New music
Kieron Tyler
Although Mary Halvorson leads the sextet Amaryllis on About Ghosts, instrumentally, she does not place her guitar to the fore. The first time her playing really leaps out on her new album is during second cut “Carved Form,” where it weaves through the arrangement. A guitar solo arrives just over a minute in: precise yet slippery, it complements the early space-age feel of the Pocket Piano synthesiser she also contributes to the track.The album’s cover image aptly captures the interplay defining About Ghosts. Just as the ghosts in the illustration slip through each other, each player Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Marina Diamandis is a proper pop star, brilliantly full-on, off on her own thing. The Welsh singer is primarily known for success 10-15 years ago as Marina and the Diamonds, but she’s retained global heft as an album artist, including in the US, where she now lives (she played Coachella this year). Her last album was 2021’s enjoyably unfettered Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land. Princess of Power is even more over-the-top, pushing sex-positive girl-power themes further. It’s a welcome counterpoint to contemporary trip-hop-ish “sad girl pop”.Marina 2025 is, perhaps, best summed up by the Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Eva Quartet are four outstanding Bulgarian voices of polyphonic purity and depth, drawn from the legendary choir Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, who guested on Kate Bush’s classic Eighties album The Sensual World.Soprano Gergana Dimitrova, mezzo-soprano Sofia Yaneva, alto Evelina Christova and contralto Daniela Stoitchkova began performing as a quartet in 1995, and are celebrating their 30th anniversary this year with this, their first concert in the UK since 2008’s Balkan Fever festival, at St Cyprian’s, a High Gothic revival church between Baker Street and Regent’s Park.They perform in full Read more ...
Liz Thomson
In those seemingly long-ago times of loneliness and lockdown, artists around the world invited us into their kitchens and living rooms as they sang into their webcams and iPhones, some more successfully than others, doing what they needed to do. The most successful, the one I truly looked forward to, was Mary Chapin Carpenter who, every week, welcomed us into her sun-dappled Virginia farmhouse for a chat and a song. She was joined by Angus, a puppyish Golden Retriever, and occasionally by White Kitty, a blind and aged Rag Doll rescue, who has since crossed the rainbow bridge as folks like to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Forest and the Shore” by Keith Christmas is remarkable. In his essay for Gather In The Mushrooms, compiler, author and Saint Etienne member Bob Stanley says it is “as evocative as its title. The song has a deeply wooded sound, like a cross between Serge Gainsbourg’s “Ballade de Melody Nelson” and Ralph Vaughan Williams.” To this can be added the brooding, dramatic melancholy of Scott Walker’s “The Seventh Seal.”Despite the grandeur of “Forest and the Shore” – and the astounding Richard Thompson-esque, Tom Verlaine-predicting guitar solo taking it to its close – Gather In The Mushrooms: The Read more ...
Tim Cumming
When Van Morrison last released an album of original songs, during the Covid pandemic, it didn’t go down well. Indeed for many, 2022’s What’s It Gonna Take squats in Morrison’s catalogue like a toad in a fruit salad.“A self-absorbed descent into Covid lunacy” one critic opined. Well, we’ve all been there, dear, but here we are now, out on the other side, blinking into the blinding lights of incendiary wars, mechanically rendered intelligences and toxic substances masquerading as world leaders. It’s not a place for dreams and visions, but here’s Van Morrison, just shy of 80, bringing us a Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
In 2022 I called caroline “perhaps the best band in the U.K” in my article about their debut, which I named my album of the year. Seeing the band on Tuesday night at a sold out Islington Assembly Hall, I not only feel vindicated but stronger in my conviction. As the band walks out on stage, soundtracked by “Fistful of Love” by Anthony and the Johnsons, I am struck by how unified a front they look. The band originally started as a trio in 2017 and expanded over the years until settling on eight members in 2022. Their debut, caroline, was a compilation of songs birthed from improvised jam Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
With WOMAD not happening this year, where could one go for a feast of global sounds? Fes in Morocco has been presenting its sacred music festival for 29 years. I’ve been several times and although this wasn’t an absolute classic, it was as ever, full of extraordinary moments. The Fes Festival came into existence as a response to the first Gulf War, given further impetus by 9/11 and is important in reflecting a more tolerant side of Islam, with lots of respect to other faiths. “There are many ways up the mountain” as a Sufi practitioner told me here.Fes was the old capital of Morocco, the Read more ...
Guy Oddy
No-one needs to be living in Trump’s USA to be aware that governments never feel that it’s in their interest to prioritise great art and music over attention-grabbing and ill-conceived populist policies. Mali’s Songhoy Blues, unfortunately, have now found themselves at the receiving end of such nonsense.The four-piece band have been around for more than ten years, with four very well received albums to their name, but have still managed to find themselves falling foul of UK immigration policy. In fact, only two of the band (vocalist and guitar player Garba Touré and bassist Oumar Touré) were Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
While the Gallagher brothers scrabble around in the dirt for their rich pickings, an altogether more dignified experience is on offer from Sheffield. More is Pulp’s first album for 24 years, which is a sobering fact for those of us who still remember the first time. Thankfully, this isn’t a reprisal of past glories but a vibrant and moving work of some significance. They’ve ripened delightfully and are living proof that age does not diminish creativity or relevance.The title of the first single had me worried. While slightly dreading a return to having left an important part of Read more ...
Ibi Keita
Turnstile’s NEVER ENOUGH is a vibrant, shape-shifting album that proves the Baltimore-based band is fully committed to evolution. Since their formation in 2010, Turnstile have been known for injecting a fresh, genre-blurring energy into hardcore punk. With each release, they’ve pushed further into new territory, and NEVER ENOUGH might be their most fearless leap yet. While still rooted in the intensity that defined their early work, this record expands far beyond those borders, bringing in lush textures, genre-blending arrangements and a bold sense of experimentation.The album begins with the Read more ...
joe.muggs
Little Simz clearly believes in meeting situations head on. Her sixth full-length album kicks off, in every sense of the phrase, with “Thief”: unambiguously a lyrical barrage at her childhood friend and frequent collaborator Inflo, who Simz is currently suing for alleged failure to repay £1.7 million in loans for ambitious recording and performance projects.It’s a topic she returns to on at least two other tracks on the album, going into quite some detail about her sense of betrayal and broken trust and the impact of this on her sense of self and creative process. It feels kind of bleak that Read more ...