tue 01/07/2025

New music

Album: Lorde - Virgin

Lorde’s trajectory is continually fascinating. From the minimalist, sparse electropop of Pure Heroine to the similar but more grandiose production of Melodrama was a linear progression, but then came the acoustic...

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Album: Bruce Springsteen - Tracks II: The Lost Albums

It’s somewhat surprising to read that The Boss wasn’t happy with Born in the USA. After all, it was – remains – his most iconic album, the LP (for that’s what it was originally) that jet-propelled Bruce Springsteen into the mainstream. A...

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Brad Mehldau Trio, St George's Bristol review - exquisite intelligence

There's something luminous about the Brad Mehldau Trio. The music they create with such joy shines with a special clarity, in which ever-changing forms constantly reveal lines of shared thought, explicitly, yet purveying an abiding sense of wonder....

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Album: Brìghde Chaimbeul - Sunwise

The first five-and-a-half minutes of Sunwise’s opening track “Dùsgadh / Waking" are taken up by a drone. Played on the Scottish small pipes – a form of bagpipes – this is in due course supplemented by a series of individual notes played in clusters...

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Music Reissues Weekly: Rupert’s People - Dream In My Mind

Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was an instant phenomenon. Recorded in April 1967 and issued as a single on 12 May after pre-release play on pirate station Radio London, it topped the UK charts four weeks later. Globally, it hit big on most...

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Album: JF Robitaille & Lail Arad - Wild Moves

Around eight years ago, London singer-songwriter Lail Arad started releasing one-off tracks with Canadian singer JF Robitaille, once of Montreal indie outfit The Social Register (Arad’s own 2016 album The Onion is an undiscovered diamond that should...

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Ian Leslie: John and Paul - A Love Story in Songs review - help!

Do we need any more Beatles books? The answer is: that’s the wrong question. What we need is more Beatles books that are worth reading. As the musician and music historian Bob Stanley pointed out, in his 2007 review of Jonathan Gould’s Can’t Buy Me...

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Album: BC Camplight - A Sober Conversation

A Sober Conversation is the work of a master songwriter, one who knows how to achieve their goals. As the album’s nine tracks pour from the speakers, comparisons come to mind: 20/20 and Smiley Smile-era Beach Boys, Lindsey Buckingham, the early solo...

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theartsdesk on Vinyl 91: Sex Pistols, Pink Floyd, Tropical Fuck Storm, Sparks, The Sisters of Mercy and more

VINYL OF THE MONTHFrank From Blue Velvet I Am Frank (Property of the Lost) + Column258 Interloper (The Workshop Sessions, Volume One) (Property of the Lost)Hastings label Property of the Lost has grown into a potent force, its stable of artists...

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Album: Durand and the Indications - Flowers

Neo-soul devotees Durand Jones and the Indications mine a vein of sensuous sounds, at the soft end of a genre that's partly defined by the raw passion of gospel. Their roots draw from vintage Curtis Mayfield and the smooth vocal harmonies of the...

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Music Reissues Weekly: The Sonics - High Time

“Theirs is truly rock in extremis, a précis of the youthful impetuosity and cathartic chaos at the heart of real rock ’n roll.”This extract from the essay in the booklet coming with the handsome box set High Time bluntly lays it out: The Sonics, as...

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Album: Benson Boone - American Heart

I first had a conversation about Benson Boone without realizing it was him we were talking about. It went something like: “Did you see that horrifying moment at Coachella when Brian May got onstage with some American guy, and no one knew...

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