Music, Issue 625

Spotify - Electric dreams

When users’ initial response to a new piece of software is a disbelieving ‘This is free?’, it’s worth installing. Although Spotify launched last year, it was invitation only until last month. Now everyone’s free to join, and they have been, with the…

Pet Shop Boys

‘I was quite surprised, really,’ remarks pop’s greatest deadpan front-man, Neil Tennant, a propos the Pet Shop Boys’ recent Outstanding Contribution to Music Brit Award. ‘I thought it was nice of the industry to give it to us,’ he concurs with a shrug.

Place Project

The biggest difference between Edinburgh and Glasgow’s cultural scenes can be located right down at the grassroots. While Glasgow has a plethora of places like Mono, The Arches, CCA and the Art School – centralised hubs where emergent artists, musicians…

Instal 09

PREVIEW A church organ sounding the course of the stars, a cello being turned to dust, a sound poet voicing typewriter symbols, long stretches of almost nothing … Instal has been expanding the way we listen since its inception in 2002, building a…

The Red Well

PREVIEW Loud or quiet, why choose? The best rock bands manage to combine ear-shredding wig-outs with moments of blissful acoustic gentility – and so it is with The Red Well. The Edinburgh-based quartet are part of Fife’s Fence Collective, but stand…

Joel Frahm & Michael Janisch Quintet

This quintet is led by two Americans, one of whom is likely to be more familiar than the other to audiences in these parts. Bassist Michael Janisch has been based in London for a while now, and has collaborated with a number of Scottish musicians…

The Country Teasers

ART NOISE The gig finishes with a note of despondent appreciation. ‘Thank you,’ says Ben Wallers, also known as The Rebel, one third of The Teasers and a son of St Albans who settled in Edinburgh for a few years way back when. ‘Thank you. That’s the…

The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love

FOLK ROCK When Anglophile Oregon native Colin Meloy bills his band’s fifth album as ‘an odd bond between the music of British folk revival and classic metal’ he’s only telling half the story. Sonically, The Hazards of Love rocks like Sabbath and…

Royal Scottish National Orchestra: Springtime in Paris

CLASSICAL MINI FESTIVAL OK, there’s no way that Glasgow and Edinburgh can compete on the romance front, but bringing as much of Paris in the Springtime that is possible to Scotland, the RSNO present a mini-festival of music and events inspired by the…

LGBT Arts Festival Weekend

CREATIVE FESTIVAL LGBT Centre for Health and Wellbeing, Edinburgh, Fri 20–Sun 22 Mar Scotland’s capital can lay proud boast to being the only city in the UK to have its own dedicated health and wellbeing centre for LGBT folks, which runs…

Glasgow Implodes

PREVIEW Nihilism and noise go fist in hand. Just take a look at the line-up of Glasgow Implodes, the fourth annual all-dayer of extreme noise terror organised by cottage industry label At War With False Noise in association with Zero Tolerance…

PJ Harvey & John Parish - A Woman A Man Walked By

ROCK From topless indie pin-up to tormented folk mythologist, cult pop monarch Polly Jean Harvey has long exposed and scrutinised the predicaments of the human condition. She’s populated copious roles over her swaggering, nigh-on 20-year career…

Sorren Maclean

FOLK POP 19-year-old Isle of Mull singer songwriter Sorren Maclean is a well-connected young chap who has worked with or supported such respected names as Michael Marra, James Yorkston and the late Martyn Bennett. It helps that his father Gordon is a…

The ID Parade

ROCK Whether anyone should ever trust a man wearing tassles is a matter for each individual’s conscience to decide. However, even the most hardline fashion police officer would surely turn a blind eye to the flamboyant shirts modelled by at least one…

Chris Corsano and Heather Leigh Murray

IMPROVISATION Something remarkable happens mid-way through this duo between drummer Chris Corsano and pedal steel guitarist/vocal siren Heather Leigh Murray. For the first half of the set the pair pound at their instruments with a driving ferocity…

Courtney Pine - Transition In Tradition

JAZZ The saxophonist sub-titles this powerful and eclectic outing ‘En homage à Sidney Bechet’, but admirers of that early jazz master may find that to be a bit of a red herring if they expect it to actually sound like the first great soprano…

Big Air - Big Air

JAZZ An inspired debut from this Transatlantic aggregation, although one that has been a while in the making. Big Air features London-based trumpeter Chris Batchelor and saxophonist Steve Buckley with Americans Myra Melford on piano (and harmonium…

The Martin Green Machine - First Sighting

FOLK Accordionist Martin Green unleashed the Green Machine as a New Voices commission at Celtic Connections in 2006, with guitarist Tom Cook as his principal co-collaborator, and a powerful band willing and able to take on his iconoclastic vision. I…

1990s - Kicks

INDIE Unfairly under-rated for their sleazy glam riot of a debut album Cookies in 2007, Glasgow’s 1990s have returned to finish the job. With Bernard Butler producing. So most of the sleaze, the glam and the rioting has been kicked out. Okay, so…

Smoove and Turrell - Antique Soul

ELECTRONIC SOUL Soul is one musical genre constant judged less by its actual quality and more by its supposed authenticity, which, as anyone with ears knows, is the surest way to find yourself down a musical blind alley. So when someone like this…

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

INDIE If My Bloody Valentine and Belle and Sebastian had babies, they’d no doubt be pretty grotesque-looking little mites. But we reckon their musical outpourings would sound a lot like The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – and boy, would they be able…

Frightened Rabbit - Quietly Now!

LIVE INDIE Don’t be misled by their cuddlesome designate, nor indeed their cutesy demeanour: Frightened Rabbit are a savage pop mob, whose colossal debut proper, The Midnight Organ Fight, was a fierce contender for the album of 2008. Said melodic…

Dan Deacon - Bromst

ELECTRO More complex, euphoric and chaotic than ever, Dan Deacon’s follow-up to Spiderman of the Rings is his showpony. From the home of weirdo electro-noise, Baltimore, the oversized specs wearer is worshipped like a demi-god at live performances…

Pet Shop Boys - Yes

POP Everything that’s ace about the Pet Shop Boys is here. Sure, the electronic voyagers’ ingenious pop template has been updated by clarion chart messiahs Xenomania (Kylie, Girls Aloud), and embellished by Johnny Marr and Final Fantasy’s Owen…

The Answer - Everyday Demons

ROCK Northern Irish four-piece The Answer were hand-picked by AC/DC as support for their current Black Ice world tour, surely one of the greatest honours in rock. Live they tear it up and you can imagine the whole crowd reaching for their air…