The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Why aren’t Metric stars? In their native Canada, several of their albums have gone platinum, but the rest of the world? Not so much. Twenty-five years after Emily Haines and James Shaw formed the band, here they still are, playing to a not-quite-full Roundhouse to promote their eighth album, Formentera. It was a pretty good
Sound of the Underground is a drag show involving a handful of cross-dressers who spend the opening 15 minutes telling us who they are. Then, rather ominously, they announce: ‘We’ve written a play.’ But they haven’t really. The scene shifts to a kitchen where the drag queens meet to discuss their pay and conditions, and
Grade: D Yes, it’s porky Sam from Essex, with his body issues and his complex gender pronouns and his endless narcissistic banalities, his depthless self-importance. This is Smith’s fourth studio album in a career that seems to be nosing a little downhill, mercifully – although it will still sell by the million worldwide. He has
A classical concert programme is like a set menu, and for this palate the most tempting orchestral offering in the UK this January came from the Slaithwaite Philharmonic under its conductor Benjamin Ellin. They opened with a suite from Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo, and the inclusion of Hollywood film music in a ‘straight’ classical programme was
Folk is the Schiphol of Scottish music. Eventually, every curious traveller passes through. From arena rockers to rappers, traditional music remains an undeniable source. Which is why the second word in ‘Celtic Connections’ is at least as significant as the first. Now in its 30th year, lighting up the otherwise unpromising prospect of a Glasgow
The great country singer George Jones was famed not just for his voice, but also for his drinking. Once, deprived of the car keys, he drove his lawnmower to the nearest bar. In the very good Paramount+ drama about Jones and Tammy Wynette – entitled George and Tammy, so there’s no excuse for forgetting –
‘We hope you enjoy the performance,’ announced the Tannoy before the lights went down for How did we get here? – the accent being put on ‘hope’, as though enjoyment was unlikely. I took a deep breath in anticipation of modern dance at its most portentous and pretentious, my expectations already depressed after imbibing some
Daniel Barenboim was supposed to perform with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra earlier this month. His recent health concerns made that impossible, but it was a reminder that for the first time since the appointment of the late Libor Pesek in 1987, the RLPO is under the direction of a conductor soaked in the German
‘The rays of the sun conquer the night’ sings Sarastro, at the end of Mozart and Schikaneder’s Die Zauberflöte. It was the Royal Opera’s first performance of January 2023 and there’s something profoundly consoling about seeing this of all operas at the midnight of the year. The lights dim; five chords ring out and that
There’s a case to be made for John Cale being the most daring ex-member of the Velvet Underground. Lou Reed redefined the transgressive possibilities of literate three-chord rock’n’roll. Cale, arguably, has travelled even further. A Welsh miner’s son who won a scholarship to Goldsmiths, Cale engaged with the early flowerings of Fluxus before mixing with
On 3 February 2003, the emergency services in Los Angeles received a call. ‘I’m Phil Spector’s driver,’ a voice told them. ‘I think my boss killed somebody.’ This was the inevitable yet still extraordinary starting point for Spector – a new four-part documentary on a man who, in the face of fierce competition, might well
Grade: A– James Newell Osterberg Jnr’s unexpected and unwarranted longevity on this planet has conferred upon him the status of irascible, but very loveable, grandfather of punk: it suits him just fine. A delightful contrarian in a profession otherwise staffed by vapid, guileless, liberals – Iggy actually meant it when he sang ‘I’m a Conservative’
Orlando opens with a pack of Virginia Woolfs on stage. All wear the same costume of horn-rimmed spectacles, long tweed skirts and woolly cardigans, and they comply with current diversity targets. There’s a white Woolf, a black Woolf, a mixed-race Woolf, an East Asian Woolf, and a male Woolf with a deep voice who seems
I’m generally not a fan of New Year’s resolutions, but one occurred to me recently as the younger members of my family were blasting out a patchy David Bowie playlist: Stand Up Against Revisionism. It’s harder than ever these days not to succumb to printing the myth – reality can be so so-so – but
