rock
Thomas H. Green
The lockdown which began in March is now noticeably easing, although in the realm of gigs and festivals things are still nowhere near operative. Nonetheless, theartsdesk is responding to the changes by ceasing our many weeks of New Music Lockdown Specials and looking forward to an increasing amount of actual live events. This week, we can only offer one, alongside plenty of streamed entertainment, but it’s early days. Here’s to the future. Dive in!Supersonic presents SofasonicBirmingham’s Supersonic is one of the only shindigs in Britain’s jammed annual summer festival calendar that truly Read more ...
Asya Draganova
It is difficult to live up to your own legacy when you’ve reached an iconic status in rock’n’roll. It is even harder when you are a frontwoman in a “masculine” genre where age makes you increasingly invisible and/or viciously criticised. Like Chrissie Hynde sings in the autobiographical “Can’t Hurt a Fool” from the new record, she does not “play the rules” and is “too old to know better/too young for her age”. She rises to the challenge with confidence and oomph: the tunes from the new Pretenders album Hate for Sale are well worth the listen.If you are a Pretenders fan, you will not be Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Shoegaze stable Sonic Cathedral has, in truth, always been a much broader church than its name implies. From the psychedelic, sunshine pop of Gulp, to the blistering art noise of Spectres, it has consistently released music that shares a similar heritage, without putting all its pedals on the same board.Bedroom, the debut album from Leeds/Hull-based five-piece bdrmm, however, plays exquisitely to type. It channels the shoegaze sound with such purpose and resolve it’s hard to believe most of band weren’t born when My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless nearly crippled Creation.Brimming with taught Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The spoof “rockumentary” always sounds like a great idea, but it’s hard to pull off. Largely this is because rock stars are so divorced from reality that an element of self-parody is already built in, albeit unwittingly (“everybody’s so different, I haven’t changed” as Joe Walsh deadpanned in "Life's Been Good"). This Is Spinal Tap (the Rosetta Stone of the genre) worked because it didn’t try to invent its material so much as amass a load of real-life examples and compress them into 82 minutes.At least writer/director Rhy Thomas has some credibility in this area, having masterminded the droll Read more ...
caspar.gomez
Coronavirus blah blah blah. Glastonbury cancelled. What to do? Didn’t go to the 2010 festival for reasons too tedious to go into. Suffered the worst FOMO of my life. This is different. There is no Glastonbury. But sitting around at home… we’ve all been doing that for months…I call Don Carlton, who has been my fellow adventurer for eight of the last 10 Glastonburys: “Hey Don, we’ve got to do something that weekend, but I don’t know what…”“I have a plan,” he says.It is Thursday 25th June 2020.T-minus two days until Don Carlton’s plan kicks in. I’ve just driven for four-and-a-half hours on the Read more ...
mark.kidel
One of the songs on Paul Weller’s excellent new album – only similar to his previous one True Meanings (2018) in that once again he's gently treading new ground – is called “Equanimity”. The title sums up the quietly joyful and relaxed tone of the material he's crafted once again with such discernment, musicality and soul.The Modfather has settled into a mature groove: one of his new release’s strongest and most appealing qualities is an impeccable attention to production, in tandem with Jan Stan Kybert. Although the sophisticated sounds are steeped in a rich heritage of pop, soul and jazz, Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
If the title of their third album alludes to the lazy assumption of female-fronted as a musical genre, HAIM’s revenge is to try a little bit of everything, while never sounding anything less than themselves. Women in Music Pt. III elevates the sister trio’s signature harmonies, infectious rhythms and Sunshine Coast melodies with muted saxophones, warped vocal samples, techno beats, good ol’-fashioned soft-rock guitar riffs - and a whole lotta honesty.The band take turns at being giddy, flirtatious and introspective, letting rip equally at 3am booty calls, depressive illness and patronising Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
This morning at 9.00 AM would be when Worthy Farm opened its gates to the hedonistic hordes. The weather is scorchio and Glastonbury 50 would have been such a party. Instead, that will all be Glastonbury 2021. So right now, those who love their annual Pilton pilgrimage need to get inventive: the festival and the BBC have laid on a feast of allsorts. It’s about to kick off. Let’s get amongst it…BBC CoverageThe BBC have devoted a whole new special iPlayer channel to Glastonbury and will be showing old sets from 10.00 AM Thursday morning until after midnight, and doing the same every day, up to Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The lockdown may be loosening but we’re no nearer to gigs and festivals occurring so, for the foreseeable, online is where it’s at. Here, then, is the latest selection of musical happenings that you can wrap your eyes and ears around during the coming week. Dive in!Make Music DayOriginating with France’s Fête de la Musique back in 1982, the idea of Make Music Day is to put as much music in as many public spaces as possible. It has blossomed over the decades, catching on in the UK where, last year, almost 30,000 performed to around 140,000 people. In 2020, of course, the event takes place Read more ...
Barney Harsent
In the series one finale of metal-detecting sitcom Detectorists, Lance fills in a hole he’s dug after unearthing nothing more than a rusted ring-pull. As the camera pans downwards, we see the riches that were hiding beneath. He was looking in the right place, it’s just that the good stuff lay tantalisingly out of reach.And that’s a little bit like Homegrown, Neil Young’s lost album. Scheduled for a 1974 release, it was shelved by the singer/songwriter, who felt the emotion on display was too close to the bone following his split with actress Carrie Snodgress. Finally, some 46 years later, Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Echo in the Canyon is a lamentably thin documentary about the vibrant folk-rock music scene that flourished in the bohemian Los Angeles neighbourhood of Laurel Canyon from 1965 to 1967. Though it features priceless vintage footage of the Beach Boys, the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and the Mamas and the Papas and interviews with some surviving members, it weirdly comes across as a vehicle for Jakob Dylan.The singer-songwriter was born in 1969, the year in which Jacques Demy’s only American film Model Shop was released. Inspired by the mood of Demy’s semi-documentary love-letter to Los Angeles Read more ...
Tim Cumming
When “Murder Most Foul” was dropped into an unsuspecting world under lockdown, the surprise was palpable, given that eight years had passed since Tempest, filled by Sinatra covers and seasonal tours. That it was a 16-minute epic that took Dylan’s writing into new areas (including No1 on Billboard) – and this on the verge of his eightieth year – is also astonishing. Mixing the modes of popular verse with his own telling twists of imagery and narrative, “Murder Most Foul” was a widescreen, mythological retelling of the Kennedy assassination wrapped up in a lengthy ‘king list’ of players, songs Read more ...