New Music Reviews
Björk, SSE Hydro, Glasgow review- Icelandic experimentalist reimagines live performanceWednesday, 27 November 2019
Grimes, the Canadian art pop performer, made headlines last week when she predicted the end of musical performance as we know it on a podcast interview with theoretical physicist Sean Carroll. Live music, she said, would be “obsolete soon”, while she gave a window of a couple of decades in which artificial intelligence would become “so much better at making art” than human creatives. Read more... |
Sam Fender, O2 Academy, Glasgow review - pop bangers with pathosWednesday, 27 November 2019
If this is what Sam Fender can provoke on a Monday night, then Lord knows the reaction he generates at a weekend. Read more... |
WH Lung, Rich Mix review - ever-intensifying motorik-bedded onslaughtTuesday, 26 November 2019
A 55-minute set without an encore. Songs bleeding into each other. No announcements, no talking from the stage. A constantly moving frontman seemingly channelling a yen to merge Merce Cunningham moves and tai-chi. A band who, barring the odd grin from one of the guitarists, focus on what they are doing without expression. An absence of “please-like-me” posturing. Read more... |
Cleveland Watkiss 60th birthday celebration, Queen Elizabeth Hall review - seismic pulse, emotive wordsMonday, 25 November 2019
Whether performing with the ground-breaking Jazz Warriors big band (which he co-founded in the 1980s) or Marque Gilmore and DJ Le Rouge in Project 23, taking the lead roles in Julian Joseph’s jazz operas Bridgetower and Shadowball, or emceeing one of the legendary Metalheadz nights at Blue Note, Hoxton Square, Cleveland Watkiss has been one of the most unfailingly creative, daringly protean artists on the UK jazz... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Mighty Baby - At a Point Between Fate and DestinySunday, 24 November 2019
If the prices fetched by original pressings are a guide, Mighty Baby are notable. Their eponymous first album, issued by the fittingly named Head label in November 1969, sells for at least £150 and has changed hands for over £500. Read more... |
Billy Bragg, Islington Assembly Hall review - a pep talk from the progressive patriotSunday, 24 November 2019
It’s always good to be among friends and it’s safe to say that everyone gathered at Islington Assembly Hall on Saturday for the third and final North London gig of Billy Bragg’s One Step Forward, Two Steps Back Tour was left of centre. The tour began in July on the south coast, planned long before Borrissey, as Bragg calls the PM, conned the country in going to the polls but events have certainly given it a new urgency. Read more... |
The Lumineers, SSE Hydro, Glasgow review - a stomping but exhausting nightSaturday, 23 November 2019
There was something fitting about the Lumineers entrance in Glasgow. As “Gimme Shelter” blared around the SSE Hydro, lights pulsating over the crowd, it was drummer Jeremiah Fraites who took the stage and started the opening beat of “Sleep On The Floor”, an array of phones quickly whipped out to act as a welcoming committee from the crowd. The rest of the band followed in due course, but this is a group for whom the drums are at the heart of their stomping songs, no matter what. Read more... |
Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi review, Royal Festival Hall - musical togethernessSaturday, 23 November 2019
Leonard Bernstein talked about “the infinite variety of music” and the late maestro would have been thrilled by the variety on display at the Royal Festival Hall where Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi were as exciting and exhilarating as anything I’ve heard. Read more... |
Fontaines DC, SWG3, Glasgow review - Irish rockers let down by shaky soundSaturday, 23 November 2019
Time moves fast in the music business. It has only been a matter of months since Fontaines DC were playing the far smaller confines of King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow, and here they were at a sold out SWG3, celebrating the success of debut album “Dogrel”. If that record is one of the finest released this year, then this gig was not quite the victory lap hoped for, albeit still a show that displayed evidence of their quality. Read more... |
Vinícius Cantuária, Eliane Elias, Barbican review - simply does itSaturday, 23 November 2019
Less really is more. Vinícius Cantuária is a musician who has done it all, but has reverted to the simplicity of singing classic Jobim bossa nova songs, to which he brings a quite astonishing lightness of touch. Last night at the Barbican, alone on stage, with just a nylon string guitar for company, he made the 1,850-seater Barbican feel like the most intimate of small clubs. Read more... |
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