Reviews
Inside Reviews
Album: Coldplay, Mylo Xyloto (Parlophone) (Rated 2/ 5 )
Friday, 21 October 2011
Generally speaking, the more producers involved with an album, the less distinctively defined its contours, the various opinions tending to nullify the more extreme ideas.
Album: Maverick Sabre, Lonely Are the Brave (Mercury) (Rated 3/ 5 )
Friday, 21 October 2011
Soul-rapper Maverick Sabre has steadily built a devoted following, as witness the Jazz Cafe audience enthusiastically singing along with "They Found Him a Gun", the bonus track concluding Lonely Are the Brave.
Album: Tom Waits, Bad As Me (Anti-) (Rated 5/ 5 )
Friday, 21 October 2011
On what is inarguably Tom Waits's best album since Rain Dogs a quarter of a century ago, he strolls assuredly across the landscape of American music, turning his hand with equal facility to an extraordinary range of styles, and managing to invent one or two of his own along the way. It must be wonderful to exercise such protean command over one's art, and it's immensely satisfying to witness it wielded by a musician of such remorseless integrity.
Album: Kami Thompson, Love Lies (Warner Music) (Rated 3/ 5 )
Friday, 21 October 2011
If you didn't know Kami Thompson was a scion of the noted folk family – daughter to Richard and Linda, sister to Teddy – you could instantly tell, not just by the characteristic filigree of skirling, subtly bent notes in her dad's guitar solo on the opening track, but also by the pervasive affinity for heartbreak and melancholy.
Album: Dirty Projectors with Bjork, Mount Wittenberg Orca (Domino) (Rated 4/ 5 )
Friday, 21 October 2011
Originally available solely as a charitable download last year, Dirty Projectors' collaboration with Björk finally receives a physical release, a welcome compensation for those who, like me, found her own Biophilia a touch too amorphous to enjoy.
Feist, London Palladium (Rated 4/ 5 )
Friday, 21 October 2011
Who are you calling twee? A wizard, wired performance from the feisty queen of alt-folk
Album: Kelly Clarkson, Stronger (RCA) (Rated 1/ 5 )
Friday, 21 October 2011
As the winner of the inaugural American Idol series in 2002, Kelly Clarkson has managed to sustain her singing career with far greater success than most talent-show contestants; though it's hard to see why anyone would want to own another of her albums besides Breakaway.
Ghostpoet, Scala, London (Rated 4/ 5 )
Thursday, 20 October 2011
Entranced by the haunting melodies of a master rapper
Gruff Rhys, Shepherd's Bush Empire, London (Rated 3/ 5 )
Wednesday, 19 October 2011
If Gruff Rhys wasn't the leader of Britain's premier freak-out pop collective, Super Furry Animals, or if he was an occasional exotic US visitor, his solo sounds would inspire cult reverence. Of course, it's all one to Rhys: the Super Furries, the collaborative concept album about 1980s DeLorean cars as Neon Neon, the record of rough psychedelic mantras with the sometime Sao Paolo video repairman Tony Da Gatorra, and a feature documentary about the Welsh in Patagonia. As with his friend Damon Albarn, this isn't a career so much as a freewheeling exploration.
The Horrors, Roundhouse, London (Rated 3/ 5 )
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
Beyond his role as singer, Faris Badwan has only one message for his band's newly expanded fanbase: "If you've come for conversation, you've come to the wrong place." The Horrors are happy to be a commercial success, but without turning into Coldplay.
Iron and Wine, Shepherd's Bush Empire, London (Rated 3/ 5 )
Monday, 17 October 2011
Far from a vintage show as the Iron man pumps up the volume
Katy Perry, Motorpoint Arena, Sheffield
Brett Anderson, Club Academy, Manchester
Sunday, 16 October 2011
Who is Katy Perry? And do we really care?
Album: Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds (Sour Mash)
Sunday, 16 October 2011
Well, he's really torn up the rulebook this time.
Album: Shonen Knife, Osaka Ramones (Damnably)
Sunday, 16 October 2011
If there's anyone who can get away with wearing Ramones T-shirts without being suspected of Topshop cluelessness, it's Shonen Knife.
Album: Sezen Aksu, Optum (World Village)
Sunday, 16 October 2011
On Thursday night, London's Royal Albert Hall will be packed out for the singer dubbed the "Turkish Madonna".
Album: Wadada Leo Smith's Organic, Heart's Reflection (Cuneiform)
Sunday, 16 October 2011
The astonishing 20-minute opening track might be called "Don Cherry's Electric Sonic Garden", but it's the wheedling tone and furious backbeat of the late Miles Davis that veteran free-jazz trumpeter Smith makes you think of most.
Album: Shelby Lynne, Revelation Road (Everso / Proper)
Sunday, 16 October 2011
The albums since 1999's I Am Shelby Lynne have been, to put it kindly, a mixed bag of the over-egged and the under-whelming.
Album: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Soul Time (Daptone)
Sunday, 16 October 2011
The latest by Brooklyn's queen of soul starts a little dispiritingly with two JBs-style funk numbers, while what you want from Shazza is anguish.
Album: M83, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming (Naive)
Sunday, 16 October 2011
Anthony Gonzales made a giant leap pop-wards with Saturdays = Youth, and now he's taken it even further.
Album: Lisbee Stainton, Go (Western Songs)
Sunday, 16 October 2011
Light, acoustic, melodic, earnestly upful pop such as this might seem destined for yogurt ads on telly, but it only seems that way.
Album: Various artists, The Legendary Studio One records 1963-80 (Soul Jazz)
Sunday, 16 October 2011
An 18-track survey of C S Dodd's great label, to accompany a handsome volume dedicated to the cover art.
The Kooks, Brixton Academy, London (Rated 3/ 5 )
Friday, 14 October 2011
A lot of the people in the audience had grown up with The Kooks. They probably had their first kiss listening to "By My Side", got drunk for the first time in a club dancing to "Eddie's Gun", then had their hearts broken and listened to "Seaside" and "Love It All" for weeks on repeat. Five years on from the Kooks' debut album, Inside In/Inside out, they were seeking nostalgia. They got it in buckets.
Album: Various artists, Listen to Me Buddy Holly (Rated 2/ 5 )
Friday, 14 October 2011
This is the second tribute album of cover versions commemorating the 75th anniversary of Buddy Holly's birth released in just a few months; and sad to say, it lacks even the mild potency of Rave On Buddy Holly.
Album: Naomi Bedford, Tales from the Weeping Willow (Rated 4/ 5 )
Friday, 14 October 2011
The subtitle to Naomi Bedford's second album, "Songs of Murder, Death and Sorrow", leaves little room for doubt or argument. There are no happy endings here, and scant regard for gentler sensibilities, whether Bedford's telling the gruesome tale of "Lord Thomas and Fair Ellendor" or the sadder, sicker account of the Essex millionaire who, facing ruin, killed his family, in "Daddy's Got a Gun". Set to banjo and astringent fiddle, it's animated by Bedford's tremulous voice, a striking instrument with skillful touches of vibrato and melisma capable of transforming Warren Zevon's mythopoeic mercenary ballad "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" into a trad-folk parable. Best of all is "My Love Is Deep", a murder duet with Justin Currie set to a hissing loop and ramshackle piano. Brilliant and original, in equal parts.
Album: Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds (Rated 3/ 5 )
Friday, 14 October 2011
This is apparently the first of two completed albums Noel Gallagher has readied for release. The other, a collaboration with studio duo Amorphous Androgynous, will follow next year, and it's to be hoped it has a touch more sparkle and sonic invention than Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, which, while not a bad effort, doesn't exactly set the heart racing.
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