Latest news with #EdwynCollins
Telegraph
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Edwyn Collins: Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation, review: A retiree with joy in his heart
Edwyn Collins recently announced his farewell 'Testimonial' tour, nine shows billed as a 'last lap around the UK' that will conclude in October. At 65, he is settling down for a quiet life in Helmsdale, in the northern highlands of Scotland, where he recorded this album at a home studio on a croft he owns with his wife and collaborator, Grace Maxwell. Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation is Collins's 10 th solo album, a glittering gem of beautifully crafted songs the equal of any he has released in his career. The title was the original BBC World Service motto, which adorns an art deco radiogram speaker in Collins's studio. He employs it sweetly in a title song that lightly brushes off contemporary troubles in the world by referencing his own well-documented struggles with aphasia, following a double cerebral haemorrhage that almost killed him in 2005. Although he has physical restrictions on his right side, with one arm locked in a permanent crook, the remarkable recovery of his singing voice and restoration of his musical abilities has been incredibly heart-warming to bear witness to. 'If I can talk to you, and you can talk to me, how can nation speak unto nation?' Collins asks over a gentle but propulsive groove. There are shades of the off-kilter punkiness of Collins's only major hit, the deathless 1994 single A Girl Like You (which has rumbled across the airwaves and popped up on soundtracks for three decades now, and currently stands at over 136 million streams on Spotify). That sense of mantric grooving is evoked too on Strange Old World ('but it's my world') and the playful psychedelic coda to A Little Sign with its glockenspiel hook. Collins's songs are always elegantly assembled, with flowing melodies and countermelodies, delicate hooks, soaring bridges and replete with surprising touches that can make you reflect on the lyrical message from different angles. As a prime mover in the 1980s indie rock scene with his DIY Scottish record label Postcard and wonkily brilliant post-punk band Orange Juice, Collins has been a minor yet significant figure in the British music scene for a long time. He is a purveyor of a critically admired brand of 'perfect pop' that was never really perfect, and rarely all that popular. His references tend to draw on dated ideals of Sixties beat groups, soft psychedelia and Northern Soul, with quirky touches that shift out of the realm of purist nostalgia. There is a gentleness to his oeuvre that makes even his rockiest charges easy on the ears, and a life-enhancing positivity that suggests music made with a smile on its face. The 11 songs here are another slice of juicy joy, and the final track implies that it won't actually be the last we hear from him. 'I guess it's true, I'm working on a new song,' he admits on the outro bossa nova track, Rhythm Is My World. You've got to have something to keep you occupied during retirement. Best New Songs By Poppie Platt Chappell Roan, The Giver First performed back in November on Saturday Night Live, the most exciting young star in pop returns – post-Grammys win for Best New Artist – with a foot-stomping slice of country that sounds like an overtly sexualised, lesbian-power spin ('Baby, I deliver / Ain't no country boy quitter') on Shania Twain's classic anthem Any Man of Mine. Cliffords, Bittersweet There are some terrific shoegaze and post-punk bands emerging from Ireland, including NewDad, Just Mustard, Sprints and Cliffords, rising talents from Cork whose plucky latest single pays heartfelt tribute to their hometown. Lizzo, Still Bad Having made it out the other side of near-cancellation after she was accused of bullying by members of staff, Lizzo returns with a dancefloor-ready disco anthem accompanied by – what else! – a video depicting her being covered in fake blood and chased by villainous dancers with bird beaks. A not-so subtle nod to the Twitter critics, one assumes? Loren Kramar, Hope Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have – But I Have It A gorgeous project, this: LA-based singer-songwriter Loren Kramar has channelled earlier taunts about being in touch with his feminine side into a collection of Lana Del Rey covers, called Living Legend. Hope Is A Dangerous Woman… from Del Rey's 2019 masterpiece Norman F---ing Rockwell! is first up. Sugababes, Jungle Noughties girl-group icons Sugababes have had quite the few years: sold-out tours, so much demand for last year's Glastonbury set they literally shut down the West Holts stage. Now the trio return with an infectious, garage-influenced banger just begging to be blasted at summer parties.
