New Music Reviews
Laura Gibson, Hug and Pint, Glasgow review - fable songs and unpretentious intimaciesMonday, 04 March 2019
Laura Gibson’s songwriting was always that of a storyteller but her newest album, Goners, ups the ante still further. Her first album to be made after completing an MFA in creative writing, the album explores weighty themes like grief and the persistent march of time with a spellbinding elegance. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: SparksSunday, 03 March 2019
Although American, Sparks’ initial commercial breakthrough was in the UK where their rococo art-rock chimed with ears attuned to, say, Roxy Music. Their sensibility has always been more European than American. In 2009 they issued an album titled The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman. Its theme was a flight of fancy which took the Swedish director to Hollywood. Read more... |
Joan Baez, London Palladium review - fare-thee-well generositySaturday, 02 March 2019
“If you look at music, you see theme, variation, you see symmetry, asymmetry, you see structure,” observed Dave van Ronk, the late folk musician known as “the Mayor of MacDougal Street” in Greenwich Village. Read more... |
CD: Hozier - Wasteland Baby!Thursday, 28 February 2019
In the summer of 2014, there was little getting away from Hozier's "Take Me to Church". Whenever you turned on the TV or the radio there it was. It wasn't just in this country. Eventually, the song became number one in 12 countries and number 2 in the States. Of course, for the singer, this massive success also brought a big problem: how to top it? When Hozier sat down to write his new album he must have agonised about what he'd got so right first time around. On paper, the recipe was... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Eric DolphySunday, 24 February 2019
The tapes from which Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions is sourced were found in a suitcase Eric Dolphy had given to musical polymath Hale Smith and his wife Juanita before setting off on a European tour in 1964. What was handed over by the prodigious multi-instrumentalist for safekeeping has never before been fully explored by an archive release. Read more... |
Joshua Redman Still Dreaming, Barbican review - world-class quartetWednesday, 20 February 2019
Joshua Redman's Still Dreaming Quartet is a project surrounded by an abundance of facts, context and backstories. Jazz folk really like that stuff. If fans can’t get enough of all the interconnections and the minutiae, the truth is that a concert stands or falls by what actually happens in the moment, whether it actually works or doesn't. Read more... |
Lau, Cheese & Grain, Frome review - the dangerous charm of electronicaTuesday, 19 February 2019
Back in 2017, The Foo Fighters did a surprise pre-Glastonbury gig at Frome’s Cheese & Grain, a rather soulless shed near the equally soulless Westway Shopping Centre. So much for Frome being the heart of a new alternative Britain, almost a parallel universe with the only state-funded Steiner school in the country. The all-purpose venue is better known for programming a string of covers bands, the bi-monthly Vegan Market and the Seed Swap and Potato Day. Read more... |
Yes is More: Charlotte Church’s Late Night Pop Dungeon, Tramshed - utterly convincingMonday, 18 February 2019
Compared to Scotland, Welsh independence has yet to hit the mainstream. The idea has been mostly supported by the Welsh-speaking population, with opinion polls hovering around 19 per cent. It’s fallen to Super Furry Animals keyboardist Cian Ciaran to change this with the Yes is More campaign. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Manchester - A City United In MusicSunday, 17 February 2019
Full marks for shoehorning-in the names of city’s two major football teams into the title of Manchester - A City United In Music. But this spiffy double-CD compendium roams further than the boundaries of the titular metropolis. Leigh, Salford, Stockport, Timperley and Warrington are in the mix too. Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 47: The Beta Band, Ry Cooder, The Cardigans, Sgt. Pepper goes jazz and moreWednesday, 13 February 2019
Let’s cut straight to the chase. Here are reviews of 48 records, running riot across genre boundaries and categorizations, from preposterous pop metal to woodland-themed classical piano pieces. It’s the wildest vinyl ride in review-land, an adventure for the ears. Dive in! VINYL OF THE MONTH Read more... |
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