New Music Reviews
Mark Knopfler, O2 ArenaSaturday, 23 May 2015
For many, Mark Knopfler will forever evoke a golden age of Eighties' soft rock. His headband might have been easy to mock but his blistering, finger-picking was undeniably thrilling. Latterly, though, Knopfler has travelled a less commercial path. Still, while his folk tendencies may not be everybody’s cup of tea, there's certainly more to Knopfler than just melancholy ballads. Read more...
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Benjamin Clementine, Theatre Royal, BrightonFriday, 22 May 2015
Benjamin Clementine’s idea of repartee with the audience is producing a clementine orange and smiling shyly. Clad in his trademark greatcoat-over-naked chest, with bare feet and outrageous pompadour hair, he sits at a spotlit grand piano and manoeuvres the fruit gently about before setting it down. It’s hardly even a gag but, given his between-song demeanour the rest of the time, this is the Clementine equivalent of prat-falling on a banana skin while making farting noises. Read more... |
Cat's Eyes live score for The Duke of Burgundy, Brighton DomeFriday, 22 May 2015
There’s an extraordinary moment, in Peter Strickland’s deeply sensual, desperately funny and feverishly powerful S&M love story, when a camera travels slowly into the darkness between a woman’s thighs. It’s an extraordinary moment in the soundtrack, too. In place of the golden strings and softly hovering choral notes, Brighton Dome suddenly fills with a monochrome electronic pulsing, as if an army of giant moths is flying over with wings of black sheet metal. Read more... |
The Joey Arias Experience, Theatre Royal, BrightonThursday, 21 May 2015
Brighton whooped as if she had never seen risqué entertainment last night, as cabaret veteran Joey Arias brought his Billie Holiday-meets-bawdy-standup show to the Brighton Festival. Able to switch between sincere tribute and brilliantly, cathartically filthy jokes instantaneously, he makes an audience unfamiliar with his style take a few minutes to calibrate their response. Read more... |
Flavia Coelho, Rich MixWednesday, 20 May 2015
Flavia Coelho once told me her parents in the favelas of Rio put an aluminium bucket over her head as the only way to calm her down. It was also a useful echo chamber to practise her singing. Her parents were hairdressers for drag queens. She still comes over an overactive child on stage and is one of the most dynamic live acts you are likely to see: she’s like a Duracell bunny on stage. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Bobby WomackSunday, 17 May 2015
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Kate Tempest, George the Poet, Brighton Corn ExchangeFriday, 15 May 2015
Kate Tempest's long blonde-brown hair flailed as she prowled the stage, red-faced from exertion, adhering not a jot to the media’s tick-boxes for femininity. She is smaller, by far, than her backing band, dressed down in baggy sweatshirt and jeans. Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl: Volume 5Friday, 15 May 2015
The big vinyl storm in the US media over the last month has been a kerfuffle about VNYL, the service that hoped to do for vinyl what Lovefilm used to do for DVDs. The idea, backed by a hefty and successful Kickstarter campaign, was VNYL would send members three records, based on their stated tastes and chosen by connoisseurs. These could be listened to and returned, to be replaced with others. Sounds like a dreadful idea. Vinyl is delicate and surely one of its pleasures is ownership? Read more... |
Lambert & StampTuesday, 12 May 2015
“I fell in love with both of them immediately,” says Pete Townshend of Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, the managers who took his band The Who to world-wide success. An hour into Lambert & Stamp, a documentary on the duo, the depth of that bond is belatedly seen in a touching clip of Townshend demonstrating one of his new songs. Singing with acoustic guitar, Townshend tries a tentative run-through of “Glittering Girl”. Read more... |
GoGo Penguin, Corn Exchange, BrightonTuesday, 12 May 2015
It’s a shock to see the Corn Exchange’s hundreds of seats sold out for a jazz piano trio. When I first heard GoGo Penguin two winters ago, it was in an East London basement, where new recruit Nick Blacka’s thunderous double-bass was inspiring a few intrepid dancers to their skittering beats, among a crowd of dozens. Since then, there’s been a Mercury nomination, and a recent three-album deal with America’s gold-standard jazz label, Blue Note, a remarkable achievement for a British band. Read more... |
Bobby Womack: The PreacherPages
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