pop music
Album: Toyah - Posh PopWednesday, 25 August 2021
Toyah, always a one-off, has been a surprise star of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Her YouTube Sunday Lunches, kitchen-filmed cover versions with her husband, King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, have been celebratory shared moments, jaunty, unlikely, silly,... Read more... |
The Beach Boys: Feel Flows - the Sunflower and Surf's Up Sessions 1969-1971Monday, 23 August 2021
“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... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The Merseybeats, The SorrowsSunday, 15 August 2021
After a band’s back catalogue has been reissued countless times, any new release needs a fresh approach to attract attention. Archives and collections can be scoured to find previously unissued tracks. There might be otherwise unknown recordings... Read more... |
Album: Golden Child - Game ChangerSaturday, 07 August 2021
This second full-length album from South Korean 10-piece Golden Child moves seamlessly from pop balladry to anthemic EDM without ever losing its footing.With ghostly, submerged bell noises, ominous-sounding low brass, joined by strings and pounding... Read more... |
The Sparks Brothers review - giddy celebration of the Mael brothersSaturday, 31 July 2021
How lovely it must be to direct a documentary about your favourite musicians and have no one stop you from cramming in everyone who has ever loved them too. The British director Edgar Wright, best known for his feature films (including Hot Fuzz,... Read more... |
Album: Willow - Lately I Feel EverythingMonday, 26 July 2021
Willow Smith has done more during her life than the average 20-year-old. The daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith, she bounced off her childhood appearance in her father’s film I Am Legend to a No 2 UK hit with “Whip My Hair” a decade ago,... Read more... |
Album: Anne-Marie - TherapySaturday, 24 July 2021
Anne-Marie Nicholson is a hard-working young woman from Essex whose career description is “Global Girl-next-door Pop Star”. She has incrementally worked her way there, attended the marketing meetings. Anyone requiring a CV that exemplifies the... Read more... |
Album: Gary Kemp - InsoloWednesday, 14 July 2021
Spandau Ballet started well, their slick, slightly angular pop-funk adding a certain something to early Eighties new romantic frippery. Later, especially with the success of global schmaltz-smash “True”, they lost what teeth they had, drifting into... Read more... |
Album: Tones and I - Welcome to the MadhouseSaturday, 10 July 2021
This writer has often pleaded to move away from vocal homogeny in pop. The current value placed on technical skill and hackneyed vulnerability-signifying has become a bore. It’s limiting that Chris Martin-meets-Ed Sheeran or Beyoncé-meets-Whitney... Read more... |
Album: Jam & Lewis - Vol. 1Friday, 09 July 2021
It’s kind of surprising Jimmy “Jam” Harris and Terry Lewis have never made an album as Jam & Lewis per se before now. The two have conquered the world, more or less: their band The Time was Prince’s regular support act in his breakthrough years... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Yardbirds - YardbirdsSunday, 04 July 2021
Instability coursed through the Yardbirds in 1966. When their first studio album Yardbirds was issued in July, the band seen on stage was not the one which had made the album. Bassist and in-house producer Paul Samwell-Smith had left between its... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 65: Solomun, Black Sabbath, Trojan Records, The Creation, Seefeel, Motörhead and moreThursday, 01 July 2021
The latest edition of theartsdesk on Vinyl combines the best new sounds on plastic with the vinyl reissues that are pressing buttons. Ranging from heavy rockin’ book-style boxsets to the funkiest summertime 7”s, all musical life is here. Dive in.... Read more... |
