John Shand Posts

August 18, 2015 / Concert Reviews - Archive

The Vanguard, August 9 Both Marc Ribot’s guitars look well-used and old – probably older than they are, like rugby forwards who look 40 when they are 20. They get a bit more roughed up each time he plays them, because Ribot doesn’t go much for genteel music. He likes…

August 17, 2015 / Concert Reviews - Archive

State Theatre, August 8 James Morrison and Megan Washington bring out the best in each other. She is such an idiosyncratic singer and performer as to shrug aside all the baggage of trying to sing standards “authentically”, and just give them the Megan Washington treatment. She makes the songs hers;…

August 16, 2015 / Album Reviews - Archive

Lucidity (Jazzland) Were Lucidity the soundtrack, you wouldn’t want to be the subject of the film. On its 12th album the Norwegian/Swedish Atomic makes an art-form of causing disquiet, so even when the music is elegiac in the way we have come to expect of Scandinavian improvisers it is usually…