Reviews
Boyd Tonkin
Nymphs and shepherds – go away? In music, as in art or literature, the pastoral fripperies of the Baroque age can feel utterly alien to modern tastes. Those dalliances, seductions and abductions in the Arcadian landscapes of myth may cease to entice in an era that takes sexual violence seriously, while we scorn play-acting toffs who ape the lifestyle of some idealised peasantry, Marie Antoinette-style. That said, never forget that one particular self-conscious exercise in Baroque pastoral – the violin concerti of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons – remains the world’s best-known piece of classical music Read more ...
India Lewis
Angel Olsen’s show at the Eventim Apollo has been much hyped and publicised over the past weeks, an indie chanteuse reinventing herself, recasting herself with a darker, more rocky sound. Her set was clearly and obviously "rock", a sound and atmosphere that often detracted from her wonderful voice, with its brilliant mix of soft warmth and clear, piercing heights. There was something a little off, too, with the sound itself – it was too loud, and at times made both Olsen and her band appear a little sharp. It was a sound that would have worked well in a festival but could be jarring in an Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The return of screenwriter Abi Morgan’s series about a largely-female London law firm is no doubt in tune with our gender and equality-conscious times, but that doesn’t mean it’s great television. Its legal storylines are counterpointed against episodes of sentimentality and self-congratulation, as if it wanted to be The Good Wife but ended up as Doctors. It’s the kind of show where a character might notice an old photo on the mantelpiece and drift off in a sentimental reverie, encouraged by insipid singer-songwriter balladry.The best news is Nicola Walker, who clothes herself in the Read more ...
mark.kidel
There is natural logic in the unholy marriage between heavy metal and Mongolian throat singing. The Hu are not to be confused with The Who – although John Entwistle’s vocals on “Boris the Spider” were an early manifestation of the "death growl" in death metal, but perhaps not a major source of inspiration for this new band from the East. “Hu” in Mongolian signifies the human realm or race, as opposed to the world of animals and their spirits. The Ulan Bator band have taken the world by storm, as the armies of Ghengis Khan, their distant ancestors, before them, with over 30 million views on Read more ...
David Nice
So much pressure is on for Lise Davidsen to be the next Kirsten Flagstad or Birgit Nilsson, but the question has to be asked: is this just The Voice - a big "just" when a dramatic Wagnerian soprano is at stake - or The Complete Artist? Intimations of the latter flashed through much of a well-planned programme - elements of it already featured in her Wigmore Hall debut recital - in partnership with consummate, calm pianism from James Baillieu, but settled in the divine shape of Sibelius's Luonnotar, nature-spirit and sea mother, haloing her in mysterious glory.Though this tone-poem for voice Read more ...
Sarah Kent
“From today, painting is dead.” These melodramatic words were uttered by French painter, Paul Delaroche on seeing a photograph for the first time. That was in 1840 and, since then, painting has been declared dead many times over, yet it refuses to give up the ghost.Even now, when so many artists are choosing photography, film or video over paint on canvas, artists like Glenn Brown, Marlene Duma, Peter Doig and Jenny Saville continue to expand the possibilities of the archaic medium and prove there’s plenty of life in it.The Whitechapel Gallery's new show Radical Figures: Painting in the New Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There’s such remarkable symbiosis between material and performance in Irish dramatist Margaret Perry’s Collapsible that you wonder how the hour-long monologue will fare in any future incarnation. I don’t know how much Perry had the performer specifically in mind when she wrote the piece, nor whether they developed it together in rehearsal, but the fusion feels total. It transfers to the studio space of the Bush Theatre from last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, where Holahan won The Stage’s Edinburgh Award for her performance.The space at the Bush gives it a poised but fraught intimacy, highlighted Read more ...
mark.kidel
Alabama-born Lonnie Holley, the seventh son of 27 children, more or less abandoned as a child, comes from a tradition of African-American visionaries who reach back through the generations to a culture of great aesthetic and ethical sophistication, one which the slaves’ horrific voyage across the Atlantic wasn’t able to obliterate. He is so much himself, that any comparison risks reducing his extraordinary qualities to something so much less than their true worth.On this rare solo appearance, he played grand piano and Nord digital keyboard – and sang. The songs evolve quite naturally from Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
Few will forget back in 2012, when Canadian singer Carly Rae Jepsen came crashing into the airwaves of pretty much every pop station on the planet, with the sugary synth-pop sounds of Call Me Maybe. With a track as big as that – even Jepsen herself has said she was sick of hearing it on the radio – it would have been easy to assign the singer to one-hit-wonder status. Instead, Jepsen has released a steady stream of highly credible pop music, proving herself to be musician first, celebrity second, building up a serious and loyal fan base. Her return to the UK saw her playing a far bigger Read more ...
Owen Richards
And so, Tame Impala’s evolution from riff-laden psych-mongers to dancefloor-fillers is complete. It’s undeniable from the opening drum machine on “One More Year” supplanting Kevin Parker’s trademark kit-work. The band’s music has always been built from the groove up, but now the head banging has been replaced with waves of rhythm that flow through the body. The Slow Rush is an apt name. This is an album that replicates the wash of a narcotic come-up. Unstoppable, inimitable, and highly addictive.A sense of joyous adventure carries through the songs, less concerned with the destination than Read more ...
David Nice
"New Dawns" as a title smacked a bit of trying to shoehorn a fairly straightforward Aurora programme in to Kings Place's Nature Unwrapped series. Only Dobrinka Tabakova's short and sweet Dawn made the link, and that was old, not new (composed in 2007). Maybe the dawn intended in Mozart's C minor Piano Concerto, K491. was the way in which its opening theme embraces all 12 notes of the chromatic scale, while there is certainly some shock of the new in Beethoven's First Symphony (also being played over at the Royal Festival Hall by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Jurowski, such are the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
You could sometimes begin to believe that the notion of original TV drama is dying out, replaced by an interminable stream of adaptations and remakes. Did somebody mention Dracula? Screenwriter Sarah Phelps is currently the BBC’s go-to specialist for makeovers of Agatha Christie, having adapted The Witness for the Prosecution, And Then There Were None, The ABC Murders, and Ordeal by Innocence.She’s unapologetic about the extensive changes she wreaks upon Christie’s source material (in Ordeal by Innocence, she notoriously changed the identity of the killer). “Have I changed a load of stuff? Read more ...