Tears For Fears Let It All Out At The O2 Arena
Last week, Curt Smith tweeted a photo from Tears For Fears’ tour rehearsals. Jamie Wollam is seated at a drum kit, chatting on his mobile. The caption reads: “so good he just phones it in”. It’s not just a bad pun. The drummer, like the three other musicians backing...
Enter Shikari Stop The Clocks At The Cambridge Junction
We were worried the day before the gig that it may not take place as the Beast from the East was threatening. As it turned out, the night before only brought the Flurry from Surrey. A hardy group of individuals queued outside The Junction well before doors at 7pm on...
The 1975 Make The Human Connection At The O2
Jack White insists that fans hand in their phones before a show so they can have a “100% human experience”. Prince had men on stage armed with flashlights to blind anyone holding up their mobile. And, even less subtly, Nick Cave has been known to call out people who...
Def Leppard Pour Some Sugar On Wembley Arena
Hysteria wasn’t the easiest album to make. Its three-year gestation was marked by false starts (including aborted sessions with Meat Loaf collaborator Jim Steinman), a near-fatal car crash (costing drummer Rick Allen his arm), and a mindset so meticulous that mixing...
Ginger Wildheart Throws A Huge Birthday Bash
Thankfully Ginger Wildheart is still with us and capable of playing. It's a fact he underlines several times during his annual Birthday Bash show, casually saying he hadn’t intended having a birthday this year (which might sound a touch melodramatic). But, as he has...
Wolf Alice Bring Visions Of A Life To A Close At The Brixton Academy
London rock outfit Wolf Alice have had an incredible 18 months with what was always going to be the challenging successor to breakaway hit debut record My Love Is Cool. That debut saw the North London-based four-piece realise years of hard work and building up their...
No Fun At All MasterClass in Punk Rock @ New Cross Inn
Our special relationship with the U.S has afforded us a rich bounty in musical imports. Many of us will have spent our formative years engrossed in the sometimes raucous, and often melodic punk rock of Bad Religion, Pennywise, and No Use For A Name. And frankly, we...
Luna Bay Are No Smoke And Mirrors At The Camden Assembly
It’s been quite the ride for the as yet unsigned London-based Luna Bay, their following growing month on month as they’ve taken their indie sound on the road this year along with American band The Aces, reaching across the UK and into Ireland with stops at Glasgow’s...
Burn The Dancefloor – Fireball’s Fuelling The Fire Tour
As the chilly London nights draw in, what better way to warm both body and soul than a punk-themed night on the Fireball – Fuelling The Fire tour? Shepherd's Bush Empire played host to the first night of this ten-date British tour. The Fireball-branded drum kit and...
Mumford & Sons Bring Delta To London’s O2 Arena
Four voices. One guitar. One banjo. One microphone. Turns out that's all it takes to silence 20,000 screaming voices. As Mumford & Sons perform a spare, spellbinding rendition of Timshel, London's largest indoor venue suddenly becomes its most intimate. But this...
Israel Nash Live @ Scala Kings Cross
Thanksgiving seems like the perfect day to see the Texan country sensation Israel Nash playing live at Scala in Kings Cross and the show is pretty much sold out helping to create a good atmosphere. I got in while opening act Brent Cowles was playing as a duo with...
Larkin Poe Storm Islington’s Assembly Hall
Larkin Poe are not a household name in the UK. They don’t have any albums or singles in the UK charts and haven’t visited our shores for over two years. Yet as I walk past the Islington Assembly Hall on North London’s famous Upper Street a good half hour before their...
The Sheepdogs Live: Rounding Up The Borderline Faithful
It’s kind of weird when an artist that is massive on one side of the Atlantic is relatively unknown on the other. Show a North American a Blur, Stereophonics or Kasabian CD and you’ll likely get confused shrugs. Conversely, an (ironically English) band such as The...
Holy Moly And The Crackers Bring The Circus To Cambridge Junction
This was a show that I had been looking forward to since early Spring, so I was more than excited to catch up with Holy Moly And The Crackers on the third date of their UK Headline Tour. Southampton and London had been rocked to the core by Boombastic Folksters and...
Public Service Broadcasting Live At The Royal Albert Hall
It must be great being in Public Service Broadcasting. You’re sufficiently anonymous that you can walk about without being bothered by the general public. You make and perform music entirely on your terms. This means, in moves that would make the average record...
Reel Big Fish Skanking On Halloween @ Forum, Kentish Town
Halloween, the night where witches, ghosts and other ghouls come out of their caves to celebrate the darkest and coldest months to come... But wait! In London, a bunch of friends from sunny California and Florida came to fight the evil spirits. Rockshot Magazine went...
Counting Crows Celebrate 25 Years And Counting At BluesFest
There are only two types of musicians. There are those who believe that, once it's recorded, a song’s finished. And there are those who believe that a song’s never done. Bob Dylan, for one, has spent the past 50 years out on the road reimagining his back catalogue to...
Van Morrison & Robert Plant Shift Time & Space @ BluesFest 2018
Blues Fest has been building reputation as a musical calendar fixture for a few years. A four-night festival of musicians who either play in blues style or who have adapted blues songs in a fusion of styles. Tonight’s pairing of co-headliners have, across their...