Reviews
graeme.thomson
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. Cute, knowing, twee as toffee, it was all very sweet but not hugely substantial.If this was the opening act in the tale of Slow Club, the duo formed in 2006 by Read more ...
joe.muggs
In an age of ever-better soundsystems and chain venues built and kitted out to replicate the same standard gig experience in different cities and areas, it's nice to be reminded of the challenges and rewards of a non-standard venue. I've intended many times in the past to go to shows at the Union Chapel in North London, but somehow Friday was my first time – and I was stunned. The space inside the octagonal chapel is welcoming and airy, and where some church interiors sternly command hush and attention this simply seemed to relax people into a contemplative state.That wide open space also has Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Scandinavia’s music is the gift that keeps on giving. Journeying through new releases from our friends in the north, this round-up encounters irresistible Danish electropop, absorbing Norwegian weirdness, hypnotic Finns, charming singer-songwriting from Sweden and Icelandic/Swedish jazz pop.Denmark’s Tiger Baby grab the pop crown here. They’ve been heard on the US reality show The Real L Word and are – inexplicably – popular in Indonesia, where they’ve charted and appeared on a film soundtrack. Open Windows Open Hills is the Copenhagen trio’s terrific third album. Its brilliant opening cut “ Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
That Faust - Gounod's curdled Victorian dessert of an opera, an overwhipped melange of melodrama and misogyny, topped with grand 19th-century dollops of religiosity - achieves a level of profundity that at one stage nearly had me in tears is an absolute miracle. The miracle workers? David McVicar, whose revival production is unlikely to be bettered, and a clutch of leads that you'd normally need a pact with the devil - or at least a very amenable bank manager - to bring together.You don't have to update to pack a punch. That's what McVicar's straight-up French Second Empire setting Read more ...
Nick Hasted
As an elegiac score plays, bails of early editions of the New York Times are bundled and tossed into a fleet of vans, which roll out into the dawn city streets, to distribute the news. The conviction shared by many in this documentary about the paper is that the vans will soon look as quaint as the last of the horse-drawn hackney cabs. The ritual of late-night editorial agonising over stories before the presses roll, and newspapers themselves, are equally under threat. The New York Times’ possible death, as much as daily life there, is director Andrew Rossi’s theme.He focuses on the Times’ Read more ...
ash.smyth
Am I being paranoid, or are there spies everywhere these days? A quick squiz at the telly guide recently, and you'd have been forgiven for thinking that everyone in London is either employed in the security services or in making films about them. According to last night's re-opening of the Spooks case-file, anyway, there are plenty around the red-brick side-streets of Hammersmith. And when I say "spies", I don't mean Stella Rimmington at work on a novel; I mean guys in black gloves, and "accidents", and hell to pay.First rule for a new series: get all your loose ends Read more ...
howard.male
I love the fact that under the “genre” tab on their Facebook page, Orchestre National de Barbès have opted for “Other” from the dropdown menu. Obviously in Facebookland “Other” simply means not rock, soul, hi-hop, jazz, reggae, classical etc. However, in a metaphysical/philosophical sense “Other” can mean that which is alien, different or exotic. But what tickled me is that the music of this Parisian-based, largely Algerian band actually embraces just about all the Facebook categories they could have clicked on, even if none of them fully sums up the multilayered din they create.Although the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
And now for that difficult second album. Downton Abbey’s stately progress last autumn revived in television audiences a taste thought long dead: for populist drama offering a sepia-tinted vision of the English class system in which the well-to-do are dressed for dinner by bowing/curtsying feudal underlings. With social mobility back roughly where it was a century ago. it could almost have been a snapshot of modern UK plc. That did not stop it from being hungrily consumed as pure escapism, both here and in America where overnight it won four Emmys. And here for our pleasure is another helping. Read more ...
carole.woddis
It all started back on Thursday, 6 April, 1972. In the dining room of the less than salubrious Bush Hotel on the corner of Shepherds Bush Green, in a room that had once been Lionel Blair’s studio, the Bush Theatre was born. Over the course of the next 39 years, the Bush became a byword for small theatrical miracles.On its stamp-sized stage Victoria Wood met the comparatively unknown young Julie Walters. Stephen Poliakoff, Sharman Macdonald, Jonathan Harvey amongst many others made their stage-writing entrance within its modest portals.Forgive me while I get a little bit slushy here. Memories Read more ...
ash.smyth
As Gary Numan strode out onto the stage last night, for the Shepherd's Bush leg of his Dead Son Rising tour, his black boots a-shining, his arms a-waving, his proto-emo knees a-bending, well, you couldn't say the crowd went insane, exactly - but they were very pleased to see him.For a man whose career was said to be all but over a quarter-century ago, Numan has done a hell of a job ignoring the bad news. His albums of recent years (four since the millennium) have created a new surge of critical esteem, and he is now openly lauded and acclaimed (and covered) by a generation of new musicians.If Read more ...
judith.flanders
A retrospective of an artist’s work is not usually a history of a working relationship, but in the case of Christo, this impressive exhibition of works from the past 40 years also marks two crucial partnerships: with his wife, Jeanne-Claude, who was his equal and co-creator from 1961, and with the Annely Juda gallery, which has mounted 12 exhibitions over four decades, as well as being intimately involved in their massive environmental “wrapped” pieces. Photographs of the end results are breathtaking, but even more gripping is watching the development of the processes over the years.The very Read more ...
graham.rickson
It’s easy to accuse opera companies in these straitened times of wanting to play safe. Opera North’s 2011-12 season is slightly slimmer than one would expect, but includes five new productions, and the revivals fully deserve their resurrection. Ruddigore is one. Tim Albery’s 1950s update of Madam Butterfly, first performed in 2007, is the other, and it's been given a classy resurrection here.Puccini’s best operas are disarmingly accessible and musically they’re brilliantly constructed. The frighteningly young Italian conductor Daniele Rustioni takes charge for most of these performances Read more ...