4 h. ago Ohio at the Young Vic review: this new musical is an intimate and idiosyncratic joy

Fleabag and Baby Reindeer producer Francesca Moody brings another Edinburgh Fringe hit to London

Politics

22 h. ago Into the Groove By Justin Lewis: The advice Michael Jackson gave Queen that got them a US smash hit

Justin Lewis takes us on a wild ride through the music of the 1980s in his raucous new book, Into The Groove.

Politics

45 h. ago Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl review – lazy big screen cash

The megastar’s underwhelming new album gets a suitably sub-par cinematic accompaniment offering very little for even the most devoted of fansJust as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, fans of Taylor Swift will heed the call for new content. Long before the economy-lifting, paradigm-shifting global domination of her Eras Tour, Swift had cultivated a uniquely intense and personal relationship with her fans, even within the reverential world of pop music. That relationship, sustained through Easter eggs, years long parasocial narratives and arguably her own metaverse, can be real and special and nutritive, a steady raft through life’s storms – I’ve been there. But years into her imperial era, Swift’s cyclical feeding of the fan base has started to seem less like an act of mutual devotion and more nakedly exploitative, the many one-off re-releases and special vinyls and limited-edition Target drops like a billionaire’s tax on her most loyal.The latest of these is the Life o...

Politics

60 h. ago Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl review: penis metaphors and poor little rich girl tales start to chafe

Is this really the same artist that gave us Folklore and Evermore?

Politics

61 h. ago Agriculture: The Spiritual Sound review – unabashedly gorgeous noise from ‘ecstatic black metal’ band

(The Flenser)The LA group’s second album pairs all the power and euphoria of heavy music with imaginative detailing and poignant lyrics – it will have you levitating with joy All of the euphoria, transcendence and power of heavy music emanates with blinding force from the second album by this self-described “ecstatic black metal” band from Los Angeles.The Spiritual Sound pairs crushing weight with imaginative detailing. Lead single Bodhidharma rides a riff fit for a biker gang, then a burst of static and screaming heralds a sad post-rock middle eight. The maligned art of the widdly-woo solo is spectacularly resurrected by guitarist Richard Chowenhill, whose soloing here and on highlight Flea will have you levitating with joy – but then the calm ballad Hallelujah features falling guitar notes played with childlike simplicity. Continue reading...

Culture

61 h. ago Dania: Listless review – Intimate underground pop inspired by hospital night shifts

(Somewhere Press)Reflecting her nocturnal work as an emergency doctor, the Baghdad-born musician’s latest blends trip-hop, shoegaze and ambient into sometimes eerie, sometimes blissful tracksAs well as making atmospheric electronic compositions, the Baghdad-born, Barcelona-based musician Dania also works night shifts as an emergency doctor. These nocturnal hours are the influence behind her new album Listless: all seven tracks were composed and recorded after midnight, while the artwork features the spindly flower of the Japanese snake gourd, a plant that only blooms after dark. But there is little trace of the chaos of her late-night schedule here: instead, the record embodies a quiet calm that is sometimes blissful, sometimes eerie.Meeting somewhere between trip-hop, shoegaze and ambient, with a touch of pop, the textured tracks slink along dreamily, propelled by washes of synths and, for the first time, drums. A new addition to Dania’s usual setup, they lend a gentle downtempo ki...

Politics

63 h. ago Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror review – insiders’ account of cult musical 50 years on

Stars including Richard O’Brien, Susan Sarandon and Tim Curry line up to recount the endearing origin story of the perennial crowdpleaserNot to be confused with the unauthorised, warts-and-all fan history Sane Inside Insanity: The Phenomenon of Rocky Horror, this is an insider’s account all the way, starring the stage-show-turned-cult-film’s writer and co-star Richard O’Brien. Heck, it’s even directed by O’Brien’s son, Linus O’Brien, a fact you couldn’t really miss given interviewees frequently allude cosily to Richard as “your dad”. Given its provenance, it’s no surprise that no one here says, as they do in the rival documentary, that the 1975 film adaptation is a “shitty fucking movie” – but nevertheless there’s honesty on display, mostly about the slapdash origins of the project and the later mistakes made, including the huge flop when the original stage production tried to transfer from Los Angeles to Broadway.But even the most diehard Rocky Horror sceptic would have to concede ...

