New music
mark.kidel
Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson’s reputation was much enhanced by the story – never substantiated – that he’d met with the devil one night at a crossroads, and was miraculously taught exquisite guitar licks that astounded his juke-joint audiences and later the world. A pact that – as it goes with such shady deals – led to him succumbing, a few years later, to a violent death. He was also a source of inspiration for many who came after him – electric Chicago blues giants like Muddy Waters and Elmore James, and later, white boys such as Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and others.There’s Read more ...
joe.muggs
Dua Lipa's self-titled debut was unmistakably the sound of a musician feeling their way. It had all the flavours of trap, tropical house, autotune and Lana Del Ray-ish triphop introspection you'd expect on a 2017 pop record. The multi-billion-stream single “New Rules” was the most transatlantic-sounding thing there, and it must have been tempting to try and repeat its success by following current generic templates.Thankfully, though, that isn't the way Lipa has gone. Perhaps the success of her features on Calvin Harris's “One Dance” and Silk City's “Electricity” helped encouraged her to free Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Miles – where to begin? Some 21st century revisionists find his art fatally tainted by his personal life, and his violent behaviour in relationships. His rasping, epithet-scarred voice, the sound of a snake sloughing off its own skin, able to weaponise ‘motherfucker’ to some kind of deadly bio-mass, his long rich history of drug use and abuse, his vivid, aggressive take on race relations and his studied indifference to his audience – this is not how musicians and artists are supposed to behave, especially nowadays.Miles Davis comes from a creative and political world that is the polar Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Eddie Vedder’s maturing from a mumbling, suspicious victim-star of grunge into a wise elder statesman leading the last convincing big rock band has been heartening. This first Pearl Jam album in seven years rings sonic changes with the machine drums and electro beats of “Dance of the Clairvoyants” and ranges from industrial clank to Byrds jangle elsewhere, switching styles even during songs, as if down-time left them brimming with ideas, half-forgetful of the band they were thought to be. That doesn’t stop them relaxing into windmilling Who guitars on “Never Destination”. Grunge itself barely Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Coming in at around four hours, in two parts, this 2015 documentary is ostensibly about Ol’ Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra, but really, via the prism of his existence, it’s as much about America’s journey through the first two thirds of the 20th century. What other life intersects so neatly with such a scattershot selection of key names – Franklin D Roosevelt, Elvis Presley, Lucky Luciano, Mia Farrow, Louis B Mayer, Edgar J Hoover, Louis Armstrong, Ronald Reagan, Martin Luther King, Eli Wallach, and on and on. It’s a compulsive biography that, like the man it covers, never slows, and never grows Read more ...
mark.kidel
Sufjan Stevens is an immensely creative musician – a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and composer. His work ranges from sophisticated dreamy pop that has influenced many, not least Bon Iver to grandiose and sometimes disturbing soundscapes. He grew up with a kind and passionate step-father, Lowell Brams, who inspired in Sufjan a wide-ranging musical curiosity, which is reflected in the stylistic variety of his work.A few years ago step-father and son collaborated on a decidedly weird album, Music for Insomnia: it was as far from easy listening as Stevens’s solo recordings came close Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Waxahatchee’s fifth album wasn’t intended as an escapist fantasy. Written shortly after Katie Crutchfield decided to get sober, Saint Cloud documents a journey towards self-acceptance; one woman’s reckoning with her past and its impact on the people she loves. But it’s a journey that is as literal as it is metaphysical, Crutchfield’s vivid lyrics and wide-open arrangements painting pictures of the places she has seen along the way: Memphis glowing in the sunlight as if on fire; tomatoes sold by the bag on a roadside in Alabama; homesickness on the crowded streets of Tennessee.After evolving, Read more ...
Guy Oddy
There aren’t many metal bands like Slipknot. For a start, the nine-piece line-up consists of the standard vocalist, two guitars, bass and drums – but then there are also two percussionists, sampler and decks. Their music is consistently ferocious, with a hardcore, high-speed, ragging thump and semi-comprehensible lyrics that leaves no room for chart-friendly power ballads. On stage they wear modern horror film costumes, fright-masks and put on a high octane, theatrical show that is not for the faint-hearted.Yet, Slipknot are one of the biggest and highest-earning bands on the planet that only Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“No Control” feels like an instant pop classic. It opens with a brief introduction where layers of instrumentation are added in waves. There’s a restraint. Then, three-quarters of minute into what initially seems like a reflective mid-tempo ballad, a soaring chorus with contrapuntal drums and piano hits home. Basia Bulat’s gospel-like incantations reach the stars. Even so, there’s an intimacy.The Fleetwood Mac-esque “Your Girl” is equally arresting. It’s a different sort of song though – linear, with a rhythmic chug. The two are connected as each unites an understanding of dynamics with the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Two of the 84 tracks on A Slight Disturbance In My Mind: The British Proto-Psychedelic Sounds of 1966 are covers of songs from Revolver. One is a rendering of “Tax Man” (sic) by a band named Loose Ends which was enterprisingly issued as a single on the same August 1966 day The Beatles’ album was released. Despite the addition to the arrangement of bongos, spiralling soul-type organ and an odd spindly guitar line it’s pretty faithful to the original and not too exciting.The other is Hertfordshire band The Mirage’s re-rendering of “Tomorrow Never Knows”, which hit record shops in December 1966 Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Buried lyrical tremors barely disturb Little Dragon’s blissed electronic R&B, on the former Gothenburg schoolmates’ fifth album. Though forming in 1996, they took another decade to really begin a career which has included collaborations with Gorillaz, DJ Shadow and Outkast’s Big Boi, and co-headlining the Hollywood Bowl with Flying Lotus. The conscious hip-hop and spiritual jazz influences which saw them jam on A Tribe Called Quest and Alice Coltrane tunes as teenagers have now filtered down into modern quiet storm soul, with female vocalist Yukimi Nagano suggesting the androgynous Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Like all other performers, the Indigo Girls were forced to make the “heart-breaking decision” to cancel their spring tour. And in that moment, “we knew we wanted to play a free livestream show,” Amy Ray and Emily Saliers said in a statement. “People are feeling scared, isolated, uncertain, and unmoored. For the public good, we all have to do our part not to gather in person, but we can still play music, and we are really looking forward to connecting with you on Facebook and playing a low-key, homegrown set of songs and talking to people directly through Q&A.”We in Britain are now, Read more ...