New music
First Person: rising folk star Amelia Coburn on her French inspirationThursday, 01 May 2025
“Sandra” is one of my favourite tracks from my album Between The Moon and the Milkman which was released last year. While living in Paris a few years ago I shared a flat with an older French lady. We loved to chat every night when I came home... Read more... |
Adrian Utley / Eddie Henderson Project, Ronnie Scott's review - beyond fusionThursday, 01 May 2025
On the eve of recording an album at Real World Studios, guitarist Adrian Utley and the American trumpet player Eddie Henderson brought their “project” to the hallowed ground of Ronnie Scott’s in Soho, along with four other top-class British... Read more... |
Album: Suzanne Vega - Flying With AngelsThursday, 01 May 2025
Wow, can it really be 40 years since Solitude Standing, the second studio album by Suzanne Vega who put the 1980s folk revival on the map. “Fast folk” the New York scene was called, and its voices emerged from much the same Greenwich Village cafes... Read more... |
Album: Lael Neale - Altogether StrangerWednesday, 30 April 2025
Over its crisp 32 minutes and nine songs, Altogether Stranger embraces electropop, lo-fi terrain and gothic solo contemplation. By deconstructing modern R&B, the upbeat “Come on” is as close as it gets to pop’s mainstream. The unifying factors... Read more... |
Album: Car Seat Headrest - The ScholarsMonday, 28 April 2025
Following a tradition that reaches back to the The Who’s Tommy, bands and musicians with serious artistic ambition have created rock operas, reaching beyond the thematic explorations pioneered in concept albums a form that transcends the limits of... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Hamburg RepertoireSunday, 27 April 2025
The blurb on the front of the double-CD set The Hamburg Repertoire says it collects “The original recordings of songs performed by The Beatles on stage in Hamburg.” Disc One opens with Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally.” Disc Two ends with Chet... Read more... |
Album: Dr Robert & Matt Deighton - The Instant GardenSaturday, 26 April 2025
There’s this mod milieu, harking back to the Eighties. Weller at the forefront; Dr Robert and his Blow Monkeys; all righteously hate Thatcher; then the electronically groovy 1990s arrive; Acid Jazz Records; boss mod Eddie Piller; his collection of... Read more... |
Album: Self Esteem - A Complicated WomanFriday, 25 April 2025
Given that Prioritise Pleasure was Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s (RLT) Back to Black, and that there’s been a lengthy wait for this new release, it’s no wonder that there’s so much anticipation around A Complicated Woman. Add to the mix... Read more... |
Album: Jenny Hval - Iris Silver MistThursday, 24 April 2025
Had I read the contextual blurb about Jenny Hval's latest album first, I might have assumed it was a perfume company collaboration. The album is named after a fragrance created by renowned perfumer Maurice Roucel for French house Serge Lutens, a... Read more... |
Album: Billy Idol - Dream Into ItWednesday, 23 April 2025
There’s always been a goofy charm about Billy Idol. As an implausibly chiselled Adonis shining out from the deliberate ugliness of the original London punk scene, he was a misfit among misfits. As a pop star through the ‘80s, he was visibly so... Read more... |
Album: Viagra Boys - Viagr AboysMonday, 21 April 2025
Sweden’s most gloriously unhinged export is back, and Viagr Aboys might just be Viagra Boys at their most fun, feral and fully realised. This album doesn’t try to out-clever the world; it grabs it by the collar, shakes it around, and laughs in its... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: 1001 Est CrémazieSunday, 20 April 2025
It would have been hard to pick up a copy of the album credited to and titled 1001 Est Crémazie in 1975. Just 500 copies were pressed. It didn’t reach shops but was circulated amongst the musicians playing on it, their friends, families and fellow... Read more... |
