mon 28/07/2025

New Music Reviews

Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular, SSE Hydro, Glasgow

Lisa-Marie Ferla

It seems a peculiar conceit to pack up a full symphony orchestra and choir and take them the length of the UK solely to perform suites of music from a popular television show – and I say this as a fan of the show in question.

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When Pop Ruled My Life, BBC Four

Jasper Rees

A long time ago I went out into the field to research a feature about the three ages of obsessive fandom. At the entry level was a bog-standard legion of young teenage girls who simply hung around outside the mansion block in Maida Vale where one or possibly both of the Gosses (of Bros) lived. I also met three young women who had access to Jason Donovan’s diary and were traipsing around town in the hope of glimpse. Donovan’s star had waned but they hadn’t moved on.

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Fleetwood Mac, Reunion Tour, O2 Arena

Jasper Rees

To begin at the very bizarre ending. Fleetwood Mac, finally reunited as a five-piece with Christine McVie stage right on luscious vocals and keyboard, had just thrashed out a show of great finesse for two hours. It had all gone peachily. McVie was given a last lovely encore - “Songbird” – crooned solo on a grand piano. That should have been it. Many were already going, or gone.

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Common People Festival, Southampton

Caspar Gomez

Perhaps it was after Bestival 2008 that its organizer, Rob da Bank, made his pact with the ancient gods. That year the Robin Hill Country Park site was reduced to a cold, sleet-raked, tornado-blown mire. The event truly lived up to every overuse of the word “mud” the British media hurls about eagerly each festival season. It was then, presumably, that da Bank, together with his acolytes in necromancy, turned to the pagan arts to facilitate positive weather conditions for future events.

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Carleen Anderson: A Tribute to Sarah Vaughan, Theatre Royal, Brighton

Nick Hasted

Carleen Anderson’s range of vocal scales and styles is matchless in contemporary pop. Where she aims those enviable resources is the only issue anyone could have with her, a matter of taste she’ll eventually make irrelevant tonight with a flood of gospel-jazz exhilaration.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: The Damned

Kieron Tyler

 

The Damned Go! 45The Damned: Go! 45

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Mark Knopfler, O2 Arena

Russ Coffey

For many, Mark Knopfler will forever evoke a golden age of Eighties' soft rock. His headband might have been easy to mock but his blistering, finger-picking was undeniably thrilling. Latterly, though, Knopfler has travelled a less commercial path. Still, while his folk tendencies may not be everybody’s cup of tea, there's certainly more to Knopfler than just melancholy ballads.

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Benjamin Clementine, Theatre Royal, Brighton

Thomas H Green

Benjamin Clementine’s idea of repartee with the audience is producing a clementine orange and smiling shyly. Clad in his trademark greatcoat-over-naked chest, with bare feet and outrageous pompadour hair, he sits at a spotlit grand piano and manoeuvres the fruit gently about before setting it down. It’s hardly even a gag but, given his between-song demeanour the rest of the time, this is the Clementine equivalent of prat-falling on a banana skin while making farting noises.

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Cat's Eyes live score for The Duke of Burgundy, Brighton Dome

bella Todd

There’s an extraordinary moment, in Peter Strickland’s deeply sensual, desperately funny and feverishly powerful S&M love story, when a camera travels slowly into the darkness between a woman’s thighs. It’s an extraordinary moment in the soundtrack, too. In place of the golden strings and softly hovering choral notes, Brighton Dome suddenly fills with a monochrome electronic pulsing, as if an army of giant moths is flying over with wings of black sheet metal.

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The Joey Arias Experience, Theatre Royal, Brighton

Matthew Wright

Brighton whooped as if she had never seen risqué entertainment last night, as cabaret veteran Joey Arias brought his Billie Holiday-meets-bawdy-standup show to the Brighton Festival. Able to switch between sincere tribute and brilliantly, cathartically filthy jokes instantaneously, he makes an audience unfamiliar with his style take a few minutes to calibrate their response.

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