singer-songwriters
Lisa-Marie Ferla
I’ve never understood why the great American train journey isn’t as romanticised as the great American road trip. There’s nowhere else you get quite that same uninterrupted time with your own thoughts: to create, to ponder, to come to terms with everything. Certainly not in the UK, where the six-hour stretch from Glasgow to London is punctuated by so many stops that letting your mind wander as a pushchair or a scalding cup of tea makes its way up the aisle is something you do at your peril.Laura Gibson’s Empire Builder is, perhaps, the first great American rail trip soundtrack, named for the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Damien Jurado’s last album, 2014’s Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son, was, as theartsdesk noted, about “a man setting off in search of himself but never returning”. Its follow-up tracks the same unnamed character and his companion Silver Katherine on a road trip which may or may not be in his mind. Following a concept album with another integrally linked to its predecessor – and the album before that too, 2012’s Maraqopa – suggests Durado has faith in his listeners. They are, implicitly, going to follow the singer-songwriter on this journey.Ambition, creativity and an overarching vision Read more ...
Mark Kidel
The opening track of Leonard Cohen’s new album says it all: the hum of a spine-chillingly eerie male choir, joined by the throb of an irresistible bass line. We're in for a slow joy-ride through the depths of the underworld. In “You Want It Darker”, one of his unquestioned masterpieces, a title-song as rich in soulful images as anything he has ever written, and in a voice close to a whisper, Cohen alludes to “a million candles burning for the help that never came”. He is, as ever, singing of the shadows that fill our inner and outer worlds, “a lullaby for suffering” in which the only Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The answers, for the listener curious as to whether Emmy the Great’s Second Love fared any better than her first (it’s the title of her 2009 debut as much as any reference to the songwriter’s psyche), do not emerge until its final track. “Once I was a flight risk,” Emma-Lee Moss sings softly, almost swooning, “but soon I think I will be safe … Let me get lost in you”. Which sounds as close as one gets to a happy ending, until the lyric changes with the second verse to “I wish I was a flight risk”.It’s been five years since Moss’s last album proper: five years in which the Londoner moved to LA Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The thing about having a very distinctive voice is that it gives the audience something to latch onto. That’s all well and good, but it can also mean people find it easier to hear without listening. As the familiar tones and comfortable cadences of King Biscuit Time and former Beta Band member Steve Mason drift in, it’s easy to see how people could simply think, “Ah, another Steve Mason album.” Which it is, to be fair – but it’s also the rather wonderful result of all his former experiments.From the Beta Band – the glorious, stumbling and staggering Beta Band, with their moments of ragged Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Canadian singer-songwriter Basia Bulat’s first three albums were recognisably folky. Her main instrument was the autoharp. Good Advice is different. With its more upfront songwriting and verve, her fourth album is a giant leap. It is also Bulat’s best to date.Good Advice abandons her previous approach to embrace an R ‘n’ B-influenced pop with gospel-inclined melodies (the only element nodding back to her former self). The instrumental framing is totally new: booming drums, bubbling bass, shuffling percussion, keyboards, odd stabs of sax and a supporting chorale. Her voice is more powerful Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
If you haven’t fallen for Emma Pollock by the end of the first two songs on In Search of Harperfield – you know, on the off chance that you have somehow been immune to the first lady of Scottish indie over the past 20 years – then there’s probably no help for you. In just two songs, Pollock perfectly showcases her dynamic talent: there’s the dreamy, ghostly “Cannot Keep a Secret”, as immersive a song ever written to fit Pollock’s husky, beguiling voice; and “Don’t Make Me Wait”, a catchy rocker that’s as insistent as its name.Five and a half years since 2010’s The Law of Large Numbers and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
January 1966 is a half a century back but some of the music released 50 years ago this month remains fresh, vital and timeless. With its biting invective and energy, Bob Dylan’s “Can You Please Crawl out of Your Window” will never lose its visceral edge. Dusty Springfield’s joyful, kinetic “Little by Little” is eternally alive. Author Jon Savage goes further and pinpoints the whole of 1966 as “the year that shaped the rest of the century”. His proposition uses the year’s pop music as evidence for 1966 as a year like no other: one which was pivotal and irrevocably changed the world.Savage Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Revealing a new story which completely rewrites an existing one is not easy in the world of reissues. With so much already known, and with pop and rock history constantly being revisited, it’s always surprising when a fresh tale is told. And it’s even more so when it’s actually worth knowing. Although issued in June, Saved by the Bell: The Collected Works of Robin Gibb 1968-1970 has been saved for the end of the year as it was instantly apparent that it did, indeed, rewrite history. It also included a wealth of extraordinary music, most of which had never been previously released – or even Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The City: Now That Everything’s Been SaidWith early 1971's Tapestry, Carole King released a worldwide best seller which belatedly recognised that as an interpreter of her own songs, she had no peers. King had made the jump from the writer of songs for others to successful singer-songwriter. Harry Nilsson had done it. So had Randy Newman. Jimmy Webb would too. All three were based in Los Angeles.She had moved there from New York in 1968. The new home of America’s music business had supplanted the city where she had written “The Loco-Motion”, “Pleasant Valley Sunday, "Will You Love Me Read more ...
Barney Harsent
John Grant is nothing if not a confessional songwriter. On his last album, Pale Green Ghosts, there were moments of dark despair, caustic barbs and some surprisingly slinky grooves soundtracking a man who was offering himself up with a breathtaking honesty. On Grey Tickles, Black Pressure – a title that places us somewhere between mid-life crisis and full-on nightmare – he is similarly laid bare, but the literate humour has now become full-on funny and could well mark him out as the best lyricist of his generation.Although Grant says he wanted to get “moodier and angrier” on this record, he Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Don’t be fooled by the header picture. Despite the relaxed poses, Iceland’s Pink Street Boys are amongst the angriest, loudest, most unhinged bands on the planet right now. Hits #1, their debut vinyl album – which follows distorted-sounding, lower-than-lo-fi cassette and digital-only releases – is so impolite and wild that once the rest of the world gets the message the story of what constitutes the current-day music of their home country will have to be rewritten.They are not an anomaly. Iceland is currently witnessing a groundswell of loosely punk–inspired bands drawing from the edgy spirit Read more ...