Birmingham
Hanna Weibye
It is proof, as if more were needed, of how very right-on Birmingham Royal Ballet’s director David Bintley is, that he chose to open the International Dance Festival currently taking place in that city with two specially commissioned ballets from emerging choreographers who started their dancing careers with the company: Quatrain by Kit Holder and Kin. by Alexander Whitley. Finishing up the bill with an early Frederick Ashton piece – Les Rendezvous (1933) on Thursday and Friday; Façade (1931) on Saturday – completes a hat trick by choreographers not far off their 30th birthdays. These Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Drenge certainly pull in a diverse crowd to their shows these days. Prior to the band coming on stage for this sell-out gig, there was a group of 40-somethings in fairly new-looking leather jackets to my left, talking about Tom Watson MP (who famously recommended the band to Ed Miliband in a resignation letter), and to my right a group of teenagers, sniffing from a bottle of amyl nitrate and trying not to puke.By the end of opening song, “People in Love Make Me Feel Yuck”, these two groups had very definitely moved apart. The teenagers had gravitated towards the stage and were throwing Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Suzanne Vega clearly likes her new album, Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles. Either that or she’s got this promotional lark down to a fine art. Tonight we were treated to seven of its ten tracks, which is not something you might expect of someone who began their recording career in 1985 and has since released seven other albums and a fair few hit singlesPlacing a black top-hat on her head to complement her bohemian head mistress attire, Suzanne kicked things off with debut single “Marlene on the Wall” and the wonderfully rich “Caramel”, from 1996’s Nine Objects of Desire . Then Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Once upon a time, there was an assumption that the DJs and remixers who emerged in the late 1980s would kill off touring bands like Depeche Mode. As it turns out, nothing could be further from the truth and 34 years since they first got together, Basildon’s finest are not only still providing remixers with plenty of raw material for their craft, but they are reproducing their recreations in the live arena. Last night, Depeche Mode not only played classic after classic in their original recorded form, but also a couple of re-arrangements by way of Goldfrapp’s understated reworking of “Halo”, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
A week ago the first episode of Benefits Street crashlanded on Channel 4. It visited the eponymous area of Birmingham where most residents are on some form of social security. Housing benefit, child benefit, disability benefit: you name it, they were in IDS's crosshairs. Channel 4’s regular payload of viewers shot off the chart: 4.3 million was higher than the ratings for any of its programmes last year. Many of them have apparently taken to visiting James Turner Street, where the luckless and mostly likeable stars live. This must be what people mean by a hot-button issue, the button being on Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Love, Poetry and RevolutionThe subtitle “A Journey Through the British Psychedelic and Underground Scenes” – with “A” as the operative word – suggests this box set isn’t going to tell a familiar story. Most of the bands were and still are barely heard of. Twenty-four of the 65 tracks compiled were not originally issued.The opening shot is “Pretty Colours”, by obscure West Midlands band Deep Feeling which included future Traffic member Jim Capaldi. Although unreleased at the time of its October 1966 recording, The Animals’ Eric Burdon cocked an ear and declared it “ Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Age can do interesting things to musicians who have once been regular fixtures in the media and who reappear in the public consciousness some years later. Time, it has to be said, has been kind to the two remaining members of Simple Minds’ original line-up. The band’s guitarist, Charlie Burchill, may look like Stan Smith, the star of the cartoon American Dad but he looks good with it. Jim Kerr also seems to be ageing gracefully. In fact, he looks better than he did almost 30 years ago, having dumped the dress-sense that seemed to take pointers from Blackadder the First, with a beret.Support Read more ...
Guy Oddy
This year 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of two landmark albums, both of which were composed and recorded by bassist, pianist and all-round jazz colossus, Charles Mingus. Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus is a reimagining of some of Mingus’s tunes from the 1950s in a way that has influenced acclaimed jazz-rock amalgamates such as Get The Blessing. The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, on the other hand, is a spawling, orchestral masterpiece that is often described as Mingus’s greatest work. This autumn, Arnie Somogyi, a double bassist of some repute who's played with the likes of Amy Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Without doubt, 2013 has been the year of Rudimental on Planet Pop: a second number one single with “Waiting All Night”; a number one debut album with Home, hugely successful festival appearances, and plenty of TV coverage. It’s no wonder that the youth of the West Midlands (and some of their mums and dads, by the look of things) turned up to see the band in their droves at this O2 Academy show that’s been sold out for weeks. “Eagerly anticipated” doesn’t cover it.Things kicked off early with plenty of warm-up action from Joel Compass and then Shakka’s laid-back grooves and finally DJ Gorgon Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Much hype has been whipped up around this tale of a gang of thuggish, racketeering bookies in Birmingham just after World War One. It's a pretty good cast, with Helen McCrory's Aunt Polly laying down the law within the criminal Shelby family, Cillian Murphy playing her ambitious nephew Tommy and Sam Neill as sinister Belfast copper Inspector Campbell. But this opener still felt a little wobbly on its feet.A lot of it was down to the accents, which can be slippery little devils to get right (we know how easily attempts at Welsh can end up detouring to Mumbai). Since this is Birmingham, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Being assigned to review Editors on the Other Stage at Glastonbury 2007, when Shirley Bassey was on the main Pyramid, was not a good way to consolidate my already fragile critical relationship with the Brummie quartet. Their music pushed my mind to predictable comparisons, ones many had drawn before – Joy Division, notably. Thus I avoided them from thereon, left them alone and they left me alone, going on to sell millions of albums of gloom-flecked indie, tinted with a – to my ears, rather unsatisfying - smidgeon of electronics.Now their fourth album arrives bearing possible good news (at Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Lady Barber (1869-1933) née Hattie Onions, had her portrait painted in sumptuous style about 30 times, mostly in a sub-Orpen vein, and almost all by the unknown Belgian Nestor Cambier. But that was the very least of her occupations. Her husband, the lawyer Sir Henry Barber (1860-1927), had made a fortune in Birmingham property, and became quite the gentleman. Retired in his thirties, he took to riding to hounds and judging horses in the company of royalty, while his wife created a nationally known alpine rock garden around their mansion in Henley-on-Thames.Their largesse funded what in fact Read more ...