Brighton
Thomas H. Green
Some rock bands base their career around being musically fluid, an ever-changing what-will-they-do-next? conundrum. Others, such as, famously, Motörhead and The Ramones, simply go on doing their thing, honing it, repeating ad infinitum, with an almost zen devotion. The results, at their best, are vigorously on-point.It’s not only rock bands, though. Some of those swept up in the 1990s rave-olution also knuckled down, stuck to the cause, purposefully focused. One such is Steve Mac and his new album combines aspects of old and contemporary production to salute the history and ongoing potency of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s a disconnect on the third album by Brighton rockers Black Honey. The music is rousing post-grunge indie rock, tuneful, full of vim, but the lyrics speak of someone deeply troubled. The mood is, perhaps, best summed up by “Rock Bottom” which states, “Rock bottom – but the floor keeps dropping.” The whole album is mired in similar mind-strife.Singer Izzy Bee Phillips has said as much of the incongruously named A Fistful of Peaches, stating, “Most of this record is me trying to figure out where the line is between normal mental health and when you’re having breakdowns every day that then Read more ...
Katie Colombus
If I’m honest, venturing out into a misty Brighton night with my Tweens for their first proper gig (we won’t count Olly Murs – they were children then) felt somewhat trepidatious.I was buoyed by seeing other parents in the same situash, and comforted by the warmth of both crowd and venue in the Brighton Dome. The audience was a sliced n’diced mix of older MTV-range couples who grew up with CRJ’s music the first time round; Gen-Z Tik-Tok newbies who grew up watching Ballerina (an animated film featuring excellent musical-pop by Jepsen) and a strong LGBTQ+ crowd who take to the pit to sing Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Sacre isn’t your average big-top show. Created by Brisbane-based company Circa, this is modern circus meets contemporary dance – a conceptual deconstruction of the traditional experience, represented in a show of impressive strength, with real people reacting and responding to one another’s energies and intentions.A group of 10 acrobats all in black dart around the stage with breathtaking speed and vigour, coming together and pushing apart in a series of lifts, throws and catches with alarming alacrity. They run, jump and fling themselves at each other at unexpected moments, hurling back Read more ...
caspar.gomez
My friend George claims to have nightmares about The Great Escape. In them he’s standing in an endless queue, never reaching the front, never entering the venue, and never seeing the band he wants to see. That was his experience the only time he attended, and he consequently reckons The Great Escape is rubbish.“I’ve been going for years and that’s never happened to me,” I said to him.“Yeah, well, you’re press, aren’t you,” he responded, with only a smidgeon of bitterness.“I s’pose so,” I replied, with only a smidgeon of smugness.But now photographer Finetime and I are standing outside Horatio Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Onstage at The Old Market in Hove, New York’s Mykki Blanco has been waving around a knot of garlic bulbs as if it were a wand or occult aspergillum. At some point during Blanco’s punchy rendition of 2016 single “Loner”, or possibly the dizzier “Summer Fling”, they transfer it to the flies of their trousers, let it hang there, all mischief. They explain that this is the result of the band becoming obsessed with “a mad coven of witches in Italy”.Whatever, it certainly adds to the freeform conviviality. Blanco (pictured left) no longer adopts a draggy look. The non-binary MC first enters wearing Read more ...
Katie Colombus
The psychology of female desire in 1960s California, was a field awash with voyeurism and exploitation. This brilliant play uncovers not only the bizarre story of Gloria Szymanski, but catholic hypocrisy and everyday sexism too, with a nod to third wave feminism.The plot is based on the "Gloria Tapes" – three video therapy sessions between leading psychologists and a 30-year-old divorcee who spoke openly about her enjoyment of sex. It was filmed with the purpose of demonstrating different therapeutic approaches as an educational tool, but was later released, without Gloria’s consent, on the Read more ...
Katie Colombus
To take to the streets in Brighton in pursuit of a superior political ideology isn't unusual. What is unusual is that some of the young folk currently lurking about the Brighton Museum are part of dreamthinkspeak, an immersive theatre company taking part in this year's Brighton Festival.Before the evening begins, us "recruits" are introduced via a "secure platform" online, to an exciting sounding rebel movement's dream of freedom from their dystopian state. In small groups we arrive in secret locations, before being given an ipad and bemusedly squirreling around the dark museum and its Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
“As you’ve noticed, I’m really terrible at talking between the songs,” announces Melt Yourself Down singer Kushal Gaya, two-thirds of the way through the gig. He is. But it really doesn’t matter; the genre-uncategorizable London six-piece smash through their hour-and-15-minute set with a lean, giddy forward propulsion that brooks no pause. Consequently, the small, sold-out, low-ceilinged club venue gradually becomes a wriggling, sweaty rave-pit.A lot has been written about the London jazz resurgence of recent years. Names such as Shabaka Hutchings, Nubiya Garcia and Seb Rochford bandied about Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The former British Sea Power’s seventh album draws on deep reserves of melancholy and ecstasy. Several songs sound like elegies for Yan and Neil Wilkinson’s recently deceased parents. The band’s emotional heart – sometimes missed beneath the perceived eccentricities of their semi-pagan, mythos-building stage-show – beats hard, even as songs reliably surge with pop power.Losing “British” from their name seems sad, when BSP’s wryly nostalgic intent seemed so clear; it feels like a defeat by nationalism, but is of course the band’s considered, moral choice, as fascism again stokes patriotic Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Madness frontman Suggs is asking the capacity crowd at the Brighton Centre if any of them are in school-age education. Quite a few are. There are actual young people here! Some are with parents (even, possibly, grandparents), but gaggles of teenagers are also in evidence on their own. They shout out. We all know what’s coming… a Madness song about school days… “Naughty boys in nasty schools, headmaster’s breaking all the rules…” And, we’re off again, jogging on the spot to perennial Eighties classic “Baggy Trousers”, a sea of shaven heads, red fez’s and porkpie hats bubbling with happy Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A persistent moan of this writer in recent years, about gigs attended by those his own age (54) and up, is that, however good the band is, the audience are stationary, staring, semi-catatonic. They don’t twitch or move, facing stage-wards earnestly, silent, as if watching Chekov at the theatre. Their joy, if it exists, is internalised, unreleased. Dancing something forgotten long ago. Such gigs are flat, disappointing, like the airless, staid classical concerts I was taken to as a boy, contemplative and half-asleep. It is, then, a blissful surprise to find Eighties synth-pop outfit OMD’s Read more ...