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Live Reviews Music

Sam Fender fires off Hypersonic Missiles

Sam Fender hasn’t released a full-length album. He’s not had a song featured in one of those omnipresent car adverts or even the heavy-rotation trailer for yet another interchangeable BBC cop show. He’s not even made Ant and Dec cry on Britain’s Got The Voice, or whatever it is they’re hosting now.

But thanks to one EP, a string of singles, and incessant touring (133 shows since last January), the 2019 Brit Awards Critics’ Choice winner has now sold out two nights at Shepherds Bush Empire. And when he returns to London in December it will be Brixton Academy that sells out.

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Live Reviews Music

Tears For Fears let it all out at The O2

Last week, Curt Smith tweeted a photo from Tears For Fears’ tour rehearsals. Jamie Wollam is seated at a drum kit, chatting on his mobile. The caption reads: “so good he just phones it in”.

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Interviews Music

White Lies go it alone on ‘Five’

Broken Hands

Jack Lawrence-Brown is a bit stressed. It’s mid January. In less than two weeks White Lies hit the road for four months. They’re playing 55 dates across Europe and North America. They’re marking the 10th anniversary of their debut album. Oh, and they’re launching a new LP.

“This is always one of the toughest parts,” the drummer admits, looking ahead to the release of ‘Five’ on 1 February. “It’s all done, you’ve had it done for a little while, and you’re just drip-feeding songs to people, constantly checking the internet to see what they’re making of it all.

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Live Reviews Music

Def Leppard bring Hysteria to London

Hysteria wasn’t the easiest album to make. Its three-year gestation was marked by false starts (including aborted sessions with Meat Loaf collaborator Jim Steinman), a near-fatal car crash (costing drummer Rick Allen his arm), and a mindset so meticulous that mixing (usually done within a week) took three months.

But the persistence, and attention to detail, ultimately paid off. Hysteria was the album that changed everything for Def Leppard. Since August 1987, it’s sold over 25 million copies. Six of its seven singles have been a staple of the band’s live set for the past 30 years (and now included on the brand new The Story So Far hits collection). And following 2013’s Viva! Hysteria Las Vegas residency, it’s the centrepiece of the band’s first UK tour in three years (plus a series of European summer festival appearances scheduled for 2019).

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Live Reviews Music

Nick Mason serves up a Saucerful Of Secrets

Nick Mason doesn’t have to be here. Instead of hitting the road for the first time in over 20 years, the 74-year-old Pink Floyd drummer could be racing his classic cars, flying his helicopter, crafting a follow up to his meticulous autobiography Inside Out, or, frankly, doing absolutely nothing at all. With a personal fortune of some £90-million, he obviously doesn’t need the money.

Then again, neither does Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp, the man behind such perennials as Gold. And yet here he is too, having interrupted his own down time to sing and play on songs that soundtracked his own youth. He first saw The Floyd live in the early ‘70s and at one point confesses that, even as an aspiring guitarist, he couldn’t take his eyes off Mason “mostly because he was the only thing moving on stage”.

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Live Reviews Music

Everybody wants a Peace of the action

What’s in a name? Not much, it turns out, for Peace; their gigs are anything but. Possessed of an audience every bit as energetic as most of their songs, the band’s Kentish Town Forum show is loud, brash, sweaty, tireless, visceral, and totally invigorating.

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Live Reviews Music

The 1975 make a personal connection

Photo: Jordan Hughes

Jack White insists that fans hand in their phones before a show so they can have a “100% human experience”. Prince had men on stage armed with flashlights to blind anyone holding up their mobile. And, even less subtly, Nick Cave has been known to call out people who insist on watching the gig through a lens.

The 1975 have taken a different approach. Knowing that their average fans document their lives online, the band have devised what can only be described as the most Instagrammable arena show ever. The dextrous, genre-fluid musicians are dwarfed on three sides by giant versions of the empty picture frame that’s become an integral part of their visual identity.

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Interviews Music

Wilko Johnson ‘just gets up there and plays’

Wilko Johnson performing at The O2 Forum Kentish Town on 23 April 2016

Five years ago, Wilko Johnson never imagined he’d reach 70. But now the straight-talking survivor is celebrating the milestone with his first headline show at Royal Albert Hall.

In the run-up to the gig, he tells us about overcoming a diagnosis of terminal cancer, an unlikely collaboration with Roger Daltrey, learning to live in the moment on stage, the effect of seeing The Beatles and Chuck Berry play live, and pretending his guitar is a machine gun.

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Live Reviews Music

U2’s Joshua Tree still thrills and challenges

U2 Twickenham

U2 come out swinging. Having warmed up an already expectant crowd with The Waterboys’ guaranteed party starter ‘The Whole Of The Moon’ as their intro tape, the band launch into a chronological run of eight songs that have anchored their live performances for at least the past 30 years.

As Bono declares “there’s no place we’d rather be than here with you”, a thunderous ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ makes way for a jubilant ‘New Year’s Day’. ‘Bad’, the only bonafide stadium anthem to ever tackle heroin addiction, still manages to sound menacingly tragic and beautifully uplifting all at once, before the always rousing ‘Pride (In The Name Of Love)’ soars even higher thanks to 55,000 unprompted backing vocalists (and a subtle but incisive lyric change to reflect the refugee crisis).

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Live Reviews Music

Imagine Dragons go for gold at Roundhouse

The Imagine Dragons sound is big on beats, both on record and on stage. So it’s almost expected that their encore of ‘Radioactive’ climaxes with all four band members pounding on some type of drum. Less expected is the might of lead guitarist Wayne Sermon. Relatively low-key on their albums, in concert he’s as integral to the Las Vegas quartet’s sound as Dan Reynolds’ voice and, yes, even those pounding rhythms.

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