CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
The pairing of Chemical Brother Tom Rowlands and Norwegian pop star Aurora sounds interesting but not, on paper, like the formula for something extraordinary. Tomora’s debut album kicks such presumptions to the kerbside. It feels like a project they both urgently need, a vital escape from their “day jobs” which they dive into with effervescent giddiness, whether embracing the android-ethereal or the thunderously bangin’.The Chemical Brothers’ last two albums have showcased a unit who, three decades into their ravey career, are still alive to the possibilities of electronic music, to pushing Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Lincolnshire singer Holly Humberstone, now London-based, was awarded the Brit for Rising Star in 2022. A UK Top 5 album followed, Paint My Bedroom Black. But her second album, Cruel World, will showcase what long-term following she’s developed, via her support slots with Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo and Sam Fender. Well, things don’t go anywhere too unexpected but, by the same token, she knows her way around a honeyed hook.Humberstone is, at her best, a fine lyricist, telling stories, usually of angsty, youthful love, longing and break-up, with an evocative literate snappiness. “I think I Read more ...
Tom Carr
It is always fascinating recognising influences in a band or artists style, but noting how they have been adapted, morphed into something different and new. For the Brighton based three-piece rock band Tigercub, influences like Nirvana and Queens of The Stone Age are easy and obvious to grasp, but it is also apparent how the trio push through into their own style and making.For those not in the know, Tigercub consist of Jamie Stephen Hall (vocals and guitar), Jimi Wheelwright (bass) and James Allix (drums). For the last fifteen years they have honed and refined their alternative rock sound, Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
It was something of a miracle how long They Might Be Giants managed to preserve their trademark madcap optimism intact. It lasted right through to their last album, Book (2021). In The World is to Dig, they are still holding on to it in some tracks, but in others it is clear that even they have finally succumbed to ubiquitous world-weariness.Maybe the surprise is that they stayed immune from it for so long. The band’s two Johns, Flansburgh and Linnell, are now in their mid-sixties, their band has been going for over four decades, this is their 24th album. But it is hard to ignore a new vibe Read more ...
Ellie Roberts
Johnny Franck’s energy is palpable with the latest Bilmuri instalment, his signature comedic country metalcore style is as honed as ever and Kinda Hard really just sounds like it was a lot of fun to make. Even with the genre blending, this album falls very much under the pop punk umbrella, with humour through emotion being at the forefront of its style. It’s not hard to see why fans of this trope enjoy Bilmuri, even if the moment has slightly passed. Maybe it’s because the world felt lighter, because the genre was newer, or because we were younger, but the notion of comedy through Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Mountain Call from ECM – it consists of recordings made in Prague in very different contexts and settings between 2003 and 2010 – is a timely reminder of what a fearsomely irrepressible and unique musician Miroslav Vitouš is, both as instrumentalist and as composer. There is purpose, attitude and an almost daemonic challenge in everything he plays or writes.His backstory is all about heft and serious chops. When Vitouš (b.1947) won first prize at the 1966 International Jazz Competition in Vienna, an event set up by Friedrich Gulda, the prize included a course of study at Berklee in Boston. So Read more ...
Guy Oddy
About a dacade ago and then again last year, Seattle’s proto-grungers, Melvins and Birmingham’s grindcore originators, Napalm Death hit the road with their double-header Savage Imperial Death March tours – scorching the earth and damaging hearing wherever they went. Now, they have emerged together from the studio, having turned their relationship into something more solid and lasting.The disc that has emerged, Savage Imperial Death March, is a true collaboration and not a split album with sperate songs from each band. The resulting material is new, covers-free and as extreme in its sonic Read more ...
Joe Muggs
theartsdesk’s Thomas H Green has lately been noting a “mellow production flatness” in modern pop and he’s really nailed a ubiquitous tendency there. The pendulum has definitely swung a long way back from the “loudness wars” of the era that trap and EDM crashed in and everything was amped up and ramped up as if to fight for attention in a crowded mall. One might trace the global counter tendency back to the chillwave of the Noughties, and its mainstreaming to the breakthrough of Tame Impala a decade ago, ushering in era where (brat being the exception that proves the rule) everyone from SZA to Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Poetry and song are related, but they’re not kissin’ cousins, more first cousins at one remove. Composers of art song in the 19th and 20th centuries turned to poets for their song cycles, and rock-era lyrics have often been hailed as poetry, but what happens when a poet – a page poet, albeit adept at performance – combines with musicians and lyricists and adds his own voice to the mix; his reading voice, not a singing one. In the case of Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate, former probation officer and resident poet with LYR, he’s fortunate in his collaborators, singer-songwriter Richard Read more ...
johncarvill
It’s hard to describe this hot mess of a film without divulging the entire plot. And even if you did, you’d struggle to convey the scabrous psychosexual atmosphere, or summarise the thematic currents that swirl beneath the surface. As director Peter Medak says in one of the interviews on this typically well-stocked BFI disc, “It's too complicated to explain."The basic setup is simple, though: Theo (Peter McEnery, pictured below right) and Vivien (Glenda Jackson) live above Theo’s father’s antiques shop in a down-at-heel corner of West London. They pass the time by indulging in what today Read more ...
Tom Carr
José González is one of those musicians who is well known without many recognising it. Until that is, someone plays his most known track “Heartbeats”, which was unavoidable after it released in the early Noughties. Since then, the Swedish solo artist hasn’t pierced through the zeitgeist in quite the same way, but he has been more than successful enough.Born in Gothenburg to Argentine parents who had fled their native country following the coup in the late seventies, González grew up learning the guitar on a steady stream of Latin and folk influences which form the bedrock foundation of his Read more ...
Tom Carr
The premise of a four-piece rock band hailing from Bedford sounds very unassuming when compared to the reality of the eclectic rockers, Don Broco. Their journey, not just musically, but also stylistically has been fascinating to see unfold.Just over 10 years ago, the quartet of Rob Damiani, Simon Delaney, Tom Doyle, and Matt Donnelly arrived in a sleek modern fashion with tunes equally glossy, though with heavy undertones of Nu Metal influences. Over their first four albums, that sleek style has morphed and shifted as with each outing, the group have adapted more genre influences and styles Read more ...