punk
Kieron Tyler
Martin Hannett & Steve Hopkins: The Invisible GirlsWhile acclaimed for his glacial productions for Joy Division and New Order, Martin Hannett was also a musician in his own right. With bass guitar in hand and alongside composer-keyboard player Steve Hopkins, the duo recorded as The Invisible Girls. Under that name, they provided music for albums by John Cooper-Clarke, ex-Penetration singer Pauline Murray and provided a sonic bed for Nico. They also contributed to Hannett-produced records by Durutti Column and Jilted John.The Invisible Girls celebrates a more under-the-radar Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Last autumn Rumer reappeared with her third album, Into Colour, surprising everyone with a lead single that was disco-flavoured. The rest of the album was closer in scope to the opulent LA easy listening and classic West Coast singer-songwriter fare that the singer has made her own since her first major label single, “Slow”, blew up in 2010.Born Sarah Joyce in Islamabad in 1979 to a large British family, she found she was the result of an affair between her mother and their Pakistani cook. The death of her mother in 2003 affected her profoundly and, when she attempted to track her blood Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Radio Birdman: Radio BirdmanLike Magma, last week’s stars of theartsdesk’s reissues weekly, Australia’s similarly black-clad Radio Birdman favoured a uniform look. And also in common with the idiosyncratic French combo, they had a logo – an ominous, diamond-shaped, red and black symbol chosen for the cover of this box set over an image of the band. Instead of wearing their logo as pendants like Magma, Radio Birdman sported it on arm bands.There’s no musical similarity between Magma and Radio Birdman, but both sought to portray themselves as united, as if by a cause, and apart from Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
There are, probably, two things standing in the way of Against Me! topping as many best-of lists as they deserve to this year: firstly, the January release date, which tends to lead to many fine records being abandoned for the newest and shiniest; and secondly, the tortuous route it found to release at all. Label issues, intra-band politics and the small matter of the additional attention paid to the band's songwriter and frontwoman Laura Jane Grace's first album since coming out as transgender in 2012. However, right from the thudding, drums-only beginnings of the album's opening salvo (" Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Millions Like Us - The Story of the Mod Revival 1977–1989A “testosterone-fuelled youth movement” is how the opening paragraph of the introductory essay of this box set tags the mod revival. Aficionados of the “clean-cut, neatly dressed younger sibling of punk” were members of “an often violently defined tribe”. Concerts are described as battlegrounds: “punches were thrown” at “live appearances by The Chords.” In the individual commentaries on the 100 tracks collected, there is talk of “boot boys in parkas” and, for the band Small Hours, “live appearances sometimes Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Purple’s debut album (409) is loud, brash and full of beans, with a big smile and an eye on a good time. This lively three-piece come on like a Texan take on UK indie favourites The Subways, but without the angst, and their exuberant garage punk rock with yelping, over-excited vocals is just the tonic for a wet autumn.(409) is named after Purple’s East Texan area code and “Wallflower” kicks off with some serious swagger, as singer Hanna Brewer commands “I’m a girl. You’re supposed to be chasing me!” over Taylor Busby’s dirty riffs, while knocking seven bells out of her drum kit. This is just Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Minny Pops: Drastic Measures, Drastic Movement The Pop Group: Cabinet of Curiosities, We are TimeTwo groups with tangential relationships to the pop in their names. One from Bristol, the other from Amsterdam. Each attracted attention in the punk's slipstream yet most certainly weren’t punk. In time, both would be pigeonholed as post-punk, despite The Pop Group having formed in 1977 and Minny Pops getting off the ground in 1978 – successive years when punk was still vital, common currency and commercially viable.The term post-punk, like most after-the-fact categorisations, doesn’t neatly Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
If you’ve ever found the idea of “cock rock” to be unnecessarily gendered, then the debut album from Ex Hex – an all-female trio who, between them, have created the best 35 minutes of ballsy rock 'n' roll I’ve heard since Sleater-Kinney’s “The Fox” – is for you. If you haven’t, and you’re just looking for something new to listen to that’s uncomplicated and up-front that will blow the cobwebs out from between your ears, then Ex Hex is also for you. And if you’ve been struggling to find a record that would match the giddy girl-rock high you got the first time you listened to Wild Flag’s first Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
For someone who tags himself rock and roll's greatest failure, John Otway hasn’t done too badly. Anyone attempting to navigate their way through a career in rock ‘n’ roll wouldn’t do badly looking to Otway as an example to follow. He’s had chart singles, headlined the Royal Albert Hall, written two autobiographies and has a massive, loyal fan base. At age 61, he’s still at it over 40 years after the 1972 release of his first single. Judging from Otway the Movie, he does what he does full time, has a roof over his head, has a wife and an enviably articulate daughter. Failure? Hardly.The Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“It looked like Dresden after the bombing.” Blondie’s Chris Stein may be a member of one of pop’s most-loved bands, but he also has a way with words. Describing 1970's New York City in this way is offensive to the memory of the 25,000 who died in the World War II air raids on Dresden. More pertinently for New York-dweller Stein, his comment also chimes badly with the destruction of the twin towers of Manhattan’s World Trade Centre in 2001.Blondie’s New York and the Making of Parallel Lines unquestioningly celebrated the band’s massive-selling, breakthrough third album but some care could have Read more ...
David Nice
Lukas Moodysson caught the miseries and splendours of kids on the cusp of teendom in an early gem, Together (Tillsammans), but there they made up only one strand in the general trajectory of trouble to triumph. That difficult theme of very early adolescence, so easy to parody, so hard to keep truly affectionate, is the entire domain of We Are the Best!Maybe it partly rings true because the tale of first two, then three spirited girls embracing punk at the end of its natural life in 1982 is also the true story of Moodyson’s wife Coco, who novelized her early angsts and exuberance. But it Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Wire: Document and EyewitnessEven when taking account of the elasticity brought by punk splintering into the myriads of left turns, new directions and dead ends of what became post-punk, the trajectory of Wire was eccentric. Document and Eyewitness was the final and fourth album they issued before their reformation in 1985, having first split up in 1980. Ostensibly a live album, Document and Eyewitness captures Wire’s final show, on 29 February 1980, at Camden’s Electric Ballroom. It was an evening which continued what they had begun during a residency at The Jeannetta Cochrane Theatre Read more ...