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The Cribs storm London

For a Northerner-in-exile like myself, The Cribs’ gig last night at the Kentish Town Forum was a peculiarly homely experience, to the extent that flying plastic pint glasses and pogoing parkas can be homely. My full review of Wakefield’s finest sons and their newest member, guitar prodigy Johnny Marr, should be online in the next [...]

By Jack Riley | Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - | Friday, 16 October 2009 at 3:14 pm

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Who are Thom Yorke’s new bandmates?

What have "Bottle Up and Explode" by Elliott Smith, "Roller Coaster of Love" by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and David Byrne’s giant clunking Camden Roundhouse installation got in common? They all feature members of Thom Yorke’s new supergroup, due to grace LA’s Echoplex tonight for a gig shrouded in mystery, and revealed to [...]

By Jack Riley | Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - | Friday, 2 October 2009 at 6:28 pm

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Golden Silvers outshine Noah and the Whale

Industry gigs are always strange events, particularly for bands who are in the ascendancy. Noah and the Whale, who I saw at the Hospital Club on Friday for a Mercury Music Session gig, struggled more than most to handle the unique challenge of playing to a crowd who haven’t paid to be there.
 
They were preceded [...]

By Jack Riley | Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - | Tuesday, 29 September 2009 at 4:11 pm

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Irresponsibly misleading headline of the day

 …comes from page 5 of the Metro;

By Jack Riley | Notebook - A selection of Independent views - | Wednesday, 23 September 2009 at 11:19 am

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Banksy works his magic in Thom Yorke’s new video

Update: Apparently the video is not official.
For those of us who rate ‘Eraser’ above ‘In Rainbows’, it’s nice to see Thom Yorke returning to his glitchy electro solo career for new song "The Hollow Earth", the video for which was released to the world on YouTube this weekend. Featuring the talents of the mysterious and [...]

By Jack Riley | Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - | Monday, 21 September 2009 at 2:08 pm

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Mumford & Sons: There’s nowt so cool as folk

"So is folk now, like, cool with the kids?", I heard someone ask on my way out of last night’s astonishing Mumford & Sons show at Scala. As questions go, it was hardly the sharpest. I guess you could expand it out to "can one band re-popularise an entire genre?", and start trying to examine [...]

By Jack Riley | Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - | Thursday, 17 September 2009 at 10:17 am

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What's in a name (which begins in 'C')?

Casey, Crystal, Callum and Connor, watch out. Your names, along with Chelsea, Courtney and Chardonnay, are on the list of those most suspected of bad behaviour by English teachers in a survey of three thousand, conducted by a childcare website with some kind of strange bent against the letter C. In fact, the only [...]

By Jack Riley | Notebook - A selection of Independent views - | Tuesday, 8 September 2009 at 3:53 pm

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Post-punk’s receding hairline – Magazine at Royal Festival Hall

Magazine at the Royal Festival Hall last night was a strange gig: a crowd of aging musical aristocracy, a post-punk revival 28 years in the making and, perhaps strangest of all, everyone was sat down until the last three songs.
After that, Howard Devoto issued a stirring call-to-arms for all the aging punks out there [...]

By Jack Riley | Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - | Wednesday, 2 September 2009 at 12:10 pm

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Wireless electricity and REM-aware alarm clocks

Though it seems like we’re on the cusp of widespread uptake, in actual fact wireless electricity has been around for more than a century – the tragic tale of the Wardenclyffe Tower is worth a read, and so are some of Russian pioneer Nikola Tesla’s writings on the subject. Still, this video from TED is [...]

By Jack Riley | Notebook - A selection of Independent views - | Wednesday, 26 August 2009 at 12:13 pm

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Chris Martin fights for his right to party

For this week’s Arts and Books playlist, I contributed a suggestion – Fanfarlo’s cover of the excellent Smashing Pumpkins song "We only come out at night" (original here) from the epic ‘Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness’. Here’s the full video - 

And while we’re talking bizarre covers, it’d be remiss not to mention Coldplay frontman [...]

By Jack Riley | Arts - News, notes and quotes on the Arts world - | Friday, 7 August 2009 at 12:18 pm