singer-songwriters
Barney Harsent
There are people who do and say awful things in the name of honesty. It can be used as a cover for rigorous appeasement of our own worst impulses, or as a thin veil to disguise needless personal attacks on those around us. With singer-sonwriter John Grant, however, it’s impossible to see it as anything other than a colossal strength. Throughout his career (Love Is Magic is his fourth album) Grant has marked himself out as one of the foremost lyricists of his generation. His literate approach, peppered with laugh-out-loud humour and a predilection for the dark underbelly of human emotion Read more ...
joe.muggs
Knowing a deceased artist's archives are available for re-release is a double-edged sword. Will there be a shoddy flood of any and every old bit of tat a la Jimi Hendrix? Will there be half-arsed, half-finished and even fake songs bodged together by trashy but popular modern dance remixers like Michael Jackson? Will the vaults just stay infuriatingly locked? With the impossibly prolific, but often self-indulgent Prince, it is doubly worrying: who has the rights? What will the quality control filter be like?Well, thank all that is holy, on the evidence of this release they're taking the right Read more ...
Ellie Porter
“This, quite possibly, could be a really good night,” declared David Crosby. He’s a couple of songs into this show, one of only two UK dates on the tour promoting his current album Sky Trails. Looking trim, beaming and in impeccable voice, the 77-year-old known as Croz fulfils his prophecy – and then some.It’s a predictably mature crowd, but there’s a Crosby-shirt-sporting young boy in front of me who, with his mum, seems as thrilled as the rest of the audience packing out Shepherd’s Bush Empire. With a massive back catalogue to plunder, Crosby presents a fine selection tonight from his Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Bananas is Malcolm Middleton’s first solo album to be built around guitar, bass, drums and all that stuff since 2009’s gorgeous Waxing Gibbous. Like any great artist, he soon became bored with pursuing the classic formulation that made his name (post-Arab Strap). He’s spent the last few years trying new ideas instead. His last album, Summer of ’13, was his take on electropop, there’s his Human Don’t Be Angry experimental albums and a collaboration with the artist David Shrigley. On Bananas, however, those who’ve been pining for his classic sound are rewarded.Middleton is a wordsmith, striking Read more ...
mark.kidel
For nearly half a century, Loudon Wainwright III has trodden a path on the margins of American popular music. He is as much a wry and sometimes puerile humourist as he is the writer of touching songs about love. This new collection of unreleased material provides both an entry point for those unfamiliar with his work and a treasure trove for devotees.There is material recorded in the studio, on his laptop and at concerts – even a bootleg from a fan. The two CDs come with a nicely designed booklet with mementoes and drawings, all of which testify to the child-like qualities that provide Read more ...
Jo Southerd
Hot on the heels of her celebrated 2017 album Out in the Storm, Katie Crutchfield shares an EP of a very different nature. The Waxahatchee sound is stripped down to its most bare and essential; much of Great Thunder is simply Crutchfield sat at a piano. It’s a clear departure from the noisy thrill of her last record, yet equally radiant and emotive.The six songs on Great Thunder were written with the now-dormant experimental recording group of the same name, between 2012 and 2014, while Crutchfield was also writing the Waxahatchee albums Cerulean Salt and Ivy Tripp. Though the original 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 ...
Liz Thomson
It’s been a decade since we last heard from Tom Baxter when he released his second album Skybound, which itself was four years after his debut Feather & Stone. That album included “Almost There”, a song somewhat implausibly covered by Shirley Bassey; Baxter accompanied her when she sang it at the Roundhouse’s Electric Proms.As the title suggests, it’s been a somewhat tricky 10 years for this very English singer-songwriter, one of four children of Jeff and Julie Gleave whom folkies with long memories may remember from the 1960s and ‘70s folk circuit. So with Rufus Wainwright and Tom Waits Read more ...
Keaton Henson
This Friday, July 20, sees the world premiere of Six Lethargies, a composition by the singer-songwriter Keaton Henson, created collaboratively with various artists, including the Britten Sinfonia who’ll be performing it. Henson, who has six acclaimed albums to his name and is also a successful visual artist, created the work over three years around the theme of anxiety and depression. By way of research, as well as drawing on his personal experiences in the area of mental health, he met with neuroscientists and music theorists, eventually bringing an immersive installation element to the Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
"Homeward Bound – the Farewell Tour", they were calling it. But with a show this strong, nobody would complain if that farewell were to turn out at some point not to be absolutely final.Paul Simon is 76, and there is absolutely no doubt that as he sings in "The Boxer", "the fighter still remains". He has just done 10 of these shows across Europe in the last 16 days, each of at least two hours, and yet the voice still sounds strong, and his energy completely intact. This was a performance full of vim, sass and clear intent.Above all it's a show about the power of all those great songs, and a Read more ...
Liz Thomson
There aren’t too many folk singers that make it into the pages of Vogue and Interview magazines, but that’s what comes of being a face of Burberry – attire that’s not necessarily a good folk fit. He’s also been snapped in the Augustus Hare catalogue modelling a rather sharp suit and tie. He’s studied theology, likes Bob Dylan and Nick Drake, and his favourite city is Jerusalem. He describes himself as “a classical folk singer”. Sometimes he sounds a little like Donovan.Quiet Man is the third outing by the Dorset-born singer-songwriter Roo Panes and it is, he says, about “contentment” and has Read more ...
Jo Southerd
Gota Fría, or “cold drop”, is a Spanish weather phenomenon associated with violent rainstorms, when high pressure has caused a pocket of cold air to dissociate itself from the warmer clouds. Meteorologists, please excuse my basic and probably erroneous interpretation; the point here is that any person who’s experienced mental ill-health will likely relate to the idea of a sudden dip in temperature, a torrential downpour, and the accompanying isolation. On Gota Fría, the Peru-born, Bristol-based singer-songwriter Beth Rowley explores darkness and light via classic songwriting, delivered Read more ...