Reviews
joe.muggs
Muse are not cool. For a minute on leaving the tube station I did think they'd broadened their appeal quite dramatically before realising that a fair section of the people around me were heading to Giants of Lovers Rock show also at the O2 complex last night. But no, their audience, judging by those heading for the main arena, are a fairly even split between hyper-mainstream V Festival demographic and slightly misshapen indie/goth kids, not really much more rock'n'roll in demeanour than, say, a Coldplay crowd, but very dedicated.This isn't meant pejoratively, not at all. It's just that Read more ...
Laura Silverman
Set at the start of the US and UK invasion of Iraq in 2003, Clare Bayley's Blue Sky follows an old-school journalist pursuing justice at the cost of neighbours and friends. Jane, played with careerist resolve by Sarah Malin, is convinced she has uncovered a case of extraordinary rendition. She believes the CIA are involved in the kidnap of a man seen being bundled on to a private jet in Islamabad so that they can question him under torture. “People,” she says, “don't just disappear.” Now she needs proof.Jane contacts an old flame, Ray (Jacob Krichefski) to help her trace the plane, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Ennio Morricone: In ColourKieron TylerThe recent release of Berberian Sound Studio raised the level of interest in Italian film soundtracks. From the moment Ennio Morricone’s compositions for the spaghetti westerns of the Sixties attracted attention, it became obvious that Italy operated to a different metronome than the other filmmaking nations. Morricone will always be a prime interest, not least because he has made so much music, in a bewildering array of styles. This exceptionally good value, neatly packaged clam-shell box collects eight of his soundtracks from 1969-1979 over four discs. Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Still waters run deep, but that truism barely hints at the quiet power of The River, the eagerly awaited new play from Jez Butterworth (writer) and Ian Rickson (director) whose collaboration yet again gives cause for cheer. The converse in almost every way from their immediate Royal Court predecessor, Jerusalem (2009), this latest work is as small-scale, intimate, and compressed as that epoch-defining transfer to the West End and Broadway was rangy, anarchic, and feral.Don't let the fuss about how to get tickets - there is no advance purchase possible, only day seats - put you Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
When The Unthanks staggered into the spotlight with their haunting and beguiling Mercury Award-nominated 2007 album The Bairns, with bracing songs about infant mortality and child abuse, they became a folk band adored by people who don’t even like folk. They were spiritual sisters to brilliant mavericks like Antony & the Johnsons or Robert Wyatt (they did an album of covers of both artists' songs) while remaining firmly rooted in their native Northumberland. The heart of the band being the two Unthank Sisters, one of those terrific telepathic vocal relationships you sometimes get with Read more ...
graham.rickson
Nicola Benedetti: The Silver Violin (Decca)Cheesy packaging and photos aside, Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti’s latest album has lots to commend it. This anthology of cinema-related music grew through Benedetti’s love of Korngold’s Violin Concerto, which she first heard in Heifetz’s chromium-plated 1953 recording. Still dismissed by some as hokey schlock, it remains an endearing, compact piece, with Korngold’s impossibly anachronistic style hard to dislike. This is a noirish, overripe score which reeks of Hollywood, never more than in the swashbuckling finale. Me, I’m always bowled Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Chas & Dave’s run of hits up the mid Eighties made them an alternative to the gloss of Wham!, Duran Duran and Culture Club. They had three chart albums in 1983. But was there more to their “rockney” music than a first take suggests? Were they more than a cockney slanted, pie ‘n’ mash Wurzels? This programme, prompted by their 2009 retirement, made a valiant – heroic – attempt to elevate them to the level of the greats. Peter Doherty declared them “just like The Clash, The Smiths, Keats”. Obviously, he was thinking of “Snooker Loopy”.They are pretty great. But by not taking their good-time Read more ...
Matthew Paluch
Birmingham Royal Ballet’s second triple bill at Sadler’s Wells this week is aptly titled "Autumn Celebration", acknowledging the season’s diverse weather through eclectic, light-hearted programming.Joe Layton’s The Grand Tour is a nostalgic 1971 comedy-ballet about the heyday of the 1920s and the escapist glamour of sea travel. John Conklin’s art deco set and costume designs are supported by a Noël Coward score (adapted and orchestrated by Hershy Kay) that ranges from toe-tapping to shoulder-swooning musical numbers. Coward features as a character on board, and Layton uses other celebrities Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It’s a sadness to all lovers of the French horn that Mozart’s four horn concertos, the product of his longest friendship, make their appearance all too rarely in the concert hall. Though the building blocks of the repertoire, perhaps their apparent frivolity counts against them. But last night the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and its principal horn Roger Montgomery brought out of mothballs the best-known concerto, K495, and planted it in the middle of a programme celebrating Mozart the entertainer.First up was Symphony no 36, K 425, dashed off on the way back from Salzburg in 1782, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Nightclub Tähti is on the seventh floor of an anonymous-looking building along Tampere’s main shopping street, Hämeenkatu. Black-suited security wave you into a lift which zips straight up there. After surrendering your coat at the cloakroom – obligatory in Finland - a walk around the bar reveals the dance floor. The couples occupying it are doing the Finnish tango, a measured, understated version of the dance. Finnish schlager is the soundtrack, a sort of native-language Eighties’ electropop with emotive crescendos. It rarely strays from the mid-paced.Thirty minutes earlier, a couple of Read more ...
Graham Fuller
As the title suggests, It Always Rains on Sunday wasn’t one of Ealing Studios' famous comedies, but a film suffused with resignation and realism. That’s not to say the 1947 classic is monotonous: how could it be when it’s a bickering domestic drama, a panoramic portrait of Bethnal Green street culture, and a thriller that draws on French poetic realism and American film noir? And given its provenance, it does at least include a wryly comic story about petty criminals.It’s not hard to divine why the film’s director, Robert Hamer (better known for the elegant aristocraticide of Kind Read more ...
Helen K Parker
I have been fortunate indeed this week, having been given a sneaky peek at the preview build of Wormwood Studio's and Wadjet Eye Games’ upcoming point-and-click Primordia. And from what my time with the game has shown me, it’s going to be an absolute beauty.As we all know, life as an independent engineering robot can be trying at times. Just when you – Horatio Nullbuilt version 5 – have finished fixing one part of your wrecked ship, a marauding laserbot with a serious personality-chip malfunction melts through your hull and steals your power core. If that wasn’t bad enough, your ship, the Read more ...