Bob Dylan - Live in Cardiff 2022 Review

Originally printed in Quench. This was a bit of a rush job, had a lot on at the time, so apologies if not up to my usual standard. 

I arrived at Cardiff International Arena to see a crowd weaved around the block. Before long, we were all hushed inside, locking our phones inside a pouch, and waiting with bated breath for that evening’s sell-out performance. It was almost spiritual. Many had arrived in t-shirts - including myself - adorned with images of the act, who had not performed in Cardiff in over a decade, throughout his sixty-year career; some highpoints including as a folk-troubadour, the electric bohemian, and the rolling thunder rocker. Times have been a-changing, although there were no signs of the difficulties with live performance that comes with being eighty-one years old. The performance was such a credit to Bob Dylan that the body of work surrounding his latest record, ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’, is well deserving of joining the ranks of his greatest periods. 

The Feeling - Live Review

Originally printed in Quench Magazine 

The Y Plas audience for The Feeling waited with bated breath for the band’s first appearance in Cardiff in some years. This was responded to very well on stage – it began with a special harmony-laden fanfare of Fill My Little World rich with atmosphere. It sounded like an off cut from The Beach Boys’ Smile Sessions, a piece of pop genius, alongside lots of enigmatic spotlights. Before too long, the band came on stage, led by lead singer and songwriter Dan Gillespie Sells.

'ELVIS' (2022) - Film Review

Originally printed in Quench Magazine

One of America’s greatest heroes has finally got the awe-inspiring cinema treatment he deserved. ‘ELVIS’ is an electric tribute to a masterful showman, flying by despite its well-over two-hour runtime. Directed by Baz Luhrmann in his colourfully kaleidoscopic style, it is very much as theatrical as Elvis’ awesome performances – it looks ‘Walk Hard’ or ‘Spinal Tap’ dead in the eye, doubling down on the now-permeated musical biopic tropes with little subtlety, the most sensational of these being the intensely dramatic moment where the Colonel discovers Elvis is white. Luckily, the ‘Luhrmannisms’ calm down around the half-hour mark as Austin Butler takes the spotlight. He too is sensational. He transforms into the King and has it all – the look, the moves, and even the voice: Austin sings Elvis’ first records with gusto. His quivering hip-shakes are instantly as exciting as the real thing. What a perfect piece of casting – you can tell Butler understands the importance of this role to millions upon millions and gives it his all. 

Beyonce - RENAISSANCE (2022) - Album Review

Originally published in Gair Rhydd

Beyonce restabilises herself in the pop landscape by reaching back to its world long before she arrived. With the confidence and ability to go beyond her traditional 90s house jams, Beyonce has created a nonstop extravaganza inspired by the dance culture forged by black and queer pioneers in the 1970s and beyond. I feel Kendrick Lamar has raised the bar for contemporary hip hop production on albums such as 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly - she more or less reaches this standard, not dramatically, but it's fine. There’s an fun approach to everything going on behind the words, with what sounds like a theremin during THIQUE a particularly good earworm. The songs zip around so often, with excellent transitions between, it’s akin to the sensations of a DJ set, though this gets weary not played in a party atmosphere.

The Complete Radio Show Collection

Every single radio show I've ever recorded - free and available to stream instantly! 

Clubbing at "The Pink Toothbrush"

Last Friday I went to my local nightclub, called The Pink Toothbrush. Being granted the ability to indulge in my local (albeit limited) nightlife after my entire 18th year stifled by A Level misery in lockdown was hugely enticing. The venue had taken on a near-mystical quality as a child, only glimpsed inside if you could make it during the Christmas lights switch-on, forever knowing it had once been called 'Crocs' and gave a home to real alligators. As you get older you find you have a lot more things organised, and so I received my second jab beforehand, shuffled through a converted pharmacy. Oddly, there was a print-out of Madonna's Ray of Light stuck to the wall, which I realised must've been my kindly doctor's favourite album. I felt astounded and inspired in equal measure by this presentation of sheer confidence in his personal taste, his Madonna fandom for all the village to see, defying all stereotypes and popular critical opinion. If he had blu-tacked OK Computer or Dark Side of The Moon, he wouldn't have been nearly as cool. I was so distracted by this the nurse had to reiterate the instructions to wait outside, like I had been instantly struck with some side effect. And so as once again my arm felt a little sore, I waited in my cubicle and immediately left for the pub to get one step ahead of any possible grogginess the vaccine could give me. 