Playing under the baton of Arturo Toscanini must have felt a bit like fighting in the trenches. There are recordings of him rehearsing in the 1930s or ’40s. The orchestra is bowling along; there’s a low muttering, and then suddenly, out of nothing, the explosion. A scream of rage: a huge, operatic, animalistic roar. There’s
What’s wrong with sentimentality? The answer, I’d suggest, could either be: a) its almost bullying insistence on us having emotions disproportionate to anything a particular story has earned; or b) nothing at all. And if you want to see how both of these are possible, two of this year’s big Christmas TV offerings provide handy
Grade: B+ By the time the 1970s had come along – post Altamont and post hope – the Beach Boys were tired of being beach boys and thus became, for a while, just another rather mediocre rawk band. The two albums they released in the first three years of the decade, Carl and the Passions
A Christmas revival of New Adventures’ ten-year-old production of Sleeping Beauty stirs up all my nagging ambivalence about Matthew Bourne’s work. I’ve mulled over this in print elsewhere several times, and I feel conscious that if Bourne reads reviews – perhaps he doesn’t – he might be groaning into his Corn Flakes. But his reputation
It’s unlikely that Irving Berlin was pondering the energy price cap when he composed the seasonal standard ‘I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm’ in 1937. ‘I can’t remember a worse December, just watch those icicles form,’ he wrote, a sentiment many of us can surely relate to right now – but wait! ‘What
Temperature records for Los Angeles in the summer of 1945 are patchy, but 90 in the shade seems to have been the norm. It was during one such scorcher, presumably, that the songwriters Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn pulled up at a red light on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. Cahn suggested going to
Only boring people are bored by Ravel’s Boléro. True, the composer – the slyest of wits – left his share of booby traps for the uncomprehending; take his comment, in a letter to Paul Dukas, that ‘I have written only one masterpiece, Boléro. Unfortunately there is no music in it.’ Yet Ravel was a sublime
Grade: B+ We are all very touched, up here, that the esoteric French artist formerly known as Christine and the Queens has changed her name to Redcar, in honour of our once vibrant beachside steel town. Perhaps she was impressed by the newish ‘vertical pier’, or enjoyed a nutritious meal in the Light of Asia.
As she recalls a decade of infamy, Maria Alyokhina wanders one of the many anonymous apartments she has lived in since escaping Russia six months ago. ‘We didn’t expect a criminal case, we didn’t expect imprisonment, we didn’t expect international attention. We didn’t expect how many people would support Pussy Riot, would go to the
Reader, I let you down. But I did so for the right reason: for love. On a night when all of London’s music critics were at the Royal Festival Hall for Christine and the Queens, I deserted my duty. But, honestly, I don’t regret it. The reports back from the RFH suggested some baffling melange
Whoosh! A digital starburst, a sweep of orchestral sound and the stage of the Coliseum is alive with dancing, whirling snowflakes. Floating in the heavens is the soprano Danielle de Niese; below her in the darkness, the truss bridge that we all know – because we’ve all seen It’s a Wonderful Life – is where
Grade: B+ The 38-year-old Icelandic pianist Vikingur Olafsson has an almost unique ability to make counterpoint sing, as his astonishing 2018 Bach recital for DG revealed. But his Proms debut last year in Mozart’s Piano Concerto K491 seemed over-thought, verging on the fussy. Now he’s been allowed the luxury of a concept double album, From
Plus: it’s quite clear that MUNA are going to be huge What is it with Icelanders and mushrooms? Just weeks after Bjork releases a fungal-themed album, Fossora, Sigur Ros appear on stage with dozens of sporey lights illuminating the gloom. It’s boom time for mycophiles, but with Sigur Ros the link makes a certain kind
Viewers watching a good romcom need to fall in love with three things. The boy, the girl and the affair itself. The new Hampstead melodrama, Blackout Songs, scores just one out of three. Rebecca Humphries is adorably chic and sexy as the Soho seductress who drifts from bar to bar, picking up men. Her toyboy
A hotel bellboy, the story goes, discovered George Best in a luxury suite surrounded by scantily clad lovelies and empty champagne bottles. ‘George, George’, he sighed. ‘Where did it all go wrong?’. It’s the same deal, essentially, with Ruggiero, hero of Handel’s Alcina. As the curtain rises he’s in the boudoir of Alcina, a smokin’