The Guardian
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Edwyn Collins: Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation review – the sense of an ending
Recorded at his home studio in Helmsdale in north Scotland with musicians including his son, William, there is a sense that Edwyn Collins's 10th solo album – and his fifth since two life-changing strokes in 2005 – is about homecoming, coming full circle, marking the end of a journey. Quite apart from the explicit references to the village in which he lives on The Bridge Hotel, he sings elsewhere of 'winding my way back home'. There's also a sense of reckoning. The title track alludes to the speech problems caused by his ill health: 'Back when the words came easily/ I had the answer to everything', something also touched upon on Knowledge. Indeed, his lyrics are equally thoughtful and thought-provoking throughout, the musicianship sensitive and never seizing the spotlight from his still distinctive baritone. Paper Planes and It Must Be Real are particularly beautifully realised; the rousing The Heart Is a Foolish Little Thing conceals rueful and tender sentiments. Collins has just announced a farewell tour for the autumn. One has to hope this compassionate, empathetic record is not his farewell album too.
BBC News
04-03-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Singer Edwyn Collins announces final tour
Edwyn Collins will stop performing live after a farewell tour later this 65-year-old singer - best known for 1995 hit single A Girl Like You - said he decided to halt touring due to his age, but would continue to record new 2005 he went into a coma after having a stroke and two haemorrhages, but recovered and was able to resume his music Edinburgh-born singer first gained attention in the 1980s with influential indie-pop band Orange Juice, before embarking on a solo career later in the decade. Collins told BBC Scotland News he had decided the run of dates in September and October would be his last because "I'd be a very old man by the time the next one [tour] rolled around, and that's not for me."The singer added that he would miss "the audience love, my beautiful band and crew".He said he would keep making music as "I can't stop writing and recording. For fun, you know?".Collins was left unable to walk, talk or read after the stroke and haemorrhages in 2005, and spent several months in hospital after a surgical scar became infected with the MRSA he recovered enough to release a further five albums, including the forthcoming Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation - his 10th overall 11-track album was recorded at his Clashnarrow Studio in Helmsdale, the Sutherland village where he has lived for many years with his wife Grace. Collins formed his first band the Nu-Sonics while still a teenager, and they played their first gig at Glasgow's Satellite City nightclub in group later became Orange Juice and enjoyed a Top 10 hit with Rip It Up in 1983. The quartet broke up two years after that, but were cited as an influence by many bands that followed, including Franz 1995 solo track A Girl Like You became a worldwide hit, topping the charts in Belgium and Iceland and cracking the top 40 in America. Collins also worked as a producer and published a book of his illustrations of British farewell tour will begin at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow on 29 September, before going to Buxton, Bath, Southampton, Brighton, London, Norwich and Manchester, before ending at the Boiler Shop in Newcastle on 8 October.
The Guardian
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Post your questions for Edwyn Collins
From his days with Orange Juice to his solo gems, Edwyn Collins has long cut a distinctive dash in the worlds of British pop and indie – and he's still at it, putting out his 10th solo album, Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation, on 14 March. As he prepares the release he'll be joining us to answer your questions. Now 65, Collins was born in Edinburgh and raised in Dundee, before he headed to Glasgow where he worked as an illustrator for the city's parks department, drawing 'chaffinches and squirrels and moorhens for park leaflets' he later remembered. But he was also frontman of the burgeoning band Orange Juice, who came to define a moment in Scottish indie-pop with spirited tunes such as Rip It Up, Blue Boy and Falling and Laughing (the latter one of Keir Starmer's Desert Island Discs), topped by Collins's untutored yet romantic croon. After they split in 1986 Collins went solo. He will always be remembered for his Northern soul song of total infatuation, A Girl Like You, which became a global hit in 1995 – but his discography is full of other gems such as the 2002 LP Doctor Syntax. He suffered two strokes in 2005 which left him unable to speak for a time – save a handful of words, including 'the possibilities are endless' – but he has recovered well enough to record another five albums since. Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation is the latest of these, and the first since 2019, drawing its title from an old BBC motto. Collins will answer your questions on it and anything else in his career – post them in the comments below before Wednesday 26 February. His answers will be published on 7 March.
