fri 23/05/2025

New Music reviews, news & interviews

Album: Ammar 808 - Club Tounsi

Mark Kidel

Ammar 808 is the high octane vehicle for the Tunisian-born producer Sofyann Ben Youssef, now based in Denmark. His first album Maghreb United (2018)struck hard and fast in a field already well-populated by the fusion of traditional Arab sounds and modern electronics. It was a marriage made in heaven.

Pixies, O2 Academy, Birmingham review - indie veterans pack the house

Guy Oddy

Pixies might just be the ultimate Radio 6 Dad band. They’ve been around (on-and-off) for around 40 years; they’ve got a fine back catalogue of slightly weird, guitar-driven scuzzy rock music and they have absolutely no pretentions to being flash at all.

Album: Sports Team - Boys These Days

Thomas H Green

How do you solve a problem like Sports Team? Taking them at face value, they’re a living metaphor for the slow music biz relegation of the working...

Album: Stereolab - Instant Holograms on Metal Film

Joe Muggs

Stereolab always walked a knife edge between deadly serious and dead silly. Their sound was constructed around the sort of reference points – French...

The Great Escape Festival 2025, Brighton review...

Caspar Gomez

Photographer Finetime and I have our first pints outside Dalton’s, a bar on Brighton seafront, at almost exactly midday. They are Beavertown Neck Oil...

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Album: Robert Forster - Strawberries

Kieron Tyler

The former Go-Betweens linchpin celebrates life’s quirks and temptations

Music Reissues Weekly: Chapterhouse - White House Demos

Kieron Tyler

What the shoegazers were up to before they were categorised as shoegazers

Songlines Encounters, Kings Place review - West African and Anatolian magic

Tim Cumming

Setting the scene for a weekend of close musical encounters from across the globe

The Great Escape Festival 2025, Brighton review - a dip into Thursday

Thomas H Green

Running the gamut from Japanese hip-house to Welsh LGBT stadium pop

Album: Rico Nasty - LETHAL

Ibi Keita

From chaos to control, Rico Nasty trades bite for balance

Lucy Farrell, Catherine MacLellan, The Green Note review - sublime frequencies

Tim Cumming

Two singer songwriters in their prime deliver a double header showcase in Camden

Album: Billy Nomates - Metalhorse

Guy Oddy

East Midlands post-punker tries on some yacht rock

Album: MØ - Plæygirl

Thomas H Green

Scandinavian singer injects a dash of outsider melancholy into her fizzing electro-pop

PUP, SWG3, Glasgow review - controlled chaos from Canadian punks

Jonathan Geddes

A no-frills set demonstrated the Toronto quartet's skill with a chorus and a mosh pit

Music Reissues Weekly: Roots Rocking Zimbabwe

Kieron Tyler

Exhaustive guide to how and why a music scene evolved

Supergrass, Barrowland, Glasgow review - nostalgia played with youthful energy

Jonathan Geddes

The Oxford group's revival of their debut album fizzed with excitement

Louis Cole, Roundhouse review - nothing is everything

Peter Quinn

Telepathic grooves and Mahlerian beauty collide in Camden

Album: Peter Doherty - Felt Better Alive

Tim Cumming

Doherty returns with his first solo album in almost a decade

'Classic-era prog’s Olympian pinnacle': Pink Floyd's 'Echoes' returns in their restored Pompeii concert film and as Nick Mason's band's vinyl hit

Graham Fuller

The band's legendary track from 1971 resurfaces not once, but twice

Album: Sleep Token - Even In Arcadia

Tom Carr

The anonymous UK metallers' fourth album is breathlessly inventive and emotive

Album: Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke - Tall Tales

Joe Muggs

A toning-down leads to an opening up of new possibilities in a fertile collaboration

Album: PinkPantheress - Fancy That

Thomas H Green

Hot rising pop star's new mixtape lacks tunes and dynamism

Shack, Union Chapel review - the surprise return of the Liverpool legends does not run to plan

Kieron Tyler

A celebration with a sting in its tail

Album: Arcade Fire - Pink Elephant

Thomas H Green

Seventh from Canadian stadium-slayers contains enough juice to convince

Music Reissues Weekly: John McKay - Sixes and Sevens

Kieron Tyler

The former Siouxsie and the Banshees guitarist digs through his archive and finds treasure

Georgia Mancio, Alan Broadbent, Pizza Express Dean Street review - songs beautifully crafted

Sebastian Scotney

Gloriously personal expression

Album: PUP - Who Will Look After The Dogs?

Ellie Roberts

A compelling balance between absurdity and sincerity

First Person: rising folk star Amelia Coburn on her French inspiration

Amelia Coburn

The Middlesbrough singer-songwriter on the background story to her latest single

Adrian Utley / Eddie Henderson Project, Ronnie Scott's review - beyond fusion

Mark Kidel

Six musicians in search of common ground

Footnote: a brief history of new music in Britain

New music has swung fruitfully between US and UK influences for half a century. The British charts began in 1952, initially populated by crooners and light jazz. American rock'n'roll livened things up, followed by British imitators such as Lonnie Donegan and Cliff Richard. However, it wasn't until The Beatles combined rock'n'roll's energy with folk melodies and Motown sweetness that British pop found a modern identity outside light entertainment. The Rolling Stones, amping up US blues, weren't far behind, with The Who and The Kinks also adding a unique Englishness. In the mid-Sixties the drugs hit - LSD sent pop looking for meaning. Pastoral psychedelia bloomed. Such utopianism couldn't last and prog rock alongside Led Zeppelin's steroid riffing defined the early Seventies. Those who wanted it less blokey turned to glam, from T Rex to androgynous alien David Bowie.

sex_pistolsA sea change arrived with punk and its totemic band, The Sex Pistols, a reaction to pop's blandness and much else. Punk encouraged inventiveness and imagination on the cheap but, while reggae made inroads, the most notable beneficiary was synth pop, The Human League et al. This, when combined with glam styling, produced the New Romantic scene and bands such as Duran Duran sold multi-millions and conquered the US.

By the mid-Eighties, despite U2's rise, the British charts were sterile until acid house/ rave culture kicked the doors down for electronica, launching acts such as the Chemical Brothers. The media, however, latched onto indie bands with big tunes and bigger mouths, notably Oasis and Blur – Britpop was born.

By the millennium, both scenes had fizzled, replaced by level-headed pop-rockers who abhorred ostentation in favour of homogenous emotionality. Coldplay were the biggest. Big news, however, lurked in underground UK hip hop where artists adapted styles such as grime, dubstep and drum & bass into new pop forms, creating breakout stars Dizzee Rascal and, more recently, Tinie Tempah. The Arts Desk's wide-ranging new music critics bring you overnight reviews of every kind of music, from pop to unusual world sounds, daily reviews of new releases and downloads, and unique in-depth interviews with celebrated musicians and DJs, plus the quickest ticket booking links. Our writers include Peter Culshaw, Joe Muggs, Howard Male, Thomas H Green, Graeme Thomson, Kieron Tyler, Russ Coffey, Bruce Dessau, David Cheal & Peter Quinn

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