Review: Lana Del Rey live at the Glasgow SECC

I am a huge Lana fan and bought my ticket for this show in the pre-sale as soon as they were released back in November, even so I’ve never been entirely sure what to expect from it. The videos I have watched of her performing live have varied from straight up good in a ‘normal’ way to idiosyncratic but wonderful to (being polite) endearingly shonky so I had braced myself somewhat for her being charming but possibly hit and miss. She has also often appeared terribly nervous live and I was worried how she would fare playing her first proper tour after previously having played small venues like Oran Mor - and that was *before* they moved it from the mid sized venue I was already slightly concerned about being too big for her to the even bigger SECC.. I was *this* close to not going when it it was first announced because I was completely convinced she would be dwarfed by such a large, characterless venue never mind the kind of transient, usually drunk crowds that always seem more prevalent at arenas..

Let’s just say I’m very, very glad I was talked out of it.

Whether it’s down to her live performances getting better, her being more comfortable playing to ‘her’ crowd, having a really good sound system with her voice way up in the mix or a combination of all of these things she absolutely tamed the venue with no problem at all - and it’s worth pointing out that we were up in the bleachers so it’s not a front-row only perspective.

It definitely helped that the stage had a lovely trptych / boudoir set which along with good lighting and beautiful, thematic backdrop videos playing throughout the show gave a nice visual boost and set an evocative atmosphere, allowing her to  concentrate on singing with it to frame her.

However, I was also surprised by how warm her stage presence was and how much she interacted with her fans. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone else sign autographs one-handed whilst singing and still looking totally  composed and elegant before! Not to mention her going round the entire front row at the end - but more of that later..

There was also that lovely feeling you get sometimes of watching an artist at that point where they are first realising how successful they are now. 

Far from being patchy or disappointing I loved every moment of the show and it flew past too quickly. I will without a doubt go and see her again.

Blow by Blow

Opening / Cola

The moment I saw the cool blue curtains with the silhouettes of palm trees swaying on them I felt I was beamed straight into one of her songs, even more so when they were pulled back to reveal the full set. Palm trees, stone lions, a huge golden triptych style frame, a string quartet and a luxurious golden chandelier. 

Only Lana could open a show after a 5 minute, dramatic instrumental build up with the line ‘my pussy tastes like pepsi cola’ and get away with it. Great choice for an opener and within a verse I knew EVERYTHING WOULD BE OK.

Body Electric / Blue Jeans

Body electric had some great backdrops with the Elvis / Marilyn / Jesus lyric as the jumping off point and this was when I realised how well the show was going to use those visual elements too. 

Blue Jeans was the first song where you could really hear the audience singing every word and she seemed genuinely quite bowled over by it.

Born To Die

This was the first real show stopper for me and after a slightly nervous looking start (the first line of that song always seems to give her the fear for some reason) blossomed into an absolutely beutiful number.

Carmen

Carmen is my second least favourite of her songs (Diet Mountain Dew is the first) and I generally skip it but I did enjoy it much more live. Still, there are other songs I would have rather heard.

Blue Velvet

Just mesmerising and lit, of course, completely in blue. I’m a sucker for a good cover and this was wonderful. She also sung a fabulous bit of Knockin’ on Heaven’s door at one point but I’m having trouble remembering exactly when..

American

After torturing us by wondering out loud whether to play Gods & Monsters or American she settled on American. Gods & Monsters is my favourite of her songs so I was slightly gutted we didn’t get both (especially when she did Carmen) but American is a big favourite of mine too so the wound was immediately salved. It also eneded with her singing the words ‘like a Glaswegian’ which was.. surreal.

Without You / Young and Beautiful

Both of these were great and Y&B was clearly hugely popular with the crowd. I wasn’t much of a fan of the song when it first came out but it’s grown on me and seeing it live has cemented that.

Ride / Summertime Sadness

The spoken word intro video for Ride was played on the screens giving her a break offstage and setting the mood for arguably her ‘best’ song to date. She always sings this well I’ve noticed and last night was no exception. It’s such a powerful song and I found myself ‘pure greetin’ (as they say in the weedge) through the second half of Ride and most of Summertime Sadness. I do have a tendency to howl at these kind of things so take it with a pinch of salt but I did find her performance in general pretty emotional and moving throughout the night.

