MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Moon master
This is music that brings the party, the catharsis and the love all at once, says GEORGE FOGARTY
MUSIC FOR OUR TIMES: Disraeli leads the singing at Edinburgh's Voodoo Rooms
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New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
Dizraeli’s Joy Machine
Jericho Tavern, Oxford
KNOWN for his masterly blend of rap with English folk — most notably on the album Engurland: City Shanties — Dizraeli opens today’s set with an acapella singalong of that album’s anthemic Take Me Dancing, a fitting way to start a set that is all about connection.
After that, though, we’re off somewhere entirely new. A Love for the Rain, opening track of new LP Joy Machine (released May 31) is a shimmering triptych of spoken word, free jazz and roof-raising, butt-shaking funk. The drums kick in like a shamanic calling up of the spirits, echoed by Dizraeli’s literal calling up of “freaks to the front.” We oblige willingly.
Dizraeli has been open about his struggles with depression. And tonight his call to “soak up the rain when it comes” reminds me of Emily Tammam’s wise words on how grief, through its contrast with beauty and joy, heightens them both.
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