Music

Jonnie Common, River of Slime and Shift-Static - Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh, Sat 9 Mar 2013

Mixed bag from Song, By Toad Bad Fun night

Tonight’s edition of Edinburgh indie label Song, By Toad’s BAD FUN series serves as a showcase for the world of current alt.electronica. First up, Shift-Static do a nice line in off-kilter electro-pop, melodic yet unafraid of some forays into…

Interview: Ira Kaplan - Yo La Tengo set for new album and UK tour

On keping things fresh and working with John McEntire of Tortoise on new album Fade

‘We don’t get too deep into comparing experiences,’ muses Ira Kaplan. ‘We just want to make things as exciting as they can be in the moment and it will all take care of itself.’ The Yo La Tengo frontman knows a thing or two about staying power, having…

Kurt Vile - Wakin On A Pretty Daze

Enjoy the vast scenery, just don’t expect many landmarks

(Matador) Strangely enough for an album distinctly unconcerned with immediacy, the strengths and weaknesses of Wakin On A Pretty Daze are encapsulated within its opener, ‘Wakin On A Pretty Day’. A lazy, bucolic, summer haze-conceived mid-tempo strum…

Purling Hiss - Water On Mars

Polished up tunes of second album are still caked in good-ol’ low-down dirty fuzz

(Drag City) After several years floating around Philadelphia in the same trashy, lo-fi puddle as fellow longhairs Kurt Vile and The War On Drugs, Mike Polizze – for Purling Hiss (toiletal pun ahoy) is essentially he – has polished up his act some…

The Weeknd set for UK tour

Soulfully-voiced Toronto Canadian eschews rap's chiches

All the familiar tropes of hip-hop’s seedy side – narcotics, booze, girls very much in the plural – lurk in the shadows of The Weeknd’s spacey, chilly synthscapes, as nights typically become day and then night again. But if there’s a marked contrast…

RockNess 2013 comedy line-up announced

Dylan Moran, Jim Jeffries and Daniel Sloss lead this year’s stand-up bill at Scottish music festival

Following 2012’s year’s killer set from Tim Minchin, music festival RockNess once more prove their commitment to laughs as well as dance beats. Foul mouthed comic Jim Jeffries will be reaching out over the taste barrier with his only Scottish appearance…

Marnie Stern - The Chronicles of Marnia

Inspirational album an exercise in restraint from maximalist guitarist

(Kill Rock Stars) Marnie Stern’s 2007 debut In Advance of the Broken Arm was the best thing to happen to indie rock in yonks. In a milieu that all too often venerated dour beardedness and/or half-arsed underachievement, here was someone well-versed…

Black Pus - All My Relations

Enjoyably visceral solo project from Lightning Bolt drummer Brian Chippendale

(Thrill Jockey) A big chunk of the appeal of Rhode Island’s two-man wrecking crew Lightning Bolt lies in the grotesquely overdriven and pitched Hades-ward tone of bassist Brian Gibson. You’d be forgiven, then, for being concerned that the solo project…

Moss - Horrible Night

Riff-based, melodic material from unreconstructed stoner metal band

(Rise Above Records) Regarded as one of the starkest and most suffocating English doom bands of the last ten years, the return of Southampton’s Moss is another step into the void. Horrible Night sees them distance themselves from their guttural and…

Glasgow-based LuckyMe protégée S-Type set for live shows

Remix schedule includes work for Aluna George, Jamie Lidell and Lianne La Havas

LuckyMe protégée S-Type, aka Bobby Perman, has been necking a combo of sick hip hop stimulants. ‘I’ve just had a bowl of porridge and a cup of tea,’ admits the ingenious electronic producer, warming up in his Glasgow studio. ‘I’ve only recently started…

Rick Redbeard - Electric Circus, Edinburgh, Tue 12 Mar 2013

Honest and traditional material from versatile Phantom Band singer

’I don’t know if any of you have been to Glasgow before?’ asks Rick Anthony with tongue in cheek, having a laugh at the expense of his genteel east coast fans. But sometimes, when your other group the Phantom Band is known for a retro-futurist strain of…

Fire! Orchestra - Exit!

