New Music Reviews
Tony Bennett, London PalladiumTuesday, 04 October 2011
Tony Bennett receives a standing ovation just for walking on stage. His band arrive first, then Bennett in loose black suit, white shirt, black tie (not bow), and red handkerchief in breast pocket. He saunters into a spotlight stage right. It’s enough. He laps it up. There’s a real sense of occasion. The worry is that, at 85, he will not be able to deliver, that his voice will be a feeble shadow of its former self. Read more... |
Imperial Tiger Orchestra, Boston DomeMonday, 03 October 2011
There’s more than one way to reinterpret or simply embrace the extraordinary wealth of Ethiopian music that Francis Falceto has given us with the still growing Ethiopiques CD series of 1970s Ethio-jazz (as the style has been inadequately labelled). For example, Dub Colossus were seduced by the dissimulating aspect of the music that they felt it shared with dub reggae. And the Heliocentrics embraced its “otherness” over which they imposed their own art-school sensibility. Read more... |
Ecstatic Journey, BarbicanThursday, 29 September 2011
The final night of the Barbican’s adventurous if slightly awkwardly named Transcender season was a Sufi safari, with a tapas selection of four very different artists from assorted Islamic countries giving a taste of their music. Read more... |
Rock of Ages the Musical, Shaftesbury TheatreWednesday, 28 September 2011
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, all women were dressed by Frederick's of Hollywood and all men were a cross between David Lee Roth and Jon Bon Jovi. The Eighties-set Rock of Ages is so outlandish, it might as well be set on another planet. Instead, the all-singing, all-dancing action centres on a bar along LA’s Sunset Boulevard. Read more... |
The Good The Bad/ The Cut Outs/ Peter Parker's Rock'n'Roll Club, Madame JoJo'sTuesday, 27 September 2011
There can't be many excuses for a back-up band at a triple bill, but back it up they did at last night's The Good The Bad album launch at Madame Jojo's. Way up. Read more... |
Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, BarbicanSunday, 25 September 2011
Some countries have a particular talent for choral music. Georgia, for example, has wonderful choirs, as does South Africa and, it seems, Bulgaria. Unfortunately, due to the expense of touring, we hardly get to see them. So when Le Mystère de Voix Bulgares, the female choir who embody the strange and powerful music of their homeland, came to town last night, lovers of global choral music were out in force. Read more... |
Emmy the Great, Pleasance, EdinburghSaturday, 24 September 2011
“Are there any freshers in the audience?" asked Emma-Lee Moss halfway through last night’s set. Two voices raised a muted cheer. Whatever else your average 18-year-old might have been doing, cut loose from the apron strings for the first time in the capital city on a Friday night, they were unlikely to be listening to music this polite and well behaved. Or so you’d hope. Read more... |
Adele, Hammersmith ApolloTuesday, 20 September 2011
Fresh from a fortnight of disappointments, Adele showed she was back on top form in London this evening. Having missed out on the Mercury Music Prize and cancelled a string of dates on her nationwide tour suffering from a chest infection, today heralded better things for the Tottenham-born warbler after she was nominated for three MTV music awards. Not that a bit of sadness is a bad thing for this pair of lungs, mind. Read more... |
The Black Angels, The ScalaTuesday, 20 September 2011
A reverb-swathed guitar picks out a rudimentary surf riff. Drums whack out the Bo Diddley shuffle. The four-to-the-floor bass throbs. Vocals drag the vowels out. As whole, the sound spirals, pulses. At eye-rattling volume, The Black Angels serve up a psychedelia that’s mind expanding, but more about the darkness within than the light without. Their trip isn’t the worst ride you’ve ever been on, but it sure doesn’t take you to the third bardo. Read more... |
Slow Club, Cabaret Voltaire, EdinburghTuesday, 20 September 2011
Once upon a time there was a boy/girl band who hailed from Sheffield. They made a debut album called Yeah So which married whimsical indie-folk and a kind of post-punk rockabilly to words seemingly torn from the diaries of a pair of teenage sweethearts, holding hands in the rain one minute, crying into their snakebite the next, all the time hoping that this might last forever rather than just until the end of Fresher’s Week. Read more... |
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