soul music
Thomas H. Green
Broken Hearts and Beauty Sleep has been five years coming. It’s only a mini-album but is spiced with a range of guests, and offers an array of musical styles, the whole sound ably built with alt-tronic producer FaltyDL. The press release tells us Blanco has recently come out of a calming three year relationship, but the album is neither morose nor studiedly reflective. It feels more like a sequel to the playful 2016 debut Mykki. Blanco may be a key transgender presence in hip hop, but rather than preaching, they prefer to entertain, and are not afraid of choruses.The one song that does seem Read more ...
joe.muggs
Greentea Peng is a south Londoner, heavily tattooed, heavily spiritual, heavily anti-establishment, and very, very heavily into basslines. She cuts a singular figure in many ways, but her rebel dub soul style also makes her a particularly British archetype: the next iteration in a lineage starting with Poly Styrene and Ari Up, and running through Neneh Cherry, Tricky and MIA. (Yes, OK, Ari Up was German and MIA is Sri Lankan, but their sound and their cultural fusions could only have happened on this island.) Like each of those artists, she is unmistakeable in sound. One of the most Read more ...
caspar.gomez
INTERLUDE 1: INVALID CODE-AGEDDON6.45 PM on Saturday 22nd May and all is well. Like tens of thousands of others across the UK (or maybe even more?) my wall flatscreen is tuned to Glastonbury’s livestream. Prior to the event itself promos for Water Aid and the like roll by, the kind usually on the huge screens beside the Pyramid Stage at the festival.One of my usual Glastonbury compadres, Finetime, is round, the fridge is loaded with beers, posh bottles of Bordeaux breathe by the radiator. Finetime has made his patent fiery quesadillas, timed for the 7.00 PM start. We’re going to make a right Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Back in the mid-Eighties, BBC television started broadcasting The Rock'n' Roll Years, one of the first rock music retrospectives. Each half-hour episode focused on a year, with news reports and music intermixed to give a revealing look at the development of rock culture against the context of current affairs.That is more or less the basic template employed by the makers of Apple TV+’s new eight-parter, 1971 - The Year that Music Changed Everything, ballooning that half-hour to around about six hours of great music, incredible footage, and more great music. It’s loosely based on David Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Things got out of hand at theartsdesk on Vinyl this month and these reviews run to 10,000 words. That's around a fifth of The Great Gatsby. It's because there's so much good music that deserves the words, from jazz to metal to pure electronic strangeness. That said, this is the last time theartsdesk on Vinyl will reach this kind of ludicrous length. So enjoy it. Dig deep. There's something for everyone. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHThe Fratellis Half Drunk Under a Full Moon (Cooking Vinyl)Look, I’m the first one to gleefully, mercilessly dance on the grave of so-called landfill indie (the wave Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
With all eyes on her in 2018, Jorja Smith’s debut was surprisingly level-headed and mature, filled with the introspection and storytelling of someone twice her age. This new, slender eight-track project feels like a stepping stone in her career rather than a follow up to her acclaimed debut. That being said, it’s a fine collection of songs which finds Jorja in a more world-weary and sombre head space than ever before.The second single “Gone” is an example of Jorja’s evolving storytelling. Backdropped by an elegant beat by Rahki, it’s a song about loss which makes use of narrative positions in Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
From her indie roots to the Grammy-winning angular art-rock of her self-titled 2014 album and the new wave glam of MASSEDUCTION, St Vincent has refused to allow her work to be pigeonholed. Her latest pivot draws from the grit and glamour of early 1970s New York: pay phones and back-street movie theatres, smoking in bars, cheap vinyl records, never writing your screenplay, last night’s high heels in a dirty subway car.It works. It always works because, however radical the so-called reinvention, hers is a collection of interests and inspirations you can imagine in the same space: just behind Read more ...
John Bungey
If you want to understand the psychic harm that prolonged lockdown can do to a man, then take a listen to Van Morrison's new 28-song set. Actually, you don't need to listen, the song titles say enough: “Where Have All the Rebels Gone?”; “Stop Bitching, Do Something”; “Deadbeat Saturday Night”; “They Own the Media”; “Why Are You on Facebook?”While Sir Van's vast catalogue is revered for transcendent love songs and joyous R&B, it also includes a sub-genre of complaint songs (“They Sold Me Out” on Magic Time or “School of Hard Knocks” on Keep it Simple, for example). With the singer stuck at Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Carolyn Crawford’s “Ready or Not Here Comes Love” is a 1971 recording. It sounds like a Motown classic from 1968 or so – a confident lead voice soars over backing vocals, light orchestration and a tight arrangement designed to get feet moving. Most of all, it’s about an instantly memorable melody.Kim Weston’s “It Takes a Lotta Teardrops” is as good. From 1967, it was co-written by Vicki Basemore, a Detroit-based writer who also co-wrote “Ready or Not Here Comes Love” and wrote for Motown too. Weston adopts a pleading tone on a similarly impactful track.Then there’s “The Intruder” by Melvin Read more ...
John Bungey
“I'm growing old,” laments Tom Jones as his 40th studio album draws to a close. Sir Tom is “growing dimmer in the eyes” and “drowsy in my chair”. These blunt observations are not sugared with the mordant humour that, say, Randy Newman or the late Leonard Cohen might apply to a bad case of codgerdom. The only apt listener response to the song "I'm Growing Old" is: “Well you're 80, I guess you are.”Jones's days as a hip-swivelling knicker magnet are fast receding in time's rearview mirror. However, elsewhere on this album Jones does everything in his power to contradict the notion that he'll be Read more ...
Owen Richards
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 ...
Kieron Tyler
The Viscaynes ought to have been a footnote. A minor footnote. From Vallejo in north California, they were one amongst many early Sixties vocal groups giving it a shot. Some were lucky and had hits. The Earls, The Impalas and Randy & The Rainbows did. Like The Marcels, who charted with “Blue Moon”, they were all rooted in the doo wop sound. Despite their three singles – including the Marcels referencing “Yellow Moon” – The Viscaynes did not break through to national success.Nonetheless, Yellow Moon – The Complete Recordings 1961–1962 is a meticulous 19-track compilation dedicated to what Read more ...