California
Kieron Tyler
The prospect of seeing a band seemingly in thrall to peak-popularity Fleetwood Mac in a Shoreditch basement intrigued. Could San Francisco's Vetiver reproduce the glossy sheen of new album The Errant Charm live? The answer was no, and last night’s London show was all the better for that. As the guitars intertwined, the sonic swirl was more akin to a Seventies LA version of shoegazing than a recreation of the seductive West Coast sound.The time shift aspect of Vetiver is distracting in a live setting. It’s impossible to look at North Carolina transplant Andy Cabic and his band without being Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
James M. Cain's novel Mildred Pierce is best remembered for Michael Curtiz's entertainingly lurid 1945 movie version, starring Joan Crawford. Featuring William Faulkner among its screenwriters, it played fast and loose with Cain's book, but bashed it into crowd-pleasing shape successfully enough to win Crawford an Oscar.Cue Todd Haynes's five-part miniseries for HBO (brought to us, or to some of us, by Sky Atlantic) and the equation is reversed. Haynes has adhered to the original book with exaggerated reverence, so much so that the dialogue sometimes feels more like sequential monologues Read more ...
david.cheal
A guitar with one string? There is indeed such a thing. It’s played by Seasick Steve, and it consists of a stubby plank of wood, a pick-up and a couple of nails. And a string. The man born 70 years ago as Steven Wold plays it with a slide, and it makes a fabulous, sleazy sound. It’s one of a collection of manky-looking instruments played by Seasick Steve, the former hobo, drifter, session musician and studio engineer who has experienced a late blossoming in popularity as a bluesman and raconteur.His other instruments include a guitar made out of a broom handle and two Morris Minor Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Of all the unlikely musical pairings in recent times, Jesca Hoop and Guy Garvey deserve special mention. The genial Elbow frontman, all northern charm and indie anthems, is like a favourite bitter. Hoop, on the other hand, former nanny to Tom Waits's children, is more like something Lewis Carroll's Alice might have drunk. Since she moved from California to Manchester, Garvey has been mentoring Hoop, and appeared on her best-known song. But last night’s gig was all her, with a little help from four friends.And the packed London bar was also shown why, in a scene saturated with high-quality Read more ...
David Nice
Believe it or not, some critics can't get enough of London's superabundant concert scene. I could hardly be sour about not catching Gustavo Dudamel's first Barbican concert on Thursday night, spellbound as I was by his predecessor at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen, spinning such insidiously beautiful Bartók with the Philharmonia over on the South Bank. Yesterday lunchtime I caught Dudamel coaching 80 of the city's young musicians in the finale of the Beethoven Seventh I'd missed before he went on that night to conduct Mahler's Ninth, surely the symphonic repertoire's supreme Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Americans are chastised, often wrongly, for possessing a scant sense of irony, so I mean it as no criticism whatsoever of The Kids Are All Right to point out that the title of Lisa Cholodenko's wonderful film is altogether un-ironic. In less caring or careful hands, or a not so fully empathic context, this might be a portrait of irretrievably damaged youth with the parents deemed responsible, of the sort that proliferates on the London stage. Instead, the movie embraces conflict and confusion, lustful impulses and our capacity to wound, all the while suggesting that life in its imperfections Read more ...
Russ Coffey
The prefix “Christian” can invite mockery. The suffix “rock” usually makes it worse. And a Christian Rock band celebrating 25 years in yellow and black Spandex? Surely that has to be a spoof. But I have news for you: Eighties Californian glam metal band Stryper are real, back, and tonight they rocked.Stryper were formed in a world where the more macho a band the more they wore make-up, and where the intricacy of the guitar work was in direct proportion to the volume of hairspray. Stryper made no concessions to such conventions. Nor would they make any concessions to their religious beliefs. Read more ...