New music
Thomas H. Green
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away called the late 1990s, there was a scene known as “big beat”. It consisted of club culture sorts making music closer in flavour to rock, and easier to drink beer to than house and techno.It gave us both Fatboy Slim and Chemical Brothers, as well as a thousand long-forgotten acts (with apologies to those still listening to Hardknox and Boom Boom Satellites). But perhaps the most intriguing artist was Death In Vegas. Their seventh album is Spartan, stern, crafted, enigmatic and dripping with Berlin-esque cool.Death in Vegas is now just DJ-producer Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Pete Shelley’s departure from Buzzcocks felt abrupt. When he left the Manchester band which had been integral to British punk since 1976, the other members thought it was still a going concern. Shelley had reached a different conclusion.Buzzcocks played what turned out the be their final show on 23 January 1981. At this point, making a new album, their fourth, was on the table. Neither the band or the audience in Hamburg knew it was the last time the band would be seen on stage. A little over a month later, on 4 March, Shelley put his name to a letter dissolving the band. “Homosapien,” his Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Nick Mulvey’s first two albums, First Mind in 2014 and Wake Up Now in 2017, are among the loveliest singer-songwriter fare released this century. With his last album, 2022’s New Mythology, his ayahuasca-fuelled search for spiritual meaning went full-blown mystic. Where has it led him? To Jesus.The first Dark Harvest album (the second is due in the autumn) is touched by Christianity, notably on the slightly preachy “My Maker” (“God shares His secrets with those who fear Him”). But, like Bob Dylan’s first Born Again outing, Slow Train Coming, upon occasion the spark of religion lights the fuse Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
For the first half-hour of this show – on the day before the release of his new album Alan Sparhawk With Trampled by Turtles – Alan Sparhawk moves ceaselessly. Whirling, arms sweeping like the sails of a windmill, gliding across the stage. He sings, his voice treated: auto-tuned, pitch-shifted. The only breaks come with momentary pauses to set rhythm tracks for the next song. Then, off again.His old band Low – abruptly terminated with the death in 2022 of his wife and musical partner Mimi Parker – were often dubbed “slowcore.” Minimalist yet always primed to create a huge sound they were not Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Michael Gira (born 19/2/54) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, author and artist. He founded Swans, a band in which he sings and plays guitar, in New York during the late 1970s. Since that time, Gira and Swans have been a major influence in the experimental rock scene and in the 1980s were lorded as the “loudest band on the planet”. Not ones to sit still, however, they evolved continuously, taking on new sounds and influences until grinding to a halt in the late 1990s. Swans reformed and returned as elder statesmen of underground rock music in 2010 and have continued to create music Read more ...
joe.muggs
A couple of months ago, I wrote here that Lady Gaga was the godmother of the new generation of ostentatiously “theatre kid” pop stars – but actually, perhaps I was wrong and Miley Cyrus deserves that title. Ever since her teens, she has consistently gone the extra mile in adding pizazz and razzle dazzle to a gloriously messy discography and personal presence, smashing together her Disney Channel past and country royalty family ties with garish influences from across club and hip hop culture and a punkish, pansexual, psychedelic presentation that, given where she’s come from, makes her perhaps Read more ...
Ibi Keita
Garbage’s eighth album, Let All That We Imagine Be the Light, arrives with weighty intentions and a strong sense of purpose, but the end result feels more admirable than truly compelling. While the band still knows how to craft polished, politically aware alt-rock, the album often plays it safe musically, lacking the punch or experimentation that once defined them.The opener, “There’s No Future in Optimism”, sets a sombre tone, and while its message of resilience is timely, the track itself feels more like a thesis than a song you would return to. That is a recurring issue throughout the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHEmily Saunders Moon Shifts Oceans (The Mix Sounds)It’s de rigeur nowadays, if you love music, to love Joni Mitchell. She is, of course, a great soul, but her music never connected here. That said, I have a favourite Joni Mitchell song. It’s the 1975 number “The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines”. I also have a soft spot for the parent album, Mingus. Mitchell was accompanied on it by Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Jaco Pastorius. A red hot line-up. Jazz fusion usually goes down like cold sick round here but Mitchell's foray is the exception to the rule. A decade ago Emily Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Ready to Live a Lie is so sonically vaporous it almost isn’t there. While the album’s 11 tracks draw from continental European musical archetypes – specifically Italian disco and Eurovision-styled balladry – there is little solidity which can be grasped. The wispy clouds in the album’s cover image are emblematic.Taken individually, tracks can be lovely: slices of glacial electro-dance, of sighing balladry. There is pulsing album opener “The Other Days”; a glistening cover of Pet Shop Boys’ “Rent”; the languid, bossa nova-infused “He's Not You”; “Guarding Shell”, with its vague intimations of Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
This album Firedove (Sony Classical), surely, has to be seen as part of a bigger story: that of organist, choir director and broadcaster Anna Lapwood, who, still in her twenties – just – has become an essential part of the (often cautious and conservative) classical music fabric of this country at a pace which defies belief. She works punishingly hard and has thoroughly earned her pivotal position both as performer and as advocate. Her passion for the organ as an instrument with a unique power to appeal to large audiences has already upturned perceptions, changed attitudes, broadened Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Johnnie Taylor’s big break came with the ever-fabulous September 1968 single “Who's Making Love.” His ninth 45 for the Stax label, it went Top Ten on the Billboard Hot 100. Up to this point, the Arkansas-born singer had been on the R&B charts only. Hitting the mainstream countdown had taken a while: Taylor’s first solo single had been issued in April 1961.Before this, he had been in gospel outfits The Five Echoes – who he joined in 1951 or 1952 at age 17 – and, from 1957, The Highway QC’s, who Sam Cooke had passed through. In August 1960, he took on the Cooke role in the Soul Stirrers – Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Morcheeba reach their 30th anniversary this year. The 1990s band, a unit once synonymous with phrases such as “trip hop” and “chill-out”, are up to album number 11. Their multi-million-selling oeuvre is based around a hazy combination of low-slung hip hop beats, stoned electronic atmospherics, spacey, slightly John Barry wah-wah guitar, and the luxurious voice of frontwoman Skye Edwards. Because the formula is always approximately the same, each album wins or loses dependent on whether they’ve nailed a sweet set of songs. On this occasion they do.Morcheeba has been the duo of singer Skye Read more ...