New Music Reviews
Soap & Skin, ScalaThursday, 12 April 2012
Any shade you want, as long as it’s dark. Songs like “Extinguish Me”, "Deathmental”, “Mr Gaunt Pt 1000” meant last night wasn’t going to be defined by uplifting toe tappers. On album, Soap & Skin’s music is desolate, emotive and turbulent. The songs are tremendously affecting, with a touching intimacy. But live, too few heights were scaled. Read more...
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Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner & Nico Muhly, BarbicanTuesday, 10 April 2012
Sufjan Stevens is a singer-songwriter of startling scope, one minute releasing a record dedicated to the state of Illinois, the next a five-disc Christmas box set or an album for the animals of the Chinese Zodiac. Read more... |
Cher Lloyd, IndigO2Monday, 09 April 2012
Cher Lloyd first appeared aged 16 on The X Factor with a storming cover of an unofficial bootleg version of “Turn My Swag On” - a song that peaked at just number 48 on the UK singles charts. Knowing so much about music at such a young age set her apart from the entire competition, and it’s no surprise that her debut album Sticks + Stones is the most feverish and bold set that anyone from the show has yet produced. Read more... |
Kylie Minogue, Hammersmith ApolloWednesday, 04 April 2012
Last year, Kylie Minogue's Aphrodite World Tour took in 77 shows across five continents and grossed over $50m. It was a typically lavish production featuring a bespoke mechanical stage, costumes designed by Dolce & Gabbana and high-impact jets requiring 25,000 litres of recycled water; gig-goers in the designated "Splash Zone" were even given towels and ponchos with their tickets. Read more... |
Low, Royal Festival HallWednesday, 04 April 2012
Low don’t really look as though they’re given to ostentatious display. With their black shirts, polished footwear and sensible haircuts, they could be waiting staff in a formal restaurant. One with a lot of dark wood and banquettes. The Hendrix-like squall that preceded last night’s set opener “Nothing But Heart” quickly subsided. These flashes are enough to show how intensely Low’s hidden fires burn. Read more... |
Public Image Limited, HeavenWednesday, 04 April 2012
Ever since he walked out on the Sex Pistols in January ’78, John Lydon’s music has divided opinion. In the shadow of reductive three-chord punk, his first incarnation of Public Image Ltd was fabulously exploratory and musical, blending fathoms-deep reggae bass, Krautrock and disco into its gnarly, alienated soundworld. Read more... |
Who Do You Think You Are? USA: Lionel Richie, BBC OneWednesday, 04 April 2012
“It's about as close to a spiritual awakening as I’ve had in my entire life,” said Lionel Richie. He was standing close to the unmarked grave of his great-grandfather, in the pauper’s section of an overgrown Chattanooga cemetery. Richie began the search for the man he’d discovered was called John Louis Brown thinking he was on the trail of a scoundrel. He ended it discovering Brown was a former slave who had become a pioneer of the American civil rights movement. Read more... |
Drake, O2 ArenaWednesday, 28 March 2012
Drake’s routine is divisive; he’s attracted hip-hop’s most loyal following in a somewhat unconventional way. By using self-doubt as his signature complex, he’s taken something traditionally uninteresting and made it his calling card. The cringe factor in his lyrics seem, from the outside, best suited to an album at the tail-end of a career, but that’s without considering his charm, his astute ear for a chorus, and how unashamedly, loveably contrived and cheesy his whole shtick is. Read more... |
Ambrose Akinmusire, Colston Hall, BristolWednesday, 28 March 2012
Ambrose Akinmusire is the new jazz sensation, the messiah of the post-bop trumpet. With his hyper-talented and youthful quintet, the 29-year-old Californian delivered a set in Bristol that rang all the changes from the soft and lyrical to high-energy heat. Read more... |
Roberto Fonseca, BarbicanTuesday, 27 March 2012
The dazzling Cuban pianist Roberto Fonseca delighted a packed Barbican last night – but part of the fun was seeing him negotiate the balance between more soulful, minimal playing and sheer technically brilliant extravagance. Is he more an heir to Chucho Valdez, the consummate sophisticated Havana Jazzer, or to Ruben Gonzalez, the more lyrical pianist of the Buena Vista Social Club, into whose shoes he had the tricky task of stepping for their live tours? Read more... |
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