New music
Barney Harsent
The mysterious figure of Man Power has been making waves for a while now. A series of mixes and remixes and frankly jaw-dropping EPs have seen his star rise, though his actual profile has remained obscured – largely by his hand in a series of promo shots. His true identity remains a secret. So, who is Man Power and why should you care?The first of those questions will remain unanswered. The second is, in any case the more important. You should care because this is clever music aimed at the head, heart and feet, made by an artist capable of wringing emotion out of machines in a way that, if I’ Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Carleen Anderson’s range of vocal scales and styles is matchless in contemporary pop. Where she aims those enviable resources is the only issue anyone could have with her, a matter of taste she’ll eventually make irrelevant tonight with a flood of gospel-jazz exhilaration.Anderson’s impeccable lineage – Bobby Byrd’s step-daughter, James Brown’s god-daughter – and period of Acid Jazz stardom after moving from Texas to Britain in the Nineties is less relevant than her ongoing studies in the vocal arts. It means that, at 58, she’s ready to tackle this Brighton Festival show’s subject, Sarah Read more ...
Lydia Perrysmith
At gigs by Irish blues-rockers The Strypes or Dutch swing fanatic Cara Emerald, what’s shocking is how old and staid their audience often is. Mums and dads – even grannies and granddads – turn out to hear younger voices express dynamic rehashes of their own generation’s music.Pokey LaFarge is, arguably, even more retro yet he draws a wider audience, establishing a youthful fanbase for his folk-Americana revivalism. Supported along the way by that doyen of rockin’ roots music, Jack White, LaFarge has been around for a decade but his seventh album is a real showcase of his Midwestern roots. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Damned: Go! 45At the end of 1979, Britain’s first three 1976-born punk bands were in very different situations. The Sex Pistols had imploded in early 1978 and John Lydon, their front man, was back with Public Image Ltd’s challenging dub- and Krautrock-influenced multi-disc collection Metal Box. The Clash had released the epic, cross-genre double album London Calling. The Damned’s crisp Machine Gun Etiquette was in the shops on the back of that year’s hit singles “Love Song” and “Smash it up”, both of which featured on the album. No one, not even the band itself, could have predicted Read more ...
Russ Coffey
For many, Mark Knopfler will forever evoke a golden age of Eighties' soft rock. His headband might have been easy to mock but his blistering, finger-picking was undeniably thrilling. Latterly, though, Knopfler has travelled a less commercial path. Still, while his folk tendencies may not be everybody’s cup of tea, there's certainly more to Knopfler than just melancholy ballads. For much of last night he treated the O2 to tantalising glimpses of his former, more rocking, self.Knopfler came on looking lean and casual in a floral shirt and jeans. His hair was close cut (he still looks Read more ...
Lydia Perrysmith
Pokey LaFarge (b. 1983) is a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and American history enthusiast. Based in St Louis, Missouri, but frequently on the road, he self-released his first album Marmalade in 2006, a well-received foray into American roots music, and consolidated his reputation playing mandolin for rowdy folk-revivalists the Hackensaw Boys. Recording for Jack White’s Third Man Records along the way, he has also developed a hardcore following, at home and abroad, for live shows that offer a heady mix of charisma, trumpets and ragtime blues, his grass-roots music a backdrop for Read more ...
theartsdesk
Been a while since you checked out the best and latest world music releases? theartsdesk’s global music expert Peter Culshaw's selects the best music released in the last month or so.His peripatetic wanderings take in hot New Orleans brass, Indian psychedelia, Ethiopian fuzz-tone guitar, Brazilian reggae, English folk, underground Congolese music, a bunch of Italian eccentrics, Senegalese funk and numerous stops in between, including a side project from everyone’s favourite south London rockers Fat White Family. Albums of the moment include those by Blick Bassy, Sacre Delone Cuore, Flavia Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Having come of age with their second LP, The Vaccines had developed a sound that, though borrowed, they wore with confidence. This, their third album, sees them wilfully discard it, which is, if nothing else, quite the surprise.If you’re a fan, "Handsome", "20/20" and "Radio Bikini" are the tracks that will be going on the playlist, as they’re the only ones that sound remotely like the Vaccines of old. Even then, there’s something distinctly (and newly) infantile about them. “Handsome” is McBusted playing the hits of The Jesus and Mary Chain, with the Reid brothers’ shiftless ennui replaced Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Benjamin Clementine’s idea of repartee with the audience is producing a clementine orange and smiling shyly. Clad in his trademark greatcoat-over-naked chest, with bare feet and outrageous pompadour hair, he sits at a spotlit grand piano and manoeuvres the fruit gently about before setting it down. It’s hardly even a gag but, given his between-song demeanour the rest of the time, this is the Clementine equivalent of prat-falling on a banana skin while making farting noises. His audience, however, are onside and audibly respond with affectionate laughter. He has created a consensus bubble of Read more ...
bella.todd
There’s an extraordinary moment, in Peter Strickland’s deeply sensual, desperately funny and feverishly powerful S&M love story, when a camera travels slowly into the darkness between a woman’s thighs. It’s an extraordinary moment in the soundtrack, too. In place of the golden strings and softly hovering choral notes, Brighton Dome suddenly fills with a monochrome electronic pulsing, as if an army of giant moths is flying over with wings of black sheet metal.Your eyes finally flick back to the other half of Cat’s Eyes. Faris Badwan has spent the performance tucked away behind a synth, Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Brighton whooped as if she had never seen risqué entertainment last night, as cabaret veteran Joey Arias brought his Billie Holiday-meets-bawdy-standup show to the Brighton Festival. Able to switch between sincere tribute and brilliantly, cathartically filthy jokes instantaneously, he makes an audience unfamiliar with his style take a few minutes to calibrate their response. Once you understand that the Holiday is for real, and everything else tongue (or that’s what it looks like, anyway) in cheek, the evening makes curiously, but compellingly refreshing dramatic sense. The echoes Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Flavia Coelho once told me her parents in the favelas of Rio put an aluminium bucket over her head as the only way to calm her down. It was also a useful echo chamber to practise her singing. Her parents were hairdressers for drag queens. She still comes over an overactive child on stage and is one of the most dynamic live acts you are likely to see: she’s like a Duracell bunny on stage. She performed as part of a trio with a keyboardist and drummer, playing low slung guitar and bashing drums sporadically during her set, but the lean line-up seemed expandable – give her the cash and she would Read more ...