FFS, Glasgow
Nobody, it is said, likes a smartarse. But how about two completely separate contingents of smartarse spanning 30 years of music making? Yes? That’s what is being attempted with FFS, a fusion of Sparks and arty indie band Franz Ferdinand. Although the group have apparently been recording for some time, it is only now that they’ve chosen to reveal their work to the world, and in truth, songs such as Collaborations Don’t Work prove their compatibility as resoundingly as if they’d both placed “must enjoy collegiate smugness” on a dating site. Glad they’ve found each other and everything, but one wonders if this ironic pomp rock needed to become anything more than a private joke.
JR
Vashti Bunyan, Leeds
Last summer, Vashti Bunyan announced that her forthcoming album Heartleap would be her final recording before retiring from music. In truth, “retiring” has always been the word for her. Fifty years ago she was a pop star aspirant, signed to Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate label alongside the Small Faces, and competing against the Mariannes and the Sandies in a world divided on beat/folk lines. Her tremulous interior monologues cut little ice in that context, but after relocating to a Scottish commune in a horse and cart, she wrote songs that formed the bulk of her lovely debut album Just Another Diamond Day. That didn’t sell much either, but its 21st-century rediscovery has supplied the foundation of Bunyan’s subsequent career. It will undoubtedly be worth seeking her out now, before she becomes elusive in a more decisive way.
Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, Sat
JR
Ariel Pink, On tour
A bit like Julian Casablancas, Ariel Pink is working hard to resolve his relationship with the music of the 80s. It’s a challenging mission, because rather than taking it on one genre at a time (say goth rock, then the synth-pop and ad jingles, finishing up with the MOR ballads and the indie) over recent albums, Pink’s tried to deal with it all at once. The degraded blur at the heart of his sound became formalised into a mid-2000s genre – “chillwave” – but his enjoyable current album Pom Pom speaks highly not only of the persuasiveness of his aesthetic, but also the strength of his songwriting. Rather than a covering of bases, the record achieves its own extremely strange vision. Live, Pink is very much the same: caught up in his own world, into which other people wander at their own risk.
JR
Fat Out’s Burrow, Salford
For the next two years, Manchester promoters Fat Out are taking the helm of Salford’s Islington Mill. They start their first season with a bang, with shows from the known and unknown: James Blackshaw’s atmospheric plucked guitars (Tue); audience participation pop with the ever-wacky Dan Deacon (Wed); data sonification and hacked sound-making machines from Manoli Moriaty (20 Jun); plus David McLean, whose Tombed Visions label will be in collaboration with noise/pun project Sly & The Family Drone (Thu). For those after something harder, try the obliterating beats of Cut Hands and Source Direct, alongside Middlesbrough punks Drunk In Hell (Fri).
Islington Mill, Tue to 21 Jun
JA
Michel Camilo, London
Despite being one of the world’s great live performers, pianist Michel Camilo’s concerts are a rarity in Britain, so this one-off is something special. Camilo plays the daylight out of pianos, and while he rarely stops at one note when six will do, he’s nonetheless an artist of taste, who moves on from every breathtaking firework display with the audience still wanting more. Camilo, who was born in the Dominican Republic, was a classical prodigy as a child, but discovered jazz through hearing swing-piano genius Art Tatum on the radio, and added Herbie Hancock and other pioneers to his influences as he progressed. Camilo’s breaks came in the famous Latin-jazz bands of Tito Puente and Paquito D’Rivera, and he debuted with his own trio at Carnegie Hall in 1985. Since then he has won a Grammy, composed for films and just about every size of jazz band, and performed all over the world.
Queen Elizabeth Hall, SE1, Sat
JF
Andris Nelson, Birmingham
Andris Nelsons signs off as the City of Birmingham Symphony’s music director this week by conducting a pair of performances of Mahler’s Third Symphony. In seven years with the orchestra, he has risen from being virtually unknown outside his native Latvia to perhaps the hottest property in the conducting world, and though still only 36, he is one of the favourites to succeed Simon Rattle as conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. Nelsons’s concerts in the Symphony Hall have become unmissable, with almost every work he tackles charged with extraordinary energy; Mahler’s Third will surely be the same, and the CBSO will be hard-pushed to find as gifted a conductor to replace him. But the good news for Nelson’s fans is that he will be reunited with the orchestra when he conducts them in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Proms (Royal Albert Hall, SW7, 19 Jul).
Symphony Hall, Wed & Thu
AC
