sun 13/07/2025

New Music Reviews

Reissue CDs Weekly: Ramones

Kieron Tyler

Production gloss and deliberation are not notions immediately springing to mind while pondering the 1976-era Ramones. Even so, this new edition of their second album, the ever-wonderful Leave Home, reveals that careful consideration was given to how they presented themselves on record.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Anne Briggs

Kieron Tyler

The Time Has Come was issued in late 1971. Anne Briggs’ second album and her second to reach shops that year, it followed an eponymous set released that April. That was on the folk label Topic and produced by the pivotal A. L. Lloyd, who had been key to propagating Britain’s traditional music since the late 1930s.

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theartsdesk on Vinyl 30: Moby, The Beach Boys, Napalm Death, John Coltrane and more

Thomas H Green

If there’s a downside to the resurgence of vinyl, it’s that all that’s left in most charity shops these days is James Galway and his cursed flute and Max Bygraves medley albums. Then again, there’s always new stuff coming in so it’s down to everybody to get in there quick, before the local record shops hoover up all the gems. And there it is. Many small towns now have local record shops again. That’s surely something to celebrate.

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Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Hyde Park review - electrifying American classics

Katie Colombus

Tough security checks mean I make it to British Summer Time’s main stage just moments before the opening chords of the early evening set from The Lumineers.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Silhouettes & Statues - A Gothic Revolution

Kieron Tyler

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.

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BambinO / Last And First Men, Manchester International Festival

Robert Beale

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.

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Steve Winwood, Eventim Apollo review - multi-talented performer redesigns his back catalogue

Adam Sweeting

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.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Beach House

Kieron Tyler

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.

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theartsdesk at Glastonbury Festival 2017

Caspar Gomez

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...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Shelleyan Orphan

Kieron Tyler

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...

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