Reviews

Love Music Hate Racism Carnival, Victoria Park, London

Another clash between rock and racism as Paul Simonon returns to the front line

Inside Reviews

Adriana Mater, Barbican, London (Rated 3/ 5 )

Wednesday, 30 April 2008

The Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho's new opera, here given a concert performance, inhabits a world where bad dreams impinge on reality until the two are all but indistinguishable. It's an opera about violation. A woman is raped in time of war; her rapist has been dehumanised by that war. But the real drama lies with the child she then bears, and the secret she keeps from him. On learning the truth, the boy vows to kill the man responsible for his violent conception. But will he?

Preview: The Groanbox Boys, The Oval Tavern, Croydon

Wednesday, 30 April 2008

There are acoustic-guitar- picking folk groups, there are accordion-pounding Gypsy troupes, there are harmonica-blowing blues combos and gourd-banjo-frailing world-music troubadours; there are even, probably, musicians who carry six-foot-high percussion sticks around with them. But there is surely no musical partnership that brings all of the above together as bracingly as the Groanbox Boys.

The Blues: Back To The Source, Barbican, London (Rated 5/ 5 )

Wednesday, 30 April 2008

It was a double-header of a concert that returned the blues to its source in radically different ways, pairing Otis Taylor's Reclaiming the Banjo project with Bassekou Kouyaté, who, with his group Ngoni Ba, took two world music awards a few weeks ago, including Album of the Year for his debut, Segu Blue.

Sebastien Tellier, Scala, London (Rated 3/ 5 )

Wednesday, 30 April 2008

Albums designed for making out to are the hardest trick to pull off. For every Let's Get It On and I Want You by Marvin Gaye, there is the bedroom embarrassment that is R Kelly. Yet France's Sébastien Tellier has achieved the near impossible with Sexuality, a seductive gossamer of a listen, designed to boost the birth rate on both sides of the Channel. It certainly seems to work on the French couple cuddling next to me on a balcony inside a rammed Scala. With more than 300,000 French people residing in the capital, any date in a venue this size is a banker, but there is also a smattering of trendy Hoxton types, gay couples – fitting given the all-inclusive nature of the shimmering "Une Heure" – and the odd Eurovision obsessive.

You write the reviews: Diamond Hoo Ha, Supergrass, Parlophone (Rated 4/ 5 )

Wednesday, 30 April 2008

If there were an award for the most underrated band of the past decade, it's a fair bet that Supergrass would figure somewhere in the top three. Since they burst on to the scene in the embryonic days of the Britpop revolution, the band have ridden the shifting waters of the pop world with skill. Unfortunately for them, the success of their earlier albums proved harder to emulate as the Britpop era gave way to the new sounds of the Noughties.

LPO / Jurowski, Royal Festival Hall, London (Rated 3/ 5 )

Tuesday, 29 April 2008

Vladimir Jurowski's reading of the Verdi Requiem was made for singing – meaning that every phrase, every tempo, every gesture was mindful of how it might be sung. How often we hear the opening of this piece, with its hushed, awed repetitions of "Requiem aeternam", sound static. Jurowski moved it along – there was rhythm in the words, there was fluidity. Jurowski is a classicist at heart and this Requiem was memorable more for the musicality of the direction than the spirituality of the message.

Mystery Jets, Scala, London (Rated 3/ 5 )

Tuesday, 29 April 2008

The Mystery Jets' second album, Twenty One, released earlier this year, was a milestone in the band's evolution from barely-out-of-school, try-hard popsters to colossi of the alternative scene. Aided by the remixing monarch Erol Alkan's generous daubings of 1980s pomp, their sound is now richer and more focused. They are also less kooky than before (the group famously hail from Twickenham's Eel Pie Island).

Was (Not Was), Carling Academy, Islington, London (Rated 5/ 5 )

Tuesday, 29 April 2008

Night-time in Islington, and out come the freaks. A fair complement of them are crammed together up on the Academy stage, jostling for position as they take solos or execute impromptu little dance routines during one of the most enjoyable shows I've seen in some while. So, just how freaky are Was (Not Was)? Well, freaky enough to imagine the world is any more ready to take an absurdist soul-band to its heart now than it was when they last performed in London, 16 years ago – and freaky enough to be right, despite the odds stacked against them.

You write the reviews: Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Festival Hall, London (Rated 4/ 5 )

Tuesday, 29 April 2008

At this wonderful concert, a packed Royal Festival Hall was treated to a slide-rule performance of a programme that could have been a run-of-the-mill outing for well-tried orchestral standards. Instead, we were witness to an exemplary interpretation of Mendelssohn's Fourth Symphony, in which Christoph von Dohnyáni conducted the sublime Philharmonia through a sure-footed and delightfully witty reading with a lightness of touch exemplified by his economical gestures. The tempi were brisk, which could have wrong- footed the woodwind, but they were more than equal to the task.

Atalanta, Royal College of Music, London (Rated 3/ 5 )

Monday, 28 April 2008

It's quite a thing to stage a Handel opera that virtually no one has seen – and quite a responsibility. So when Christopher Cowell describes Atalanta in his directorial note as an "anodyne" interpretation of the myth ending in a "shameless piece of political puffery", you wonder why – apart from its rarity – he's bothering to do it at all.

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