New Music Books
Album: Dolly Parton - Run Rose RunThursday, 03 March 2022
I tried, I really did. Took a shot at my best, and fell short, Yup, I couldn’t get beyond the opening chapters of Dolly Parton’s first novel, written with that veteran of popular page-turnin’, James Patterson. The best bit for me was on the first page, and it was pure Dolly, but in 22 little words, not 80,000. “Is it easy? No it ain’t. Read more... |
Music books to end lockdown: Sam Lee, Hawkwind, Dylan, Richard Thompson, and the Electric MusesFriday, 14 May 2021
It won’t be long now before concert halls and back rooms, arts centres and festival grounds fill with people again, and live music, undistanced, unmasked, and in your face, comes back to us. Read more... |
CD - The Lost Words: Spell SongsSunday, 07 July 2019
Earlier this year, eight musicians – Karine Polwart, Julie Fowlis, Seckou Keita, Kris Drever, Kerry Andrew, Rachel Newton, Beth Porter and Jim Molyneux – set about working with the ‘spell songs’ of nature writer Robert Macfarlane and the images from nature of artist Jackie... Read more... |
Peggy Seeger: First Time Ever - A Memoir, review - a remarkable lifeSunday, 22 October 2017
Seeger. A name to strike sparks with almost anyone, whether or not they have an interest in folk music, a catch-all term about which Peggy Seeger and her creative and life partner Ewan MacColl (they didn’t actually marry until a decade before his death) had strong feelings. Read more... |
latest in today
Theodora, Arcangelo, Cohen, Barbican review - gloriously dar...
Handel’s Theodora – voluptuously beautiful, warm-to-the-touch music, yoked to a libretto of chilly piety about Christian martyrdom in 4...
Riotsville USA review - a training scheme with a tragic lega...
Sierra Pettengill has made the politest angry film I have seen. It has an incendiary quality that comes precisely from its calm stance towards its...
Album: The Zombies - Different Game
There’s something charmingly unassuming and humble about The Zombies. Nowadays their 1968 second album Odyssey and Oracle regularly...
Tom Dale Company, The Place review - immersive and genre-bus...
With all the talk – and, frankly, fear – around AI and the increasing dominance of the digital world, it’s fascinating to see what dance has to...
Mansfield Park, RNCM, Manchester review - bringing out the b...
Mansfield Park was written to be a country house opera – that...
Album: A Certain Ratio - 1982
1982 is only A Certain Ratio’s third album this century but it’s one that’s brimming with funky vibes that are more than enough to get...
Succession, Season Four, Sky Atlantic review - powerful begi...
How much more is there left to be said about the excellence of Succession? It’s back for a final season, and devotees will pore over...
Inspiral Carpets, Concorde 2, Brighton review - a raucous ca...
As Inspiral Carpets play “She Comes in the Fall”, a great song and one of their signature tunes, its martial drumming drags me into my own past....
Seraphina Madsen: Aurora review - the tarot won’t save us
“There is another world… a way of perceiving that is chaotic and awesome and terrifying,” announces Seraphina Madsen’s cigarillo-smoking,...