Category: Music

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Music Reviews

Pain and suffering in various tempos

“Pain and suffering in various tempos” declares the sleeve of ‘Playing the Angel’ proudly. Business as usual then for the boys from Depeche Mode? A handful of critics seem to think so, having derided the band’s first album in four years as “the same old stuff with some new bleeps and blops”. But they’re wrong.

Yes, it does draw musical inspiration from their landmark albums ‘Violator’ and ‘Songs of Faith and Devotion’ — and the lyrics are preoccupied with sex and religion, as always — but the trio’s latest offering is no cash-in nostalgia trip.

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Music Reviews

Dave Matthews Band get on up

Dave Matthews Band

Hard to believe, but a band with a saxophonist and violin player in its lineup, a band that plays a hybrid of funk, bluegrass, jazz and world music (usually in the same song) is the biggest rock band in the USA. Their guitars aren’t even electric for chrissakes.

But listen to the live bonus disc on ‘Stand Up’, the Dave Matthews Band’s latest album, and you’ll understand why the quintet have sold some 10-million concert tickets. Their prolonged freeform jams, mentioned in the same breath as those of the Grateful Dead, ensure that every night punters are guaranteed one helluva show.

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Music Reviews

Tori Amos is ‘The Beekeeper’

‘The Beekeeper’, says Tori Amos, is about the “struggle to find a bedrock of truth beneath the tangle of lies, mythology, casual assumptions and political manipulation that have formed the cultural landscape of the USA today”.

Complicated enough for you?

Not for the artist who once took on a different persona for each song on her album of cover versions. Or catalogued the tracks on her greatest hits collection according to the Dewey decimal system.

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Music Reviews

R.E.M. give a monster performance

“I don’t want to be Iggy Pop,” barks Michael Stipe on ‘I took your name’, the song that opens the first South African concert of R.E.M.’s world tour.

But – even decked out in a dark suit, white shirt and red tie – he’s not fooling anybody.

Behind him, the band grinds relentlessly on, all wailing guitars and pummelled drums, giving a potent song the powerhouse treatment it deserves.

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U2 get explosive

“Time won’t take the boy out of this man,” declares Bono on ‘City of Blinding Lights’, one of the numerous highlights on U2’s stellar new album. And he might just be right.

With its jangling guitars and keyboard melodies from 1983’s ‘War’ album, the song burns with the rampant energy of boys hungry for success. But, the passion and vintage sounds battle it out with the finesse and skill you get from a group of fortysomething men who’ve enjoyed that success for near on two decades.

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Music Reviews

‘The Cure’ demands to be heard

Press play, and within seconds Robert Smith is wailing “I can’t find myself” while a sole guitar strums in the background.

“Oh, grow up,” you might think. This is no way for a millionaire rock star in his mid-forties to behave. But Smith sounds so passionate that you actually believe his moment of crisis as the jagged music rises to match his pained, increasingly distraught vocals.

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U2 relive the difficult years

“We’re going away to dream it all up again,” Bono declared. Speaking at U2’s last concert of the 1980s the band’s lead singer was not just responding to the critical backlash that had greeted their latest album, ‘Rattle and Hum’. He had unwittingly set the tone for the group’s output of the next ten years.

A difficult decade for the Irish foursome, documented here on their second ‘Best Of’ compilation, the 1990s were marked by musical experimentation as the band continually sought to find a new voice.

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Music

The Rodriguez story… so far

Rodriguez is an unlikely icon. He is 60 years old, has only recorded 25 songs and has not released any new material in the past 30 years. Yet, his music has influenced and affected scores of South Africans growing up during the past 3 decades. Even as they were ignored by international audiences, songs like ‘Sugarman’ and ‘I Wonder’ have become part of the country’s musical heritage.

This unlikely icon was born Sixto Diaz Rodriguez on 10 July 1942 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. Pronounced ‘Seez-toe’, he was given the name by his working class Mexican parents as he was their sixth child.

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