I've been gently kicking myself for the past few days after discovering The Necks were playing a couple of shows just down the road from me in Dalston. By the time I tried to get tickets on Sunday afternoon, they'd long sold out. Their new album, "Townsville", is compensation of a kind, but it also makes me regret missing them more than ever.
Because you can never attend enough international film festivals, here's STEPHEN DALTON's report from this year's VIENNA FILM FESTIVAL.
Tanks and armoured cars rumble ominously through the centre of Vienna. The streets are eerily empty, as all civilian traffic has been removed from the city’s main inner ring road. It looks like a military coup is underway.
Kaiser Chiefs are a strange beast. Starting off as a welcome return to the light-hearted melodicism and sheer pop power of Britpop and the likes of XTC, over-familiarity and their careerist second album have left them slightly unpalatable. At the risk of sounding condescending, sure, ‘the people’ have got into them – the same tabloid-reading masses they rail against on ‘The Angry Mob’ – but the discerning music lover (ahem) has perhaps been left a little cold by their eagerness to please.
