Plaisirs illuminés
This latest album featuring the “bare-footed violin maverick” Patricia Kopatchinskaja is named after a “perplexing” Dalí painting featuring rectangular boxes, eggs, a bleeding knife and 34 bearded cyclists, said Geoff Brown in The Times. Thankfully, what is on it – 20th and 21st century music with a folk twist – is “much easier to grasp”. There’s Sándor Veress’s
Musica concertante; the 1966
Concerto for Strings by Alberto Ginastera; and
Les Plaisirs illuminés itself, a Dalí-derived double concerto by Francisco Coll. It’s a “rewarding” programme, and “just the kind of fare to get maximum voltage” from Kopatchinskaja and the Camerata Bern chamber orchestra.
Patrick Clarke
, January 29th, 2021 12:00
The new year brings a continuation of old miseries, but a resurgence of extraordinarily good music. Here s our guide to the best albums and tracks of a particularly strong month
I m not sure why, but in a year so far as disastrous as the last, in which musicians fortunes continue to plummet to the point that total collapse looms as a real possibility, the art they ve been releasing sounds stronger than ever.
From Sleaford Mods blistering career-best new album, to anti-colonialist duo Divide And Dissolve s unbelievably powerful cascades of crushing doom, to The Body s latest head-melting extremity, music has provided plenty of necessary catharsis.
22 January 2021
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You Me At Six have gone straight to Number 1 on the Official Albums Chart with SUCKAPUNCH.
The band’s seventh studio album is now their second Number 1, following 2014’s Cavalier Youth, and sixth Top 10 collection overall.
In an OfficialCharts.com video reaction clip, singer Josh Franceschi celebrates:
“Thank you to our fans, you guys are incredible. Without you we wouldn’t be here after 15 years.
The band’s front man continues with a message for the detractors:
“Maybe most importantly, thank you to everyone who has caused us pain or wrote us off or said we were done. This is for you. We made this record for you, to remind you to put some respect on the name.”
Album reviews: Shame return with Drunk Tank Pink, and Zayn Malik releases his third solo record
Shame sound like they ve been wrestling with excess, while the former One Direction singer unfurls a gothic melodrama
Shame, and Zayn.
Ed Power
Shame: Drunk Tank Pink.
Shame’s first album was a frantic assault that saw the group heralded one of the saviours of British indie music. But the success of that record exacted a heavy toll. Their pummelling and fraught second LP is the sound of a band reckoning with excess, burnout and a loss of identity.
It’s hugely affecting, singer Charlie Steen’s hoarse croon counterpointed with slamming guitars and a bottomless jitteriness. Obvious comparisons include The Fall, whose tightly-wound riffs Shame approximate, and Sleaford Mods, with whom they share a lurching, anything-could-happen sensibility. Steen is clearly singing – sometimes screaming – from the depths of his soul on tunes such as Nigel Hitter and Alphabet .