fri 15/08/2025

New Music Reviews

Cutty Cargo presents Jessie Ware, Ely's Yard

joe Muggs

It was a bittersweet kind of evening. Walking down Brick Lane, it was striking how Caucasian, tanned and healthy most people we passed were, and we couldn't help wondering if the Bangladeshi locals were starting to get priced out of their own neighbourhood, while the artists and party-weirdos who ironically made the place such a tourist destination are fading away, sloping off to Dalston and Peckham to continue the gentrification process all over again.

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theartsdesk in Katowice: On tour at Tauron Nowa Muzyka Festival

Caspar Gomez

Day 1

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Eels, Shepherd's Bush Empire

Russ Coffey

The last time Mr E toured these shores he looked as if he might be heralding the end of the world. Dressed all in white with a Moses beard and gangsta bandana, his songs were about inner struggle and personal redemption. Between songs he remained mute and mysterious. How things have changed. This year the band is touring the much fuzzier Wonderful, Glorious and last night Mark Everett hardly shut up.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Roky Erickson

Kieron Tyler

 

Roky Erickson The Evil OneRoky Erickson & the Aliens: The Evil One

Roky Erickson: Don’t Slander Me, Gremlins Have Pictures

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Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Queen Elizabeth Hall

Tom Birchenough

It’s hard to imagine much upstaging Martyn Jacques, the indomitable falsetto frontman of the Tiger Lillies. The gaping mouth of an enormous mythical fish that seems to have swum straight from the canvases of Hieronymus Bosch, projected right across the stage in their new show Rime of the the Ancient Mariner, comes close.

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Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker, Green Note, Camden

Tim Cumming

The Green Note had put up a Sold Out sign on Monday night when Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker stepped in to play a sometimes mesmerising set on the little stage by the door.

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Agnes Obel, St Pancras Old Church

Kieron Tyler

In the half light of a small medieval church tucked behind London's St Pancras Station, a figure in white plays melancholy songs at a grand piano to the accompaniment of a cellist and violinist. This chamber ensemble had an audience of 84. The atmosphere of this special concert contrasted starkly with the close, humid and overhot day which led up to it.

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Electro Anthro Visceral Intensity, The Amersham Arms

joe Muggs

It's always nice when musical events of an overtly academic bent are taken away from the academy: when high-falutin' or exploratory music is made to stand on its own. All right, this show demonstrating new technical innovations by musicians affiliated with the Goldsmiths College Computer Music courses hadn't come that far, being some couple of hundred yards along the road from the college, but the Amersham Arms backroom is more used to rock gigs and raves.

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Björk, Alexandra Palace

Serena Kutchinsky

While Lady Gaga’s conceptual antics left the crowd cold in Camden last Sunday, Björk’s Ally Pally spectacular last night showcased the musical artistry that sets her so far above other female pop pretenders. While Gaga’s affected oddities have always jarred with the mainstream sensibilities of her music, Björk’s strangeness perfectly fits and feeds her sound.

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CD: Gregory Porter - Liquid Spirit

peter Quinn

Gregory Porter's Blue Note debut provides one of the biggest sugar rushes of auditory pleasure you'll hear this year. Grounded in jazz but heavily seasoned with the blues, gospel and soul, it's a superbly paced album, ranging from the poetic tableaux of ballad “When Love Was King” to the unstoppable, hand clapping moto perpetuo of the title track.

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