rock
Markie Robson-Scott
In photographer Jim Marshall’s heyday in the 60s and 70s, before the music business became corporate and restrictive, and before Marshall unravelled – he was partial to cars, cocaine and guns as well as cameras – musicians asked for him, they trusted him, and he never violated their trust because, he said, “these people have let you into their life”. The pictures he took of the Beatles, Janis Joplin (pictured below), John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Duane Allman, Joni Mitchell and countless others are startlingly intimate, as if, one of his friends observes, there is no one else in the room.Alfred Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Drums away: Stewart Copeland, drummer with The Police and a score of other groups, composer for films, video games and operas, now beams enthusiastically at us from the small screen. He’s writer and presenter of this three-part Adventures in Music series for BBC Four, which has as its thesis his view that music is what made us human, differentiated us from the Neanderthal and was our earliest form of communication. Sounds came before words. Copeland was imprinted early. He remembered sitting in a dark room aged seven, listening to Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, and recognising in some way Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Bombay Bicycle Club have a knack for quasi-prophetic titles. Their fourth album, So Long, See You Tomorrow, released in February 2014, turned out to be their last, at least for a while. For when the accompanying tour concluded at London’s Earls Court – the final event before the wrecking ball deprived London of another iconic venue – the band decided they’d had enough.They’d come together at school in north London and “after ten years of doing this we thought it was time for all of us to try something else”. Bassist Ed Nash released a solo album, singer-guitarist Jack Steadman immersed Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
18 years ago, Electric Soft Parade, centred around brothers Alex and Thomas White, were the latest hyped hope of indie kids and NME-type media. However, their might-have-been moment imploded when they moved too fast for their fans, rocketing off in wildly creative flourishes rather than sticking to a predictable formula. They – and associated break-away bands – have since produced a fascinating array of musical activity, often boasting an inventive yet old-fashioned feel for orchestration.Their latest album, their fifth, is a change of direction. Written and sung by Alex, recorded and Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Now the first generation of real rock stars are finishing their fifth recording decade, the question presents itself: what should a rocker do when their career has gone on much longer than they'd planned? 2019 came up with some excellent answers. Some old-timers continued to play loud, others grew more mellow. But one thing they all had in common was that their music journeyed deep into the imagination. Of all the rock-veteran albums released, none felt more widescreen than Springsteen's Western Stars. After 40 years of straining every vocal sinew, the gravelly singer tried his Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As one decade gives way to the next, the beginning or end of the ten-year cycle rarely yields anything cut and dried. With pop music, a host of decade-related platitudes have no respect for the decade-to-decade switch. Depending on points of view, the Sixties didn’t begin until 1962, 1963 or 1964. With the Seventies, the kick-off could have been 1971 or 1972. Or maybe 1976 or 1977.Even so, it’s clear when some groundswells originated. Most of the early Seventies’ successful glam rockers were active in the preceding decade. Bolan, Bowie, Slade, Sweet and Alvin Stardust had all done their Read more ...
Owen Richards
Picking the best album at the end of the year is always unfair on the early releases. Recency bias means the newer albums carry more excitement. Better Oblivion Community Center's self-titled debut would be a major contender if it had released in September as opposed to January. It feels like part of the furniture now, a testament to the songwriting of Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst. The same goes for Titanic Rising from Weyes Blood, a sweeping epic of melody and melodrama.We've had some big hitters delivering their best work this year. Vampire Weekend's Father of the Bride refreshed Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Leonard Cohen’s death, just as Trump finagled his way into the White House, was the cruellest of blows. Now more than ever we need his bitter, witty, ironic commentary and wry observations, his wonderful words delivered in that bottomless “golden voice” which on this, his final posthumous album, is deeper than ever. There are many who came late to Cohen, the man lampooned in the 1970s and ‘80s as “Laughing Lenny” and “Captain Mandrax”. I was in my early teens when I first knowingly heard him, and I was entranced. I might not always have understood what he was singing about but I knew it was Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Liam Gallagher knows exactly how "fucking fantastic… and fucking shit I am", and proceeds to tell us so for 85 minutes. This 10-year documentary project came about as a result of director Charlie Lightening’s friendship with Gallagher, formed as Oasis came to a predictable halt. It seeks to be mildly critical, although the only person vaguely putting the boot in is current girlfriend/fiancée/soon-to-be-third-wife Debbie Gwyther – now also his manager – who describes him as "impulsive and a bit silly", and "like a toddler". Otherwise, it’s up to the other brother, Paul Gallagher, and ex- Read more ...
howard.male
Up until a couple of weeks ago, I had every intention of making Songs Of Our Native Daughters featuring Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, Allison Russell and Amythyst Kiah my Album of the year. It’s a solid work of great beauty, elegance and substance. But you can read my thoughts on it elsewhere on The Arts Desk. And the album is number eight in Rolling Stone’s Top 40 of the year, as well as being Iggy Pop’s personal album of the year, so more waffle on it from me is neither here nor there. Whereas the still relatively unknown Louisiana pop group Seratones may still be new enough to this game Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Once upon a time – before the nation’s schism – an indie band with dubious reputation espoused the virtues of Albion and invited us on the good ship Arcadia to travel to this Utopia. Things are a bit different now.Unfashionably nostalgic and romantic, preposterously self-indulgent and adolescent, do The Libertines really have any relevance in this brutal post-truth age? Maybe they’re just what we need when the concept of Britishness is being so fiercely fought over? They make their entrance to the ironic strains of Vera Lynn’s “White Cliffs of Dover” just 10 days after the pro-Brexit Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In June 1978, the still-extant independent label Cherry Red issued its first record. The seven-inch featured three slices of terse, Buzzcocks-ish art-punk by The Tights. The band were from Great Malvern, Worcestershire – as was the label. They only made one more 45 but Cherry Red – named after a Groundhogs song; the label was founded by local concert promoters – was built to last. Later, Great Malvern spawned Stephen Duffy’s Lilac Time and Blessed Ethel. Jenny Lind and Edward Elgar were local, but this seemed to be it as far as it went for entries on the rock ’n’ roll map.Surprisingly, Cherry Read more ...