Burning Desire / Video Games

The backdrop for Burning Desire was this rather heady, pulsing redness and it was all a bit hot under the collar for three and a half minutes. Video Games was another big singalong moment and oddly joyous for such a melancholic song.

National Anthem

The song itself was fabulous and the perfect closer (there was no encore) being as it is quite uplifting for a Lana song but, for me, one of the most interesting parts of the evening came after she finished singing as she descended to the crowd and made her way, signing autographs and taking photos with, it seemed, every person in the front row while the band played out an instrumental string version of the song. All through this there was this wonderful grainy, black and white footage of it being shown on the screens.

I’m not cynical enough to believe she didn’t genuinely want to give something back to her fans but it was also one of the most effective moments of self mythologising I’ve witnessed. It was like being in a room with living, breathing vintage footage of a Hollywood star disembarking graciously at an airport and I couldn’t help thinking ‘how Lana, how perfect, how good is this going to look on the DVD..’

The crib notes

Don’t expect dance routines and costume changes but do expect to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with Lana.

Review: Bloodsports by suede

So.. yes, it’s taken me over a month to sit down and write this review and I’m sure by this point no-one actually cares any more but here we are anyway.. The main reason it’s taken me so long is that although the overriding feeling of the album appealed to me and a few songs were instant I had the distinct suspicion that several of the slower songs would be growers and I wanted to give the album as a whole a chance to percolate before I wrote a review knowing that if I didn’t I would probably completely change my mind about half of it after I had written it.

My initial impressions of the tone of the album were favourable - I really like the way Brett has been using his voice in more recent years. Despite loving the album the more years that have passed since Coming Up the less fond I get of the plastic-glam pitch of the vocals and I don’t think anyone misses the Oasis rasp even if it did work well on a few songs like One Hit To The Body. The sound of the vocals on Bloodsports (and indeed the feel of the album) is closest to Brett’s last solo album Black Rainbows - an album I’m very fond of and has probably increased in my estimation quite a bit since my initial 7/10 review of it. The album as a whole feels full and ballsy but, unusually for suede not petulant. Also, apart from a couple of Brett-by-numbers moments it has continued the trend of his solo albums in having far, far better lyrics than latter day suede and Tears songs.

I also love the way everything sounds SO LOUD. I’m not very techy so I can’t tell you what I mean by that in production terms but everything just seems to BURST OUT of the songs.

The thing that threw me off about the album when I first started listening to it was the very strange way it is divided almost half and half into uptempo and downtempo songs which resulted in me often listening to first half only and ignoring the difficult ‘side 2’.

The lightbulb moment for me was this interview quote:

The album was conceived as a journey from the start to the end of a relationship, taking on all the points in between - suspicion, obsession, infatuation, co-dependency.

The second I read that not only did I think it was kind of a nice idea for an album but the record suddenly made perfect sense and just clicked with me. Now that difficult second half feels like a necessary bookend to the more familiar territory of the pop-rock tracks about emotional infatuation and sexual desire.

On first listen I probably would have given the album a 6/10 tops but I’d say now after getting under it’s skin a bit I’m going to come out with a much higher mark. I’ve really fallen for it and although I think Black Rainbows is probably more consistently satisfying as a whole I’m really happy with this album as if not a ‘comeback’ at least a forage into slightly new territory.

Track by track:

Barriers

I really liked this song straight away. It has a nice meaty rhythm and a big punchy chorus. It does also, as many have said, have a bit of a stadium rock Simple Minds thing going on.

8/10

Snowblind

This was another of my instant favourites. It starts with an even more Simple Minds opening followed by a Coming Up esque ‘oooh oooh’ but the body of the song is like a slightly more macho, aggressive version of some of the Coming Up era rockers wrapped around another big, loud stadium chorus.

