December 22, 2007
GNR CD Release Set - Top Story of 07 (antiMUSIC)
MUSIC
The Good, the Bad and the Queen, Damon Albarn’s latest act of musical reinvention, enters the chart at No 2 and is evidence of the Gorillaz man’s genuinely questing musical spirit; may The View prove to have a similarly far-sighted outlook.
MUSIC
Elsewhere, Dolores O’Riordan returns after four years in a post-Cranberries wilderness at No 28 and Banarama - remember them? - hit No 61 with The Greatest Hits & More More More.
PATRICK SWEANY Band Rocks
MUSIC
Get the Party Started is her highest-charting album since 1978 and its success makes her, at 70, the oldest female solo artist to make her mark on the charts. This week’s highest new entry goes to the cerebral Birmingham fourpiece Editors, who score their first No 1 album with their second release An End Has a Start. Their relentless touring of the festival circuit this summer has already paid off.
MUSIC
The logistical nightmare of a tour opened in the Eurovision auditorium of Mill Street, County Cork, last Saturday. On Monday it began the first of three sold out shows over two days in Belfast, and the atmosphere was incredible. The notion of “all women together” - all Irish, women-next-door types - has an appeal that straddles the confines of age and class, and everyone is linked musically (bar instrumentalist Sharon Shannon) by a shared preference for ballad-based material of a type that explains why Nanci Griffith was a star in Ireland long before England took notice. The songs transcend or blur the traditional boundaries of folk music, “new country” and soft rock balladry. Everyone has an adventurous streak in them, but it’s
the warm, gentle middle ground that forms the foundation of the whole bandwagon.
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At three and a half hours it’s a hell of a long show but still one with pace, build and a sense of occasion. Dolores Keane established a rapport almost immediately, followed successively by Maura O’Connell, Frances Black, Sharon Shannon and Mary Black, with Sinead Lohan coming on for the one song towards the end. Everyone was in grand form. There were no prima donnas: six numbers each, (eight for Mary), gave everyone a crack at establishing their own identity, and it was these odd moments of adventure that held the attention - Dolores Keane dueting with guitarist Ted Ponsonby on “My Love Is in America”; a nervous Frances Black daring to dice with both politics and the a capella on Ewan MacColl’s “Legal / Illegal”; Mary Black e xcelling on Billie Holliday’s “Good Morning Heartache”.
Had it been a competition, though, few could have argued with the sheer space-filling personality of Maura O’Connell (replaced by Mary Coughlan for the English leg). Her voice more soulful and her material more eclectic than anyone else’s, highlights included a spell-binding “Western Highway” with songwriter Gerry O’Beirne inimitable on glistening 12-string guitar. The finale of “A Woman’s Heart / No Woman No Cry” and the incongruously rocking but wholly successful “Sisters Are Doing it for Themselves” was a genuine climax to a package that has proven itself a licence to print money within Ireland, if yet to be tried elsewhere. “I think we’ll have to cut the sets by a song each for England,” said Frances Black. “Well that’s me out then,” says Lohan. Only in Ireland . . . POP Heart felt
Blake Lewis - Band Improv (Part II)
Radiohead of the class
Music
flask. He looked on the failure of the control as nothing new. I
took advantage of my invitation to the pulpit to present my bill
of particulars. There are some things better said in public. I