Reviews of Habibi Funk 031, Kayatibu, and The Good Ones
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Take the biscuit
JAMES WALSH savours the genius of Britain’s greatest living songwriter
Half Man Half Biscuit in 2015
[Paul Hudson/CC]
SIMON DUFF relishes the cross contamination of Damien Hirst’s greatest hits by street artists from France and the US
In view of the grooming gangs inquiry, SIMON PARSONS feels the relevance of this powerful examination of trauma suffered at Medomsley Youth Detention Centre
JOHN GREEN doubts the motivations of a US war photographer who never questions why, or for whom, she is producing images of imperialist conflict
MARIA DUARTE reviews Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Hedda, The Mastermind, and Regretting You
TONY CONWAY welcomes a thrilling and concise history of Hope not Hate, that is also a manual full of tactical advice
PAUL DONOVAN welcomes an inspiring account of living with deafness that has important lessons for the treatment of deaf people in today’s UK
Half Man Half Biscuit
Electric Ballroom, London
20/1/2023
IN CAMDEN TOWN on a cold January night, a man down the front is crying and bellowing along to the closing track of a band’s sixteenth studio album: Oblong of Dreams, a paean to place and belonging worthy of Wordsworth.
Up on stage, Nigel Blackwell, Britain’s greatest living songwriter, is an unassuming type, his genius known only to a lucky few. Half Man Half Biscuit’s wonderful, warm and endearingly obsessive fan base are all here, packed like expectant sardines after drinking weak lager in a Camden boozer.
While many of their era have long since sunk into a morass of nostalgia tours, new tunes met with a rush to the bar, Nigel and the boys are more vital than ever.
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