pop music
james.woodall
This is the most frustrating film. It’s probably no fault of the makers, but it’s rare to have to assess a documentary for what it doesn’t have. Over nearly two hours of celebrating the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Beatles period – late 1966 to their record label Apple taking off in 1968 – there is not a note of the group’s music.Well, alright, in the opening animated credits you detect a phrasal shimmer of George Harrison’s sitar-driven “Within You Without You”, but that’s it. The score, by Andre Barreau and Evan Jolly, is a confection of atmospherics and rhythms that could be the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As the producer of the early Kinks and Who, Shel Talmy’s status as one of British pop’s most important figures is assured. He is, though, American. Despite being integral to the mid-Sixties boom years when the Limeys took over, he was born in Chicago in 1937.It didn’t stop with his two most successful clients. As the new collection Making Time: A Shel Talmy Production more-than amply demonstrates, his ears were always to the ground and the lesser knowns he worked with were as striking as the Top Ten acts. Pitch The First Gear’s sandpaper-rough version of “A Certain Girl” against The Kinks at Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Sacred and profane, trivial and profound blissfully combine in this irresistible, Olivier Award-winning tale of choirgirls gone wild. Lee Hall, of Billy Elliot fame, adapts Alan Warner’s 1998 novel with a similarly shrewd grasp of youthful hope amidst challenging circumstances, and with the arts once again proving a vital escape – albeit, in this case, temporarily.In a whirlwind 24 hours, a group of 17-year-olds travels from Oban to Edinburgh for a choral competition. Angelically voiced they may be, but they’re also here to “go mental”: cue the flaming sambuca, sexual experimentation, unholy Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Electronic music, feedback, imaginative identification with colours and art and unique sounds is our art-from. We feel we are contributing to the new ‘total sound culture.’ This culture will take its place in the world just as the Renaissance and Picasso’s blue period has.”The September 1966 press release accompanying The Creation’s second single “Painter Man” wasn’t shy. Its front page declared “We see our music as colours – it’s purple with red flashes.” If all that weren’t enough, the quote was attributed to Creation 1 v ii, as if the bible was being quoted.Just as the band’s name Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Compilations of Sixties girl group or girl-pop sides are innumerable but Honeybeat: Groovy 60s Girl-Pop is promoted on the basis of the rarity of what’s collected. The 19 tracks include The Pussaycats “The Rider”, the A-side of a 1965 single: originals sell for upwards of £100. The track has been reissued before though, on the 1990s grey-area album Girls in the Garage Volume 7. Until now, it’s never been legitimately comped.Honeybeat’s opening cut is The What Four’s essential and wild 1966 pounder “I'm Gonna Destroy That Boy”. A good-shape first-press of the 45 sells for around £150. The Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
Instead of resting on the laurels of the great music they made some 40 years ago, Blondie - still led by original members Debbie Harry and Chris Stein - are back with an album that tries to channel their past chart-toppers while also keeping in touch with modern pop, as filtered via collaborations with Sia, Charlie XCX and The Strokes’ Nick Valensi. Unfortunately for them, Pollinator reminds more of the Sonic Heroes videogame soundtrack than Parallel Lines.The singles “Fun” and “Long Time” are overflowing with squawking keyboards, uplifting vocal lines, and overly metronomic (as in, dull) Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Frankie Goes to Hollywood of “Two Tribes”. Talk Talk. Stadium-era Depeche Mode. Laibach. a-ha’s aural dramas “Stay on These Roads” and “Manhattan Skyline”. “New Year’s Day” by U2. These are the musical building blocks of Ulver’s The Assassination of Julius Caesar.The death of Princess Diana. The attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan. The Greek goddess Artemis (Diana, in the Roman myths) and story of Actaeon the hunter who saw her naked body so was killed by dogs. The Bernini statue The Rape of Proserpina, used as the album's cover image. The death of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As 1967 ended, The Beatles’ “Hello Goodbye” sat at the top of the British singles chart and Billboard’s Hot 100 in America. Musically trite – “blandly catchy”, declared the writer Ian MacDonald – the single’s banal lyrics pitched opposites against each other: yes, no; stop, go; goodbye, hello. Although Paul McCartney was saying little with the song, he was playing a game with inversion.The new compilation Jon Savage's 1967: The Year Pop Divided meets another of 1967’s schisms head on. One which The Beatles were at the heart of. As Savage puts it, “1967 was the year the ‘60s divided. During Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Olly Murs seems to have monopolised the market on teenage girls and their middle-aged mums - the ultimate X-Factor audience that's followed his journey from the show eight years ago. Doe-eyed kids and their over-zealous chaperones at the O2 are equally doolally when it comes to whooping in response to Olly's laddish flirtation, waving their arms in the air, crooning along, or boogying when invited to "party like it's a Saturday night".Ever the showman, Olly brings an abundance of energy to his set, which is a great mix of his popular chart toppers like "Heart Skips A Beat", "Dear Darling", " Read more ...
joe.muggs
One tries not to conflate the man and the music too much. Getting overly tangled up in questions of authenticity is a fool's errand, songs are ultimately public property, and in general, short of Gary Glitter-level crimes, dislike of a pop star's demeanour or attitudes shouldn't stand in the way of enjoyment of a good piece of music. All that said, snide, smirking, condescending, tax-avoiding Gary Barlow makes it very, very hard to enjoy his work.Not that there's a huge amount to enjoy here. It's a shame, because after being a good to excellent boyband, Take That upset every standard pop Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Silver Eye is Goldfrapp’s seventh long-player in an 18-year career that has taken in electronica sounds of all stripes. It sees the duo make a stab at melding together the club-friendly electropop and the witchy rural folk-noir sounds of their repertoire. Not ones to repeat themselves sonically, this involves the band inhabiting a sound characterised by dirty and sparse electronics with distorted, helium-powered vocals that annoyingly bring to mind Thereza Bazar of Eighties pop-muppets, Dollar.While this is initially an interesting and intriguing concept, it soon starts to wear pretty thin. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
When a skiffle group called The Quarry Men played live in 1959, their repertoire included covers of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” and “Sweet Little Sixteen”. The folk-based skiffle was becoming rock. In 1960, when the same band became The Beatles, they added Berry’s “Carol” and “Little Queenie” to their set.For their first radio broadcast, on 8 March 1962, the Fabs played his “Memphis Tennessee”. On 30 July 1963, they taped Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven” for what would be their second album, With The Beatles. Their final live show, in San Francisco on 29 August 1966 opened with a scrappy run Read more ...