Graeme Thomson

One could argue that all musical forms are essentially incomplete until the listener joins the party, but ambient music seems more needily co-dependent than most. Given that a typical sound bed is a blank canvas of amniotic electronica, much depends on the interpretation of whatever is laid over it: the drip and the drift; the

There is a website called setlist.fm which allows its users to vicariously attend pretty much any concert. Search the name of an artist and a comprehensive history of their live performances will appear, spanning decades long gone to the hour just past. Setlist.fm is both a useful resource and a massive spoiler-fest; the music equivalent

I was talking recently to a rock guitarist about the amount of music an audience hears during a typical concert that is ‘on track’ – in other words, not played live in the moment but instead stored, supplied and sequenced via computer. They suggested that nowadays every artist, from pop starlets to indie rebels, relies

Progressive rock never died. Whenever some grizzled punk soldier next appears on a BBC4 documentary relaying their version of that beloved old fairytale, the Sex Pistols’s Slaying of the Dinosaurs, it’s worth remembering that nothing of the sort occurred. The big beasts of the 1970s – Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes – thrived into the 1980s

I am a regular attendee at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh’s most ornate and venerable concert venue. On more than one occasion recently I have seen Hamish Hawk here – albeit each time he was showing the audience to our seats. Hawk has graduated from Grand Circle stair duty to centre-stage spotlight, the kind of local-boy-made-good

Tracey Thorn released an album in 2010 titled Love and Its Opposite. When it comes to songwriting, it’s the ‘opposite’ that tends to throw up the more compelling discourse. The anti-love song has been a staple in popular music since Elvis’s baby left him and he wandered off to ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. Presley is a useful

Is it possible to find a common thread running through the finest Scottish music? If pushed, one might identify a quality of ecstatic melancholy, a rapturous yet fateful romanticism, in everything from the Incredible String Band to the Cocteau Twins, the Blue Nile to Frightened Rabbit, Simple Minds to Mogwai. The Jesus & Mary Chain

For artists lacking any obvious feel for the style, ‘going country’, similar to mainstream white artists dabbling in reggae in the 1970s following the breakthrough of Bob Marley, tends to elicit the sour whiff of a morning after the last chance saloon. Particularly at a time when a slick multi-hyphenate brand of country music is

Finally, a taste of the authentic Bob Dylan live experience. On the two previous occasions that I’ve seen Dylan, in the early 2000s and again two years ago, he was disappointingly well-behaved for a man with a reputation for operating a scorched-earth policy towards his catalogue. Once upon a time, seeing Dylan live was a

A few years ago, I received an early morning phone call from Nick Cave’s former PR, berating me for not crediting his band the Bad Seeds in an album review. She was quite right. As Cave says, with a hint of paternal pride, during this powerhouse Glasgow show: ‘This band can do anything.’ It’s not

A few hours before the doors opened for the Pretenders’ Edinburgh concert, Chrissie Hynde posted a message on her social media channels. The gist being that, while she appreciated the support of the band’s most devoted fans – the ones who travel from city to city and country to country to attend multiple concerts –

Before each show on the recent The The tour – reviewed in these pages last week – the pre-recorded voice of singer Matt Johnson politely asked the audience to refrain from using mobile phones when the band was performing. In Edinburgh, while Johnson was speaking, the chap next to me was preoccupied filming an empty

‘At the record company meeting/ On their hands – at last! – a dead star!’ Back when Morrissey was more concerned with writing a decent lyric than sour internet tirades, ‘Paint a Vulgar Picture’ by the Smiths summed it all up rather neatly: a living pop star is all well and good, but a dead

Song for song, line by line, blow for blow, Elvis Costello remains the most consistently fascinating songwriter Britain has produced in the past 50 years – an opinion which seems these days to be mostly confined to a smallish section of an ageing demographic. Certainly, Costello’s music has, as far as I can tell, proved

As the American superstar starts singing another slow, sad, rather beautiful song, my mind begins to drift. I’m thinking that our appreciation of music is so much about the who, the when and perhaps most crucially the where; the significance of place is an under-examined element in our relationship with what we’re hearing at any

Towards the end of Declan McKenna’s snappy, enjoyable 90-minute set at the Edinburgh International Festival, something quite powerful occurs. The English singer-songwriter returns alone to the stage for the encore and proceeds to play a version of ABBA’s ‘Slipping Through My Fingers’ with only his electric guitar as accompaniment. It becomes a strange, emotionally layered

The ploy of releasing an album without any advance warning comes into play when an artist feels they are being paid either too much or too little attention. The stealth arrival of Jack White’s new solo album falls firmly into the second category. Putting out music in this way ensures additional media coverage and a

There’s nothing quite like the drama of a prodigal’s return. ‘I’ve been singing in this venue since I was ten years old,’ announces Shirley Manson, staring down nearly half a century of personal history at Edinburgh’s ornate Usher Hall. The fact that Garbage’s lead singer made the United States her primary residence many years ago

It is always interesting to observe the ways in which pop stars try to negotiate first growing up, and then growing old. From teen scream to respected mainstay to elder states(wo)man is not an easy path to walk without a few stumbles. At certain times, it requires making some blatantly strategic moves. Cabello wants so