New music
Peter Culshaw
Fia is a Swedish singer with a crystalline voice and a ear for a great melody - her singalong choruses are not typical for a festival Friday night headliner, like getting the audience to join in with “Sit with your pain/ cradle it close/ and when you’re ready/ Let it go.” This had a hypnotic effect on the audience, more mass therapy than a having a good time. The lyrics won’t go down as great poetry, but the point of the song was the effect it had, there was an undeniable group energy in the audience - a growing group empathy that every single person in the audience had varying levels of pain Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Frankie and the Witch Fingers’ new album is a heady stew of the loud, the funky and the weird – and it doesn’t let up from the first riff to the last. Make no mistake, Data Doom really does have the band firing on all cylinders the whole way through, so anyone looking for mellow and relaxing tunes might consider moving along.With a new line up that includes Mike Watt’s drummer, Nick Aguilar and Death Valley Girl Nikki “Pickle” Smith on bass, long-timers Dylan Sizemore and Josh Menashe have embraced a sound that suggests proto-punkers Blue Oyster Cult at their most forceful getting down with Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Forty-seven years ago this week, a new band called The Clash were seen by a paying audience in London for the first time. On Sunday 29 August 1976 they played Islington’s Screen on the Green cinema, billed between Manchester’s Buzzcocks – their earliest London show – and rising luminaries Sex Pistols. Doors opened at midnight. The anniversary needs marking.At this point, The Clash had three guitarists. They were a five-piece band rather than the four-piece which became familiar. The guitarist who left a few weeks after the Screen on the Green outing was Keith Levene. Along with fellow Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Everything is Alive opens with all that could be wanted from a Slowdive album. “Shanty” is just-under six minutes of out-of-focus, shimmering aural fog in which guitars throb and drums are a distant pulse. An acid-house-type heartbeat is offset against a harpsichord-like refrain recalling Broadcast. Lines drift in about a burning candle and the arrival of night. It all seems to be about the passing of time.Text-book Slowdive then, on a line between their 1993 second album Souvlaki and its 1995 follow-up Pygmalion. The latter became their last release before they split the same year. They Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Let’s face it, well over 50 years into Alice Cooper’s career, you probably already know whether his umpteen-billionth album is for you. Over the last decade, he’s revitalised things by taking a meta look at himself, but, whether harking back to his proto-punk Detroit roots or creating sequels to classic albums, his genial schlock-rock has settled to a calculable pattern.Nothing wrong with that. Worked for Motörhead and The Ramones. As with the later career of those bands, if the listener is inclined, Road has its moments. It's a concept album about being on tour. This is an environment where Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
As the relentless, hammering beat of “The Rat” faded away, the Walkmen’s singer Hamilton Leithauser was evidently in buoyant mood. “Like riding a bike,” he declared to the Glasgow crowd, and this was a statement that proved consistently accurate throughout the 75-minute set, as the reunited quintet played in a manner that felt like they’d never been away.As Leithauser acknowledged, bringing the band back together after nine years is considerably more difficult than in their early days, when they thrived among New York’s clubs. Now the group are spread across the USA and, in the case of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Any surprises which Jump for Joy brings aren’t about the nature of the music or the unfailingly open lyrics recounting Hiss Golden Messenger main-man M.C. Taylor’s outlook on his life, but an intermittent undertone suggesting he’s been considering the rhythmic foundations of The War On Drugs. In the sixth song, “Jesus is Bored” there’s a hint of WOD’s fondness for a chugging, insistent tempo. It’s more to the fore on eighth track “Feeling Eternal.”In essence though, Jump for Joy adroitly showcases the mélange the North Carolina-based Taylor has perfected. In the studio here with his touring Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Ratboys have been around since 2010, knocking out their guitar-powered indie fare over three albums in their home city of Chicago. However, with album number four, they have decided to branch out and pay homage to the US alt-rock scene of the early 90s with a grunge-pop-athon that wears its influences heavily.The ghosts of Veruca Salt, the Breeders, the Stooges and Neil Young and Crazy Horse all stalk the grooves of The Window. There’s even an occasional sniff of 4 Non-Blondes’ pop sensibilities on the more commercial tunes, like “It’s Alive!”. In fact, this album is an indication of how Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The final track of Giant Steps is titled “The White Noise Revisited.” Its lyrics recount the crushing impact of a job where you “kill yourself at work for what seems nothing at all.” After coming home, “you listen to the Beatles and relax and close your eyes.”Inevitably, as it was also a double album with a similarly hop-scotch approach to musical styles, the newly reissued Giant Steps was bracketed with The Beatles’ eponymous double album from 1968; what was dubbed “The White Album.” Little needs saying about what’s in the grooves of the wonderful Giant Steps on the occasion of its 30th- Read more ...
Cheri Amour
It shouldn’t be news to you that thanks to Gen Z, Y2K is making a comeback. From fashion threads to cultural memes, our feeds are a wash of “nowstalgia”. After 15 years away from the dive bars of their youth, Noughties noisemakers Be Your Own Pet are primed for the revival.It was actually another indie figurehead (admittedly who’s not left the mainstream music scene) behind the record coming together though. Not content with jamming out the old hits, the daydream of a single Nashville performance quickly morphed into a string of shows supporting Jack White, a man expertly crafting our new Read more ...
joe.muggs
We Out Here Festival, now in its fifth year (and fourth edition, as 2020 was of course cancelled for Covid), has become an institution. Curated by jazz-centric veteran DJ Gilles Peterson and actualised by Noah Ball – best known for his role in creating Outlook Festival in Croatia which has served as UK bass music’s metting point in the sun since 2008 – it joins the dots culturally through generations of music both strange and hedonistic and attracts a faithful crowd that reflects that.The diversity of the crowd is the first thing you’ll notice about the festival. Though it has grown a lot Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Introducing the fifth number in this evening’s set, Erin Birgy speaks to the audience for the first time. “This is our last song, thank you,” she says. Thoughts of early Jesus and Mary Chain shows instantly surface. Is this going to be a 20-minute wonder? A five-song digest of where Birgy – who records and writes as Mega Bog – is now, playing her first UK dates since the release of her seventh album The End of Everything? Is it the end of the show?Despite the announcement, it isn’t. Ten songs are played over 50 minutes. But the proclamation is emblematic of the issues and questions inherent Read more ...