New music
Matthew Wright
From Bach to the Beach Boys in three months. Though the right side of 50, pianist and bandleader Brad Mehldau has released 35 albums in over 25 years. In the Nineties, as a twenty-something, he recorded a five-volume series of albums with the title Art of the Trio. Today, he’s probably the best-known improvising pianist after Keith Jarrett. No one can accuse him of a lack of ambition or confidence. On the evidence here, it’s born of a great inspiration and gift. This is sumptuous, collective improvisation of the highest order.Listening to this album without a track listing, it would require Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Arctic Monkeys are the great British guitar band of the 21st century so far. Only now they’re not. For the last couple of albums, Sheffield’s ever-smart rock four-piece have pushed their innate indie guitar sound further and further into 21st pop territory. This time, centred on lead singer Alex Turner’s piano, Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino leaps off somewhere else entirely, dipped in Rat Pack cool and sun-blissed retro easy-listening.Turner’s lyrics remain as poetic as ever, but he’s become more conceptually abstract, positing rather than commenting. He lives in LA now and the lovely, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Problem is Brighton is down in the Festival programme as an “alt-rock/pop pantomime”, with actors involved and the inference it’s some sort of musical featuring “instruments specially created by David Shrigley for the performance”. This turns out to be seriously over-selling it. In fact, Problem in Brighton is a rock band put together to play an hour of songs created in league with the maverick artist and Festival Guest Director. Putting any expectations aside, it’s a patchy show.The band – four men, two women – initially arrive on stage one by one, in regulation black cowboy shirts with Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As it was with his last album Golden Sings That Have Been Sung, it’s impossible to listen to Ryley Walker without comparisons to John Martyn and Tim Buckley – the jazz-infused, non-linear Buckley of Lorca – springing to mind. But this time round, for his fifth album, Walker appears to have also been sponging up the free-flowing ethos of David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name and the lithe Arthur Lee of Four Sail. Additionally, there’s the spiralling instrumental current of fellow Chicago dwellers Tortoise and dashes of math rock.On his label’s website, Walker says the only music he Read more ...
mark.kidel
Ry Cooder is not only one of the greatest American guitarists of his time, a virtuoso who uses his technical mastery to make music with extraordinary soul, but he also has his heart firmly in the right place. On this new album, a close collaboration with his equally talented son Joachim, armed with some gospel classics and political songs of his own, he calls us to attention, at a time of ethical chaos and moral dissolution.The opener, “Straight Street", originally a slow-burner from the great Pilgrim Travellers, sets the tone, warning us against losing our souls. The song starts with a Read more ...
Guy Oddy
If her collaborations with other musicians is anything to go by, Courtney Barnett’s star has definitely been on the rise since the release of her wonderfully titled 2015 debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit. Last year there was her album of duets with Kurt Vile, Lotta Sea Lice. This year her second solo effort, Tell Me How You Really Feel, has added Deal sisters and a sprinkling of Breeders magic. Not bad for someone who didn’t really appear on anyone’s radar outside Australia only three years ago. All this doesn’t seem to have filled Courtney with any joie de Read more ...
theartsdesk
Brighton Festival is the UK’s leading annual celebration of the arts, with events taking place in venues both familiar and unusual across Brighton & Hove for three weeks every May. This year, the Festival boasts an eclectic line-up spanning music, theatre, dance, visual art, film, comedy, debate and spoken word, with visual artist David Shrigley as Guest Director.Enter this competition by entering your details here for a chance to win a fantastic break for two over the closing weekend of Brighton Festival (Fri 25 – Sun 27 May).The prize package includes:A two-night stay at Sooty’s Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
Pinkshinyultrablast might be a long way from their hometown of St Petersburg, but in recent years they’ve built themselves up in England as one of the more bizarre and original bands in today’s psych/shoegaze revival, and on the day their third album Miserable Miracles is released, they hit the north for a night of fuzz and electronic trickery.Support comes from Warm Digits, whose propulsive set has the room hooked from the off. Mostly playing tracks from their 2017 LP Wireless World, drummer Andrew Hodson and guitarist Steve Jefferies don’t let the groove drop, with their songs forming, Read more ...
Guy Oddy
RSO are a duo made up of ex-Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora and Australian guitar-shredder and present member of Alice Cooper’s band, Orianthi Panagaris – a couple who have decided to celebrate their relationship in song with what can only be described as a vanity project. While Radio Free America, a title that implies something more than what’s delivered, may be their debut album, a good chunk of these songs has already seen the light of day on their Rise and Making History EPs and “I Got You Babe"/ "Forever All the Way” single: none of which has managed to set the world on fire. Their Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In early March 1980, the weekly music paper Sounds dedicated their front cover to “the new face of punk” with a photograph of Stinky Turner, the singer of The Cockney Rejects. What had, in 1977, been widely interpreted as a challenge to musical orthodoxy and as a new broom which was sweeping clean had, in turn, become a default style for new waves of bands. Punk, as The Exploited put it in 1981 for the title of their debut album, was not dead. And punk itself was now the inspiration, rather than the assorted influences which had fed into Buzzcocks, The Clash, The Damned and the Sex Pistols. Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Throughout their career, James Ford and Jas Shaw have proved themselves to be nothing if not versatile. From the subtly swirling psychedelia of Simian, to the various dancefloor shapes they’ve thrown as Simian Mobile Disco.On their last album, 2016’s Welcome to Sideways, the pair presented a collection of tracks that showed talented producers being talented at production. It was an engaging enough listen, but felt, at times, punishingly functional. Of course, in many ways, that’s dance music’s raison d'être – the clue’s in the name and the feet are on the floor. It’s the rhythm, the pulse, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Perfectly Unhappy’s sixth track makes the album’s case. Until this point, Andy Sheppard’s playing has largely gone with the flow; working through and around the melodies pianist Espen Eriksen has composed for his trio’s first recorded collaboration with the British saxophonist. A minute 20 seconds into “Naked Trees”, the double bass comes to the fore. Then, after another 55 seconds, Sheppard begins playing with a free-flowing sinuousness and spontaneity which wasn’t previously apparent. The next two tracks, “Revisited” and the album closer “Home”, are similarly energised.Sheppard and Norway’s Read more ...