Events

65 h. ago Taylor Swift review, The Life of a Showgirl: As compelling as she’s ever been – the star, the ringmaster and the circus all in one

Pop artist’s 12th record contains some of her outrageous songs, suggesting she feels confident enough at this point in her career to go as rogue as she fancies

Politics

4 d. ago Sigur Rós and the London Contemporary Orchestra review – crashing waves of refined harmony

Royal Albert Hall, LondonPerhaps the band that can best justify a mid-career gig with classical backing, the extra heft of the orchestra adds power to the Icelanders’ beautiful crescendosOn Sigur Rós’s most recent album Átta, their first in a decade, the group reversed course from the intriguing industrial experiment of its predecessor Kveikur and returned to safe ground – leaning back into the grand orchestral crescendos that defined their best-loved work, as glacial in pace as they are in beauty. It makes sense, then, that the USP of their current tour is a collaboration with a different set of classical musicians in every city.Though mid-career-band-joined-by-orchestra sets so often enlist classical musicians to fill the holes left by fading creativity, leaving awkward blends between the two parties, that’s not the case tonight. The Icelanders meld seamlessly with the London Contemporary Orchestra, musically and visually, with both camps all in monochrome, mingled together under ...

Events

4 d. ago Radiohead X Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror review – musical mash

This new approach to silent cinema is like trying to watch a movie while your neighbour has their music on too loudHow should we watch silent films now? When they were first produced and consumed, they were after all just films, not “silent” films – any more than photographs or paintings or sculptures are thought of as “silent”. Yet of course they often had improvised piano accompaniment; Gert Hoffman’s autobiographical novel The Film Explainer (filmed with Armin Mueller-Stahl) remembered the prewar time in Germany when his father was employed in a movie theatre to stand next to the screen with a pointer and literally explain what was going on. When Abel Gance’s Napoleon was revived in the late 70s with a live orchestral accompaniment, there was a new creative excitement around the idea of early cinema’s musical reinvention – we recently saw the re-release of the special edition of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin with the 2005 soundtrack composed for the film by the Pet Shop Boys.B...

Events

5 d. ago Lady Gaga review – from skeletons to sexy plague doctors, this is a glorious, ridiculous spectacle

O2 Arena, LondonMove over Chappell Roan – Gaga’s eighth world tour is a full-blooded return to OTT camp, with a Nietzschean nemesis and a zombified crowd of fans driven berserk with gleeLady Gaga’s eighth world tour, The Mayhem Ball, does not lack ambition. It lasts two hours and features 30 songs. It comes divided into five acts, each with a deeply portentous title that glows from the big screens in blood-red gothic script: Of Velvet and Vice; The Beautiful Nightmare That Knows Her Name; Every Chessboard Has Two Queens. It arrives preceded by a lengthy film in which next to nothing happens: resplendent in a ruff and leg of mutton sleeves, Lady Gaga looks pensive and occasionally writes on a scroll with an absolutely enormous feathered quill, while opera booms in the background.Perhaps she’s paying tribute once more to her avowed influence Andy Warhol, in this case his notorious always-leave-them-wanting-less approach to cinema. When it becomes apparent that looking pensive and writ...

Events

5 d. ago Lady Gaga: The Mayhem Ball at the O2 review — put your paws up for the stadium show of the century

If we could give this show six stars we would

Politics

5 d. ago Lady Gaga review, O2 Arena London: Pop star’s Mayhem Ball is the concert of the year

No set piece is too elaborate, no framing device too ludicrous, for this show of wall-to-wall bangers that suggests Gaga isn’t ready to give up her pop crown just yet

Politics

6 d. ago Cinderella at London Coliseum: 'Hugely enjoyable contemporary spin'

The ENO have brought the classic story up-to-date while still keeping its heart and soul

Politics

6 d. ago Review: Self Esteem brings a ritualistic masterclass in reclamation to Manchester Academy

This is not just a concert, it’s theatre

Sport

6 d. ago Oasis review: Liam and Noel Gallagher summon a euphoric and almost sad last hurrah at Wembley Stadium

