rock
Nick Hasted
Anita Pallenberg was a vital presence in the Stones’ most vital years. Her bright eyes and hungry mouth betrayed a ferocious appetite for pleasure and adventure, taking her from a nun-schooled Rome childhood to New York’s downtown art crowd, then modelling in Munich, where in 1965 she engineered an encounter with “shy” Keith Richards, a similarly callow Mick Jagger and her first, violent Stones lover Brian Jones. Richards saved her from Jones’ paranoid abuse in 1967, and they became notorious outlaw lovers for the next decade.Co-directed by Svetlana Zill and Alexis Bloom, both associates of Read more ...
caspar.gomez
If the weather’s good TGE Beach is a grand start to a day. As it sounds, it’s a purpose-built seafront space to the east of central Brighton, containing three stages as well as stalls selling vegan kebabs, Filipino street food and German sausage.Every Great Escape’s closing Saturday it’s taken over by Sounds Australia, offering a fresh selection of what that country has to offer. And there’s a bar, of course, where, at midday, photographer Finetime and I avail ourselves of a traditional media breakfast of BrewDog Wingman pale ale (4.3%).The first music of the day is a short set by Tamara Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Original pressings of Love And Poetry sell for up to £2,800. Copies of the August 1969 debut album by Andwellas Dream can sometimes also be found for £700, a relative bargain in the context of the upper limit of the prices the collector’s market has settled on.There were two follow-up albums – each credited to Andwella. August 1970’s World's End fetches around £40 to £80; People's People, issued in late 1970, attracts prices of £50 to £100. Cult stuff then, with interest centred on that first album. And where there’s such appeal, repressings follow. Love And Poetry was first reissued in 1995 Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Before reviewing The Great Escape, we must first deal with the elephant in the room. Or, in this case, the room that’s crushing the elephant, like the trash compactor in the first Star Wars film.THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM BITThere is a boycott, by around 25% of booked artists, of Brighton’s annual multi-venue showcase for new and rising bands. This is in protest at sponsor Barclays Bank’s involvement with arms companies trading with Israel as that country instigates the ongoing and catastrophic Gaza bloodbath. The boycott was begun a couple of months ago as a petition by Bristol punk outfit The Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
By midway, things are cooking. “Can U Dig It?”, a post-modern list-song from another age (Ok, 1989), boasts a whopping guitar riff. Keys-player Adam Mole, his ushanka cap’s ear-covers flapping, leaps onto his seat, waves his synth aloft. Frontmen Graham Crabb and Mary Byker fly up’n’down the stage-front, launching airwards for chest-bumps, staccato-firing rapped lyrics about the Furry Freak Brothers, Renegade Soundwave, Bruce Lee, DJ Spinderella and, of course, how writer-magician Alan Moore “knows the score”. At the end Crabb segues briefly into an obscure sliver of Boys Own Bocca Read more ...
joe.muggs
The buildup to this album offered quite a bit of hope. The promo blurb with it talks about “cutting loose, trying new things… hark[ing] back to their gritty origins… freed from any expectations.” Most glaringly, it says it’s “the album the band says they’ve always wanted to make” – perhaps, along with the plaintive album title, a tacit admission that their heart hasn’t really been in the modern day AOR they’ve been pumping out every since the strained “woah-woahs” (“millennial whoops”) of “Use Somebody” and “Sex on Fire” blasted them into the mainstream in 2008.The thing is, the Nashville Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Bab L’Bluz are a French-Moroccan four-piece that play a tasty blend of fiery psychedelic rock backed up with hypnotic North African gnawa rhythms. Featuring electric awisha lute, guembri, percussion and castanet-like qraqeb rather than more mainstream instruments, they tackle subjects like gender inequality and call for unity and tolerance – while getting hips swinging and feet stomping in a frenzied groove.Swaken is Bab L’Bluz’s second album and features Yousra Mansour’s emotive vocals and riff-heavy awisha lute backed by a giddy trance-rock sound that owes as much to Led Zeppelin’s heavy Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
To mark the 40th anniversary of New Jersey’s second-greatest gift to rock’n’roll, Disney+ have served up this sprawling four-part documentary which tells you more about Jon Bon Jovi and his band of brothers than you ever needed to know. Or, possibly, wanted to.One has to conclude that it has been created in the image of Jon Bon himself, in all his obsessive, control-freak glory. Far from a hell-for-leather rock’n’roller, too fast to live and too young to die, he comes across as a sober, thoughtful workaholic who has maintained a steely grip on his career virtually since he learned to walk. He Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The joy of CVC, when they catch fire, is the zing of gatecrashing a gang of cheeky, very individual personalities having their own private party. There’s a moment tonight, for instance, midway through the evening, when guitarists David Bassey and Elliot Bradfield, close in on each other, lock eyes, and spar clanging notes with spine-tingling precision. This band are tight, tight, tight. Meanwhile frontman Francesco Orsi dances louchely as keys player Daniel Jones does a manic jig around him. They enliven the venue with a joyful, if practiced, energy.CVC stands for Church Village Collective, Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
First Nadine Shah raised hopes, then dashed them. “I’ve never had a dance off onstage before,” she observed at one point, impressed by the shapes a crowd member was cutting, before confirming it wouldn’t be happening on this evening either. You’d have backed Shah to triumph too, given how the rest of the gig showcased her skills with style.Dressed in a black power suit that suggested she could tangle with Melanie Griffth and Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl, Shah has both a superb voice and a terrific stage presence. She prowled around on the opening “Even Light”, all nervy, tense rhythms, Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
There’s a scene in Priscilla where Elvis stands above his wife, who is scrambling to put her clothes in a suitcase. Priscilla has just confronted him about a letter she found from the actress Ann-Margret, confirming her suspicion that the King of Rock'n'Roll has been unfaithful. Elvis's legs in their white trousers tower before her like the pillars of Graceland.This is just one of the many memorable images in Sofia Coppola’s delicate portrayal of Priscilla Presley, now available on Blu-ray and DVD. In the context of Coppola’s oeuvre, which includes such gems as The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Read more ...
Cheri Amour
For most people’s 40th birthday celebrations, they might get a few friends together, rustle up a cake, and toast to another turn around the sun. But when musician Lail Arad realised the stars had aligned with her beloved Joni Mitchell's own 80th birthday, she knew she had to mark the milestone moment with something special.Thus, The Songs of Joni Mitchell was born, an intimate evening celebrating the iconic singer-songwriter as part of this year’s In The Round festival. Mitchell was one of the first women in modern rock to achieve enviable longevity and critical recognition. Her works Read more ...