8/10

It starts and ends with you

I pretty much hated it when it was released but much like The Stars (are out tonight) it works much better for me in the context of the album than elevated to a single. Again like Stars it’s, in my opinion, the weakest track on the album. What is with that? Second-single-itus?

6/10

Sabotage

I love the oppressive, moody feel of this song and it builds towards a very satisfying ending although the chorus is a little weak. It seems to be a bit more loved by fans than I think it’s due but it’s a decent enough album track.

7/10

For the strangers

I love this song. Swoony and gorgeous.

8/10

Hit me

Swagger. Next single. Fucking love it. Can’t wait to hear it live.

Hit me is really close to being suede-by-numbers but then it does these melodic twists you weren’t expecting.

9/10

Sometimes I feel I’ll float away

I swear I’m not being hyperbolic when I say I honestly think this is my favourite suede song since Coming Up, and in honesty is probably better than a good portion of that album.

Lyrics like

Let me take you through each stage of the male mistake
And we’ll adopt our natural roles

and

All the plans were made
In the wooded glade
Where your body was split wide open
And I count to ten
As the race begins
Round your hairpin bends

are very un-suede but somehow still perfectly ‘right’. The guitar towards the end makes *me* feel like I’ll float away. The album would have been worth buying for me if it was just this song repeated twelve times.

10/10

What are you not telling me?

The song on the album most reminiscent of Brett solo. Paranoid and slightly bitter, the turning point of the album into the second half.

8/10

Always

Melodically reminiscent of some of the more downbeat coming up era b-sides but there are some instrumentation flourishes that call to mind Dog Man Star slowies like Wild Ones.

7/10

Faultlines

I’m in the odd minority of suede fans that really likes A New Morning (I’m not sure even the band are that keen) but I love this song because it’s like the best of the slow songs on ANM like Untitled.. or When the Rain Falls but just so much darker and tougher. The end feels almost positive, I think? But it’s quite ambiguous.

8/10

Overall:

It’s an odd album with the last three songs being a tough ride if you’re not in the mood but persistence pays off and there are treasures to be found.

8.5 / 10

Not Tomorrow: Review - The Next Day by David Bowie

Here I am not quite dying

My body left to rot in a hollow tree

Its branches throwing shadows on the gallows for me

And the next day

And the next

And another day

It’s been noted elsewhere that anyone expecting an elegiac album of mournful slowies after the red herring release of ‘Where are we now’ was in for a surprise. The Next Day is an album positively drenched in the death rattle but it’s not the melancholic last hurrah of an ageing rocker eyeballing his future, it’s something far darker and more complex than that.

Lyrically at least The Next Day is easily Bowie’s bleakest album to date. He has often dealt with similar themes - suicide, death, murder, apocalypse even - but mostly in a glamourised, romanticised or pithy way. There are moments such as The Motel or Slip Away that are somber and intense but I’m not sure he has before produced a body of lyrics with such unrelenting harshness. There are flashes of wit and humour but you only need to compare something like the swooningly tragic Rock & Roll Suicide to the sheer venom of You Feel So Lonely You Could Die to feel the shift. Even the two popiest sounding songs on the album (I’d Rather Be High and Valentine’s Day) contain lyrics like:

I stumble to the graveyard and I lay down by my parents, whisper ‘Just remember duckies everybody gets got’

and

It’s in his tiny face

It’s in his scrawny hand

It’s in his icy heart

—

It’s tempting with any artist, especially one as shifting and enigmatic as Bowie to try and read biographical confession into song lyrics and certainly with Where Are We Now that seemed all to easy to do - the notion of a sad, elderly David ‘just walking the dead’ around Berlin seemed both plausible and poignant - but realigned within the context of the album it takes on a whole new flavour. With it’s cast of characters ranging from 17 year old soldiers to dying aged despots this is an album firmly written in the second person. Sure, like any art it must ultimately say something about the artist but transparent autobiography it certainly isn’t. This is nothing new for Bowie of course - his transparently autobiographical moments are scarce and many of those that I assumed to be such melted into storytelling for me on closer inspection. He wears many masks and he has always worn them well.

