New music
Depeche Mode, 02 ArenaWednesday, 29 May 2013
Even the most committed lover of long odds would not have bet on Depeche Mode still being this big when they first tinkled their way into the charts over three decades ago. The smart money would probably have been on them now playing, at best, to a... Read more... |
CD: Disclosure - SettleWednesday, 29 May 2013
Guy and Howard Lawrence, brothers from Reigate, Surrey, aged 22 and 19 respectively, have become one of the hottest acts in British pop. They have done this by dint of being the figureheads of a genuine garage-house revival. Clubland has been... Read more... |
CD: The Pastels – Slow SummitsMonday, 27 May 2013
It's apt that the word "slow" crops up in the title of the first album proper in 16 years from Scotland’s seminal and influential indie kingpins. "Stately" would be even more suitable. The pace at which Stephen McRobbie and long-term accomplice... Read more... |
Matthew and Me, Notting Hill Arts ClubMonday, 27 May 2013
Totnes indie-folk band Matthew and Me took the stage at Notting Hill Arts Club fresh from a stint at the legendary Rockfield. Like many other bands to have recorded at the Welsh studio (which has hosted everyone from Black Sabbath to Coldplay), they... Read more... |
Muse, Emirates StadiumSunday, 26 May 2013
For all the video projections and pyrotechnics that accompanied it, Muse’s entrance onto the Emirates stage last night was disappointingly anticlimactic. This was partly because there was still so much daylight in the stadium but, mainly, it was... Read more... |
David Bowie - Five Years, BBC TwoSunday, 26 May 2013
Picking five creatively significant years was quite a smart way of tackling the huge career of David Bowie, though you could argue forever about whether producer/director Francis Whately had chosen the right ones. What about 1969 and the Space... Read more... |
CD: Alice in Chains - The Devil put Dinosaurs HereSunday, 26 May 2013
In its day Alice in Chains’ so-called “sludge metal” – something a bit like the sound of industrial machinery pulled through treacle – was some of most darkly brilliant music to come out of Seattle. Much of this was down to Layne Staley’s drug-... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Rodion G.A., Dudley Moore, Four Tet, Cheap TrickSunday, 26 May 2013
Rodion G.A.: The Lost TapesInitially, under Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania’s borders were open: Blood Sweat & Tears, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong played there. But the regime tightened its grip after the dictator’s 1971 visit to North Korea... Read more... |
CD: Laura Marling - Once I Was an EagleSaturday, 25 May 2013
I suppose that whether Once I Was An Eagle appeals may depend on whether you consider "underwhelming" a synonym for "disappointing". It's the word that surfaces most, the more I listen to the fourth album from newly Los Angeles-resident Laura... Read more... |
Neko Case/Lady Lamb the Beekeeper, Village Underground, LondonSaturday, 25 May 2013
Neko Case wasn't about to launch a Yeah Yeah Yeahs-style pre-emptive strike aimed at the Village Underground's amateur camera-wielders. She doesn't mind the odd photograph, she said; just don't try to film her. It makes her feel a little... Read more... |
Praxis Makes Perfect, National Theatre WalesFriday, 24 May 2013
Almost before the dust has settled on their globe-spanning collaboration with New National Theatre Tokyo, National Theatre Wales embarks on a very different, if no less ambitious, partnership with the mercurial synth pop duo Neon Neon. The sometime... Read more... |
Steve Earle, Royal Festival HallThursday, 23 May 2013
Steve Earle is country music's great polymath - short story writer, playwright, novelist, activist, actor, oh yes, and singer and songwriter of some of the most acutely intelligent and literate songs in contemporary country. He's adept at evoking... Read more... |
