New Music Reviews
Music Reissues Weekly: Norma Tanega - I Don't Think It Will Hurt If You SmileSunday, 16 March 2025
After scoring a hit in 1966 with the distinctive folk-pop of her jazz-inclined debut single "Walkin' my Cat Named Dog," US singer-songwriter Norma Tanega (1939–2019) seemed to melt away. Three follow-up 45s weren’t hits. Her album wasn’t a strong seller. Latterly, though, one of its tracks, “You're Dead,” has been heard as the theme of the TV and cinema versions of What We Do In The Shadows. Read more... |
Album: The Loft - Everything Changes, Everything Stays The SameSaturday, 15 March 2025
“Sitting on a sofa, cigarettes and beer, ten years disappear…agreeing to agree, just to get along.” By going into the difficulties of resuscitating the past, the lyrics of “Ten Years,” the fourth song on The Loft’s first album, neatly sum-up the band’s current situation. The final line gives the 10-track set its title: “Everything changes, everything stays the same.” Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Liverpool Sunset - The City After MerseybeatSunday, 09 March 2025
What happens after the spotlight is directed towards another target? In the case of Liverpool and the Merseybeat boom – which, in terms of chart success, peaked in 1963 – the question is addressed by Liverpool Sunset: The City After Merseybeat 1964–1969. The city’s musicians carried on, despite record labels looking elsewhere for the next big thing, and despite the Liverpool tag no longer ensuring an automatic interest. Read more... |
Album: The Burning Hell - Ghost PalaceWednesday, 05 March 2025
Cultural references run up the flagpole on Ghost Palace include Deep Purple’s “Space Truckin’” buskers covering Lynryd Skynyrd and Ed Sheeran, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome and The Ramones’ Leave Home album. Read more... |
Chuck Prophet, Mid Sussex Music Hall, Hassocks review - the good AmericanTuesday, 04 March 2025
Forty years ago, Chuck Prophet was the Keith Richards-like guitar hotshot in Green On Red, peers of R.E.M. and among the raw country-punk architects of what became Americana. Now he’s 61 and playing in a sold-out pub back-room in Hassocks, a downland commuter village near Brighton, still giving his all during two hours of humour and humane passion as if this is the biggest stage, and this crowd a community clearly worth serving. Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Kraftwerk - Autobahn at 50Sunday, 02 March 2025
“German space rock group is already shooting up the charts with their debut US LP. One of few continental groups able to make this musical mode attractive in the US.” That, in full, in its 1 March 1975 issue, was US music business paper Billboard’s review of the single of Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn.” Read more... |
Jopy/Lemonsuckr/King of May, Green Door Store, Brighton review - exhilarating showcase for new young guitar bandsFriday, 28 February 2025
There’s something exhilarating about seeing bands right at the very, very dawn of their careers. Will they be headlining the Houston Astrodome in five years’ time or working in chip shops? It’s all to play for. But it’s right now that counts. Of course, it only feels that way if they’re any good. When they are, it peps the spirit. Read more... |
Album: bdrmm - MicrotonicWednesday, 26 February 2025
Microtonic comes into focus on its third track, “Infinity Peaking.” Album opener “Goit,” featuring a guest vocal by Working Men’s Club’s Syd Minsky-Sargeant, is doomy post-Balearic impressionism with spoken lyrics seemingly about the loss of self. Next, the distant-sounding rave-shoegazing hybrid “John on the Ceiling.” “Infinity Peaking” is the point of coalescence; where beats-bedded, drifting electronica is suited to the comedown experience. Read more... |
Rats on Rafts, The Victoria review - crepuscular Dutch quintet begins to see the lightTuesday, 25 February 2025
An album is one thing, a live show is another. A truism of course, but one which is inescapable during this London date by the Rotterdam-based Rats on Rafts at a shabby chic pub in Dalston, East London. Read more... |
Bilk, O2 Academy 2, Birmingham review - Essex rock'n'rollers blast into the weekendMonday, 24 February 2025
Sol Abrahams, singer and guitarist for Essex rock’n’rollers Bilk, was suffering from a bit of guitar trouble in Birmingham on Friday evening. By the time the band was ready to power through “On It”, from new album Essex, Drugs and Rock and Roll, he was already on his third or fourth instrument, the last one having literally fallen apart in his hands. Read more... |
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