John Shand Posts

May 5, 2018 / Album Reviews - Archive

 LIVE AT THE NCH (Real World/Planet) 9.5/10 A fine mist seems to descend right from the opening moments of The Booley House, so delicate and wistful is Martin Hayes’ fiddle, and immediately you sense that the Gloaming’s third album (recorded live in Dublin’s National Concert Hall) is going to sustain…

May 4, 2018 / Album Reviews - Archive

ANIMARUM (Planet/MGM) 8/10 You sense again the fastidious distillation of ideas that was a hallmark of Jonathan Zwartz’s two previous albums as leader, The Sea and The Remembering & Forgetting of the Air. Something of the same introversion that imbued those records with such soothing, reflective music is at work,…

Concert Hall, April 8 6/10 I once attended a Peter Sarstedt concert (yes, really), and of course the entire audience was only there to hear Where Do You Go to (My Lovely)? to the extent that, had he played it first rather than last, everyone would probably have bolted after…