guitar
Wet Leg, O2 Forum Kentish Town review - eclectic glee from an emerging bandSaturday, 26 November 2022
Arriving to the second night of two shows in the same venue, you would expect it to be a little quieter. But Wet Leg’s second outing at the O2 in Kentish Town was anything but – their burgeoning reputation (they are supporting Harry Styles next year... Read more... |
Wilko Johnson (1947-2022): The Bard of Canvey IslandFriday, 25 November 2022
Wilko Johnson, who has died aged 75, enjoyed an astonishing afterlife while he was still alive. After Julien Temple’s Dr. Feelgood film Oil City Confidential (2009) restored his crucial former band's profile, a terminal cancer diagnosis in... Read more... |
Album: Jamie Lenman - The AtheistSaturday, 19 November 2022
Jamie Lenman is as cult an icon as cult icons can get. The former guitarist, song-writer, frontman of Reuben, a band unfortunately most notorious for breaking up, but still dearly beloved by a devoted, passionate fanbase.Lenman has since carved for... Read more... |
Courtney Barnett, Brighton Dome review - canny, poetic singer shows she can rock out with the bestMonday, 14 November 2022
There’s a disconnect between Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett on record and in concert. On record, especially on her latest album, her dryly-stated, touching emotional lyricism is to the fore, but in the live arena you’re as likely to... Read more... |
Album: Morton Valence - Morton ValenceSaturday, 05 November 2022
London’s Morton Valence are one of those bands music journos love, not that it’s done their career much good. I’ve bigged them up a few times, myself, starting at least a decade ago, but widespread critical acclaim has not added up to countrywide... Read more... |
Album: Slipknot - The End, So FarThursday, 29 September 2022
Make no mistake about it, Slipknot are massive. 23 years after their recording debut, they’ve had 8.5 billion streams, their sixth album, 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind, hit the top of the charts in 12 countries, including the US and the UK, and... Read more... |
Album: Neil Young and Crazy Horse - ToastThursday, 07 July 2022
Neil Young put Toast to one side in 2001, dismayed at its blue emotional terrain. Depicting his marriage to Pegi Young hanging by a thread, it was recorded with Crazy Horse in San Francisco’s Toast studio, where Coltrane once worked, but rats now... Read more... |
The Vaccines, Barrowland, Glasgow review - pacy but predictable rock'n'rollTuesday, 26 April 2022
You could never accuse the Vaccines of being the most subtle of bands. When the London quintet ran through the intro to “Surfing in the Sky”, their frontman Justin Young started to shoogle around onstage as if, yes, he was riding a surfboard, in... Read more... |
Album: Jono McCleery - Moonlit ParadeSaturday, 23 April 2022
Jono McCleery has one of those voices that once heard, demands your attention, an instrument of richness and depth, and one that has earned him many fans. The likes of Vashti Bunyan and Tom Robinson helped to crowdfund his recording debut back in... Read more... |
Album: Bonnie Raitt - Just Like That...Wednesday, 20 April 2022
There aren’t too many musicians, male or female, who made it into Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Greatest Singers of All Time”, and "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Indeed, the former was overwhelmingly male, the latter included only two... Read more... |
Album: Reef - Shoot Me Your AceFriday, 15 April 2022
I have a theory about Reef. In the mid-Nineties, when the Somerset outfit appeared, they were reviled by London music journalists. This was mostly because they sounded like a hoary, unreconstructed early-Seventies blues-rock band. Those same... Read more... |
Dream Wife, St Lukes and the Winged Ox, Glasgow review - an exhilarating reminder of live music's powerThursday, 24 March 2022
Rakel Mjöll has a nice line in understatement. “We released this album in July 2020”, she said at one point, referring to her band’s sophomore record “So When You Gonna...” before adding, dryly, “which wasn’t the best time”. Finally, nearly two... Read more... |
