fri 19/04/2024

New Music Books

Album: Dolly Parton - Run Rose Run

Tim Cumming

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 Muses

Tim Cumming

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 Songs

Tim Cumming

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 life

Liz Thomson

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

Baby Reindeer, Netflix review - a misery memoir disturbingly...

Richard Gadd won an Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2016 with...

All You Need Is Death review - a future folk horror classic

Music, when the singer’s voice dies away, vibrates in the memory. In the hypnotic new Irish horror film All You Need Is Death, those who...

Jonathan Pie, Duke of York's Theatre review - spoof pol...

If you don't like sweary comics – Jonathan Pie uses the c-word liberally – then this may not be the show for you. In fact if you're a Tory, ditto...

theartsdesk on Vinyl: Record Store Day Special 2024

Record Store Day is tomorrow! At theartsdesk on Vinyl...

If Only I Could Hibernate review - kids in grinding poverty...

Teenage Ulzii (Battsooj Uurtsaikh in an elegantly restrained performance) is looking after his little sister and brother in Ulaanbaatar after...

The Book of Clarence review - larky jaunt through biblical e...

The Book of Clarence comes lumbered with the charge of being the new Life of Brian, an irreverent spoof of the life...

Lisa Kaltenegger: Alien Earths review - a whole new world

Our home planet orbits the medium-size star we call the Sun. There are unfathomably many more stars out there. We accepted that these are also...

Bell, Perahia, ASMF Chamber Ensemble, Wigmore Hall review -...

All three works in the second of this week’s Neville Marriner centenary concerts from the ensemble he founded vindicated their intention to reign...

An Actor Convalescing in Devon, Hampstead Theatre review - o...

One can often be made to feel old in the theatre. A hot take in a snappy 90 minutes (with video!) on the latest Gen Z obsession (...