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Katie Colombus
In an era of excessive production for live shows, it is striking to see a band of Big Thief’s stature walk onto a stage this large and offer almost nothing but the songs themselves. No grand entrance, no visual shenanigans, no swag. Just four musicians, a handful of instruments, and darn good songs. But then their appeal has always lain elsewhere – in the frayed and tender edges of their songs, in the way they can make the intimate feel infinite, and the infinite feel as ordinary as a dirt road at dusk. At Brixton, that same hum of nonchalant chill settled over the evening. They came on Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Mille Petrozza was born in 1967 to a Calabrian father, and a mother who was a refugee from Communist East Germany. He grew up in the Altenessen district of Essen, in Germany’s industrial Ruhr Valley, where his father worked in the coal mines. As a young teenager, inspired by a KISS concert, he and school friends Jürgen "Ventor" Reil (drums) and Rob Fioretti (bass) started a band.By 1984, after going by various names, the band was called Kreator, with Petrozza the frontman and rhythm guitarist. Their raw 1985 debut album Endless Pain was followed by 1986’s seismic Pleasure to Kill. The latter Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Stagefront are two silhouetted figures, heads at a strange angle. Like hanged men. Beside each is a robed demon sentinel with a burning torch. Overseeing all is a gigantic, trompe l’oeil devil, gnarly-fanged, eyes a glazed pink blaze. The demons touch their torches to the doomed mannikins who go up in flames. Kreator, amid the enkindled carnage, plough into the utter pummelling of “Endless Pain”, the title track of their 1985 debut album. The moshpit explodes again.The German thrash perennials, over 40 years into their career, are bigger than you might think. They’re filling 3000- Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s the first date of Manchester rockers Witch Fever’s European tour and things are off to an iffy start. Drummer Annabelle Joyce has food poisoning. It was touch’n’go whether the band would play. But they do. Singer Amy Walpole advices us that Joyce may need to leave and puke at any point. But the crop-haired drummer’s made of sterner stuff. They hold their own. The band shaves two songs off the set but it matters little. Witch Fever rock.But let’s rewind. Support act Cowboy Hunters have a buzz growing. It’s easy to see why. The Glasgow duo are an original. They appear to an initially Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
When David Byrne made a mention of heroes and superheroes, one audience member could not resist. "Like you" they yelled out, and while the former Talking Heads singer might not be able to leap buildings in a single bound, his current creative hot streak is a nifty power indeed. Several years on from his terrific American Utopia tour, and Byrne is back on the road with a 12-piece backing band and a seemingly empty stage. To begin with, he was joined by only three musicians for a pared back "Heaven", the Talking Heads track from 1979, but it wasn't long until more and more started arriving Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Squeeze have done well. They’ve worked their arses off for years and now have significant profile again, playing some of Europe’s bigger venues (such as the O2). Their latest release, then, is anticipated. It’s a fanciful rejig of a concept album the band’s central duo, Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook, created, pre-success, when they were teenagers in 1974. For both better and worse, it sounds that way.Trixies offers 13 snapshots of an imaginary nightclub, much flavoured by Difford’s youthful reading of Damon Runyon’s New York nightworld tales, mingled with the lowlife of their native south Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Things do not look promising at 8.55 PM. Half the 1500-capacity Engine Shed is curtained off. The venue is still far from full. The crowd is mostly between their 30s and their 50s, lots of couples. The lights are on. The vibe is lacklustre. Mumbled chat and pints. It’s ex-Kasabian frontman Tom Meighan’s acoustic RAW show and it doesn’t seem likely he’ll be able to turn this around. But, within ten minutes of hitting the stage, he most certainly has.Guitarist Chris Haddon, appears first, then Meighan, a wiry, bewhiskered figure in black, cropped hair, a padlock on a chunky chain around his Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHWest Virginia Snake Handler Revival They Shall Take Up the Serpents (Sublime Frequencies)
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Californian producer Ian Brennan walks, loosely speaking, in the footsteps of groundbreaking (and controversial) father and son song collectors, John and Alan Lomax, who, between them, gathered an essential storehouse of American folk music in the early-to-mid-20th Century. Like them, he’s interested in the cultural context of roots music and he’s ranged across the world, from Rwanda to Azerbaijan. His recent 2023 Parchman Prison Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
“Lincoln, you have not been a Monday night crowd, they can be a bit funny,“ says Suede frontman Brett Anderson just before then band exit the stage for the final time. “You’re more than just watchers, you got involved.”It’s doubly true. For multiple obvious reasons, Monday can be an underwhelming gig experience for both bands and audiences (I’ve come to almost resent it when bands I like hit town that day). But within this giant, red brick, converted 19th century steam engine shed, the capacity 1500 crowd respond fervently from the very start.It says something about Suede’s partial rejection Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Last time we heard from Blackburn heavy rockers Sky Valley Mistress, they were a four-piece who'd recorded their 2020 debut album in the Mohave Desert (strong hints at their musical motivation lie in their name, drawn from Welcome to Sky Valley, an album by Kyuss, Josh Homme’s pre-Queens of the Stone Age outfit). They return as a duo, with the album Luna Mausoleum, laid down in Leeds. While it retains the riffological poundage of their origins, it’s an invigorating leap forward in terms of sonic invention and songcraft.Now consisting of singer Kayley “Hell Kitten” Davies and guitarist Max Read more ...
David Nice
Our most adventurous guitarist never does anything twice, at least not in quite the same form. Days after a recital in Dublin's Royal Irish Academy of Music, he included several items from that programme in a unique three-parter.It started with a selection of international lute dances from the Scottish Rowallen Manuscript – talking about them in between, as he apparently didn't in presumably a different Dublin selection – in the Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer, before leading us in to the Purcell Room for Bach and Adès on guitar, and then out for Part Three in a differently organised foyer, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Thrash metal’s “big four”, the ones who originally set the genre rolling, are, famously, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax. These are American bands. In Europe, another band has a decent claim. They are Germany’s Kreator, whose early work, particularly 1986’s Pleasure to Kill, boasts venomous attack the equal of any peer. Decades later, their 16th studio album sees them offer similar velocity, if with more melodic finesse.For Kreator, wider appreciation was a long time coming. Their global breakthrough came with 2005’s Enemy of God (their 11th album!), and they’ve since Read more ...