New Music Reviews
Reissue CDs Weekly: Northern Soul's Classiest Rarities Volume 7Sunday, 02 May 2021![]()
Carolyn Crawford’s “Ready or Not Here Comes Love” is a 1971 recording. Read more... |
Psappha, Phillips, Hallé St Peter’s, Manchester online review - Turnage world premiereFriday, 30 April 2021![]()
Manchester’s Psappha have been proudly flying the flag of new and radical music right through the year of lockdown, and last night’s livestream, with two-and-a-half world premieres, one of them by... Read more... |
Album: Teenage Fanclub - Endless ArcadeMonday, 26 April 2021![]()
A few hurdles need jumping before grappling with the essence of Teenage Fanclub’s 11th album. Endless Arcade is their first without bassist and founder member Gerard Love. He, alongside Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley, was one of the band’s songwriters. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Spiritualized - Lazer Guided MelodiesSunday, 25 April 2021![]()
Lazer Guided Melodies was great. It still is. Spiritualized’s debut album built from what was already there in Jason Pierce’s previous band Spacemen 3 and took it into newer, more textured territory. While softer-focussed and more dynamic than Spacemen 3 there was still an edge, a brittle carapace which ensured Spiritualized was its own thing. Read more... |
Album: Field Music - Flat White MoonMonday, 19 April 2021![]()
Although it is not solipsistic, Flat White Moon is Field Music’s most personal, most revealing, warmest-sounding album so far. David and Peter Brewis have opened up. Their ninth studio album together opens with a seeming declaration. “Orion from the Street” has a drum pattern, bubbling, whooshing sounds and weaving, treated guitar unambiguously alluding to The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows”. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: T2 - It'll All Work Out In BoomlandSunday, 18 April 2021![]()
It'll All Work Out In Boomland was issued by Decca at the end of July 1970. A poor seller at the time, it began attracting attention in the mid-Eighties when prices for original copies began creeping up. Around 2000, it was picking up about £100. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Wes Montgomery - The NDR Hamburg Studio RecordingsSunday, 11 April 2021![]()
Speaking to America’s Hit Parader magazine in August 1967, Frank Zappa said “If you want to learn how to play guitar, listen to Wes Montgomery.” The article was titled My Favorite Records and the head Mother was being featured shortly after the release of Absolutely Free, the second Mothers Of Invention... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Tame Impala - InnerSpeaker (2010➝2020)Sunday, 04 April 2021![]()
Heard now, InnerSpeaker sounds as it did when it was issued in 2010. Tame Impala’s debut album was crisp, fizzing; a pithy collection of psychedelic rock nuggets which made its case instantly. This was modern psychedelia, infused with a dash of Sweden’s Dungen, which still sounds fresh. Despite brushing the borders of freak-out territory, it was direct. Tuneful too. Fantastic. Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 63: KMFDM, Laurie Anderson, Seratones, The Telescopes, Black Sabbath, Conrad Schnitzler and moreThursday, 01 April 2021![]()
Rumours keep swirling of pressing plants stumped by the effects of COVID-19 lockdown, and it’s true that vinyl editions of many albums have been delayed, yet still those records keep arriving. At theartsdesk on Vinyl, no-one cares if an album was streaming or out in virtual form months ago. Read more... |
Album: Ryley Walker - Course In FableWednesday, 31 March 2021![]()
Although Course In Fable is, as Ryley Walker albums go, pretty straightforward some sharp left turns indicate that the formerly Chicago-based, now New York-dwelling guitar whizz isn’t content with limiting a single musical line of attack to one song. Read more... |
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