The Rolling Stones - Hackney Diamonds
Dear reader, thank you for taking the time to read it, but this review is largely pointless.
For The Rolling Stones are beyond reproach: an unprecedented 60+ year run, as well as lucrative tour after lucrative tour ($170mill made in 2022 alone) means that Mick, Keith and Ronnie are bulletproof, and a hugely important stitch in rock’s fabric. They don’t need the money to keep touring, but they do it because they love it. Chances are, they will outlive you and me, and their legend most definitely will. And quite right too.
But it’s fair to say that there has been indifference to their recorded output for some time, including by the band themselves. Barring 2016’s Blue & Lonesome (an album of covers), the output of new material has been sparse for 18 years, consisting of just 3 singles (2 of which were for a Best Of). Did anyone even notice? Does the world need a new Rolling Stones album in 2023?
Hackney Diamonds may not be needed, but by god the world would be a poorer place without it. It shrewdly extolls the flab that has bedraggled every album since Dirty Work (1986), but its strength lies not only in its sense of purpose, but its familiarity.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/10/review-the-rolling-stones-diamonds/
Gang Of Four - o2 Academy, Bristol - 7th October 2023
Widely lauded as one of the most influential groups of all time, who can list Franz Ferdinand, R.E.M., Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nirvana in their pantheon of fans, Gang Of Four rarely get the credit that their post-punk impact deserves.
Largely unknown, they are perhaps the original ‘muso’ band but the paucity of attendees for tonight’s show sadly reflects their cult status. The venue is by no means empty but an act of such significance should be able to muster a larger crowd, yet it matters little because it’s a joyous show with smiles all round.
Warming up for the Leeds art-rockers is The Miki Berenyi Trio, with the former Lush singer on something of a renaissance in 2023, in part due to her excellent autobiography Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/10/gang-of-four-live-academy-bristol/
Genn - Unum
If it was a point that needed making, Genn gleefully thumb their nose at the concept that ‘multiculturism has failed' as the UK Home Secretary disgracefully declared this week.
Three-quarters of Genn (guitarist Janelle, bassist Leanne, and vocalist Leona) have Maltese routes, while drummer Sofia’s background is Portuguese, Jamaican, and British, with the group adopting Brighton as their new home. Although not essential ingredients for the musically diverse, intoxicating collection of songs that make up Unum, one can assume they influenced this fine debut.
Interview - James Skelly, The Coral
Given their headcount of five and their relentless creativity, it would be reasonable to assume that getting The Coral to dedicate time to a project would be akin to herding cats. Books, albums, artwork…anything can happen on Coral Island (and invariably does) but experience has given the Liverpool act the ability to harness their strengths.
Their latest creative venture comes in the form of two brand-new albums. Picking up where 2021’s sprawling-but-coherent Coral Island left off is Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show, which acts as a bridge to the more traditional Sea Of Mirrors.
“‘Holy Joe…’ is the low-budget sequel and then we used most of the budget for Sea Of Mirrors!” explains frontman James Skelly over Zoom. “We had the ‘Holy Joe’ idea floating around and I think we’re going to go in and out of the Coral Island world over the years. It’s our world.”
https://www.clashmusic.com/features/its-our-world-the-coral-interviewed/
The Coral - Sea Of Mirrors/Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show
Oh, to live on Coral Island.
Or, more specifically, how satisfying it must be to be in one of Britain’s most innovative, creative, and distinct bands. Following 2021’s Coral Island, a (double!) concept album – which just so happened to be one of the most critically acclaimed of their two-decade plus career - with two further concept albums, in today’s 30-second society, belies the confidence of only the truly liberated.
But James Skelly and co are no fools either and indeed, are having their cake and eating it. While Sea Of Mirrors is undergoing a bells and whistles campaign, Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show (to give it its full moniker) will only be released physically. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, etc. It’s also the obvious sequel to the last record, interspersed once again with running commentary from The Great Muriarty (Grandad Skelly) as DJ across a sequence of murder ballads. At only 30 minutes it’s a slight thing, albeit consisting of 17 tracks.
https://www.clashmusic.com/reviews/the-coral-sea-of-mirrors-holy-joes-coral-island-medicine-show/
Public Image Limited - o2 Academy, Bristol - 28th September
It’s not revelatory to say that John Lydon is a complicated fellow. His long and storied history notwithstanding, in the last decade he has declared support for both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and advocated for both Leave and Remain in the ‘Brexit Years’. For most, if not all, those opinions are at odds, but Lydon is able to wholly justify them to himself, if not to anyone else.
So it goes: midway through tonight’s show Lydon is barracked by an audience member which clearly infuriates him, roaring back in response: ‘Rundown lavatory of a country and you dare challenge me. You’re the cunts that ruined Britain…but I like you.’ He may be contradictory, but he is at least true to himself. His schtick is no act.
