punk
CD: The Menzingers - Rented WorldSunday, 27 April 2014
Dreaming about teeth, teeth falling out specifically, is supposed to represent anxiety and transition. Already this year The Hold Steady have based an album around the concept and now, on his own band’s fourth album, Greg Barnett of Pennsylvania... Read more... |
The Men They Couldn't Hang, Shepherd's Bush EmpireSunday, 20 April 2014
From the balcony overlooking the mosh pit you get a good idea of how long a band has been going. Last night at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, The Men They Couldn’t Hang celebrated their 30th anniversary while a small kinetic cluster of mainly bald 50-... Read more... |
We Are the Best!Tuesday, 15 April 2014
For a teenager, a parent’s birthday party is never comfortable. As We Are the Best! opens, it’s worse than that for Bobo as she holds a torch for punk rock and her mother is determined to have a good time. It’s Stockholm in 1982 and no matter how... Read more... |
CD: John Harle & Marc Almond - The Tyburn Tree: Dark LondonFriday, 21 February 2014
It's hard to countenance sometimes that there was an era where Marc Almond could have been a bona fide, chart-smashing pop star. His ability to parlay the archest of high camp and the most grotesque of low life into something digestible by genuine... Read more... |
DVD: Pussy Riot - A Punk PrayerTuesday, 26 November 2013
Access and trust are the key issues facing any documentary director, especially when the film concerned touches on questions that arouse controversy in society. It’s a long time since I've seen a work that achieved so much on those two fronts as... Read more... |
Television, RoundhouseWednesday, 20 November 2013
The expected curveball came an hour in with a completely unfamiliar 14-minute song. Based around a pulsing bass riff, it was a deconstructed merger of The Rolling Stones’s “Paint it Black” and the Spanish side of Love’s Da Capo. A large contingent... Read more... |
Public Image Ltd, O2 Academy, BirminghamMonday, 21 October 2013
Thirty seven years since first breaking into the public consciousness and following a period being regarded as punk’s pantomime dame, John Lydon is now finally reaping wider musical recognition and kudos. Recent times have seen a revitalisation of... Read more... |
LFF 2013: We Are the Best!Thursday, 17 October 2013
The Lukas Moodysson who made Together in 2000 has been missing in action ever since. Its charmingly optimistic look at a Seventies Swedish commune and tremendous use of Abba was followed by severe and sometimes experimental films, self-flagellating... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: National Wake, DrugstoreSunday, 06 October 2013
National Wake: A Walk in Africa 1979–81South Africa’s National Wake would be noteworthy enough even if their music wasn’t. The mixed-race group emerged in 1978 in a country where the establishment and institutions were directly opposed to what... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: NirvanaSunday, 22 September 2013
Nirvana: In UteroNext April marks 20 years since Kurt Cobain took his own life. Paving the way for that tragic anniversary is a reissue of 1993’s In Utero, the album which unintentionally became the band’s musical epitaph. Their third, it was... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Classroom Projects, Good Vibrations Records, Darrow FletcherSunday, 15 September 2013
Various Artists: Classroom ProjectsIt starts with a plummy voice: “The poems, the words and the music on this record all come from children at primary schools, boys and girls of eight, nine, 10 and 11 years old.” Although the introduction to... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Eddie Noack, The Dictators, The Allman Brothers, Clifton ChenierSunday, 11 August 2013
Eddie Noack: Psycho – The K-Ark and Allstar Recordings 1962–69Eddie Noack’s 1968 single “Psycho” was virtually unknown until Elvis Costello released his cover version in 1981. By that time, Noack had been dead for three years. After its resurrection... Read more... |
