Rory Graham’s first words as he comes on stage are: “Well this is a bit weird, isn't it? It's been a while.” After a run of cancelled gigs, the band haven’t performed live for a year and a half – which feels, says Rory, “a bit like missing a testicle.”Anatomy aside, we all get it. While I knew how much I had missed live music, the depth of intense emotional response to this band's sound and lyrics; the overwhelming energy connection between artist and audience and the transformative healing power of music is another level at this gig.There is a chemistry in the Jazz Cafe that I have never Read more ...

Album number three from Ivor Novello-winning singer-songwriter Laura Mvula sees her paying singularly personal homage to the music of the 1980s. Change, Chic, Michael Jackson and more are all called to mind at various points, with “Church Girl” seemingly nodding to the US songwriting and production team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, with its textural palate of drum machine (a Roland TR-808, perhaps?), hand claps and shiny synths, plus a final fade to the unadorned beauty of the human voice, a stylistic trait which Mvula uses to exquisite effect here and elsewhere on the album.Whether it’s the Read more ...

She became one of the most successful pop stars in history, but Britney Spears has also become a paradigm of the horrors and pitfalls of life in the white heat of showbusiness. This new documentary by Samantha Stark (made by the New York Times) tracks Britney’s path from her upbringing in the small Bible Belt town of Kentwood, Louisiana through her precocious progress from an 11-year old star of TV’s The Mickey Mouse Club – also featuring Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling and Christina Aguilera – to monster-selling hits like "...Baby One More Time" and "Oops!.. I Did It Again". But then come Read more ...

Hailing from Benin and based in Paris since she was 23, Angélique Kidjo can sing in five languages, has collaborated with an A-list festival line-up of global stars ranging from Alicia Keys and Philip Glass to Herbie Hancock and Peter Gabriel, and had her first albums released by Island, after being spotted by label head Chris Blackwell. Each of them was studded with guest artists, including Branford Marsalis and Gilberto Gil, and featuring covers such as Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child”.She has won Grammys, travelled widely as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and set up a foundation to empower Read more ...

The first release that brought folk-pop duo Kings of Convenience to prominence outside of their native Norway was their Live in a Room EP, released in 2000. Recorded, as the title suggests, with a minimum of fuss, the cuts include pre-song count-ins, real-life room reverb and the occasional shriek of a string as a barre chord hurriedly settled into its seat. These moments defined the recordings almost as much as the notes themselves - acoustic music with an electric atmosphere.More than 20 years later, Eirik Glambek Bøe and Erlend Øye have returned with Peace or Love, their first album since Read more ...

Well this is bleak. Seven studio albums, three live albums, two compilation albums, one remix album, three EPs, 33 singles, 23 music videos, 120 million sales and streams well into the tens of billions seem to have completely erased what personality Maroon 5 might ever have had. Not that they’ve ever been a band to frighten the horses, of course: their giga-success has come through comfortably cruising along the middle of the road, cannily adopting zeitgeisty sounds and giving guest spots to current ascendent names, without ever letting them overwhelm their essentially solid soft rock Read more ...

When Laurence Binyon wrote: “Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn…” he was, of course, talking about the fallen soldiers of World War One, not Amherst’s premier hardcore grunge punks. However, on hearing Sweep It Into Space, Dinosaur Jr.’s fifth album since their unexpected 2007 rebirth, it could easily apply to J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph.A lot has been written, much of it here, about the trio’s glacial evolution since their 1985 debut, and Sweep… certainly has all the familiar ingredients perfectly preserved in its slowly shifting ice. There’s heavy Read more ...

The career of Raf Rundell has had one of the most satisfying trajectories of any in UK music – a steady process of self-realisation, from record label staff via DJing and artist management, through being a serial studio collaborator, to becoming a fully fledged artist in his own right. For a musician to only now, in his late 40s, be releasing his second full album might seem odd, but there’s something very natural about the way it’s all happened, which is expressed in the confidence of his sound which only continues to mature like fine wine.At the heart of this record sits the single “Always Read more ...

Writing something people want to stream one billion times is inconceivable for most of us. But then, most of us aren't Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Daryl Hall. Alongside John Oates, he is behind some of the greatest pop songs of all time: "Maneater"; "She's Gone; "Out of Touch"; "Rich Girl"; "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)"; and of course, the billion-stream masterpiece that is "You Make My Dreams".Over 50 years after forming, the band are still finding new audiences. They've become a favourite for film soundtrackers and samplers. But they don't rest on former glories - Live from Daryl's Read more ...

The debut album by Australian-Ghanaian artist Genesis Owusu is so musically restless it’s exhilarating. What’s clear is this guy doesn’t want to be placed in a box, marked hip hop or anything else. Over a wild variety of music, he adopts multiple vocal styles, reminding of beatbox genius Reggie Watts (most especially his recent Wajatta project with John Tejada). The album cover encapsulates the cinematic, occasionally garish persona that comes across during the 15 tracks. What’s clear is that Genesis Owusu is no wall flower.Running through Smiling With No Teeth is the theme of a “black dog”. Read more ...

Best known for winning Sweden's version of Got Talent, at the tender age of 10, Zara Larsson is a shining example of a prodigious young female talent being groomed by the music industry into the perfect pop icon.Her third album Poster Girl is exactly what it says on the tin. Here is a place of dance floor beats and snappy sass for your average teenage girls’ bedroom karaoke session. Perhaps, it’s what the title alludes to, although I was expecting more irony on that front.For the most part, the album is very generic pop. The “touch me the way you do’s” of “Love Me Land”, “Make your jaw drop, Read more ...

Over the course of seven albums and nearly two decades, Kings of Leon have gone from spiky, short bursts of adrenaline-fuelled garage rock to swollen stadium pomp, full of big builds and grandiose gestures. Following on from 2016’s WALLS (We Are All Like Love Songs) the band’s eighth collection, When You See Yourself, doesn’t suggest a complete volte face in this regard, but there are definitely more elements jostling for attention.Like analogue synthesisers for instance. While the Followill family aren’t swapping guitar picks for patch cables in the way that Kevin Parker’s Tame Impala have, Read more ...