New Music Reviews
Carleen Anderson: A Tribute to Sarah Vaughan, Theatre Royal, BrightonSunday, 24 May 2015
Carleen Anderson’s range of vocal scales and styles is matchless in contemporary pop. Where she aims those enviable resources is the only issue anyone could have with her, a matter of taste she’ll eventually make irrelevant tonight with a flood of gospel-jazz exhilaration. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The DamnedSunday, 24 May 2015
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Mark Knopfler, O2 ArenaSaturday, 23 May 2015
For many, Mark Knopfler will forever evoke a golden age of Eighties' soft rock. His headband might have been easy to mock but his blistering, finger-picking was undeniably thrilling. Latterly, though, Knopfler has travelled a less commercial path. Still, while his folk tendencies may not be everybody’s cup of tea, there's certainly more to Knopfler than just melancholy ballads. Read more... |
Benjamin Clementine, Theatre Royal, BrightonFriday, 22 May 2015
Benjamin Clementine’s idea of repartee with the audience is producing a clementine orange and smiling shyly. Clad in his trademark greatcoat-over-naked chest, with bare feet and outrageous pompadour hair, he sits at a spotlit grand piano and manoeuvres the fruit gently about before setting it down. It’s hardly even a gag but, given his between-song demeanour the rest of the time, this is the Clementine equivalent of prat-falling on a banana skin while making farting noises. Read more... |
Cat's Eyes live score for The Duke of Burgundy, Brighton DomeFriday, 22 May 2015
There’s an extraordinary moment, in Peter Strickland’s deeply sensual, desperately funny and feverishly powerful S&M love story, when a camera travels slowly into the darkness between a woman’s thighs. It’s an extraordinary moment in the soundtrack, too. In place of the golden strings and softly hovering choral notes, Brighton Dome suddenly fills with a monochrome electronic pulsing, as if an army of giant moths is flying over with wings of black sheet metal. Read more... |
The Joey Arias Experience, Theatre Royal, BrightonThursday, 21 May 2015
Brighton whooped as if she had never seen risqué entertainment last night, as cabaret veteran Joey Arias brought his Billie Holiday-meets-bawdy-standup show to the Brighton Festival. Able to switch between sincere tribute and brilliantly, cathartically filthy jokes instantaneously, he makes an audience unfamiliar with his style take a few minutes to calibrate their response. Read more... |
Flavia Coelho, Rich MixWednesday, 20 May 2015
Flavia Coelho once told me her parents in the favelas of Rio put an aluminium bucket over her head as the only way to calm her down. It was also a useful echo chamber to practise her singing. Her parents were hairdressers for drag queens. She still comes over an overactive child on stage and is one of the most dynamic live acts you are likely to see: she’s like a Duracell bunny on stage. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Bobby WomackSunday, 17 May 2015
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Kate Tempest, George the Poet, Brighton Corn ExchangeFriday, 15 May 2015
Kate Tempest's long blonde-brown hair flailed as she prowled the stage, red-faced from exertion, adhering not a jot to the media’s tick-boxes for femininity. She is smaller, by far, than her backing band, dressed down in baggy sweatshirt and jeans. Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl: Volume 5Friday, 15 May 2015
The big vinyl storm in the US media over the last month has been a kerfuffle about VNYL, the service that hoped to do for vinyl what Lovefilm used to do for DVDs. The idea, backed by a hefty and successful Kickstarter campaign, was VNYL would send members three records, based on their stated tastes and chosen by connoisseurs. These could be listened to and returned, to be replaced with others. Sounds like a dreadful idea. Vinyl is delicate and surely one of its pleasures is ownership? Read more... |
The Damned: Go! 45
Bobby Womack: The PreacherPages
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