America
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, O2 Academy, Glasgow review - revisiting the past produces mixed results
Jonathan Geddes
Towards the end of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's run-through of their old album Howl, bassist Robert Levon Been told the crowd the "pain was nearly over". By BRMC standards that's a wisecrack, referencing the gloomy, pared-back tone of that 2005 release, but some of the Glasgow audience seemed to have experienced it for real, having headed for either the bar or exits as the set progressed.That is partly on them, given the show was clearly advertised in advance as a 20th anniversary revisitation of Howl. However, it is unquestionably an album that was an odd pick to play in full, lacking many Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Chinese-American director Bing Liu’s first feature – his Minding the Gap, a wonderful documentary about himself and his skateboarding buddies in Illinois, was Oscar-nominated in 2019 – is based on Atticus Lish’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of 2014 about an undocumented Uyghur immigrant and her relationship with an American soldier who’s done three consecutive tours in Iraq and has severe PTSD.The harsh reality of family abuse and violence in Minding the Gap might lead you to expect something as powerful here, especially as Liu has said that his mother’s immigrant experience mirrors Lish Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
According to the fifth song on their first Christmas album, seasonal shenanigans in Old Crow Medicine Show’s family are boozy and raucous. Step aside Santa because “Grandpappy's been a-brewing since before the war” and is “the best bootlegger for a Georgia mile”. The result is the riotous barndance fiddlin’ of “Corn Whiskey Christmas” (which brings “good cheer to all the gals and the fellas). I’m in!The song is a highlight of OCMS XMAS, a 13-track set which showcases the light-hearted side of a Nashville outfit who’ve been at the forefront of the US bluegrass revival for over two decades. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Among the many versions of America on parade in the ever-expanding universe of Taylor Sheridan, the one portrayed in Mayor of Kingstown is surely the bleakest. As AI helpfully informs us: “The show offers little respite, depicting extreme violence, moral ambiguity, and systemic failure without much sugarcoating.”Yet the longer it goes on, the more addictive it becomes. Now in the middle of season 4, the show continues to tighten its tendrils of menace, thuggery and corruption with seemingly no concern for the viewer’s delicate sensibilities. Much of its allure stems from its impeccable Read more ...
Liz Thomson
On a rainswept Monday, “Miss American Idol 1956”, as Judy Collins likes to introduce herself these days, drew a near-capacity crowd to the Union Chapel, Islington, for an intimate concert that felt at times as if it were in a large living room. She’s 86 now, wearing a pixie cut instead of her once-signature rock-star mane, but the eyes that so entranced Stephen Stills are no less blue and she’s still doing what she's done so gloriously for some 65 years. It was, she reflected, 1965 when she made her British debut, with Tom Paxton, and she’s been a regular visitor ever since. In the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Having given us Peter Jackson’s monster documentary series The Beatles: Get Back four years ago, Disney have returned to the Moptop well to deliver this spruced-up reissue of the Beatles Anthology. This epic history of the Fab Four originally aired in six-episode form in the US and the UK in 1995, but that was expanded to eight instalments for VHS and LaserDisc releases in 1996.The USP of this latest version is a supposedly new ninth episode, a sort of post-match roundup assembled from mid-1990s interviews with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison with interpolations from producer Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
She’s still best remembered for her portrayal of Carrie Mathison in Homeland, but Claire Danes is an actor with plenty of moves up her sleeve. In this eight-part drama penned by Gabe Rotter, she plays author Aggie Wiggs, renowned for her book Sick Puppy but now crippled by writer’s block. This is in the aftermath of her break-up with wife Shelley (Natalie Morales), following the death of their young son Cooper in a road accident, leaving Aggie living in splendid isolation in a mini-mansion in leafy Oyster Bay, Long Island. Indeed, this locale is so upscale that it has tempted real estate Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If you’re old enough to remember LPs and the lost art of reading sleeve notes (let alone writing them), this one’s for you. The titular session man is the fabled keyboard player Nicky Hopkins, whose teeming creativity and dancing digits left their indelible mark across an extraordinary swathe of records from the golden age of rock’n’roll.Among Hopkins’ most recognisable feats are his Jerry Lee Lewis-style romp through the Beatles’ "Revolution", contributions to several tracks on John Lennon’s Imagine including "Jealous Guy", rollicking ivory-tickling on George Harrison’s "Give Me Love", his Read more ...
Sarah Kent
A lone slice of cherry pie sits on a plate inside a glass case (pictured below), waiting to be released from its solitary confinement and guzzled by a hungry diner. There it is again, in an eye-watering display of sickly offerings (main picture). This time, four slices are lined up alongside their chocolate, pecan and lemon meringue counterparts. The display goes on and on, for as far as the eye can see.At first glance, Wayne Thiebaud’s pictures of cakes, pies, hot dogs, ice creams and gob stoppers look like euphoric celebrations of abundance; but gazing at this glut of comfort food soon Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Don't be fooled by the shambling geniality which first defines Bryan Cranston's Joe Keller at the start of the Belgian director Ivo van Hove's scorching revival of All My Sons. By the time we get to the interval-free finish, some 2-1/4 hours later, this seemingly affable chap will be as done in as the tree we see toppled in the production's wordless prologue. As Joe goes down for the count, so too does the America of which he forms an all-too-ruthless part. Written in 1947, Arthur Miller's breakout play depicts a nation given over to deception and rapacity that responds only to one God Read more ...
David Nice
At least two facts stare us unflinchingly in the face here. For all the programme’s harping on how “everyone has their own view about the death penalty,” I don’t think there was any doubt in the audience’s mind about the horror of its Old Testament vengeance. And I also doubt if anyone was ultimately left unmoved or stunned by the hard-hitting performances of a perfect cast. This is music-theatre at its riveting best.
Jake Heggie’s work, premiered 25 years ago and staged 80 times around the world to date, isn’t perfect. It starts with a haunting, lopsided flow not a million miles away from Read more ...
Justine Elias
Before Million Dollar Baby and Fight Girl, before women could compete in boxing at the Olympic Games, there was Christy Salters Martin. The hard-punching West Virginian known in the ring as the Coal Miner's Daughter and to U.S. television audiences as a sassy sports phenomenon was a housewife who just happened to knock people out.
Dressed in baby pink for the ring and floral, puffy-sleeved dresses for her many TV chat show appearances, Martin embodied all the contradictions of the ‘90s and early 2000s’ view of female athletes. "I’m not trying to make a statement about women in boxing Read more ...