New Music Books
Album: Dolly Parton - Run Rose RunThursday, 03 March 2022
I tried, I really did. Took a shot at my best, and fell short, Yup, I couldn’t get beyond the opening chapters of Dolly Parton’s first novel, written with that veteran of popular page-turnin’, James Patterson. The best bit for me was on the first page, and it was pure Dolly, but in 22 little words, not 80,000. “Is it easy? No it ain’t. Read more... |
Music books to end lockdown: Sam Lee, Hawkwind, Dylan, Richard Thompson, and the Electric MusesFriday, 14 May 2021
It won’t be long now before concert halls and back rooms, arts centres and festival grounds fill with people again, and live music, undistanced, unmasked, and in your face, comes back to us. Read more... |
CD - The Lost Words: Spell SongsSunday, 07 July 2019
Earlier this year, eight musicians – Karine Polwart, Julie Fowlis, Seckou Keita, Kris Drever, Kerry Andrew, Rachel Newton, Beth Porter and Jim Molyneux – set about working with the ‘spell songs’ of nature writer Robert Macfarlane and the images from nature of artist Jackie... Read more... |
Peggy Seeger: First Time Ever - A Memoir, review - a remarkable lifeSunday, 22 October 2017
Seeger. A name to strike sparks with almost anyone, whether or not they have an interest in folk music, a catch-all term about which Peggy Seeger and her creative and life partner Ewan MacColl (they didn’t actually marry until a decade before his death) had strong feelings. Read more... |
latest in today
Album: Neil Diamond - A Neil Diamond Christmas
Oy vey. Where to start. This is essentially painful – and I write that knowing that Neil Diamond is a genuinely nice guy and that he is now...
George & Tammy, Paramount+ review - alcohol, violence an...
Some may consider country music to be corny, sentimental...
Hex, National Theatre review - 12 months after being sent to...
Hovering way, way above us, three aptly named high fairies, in voluminous chiffon, open a show that may not be airy in the metaphorical...
Ruination, Linbury Theatre review - Medea gets a makeover
At a time when every other theatre is offering an alternative Christmas show, what to make of the Royal Opera House’s first collaboration with...
Album: Backstreet Boys - A Very Backstreet Christmas
Good things don’t tend to come in slews. Slews seem to be reserved, pretty much exclusively, for the bad stuff: legal issues, school shootings,...
Orlando, Garrick Theatre review - Emma Corrin is incandescen...
Identity is thorny business. This was the parting thought of Anna X, the play that marked Emma Corrin’s West End debut in the summer of...
Blu-ray: The Cat and the Canary (1939) / The Ghost Breakers...
Paramount added a late “old dark house” mystery comedy to Hollywood’s annus mirabilis of 1939 by teaming Bob Hope with...
Slow Horses, Series 2, Apple TV+ review - Mick Herron’s spie...
Apple TV+ is using the arrival of season two...
Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review - a perfo...
This greatest of symphonies starts with what’s plausibly described as arrhythmia of the heart, so it shouldn’t have been surprising to find my own...
Three Minutes: A Lengthening review - superb portrait of a v...
We hear the projector whirr as the mute 16mm film flows through the sprockets and on to the screen. For three minutes and a little longer we watch...