New music
CD: Etta James - The DreamerWednesday, 09 November 2011
The Dreamer is the relatively low-key swansong from one of soul’s greatest divas, a mountain of barely restrained power, who inspired and influenced several generations of singers. Why some musicians survive lives of excess and others don’t is... Read more... |
Agnes Obel, Union ChapelTuesday, 08 November 2011
It’s easy to get lost in the music of Danish singer-songwriter Agnes Obel. As she ended with "On Powdered Ground" singing “don’t break your back on the track”, her piano meshed with a cello and a Scottish harp, making what was already an affecting... Read more... |
CD: The Fall – Ersatz GBMonday, 07 November 2011
“My friends don't add up to one hand,” intoned Mark E Smith on his 1988 album Frenz Experiment. Maybe not, given his legendary propensity for dramatically falling out with band members, but his albums now add up to considerably more than a single... Read more... |
CD: Hedvig Mollestad Trio – Shoot!Sunday, 06 November 2011
Fusion is a pretty difficult word to deal with. Miles Davis's Bitches Brew might have inspired a raft of jazzers to embrace rock, but an awful lot of the crossover that followed – like prog rock – became the musical equivalent of the love that dare... Read more... |
Tubular Bells, The Charles Hazlewood All Stars, St George's BristolSunday, 06 November 2011
Tubular Bells, the first half of which is being currently revived as a live piece in the UK, sold between 15 and 17 million units worldwide. Quite apart from the work’s innocence being co-opted and made spooky in William Friedkin's The Exorcist,... Read more... |
Seun Kuti & Egypt 80, 229 ClubSaturday, 05 November 2011
Where’s the African car? Seun Kuti wanted to know. There are German cars, Chinese cars (he grimaced) even Brazilian cars. At least, anyway, there is “original African music”, not traditional but something new. Actually, not entirely new, as some of... Read more... |
CD: Bruce Forsyth - These Are My FavouritesFriday, 04 November 2011
There’s a curious misconception that pop music began with The Beatles, or possibly with mid-Fifties rock’n’roll. Bruce Forsyth was involved with musical entertainment long before that. At 14, during World War Two, he was on the road playing ukulele... Read more... |
Charles Bradley, 'Top Boy' soulmanFriday, 04 November 2011
Not only was Channel 4's Top Boy a brilliant slice of TV drama, but it delivered a neat little pay-off over the closing credits with Charles Bradley's track "The World (Is Going Up in Flames)". An anguished chunk of classic soul, sung by... Read more... |
The Specials, Alexandra PalaceFriday, 04 November 2011
“Rude boy! Rude boy! Ruuuude boooyyyy!!” The chanting from the crowd began soon after the booing subsided. The boos were in response to a picture of Margaret Thatcher which was flashed on a big screen as part of a short filmed history lesson about... Read more... |
Interview: Ana Moura on being Prince and Mick Jagger's protégéFriday, 04 November 2011
My most rock’n’roll moment of the last year was probably travelling 120 miles an hour on the wrong side of the road in a black Mercedes as part of Prince’s police convoy on the way out of Lisbon to the Super-Rock Festival where the diminutive star... Read more... |
Camille, Hackney EmpireFriday, 04 November 2011
It’s a rare but delightful thing when a venue and an artist prove perfect partners for each other, as was the case last night with young French singer Camille and old English music-hall theatre the Hackney Empire. From up in the cosy darkness of the... Read more... |
Toumani Diabaté, St George's BristolThursday, 03 November 2011
Toumani Diabaté is the world’s greatest and best-known kora player. Plugged in deep to a musical tradition that goes back over seven centuries, this griot or jali takes his custodial role very seriously, but he is also an adventurer who has... Read more... |
