New Music Reviews
James Yorkston, Oran Mor, GlasgowMonday, 04 June 2012
“Before I met James Yorkston, I used to write songs that had choruses in them - and here’s one of them.” Irish folk-inspired singer-songwriter Seamus Fogarty may be one of the newer additions to the legendary Fence Records label from which Yorkston sprang, but at the end of a clutch of dates on which the more established artist performed his 2002 debut Moving Up Country in its entirety he certainly isn’t over-awed. Read more... |
The Voice: The Final, BBC OneSunday, 03 June 2012
I love the BBC. “Auntie Beeb” really is the appropriate nickname for the Corporation, at least when it comes to television, because you just know when they try and get involved with any kind of pop culture it's going to be with all the gaucheness of a very enthusiastic auntie trying to adopt kids' tastes. This goes double with Danny Cohen – a man who gives the impression that he starts every sentence with “hey guys” and thinks “mega” is the latest street slang – at the helm of BBC One. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Everything But The Girl, Todd Rundgren's Utopia, WITCHSunday, 03 June 2012
Jasper Rees Read more... |
Norah Jones, Royal Festival HallSaturday, 02 June 2012
It's easy to forget exactly how successful Norah Jones is, but with over 50 million records sold, she is a modern success up there with the Jay-Zs of this world. To see her come on stage last night, though, you wouldn't have known it. There were no fireworks, no build-up of drama, no crazed intro tape, no MC on stage to announce her entrance, just a band and singer walking on stage to play. Read more... |
Punk Britannia, BBC FourSaturday, 02 June 2012
“We didn’t have a real agenda. We just wanted to play some tunes and have a good time.” Thus spoke the immaculately suited but still mischievous-looking Mick Jones. And thank goodness he said it because, from the off - even before the off - I didn’t think anyone would. The interviewer (his ideological preconceptions crumbling) protested, so unfortunately Jones had to qualify his unguarded statement by saying he couldn’t of course speak for the other members of The Clash. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Sandy Denny, Kevin Coyne, France GallSunday, 27 May 2012
Graham Fuller Read more... |
Westlife, O2Friday, 25 May 2012
Nicky Byrne, Shane Filan, Cian Egan and Mark Feehily announced they were retiring Westlife in October 2011, but not before this final farewell tour. It proved to be an opportunity to roll out the red carpet for Facebook-status emoting and self-pity about entering the post-fame abyss. The endless video clips squeezed in throughout their two-hour set (no sign of Brian McFadden, who left in 2004) must surely have exhausted even the most devoted attendees at some point during the evening. Read more... |
White Denim, HMV ForumWednesday, 23 May 2012
When these blazin’ psychedelic jazzers first landed here from Austin in 2007, there’d already been four or five years’ worth of herky-jerky cod-post-punk-reviving going on, way past the point of overdose, but White Denim were different, and obviously worth making an exception for. Read more... |
Matthew Herbert's One Pig, Theatre Royal, BrightonWednesday, 23 May 2012
There is a shouty lady outside the Theatre Royal in Brighton who takes strong objection to us attending tonight’s Brighton Festival performance of Matthew Herbert’s One Pig. The show is based around the life and death of a pig, from birth to plate, and includes pork being cooked. We are, she tells us as we enter, “hypocritical vegetarians with the blood of farm animals” on our hands. Read more... |
Jessye Norman, Royal Festival HallTuesday, 22 May 2012
There comes a point in almost every great soprano’s career when she tells the world that Tosca, the Marschallin or Isolde be damned: what she wanted to sing all along was The Great American Songbook. This announcement tends to be made - how shall I put this? - later rather than sooner. In Jessye Norman’s defence, in 1987, just five years after her landmark, ultra-luscious recording of Strauss’s Four Last Songs, she recorded a disc of Gershwin, Richard Rodgers et al. Read more... |
Everything But The Girl: Eden, Love Not Money, Baby, The Stars Shine Bright, Idlewild
Sandy Denny: Sandy (Deluxe Edition), Like An Old Fashioned Waltz (Deluxe Edition), Rendezvous (Deluxe Edition)Pages
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