New music
Album: X - Smoke & FictionThursday, 01 August 2024
X, although beloved of music journalists, are one of American punk’s most under-acknowledged. They took a tilt at fame in the mid-Eighties with the radio-friendly Ain’t Love Grand album and its lead single “Burning House of Love”, but it wasn’t to... Read more... |
WOMAD Festival 2024 review - exuberant global roots sounds, hippies young and old, and blissful weatherWednesday, 31 July 2024
The weather is perfect. Rare at a festival in this country. The sun shines. Occasional clouds pass. There’s a light breeze. Flamingods are on the Charlie Gillett stage. They are a London-based unit of primarily Bahraini origin who make psychedelic-... Read more... |
Album: Blues Pills - BirthdayWednesday, 31 July 2024
Swedish-American four-piece Blues Pills are new to this writer but have been around since 2011. Their fourth album makes me wonder why.Of its 11 songs, judged purely on sheer pop-rock chops, nine have real legs. If a friend had put Birthday on and... Read more... |
Camp Bestival, Dorset 2024 - magical memories from an enchanting festivalTuesday, 30 July 2024
I sometimes think I’ve done the festival thing the wrong way round. When my babies were at their littlest, we did the big ‘uns – Latitude, Wilderness, Blue Dot, and the like – all family "friendly", but with slightly wilder, bigger, more adulty... Read more... |
Album: Personal Trainer - Still WillingMonday, 29 July 2024
Still Willing opens with “Upper Ferntree Gully,” a seven and three-quarter minute workout twice as long as most of the other nine tracks on Personal Trainer’s second album. A portmanteau piece, its most direct sections have the chug of vintage... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Tomorrow's Fashions - Library Electronica 1972-1987Sunday, 28 July 2024
The conundrum central to library music is that it was not meant to be listened to in any normal way. Yet, in time, this is what happened. What ended up on the albums pressed by companies like Bruton, Chappell, De Wolfe and others was heard by... Read more... |
Album: Meshell Ndegeocello - No More Water: The Gospel of James BaldwinSaturday, 27 July 2024
Meshell Ndegeocello's groundbreaking new album No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin takes you on a musical journey which defies categorisation.Eight years in the making and set for release on 2 August – Baldwin's centennial – the album’s... Read more... |
Album: Isabell Gustafsson-Ny - RosenhagtornFriday, 26 July 2024
In a discussion recently a friend compared generative AI to self-driving cars back in 2017: the makers were convinced, perhaps rightly, that they had solved 99.9% of the problem, and therefore would have a viable product within the year. The problem... Read more... |
Album: 137 - Strangeness OscillationsThursday, 25 July 2024
Something of a jazz supergroup this one: with drum virtuoso, the ubiquitous Seb Rochford, Jim Bar of Get the Blessing, Adrian Utley – formerly of Portishead, a prolific collaborator and producer, but with a heart rooted in jazz, and sax and flute-... Read more... |
10 Questions for DJ-producer Dave ClarkeWednesday, 24 July 2024
Dave Clarke (b. 1968) is, arguably, Britain’s greatest techno DJ. Although, in fact, he has lived in Amsterdam since 2009. He is also a producer of repute. His Red singles of the mid-Nineties are regarded as groundbreaking productions.He followed... Read more... |
Album: The Very Things GXL - Mr Arc-Eye (Under a Cellophane Sky)Wednesday, 24 July 2024
Back in the mid-80s, a group of lads from Worcestershire, who’d previously been known as the Cravats, were putting an exceedingly strange spin on the post-punk sounds of the time.“The Bushes Scream While My Daddy Prunes” and “Mummy You’re a Wreck”... Read more... |
Madeleine Peyroux, Barbican review - a transport of delightTuesday, 23 July 2024
You can take the woman out of the Left Bank, but you can’t take the Left Bank out of the woman. Madeleine Peyroux would be perfectly at home in a boîte in the Latin Quarter, or perhaps Montparnasse. Alas, we were in the sadly unromantic surrounds of... Read more... |
