New music
Kieron Tyler
“Forest and the Shore” by Keith Christmas is remarkable. In his essay for Gather In The Mushrooms, compiler, author and Saint Etienne member Bob Stanley says it is “as evocative as its title. The song has a deeply wooded sound, like a cross between Serge Gainsbourg’s “Ballade de Melody Nelson” and Ralph Vaughan Williams.” To this can be added the brooding, dramatic melancholy of Scott Walker’s “The Seventh Seal.”Despite the grandeur of “Forest and the Shore” – and the astounding Richard Thompson-esque, Tom Verlaine-predicting guitar solo taking it to its close – Gather In The Mushrooms: The Read more ...
Tim Cumming
When Van Morrison last released an album of original songs, during the Covid pandemic, it didn’t go down well. Indeed for many, 2022’s What’s It Gonna Take squats in Morrison’s catalogue like a toad in a fruit salad.“A self-absorbed descent into Covid lunacy” one critic opined. Well, we’ve all been there, dear, but here we are now, out on the other side, blinking into the blinding lights of incendiary wars, mechanically rendered intelligences and toxic substances masquerading as world leaders. It’s not a place for dreams and visions, but here’s Van Morrison, just shy of 80, bringing us a Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
In 2022 I called caroline “perhaps the best band in the U.K” in my article about their debut, which I named my album of the year. Seeing the band on Tuesday night at a sold out Islington Assembly Hall, I not only feel vindicated but stronger in my conviction. As the band walks out on stage, soundtracked by “Fistful of Love” by Anthony and the Johnsons, I am struck by how unified a front they look. The band originally started as a trio in 2017 and expanded over the years until settling on eight members in 2022. Their debut, caroline, was a compilation of songs birthed from improvised jam Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
With WOMAD not happening this year, where could one go for a feast of global sounds? Fes in Morocco has been presenting its sacred music festival for 29 years. I’ve been several times and although this wasn’t an absolute classic, it was as ever, full of extraordinary moments. The Fes Festival came into existence as a response to the first Gulf War, given further impetus by 9/11 and is important in reflecting a more tolerant side of Islam, with lots of respect to other faiths. “There are many ways up the mountain” as a Sufi practitioner told me here.Fes was the old capital of Morocco, the Read more ...
Guy Oddy
No-one needs to be living in Trump’s USA to be aware that governments never feel that it’s in their interest to prioritise great art and music over attention-grabbing and ill-conceived populist policies. Mali’s Songhoy Blues, unfortunately, have now found themselves at the receiving end of such nonsense.The four-piece band have been around for more than ten years, with four very well received albums to their name, but have still managed to find themselves falling foul of UK immigration policy. In fact, only two of the band (vocalist and guitar player Garba Touré and bassist Oumar Touré) were Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
While the Gallagher brothers scrabble around in the dirt for their rich pickings, an altogether more dignified experience is on offer from Sheffield. More is Pulp’s first album for 24 years, which is a sobering fact for those of us who still remember the first time. Thankfully, this isn’t a reprisal of past glories but a vibrant and moving work of some significance. They’ve ripened delightfully and are living proof that age does not diminish creativity or relevance.The title of the first single had me worried. While slightly dreading a return to having left an important part of Read more ...
Ibi Keita
Turnstile’s NEVER ENOUGH is a vibrant, shape-shifting album that proves the Baltimore-based band is fully committed to evolution. Since their formation in 2010, Turnstile have been known for injecting a fresh, genre-blurring energy into hardcore punk. With each release, they’ve pushed further into new territory, and NEVER ENOUGH might be their most fearless leap yet. While still rooted in the intensity that defined their early work, this record expands far beyond those borders, bringing in lush textures, genre-blending arrangements and a bold sense of experimentation.The album begins with the Read more ...
joe.muggs
Little Simz clearly believes in meeting situations head on. Her sixth full-length album kicks off, in every sense of the phrase, with “Thief”: unambiguously a lyrical barrage at her childhood friend and frequent collaborator Inflo, who Simz is currently suing for alleged failure to repay £1.7 million in loans for ambitious recording and performance projects.It’s a topic she returns to on at least two other tracks on the album, going into quite some detail about her sense of betrayal and broken trust and the impact of this on her sense of self and creative process. It feels kind of bleak that Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away called the late 1990s, there was a scene known as “big beat”. It consisted of club culture sorts making music closer in flavour to rock, and easier to drink beer to than house and techno.It gave us both Fatboy Slim and Chemical Brothers, as well as a thousand long-forgotten acts (with apologies to those still listening to Hardknox and Boom Boom Satellites). But perhaps the most intriguing artist was Death In Vegas. Their seventh album is Spartan, stern, crafted, enigmatic and dripping with Berlin-esque cool.Death in Vegas is now just DJ-producer Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Pete Shelley’s departure from Buzzcocks felt abrupt. When he left the Manchester band which had been integral to British punk since 1976, the other members thought it was still a going concern. Shelley had reached a different conclusion.Buzzcocks played what turned out the be their final show on 23 January 1981. At this point, making a new album, their fourth, was on the table. Neither the band or the audience in Hamburg knew it was the last time the band would be seen on stage. A little over a month later, on 4 March, Shelley put his name to a letter dissolving the band. “Homosapien,” his Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Nick Mulvey’s first two albums, First Mind in 2014 and Wake Up Now in 2017, are among the loveliest singer-songwriter fare released this century. With his last album, 2022’s New Mythology, his ayahuasca-fuelled search for spiritual meaning went full-blown mystic. Where has it led him? To Jesus.The first Dark Harvest album (the second is due in the autumn) is touched by Christianity, notably on the slightly preachy “My Maker” (“God shares His secrets with those who fear Him”). But, like Bob Dylan’s first Born Again outing, Slow Train Coming, upon occasion the spark of religion lights the fuse Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
For the first half-hour of this show – on the day before the release of his new album Alan Sparhawk With Trampled by Turtles – Alan Sparhawk moves ceaselessly. Whirling, arms sweeping like the sails of a windmill, gliding across the stage. He sings, his voice treated: auto-tuned, pitch-shifted. The only breaks come with momentary pauses to set rhythm tracks for the next song. Then, off again.His old band Low – abruptly terminated with the death in 2022 of his wife and musical partner Mimi Parker – were often dubbed “slowcore.” Minimalist yet always primed to create a huge sound they were not Read more ...