How, exactly, are you supposed to review a Keith Jarrett concert – solo, completely improvised, just one man and his Steinway, audience on all sides, ushers walking up and down the aisles bearing signs forbidding any record of the evening's music?
From the second song, “Teenage Icon”, the Brighton Centre crowd are in the palms of Vaccines’ frontman Justin Young’s hands. It’s not a capacity crowd but they sing along to the perfectly crafted indie-pop stomper as if they were. “I’m nobody’s hero,” Young roars, clad in black, wearing his own band’s tee-shirt, but it’s not true, he’s clearly everybody’s hero here. His audience are mostly late teens and early twenties but there’s a hefty smattering of older faces and loads of women. The latter is striking as so often gigs are just hordes of men. The Vaccines clearly have a wider appeal.
Heading into the final straits of 2015, it’s pleasing to read announcements by the BPI (British Phonographic Industry), the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and Nielsen Soundscan that the year has been the biggest for vinyl sales this century. The sales figures are, respectively, a year-on-year rise of 35% and 56% in the US and the UK, with Europe following the pattern.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” said Cassandra Wilson to a half empty Royal Festival Hall, after a sulky rendition of “Don’t Explain”, the opening track from her Billie Holiday tribute album, Coming Forth By Day. It was an hour and fifteen minutes since the singer was due on stage and half an hour since the directors of concert promoter Serious had arrived in her stead – amidst boos and irate whistles – to tell us she was refusing to leave her hotel room.
Don’t blame the players: they did their considerable best. But what could they hope to achieve with a programme in which six of the seven pieces were on a hiding to nowhere, or too short to have much of an impact? A sequence, what's more, in which platform rearrangements took longer than two of the pieces in the first half?
Eloquent, transfixing, profoundly moving. Last night, in the beautiful setting of the Cadogan Hall, the Maria Schneider Orchestra gave one of those landmark performances that people will remember for years to come. We heard seven of the eight tracks from the composer, arranger and bandleader's stunning latest release, The Thompson Fields, which celebrates its composer's love of her childhood home in Windom, southwest Minnesota.
Exactly three years ago, Imagine Dragons played to 150 people in Glasgow. This time, there were 12,000 people in attendance. The ascent of the Las Vegas quartet (swelled to a five-piece for this tour) brings to mind Peter Cook’s withering assessment that David Frost “rose without trace”. Their 2012 debut Night Visions and this year’s Smoke + Mirrors have shifted in their millions in both the US and UK without the band making any discernible cultural impact.
Martin Fry is unsure whether Worthing is enjoying itself enough for his liking. Clad in a sharply tailored grey three-piece suit, ABC’s frontman keeps asking us if we’re having a good time. The shouts of approval that greet the question suggest we are. In any case, he certainly seems to be.
Having released a self-titled debut album last year, soul singer Jarrod Lawson has been on a European touring offensive for much of this one. Very charming it has been, too, landing Lawson Soul Artist of the Year title at the 2015 Jazz FM Awards, and a string of stellar album reviews. Saturday’s London Jazz Festival appearance – there’s a lot of jazz in Lawson’s harmonic keyboard adventures – was the final night of a month-long European tour. On the evidence of the Shepherd’s Bush crowd, he already has loyal fans who know his music, and their number is increasing rapidly.
Some rock’n’roll gigs are built upon the lead singer’s ego, others on the lunacy of the band’s drummer. The inaugural Fuzz Club London Weekender was unashamedly built upon guitars and effects pedals.