New Music Reviews
Gregory Porter, Royal Albert Hall review - impressive first night for the Nat King Cole & Me tourTuesday, 03 April 2018
It was 2011 when Gregory Porter made his first London appearances at Pizza Express in Dean Street. That club has a capacity just over 100, and yet it only seems like yesterday. Read more...
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theartsdesk on Vinyl 38: Led Zeppelin, Lissie, Holger Czukay, Gomez, Ringo Starr, Moscoman and moreTuesday, 03 April 2018
Can you find a more extensive and comprehensive rundown of monthly vinyl releases than theartsdesk on Vinyl? We can’t. But then we would say that. Don’t believe us, though; below we surf punk, techno, film soundtracks, folk, major label boxset retrospectives, avant-garde electronica, pop, R&B and tons more. Dive in! VINYL OF THE MONTH Belako Render Me Numb, Trivial Violence (Belako) Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Shirley CollinsSunday, 01 April 2018
“When I was singing at my best, I was the essence of English song. And that was all I ever really wanted.” It’s said without pride and in a matter-of-fact manner. The speaker is Shirley Collins in the documentary The Ballad of Shirley Collins. Issued on DVD in a package with a CD collecting music which defines parts of her world, the film tracks a person balancing certainty about who she is and was with an enviable level-headedness. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: SpiritSunday, 25 March 2018
The press ad for Spirit’s debut album wasn’t shy. “Five came together for a purpose: to blow the sum of man’s musical experience apart and bring it together in more universal forms. They became a single musical being: Spirit. It happens in the first album.” Of the band’s bassist Mark Andes, it declared “the strings are his nerve endings”. Drummer Ed Cassidy apparently “hears tomorrow and he plays it now”. Read more... |
Beth Nielsen Chapman, Cadogan Hall review - Nashville chatsSaturday, 24 March 2018
There were empty seats at Cadogan Hall on Thursday night which was a crying shame, for Beth Nielsen Chapman was in town and she played a wonderful set, full of warmth and charm and powerful singing, her voice always true and expressive. Read more... |
Tim Maia tribute, The Jazz Café review - the Brazilian wild soul legend revival continuesTuesday, 20 March 2018
The packed crowd at the Jazz Café was fired up by a sizzling samba soul band led by Kita Steuer on bass and vocals, singing along to a production line of hits, complete with dynamic brass section and superior percussion. All songs by a singular Brazilian artist, Tim Maia, who died 20 years ago and whose music was being celebrated. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Cocteau TwinsSunday, 18 March 2018
This column last encountered Cocteau Twins in 2015 when the compilation The Pink Opaque and the Tiny Dynamine/Echoes in a Shallow Bay album, which collected two EPs, were reissued on vinyl only. Read more... |
Brit Floyd, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - the old ones are the bestMonday, 12 March 2018
It’s now 24 years since Pink Floyd pretty much stopped being a going concern and 33 since the departure of artistic powerhouse Roger Waters. So, apart from a brief band reunion at 2005’s Live8 concert, Floyd-heads have had little to keep them happy apart from periodic album reissues for the best part of a generation. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Robert KirbySunday, 11 March 2018
The similarity is intentional. The cover design of When the Day is Done – The Orchestrations of Robert Kirby nods explicitly to that of Nick Drake’s debut album Five Leaves Left. That wasn’t just the first record by the singer-songwriter, it was also first time most people heard Kirby’s string arrangements. He and Drake had been friends at Cambridge University. Read more... |
Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox, Roundhouse - hits and missesThursday, 08 March 2018
There are good musical reasons why it might never have occurred to you to wonder how Lady Gaga would sound if adapted by Duke Ellington; Radiohead by Sidney Bechet; or Bruce Springsteen by Frank Sinatra. Read more... |
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