New music
mark.kidel
The second act of a trilogy, launched with “Renaissance” (2022), Beyoncé’s latest release has been loudly proclaimed as her “Country” album. In a tradition of surprising and controversial self-reinventions that includes among others Bob Dylan’s gospel albums and Ray Charles’s “Modern Sounds in Country and Western” (1962), the superstar has once again broken the rules of genre, and done her own all-too-remarkable thing – with the usual brilliance and panache.Of course, this is so much more than a Country album, even though she's surrounded herself with some of the top black Country singers, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“So Ends Another Life” is strange. Very strange. The song’s dolefulness is immediately set up with a strummed guitar along the lines of the intro to The Bee Gees’ “New York Mining Disaster.” “In a world of agitation, there’s no time for compassion” are the opening lyrics.As it continues, the song asserts that life goes on until you don’t belong. The chorus bleakly commences “so ends another life.” It takes the Gibb brothers’s most maudlin moments to the Nth degree. The arrangement’s use of brass and strings enhance the Bee Gees feel.Next up on the album featuring “So Ends Another Life” is “ Read more ...
Liz Thomson
We’ve come a long way since 1971, when the audience at Madison Square Garden for the Concert for Bangladesh applauded when Ravi Shankar tuned up. Western audiences were first exposed to the sitar in 1965 when George Harrison played one on Rubber Soul, the earliest instance of the instrument being used in rock music. Soon it was all over the place, most often in the form of the Danelectro electric sitar, with its “buzz” bridge design offering an imitation of the sitar’s distinctive sound on an instrument easily playable by guitarists: unlike George Harrison, few took the time to master the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Motif,” Love In Constant Spectacle’s fourth track, is the closest Jane Weaver has come in over a decade to the folk influences embraced on her 2007 and 2010 albums Cherlokalate and The Fallen By Watch Bird. Not that her new album is rooted in past ventures, more that it appears she has taken a step back to consider what she has done, and has found this reflection comfortable.And there is a lot to ponder. Weaver, who thrives on embracing new musical and wider cultural discoveries, has her own résumé to contemplate. Her first solo album was issued in 2002. Just before this, there was her Read more ...
joe.muggs
What a time to be alive it is for fans of late Eighties, early Nineties indie – the proverbial 6 Music Dads – with so many of the best acts from the era on the form of their lives. Even in just the last year we’re spoilt for choice of quality albums by those who’ve kept on keeping on (J Mascis, Kristin Hersh), those who’ve come back but sound like they never went away (Slowdive), and those returned and completely revivified (The Jesus And Mary Chain). It’s into this latter category that Ride fit. The Oxford band reformed in 2014 and since then have made three albums with Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“The name of this group is Mayan Space Station.” In spite of the billing as The William Parker Trio, their bassist – coolly introducing himself as “William Parker, bass” – is firm about the designation under which the three musicians on stage are operating.Mayan Space Station is also the title of a recent album. On the 2021 release, Parker was joined by drummer Gerald Cleaver and guitarist Ava Mendoza. All three are here, on stage in the basement of the Park Hotel in the lakeside village of Voss, to the east of Bergen. Getting here from Norway’s second city, the just-more than an hour train Read more ...
Ellie Roberts
Sum 41 honour their 27-year career with Heaven :x: Hell, a 20-track double album, due to be their final, without a single skip. Harking back to their widely acclaimed debut All Killer No Filler, the album that gave us “Fat Lip” and “In Too Deep”, the band have maintained their commitment to making every track count with Heaven :x: Hell.“Waiting On a Twist of Fate” opens Heaven with as much energy as you can cram into 2 minutes and 46 seconds, and the early-2000s Pop Punk summer nostalgia does not falter in the 19 tracks that follow. Although Hell aims to dive deeper into heavy metal than Pop Read more ...
Tim Cumming
The British folk artist and singer songwriter Olivia Chaney released her third solo album this week, as we break out into springtime, and she’ll be touring sporadically around the UK over the next few months, with a showcase at London’s Union Chapel in June.Chaney is a singular singer and songwriter with a beautiful voice and the instrumental finesse honed at the Royal Academy of Music and Aldeburgh. She released her first EP in 2010 and 2013, the year she was nominated twice, for the Horizon Award and Best Original Song, at the BBC Folk Awards (and again for Folk Singer of the Year in 2019). Read more ...
Guy Oddy
During the mid to late 90s, Sheryl Crow and other grunge lite-friendly female artists like Alanis Morrisette were all over the airwaves. Sheryl’s particular schtick being a soft rock stew of pop/country/folk that threw up monster hits like “All I Wanna Do”, “If It Makes You Happy” and “Everyday is a Winding Road”.Thirty-odd years on and Sheryl seems to have been relatively quiet for some considerable time. So, it is something of a surprise to hear that Evolution is her 12th album and in 2023, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But then, she had announced that her previous Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Winston Holness started his own record label in 1969. Missing a finger, he became known by many folks as Niney. Born 7 December 1944, he had lost a thumb in an accident at work. By the point his imprint debuted, he had sung on a Clement “Coxsone” Dodd-produced track and was working as a salesman for other producers, including Clancy Eccles, Bunny “Striker” Lee and Lee “Scratch” Perry.Niney would get on a bike and take records to dances where he tried to get DJs to play them. He was also shadowing Bunny Lee in the recording studio, picking up on how records were produced. He began co-producing Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Dee C Lee was born Diane Sealy in London in 1961. She is best known for her 1985 hit “See the Day”, later covered by Girls Aloud, and for being in two of the Eighties' most notable pop acts, The Style Council and WHAM!. But she was also prolifically involved in multiple other musical projects, and now has a new album appearing, Just Something, her first in over 25 years.Lee’s first break came through talking her way into working with the British soul outfit Central Line, who had a couple of US club hits in 1981. From here, EMI picked her up as a session singer and, alongside Shirlie Holliman Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Hey Panda is unlike any previous High Llamas album. While the characteristic traces of late Sixties and early Seventies Beach Boys, Van Dyke Parks and Steely Dan are here, they have become melded with a sensibility lead-Llama Sean O’Hagan has absorbed from multifaceted US hip hop producer J Dilla – whose approach to rhythm and song structure rewrote standard linear templates.In the promotional material for the first High Llamas album – the title comes from a panda seen on TikTok during the coronavirus pandemic – in eight years, O’Hagan is quoted saying “when I heard J Dilla in the early 2000s Read more ...