MUSIC: News
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We are told: Already a big draw in Australia and the UK, AC/DC were determined to crack the United States in 1977. Having replaced bassist Mark Evans with Cliff Williams in June, they headed over there to promote their new Let There Be Rock album, performing in many small clubs, as well as supporting bigger […]
The director of the Marian Consort Rory McCleery talks to Editor Martin Cullingford about the ensemble’s latest recording, ‘Music for the Queen of Heaven’, an album of modern Marian motets, many of which were commissioned by the choir. The album is ….. Continues HERE
HELEN BROWN: When the news of Christine McVie’s death broke yesterday, radio stations around the world queued up her 1987 hit, “Everywhere”. The song’s sparkling synths will have shimmered from a thousand car radios and supermarket speakers, sending tiny, shiny bubbles of love and anticipation fizzing into the midweek mood. Paces will have picked up […]
MALCOLM JACK: Electric shock of voluminously frazzled hair, baggily dressed in what else but black, the Cure’s singer, songwriter and guitarist Robert Smith is one of those rare rock stars whom you can recognise even in silhouette. His band’s shadowy yet anthemic music – comfortably the creepiest thing to crawl out of ….. Read more […]
ERICA JEAL: I love this music and no-one seems to play it.” It’s only a slight exaggeration on Leif Ove Andsnes’s part to say that about Dvořák’s Poetic Tone Pictures; this beautifully recorded release is one of only a handful available, and he is the highest profile of today’s pianists to have recorded this baker’s […]
‘Diamantes’ was originally created for a tour of South America in 2014. It combines Spanish language songs culled from the 1988 recording, ‘Diamonds and Rust in the Bullring,’ with some concert favourites and two newly recorded Portuguese songs, “O’Cangaceiro” and “Ate Amanha/Te Ador”. Six of the tracks – “God Is God” (penned by Steve Earle), […]
Acclaimed director John Hillcoat has made a video for a song from Johnny Cash’s forthcoming ‘lost’ album. The film-maker John Hillcoat is listing the things about Johnny Cash that appeal to him. It’s quite a list, from his distinctive voice and constant championing of the underdog to the way he’d play guitar (“he’d string it […]
HADLEY FREEMAN The singer/songwriter, best known for Werewolves of London, died 10 years ago next month. His family and friends, including the writer Stephen King, explain why, despite his dark side, they still miss him. Warren Zevon, who died a decade ago this September at the far-too-premature age of 56, was a singer, a songwriter […]
CHARLOTTE HIGGINS: England no longer values the profound, weird art of opera – and that leaves us all poorer I n Kyiv, daily performances at the National Opera of Ukraine are acts of brave defiance against the Russian invasion. They symbolise what the country is fighting for: life, culture. In Britain, untouched by war, we […]
ALEXIS PETRIDES: Wilko Johnson’s second act was every bit as belligerent and explosive as his first Before a miraculous recovery from cancer made him more famous than ever, the Dr Feelgood guitarist fired up 70s rock with proto-punk playing and divisive songwriting Read more HERE
A rare live recording of one of Stephen Sondheim’s earliest musicals has been discovered on a bookshelf in the US city of Milwaukee. The American composer and lyricist wrote Phinney’s Rainbow when he was an 18-year-old student in 1948. The celebrated songwriter, who died last year, is best known for West Side Story and Gypsy. […]
Just over 30 years ago, band The La’s released their sole LP – a masterpiece that shaped guitar music. But its brilliant frontman has been elusive ever since, writes Shaun Curran. MORE
Tim Ashley writes: Olga Peretyatko’s latest album is essentially an old-fashioned recital of coloratura show-stoppers, some drawn from the mainstream operatic repertoire, though others, like Alyabyev’s The Nightingale and Tosti’s Il Bacio, are party pieces associated with the great divas of yesteryear. As a technician, the Russian soprano is ……….. http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/may/08/olga-peretyatko-arabesque-review
ESME BLEGVAD: A new documentary sheds light on a brilliant voice of the era who never received the recognition she deserved Read more HERE
DAN SMITH: My sister used to play The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill on repeat when we were kids. We’d been really big Fugees fans (The Score was the first album I ever owned and I was obsessed with it, mainly because of Hill’s voice and the beats), and we were so excited that she’d done […]
The BBC has revealed that Radio 2 will play an alternate “Fairytale of New York” for the 2022 Christmas period. Every year, when the festive season rolls around, the song makes headlines due to its lyrics, which contains the word “f****t”. The 1987 track, which is performed by Kirsty MacColl and The Pogues frontman Shane […]
The Velvet Underground frontman’s groundbreaking second solo album turns 50 this week. Roisin O’Connor speaks with Ezra Furman about how it continues to inspire her own work, and the way it helped bring queer identities into the mainstream Read more HERE
GUARDIAN MUSIC: 100. Vic Reeves and the Wonder Stuff – Dizzy (Top of the Pops, 1991) There’s a reason that Vic Reeves’s attempt to recreate the video for his cover of Tommy Roe’s 1969’s hit – complete with yellow tartan suits, washing machines and Bob Mortimer scampering between Reeves’s legs – was so shambolic: they […]
JOHN FORDHAM: When Esbjörn Svensson made his UK debut at the 1999 Swedish Jazz Extravaganza festival, the then-34-year-old pianist/composer’s jubilant fusions of Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, Keith Jarrett and his …. Continues HERE
The singer on arriving in the UK alone aged 7, her first £3 guitar, and meeting the anti-apartheid activist Read more HERE
Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac singer-songwriter, dies aged 79 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63812952 https://news.sky.com/story/fleetwood-macs-christine-mcvie-dies-aged-79-12758951 https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/christine-mcvie-fleetwood-mac-songs-death-cause-b2236462.html
Alexis Petridis writes: We tend to think of 1971’s Hunky Dory as the moment David Bowie finally snapped into focus after years of dead ends and false starts. It opens with a song often seen as his mission statement, Changes, with its promise of constant forward motion and undertaking to make pop weird again. It […]