New Music Reviews
Emma Smith, Pizza Express Jazz Club review - Christmas spiritedThursday, 15 December 2022![]()
There’s much fun to be had with snow, and fun things go with it, too, such as album launches in Soho on a freezing Saturday night in December, when the rest of the country is watching England depart the World Cup in the quarter finals. Read more... |
Trans Musicales Festival 2022 review - vibrant eclecticism rules in RennesTuesday, 13 December 2022![]()
It’s Friday night and I’ve finally arrived at 43-year-old French music festival institution Trans Musicales. Due to some dreadful nonsense, it’s taken a 12-hour train journey, two baguettes, one short Stephen King novel, six large beers, a tumbler of Bourbon, and one shuttlebus to place me at the Parc Expo, a series of giant airport hangars that house the majority of musical activity (although there’s a smattering of earlier events in Rennes itself). Read more... |
First Aid Kit, Eventim Apollo review - joyful folk rockSunday, 11 December 2022![]()
Growing up in Sweden, sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg developed ways of combatting the biting cold and bleak darkness of winter. As well as writing during wintertime, they turned to the open landscapes and pervasive desert heat of the USA to inspire their music. Perhaps it is this that brings such a warm sheen to their presence. Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Perú Selvático - Sonic Expedition into the Peruvian Amazon 1972-1986Sunday, 11 December 2022![]()
"Descarga Royal" by Los Royal’s de Pucallpa opens proceedings. After flurries of wobbly wah-wah guitar, a driving percussion bed interweaves with a rolling guitar figure. Then, about two minutes in, the guitarist steps on the fuzz pedal. Groovy. Psychedelic too. The band’s name is taken from the tropical east-Perú city of Pucallpa, located on the Amazon tributary river Ucayali. Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Trevor Beales - Fireside StoriesSunday, 04 December 2022![]()
When Trevor Beales’s band Havana Lake released their only album in 1977, it was on a label which also issued records by The Ryman Country Band, The Saddleworth Male Voice Choir, The Slaithwaite Brass Band, The Thurlstone Bell Orchestra and a version of Sixties beat band The Merseybeats. Look was the offshoot of West Yorkshire studio September Sound Studios – anyone booked there could have a record pressed as part of the deal. Read more... |
Justin Adams & Mohamed Errebbaa, The Jam Jar, Bristol review - the African roots of rock'n'rollTuesday, 29 November 2022
Justin Adams has been exploring music that produces trance or near-trance states for a number of years. Along with being Robert Plant’s lead guitarist for a long while, he has followed his own path, seeking out what he had dubbed the secret heart of rock’n’roll. Read more... |
Park Jiha, Stone Nest, K-Music - timeless evocative East-West soundscapesTuesday, 29 November 2022![]()
Even those with the most tangential connection to pop music will be aware that K-Pop is all conquering, and the likes of BTS and BlackPink are on some metrics the most successful of recent acts anywhere. But at the same time, there is also a growing awareness that there is a burgeoning Korean indie and art music scene, the flames of which have been fanned by what has become one of London’s most interesting and enterprising annual festivals, K-Music. Read more... |
Album: Stormzy - This Is What I MeanMonday, 28 November 2022![]()
“All of this music, it’s nothing to do with the listener,” Stormzy announced to Louis Theroux in a recent TV interview. “All I can do is feel what I feel and document that, and whatever that is, that’s what it’s going to be.” Read more... |
Mary Gauthier, Union Chapel review - a living room concert in all but nameSunday, 27 November 2022![]()
Mary Gauthier’s first tour in more than three years landed at London’s Union Chapel on Saturday, concluding with another sold-out gig. The venue is perfect for unplugged acts – intimate, architecturally pleasing and acoustically spot on. But cold, on this windswept November night. Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Love - Expressions Tell EverythingSunday, 27 November 2022![]()
Any reminder of the greatness of Love is welcome, and Expressions Tell Everything does this in fine style. A box set, it contains eight picture-sleeve seven-inch singles, a book and a couple of postcards. It’s very stylish. Read more... |
Pages
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
latest in today
![Taylor Swift, Wembley Stadium, Saturday 22nd June 2024](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/tay%20header.jpeg?itok=X6Ly0O0S)
Unless you were around when The Beatles toured America in the mid-1960s, it’s doubtful you've heard anything like this. In 40 years of extensive...
!['An album of real warmth and connection'](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/thompson.jpg?itok=Mb9rBt0T)
She has one of the most distinctive voices in folk and contemporary British music, impossible to forget once heard, and impossible to ignore. Even...
![Martin James Bartlett watched with delight by Fantasia Orchestra leader Millie Ashton](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Fantasia%201.jpg?itok=v4fqQDvE)
Any programme featuring Gershwin’s top large-scale works might tend to the “pops” side. Bernstein’s West Side Story Overture and even the...
![It’s all relative: Theo Ogundipe and Tiwa Lade in ‘My Father’s Fable’.](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/fable1.jpg?itok=2S4sJgVz)
Following the huge success of Benedict Lombe’s Shifters, which transfers soon to the West End, the...
![Ruthlessly organised: Simone Signoret in 'Army of Shadows'](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/L--Armee-des-ombres-Photos-022PHOTO-jpgiii.jpg?itok=obTJMiE7)
One of those rare films that leaves you speechless after the closing credits, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows (L'Armée des...
![Ideal lovers: Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen as Cesare and Louise Alder as Cleopatra](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Cesare%201.jpeg?itok=3JdC7eMC)
How much better can a classic get? Sebastian Scotney more or less asked the same question on theartsdesk the last time Giulio...
![Kelly Clancy](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/kelly%20portrait.jpg?itok=Oe1dXxId)
For a couple of decades, the free video game America’s Army was a powerful recruitment aid for the US military. More than a shoot-em-up,...
![Chillin' with them old blues](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Peyroux_LetsWalk_Cover_03_3600x3600%20%281%29.jpg?itok=F2jUDM0f)
Madeleine Peyroux made her name with her second album, 2004’s Careless Love. It consists almost completely of cover versions, delivered...
![The Cryin’ Shames, c. September 1966 in their final incarnation as Paul & Ritchie & The Crying Shames](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/The%20Cryin%E2%80%99%20Shames%20Do%20The%20Strum_the%20cryin%20shames_Header_1000.jpg?itok=Y75fI_xH)
Liverpool’s The Cryin’ Shames were responsible for two of mid-Sixties Britain’s most striking single’s tracks. The February 1966 top side “Please...
![The statue of Smetana, born 200 years ago, presides over the main square of his native Litomyšl](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/1000021319.jpg?itok=j5ytrfbY)
What did they put in the water of Czechia’s central Bohemia/Moravia borderlands? From south to north there's Mahler’s birthplace in Kali...