'Yesterday' Film Review

Yesterday is an endlessly frustrating waste of a great premise which spends two hours yelling at you “THE BEATLES ARE GREAT!” without never exactly explaining why. Musician Jack Malik is looking for a lucky break until an accident  (somehow) results in a world where the Beatles never happened, and he is the only person who can remember the songs. Ergo, he becomes immensely famous through passing the songs off as his own. Jack only feels a twinge of guilt for his actions or fear of being found out every so often, a feature underutilised. The idea of Jack being plagued by symbols of the Beatles, and the members themselves, is passed off for a joke, but is something that could actually be quite interesting to see aside from a quasi-interesting romantic main-plot. When it finally remembers - oh yes, this is a film about The Beatles! - the songs hold no greater significance than just being good songs, or fodder for jokes. The only joke in this film I laughed at revolved around ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’, mostly because of it’s sheer ridiculousness. The script is seriously poor, simply parroting Beatles references, promoting the reason why the first rule of scriptwriting is ‘tell don’t show’. Everything about this film seems to require a second draft. 

The main issue - of which the product is never entertaining enough to distract you from it - is that the logic of a world without the Beatles has hardly been thought through, resulting in a ‘alternative reality’ making the whole idea of the film proving rather dull. The world where the Beatles exist, and the one where they don’t, are pointlessly indistinguishable. So much of the pop culture referenced in this film, from Coldplay, The Beach Boy, David Bowie - was undoubtedly influenced by the Beatles. James Taylor is mentioned, an artist who owes his break to Apple Records: created by you know who. It’s not a fan being sycophantic - the Beatles had an impact on pop music so huge it was incalculable, and without them the pop charts would look extremely different. Instead of a reality boringly familiar, save for one band, not go a tad overboard and depict a depressingly grey loveless world, where radios play no music, nobody makes an album, and hardly anybody owns a musical instrument? At least that’d be fun to see, as Jack’s songs leave to a complete societal revolution. But no, you get the gaudy romantic subplot you’ve seen hundreds of times before. 

It is also a film firmly stuck in the past glories of Curtis rom-coms - and whilst there are small moments that work, and are subsequently deeply affecting, for what they say about the power of the Beatles - the Yellow Submarine section, namely - it speaks volumes that Ed Sheeran is in this film. That alone is enough to point out Beatles fanatics are not the target audience. The absolute cheek to even imply Ed could hold a candle to the Fabs is enough of an insult. Ed Sheeran’s simply atrocious acting is a stain upon this shitrag. Every smug interjection, quip leaves you begging, pleading for him to go away. Curtis is better than this. He’s certainly better than obviously utilising the not just outdated, but plain wrong assumptions of what women like about the Beatles, believing it’s intended audience isn’t interested in the musical value of the Beatles’ music, more good looks, extreme gushiness, something to scream at.  It’s a date film. It may be difficult to say something new about the Beatles, but there’s no point giving the due attention a brilliant premise deserves, your characters any observations, or any reverence to the music you’ve paid millions to include in the film, when you just want it to be something to watch before a couples’ Pizza Express dinner. There’s nothing wrong with a good date film, but this can’t even stretch itself to be a good date film. Hell, an Oasis song holds greater personal gravitas for Jack than anything the Beatles ever did. 

As Jack moves up in the music business world, with busybodies making every creative decision for him in the name of profit, you may begin to recognise that the music of The Beatles could not work (!) and take off in today’s manufactured, conglomeratic climate of pop music, orchestrated by stiff men in suits, with no room for the experimentation the Beatles thrived on. You may find yourself shouting at the screen when Jack laments ‘how can I be creative when I’m never left alone’. This is, yet again, a far more interesting little facet to the story rather than the cookie-cutter rom-com we’re given. Unlike Jack’s, their success did not just happen overnight. Yesterday could’ve explored the changing conditions of success in pop music, and even how a lot of the Beatles’ success was due to a variety of external factors - from skiffle groups, post-war feeling, to the available of hallucinogenics - all having absolutely no impact on this premise. The Beatles are a group adored universally for their irrepressible plucky burst of personality, glowing with a charm none of this film has. A complete waste of potential, Yesterday low serves The Beatles as something they never were, or have ever been: unimportant.