Brett Anderson – London Shepherd’s Bush Empire

Brett Anderson

January 22nd 2009

The last time I saw Brett Anderson he was fronting Suede on the Coming Up tour.  He swaggered on stage joining his band (everyone dressed in black) and delivered a set of songs which rode the crest of the Britpop wave which he had helped to kickstart. He pranced, he clapped, he put his foot on the monitor and sang songs about sex and drugs and the urban, working class world he inhabited.

Since then a lot of water has passed under his bridge; drug addiction, the break up of his band, death and the release of three solo albums in as many years, generally to critical and commercial indifference.  His solo output has been a much more sombre affair than the majority of Suede’s, preoccupied by death and broken relationships and on his latest LP, Slow Attack, the terrible beauty of nature. With this in mind I’d expected a much downbeat Anderson.  Although not quite as lively as 15 years ago, after sauntering onstage dressed in his trademark funeral apparel to join his band (piano, cello, guitar, bass, drums) his fringe flops, his hip sway and his tambourine shakes once more.

Opener ‘Hymn’  is breathtaking, Brett croons over minimal piano. When the band join in for the bass heavy crashing swells of the chorus the sound is immense, like waves crashing on a lonely beach. Two of the more pop songs from Slow Attack follow, (’Wheatfields’ and ‘Hunted’) which are nice but don’t have the same impact as the opener, if anything they sound a little MOR.

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Blur: the Hyde Park aftermath

Blur at Hyde Park

In the final few weeks of 2008, something unexpected happened. Yes, it had been mooted and thrown around as a rumour for quite some time, but nobody was really sure if it would ever actually come about. Then it did: with sepia-toned photographs of Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon, entwined and grinning, splashed across an NME feature, Blur reformed.

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Blur, Manchester Evening News Arena

Blur

June 26, 2009

After a series of intimate gigs chosen for the nostalgic weight of their locations, Blur make the step-up to the MEN Arena tonight, prior to heading off to Glastonbury and London. After a prematurely-dated Klaxons set bereft of any new material whatsoever, the four-piece begin their show as they began their career back in 1990, with the dreamy if naïve ‘She’s So High’, an unremarkable baggy homage which then betrayed little of the invention to come over the next decade.

Instantly following with ‘Girls and Boys’, the track which arguably kicked the Britpop movement into fifth gear, it’s a hits-heavy set, with scant room for obscurity – although the devastating ‘Trimm Trabb’ and immensely funky ‘Oily Water’ (part of three consecutive choices from the underrated Modern Life Is Rubbish) are amongst the less well-known highlights. … Continue Reading

Blur, London Goldsmith’s College

Blur's Alex James - image by ex zilla

June 22, 2009

I’d liked to have started this review off by going on about how special it was to be arriving at such a small venue, littered with reminders of what university life was like and painfully similar to the school halls of my childhood. This sentimental feel was very much in keeping with what Blur’s music has meant to me, personally, over the years. I think I aged a good five years when my big sister handed me a copy of Leisure when I was ten years-old, while I vividly remember dragging my mum on a bus ride to Our Price in Islington the day The Great Escape came out.

The trouble is, David Walliams – a mountain of a man, I might add – was lurking around the entrance hall as we arrived. This symbol of British popular culture in the “noughties” was a stark reminder that this was no ordinary trip down memory lane for that small ginger kid bopping to ‘There’s No Other Way’ in his bedroom, wondering how that guitar made all those sounds. This was a real event. What was once my own small secret was now… oh, and there’s Jude Law.

When the band saunter on just a few minutes after their promise of eight o’clock, and swagger into the opening number from their 1991 debut LP, the crowd sway and groove, all the while mindfully transfixed on the figure stood in the middle of the stage. His eyes locked on the ceiling above him, Damon Albarn looks like a man praying to the Goldsmiths Gods, a lead singer watching nigh on twenty years of his life roll by and culminate in the right here, right now. … Continue Reading

Blur playing in London tonight!

Blur

Following their comeback show on Saturday, Graham Coxon exclusively revealed via his Twitter page that Blur are playing a London show tonight (Monday June 15).

Wristbands are available to the first 170 people to turn up at Brixton Academy NOW so get your skates on. The show will not be taking place there, and the current rumours suggest that it will be at Rough Trade East. It’ll be a scorcher… … Continue Reading

Jarvis – Further Complications

Jarvis - Further Complications

It’s just not a very conceivable story, is it? This man playing basically the whole 1980s in an unsuccessful band, being on the dole to boot.

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Classic album: Kenickie – At The Club

Kenickie - At The Club

So it’s early 1997. Oasis are a matter of months away from strapping Britpop to their motorbike and heaving its tired carcass over the metaphorical shark. Blur have already evolved their way out of the scene by indulging their Pavement fantasies on their eponymous classic. And Kenickie, with characteristically disastrous timing are about to unleash their debut album At The Club.

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Blur announce two intimate charity dates

Blur

As a warm-up for their massive, huge, gigantic, showstopping shows, Blur have announceD a duo of intimate club shows to raise money for charidee.

These fan club only dates were announce this morning at blur.co.uk, and will come before the band’s appearances at Hyde Park, the MEN Arena, Oxegen, T In The Park and Glastonbury.

On June 13, they will be making a return to the East Anglian Railway Museum, the venue of their first ever gig. The proceeds will go to the Aldham Village Hall Restoration Project and the museum itself. … Continue Reading

The Bluetones – Expecting To Fly (Expanded Edition)

The Bluetones - Expecting To Fly

There’s a heavy weight bearing down on bands when it comes to naming début albums.

It could make people pick up or turn away – it could make the difference between a lasting career or a brief day basking in the warming sun of musical success.

The Bluetones’ 1996 début was named Expecting To Fly, which spoke more volumes about the band than they could have with their music.

It was a record that tied up their fearful ‘dare to hope’ attitude with a small amount of self-assurance, well-placed in their understanding that they had talent, dammit, and people would see that.

And they did, for a time. Expecting To Fly fired Oasis’ (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? from the number one spot, which was a grand measure of popularity indeed. … Continue Reading

Mark Morriss – I’m Sick

Mark Morriss - Sick

Remember when Britannia ruled

and everyone wanted to be photographed in 10 Downing Street?

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