New Music Reviews
Gilberto Gil, Royal Festival HallThursday, 22 July 2010
The dreadlocks are gone, the dark suit is gone, the acoustic guitar which was his faithful travelling companion during the four years as Brazilian Minister of Culture, is also gone. Instead, Gilberto Gil skipped on stage with a cool, short, grey haircut framing his beautifully sculpted features, wearing a white shirt and check trousers, and strapped on a Fender Stratocaster. Read more...
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Latitude Festival, SuffolkTuesday, 20 July 2010
So little time, so much stuff to see: that, in essence, is the story of Latitude. Now in its fifth year, this Suffolk festival offers a bewildering cultural cornucopia: music, theatre, dance, cabaret, comedy, circus, literature, poetry, as well as unexpected oddities such as performers dressed as unicorns wandering the woods at night and teams of ghoulish “medics” defibrillating random victims (I was one of them) during theatre group Duckie’s Saturday night masked ball. It’s a blast (albeit... Read more... |
Corinne Bailey Rae, Somerset HouseSaturday, 17 July 2010
Was this a Corinne Bailey Rae audience or a Somerset House audience? “We’re Somerset House fans,” I heard one posh punter proudly tell some friends. Then later I heard a woman talking about the Florence and the Machine gig that she’d missed earlier in this short season of concerts, as if it were a stamp missing from her collection. Could this really be an audience who were here for the building first and the music second? Yes, this enclosed yet open-air square in central London is a... Read more... |
Laura Moody, The Forge, CamdenWednesday, 14 July 2010
Laura Moody says she was given a cello as a child to curb hyperactivity, but listening to her last night you might well have wondered if she’d had Tourettes too. The singer-cellist’s sound included clicks, shrieks, howls, and a lot of things that probably shouldn’t happen to a cello - as if she had taken every musical influence that had come her way in her 28 years and put them in a blender. The result? It was certainly extraordinary and sometimes disturbing. Read more... |
The xx, Somerset HouseTuesday, 13 July 2010
I don't know exactly what they do in the music classes at Putney’s Elliott School, but it seems to do the trick. Fleetwood Mac's Peter Green went there 50 years ago and now, after admittedly a bit of a lull, the school is positively spitting stars out by the vanload. Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet, attended, Hot Chip's members are Elliott alumni and The xx are the latest schoolkids on the block, with their self-titled 2009 debut album tipped to be a serious Mercury Prize contender. ... Read more... |
Classic Albums: John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band, BBC FourSaturday, 10 July 2010
The BBC just can't stop showing that flipping Lennon Naked drama. No sooner have we emerged from the Fatherhood Season, where it first appeared, than we're into a John Lennon Night on BBC Four, featuring Lennon Naked again under a new temporary flag of convenience. Read more... |
Imagine: Tom Jones - What Good Am I? BBC OneWednesday, 07 July 2010
The voice, being 70, isn’t quite the untamed beast of yore. But it retains a certain feral throb. Alan Yentob stands across the recording studio, listening donnishly as Tom Jones belts one out. “You still feel the presence and power,” he reports. Not that you’d know from the way Yentob sways ever so imperceptibly in his BBC execuspecs. Yentobs don’t dance. Go on, man, do the done thing. Whip off your drawers and lob them lovingly at the Pontypridd Pelvis. Read more... |
Tapestry Supersonic Sunday Mini-FestivalTuesday, 06 July 2010
The Tapestry Festival is a labour of love. It's the ongoing adventure of a Camden plasterer called Barry Stilwell who decided a decade ago that he wanted a festival of his own. Irritated by the way corporate branding was piggy-backing festival culture, and disgusted by stringent spoilsport ground-rules at many outdoor events, he started his own in 2003, mostly showcasing bands who'd played his monthly Euston-based club night. Read more... |
Caetano Veloso, Barbican HallSunday, 04 July 2010
He's a small man, wiry, bespectacled. His three band members - guitarist Pedro Sá, bassist Ricardo Dias Gomes, percussionist Marcelo Callado - must each be about a third his age: a case of three pupils and a professor? Behind them is a screen which, through this one-and-a-half-hour set, will flash up clips of Brazilian seascapes and city scenes, mainly of Rio de Janeiro. |
Forever Young, BBC FourFriday, 02 July 2010
Appropriately enough, Forever Young began with the primal beat of Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life". What I consider to be Mr Pop’s “My Way” seems to perfectly sum up the pumped-up and apparently unstoppable forward momentum of the man himself and his against-all-the-odds lengthy career. But it could just as easily represent many of the world-weary yet resilient musicians interviewed in this unexceptional but nevertheless diverting documentary. |
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