CDs/DVDs
joe.muggs
James Bay couldn’t be more unhip if he had pelvic removal surgery. He is so middle of the road that he could be a cat’s eye. Everything about him is old before his time – he was inspired to pick up a guitar by hearing “Layla”, he sings in a husky transatlantic semi-Celtic voice, he exists in a continuum of soft rock that runs from the start of AOR through U2, David Gray and the Coldplay imitation explosion of the 00s through to Ed Sheeran and Louis Capaldi.And he is also very, very, very good at doing what he does indeed. This album makes no bones about his positioning. The opener “ Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Neil Young put Toast to one side in 2001, dismayed at its blue emotional terrain. Depicting his marriage to Pegi Young hanging by a thread, it was recorded with Crazy Horse in San Francisco’s Toast studio, where Coltrane once worked, but rats now crept in from the alley. “Toast was so sad that I… couldn’t handle it,” Young said recently, its sound “murky and dark”.Dumped with his many “lost” albums, Toast now joins Homegrown (taped 1975, released 2020) and Hitchhiker (1976, 2017) in a restored discography. Convening Booker T and The MG’s and Horse guitarist “Poncho” Sampedro in a different Read more ...
Barney Harsent
After four years, three releases and a slew of remixes, the identity of spotlight-shunning producer Vyvyan ended up the subject of intense speculation.There were no obvious clues from the records themselves. Channelling open-armed enthusiasm and rampant eclecticism, the releases were wild rides full of thrilling energy, nodding to the past as they ran full-pelt into the future. Could it be some Berlin-based wunderkind? Maybe the work of an established veteran? Was it Henry, the mild-mannered janitor?Tired of the anonymity (“mystery is for Daft Punk and the Catholic Church”), composer, DJ and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The third album from Stockholm rowdies Viagra Boys doesn’t muck about with what they do, but it’s more persistently punkin’ than their last. There’s more than a snifter of Iggy and the Stooges in both the vocal style and the raucous over-amped riffage, but Viagra Boys spice their sound with electronics and, where early-Seventies Ig was always about untrammelled “Raw Power”, this lot are as happy to offer wry lyrical critiques among the all-out stompers.Thus, goofin’ rock’n’roll trashiness such as “Troglodyte”, which comes on like The Cramps discovering Krautrock, sits easily alongside songs Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The last minute of Found Light’s third track “Seaside Haiku” is defined by the repetition of a single phrase: “give but don’t give too much of yourself away.” Before this is the line “I’ve learned a lot from pain.”Working out whether an album’s lyrics are a form of personal reportage or if they’re about imagined scenarios is always tricky. In this case Laura Veirs has said her 12th album is about what comes after divorce, so it feels safe to assume that “Seaside Haiku” is born from past events and describes an outlook generated by what’s been experienced.Elsewhere on Found Light, other lyrics Read more ...
Barney Harsent
“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” That’s the rule, right? Unless, of course, what happens is that you form a pop-rock act with a remarkable ear for a route-one hook and a direct line to the emotional core of teenagers everywhere. In that case, you definitely don’t stay in Vegas. You take the world by storm while leaving critics largely scratching their heads and saying, “I don’t get it”.Mercury – Act 2, the follow up to last year’s Mercury – Act 1 (and released, confusingly, in a two-disc set with its older sibling), won’t change any of that for frontman Dan Reynolds and co. Fans will Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“The historic, the prehistoric, the natural, architectural, geological, ornithological, or on the side of its folklore, Christian or heathen – the place teems with subject matter that is as curious as it is interesting.” So the Gothic Revival architect John Dando Sedding wrote of Cornwall in 1887.Now, the county’s riches are supplemented by the third album from the Wales-born Gwenno Saunders, on which all but two tracks are sung in Cornish: one is in Welsh, another is an instrumental. Sedding’s inventory applies to Tresor – which translates as "Treasure" – as much as it does to Victorian Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The last time that Paolo Nutini was on the public stage, he was knocking out fine blue-eyed soul and having substantial hits like “Scream (Funk my Life Up)”. That was eight years ago though.His new disc, Last Night in the Bittersweet sees Nutini undergo something of a change of direction from the Caustic Love album, by dropping the brass and taking a considerably more rockist approach, while noticeably turning up the Scottish accent in his singing voice. This double album also brings with it a host of unexpected influences, from early Eighties Celtic rock to mid-Seventies kosmiche, new wave, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
American singer-songwriter Damien Jurado is both prolific and enigmatic. His latest album follows too many to count (OK, not really, I think this is his 20th). On his own label, it's as opaque as anything he’s done, and that’s saying something.There are 12 songs, at least half of them around the two-minute mark, all opaque and mysterious, but also often fascinating. “What is he singing about?” the listener asks themselves, a sense of what’s going on elusive but also, tantalisingly, almost within reach.A concept album, then? Kind of. There’s a very loose thematic of films sets. Possibly. Or Read more ...
peter.quinn
An artist with a myriad of strings to his bow – gifted wordsmith, multi-instrumentalist, captivating storyteller – what enables James Vincent McMorrow’s singularly personal songs to take flight is the fact that he’s also a supreme melodist.The Less I Knew is chock full of killer chorus hooks, with album opener “Hurricane”, in which McMorrow’s gloriously harmonised vocal line is supported by the additional ear candy of Alex Borwick's horn parts, being a case in point. Borwick also supplies some driving mandolin work on “Heads Look Like Drums”, as well as engineering and mixing the Read more ...
Katie Colombus
When did life become so theoretical? In the penultimate track of her new album, Home, before and after, Regina Spektor plays the role of classroom teacher to list all of the -ologies, from porcupineology through pleaseology to sorryology and loveology.Set to endearingly intimate piano, it’s a sardonic poke at the current epidemic of self-branding and the categorised polarisation of thought this has created. Perhaps this is why – in a world where everything now published extraneously from our internalised thought process has become a concept to be marketed – this album is such a breath of Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
In a world seemingly devoid of joy, Hollie Cook's fourth album is a very welcome salve indeed. It’s not just the deliciously mellow groove of the genre and her mellifluous tones, but the feeling of stepping away from the everyday – a holiday from the horrible – which makes this a musta-have for all summer gatherings. At first listen, Happy Hour can seem a bit "samey" but that’s an illusion. Stick with it. In fact, this, her first self-produced effort is something of a triumph. Dreamy and serene, this is Lovers' Rock for the Covid generation. Deceptively simple, the first three songs – Read more ...