Musically the album is closest in the Bowie canon to the other jagged edges of his career - Scary Monsters, Outside, Earthling, the darker recesses of Heroes and Heathen - only the second single The Stars (are out tonight) recalls Reality and is, perversely, my least favourite track on the album.

Despite the fact I have literally not stopped playing it since it came out it’s taken me until now to tackle a review because there is just so much to digest, and I still feel like I’m only just scratching the surface. This will be an album I listen to for a long time to come. Bravo Mr Bowie.

——-

Finally here’s my track by track for anyone who wants it:

The Next Day

Listen to the whores he tells her

He fashions paper sculptures of them

Then drags them to the river‘s bank in the cart

Their soggy paper bodies wash ashore in the dark

A stomping, beastly little introduction to the album where the words ‘the next day’ turn out to sound more like a threat than any kind of hopeful forward thinking that the album title might have suggested. The bit where he shrills ‘They scream my name aloud down into the well below’ puts a shiver down my spine.

9/10

Dirty Boys

You’ve got to learn to hold your tongue

This ain’t the moon this is burnin’ sun

Slinky and sexy with some lovely sax. Reminiscent of songs like Sweet Thing, Candidate and John, I’m only dancing this was an instant favourite for me. It seemed immediately like it had been in my life forever. An old friend seen in a new light.

9/10

The Stars (Are Out Tonight)

We will never be rid of these stars

But I hope they live forever

Musically this is the only track I feel is a little weak, although that’s comparative and I certainly enjoy it a lot more within the album than as a single. It has some great vocal moments and a fabulous video too.

6/10

Love Is Lost

It’s the darkest hour, you’re twenty two

The voice of youth, the hour of dread

The darkest hour and your voice is new

Love is lost, lost is love

Your country’s new

Your friends are new

Your house and even your eyes are new

Your maid is new and your accent too

But your fear is as old as the world

This song is just, I’m not sure what to say.. perfect? A brooding, gothic suicide note that breaks unexpectedly and confusingly into a seemingly uplifting middle eight before turning back in on itself as though that moment were an hallucination - a false promise leading towards a foolish act. ‘Oh, what have you done? Oh, what have you done?’

10/10

Where Are We Now?

Had to get the train from Potsdamer Platz

You never knew that I could do that

Someone who was once far too important to simply take the train finds himself now shuffling the streets of Germany. Maybe Mr Bowie, maybe not.

9/10

Valentine’s Day

Valentine told me how he’d feel

If all the world were under his heel

There is little affection from the author for the characters that inhabit The Next Day and the would-be tyrant depicted in Valentine’s Day is no exception. I can’t help picturing a small man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, perhaps a little like Michael Douglas in Falling Down, about to finally let us all know exactly what he has to say.

8/10

If You Can See Me

Now you could say I’ve got a gift of sorts

A fear of rear windows and swinging doors

A love of violence a dread of sighs

If you can see me I can see you

If you can see me I can see you

The song on the album most reminiscent of the best bits of Earthling. This one kind of gives me the willies. In a good way.

8/10

I’d Rather Be High

The Thames was black, the tower dark

I flew to Cairo, find my regiment

City’s full of generals

And generals full of shit

This was one of the first songs to click with me and I still can’t listen to it once through without hitting replay at the end. Deceptively perky sounding with lines like ‘I’d rather smoke and phone my ex, be pleading for some teenage sex’ jumping out on first listen. I’ve seen it interpreted as a kind of looking-back-on-being-young song when on closer listen it’s nothing of the sort.

9/10

Boss of Me

You look at me and you weep for the free blue sky

Not a skip track by any means but the only song I haven’t quite connected with yet. A decent album track but nothing as arresting as the rest of the album tracks.

6/10

Dancing Out in Space

Something like religion

Dancing face to face

Something like a drowning

Dancing out in space

The only song that teeters close to something glammy and a little silly sounding. A small oasis of fun, albeit abstract and slightly cryptic fun.

7/10

How Does the Grass Grow

There’s a graveyard by the station where the girls wear nylon skirts

I love this song. Not just because it has a chorus that goes ‘Blood blood blood’ followed by a backing ‘la la la’ that sounds almost exactly like that bit in Gremlins 2 where they get melted while singing New York, New York and doing the conga. Not just because of that, but it’s definitely got a lot to do with it.

