rock
joe.muggs
The original Black Sabbath were a feat of engineering on a par with a classic Land Rover or an AK47. Everything about them was basic, brutal, unadorned and brilliantly functional – and as such achieved a very real, if rather grim, kind of beauty. So it's very nice indeed to see Tony Iommi's churning detuned guitar, Ozzy Osbourne's desolate howl (one of the most inhuman voices in popular music this side of Kraftwerk, in fact) and Geezer Butler's basslines and lyrics of alienation reunited, 35 years after they last recorded together.There are issues here. Sadly original drummer Bill Ward is Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Reasons behind the prolonged absence of Queens of the Stone Age are legion, including line-up turbulence, successful side projects and the near-death experience of band linchpin Josh Homme. As if to acknowledge and compensate for the lengthy gap in new material since 2007‘s Era Vulgaris, there’s little that hasn’t been thrown into the ...Like Clockwork mix: power ballads, industrial sleaze, surprising reunions, the sound of broken glass - and Elton John on piano.That contribution - the joyous backdrop, half-buried in the mix, of a song called “Fairweather Friends” that begins like something Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
From being “a strange facsimile of the original” to generating the “first British record made by people who are 100 per cent convinced that they are doing the right thing”, Rock ‘n’ Roll Britannia breezily mapped the protracted birth of a British rock scene which could take America on at its own game. As Cliff Richard put it, what was created was “different enough to become European. Or other-worldly.” It took The Beatles to crack America, but they would not have done so without being rookies in Britain’s Fifties’ musical boot camp.That the programme tackled this familiar story with a Read more ...
Graham Fuller
For those familiar with Ginger Baker’s virtuosic musicianship, but not with his life, the biggest revelation of the warts-and-all documentary Beware of Mr Baker may be that next to drumming, playing polo was the great time-keeper’s obsession. One might expect a jet-setting country gent like Bryan Ferry to mount up for a chukka or two before teatime, but the wild man of Cream and Blind Faith, late of Lewisham? Does Topper Headon play bowls?If, as an addiction, polo didn’t match Baker’s 19-year affair with heroin, it has been almost as ruinous a pastime. Toward the end of Jay Bulger’s film, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: The Sun Rock Box - Rock ‘n’ Roll Recorded by Sam Phillips 1954-1959It’s no exaggeration to say that Sam Phillips transformed society. With his associate Ike Turner, he brought Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88” to the world in 1951. He may or may not have known it then, but Phillips had set the template for what would become rock ‘n’ roll. Then, in quick succession, he disseminated the message via Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis. By the end of 1956 rock ‘n’ roll was, indeed, here to stay. The world would never be the same again.Then there’s the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Killing Joke: The Singles Collection 1979-2012Killing Joke were one of the most singular British bands to emerge in wake of punk. Their metal-edged, tribal stomp didn’t fit in with anything else going on at the time. Collecting 33 tracks from their singles and EPs to date, The Singles Collection 1979-2012 shows them as single-minded, a trait bringing a timelessness and consistency. “In Cythera”, from 2012, is as impactful as 1988’s “America”.Their sound has changed though. The rough edges and bark of “Follow the Leaders” (1981) or "Let's All Go (to the Fire Dances)" (1983) have been tempered Read more ...
garth.cartwright
Reformed rock bands may be ten-a-penny but no other return quite matches the resurrection of Alice In Chains. The first grunge band to break big with their 1990 debut album Facelift, Alice In Chains matched Nirvana both in their ability to marry heavy riffs with haunted melodies and a genuinely desperate sense of despair: on Facelift they sang "We Die Young" while 1992’s Dirt finds nearly every song mined with self loathing alongside odes to heroin. Unsurprising then - if still shocking - that vocalist Layne Staley and bassist Mike Starr both went to early graves.Yet guitarist Jerry Cantrell Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Rock geeks will generally tell you that Deep Purple needs to include either Ritchie Blackmore or Jon Lord to be truly deserving of the name. Sadly, neither will ever again be available for duty. Lord – to whom this album is dedicated – passed away last year. Blackmore irrevocably turned his back on rock years ago. Their absence, however, has little to do with this album's deficiencies.Short of hiring a spirit-medium to bring back Lord, the band couldn’t have achieved a more classic organ sound than that of Don Airey. Guitarist Steve Morse is equally virtuoso and none of the others performs Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
While it’s impossible to recreate the impact of their astounding first Sixties sally, it’s still a thrill when a new album appears bearing the name “Stooges”. Punk’s ragged-arsed Detroit progenitors first popped up again in 2007 with visceral live shows but a lacklustre album, The Weirdness. Since then original guitarist Ron Asheton has died and, in a strange mirror to history, James Williamson, guitarist on 1973's classic Raw Power, has returned to the fold (following a 30 year career in engineering management!)For fans who dared to hope, it’s good rather than great news. This isn’t an Read more ...
Russ Coffey
If one thing unites James and last night's support act, Echo & the Bunnymen, it’s that they both tend to be underrated. James’s big college rock songs can overshadow the true splendour of their weird, poetic and off-kilter worldview. The Bunnymen’s problem is that, outside their fanbase, too many simply know them for their song “The Killing Moon”, which featured in the film Donnie Darko. Last night, they didn't seem to want to do much to change that.It was only partly their fault. They came on in front of a half-empty Academy with an atmosphere more soundcheck than gig. The way they'd lit Read more ...
joe.muggs
On hearing the opening track of this album, a friend said “I didn't expect to be listening to new albums of the YYYs 10 years on!” And this is kind of understandable: of all the new rock bands of the early 2000s – The Strokes, The Vines, The Hives, The White Stripes – they had the most air of hipsterism, their kooky demeanour and New York clubbability making it understandable that some could think they were a trend-driven flash-in-the-pan sensation.In fact it was their NYC compatriots The Strokes who all but collapsed under the weight of their own archness, while in contrast what drove the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Stephen Stills: Carry OnSprawling across these four discs is the curious saga of the megastar who fell to earth. From early 1967, when Stephen Stills's song "For What It's Worth" became a Top 10 hit for LA folk-rockers Buffalo Springfield, to 1973's Down the Road, the second and final album with his band Manassas, Stills was leading the charge at the white-hot edge of the rock revolution. But after that his stock plummeted, his albums falling lower and lower in the charts as his imperious aura dwindled bewilderingly. He last appeared on Billboard's Top 200 when his 1984 disc Right Read more ...