David Lister: Don't encourage politicians who want to be film buffs
Saturday 23 July 2011
Album: Helado Negro, Canta Lechuza (Asthmatic Kitty)
Sunday 17 July 2011
The impeccably hip credentials of HN's Roberto Carlos Lange (exotic Ecuador to Florida to Brooklyn background; he's an artist doing a "project"; album recorded in the middle of a field in Connecticut, etc) are rather at odds with the wonderfully gloopy Latin-cheese of this Spanish language, old school synth-session's best tracks.
Prince announces first UK show in four years
Wednesday 18 May 2011
Prince is to play his first UK show in four years at the Hop Farm Festival.
Cheltenham Diary: Westwood's pain is Motty's pleasure as Savage is silenced
Thursday 17 March 2011
Sometimes it doesn't pay to be a multimillionaire. Take Lee Westwood yesterday. The world's second-best golfer found his day ruined by the fog and couldn't travel down from Worksop.
Roxy Music, 02 Arena, London
Thursday 10 February 2011
Only quite late on in the evening, somewhere between Bryan Ferry's plaintive whistle in "Jealous Guy" and the longed-for intro to "Virginia Plain", is Roxy Music's O2 audience roused to something like excitement. It's clearly a huge relief to Ferry, but it's the band's own fault: with as elegantly innovative a back catalogue as Roxy's, this should have been a torrent of exuberant memories, but for substantial portions of the set the longueurs are alleviated only by the consistently exciting guitar work of Phil Manzanera, as the band leads us around some of the less sparkling corners of their history. It's like going through a photo album and finding several of the most important snapshots missing: where are "Ladytron", "Both Ends Burning", "Dance Away", "Pyjamarama"?
Jessie J, Scala, London<br/>Richard Thompson, Royal Festival Hall, London
Sunday 23 January 2011
How We Met: Dan Clark & Noel Fielding
Sunday 07 November 2010
Album: Bryan Ferry, Olympia (Island)
Friday 22 October 2010
Pop's pre-eminent lounge lizard returns to more familiar territory after his patchy album of Dylan covers: Olympia is full of Eurotrash dancefloor motorik like the single "You Can Dance" and romantic languor like "Alphaville", the latter an exercise in dissipated alienation.
Smoke Fairies: Folk heroines' long odyssey
Friday 20 August 2010
With support from Jack White and Bryan Ferry, Smoke Fairies are no ordinary folk-oriented outfit. Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies met as part of a school choir in rural Sussex, gaining further inspiration from their parents' Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young records and a desire to get the hell out of Chichester.
Devendra Banhart, Koko, London
Tuesday 06 July 2010
"Alternative-folk", "freak-folk", even "psych-folk" are expressions that have been used to describe the Texan-born singer Devendra Banhart and his band The Grogs. But at Koko, it became clear that the group, part of the New Weird America movement, has morphed into a very different beast from the quirky, folky hippies who produced Cripple Crow in 2005.
David Beckham set for Jonathan Ross' 'Friday Night With' swansong
Wednesday 30 June 2010
David Beckham and Hollywood star Jackie Chan will be the final guests as Jonathan Ross bows out from his BBC1 chat show, it was announced today.
The Sketch: There he was, with his fragrant wife and Bryan Ferry hair
Wednesday 07 April 2010
It was Nick Clegg who fired the starting gun. Straight into his foot. It was 7.30 and no one was there because only drug addicts, brokers and political activists are up at that hour.
Album: Groove Armada, Black Light (Cooking Vinyl)
Sunday 21 February 2010
Is this really a Groove Armada record?
Album: Various artists, Ethiopiques 24 (Buda)
Sunday 10 January 2010
The wealth of sublime music produced in Ethiopia in the 1970s (before a military junta stopped the party) seems to have no end.








