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The XX have been much hyped over the past 12-18 months by all the music press and tonight Academy 2 is ram packed with only a few spaces left before the exit door at the rear of this large room. The other reason is their beautifully crafted CD having done well in the charts thanks to songs like “Crystalised”,”VCR” and “Heart Skipped a Beat”. |
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Political correctness is basically a term for minimising social offense. Thankfully, there’s none here tonight. Stephen Lynch, the King of YouTube musical comedy is in town to sing the kind of songs you laugh at in private, maybe in the pub, but never in polite society. Think of him as the Marilyn Manson of melodic humour. If it’s there to be poked as a subject for human shock value in song form, then it’s fair game, and nobody does it better than Lynch. |
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Jazz is not my usual cup of tea. I’m more of a rock and metal fan, but having been introduced to Courtney Pine in the mid-90s, it would have been rude not to see him in the amazing setting of Birmingham Town Hall. |
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This could all have easily ended up massively confusing, most probably very off putting and more than likely end in a night to remember for all the wrong reasons. |
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It's been a few years since I heard Jim Moray live so I'm really looking forward to this evening. Jim Moray, of course, is the singer who burst on to the folk scene back in 2003 with his debut album, Sweet England winning the BBC2 Horizon award for most prestigious album of the year and winning him the accolade of best newcomer. |
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After a month that has so far given me the brutal likes of Decapitated, Black Dahlia Murder and Morgue Orgy, as well as an unforgettably transcendental Mastodon performance, it was time for a brief respite. I headed to the Academy for a welcome relief after a fortnight of aural abuse for an evening spent in the company of Swedish hard rock titans Europe. |
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Having heard from a friend of mine that Fear Factory had just released a new album, 'Mechanize', my interest was piqued. When I also found out that original guitarist Dino Cazares had rejoined the band I decided I really couldn't miss this one! |
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Mastodon return to Wolverhampton’s Wulfrun Hall on this chilly Tuesday evening in support of last year’s album “Crack The Skye”, and how do they support it? By playing the album in it’s entirety! If you didn’t know the album before, then you knew it by the time the main set ended. |
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Touring with their very fresh released 2010 album, ‘Odd Blood’, US, Brooklyn based, quote - ’Experimental rock, Psychedelic pop, Worldbeat sonic evangelists’, Yeasayer, have both fans and critics alike getting in to all sorts of thesaurian froths trying to draw metaphors of eclectic genre comparisons. Sonic buccaneers? Curators of the cosmic consciousness? Electro fusions for the inner-spaced out tantric troubadours? Possibly. The band concede that their muse might be seen and heard as, ‘Middle Eastern-psych-snap gospel.’ Hmm, that clears up any ambiguities then. |
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This review is likely to be quite biased! I hold my hands up to being a big fan of Texan indie/folk rockers, Midlake but I’ll try to be to be as constructive as I can. Tonight’s gig at the Town Hall in Birmingham is part of Midlake’s tour in promotion of their third album, ‘The Courage of Others’. The album is their first in four years after their breakthrough release, ‘The Trials of Van Occupanther’ in 2006. |
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There’s something big happening at the Academy tonight. Not every gig would you expect to see three identical Austrian registered double-decker tour buses, two identical Swiss registered container trucks and a cherry picker parked at the rear of the venue. Anyone would have thought there was an American Idol performing… |
