mon 31/03/2025

New Music reviews, news & interviews

Music Reissues Weekly: Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy

Kieron Tyler

The sticker on the front cover says “The heaviest proto-metal compilation ever released.” And considering the label behind Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy is Rise Above, founded by former Napalm Death and Cathedral frontman Lee Dorrian, this is not idle hubris.

Album: Bryan Ferry and Amelia Barratt - Loose Talk

Graham Fuller

On the spoken word LP Loose Talk, Amelia Barratt reflects on her or other women’s experiences, real or imagined, over tunes drawn from Bryan Ferry’s demos, some from early in his career.

Album: Will Smith - Based on a True Story

Ibi Keita

Will Smith’s new album, Based on a True Story, is a prime example of why some comebacks should remain hypothetical. After two decades away from music...

Album: Perfume Genius - Glory

Joe Muggs

I can’t stop reading and re-reading the review copy I got of a new book, out next week. Liam Inscoe-Jones’s Songs in the Key of MP3: the New...

Album: Alison Krauss & Union Station - Arcadia

Tim Cumming

It’s been 14 years since Alison Krauss and Union Station released an album – 2011’s Paper Aeroplane. The world’s shed a few skins since then, and...

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

Lauren Mayberry, Barrowland, Glasgow review - solo star stays too close to the day job

Jonathan Geddes

The Chvrches singer mixed some great tunes with an overly heavy sound.

Album: Toria Wooff - Toria Wooff

Kieron Tyler

Assured but too measured debut album from Americana-inclined singer-songwriter

Music Reissues Weekly: Too Far Out - Beat, Mod & R&B From 304 Holloway Road 1963-1966

Kieron Tyler

Maverick producer Joe Meek’s maximum-impact approach to the beat-group scene

Album: Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco - I Said I Love You First

Thomas H Green

An album by a pair of loved-up Hollywood celebs that is, whisper it, rather good

Album: The Horrors - Night Life

Thomas H Green

A new line-up proves no hindrance to a band bringing electro-rock zip to the darkness

Mercury Rev, Islington Assembly Hall review - the august US psychedelic explorers cover all bases

Kieron Tyler

Balance is maintained between the anticipated and the spontaneous

Lizz Wright, Barbican review - sweet inspiration

Mark Kidel

Soul, jazz and gospel seamlessly mixed

Wardruna, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - Einar Selvik's Norsemen return to Mercia in triumph

Guy Oddy

Operatic neo-pagans’ magnificent show is an uplifting call for unity

Album: Billy Hart Quartet - Just

Sebastian Scotney

The drum legend's group in perfect balance

Album: Greentea Peng - Tell Dem It's Sunny

Guy Oddy

South Londoner’s smoky sophomore album is loaded with dope tunes

Music Reissues Weekly: Norma Tanega - I Don't Think It Will Hurt If You Smile

Kieron Tyler

Cult album from 1971 which deserves its status as a lost classic

Album: The Loft - Everything Changes, Everything Stays The Same

Kieron Tyler

Belated debut album from the early Creation Records mainstays

Album: Jason Isbell - Foxes in the Snow

Joe Muggs

Small stories, big talent from the Alabaman storyteller extraordinaire

First Person: singer-songwriter David Gray on how the songs on his new album came to him

David Gray

One of this century's most successful British singers still finds magic in the act of creation

Album: Steven Wilson - The Overview

Graham Fuller

Infectious prog concept LP ponders Earth's insignificance and what lies beyond

Album: Coheed and Cambria - The Father of Make Believe

Ellie Roberts

An impressive welcome back to the group's imaginitive universe

Album: Reg Meuross, Fire & Dust: A Woody Guthrie Story

Liz Thomson

At once a celebration and an exploration of the timeless Dust Bowl Balladeer

Music Reissues Weekly: Liverpool Sunset - The City After Merseybeat

Kieron Tyler

Times changed, but the city which birthed The Beatles still came up with the goods

Album: Lady Gaga - Mayhem

Joe Muggs

The godmother of theatre-kid pop is back! Back!! BACK!!!

Album: Spiritbox - Tsunami Sea

Tom Carr

Second album from Canadian metalcore band is a sonic assault yet graceful and beautiful

Album: The Burning Hell - Ghost Palace

Kieron Tyler

Reflective Canadians interpret an increasingly unfathomable world

Chuck Prophet, Mid Sussex Music Hall, Hassocks review - the good American

Nick Hasted

Liberating, humane rock'n'roll from an unassuming master

Album: Anoushka Shankar - Chapter III: We Return to Light

Guy Oddy

Sitar titan blends the sounds of modern India into her travelogue triptych

Album: Jethro Tull - Curious Ruminant

Graham Fuller

Tull burst out again with a set of bristling folk-prog anthems

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

Close Footnote

The future of Arts Journalism

 

You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!

We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d

And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters

latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

This City is Ours, BBC One review - civil war rocks family c...

The dramatic allure of families neck-deep in organised crime never seems to falter, and Stephen Butchard’s new series continues that great...

Music Reissues Weekly: Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy

The sticker on the front cover says “The heaviest proto-metal compilation ever released.” And considering the label behind Yeah Man,...

Album: Bryan Ferry and Amelia Barratt - Loose Talk

On the spoken word LP Loose Talk, Amelia Barratt reflects on her or other...

Biss, National Symphony Orchestra, Kuokman, NCH Dublin revie...

On paper, it was a standard programme with no stars to explain how this came to be a sellout concert. But packed it was, an audience of all ages...

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Musical, Theatre Royal Bath r...

In Italy, they did it differently. Their pulp fiction tales of suburban transgression appeared between yellow covers on new stands...

Album: Will Smith - Based on a True Story

Will Smith’s new album, Based on a True Story, is a prime example of why some comebacks should remain hypothetical. After two decades...

Verdi Requiem, Philharmonia, Muti, RFH review - new sparks f...

Forget, for a moment, the legend and the lustre. If you knew nothing about Riccardo Muti’s half-century of history with Verdi’s Messa da...

Wilko: Love and Death and Rock'n'Roll, Southwark P...

Resurrecting the origins of old rock stars is becoming quite the thing, After cinema’s Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Bob Dylan and...

The End review - surreality in the salt mine

The End, a quasi-musical from Joshua Oppenheimer, who has previously only produced ...