New music
Lisa-Marie Ferla
When, back in October, Donald Trump sulked that his political opponent was being a “nasty woman”, little did he realise the cultural impact it would have.Those two words – a fit of pique that was impressive even amidst an ever-lengthening line of cry baby incidents from the man who went on to become president-elect of the United States of America – have become a rallying cry of sorts for those of us unprepared to take the 12-month garbage fire that was 2016 lying down. Of course, you can get Nasty Woman mugs, T-shirts and baseball caps. The name has lent itself to essays and anthologies. But Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Five new albums released over the year have dominated 2016: Marissa Nadler’s Strangers (May), Mikko Joensuu’s Amen 1 (June), Jessica Sligter’s A Sense of Growth (July), Arc Iris’s Moon Saloon (August) and Wolf People’s Ruins (November). Next year, it’s likely Foxygen’s Hang (out in January) will be amongst those doing the same.But Amen 1 is the one casting the darkest, longest and most inescapable shadow. One defined by an overarching sense that this is an unfiltered expression of emotion. What’s heard is what was felt. Marrying this to a classic melodic sensibility in the Jimmy Webb Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Like the sex life of a long-married couple, it’s not every night that a band who’ve been around for over three decades will catch the unfettered frisson of their wildest moments. For the first half of their set, despite frontman Bobby Gillespie assuring us the just-rendered version of recent single “100% Or Nothing” was “maybe the best ever”, the gig didn’t take off. It was another decent roll in the sack, a band on tour searching for the sweet spot, another rock’n’roll night. Then, well over halfway through, with the caustic, siren-enhanced assault of 1999’s “Swastika Eyes”, they found what Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
As the late Leonard Cohen once growled, “Everybody knows that the war is over/Everybody knows that the good guys lost.” That’s how 2016 felt. Perhaps the moment that encapsulated my year was standing in a very muddy Somerset field, two days after the Brexit disaster, part of an exhausted but defiant Sunday night crowd, singing along with LCD Soundsystem for all we were worth; “So it’s us versus them, over and over again.” That repeating chorus, circling and circling, summing it all up.In 2016 the scales tipped when we weren’t looking. The “good guys” suddenly became the minority. Meanwhile, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The big news as this year closes is that vinyl sales have brought more money in than downloads. They made £2.4 million compared to the £2.1 million from digital, the eighth consecutive year of growth in vinyl sales. Of course, to a large degree, this is because the youth market very suddenly transferred their affections from downloads to streaming. Which doesn’t make sense to me. If you can’t get a decent connection, you don’t have music. And that’s not even starting in on quality issues. But this isn’t the place for that, nor is it the place for cynics to sneer at vinyl as a home Read more ...
Barney Harsent
For those of you who aren’t parents, or a member of theartsdesk’s burgeoning under-5 readership, Mr Tumble is the comic creation of Justin Fletcher a children’s entertainer and TV presenter. Among his CV highlights is providing the voice of Jake, one of the the Noughties, pre-school phenomenon the Tweenies, and a character who made Joe Pasquale sound like Richard Burton after a packet of woodbines and half a bottle of decent Scotch.I’m not joking, compared to that voice, nails down a blackboard seems like a decent option for guided meditation, so I’m genuinely terrified going into this. I’m Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Another day, another country Christmas album. Yesterday, on theartsdesk, Kacey Musgraves’s A Very Kacey Christmas was given the once-over. Today, it’s the more storied, more venerable Loretta Lynn and White Christmas Blue, her second-ever Christmas album and the belated sequel to 1966’s Country Christmas. Fifty years ago, that album opened with its self-penned title track. In 2016, a remake becomes the second song on the new White Christmas Blue.“Away in a Manger” was on Country Christmas and it crops up again on White Christmas Blue. The same with “Blue Christmas", “Frosty the Snowman", “ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Another day, another country Christmas album. Yesterday, on theartsdesk, Kacey Musgraves’s A Very Kacey Christmas was given the once over. Today, it’s the more storied, more venerable Loretta Lynn’s White Christmas Blue, her second-ever Christmas album and the belated sequel to 1966’s Country Christmas. Fifty years ago, that album opened with its self-penned title track. In 2016, a remake becomes the second song on the new White Christmas Blue.“Away in a Manger” was on Country Christmas and it crops again on White Christmas Blue. The same with “Blue Christmas, “Frosty the Snowman", “White Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Anthologie 1953–2002 is a monster. A 20-disc set spanning almost 50 years, it tracks one of France’s most beloved singers and songwriters. Gilbert Bécaud died in December 2001, but songs from his posthumously released Je Partirai album are included. Fitting, as his music lives on and the release of this box set marks the 15th anniversary of his death.Outside France, Bécaud is less well known. Though his “A Little Love and Understanding” single charted in Britain in 1975, he did not make a Charles Aznavour-style crossover to mainstream recognition in the Anglophone world. He’s never been given Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Slade. McCartney. Jona Lewie. There’s a reason that every festive compilation album released since the mid-90s has featured exactly the same songs: the human race has lost the ability to write a Christmas-themed track that is just the right combination of schmaltz and saccharine to become an instant Mariah Carey-level classic.It’s not for lack of trying: almost every Christmas cash-in that arrives with us at theartsdesk includes at least one, usually more, self-penned number amongst the usual selection of classic covers. Sometimes, they come close to working (although I confess to having not Read more ...
Matthew Wright
TV’s Gareth Malone has been pounding the pavement from the Perranarworthal Handbell Ringers in Cornwall to the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band in West Yorkshire to curate a national expression of Christmas. Each group gets Malone’s motivational treatment, and the result is a shiny bauble of an album, ideal for engaging a broad family taste. Malone’s “British” selection of songs has an admirably cosmopolitan slant, embracing nationality in the sense of adopted experience rather than origin. From “Silent Night”, to the choral suite from the Disney hit Frozen, these pieces are part of Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Now the celebrity-drug-addict phase of Pete Doherty's career seems to be over the question remains as to what sort of artist he really is. After all, Doherty's best material always appeared to be inextricably woven into his chaotic lifestyle. The new album, Hamburg Demonstrations, on the other hand, was apparently recorded entirely drug-free. It's given fans pause for thought about where Doherty-the-phenomenon ends and Doherty-the-talent begins. Before Tuesday's show one punter gave me his opinion. "The drugs were really an irrelevance," he told me, "What matters is Read more ...