rock
Barney Harsent
One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock rock… For those who orchestrated the swing from blues to rock ‘n’ roll, it’s getting late. Like the Chelsea pensioners, their numbers are beginning to dwindle and, as time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future, their testimony must be recorded for posterity, lest it be lost for ever in the music mists (currently somewhere off the coast of Kintyre). Except – and it’s a fairly big "except" – this stuff’s already fairly well documented, no? And no matter how many grey-haired rockers try to explain how revolutionary this stuff was at the time Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Normally, if an album as good as The Man Who Sold the World had itself sold the sum total of sod all on release, it would have been lost, then found, before becoming a fêted rarity, exchanging hands for hundreds while bootleggers had a field day. The fact that it was a David Bowie album meant that, despite the initial indifferent shrug from the buying public, it’s shifted more than a million and a half copies. It remains, however, overlooked and underrated by many.Having never toured the album at the time, last year saw Spiders from Mars drummer Woody Woodmansey and producer Tony Visconti put Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Sunday afternoon at Glastonbury is an odd time. For some it means carrying on carrying on, trying to wring the very last drops out of the weekend and putting off the inevitable, stomach-churning lurch that will signal a nosedive into a colossal comedown. For others, it’s simply a day to be a bit more sensible: after all there’s a long drive tomorrow… Whichever, there seems to be a clamour for the familiar, something to cling to while you take the edge off with more booze or think about A-road alternatives to avoid congestion. This is where the faded glory of the "once-greats" comes in: mid- Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Almost a decade ago, I went to a disappointing festival in Holland. Driven to distraction by the crowd – a sixth-form disco stuck between the third and fourth circles of Dante's inferno – I, on the advice of a friend, went to see Muse. Their theatrical pomp and overblown, muscular attack took the top of my head off and replaced my brain with a great big lump of wallop.The news, then, that their latest album, Drones, is a concept set to become a musical makes perfect sense. It also explains the, at times, over-expository lyrics and the big theme slapped on the front. Fans of Banksy will think Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Sticky Fingers is the Stones’ defining album, a record that preserves the band in all its ragged, outlaw rock'n'roll glory. It captured them, too, between worlds of their own making, as the exploratory Sixties solidified into the excessive Seventies, Mick Jagger turned left into the first-class jet-set life, and Keith Richards turned the other way, into an image-defining drug addiction, scoring his mythos as permanently as a prison tattoo. Some things never fade away.In pretty well every aspect – music, image, cover, line-up – Sticky Fingers represents the Rolling Stones at their peak, on the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Al Pacino gives it his barnstorming all as Danny Collins, an ageing, coke-rattled rocker who calls it quits in order to reconnect with his family and recharge his life. Sentimental (but not brazenly so) and buttressed by an ace supporting cast, the film finds Pacino hurtling through his 70s in irresistibly energiser bunny mode. Whereas such contemporaries as Gene Hackman and Jack Nicholson have pretty well faded from view, there's plenty of life in this celluloid mainstay yet. Indeed, there's something delicious in watching Pacino gobble whole the part of a rock god living off his Read more ...
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. For much of last night he treated the O2 to tantalising glimpses of his former, more rocking, self.Knopfler came on looking lean and casual in a floral shirt and jeans. His hair was close cut (he still looks Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The timing of this tour, to celebrate the 15th anniversary of their self-released, lo-fi masterpiece Mwng, could not be more fitting. The album was inspired, in part, by Welsh language punk band Datblygu, and the left-wing political feelings that ran through that band’s work. Fast forward to now and London looks like an island of red surrounded by a sea of blue following the recent election – and there are a lot of people here aching for escape after Thursday's events.The tour has the air of a retrospective. The songs from Mwng, including the sea-shanty sway of “Ymaelodi A’r Ymylon” and the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Spooky Tooth: The Island Years (An Anthology) 1967–1974After Spooky Tooth called it a day in 1974, various long-time members struck out in directions as unpredictable as their former band’s identity was hard to get a handle on. Drummer Mike Kellie joined the Lou Reed-influenced, punk-era band The Only Ones. Their main songwriter, co-vocalist and keyboard player Gary Wright scored a massive US hit in early 1976 with the fantastically atmospheric proto-yacht rock single “Dream Weaver”. Guitarist Mick Jones formed the immediately successful (in America) formulaic rock band Foreigner. Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Mumford and Sons, world conquering as they are, still fall victim to various accusations. Some, for instance, loathe their blandness. Others detect a whiff of smug middle class about them. Perhaps a more interesting observation, though, is how the band takes an intimate, personal musical form – folk – and turns it into something anthemic. Well, not any more. There’s nothing folk about Wilder Mind. Not a single banjo.The anthems are fewer in number too. Like Noah and the Whale before them, the Mumfords have wholeheartedly waved goodbye to nu-folk and moved their sound Stateside. So, how Read more ...
Barney Harsent
So, what I’m probably supposed to do when reviewing Django Django’s new album, Born Under Saturn, is mention the sleeper-hit success of their 2012 self-titled debut. I’m then definitely supposed to do a funny and find some suitable similes before summing up with something pithy and sage. The trouble is, I’m stuck here grinning like an idiot while thoughts flit in and out without ever finding room to land. Melodies can do that to you – stop you thinking and drag you into the moment, where meaningful reflection is all but impossible. Like being really pissed, but without the hangover. What Read more ...
Barney Harsent
This latest Friday night vehicle for archive footage and pop performances was the tour bus, as BBC4 invited us to hop into the back of the van for a quick spin through the "golden age" of touring rock bands (which the producers clearly felt ended with the Eighties).The designated driver was high priest of prog pomposity Rick Wakeman – but long gone are the flowing locks and gowns that were once his trademark, replaced by a look that falls somewhere between youngish Bill Maynard and overstuffed straw pillow. Given the subject matter – the often harsh reality of life for a touring band – this Read more ...