New music
Katherine Waters
Little Simz exits through the ladies. It's telling, since her set at EartH is the capstone to a tour that, by her own admission, has left her rinsed, broken friendships, torn her away from her family and led her to question her career. And yet, as she wends past the women in the queue that snakes down the corridor, who whoop and thank her for the show, she's obviously buzzing. And rightly so. From start to finish, the show drips energy. Opening with a growling roll of bassy thunder, she almost breaks the sound system when she bursts on set with Boss. Her entrance alone lends credence to Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Jeff Goldblum’s 2018 debut, Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra - The Capitol Studios Sessions, was one of the great surprises of last autumn, its infectious, feel-good vibe and self-deprecating retro pastiche as engaging as a favourite Hollywood movie on a grey day. And live at the Cadogan Hall Goldblum was a treat, a real-life Mr Nice Guy who was just so good and so funny.I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This is a far more serious outing, by which I don’t mean dull and boring. Rather high-quality jazz that can stand tall and needs no apology. The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra – Goldblum Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Considered logically, releasing an album as heavy on guest features as Charli XCX’s newest should present particular logistical problems when it comes to recreating the tracks on tour. Charli’s approach is the opposite: no gimmicks or trickery, just minimalist techno hedonism powered by nothing but strobe lights and sheer charisma.Charli XCX is the full package: MC, singer and her own hype man; number one, to butcher the title of her 2017 mixtape, in a hall full of angels on hand to contribute additional vocals when needed. Latest album Charli, released just last month, is both a party record Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Sunn O))) must have been on stage at The Crossing for a fair few minutes before anyone from the capacity audience realised they were there. Bathed in a thick fog of dry ice, initially all that could be seen were the power-on lights of the band’s impressive mountain of amplifiers and speakers. However, as the first chord was struck and the red and blue stage lights ignited, Stephen O’Malley, Greg Anderson and their crew made themselves very much known with a burst of volume to wake the dead.Dressed in their trademark black cowls and with guitars held aloft to greet the crowd, Sunn O))) Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Rough Trade’s first album was Stiff Little Fingers’s Inflammable Material. The label followed up its February 1979 release with Swell Maps’s A Trip to Marineville, The Raincoats’s eponymous debut, Cabaret Voltaire’s Mix-Up and Essential Logic’s Beat Rhythm News Waddle Ya Play? Inflammable Material was avowedly punk but though they could not have emerged without the punk upheaval, the others inhabited their own musical continua. There was a further difference: Inflammable Material charted – on the proper charts – while SLF's idiosyncratic labelmates could never have done so.Rough Trade’s Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
This edition of Peter Culshaw’s periodic global music radio show features guest special guest Anne Pigalle. A flâneuse and doyenne of the urban demi-monde, she came to our attention recording for ZTT Records in the 1980s and ran Soho nights at the Café de Paris, did Japanese commercials for Jean-Paul Gaultier, and a series of innovative albums including Madame Sex. She recently won the best art film award for the multi-media project Ecstase at the Portobello Film Festival 2019, the film based on her recent and probably best album of the same name. Her numerous Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Underworld’s first album in three years comes in two versions: a seven-CD box set with a disc of Blu-ray visuals and an 80-page full-colour book or a stand-alone ten-track sampler, which is also included in the gargantuan release. As theartsdesk has only been sent the single disc, we can only comment on the condensed version. This is, however, more than enough to excite interest in the present activities of a band that for a generation of old ravers provided the high point of many evenings on the dancefloor, shouting “lager, lager, lager, lager”. For while DRIFT Series 1 slips comfortably Read more ...
peter.quinn
From brooding masterpieces (”Love for Sale”) to classic list songs ("Let's Do It"), Cole Porter was one of the greatest songsmiths of the 20th century. As one of his peers, Richard Rodgers, eloquently put it: "Few people realise how architecturally excellent his music is. There's a foundation, a structure and an embellishment. Then you add the emotion he's put in and the result is Cole Porter."For his debut album on his new label, the legendary Verve Records, musician and actor Harry Connick Jr. takes a deep dive into 13 of the 1,000-plus songs that Porter composed during a career that Read more ...
Russ Coffey
When goth-pop duo Shakespears Sister split in 1993, the music press dubbed it the break-up of the decade. Partly it was because at the time they were one of the biggest, and coolest, bands around (their single "Stay" managed a record eight weeks at number one). It was also because of the dramatic way the split happened: Siobhan publicly fired Marcella with a short note, read out at the Ivor Novello awards. After that, the pair didn't speak for 26 years. Now they're back together. A new EP, Rides Again, is out tomorrow and their tour starts at the end of the month. It's thirty Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Michael Kiwanuka looks set to conquer. His previous two albums set him up as the sensitive singer-songwriter who tips his hat to the muscular soul music of Bill Withers and Curtis Mayfield; the lone troubadour who’s clearly listened to more than a smidgeon of tough-edged indie in his time. Iggy Pop kept playing him on BBC Radio 6. The people at HBO used his “Cold Little Heart” as the theme for their flagship Hollywood star series Big Little Lies. In this light, and because his momentum doesn’t falter, Kiwanuka could be his Back to Black-style commercial monster.The Winehouse comparison is apt Read more ...
Ellie Porter
There’s no getting around it – it’s very surreal indeed to be in the Shepherd’s Bush Empire and see an eye-wateringly famous movie and TV star rocking out on stage. But it’s a testament to Kiefer Sutherland’s commitment to his musical side-project that this never overwhelms what turns out to be an entertaining, enjoyable evening of bluesy, rootsy country shenanigans.Tonight’s gig rounds off the latest leg of this tour, which was recently disrupted due to a Sutherland vs tourbus steps mishap that saw the singer, actor (and, as we learn, former professional rodeo cowboy) forced to postpone a Read more ...
Russ Coffey
James Blunt loves to joke about how gloomy his songs are and he says Once Upon a Mind is his most depressing collection yet. But the truth is that the album is really just agonisingly safe and painfully middle-of-the-road. (For the most part) Blunt has stared into his dark night of the soul and turned it into something beige and inoffensive.Partly it's the voice. That thin, strangely inert warble. It's also Blunt's tendency to treat every subject as a melancholy singalong. You might imagine a song about your relationship with your wife, would aim for a close, intimate feel. Instead Read more ...