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Simon Price on Brighton's The Great Escape festival: So when did young people get so old?

Sat, 18 May 2013 19:15:00 GMT

The queue of paying Great Escape ticket-holders waiting to get into The Warren – a church hall tucked away behind Brighton's hellish Booze Britain battleground West Street – could fill the venue five times over.

Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa, Seesaw (Provogue)

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

A second album of proxy "blues'n' soul", by the LA belter and the Guitarist Who's Always Available for Work.

Album: Georgia Ruth, Week of Pines (Gwymon)

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Eisteddfod-reared singer-harpist Georgia Ruth Williams was raised bilingually in Aberystwyth, as far into Wales as you can get without falling off the edge.

Album: The National, Trouble Will Find Me (4AD)

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

The National's quiet, steady ascent presents the Cincinnati band with a problem on their sixth album: how to crown their rise without losing the ATP/Pitchfork crowd which nurtured them.

Album: Gwyneth Herbert, The Sea Cabinet (Monkeywood)

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Recorded by the sea in Aldeburgh, Herbert's sort-of concept album is changeable as the ocean.

Album: Daft Punk, Random Access Memories (Columbia)

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

They may present an image of faceless androids, but Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo are always about the interface between technology and emotion – and RAM is their most emotional record yet. Because though the vocodered vocals frequently put android futurism front and centre, it was recorded using more actual flesh-and-blood human beings than any previous Daft Punk release.

Album: The Brand New Heavies, Forward (Heavytone)

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

The roots of English bands who followed US funk and soul can't help but show through. Old tracks by Soul II Soul/Caron Wheeler now sound as "London" as Madness, and the solid yeoman-grooves of funk-plumbers the Heavies seem quaint and paisley-foppish on this first studio album for six years.

Album: Florence Joelle, Stealing Flowers (Zoltan)

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

This French singer-songwriter's second album embraces chanson, doo-wop and early rock'n'roll, so, appropriately enough, it was recorded using vintage mics straight to two-inch tape.

Album: The Live New Departures Jazz Poetry Septet, Blues for the Hichhiking Dead (Gearbox)

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Vinyl specialists Gearbox have done poet Michael Horovitz proud with this beautiful two-LP box-set of an epic live recording from 1962. English beats Horovitz and Pete Brown declaim verse to the often inspired – and very off the cuff – music of a band including Stan Tracey, Bobby Wellins and Jeff Clyne. A new LP and single of Horovitz with Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon and Paul Weller have already sold out but may reprint.

Album: Marques Toliver, Land of NaAan (Bella Union)

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Multi-instumentalist, string arranger, model, senior editor of Love Is the Magazine and busker … the surprise here is only that the violinist/singer Toliver's debut LP is, on the surface, such a conventional, Radio 2-friendly affair.

Review: What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes?, By Moss Project

Sat, 18 May 2013 17:00:09 GMT

When the composer and performer Moss Freed finished recording his new jazz album What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes?, he wondered what kind of response it might elicit from the listener, and approached some writers to see if they might put it into words. As a result the album includes a collection of short stories by Colum McCann, Joe Dunthorne, Lawrence Norfolk, Hanan al-Shaykh, James Miller and Naomi Alderman.

Album review: Texas, The Conversation ([PIAS])

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:48 GMT

Returning after eight years away, Texas shoot straight to the top of 2013's Unnecessary Albums chart with The Conversation. It's not that it's actively bad – that would be interesting, at least – but that it lacks impetus, panache and compulsion, just for starters. The title track is OK, in an ersatz country-soul way, and the country-pop of “Dry Your Eyes” works well too.

Album review: Jamie Cullum, Momentum (Island)

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:35 GMT

Jamie Cullum's first album for Island may be his best. It certainly goes beyond his retro-jazz comfort zone, with piercing electric organ and electric piano lending a vibrant, visceral edge to several songs.

Album review: The National, Trouble Will Find Me (4AD)

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:33 GMT

Slowly but surely, Brooklyn quintet The National have developed over a decade from modest alt.country beginnings to the point where they can draw 10,000 fans to an Obama rally. That they have retained serious artistic credibility while doing so – they recently played the same song for six hours as part of an artwork, and The Kronos Quartet has commissioned an album of guitarist Bryce Dessner's compositions – speaks volumes about the virtues of their approach.

