Reviews
India Lewis
Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres is American critic Kelefa Sanneh’s ambitious survey of musical history. As such, it risks remaining only a surface-level summary of the seven genres he describes. I was wrong to worry, though: despite its broad coverage, Sanneh’s study is informative and personal, providing overviews of but also covering smaller diversions and developments within rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance and pop.Each chapter loops back to the other genres to show their points of divergence, before travelling forward to explore the roads of sub- Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
William Thomas has fast made an impact as a rapidly rising (or should that be descending?) star of the bass world. Though he has only recently graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, his awards include Winner of the Veronica Dunne International Competition and Winner of the Critics’ Circle Award for Young Talent.For those curious about what the fuss is, it’s clear from the first few notes that he has a tone so full and rich it makes you think of polished mahogany. Together with the acclaimed Scottish accompanist, Malcolm Martineau, he dispatched a programme of 19th and early Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s Friday night and I’ve finally arrived at 43-year-old French music festival institution Trans Musicales. Due to some dreadful nonsense, it’s taken a 12-hour train journey, two baguettes, one short Stephen King novel, six large beers, a tumbler of Bourbon, and one shuttlebus to place me at the Parc Expo, a series of giant airport hangars that house the majority of musical activity (although there’s a smattering of earlier events in Rennes itself).The music runs from 9.00 pm-ish through to shortly before dawn and Trans Musicales is renowned for ensuring that the nearly 60,000 attendees are Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“Only by doing something mad can I hope to stay sane,” says Charlotte Salomon (voiced by Keira Knightley) to her lover, Alexander Nagler (Sam Claflin). “I feel it inside me, the same demon that’s haunted so many in my family.”Both are Jewish refugees in Villefranche, near Nice in the south of France, in 1943. Her mad, courageous plan is to paint the story of her life (it’s considered by some to be the first graphic novel). The demons are not just the Nazis, but the suicidal impulses that claimed her mother, her great-uncle, her aunt Charlotte and now her Grossmama (grandmother, voiced by Read more ...
Mark Kidel
As our favourite rock stars become elders, there has been a steady flow of autobiographies, some ghosted, some authentically authored; more or less confessional, revisiting the ups and downs of life-journeys lived beyond the fatal 27th birthday that seems to have knocked an uncanny number of them out of play.Patrick Duff, the lead singer and songwriter for the Nineties indie band Strangelove is an unlikely survivor. Strangelove, emerged at the tail-end of Britpop, were much admired by Radiohead and Suede. They almost made it big. The band were very good, and their music has stood the test of Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Is British new writing in deep trouble? With the Arts Council defunding venues such as the Hampstead Theatre, the Donmar and the Gate, and past masters such as Terry Johnson underperforming, the signs are not good. But what about the National Theatre, the country’s flagship — can it step up to fill the gap? Well, judging by recent flops such as Moira Buffini’s Manor, I wouldn’t bank on it. The problem with this venue, and the Royal Court for that matter, is that they stage plays that are good ideas, but need much more work, more editing, more development. April De Angelis’s latest, despite a Read more ...
David Nice
Only a group of top musicians stood, or mostly sat, between a full but necessarily small house and Dr Malatesta’s Plastic Surgery Clinic in the bijou surroundings of Dun Laoghaire’s 324-seater Pavilion Theatre. The scaled-down wing of Irish National Opera’s season, touring between a highly-acclaimed production of Guillaume Tell and next March’s Der Rosenkavalier, worked so well because the same high values that have marked the other company offerings I’ve seen so far are very much in evidence.Donizetti’s stock farce of an old man duped into thinking he’s got himself a demure bride may not Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
What do you mean you haven’t heard of the newsboys’ strike of 1899? It’s a classic David and Goliath story: a group of New York kids selling newspapers for Joseph Pulitzer (him of the prize), who take a stand when their boss tries to charge them 20% extra to buy their “papes”.The 1992 Disney film, Newsies, became a cult classic, and was turned into a Tony-winning Broadway show in 2011 that ran over 1000 performances. The newsies have now burst onto the stage of the shiny Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre, backflipping, wise-cracking, and making the most of some mediocre songs.Director/ Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Tom Ward does his audience research at the top of the show, asking fairly mundane questions about their ages and where they live before he poses an unexpectedly pointed “Who is in an open relationship?” It's the beat before “They're aware of...” that makes it a killer joke.There are several of those in Anthem, his new show – and first UK tour – that was a hit at this year's Edinburgh Fringe, which showcases Ward's offbeat observational comedy. He has been on the comedy circuit for a few years but his television appearances are becoming more frequent; if you can't immediately place the name, Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Growing up in Sweden, sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg developed ways of combatting the biting cold and bleak darkness of winter. As well as writing during wintertime, they turned to the open landscapes and pervasive desert heat of the USA to inspire their music. Perhaps it is this that brings such a warm sheen to their presence.On a stage ablaze with the iridescent shimmer of a huge sun backdrop, the duo open with “Palomino”, to a retro film screen of horses running free and wild. The Nevada aesthetic continues with “Angel” and “It’s A Shame” accompanied by Super 8-style films of golden Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
"Descarga Royal" by Los Royal’s de Pucallpa opens proceedings. After flurries of wobbly wah-wah guitar, a driving percussion bed interweaves with a rolling guitar figure. Then, about two minutes in, the guitarist steps on the fuzz pedal. Groovy. Psychedelic too. The band’s name is taken from the tropical east-Perú city of Pucallpa, located on the Amazon tributary river Ucayali.Further in, "Humo En La Selva" by Los Invasores De Progreso is as groovy and also features fuzz guitar along with vocal chants. Progreso is located in inland south-western Perú along the Apurímac, another Amazon Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Clint Dyer is the first black director of Othello at the National Theatre, a venue that once staged the piece with its actor founder Laurence Olivier playing the lead role in blackface. We are reminded of this now-reviled practice before curtain up in a flickering montage of programme covers projected onto the set going back to 1634, and stopping at 2022. An actor arrives with a broom and cart to sweep the stage area clean. So are we going to be seeing a new take on the tragedy? Yes and no. This Is a laudably ambitious production, but one that has jettisoned some of the play's key Read more ...