New music
Jonathan Geddes
There are a few perils to saying supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, as Janette Manrara discovered on this opening night of Disney’s anniversary arena jaunt. Trying to divide the Glasgow crowd into sections to sing the song, Manrara tripped over who was to sing what, something only notable because the rest of the evening was possessed of an almost overpowering slickness.Although the opening overture went all the way back to Steamboat Willie, nearly all of the set, which featured a full orchestra, a rotating array of singers supplied from the West End and a likeable, cheerful hostess in Read more ...
Cheri Amour
Five years ago, breaking dry January a few days early, I joined a throng of folks amongst the merch boxes and strip lights of Rough Trade East to see Dream Wife. The London-based trio has come a long way since those small-scale shows in the backroom of a Brick Lane record shop.Their last release, So When You Gonna… was the only indie album recorded and produced by all women at the time to break into the Official UK Top 20 album charts. And they’ve shared the stage with the bands who likely informed them to pick up their instruments, opening for Garbage and The Kills across North America.Half Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
This is a slight album in terms of length (under half an hour) but not in emotional insight. It’s absolutely haunting. Here we have the characteristic all-consuming melancholy that oozes from Baxter Dury but without the menace of Prince of Tears. And his f*cked up childhood still takes centre stage. From the off, he’s poking at his own ego and the struggle for familial understanding. “Hey mummy, hey daddy, who am I?” he asks, mockingly, at the start of “So Much Money” (later remembering “potato-faced ancestors”). Not far from the age Ian Dury was when he died, Baxter is a father himself Read more ...
Liz Thomson
"This album is almost like a recorded birthday party and birthday present to myself. I just invited all the singers that I greatly admire and always wanted to sing with." So says Rufus Wainwright, a brilliant and compelling performer – and one, you suspect, who brooks few challenges, be they from family, friends, or producers. And someone needed to tell him that Folkocracy is often a tad OTT. Rather more than a tad actually.There are some lovely moments but rarely is the singer subservient to the song. On this album, it’s all about Rufus. Me, me, me. Striking poses, seeking attention, showing Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHRahill Flowers at Your Feet (Big Dada)Rahill Jamalifard’s debut solo album somehow transmutes autobiography into gorgeous slow-pop. Of Iranian-American origin and best-known as singer of the band Habibi, she and FKA Twigs producer Alex Epton use home recordings and pensive, sometimes nostalgic lyrics to create something unique, lolling and amiable. Beck appears on one song, “Fables”, and the magpie spirit of his best work is a good reference point. It’s a lovely album that seems at once familiar, yet strange and new, a collation that includes elements of jazz, trip hop, hip Read more ...
mark.kidel
The circular form of the large turf-roofed round house at the Ancient Technology Centre in Cranborne, Dorset, is tailor-made for music in the round. The latest in the series of Jaminaround concerts made the most of the intimacy that the venue provides, with music that engaged the audience in a way that conventional staging makes difficult.On a conventional stage, performers are elevated above the spectators, and, even if they body-surf through the crowd, there's a certain distance, a show rather than a conversation. Expertly and sensitively curated by musician Olly Keen, whose father Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Council Skies was created in Noel Gallagher’s new studio, partly during lockdown, an attempt to reconnect with where he came from, Manchester, as per its cover art. It’s not an exercise in nostalgia (except insofar as everything either Gallagher sibling has ever done is), but more about mining his origins for inspiration, authenticity and emotional meaning. There’s an audible earnestness, then, a ferventness, but, unfortunately, the ratio of catchy anthems is low.Let’s face it, neither Gallagher sibling actually needs to reform Oasis. Both their solo careers have proved strong, chart-topping Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” was the UK’s first explicitly psychedelic record. Although there were delays with it hitting shops, it was recorded in December 1965. A large part of its impact came through the instrumentation and arrangement. Jazz players were on board, playing in a folky way without abandoning their core musical sensibilities. The ground-breaking arranger responsible was John Cameron.In 1976, Heatwave issued the instant dance-floor filler “Boogie Nights” as a single. It was a world-wide chart smash in 1977. Producer Barry Blue brought in arranger John Cameron to work on the Read more ...
Liz Thomson
It’s 27 years since Gretchen Peters released her debut album, The Secret of Life, championed by Bob Harris and the late Terry Wogan, whose morning-tide enthusiasms also helped propel Eva Cassidy and Beth Neilsen Chapman to success - the term “Americana” hadn’t yet been invented!Peters has been touring Britain for some 25 years, unusually for an American recording a live album here (The Show: Live from the UK), which captured her just pre-Covid performing a career-spanning selection of songs with the all-female Southern Fried String Quartet. She’s won, or been nominated for, a raft of Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Dylan’s Shadow Kingdom first crossed our paths in July 2021, his first streaming event, and coming little more than a year after the garden of unearthly delights that was Rough and Rowdy Ways. To enter this kingdom, you were given a key code for $25, and allowed fifty minutes, 13 songs, and the chance to revisit over the following 48 hours. Then Alma H’arel’s film evaporated into the digital ether, its noir-ish settings turning dark, apparently never to return.Two years on, and while the film itself remains for now in the dark room, the soundtrack is manifesting in traditional physical Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Jim Jones has been around the block a few times, plying his garage/punk/rock’n’roll schtick – most notably with his last couple of outfits, the Jim Jones Revue and Jim Jones and the Righteous Mind. Back in the ring with his new crew, the Jim Jones Allstars, however, he’s subtly changed the template to bring some serious old school rhythm and blues to the party as well.As part of this change, Jones has recruited some brass into the band, with a couple of saxophones to add a bit of vim. His eight-strong crew still look as if Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds had crawled out of South London though. Trilbies Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Mount Caburn is east of Lewes in Sussex. Shirley Collins’s stepfather used to call it Archangel Hill. The site of an Iron Age hill fort, it was defended with a ditch during the Roman and Saxon periods. In World War II, a gun emplacement was positioned there. While physically strategic, it’s a spiritual landmark for Shirley Collins – a marker in the story of her life.Correspondingly, Archangel Hill the album collects a series of reflections on where she is now, and where she has been. The third album since her 2016 comeback on record ends with the title track, a recitation contemplating the Read more ...