sat 17/05/2025

New Music Reviews

Reissue CDs Weekly: Goldie & the Gingerbreads - Thinking About The Good Times

Kieron Tyler

In October 1964, New York’s Goldie & the Gingerbreads boarded the RMS Mauretania for Southampton. In the midst of the British Invasion, they were taking on the beat boom at its coal face.

Read more...

Blade Runner, Avex Ensemble, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - synths synced to screen

Miranda Heggie

"I've seen things you people wouldn’t believe." It’s one of the most famous lines from Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner, though in the past 18 months we’ve all seen things we would not have believed back at the start of 2020, when I originally secured my tickets for this show that had been scheduled for 26 March 2020.

Read more...

Nadine Shah, Winterstoke Sun Shelter, Ramsgate review - a thrilling return in a stunning venue

Kathryn Reilly

Hilarious, potty-mouthed and mesmerisingly beautiful, Nadine Shah is on superb form at the Ramsgate Festival of Sound’s closing evening show. And aside from the banter there is, of course, that remarkable voice – hugely powerful and somehow perfectly suited to this enchanting outdoor venue.

Read more...

Reissue CDs Weekly: Laura Nyro - American Dreamer

Kieron Tyler

“She is a 20-year-old white New Yorker who sings like a 55-year-old black lady from Mississippi.

Read more...

Reissue CDs Weekly: Leslie Winer - When I Hit You, You’ll Feel It

Kieron Tyler

When I Hit You - You’ll Feel It opens with “When I Was Walt Whitman”. A French-language answer-phone message is abruptly cut off by a massive-sounding percussive pulse over which a borderline menacing voice enigmatically murmurs words which are hard to make out.

Read more...

Edinburgh International Festival 2021: Anna Meredith

Miranda Heggie

She’s an artist who’s impossible to define. Producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist, Anna Meredith has a musical mind that cannot keep still. Her latest studio album, Fibs, which was released in 2019, is a genre-defying blend of electronic and acoustic music, conceived with raw zeal, true artistic integrity, and a huge sense of fun.

Read more...

The Beach Boys: Feel Flows - the Sunflower and Surf's Up Sessions 1969-1971

Adam Sweeting

“Add some music to your day,” the Beach Boys urged in their song of the same name, from their 1970 album Sunflower. There’s far more than a day’s worth of music included on this immense five-CD package, which scrutinises the turn-of-the Seventies Beach Boys in miniscule detail as they made the awkward transition from their California surf-and-sand past to a more diffuse, more democratic and in many ways more interesting group.

Read more...

Reissue CD Weekly: Iggy and the Stooges - Born In A Trailer

Kieron Tyler

Despite their implosion three years earlier, 1977 was a good year for The Stooges. The CBS budget label Embassy reissued their 1973 Raw Power album in the wake of their songs cropping up in the repertoires of The Damned and Sex Pistols.

Read more...

Edinburgh International Festival 2021: traditional music round-up review

Miranda Heggie

Following on from last year’s online-only My Light Shines On programme, traditional music features heavily in the 2021 Edinburgh International Festival, with a series of live performances taking place outdoors, in the quad of Edinburgh University's Old College (pictured below).

Read more...

Bloodstock Festival 2021 review - UK metalheads descend on Derbyshire and bring the noise

Guy Oddy

Here we are, deep in the second summer of Covid-19 and the UK music festival industry is still giving the impression of being on life support. Yet again, there’s been no Glastonbury, no Womad and not even the return of the Supersonic Festival.

Read more...

Pages

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

Magic Farm review - numpties from the Nineties

There’s nothing more healthy than dissing your own dad, and filmmaker Amalia Ulman says that her old man was “a Gen X deadbeat edgelord skater”...

The Great Escape Festival 2025, Brighton review - a dip into...

As every social space in Brighton once again transforms into a mire of self-important music biz sorts loudly bellowing about “waterfalling on...

theartsdesk Q&A: Zoë Telford on playing a stressed-out p...

If you compiled a list of favourite TV series from the last couple of decades, you’d find that Zoë Telford has appeared in most of them. The...

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Wigmore Hall review - too big a splash...

It was a daring idea to mark Ravel’s 150th birthday year with a single concert packing in all his works for solo piano. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet knows...

Good One review - a life lesson in the wild with her dad and...

Good One is a generation-and-gender gap drama that mostly unfolds during a weekend hiking and camping trip in the Catskills Forest...

E.1027 - Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea review - dull...

It’s hard to say who is going to enjoy E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea. Admirers of the modernist designer-architect will...

Album: Rico Nasty - LETHAL

Rico Nasty’s new album LETHAL signals a shift in direction, but whether it is a bold evolution or a step towards something less distinct...

The Marching Band review - what's the French for '...

In Emmanuel Courcol’s drama The Marching Band (En Fanfare in French, and also released as My Brother's Band), a...