tue 22/07/2025

New Music Reviews

Reissue CDs Weekly: Hank Williams

Kieron Tyler

Any knowledge of the Hank Williams narrative heavily influences how he is perceived. He died at age 29 on New Year’s Day 1953, in the back of a car while travelling to a show in Ohio. His schedule was punishing. A day earlier he had played in West Virginia but a storm meant he could not fly from one show to the next.

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Transatlantic Sessions, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - folk fusion from Burns to the boss

Miranda Heggie

In its seventeenth incarnation, Transatlantic Sessions - a concert comprising music from some of the finest names in Scottish, Irish and American folk - had its penultimate night of its UK tour in a packed-out Symphony Hall, Birmingham on Friday evening.

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Jonas Brothers, SSE Hydro, Glasgow - reunited siblings look to the future with slick show

Jonathan Geddes

No matter how much the Jonas Brothers try, they can’t totally escape the mouse. Commercials for new Disney TV shows flashed up onscreen not long before the siblings took to the stage, and although the trio’s days of appearing in such fare are long gone, it offered a brief reminder of where they began.

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theartsdesk in Aalborg: Northern Winter Beat 2020 review

Kieron Tyler

U-Bahn’s second-ever live show outside their home country Australia took place in Aalborg, in Jutland, in the north of Denmark. They were in this congenial, routinely rain-sodden city last weekend for Northern Winter Beat, the annual festival of established, offbeat and up-and-coming musical adventurers.

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Celtic Connections 2020, Glasgow review - Yorkston/Thorne/Khan and Roaming Roots Revue celebrate joy of collaboration

Lisa-Marie Ferla

While there’s usually something for everybody on the Celtic Connections festival programme, where Glasgow’s midwinter festival tends to shine is in its collaborations and special events.

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Anaïs Mitchell, Bonny Light Horseman, Roundhouse review - heart-warming folk bliss

mark Kidel

Anaïs Mitchell should be a star: she sings like a dream, oozes presence and charisma, and writes songs of classic simplicity, poetry and depth. Her other outstanding quality is a natural modesty and a delight in just being herself on stage, and sharing the joys of music-making with her fellow-musicians and the audience.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Tea & Symphony - The English Baroque Sound 1968-1974

Kieron Tyler

When it was issued in May 1968, “Fading Yellow” attracted no attention. It couldn’t have as it was the B-side of “Mr. Poem”, Mike Batt’s poor-selling debut single. The top side was good, very 1968 and along the lines of whimsical 45s like Donovan’s “Jenifer Juniper” or Marty Wilde’s “Abergavenny” but wasn’t a hit.

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Madonna, London Palladium review - a fiesta of the surreal and the fiercely fabulous

Katie Colombus

The first time I heard Madonna, I was 8 years old at a school disco.

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Fatoumata Diawara, Roundhouse review - Malian magic on show

mark Kidel

Fatoumata Diawara knows how to please: with a winning and innocent smile, she wins the audience over in a matter of seconds. She has a vocal style all of her own: in her first song, “Don Do”, a quiet and meditative prelude to the boisterous show that follows, she seduces with sensual textures and a slight rasp unique among West African women singers, and which owes as much to jazz and gospel as to the traditions of her musically-rich country.

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John Grant, Roundhouse review - simplicity, with a bit of space opera

India Lewis

John Grant’s entry onto the stage was unobtrusive, appropriate for a set-up that consisted of just a grand piano and an electronic keyboard (with accompanying keyboardist). He began with similarly unadorned songs, the ballads that peppered the start and the end of his set.

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