New music
bruce.dessau
Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe's twelfth studio album sounds strangely familiar. I thought for a moment they had already released an album with the same title and then I realised that I was thinking of the Tennant/Johnny Marr/Bernard Sumner collaboration Electronic. There is definitely an air of deja vu about Electric though. But in a good way. Sorry, make that a great way.This is certainly an improvement on their last album, Elysium. If that was all about end-of-an-era melancholy, there are no such comedowns here. From the Moroder-ish opener "Axis" through to the forthcoming single "Vocal Read more ...
caspar.gomez
The smell is like a squidgy hash spliff marinated in hickory-smoked barbecue sauce. There’s an additional top note of tangy, excited human musk and a hint of vinegary organic waste. By the weekend’s end this Parfum de Glaston will have infused everything, from unworn clothes to the tent to even skin and hair. It will take days to shift, permeating the pores as completely as this temporary city of madness sandblasts the mind. But let’s not get carried away before we’ve begun. To peak too early would be a classic rookie mistake.Thursday 27 JuneThings begin, then, on a sunny A303 that turns Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Darren Hayman isn’t a chap who stands still. The former Herfner frontman’s last-but-one album, Lido, was a series of mood-music compositions inspired by open-air swimming pools. In 2011 came The Ship’s Piano, a collection of piano pieces. Rather than being a follow-up to his most recent album The Violence, Bugbears complements it. While researching East Anglia’s Civil War-era witch trials for The Violence, he was compelled to dig further into the 17th and 18th century’s songs. Bugbears is the result.Instead of being a straight folk album, or even trying to recreate the sound or ambience of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Off we jolly well go.” With that, The Flamin’ Groovies’s Chris Wilson announced the arrival of “Shake Some Action”, the band’s classic evocation of rock ‘n’ roll swagger. In 2013, 40 years after it was first recorded, it's still magnificent, a headlong rush of chiming, descending chords and soaring vocals. “If you don't dig what I say, then I will go away,” sang Wilson. And without a mass audience, The Flamin’ Groovies had gone away. Wilson left in 1981 and the band fizzled out in 1992. Now, they’re back.Beginning last night with a ragged version of 1973’s “Let Me Rock” was a statement. This Read more ...
graeme.thomson
Blondie are one of a handful of bands capable of producing a set list which renders rational critical argument all but obsolete. If they play the hits and they play them straight and true, there’s not really much to complain about. Last night in Edinburgh the six-piece line-up (half original members, half relative newbies) played (most of) the hits, and well, but let’s break it down to specifics.Five things you want to see at a Blondie concert1. Debbie Harry. A vision in peach with voice and sass intact, she remains a tough-but-tender front woman par excellence with charisma to burn. 2. Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Every so often, an album comes along that reminds you why you love the medium: not because it’s a simple collection of individual songs, no matter how good they are, but because it’s a carefully curated statement of artistic intent. Taken individually Emily Barker’s clear voice and pretty melodies are pleasant enough, but what sets her fourth album apart is its immersive flow.It’s there right from the album’s seductive opening notes: Barker, close to unaccompanied, intoning the album’s title and opening words; crooning and cajoling the “dear river” to lead her away from her Australian Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
"Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park" is a wonderfully grand name for the venue for this summer's Hard Rock Calling festival, but the reality doesn't quite match up. Rather than basking in the glory (and shiny new stadium architecture) of Mo and Jessica's triumphs from last summer, music fans found themselves a few hundred yards away on a drab swathe of stony wasteland, temporarily covered with artificial grass. Still, at least the sun blazed down and they'd got the beer tent sorted, with thirsty punters bundled in and out, several banknotes lighter, at unprecedented speed.Bruce Springsteen has Read more ...
Nick Hasted
“It was a bit leary,” Georgie Fame recalls of a 1960 visit to Glasgow. “They had these cast-iron ash-trays at the Empire...” Teddy boys offended by Fame’s starry effect on the local girls led to these being skimmed at the band, bisecting a cymbal, he explains almost fondly, of the night police with dogs were needed to ensure that he at least left the city intact.That stereotypical picture of a Glasgow crowd was of course unlikely to recur now Fame is a respected 70-year-old, headlining the Glasgow International Jazz Festival’s penultimate night. In steep contrast, this festival's fans are Read more ...
joe.muggs
The part-Japanese Brit Maya Jane Coles displays elaborate asymmetric hair, interesting piercings and enormous tattoos in her moody photoshoots, makes sounds that are uniformly smooth and high-gloss, and has a sonic palette that takes in populist trance, chillout and straight-up pop music as well as more nerd-cred underground sounds. And in an era of techno that's been dominated by Berlin-centric cosmopolitanisms – by sophisticated internationalist crowds with creative haircuts and intricately-knotted scarves as well as sometimes tediously tasteful musical minimalism – it'd be very easy to Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Fly into Morocco on Royal Air Maroc, and as in-flight entertainment on the overhead screens you’re treated to Charlie Chaplin shorts from the 1910s, still sharp as a tack, the little guy goosing authority, the law, the rich, the powerful. The Little Tramp must remain a figure with resonance in Morocco: the base of operations for legendary band Nass El Ghiwane was the back room of a tailor’s shop in Casablanca dominated by a poster of Chaplin.Their songs were about the same "little guys" that Chaplin’s comedy immortalises, the struggle of poor Moroccans and the search for poetry in a new urban Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
“The boy looked at Johnny – he was surrounded by white and blue tiles, in the medina.” Patti Smith was improvising on her classic album Horses in her first, compelling, gig in Morocco. Smith has a history of Moroccan connections: she knew the Tangier-based writer Paul Bowles and plugged into that pre-punk Beat generation, but there were some raised eyebrows as to what exactly she was doing at a “sacred” music festival. “Birdsong is sacred,” she said when challenged on this, surrounded by the twitter of birds at the open courtyard of the Riad Sheherazade where she gave her press conference the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
What’s the point of Harry Connick Jr in a world where Michael Bublé exists? Twenty years ago Harry Connick Jr was the Bublé of the day. He was among the first to run a comprehensive and commercially successful update of swingin’ Sinatra schtick, adding youthful sex appeal. Suave, good looking and a charmer, he also had other strings to his bow. An easy presence as an actor – which led to a parallel career on TV and on Broadway – has been matched by a connoisseur’s appreciation of jazz. The latter led to an interest in the musical history of his native New Orleans, resulting in a number of Read more ...