thu 24/04/2025

New Music Reviews

theartsdesk at the Berlin Festival and Music Week

Kieron Tyler

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter who you are. You might be a charismatic performer, or the most energetic band in the world. But some settings can’t be outperformed. Holding Berlin Festival at the city’s astonishing out-of-commission Tempelhof airport sets a challenge that’s almost impossible to rise to. Although it began working in the late 1920s, the surviving buildings were completed in 1941 and form a single block over a kilometre long, wrapped around an open quadrangle.

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Lady Gaga, Twickenham Stadium

Josh Spero

After Lady Gaga's concert at Twickenham last night, I asked some of the Little Monsters scurrying back to the station the name of the last song she had sung. The song she sang right after declaring that she had to bring the evening to an early end. The song she sang an hour after screaming that she would "sing her pussy off" and no one could stop her. Someone stopped her and no one could name it. (See Update in the penultimate paragraph.)

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Lee "Scratch" Perry, Cud, Taj Mahal, David Cassidy

theartsdesk


Lee “Scratch” Perry and Friends Disco Devil The Jamaican DiscomixesLee “Scratch” Perry and Friends: Disco Devil - The Jamaican Discomixes

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Jeffrey Lewis and the Junkyard, The Haunt, Brighton

Thomas H Green

Astonishment is the emotion that creeps up most often when watching 36-year-old New York singer-songwriter Jeffrey Lewis. The term singer-songwriter does him an injustice, in fact, for these days it summons notions of strummed predictability, opaquely emotive lyrics and vulnerable falsetto-flecked whining, whereas he’s a whole different ball game. Take his history of the Cuban Missile Crisis, for instance.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Lee Hazlewood, T-Coy, Laibach, Boppin’ by the Bayou

theartsdesk

 

Lee Hazlewood A House Safe For TigersLee Hazlewood: A House Safe for Tigers

Graham Rickson

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Grandaddy, O2 ABC, Glasgow

Lisa-Marie Ferla

Jason Lytle has a “fervent appreciation”, he says, “for bands that don’t exist anymore”. It’s why he’s playing the cover of “Here”, by Pavement, that has become a staple of his band Grandaddy’s live sets on this open-ended reunion tour, although it doesn’t explain why the time is right for a Grandaddy reunion in the first place.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Green Day, The Ramones, Solomon Burke, Anthony Moore

theartsdesk


Green Day The Studio Albums 1990-2009Green Day: The Studio Albums 1990-2009

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Soul Sister, Savoy Theatre

Kieron Tyler

The fright wig is instantly recognisable. Even with her back turned, it’s obviously Tina Turner on stage. Except it isn’t. It’s actress Emi Wokoma playing the singer in a performance virtually guaranteed to turn her into a star. Casualty and EastEnders will soon be distant memories for Wokoma. Good for her, maybe, but she’s the best thing about the otherwise wafer-thin Soul Sister.

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Mittwoch aus Licht, Birmingham Opera Company

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Singing camels, paddling trombonists, airborne string quartets and a libretto so barmy it makes David Icke sound like Richard Dawkins. Birmingham, welcome to the world of Karlheinz Stockhausen. The German composer devoted 25 years of his life composing his giant, seven-day, operatic cycle Licht. We in Britain have only ever had the chance to see one segment when in 1984 Donnerstag aus Licht was premiered at the Royal Opera House.

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London Mela, Gunnersbury Park

Thomas H Green

The look for many young Asian guys in deepest west London appears to focus on how thin they can sculpt their goatees. Well-muscled, chiselled even, sporting either a bowl-crop or one of those spiky, gelled, junior estate agent haircuts, and clad in the ubiquitous sports casual that hip hop has wrought, it’s still their beards that draw the attention. These are pencil-thin lines from the ear to chin, interconnected by another over the mouth, part Errol Flynn, part Armand Van Helden.

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