Music

Review: Primal Scream

Paul Lester — Mon, 06 May 2013 12:00:00 +0100

It is 22 years since Primal Scream released a truly important album (Screamadelica) and 13 years since their last great one (XTRMNTR). The former captured the heady moment when house music entered the mainstream; the latter was the most successful example of the band’s rampant eclecticism.

On More Light, their 10th album, the Primals once again offer a précis of their favourite artists’ careers — not for nothing has their disparate approach been described as “record collection rock”. Trouble is, it comes across less like a band with a unique voice and more like a bunch of copycats offering karaoke renditions of their heroes’ classics.

The problems with More Light start with the album opener, 2013, which desperately wants to be a generational rallying cry along the lines of the Stooges’ epochal 1969. The effect is comical rather than revolutionary, not least because frontman Bobby Gillespie is a 51-year-old Glaswegian rather than a 21-year-old from Detroit.

Culturecide refers to neutron bombs and satellite dishes, although as ever with Gillespie it feels as though he’s just name-checking pop-cultural totems rather than making a serious point. More impressive is the mix of influences. You can detect elements of everyone from Roxy Music to Funkadelic.

Elsewhere, there are echoes of John Lennon circa the Plastic Ono Band, New York synth-punk duo Suicide and the cosmic grooves of 70s German experimentalists Can. As a redux version of a cool vinyl collection, it works a treat. But it’s more likely to send you back to the musicians being mimicked than to elevate the Scream to their status.

Review: Matisyahu

Marcus Dysch — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:54:55 +0000

It is hard to believe that the clean-shaven, casually-dressed singer on the stage is the same man who once performed in a dark suit, Chasidic beard and black hat.

But Matisyahu has changed, and so has his music. The rap and reggae star, who has left the strictly Orthodox enclave of New York’s Crown Heights for the Los Angeles sunshine, was performing in London to coincide with the release of his album, Spark Seeker.

Matisyahu’s current European tour features some 12 dates in eight countries, so perhaps it was fatigue that led to a slow start.

But the bizarre mix of religious Jews, Rastas and rock lovers who made up the audience came alive to his eventually energetic dancing, crowd-surfing and beat-boxing.

Spark Seeker — a special edition double-disc features 13 new songs as well as some acoustic material — is a lighter, more pop-infused work than his debut album, Youth. But, at the Scala, his fans greeted the fresh numbers, such as Live Like A Warrior, with almost as much enthusiasm as they did classics like Jerusalem.

The gig really took off only when the 33-year-old star emerged for his encore, which featured a rousing rendition of One Day — his biggest global hit to date — and ended with the star dancing alongside tzitzit-wearing fans plucked from the crowd.

The hat and beard may have gone, but Matisyahu’s popularity among this unique mix of gig-goers remains undimmed.

An exclusive acoustic version of ‘Live Like A Warrior’ can be watched
here.

Opera: Written on Skin

Stephen Pollard — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:49:39 +0000

After seeing Written on Skin, I have some idea what it must have been like to have been at the premiere of Peter Grimes. Just as Britten’s opera was immediately obvious as a masterpiece — and not just of British opera —so, too, George Benjamin’s work is a league above any other new opera I have seen.

From its first note to its last, through 90 riveting minutes, Written on Skin shows that reports of opera’s demise are nonsense. In the right hands, it can still be the most gripping of all performance media.

Benjamin’s score is at once exquisite, threatening, melodic and translucent. Better still, the match of music and libretto (by the playwright Martin Crimp) is not merely seamless but organic. And, as a theatrical performance, it is difficult to imagine anything more compelling.

The story is simple. A medieval landowner hires an illustrator to celebrate his life in a book. The landowner’s wife seduces the artist. The cuckold kills him and forces the wife to eat her lover’s heart. But that simplicity masks a wonderfully rich opera.

There are three performances left. Drop everything. Go. (www.roh.org.uk)

Jessie Ware is Brit awards nominee

Sandy Rashty — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 12:10:41 +0000

Singer-songwriter Jessie Ware has been nominated for two Brit awards.

