2000s
Markie Robson-Scott
Based on Savannah Knoop’s memoir Girl Boy Girl: How I became JT LeRoy, Justin Kelly’s film skims the surface of the sensational literary hoax of the early 2000s, that far-off time before avatars, gender fluidity and fake online identity were part of everyday life.Kristen Stewart, with her own queer identity as a background hum, is a fine, understated match for the role of the androgynous Knoop, who was roped in by her sister-in-law, 40-year-old author Laura Albert (a harsh, one-note Laura Dern) to play LeRoy at literary events and parties. This is Knoop's side of the story, set in San Read more ...
Matt Wolf
An apocalyptic title proves somewhat of a red herring for a slight if intriguing play that returns the dream team behind Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to their erstwhile stomping ground at the Royal Court. Set across 20 years in the Newbury kitchen of a socialist family most of whom on this evidence cannot cook, Jack Thorne's play traces a familial and political bequest that takes us from the arrival of Tony Blair as PM through to the spring of 2017 and a lone reference in passing to "Brexit Britain". But quite what the author and his longtime director, John Tiffany, want us to make of a Read more ...
Chloe Allen
“I want to be just like P!nk,” a little girl screams as the lights begin to dim and the introductory music grows louder. It’s no wonder this leg of the Beautiful Trauma World Tour sold out in under 15 minutes. The whole stadium is packed full of adoring fans, in a sea of varying shades of pink, visiting from all over the UK and some further afield. A man takes to the stage offering an out-of-tune version of the 20th Century Fox intro sequence, gesturing towards a popular viral video shown onscreen.The pink satin curtain at the stagefront falls, the lights go up. P!nk is already onstage Read more ...
joe.muggs
There's a remarkable lightness to the way Norah Jones has glid through her career. She once told theartsdesk that even in her early 20s, faced with the global hyper success of Come Away With Me, “I think I was smart enough to know at the time that it was money in the bank: ‘You can do what you want now, so do it.’” And what she wanted, fantastically, was essentially to be the musician she already was only more so: steadily getting deeper into country melancholy, lounge jazz dreaming and other romantically-lit hinterlands of the American psyche. And now, 17 years on, well Read more ...
Matt Wolf
An entirely electric leading performance from the fast-rising Ukweli Roach is the reason for being for revisiting Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train, back in London for the first major production since the late Philip Seymour Hoffman brought his acclaimed Off Broadway premiere of it to the Donmar in 2002. Since then, author Stephen Adly Guirgis has to be honest written better plays, not least the thrilling The Motherf**er with the Hat which doesn't try so hard to flag its bravura at every turn. Kate Hewitt's revival for the Young Vic rides the inbuilt energy of the play, but the net result is Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Let’s cut straight to the chase. Here are reviews of 48 records, running riot across genre boundaries and categorizations, from preposterous pop metal to woodland-themed classical piano pieces. It’s the wildest vinyl ride in review-land, an adventure for the ears. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHVula Viel Do Not Be Afraid (Vula Viel)To describe this record is not to do it justice: Vula Viel are a three-piece investigating the possibilities of the Ghanaian xylophone (the gyil), using it to explore minimalist Afro-jazz potential of the traditional music of Africa’s Dagaaba people. So far so dusty and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
When Ladytron appeared in 1999, at a time when electronic music was glutted with pop-trance, Mitsubishis and superclubs, they drew instead directly on the post-punk synth-pop explosion of 20 years before, The Human League and the like. While all about revelled in warmth, hedonism and groove, Ladytron embraced the android: crisp in appearance, dry and enigmatic of lyric, symmetrically stylish. Coming back now from a five-year break, it’s their own music of 20 years before they may be defined against, a striking back catalogue they often match.When I first heard Ladytron all that time ago, I Read more ...
Richard Bratby
Imagine an orchestral concert made up exclusively of contemporary works by living composers: a programme in which every note was written within the last two decades. Imagine not only that this concert is sufficiently popular to fill a 2,000-seat hall with a noticeably youthful and diverse crowd, but that its format is already being replicated regularly by pretty much every major UK symphony orchestra. Now ask yourself how much critical attention such a concert would receive? You wouldn’t be able to pick up the Sunday review supplements for sheer weight of coverage, would you?Well, apparently Read more ...
joe.muggs
Implausible times call for implausible music, and it doesn't come much more unlikely than this. Hawkwind, the die-hard troupers of gnarly cosmic squatter drug-rock, have re-recorded highlights from their catalogue, arranged and produced by Mike Batt. Yes, Mike “Wombles” Batt. Mike “Elkie Brooks” Batt. Mike “Katie Melua” Batt. Mike “Bright Eyes” Batt. And yes, he's removed all of the dirt, grease, diesel fumes, sticky bong residue and guitar distortion from the band's sound – this is a full-on showbiz spectacular, ballroom dance rhythms, big band brass, orchestral swoops and all. And yet Read more ...
caspar.gomez
One of the biggest crowd roars of the night comes right at the start when Jake Shears runs onstage. He is wearing a grey top hat, a white tail-jacket with glittered lapel-edging, silver glittery trousers, a tight black sequinned vest top, and a bow tie on his bare neck. The 600 capacity Concorde 2, right on Brighton's seafront, is sold out. The audience had been singing along loudly with the immediate pre-show tune, “All That Jazz”, then cheered when the band walked on looking snappy in matching zig-zagged suits like tropical pyjamas. The bassist is songwriter/sometime pop star Mr Hudson and Read more ...
caspar.gomez
There are two schools of thought on the Scissor Sisters. One was that they were vapid, over-cheery retro-pop of the worst order. The other is that they were an extension of New York’s ever-mischievous underground in all its underground LGBT+ disco glory. While they certainly leaned occasionally towards the former, I very much valued them as the latter. The first solo album from frontman Jake Shears provides the same quandary and its relentless Labrador bounciness won’t be for everyone.Shears took time out when the Scissor Sisters went on hiatus in 2012 after their fourth album. Recently his Read more ...
Katherine Waters
“When you were our age, how did you imagine your life? What did you hope for?” It is a video of a classroom south-east of the Périphérique separating Paris from the working-class suburbs. The students are mostly girls between fifteen and sixteen and they wear make-up, jewellery, low-cut tops – we understand they’re sexy, confident, cool. Several are African, North African, Caribbean. When the teacher laughs, which is often, it bears vestiges of the provincial attitude of “a young girl who acknowledges her lack of importance,” though it’s unclear whether the students notice for she Read more ...