CDs/DVDs
mark.kidel
Ammar 808 is the high octane vehicle for the Tunisian-born producer Sofyann Ben Youssef, now based in Denmark. His first album Maghreb United (2018) struck hard and fast in a field already well-populated by the fusion of traditional Arab sounds and modern electronics. It was a marriage made in heaven. His second album Global Control/Invisible Invasion (2020) explored links with South Indian sounds, but in the latest, he returns to his roots and the result is a frenetic and very danceable mix of ancient and modern.In the company of some of Tunisia’s most popular vocalists, the producer weaves Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
How do you solve a problem like Sports Team? Taking them at face value, they’re a living metaphor for the slow music biz relegation of the working class in favour of the privileged, a bunch of snarky ex-Cambridge University students who make smug guitar pop, a Brideshead Revisited version of The Kooks. And yet, and yet, that’s too trite, too obvious; they mine their background and image with self-awareness, their songs smart, ironic observations of the world they’re perceived to inhabit. They’re gunning for Roxy Music’s elegant trick of rendering monied louche wryly cool. On their third album Read more ...
joe.muggs
Stereolab always walked a knife edge between deadly serious and dead silly. Their sound was constructed around the sort of reference points – French, German and Brazilian psychedelia, Radiophonic Workshop sound effects, 1960s library music – which back in pre-streaming, pre-discogs days of the early 1990s when they started out you had to be a proper nerd to have any grasp of.Lyrics were shot through with references to obscure Marxist theory, situationism, obsolete electronics catalogues and so on, with layer upon layer of absurdism and earnestness interleaved to the point you could very Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Tell me what you see” invites Robert Forster during Strawberries' “Tell it Back to me.” The album’s eight songs do not, however, necessarily say what Forster actually sees. These vignettes about encounters between characters come across as imaginary scenarios.This contrasts with the former Go-Betweens lynchpin’s last album, The Candle and the Flame, which was a direct – albeit allusive – reaction to the diagnosis and treatment of his wife Karin Bäumler’s cancer.“Tell it Back to me,” the tale opening Forster’s ninth solo album, tells of a man – an English teacher – who meets a woman who Read more ...
Ibi Keita
Rico Nasty’s new album LETHAL signals a shift in direction, but whether it is a bold evolution or a step towards something less distinct is up for debate. Known for her fiery rage-rap and punk energy, Rico tones things down here, trading some of her wild unpredictability for a more polished, trend-aware sound.Tracks like “TEETHSUCKER (YEAH 3x)” bring back her signature distortion and chaotic charm, but those moments are scattered. Songs like “Butterfly Kisses” and “Soul Snatcher” lean into vulnerability, showing a softer side of Rico that feels genuine, but are not especially groundbreaking. Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Metalhorse is a concept album that uses visions of a dilapidated funfair as a metaphor for life’s various ups and downs. It especially seems to concentrate on the downs though, especially when it employs opening lines like “My best friend’s dying” on “Nothin Worth Winnin”.Metalhorse is also Billy Nomates’ third album but the first to be recorded with a full band. More surprisingly, it also sees Sleaford Mods’ former collaborator, Tor Maries veer away from her previous DIY fare and towards less spikey, more middle of the road, yacht rock sounds. This largely involves replacing melodic heft Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Danish singer MØ is a paradox. Initially she appeared to be another Scandi electro-pop princess of the bangers. The monster 2015 hit “Lean On” with Major Lazer jacked her profile, briefly, through the roof, but, while she’s worked with everyone from Iggy Azalea to DJ Benny Benassi, she seemed to step sideways from pure pop, tempering it with something more Nordic and melancholy. Her fourth album persuasively continues in this direction.This isn’t to say that there are no clubby stompers. Those after that pure rush should head straight to “Keep Moving”, an Eighties-tinted 4/4 cruncher, created Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Over the years Slade in Flame has been hailed as one of the greatest rock movies (albeit rarely seen or screened), up there with Perfomance and That’ll Be The Day.Like those films, it has grittiness running through it like barbed wire through a stick of Blackpool rock. It’s raw and dark; very dark. Not glam at all. And wrapped up in its singular brilliance is the grim rather than glam fact that Slade in Flame tanked at the box office and almost tanked the career of the band it – sort of – celebrated.There was one DVD release in the Noughties, which now goes for around £200 on Amazon. But Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Following on from an impressive set with the Libertines – last year’s No 1 album All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade – Peter Doherty returns to the fray with his first solo album in nine years. In youth renowned for opiates, crack and chaos, and for cholesterol over alcohol in middle age (he’s now 46), the songs on Felt Better Alive come across as swiftly taken snapshots developed in a musical dark room. Some tracks feel like demos awaiting a few more layers of invention, others more richly built up, but all of them trailing the loose, intimate charm of home-made things, wrapped in a Read more ...
Tom Carr
It has never been an exact science understanding when something will capture lightning in a bottle and go viral. Even less expected is for an anonymous metal band to become a social media sensation, but in early 2023 that's exactly what happened for Sleep Token.The anonymous UK metal collective had been slowly cultivating their following since arriving on the scene in 2016. Their gothic stage presence and mysterious lore set them aside from their contemporaries immediately, as did their playing with various genres around a modern metal sound. And though they had achieved steady success across Read more ...
joe.muggs
I’ve got an admission: I never really got Radiohead, in no small part because of Thom Yorke’s singing. I appreciate his technical abilities and songwriting, and that a lot of people find his anguish cathartic, but the more he goes for it the more I switch off.Even in gentler and less rockist songs he tends to go for a keening sound that still jangles my nerves. Rather like Paul Weller (not someone I imagine he’s compared to very often) straining to express intensity seems to have become a vital part of his musical brand, but just like Weller, I infinitely prefer it when he sits back a bit and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s plenty of noise out there about 24-year-old Kentish musician Victoria Walker, AKA PinkPantheress. Since being acclaimed BBC Sound of 2022, the spotlight has been on her. She supported Halsey and Olivia Rodrigo on tour, worked with Beabadoobee, Skrillex, and K-Pop sensations Le SSerafim, and had a song on the Barbie soundtrack. It’s a lot. Perhaps, judging from this mixtape – a 20-minute filler release we might once have called an EP – she’s spreading herself too thin.The idea is that Fancy That tips its hat to millennial dance sounds and, indeed, it features Basement Jaxx’ music on “ Read more ...