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Album: Imelda May - 11 Past the HourTuesday, 13 April 2021
11 Past the Hour opens with its title song, a delicious, twangy, string-laden Nancy Sinatra Bond theme that never was. The album closes with a lyrically empowered torch song, “Never Look Back”, which rises and rises over a marching band drum tattoo... Read more... |
Album: Black Honey - Written & DirectedThursday, 18 March 2021
Indie rock has taken a commercial back seat, even if the music press still hasn’t quite caught up. Sure, there have been hit-makers, and bands that sell out stadiums, but overall, indie’s tide is very slowly retreating. Like any genre, it will... Read more... |
Disc of the Day 10th Anniversary: the level playing fieldFriday, 19 February 2021
Theartsdesk is a labour of love. Bloody-mindedly run as a co-operative of journalists from the beginning, our obsession with maintaining a daily-updated platform for good culture writing has caused a good few grey and lost hairs over the years. But... Read more... |
Album: Steve Hackett - Under A Mediterranean SkyWednesday, 27 January 2021
Never have the early months of the year felt more cruel. Escape is what we all yearn for – from home, from ourselves and our shrunken lives. Never has music been more important to us and, over the last few days, I’ve had Steve Hackett’s new... Read more... |
Album: Skyway Man - The World Only Ends When You DieFriday, 15 January 2021
When the concept album first properly took flight, in the late 1960s, before it became slave to the bloated artifice of prog-rock, it was an extension of the LSD-soaked times: “Songs aren’t big enough, man, I need a bigger canvas!” Famed albums by... Read more... |
Album: Kitchman/Schmidt - As Long As Songbirds SingSaturday, 21 November 2020
I really wanted to like this album – indeed, from a short sample, I thought I would love it. But while there are indeed some lovely moments, repeated listenings fail to persuade me of anything other than two good musicians with evident talents who... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Henrique Oswald, Saint-Saëns, Tilson Thomas, Smaro GregoriadouSaturday, 24 October 2020
Henrique Oswald: Piano Concerto, Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No. 5 Clélia Iruzun (piano), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Jac van Steen (Somm)You can never have enough of Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 5, a piece tailor-made to soothe and... Read more... |
Album: Melody Gardot - Sunset in the BlueThursday, 22 October 2020
What a pick-me-up this album is. Released as the days darken, literally and metaphorically, it’s a real joy – a transport of delight to dappled squares in Paris or Lisbon, or a street party in Rio. Sunset in the Blue is billed as “an orchestral... Read more... |
Hendrix and the Spook review - a search for clarity in murky watersSaturday, 19 September 2020
September 18th is the 50th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’s death, an appropriate moment to release Hendrix and the Spook, a documentary exploring the vexed question: was it murder, suicide or a tragic accident? Trying to unravel this conundrum,... Read more... |
Album: Nadine Shah – Kitchen SinkThursday, 25 June 2020
Why don’t you have children? Why aren’t you married? Why don’t you own your own home? Why are you a failure? These are the societally enforced questions that, as a 34-year-old woman, Nadine Shah finds inescapable. Much like the rest of us. When... Read more... |
Album: Michael Franti & Spearhead - Work Hard & Be NiceTuesday, 16 June 2020
It’s over 30 years since Michael Franti entered the public arena, howling “Television – drug of the nation” backed by harsh, industrial sounds and explosive beats, as frontman for the Beatnigs. He then produced the Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales... Read more... |
Echo in the Canyon review – California droopin'Saturday, 13 June 2020
Echo in the Canyon is a lamentably thin documentary about the vibrant folk-rock music scene that flourished in the bohemian Los Angeles neighbourhood of Laurel Canyon from 1965 to 1967. Though it features priceless vintage footage of the Beach Boys... Read more... |
