Tallinn Music Week 2025 review - Estonia’s capital accommodates all flavours of music
The festival where everything appears on an equal footing
Langenu are a black metal band. On stage at Estonia’s Tallinn Music Week, they are fearsome. Blood-vessel-burstingly intense. Tempering their force with twists into progressive, psychedelic-adjacent territory, they are a band any rock fan would dig.
Deap Vally, Concorde 2, Brighton review - final blow-out before the rockin' duo quit
Los Angeles queens of the dirty riff are as magnificent as ever on their final go-round
Towards the end of the encore, Deap Vally bring on their friend Solon Bixler. Frontwoman Lindsey Troy hands him her guitar. Despite this being their farewell tour, these two songs, she tells us, are new. The duo, now briefly a trio, go ballistic, a punk rock explosion ensues. Drummer Julie Edwards attacks her kit like Animal from The Muppets, Troy stomps like a glam rock loon before rolling about the floor, and Bixler scissor-kicks his way to stand aloft the bass drum.
They’re burning with the right stuff. They have been all night.
The Great Escape Festival 2024, Brighton review - 12 hours on the musical frontline of Day Three
Checking out gigs by Being Dead, Kneecap, Pip Blom, Looking Glass Alice and more
If the weather’s good TGE Beach is a grand start to a day. As it sounds, it’s a purpose-built seafront space to the east of central Brighton, containing three stages as well as stalls selling vegan kebabs, Filipino street food and German sausage.
The Great Escape Festival 2024, Brighton review - a dip into day one and the elephant-in-the-room
An opening snapshot of Brighton's multi-venue showcase
Before reviewing The Great Escape, we must first deal with the elephant in the room. Or, in this case, the room that’s crushing the elephant, like the trash compactor in the first Star Wars film.
THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM BIT
Album: Pearl Jam - Dark Matter
Enduring grunge icons return full of energy, arguably their most empowered yet
Thirty years, and over 75 million copies sold. It’s been a long journey from Nineties Seattle for Pearl Jam, the grunge era icons fronted by Eddie Vedder's commanding vocals.
theartsdesk on Vinyl 83: Deep Purple, Annie Anxiety, Ghetts, WHAM!, Kaiser Chiefs, Butthole Surfers and more
The most wide-ranging regular record reviews in this galaxy
VINYL OF THE MONTH
London Afrobeat Collective Esengo (Canopy)
Album: J Mascis - What Do We Do Now
Tapping into the endless elemental flow of an alt-rock mainstay
It seems like time flows differently for J Mascis. He’s now not far off 60, it’s 40 years since he founded Dinosaur Jr, and he’s been involved in untold musical project from the most rarefied of abstract psychedelia to guesting with Lemonheads and Nirvana, but within his own core output he is tapped into exactly the same wellspring as he was all those years ago.
Snayx/Shelf Lives/Monakis, Patterns, Brighton review - storming, punking triple-header
Fired-up three band package tour hits the south coast with a communal sense of fury
Patterns is a small, low-ceilinged, underground, seafront venue. Tonight it would be a feast for any passing ancient succubae who happens to feed on raw human energy. From 7.00 PM until 10.00 PM, the room plays host to a package tour of three rising bands. Their short, vim-filled sets are hard-wired to a thrilling, relentless punk intensity.
Album: Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers - I Love You
Likeable debut from Aussie outfit which combines punkish bio with a feminist edge
Canberra band Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers continue the recent tradition of Australian indie bands having unwieldy comedy names. However, their music, as laid out on their debut album, has higher aspirations, bridging their scuzzy punkin’ roots and a larger sound, loosely somewhere between The Breeders and Foo Fighters, yet very much their own thing.