CDs/DVDs
Tim Cumming
Catrin Finch has been at the top her field for a long time now. The Welsh harpist was appointed to the ancient office of Royal Harpist by Prince Charles in 2000, was nominated for a Classical Brit Award in 2004 and her World Music collaborations with Seckou Keita resulted in their winning the 2019 BBC Radio 2 Folk Award for Best Duo. After her three acclaimed albums with Keita, she released the striking Double You with Irish fiddler and classical violinist Aoife Ni Bhrian in 2023. And now, striking out with her first solo album in a decade, she turns to her self – in fact, to her 13-year Read more ...
Ibi Keita
Gorillaz return with The Mountain, a release that feels like a defining chapter in the band’s long evolution. After years of restless experimentation and high profile collaborations, this record sounds purposeful and reflective. It carries the playful unpredictability fans expect, yet there is a deeper emotional current running beneath the surface.From the opening moments, the album establishes a sweeping and cinematic tone. Layers of electronic production blend with organic instrumentation from Anoushka Shankar, creating a sound that feels both expansive and intimate. Elements of alternative Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“I don’t remember yesterday, but I remember when I was eight years old.” The opening lyrics of “Sure & Steady,” Gained / Lost’s second track, underline a core concern of UK indie stalwarts The Wave Pictures’ 20th (!) album: the passage of time, what can and cannot be remembered, what may or may not have a bearing on the here and now. A look at the images collected for the Exile On Main Street-style sleeve of Gained / Lost confirms what’s going on.Thematic considerations aside, The Wave Pictures have a fondness for American musical archetypes. Despite guitarist and singer David Tattersall’ Read more ...
Tom Carr
After honing an 80s-inspired and -influenced indie sound, the solo singer-songwriter Mitski set out across the range with previous album The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We. Its rural, rustic aesthetic paired with Mitski’s exploration of love and loss.This authentic combination chimed with a huge audience, with “My Love Mine All Mine” earning almost two billion streams on Spotify, and widespread use on TikTok. The huge success can largely be explained by Mitski’s uncanny ability to frame herself in the point of view of deeply to down to earth characters, bringing to life the mundane and Read more ...
Ibi Keita
My first listen to Iron & Wine was only last year, when iconic Midwest Emo band American Football released a cover album of their now classic 1999 self-titled album. Keen to hear all of my favourite tracks reincarnated by some seemingly random, and unknown artists, I woke up on its release date to find that their most popular song “Never Meant” was covered by Samuel Beam, aka Iron & Wine. The song is literally a masterpiece, both its original and Beam’s fantastic cover, a triumph in stretching and kneading the track into something new and beautifully haunting.Hen's Teeth is Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
When the debut album by ex-Little Mix star Leigh-Anne Pinnock starts, the omens are good. The opener, “Look into My Eyes”, is an electro-pop stonker with a roots reggae break at its close. So far, so tasty. Cast eyes down the track-listing and the majority of songs come in at under three minutes. Often a good sign, indicating a willingness to cut flab, keep things snappy. Such positivity lasts for a few songs, but then the album, unfortunately, settles to a bland amalgam of reggaeton and R&B that’s less persuasive.The consistent nod towards Pinnock’s Caribbean heritage is the most Read more ...
Ellie Roberts
Millennial icon Hilary Duff has released her first album in over a decade, and for an artist whose music career always felt more like an inevitable dabble following her success as a Disney teen than it did anything serious, her transition into the current pop landscape is incredibly smooth. That’s not to say a handful of her previous hits haven’t stood the test of time, there’s just an air of irony and nostalgia to them that it seems it would be impossible to separate her from. Luck…or something, and Duff’s comeback as a whole, tackles that with subtle self-depreciation alongside genuinely Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Peaches is primarily known as a purveyor of transgressive, sex positive anthems that have no room for shame whatsoever. This is just as it should be, although her music might not be for the easily offended, and her seventh album is not only one of her best, but possibly her most audacious too.No Lube So Rude is packed with hardcore punk attitude, biting sarcasm, raw electroclash grooves and is blatantly sexually explicit throughout. Seemingly, as she stares down the barrel of her sixties, Merrill Nisker feels no need to veer towards the middle of the road, declaring herself “a horny little Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
It’s been a long wait. More than five years have passed since Maria Schneider’s most recent "magnum opus", the double album Data Lords came out. That was in July 2020, and the album went on to win not only a sixth and a seventh Grammy for the composer/bandleader, it was also a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Music. And I can’t help noting with some pride that theartsdesk’s review of that album is extensively quoted on the Pulitzer Prizes website (link below).In the intervening years, the main addition to Schneider’s catalogue has been Decades, a retrospective package released in Read more ...
Katie Colombus
The first time I heard Wuthering Heights I felt a bit like I’d walked into the wrong room – one lit by firelight rather than LEDs. Is this the sound of an artist in retreat? Away from the dancefloor, from self-scrutiny, from the lime-green glare of her hyperpop Brat era? Or a clean break from the terms that used to define her?When film maker Emerald Fennell asked for one song last year, Charli was on the brink of burnout. But the more she got into the creative world of Fennell’s new Wuthering Heights adaptation, the more she realised how much she wanted to escape into someone else’s 177-year- Read more ...
Joe Muggs
One of the smaller but more passionately enduring subcultures in the world today is that around slow dance music. The core of its audience is a Gen X crowd, a good number of whom have stuck with club culture since the mid Nineties or earlier, with others who’ve rekindled their love of electronic music in middle age: people whose knees might not be up to stomping to techno for hours, but are still deeply committed to the experience of deep and prolonged immersion in repetitive beats.Belfast’s Phil Kieran is a key mover and shaker in this scene. Though his career began 25 years ago as a Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Jill Scott is neo-soul royalty, without any doubt whatsoever. In fact, her debut album, Who Is Jill Scott? remains a monumental release over quarter of a century since it first saw the light of day.Nevertheless, Scott has continually refused to be boxed-in as a singer but is a true Renaissance Woman who has also made her mark as a spoken word artist, poet and actor. Hence, she can easily be forgiven for making us wait 11 years since her last album, Women. That said, any fans approaching To Whom This May Concern with a degree of trepidation due to its long gestation can be rest assured. Jill Read more ...