Brighton
Album: Sea Power - Everything Was ForeverThursday, 10 February 2022
The former British Sea Power’s seventh album draws on deep reserves of melancholy and ecstasy. Several songs sound like elegies for Yan and Neil Wilkinson’s recently deceased parents. The band’s emotional heart – sometimes missed beneath the... Read more... |
Madness and Squeeze, Brighton Centre review - enjoyable annual December nostalgia rompWednesday, 08 December 2021
Madness frontman Suggs is asking the capacity crowd at the Brighton Centre if any of them are in school-age education. Quite a few are. There are actual young people here! Some are with parents (even, possibly, grandparents), but gaggles of... Read more... |
OMD/Scritti Politti, Brighton Centre review - an engaging, ebullient good timeThursday, 18 November 2021
A persistent moan of this writer in recent years, about gigs attended by those his own age (54) and up, is that, however good the band is, the audience are stationary, staring, semi-catatonic. They don’t twitch or move, facing stage-wards earnestly... Read more... |
Arthur Smith, Brighton Fringe review - touching memoir of his dadMonday, 31 May 2021
“A real live audience,” said Arthur Smith delightedly as he kicked off the Brighton Fringe with Syd, his touching and funny tribute to his late father, “an ordinary man who lived in extraordinary times” – his life included a stint in Dad's Army (the... Read more... |
Live is Alive!, Brighton Festival 2021 review - local talent makes for snappy return to gig-landSaturday, 22 May 2021
The idea live music is back is worth shouting about. Indeed, the BBC News has been doing just that about this gig. In reality, though, while it’s a joy to be out (this is my first major venue concert for a year-and-a-half), Live is Alive is a... Read more... |
Points of Departure, Brighton Festival 2021 review - Ray Lee's harbour-based sound art impressesFriday, 07 May 2021
They stand in a row, nine of them, in a long, strange corridor between rows of stacked, palleted, planked wood and the red brick wall of an endless warehouse. Nine tripods, each two humans high, with a spinning helicopter head, double-ended by... Read more... |
Album: Rag'n'Bone Man - Life by MisadventureThursday, 06 May 2021
Rory Graham was always stoically familiar with life’s knocks. With a stage-name inspired by Galton and Simpson’s fatalistic family tragicomedy Steptoe and Son, and an underground hip-hop career hinterland in Sussex and London, this big 30-something... Read more... |
Album: Black Honey - Written & DirectedThursday, 18 March 2021
Indie rock has taken a commercial back seat, even if the music press still hasn’t quite caught up. Sure, there have been hit-makers, and bands that sell out stadiums, but overall, indie’s tide is very slowly retreating. Like any genre, it will... Read more... |
Grace, ITV review - sun, sea and skulduggery in sunny BrightonMonday, 15 March 2021
We last saw John Simm on ITV in 2018’s Hong Kong-based murder mystery Strangers, a product from the Jack and Harry Williams script factory which wasted its exotic backdrops with a plot which mooched about in a dispirited fashion before dozing off... Read more... |
William Boyd: Trio review - private perils in 1968Monday, 05 October 2020
William Boyd’s fiction is populated by all manner of artists. Writers, painters, photographers, musicians and film-makers, drawn from real life or entirely fictional, are regular patrons of his stories. Boyd’s latest novel, Trio, is no different.... Read more... |
The Cheeky Chappie, The Warren Outdoors review - entertaining drama about risqué comic Max MillerWednesday, 23 September 2020
It’s fitting that there’s another run of Dave Simpson’s terrific play about Brighton’s favourite son, Max Miller (aka The Cheeky Chappie), at this delightful pop-up on the seafront he knew and loved so well.Jamie Kenna, who has been playing the role... Read more... |
The Warren Outdoor Season, Brighton review - creatives take to the beachTuesday, 18 August 2020
The Warren is normally to be found in Brighton city centre, where it stages shows during the Brighton Fringe. But there's nothing normal about 2020, so its organisers are now producing The Warren Outdoor Season at a pop-up space on Brighton beach,... Read more... |
