New music
Jonathan Geddes
Time moves fast in the music business. It has only been a matter of months since Fontaines DC were playing the far smaller confines of King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow, and here they were at a sold out SWG3, celebrating the success of debut album “Dogrel”. If that record is one of the finest released this year, then this gig was not quite the victory lap hoped for, albeit still a show that displayed evidence of their quality.The record itself is rich in thoughtful lyricism, the nuances of which were somewhat lost in a live setting. That was not particularly problematic, because the sheer Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Less really is more. Vinícius Cantuária is a musician who has done it all, but has reverted to the simplicity of singing classic Jobim bossa nova songs, to which he brings a quite astonishing lightness of touch. Last night at the Barbican, alone on stage, with just a nylon string guitar for company, he made the 1,850-seater Barbican feel like the most intimate of small clubs.Cantuária’s sublime art is to glide through chord sequences as if they are a liquid. Whereas jazz musicians can sometimes turn the act of working through a song form into a ponderous and self-conscious exercise of landing Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Composer, classical guitarist and ensemble leader Simon Thacker has spent the past decade immersed in distinct musical cultures; from the reinterpretations and reimaginings of the musical traditions of eastern Europe and the Roma people that underpin his Songs of the Roma trio, to his collaborative work with musicians from across the Indian subcontinent under the ever-expanding Svara-Kanti name. Simon Thacker’s Ritmata is a back-to-basics of sorts: the first album from Thacker’s original musical ensemble, Táradh is a collection of mostly original compositions which draw inspiration from Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A few years ago it would have been hard to envisage proto-punk maniac Iggy Pop being a star feature of the EFG London Jazz Festival. His last few albums, though, have been heavily flecked with jazz, and let’s not forget that as far back as The Stooges’ 1970 album Funhouse, free jazz sax squalling was part of the mayhem. Tonight doesn’t veer into that kind of transgressive noisiness but is still far more than just, as the promotion suggests, a run-through of his often elegiac latest album Free.Once his band are onstage, including album co-creator, New York experimentalist Noveller (Sarah Read more ...
Liz Thomson
The four young men who comprise Darlingside met at Williams College, in the Berkshires which, each October, declares a “Mountain Day” when students hike up Stony Ledge and celebrate with donuts, cider and a cappella singing. Perhaps on one such hike was born the idea of a band and perhaps one day in the future the names of Don Mitchell, Auyon Mukharji, Harris Paseltiner, and David Senft will be added to the roster of notable Williams alumnae that includes Elia Kazan, Stephen Sondheim and Michael Beschloss.Take a bow, Darlingside, who returned to Britain this week for just two dates. Named in Read more ...
Tim Cumming
This week, one of the finest gems in the entire Hendrix catalogue finally sees the light of day in its full unedited glory – Songs for Groovy Children comprises all four sets from the Band of Gypsys New Year’s Eve 1969-70 residency at the Fillmore East in New York City.Originally recorded to free up Hendrix from a contract he’d signed earlier in his career, while transitioning from the R&B circuit towards his first psychedelic flowering, Band of Gypsys, released in April 1970 was the only full live album he ever sanctioned under his own name. It is one of rock’s great live albums. An Read more ...
mark.kidel
Israel isn’t generally kind to the Jews who have come from somewhere other than eastern Europe and Russia. Music has provided one of the avenues through which this despised and often culturally Arab minority has been able to make itself recognised.El Khat is a band led by an Israeli of Yemeni origin, the astonishingly inventive composer and musician Eyal El Wahab. Their first album, Saadia Jefferson is typical of a new wave of dis-placed music, with a DNA that draws from ancestral roots – in this case the music of Yemen, but with a world-attuned sensibility that references David Bowie, the Read more ...
joe.muggs
For all they've inspired swathes of the most crushingly mundane music of the modern age from Sheeran on down, Coldplay have always been at their best at their most grandiose. That is, when they shake off Chris Martin's I'm-a-normal-bloke schtick and let their romanticism – in melodies, arrangements and fairytale lyrics – fly free. So it sounded promising when it emerged they were releasing a double album full of global influences: maybe they're really going to go for it this time?In the event, at 53 minutes, Everyday Life is actually shorter than some of their single albums. And for Read more ...
Nick Hasted
That voice’s husky confiding wasn’t quite silenced. Working helped Leonard Cohen live a little longer, and old friends and family have gathered to complete these last bequests. “As for the fall it began long ago,” he sings, and more than a quarter of his rare, honed albums have now been released in the miraculous final arc since his financial theft-enforced, septuagenarian comeback in 2008.Cohen’s son Adam continues his co-production from 2016’s seeming swansong You Want It Darker, and with Jennifer Warnes, Sharon Robinson, Javier Mas and Anjani Thomas among the other returning compadres, has Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
When it comes to the true jazz legends capable of filling concert halls with faithful fans, whom jazz festival programmers can put on as headliners, the choice is dwindling. Herbie Hancock is one and he does; his Barbican concert is one of the big events of this year’s EFG London Jazz Festival and it had been sold out for months.Hancock’s entrance onto the Barbican stage was greeted with a loud roar. Two hours later, the final sequence of the tunes which one would expect had the complete packed house up on its feet, with the keytar-toting hero strutting his way through “Cantaloupe Island” Read more ...
Owen Richards
Beck stands on the front cover of his new album Hyperspace with a vintage Toyota and Japanese text resplendent above. It’s the perfect scene setter for an album you could easily imagine soundtracking a midnight drive through Tokyo. Or if the lyrics are anything to go by, an intergalactic voyage. Following on from 2017’s excellent Colours, Beck has settled into a reliable late-career groove that mixes deceptively simple songwriting with intricate production. The best example of this is the aptly-named “Chemical”, creating sounds that wash over your synapses like a psychoactive compound. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In a first for this column, what’s cropping up is a cassette reissue. The Clash’s third album is so familiar, going into what it is or was in any depth is redundant but it’s worth considering what’s going on here.London Calling was originally issued on 14 December 1979 and is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Naturally, it’s hitting the shops again. The definitive reissue came out for the 25th anniversary in 2004, when the album was teamed with rehearsal recordings taped on cassette at Vanilla Studios, a DVD of The Last Testament: The Making of London Calling documentary, promo videos, film Read more ...