Category: Live Reviews

Interpol turn up the urgency at Roundhouse

Post author By Nils van der Linden
Post date June 18, 2022
No Comments on 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.”

Tags Interpol, Maccabees, Orlando Weeks, Paul Banks, Roundhouse

Live Reviews

Pat Metheny gives Hammersmith the Side-Eye

Post author By Nils van der Linden
Post date June 12, 2022
No Comments on 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.

Tags Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith Apollo, Pat Metheny, Side-Eye

Live Reviews

Crowded House are still dreaming

Post author By Nils van der Linden
Post date June 6, 2022
No Comments on Crowded House are still dreaming

More than a decade’s passed since I last saw Crowded House live. It was October 2010, according to setlist.fm, in an arena at a Cape Town casino. The band played well, and the songs sounded good. But the most memorable part of the show was the warm, casual vibe they created in a venue with all the charm of an aircraft hangar.

Tags crowded house, neil finn, the roundhouse

Live Reviews Music

The Flaming Lips bring peace, love, and giant inflatables

Post author By Nils van der Linden
Post date June 4, 2022
No Comments on The Flaming Lips bring peace, love, and giant inflatables

The Flaming Lips have a reputation to uphold. Legend has it they were signed after a record label rep caught a show where they almost burnt down the venue “with some questionable on-stage pyrotechnics”. They came up with the “headphone concert” more than 20 years ago, transmitting their live performance to audiences wearing headphones. They’ve released music on flash drives embedded inside gummies, a 24-hour song streamed on a non-stop loop, and one album across four discs intended to be played simultaneously.

Tags O2 Forum Kentish Town, The Flaming Lips, Wayne Coyne

Live Reviews Music

Jeff Beck makes the sublime look effortless

Post author By Nils van der Linden
Post date June 1, 2022
No Comments on Jeff Beck makes the sublime look effortless

On Jeff Beck’s first day recording Roger Waters’ album Amused To Death, the story goes, he showed up with a distortion pedal in his back pocket and an unplayed signature Fender ripped out of a cardboard box moments earlier. “You got an amp?” he asked. Didn’t need anything else. Just plugged in and played.

Tags Jeff Beck, johnny depp, Royal Albert Hall

Live Reviews Music

Tool are twisted but majestic

Post author By Nils van der Linden
Post date May 10, 2022
No Comments on Tool are twisted but majestic

“I’m going to be honest,” singer Maynard James Keenan says before the final song of Tool’s first O2 Arena show. “I’m fucking tired. Being 58, thinking you’re 48, pretending you’re 28, it’s fucking hard work.”

The thing is, he doesn’t seem tired. And he doesn’t make it look like hard work ⁠— although even an 18-year-old would struggle to make it through the two-hour performance Tool’s just given.

Tags Fear Inoculum, Maynard James Keenan, The O2 Arena, Tool

Live Reviews Music

Foals rock Brixton Academy with a smile

Post author By Nils van der Linden
Post date May 9, 2022
No Comments on Foals rock Brixton Academy with a smile

“Might start writing a record & making soap,” Yannis Philippakis tweeted in March 2020, just a few days before England went into lockdown. While there’s no news on the Foals singer-guitarist’s range of bath bombs, that record is now imminent. Called Life Is Yours, it’s due next month with early reports throwing around descriptions like “euphoric”, “sunny”, and even “best of their career”.

Tags Brixton Academy, Foals, Life Is Yours, Yannis Philippakis

Live Reviews Music

Ghost haunt The O2

Ghost’s new album, Impera, is partly about the rise of empires. It’s something they know a little about. Just over a decade ago, their debut LP didn’t even trouble the UK charts; their latest debuted at Number Two. On their last visits to London, pre-pandemic, they played at Royal Albert Hall and Wembley Arena; tonight they’re at the city’s largest indoor music venue, The O2.

Tags Ghost, Impera, The O2 Arena, Tobias Forge

Live Reviews Music

Spoon unplug at Third Man Records

Post author By Nils van der Linden
Post date March 25, 2022
No Comments on Spoon unplug at Third Man Records

The basement is hot. Britt Daniel and Alex Fischel have had a long day. They’re playing to around 30 people who haven’t even paid to be there. And yet the Spoon duo are giving it their all.

But that’s always been the band’s approach to live performance: crank up the intensity of their studio recordings so they sound more visceral, more direct, more emotional.

Tags Adam Buxton, Alex Fischel, Britt Daniel, Spoon, the wild, Third Man Records

Live Reviews Music

EMF are all Go Go Go at The Water Rats

Post author By Nils van der Linden
Post date March 20, 2022
No Comments on EMF are all Go Go Go at The Water Rats

Recording a new album after almost 30 years is, in a word, risky. Will it be good enough to match your classics? Will it be similar enough for diehard fans to like it? Will it be different enough to keep them interested? Will anyone else even notice it’s out?

Performing said album live from start to finish to a crowd who’ve never heard it before is, in a word, insane.

Tags EMF, Go Go Sapiens, Ian Dench, James Atkin, The Water Rats