Newcastle
Album: Maxïmo Park – Nature Always WinsSaturday, 20 February 2021
Composed in the first lockdown, and recorded remotely, the seventh album from Newcastle’s Maxïmo Park was produced by Ben Allen (Animal Collective, Deerhunter). But it is not so much a record of the times as a snapshot of a time in the... Read more... |
Northern Chords Festival, Church of St James and St Basil, Newcastle review - high, lucid and brightTuesday, 27 October 2020
Whatever happens next – and even in Tier 3 the Royal Liverpool Phlharmonic goes on playing to carefully distanced audiences – this will be remembered by all participants as a day of dazzling brilliance, its bright autumn light matched by so much of... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Albert Roussel, Roy Budd, PropellorSaturday, 07 September 2019
Albert Roussel Edition (Erato)Be grateful that Albert Roussel became a composer at all. Born in 1869 and orphaned at a young age, he was a talented pianist who joined the French navy as a teenager. Music was an enjoyable distraction during his... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Stormy MondayFriday, 07 July 2017
Using Hollywood stars to prop up British crime thrillers is an ignoble tradition. Guy Ritchie’s Snatch misused Brad Pitt, but John Wayne’s execrable Brannigan is probably the worst example. So one’s hopes aren’t high for Stormy Monday, a 1987 noir... Read more... |
Boy Meets Girl, BBC TwoFriday, 04 September 2015
Any romcom that begins with a woman saying the line “I was born with a penis” is OK by me. And that's how Boy Meets Girl, a superb new comedy created by Elliott Kerrigan, begins a six-part series.Kerrigan and co-writer Simon Carlyle have neatly made... Read more... |
Wet House, Soho TheatreFriday, 24 October 2014
When gifting the unheard a voice, the temptation is often to make it a solemn one. Thankfully, Paddy Campbell has, for the most part, sidestepped puritanical preaching in his debut play based on experiences working at a ‘wet house’, a homeless... Read more... |
Listening, BALTIC 39, Hayward TouringFriday, 10 October 2014
Traditionally, art exhibitions have been about looking, but as more and more artists cross boundaries to engage with sound, touch and movement or to use film and video, work that is static and silent is becoming the exception rather than the rule.... Read more... |
Inspector George Gently, Series 6, BBC OneFriday, 07 February 2014
“I like it when you’re a bastard,” George Gently growled at his sidekick, halfway into the first episode of this sixth series set in 1960s Northumberland, reassuring us that the partnership is very much back on when all appeared to be lost the last... Read more... |
CD: Lanterns on the Lake – Until the Colours RunThursday, 05 September 2013
Newcastle’s Lanterns on the Lake have quietly gone about the business of perfecting their mood music. Each time they surface, their music gains another level of intensity and assumes a greater focus. This progress suggests their second album, Until... Read more... |
Cheryl: Access All Areas, ITV2Wednesday, 21 November 2012
What is the point of this? Someone somewhere must have imagined Cheryl: Access All Areas was a passably entertaining idea yet it makes Come Dine With Me look like Kick Ass. It’s the antithesis of watchable and a complete waste of time - boringly... Read more... |
The Unthanks, Songs from the Shipyards, Purcell RoomSaturday, 27 October 2012
When The Unthanks staggered into the spotlight with their haunting and beguiling Mercury Award-nominated 2007 album The Bairns, with bracing songs about infant mortality and child abuse, they became a folk band adored by people who don’t even like... Read more... |
Northern Sinfonia, Zehetmair, The Sage GatesheadSunday, 30 September 2012
Sting, Debbie Harry, the Pet Shop Boys, Brahms, Mozart, Schumann. This is the kind of thing an average year throws up for the Gateshead-based Northern Sinfonia. Their visits to London are mostly to provide a backing track for the top pop acts. Which... Read more... |
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