New Music Reviews
Pulp, Hyde ParkSunday, 03 July 2011
Well, it pains me to say it, but if there has to be a winner Morrissey edged it. Jarvis was Nadal to Mozza's Djokovic. Both match-fit after appearances at Glastonbury, both would have been invincible against anyone else. Read more...
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Morrissey, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Hop Farm FestivalSunday, 03 July 2011
It cannot be easy being a veteran pop star on tour. All you want to do are your lovely new songs and all your fans want to hear are your golden oldies. Two weeks ago Ringo Starr showed that he has clearly got to an age where he has decided to give the fans what they want and last night in a sun-kissed field in Kent three more icons embraced their past and bathed in the golden... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Glastonbury Festival 2011Thursday, 30 June 2011
Thursday 23 JuneHaven’t left yet but someone sends me an email saying, "Not going to Glastonbury this year and feeling rather smug about it." What are they feeling smug about? The fact that they’re going to have a forgettable, normal weekend while this extraordinary event is going on? It is, of course, to do with ideas of rain. A lot of the pre-Glastonbury coverage focuses endlessly on rain and mud, as if home comforts are everything. When did comfort become the big cultural draw?... Read more... |
Paul Simon, Hammersmith ApolloThursday, 30 June 2011
Paul Simon is now nearly 70 years old and as he walked onto the Hammersmith Apollo stage last night it struck me that he is beginning to look like the little old man he will eventually become: still nimble, enviably trim, but nevertheless, he was noticeably older and more fragile-looking than when I last saw him five years ago. The second thing that struck me was a certain weariness in the opening songs - a mechanical quality to the playing, and a concomitantly flat atmosphere. The... Read more... |
Vetiver, XOYOThursday, 30 June 2011
The prospect of seeing a band seemingly in thrall to peak-popularity Fleetwood Mac in a Shoreditch basement intrigued. Could San Francisco's Vetiver reproduce the glossy sheen of new album The Errant Charm live? The answer was no, and last night’s London show was all the better for that. As the guitars intertwined, the sonic swirl was more akin to a Seventies LA version of shoegazing than a recreation of the seductive West Coast sound. Read more... |
The Secret Sisters, Pleasance, EdinburghTuesday, 28 June 2011
Emmylou Harris once described to me the sibling harmonies of the Louvin Brothers as sounding like they were “washed in the blood”. The voices of Laura and Lydia Rogers, two twentysomething sisters from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, have that same haunting quality. When they sing they lock together so effortlessly it’s almost impossible to discern where one ends and the other begins. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Home Festival, DartingtonMonday, 27 June 2011
While Michael Eavis’s fields were colonised by the solstice hordes, transforming a tranquil farmstead into a vibrant (and muddy) drop city, a very different and much smaller crowd assembled in the enchanting grounds of Dartington Hall in south Devon, for the second edition of Home, "a Festival with Acoustic Music at its Heart". Read more... |
Kings of Leon, Hyde ParkWednesday, 22 June 2011
Brothers Caleb, Nathan and Jared Followill and their cousin Matthew Followill, better known as Kings of Leon, have come a long, long way from their humble Tennessee roots in the last 12 years. In London last night playing to a 65,000-strong crowd in the same week that a documentary charting their rise hits cinemas, the contrast between the life they were born into and... Read more... |
Jon Allen/ Josh Bray, Bush HallWednesday, 22 June 2011
Jon Allen and his support Josh Bray are two sides of a coin. Of the two folk-rockers, the smoother, more polished Allen’s the heads. Bray is rougher, more unknown. But last night they both showed the depth of quality that exists in contemporary commercial roots-influenced music. Allen is touring his second album, Sweet Defeat. Its beautifully crafted songs and refined production have impressed the likes of Jools Holland, and last night he took it to a new level. Read more... |
Sónar 2011: Day 3 and Round-upTuesday, 21 June 2011
This is where the delirium kicks in. Tired but happy, the attendees started the third day of Sónar festival slightly boggled by how to pick and choose from the strange delights on offer. Saturday was when the true musical variety of the festival was displayed: straight-up hip hop to eye-popping South African tribal dance displays, balmy ambient revivalism to apocalyptic techno, heartbroken electronica to deranged prog rock: it was all on offer... Read more... |
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