8/10

(You Will) Set the World on Fire

From Bitter End to Gaslight

Baez leaves the stage

Ok so, the fact that the opening chords totally remind me of the Beverly Hills 90210 theme tune is my problem and mine alone. Other than that it’s the sole song with a more conventional Bowie/Fame motif. A pep-talk-come-warning for the promise of success in the vein of Opportunities by The Pet Shop Boys via Eno’s Baby’s on Fire.

7/10 

You Feel So Lonely You Could Die

I can see you as a corpse hanging from a beam

I could read you like a book

I can feel you falling

I hear you moaning in your room

Oh, see if I care

Oh, please, please make it soon

A claustrophobically dark vignette wishing loneliness and death on a malevolent and unlikeable soul - with swooning Spectorish backing vocals. Nasty stuff. In the best possible way.

10/10

Heat

My father ran the prison

But I am a seer, I am a liar

Another instant favourite, Heat is a clear nod to Bowie’s long-time musical bedfellow Scott Walker with shades of Outside and Heathen mixed in. A somber and downbeat ending that leaves you feeling both satisfied and bewildered.

And I tell myself, I don’t know who I am

And I tell myself, I don’t know who I am

10/10

Overall:

10/10

Review: Stoker

There are films which are, as the reviewer’s favorite phrase goes, style over substance and there are films where the style *is* the substance.

Stoker is an almost entirely visual film - it could quite easily have no dialogue and be not much worse for it, although when there is dialogue it mostly lyrical, witty and worth the wait. Even the score punctuates the film sparsely but effectively.

This is a film that’s all about watching.

It is dovetailed by India’s monologue about how she sees things no-one else does. It’s voyeuristic in almost every possible sense. The characters watching each other through doors, windows, stolen glances and those long, stalkerish tracking shots at the wake. In Charlie’s case even watching India through the years themselves. 

The symbolism of sneaking a peak at something through locked drawers, photographs and letters is everywhere. 

And of course the way the viewer’s gaze is firmly positioned as the voyeur during both erotic and violent moments, the two blurring into each other on more than one occasion.

Like a lot of my favorite books and films Stoker is pregnant with unsaid things, sexual tensions, violent secrets - the truths (if there are any) are in the gaps between what happens rather than the plot itself. Like the empty seat at the piano it could all just be a mirage, or a specter - like the vampiric connotation of the family name. Everything is submerged between a somnambulistic, dreamy funk - personified in the moments Nicole Kidman’s character half-knows what lies beneath her family, both literally and metaphorically.

I can understand why this film is dividing critics and viewers alike because it’s a strange combination of over-the-top pot boiler and microscopic emotional minutiae at the same time. The performances are all a restrained kind of camp found almost exclusively in old noir thrillers and whilst the cinematography, set and costumes are lush and seductive it’s an iron fist in a velvet glove. It has one foot in ‘pretty’, one foot in ‘difficult’ and a more than slightly dubious moral compass - It’s a lovingly filmed  spider on young girl’s inner thigh. Needles to say it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m happy to say I loved it.

Overall: 9/10

The Future Is Now (Review: Black Mirror & Utopia)

I had planned on writing reviews of both Black Mirror and Utopia separately but I can’t help thinking about one when I think of the other. Two British, dark, dystopian series running concurrently with surely a very similar audience.

On paper Black Mirror covers areas that appeal to me more than Utopia - pop culture, media hysteria, and in particular, Brooker’s obsession with the frisson point between technology and human emotion. Utopia on the other hand sounds at it’s base level like a classic paranoid conspiracy theory. Even the titles would have me gravitating towards Black Mirror first - suggesting it’s as much about who we *are* as who we might become.

And yet Utopia succeeded in almost every way that Black Mirror has near-consistently failed me.

