The Chemical Brothers review – mesmerising barrage of thunder and lighting | Chemical Brothers

Bad-trip visuals … The Chemical Brothers.

Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons are indistinct within a looming ring of keyboards, drum machines, laptops and mixers. It isn’t clear, through darkness and dry ice, what precisely they are doing to conjure the mesmeric […]

Billy Bragg: The Roaring Forty review – four decades of flying the flag | Music

The artwork for The Roaring 40.

In his 2010 history of protest music, 33 Revolutions Per Minute, Guardian writer Dorian Lynskey makes a bold claim about Billy Bragg: “If you ask someone to name a British protest singer,” he writes, “there […]

Gilberto Gil review – farewell London concert for a joyful musical great | Pop and rock

Celebratory mood … Gilberto Gil.

Political prisoner, exiled psych-rock idol, reggae pioneer, cabinet minister, reality TV star … the English-speaking world really doesn’t have an equivalent of the Brazilian polymath Gilberto Gil. Aged 81, he has declared that this show […]

Yussef Dayes review – London jazz linchpin delivers a masterful set | Jazz

Ferocious beats … Yussef Dayes.

Few drummers hit faster or with more dynamic control than Yussef Dayes. Over the past decade, the south London-based musician has become a guiding light for rhythm sections looking to blend jazz improvisation with the […]

Review: Queen + Adam Lambert bring ‘The Rhapsody Tour’ to Madison Square Garden

Queen + Adam Lambert

Queen + Adam Lambert. Photo Credit: Bojan Hohnjec On Friday, October 13, Queen + Adam Lambert performed at Madison Square Garden in New York City. This marked their second consecutive show at The Garden as […]

‘Dreamin’ Wild’ review: Tuneful Casey Affleck shines darkly

Two men embrace and smile.

Late-blooming recognition becomes both a blessing and a sideways needle scratch for the aspirations of a struggling singer-songwriter played by an epically downbeat Casey Affleck in director Bill Pohlad’s sweetly melancholic “Dreamin’ Wild.” A well-cast, […]

Twisted Metal review: Peacock’s PlayStation adaptation isn’t so twisted

Anthony Mackie’s John Doe and Stephanie Beatriz’s Quiet are assembled with a group of wasteland raiders in front of a speaker just off-screen in the Peacock series Twisted Metal

Allow me to free associate for a moment. Twisted Metal is a funny show. Not ha-ha funny, like a clown. But there is a clown. The kind that thinks murder is funny. This is also […]

Womad review – more music festivals need this vitality, daring and breadth | Womad

Mariza.

In a crowded festival marketplace that nevertheless often cleaves to a relatively timid and tight crop of British, European and American artists, Womad provides a vital yearly reminder of the breadth of the planet’s music. […]

Lance Gurisik: Cull Portal review – drones, drums and disruptive drama | Music

The artwork for Cull Portal

Cull Portal slowly mutates in various directions. Analogue synths burble; intense meditative improvisations develop on the piano; pastoral string sections fade in and grow more harmonically complex; wispy saxophones spray modal jazz riffs over coruscating […]