sun 03/08/2025

New Music Reviews

Lucumi Choir, St John's Church, Waterloo

Paul Bradshaw The Lucumi Choir: songs to the Yoruba orishas sung in a Christian church

As we gathered in St John’s Church in Waterloo last Thursday to hear The London Lucumi Choir perform, on the same day people in their thousands were making the pilgrimage to the Church of San Lazaro in Cuba. In that church, just outside Havana, pilgrims walk or sometime crawl the few miles to the Church, often bearing gifts of rum and cigars as penitence.  It is a sign of the times that songs to the orishas – the deities that populate the Yoruba religious pantheon, who all have their...

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Ray Davies, Hammersmith Apollo

Glyn Brown

Ray Davies, that old curmudgeon, has said he’s not keen on touring alone since the demise of The Kinks. But he’s sorted that out for the moment by choosing to play alongside 45 new people – the members of the Crouch End Festival Chorus, with whom Davies has decided to reinterpret his hits. You’d think this could be undiluted lift-music hell: the Mike Sammes Singers trample everything...

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Them Crooked Vultures, Corn Exchange, Edinburgh

graeme Thomson

From the moment the roadies began assembling Dave Grohl’s drum-kit in a manner that resembled the construction of the Queen Mary on Clydeside, it was clear that power was going to be the watchword of last night’s Edinburgh appearance by Them Crooked Vultures, the supergroup that’s threatening to give the term a good name.

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J Mascis, The Garage

Rose Dennen

J Mascis can almost only sound like J Mascis. Comparing the original material of J Mascis and the Fog and the Dinosaur Jr songs he played last night at the Garage in Islington, there's not a huge amount of difference between the bands. His laid-back, almost comatose delivery and very particular song structures stamp his personality onto every song.

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Spiro, Passing Clouds, Dalston

Russ Coffey

A self-styled “string quartet comprising a guitar, fiddle, mandolin and accordion” - welcome to the topsy–turvy world of Spiro. A world where nothing is quite what it seems. A world where up is down, black is white, and folk is, well, kind of avant-garde.

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Battles at Warp Records 20th Birthday, Coronet

Rose Dennen

Everybody needs a daddy and the paternal focus of Battles is their drummer - nothing seems to be done without the say of John Stanier. This is no bad thing, a lynch pin is needed in every rag-tag mob. With Battles, last night, they seemed extremely comfortable in airing new material and, for the first time, fucking with their tried and true older material. Every other time they've played they've played by rote; as on the album as is on stage.

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LAU, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

graeme Thomson

While we’re busy falling over ourselves in the rush to laud the latest beard-and-guitar export from Wisconsin tundra or Williamsburg tenement, it’s easier than ever to undervalue home-grown talent. Lau formed in 2006, a coming together of three British traditional musicians with outstanding individual pedigrees but little in the way of mystique.

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Regina Spektor, Hammersmith Apollo

Robert Sandall Regina Spektor looks up and up

After years of cultish acclaim and enthusiastic reviews, the American singer-songwriter and star of New York's “anti-folk” scene Regina Spektor has now reached a career tipping point where mainstream acceptance beckons - and her detractors begin to sharpen their knives. She is, depending on your taste, either an idiosyncratic, piano-charming genius, or a contrived and slightly irritating kook cut from similar cloth to that of Tori Amos. With her heavy red lipstick and mane of auburn hair she...

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The Posters Came From The Walls, Clapham Picture House

joe Muggs German Depeche Mode fan in video re-enactment costume

In a pirate television (pirate television!) broadcast from 1992, a large group of Russian youths in flat top haircuts and leather jackets discuss Depeche Mode's appeal. “It's romantic style,” suggests one with absolute assurance, “it's music for the lonely.” It is just one touching, funny moment in a film packed with them, but it also sums up what The Posters Came From The Walls is...

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Singles and Downloads 2

Thomas H Green Rihanna's Russian Roulette: an incredibly harrowing but addictive listen

Rihanna, Russian Roulette (Mercury)

I strongly suggest anyone who believes the sound of US mainstream pop is somehow homogenised and safe take another look at the current charts. Standing over them like android colossi are Lady Gaga and Rihanna - who not only look exactly as pop stars were always going to look "in the future", but sound apocalyptically insane. This song is in the standard melodramatic modern power-ballad style of writer/producer Ne-Yo, but...

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