If it is, it must be exhausting. As he and the rest of Public Image Ltd, the original post-punks, walk (or, in Lydon’s case, lurch) on to the stage, clad in an oversized pinstripe jacket and tie, he takes to the mic: ‘I have one request for you this evening. Put your cell phone up your arsehole. When that light gets in my eyes, that’s when the music stops.’ Impressively, the crowd (mainly made up of greying/balding heads, barring some smatterings of youth) generally acquiesce to his demand.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/10/public-image-ltd-live-o2-bristol/
The Chemical Brothers - For That Beautiful Feeling
Perennial festival headliners, The Chemical Brothers have been at the top of their game for nearly three decades but, despite this album now putting their catalogue into double figures, the duo never rest on their laurels.
Their music is largely designed for euphoric nights, complete with comedowns, and For That Beautiful Feeling starts as such: opening track (Intro – see what they did there?) drops us straight in, like we’ve just popped our heads round the door on a party night that is in full flow, with wonky beats that segues into single ‘Live Again’.
The muscular track crashes in on a wave of electronics and beautiful Balearic sci-fi sonics, with Halo Maud (French psyche-pop singer and the album’s main collaborator) adding dreamy – if slightly repetitive – looped vocals and a deftness of touch. The swirling ‘No Reason’ follows, all sultry bassline and snapping percussion. So far, so banging.
Goodbye changes the tempo, fusing a euphoric melancholy with stuttering percussion, tugging at the heartstrings with a simplistic melody (providing by a soulful but uncredited vocalist) and allowing the mind to wander.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/09/rev-the-chemical-brothers-beaut-feel/
Interview - Cian Ciarán, Super Furry Animals
For a band with such a rich and diverse a career as Super Furry Animals, selecting a career peak is a thankless task. But the consensus is that they were at the top of their game around the turn of the century, at least commercially.
During the nineties Super Furry Animals were defined by their uniqueness, with tank purchases and world record-beating recordings containing the most sung profanities but in the post-millennial era, on a new label (post-Creation Records) and a bigger budget, Rings Around The World (2001) and its successor Phantom Power (2003) were both critically acclaimed (as usual) and mainstream hit albums.
Continuing their ongoing reissue project, the latter album is the latest to receive the bells and whistles treatment. In an exclusive interview with Live4ever, multi-instrumentalist (calling him just a keyboardist is doing him a disservice) Cian Ciarán walks down memory lane as best he can.
“It’s flown by! I feel like an old man when I say, ‘Time’s relative and it gets faster when you get older’, but it has,” he told us.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/09/l4e-int-cian-super-furry-animals/
Forwards Festival 2023 - Day 2
There is no shortage of festivals in the Bristol area, given its proximity as the ‘Gateway to the South West’, as well as being just three hours outside London (apart from the Glastonbury weekend when everyone in the city makes the 30 mile journey south).
But the jewel in Bristol’s festival crown (with all due respect to Love Saves The Day) comes at the tail end of the summer. Rebranded post-pandemic from The Downs Festival to Forwards, the 2023 iteration has pulled off quite the coup for its headliners. Hot on the heels of Queen of Neo Soul Erykah Badu on Day One, the legendary Aphex Twin closes the festival on Saturday in one of only two UK festival shows.
However, there is a feast of music with something for everyone to get through first: Jockstrap continue to sustain their momentum as critical darlings, with thudding electro or acoustic musings, often in the same song. Georgina Ellery has something of the Goldfrapp about her, gleefully casting a spell on the sizable crowd. The duo impressively fill the East Stage, albeit in volume rather than physical presence.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/09/review-arlo-parks-forwards-fest-23/
Interview - Joel Stoker, The Rifles
Image by Patrick Ford
Across their 20-year friendship and five studio albums, Joel Stoker and Lucas Crowther have built a loyal and enduring fanbase as The Rifles.
Now, Stoker is temporarily going it alone on his new studio album The Undertow. In an exclusive chat with Live4ever, the singer-songwriter tells us all about the new album, the music industry and why fans of his main band should have no fear.
How did the solo album come about?
‘It was never my intention to do a solo album, I just had a bunch of songs around the lockdown period – I’ve always got lots of ideas floating about – but I had 5 or so songs that were fully formed, all similar in subject.
They were a bit too personal for the band, so I wrote a couple more and fell into that vein. I thought, ‘If I do a couple more there’s an album there’. It wasn’t a planned thing as such.’
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/09/live4ever-interview-joel-stoker/
Slowdive - Everything Is Alive
Dignity as one reaches middle age is a tricky thing to manage, especially for musicians.
The feverish clamour to act as if the rigours of time don’t exist is all too tempting, to say nothing of the risk of alienating your fanbase with a new sound.
