New Music Reviews
Reissue CDs Weekly: Dungen - StadsvandringarSunday, 20 June 2021
Dungen’s October 2005 appearance on Late Night With Conan O'Brien was incongruous. Here was a Swedish band on an independent label, singing in their native language, playing live on coast-to-coast mainstream US TV. The show’s host making a great play in his intro of trying to pronounce their name compounded the sense that this was a band of outsiders which had been mistakenly invited to the banquet. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Screamers - Demo Hollywood 1977Sunday, 13 June 2021
In its first issue of 1979, Melody Maker included an article by Jon Savage on a Los Angeles band named Screamers. “They're ambitious, talented and they want it all NOW,” he wrote. Read more... |
Album: Julian Lage – SquintSaturday, 12 June 2021
Expectations are high with Julian Lage; they always have been. The guitarist is one of the special ones: born on Christmas Day (1987)...appearing with Carlos Santana at age seven... a documentary made about him at eight...clocked by Gary Burton at the Grammy awards at the cusp of his teens...and performing in Burton’s group at an age when he still needed parental chaperoning. Read more... |
Dark Days, Luminous Nights, Manchester Collective, The White Hotel, Salford review - a sense of HadesTuesday, 08 June 2021
Did you wonder what all those creative musicians and artists did when they couldn’t perform in public last winter? Some of them started making films. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Donovan - Hurdy Gurdy SongsSunday, 06 June 2021
Early last month, Donovan issued his extraordinary new single “I am the Shaman”. Recorded at David Lynch’s Los Angeles studio, it was produced by the polymath director and fellow transcendental meditation devotee. The accompanying video was also directed by Lynch. The powerful “I am the Shaman” haunts. It also confirms that Donovan remains an active force. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The Loft - Ghost Trains & Country LanesSunday, 30 May 2021
“All the best bits of Dylan and the Velvets with a post-punk Eighties edge to it.” That’s how Alan McGee described The Loft to NME in November 1984. Their first single, “Why Does the Rain”, had come out on his Creation label that September. Their next, “Up the Hill and Down the Slope”, arrived in April 1985. Read more... |
London Bulgarian Choir, Kings Place review - dark Slavic tales in waves of soundTuesday, 25 May 2021
So, blinking, after too much isolation, into a spring evening for a first live indoor gig for over a year was always going to be exciting, if just for novelty value. But for a gentle breaking-in to live music, the London Bulgarian Choir was an inspiring choice. Read more... |
1971, Apple TV+ review - rock'n'roll's golden year?Sunday, 23 May 2021
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. Read more... |
Live is Alive!, Brighton Festival 2021 review - local talent makes for snappy return to gig-landSaturday, 22 May 2021
The idea live music is back is worth shouting about. Indeed, the BBC News has been doing just that about this gig. In reality, though, while it’s a joy to be out (this is my first major venue concert for a year-and-a-half), Live is Alive is a stepping stone towards a ‘proper’ gig, rather than the real deal. The Brighton Dome is less than half full, the moshpit set with cabaret-style tables, everyone socially distanced. Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 64: Chet Baker, Lava La Rue, Bob Mould, Krust, The Yardbirds, The Fratellis and moreMonday, 17 May 2021
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. Read more... |
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