rock
Russ Coffey
On the face of it, comparisons could be drawn between Dawn Kinnard and fellow preacher’s-offspring-cum-country-singer, Diane Birch. Except Birch’s music comes from every musical advantage, whereas Kinnard still has a day-job as a hairdresser. Moreover, her voice remains totally unproduced - a glorious mix of Tom Waits and Marge Simpson. This summer, for the second time in three years, she has put her savings on the line to try to make it here. Last time round, Kinnard, then staying chez Cerys Matthews, enjoyed a barnstorming session on Later with Jools Holland. Last night things Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It was the Danny Sugerman-Jerry Hopkins biography, No One Here Gets Out Alive, that kicked off the Doors death cult 30 years ago, at a point where the band's reputation was wallowing low in the water. Previously it had been quite acceptable to regard much of their work as cheesy pseudo-jazz with stupid lyrics, and their posturing vocalist Jim Morrison as a tedious drunk with a Narcissus complex.Then suddenly The Doors were propelled into Classic Rock nirvana, their collective efforts elevated to "Great American Band" status and Jim Morrison canonised as sage, seer and sex god. There they Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Films about rock stars usually fail, because it's impossible to recreate whatever larger-than-life qualities made them unique and famous in the first place. You frequently end up with a slightly embarrassing party-piece impersonation that captures some of the mannerisms but misses the essence of the character.John Lennon continues to exert a strange fascination for film-makers, doubtless because he's the Martyred Beatle, but previous biopics have shrewdly homed in on lesser-known aspects of his life, so you weren't constantly comparing the celluloid version with what you knew of the real Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Wiley, Electric Boogaloo (Back Yard) Erratic and spiky where his old mucker Dizzee Rascal has been slick and unerring in his rise to the top, East Londoner Richard "Wiley" Cowie has managed several massive pop-dance hits while remaining thoroughly entangled in the edgier, more aggro grime music scene which he helped to invent. This is very much on the pop-dance side of his output, with every mid-1990s club-energising trick in the book thrown into the mix - but it is done with huge élan, and there is enough of Wiley's wildcard persona audible in his raps about getting stuck into the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If the audience at Wilton's charmingly archaic music hall were feeling depressed by the bleak comedy of the England "performance" against Algeria, a whirl around the musical block in the company of Ed Harcourt was the perfect antidote. Critics feel compelled to categorise everything, and Harcourt has been compared to all and sundry, from Brian Wilson to Harry Nilsson to Tom Waits. But the great thing about Ed is that, despite being the 74 billionth singer-songwriter to walk the face of the earth, he manages to be a one-off, apparently sweet and soothing one minute, sending out pulsating waves Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Almost like an inverted echo of Stevie Wonder over in Detroit, Little Stevie Winwood was a Brummie teen prodigy who scored an early dose of stardom with the Spencer Davis Group at age 15. Raved over for his amazing soulful vocals and effortless instrumental skills, he went on to form Traffic before joining “supergroup” Blind Faith with Eric Clapton.Quite a lot of people already know all this, and many of them will have been to see Winwood and Clapton on their recent tour, but somehow Winwood has always contrived to avoid the kind of status and visibility that ought to go with his rich and Read more ...
joe.muggs
A couple of very different publications have lately had me thinking about those 21st-century inescapables: death and celebrity. A new magazine called Eulogy hits the news stands for the first time today. It is an attempt – one that is on first sight slightly barmy, but in actual fact may be quite brave – to create a mature and engaged public discourse about death. Death, their reasoning goes, happens all the time, affects everyone, and makes us think about the deeper things in life that otherwise get obscured by banal minutiae – so why not bring it out into everyday discussion and acknowledge Read more ...
howard.male
It’s hard to believe that it’s 30 years since the release of The Clash's London Calling, an album that sounds as vital, immediate and relevant today as it did then. Yet there are probably people who remain more familiar with London Calling’s iconic cover than the music contained on the two discs of shiny black vinyl that came with it. Perhaps that’s one reason a new exhibition inspired by London Calling is about the cartoonist and illustrator Ray Lowry, rather than The Clash or the album itself. Lowry, who died in 2008, designed the sleeve, and the curators have come up with the excellent Read more ...
Ismene Brown
A second coming for Michael Clark's recent Barbican commission Come, Been, Gone. Eight months after the London premiere (on which I opined unenthusiastically below last October), he has added another 20 minutes of choreography, they said, with new costumes and artworks. The revision is also now artfully retitled Come, Been and Gone. Not comma-Gone. And Gone. Makes all the difference. Furthermore, note the following revisions to the individual section names: the original "Come" is now entitled "Been", "Been" has actually gone, and been replaced by a new "Come" (that’s the inserted part) while Read more ...
howard.male
I’m not sure what it says about a songwriter when they simply call a song “Music", but the half French, half Moroccan singer Hindi Zahra is a bit of an enigma all round. Critics have already compared the 30-year-old to Billie Holiday and Madeleine Peyroux, presumably because of her phrasing, timbre and a certain fragility in her voice. But her debut album is neither easy listening or jazz. In fact, it’s got more in common with the woozy, trip-hoppy work of Martina Topley Bird, or even the lo-fi experiments with sound that Tom Waits indulges in. The latter aspect being what got my ears paying Read more ...
david.cheal
When I last saw Paul Weller at the Royal Albert Hall he was becalmed in the doldrums of his career – between the demise of the Style Council and the release of his “wake up and smell the coffee” album, Stanley Road. On stage, Weller was a sheepish figure who only sporadically sparked with enthusiasm for his music; it wasn’t much fun. What a difference nearly 20 years can make: this time around he was confident, assertive, vigorous, alive – an elder statesman of rock who has reached the point where he can fill up a five-night residency at the Royal Albert Hall (of which this was the second Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The arrival on the scene of The Klaxons a few years back gave indie, pop and rock a much-needed kick in the pants. Sure, they were a band born of self-consciously over-trendy east London, causing the NME to froth about "nu rave" for ten minutes, but they were also a sudden flash of raucous beatnik psych-pop in a landscape dominated by mundane Luddites such as The Fratellis, The Kooks, et al. The Klaxons harked back to rave culture's utopian bluster but littered their music with knowing nods to Ballard, Burroughs and The Beach Boys. How could anyone not be smitten? And when they won the 2007 Read more ...