New York
Adam Sweeting
Donald Fagen's fourth solo album arrives 30 years after his first one, The Nightfly, though there can be no doubting that it's the work of the same artist. The quizzical chord sequences, supple instrumental interplay and teasingly cryptic lyrics will be instantly familiar to students of his work, and indeed of the later days of Steely Dan.Fagen and his partner Walter Becker have successfully rejuvenated the Steely Dan legacy by assembling a touring version of the group bristling with hyper-capable musical gunslingers, and Fagen has used several of them here, notably guitarist Jon Herington, Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in New York, released on DVD and Blu-ray today, is the fifth feature written (or co-written) and directed by the French actress-filmmaker and her sequel to 2007’s 2 Days in Paris. It is, therefore, another hyper, chaotic comedy of Franco-American cultural discord.Since we last saw her, Delpy’s neurotic art photographer Marion has split up with truculent boyfriend Jack (Adam Goldberg) and moved into a Manhattan apartment with Village Voice writer and radio talk-show host Mingus (Chris Rock), forming a new family with her son and his daughter. Their stability is ruptured Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After 65 years in music, over 55 of them as a solo artist and songwriter, it’s a tad surprising that Neil Sedaka has taken until now to declare he’s revealing the real Neil. Even when his former girlfriend and Brill Building colleague Carole King was baring it all in song, he kept it less personal. The Real Neil isn’t so much a window into his soul though, but a follow-on from recent tours where Sedaka has performed solo, accompanying himself on piano.The Real Neil, a mix of old songs and newly written material, opens with a speech from Sedaka: "Hi, this is Neil, welcome to my world of music Read more ...
Laura Silverman
When Hindle Wakes opened in 1912 in London, the script was burned in the street. Stanley Houghton, a member of the Manchester School of playwrights, had exposed one of society's double standards: that it was fine for a man to have a guiltless fling before marriage, but it was not acceptable for a woman. The problem with Bethan Dear's earnest revival is that the play no longer holds the same moral force. Today, the idea that Fanny Hawthorn, a mill girl, goes away for the weekend with Alan Jeffcote, the mill owner's son, and then refuses to marry him is hardly shocking.Solidly constructed, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Shields leaves standing everything Grizzly Bear have done previously. Four albums in, the Brooklyn quartet move forward with their most focused, most cohesive album yet. The folk influence remains, as do traces of their love of The Beach Boys, but Shields is – mostly – so confident it could be a debut album. It’s also the first time all the songwriting has been credited to the entire band.It opens with “Sleeping Ute”, a swirling psychedelic vortex evoking longing and endings: “those countless empty days made me dizzy when I woke… I know no other way than straight on out the door”. It’s a Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
It's not like we don't already love him, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt couldn't possibly get more adorable than he is as the fearsomely skilled bike-riding good guy in Premium Rush - a film that may remind older moviegoers of a 1986 bike messenger film Quicksilver. Anyone who remembers that film can now forget it because Premium Rush is so much more exciting and almost completely more plausible than its predecessor that it upends the whole bike messenger film genre, much in the way The Imposter upped the ante for documentaries. Yes, you could say Premium Rush was a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Patti Smith does not appear to change very much, visually. Her image is undoubtedly part of her appeal, especially in Brighton with its large lesbian population. She arrives on stage in pale blue jeans, a white shirt and a baggy cardy-style jacket, face unadorned with make-up and hair straggled down around her shoulders. From a distance she looks very much as she did in the mid-Seventies. She certainly doesn’t look 65.Her Brighton audience are zealously partisan. This has a dual effect. It gives the evening real electricity and a sense of laser-focused affection which Smith bathes in, Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
According to US television anchor Stephen Colbert, there are only three ways to end your career as a rock star: overdose, overstay your welcome or write Spiderman: The Musical. Rockers, he says, during a televised interview with LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy, don’t get to walk away - certainly not at the peak of their careers, when every album they release is still greeted with critical adulation and they’re capable of selling out Madison Square Garden.And yet, in April 2011, that’s exactly what the then 41-year-old New York performer and DJ chose to do. The Colbert interview, clips Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The death of lyricist Hal David at 91 is a sad reminder that the golden age of a uniquely American approach to songwriting is getting further and further away. The Bacharach and David brand will last, as will classic songs like “Anyone Who Had a Heart”, “Don’t Make Me Over”, “Magic Moments”, “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on my Head, “The Look of Love” and “Walk On By”. Yet David’s passing emphasises that although these compositions have a life of their own, they remain rooted in an era that becomes less and less tangible as the years pass.Of course, for David and his partner Burt Bacharach Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Alfie Moore: I Predicted a Riot, Pleasance Courtyard **** There can't be many serving police officers doing stand-up comedy at the Fringe, so that makes Alfie Moore an unusual beast. Actually he's a one-off, a wonderfully engaging bloke in a sharp suit who says the most surprising things for someone currently indentured to Her Majesty. He's left-leaning, for a start, having grown up on a Sheffield council estate and who started his working life in a steelworks, where he was a shop steward. Moore, who was on Show Me the Funny on ITV last year, is now a sergeant in Humberside Constabulary Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Created by Jonathan Nolan (brother of film director Christopher) and exec-produced by the workaholic JJ Abrams, Person of Interest seeks to accomplish the counter-intuitive feat of finding something to celebrate in our surveillance culture. We're accustomed to feeling fear and paranoia at the idea that all our tweets, emails and phone calls are being routinely monitored by sundry mysterious agencies, but Person of... wonders whether there's a silver lining in the menacing info-cloud hanging over us.The show's central duo is the mismatched couple of technology nerd Harold Finch (Michael Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Describing the music of Franz Nicolay is a formidable task: it’s almost as easy to imagine the work of some of the bands he has loaned his considerable talents to in the past - most notably during his five years as a member of The Hold Steady - and then imagine the exact opposite. As proficient on accordion, saw and banjo as he is on keyboard or guitar; Nicolay’s music fuses elements of folk and punk with polka, gypsy and klezmer influences to create an articulate, joyful mix that is always entertaining.At least, that’s how I would have described it before my first listen to Do The Struggle, Read more ...