UK dub maestro and producer, Adrian Sherwood is hardly what anyone might call a slacker, but it’s 13 years since the release of his last solo album, Survival and Resistance. Those who have been eagerly anticipating more of his particular take on one of Jamaica’s greatest musical exports, however, need wait no longer.
The history of popular music is littered with bands who fulfilled everything needed to make it. Then fate kicked them in the teeth. Goofin’ good time Brit heavy rockers Dinosaur Pile-Up have had some rubbish luck.
Who’d have guessed that a dude who first came to attention a decade ago guesting on a cheesy Chase & Status drum & bass track would likely now be heading for his third chart-topping album? Tom Grennan’s done well.
Emma Smith, one time Puppini Sister, has established herself over the past decade or so as one of the UK’s most compelling jazz singers, now signed to hip Brooklyn label La Reserve, with Bitter Orange, a new album of classics from the Great American Songbook. The 2024 Parliamentary Jazz Vocalist of the Year launched the album from the stage of Ronnie Scott’s over four sets across two hot, high-summer Soho nights.
“I will fly around the world just to forget you” are the opening words of “It Hits Harder,” the first track on New Radiations. The song is about a farewell. The album ends with “Sad Satellite,” where the titular heavenly object is used as a metaphor for distance, when the gap is increasing between the narrator and the subject: the latter a character who is “sucking me dry” and “took me for ride”.
Ricochet is Chicago punk veterans Rise Against’s 10th album and, unfortunately, one which suggests that despite a four-year break since Nowhere Generation, that they have hit that point where they are seriously struggling to maintain relevance. In fact, they would seem to be both short of anything special to say and for tunes to carry their message, such as it is.
It’s impossible to overstate how much the early 2000s records of Goldfrapp – the duo of Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory – set the tone for the whole rest of the 21st century. The electroclash scene had already ushered in an Eternal Eighties of electropop revival, but Goldfrapp professionalised it, added heavyweight songwriting skill and superstar vocal personality.
For a band who started by entirely self-producing their own records and performing in basements, it has ended up being a long and storied career so far for The Black Keys. The blues-rock group, consisting of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, began their career with their first five albums, from 2001 debut The Big Come Up through to 2008’s Thickfreakness, all playing in a modern blues rock wheelhouse.
This is a weird one: I do try and stay on top of pop culture, but for several years, Ethel Cain completely passed me by. You’d think I would have noticed a gothic bisexual Baptist trans woman achieving great enough success to be championed by Barack Obama, but no – until streaming algorithms put me on to her record Perverts, released earlier this year.
The default setting for Brighton indie quartet Black Honey is pop-grunge. There are plenty of moments during their fourth album when Nineties femme-rockers L7 spring to mind. But Black Honey also spread their wings and fly in other directions. The latter songs tend to be Soak’s most noticeable, although whatever style the band chose, they know enough about hooks to keep listeners onside.