New Music Reviews
Music Reissues Weekly: March of the Flower Children - The American Sounds of 1967Sunday, 03 September 2023
“March of the Flower Children” was a June 1967 B-side by Los Angeles psych-punks The Seeds. The track was extracted from their third album Future, a peculiar dive into psychedelia which was as tense as it was turned on. While the song’s lyrics referenced a “field of flowers,” a “painted castle” and a sky “painted golden yellow” the mood was jittery, unstable. Read more... |
Medicine Festival review - the new New Age gathers in leafy BerkshireWednesday, 30 August 2023
Fia is a Swedish singer with a crystalline voice and a ear for a great melody - her singalong choruses are not typical for a festival Friday night headliner, like getting the audience to join in with “Sit with your pain/ cradle it close/ and when you’re ready/ Let it go.” This had a hypnotic effect on the audience, more mass therapy than a having a good time. Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Keith Levene and The ClashSunday, 27 August 2023
Forty-seven years ago this week, a new band called The Clash were seen by a paying audience in London for the first time. On Sunday 29 August 1976 they played Islington’s Screen on the Green cinema, billed between Manchester’s Buzzcocks – their earliest London show – and rising luminaries Sex Pistols. Doors opened at midnight. The anniversary needs marking. Read more... |
Album: Slowdive - Everything is AliveSaturday, 26 August 2023
Everything is Alive opens with all that could be wanted from a Slowdive album. “Shanty” is just-under six minutes of out-of-focus, shimmering aural fog in which guitars throb and drums are a distant pulse. An acid-house-type heartbeat is offset against a harpsichord-like refrain recalling Broadcast. Lines drift in about a burning candle and the arrival of night. It all seems to be about the passing of time. Read more... |
The Walkmen, SWG3, Glasgow review - a classy return for New York's finestWednesday, 23 August 2023
As the relentless, hammering beat of “The Rat” faded away, the Walkmen’s singer Hamilton Leithauser was evidently in buoyant mood. “Like riding a bike,” he declared to the Glasgow crowd, and this was a statement that proved consistently accurate throughout the 75-minute set, as the reunited quintet played in a manner that felt like they’d never been away. Read more... |
Album: Hiss Golden Messenger - Jump for JoyWednesday, 23 August 2023
Any surprises which Jump for Joy brings aren’t about the nature of the music or the unfailingly open lyrics recounting Hiss Golden Messenger main-man M.C. Taylor’s outlook on his life, but an intermittent undertone suggesting he’s been considering the rhythmic foundations of The War On Drugs. In the sixth song, “Jesus is Bored” there’s a hint of WOD’s fondness for a chugging, insistent tempo. It’s more to the fore on eighth track “Feeling Eternal.” Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Boo Radleys - Giant StepsSunday, 20 August 2023
The final track of Giant Steps is titled “The White Noise Revisited.” Its lyrics recount the crushing impact of a job where you “kill yourself at work for what seems nothing at all.” After coming home, “you listen to the Beatles and relax and close your eyes.” Read more... |
Album: Be Your Own Pet - MommySaturday, 19 August 2023
It shouldn’t be news to you that thanks to Gen Z, Y2K is making a comeback. From fashion threads to cultural memes, our feeds are a wash of “nowstalgia”. After 15 years away from the dive bars of their youth, Noughties noisemakers Be Your Own Pet are primed for the revival. Read more... |
We Out Here Festival, Wimborne St Giles review: it's a family affair, and then some...Friday, 18 August 2023
We Out Here Festival, now in its fifth year (and fourth edition, as 2020 was of course cancelled for Covid), has become an institution. Read more... |
Mega Bog, The Lexington review - a synth-pop makeover is tempered with dashes of new waveFriday, 18 August 2023
Introducing the fifth number in this evening’s set, Erin Birgy speaks to the audience for the first time. “This is our last song, thank you,” she says. Thoughts of early Jesus and Mary Chain shows instantly surface. Is this going to be a 20-minute wonder? A five-song digest of where Birgy – who records and writes as Mega Bog – is now, playing her first UK dates since the release of her seventh album The End of Everything? Is it the end of the show? 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
'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages...
