Category: Live Reviews

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Live Reviews Music

Duran Duran host a carefree party

Curating the lineup for a day-long family music event like BST Hyde Park can’t be easy. You don’t want 10 soundalike clones of the headliner. But you also don’t want anything too out there either. It’s a balancing act that, on paper, Duran Duran have got all wrong. Sure, Nile Rodgers, who helped revitalise their career in the mid-’80s, makes sense. But what about a soul singer with roots in jazz, gospel, and classical? Or a Norwegian artist always described as “ethereal” and “Enya-like” by lazy writers? Or, least of all, a sweary post-punk band with song titles like Lady Eggs and Greasin’ Up For Jesus? It’s not exactly what you’d expect in the same postal code as Ordinary World.

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Live Reviews Music

Pearl Jam preach inclusion at Hyde Park

During a vigorous State Of Love And Trust, Eddie Vedder notices something. He motions at the camera operator to point at the audience. A boy, around 10 years old, appears on the massive screen behind Pearl Jam, smiling broadly. He’s at the rail with his dad, holding up a disposable take-away tray repurposed as a sign. It says: “1st show”. The singer welcomes him to the fray and recounts how, as a 16 year old, guitarist Mike McCready’s life was changed from the front row of a Van Halen show. In that moment, it’s clear Pearl Jam have grown into a band for everyone. The young adults who listened to Ten back in 1992 have now grown up and are bringing their families, while new generations of teens connect with the rage and anguish of songs like Once and Jeremy.

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Live Reviews Music

The Stones roll back into Hyde Park

“One of my big jobs,” Mick Jagger admits in the new BBC documentary series My Life As A Rolling Stone, “is to be a show off, really.”

With 60 years’ experience, he’s incredibly good at it. At the second of two sold-out Hyde Park shows, the 78-year-old frontman prances, struts, preens, hops, strides, points, and poses for two hours with the enthusiasm of a fitness trainer one-third his age. All the while, he’s belting out high-energy rock ‘n roll standards, playing harmonica, playing harmonica and pointing, and changing outfits. After a black coat, ornately embroidered in golden floral patterns; sleek, flowing silver shirt; pink waistcoat; red and blue silk hoodie; and yellow and black colour block jacket, one starts to lose track. And he knows it. “She’s an amazing singer, but I’ve worn sparklier dresses,” the showman says of Adele at one point.

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Live Reviews Music

Tremonti offer more than musical bodyslams

Alter Bridge bandmates Myles Kennedy and Mark Tremonti must be really competitive. Or maybe they just don’t like sitting around the house. Kennedy, the group’s singer and rhythm guitarist, doubles up on those roles for Slash while nurturing a burgeoning solo career. Lead guitarist Tremonti, who co-founded Creed and co-wrote hits like the Grammy-winning With Arms Wide Open, has recently teamed up with members of Frank Sinatra’s orchestra to sing Ol’ Blue Eyes standards. Oh, and for the past decade, he’s fronted Tremonti.

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Live Reviews Music

Jack White’s evolution continues

When Jack White joined his first group, Goober & The Peas, playing drums was just part of the gig. They dressed like Grand Ole Opry cowboys, so he was forced to wear the whole Hank Williams getup, from the Nudie suit to the 10-gallon hat. It wasn’t an easy fit for a kid from Detroit. But White soon realised that the band were getting noticed purely because they’d swapped out the predominant uniform of jeans and T-shirt. At that point in the early ’90s he learned that, even through something as innocuous as an outfit, he could decide what message he wanted to project.

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Live Reviews Music

Red Hot Chili Peppers still giving it away, now

Red Hot Chili Peppers have just played a swaggering Give It Away. They’ve walked off to do whatever it is they do before the encore. A few roadies move some equipment around. The cameras that have been covering the action on stage turn to the audience.

The two big screens show a sea of waving arms; close-ups of sweaty, smiling, sunburnt faces; self-conscious giggles; people who still have enough energy after 90 minutes of jumping and screaming to jump and scream some more.

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Live Reviews

Twenty One Pilots’ London takeover intensifies

Twenty One Pilots are not short on ideas.

Let’s begin with their current Takeover tour that’s, well, taken over London this week. Instead of putting on one blowout at, say, The O2 Arena, the duo are building up to Wembley Arena by playing increasingly larger venues across the city. Yesterday it was Camden Assembly (that holds 400 punters), tonight Shepherd’s Bush Empire (2,000), before graduating to Brixton Academy (5,000) and, finally, the 12,500-capacity arena next to Wembley Stadium. It’s a good marketing idea that keeps the Twenty One Pilots name out there for more than one night. More importantly, it lets the band reconnect with diehard fans — one who told our photographer that he’s been queuing outside the venue since Monday morning — even though it can’t have been easy to downscale this hyperkinetic, hypervisual show.

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Live Reviews

Sharon Van Etten uplifts at Brixton Academy

For Sharon Van Etten, live shows are all about “feeling connection and sharing energy“. You’d think that would be a priority for all performers. But, by the time they can headline venues as big as Brixton Academy, many prefer efficiency. At the level where the lighting cues are seemingly as important as the music, passion is replaced by precision, off the cuff chat by carefully rehearsed dialogue.

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Live Reviews

Interpol turn up the urgency at Roundhouse

“Fuck yeah!” grins Paul Banks. Interpol have just played a blistering rendition of PDA — greeted with riotous bouncing, moshing, and a persistent crowd surfer upfront — to end the main set of a thrilling Roundhouse gig. It’s a show that almost never happened. Yesterday, only 45 minutes before the venue doors were set to open, the band tweeted: “Due to illness, we sadly have to cancel tonight’s show—it is our intention that tomorrow’s show will go ahead—we greatly apologize for the late nature of this announcement.”

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Live Reviews

Pat Metheny gives Hammersmith the Side-Eye

On stage, Pat Metheny’s almost always stationary. He’s either looking down, face obscured by hair, coaxing his Ibanez PM signature model to sing with impossible beauty. Or he’s sitting, finger-picking an acoustic guitar with the utmost precision and grace.

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