Father John Misty, On tour
A writer of bitter and twisted songs, Josh Tillman has worked with producer Jonathan Wilson on his latest Father John Misty album, with the latter providing the musical sugar that helps Tillman’s lyrical medicine slip down. Wilson’s talent is to bridge the gap between the LA of the 1960s and the present - with I Love You, Honeybear, he makes the singer sound like the Harry Nilsson of his time: wonderful voice, good tunes, wry observations. But the album is also a queasy mixture of tender love and flat-out misanthropy; the work of someone articulate and funny but also cravenly eager to appear cooler than thou. Of course, as Tillman would tell you, Father John Misty is a character. Maybe, but he still wouldn’t want to get typecast.
Whelan’s, Dublin, Sun; King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow, Mon; Gorilla, Manchester, Tue; Rough Trade East, E1, Wed; Village Underground, EC2, Thu; Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, Fri; touring to 28 Feb
JR
The Unthanks, On tour
In their blacksmith’s shop, the Unthanks are building a rocket. Not for them the waistcoats and mandolins of the chart-topping stadium-folk elite. Instead, a bit like the great Sam Lee, the Unthanks are hoping to find a modern delivery system for traditional song. New one Mount The Air is part modern classical, part Kind Of Blue, and part traditional songs about drowned fishermen. Even if it occasionally threatens to lose its way along its epic length, as such the band are only honouring a long tradition of song.
Corn Exchange, Exeter, Sun; Octagon Theatre, Yeovil, Tue; Colston Hall, Bristol, Wed; St David’s Hall, Cardiff, Thu; Albert Hall, Nottingham, Fri; touring to 20 Mar
JR
George The Poet, On tour
Admirable in every way, George The Poet has made the journey from life on a north-west London estate to Cambridge University, and now on to the list of critics’ choice nominees at the Brits. He’s a published poet. He’s an entrepreneur with a heart, winning money and using it to mentor young people. He’s a musician, writing literate and occasionally amusing songs such as Grinding, which samples an iPhone ringtone. All very creditable. Still, as with Kate Tempest – the other big poetry/rap breakout star of the last year – the more you hear, the heavier the social conscience of the songs feels. Whether it’s the lugubrious wine-bar funk of the music, or the mildly sententious sex-education lessons that form the bulk of George’s lyrics, you’d hope that someone so young and doing so well would have a bit more joie de vivre.
O2 Academy Birmingham, Sat; Oslo, E8, Mon; Start The Bus, Bristol, Tue; The Haunt, Brighton, Fri
JR
Jazz For Labour, London
This all-star Jazz For Labour show was inspired by the high-profile Jazz For Obama gig in New York in 2012, and it features a score or so of key UK jazz figures, including saxophonists Soweto Kinch, Courtney Pine and Andy Sheppard. Also present is Arun Ghosh, clarinet virtuoso of an exciting and very personal east-west jazz. He won the best instrumentalist prize at the all-party Parliamentary jazz awards last year and points to the synchronicity of “community, empathy, fairness and diversity” he sees in both cross-cultural jazz-making and in more egalitarian politics.
Barbican Hall, EC2, Fri
JF
The Indian Queen, London
English National Opera’s audience has already been treated to one Peter Sellars production this season with the first-ever full staging of John Adams’s The Gospel According To The Other Mary. Now they get the chance to see the LA-based director take on a work written more than 300 years earlier. Purcell’s The Indian Queen was adapted from a play by John Dryden about an imaginary war between Peru and Mexico; it’s not known whether the score was finished, but only a part of it exists today. This production, with designs by the LA graffiti artist Gronk, was first seen in the Russian city of Perm in 2013. Sellars has totally rewritten the text, basing much of it on a novel by the Nicaraguan Rosario Aguilar, turning the fanciful original into an examination of the consequences of the Spanish colonisation of Mexico in the 16th century.
London Coliseum, WC2, Thu to 14 Mar
AC
Alasdair Roberts, On tour
Alasdair Roberts’s idiosyncratic take on folk music still holds to one traditional belief – that it is a social activity. As such, he’s often collaborated with others, from Jason Molina and Will Oldham to members of the Glasgow underground including Trembling Bells’ Alex Neilson. Roberts’s musical output has two main strands: he works with both traditional folk ballads and his own original songs, reinventing the former and leaving the latter lyrically linked to the timelessness of age-old forms. He plays largely with guitar and voice, toying with alternative tunings as he pushes forward a living folk music – one that is not confined to dusty museums and archives but is, instead, vibrant and alive – all without breaking too sharply with convention or the music’s heritage.
Kitchen Garden Cafe, Birmingham, Thu; Cecil Sharp House, NW1, Fri; touring to 27 Mar
JLA
