New Music Reviews
Prom 71: Time for Three, BBC Concert Orchestra, LockhartWednesday, 10 September 2014
Aaron Copland was an unlikely musical portraitist of the American plains and prairies. Son of Jewish immigrants from Brooklyn and student of modernism with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, he nonetheless created the quintessential American orchestral sound with a series of popular (“vernacular” was his phrase) works in 1930s and 1940s. Last night three of his most popular pieces were paired with two new pieces inspired by jazz, that other great American twentieth-century music. Read more...
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Reissue CDs Weekly: Calypso CrazeSunday, 07 September 2014
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Kasabian, RoundhouseSaturday, 06 September 2014
The genteel north London of the Roundhouse isn’t the obvious venue for a ladtronica and bloke rock band. Especially one that’s recently come from headlining Glastonbury and is used to open horizons, and sound systems more dangerously ramped-up than Primrose Hill house prices. By giving a performance that wowed an audience of mainly young couples, Kasabian showed a character and identity that’s more nuanced than the standard hairy bloke depiction allows. Read more... |
Tony Bennett, Royal Festival HallFriday, 05 September 2014
There’ll be no Lady Gaga tonight. Tony Bennett’s most public performances over the last 20 years have been in duets with such lesser talents, or in Glastonbury’s borderline ironic old-timers’ slot. The crackly recording of Sinatra calling him “the greatest singer in the world” which precedes him has introduced the 88-year-old for decades now, as if he still needed the recommendation of the long-gone Chairman of the Board. But these days, Tony Bennett stands alone. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The 13th Floor ElevatorsSunday, 31 August 2014
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Kate Bush, Eventim Apollo, HammersmithSaturday, 30 August 2014
Ms Bush walked on in a black, tasselled tunic with the slight air of an aging hippy. Her feet were bare and her tousled hair was half tied-back. And that – for anyone who had managed to avoid the papers all week – answered the first question: what she would look like. That just left us to see for ourselves what she would sing and do. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Popcorn GirlsSunday, 24 August 2014
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Reissue CDs Weekly: WireSunday, 17 August 2014
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theartsdesk in Helsinki: Flow Festival 2014Sunday, 17 August 2014
An expectant audience isn’t the only thing which can be seen from the main stage of Helsinki’s Flow Festival. Janelle Monáe, Manic Street Preachers and OutKast are also greeted by a gas holder looming ominously before them. This brooding remnant of the festival site’s former use as a gasworks brings a unique flavour to Flow. The setting and site are unlike that of any other festival. Read more... |
Neutral Milk Hotel, ForumSaturday, 16 August 2014
You could be forgiven if the name had slipped off your radar. Neutral Milk Hotel were indie contenders formed in Athens, Georgia back in the day. There were two full-length albums – On Avery Island and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea – in the second half of the Nineties which intrigued a loyal fanbase with crashing chord structures, instruments plucked from a cabinet of curiosities, and opaque lyrics. And then the rest was silence. Read more... |
Various Artists: Calypso Craze
The 13th Floor Elevators: Live Evolution Lost
Various Artists: Popcorn Girls
Wire: Document and EyewitnessPages
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