I’m not sure that the issue with Black Mirror lies entirely in the writing - the thing it is sold on - as the uneven execution. The drastic difference in stylistic tempos from episode to episode (and director to director) really is it biggest weakness for me. While ‘The Entire History of You’ (the absolute standout episode of the series for me, and in fairness probably good enough to justify the rest of the episodes on it own), ‘National Anthem’ and ‘Be Right Back’ were all directed with a sure, mature hand ‘White Bear’ and ‘15 Million Merits’ were both so cheap looking and broadly directed that they felt more like slightly off cbeebies shows than anything being broadcast on late night Channel 4. 

That said some of the ideas felt so slight and barely fleshed out (National Anthem surely was not much more than a good Brass Eye sketch?) that they buckled under the weight of the 45 minutes running time.

None of this would bother me if I didn’t think there was something there. Black Mirror is, or at least should be,  exactly the kind of show we need to be producing more of in the UK and it’s frustrating to see it fall short of the mark.

Thankfully this frustration has been greatly salved by Utopia dropping it’s grinning yellow bag of death next to our feet.

What can I say without sounding like a fawning idiot?

Brutal, beautifully filmed and perfectly cast it’s everything I could have hoped for from it, and a little bit more. If I have any criticism it’s that I had hoped for a clean one series and out ending (it was obviously well plotted through a proper story arc so it was definitely possible) and instead it left me feeling a little cheated in the final moments. However, that’s a small price to pay for the series that preceded it.

I won’t say much more in this review because it’s exactly the kind of show that will be spoiled by knowing too much about it so I’l just round off by urging you to catch up with it on 4OD if you haven’t seen it yet.

Black Mirror:

The National Anthem - 6/10

15 Million Merits - 2/10

The Entire History of You - 10/10

Be Right Back - 5/10

White Bear - 3/10

The Waldo Moment - 4/10

—

Overall: 6/10

Utopia:

Overall: 9/10

Review: Les Miserables

Let’s just start off by saying that the ticket price is worth it for the three minutes that the camera is trained on Anne Hathaway’s face as she re-writes the book on how to perform I Dreamed a Dream alone. The word ‘mesmerizing’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.

That out of the way I think this stage to screen adaptation is on the whole an absolute triumph. Taking advantage of the opportunities for both large sweeping vistas and claustrophobic close-ups that the stage cannot offer Tom Hooper has directed this in a way that adds to the stage production rather than simply recreates it. It does at points creep into being a little visually overblown for my taste (Lovely Ladies being most notable) but this is offset by the fact that, being pure melodrama at heart, most of the cast spend the film makeup-less and crying!

I heard some early reports that the soundtrack sounded disappointing and / or bad and having now seen it I can understand why. Much of the score is sung / acted as oposed to belted the way you have to do in the theatre to reach the back. I’m not sure it will be a score I will want to sit and listen to much but performing it this way was so, so much more interesting to watch.

However, as you may have heard, it has to be said that Russel Crowe’s voice is frankly completely honking. It’s such a shame because I was really excited by his casting and while physically he looks the part not only is his singing not up to scratch but he also looks seriously out of his depth much of the time too. This is a *real* shame because not only does he sing two of my favorite songs in the show but , despite Hugh Jackman acting his socks off, it also impacted negatively on the central relationship between Jean Val Jean and Javert for me. (Whilst I’m being critical I also wish they had left the Thénardiers reprise in the sewers while they were looting the dead - it’s such an eerie scene in the stage show and a lovely dark mirror to the earlier number - but that’s a minor grumble.)

Thankfully there was so much else to enjoy (and it’s a credit to how good the rest of the cast were) that this didn’t in any way ruin the film for me. In the past I’ve never been that interested in either the Marius / Cossette plot or Fantine but both of these stories really flourish in the film. Amada Seyfried just gets more adorable by the day and Heart Full Of Love was particularly beautiful despite being a song I’ve never much cared for before. The surprising standout for me though was Aaron Tveit who I literally couldn’t take my eyes off and lit up the scenes centered around the revolution.

So, yes, on the whole an absolute knockout, and as a big fan of the show a huge relief. Do catch it in the cinema if you can. Take a box of tissues and a cold compress when you go though ;)