The album can, in fact, be treated as a concept album about the capacity for change that lies at the heart of even the most hard-boiled and unsympathetic of men, the kind we meet straight away on âAinât Niceâ and âToadâ.
When âInto The Sunâ introduces us to a similar figure having a Damascene moment in which he realises the damage he has caused, we realise that we are, in fact, following a single flawed protagonist: an aging huckster who loves nothing but his dog, his drugs and himself. Travelling with this self-sabotaging antihero though his highs and lows, his relapses and revelations, as he rises above his basest impulses to pursue love and a life of peace is a hell of a journey in itself.
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.
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Drunk-tank pink is the shade of pacification. Meant to neutralize hostility and placate violence, the color was originally developed for a naval correctional institute in 1979, and when studies appeared to confirm its calming effects, the bubblegum hue was splashed across prison cells, psychiatric wards, and of course, drunk tanks. South London loudmouths Shame seem immune to its powers. Their second album is named for the pigment, which frontman Charlie Steen slathered on the walls of a roomy closet at home. During a period of self-imposed hermetism inside what he christened âthe Womb,â Steen sat in silence and channeled an internal noise.
Last modified on Fri 15 Jan 2021 03.11 EST
The annals of rock history are packed with songs bemoaning the lot of the artist on tour. You can understand the urge to write them â they proliferate on second albums, when artists who have done almost nothing except tour since their debut search for inspiration â but, nevertheless, attempting to elicit sympathy for a rock band among people who do a proper job for a living always seems dementedly optimistic.
Under the circumstances, you have to take your hat off to London quintet Shame: whatever you make of their second album, theyâve successfully come up with an entirely new variant on a well-worn theme. Drunk Tank Pink â which takes its name from the colour that psychologists discovered automatically weakens anyone who stares at it for two minutes, and which went on to become the decor of choice in cells for intoxicated arrestees and the title of a bestselling book about how subconscious forces affect our behaviour �