Tag: Shepherds Bush Empire

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Live Reviews Music

The Black Angels hypnotise

The Black Angels have never hidden their influences. Named after a Velvet Underground song, they even namecheck the band’s members ⁠— alongside other guiding voices like Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee — on The River. A gentle ’60s folk acid trip, it’s one of 11 tracks from latest album Wilderness Of Mirrors performed during a mesmerising show that celebrates both their own legacy and those pioneers of psychedelia who made their career possible.

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Fields Of The Nephilim come alive in the dark

Few bands have as strong an identity as Fields Of The Nephilim. Even seen in silhouette — partly obscured by a dry ice fog; wearing their trademark wide-brimmed hats, mirrored sunglasses, long duster coats, cowboy boots, and a shroud of mystery — they’re unmistakable. Musically, there’s nothing quite like their pairing of what would become goth signatures (baritone vocals, chiming chords, bleak soundscapes, a bass player convinced they’re lead guitarist) with twangy Spaghetti Western slide guitar. And lyrically, Carl McCoy’s interests — religion, the occult, the Victorian underworld — shaped a post-apocalyptic world to match the music’s brooding sense of unease.

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The Coronas make up for lost time

The Covid-19 pandemic was tough on The Coronas. A six-month world tour was cancelled, shutting their main revenue stream in an instant. The release of their album True Love Waits was delayed by a few months, with limited promotional opportunities available. And the only real way to keep the creative spirit alive during lockdowns was to write even more new songs, even if it wasn’t clear when anybody would actually get to hear them performed live.

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The Struts show off in Shepherds Bush

About halfway through The Struts’ adrenalised Shepherd’s Bush Empire show, Luke Spiller introduces a brand new song, never played to an audience before. It’s a risky move, especially considering the momentum they’ve built up by this point. But, from the opening salvo of “Oh oh-oh oh oh oh oh oh”, Spiller has the bouncing crowd chanting and clapping along as if it’s We Will Rock You.

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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

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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Stereophonics revisit Just Enough Education To Perform

Just Enough Education To Perform was, recounts Kelly Jones, a massive album for The Stereophonics. It reached number one in the UK charts not just once, but twice. It went six times platinum. It resulted in three young Welshmen headlining Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage and touring America with U2.

“It was all police escorts and helicopters at that time,” he tells a sold-out Shepherd’s Bush Empire.

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Live sell the drama at Shepherd’s Bush Empire

Throwing Copper isn’t just Live’s second album. It’s the one that put them on the map, by topping the Billboard 200 charts, featuring five singles (including two US #1s), and selling over eight million copies. Now that it’s 25 years old, the band are celebrating with a special anniversary edition and at least two special intimate shows back home.

So when they begin their first London show in 10 years with the LP’s first song, the slow-climbing, deep-diving The Dam At Otter Creek, there’s a brief sense that they might perform the whole thing from start to finish.

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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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Sheryl Crow reveals her present and past at Shepherd’s Bush Empire

‘Be Myself’, the title of Sheryl Crow’s latest album, says it all. After flirting with soul and classic country on her last two outings, ‘100 Miles From Memphis’ and ‘Feels Like Home’, she’s gone back to her roots, embracing the sound that first made her a household name. The decision to be herself once more was clearly personal, as lyrics like “Hanging with the hipsters is a lot of hard work” make abundantly clear. But there’s the added benefit of the new material slipping seamlessly into a live show that, from the get go, leans on her first three star-making LPs.

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