New Music Reviews
Elvis Costello & The Imposters, Royal Albert HallThursday, 06 June 2013
Comebacks may be all the rage but Elvis Costello just keeps on going. It's the third year running that he has taken his band The Imposters on the Revolver Tour, featuring The Spectacular Spinning Songbook: a giant carnival wheel of songs which audience members are brought on stage to spin and dictate the set list. Read more... |
Rod Stewart, O2 ArenaWednesday, 05 June 2013
For certain types (yes, I was that serious-minded teenager) in the late Seventies Rod Stewart made a convenient hate figure – a coke-snorting dinosaur with interchangeable blondes on his arm who, having made some decent records, was now making banal ones like “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” (and that was one of the better ones). Last night, the only moment Rod looked slightly embarrassed was singing that travesty of Disco, at 68. Read more... |
The Stone Roses: Made of StoneTuesday, 04 June 2013
Titling their long-delayed second album The Second Coming meant The Stone Roses had run out of religious metaphors for their 2012 reunion. They already had a song called “I Am the Resurrection”. Still, with super-fan director Shane Meadows on hand to capture their return, actions spoke louder than words. At their homecoming concert in Manchester’s Heaton Park, he caught their singer Ian Brown touching the outstretched hands of the faithful, anointing them with his mystic power. Read more... |
Barbra Streisand, O2 ArenaSunday, 02 June 2013
It opened with a standing ovation. And in a place the size of the 02 – the venue put on this earth to make Luton airport feel better – that’s impressive. It was that kind of evening: not so much Streisand in concert as an opportunity for worshippers at Barbra’s shrine to do a whole lot of basking in her genuinely unparalleled glory. Fifty years at the pinnacle of popular music is not to be sneezed at. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Ian Dury, Tom Moulton, José Feliciano, Archie SheppSunday, 02 June 2013
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Ute Lemper, Queen Elizabeth HallThursday, 30 May 2013
The show which Ute Lemper brought to the Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of the London Literature Festival - “Pablo Neruda: A Song Cycle of Love Poems” - is brand-new; the six-piece band (with which she has just recorded it, and which will be touring it) was performing it live for the first time. Read more... |
Depeche Mode, 02 ArenaWednesday, 29 May 2013
Even the most committed lover of long odds would not have bet on Depeche Mode still being this big when they first tinkled their way into the charts over three decades ago. The smart money would probably have been on them now playing, at best, to a medium-sized Marc Almond-style devoted audience or, at worst, joining nostalgia packages alongside one-time fellow hipsters ABC. Read more... |
Matthew and Me, Notting Hill Arts ClubMonday, 27 May 2013
Totnes indie-folk band Matthew and Me took the stage at Notting Hill Arts Club fresh from a stint at the legendary Rockfield. Like many other bands to have recorded at the Welsh studio (which has hosted everyone from Black Sabbath to Coldplay), they seemed energised by the experience, their melodies injected with a passion and confidence, and an overall sound that carries a hint of Sigur Ros with its swirling keyboards, guitars and vocal harmonies. Read more... |
Muse, Emirates StadiumSunday, 26 May 2013
For all the video projections and pyrotechnics that accompanied it, Muse’s entrance onto the Emirates stage last night was disappointingly anticlimactic. This was partly because there was still so much daylight in the stadium but, mainly, it was down to there being so many empty seats. Maybe earlycomers had been driven to the bar by support act Dizzee Rascal’s constant refrains of "let's go fucking mental." Or possibly it was just a bad day on the tube. Read more... |
David Bowie - Five Years, BBC TwoSunday, 26 May 2013
Picking five creatively significant years was quite a smart way of tackling the huge career of David Bowie, though you could argue forever about whether producer/director Francis Whately had chosen the right ones. What about 1969 and the Space Oddity album, or 1970 and The Man Who Sold the World? How about a really bad year like 1987, which gave us Never Let Me Down and the egregious Glass Spider tour? Read more... |
Ian Dury: Lord Upminster / Ian Dury & the Music Students: 4,000 Weeks HolidayPages
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