pop music
Music Reissues Weekly: Rain - Tomorrow Never Comes: The NYC Sessions 1967-1968Sunday, 20 October 2024
The Undertakers were central to the Merseybeat boom. The best of what they issued on single in 1963 and 1964 captured the raw, stomping sound adored by Liverpool’s audiences. But hits were elusive and they dropped off the musical map at the end of... Read more... |
Public Service Broadcasting, Barrowland, Glasgow review - history given euphoric lifeSaturday, 19 October 2024
The years may go by and the albums might change, but there are always a few constants with Public Service Broadcasting. There is the recorded message that precedes their arrival for one, a disembodied voice booming out to inform the crowd to put... Read more... |
Smile 2 review - worthy follow up to runaway hitSaturday, 19 October 2024
No film tackles the knotty topic of inherited mental illness with as much gleeful abandon as Smile. Mental health has been a popular subtext in contemporary horror for the past decade, but Parker Finn's Smile felt refreshing in how unsubtle it was.... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 86: Molly Tuttle, Depeche Mode, Pharoah Sanders, Seefeel, Hinds, Sofi Tukker and moreTuesday, 15 October 2024
VINYL OF THE MONTHHannah Scott Absence of Doubt (Fancourt Music)Sometimes a singer comes along who’s not stylistically my thing at all, but their voice has a quality that wrenches, reaches inside, beyond usual taste judgements. For me, a good... Read more... |
Album: Ded Hyatt - GlossyWednesday, 09 October 2024
This record keeps you guessing. It starts off with “Hybrid Romance”, an ambient piece that’s very pretty but has swooping glassy synths that crack and fracture and could easily be about to break into some super jagged Berlin deconstructed club music... Read more... |
Album: Coldplay - Moon MusicFriday, 04 October 2024
From the very first chords of "Yellow" in 2000, Coldplay have been an ever present at the summit of popular music's hierarchy. Their uncanny knack of crafting sickly sweet melodies and soundscapes that dig deep and stay with you, willingly or not,... Read more... |
Album: Caribou - HoneyWednesday, 02 October 2024
Dan Snaith’s career has been a joyous thing to watch. Almost a quarter of a century the Canadian started out as Manitoba (soon renamed to Caribou) making a giddy mixture of dreamy ‘60s psychedelic pop, glitchy electronica and then cutting-edge dance... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Why Don’t You Smile Now - Lou Reed at Pickwick Records 1964-65Sunday, 29 September 2024
The Velvet Underground first played before an audience on 11 December 1965. A year earlier, their two founder members Lou Reed and John Cale were beginning a period of schlepping around New York and New Jersey as supposed members of an equally... Read more... |
Album: Lady Gaga - HarlequinSaturday, 28 September 2024
Lady Gaga has made clear this is not her official new artist album. It’s a side project, inspired by Harley Quinn, the nom-de-chaos of the Arkham Asylum inmate she plays in Todd Phillips’ much-anticipated sequel Joker: Folie à Deux. The original... Read more... |
Elvis Costello and Steve Nieve, Bristol Beacon review - so much more than a retread of the master's hitsMonday, 23 September 2024
Apart from being one of Britain’s greatest songsmiths of the past 50 years, Elvis Costello – from the early adoption of the rock’n’roll King’s first name – has produced a form of naked self-expression, blurred by intricately-tailored pretence.... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: New Jill SwingSunday, 22 September 2024
As the name of a music genre, new jack swing was coined in an issue of the Village Voice dated 18 October 1987. Writer Barry Michael Cooper was profiling producer, songwriter and member of the R&B trio Guy, Teddy Riley when he created a tag... Read more... |
Here comes the flood: Bob Dylan's 1974 Live RecordingsWednesday, 18 September 2024
Lighters at the ready, because here comes the flood. Drawn from 16-track tape, 1/4in reels and lo-fi sound board cassettes that are now a half century old, the 27 CDs of 431 performances, 417 of them previously unreleased, of Dylan and The Band’s... Read more... |
