rock
Lisa-Marie Ferla
There must be something quite frustrating about being a Stroke in 2013, assuming you just want to get on with the business of making music without constantly being reminded that you are part of a band once labeled the biggest in the world by the music press. It’s no wonder they aren’t giving interviews around the release of their fifth album, even if they’ve now pretty much outlived every magazine that once put them on the cover. The thing is, the Strokes have eschewed the simplicity of their debut on every release since, which is why the new wave-y synths and 80s influences on their latest Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
What fire and grace on display last night at what he and we assume will be Wilko Johnson’s final London gig. It’s been a while since ticket touts were out in force outside one of his gigs (£200 for you, sir) although his career has been floating upward in the last couple of years, partly due to Julien Temple’s excellent documentary Oil City Confidential. We came to pay affectionate tribute to one of the great guitar stylists, who announced a couple of months ago that he had terminal cancer.Most bands playing material from 40 years ago are going through the motions and are basically Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Five years,” said former Mott the Hoople fan club president Kris Needs of the band’s lifespan. “That’s how long the Kaiser Chiefs have been around, but who cares?” It seemed an unfair measure. Mott split 39 years ago and the Leeds quirksters are still going strong. But in terms of stitches in rock’s rich tapestry, Mott’s, like the Kaiser Chiefs’, probably wouldn’t darn a sock.That’s not to say Mott the Hoople didn’t merit this documentary, or that their best records weren’t among the greatest of the early Seventies. But it did take David Bowie to write their first hit and boot them into the Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Over 30 years, Bon Jovi has remained one of the more cartoonish fixtures in soft rock. With characteristic lack of irony, the boys from New Jersey have perfected the art of singing nonsense - my favourite example is "someday you tell the day / by the bottle that you drink" - with straight faces. Now, they’re getting more ambitious. What About Now is being touted as a “big rock record full of social commentary". Its subject is Obama’s America. How odd then that half of it sounds a bit like the Stereophonics.Still, it’s not all bland, anthemic, stadium rock. The lead single, “Because We Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Stars are never sleeping, dead ones and the living” sings David Bowie on the “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)”, The Next Day’s third track. He could have been singing about himself. Having apparently hibernated for a decade after heart surgery, his return puts to bed speculation about retirement. More than that, The Next Day finally extinguishes one of the great Bowie what-ifs – what if he had continued the path set by 1980’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) and the trio of albums which preceded it?Scary Monsters wasn’t afraid to look back and revisit Major Tom. Similarly, The Next Day Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Family: Once Upon a TimeFamily were always difficult to place. This lavish box set doesn’t make getting a handle on them any easier. They were as idiosyncratic as Jethro Tull and, in Roger Chapman, had a vocalist as offbeat as Joe Cocker. Not that they sounded like either, more that their DNA was as sharp-edged as both. The Leicester-born band had roots in soul-pop outfit The Farinas and the psychedelic underground embraced them – they were integral to the 1969 novel Groupie, a lid-lifting, supposedly fictional, exposé of rock’s seamier side. Despite these leg-ups and their popularity, they Read more ...
howard.male
With BBC Four currently mourning the passing of the LP, it’s encouraging that some artists still like to confine themselves to the format’s time limitations and its implicit requirement that the songs etched into its silky surface should be connected by some kind of theme or mood.Nick Cave is one such artist, never more so that with this suite of nine darkly warm numbers that have been nurtured by him and his long-standing and (here anyway) remarkably restrained band. The Bad Seeds have always understood that the needs of the song outweigh the needs of individual musicians to do their thang, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The world goes apeshit when the Stones manage to drag themselves out for a few gigs after half a decade or so of indolence, but Neil Young rightly gets a bit prickly when people accuse him of making a "comeback". He tends to snarl that "he's never been away."And he's right. Though he's not far short of 70, Young keeps banging out albums which are at least intermittently impressive (eg Fork in the Road, Living With War, Le Noise), and this year the cantankerous old North Ontarian has been particularly productive. There's been Jonathan Demme's on-the-road film Neil Young Journeys, a box set Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It feels a little like cheating to call Celebration Rock, the second album from Vancouver duo Japandroids, an album at all. Featuring only eight songs, the whole thing is over and done with in a little over 35 minutes. Plenty of bands these days would be happy to file that under "extended play".And yet, Japandroids squeeze so much into their alloted time that any more would be exhausting. This late in the year, it feels like giddy repetition to suggest that the album’s title is its mission statement; a summation as stark as the simple black and white cover art the band favours. The two-piece Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Pete Townshend was always the most literate of stars, not merely a rock icon but someone who believed in Art with a capital A – he even ran his own publishing company and had an editing job in the 1980s with Faber and Faber, where he made friends with writing giants like Ted Hughes (he adapted his Iron Man) and William Golding, who he used to go boating with. Lucky Pete - except, he never thinks so, and beats himself up for not appreciating his good fortune.So we might have expected a proper literary autobiography from the Who guitarist and author of Tommy and Quadrophenia. Recent Read more ...
Jasper Rees
What makes a good rock biography? Sex, naturally. Drugs, frequently. Rock’n’roll, obviously. None of the above are in short supply in Rod Stewart’s account of a long life spent howling into microphones and knocking up blondes. He came, he snorted, he conquered across four decades, in a variety of outfits from tartan to spandex, from the Eel Pie Island to Vegas. And the way he delivers it, this tall tale of wine, women and song has the flavour of a splendid lock-in down the boozer.But there’s more to Rod: The Autobiography. The best books about stardom are able to explain how it feels to Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Elbow are responsible for a remarkable conjuring trick. Earlier this year their song “First Steps” stirringly soundtracked the BBC’s Olympic credit sequence, and then at the Closing Ceremony they serenaded the athletes into the London 2012 stadium with “Open Arms” and “One Day Like This”. Their musical message of harmony and celebration - of higher, faster, stronger, cheerier - ought by rights to sound like the most grating of bromides. But no, Elbow have found the secret recipe for banishing cynicism, boosting endorphins, spreading the love. It’s no coincidence that their star has risen Read more ...