rock
CD: Neil Young and Crazy Horse - AmericanaMonday, 04 June 2012
Ever since their original collaboration on 1969's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Neil Young and Crazy Horse have made music that sounded as old as the hills. Primitive and funky, they reduce rock to its raw materials, without flash or frills or... Read more... |
White Denim, HMV ForumWednesday, 23 May 2012
When these blazin’ psychedelic jazzers first landed here from Austin in 2007, there’d already been four or five years’ worth of herky-jerky cod-post-punk-reviving going on, way past the point of overdose, but White Denim were different, and... Read more... |
CD: The Cult - Choice of WeaponSunday, 20 May 2012
The end had long been nigh for The Cult, when it first came in 1995. It wasn’t just the booze and the arrival of grunge. It was as much that smart-arse Brit Pop was never going to have much truck with a man who called himself Wolf Child and wrote... Read more... |
CD: Garbage - Not Your Kind of PeopleSaturday, 12 May 2012
As a teenager in the 1990s, there were two female-fronted bands that occupied my heart and my attention. Although I’d never have called Garbage my favourites, thanks to flame-haired Scottish frontwoman Shirley Manson it was fair to say that I felt... Read more... |
CD: Keane - StrangelandSunday, 06 May 2012
To recap the Keane story so far: in 2004 three precocious middle-class boys stormed the charts with bland anthemic radio-friendly rock that used no guitars. Over the next six years, they then went on to experience the kind of growth that George... Read more... |
Bow Wow Wow, Islington AcademyTuesday, 01 May 2012
It’s hard to think of any other records as exuberantly hedonistic as the handful of singles this London band rattled off at the beginning of the 1980s. Yes, they were accompanied by the then necessary punk sneer which said, This is all strictly... Read more... |
Ian Anderson, Hammersmith ApolloSaturday, 28 April 2012
This may be the Thick as a Brick 2 tour, but it’s also the 44th year of Ian Anderson’s performing career, mainly as Jethro Tull's front man. In that role he's variously been a bluesman, a rocker and a folkie.1972's Thick as a Brick was dubbed a "... Read more... |
Gomez, KokoTuesday, 24 April 2012
Some say that since Gomez beat Pulp to win 1998’s Mercury award, their progress has been a little disappointing. After two or three albums their infectious frazzled blues became replaced by anodyne AOR, until eventually all their wild innocence had... Read more... |
CD: Jack White - BlunderbussFriday, 20 April 2012
Sometimes I feel I’m the only one who finds Jack White’s music overrated. Although he's undeniably a prodigious axe man, I've never found his trademark raw, “underproduced” sound as convincing. That, however, was The White Stripes and The Raconteurs... Read more... |
Sweet Home Alabama: the Southern Rock Saga, BBC FourSaturday, 14 April 2012
“Suddenly, all America wants to be a redneck”. That might be slightly overstating the impact of southern rock on American culture. Californian ex-actor Ronald Reagan becoming president in the footsteps of Georgia’s Jimmy Carter suggests it’s an... Read more... |
UK Festivals Guide 2012Thursday, 05 April 2012
The Queen's given everyone an extra bank holiday, so while you rest up over the Easter holidays, start planning your next downtime with theartsdesk's definitive clickable festival guide for the summer. We have headline listings and links for all the... Read more... |
CD: Amadou & Mariam - FolilaTuesday, 03 April 2012
With the subject of the legitimacy of the label “world music” having just had another airing in The Guardian, it seems fitting that Mali’s favourite musical couple should be releasing their least “world music” album to date. For essentially, ... Read more... |
