New Music Reviews
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, The GarageTuesday, 02 November 2010
Bounding on stage in a purple version of the man dress pioneered by Mick Jagger at The Stones’s 1969 Hyde Park concert, Ariel Pink looks like a mistranslated version of what a late-Sixties rock star should be. His long hair is dyed blonde. The roots show. His make-up is already smudged, as if applied with mittens. Read more... |
Neil Diamond, Radio 2 Electric Proms, RoundhouseSunday, 31 October 2010
At 7.55pm I was tired and grouchy. By 9.30pm I was a happy man, thanks to Neil Diamond. Say what you like about this 69-year-old singer and songwriter: he may be a cheesy old showbiz pro, but personally I am partial to a bit of cheesy showbiz, and an hour and a half in his company on the final night of this year’s Radio 2 Electric Proms was a real tonic. With his Thunderbirds eyebrows and his prowling gait, Diamond was an imposing figure whose voice has lost none of its gritty... Read more... |
Keith Richards: A Culture Show Special, BBC TwoThursday, 28 October 2010
“I was a very good soprano.” Of all the sentences you’d not expect to hear tumbling from the mouth of Keith Richards, that one is up there with "Tap water for me, please, and I do hope this vegan restaurant is non-smoking." He has the addled larynx of a Fag Ash Lil who, when not mopping and dusting, perches on a barstool glugging gin and puffing on Bensons. But once upon a time little Richards did once sing for the Queen. Read more... |
Carl Barât, ScalaWednesday, 27 October 2010
It is not easy to kickstart a fresh musical career after you've been in a painfully fashionable – and intermittently brilliant – band. It is even harder when this is your second bash at starting out again. And harder still when a couple of months ago you trousered enough money to keep you in leather jackets for a lifetime by briefly reforming that original band for a pair of festival cameos. Yet last night erstwhile Libertine and ex-Dirty Pretty Thing Carl Barât did enough to suggest that,... Read more... |
Agnes Obel: PhilharmonicsWednesday, 27 October 2010
Although Danish singer-songwriter Agnes Obel has professed a kinship with Roy Orbison and his grand musical dramas, it’s John Cale that she covers on her debut album. Choosing the slow-burning “I Keep A Close Watch” from 1975’s Helen Of Troy (Cale re-recorded it in 1982 on Music For A New Society) is telling. Not only does Obel look for and seek to telegraph emotion, she is allying herself with performers and songwriters recognised as passionate and heartfelt. Read more... |
Manu Chao, Coronet TheatreSunday, 24 October 2010
“It’s not often you get a global superstar down at the Elephant and Castle,” marvelled a local who spent the evening dancing like a dervish to the infectious music of Manu Chao, who had breezed into London for a rare show last night off the back of a short tour of Japan and the West Coast of America. The first person I saw as an usher was Colombian philosopher Oscar Guardiola-Rivera whose book What if Latin America Ruled the World? suggests - among many other things - that the US is... Read more... |
Krystle Warren, Rich MixFriday, 22 October 2010
Paradoxically, the greater the number of established artists you find yourself comparing a new talent to, the more original you are eventually forced to conclude this new talent is. So let’s get those comparisons out of the way: this Kansas City gal sounds a bit like Cassandra Wilson, Joan Armatrading, Me’Shell NdegéOcello, Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone, Sly Stone, Bob Dylan, Bill Withers… and the list could go on.... Read more... |
KT Tunstall, Shepherd's Bush EmpireThursday, 21 October 2010
First up, a confession. I’m one of those who’ve never considered KT Tunstall to be quite the real deal. She’s sometimes described as indie, but I’ve always found her more background music for filling out a tax form to than someone to help you through a lost weekend. On a recent single she sings about being “still a weirdo”, but it comes over to me about as convincingly as Guy Ritchie’s accent. Weirdo? That cutesy Sino-Scottish face and Jimmy Krankie accent are only a curio when stacked up... Read more... |
Brandon Flowers, HMV ForumSunday, 17 October 2010
There was a rumour floating around the packed Forum last night that David Cameron was in the audience. I did not spot him on my way in, but he did choose The Killers' “All These Things That I've Done” as a desert island disc in 2006 and I imagine that, being a man of firm convictions, Brandon Flowers still floats his prime-ministerial boat. Clean living, passionate, nothing too controversial – just like the PM before he pulled the knife out and started plotting to slash away at the country's... Read more... |
Guns N' Roses, O2 ArenaFriday, 15 October 2010
"The Legend of Axl Rose" sounds like the title for a long and fanciful western movie, about a bandit who defies the law and even time itself. In person, wayward vocalist Rose does indeed resemble some kind of picaresque outlaw who rules his own eccentric kingdom, and he lent much-needed gaiety to this sprawling performance by constantly ringing the changes on a huge wardrobe of hats, jackets and multi-coloured T-shirts. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Music Reissues Weekly: West Coast Consortium - All The Love...
West Coast Consortium’s first single was July 1967’s “Some Other Someday,” a delightful slice of Mellotron-infused harmony pop which wasn’t too...
Remembering conductor Andrew Davis (1944-2024)
As a human being of immense warmth, humour and erudition, Andrew Davis made it all too easy to forget what towering, incandescent performances he...
Brancusi, Pompidou Centre, Paris review - founding father of...
120 sculptures, and so much more: the current Brancusi blockbuster at the Centre Pompidou, the first large Paris show of the Romanian-born...
CVC, Concorde 2, Brighton review - they have the songs and t...
The joy of CVC, when they catch fire, is the zing of gatecrashing a gang of cheeky, very individual personalities having their own private party....
Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - meeting a...
Kahchun Wong, the Hallé’s principal conductor from the coming autumn season, presided in the Bridgewater Hall for the first time yesterday since...
Extract: Pariah Genius by Iain Sinclair
Iain Sinclair is a writer, film-maker, and psychogeographer extraordinaire. He began his career in the poetic avant-garde of the Sixties and...
Nezouh review - seeking magic in a war
The 21st century learnt afresh about the reality of carpet-bombed cities thanks to the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011. And the...
Album: Dua Lipa - Radical Optimism
This album has a lot to live up to. Its predecessor Future Nostalgia came along just as the Covid crisis was properly kicking...
Laughing Boy, Jermyn Street Theatre review - impassioned agi...
On the morning of the press show of Laughing Boy, the BBC news website’s top story was about the abuse of children with learning...
Guildhall School Gold Medal 2024, Barbican review - quirky-w...
While the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra were performing Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie – weirdly, despite its size...