- Reviews RSS Feed

Guns N' Roses, Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle Sharon Van Etten, Komedia, Brighton

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

You can get away with almost anything in pop – that's kind of the point – but contempt for your fans is a cardinal sin. Asked for a reason for the insanely late hour at which Axl Rose and his "Guns N' Roses" (now featuring only long-serving keyboardist Dizzy Reed from the glory years) deign to take the stage, his PR people replied simply: "No statement I'm afraid."

Album: Paloma Faith, Fall to Grace (RCA)

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Produced by Nellee Hooper and Jake Gosling, and co-written by Faith with some familiar names, this a big pop album full of big poppy hooks.

Album: Regina Spektor, What We Saw from the Cheap Seats (Sire)

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Though traditionally and lazily lumped in with other "kooky" female singer-songwriters (Amos, Bush, Newsom), the truth is that the Russian-born, New York-based Spektor has more in common with Rufus Wainwright.

Album: Various artists, Studio One Sound (Soul Jazz)

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Soul Jazz continues its unending commitment to the recesses of CS Dodd's back catalogue.

Album: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Here (Rough Trade)

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

The onrush of summer couldn't be more serendipitous for the messiancially-styled Alexander Ebert and his hippyish West Coast brethren.

Album: Joey Ramone, Ya Know? (BMG)

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Did "punk" offer a more loveable figure to posterity than Joey?

Album: 2:54, 2:54 (Polydor/Fiction)

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

You couldn't move for bands like 2:54 in the early 1990s.

Album: Rumer, Boys Don't Cry (Atlantic)

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

The second album seems a little soon for Rumer to be pulling the covers over her head.

Album: Scissor Sisters, Magic Hour (Polydor)

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Scissor Sisters burst on to the scene as the biggest, best queer-straight disco party on earth, an all-inclusive gathering of a global Rainbow Nation.

Album: Rumer, Boys Don't Cry (Atlantic)

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Covers albums are often taken as indications of creative stasis, a drying of the well, so to release one as the follow-up to your debut album is a very risky strategy indeed.

Album: Regina Spektor, What We Saw from the Cheap Seats (Sire)

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Just when you think Regina Spektor is coasting into a song's shallower waters, she'll catch an outsized wave – like the gulping sound in "Open" – which yanks it back into the choppier swell.

Sigur RósValtari (Parlophone)

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

The four years since their last studio album have found Sigur Rós in suspension while Jónsi Birgisson indulged his various side-projects.

Album: Scissor Sisters, Magic Hour (Polydor)

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

There's no surprises here – the usual Scissor Sisters mélange of sex, drug and disco tropes recycled over the usual hustling grooves, one eyebrow ironically raised throughout like a sonic emoticon.

Album: Public Image Ltd, This Is PiL (PIL Official)

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

It's hard not to feel slightly disappointed by PiL's first new studio album in two decades.

Album: Paloma Faith, Fall to Grace (RCA)

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Leaving behind the retro stylings of her debut, Paloma Faith has hooked up with producer Nellee Hooper to develop her undeniable talents in more modern directions.

Rumer, St James' Church, London

Fri, 25 May 2012 10:05:58 GMT

“I’m tremendously proud of this album,” Rumer demurely claims about her impending new record, Boys Don’t Cry.

Album stream: Mina Tindle, 'Taranta'

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:29:44 GMT

When the French folk-pop singer Mina Tindle supported fellow Gallic artist Camille at the Barbican recently, you could tell the lesser known musician had fairly slayed the audience, when before her final song, someone shouted out for Tindle to introduce herself (it may have been a savvy employee of her record label, mind you, but still...).

Watch The Throne – Jay-Z and Kanye West, O2 Arena, London

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:20:08 GMT

“I guarantee this will be the greatest concert of your life,” says Kanye West, with typical modesty, at one point in this first London Watch the Throne show. For fans of the pair, he might not be too far off the mark.

Live Transmission: Scanner and Heritage Orchestra rework Joy Division, Dome, Brighton

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:17:56 GMT

Finally! Thirty-two years to the day that the Joy Division singer Ian Curtis hanged himself in his kitchen comes an event celebrating his musical legacy rather than wallowing in the myth and melodrama of his demise.

Album: Saint Etienne, Words and Music by Saint Etienne (Heavenly)

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:57 GMT

The handover between "Over the Border" - a semi-spoken memoir about the powerful hold of pop over the young mind - and "I've Got Your Music" encapsulates everything that's great about Saint Etienne: one minute they're singing about great pop, the next they're actually doing some.

Album: Fun, Some Nights (Atlantic)

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:57 GMT

NYC indie-poppers Fun may be riding high off hit single "We Are Young", but, how long can they evade the trade descriptions act?

Album: Delaney Davidson, Bad Luck Man (Voodoo Rhythm)

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:48 GMT

This New Zealander's second album is a rattling, twanging, guitar-thumping celebration of the inebriated underdog as tragicomic hero.

Album: Smoke Fairies, Blood Speaks (V2)

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:46 GMT

At its best, the music of former Sussex schoolfriends Jessica Davies and Katherine Blamire is a swirling and seductive stew of early Jefferson Airplane and the Indigo Girls.

Album: Joe Bonamassa, Driving Towards the Daylight (Mascot/Provogue)

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:46 GMT

Old-fashioned musicianly blues-rock, as practised by lank-haired individuals around the turn of the 1970s, with some of the virtuosity of Led Zeppelin but a fraction of the imagination.

Album: Soulsavers, The Light of the Dead See (V2/Cooperative)

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:44 GMT

The production team of Rich Machin and Ian Glover previously recorded with Mark Lanegan as primary vocalist (with cameos from the likes of Mike Patton and Gibby Haynes).