Album review: Dobrinka Tabakova, String Paths (ECM New Series)

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:31 GMT

Aptly for a Bulgarian composer educated in England, the music of Dobrinka Tabakova pivots on the cusp of East and West European, as well as sounding both ancient and modern. As with many modern composers, there are echoes here of Arvo Pärt, both in the tintinnabuli effects occasionally discernible in the turbulent first movement of her “Concerto for Cello and Strings”, and in the ascetic but radiant tone of her string trio “Insight”.

Album review: Daria van den Bercken, Handel: Suites for Keyboard (Sony Classical)

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:25 GMT

These days, promotional novelty tends to wag the classical dog. In Dutch pianist Daria van den Bercken's case, this meant playing on a barge towed around the canals of Amsterdam – though since it's brought us this delightful selection of Handel Suites, it was surely worth the indignity.

Album review: Georgia Ruth, Week of Pines (Gwymon)

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:17 GMT

The Welsh harpist Georgia Ruth is a rare talent, able to transcend borders of language, style and age with apparent ease. At its simplest, Pines reinvigorates folk standards; but elsewhere, exploratory arrangements blending her harp with synth, guitar and ambient noises lend distinctive colour to her own material.

Album review: Frank Almond, A Violin's Life (Avie)

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:07 GMT

A Violin's Life tracks the specific instrument employed on the album, a famous Stradivari known as the “Lipinski”, through pieces written by, or for, its successive owners, beginning with the baroque formality of Giuseppe Tartini's “Sonata in G minor”, notable for its technically demanding double-stopped “Devil's Trills”, and proceeding to the Romanticism of Julius Röntgen's “Violin Sonata No 2 in F sharp”, from the late 19th century.

Album review: The Handsome Family, Wilderness (Loose)

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:02 GMT

A sort of bestiary of myth, legend and animal analogy, Wilderness uses wildlife traits as jumping-off points for enigmatic tales in typical Handsome Family manner.

Album review: Pat Metheny, Tap: John Zorn's Book of Angels, Vol 20 (Nonesuch)

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:00:00 GMT

Since the 1980s, John Zorn has composed 500 songs inspired by traditional Jewish music, a series known as the Masada Book, variously recorded by adventurous musicians such as Marc Ribot and now Pat Metheny.

Gig review: Kings of Convenience, Roundhouse, London

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:15:08 GMT

Norwegian duo Kings of Convenience last released an album in 2009, but there's no sense of moving forward tonight – it's a comfy old jumper of a show, which at times could do with smartening up, but which swaddles committed fans (of which there are enough to sell-out this substantial venue) in a cosy embrace.

Music review: Lana Del Rey, Academy, Birmingham

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:20:54 GMT

Accompanied by two faux-stone lions, a plastic palm tree and art-deco frames for the video screens, Liberace would feel at home in Birmingham tonight. Instead, the chintz and fevered anticipation are for a less theatrical performer. Having enjoyed a meteoric rise on the back of 2011’s viral hit "Video Games", the artist previously known as the winsome Lizzy Grant has struggled to match that pace.

Simon Price on The Knife: Is this a gig? A performance? Or a rubbish aerobics class?

Sat, 11 May 2013 18:10:00 GMT

Their Shaking the Habitual tour will go down as one of 2013's most controversial. But The Knife shouldn't view that as some sort of victory. The Swedish brother-sister electronic duo have moved a considerable distance between the sublime synthpop of 2003's Deep Cuts and the experimentalism of their current album. And while Karin Dreijer-Andersson and Olof Andersson have always used striking visuals, it's clear tonight that the Venetian masks of the intermediary Silent Shout era were merely a stepping stone to something more extreme and, sadly, less satisfying.

Album: Noordpool Orchestra, Radiohead: A Jazz Symphony (Buzz)

Sat, 11 May 2013 17:30:00 GMT

What is it about jazz musicians and Radiohead? Though hardly Cole Porter, their tunes are becoming jazz standards.

Album: Patty Griffin, American Kid (Columbia)

Sat, 11 May 2013 17:30:00 GMT

Robert Plant's sometime Band of Joy side-woman.