America
David Nice
We’re talking in Berlin for two reasons: Andrew Litton has just renewed his contract with the Bergen Philharmonic – he’ll see out at least 12 years as the Norwegian orchestra’s principal conductor – and they’ve now reached the holiest of holies on their European tour, the Philharmonie. The long-term relationship is rare enough, given the musical chairs of today’s higher-paid international conductors, though not unique. Yet it seems to me that what they have together probably is - and I can say, hand on heart, that the Bergen/Litton Berlin concert knocked spots off the one time I heard the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Without intending to, Fleet Foxes set a benchmark with their debut album in 2008. One that resonated. So much so that the release of their second album, Helplessness Blues, is accompanied by sell-out shows at top-drawer venues. The love of their sensitively delivered, beautifully crafted and emotive folk rock is clear. But anyone expecting a rerun of the debut on Helplessness Blues is in for a surprise. What’s known and loved is here. There’re also more than a few left turns.Fleet Foxes will keep the fans they have, but the broadened musical palette and new idiosyncrasies exhibited on Read more ...
carole.woddis
David Mamet plays can, nearly always, be relied upon to be muscular. Leastways, when you think about his early signature plays – American Buffalo (1975), Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1976) and the Pulitzer award-winning Glengarry Glen Ross (1983) – the first thing that springs to mind is the manner and cadence of male speech and communication. A consistent critique of capitalism, Mamet’s early works did it by exploring masculinity and brilliantly dissecting the male psyche and the strutting aggression of men involved in scoring one over each other, be it in gambling or pulling a con Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Kelly Reichardt’s quietly radical vision of the Wild West is a slender, provocatively ambiguous work and the antithesis to the genre’s muscular action-packed epics. It’s a western which aligns us with those who don bonnets rather than Stetsons, and which favours quiet pluck over showy heroics. With a narrative shorn almost entirely of incident, its existential, quasi-religious minimalism recalls Waiting for Godot.Set during the earliest days of the Oregon Trail in 1845 and based on real events, Meek’s Cutoff is the story of three families who, in their pursuit of a better life, hire a guide, Read more ...
Veronica Lee
To describe this movie as slow-burn would be like saying snails live in the fast lane. The latest work from indie auteur Aaron Katz (Dance Party USA and Quiet City) who wrote, directed and edited, is 97 minutes long, but nothing happens for its first third and then when things do start happening - as the lead characters investigate the disappearance of a friend - the film abruptly ends. It may be layered with all manner of subtexts but they pretty much passed me by.Doug (Cris Lankenau) has dropped out of college in Chicago and moved back to his home town of Portland in Oregon to share a flat Read more ...
graeme.thomson
I’ll say this much for Josh Ritter last night, he was happy to be there. I’ve never seen a man grin quite so much on stage, and apparently with complete sincerity. Before the Idaho-born singer-songwriter played a note he promised that “we’ll have a ball”, and by the end he had certainly delivered. And yet still some small but essential ingredient seemed to be lacking.Ritter is one of those supremely gifted all-rounders who turns his hand to most types of Americana without ever quite stamping his imprint indelibly on any of it. He and his excellent four-piece backing group, the Royal City Band Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Does the perfect murder make for the perfect musical? One doesn't have to make undue claims for the work's chamber-size appeal to warm to Thrill Me, the American two-hander that has arrived at the Tristan Bates Theatre as this season's entry in retelling the story of the Chicago killers, Leopold and Loeb. (Last season's was the superb Almeida Theatre revival of Rope, from director Roger Michell.) While getting up close and personal with a show can sometimes magnify its flaws, the intimacy on this occasion allows a real appreciation of the performers, especially newcomer George Maguire, of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It's unlikely that this soap-esque miniseries about America's most notorious political clan will stir up the kind of furore in Britain that has engulfed it in the States. Over there, merely to mention the Kennedys seems to conjure up visions of a lost Eden (well, Camelot) in which America stood square-jawed against the Russians, won the race to the moon and policed the planet with its colossal Arsenal of Democracy. Add in the horrific assassinations of JFK and his brother Bobby and the obliteration of all that glamour and promise, and it's a great shining myth that even Hollywood has never Read more ...
marcus.odair
Inspired to take up the piano by his neighbours Bud and Richie Powell, Philadelphia’s McCoy Tyner made jazz history as a member of the early-1960s John Coltrane quartet before emerging as a leader at Blue Note records. If his voicings seem any less distinctive today, it’s only because they have been so influential. And though his attack may have mellowed a little, that famous haymaker left hand remains very much in evidence several years after he blew out the candles on his 70th birthday cake.
But as much as his technical ability, what was most remarkable last night – along with a dapper Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Post-rock shares more with prog rock than six letters. Both are rock music that doesn’t want to rock, be rock and are beyond quotidian rock. Of course, these labels are never self-defined. But post-rock is what Austin Texas’s Explosions in the Sky are lumped in with. Unlike prog rock, it’s not about flash technique. A guitars-and-drums four-piece, their instrumental music is about texture, rather than melody or verse-chorus-break structures. Sixth album Take Care Take Care Take Care doesn’t take them to new places though. It restates who and what they are.The last Explosions in the Sky album Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Ever controversial, America's Kennedy clan continues to create turbulence. On Thursday, 7 April, the History Channel in the UK will begin airing a new $30 million miniseries, The Kennedys, which traces the lives and political fortunes of John F Kennedy, his brother Bobby and their domineering father Joe. But the History Channel's American counterpart announced in January it was dropping the show (which stars Greg Kinnear, Katie Holmes, Barry Pepper and Tom Wilkinson), despite having spent two years overseeing its development. The channel, which usually specialises in documentaries and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Low undeniably create a music of rare beauty. Elegiac and affecting, their unhurried evocations of intimacy urge reflection. They've ploughed this furrow for a while though. C’mon is Low’s ninth album. Their first was issued in 1994. Things are refined and occasionally tinkered with – 2007’s Drums and Guns was fitted with some ill-suited glitchy beats. But the sonic core remains. Is this stasis enough to sustain 17-plus years?C’mon is hugely seductive, the slow, distant, Mogadoned power-chord squall of “Witches” pulling you into something like a half-asleep Crazy Horse. “All you guys over Read more ...