For example, despite all their value and historic importance, expectations aren’t particularly high for the forthcoming Rolling Stones album, which will undoubtedly come with video packages of Mick Jagger prancing around in a way unbecoming for someone half his age, but when he’s giving the people what they want, who can argue?
For reformed bands it becomes even trickier to negotiate as the whole appeal of their comeback is geared towards nostalgia. God bless Shed Seven, but for them to release an album of jazz instrumentals would be a bold step, to say the least.
Slowdive don’t care about that. Evolution has always been their watchword, and to disregard the progression in electronic music since their early 90s heyday would be churlish to the point of ignorance.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/08/review-slowdive-everything-alive/
Live Review - Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds & Ride - Vivary Park, Taunton - 24th August 2023
There’s something about the summer that immensely suits Ride.
Perhaps it’s nostalgia: their feedback-heavy, hazy sonic soundscapes evoke memories and images of summers past from the first act of their career over thirty years ago. Even more so in late August, with the lower sun casting a particular kind of light over our green and pleasant land that the band so aptly soundtrack.
Not that the Oxford gang are a heritage act. Arguably the most creatively successful of the reformed acts of the era, the two albums released in that period sit comfortably with Nowhere and Going Blank Again.
Indeed, their walk-on music (‘R.I.D.E.’, taken from 2019’s This Is Not A Safe Place) is more blistering and industrial than anything from the nineties. Before a note is played, being the good egg he is Andy Bell congratulates Phil Smith (Noel Gallagher’s long-time tour DJ) on his choice of music.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/08/review-noel-gallagher-ride-taunton/
Interview Kyle Falconer, The View
As outlined in Kyle Falconer: Love and Chaos (broadcast on Monday night on BBC Scotland and available on iPlayer), The View frontman has been and continues to be a busy boy. Originally premiering at Dundee Rep and currently on show during the Edinburgh Fringe, No Love Songs is a play written by Falconer’s wife Laura Wilde in which she tells their brave and deeply personal story of love, new parenthood and deals with the subject of post-natal depression, inspired by Falconer’s 2021 solo album.
‘I wrote No Love Songs For Laura and Laura named it as a joke,’ he tells Gigwise in an exclusive interview. ‘I said it’s a collective of songs together; I subliminally write songs and sometimes don’t know what I’m saying and she suggests what I’m saying, whereas I let them flow off the tongue and see what happens.’
https://gigwise.com/features/3431680/exorcising-youth--the-view-in-conversation
Thus Love - Live at The Louisiana, 21st August 2023
Life just isn’t fair, is it? If it were, Thus Love would be playing far bigger venues than Bristol’s 100-capacity Louisiana (with all due respect to the iconic room).
The self-styled ‘Queer Post-Punk’ trio released their fine debut album Memorial nearly a year ago and yet it hasn’t captured the attention of the mainstream for whatever reason (and there are surely many).
As musical injustices go, this ranks highly alongside the likes of Ed Sheeran’s ubiquity or Robson & Jerome preventing both Common People and Wonderwall from hitting number one.
Thankfully, the lack of deserved recognition appears not to have dimmed their enthusiasm, with singer Echo Marshall often struggling to keep the massive smile from her face during a concise and watertight 45-minute set. When not smiling, her expressive face generally looks pleased with herself, with good reason.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/08/review-thus-love-live-louis-bristol/
Mary Anne Hobbs Interview
Summer (pah!) may be winding down, but there are still some huge festivals still to come, not least All Points East, which takes palce over two weekends from August 18th to 28th.
Over the last few years, the event has featured some stellar performers, with Gorillaz, Kraftwerk and Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds in 2022 alone. This year’s iteration is no different, as the likes of Stormzy, Aphex Twin and the Strokes will rattling the foundations of the buildings surrounding East London’s historic Victoria Park.
The official broadcast partner of the event (for the third successive year), BBC 6 Music will be playing out sets across both weekends, with shows presented by Gilles Peterson, Jamz Supernova and an Indie Forever show fronted by Steve Lamacq. Yet the centre point of their coverage is the third ALL QUEENS takeover curated by Mary Anne Hobbs. In an exclusive interview with Clash, the radio legend talks us through the recent history of the initiative and why it is so important.
https://www.clashmusic.com/features/all-queens-mary-anne-hobbs-in-conversation/
Liam Gallagher - KOKO - 10th August 2023
Photo by Zekaria Al-Bostani
Amidst this (so-called) Summer Of Britpop, one man has been conspicuous by his absence.
As such there’s a palpable sense of excitement in north London, from Euston station to Camden, for Liam Gallagher‘s first UK show for nearly a year and his only indoor gig of 2023 at the 1500-capacity KOKO.
Admirably armed only with acoustic guitar, Rifles frontman Joel Stoker proffers some choice cuts from his forthcoming solo album The Undertow in his support slot. Less upbeat than his band’s output, Stoker has a world-weariness to his voice that reflects his experience, and harnesses the power of one man and a guitar while also boding well for the album.