Mats Gustafsson collaborative project featuring Sofia Jernberg is a thrilling gamb

(Rune Gramofon) We know Mats Gustafsson is an insatiable collaborator, but this is ridiculous. New album Exit! sees the intrepid saxophonist expanding his jazz-rock trio Fire! into a 30-strong big band. As with previous Fire! releases, the music is…

Los Chinches - Fongo

London-based update chicha sound with chippy ska rhythms and a festival-friendly energy

(Movimientos Records) Sharing its name with a popular South American corn-based alcoholic drink, chicha is a musical style dating from late 1960s Peru, where hot cumbia rhythms sweat it out alongside pentatonic Andean melodies and groovy psychedelic…

Decoy with Joe McPhee - Spontaneous Combustion

Head-spinning live set from veteran free-jazzer and Alexander Hawkins' organ trio

(Otoroku) A veteran free-jazzer (check out his 1971 classic Nation Time for a righteous blast of fire music, James Brown funk and radical black politics), Joe McPhee has been making some of his most adventurous and vital work in recent years. This…

Rokia Traore - Beautiful Africa

Malian singer, songwriter and guitarist works with PJ Harvey producer John Parish

(Nonesuch) Rokia Traore has an extraordinary voice, a deceptively gentle alto to which she brings a vibrato that can be tender or fierce. This, her fifth album, sees Traore working with PJ Harvey producer John Parish, who deftly combines a natural…

The Knife - Shaking the Habitual

98-minutes of new music from Swedish pioneers is a mighty piece of work

(Rabid) Dear God, where to start? How about with congratulations, not just for taking their time to get it right and unleashing a 98-minute double CD/triple vinyl monster upon us seven years after Silent Shout’s breakthrough success, but for…

Programme for the Edinburgh International Festival 2013 puts artists and technology centre-stage

Tod Machover, the Wooster Group and Oper Frankfurt among the EIF programme highlights

A crowd sourced orchestral work by boundary breaker Tod Machover is just one of the many highlights of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival programme. Set over three weeks this August, the EIF’s line-up includes an homage to Allen Ginsberg with…

Indie-pop group The Plimptons prepare to say farewell after 13 years

The DIY-minded posse are set to release a final compilation to mark their goodbye

Glasgow indie-popsters The Plimptons have finally decided to call it a day after 13 years together. Originally hailing from deepest, darkest Lanarkshire which, given their skewed social commentary and sardonic wit would have you believe was a…

Willy Mason – Oran Mor, Glasgow, Sun 10 Mar 2013

The rootsy singer-songwriter's show succeeds best when pared right back

'You wanna hear some songs?' burrs Willy Mason into the sold-out, low-lit basement of Oran Mor. Songs are what he promises, and songs – pared-back, intimate, glorious – are exactly what he provides. Mason works at a slow and steady pace: at the age…

Garden Of Elks - Nice'n'Sleazy, Glasgow, Thu 7 Mar, supporting Campfires in Winter

Say what you like about the often whimsical and fickle notion of a ‘scene’ and its accompanying ‘scenesters’ - in the case of the current slew of DIY guitar bands that are currently hitting up Glasgow’s punk influenced network this has brought a more…

Bwani Junction, Alarm Bells and Honeyblood join forces for Breakout Scotland

The trio form the line-up at The List's first live music event

Edinburgh's Bwani Junction will travel through to Glasgow to join city natives Alarm Bells and Honeyblood for The List's first ever live event at Stereo on Thursday 21 March. London-based promoters Breakout, whose events have showcased the hottest…

Doldrums - Lesser Evil

Incredibly busy electro indie-pop album from Grimes cohort Airick Woodhead

Airick Woodhead is the latest artist to come out of the buzzing Montreal music scene. Woodhead, formerly of Spiral Beach and best friend of Claire Boucher (aka Grimes), is releasing Lesser Evil, his debut LP with his new project Doldrums and the DIY…

My Bloody Valentine - Barrowland, Glasgow, Sat 9 Mar

Kevin Shields and co's return to the live arena shows humility and respect for the band's legacy

There’s something peculiar about seeing My Bloody Valentine onstage together. It’s almost as if the symbiotic relationships and synergy between the band members has never diminished in the 22 years between Loveless and the making of new album m b v.

Why sending Bonnie Tyler to Eurovision says we're not taking it seriously

Nobody’s going to vote for a country that looks like it doesn't care

The morning when we find out who is to represent the UK at Eurovision is like mini Christmas, a sparkly surprise waiting to be unwrapped when we wake up. But evidently, for the last two years, we’ve been on the ‘naughty’ list, being allocated once-great…

Richard Thompson - Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Thu 28 Feb 2013

Inventive power trio show from unique and resourceful guitarist and songwriter

Richard Thompson and Eric Clapton. Two bearded Englishmen of a certain age, born within 30 miles and four years of each other, along what would one day become the south-western course of the M25, each of them devoted in their respective ways to certain…