tue 19/03/2024

pop

Album: Elbow - Audio Vertigo

On this, their 10th album, the melodious Mancunians started at the drum kit and built from there. This is no bad thing. The overall effect is wide-ranging, surprising and altogether more uplifting than either the delicious despairing ...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Musician Karl Wallinger

In February 2001 a brain aneurysm nearly killed Karl Wallinger. It didn’t do World Party many favours either. The aftermath of devastating illness resulted in a five year hiatus for his band, followed by a gradual, tentative return. Since 2006 there...

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Album: Bolis Pupul - Letter to Yu

This album starts on an extremely literal note. The whole record is themed around Belgian born-and-raised Bolis Pupul’s explorations of the Chinese side of his heritage after his mother’s death in 2008, and his regrets at not having done so when she...

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Cruel Intentions, The Other Palace review - uneasy vibes, hit tunes and sparkling staging

Transgression was so deliciously enticing. Back in the Eighties when I saw Les Liaisons Dangereuses in the West End on three occasions, life was simpler – or so us straight white men flattered ourselves to believe. Consent was for unproblematic...

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Album: Paloma Faith - The Glorification of Sadness

Paloma Faith is pretty much the dictionary definition of “full-on”. Always in elaborate hairdos and outré ruffles, big of personality and big of voice, she enthuses and emotes with firehose intensity at any opportunity. So it comes as no surprise...

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Album: Helado Negro - PHASOR

Floridian-born, longtime Brooklyn resident, now Asheville, North Carolina based Roberto Carlos Lange doesn’t rush things, but he gets them done. This is his ninth album in 15 years, during which time he’s built a substantial body of audiovisual /...

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Album: Gruff Rhys - Sadness Sets Me Free

Halfway through this album, “They Sold My Home to Build a Skyscraper” unlocks it. On first listen I’d been nodding along with the first few songs, enjoying how they find glimmers of more or less forlorn hope in amongst sadness and middle-aged...

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Album: The Vaccines - Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations

Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations is the Vaccines’ sixth studio album and their first since the departure of original guitarist Freddie Cowan. As with previous releases, it’s rammed with catchy hooks wrapped in in fizzy pop rock tunes – but despite...

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Hozier, OVO Hydro, Glasgow review - sublime voice and a super-sized sound

There was something misleading about the opening of this concert. As Andrew John Hozier-Byrne and his band stepped onstage, the stage was lit up by a single spotlight, focused around the microphone that the singer stepped up to. Yet the following...

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CMAT, Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow review - an evening of exuberance

There was a moment towards the end of this exuberant evening when Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson compared the show to a pantomime. This was an extremely apt comparison, in a good way, for alongside the singing and dancing there was a helping of cheeky...

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Jambinai & Leenalchi, Southbank Centre review - contrasting faces of contemporary Korean music

Friday’s double-header at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the Southbank was not only one of the final gigs in this year’s K-Music Festival – entering its tenth year with an eclectic range of Korean artists and bands performing across London and beyond...

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Korea On Stage, OVO Arena Wembley review - a symphony of lights, beats and empowerment

Choruses rocked, choreo popped, and thousands of light sticks danced in unison, as an incredible lineup of nine acts lit up this fourth edition of Korea On Stage, celebrating 140 years of UK-Korea relations.The evening commenced with the beautifully...

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