'I wanted to be in musicals'
Agenda: Hand-printed Bauhaus tights; Queen of Hearts; Cinemagram;
Sunday 20 May 2012
Fashion: Be haus proud
Album: Bright Moments, Natives (Luaka Bop)
Saturday 19 May 2012
Kelly Pratt, who to all intents and purposes is Bright Moments, has in the past supplied horn parts to Arcade Fire, Beirut and LCD Soundsystem.
Album: Scent of Soil, Scent of Soil (Hubro)
Sunday 22 April 2012
They should have stuck a scratch'n'sniff card of rich Norwegian earth in with this intensely bucolic album fronted by composers Tore Brunborg on reeds and Rhodes, and vocalist Kirsti Huke.
Frank Turner, Wembley Arena
Monday 16 April 2012
Frank Turner is a former hardcore Punkster who fronted band Million Dead in the early noughties. But his much gentler, quintessentially English folk-influenced solo material has earned him enough fans to sell-out a 12,000-capacity Wembley Arena.
Rosie Millard: Viewers want to see talent, not crying
Tuesday 10 April 2012
Well, it is jubilee year... Queen's 'Greatest Hits' is Britain's best-selling album of past half-century
Monday 09 April 2012
Kings of camp rock join Beatles with two entries in Top 40 – but the Stones are nowhere to be seen
Album: Jim Moray, Skulk (Niag)
Sunday 08 April 2012
Moray – with his bleeps and beats approach to trad folk – has never been afraid to attract attention.
Four police officers suspended in Northern Ireland over 'sectarian texts'
Friday 06 April 2012
Four police officers in Northern Ireland have been suspended from duty after the discovery of racist and sectarian text messages.
Versace shows a clean pair of heels on catwalk and in the boardroom
Sunday 01 April 2012
Sting at Hammersmith Apollo, London
Wednesday 21 March 2012
“Sometimes I'm scared of being Ozzy Osbourne. But it could have been worse. I could have been Sting.”
Oscars Trending: New Zealand's second most popular folk singer makes it big
Tuesday 28 February 2012
Two things that we've never met anyone who dislikes – The Muppets and the Flight of the Conchords. As such, it was almost inevitable that Conchord Bret McKenzie's writing of songs for the recent Muppets movie was guaranteed to bring a smile to the faces of most right-thinking fans of puppets and well-pitched parody songs.
Album: Field Music, Plumb (Memphis Industries)
Friday 10 February 2012
There's an awful lot of music crammed into Plumb's 35 minutes, but it's rarely organised into the most attractive shapes – and on the few occasions it is, they alter course within seconds and head off in some less appealing direction.
Album: Mark Lanegan Band, Blues Funeral (4AD)
Sunday 05 February 2012
Not a blues album, but an album borrowing heavily from the bank of blues tonality: minor keys, draggy tempos, undecorated structures, an implicit sense of what it is to be enslaved.
Bob Weston: Early '70s guitarist with Fleetwood Mac
Tuesday 10 January 2012
Originally a British blues boom band led by Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer, Fleetwood Mac were at something of a crossroads by September 1972. The founder-member and drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie – the rhythm section the group was named after – had added McVie's wife, the keyboard-player and singer Christine McVie, formerly of Chicken Shack, and Bob Welch, an American vocalist and guitarist, but felt they needed a pedigree soloist able to recreate the contrasting guitar styles of his predecessors, particularly the slide playing of Spencer, for concert engagements.







