Adam Lambert, talent-show runner-up and ersatz Freddie Mercury, managed a rather difficult task last night, shoehorning an arena show into a theatre-sized setting. The last time Lambert was in town, a year and a half ago as Queen’s latest jobbing frontman, he played the Vector Arena; his management, presumably, decided that he couldn’t quite fill […]
“Three lads from Mangere, you say?” “That’s right.” “Singing opera?” “That’s the one.” “In a vineyard?” “Indeed.” “And you want me to review this for The 13th Floor?” “The very fellow.” We’re nothing if not catholic in our tastes here at The 13th Floor. A brace of tenors and a baritone would, ordinarily, fall outside […]
Ed Sheeran, perhaps to make up for the fact that his show comprised only one musician, packed the undercard at his tour-ending show at Auckland’s Mount Smart Stadium last night. Or perhaps, given that this would be the last performance in, as he repeatedly reminded us, a four-and-a-half-year tour, he was minded to depart with […]
A full bill at the Tuning Fork last night saw Tom Cunliffe, and then Skyscraper Stan, open for Holly Arrowsmith. Arrowsmith topped the bill, but she wasn’t the highlight of the show. Cunliffe kicked the evening off with a fairly rudimentary set of by-the-numbers folk numbers, one man and a guitar offering little new to […]
If you saw Douglas Trendle sitting and having a pint at the King’s Arms, you’d likely write him off at the nutter down the pub you’d rather avoid, the UKIP voter with a pitbull under a corner table and a half-looked-at copy of The Sun by his beer tankard. But on stage, Trendle becomes Buster […]
The stage at Auckland’s Tuning Fork was oozing with down-home South Carolina charm as Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent, the married couple who perform as Shovels & Rope, harmonized their way through a set of rootsy songs that held the crowd spellbound. The first thing you notice about Shovels & Rope when they hit […]
Tuesday afternoon is an odd time for a rock festival. Judas Priest’s closing number — I only caught the end of it; I had to work all day — might have better been titled Rockin’ Before Teatime. Theirs is not music that wants to be performed in daylight. As soon as Judas Priest left the […]
Before the Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses, long before Oasis, Peter Hook was a mainstay of the Manchester music scene, playing bass first in Joy Division and then, following the death of Ian Curtis, New Order. But New Order are infrequent performers of late, and its members, increasingly, are solo artists. Bernard Sumner, the […]
“You might have thought Passenger were a band,” Michael Rosenberg told Auckland’s Civic last night. “Auckland, it’s just you, me and a guitar. Is that OK?” The two-thousand strong audience certainly seemed not to mind. Rosenberg, performing since 2009 as Passenger following the breakup of the band of the same name, opened with Rolling Stone, […]