New Music Reviews
Reissue CDs Weekly: Silhouettes & Statues - A Gothic RevolutionSunday, 09 July 2017
In February 1983, New Musical Express ran a cover feature categorising what it termed “positive punk”. Bands co-opted into this ostensibly new trend were Blood & Roses, Brigandage, Danse Society, Rubella Ballet, Sex Gang Children, Southern Death Cult, The Specimen, UK Decay and The Virgin Prunes. Read more...
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BambinO / Last And First Men, Manchester International FestivalFriday, 07 July 2017
The Manchester International Festival – a biennale of new creative work – this year has a new artistic director in John McGrath, and there’s no large-scale new opera or prominent "classical" work, it would seem, other than Raymond Yiu’s song cycle, The World Was Once All Miracle, performed on Tuesday by Roderick Williams with the BBC Philharmonic. |
Steve Winwood, Eventim Apollo review - multi-talented performer redesigns his back catalogueThursday, 06 July 2017
The precocious Steve Winwood joined the Spencer Davis Group when he was 14, when the Sixties themselves were still young, and hasn’t really stopped ever since. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Beach HouseSunday, 02 July 2017
From beginning to end, B-Sides and Rarities plays through like a regular album; as though it collects a series of tracks recorded where a cohesive release with a flow was the goal. Yet this 14-cut collection is a compilation with its earliest selection from 2005, the year Beach House formed. Read more... |
theartsdesk at Glastonbury Festival 2017Thursday, 29 June 2017
It’s a Tweet-age Glastonbury aftermath. It’s monsooning grey outside. The real world’s back, consensus reality fast encroaching. Everything’s moved on, spun to the next thing as we A.D.D. onto Wimbledon, Hard Brexit or whatever. Even my 14-year-old daughter knows the “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” chant (to the riff from White Stripes “Seven Nation Army”) that rolled across this year’s Glastonbury crowds like... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Shelleyan OrphanSunday, 25 June 2017
Considering Shelleyan Orphan, Melody Maker said “someone’s been smearing themselves in art…were they artists or did they just wallow in shit?” While the late Eighties’ British music press often made assertions to seek attention, slagging off a band because they sought to follow their own path is, with hindsight, rich given that roughly contemporary cover stars such as Chakk and Set The Tone dealt in music so precisely fixed in the moment they now sound as dated as Sheena Easton’s... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 29: The Beatles, Kraftwerk, Sikth, ESG, Alice Coltrane and moreThursday, 22 June 2017
Reviewed this month with the windows open, in weather hot enough to warp records, this month theartsdesk on Vinyl casts two ears over 34 releases, starting with a striking foray into elegant songwriting and ending with Now That’s What I Call Classic Rock. Read more... |
Supersonic Festival 2017, BirminghamTuesday, 20 June 2017
The Supersonic Festival is Birmingham’s annual gathering of the sonically weird and wonderful pitched at “curious audiences” happy to lend their ears to sounds that would ordinarily be difficult to discover without a lot of effort. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Lynn CastleSunday, 18 June 2017
In a 1967 headline, The Washington Post pegged Lynn Castle as a “Shapely Blonde in Blue Jeans, Popular Barber in Hollywood”. She had attracted attention as the hairdresser of choice for The Byrds, The Monkees, Del Shannon, Sonny & Cher and Stephen Stills. Known as “The Lady Barber”, she also cut the hair of music business movers and shakers Lee Hazlewood and Monkees’ songwriters Boyce and Hart. Read more... |
Guns N' Roses, London Stadium review - venue almost ruins night of glorySunday, 18 June 2017
It had been a perfect summer's day and around the stadium denim-clad punters sipped ice-cool beer and discussed how this reunion would sound. Everyone knew how Axl had aced it, right here, a year ago, filling in as AC/DC's lead singer. Many hoped it would be just like when the classic line-up last played London in 1992. Except this time the sound quality would be better. Read more... |
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