New Music Reviews
Wilderness Festival 2019 review - marvellous misbehaviourWednesday, 07 August 2019
The thing about Wilderness is that it’s just so jolly decent. Acres of decadence, sprawled safely over the yawning magnificence of Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire, combine to create a scintillating country fair reverie – a heady mix of good music, high end food, luxury outdoorsyness and companionable folk. Read more... |
Nile Rodgers and Chic, Royal Festival Hall review – great band, shame about the soundMonday, 05 August 2019
There is every reason to celebrate Nile Rodgers. For his contribution to music as arranger, producer and performer over more than four decades. And also not least because he’s still around and still performing: he has, after all, pulled through after two bouts of serious cancer in 2010 and 2017. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Fernando Falcão - Memória das ÁguasSunday, 04 August 2019
Memória das Águas hasn’t figured in lists of great Brazilian albums. Its creator Fernando Falcão isn’t as celebrated as fellow countryman and musical maverick Tom Zé. The reissue of this arresting yet previously obscure album should help change these oversights. Read more... |
Black Sabbath: 50 years, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery review – not heavy goingFriday, 02 August 2019
The well-spring of certain musical genres and hometowns of certain influential musicians have long been a source of civic pride – and a boost to the tourist industry – in many clued-in parts of the world. One only has to think of the co-opting of Bob Marley’s life and influence in attracting tourist dollars to Jamaica or the raising of the Beatles to mythic status – bus tours and all – in Liverpool. Read more... |
Ludovico Einaudi, Barbican review - a long road to nowhereThursday, 01 August 2019
There is a video, part of Greenpeace’s laudable Save The Arctic Campaign, in which Ludovico Einaudi sits at a Steinway atop a small ice flow performing his Elegy for the Arctic. As he plays a descending scale, the camera pans slightly to the right just in time to see a chunk of glacier break away and crash into the sea. Perfect timing! Read more... |
WOMAD, Charlton Park review - a gloriously defiant global music celebrationThursday, 01 August 2019
This was a year of superb musical standards, smooth organisation and a real sense of celebration. In the last couple of years, WOMAD being more liberal and internationalist than nearly anywhere else, there was a sense in the air of a collective political shock - maybe the future wasn’t with our tribe of happy cultural globalists after all. Read more... |
Liam Gallagher, Valletta, Malta review - underperformed but rapturously receivedTuesday, 30 July 2019
Rock ‘n’ roll. That’s what was promised. It was emblazoned on the organ for all to see. And if that visual guarantee was too subtle, the set began with “Rock 'n’ Roll Star”. Only, despite the swagger, Liam Gallagher doesn’t really live up to the promise live. It’s loud enough, and the songs talk the talk, but this balmy night in Malta appeared to be just another day in the office for the former Oasis frontman. Read more... |
Lucinda Williams, Barbican review - memories, heartache and Southern secretsMonday, 29 July 2019
“I’m talking about these songs in more depth than I usually do, revealing a few secrets along the way,” says a black–jeaned, cowboy-booted Lucinda Williams after singing “Right in Time”, the achingly erotic first song on Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, her breakthrough, Grammy-winning, never-bettered ... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: 1977 The Year Punk Broke, Optimism / RejectSunday, 28 July 2019
Britain’s musical eruption of 1977 wasn’t just about the now. As the new box set 1977 – The Year Punk Broke amply demonstrates, the flux allowed more than first-timers through the door. Seasoned gig-circuit regulars Stranglers got a leg up. Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 51: Suicide, Soundgarden, Soft Cell, Stax, Spice Girls and moreWednesday, 24 July 2019
As this month’s edition of theartsdesk on Vinyl appears the sun is blazing outside, a heatwave hits, and our record collections must hide in the shadows or warp. Yet still we want more to join them in their sheltered rows and where better to seek the greatest new releases than the longest, most complete monthly round-up of new vinyl releases. As ever, we run the gamut. Read more... |
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