New music
Liz Thomson
A confession – one I have made down the years to many friends, who mostly disagree. I have never much liked Joni Mitchell. Yes, she has written some good and enduring songs, but the voice? To me it has no substance, no texture. Admirers say she led the way – those intimate, confessional songs. So ground-breaking!You want intimate and ground-breaking, coupled with real musicianship? Then listen to Janis Ian, in my opinion a far greater songwriter and a more complete musician than Mitchell. Check out Leonard Bernstein interviewing her on his 1967 television documentary Inside Pop: The Rock Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Malian kora master Ballake Sissoko is a griot steeped in the musical and cultural traditions of West Africa, whose duets with his cousin Toumani Diabate on the world music classic, 1999’s New Ancient Strings, are rightly celebrated.His duets with French cellist Vincent Segal first appeared in 2009, on the French No Format label; Chamber Music was hailed as a classic of world fusion, and their follow-up, 2015’s Musique de Nuit, extended and expanded that spirit of improvisation, recorded live in a studio in Bamako in Mali – and, more poetically, on Sissoko’s rooftop.That intimate sense of Read more ...
joe.muggs
Michael Stafford aka Maverick Sabre is the definition of a modern journeyman vocalist. Since 2008 he’s released three albums and appeared on a huge range of British and Irish rap, dubstep and drum’n’bass artists’ records. He’s had several top 40 singles and streams into the tens, even hundreds of millions on tracks, but he hasn’t necessarily got the name recognition of some of his contemporaries.Maybe it’s that range that’s the issue: he has an instantly recognisable voice, but given that he spans soul, rap and the kind of grand sweep Celtic romanticism that almost puts him in Lewis Capaldi Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Six months after the release of Common Ground, neo-proggers Big Big Train return with another album of meticulously crafted songs urging human connection, closing communication gaps, and celebrating what it is to be alive; the opener and closer of Welcome to the Planet are addressed to newborns. The sole love song is an ode to a wife. And just as “happiness writes white on the page", so naive idealism roars with silence in the ears. These ears anyway. Like its predecessor, Welcome to the Planet is not the most expansive or melodic BBT opus, but diehards will likely adore its typically Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Fiona Monbet is a phenomenal violinist with a huge expressive range. Her credentials, above all in jazz, are impeccable: the late Didier Lockwood once declared the Franco-Irish musician to be his “spiritual daughter”, but her influences range considerably wider than that remark might suggest. Her previous album, Contrebande (Crescendo, 2018), established her not just as an astonishingly strong musical presence, but also gave clues to her versatility.Now, nearly four years on after the album release, she says that she has performed her very last “Contrebande” concert with guitarist Antoine Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
What’s now been titled The 1959 Sessions represents an unreleased studio album completed by the Stan Tracey Trio on 5 and 8 June 1959 at Decca’s London studio at Broadhurst Gardens. If issued then, it would have been the swift follow-up to the trio’s debut album Little Klunk, recorded at the same studio on 22 and 26 May 1959.Little Klunk was made by Tracey (piano, vibes), Kenny Napper (bass) and Phil Seaman (drums). This release features those three on four tracks – Tracey originals – and Tracey and Napper plus Tony Crombie rather than Seaman on drums for the remaining four tracks: which are Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
There has been no shortage of documentaries about king Beach Boy Brian Wilson, not to mention the 2014 bio-drama Love & Mercy, so the purpose of this new effort by director Brent Wilson (no relation) isn’t altogether clear. Certainly Wilson (the director) leaves no stone unturned in his mission to emphasise once again the ineffable genius of the former symphonist of surf, but surely nobody with an interest in pop history needs any reminding.As such eminent talking heads as Bruce Springsteen, Don Was and Elton John are wheeled out to testify to Brian’s brilliance, a sceptic might detect Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Mr. E’s music examines hellish depths, but always climbs back towards the light. Electro-Shock Blues (1998) was soon redeemed by “Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues”, and a trilogy of sometimes feral, wracked albums ended with Tomorrow Morning (2010). As the hard blows of deaths, disaster and divorce were absorbed, The Deconstruction (2018) even found a kind of faith. All things considered, E’s a remarkably optimistic writer.Souljacker was, though, a plunge into heavy darkness with Unabomber vibes, coincidentally released in 9/11’s aftermath. PJ Harvey’s frequent collaborator John Parrish produced, and Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
Around 2017, Thebe Neruda Kgositsile, known professionally as Earl Sweatshirt, said he wanted to push his music in a more experimental direction, to do “riskier shit” to be precise. This need to venture out after being released contractually from Colombia Records resulted in the landmark 2018 album Some Rap Songs and the 2019 EP Feet of Clay some of the most daring and brilliant rap music in recent memory. Sick! is the rapper’s sixth project and feels like a return to the surface after a dive into his own psyche – thankfully he’s come up clear-headed and better than ever. Read more ...
Liz Thomson
“I didn’t even know what I was writing about. It was just sent to me”, John Mellencamp has said of Strictly A One-Eyed Jack, his first album in five years.Lauded by Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and Nora Guthrie, who sees in his work echoes of her father Woody, and Bruce Springsteen, who is writ large on this his 24th studio album, Mellencamp really does seem to contain multitudes. From the first notes of “I Always Lie to Strangers”, Jack’s opening track, you’re hooked, grabbed by the lapels, and happily held close. The style and mood are reminiscent of Dylan’s Time Out of Mind, his great late Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Virtual “mixtapes” are not proper albums. Their purpose is often to whet the appetite. Nowhere is this more so than in US hip hop and right now Lady London’s new teaser is much-vaunted.Off the back of a couple of hot tunes that woke her peers to her talents (“Money Over” and “Never”), the new 33-minute, 13-track collection collates and polishes freestyles that have appeared on various platforms, as well as adding a couple of new ones. The content varies in quality, but the delivery and style never does.Zaire Stewart – AKA Lady London – hits her mid-20s having achieved much. She has self- Read more ...
joe.muggs
This is just boggling. The Japanese rock trio Boris have been together in the same lineup for over a quarter of a century – and it’s longer still since their original formation – but they’re outdoing themselves record by record. Their last record, NO, was the most energetic record they’ve ever made. Where they’re best known for floaty dream pop and sludgy, doomy, lava-flow-like noise churning, NO is a 1000mph fusion of thrash, punk and classic metal, a glorious rage against a world of fear and torpor in the COVID age. And now, only six months later, comes another album, and in dramatic Read more ...