New music
Album: Beabadoobee - This is How Tomorrow MovesThursday, 08 August 2024
Beatrice “beabadoobee” Laus provides strong backup for the common argument that, particularly in the mainstream, genre is no longer particularly important. From the outset, she has consistently dissolved the mainstream/indie binary, and pulled from... Read more... |
Album: SJS - A Sequence of MistakesThursday, 08 August 2024
Whether or not the lyrics Stuart Stawman writes and sings are autobiographical, the persona he’s created for himself as the leader of his neo-prog project SJS is that of a dutiful lover thwarted by the pressing of the self-destruct button no affair... Read more... |
Brighton Pride 2024 review - the UK's most fabulous festivalWednesday, 07 August 2024
Brighton’s Preston Park came alive this weekend in the most magnificently colourful, sparkling and diverse celebration of love in all its forms for the UK's most famous LGBTQ+ community fundraiser.Saturday was the more hedonistic affair, seeing the... Read more... |
Album: Ryuichi Sakamoto - OpusWednesday, 07 August 2024
Ryuichi Sakamoto can be heard here, on Opus, surrounded by silence, shuffling at the keyboard, off-mic rustles and tells, recorded in the last year of his life, in September 2022 – he died early in the following year – as he sat to make his final... Read more... |
Album: Mari Kvien Brunvoll & Stein Urheim with Moskus - Barefoot in BryophyteMonday, 05 August 2024
Barefoot in Bryophyte is a collaboration between musicians embedded in Norway’s jazz and experimental music scenes. Some of it, though, sounds nothing like what might be expected. Take the fourth track, “Paper Fox.” Figuratively, it lies at the... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Sex Pistols - Looking For a Kiss in KristinehamnSunday, 04 August 2024
After Sex Pistols have played “New York,” the fourth song in their set, someone from the audience shouts “Anarchy in the U.K.” "We've already played it, you fucking idiot" responds Sid Vicious. They have. It was the first song they did at... Read more... |
Album: Esperanza Spalding - Milton + esperanzaSaturday, 03 August 2024
Whatever esperanza wants, it would seem, esperanza gets. From over-riding normal conventions of using capital letters in her name, to an imposing A-List of guests on Milton + esperanza (Concord): Paul Simon, Lianne La Havas, Guinga, Dianne Reeves,... Read more... |
Future Islands, Summer Nights at the Bandstand, Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow review - soulful and synth-driven soundsFriday, 02 August 2024
Attending an outdoor event anywhere in the UK – especially given the summer we’ve not been having this year – is always a bit of a gamble. And it’s fair to say Glasgow’s in a bit of a high risk category, but fortunately Tuesday’s weather... Read more... |
Album: WHY? - The Well I Fell IntoFriday, 02 August 2024
It seems like Yoni Wolf and his band WHY? may have settled into a cycle of five-year crafting of albums. The last WHY? album was 2019’s AOKOHIO and it was an extraordinary collection of abstracted miniatures locked together with each other and with... Read more... |
Album: X - Smoke & FictionThursday, 01 August 2024
X, although beloved of music journalists, are one of American punk’s most under-acknowledged. They took a tilt at fame in the mid-Eighties with the radio-friendly Ain’t Love Grand album and its lead single “Burning House of Love”, but it wasn’t to... Read more... |
WOMAD Festival 2024 review - exuberant global roots sounds, hippies young and old, and blissful weatherWednesday, 31 July 2024
The weather is perfect. Rare at a festival in this country. The sun shines. Occasional clouds pass. There’s a light breeze. Flamingods are on the Charlie Gillett stage. They are a London-based unit of primarily Bahraini origin who make psychedelic-... Read more... |
Album: Blues Pills - BirthdayWednesday, 31 July 2024
Swedish-American four-piece Blues Pills are new to this writer but have been around since 2011. Their fourth album makes me wonder why.Of its 11 songs, judged purely on sheer pop-rock chops, nine have real legs. If a friend had put Birthday on and... Read more... |
