Review Corner

Author: jerobear

  • Joshua Fineberg: Sonic Fictions

    This is not an easy work and is for those who like their music atmospheric and challenging. It’s music that’s meant to be played live, the physical placing of musicians and mics in relation to audiences being key. The sleeve notes say works are not built around narrative or realism but are indebted to modernist…

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    Middle Kids: Lost Friends

    Good news: Middle Kids will sound great at any festival you catch them at, with their lively indie pop that varies from song to song; you’ll not get bored and the music is all very familiar. Bad news: on CD it’s all a bit over the place and ultimately lets itself down because they lack…

  • Damian Le Bas The Stopping Places: A Journey Through Gypsy Britaino

    This delightful book sees Romany Damian Le Bas follow in his gran’s footsteps, stopping at atchin tans, the old Romany stopping places. Granny did it with horse-drawn wagons and bender tents, doing seasonal work, Le Bas does it in a Ford Transit (the compulsory Traveller conveyance) doing music videos and appearing on Radio Four’s Today.…

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    Lily Allen: Shame

    While Ange Hardy sings about her personal experiences and expands this into wise advice on living, Allen sings about herself. There is a difference. This new CD charts her personal life: broken marriage, social media harassment and all. It feels a bit lightweight, and even the sharp lyrics are good only for the first couple…

  • Solem String Quartet: Rawsthorne and Other Rarities

    This is billed as a sequel to A Garland for John McCabe (DDA 25166), an affectionate tribute to McCabe that doubled as a sampler for various composers’ work. Apparently intended as the second disc in that set, this project grew to be a full album and is also dedicated to McCabe. It features recordings of…

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    Barbara Jackson and Jill Owen: Mysterious Marks at Little Moreton Hall

    Leek historian (and former Chronicle deputy editor) Doug Pickford writes books that make the reader stop and think about how our ancestors see the world. We say “get on the A34” or “turn left by the Red Lion” but mythical beings rarely come into it (unless you count the Mr Tree Face in Alsager). Yet…

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    Re-TROS: Before The Applause

    We reviewed this late last year but caught them live at Bluedot and they were outstanding. They’re from “Beijing, China”, as singer/guitarist Hua Dong introduced them, like there’s any other kind of Beijing. He was a compelling performer, playing keys and willing the music to do his bidding, as he erratically waved his arms about,…

  • Bluedot’s stars shine brightly

    It’s fair to say that life really does get no better than the opening song at a Flaming Lips gig: music so happy it brings a lump to the throat, confetti cannons, giant balloons and lasers. France might think winning the World Cup was a top moment, but even they’d probably concede that hearing Race…

  • A world of pure imagination

    Thousands of festivalgoers began to descend on Scholar Green, on Friday (17th August) for the annual weekend of extraordinary escapism. And as the 2019 edition of the Just So festival at Rode Hall proved, it gets bigger and better each year. Just So promises a secret and joyous world — offering parents and children the…