Liverpool
Jonathan Geddes
It is a sign of Ladytron’s longevity and relevance that their support acts are now performers clearly inspired by the quartet. Elisabeth Elektra, here picked for opening the night in her home city, may not have the icy cool of the evening’s headliners, but the lineage of her buoyantly loud electro pop was clear.At its best, she showcased a wickedly clear groove, at worst her vocal was submerged by the live drummer pounding away behind her. However it was a lively, enjoyable start to affairs.That noise, though, was merely a light blow compared to the hammering assault when Ladytron themselves Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Can lightning strike twice? Very much so, when it comes to Shirley Valentine, Willy Russell's much-revived solo play which I saw back in the day with its London and Broadway originator, Pauline Collins, who went on to receive a 1990 Oscar nomination for the film. Now along comes Sheridan Smith, who is very nearly the same age as the unhappy Liverpudlian housewife and mother who, age 42, reluctantly travels to Greece and into a new life. And, remarkably, Smith not only stands alongside fond memories of Collins in the role but quite often surpasses them. For years, Smith's emotional Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The most commercially and consistently successful band on DinDisc was Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Martha and the Muffins also made a mark. Label mates The Monochrome Set were cool, distinctive but not so chart friendly. The Revillos were less reserved, as was New Wave of British Heavy Metal outfit Dedringer. The patronage of Heaven 17 brought dance troupe Hot Gossip to the label.DinDisc was an offshoot of Virgin Records with arty leanings. Extant from autumn 1979 to early 1981 it was in keeping with the Charisma subsidiary Pre, which operated over a similar period. Both paved the way Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In late August 1962, Liverpool’s Swinging Blue Genes were booked to play Hamburg’s Star-Club for the first time. At the opening show of their season, they were booed and the curtain was pulled across them. The audience took against their mix of skiffle and trad jazz. A musical rethink was needed.In mid-May 1964, The Swinging Blue Jeans, as they now were, were booed while touring the UK on a bill with Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, The Animals, King Size Taylor & The Dominoes, The Other Two and The Nashville Teens. They were pulled from the dates. The R&B and rock ’n roll fans in the Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Britpop-era favourites have been critically buried for the most part, unwelcome reminders, much like a hangover, of a wild party now seen as a regrettable generational aberration. The Boo Radleys were outsiders even at the time, Wirral experimental pop classicists not far off thirty when 1995’s “Wake Up Boo!”, a deliberate hit as atypical as REM’s “Shiny Happy People”, hit the Top 10 and introduced Chris Evans’ hedonistic Radio 1 Breakfast Show. They were gawky, shoegaze-y relics of the old Creation Records now Oasis were its cocky figureheads and, behind the single’s euphoric rush, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Cops on the box… don’t we just love ‘em? From Jimmy Perez and Ted Hastings to Inspector Reid from Ripper Street and Stella Gibson from The Fall the list is endless, but obviously we need more. The copper seems to have become the battered Everyperson we can dump all our fear, loathing and anxiety onto.Just this week, we have two new major police-orientated series, the credibility-stretching bomb disposal yarn Trigger Point (ITV), and The Responder on BBC One (wackily scheduled across two weeks). At first glance the latter is indisputably the superior of the two, largely because of a dominant Read more ...
David Nice
After 14 years as principal conductor, Vasily Petrenko has left the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in top-league shape. The players must be as thrilled as we are that his successor, Venezuelan Armenian Domingo Hindoyan, carries the flame, catches the spark, call it what you will, with a distinct personality of his own, combining clariy and elegance in baton-wielding with a very watchable physical freedom. This Proms programme was well-tailored to presenting the new incumbent and the skills of each orchestral department in equal measure, and the star soloist, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Read more ...
Daniel Baksi
“On the Ordinance Survey map, it has no name”, writes Andrew Michael Hurley, of the wood that nevertheless gives its name to his essay. “Clavicle Wood” provides the first chapter in the Test Signal: Northern Anthology of New Writing. It is a mediation on meaning, bountiful in its praise of a place that is, above all else, a repository of memories: “We’ve come to call it Clavicle Wood, my family and I, on account of my eldest son breaking his collarbone there twice when he was younger". Like all the writing in Test Signal, it belongs to the contemporary. Amid the terror of the Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Merseyside rock’s taste for glowing lysergic locales defines The Coral’s tenth LP, Coral Island, a double concept album which makes them the house band in a seedy fairground full of sepia memories and sawdust spirits. Put this Island on the map with the acid-blot evocations of The Beatles’ concept single “Penny Lane”/“Strawberry Fields Forever”, and “Villiers Terrace”, the 1980 address where Echo & the Bunnymen first found the hot glow of youthful imagination and excess.Keyboardist Nick Power’s linking narration is voiced by singer/co-writer James Skelly’s 85-year-old grandfather Ian Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Breaking away from the outlandish shenanigans in Little Big Bear in the Canadian wilds of its first two series, this third outing for Tin Star brings Jack Worth (Tim Roth), wife Angela (Genevieve O’Reilly) and daughter Anna (Abigail Lawrie) back across the Atlantic to Liverpool to confront dirty secrets they’ve been running away from for 20 years. As you might expect, power, corruption and oodles of bloody violence are the order of the day.After the peculiar mixture of Ammonite preachers and Mexican drug cartels in series two, this return to basics could have proved to be a blessing, adding a Read more ...
joe.muggs
This documentary is bittersweet viewing on quite a number of levels. First, it’s got all the glory and tragedy of the most compelling music stories: a Liverpool band struggling from humble beginnings, trying to find an identity, fraternity and fallings-out, coping with huge success and its aftermath – not to mention sex, drugs, mental illness and death. On top of that there’s a constant layer of narrative about the endless pressures of racism on black British musicians, told brilliantly both explicitly and in the micro-details of 1960s and '70s life.Maybe most devastating thing of all, though Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The enduring status of The Beatles shouldn’t distract from them having been one amongst many Liverpool bands while they found their feet. In October 1961, local impresario and Cavern Club DJ/MC Bob Wooler worked out that there were 125 active bands in Liverpool and its environs, and that he knew of 249 overall since he began working with music in the city.At that point, like The Beatles, King Size Taylor and the Dominoes were on the rise. They had come together in 1958 in Seaforth, north of Liverpool, as a union of rock ’n rollers The Dominoes and six-foot-five guitarist Ted “Kingsize” Taylor Read more ...