The former JC intern, 26, is up for Best Female Solo Artist and British Breakthrough Act.

Ms Ware, who has received worldwide support for her Devotion album, said: “Canny believe it – very happy to be up for two [awards].”

Amy Winehouse is also up for a posthumous award for best British female. Ms Winehouse won the award in 2007 for her Back to Black album.

Alex Clare, 27, is also up for a Best British Single for his song “Too Close” which reached number four on the UK Singles Chart and featured in a Microsoft advert. He said he was "truly honoured".

Golders Green-based Mr Clare, who once dated Ms Winehouse, is observant. He does not perform on Shabbat and often travels to Jerusalem.

The Brit award 2013 winners will be announced next month at the O2 ceremony.

The Klezmatics on top form as JMI relaunches

Lawrence Joffe — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 12:15:14 +0000

Twenty-five years ago the Klezmatics were called the enfants terrible of the Jewish musical world.

Purists baulked at their alleged adulteration of east European klezmer. Others questioned their blending of leftist progressive politics with heimische Yiddish melodies.

A quarter of a century on, and the supposed rebels are justifiably hailed as the doyens of of 21st century klezmer (and a string of other genres).

In a sense they won the simple argument – Jewish diaspora music has always been an ever-changing mix of elements: by turns exuberant and poignant, eastern and western, a bastion of ancient traditions, yet open to the social changes of the day.

And while the Klezmatics are no longer all in the first bloom of youth, you couldn’t tell from the energetic and ever inventive performance at the Union Chapel in Islington.

Certainly the crowd seemed pleased. Talk about a portrait in contrasts. Some 900 music lovers queuing in London’s October drizzle, gamely suppressing the anxiety that they might miss what they were longing to see.

Then two-and-a half hours later they emerged with a collective spring in their step, smiling as if they had each been given a musical flu jab to overcome the winter blues.

The occasion marked a relaunch for another daring institution that has remoulded the way people view, or even define, Jewish music.

That body, of course, is Britain’s own Jewish Music Institute. The concert marked the official relaunch of the JMI, and the JMI’s newly appointed artistic director, Sophie Solomon, was as much performer as co-ordinator.

She leapt onto the stage, violin in hand, like a female avatar of Nigel Kennedy, full of verve and attitude and a total bodily immersion in the music.

The Klezmatics proved the perfect foil and got the audience clapping along to her syncopated tongue-in-cheek composition, Swing.

Supporting the Klezmatics was the locally based and rapidly rising Balkan band, Monooka’s Caravan, who recently delighted crowds at the JMI's Klezmer in the Park event.

In fact, their pairing with the ‘Matics was perfect, as their geographical soundscape of Bulgaria and Romania melds naturally with Bessarabia, the focal point of quintessential klezmer.

Led by the charming Romanian-born, London-based singer and puppeteer, Monooka (aka Monica Lucia Madas), the Caravan consists of dulcimer (or tsimbl) player Cristi Vasile , as well as Meg Hamilton (violin), Matt Bacon (guitar) and Paul Moylan (bass).

They opened with La Ciolpani, a medley of Jewish and Romanian song, then a light-hearted Cirip-Cirip.

Next came a fantastic duo of bass and voice in a traditional Transylvanian doina, though updated with some pretty funky bass manoeuvrings.

It showed off Monooka’s vocal range and inflections to full effect. Ottoman Turkish and Greek influences shone through in the old Romanian song, Lelita Saftita, while a Wallachian gypsy-flavoured Saraiman won applause for a bazouki-like solo on the guitar.

Duly warmed up, the audience knew they were in for something special when, after the break, Klezmatics drummer Richie Barshay beat out a fearsome syncopated tattoo, and got listeners to echo him.

Still just 29 and already a veteran of the Herbie Hancock Quartet, he set the stage for a haunting introductory doina on tsimbl by Paul Morrisset, accompanied by Matt Dariau on kaval (breathy Turkish flute).

Then came the band’s rousing favourite, Klezmorimlekh, followed by the haunting Davenen and the cheeky Kats unt Moyz.

