Americana
Hatfields & McCoys, Channel 5Thursday, 01 November 2012
This factually-based saga of two feuding families in the woods and mountains of Kentucky and West Virginia might not look too prepossessing on paper, but two episodes in, Hatfields & McCoys is starting to grip like a knotted rope. The... Read more... |
CD: Titus Andronicus - Local BusinessSunday, 21 October 2012
The concept album can be a tricky beast; Titus Andronicus’s 2010 epic The Monitor more so than most. How to follow up an album that loosely ties your frontman’s break-up to the American Civil War, complete with spoken-word interludes voiced by... Read more... |
CD: Sera Cahoone - Deer Creek CanyonWednesday, 03 October 2012
There are, roughly speaking, two types of record. There are the ones that it is hard to consider as anything other than a complete unit - gimmicky concept records or complex themes, tracks that ebb and flow and blend together as if making a mockery... Read more... |
Van Dyke Parks, Britten Sinfonia, BarbicanSunday, 24 June 2012
“America treats its musical titans as disposable, and I’m not disposable.” Coming from anyone else, Van Dykes Parks’ declaration last night might have been self-aggrandising. Parks is 69, but he could have said this during any of the last four... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Can, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Dreamboats & PetticoatsSunday, 17 June 2012
Can: The Lost TapesKieron TylerDespite being compiled from previously unreleased material, the extraordinary The Lost Tapes is as wonderful as last year's 40th Anniversary edition of Tago Mago. This archive trawl outpaces previous exhumations like... Read more... |
Calexico plot September release, London tripThursday, 07 June 2012Country-fusion legends Calexico are to release their sixth album, Algiers, on 10th September. Named for the neighbourhood in New Orleans in which it was recorded, the band claim that the influences of their surroundings have seeped into the album's... Read more... |
Simone Felice, Electric Circus, EdinburghThursday, 12 April 2012
Nothing tests an artist’s mettle more severely than having to negotiate a full-blown case of tech-horror. Half way through the third number last night, a particularly sweet version of “Summer Morning Rain“, an ear-scorching sonic car crash brought... Read more... |
Low, Royal Festival HallWednesday, 04 April 2012
Low don’t really look as though they’re given to ostentatious display. With their black shirts, polished footwear and sensible haircuts, they could be waiting staff in a formal restaurant. One with a lot of dark wood and banquettes. The Hendrix-like... Read more... |
The Civil Wars, Shepherd's Bush EmpireWednesday, 21 March 2012
The Civil Wars are one of those bands rendered suddenly white hot in the UK by a classy performance on Later with Jools Holland. They’re a photogenic country-ish acoustic singer-songwriter pairing whose style is just un-country enough to fit neatly... Read more... |
CD: Carolina Chocolate Drops - Leaving EdenSaturday, 25 February 2012
The fourth album by Carolina Chocolate Drops, the old-time string and jug band with 21st-century attitude, fizzes with their characteristic energy. They’re essentially a live band, great communicators and purveyors of a musical style that was... Read more... |
Carolina Chocolate Drops: Leaving Eden and Moving OnMonday, 20 February 2012
Something falls with a clatter from one of Dom Flemons’s pockets. The Carolina Chocolate Drops’s banjo player, guitarist and all-round picker and plucker has a lot of pockets. Earlier, he’d produced a pipe from one, a tobacco pouch and tuning pipes... Read more... |
CD: Band of Skulls - Sweet SourWednesday, 15 February 2012
The credibility of blues-rock has ebbed and flowed wildly for 40 years. Once upon a time it was simply the common currency for all major British and American rock bands, as exemplified by Led Zeppelin. Punk’s Seventies heyday put the kybosh on all... Read more... |
