And behind door number 22... a guide to some music of the more traditional kind
Catherine Munn and Jacob Martin list their Top 5 programmes to watch over the festive period.
And behind door number nine... some dazzling musical delights
The complete arts guide, for week 9
Dizzee Rascal hits us with the crunchy guitar driven ‘Sirens’, the first single from third album ‘Maths and English’. Dizzee’s trademark vocal is a fresh as always, although the production seems slicker than his previous releases, something complemented by a no-holds-barred video featuring a fox hunt where the target is Dizzee, because the hunters, in all their dressed-up, righteous, upper-middle-class glory, represent the law, even if by hunting they are breaking the law themselves!
Oh the irony.
However, far surpassing Dizzee in the slickness stakes is R Kelly with his newest release ‘I’m a Flirt’, a title so soaked in knowingness that it’s practically sentient. Sometimes I wonder if he just knocks up any old thing as a single so he can slap a more ridiculous name on it than the last one. It even worked for an entire album in the case of ‘Chocolate Factory’. Unfortunately the video contains no horses, and, surprisingly, no actual flirting. It is as if the flirting has already taken place and the women have become so aroused that they have chosen to writhe round the self-titled ‘King of RnB’ of their own accord.
From the King of RnB to the Queen of being the daughter of a Blue Peter presenter: fed up with teasing us with two increasingly brilliant pop singles, Sophie Ellis-Bextor is releasing an ENTIRE ALBUM: ‘Trip the Light Fantastic’. Of course, the album will probably be average with the exception of a few carefully planned singles, but the real interest here is in the genesis of the perfect pop star. With the loss of interest in pop for things like ‘indie’ the pop gene pool is getting increasingly smaller. But, instead of attempting to keep some essence of pop in the country by breeding with the general public, Sophie and Richard-Jones-from-The-Feeling have taken the ultimate risk: married and produced a child. Either this daring plan will be a success and a pop messiah will rise to build a new golden age for music, or it will be a devastating failure and the population of pop stars will continue to decline and vanish, only for the sneaky indie bands that add a pop twist to their sound to rush in and fill the void. It is, unfortunately, beyond the scope of Artsweek to predict the outcome.
A little bit more predictable, perhaps, are the events in the third and final ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ instalment ‘At World’s End’. More slurring Keith-ness from Johnny Depp, more people with things coming off their faces (flesh, tentacles etc.), more pouty pouty Keira Knightly being very English and more of the deliciously pompous Jack Davenport. However, this being the third part, it offers no fewer than four times as many pirates: one lot from each corner of the Earth. The most exciting looks to be Yun-Fat Chow’s serious looking Chinese pirate ‘Sao Feng’. Will it be the over-long special effects bore that we’ve come to expect from trilogy-closers (looking at you, ‘The Return of The King’, ‘Matrix Revolutions’ and ‘Revenge of the Sith’)? Probably.
If Pirates and boats falling of the edge of the world aren’t what you’re looking for of an evening, do you fancy some indie rock? Well, tough. BBC 6 Music with Steve Lamacq presenting The Maccabees and I Was A Cub Scout at Fibbers this Monday is well and truly sold out. Not to worry though, the legendary Mr Lamacq is bringing his radio show live to Vanbrugh bar between 4:00 and 7:00pm on the very same day, and, even if you can’t make it to that, the show will be on URY from just before 2:00pm.
For the more active amongst us, or at least those prepared to take a half hour train journey through the Pennines for their fix of brand new theatre, the Northern Exposure series continues at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds. Coming-of-age drama ‘Safe’ opens this week and the half-mystery half-romance ‘Magpie Park’, the play that opened this year’s series, is still running. If you want to catch some new writing talent from the North then it is really worth the trip.
More suitable for a quiet (ish) night in, or a hungover morning that is part of a chain so long that you can’t stand another half-hour of Homes Under The Hammer, Nintendo continues to strengthen the line-up of its Wii console with a new Mario game: ‘Mario Strikers’. Following its success on the Gamecube, the Mario football franchise continues, but the key to its success on this platform could be its online playability, a first for a UK Wii title. Fortunately accusations of unrealistic gameplay fostered at the series can now be put to rest, as we can find the innate Italian-ness of Mario, the excitability of Yoshi and the brute strength of Bowser combined in Gennaro Gattuso who, if computerised football is not enough, can be seen in Wednesday’s Champions League final.
Other notable releases this week
