Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
It’s been two long , agonizing years since I last saw Westlife live on tour but, their performance at the CIA on Friday 21st May proved that it was definitely worth the wait.
The show ‘Where We Are’ featured some of the best songs from the album of the same name. They sang ‘What About Now’, ‘Shadows’, ‘Where We Are’ and a jazzed up version of ‘How To Break a Heart’’.
As well as the new tracks, they also played some old favourites such as ‘If I Let You Go’, ‘Uptown Girl’, ‘Tell Me What Makes a Man’, ‘When You’re Looking Like That’ and of course ‘Flying Without Wings’ which had me in tears for yet another year.
As is tradition for a Westlife gig, the boys did a medley of cover songs in the middle section. I look forward to this every time as I never know what they’re going to sing. This year we were treated to ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’ (very appropriate for this tour), ‘I Gotta Feeling’ and ‘Sex On Fire’ – all were huge crowd pleasers. (more…)
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Thursday, March 11th, 2010
So what do you want from your live music? Do you:
a)want to hear the band play all their recorded material exactly the way it sounds on the album or;
b) want them to hit the stage with the aim of blowing you away with technique, dynamics, showmanship and sheer enthusiasm. If you’re in the b) set then the Billy Walton Band are the band for you.
The 100 Club is a venue with a fascinating past. If you’re interested in the history of rock music, it’s worth a visit just to look at the photos on every wall, where you can see everything from early jazz to The Damned and beyond. The Billy Walton Band set takes inspiration from many of the bands featured here and many, many more. (more…)
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Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Reviewing can be a really difficult gig sometimes. Every album which actually gets a release represents a huge amount of work and creative input for the band or artist and deserves to be taken seriously. Sometimes, however, you get an album or single which tests your ability to dig out some kind of positive comment and, unfortunately, this falls into that category.
This is David Saw’s second album and the publicity surrounding it focuses on the fact that David’s best friend is James Taylor’s son, Ben Taylor and that one of his early songs was covered by Carly Simon who is Ben Taylor’s mum and ex-wife of James Taylor (the singer-songwriter ,not the English jazz organ player of JTQ fame). So Carly Simon covered a David Saw song. Why? (more…)
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Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Black Gold are 2 multi-instrumental Brooklyn musicians, Erick Ronick and Than Luu, who got together after their paths crossed repeatedly while on tour with various bands including Panic At The Disco and Scissor Sisters and decided to explore the special musical chemistry they generated. The result of this is the album “Rush”, preceded in the UK by the single “Breakdown”.
This is one of those albums that creates an instant impact from the dirty opening synth intro of “Detroit” and leads you through a kaleidoscope of musical styles. The arrangements feature electronic and acoustic instruments blended together with a batch of songs which ranges from ballads (“After The Flood”) to widescreen epics (“Plans And Reveries”) and everything in between. (more…)
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