Tag: simon moore

“Sad is happy for deep people.” So spoke a young woman wandering around an abandoned house in a Doctor Who episode not so very long ago. She might just have a point though. ‘Bloom’ is a record of crushing sadness, and weird as it may seem, there’s a lot of…

To be perfectly honest, this is the best part of writing about music. It’s like leading your grandad down to the bottom of the garden to show him where you saw the goblins disappear. Arthur Rigby and the Baskervylles do not live at the bottom of your garden (more’s the…

It’s strange. No matter how many times his name comes up, no matter how many words get crammed into Beatles essays trying to sum his work up, it seems impossible to over-rate George Harrison. As a songwriter, as a singer, as a guitarist – even as a film producer, making…

There’s a line of thinking that says you’re not really a fan of any band until you’ve heard them play live. That doesn’t say much for this generation of Beatles fans, but if you have any kind of love for folk or rock music, then one particular band’s madly beautiful…

Some bands you don’t want to keep a secret. You don’t want them to play tiny clubs forever, shrouded in obscurity and ignored by all but a faithful few. Ellen and the Escapades have made a record that cannot stay in the underground. It’s too big and too beautiful to…

It’s the night before ‘Rise Ye Sunken Ships‘ is released in the UK. Moments before the headliners are due on stage. Night & Day is crammed wall to wall with people. There’s hardly room to raise a glass of beer. The word’s gone around: this is a band…

Somebody once asked Woody Guthrie about the way he wrote songs. “I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself,” he said. Bruce Springsteen seems to have lived and played his whole working life by those words, if ‘Wrecking Ball‘ is anything to go by.…

What do you say we cut teenagers some slack? They get a lot of stick these days, if not for perpetuating the sparkly vampire craze, then for having Justin ‘Kick Me’ Bieber among their ranks or impregnating each other on a whim. Pish and posh and syrup-soaked waffle, the lot…

The best thing about being a music lover is that you find yourself taken by surprise all the time. It’s a wonderful feeling, bumping into new sounds that don’t make you want to saw your ears off. But you knew that. What else would you be doing here? Finding out…

Leonard Cohen knows that’s a very sneaky title to use at this stage of his career. Offering us the knife and showing us where best to stab him in the back, you might expect most who hear this album to proffer an embarrassed “Oh no, not at all Len, it’s…

This band doesn’t die easily. They’ve been surviving line-up changes for 40 odd years, and it’s kept them sounding fresh and alive and dangerous. Now the immortal Scott Gorham returns with Thin Lizzy, Mark-God-Knows-What-Number-We’re-Up-To, and you’d hardly know they’d been away. It’s not hard to guess there’s a classic rock…

You don’t need to be told why this is important. If you know this man, you’ve probably already got the shakes just clicking ‘play’ on the video link. The Boss is back, and not in a “flogging a 30 year old album with bonus out-takes” kind of way. Yes, ‘The…

It’s here, it’s here, the most wonderful time of the year. No, not the January sales, you’ve had those. In January. We’re talking about Christmas, of course, that popular chocolate-based winter festival. “So what does Christmas have to do with music?” you ask. “I just slammed the door on those…

He comes from a long line in history of dreamers. He ain’t your saviour, or your Christ, or your goddamn sacrifice. He’s been sober three years, on the road nine months, and we’ve been spellbound to these kind of words and whispers and moans and Texan drawls for damn near…

There was always a reason to suspect Kate Bush was something more than a singer/songwriter. Her new album settles it. She’s a storyteller. She was always a storyteller; it’s just that she started out using Emily Brontë’s characters. Now these songs offer something bigger, something freer in form and scope…

Guess who just got back today? Okay, not today, but in the last few months, the Great British rock public have gone a bit mad for the news that The Darkness are re-formed and touring the homeland with a vengeance. Shows have sold out faster than you can say “What,…