His brother may have written the songs, but Liam undoubtedly maintains the spirit of Oasis, which is reflected in the behaviour of the crowd.
Chants of ‘Liam!’ start immediately after Stoker leaves the stage, creating an atmosphere that hits fever pitch as the house lights drop (although the venue is lit up by phones only) and intro track ‘Fuckin’ In The Bushes’ precedes the arrival of Gallagher and his 9-person band, including Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/08/review-liam-gallagher-koko/
Liam Gallagher - Knebworth 22
When he launched his solo career back in 2017, even the notoriously self-assured Liam Gallagher can’t have seen this coming.
Hard to envisage now, but for several years the iconic frontman was regarded as outdated, only to be remembered during talking head shows about the 1990s.
Oasis were done and Beady Eye, after a promising start, weren’t making any waves despite their best efforts. With his older brother taking all the accolades, it seemed that Gallagher Junior’s best hope lay in praying for That reunion.
Fate, however, had other ideas. In 2016 – shortly after his partner Debbie Gwyther had orchestrated a record deal for a solo career – the Supersonic documentary was released, reigniting interest in his former band. As the astonishing success of his debut album As You Were proved the following year, absence had made the heart grow fonder.
Mirroring the meteoric rise of Oasis, a few short years later Liam Gallagher headlined Knebworth, even if it took slightly longer second time around (although without the delays caused by the pandemic, who’s to say it couldn’t have happened sooner).
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/07/review-liam-gallagher-knebworth-22/
Treeboy & Arc - Natural Habitat
After forming in 2016, Leeds quintet Treeboy & Arc released two singles on the city’s Come Play With Me Records label and the infamous Speedy Wunderground respectively before they set about recording their debut album.
After four days, recording live with each track bleeding into the next, the band entered 2020 in high spirits with plans well underway for the album’s release and subsequent touring activity. You know the next bit.
Afforded the opportunity to reflect on their work, and as the lockdowns wore on, the five members of the band (drummer Isaac Turner, bassist James Kay, synth player Sam Robinson and guitarists George Townsend and Ben Morgan) bravely decided that their sound had moved on and opted to scrap the whole project.
Instead, they sent demos back and forth to one another over 2020/21 and, restrictions permitting, recorded the Life Preserver EP before developing this new ‘debut’ album. A long and complicated road to get to where they are, but where is that?
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/07/review-treeboy-and-arc-habitat/
Interview - Treeboy & Arc
Music fans are familiar with the issues band face on their first album.
They may have a lifetime to write it, but they don’t have any such luxury when it comes to recording it. Sometimes they may have trouble transferring the ferocity of their live act to tape, or perhaps they can’t even find the right character fit when selecting a producer. Or simply, there may be no money left in the label’s budget.
In Treeboy & Arc’s case, the pandemic brought about a rare opportunity for a band in their position: scrap the whole thing. Formed on the back of a teenage friendship between bassist James Kay and guitarist George Townsend, the group expanded to eventually become a quintet and, by 2019, had recorded a debut album to be released the following year.
However, life had other plans and the album sat on the shelf gathering dust until they decided it wasn’t reflective of where they were now. Bravely, they opted to start from nothing once restrictions had lifted.
With Natural Habitat arriving this week, Live4ever met with Townsend and synth player Sam Robinson to discuss their past and their future.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/07/live4ever-interview-treeboy-and-arc/
Blur - Wembley Stadium - 8th July 2023
Mile End aside, Blur were never a stadium band even if they could easily have been, but when Steve Lamacq interviewed them earlier in the year the conversation turned to their Wembley Stadium shows.
Pressed by the DJ on the scale of the venue, Damon Albarn was indifferent to the size of the crowd, claiming: “It’s just multiples of the same people.”
As is his wont, the difference between Interviewee Damon and Frontman Damon is vast. To be frank, it’s a rare sight to see him tonight without a shit-eating grin on his face, from when the group step onto the stage and he stands at the front (taking it all in while wearing some very fetching Harry Palmer spectacles) to the group hug after the last number, Albarn and his bandmates are very obviously living the dream (which he confesses to mid-gig).
Three diverse support acts, all equally high calibre, function as testament to Blur’s forward-thinking mentality: Jockstrap’s neu-noise is an acquired taste on record but live it all makes sense, while Sleaford Mods’ skull-thudding beats lose none of their potency in the vast arena. Self-Esteem probably pips them both however, if only for her backdrop of life advice, including ‘Don’t Fuck Up The Blur Gig’.
There’s something glorious about Albarn’s first vocals in the iconic venue being ‘I fucked up’, but the ‘Scary Monsters’-esque ‘St. Charles Square’ is a reminder that Blur aren’t all about the past, with a promising new album due later this month.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/07/review-blur-live-at-wembley/