New Music Reviews
Reissue CDs Weekly: Manic Street PreachersSunday, 22 May 2016
“Over the horizon they come; the anniversaries; joyous, arduous, remorseless.” The opening words of Stuart Maconie’s fine, nuanced essay in the book accompanying this 20th-anniversary reissue of Manic Street Preachers’ fourth album acknowledge the inescapable fact that today’s heritage rock industry is indeed largely about anniversaries and their close cousin the reunion. Bands tour to air one of their past albums in track-by-track order. Read more... |
Brighton Festival: Laurie Anderson - Slideshow, Brighton DomeThursday, 19 May 2016
Brighton Festival’s guest director speaks in a sort of rapid-fire drawl, ideal for her debut as a stand-up comic, which she claims was tonight’s Plan A. This half-century veteran of performance art is more slippery than that, proffering a discursive, unreliable, funny and profound master-class in shaggy-dog philosophy, with the festival’s theme of home at its arguable core. Read more... |
Brighton Festival: Laurie Anderson – Song Conversation, Brighton DomeThursday, 19 May 2016
The foyer of Brighton Dome for Brighton Festival director Laurie Anderson’s Song Conversation would have had a PR executive flummoxed; from punks in their 20s licking the rim of a plastic pint to a hobbling couple clutching programmes. The breadth of audience is surely a testament to Anderson’s unique career of performances combining pop melodies with countercultural performance art. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Bernard HerrmannSunday, 15 May 2016
“Ladies and gentlemen, in view of the controversy already aroused the producers of this film wish to re-emphasise what is already stated in the film: that there is no established scientific connection between mongolism and psychotic or criminal behaviour”. With these opening words, Twisted Nerve instantly defined itself as a film out to attract attention. Despite this questionable exploitation aspect, the genuinely unsettling 1968 work is ripe for reassessment. Read more... |
Album Special: Radiohead - A Moon Shaped PoolTuesday, 10 May 2016
In the whole of Britain there are only seven music journalists who are officially designated, card-carrying “Non-Fans of Radiohead”. In 2007 three of them were banished by the National Council of Music Writers to a small Crofting community in Caithness where they write occasional apologetic blogs for their anti-Yorke-ist stance. I know one of the other guys. He has a very hard time of it. Read more... |
Lush, The RoundhouseMonday, 09 May 2016
It's peculiar seeing any band come back together after a serious length of time, but when that band were part of your adolescence the cognitive dissonance is exponentially increased. Read more... |
Brighton Festival: Tindersticks, Brighton DomeSunday, 08 May 2016
Tindersticks certainly know how to instill a mood. Outside the Dome Concert Hall the start of the Brighton Festival is in full swing, with a proliferation of tents, parades and shiny happy tourists drinking in the sun. Inside, Stuart Staples is singing “don’t let me suffer” in a wracked warble to a video of a lone woman floating naked in a distorted swimming pool. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The AssociatesSunday, 08 May 2016
Any appreciation of Scotland’s The Associates is coloured by the knowledge that Billy MacKenzie took his own life at age 39 in January 1997. More than his band’s voice, he personified their unique approach to music. Between 1979 and 1982, with collaborator Alan Rankine, he created a string of vital records which defy genre pigeonholing and define their vehicle The Associates as one of Britain’s most wilful pop acts. Read more... |
Donovan, London PalladiumSaturday, 07 May 2016
"Sunshine came softly through my window today..." How fortuitous that veteran Scottish tunestrel Donovan should have picked London's glorious first day of summer to stage his "Beat Cafe" event at the Palladium. The plan was to rove across his back catalogue to celebrate his 70th birthday (which actually falls on Tuesday) as well as his half-century in the music business. Read more... |
Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, BarbicanThursday, 05 May 2016
In which two of the biggest beasts of Brazilian music played in tandem (and it was often playful) sparred with each other and revealed despite being rivals, how close they have been and remain. Read more... |
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