pop
CD: The Stranglers - GiantsMonday, 05 March 2012
This album caught me completely off guard. The Stranglers work of the late Seventies/early Eighties is classic post-punk pop but their critical and (slight) commercial comeback since 2004’s Norfolk Coast album has been less convincing. Giants,... Read more... |
X Factor Live, Wembley ArenaSunday, 04 March 2012
The X Factor has been rewriting the Gregorian calendar since its inception in September 2004. It’s now more acceptable (nay, expected) for major label pop acts’ careers to fall like dominos after the first year, while at the other end of the scale... Read more... |
Marina and the Diamonds, Shepherds Bush EmpireMonday, 27 February 2012
The way Marina Diamandis was tweeting last year – samples include “I hate pop” and “I want to disappear into a k-hole of Cheetos and beer” – some were half expecting the girl who used to be pop’s Next Big Thing to give up. Not that her debut album,... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Musician Stephin MerrittSaturday, 25 February 2012
For those unfamiliar with his work, Stephin Merritt is like a modern-day Cole Porter: prolific, highly camp, and with a genius for beautifully crafted witty three-minute songs. He performs with the 6ths, The Gothic Archies, Future Bible Heroes as... Read more... |
Oh Land, HeavenFriday, 24 February 2012
Oh Land is Nanna Øland Fabricius. A proper pop star in her native Denmark, based on last night's show there’s no reason why she can’t be one here too. She’s been living in Brooklyn and the international market is clearly in her sights. The... Read more... |
CD: The Ting Tings – Sounds From NowheresvilleThursday, 23 February 2012
It’s four years since their extremely successful debut album. But then again it’s not easy to hone perfect dumb-ass pop music from just two or three major chords while still making it shine like a new gold coin. The art of simplicity is a complex... Read more... |
CD: Air - Le Voyage Dans la LuneMonday, 30 January 2012
A semantic side effect of my longish involvement in music culture has been hearing certain phrases pass from fringe slang obscurity to mainstream acceptance. Among these is the term “chill out”, purloined by ravers from the hippies to describe post-... Read more... |
CD: Ringo Starr - Ringo 2012Sunday, 29 January 2012
If The Wombles had made this it would likely raise a smile despite its lame, lazy nostalgic guitar pop. It even goes as far as to include a feeble version of seminal skiffle song "Rock Island Line". The harsh words it deserves, however, are tempered... Read more... |
CD: Kathleen Edwards - VoyageurSaturday, 14 January 2012
Although a relatively new name around these parts, Kathleen Edwards has been alt-country’s nearly girl for almost a decade in her native Canada (as well as the doyenne of many campus radio stations across the States). But praise goes much further.... Read more... |
CD of the Year: Metronomy - The English RivieraSunday, 25 December 2011
Even in a bumper year for Xmas albums there comes a point where you really don’t “wish it could be Xmas every day”. After the third helping of turkey, and feeling like a cracker that has been well and truly pulled, it’s only natural to long for a... Read more... |
CD of the Year: Lykke Li – Wounded RhymesThursday, 22 December 2011
It could have been Fleet Foxes’s Helplessness Blues, or maybe The War on Drugs’s Slave Ambient, but this is the one that keeps being returned to. Lykke Li’s Wounded Rhymes kept forcing its way to the top of the pile, insisting it had to be heard.... Read more... |
Example, Brighton CentreThursday, 15 December 2011
Example seems a most unlikely sex symbol but the four-fifths full Brighton Centre (capacity 5100) contains multiple gaggles of young women in their late teens and early twenties who want a piece of 29-year-old Elliot Gleave (EG = Example). My pal... Read more... |
