fri 29/03/2024

New Music Reviews

Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls, Picture House, Edinburgh

Lisa-Marie Ferla

Gig-going in the winter can be a difficult business. Plummeting temperatures call for layers, thick coats and scarves - none of which are easily stowed away at your average club show. As the venue starts to fill up with similarly clad bodies the place gets sweatier and sweatier, but by the time you realise you really should have coughed up a couple of quid and the extra wait for the cloakroom you’re probably already hemmed in.

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Motörhead, O2 Academy Brixton

Garth Cartwright

As Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister heads towards his 67th birthday does he ever reflect on the strange and fabulous journey his 50 years as a professional musician have taken? I doubt it – navel gazing not being something Stoke On Trent’s most famous son is known for indulging in.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: The Jam, Ray Stinnett, Sandy Denny, The Servants

theartsdesk


The Jam The GiftThe Jam: The Gift

Thomas H Green

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Crossfire Hurricane

Adam Sweeting

What a year for great British institutions. Sixty years of Elizabeth II, 50 years of James Bond, and a half-century of the Rolling Stones. To recycle an even older cliche, we will never see the like of any of them again.

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Noisettes, Oran Mor, Glasgow

Lisa-Marie Ferla

There is something so otherworldly about Shingai Shoniwa, the vocal powerhouse who fronts Noisettes, that it is unsurprising to see the band play on it. Shoniwa arrived onstage in a blaze of light, in a spinning gold-hooped skirt that seemed to mimic a flying saucer in the chaos, before launching into a storming rendition of the band’s “I Want You Back”.

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Jake Bugg, Koko

Russ Coffey

Billy Bragg recently described Jake Bugg as “a teenager with an ear for a good tune and a chip on his shoulder". He was referring to Bugg’s evocations of council estate life, which have invited comparisons to the Arctic Monkeys. Others have sneered at the youngster’s friendship with Noel Gallagher and his unashamedly retro sound. But what’s wrong with being an angry young man with a guitar?

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Kurt Elling and Sheila Jordan, Queen Elizabeth Hall

peter Quinn

Just occasionally an artist hits the truth of the song in such spectacular fashion that it makes you feel with ever greater intensity what it means to be human.

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Cage Rattling, King's Place

Louise Gray

In 1991, the Basque performance artist Esther Ferrar wrote a letter to modern music’s inventive genius, John Cage, on the future of anarchism.

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Herbie Hancock Plugged In, Royal Festival Hall

joe Muggs

At the beginning of last night's show, Herbie Hancock looked like he was going to perform with the dignity and serenity befitting a 72-year-old with some 50 years playing experience. The improvisation that launched from a base of Wayne Shorter's “Footprints” was elegant, charming, tasteful and often very beautiful.

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Black Top #5, Café Oto

peter Quinn

For the way it combined mercurial, on-the-fly interplay, seismic textural shifts and listening of the highest order, this gig was remarkable. In the space of two continuous sets there wasn't a longueur to be found, such was the incredible union of Black Top #5's boundary-pushing improv and fine-tuned musicianship.

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