New Music Reviews
Christmas with the Rat Pack Live From Las Vegas, Wyndham’s TheatreThursday, 22 December 2011
Frank Sinatra might have come to dislike being branded as part of the Rat Pack, but the phrase stuck and still sticks. Judging by last night’s Christmas-slanted show, just as he, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr live forever, so will that phrase. Eleven years on from the first Rat Pack Live From Las Vegas show the shine hasn’t gone and the trio – even though they aren’t really there – light up the Wyndham’s Theatre. Read more... |
Manic Street Preachers, O2 ArenaSunday, 18 December 2011
Call it an absurdly grand gesture if you like, but Manic Street Preachers' decision to bow out of live performance for a while with a gig in which they would play every one of their 38 singles had to be admired. It certainly had an all-or-nothing rigour that Richey Edwards would have endorsed. But would James Dean Bradfield recall all the words? Would Nicky Wire's knees survive all of that sustained bouncing around. Would piledriving drummer Sean Moore wear a hole in his skins? Read more... |
Example, Brighton CentreThursday, 15 December 2011
Example seems a most unlikely sex symbol but the four-fifths full Brighton Centre (capacity 5100) contains multiple gaggles of young women in their late teens and early twenties who want a piece of 29-year-old Elliot Gleave (EG = Example). My pal Don is bemused. “He looks like a bloke you’d see at a bus stop,” he exclaims above female screams. He does, albeit more stylishly dressed and with a hint of Edmund Blackadder (series one) about his severe fringed haircut. Read more... |
The Wonderful World of Captain Beaky, Royal Albert HallMonday, 12 December 2011
The Rhythm Method by Nicky Forbes dives into the working, gigging, cash-free underbelly of real rock’n’roll life. Whereas most music biographies are written by or about those who’ve made it, who live in the gilded cage of pop stardom and all that entails, The Rhythm Method is about Forbes’s life as drummer in The Revillos, a cartoonish post-punk outfit born from the ashes of the more successful Rezillos. Read more... |
Getatchew Mekuria and the Ex, Rich MixSunday, 11 December 2011
“It’s cultural imperialism,” a middle-aged gentleman felt compelled to say to me, presumably because I was the bloke with the notebook. “Then all pop music is cultural imperialism,” is what I should have fired back at him, had I not been so immersed in the transcendental racket of tussling brass and distorted guitars that had almost made him inaudible. Read more... |
Coldplay, O2 ArenaSaturday, 10 December 2011
It’s easy enough to diss Coldplay: they make music that’s hugely successful (boo!) and not terribly challenging; they’re middle class – a heinous crime in a form of entertainment that’s steeped in notions of “authenticity” (hence the enduring love affair between music critics and the oafish Oasis – hey, they take lots of drugs and they used to steal car radios!); and as people they just seem a bit nice, to the point of dullness. Read more... |
The Nation's Favourite Bee Gees Song, ITV1Saturday, 10 December 2011
“They’re some of the greatest pop songs ever written,” declares Sir Elton John. He’s right. The Bee Gees – Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb – are responsible for songs that will live forever, songs that are part of successive generation’s cultural furniture. Yet although the title was The Nation’s Favourite Bee Gees Song, the question asked on the ITV website was: “Just what is the greatest Bee Gees song ever?” Favourite and greatest aren’t the same thing. Read more... |
Green Gartside and Friends, The VictoriaFriday, 09 December 2011
Clever people often make terrible music. Not always: the best pop is smart as well as direct - but an inability to stop analysing, comparing and explaining is the anathema of the pleasure principle, and encyclopedic knowledge often leads to bone-dry discourse. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Rennes: 33rd Trans Musicales FestivalThursday, 08 December 2011
Glass crunches underfoot. It’s been raining constantly, but the odour reveals that a fair amount of what's in the cobbled street's central gutter is urine. Everyone appears to be drunk. The French equivalent of crusties aren’t content with one dog-on-string. Some have four. During the annual Trans Musicales festival, Saturday night in and around the Place St-Anne of Brittany’s capital Rennes is a keep-you-on-your-toes experience. Read more... |
First Aid Kit, Bush HallWednesday, 07 December 2011
When theartsdesk last saw folkie Swedish sister act First Aid Kit, they were both still teenagers. It was a dank February night and they beguiled a tough Edinburgh club with voices that sounded like they belonged somewhere in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But that was almost two years ago, a long time in the life of one teenage girl, let alone two. That evening, our reviewer wrote, “Hope filled the air, like the scent of freshly cut grass.” Last night, as I stood... Read more... |
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