Laura Moody says she was given a cello as a child to curb hyperactivity, but listening to her last night you might well have wondered if she’d had Tourettes too. The singer-cellist’s sound included clicks, shrieks, howls, and a lot of things that probably shouldn’t happen to a cello - as if she had taken every musical influence that had come her way in her 28 years and put them in a blender. The result? It was certainly extraordinary and sometimes disturbing. What surprised me most, though, as I sweated it out in a muggy hall was just how often it became mesmerising.
new music reviews
bruce.dessau
I don't know exactly what they do in the music classes at Putney’s Elliott School, but it seems to do the trick. Fleetwood Mac's Peter Green went there 50 years ago and now, after admittedly a bit of a lull, the school is positively spitting stars out by the vanload. Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet, attended, Hot Chip's members are Elliott alumni and The xx are the latest schoolkids on the block, with their self-titled 2009 debut album tipped to be a serious Mercury Prize contender.
Onstage last night, however, the Twilight-style black-garbed trio of vocalist/ bassist Oliver Sim, percussionist Jamie Smith and vocalist/ guitarist Romy Madley Croft revealed the band's limitations as well as their strengths as they studiously worked their way through most of their only long player. There is a fragile beauty to the songs when played at home, but in the flesh most of their material starts to sound a little bit, well, samey. At its best it is timeless minimalist pop, pared down to its bare bones, Chris Isaak meets Philip Glass, as on "Crystalised". But elsewhere there is too much of The Cure and New Order at their gothiest gloomiest. And the simplicity is not always sophisticated. "Heart Skipped a Beat", with its childlike hook, keeps threatening to turn into "Three Blind Mice".
It is never a good sign when one is making notes at a gig and one finds oneself writing, "Must call dentist tomorrow about daughter's teeth." Despite, or maybe because of, the glorious white-walled architectural setting of Somerset House, there were just too many distractions unless you really, as Howard Devoto said in a different context, wormed your way into the heart of the crowd. On the fringes there were those triple threats of the modern live concert, people taking photos of each other, people so excited by the gig they had to ignore it and text their friends to tell them how excited they were, and people nipping off to the bar. Though regarding the latter sin, in mitigation the bar was undeniably appealing, due to the venue organising a speedy and fair queuing system very similar to the one in my local post office. Not that they serve Carling on tap at my local post office.
The still relatively rare sight of a woman on lead guitar is more refreshing than any cold lager, but Madley Croft does little to add to the recorded versions of their songs. Sim is a lithe, lively bassist, bobbing and weaving around the stage as if ducking imaginary missiles, but his banter is largely limited to talking about the "funky house" before the band's positively glacial cover of R&B chanteuse Kyla's "Do You Mind". Only a few tracks really stood the test of live performance. "VCR" – a song title The Human League would surely use if they were starting out today – had a beefed up feel compared to the frankly plinky plonk version on their album and "Islands" retained its itchy, infectious vibe thanks to a nagging riff and Madley Croft’s whispered vocals cross-cutting with Sim’s drawl.
Frustratingly though, the threesome never quite built up more than a functional head of steam. At Glastonbury recently they were joined onstage by Florence Welch minus her Machine for a radical unpicking of "You’ve Got The Love". It would have been a wonderful way to finish with a flourish last night. Instead we got sparkly glitter shot out over the audience and a recorded version of "You’ve Got The Love" as everyone headed for the bus. If any Elliott School music teachers were present I hope they gave their ex-pupils good marks for effort but less plaudits for charisma.
Overleaf: watch The xx perform with Florence Welch
Adam Sweeting
The BBC just can't stop showing that flipping Lennon Naked drama. No sooner have we emerged from the Fatherhood Season, where it first appeared, than we're into a John Lennon Night on BBC Four, featuring Lennon Naked again under a new temporary flag of convenience.
Jasper Rees
The voice, being 70, isn’t quite the untamed beast of yore. But it retains a certain feral throb. Alan Yentob stands across the recording studio, listening donnishly as Tom Jones belts one out. “You still feel the presence and power,” he reports. Not that you’d know from the way Yentob sways ever so imperceptibly in his BBC execuspecs. Yentobs don’t dance. Go on, man, do the done thing. Whip off your drawers and lob them lovingly at the Pontypridd Pelvis.
Thomas H. Green
The Tapestry Festival is a labour of love. It's the ongoing adventure of a Camden plasterer called Barry Stilwell who decided a decade ago that he wanted a festival of his own. Irritated by the way corporate branding was piggy-backing festival culture, and disgusted by stringent spoilsport ground-rules at many outdoor events, he started his own in 2003, mostly showcasing bands who'd played his monthly Euston-based club night.
james.woodall
He's a small man, wiry, bespectacled. His three band members - guitarist Pedro Sá, bassist Ricardo Dias Gomes, percussionist Marcelo Callado - must each be about a third his age: a case of three pupils and a professor? Behind them is a screen which, through this one-and-a-half-hour set, will flash up clips of Brazilian seascapes and city scenes, mainly of Rio de Janeiro.
howard.male
Appropriately enough, Forever Young began with the primal beat of Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life". What I consider to be Mr Pop’s “My Way” seems to perfectly sum up the pumped-up and apparently unstoppable forward momentum of the man himself and his against-all-the-odds lengthy career. But it could just as easily represent many of the world-weary yet resilient musicians interviewed in this unexceptional but nevertheless diverting documentary.
howard.male
Many press releases from now up until Christmas are sure to begin with the words, “Fresh from wowing the crowds at Glastonbury…”, but that’s not going to stop me using them now with reference to this great Malian band. This is because we world music journalists feel a particular swell of pride when one of our beloved acts breaks through the Womad glass ceiling and gets to bring their complex polyrhythms and weird-looking instruments to the mainstream music fan. And what’s more, in the case of Ngoni ba, I’m sure that they genuinely did “wow” that sea of sun-burnt punters, because having seen them at least half a dozen times I’ve yet to witness an audience that hasn’t been pulled into their vortex of duelling ngonis, thumped and slapped calabash, and sweet soaring vocals.
david.cheal
“It’s been one of the greatest experiences of our lives,” said Kings of Leon's lead singer Caleb Followill towards the end of this big outdoor gig on a warm summer’s night in London. “Thank you very much.” I’m glad he had a good time, and his diffident Southern charm was appreciated by the vast crowd, but I wish I could say the same; for me, this was certainly an experience, but not a great one. Here’s why.
joe.muggs
Looked at from a certain angle, Michael McDonald, who supported Al Green at the O2 on Sunday, couldn't be cooler. A key part of Steely Dan's notoriously virtuosic circle of session musicians, the man who turned the Doobie Brothers from hoary rockers to sophisticated R&B hit machine, and latterly the business partner of The Dude himself, Jeff Bridges – the Missouri-born McDonald epitomises a certain kind of laid-back but massively aspirational attitude. It's the attitude associated very much with 1980s Hollywood and mountains of cocaine, and is summed up in the phrase often used to describe his music: “yacht rock".