New music
Guy Oddy
2022 was, without any shadow of a doubt, the year when live music once again managed to provide an arena for music lovers to come together for shared magic and the occasional joyous evening after the main wave of Covid had passed us by. A place for heads to spin and for hips to swing.This was helped by a festival season that was generally kind to campers and by a relaxation of the draconian travel rules that had stymied international artists from visiting the UK during the last couple of years. WOMAD especially proved a significant highlight, particularly with the UK debut performance by Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Welcome to the final theartsdesk on Vinyl of 2022 which is topped off by two Vinyl of the Months, one there for seasonal jollies and the other for musical adventurousness. As ever, the rest runs the gamut from reissues of albums from decades ago to the most contemporary, cutting edge music around. Dive in!CHRISTMAS VINYL OF THE MONTHVarious The Muppet Christmas Carol (Walt Disney)Is there a more Christmassy object than a picture disc of the soundtrack to The Muppet Christmas Carol? There may be but this will do us very well. Coincidentally, theartsdesk on Vinyl’s festive film-show this year Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
I tend to run away from all known bandwagons, but I'm on this one. Peter Quinn called Cécile McLorin Salvant’s album Ghost Song “a moving, imaginative, at times laugh-out-loud collection of songs” back in February, and it is a wonderful piece of work on every level.McLorin Salvant has gone from winning the Thelonius Monk competition in 2010 at the age of 21, to becoming a MacArthur Fellow in the class of 2020. Three of McLorin Salvant’s four albums on Mack Avenue won Grammy Awards, and this, her debut on Nonesuch, must surely win her another. It is a reminder that the greats of our time have Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Each new Beatles album offered a chance for other acts to record their own versions of songs which didn’t make it onto singles. What was on the long-player could pick up attention if it was covered. Revolver was no exception. Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers’s version of “Got to Get You Into my Life” was in the charts the August 1966 week Revolver was issued.Revolver’s “Here There and Everywhere” was recorded by The Fourmost. “For no One” was covered by Paul McCartney sound-alike Marc Reid, “Yellow Submarine” by The She Trinity. None were hits, and The She Trinity were gazumped by The Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
I hate Alex Turner. Ever since he and his spotty crew upended my rather dull existence in 2005 (courtesy of not entirely legal streaming services) I have been in his thrall. But everyone loved Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not and most people moved on. But bear with me, reader. In my defence, I had reached rock bottom a few years before, ending up being hospitalised. And kind of given up on music (I was “too old”, I told myself). But I turned a corner, got out and eventually found a great job working with fabulous people. Then, shortly after I’d discovered “The Ritz Read more ...
joe.muggs
It’s been a shit year. Global horrors from Kiev to Karachi and Tehran to Texas all somehow feeling too close for comfort, and even closer to home heatstroke, frostbite, floods, strikes, impoverishment, the grinding realisation that pestilence is a long term way of life now…I’ve never been so glad of the extreme privilege of just being able to keep my head above water, but even given that there’s been misery, grief, regret and a whole heap of grinding tedium. Which in turn means I’ve never – and I mean this most vividly: NEVER – been so glad to have music and the rich culture and subculture Read more ...
Tim Cumming
There’s much fun to be had with snow, and fun things go with it, too, such as album launches in Soho on a freezing Saturday night in December, when the rest of the country is watching England depart the World Cup in the quarter finals.Downstairs at Pizza Express Jazz Dean Street, missed-penalty misery was banished, the snowfall was metaphorical, and the fun to be had was centred around singer Emma Smith, launching her Snowbound record to a full house with a fine quartet behind her, of Hammond organist Ross Stanley, the tasteful licks of guitarist Nick Costly-White, Leo RIchardson’s supple sax Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Actually, Spotify tells me the album I’ve streamed most this year is Motordrome, the third album by Danish pop star MØ. When I reviewed it back in January I was underwhelmed by its doleful moodiness, but, showing how wrong a quick couple of listens can be, something about its vaguely remorseful, indie-tinged, girl-pop melancholy grabbed me deeper than I’d realised and kept drawing me back.Some years, my Album of the Year is clear and obvious. It’s the one that stands head-and-shoulders above the rest, listened to with giddy addiction. 2022 has not been such a year. In all honesty, my Album of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Those old enough will recall Debbie Gibson as a squeaky clean, flash-in-the-pan teen pop star of the late 1980s. She was globe-trottingly huge for a couple of years – a peer of Tiffany “I Think We’re Alone Now” Darwish – but then her star waned. What’s less well-remembered is that she was a self-made creation; she’s still the youngest person to have written, produced and performed a US No. 1 single.Her new Christmas album displays a similar confidence. Unlike most such seasonal outings, dominated by the usual old chestnuts, 10 of its 14 songs are originals, written or co-written by herself. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s Friday night and I’ve finally arrived at 43-year-old French music festival institution Trans Musicales. Due to some dreadful nonsense, it’s taken a 12-hour train journey, two baguettes, one short Stephen King novel, six large beers, a tumbler of Bourbon, and one shuttlebus to place me at the Parc Expo, a series of giant airport hangars that house the majority of musical activity (although there’s a smattering of earlier events in Rennes itself).The music runs from 9.00 pm-ish through to shortly before dawn and Trans Musicales is renowned for ensuring that the nearly 60,000 attendees are Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
You wait a whole decade for an album by UK jazz vocalist Emma Smith to turn up… and then...if not quite two, then one and most of a second (a full album Meshuga Baby, released in June, and this five-track Christmas EP)... turn up.Not that Emma Smith isn’t ever extremely busy and in-demand. Turn the clock way back and she was already singing out in front of big bands from her early teens, she then had the vocalist slot with NYJO, a "chair" once held by Amy Winehouse. Smith has been a regular Puppini Sister for years, and has worked with everyone from Michael Buble, Georgie Fame and Robbie Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Growing up in Sweden, sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg developed ways of combatting the biting cold and bleak darkness of winter. As well as writing during wintertime, they turned to the open landscapes and pervasive desert heat of the USA to inspire their music. Perhaps it is this that brings such a warm sheen to their presence.On a stage ablaze with the iridescent shimmer of a huge sun backdrop, the duo open with “Palomino”, to a retro film screen of horses running free and wild. The Nevada aesthetic continues with “Angel” and “It’s A Shame” accompanied by Super 8-style films of golden Read more ...