Sheffield
Kieron Tyler
The Comsat Angels’ debut single for Polydor, July 1980’s “Independence Day”, was an instant classic. After setting a rhythmic bed, each subsequent instrumental contribution is measured out: a guitar string's harmonic; a spare keyboard line; drop-outs drawing from dub. The melody was anthemic, yet not overbearing, and the forward momentum unyielding. It still sounds fantastic.After an independently issued single, the Sheffield quartet released “Independence Day” on the major label which had brought The Jam and Siouxsie & the Banshees into the charts. In the wake of punk, Polydor seemed to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Any band’s reunion is bittersweet. They can never be what they were at their peak and know it, and yet fans hope. Recapturing past magic is tough. Hair is lost, weight is gained and aging depletes energy. With Pulp, the band never assumed formula rock personae and their reunion was always going to be more seamless with their own past than most. There was less chance that memories would be sullied. Their reformation was one of the most convincing in recent years, in part also due to quickly bowing out after returning and the favour they brought to the listening public by not writing any new, Read more ...
Veronica Lee
You may have a slight sense of déjà vu about a stage production of The Full Monty. Wasn't it a Broadway hit at the turn of the millennium? Well yes it was, but that was an Americanised musical version of Simon Beaufoy's Oscar-nominated 1997 film; now his adaptation of the movie is in the West End after its acclaimed debut last year at Sheffield Crucible, and the setting is back in familiar territory.We're in Sheffield, South Yorkshire in the late 1980s, a time when it is suffering the full ravages of Thatcherism. The city's proud history of steel-making is all but gone and a group of four Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
There isn’t really a consensus on what the single best Fall album is. However, I did come across a thread on a fansite asking devotees to nominate their favourite album title. Not album – album title.This prompts a number of observations. Firstly, there are a lot of Fall albums: Re-Mit is the 30th studio release since 1976. Secondly, there plenty of very serious Fall fans out there. Thirdly, Mark E Smith, the band’s frontman and only common denominator across its 37-year life, has a somewhat legendary turn of phrase (most votes on the poll went to 1983’s Perverted by Language ).On that front Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Seasonal appearances by The Human League have an air of Christmas panto about them, with halls packed with coach parties of devoted fans who all seem to know each other, but the group have quietly solidified into a great British success story. They made the jump from experimental beginnings to become darlings of early-Eighties electropop, but more remarkable still is their ability to produce modestly credible new music 30 years later. Several cuts from their 2011 album Credo, especially the evening's opener "Sky", were able to stand alongside highlights from their golden years with heads held Read more ...
theartsdesk
The Human League: Dare (Deluxe Edition)Thomas H GreenLast year, when I interviewed The Human League for theartsdesk, singer Susan Sulley said of Leonard Cohen, “He’s got a personality voice. It’s not a voice that’s going to pass the auditions on The X Factor but you wouldn’t mistake him for anyone else on the radio.”You would never mistake The Human League for anyone else either, a unique band born of Sheffield, punk and a love of Kraftwerk. It’s hard to credit that their hugest song, “Don’t You Want Me”, and its massively successful parent album Dare, were put together with little Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Boy, do Arctic Monkeys move fast. There were 21 songs in their set at the O2 Arena last night and at one point they were racing through them at such a breathtaking lick I thought I would be on my way home within the hour. In the end their performance clocked in at around the length of a football match thanks to some pauses to swap guitars. Plus a break for Alex Turner to stand by the drums and ostentatiously comb his elaborate quiff. Some sections of the crowd might have questioned Turner’s surprising 2011 rug-rethink, but no one would dare question his ability to pen a brilliantly infectious Read more ...
graeme.thomson
Once upon a time there was a boy/girl band who hailed from Sheffield. They made a debut album called Yeah So which married whimsical indie-folk and a kind of post-punk rockabilly to words seemingly torn from the diaries of a pair of teenage sweethearts, holding hands in the rain one minute, crying into their snakebite the next, all the time hoping that this might last forever rather than just until the end of Fresher’s Week. Cute, knowing, twee as toffee, it was all very sweet but not hugely substantial.If this was the opening act in the tale of Slow Club, the duo formed in 2006 by Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Human League are one of the brightest lights in the history of electro-pop. They have had many incarnations over the years but since late 1980 the core of the group has been frontman Philip Oakey (b 1955) and singers Joanne Catherall (b 1962) and Susan Sulley (b 1963).The Human League bloomed out of Sheffield’s electronic underground in the mid-Seventies, releasing the seminal electro-pop single “Being Boiled” in 1978. They signed to Virgin but success was not quick in coming and by 1980, with two albums under their belt, they split. Synthesizer wizards Martin Ware and Ian Craig Read more ...
aleks.sierz
It’s pretty hard to describe a Forced Entertainment show. But let’s try anyway: imagine a stage full of crazy dancers, the men in black wigs, the women in white ones, prancing around, flinging their arms in the air, mistiming their high kicks, and then running frantically up and down the stage. The lighting slides from bright white to sick pink, and the music is pop tunes with Japanese lyrics. Welcome to a wonderful world of controlled zany exhilaration.Things go up a gear when one of the dancers starts carrying a red carpet on his shoulders, and soon a ragged chaos ripples across the stage Read more ...
sheila.johnston
If Michael Moore's new film were a person, it would be diagnosed with a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder. His Cook's Tour through the ills of capitalism spans, inter alia: forced repossessions; worker lock-ins; the breadline salaries of airline pilots, some of whom sell blood or use food stamps to pay the bills; a scam, perpetrated by a judge in collusion with a private company, to make money by sending harmless youngsters to a correctional facility; Hurricane Katrina; the election of President Obama; cats flushing toilets - in short, everything but the kitchen sink.Any one of these Read more ...
sheila.johnston
Whoever first made the observation - some say Winston Churchill, others Ronald Reagan - there is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man, and a woman. On stage these noble beasts have inspired some highly successful plays, including Peter Schaffer's Equus, recently revived with Daniel Radcliffe, and War Horse, still living up to its name in the West End after over two years (panto horses probably don't count). In cinema, the legacy is more mixed; but not for nothing is the Western, arguably the greatest of film genres, also known as the horse opera. Horses Read more ...