New music
Thomas H. Green
Three of last year’s finest singles were by Luvcat, a classy-but-naughty Eartha Kitt-style bad girl steeped in burlesque-rock’n’roll spirit. In fact, she’s the wanton basque’n’fishnets persona that, during a decadent sojourn in Paris, possessed the soul of Liverpudlian singer Sophie Morgan.The question is, can she engagingly maintain this wordy, filmic conceit for a whole album? The answer is… yes.First, those singles, all golden and placed in sequence early on this 13-track set. Her debut, “Matador”, is a mariachi nightworld chanson of lust and vengeful rage; “He’s My Man” is a sinister Read more ...
Tom Carr
If you were looking for the most perfectly brooding autumnal album this year, Florence Welch and her Machine may have been one of the least likely places you would have expected. However, motivated by deeply personal tumult of the past few years, Welch and co return with an ominous, hauntingly beautiful sixth album, Everybody Scream. Since their iconic, evergreen debut album in 2009, Welch’s voice has beckoned the Machine to be an everlasting presence across the airwaves and atop the charts ever since. Following their last album, 2022’s Dance Fever, Florence had an unexpected brush with death Read more ...
joe.muggs
Twenty-five-year-old South Londoner and current Celebrity Traitors contestant Cat Burns is a charming performer. Her songs have a rare ability to present the most fundamental of youthful relationship ups and downs as fresh and real. They also make more modern expressions of hope and solidarity around sexuality and neurodivergence escape the twee, flowery framing of live-laugh-love Mum’s-on-Facebook-again posting.Maybe most important of all, sings in her own accent with her own mannerisms, with a rich tone. All of which makes me want to like her second album Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The first words are spoken after “Worldwide Epiphany,” the 20th song. “Thank you” is all Todd Rundgren says. With this, the set ends.It wasn’t that he was inscrutable or failing to acknowledge the audience during the previous hour and 50 minutes. A couple of lower-level sections like a catwalk parallel the stage before the front row of the stalls. Rundgren often paced this space, breaching the barrier between those who were there to see him and the performance. But, still, there are no introductions, no badinage.Performing a song like “Fascist Christ” – the set’s 18th – maybe said more than Read more ...
Tim Cumming
The youthful subject of A Complete Unknown, which closes with him "going electric" at Newport as the culmination of a rainbow arc that began in monochrome, distant Minnesota, is currently lightly treading the boards across Europe’s arenas, concert halls and theatres.This new iteration of a complete unknown is largely hidden from view from his audiences, sat behind a baby grand and lyric sheets for most of the set, only the top of the head visible to many paying punters. Bootlegs and fan reports suggest an 84-year-old artist in fine form as he enters the fourth year of touring his most recent Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Night CRIÚ evokes clandestine ceremonies in forest glades, covert rituals taking place in the depths of a cave. Crepuscular and ghostly, this is a realm where an intoned, reverberant voice meshes with ritualistic choirs, undulating brass, methodically bowed strings and unhurried percussion.Musically, the lineage could be the solo work of Dead Can Dance’s Lisa Gerrard or Anna von Hausswolff at her most reductive. If the fifth solo album from the Ireland’s Hilary Woods were employed as the soundtrack to the 1967 Czech film Marketa Lazarová or Werner Herzog’s 1976 Herz aus Glas, it would be a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Even in our garish online age, most celebrities and pop stars sensibly obfuscate the details of their private lives.Not so much Lily Allen. She seems to work through her issues by laying it all out there. No tabloid can pull a scoop if you’ve Tweeted everything already (as she did when announcing she’d hired female prostitutes on her Sheezus tour to spike Daily Mail revelations). Her 2018 memoir, My Thoughts Exactly, was eye-wateringly candid. It’s not just the juice she shares, but the way it makes her feel, why she reckons she behaves as she does. Our attention is drawn, but engaging can Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A curious mind, indeed. Outer space, and what may be there. Communicating with those in the hereafter. Spooks, vampires and other horror film perennials. The wild west. Deceased rock ’n’ rollers Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly.Joe Meek’s preoccupations weren’t hidden. The records he produced and the songs he wrote reflected them. Much of his output was a form of musical autoportrait: auditory reportage expressing personal fixations. When he was at his commercial and creative peak in the early to mid Sixties, anyone could latch onto Meek’s obsessions via, say, a hit single like John Leyton’s “ Read more ...
Guy Oddy
As the Poppies’ set at Birmingham’s O2 Academy drew to an end on Friday night, co-vocalist Mary Byker barked into his microphone: “Reform is on the rise? Why is that? We shouldn’t be singing this song anymore”. The song in question had their home crowd pogoing like lunatics and howling back at the stage, “Ich bin ein Auslander auch!” at the top of their lungs.Strangely, Pop Will Eat Itself aren’t really thought of as one of the most political bands around, even if they did also play a rerub of their 1994 collaboration with the Prodigy, “Their Law” during the evening. Early in their career the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Witch Fever are a rising four-piece, originally formed in Manchester. Their debut album, 2022’s Congregation, was a raw, sludge-punk howl that represented singer Amy Walpole’s livid rejection of the stridently patriarchal Charismatic Church of her upbringing.Since then, they’ve toured with everyone from Biffy Clyro to IDLES, and gathered a righteous amount of attention (and, of course, they look great). Their second album is less laser-focused on religious subject matter. It’s a match for its predecessor but with greater use of atmospheric effects and electronic trimmings.Opener “Dead to Me Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Seven years ago, Soft Cell were about to perform at a sold-out O2, a one-off event they entitled, after 16 years apart, One Night, One Final Time. It wasn't of course. They reconvened instead and went on to many more gigs, the last one just this August, as well as three more albums (if we include a new one, forthcoming).But now, with Dave Ball's passing, aged 66, the duo's career really is at an end. In tribute to one of the great synth innovators of his era, the piece below sees Ball, alongside Soft Cell partner Marc Almond, returning to the fray, excited by what lies ahead but equally happy Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Demi Lovato is impressive on many fronts. She’s a Noughties Disney tween star who’s become an outspoken activist in an America where it’s increasingly dangerous to be one. She’s lived a rollercoaster ride of a life, rampantly exploring sexuality, drink and drugs amid chaos, abuse and serious mental health calamities, and she’s overcome the worst of it.Alongside all that, unlike most of her Disney child star peers, she’s maintained a successful career, both as a film and TV actor, and as a singer who, for well over a decade-and-a-half, has consistently taken her albums Top 10 in the UK and US Read more ...