New Music Reviews
The Killers, RoundhouseWednesday, 12 September 2012
The moment everyone will remember came exactly an hour in: Brandon Flowers was singing “All These Things That I've Done” with the conviction of a man at confession. Behind him a video screen showed a loner carrying a long wooden sign on his shoulder like a cross. In the desert in front of him scantily dressed women stood by a grave. Suddenly there was an explosion above us all. Red and silver glitter thunderbolts rained down. Read more... |
theartsdesk at Bestival 2012: Wild Times Across the WaterWednesday, 12 September 2012
Friday 7th September Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Berlin Festival and Music WeekTuesday, 11 September 2012
Sometimes, it doesn’t matter who you are. You might be a charismatic performer, or the most energetic band in the world. But some settings can’t be outperformed. Holding Berlin Festival at the city’s astonishing out-of-commission Tempelhof airport sets a challenge that’s almost impossible to rise to. Although it began working in the late 1920s, the surviving buildings were completed in 1941 and form a single block over a kilometre long, wrapped around an open quadrangle. Read more... |
Lady Gaga, Twickenham StadiumSunday, 09 September 2012
After Lady Gaga's concert at Twickenham last night, I asked some of the Little Monsters scurrying back to the station the name of the last song she had sung. The song she sang right after declaring that she had to bring the evening to an early end. The song she sang an hour after screaming that she would "sing her pussy off" and no one could stop her. Someone stopped her and no one could name it. (See Update in the penultimate paragraph.) Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Lee "Scratch" Perry, Cud, Taj Mahal, David CassidySunday, 09 September 2012
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Jeffrey Lewis and the Junkyard, The Haunt, BrightonFriday, 07 September 2012
Astonishment is the emotion that creeps up most often when watching 36-year-old New York singer-songwriter Jeffrey Lewis. The term singer-songwriter does him an injustice, in fact, for these days it summons notions of strummed predictability, opaquely emotive lyrics and vulnerable falsetto-flecked whining, whereas he’s a whole different ball game. Take his history of the Cuban Missile Crisis, for instance. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Lee Hazlewood, T-Coy, Laibach, Boppin’ by the BayouSunday, 02 September 2012
Graham Rickson Read more... |
Grandaddy, O2 ABC, GlasgowFriday, 31 August 2012
Jason Lytle has a “fervent appreciation”, he says, “for bands that don’t exist anymore”. It’s why he’s playing the cover of “Here”, by Pavement, that has become a staple of his band Grandaddy’s live sets on this open-ended reunion tour, although it doesn’t explain why the time is right for a Grandaddy reunion in the first place. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Green Day, The Ramones, Solomon Burke, Anthony MooreSunday, 26 August 2012
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Soul Sister, Savoy TheatreSaturday, 25 August 2012
The fright wig is instantly recognisable. Even with her back turned, it’s obviously Tina Turner on stage. Except it isn’t. It’s actress Emi Wokoma playing the singer in a performance virtually guaranteed to turn her into a star. Casualty and EastEnders will soon be distant memories for Wokoma. Good for her, maybe, but she’s the best thing about the otherwise wafer-thin Soul Sister. Read more... |
Lee “Scratch” Perry and Friends: Disco Devil - The Jamaican Discomixes
Green Day: The Studio Albums 1990-2009Pages
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