New Music Reviews
Reissue CDs Weekly: Simple Minds, Klaus Dinger, The Primitives, Transvision VampSunday, 31 March 2013
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Mari Wilson, The Komedia, BrightonMonday, 25 March 2013
Long before Amy Winehouse, there was a north London retro soul'n'jazz girl with a beehive hairdo making inroads into the Top 40. However, after a short run of hits in the early Eighties Mari Wilson never achieved the epic popularity of her dark-haired successor. Thus we find her in a Brighton basement playing a cruise ship set to a chicken-in-a-basket audience. Read more... |
Noel Gallagher, Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Royal Albert HallSunday, 24 March 2013
"Noel. Noel." Damon Albarn had to shout twice before Noel Gallagher joined him onstage to strum his guitar during Blur's neo-bluesy "Tender". Maybe Albarn's former Britpop rival wanted their historic musical union to take just a little bit longer. Maybe he wanted Albarn to wait just to assert himself. Or maybe after all these years of standing between very loud bands and very loud audiences he is a little deaf. But it happened. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Stephen StillsSunday, 24 March 2013
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Mark Lockheart, Kings PlaceSunday, 24 March 2013
Suddenly, it's raining Duke Ellington homages. Stateside, there's Terri Lyne Carrington's Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue, a brilliant reimagining of Ellington's classic 1963 trio recording with Charles Mingus and Max Roach that recently hit the top spot on the JazzWeek radio chart. Read more... |
Tomatito, Sadler's WellsThursday, 21 March 2013
He looks the part: straggly, desert hair and haunted fizzog. He sounds the part: opening dry rhythmic strumming over unchorded strings; acrobatic trills; percussive attack. Flanked on the left by two singers, Kiki Cortinas and Simón Román, and a shadowy dancer, Paloma Fantova, and on the right by second guitarist El Cristi and percussionst Israel Suárez, this flamenco stalwart decked out the Sadler’s Wells stage with the requisite musical equipment. Read more... |
David Bowie Is, Victoria & Albert MuseumWednesday, 20 March 2013
How much more of a melancholy experience walking round this exhibition would have been if its subject hadn’t just sprung a new album on us that’s so suffused with energy and life. It’s meant that the exhibition's title - David Bowie Is – feels like a genuine statement of fact rather than just wishful thinking, at least in the literal sense. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Bernard Herrmann, Jamiroquai, The Who, Lee HazlewoodSunday, 17 March 2013
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Rick Redbeard, Electric Circus, EdinburghWednesday, 13 March 2013
Rick Redbeard has a pirate’s name and a voice like deep, dark water. Behind the colourful alter ego stands (or, as was the case last night, sits) Rick Anthony, singer of The Phantom Band, the Scottish six-piece whose two albums – Checkmate Savage and The Wants – have recently stretched the admittedly painfully limited parameters of contemporary rock music to thrilling extremes. Read more... |
Wilko Johnson, KokoMonday, 11 March 2013
What fire and grace on display last night at what he and we assume will be Wilko Johnson’s final London gig. It’s been a while since ticket touts were out in force outside one of his gigs (£200 for you, sir) although his career has been floating upward in the last couple of years, partly due to Julien Temple’s excellent documentary Oil City Confidential. Read more... |
Simple Minds: Celebrate – The Greatest Hits +
Bernard Herrmann: Vertigo and Music From the Films of Alfred HitchcockPages
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