Speaking after the concert, Frank London, co-bandleader and trumpeter extraordinaire - said that everything came together; the band was inspired by the audience’s receptiveness, the lively dancers, and not least the Chapel itself, whose subdued lighting and wonderful acoustics really matched the music.

Review: Leonard Cohen

Jenni Frazer — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 11:52:21 +0100

Ten years after he came down from his mountain-top Buddhist monastery, Leonard Cohen embarked, for financial reasons, on a series of concert tours whose astonishing success must have exceeded even his wildest expectations. From Tel Aviv to Tokyo, he plundered his back catalogue and played to ecstatic critics and audiences.

Last weekend he was back again with a two-night stint at Wembley Arena, this time promoting his latest album, Old Ideas. Call me jaundiced, but money may still be his prime motive, what with programmes at £15 and Leonard Cohen cufflinks at £40.

But the audience — undoubtedly the oldest ever to grace Wembley for a rock concert — was primarily composed of the faithful, and did not care.

More offputting was the fact that the entire show appeared so tightly scripted that there was little or no room for spontaneity. Thus I heard with some disappointment him making, on Sunday night, the identical apologies for the last-minute change of venue that I had read of him making on the previous evening.

In much the same way, his occasional songwriting collaborator, Sharon Robinson, is always “incomparable” while his singers, the Webb Sisters, are always “the sublime Hattie and Charlie Webb”. (Sublime indeed, but for some bizarre reason, performing synchronised somersaults on stage.)

But we had not come for the chat, but for the music. Effectively this was a reprise of the 2009 tour with three unfamiliar songs from the new album bolted on. The audience politely endured the new material and rapturously applauded the classics.

But it was a truly astonishing set for a man of nearly 78, delivering more than 30 songs in three hours, backed by a brilliant band, each member of which sported Cohen’s trademark fedora.
Best of all was the haunting The Partisan, sung in French and English. For this the entire ensemble moved forward on the stage, each playing an instrument — a gripping musical masterclass. Worth the price of admission alone.

Drake — the rap star who performs at barmitzvahs

Paul Lester — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 15:30:10 +0100

Aubrey Drake Graham, better known as Drake, is one of the world's most successful performers, and without doubt the most popular Jewish rapper/singer - his father, Dennis Graham, is an African-American musician from Memphis, but his mother, Sandi, is a Jewish Canadian.

He has achieved enormous success in the world of hip hop by being incredibly un-hip hop - instead of the usual tough-guy bravado he is unerringly sensitive and prone to self-doubt and, even as the 25-year-old enjoys the multi-millionaire, jet-set lifestyle, he takes great pains to make that lifestyle seem the cause for some soul-searching.

He has created a new paradigm for rap - the tormented solipsist, forever showing his emotions and scrutinising his actions. And in so doing he has divided opinion between those who believe the former teen TV star from an affluent suburb of Toronto is the antithesis of the authentic, street-wise hip hop hood, and those - not just screaming kids but serious music fans who love his melodies, which he raps and sings - who have been won over by him.

"There were people who incorporated melody before me," says Drake, talking backstage at the 02 in south-east London, where 18,000 people have converged to see him play the biggest concert of his career, "but I would deem myself the first person to successfully rap and sing."

He considers the question of his persona and agrees that: "Yes, there are aspects of it that are new in the rap world. But it's not a gimmick. I just sort of exist and people embrace it. I'm one of the few artists who gets to be himself every day. It doesn't take me six hours to get ready and I don't have to wake up in the morning and remember to act like this or talk like this. I just have to be me. That's one of the favourite parts of my life - I've done this purely by being myself."

But how much of his songs are we to believe? For example, on the opening track of his 2011 album Take Care, titled Over My Dead Body, he reveals that he performed at a barmitzvah to help pay for a friend's lawyer at a court case. Did this really happen?

"Well, I have a lot of brothers, people I consider family. That line in the song isn't false - I went and did what I had to do after one of my friends got into some legal trouble and it was very expensive and he was having trouble dealing with it."

