2000s
CD: Norah Jones - Begin AgainSaturday, 06 April 2019
There's a remarkable lightness to the way Norah Jones has glid through her career. She once told theartsdesk that even in her early 20s, faced with the global hyper success of Come Away With Me, “I think I was smart enough to know at the... Read more... |
Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train, Young Vic review - shards of power amidst much that is overwroughtFriday, 22 February 2019
An entirely electric leading performance from the fast-rising Ukweli Roach is the reason for being for revisiting Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train, back in London for the first major production since the late Philip Seymour Hoffman brought his acclaimed... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 47: The Beta Band, Ry Cooder, The Cardigans, Sgt. Pepper goes jazz and moreWednesday, 13 February 2019
Let’s cut straight to the chase. Here are reviews of 48 records, running riot across genre boundaries and categorizations, from preposterous pop metal to woodland-themed classical piano pieces. It’s the wildest vinyl ride in review-land, an... Read more... |
CD: Ladytron - LadytronWednesday, 13 February 2019
When Ladytron appeared in 1999, at a time when electronic music was glutted with pop-trance, Mitsubishis and superclubs, they drew instead directly on the post-punk synth-pop explosion of 20 years before, The Human League and the like. While all... Read more... |
The Music of Harry Potter, CBSO, Seal, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - orchestral wizardrySaturday, 13 October 2018
Imagine an orchestral concert made up exclusively of contemporary works by living composers: a programme in which every note was written within the last two decades. Imagine not only that this concert is sufficiently popular to fill a 2,000-seat... Read more... |
CD: Hawkwind - Road to UtopiaSaturday, 15 September 2018
Implausible times call for implausible music, and it doesn't come much more unlikely than this. Hawkwind, the die-hard troupers of gnarly cosmic squatter drug-rock, have re-recorded highlights from their catalogue, arranged and produced by Mike Batt... Read more... |
Jake Shears, Concorde 2, Brighton review - a blitz of glitzFriday, 17 August 2018
One of the biggest crowd roars of the night comes right at the start when Jake Shears runs onstage. He is wearing a grey top hat, a white tail-jacket with glittered lapel-edging, silver glittery trousers, a tight black sequinned vest top, and a bow... Read more... |
CD: Jake Shears - Jake ShearsWednesday, 08 August 2018
There are two schools of thought on the Scissor Sisters. One was that they were vapid, over-cheery retro-pop of the worst order. The other is that they were an extension of New York’s ever-mischievous underground in all its underground LGBT+ disco... Read more... |
Annie Ernaux: The Years, review - time’s flowSunday, 05 August 2018
“When you were our age, how did you imagine your life? What did you hope for?” It is a video of a classroom south-east of the Périphérique separating Paris from the working-class suburbs. The students are mostly girls between fifteen and sixteen and... Read more... |
Berlin Philharmonic, Rattle, RFH review - everything but inscapeThursday, 31 May 2018
Questions of interpretation apart, Simon Rattle has yet again proved the great connecter, this time in concerts separated by just over a month. Having set his seal on his new, galvanizing partnership with the London Symphony Orchestra by asserting,... Read more... |
Ryuichi Sakamoto: 'Ideally I'm recording all the time, 24 hours a day' - interviewSaturday, 26 May 2018
Ryuichi Sakamoto has conquered underground and mainstream with seeming ease over four decades, never dropping off in the quality of his releases. Indeed his most recent projects, following his return to public life after treatment for throat cancer... Read more... |
4.48 Psychosis, Royal Opera, Lyric Hammersmith review - despairing truth in song and speechThursday, 26 April 2018
Depression, with or without psychotic episodes, is a rare subject for drama or music theatre - and with good reason: the sheer unrelenting monotony of anguish and self-absorption is hard to reproduce within a concentrated time-span. So we still... Read more... |
