New music
joe.muggs
There’s always been a goofy charm about Billy Idol. As an implausibly chiselled Adonis shining out from the deliberate ugliness of the original London punk scene, he was a misfit among misfits. As a pop star through the ‘80s, he was visibly so spectacularly high almost all the time that he somehow made everything pantomime-ish around him. Latterly he’s been such a perfect encapsulation of the Brit rock star in LA archetype he could quite plausibly be starring in a Spinal Tap spinoff.Along the way, though, he’s made quite a few really great records and remained absolutely, in every possible Read more ...
Ibi Keita
Sweden’s most gloriously unhinged export is back, and Viagr Aboys might just be Viagra Boys at their most fun, feral and fully realised. This album doesn’t try to out-clever the world; it grabs it by the collar, shakes it around, and laughs in its face.From the opening notes, you can tell this isn’t the band trying to reinvent the wheel. They’ve set the wheel on fire and are using it to roast marshmallows. Sebastian Murphy howls and rambles through songs that feel like the soundtrack to a party thrown by nihilistic philosophers and drunk uncles. It’s chaotic, weird, and totally locked in.“Man Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It would have been hard to pick up a copy of the album credited to and titled 1001 Est Crémazie in 1975. Just 500 copies were pressed. It didn’t reach shops but was circulated amongst the musicians playing on it, their friends, families and fellow students at Montréal’s Collège André-Grasset, the school at which those on the album were pupils.As is the way with these types of thing, the privately pressed album was found by collectors and became sought after. The album’s final track “Bright Moments” reappeared on a DJ-targeted bootleg single in 2000 and then on 2002’s grey-area France and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Luster’s fifth track “Halo” has the lyric “mystical creatures… of Éirne,” referencing the Irish river and lough of the same name – both of which are associated with a mother goddess. Earlier, the album’s opener is a short, ambient-styled, scene-setting instrumental titled “Réalt,” where birds, wordless vocals and a harp are heard. Réalt translates from Irish Gaelic as “star.”The second album, then, by the Connemara-born Maria Somerville affirms her Irish origin (the track "Corrib" is named after another lough, one located in Connemara). In contrast, Luster cleaves stylistically to a form of Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
In this new album, three top-flight musicians based in Berlin, guitarist Ronny Graupe, Lucia Cadotsch (voice) and Kit Downes (piano) work collaboratively, superbly, as a real team. The music, some well-known tunes which Cadotsch sings hauntingly, and some original tunes by Graupe – it’s hard to tell them apart – just flows superbly.I can’t help musing, incidentally, that we are a long way here from the typical set-up in classical music, where pianists who accompany singers can often suffer death by adjectives such as “supportive” or “sensitive”. (I even remember one pianist getting Read more ...
Tim Cumming
For lovers of British folk from the 1970s on, Peter Knight is a potent force – renowned for his years with Steeleye Span, in their 1970s heyday and from 1980 through to 2013’s classic set written with Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith.The first iteration of his band Gigspanner was as a trio, releasing four albums between 2009 and 2017, while the big band version has released a live set and a studio album, 2020’s Natural Invention. The sextet comprises the original trio of Knight, guitarist Roger Flack and percussionist Sacha Trochet, alongside relative newcomers in Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Mark Morton is best known as a guitarist with US metallers Lamb of God. They’ve been going for three decades, established and successful, at the more extreme, thrashier end of the spectrum, but still achieving Top Five albums on the Billboard charts.He’s also been developing a solo career. His debut, 2019’s Anesthetic, was straightforward heavy rock, featuring names such as Mark Lanegan and Chester Bennington, but his follow-up is more interesting, a riff-tastic dive into southern boogie, tipping its hat to The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd.There are guests throughout again, but this Read more ...
Manic Street Preachers, Barrowland, Glasgow review - elder statesmen deliver melody and sing-a-longs
Jonathan Geddes
As you might expect from a Manic Street Preachers gig, literary influences were never far away. A DH Lawrence quote was prominently displayed on the video wall before the group took the stage, and band lyrics would randomly flash up throughout the ensuing performance. This occasionally raised an unintentional eyebrow, as when “Scream to a Sigh” was accompanied by I am a Relic lighting up – somewhat ironic for a group now so long-lasting they’re into a fourth decade.You could tell the longevity in other ways too, like the voices of nearby fans discussing prior gigs as if they were tours of Read more ...
Liz Thomson
At a time when the powers that sadly be in America are trying their damnedest to erase and rewrite history, the latest release from Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson is a welcome reminder of the rich culture of the Black community and how much it has given to the world. Twenty years after the Carolina Chocolate Drops emerged from the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, North Carolina, two of its founding members get together once more for a collection that comes quite literally from the back porches and orchards amid the low rolling hills of the Piedmont, a discrete province of the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In October 1967, John Lee Hooker released a single titled “The Motor City is Burning.” The song commented on the civil unrest which had taken place in his Michigan home city of Detroit that July. “Oh, the motor city's burnin',” sang Hooker. “My home town burnin' down to the ground, Worser than Vietnam, Well, it started on 12th and Clairmont, this mornin'.”A couple of years on, Detroit’s MC5 released their version of “Motor City is Burning” (no “The”) on their debut album, the live set Kick Out The Jams. Now, the title is borrowed for the three-CD clamshell box Motor City Is Burning - A Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Record Store Day 2025 is tomorrow (Saturday 12th April 2025)! At theartsdesk on Vinyl we’ve been sent a selection of exclusive RSD goodies. Check the reviews. Then check your local record shop! See you amongst it.THEARTSDESK ON VINYL CHOICE CUT FOR RECORD STORE DAY APRIL 2025Marianne Faithfull Burning Moonlight EP (Decca)A fitting and thoughtfully put together final release from an icon. Marianne Faithfull, who died in January this year, aged 78, was a one-off singer and creative, also a proper 1960s countercultural heavyweight, a woman who lived the best and worst of bright, fast hedonism. Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Tenor titan Joe Lovano is thrilled by how Homage has turned out. He actually told me so himself in person a few weeks ago, and his new album has a very appealing, natural, free-flowing ease.Cleveland-born saxophonist Lovano first met Polish pianist Marcin Wasilewski and his trio in 2009 through Tomasz Stanko. The first recording together for ECM was made in 2019, Arctic Riff. They have kept on working together since then, touring mainly in Europe. In late 2023 the Polish group joined Lovano for a week’s residency at the Village Vanguard in New York. Rather than recording live at the club, all Read more ...