Drake is famously proud of his Jewish roots. In April this year, amid tremendous publicity, he even had a "re-barmitzvah", footage of which was viewed by a million people on YouTube - "the most watched barmitzvah film clip in human history", as one website put it. But the idea that Drake - who has sold millions of records and was recently voted second-hottest rapper in the world by MTV, ahead of Jay-Z, and Kanye West - turned up at some random barmitzvah seems a little far-fetched.

"I did!" he says, laughing. "I actually went and did a barmitzvah for a family in New York. It was very nice, and they were an incredible family to deal with. I tried to edit out as much swearing as I could, and I loved it, man - the kids loved it, the parents loved it."

Presumably the guests were surprised to see him there? "They were pretty surprised. I came out from behind the DJ booth and started rocking… It was cool. It brought back memories - I've been to a lot of barmitzvahs in my life. I've never been to one like that, though. They shut down the whole street for this kid. They paid me a lot of money to come - they were very generous."

Does he make a habit of this kind of thing? My son turns 13 next March…

"I'd love to!" he says, and you could almost believe him. "If I'm in town, I'll do it - it'll be on the house."

Such a nice Jewish boy. And yet his music is complex. His songs show a young man suffering crises of conscience, often making bad choices, wracked with guilt and regret.

He highlights his song Marvin's Room, in which he describes his numerous sexual conquests, but not in the bragging way expected from hip hop artists. "That's me asking: 'Do I need to get a grip on my life?'," he says. "I have friends who are in committed relationships and spend all their time focused on one woman and I'm behaving like that! You start questioning your own morals. I'm 25 and single. I'm not supposed to care about deeper things right now, I'm supposed to be wild. But there are nights when you sit back and wonder, 'Damn, is this right?'"

He admits he worries about aspects of his personal life, including a very Jewish concern about how often he calls his mother.

"That's one of the things that plagues my mind. My relationship with my family. Am I talking to my mother enough? That kind of thing. Asking myself: 'Are you changing? Are you a different person?' Those are my issues now. If I wasn't famous I don't think those would be my issues at all. They would be: how am I going to support myself? I wouldn't be able to get any girl that I wanted. I wouldn't be travelling the world and I wouldn't be showered with all this affection."

Does he ever worry that he is in danger of suffering from Paradise Syndrome, where having everything you want induces misery and despair?

"No, no, no," he says. "It's not to the point where, like: 'Oh, now I have everything I want and I hate my life'. No, I'm happy."

The dilemma, of course, is that Drake has made his name, and his fortune, by expressing the sweet sadness of moral confusion. How to continue if he stays happy?

"I'm always looking for something else," he says, by way of reassurance, as he prepares to entertain 18,000 Londoners. "I'm always looking for what's beyond this point. Not to sound depressing or anything, but I don't just tell myself: 'Oh, everything's all good, man'. Life is good. But I'm not naive. Nothing is all good."

Opera: Verdi's Otello

Stephen Pollard — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 16:36:02 +0100

I have been spoilt by Carlos Kleiber. Nearly two decades ago, I heard him conduct Verdi’s Otello at the Royal Opera House and I know that, as long as I live, I will never hear anything that compares. The opening storm he conjured up (and yes, it was magic), when he made the orchestra sound as if the earth was opening up, was something beyond music.

I have since seen many wonderful Otellos. But none could ever come close for sheer visceral impact. Every note mattered.

When I say that this latest revival of Elijah Moshinsky’s production does not live up to that but is nonetheless a sensationally good, five-star performance, then it is the opposite of damning with faint praise.

Even to be mentioned in the same review as Kleiber’s Otello shows just how good it is.
In the pit, Sir Antonio Pappano unleashes a thrilling, dramatically taut account of the score — and masterminds a gripping drama. Nothing is wasted, with the three principals fully inhabiting their roles. Latvian tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko shows that there is life beyond Domingo. The vocal demands hold no fears and his is as fine a dramatic performance as I have seen this year. His confrontation with Desdemona in front of the Venetian ambassador was hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck thrilling.