The final UK show of the brothers’ feel-good reunion marks the end of the brief respite from the nation’s bleakness, as the cultural mood turns sour

Politics

7 d. ago Philharmonia/ Rouvali/ Ólafsson review – orchestra opens 80th celebrations with sparkle and style

Royal Festival Hall, LondonVíkingur Ólafsson’s Beethoven was clear, contemplative and witty, in a concert that also featured Olivier Latry at the mighty RFH organ and a UK premiere from Gabriela OrtizLegions of keyboard fans know that Víkingur Ólafsson does reflective like few others. Calmness, softness of touch and introspection are among the Icelandic pianist’s widely admired trademarks. It helps make him a perfect performer for the AirPod age.But how does Ólafsson respond to a full orchestra in a large-scale work such as Beethoven’s third piano concerto? The answer, in this opening concert of the Philharmonia’s season, is that he does it with enviable ease. It assured a distinguished start to the 80th birthday year of an orchestra whose founder, Walter Legge, had shamefully tried to kill it off when it had not even reached two decades old. Continue reading...

Politics

9 d. ago Doja Cat: Vie review – master pop provocateur splits the difference between sugar and spice

(Kemosabe/RCA)On her fifth album, the Californian tempers the bite of 2023’s Scarlet with glossy, lovestruck sounds – but never loses her instinct for mischiefIs this just another troll? Doja Cat’s new album is titled Vie – French for “life” – and the original artwork (changed at the last minute) features the 29-year-old Angeleno surrounded by roses, ever the picture of congeniality. Doja has become known, in recent years, as mainstream pop’s master agitator: she tells her superfans to “get off your phone, get a job and help your parents with the house”, disavows her own hits before they’ve even left the upper echelons of the charts and is totally unapologetic about what can be described, charitably, as edgelord behaviour. Doja’s 2023 album Scarlet – a prickly, antagonistic record designed to prove her bona fides as a rapper – seemingly shut the book on her time as a pop hit-maker with a bracing, refreshing meanness.So there is precedent for the notion that Vie’s lead single Jealous...

Politics

9 d. ago Geese: Getting Killed review – Cameron Winter and co’s surreal, swaggering spectacular

(Partisan/PIAS)Opaque but brilliant, the Brooklyn indie-rock band’s fourth album is full of the dread and dark absurdity of our current momentAt the end of last year, 23-year-old New Yorker Cameron Winter scored an industry hit with his solo debut Heavy Metal. The title was not indicative of its contents – this was a collection of droll, desolate dirges recalling the lugubrious greats (Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits) – yet Trinidad, the opener of his band Geese’s fourth album, actually does feature some metal-style screaming. What begins as an exercise in dreamlike, deconstructed soul soon erupts into a nightmarish cacophony of erratically parping brass, scrambled guitar and the shrieked refrain: “There’s a bomb in my car!”Getting Killed ripples with a timely dread: a combination of sonic dissonance – 100 Horses’ ramshackle maximalism, the title track’s frantic pile-up of voices and grooves – and surreal, sardonic lyrics. (“All people must smile in times of war”; “I’m getting killed by a ...

Events

9 d. ago Baltimore SO/Alsop: Clyne, Abstractions album review – Clyne writes accessible and attractive music

(Naxos)Marin Alsop’s fine recording offers a chronology of Anna Clyne’s orchestral writingOver the last couple of seasons, works by Anna Clyne seem to have been cropping up everywhere, with orchestras and ensembles eager to commission her, as they realise what strikingly attractive and accessible music she writes. Marin Alsop’s fine disc offers a brief chronology of how Clyne has developed as an orchestral composer, from 2008’s Within Her Arms, an elegy to her late mother, to the three movements, Yellow, Red, Orange, of Color Fields of 2020.Within Her Arms, whose string writing seems close to Tippett’s Corelli Fantasia at times, is impressively impassioned, but in each piece here Clyne’s command of her material seems ever more assured and focused. Each of the five short movements of Abstractions of 2016, ranging from the urgently hyperactive to the dreamily impressionistic, was inspired by a work in the Baltimore Museum of Art, while the punchy Restless Oceans, which Clyne composed ...

Culture