Category: Live Reviews
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Queens of the Stone Age – Live In London
Josh Homme has come a long way since his formative teenage years when his band, Sons of Kyuss, filled the hot, star-filled Palm Desert sky with cacophonous noise, bonfire smoke and teenage attitude, playing gear powered by generators to a seething crowd of bored desert kids. A far cry from tonight, where Josh Homme has…
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Beck Pays Tribute To Tom Petty With Cover of American Girl: Live at The Electric Ballroom
A new album by Beck is something to be celebrated, and the man himself has been in London all week to promote the new LP “Colors”, an upbeat, shiny, modern pop record, a million miles removed from its predecessor, the gorgeous but melancholy “Morning Phase”. Even better, Beck and his band eschewed the chance to…
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Ty Segall: Live at The Coronet, London.
Gentrification. “The process of renovating and improving something so that it conforms to middle-class taste”. Or “the process of making a person or activity more refined or polite”. Last night, the thankfully ungentrified Ty Segall and his ungentrified band played the equally ungentrified Elephant and Castle, at The Coronet, a South London Art Deco-styled venue…
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Car Seat Headrest Steps Up As Headliner: Live at The Forum
Car Seat Headrest announced themselves with something of a flourish last year, surfacing seemingly fully formed with one of the albums of 2016. It turned out that band leader Will Toledo had already released (at the still tender age of 23) a dozen solo albums on Bandcamp before pulling a band together and signing to…
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King’s X: The Return of The Ultimate Cult Band
King’s X, a three piece band from Texas, are hugely influential, have a large and loyal fan base, and last night played a show in London for the first time in six years. They are, perhaps the archetypical Cult Band. But how did they get here? (and I don’t mean “by bus”)… And do they…
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Depeche Mode: Live in London – Review
Their biggest ever show. 80,000 fans. It’s a far cry from their humble origins. Leaving school in 1979, Martin Gore worked as a bank clerk for Nat West in Fenchurch Street, saving the money he earned to buy a Yamaha synth. He joined a band featuring Andy Fletcher, an insurance clerk for Sun Life, and…
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Steve Hackett Speaks Out About Refugee Crisis
We don’t always turn to the leading lights of progressive music for our daily dose of politics (see: Phil Collins 1997), so it was interesting to hear Steve Hackett’s thoughts on world events last night. This happened mid-way through his set at Southend’s Cliff’s Pavillion, introducing “Behind The Smoke”, the middle-eastern (think Led Zep’s “Kashmir”)…
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Blondie: Live At The Roundhouse – Review
In 1975, a British rock writer went to see an unsigned band called The Ramones at The Performance Studio as part of a report for the NME in on the burgeoning scene in New York’s CBGB club and the surrounding area. His piece, titled “1975: A Scuzz Odyssey” in the 8 November edition of NME…
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Kasabian Return With New Album and Rip-Roaring Live Show
Tonight is a Tuesday. Kasabian’s beloved Leicester City are being knocked out of the Champion’s League. It’s surely no coincidence that the band don’t take the stage of Kentish Town’s Forum until seconds after the final whistle… They might be forgiven for being deflated. But the energy from a large crowd in a small venue…
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The xx: Live at Brixton Academy
The xx have played a series of gigs at Brixton Academy this week which they have called “Night + Day”. As South Londoners themselves this is something of a homecoming, and Brixton is abuzz with a celebration of The xx: aftershow parties, different warm up bands every night and so on, all organised by the…
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Band of Horses: Live at The Troxy
In the midst of Storm Doris last night, Band of Horses braved the wild winds of East London and The Troxy in support of their latest album “Why Are You OK”. Band of Horses are five albums in to their career, so it’s probable you will know all about them, but for those who are…
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Teenage Fanclub: Live at The Electric Ballroom
It is something of a mystery, akin to that of why men have nipples, as to quite why Teenage Fanclub have not set the world alight in quite the same way as some lesser bands. From the moment Raymond McGinley sold his fridge to pay for the recording costs of their debut single, surely great…
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Brian Wilson Brings Pet Sounds To Southend
It is fifty years since Brian Wilson famously set the young Paul McCartney’s hair on end with the release of Pet Sounds. It was a remarkable, almost impossible achievement – the musical equivalent of you or me writing a maths equation that might get Professor Stephen Hawkins to up his game. A sequence of music…
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How Asylums and South Record Shop Are Making Southend Rock
On a day when that august (and indeed August) celebration of the best albums of the year, the Mercury Prize nominations list, was released, a small part of Southend-on-Sea was showing what a bit of DIY spirit and grit and determination can do. At the start of 2014 Richard and Stephen Onslow decided to open up…
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A Glastonbury Top Five: Sunday
The final day of Glastonbury brings a unique feeling of excitement, sadness, relief and exhaustion. Excitement at the prospect of new bands to discover and see. Sadness that it will soon all be over. Relief that soon you won’t have to tread through four inches of mud to head in any direction and that one…
Every record tells a story 