Anja Harteros has cancelled more than she has sung recently, but she is worth the frustrations. This was a Desdemona at once mystified, angry, frightened, sweetly demure — and gloriously sung. With Lucio Gallo as a charismatic Iago, the casting is flawless. I cannot recommend this too highly.

The Chief Rabbi's House of Lords tribute to the Queen

Lord Jonathan Sacks — Thu, 31 May 2012 12:50:14 +0100

Many tributes have been and will be rightly paid to Her Majesty for the six decades of her sustained and dedicated service to the nation, but one in particular should not be forgotten.

It is not easy for any society to undergo change, least of all when that change touches on such fundamental markers of identity as religion, ethnicity and culture. It is even harder in a nation where there is an established church, to make the members of other faiths feel welcomed, valued and at home.

But that is precisely what her Majesty has done, and I believe I speak for all of us if I say that we are lifted, blessed and enlarged by the generosity of spirit in which she has done so. Many noble Lords will wish to add their perspectives, and we will be hearing today from Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Zoroastrian and other Jewish members of this house, as well as being honoured by the Most Reverend Primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, together with his predecessors, has done so much personally to contribute to our national ecology of tolerance and mutual respect.

Let me simply therefore say on behalf of the Jewish communities of Britain and the Commonwealth how much we have appreciated Her Majesty’s kindness to us and to others. This is something of a miracle in itself since Jews rarely agree on anything; but on this we are united. It is in fact astonishing how far this spreads. For the past year wherever I have travelled to Jewish communities throughout the world, one of the first questions I have been asked, is “How was the royal wedding?” And in the United States in several synagogues I visited in February of this year, to my astonishment, they sang “God save the Queen.” This may be the first time since 1776 they have done so. Each

week in all our synagogues we say a prayer for the Queen and the royal family, and this week we will be saying a special prayer of thanksgiving to mark Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee and the great gift of her leadership and service. There are rare individuals whose greatness speaks across all ethnic and religious divides. Her Majesty is such an individual and we are truly blessed by her.

She has spoken often of her personal faith and of the Church of England of which she is the head. But she has spoken equally of the contribution all other faith communities have made to the life of the nation. At Lambeth Palace, in February, in one of the first official engagements of the jubilee year, she reminded us of how faith itself, not just Christian faith, recalls us to the responsibilities we have beyond ourselves, and about how, together with the Church of England, other faith communities were increasingly active in helping the sick, the elderly, the lonely and the disadvantaged.

In 1952, in the first year of her reign, her majesty became the patron of the Council of Christians and Jews, the organisation founded ten years earlier, in the holocaust years, by Archbishop William Temple and Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz. That was one of the first great interfaith organisations in Britain, and today there are hundreds of such groups, creating friendships across the boundaries between faiths, where otherwise there might have been suspicion and fear.

One of the greatest of them, the Interfaith Network, is this year celebrating its silver jubilee; and as we speak, another new initiative, Interfaith Explorers, is being launched at the Regents Park Mosque in the presence of His Royal Highness the Duke of York. That too is a reminder of how greatly other members of the Royal family like His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and others, have done in their own right to make all nine of the major faith communities in Britain feel recognised and respected.

We are enriched by our religious diversity. Each faith is a candle; none is diminished by the light of others; and together they help banish some of the darkness in the human heart. I know of few places in the world where friendship across faiths is more vigorously pursued than Britain; and for the way she has led and encouraged this great opening of hearts and minds to one another, as for so much else, Her Majesty has lifted our spirits and earned our thanks.

Opera: Falstaff is a Royal Opera House must-see

Stephen Pollard — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:20:07 +0100

If I could give this new production of Falstaff 50 stars, I would. Verdi’s last opera is as close to perfection as music gets, and Robert Carsen’s 1950s update does it justice. Carsen clearly loves Falstaff and wants only to share that love with the audience.

Ambrogio Maestri’s world-class Falstaff apart, the cast is not top notch. But it does not matter because as an ensemble they are glorious. And in the pit, Daniel Gatti lets the music breathe. A must-see. (020 7304 4000)