New music
Barney Harsent
It’s nearly 40 years since bassist Steve Harris formed Iron Maiden and much has changed since then. Singer Bruce Dickinson has learned to fence, fly and kick cancer in the cock, and the band have continued to release albums – albums which, though rarely hitting the high points of their Eighties heyday, have often been pretty decent and admirably ambitious in scope.Speaking of ambition, Book of Souls, their latest, is comprised of 11 tracks and clocks in at an impressive 92 minutes. Now that’s a long album, but consider that, within those 11 tracks, there are three that go over 10 minutes and Read more ...
Guy Oddy
As someone who has always been completely indifferent to the retro New Wave stylings of The Libertines, I can’t say that I greeted the news of their reformation with anything more than a shrug of the shoulders. Sure, they had released a few toe-tappers around the turn of the century, but to view Pete Doherty and Carl Barât’s mob as culturally significant for their music seemed absurd. So I was somewhat surprised to experience all my prior prejudices go up in smoke on hearing Anthems For Doomed Youth, the band’s third album and first in over a decade.Whereas 2002’s Up The Bracket and their Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
John Lydon (b. 1956) is the singer and creative engine of Public Image Ltd. He was previously the frontman of the Sex Pistols. The latter group broke up in January 1978 when he was 21 but their brief career continues to cast a giant shadow over popular music, defining punk rock. Lydon, however, went on to form the musically more intriguing Public Image Ltd, releasing era-defining albums such their eponymous debut and, perhaps the ultimate album of the post-punk era, Metal Box. He went on to work sporadically with varying PiL line-ups during succeeding decades but reappeared with a newly Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Some consider Heartless Bastards to be the best band you’ve probably never heard of – albeit blighted by an awful name. Others say the Texas-based four-piece are merely a jumped-up garage band. Wherever you stand, though, one thing is beyond dispute – the awesome power of Erika Wennerstrom’s voice. For much of last night she sounded like the love child of Robert Plant and Janis Joplin. And when the band hit its stride you could almost smell the oil and sweat of their Midwestern blue-collar origins. Particularly the sweat. The subterranean Borderline club was about 35 degrees, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
According to the press release for Contrepoint, “AIR have not split up.” Nicolas Godin, one half of the French duo, goes on to say: “We weren’t surprising ourselves anymore… I’d made a statement with AIR and I wanted to go back to the classical world, to grow up musically; to renew myself.” What that actually reveals about his attitude towards the supposedly still-extant AIR is moot, but the result is Contrepoint, his first solo album. It is based around the music of Bach.It’s best to ignore the silly opening cut, “Orca”, a synth-and-metal hybrid reminiscent of a speed-induced Rush and begin Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Bands that stand out live often disappoint on record: it can be difficult to capture the energy, the ferociousness, the vitality that makes a group of musicians special when you freeze it in time. Experimental pop trio Micachu & the Shapes - who have the dubious distinction of being one of the best live acts I’ve ever seen yet one whose music I’ve never been able to enjoy at home - have probably come as close to doing so as is possible on Good Sad Happy Bad. The album began life as an extended jam session, sneakily recorded by drummer Marc Pell.The result is an album that sounds Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Isley Brothers: The RCA Victor & T-Neck Album Masters (1958–1983)Head straight for Track 14, Disc 10’s quadrophonic mix – which plays fine on a normal stereo – of The Isley Brothers’ version of Seals & Crofts’ “Summer Breeze”. It’s an instant head-turner as it highlights melody lines in the vocal which were not apparent on the familiar single. The jazzy piano is also more to the fore. Then nip to Track 11, Disc 13’s instrumental version of “Harvest for the World” which, shorn of its vocals, reveals the complex arrangement and intricate, lush production of this seemingly Read more ...
Graham Fuller
John Lydon’s group went 20 years without cutting a studio album before issuing This Is PiL. A mere three years on, the singer and his bandmates Lu Edmonds (guitar), Scott Firth (bass) and Bruce Smith (drums) have produced an album as robust and playful as its predecessor. If only Lydon had had such a settled combo and the means to be prolific in the Nineties and Noughties.The bracing avant-garde experimentalism of Metal Box and The Flowers of Romance now a distant memory, PiL has arrived at a choleric post-punk groove seared by Edmonds’ bravura riffs. It’s as suited to Lydon’s fast, hectoring Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Once upon a time, there was a label called Whatever We Want. As well as releasing vital, uncompromising records by Gareth “Godsy” Goddard and French prog-rock sampling delights from Quiet Village, in 2008 a 12” called The Rose saw the light of day. It was by The Laughing Light of Plenty and it was a nothing short of a revelation.The perfect marriage of live feel and dance sensibility, it was pretty much the record that everyone wished the Stone Roses had released after their hiatus, instead of descending into heavy riffing cock rock. An album followed, but seemingly only in Japan or for the Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Nyanza is the province of western Kenya where this intriguing Anglo-Kenyan, inter-generational five-piece recorded their third album, exploring the region in which the Luo people created their music. The Kenyan contingent, nyatiti (a plucked lyre) master Joseph Nyamungu and Luo percussionist Charles Owoko are both from that tribe, with Londoners Tom Skinner (drums), Jesse Hackett (vox/keys) and Louis Hackett (bass) making up the remainder. There’s a narrative arc of sorts, as the music traces the band’s journey from opening track “Nairobi (Too Hot)” into Nyanza, with a centerpiece, “Nyanza Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Sunday. Brecon Beacons. Very early in the morning. I am woken, as I have been every 20 minutes or so since falling asleep, by water dripping on my head. So far, I’ve been able to ignore it, the pain of sitting upright outweighing the inconvenience of a wet head by a factor I can’t begin to fathom. Now, however, the hangover has lifted slightly and the need to piss is so painful I can no longer ignore it.After a walk to the toilets that sees my clothes absorb more water than I subsequently eject, I stagger back to the tent and am greeted by a flurry of activity I wasn’t expecting. It seems a Read more ...
Guy Oddy
In a way that is reminiscent of fellow Swedes and label mates Goat, Hills play a primal psychedelia that draws from a far broader spectrum of sounds than the usual garage rock and motorik grooves of their British and American fellow travellers. On Frid, their third album, vocals are largely put aside in favour of spaced-out instrumentals or chanting that suggests medieval plainsong fed into an effects box. While the guitar sounds and grooves of Tinariwen and Songhoy Blues rub up against the chemical drone of Spacemen 3 to make some serious pagan ritual music that both moves hips and flips Read more ...