Live

He who shouts loudest, shouts the longest. As the video for the Shout Out Louds’ The Comeback is nominated for a Swedish grammy, Adam and his guitar hungry chums bait the Cockpit with a moog and some hillbilly-chic. You know it’s going to be a good night when the first band on (Leeds’ very own Being 747) forsake the usual ‘How ya doing, Leeds? I can’t hear you!’ for a sober announcement that they are here for health and safety Continue Reading

Grand and expansive veterans of widescreen loveliness dress down in t-shirts and jeans for an evening of precise and perfectly pitched awkwardness. James Berry stumbles forward.09/06/2005 E, possibly America’s most celebrated depressive, almost didn’t make it here tonight, he got so worn down by the prospect of touring that he made plans to stay still for a long while. But here he is, because an emotional masochist can change one’s mind, up on the Royal Festival Hall’s buffed, hallowed boards, Continue Reading

James Berry joins the band floating in zero gravity for a spot of beautifully unpretentious alt-country with a kinky shell. I think that’s what he said, anyway. 04/05/2005 They’re so bloody elusive, New York’s infamous alt-ethereal duo Joy Zipper, to the point of being a mythical construct. Crud missed the start of the set (hey, don’t blame us – blame the mad chap in a wheelchair blocking traffic on Charing Cross Road) but they may as well have seeped in Continue Reading

With an explosion of hard-wearing beats and piercing blue light it begins. James Berry finds the truth is in there, not out there. Where? The Brixton Academy. 12/04/2005 Say what you like about Doves. Call them lumbering and gloomy and dour, label them Manchester-lite, try and make them cry a bit if you can by accusing them of sporting the latest in dustbinman chic. But you just don’t start a gig with three of your best songs (containing indeed 2 Continue Reading

From a scuzz ‘n’ roll accident just waiting to happen to strobing spotlights of hope – The Kills tango with James Berry down the Electric Ballroom.22/02/2005 Relatively speaking it’s got to be up there with the first time Pink Floyd gave the national grid a coronary with a lights display to rival creation itself. Or the kind of set-up Jean Michelle Jarre probably has in his front room. Of course not literally, don’t be so bloody ridiculous. But as Hotel Continue Reading

Tongue-tied and humbled by a vision of rare beauty, James Berry eventually probes beyond the restless demeanour (and tits) of Leila Moss to observe eight-rumbling thwacks of something almost as pleasing. 09/02/2005 There she stands then, dead centre stage, cutting tall outstretched figures with her curiously bendy frame, ever-restless demeanour, ray-gun stare, and most importantly that crystal voice. Leila Moss is a quite remarkable front-woman, immediately stealing the attention of a thousand wandering eyes leaves little doubt of that. But Continue Reading

Natasha crawls the urban landscape of Northampton and above all else, looks sharp.02/12/2004 I used to think that being stuck at a garage/hip hop concert would feel like being stuck between my usual comforting rock and a hard (core) place (ho ho). But dodgy metaphors aside, I’m not often right, and I was wrong again. Zane Lowe’s “equal rights in music” motto has not only taken him across the country but across polar opposites of music – from the baggy Continue Reading

Something a bit classy. Something a little grand. Rebounding off walls, James Berry indulges the hype of the ‘light.06/09/2004 Stage-centre there’s a man wearing a smile the size of the Astoria’s incongruous, space-age sound desk eyesore, and twice as shiny. This man isn’t Johnny Borrell, because this man isn’t too cool for such emotional niceties. No, this man is full of soul and so genuinely ice-frickin-cold he can’t help but beam, widely. It’s out of his hands. His facial state Continue Reading

With a simple turn of phrase and a precious larynx to turn it, ex-Breeder, Belly and Throwing Muse, Tanya Donelly lulls James Berry into a false sense of security only to strip him naked.10/08/2004 She begins tonight’s performance in exactly the same way as she begins her sumptuous and still new record, with ‘Divine Sweet Divide’; unoppressive piano, a whole lot of close open space and words that flutter from her tongue toward the dusty horizon like petals lifted effortlessly Continue Reading