1980s
Kieron Tyler
During their original 1980 to 1984 lifespan as a recording unit, Soft Cell issued three albums, a mini-album, eleven singles and EP. There were also compilation appearances, bonus tracks on discs included with albums or singles (such as the 12-inch of Jimi Hendrix cover versions accompanying The Art of Falling Apart) and extended tracks which appeared on 12-inch singles. Everything could probably be collected on six CDs.The new box set Keychains & Snowstorms: The Soft Cell Story features 10 discs, one of which is a DVD. The albums and the Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing mini-album are not Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Implausible times call for implausible music, and it doesn't come much more unlikely than this. Hawkwind, the die-hard troupers of gnarly cosmic squatter drug-rock, have re-recorded highlights from their catalogue, arranged and produced by Mike Batt. Yes, Mike “Wombles” Batt. Mike “Elkie Brooks” Batt. Mike “Katie Melua” Batt. Mike “Bright Eyes” Batt. And yes, he's removed all of the dirt, grease, diesel fumes, sticky bong residue and guitar distortion from the band's sound – this is a full-on showbiz spectacular, ballroom dance rhythms, big band brass, orchestral swoops and all. And yet Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The long career of New York electronic duo Suicide finally came to an end upon the death of their vocalist Alan Vega in 2016. They had not, however - and to say the least – been very prolific in decades. Their reputation rests almost entirely on their first two albums, most especially their debut. But what albums those are. Their primitive synthesizer drone-rock’n’roll still casts a giant shadow 40 years on. It is, then, surely a fool’s errand to release a set entirely consisting of Suicide cover versions. Yet that’s what Many Angled Ones have done – and with partial success.Many Angled Ones Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Paul Simon is currently traversing the globe on his Farewell Tour. His new album clearly accompanies that. It’s a thoughtful look backwards wherein Simon has plucked numbers from his catalogue he feels deserve another go-round, recording them with guest artists, often from the world of jazz (notably Wynton Marsalis). It is, by its nature, somewhat self-indulgent, for there are none of his most famous songs here. These are numbers he wants to bring out of the shadows; that he reckons are worth further attention. On occasion, he’s absolutely right.The album opens with "One Man’s Ceiling is Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In May 1981, Japan played two nights at London’s Hammersmith Odeon. For NME’s Paul Morley, the high-profile shows at the prestige venue were notable as “Japan can fill two nights at the Odeon and they're not yet a hit group.” Reviewing them, he said their frontman David Sylvian “advances, dances and freezes in motion so like Ferry it's debasing, it's like he is a surgically exalted version of the original Bryan. After ten minutes of Japan’s teenybop Simple Minds material – sumptuous in parts, dank most of the time – it was time to go. Not even a piece the liquid Sylvian wrote with the Great [ Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Initially, this month’s theartsdesk on Vinyl began with the sentence after this one, but it's so dry readers might drowse off, so I started with this one instead and would advise moving through the next one, just picking up the gist quickly... Discogs, a key hub for global record sales in physical formats, recently presented its Midyear Marketplace Analysis and Database Highlights for 2018, which reckons vinyl sales are up another 15% over the last year. Very boringly stated but good news, right? The biggest seller was Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon which is predictable but it’s Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
So far Jon Hamm has had trouble finding himself movie roles which fit him quite as impeccably as Mad Men’s Don Draper – though he could do worse than throw his hat in the ring for James Bond – but his role here as an American diplomat in Beirut plays obligingly to his strengths. A tale of twisted loyalties and spookish double-dealing, it’s directed by Brad Anderson from a 25-year-old script by Tony Gilroy (a veteran of the Bourne franchise and writer/director of Michael Clayton), and gives Hamm room to probe the porous boundaries of love, loss, loyalty and betrayal.The story begins in 1972, Read more ...
Katherine Waters
“When you were our age, how did you imagine your life? What did you hope for?” It is a video of a classroom south-east of the Périphérique separating Paris from the working-class suburbs. The students are mostly girls between fifteen and sixteen and they wear make-up, jewellery, low-cut tops – we understand they’re sexy, confident, cool. Several are African, North African, Caribbean. When the teacher laughs, which is often, it bears vestiges of the provincial attitude of “a young girl who acknowledges her lack of importance,” though it’s unclear whether the students notice for she Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A sight every music fan should see and hear once is The Proclaimers playing Scotland. Around 18 years ago I saw them play a giant marquee at the T In The Park Festival. It was like a rally, a roaring wall of joyful fanaticism (on which note, their autumn 2018 tour there sold out 30,000 tickets in 20 minutes!). If it was a rally, though, it was a righteous, tending-to-socialism one for The Proclaimers have a strand of activism in their blood. On their latest album, this is writ large.The title track sets the stage at the start, a two-and-a-half minute classic, one of their best, with punk Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
In recent years there’s been an explosion in feminised self-empowerment anthems, perhaps best epitomised by Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song” (This is my fight song/Take back my life song/Prove I'm alright song). For those in need of a masculine equivalent, Dee Snider’s latest album may prove a tonic. A word of warning, though: where the feminine self-empowerment anthem can sometimes veer into the trite and solipsistic, this male version is simply a preening strut of preposterous bravado. Once that’s understood, however, there’s much to enjoy.Dee Snider was, for decades, the singer with face- Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Arriving back onstage for an encore a broadly smiling Gary Numan bathes in roared football chants of “Numan! Numan!”. He tells us it’s just over 40 years since he released his first single, “That’s Too Bad”, but that he and his tight four-piece band are going to make a “bad attempt” at playing it. He’s wrong. It’s one of the best-delivered songs of the night, sounding Seventies punky to the delight of the crowd, many of whom clearly recall the era. It’s not a song he usually plays and not typical of his set, but it has a freshness.Numan’s career has had five main phases: 1. His punk Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Who in their right minds has the time of day for Rick Astley? As a cynical 1980s experiment by ruthlessly commercial production house Stock, Aitken & Waterman his Eighties output was vapid grinning plastic bilge. He was annoying too, really annoying, a neutered avatar representing suburban English everyboy blandness incarnate. One of the trickiest things as a music writer is facing up to long-held and enjoyed prejudices but, on hearing the title single from Astley’s latest album, I had to admit – through gritted teeth – that it’s a thoroughly enjoyable slice of Chic-like pop. But what of Read more ...