rock
Paul Weller, Barrowland, Glasgow review - Modfather holding back father time with old and new tricks
Jonathan Geddes
There was a brief lapse in this lengthy set when Paul Weller stood up from the piano, walked towards centre stage and then pivoted back the way he came, having realised he was moving a song too early. “That’s the trouble with getting old, you forget shit” observed the 63-year-old drily, but the two hour set itself was a testament to Weller’s continued creativity, if also his stubbornness too.It was a sprawling trawl though his varied career, including a handful of tracks from his old bands, the Jam and the Style Council. The latter was represented early, and the blend of zestful melody and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The first of two December round-ups from theartsdesk on Vinyl runs the gamut from folk-tronic oddness to Seventies heavy rock to avant-jazz to The Beatles, as well as much else. All musical life is here... except the crap stuff. So dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHSimo Cell Yes.DJ (TEMƎT)The latest from French producer Simo Cell is a bass-boomin’ post-trap six tracker that doesn’t play it straight at all. These are the kinds of tunes that should be heard on a giant sound system so that the earth itself rumbles. The enormous head-annihilating spacious tech-dub of “Farts”, a highlight, sits easily Read more ...
Guy Oddy
When those cold winter nights start closing in, there is really only two choices for facing up to the unpleasantness that this brings. Stay at home, batten down the hatches, whack up the heating and blow the expense. Or go out and immerse yourself in some hot and sweaty rock’n’roll.Clearly, the majority of us at theartsdesk.com favour the second option. So, when the raucous Pigsx7 finally made it to Birmingham to support their Viscerals album of 18 months ago, there really was no choice about what to do.It may have been cold and wet outside, but Pigsx7 weren’t going to be guided by that with Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Adams has long been Robert Plant’s guitarist in bands including the Sensational Space Shifters, as well as working with fellow Space Shifter Juldeh Camara in the band JuJu. He is steeped in American Blues as well as its West African and Desert Blues roots, having worked as a producer for Rachid Taha and on some of Tinariwen’s finest albums. More recently, he has produced and performed with the outrageously energetic southern Italian Taranta band, Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, and it’s from that collaboration that this new set with CGS’s violinist and percussionist, Mauro Durante, stems.They Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Jason Isbell is a bigger noise on the other side of the Atlantic than he is in the UK but his last three albums have, nonetheless, bothered the middle-regions of the British album charts. He’s built a critically lauded career with his band The 400 Unit since leaving Drive-By Truckers a decade-and-a-half ago, merging country with rock and various southern US styles. His latest is a covers album benefit for three non-profit social justice organizations, including Black Lives Matter, and is, he says, a celebration of Georgia “turning blue” (voting Democrat) in last year’s US election. Happily it Read more ...
Barney Harsent
A poet I know once went to a boarding school to deliver an open class on poetry. Part of the day consisted of the children producing poems of their own, which their guest teacher then looked over and discussed with them. Almost every one was about flight, or escape into vast, open swathes of nature. These weren’t poems, he realised, these were the yearning, silent screams of perpetual prisoners.I was reminded of this when listening to Flying Dream 1, the ninth studio album from big-hearted rock band Elbow. Even pop stars with a nifty niche in singalong anthems couldn’t escape a pandemic- Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
There is unquestionably a more mellow side to the Jesus and Mary Chain these days, even when reviving their most ferocious glories from the past. Prior to launching this two-halved set, comprising their 1987 classic Darklands to begin with and a mixture of singles, B-sides and obscurities for after, vocalist Jim Reid took time out to politely explain the format.He even mentioned that the fivesome would be having a cup of tea between the two portions, suggesting a surprising tranquillity. Yet the following 90 minutes was, at its best, a bracing, jarring reminder of the power of the East Read more ...
Mark Kidel
The collaboration of Robert Plant, Alison Krauss and producer T-Bone Burnett produced a masterpiece Raising Sand in 2011. Once again, and in spite of rumours about the artists falling out, they have returned with the same winning formula.With impeccable taste and a posse of some of the best musicians in the USA, they sail their way through a gloriously varied selection of country and blues classics. Plant and Krauss have voices that match: each of them capable of switching from raucous to soulful, from seductively sentimental to energetic calls to the dance. The best harmony singing has Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Amid the spume of insults at the close of the song “The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle” by Malcolm McLaren’s Rotten-less, end-game version of the Sex Pistols, Rod Stewart is a prime target. Sandwiched between abuse for David Bowie and Elton John, Rod is accused of having “a luggage label tied to his tonsils”. It’s hardly a cutting verbal blow but the point is he’s amongst those the Pistols were supposedly rendering irrelevant. Over four decades later, though, his musical output remains relatively prolific and his albums massive hits. This new one will be. A terrifying thought as it contains many Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Like a previous occupant of this venue, Six, The Choir Of Man started life as a quirky Edinburgh show and has gone on to be staged around the world to adoring audiences, tapping into a vibe that’s as much about participation as viewing, the show as much a gig as a musical. Be warned however - they may not hand out free mead at the start of Six, but they do hand out free beers at the start of this show, so a note of caution: amidst fierce competition, the Arts Theatre has the least hospitable lavatories in the West End!Director and co-creator, Nic Doodson, takes us into a pub, its entirely Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Perhaps surprisingly for a band famed for the raw, tightly wrought, balled-up fury of their music, the most affecting moments of Idles’ fourth album are slower numbers. Chief among these is “Progress”, whose looping, repeated lyrics may reflect singer Joe Talbot’s ongoing reflections on putting drug addiction behind him. Lines such as “I don’t wanna feel myself come down” are given added potency by a threatening shroud of tunefully warped, loping band underpinning. While the album’s words sometimes – and enigmatically – offer hope, the tone of the music often sounds doomed.This is Read more ...
Tim Cumming
If you were looking for a word to describe Black String in performance at Grand Junction in Paddington, before the high altar of the church of St Mary Magdalene, itself a pinnacle of Victorian neo-Gothic bravura, then that word would be “intense”. Intensely intense. More intense than a blooming bank of Intensia.They may fold in to their sound influences from global jazz, post-rock, Korean folk and free improvisation, but the array of instruments they use to raise the unholy walls of sound in their music, from ancient folk instruments to squalling electric guitars, makes their performance one Read more ...