Americana
CD: Gruff Rhys - BabelsbergWednesday, 06 June 2018
For his fifth solo album (not counting last year’s delayed soundtrack to Set Fire to the Stars) Welsh singer-songwriter and sometime Super Furry frontman Gruff Rhys inhabits an imaginary landscape in order to deal with issues that are all too real.... Read more... |
Joan Baez, Royal Albert Hall review - diamonds, but no rustWednesday, 30 May 2018
2018 has become a year of farewells as a mighty handful of musicians who have, in their different ways, defined popular music bow out. Among them is Joan Baez, a star on the Harvard Square coffeehouse scene when she made her unannounced debut at the... Read more... |
CD: Jennifer Warnes - Another Time, Another PlaceMonday, 28 May 2018
Many will remember Jennifer Warnes as the backing vocalist on a mighty handful of Leonard Cohen albums, and from his touring bands – she was on the 1972 and ’79 European jaunts. The latter was in support of Recent Songs, mocked at the time for its... Read more... |
CD: Gretchen Peters - Dancing with the BeastMonday, 21 May 2018
Gretchen Peters arrived in Nashville in the late eighties from Bronxville, New York, where she was born, and Boulder, Colorado, where she grew up. Within a decade she was writing songs for some of the biggest names in country music, among them... Read more... |
Mary Chapin Carpenter, Barbican, review - a three-decade retrospectiveWednesday, 16 May 2018
Mary Chapin Carpenter lives these days in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where she sits at the kitchen table in her farmhouse and writes songs. “I have a couple of cats and dogs and I’m the hermit who lives down the road,” she explained to a... Read more... |
CD: Laura Veirs - The LookoutMonday, 09 April 2018
Two minutes into The Lookout, a couple of related parallels bubble up when the David Crosby of If I Could Only Remember my Name and Gene Clark at his most sparse spring to mind. It’s not that the album’s opening cut “Margaret Sands” sounds like... Read more... |
News Exclusive: R.E.M. Announce Surprise New Studio AlbumSunday, 01 April 2018
R.E.M. surprised the music world this morning by announcing an imminent new studio album, Charged. It will be released on their own record label, Around The Sun, on Friday 6th April via Spotify and iTunes, as well as a vinyl version distributed... Read more... |
America's Cool Modernism, Ashmolean Museum review - faces of the new cityThursday, 29 March 2018
Hie thee to Oxford, for it is doubtful that we will see the like of this exhibition again this side of the Atlantic. American art of the 1920s and 1930s was once disregarded in its homeland in favour of Francophile superiority, and once it fell into... Read more... |
CD: Owen Broder - HeritageThursday, 29 March 2018
An album that enchants and surprises in equal measure, Heritage sees US sax player and composer Owen Broder explore the full gamut of American roots music – from blues and Appalachian folk to bluegrass and spirituals – through the prism of modern... Read more... |
CD: Mary Chapin Carpenter - Sometimes Just the SkyMonday, 26 March 2018
It rather surprising to note that Mary Chapin Carpenter turned 60 earlier this year, which means she’s been making records for half her life, around in ours for 30 years – but it seems like yesterday. She has wisely resisted the album-a-year... 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. Chapman is... Read more... |
Diana Jones, The Lexington review - at the crossroads of folk and countryWednesday, 14 March 2018
The delicious flame-grilled burgers and the vast array of bourbons on offer at the Lexington, hard by yet another “King's Cross Quarter”, added atmosphere to the opening night of Diana Jones’s European tour. Finger licking is (quite rightly) not... Read more... |
