rock
Jonathan Geddes
There was a point in this stadium spectacular when P!nk gave her fans two choices. They could either “make out with their partners or go queue for a beer” she suggested, prior to one of the first slow-paced numbers of the evening, but the latter choice was a dangerous one. Few shows, even among big pop jamborees, feature as much going on as Alecia Moore’s current Summer Carnival jaunt.The stunts, choreography and pyro were relentless, to the extent that my friend pondered if every single number would feature fireworks accompanying them. It wasn’t far off that, and the overall result was an Read more ...
Tom Carr
Having propelled to stardom with their debut album Night Visions back in 2012, the Nevada pop-rock giants Imagine Dragons have reigned supreme on charts and airwaves.Their blending of elements from a wide range of genres into one melting pot, from rock to reggae, hip-hop to metal, has meant they’re a band with a little bit for everyone. Though their debut largely stayed true to a pop-rock foundation that was listenable and full of anthemic sing-a-longs, the boundaries on each album since have been pushed somewhat more noticeably.Take their 2014 follow up album, Smoke and Mirrors, which has Read more ...
Tim Cumming
She has one of the most distinctive voices in folk and contemporary British music, impossible to forget once heard, and impossible to ignore. Even – or especially – as Linda Peters, singing, aptly enough, “I’ll Show You How to Sing” on a fairly obscure 1968 single with Paul McNeill.A lot of songs have gone under the bridge since then, and Thompson’s standing as one of our great singers has not been diminished by the singer’s struggles with spasmodic dysphonia, a condition that robs her of her voice, but not her music, spirit, wit, love or humour, all of which are in abundance in this new set Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Out on the perimeters where there are no stars, in a void full of bong-smoke and synesthetic noise… there, in a greasy biker hovel full of gigantic amps, there live Wytch Pycknyck. Some say that place is called Hastings. Whatever it’s called, this four-piece arrive to reinvigorate heavy rock with a demented energy, zigzagged to the gills with lysergic spirit and a belief in gutter-punk rock’n’roll.Their debut album’s opening lines, on the speeding, riff-tastic smasher “Rawkuss”, are “I wanna party with the animals and live in the zoo”. It’s not metal, although the music tips its hat that way Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
The current trend for package tours with two headliners appears to be growing, and this jaunt presented somewhat unlikely bedfellows – the theatrical angst of Billy Corgan’s crew and Rivers Cuomo’s indie trendsetters united by a shared love for guitar histrionics, 90s nostalgia for those who remember MTV2 and not much else.Fitting both bands in required an early onstage time (pity support act Teen Mortgage, who trundled onstage at 6.30pm), while the night’s format presented a few quirks that resembled a festival, from the heavy turnover of people moving about between sets to a clear need for Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHAriel Sharratt & Matthias Kom Never Work (BB*Island) + Ella Ronen The Girl With No Skin (BB*Island)Two offbeat albums from the uncategorisable Hamburg label BB*Island. They are home to the literary indie outfit The Burning Hell. The central figures of that band are Canadian singers Mathias Kom and Ariel Sharratt (assuming the latter is Canadian as Google wouldn't tell me). Together, their second album is a concept affair loaded with brilliant, poignant freak-folk responses to contemporary capitalism, the gig economy and similar. These include the inspiring title track “ Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Towards the end of the encore, Deap Vally bring on their friend Solon Bixler. Frontwoman Lindsey Troy hands him her guitar. Despite this being their farewell tour, these two songs, she tells us, are new. The duo, now briefly a trio, go ballistic, a punk rock explosion ensues. Drummer Julie Edwards attacks her kit like Animal from The Muppets, Troy stomps like a glam rock loon before rolling about the floor, and Bixler scissor-kicks his way to stand aloft the bass drum.They’re burning with the right stuff. They have been all night.If life was fair, which we all know it isn’t, this month I’d be Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Any Richard Thompson appearance comes with a hallmark guaranteeing quality produce – be that an album or a stage show. Indeed, Thompson's 75th birthday concert will land on 8 June at the Royal Albert Hall, with a dazzling range of musical guests to rival the same venue’s epic 70th birthday bash five years ago. Meanwhile, it’s been six years since his last album, 13 Rivers, an album he described on its release as “coming to me as a surprise in a dark time”.Dark times, you say? All rivers meet their end when they meet the sea, and Ship to Shore, featuring the same line-up of players in Read more ...
Tom Carr
If there is one positive of the past decade, it must be the growing openness with mental health and wellbeing. Whether in the films we watch or music we listen to, there is much less of a stigma in addressing anxiety, depression, and mental health issues in general.For most of their career, pop-rock duo Twenty One Pilots, have focussed on these themes through frontman-vocalist Tyler Joseph’s rapped/sung/sometimes screamed lyrics over Josh Dun’s powerful drumming. Since 2015’s Blurryface, they have woven these into a conceptual arc that has run through their preceding albums (2018’s Trench and Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Anita Pallenberg was a vital presence in the Stones’ most vital years. Her bright eyes and hungry mouth betrayed a ferocious appetite for pleasure and adventure, taking her from a nun-schooled Rome childhood to New York’s downtown art crowd, then modelling in Munich, where in 1965 she engineered an encounter with “shy” Keith Richards, a similarly callow Mick Jagger and her first, violent Stones lover Brian Jones. Richards saved her from Jones’ paranoid abuse in 1967, and they became notorious outlaw lovers for the next decade.Co-directed by Svetlana Zill and Alexis Bloom, both associates of Read more ...
caspar.gomez
If the weather’s good TGE Beach is a grand start to a day. As it sounds, it’s a purpose-built seafront space to the east of central Brighton, containing three stages as well as stalls selling vegan kebabs, Filipino street food and German sausage.Every Great Escape’s closing Saturday it’s taken over by Sounds Australia, offering a fresh selection of what that country has to offer. And there’s a bar, of course, where, at midday, photographer Finetime and I avail ourselves of a traditional media breakfast of BrewDog Wingman pale ale (4.3%).The first music of the day is a short set by Tamara Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Original pressings of Love And Poetry sell for up to £2,800. Copies of the August 1969 debut album by Andwellas Dream can sometimes also be found for £700, a relative bargain in the context of the upper limit of the prices the collector’s market has settled on.There were two follow-up albums – each credited to Andwella. August 1970’s World's End fetches around £40 to £80; People's People, issued in late 1970, attracts prices of £50 to £100. Cult stuff then, with interest centred on that first album. And where there’s such appeal, repressings follow. Love And Poetry was first reissued in 1995 Read more ...