New Music Reviews
Mara Carlyle, Green NoteWednesday, 09 November 2011
It’s commonly accepted that a song’s true worth can be tested by stripping it down to its bare bones: if it still has wings when played on just an acoustic guitar, then you’re in business. Read more...
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Agnes Obel, Union ChapelTuesday, 08 November 2011
It’s easy to get lost in the music of Danish singer-songwriter Agnes Obel. As she ended with "On Powdered Ground" singing “don’t break your back on the track”, her piano meshed with a cello and a Scottish harp, making what was already an affecting album track into a requiem. Obel’s Philharmonics album collects a series of similarly autumnal reflections. A rain-spattered evening was just right. Read more... |
Seun Kuti & Egypt 80, 229 ClubSaturday, 05 November 2011
Where’s the African car? Seun Kuti wanted to know. There are German cars, Chinese cars (he grimaced) even Brazilian cars. At least, anyway, there is “original African music”, not traditional but something new. Actually, not entirely new, as some of the music and some of his band, Egypt 80, were that of his father, that visionary genius, subversive and sex maniac Fela. Read more... |
The Specials, Alexandra PalaceFriday, 04 November 2011
“Rude boy! Rude boy! Ruuuude boooyyyy!!” The chanting from the crowd began soon after the booing subsided. The boos were in response to a picture of Margaret Thatcher which was flashed on a big screen as part of a short filmed history lesson about the late-Seventies malcontent that gave birth to the joyfully irreverent early British ska bands of which The Specials are surely kings. Read more... |
Camille, Hackney EmpireFriday, 04 November 2011
It’s a rare but delightful thing when a venue and an artist prove perfect partners for each other, as was the case last night with young French singer Camille and old English music-hall theatre the Hackney Empire. Read more... |
Toumani Diabaté, St George's BristolThursday, 03 November 2011
Toumani Diabaté is the world’s greatest and best-known kora player. Plugged in deep to a musical tradition that goes back over seven centuries, this griot or jali takes his custodial role very seriously, but he is also an adventurer who has stretched the repertoire of his ancient strings by listening avidly to music from an astonishingly wide range of sources. Read more... |
Anna Calvi, Shepherds Bush EmpireWednesday, 02 November 2011
It’s guitar rock, but not as we know it. Read more... |
Arctic Monkeys, O2 ArenaSunday, 30 October 2011
Boy, do Arctic Monkeys move fast. There were 21 songs in their set at the O2 Arena last night and at one point they were racing through them at such a breathtaking lick I thought I would be on my way home within the hour. In the end their performance clocked in at around the length of a football match thanks to some pauses to swap guitars. Plus a break for Alex Turner to stand by the drums and ostentatiously comb his elaborate quiff. Read more... |
Britney Spears, O2 ArenaSaturday, 29 October 2011
It’s a long time since I laughed during a show as much as I did in this one. And not, I hasten to add, in a snarky, narky, sarky way, but simply because it was fun. In another illustration of just how deeply competitive the business of the arena pop show has become, Britney Spears’s Femme Fatale tour is a formidable song-and-dance spectacle, with a full complement of dancers and hydraulics and epic visuals, and one that also features some damn fine music. Read more... |
An Audience With Barry Manilow, ITV1Friday, 28 October 2011
This wasn’t going to offer any surprises. Bernadette Nolan, Lulu and Stacey Solomon would deliver the questions they’d rehearsed. Manilow would respond, then deliver the relevant song. He’s a charmer, and you’d have to be made of lead not to be lifted by some of his songs. But he didn’t need this audience and format. The interaction added nothing. His fantasticness doesn't need restating. Read more... |
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