CDs/DVDs
Liz Thomson
We end 2018 “down to the wire, runnin’ out of time”, as Joan Baez sings in Eliza Gilkyson’s “The Great Correction”, the penultimate song from Whistle Down the Wind, the album which – at 77 – she says will be her last, though perhaps there’ll be a live album of highlights from her final tour, which has been extended into 2019.Baez’ swansong was one of a number of classy Americana releases this past year and it thoroughly deserves the many plaudits (including a Grammy nomination) with which it has been garlanded. It is a rich and rewarding opus that bookends her 1960 debut, Josh Ritter’s “ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Any of the individual elements making up Ilmamõtsan would be enough. Unified, they imbue Ilmamõtsan with beauty and an understated power. That questing Estonian singer-songwriter Mari Kalkun does not sing in English is no barrier to being affected.The most immediate component is the pure, though commanding, voice. The melodies Kalkun sings are carried with apparent ease, yet they are sinuously unpredictable while instantly memorable. The arrangements seem spare but her accordion, harmonium, kannel (the Estonian zither), chimes, bells and sound-colour from a bone spinner lock together in Read more ...
peter.quinn
A 3CD set featuring 17 singers, 34 tracks and over three hours of uniquely rewarding music, my Album of the Year, Voices Fall From The Sky by the NYC-based musician, improviser, composer, educator and author William Parker, represented an inexhaustible treasure trove for lovers of song.Cécile McLorin Salvant’s The Window offered yet more astonishing examples of her captivating art, whether breathing new life into Buddy Johnson’s ‘Ever Since the One I Love’s Been Gone’ or dusting down a hidden gem such as Cole Porter’s ‘Were Thine That Special Face’.The Questions presented Kurt Elling’s Read more ...
mark.kidel
Rudderless, and under the unpredictable and self-interested leadership of crazy and authoritarian populists, the world finds, as ever, some solace from music. I’ve spent a lot of time exploring '90s Dub Techno this year, not least the work of Moritz von Oswald, Mark Ernestus and Carl Craig. Prince’s early demos on Piano & and a Mircophone 1983 were a revelation as well. I was at a loss, however, to pick a single outstanding album, but perhaps the most timely and stirring came from Ry Cooder, whose The Prodigal Son combines soul and politics, faith and social engagement, in a way all Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Sometimes it seems that the more complex life becomes, the less interested we are in simple emotion. Take, for instance, 2017's Masseduction by St Vincent (aka Annie Clark). No-one could fault how artfully Clark expressed contemporary gender politics. But that was also its weakness. On about half the album, the songs sounded like a Guardian article set to music.This year Clark re-recorded the LP as a simple piano-and-voice piece, MassEducation. It was an utter revelation. Suddenly, the tracks sounded like Tori Amos in her heyday - full of beauty, and anger and sorrow. That Read more ...
joe.muggs
The cliché of hard times making for good culture is a distinctly dodgy, even dangerous, one. But there's no doubting at all that the era of Trump, Brexit and all the rest has added an urgency particularly to underground culture, which is leading both to some searching questions about what the music and all its trappings are actually for, and to some blisteringly good music. In particular it's led to club music in certain quarters regaining its sense that putting on a good party that is welcoming to the broadest possible range of people is a political act in itself.There are venues and Read more ...
Tim Cumming
The Irish American supergroup was only meant to be a one-off, but the fervour of their audiences’ passion for the music – across two studio albums from Real World, and some magnificent concerts in the UK, Ireland and the US – has given The Gloaming the crown when it comes to radically reinterpreting and performing traditional folk.There is no other group like them, and few with the sheer heft of brilliance displayed by fiddler Martin Hayes, viola/hardanger player Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, sean nos singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, American pianist Thomas Bartlett and guitarist Dennis Cahill.Their live Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Postcards from London is a surprise. You will certainly come away from Steve McLean’s highly stylised film with a new concept of what being an “art lover” can involve, while his subject matter is considerably more specialised, not least in the sexual sense, than its seemingly innocent title might suggest. Mischievously self-conscious in tone, its niche approach to certain established themes – principally gay culture and art history – leavens any pretension with generous humour.Harris Dickinson plays Jim, an 18-year-old naif (pictured below) who leaves behind the restrictions of his Essex home Read more ...
Guy Oddy
2018 has been a quietly encouraging year for fans of music that doesn’t kowtow to mainstream norms. There were fine debut albums from feminist art punks Dream Wife and dancehall queen Miss Red, as well as King of Cowards, a cracking sophomore set from Newcastle’s energetic stoner rockers Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs. Old hands like Cat Power’s haunting ballads on Wanderer and Dylan Carlson’s Conquistador with its minimalist dessert blues, however, were evidence that there were also plenty of established artists with something interesting to help revitalise the soul. The album that Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Matthew Bourne has been a significant experimental and collaborative presence on the scene since 2001, when he won the Perrier Jazz Award. This project with musician-producing duo Nightports (Adam Martin and Mark Slater) is the first of a series planned by Leaf Label, all following a simple rule that only sounds produced by the featured musician, in this case Bourne, can be included. To give himself the widest available palette, pianist Bourne assembled a selection of instruments from honkytonk to hoity-toity, which offer a fascinating range of textures. Balance is sometimes presented Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Kosua was released only last month, but its journey began two years ago when George Thompson, aka Black Merlin, released Hipnotik Tradisi, a beautiful and captivating document of his travels through Indonesia, seamlessly blending field recordings, found sounds and studio experimentalism.Around the same time, he was preparing for a trip to Papua New Guinea, which was to result in profound relationship with both the place and the people that inhabit it – most notably the remote Kosua tribe, whose name graces this album, available on vinyl and download, via Bandcamp. The bond that Thompson Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s been an odd year for albums. The one I’ve listened to most is Stop Lying, a mini-album by Raf Rundel, an artist best known as one half of DJ-producer outfit 2 Bears. It’s a genially cynical album, laced with love, dipping into all manner of styles, from electro-pop to hip hop, but essentially pop. It’s easy and likeable but also short, and didn’t seem to have the required epochal aspects for an Album of the Year.Two albums that do are Kali Uchis’ Isolation and Your Queen is a Reptile by Sons of Kemet. The first one, despite tacky cover art that looks like a Victoria’s Secret catalogue, Read more ...