Reviews
Kieron Tyler
Ride: Going Blank AgainKieron TylerWhen Oxfordshire’s Ride arrived in the shops via Creation Records, they were the sonic little brothers to label-mates My Bloody Valentine. But their second album, 1992’s Going Blank Again, ploughed its own path, leaving the competition behind. Twenty years on, this smart, book-bound reissue adds most of the tracks from contemporary EPs and teams the album with a DVD of a March 1992 Brixton Academy live show.In the liner notes, guitarist – and future Oasis bassist, and current Beady Eye member - Andy Bell admits Ride were initially an “an amalgamation of the Read more ...
graeme.thomson
Magnus Betner, Assembly Rooms **** Here is the news: dismemberment, suicide bombers, industrial-strength Japanese porn, paedophilia and the descent of Julian Assange from hero to zero. The son of a priest and a superstar in his homeland, Swedish comic Betner is drawn to the dark stuff (come to think of it, there’s not much of a leap between Betner and bête noire), and his show latched on to the mood of post-Olympics comedown and held fast.“Show” is really the wrong word. Insisting he would rather die than do the same material every night, Betner places himself firmly as a comic outsider Read more ...
graham.rickson
Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique, Overture ‘Béatrice et Bénédict' Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Robin Ticciati (Linn)Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique needs to sound sweaty and vulgar in all the right places. Over-manicured accounts rarely cohere; you need a conductor who’s willing to let Berlioz’s startling orchestral colours leap vividly off the page. An acid test is to sample the March to the Scaffold. Do the stopped horn notes sizzle at the outset, and do the bass drum thwacks make your speakers shake? Most importantly, how loud are the trombone pedal notes underpinning the cornet-heavy Read more ...
Helen K Parker
Darksiders II **** If you’ve ever wondered what a punch-up between a horseman of the apocalypse and a massive angry ice giant would look like, you need look no further than Darksiders II, which sweeps into the gaming world this week. Death is the equine-straddling quadruplet we are following this time around as he pursues his quest to uncover a plot between deities which has seen his brother War imprisoned and falsely accused of kicking off Armageddon. Unlike the first game, the setting of the game is not Earth but the fantastical Nether Realms of the gods, an opportunity which the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The potential minefield that is the run-up to marriage brings filmgoers back to the altar once again courtesy The Wedding Video, an English romcom that is quite a bit better than one might at first expect. A mixture of pro forma slob comedy (what, no Rhys Ifans?) possessed of a genuinely endearing twist, director Nigel Cole's latest feel-good venture actually does cheer the heart, even if there are ample passages of grimace-and-bear-it shenanigans that have to be got through along the way. Rufus Hound (pictured right, with Lucy Punch) stars as Raif, devil-may-care brother and Read more ...
geoff brown
One chocolate bar, OK. But eating three in a row? Is that altogether wise? Some may feel the same about a concert containing three symphonies by Vaughan Williams: a third of his output in the form. Even the most committed lover of this visionary and still under-appreciated British composer might worry a little at the prospect, as we might at a heavy night of Beethoven or Brahms. Each symphony, to be sure, is coloured with different forms and emotions. But similar harmonies, intervals and rhythmic figurations still recur. "Variety is the spice of life" isn’t a popular saying for nothing.At the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The ever-libidinous Guy (Jason Durr) is "as subtle as a fire engine" when it comes to sex, or so we're told during the course of Volcano, and it's difficult not to feel that this belated Noël Coward discovery could be similarly described in theatrical terms. Never performed during Sir Noël's life, the 1956 play will constitute essential viewing for completists of the Master who want a further sense of how this protean talent's singular career evolved. And yet it's hard not to feel that the keenly aware critic in Coward would have taken a blue pencil to some of the play's more pulpy, banal Read more ...
Mark Sanderson
Lucy Gannon is the doyenne of drama-lite. Anyone who has seen Bramwell or Soldier, Soldier or Peak Practice will know her scripts, no matter how much suffering the characters undergo, will leave the viewer feeling better. She is in the reassurance game. The world is full of bad things and bad men but, generally, goodness wins out. All’s well that ends well.The Best of Men combines two of her favourite subjects: medicine and the military. It begins with a sepia-tinted flashback in which sweet William is lindy-hopping with his girl in a flowery meadow. Hands and Read more ...
theartsdesk
Liam Mullone: A Land Fit For Fuckwits, Stand 4 **** Liam Mullone might perform his hour of clever, quietly simmering stand-up flanked by a faithful toy raccoon called Mr Eek, but there’s nothing fluffy about his material. Mullone targets knee-jerk liberalism with a steel toe-capped intellect. He takes it as read that the likes of the EDL are deeply unpleasant knuckleheads; it’s just that people who get their kicks by constantly pointing out the fact aren’t necessarily much better.Dressed in the ageless uniform of the terminally right-on bore – including copious lapel badges and Read more ...
howard.male
Because Brand has become something of a brand – the hair, the clothes, the pantomime gait, the post-Carry On banter – he can be hard to take seriously. Nevertheless, I’ve been an admirer since his jaw-droppingly risqué appearances on Big Brother’s Big Mouth in the mid-Noughties. It was obvious that this man loved the English language and had a ribald wit that wasn’t going to be contained by Big Brother’s sister show for long. So it’s gratifying to see that this engaging documentary has Brand at least partially escaping a character he’s now also thoroughly milked in Hollywood, in order to Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Mies Julie, Assembly Hall **** Miss Julie is pretty full-on at the best of times but in Yael Farber’s striking new version, Strindberg’s themes of class and gender are given a shocking modern makeover. In transposing the action to present-day South Africa, she has written a story about the divide that still exists between the haves and have-nots, and the crippling emotional history that has yet to be overcome by the young nation.Twenty years after the end of apartheid, things haven’t changed much on a veldt farm, which is owned by a white man and whose labourers and maids are all black. Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It may be the power of suggestion, but there was distinctly laid-back vibe at the packed Royal Albert Hall last night. Clapping between movements (and this was an audience never knowingly under-clapped) wasn’t greeted by the any of the usual hisses, and when a latecomer clattered down the entire length of stalls steps before the Largo of Dvořák’s Symphony No 9 she drew only the most indulgent of laughter. The Brazilians had arrived, bringing with them a warmth that extended well beyond the stage.It seems extraordinary that this should be the first visit of the São Paulo Symphony – one of Read more ...