1980s
The Brightening Air, Old Vic review - Chekhov jostles Conor McPherson in writer-director's latestSaturday, 17 May 2025
It's one thing to be indebted to a playwright, as Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter have been at different times to Beckett, or Sondheim's latest musical is to Sartre. But Conor McPherson's The Brightening Air – the title itself is derived from Yeats... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Roots Rocking ZimbabweSunday, 11 May 2025
“Soul Scene,” by Echoes Limited, is built from elements of the James Brown sound. But it’s put together in such a way that the result is unfamiliar. The angular drum groove edges towards a 5/8 shuffle. The circularity of the guitar suggests... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: John McKay - Sixes and SevensSunday, 04 May 2025
Sixes and Sevens is a surprise. A big one. Since leaving Siouxsie and the Banshees in September 1979, John McKay has largely been a mystery. On record, the only suggestion this influential guitarist had continued with music was the EP his post-... Read more... |
Borrowed Time: Lennon's Last Decade review - how the great man spent his thirtiesFriday, 02 May 2025
Purporting to be a documentary about John Lennon in the 1970s, Borrowed Time is no such thing. Instead, we have a lot of fan boys stating the bleeding obvious and covering a much longer period of time. On the other hand, there are some really... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl: Record Store Day Special 2025Friday, 11 April 2025
Record Store Day 2025 is tomorrow (Saturday 12th April 2025)! At theartsdesk on Vinyl we’ve been sent a selection of exclusive RSD goodies. Check the reviews. Then check your local record shop! See you amongst it.THEARTSDESK ON VINYL CHOICE CUT FOR... Read more... |
Album: The Waterboys - Life, Death and Dennis HopperSaturday, 05 April 2025
Mike Scott is The Waterboys. Launched by wide-eyed 1980s folk-rock, and “The Whole of the Moon”, he’s long since roamed into whatever stylistic gumbo he fancies. The latest album – the band’s 16th – is a concept piece, a 25-track sonic biography of... Read more... |
Blu-ray: LifeforceTuesday, 25 March 2025
Tobe Hooper changed cinema with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) for pennies in rancid Southern heat, but came closest to a mainstream Hollywood career a decade later, following the hit Spielberg collaboration Poltergeist (1982) with his biggest... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2Friday, 07 March 2025
Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) was uniquely disturbing, with its monster Leatherface’s first primal eruption to hang a victim on a meat-hook rivalling Psycho’s murders for shock and fright. It was only as the bludgeoning effect... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Drugstore CowboyTuesday, 25 February 2025
Rehab people will tell you there are three stages to drug abuse: fun; fun with problems; problems. There’s also a fourth phase, where there aren't any problems, because you’re dead.Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy maps out the territory between... Read more... |
Donald Rodney: Visceral Canker, Whitechapel Gallery review - absence made powerfully presentSaturday, 22 February 2025
Donald Rodney’s most moving work is a photograph titled In the House of My Father, 1997 (main picture). Nestling in the palm of his hand is a fragile dwelling whose flimsy walls are held together by pins. This tiny model is made from pieces of the... Read more... |
Cyndi Lauper, OVO Hydro, Glasgow review - still having chaotic fun after all these yearsMonday, 10 February 2025
Cyndi Lauper was preceded onstage by a brief video that zipped through her career, which she drily declared was just in case someone was at the gig by mistake. It’s tempting to wonder what an unexpected visitor might have made of this farewell tour... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 88: Violent Femmes, Ringo Starr, ARXX, Dexter Gordon, Black Star, Dennis Bovell and moreTuesday, 28 January 2025
VINYL OF THE MONTHBuñuel Mansuetude (Skin Graft/Overdrive)This is a balls-out punk rock’n’roll mess, grunge that’s eaten the hash-cake then swigged a pint of Bourbon at high speed. Buñuel is Eugene S Robinson of San Francisco noiseniks Oxbow,... Read more... |
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