songwriters
Russ Coffey
Of all the unlikely musical pairings in recent times, Jesca Hoop and Guy Garvey deserve special mention. The genial Elbow frontman, all northern charm and indie anthems, is like a favourite bitter. Hoop, on the other hand, former nanny to Tom Waits's children, is more like something Lewis Carroll's Alice might have drunk. Since she moved from California to Manchester, Garvey has been mentoring Hoop, and appeared on her best-known song. But last night’s gig was all her, with a little help from four friends.And the packed London bar was also shown why, in a scene saturated with high-quality Read more ...
david.cheal
Beards, beards, beards: at the Roundhouse, they seemed to be everywhere, sprouting from the chins of hundreds of chaps in the audience. Perhaps, though, I was just looking out for them, what with the luxuriant growth on the face of the man they had all come to see: Iron & Wine, the artist otherwise known as Sam Beam, singer, songwriter and former film studies professor from the American south-east.Indeed, I think I had beards on the brain; skimming through his Wikipedia biography before the show, I thought I’d read that he “sometimes tours with a full beard”, when of course it says “ Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Tom Waits is releasing his poem, Seeds on Hard Ground, in a limited-edition "chap book" format (a chap book being a pocket-sized booklet popular in the 17th and 18th centuries). It will be available exclusively through his website in a collaboration with ANTI- Records, with the aim of raising funds for homeless services in his region of northern California and bringing attention to a growing homelessness problem in today's difficult economic circumstances. The poem is available to read in its entirety here.The poem is described as "a long lyrical ballad in the voices of those who walked Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It's a season of retrospection for Bruce Springsteen. New light has been thrown on his pivotal 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town with the release of The Promise, a double CD of out-takes and unreleased songs, alongside an expanded box set of CDs and DVDs telling the Darkness story in sound and vision. A version of Thom Zimny's documentary about the making of the album, included in the boxed release, was shown in Imagine on BBC One. It's part of a sporadic programme of reassessment of key works from Springsteen's career, which has included a 30th-anniversary edition of Born to Run and Read more ...
josh.spero
Talking to Jude Kelly at the Royal Festival Hall last night, Stephen Sondheim gave a glimpse into his own theory of lyrical composition by contrasting Noël Coward (whom "I intensely dislike") and Cole Porter.The problem with Coward, he said after some hesitation, was that he was born poor, and so when he writes about the rich, he does so with the outsider's sneer. Porter, on the other hand, was born rich and thus could treat his peers with good humour and kindness. Sondheim compared Coward's "I've Been to a Marvellous Party" with Porter's "Well, Did You Evah?", both songs about parties, Read more ...
paul.mcgee
“Thank you for waiting. I know some of you have been waiting a long time – about seven years – but it takes me a while to get things done.” Thus did singer/songwriter Hayley Willis greet the audience at her return to active service. Two Willis albums have bookended that seven-year period: 2003's acclaimed Come Get Some, her debut for 679/XL, and its excellent follow-up, Uncle Treacle, released on 4 October on her own Cripple Creek label, for which last night's performance acted as a launch party.The last few years have also seen the emergence of a particular kind of musical aesthetic Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If the audience at Wilton's charmingly archaic music hall were feeling depressed by the bleak comedy of the England "performance" against Algeria, a whirl around the musical block in the company of Ed Harcourt was the perfect antidote. Critics feel compelled to categorise everything, and Harcourt has been compared to all and sundry, from Brian Wilson to Harry Nilsson to Tom Waits. But the great thing about Ed is that, despite being the 74 billionth singer-songwriter to walk the face of the earth, he manages to be a one-off, apparently sweet and soothing one minute, sending out pulsating waves Read more ...
graeme.thomson
When the moment finally arrives for the Great Rock Reckoning, it’s hard to say where Crowded House will figure. There was a time, around 1993, when they looked like heirs apparent to U2 and R.E.M., ready to make the step-change up to the out-of-town sheds and the weekend fan-boys. They broke up rather than have to grasp that particular nettle, and the moment duly passed.Now in their second phase, having reformed in 2006 with Matt Sherrod replacing former drummer Paul Hester, who committed suicide just over five years ago, they remain an intriguingly indistinct proposition. Their albums, save Read more ...
david.cheal
So anyway, when I told my three teenagers that I was off to see Randy Newman, there was a collective yawn and a mild snort of derision, which (and I think I know them well enough to interpret their snorts of derision) said, in effect, “Well, he’s just some crumbly guy who writes sweet songs for Toy Story. Why would anyone actually want to go and see him sing?” A response began to form in my head: that Randy Newman has been described by some as the greatest living American songwriter; that his songs cover some pretty big topics – racism, the slave trade, German child murderers of the 1930s, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It's probably a bit early to start picking the best albums of 2010, but I would seriously consider a legal challenge if Diane Birch's Bible Belt isn't there or thereabouts when the votes are counted. Like a long-lost singer-songwriter classic, it accomplishes the trick of sounding instantly familiar, yet Birch herself doesn't sound quite like any other artist you've heard before. Her voice can be soft and supple, but it also has a raw, rasping quality that can saw through a song like "Choo Choo", with its vamping organ and garage-band guitars. By contrast, in the hymn-like "Forgiveness" she Read more ...
David Nice
One girl can hit a high C, and how; the other would surely melt the iciest-hearted in Rodgers and Hammerstein torchsongs. That's Roberta Alexander, on the evidence of her "Somewhere" last night. Together with classy lyric-coloratura Claron McFadden, the beaming high Cs girl, and sophisticated pianist-animateuse Reinild Mees, she ran the gamut of Bernstein's song-and-dance cornucopia. With such physical ease and high spirits from these total artists, even the occasional archness in Lenny's heart-on-sleeve songbook passed with a relaxed sense of fun.Not that it was all about just having a good Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Jazz enthusiast Clint Eastwood, who co-produced this film with the BBC's Arena, clearly harbours a particular regard for songwriter, singer, impresario and record company mogul Johnny Mercer. When Eastwood made his film of John Berendt's book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which was set in Mercer's home town of Savannah, Georgia and partly shot in Mercer House, built by Johnny's grandfather, the accompanying soundtrack was a newly recorded collection of some of Mercer's most celebrated songs.Happily, where Midnight in the Garden... was, even in the most rose-tinted view, a grotesque Read more ...