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REVIEW: Paul Rhodes’s verdict on Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band, The Crescent, York, December 10

Michael Head: Leading The Red Elastic Band at The Crescent. All concert pictures: Paul Rhodes

MICHAEL Head has packed a lot of living into his 63 years, and has more than earned the right to enjoy his very slow in-coming popularity. While the voice may be a shade less than before, the body seemed more than willing. Head was clearly loving being on tour.

No longer a loaded man (having also overcome heroin addiction twice), a sober Head is now a safer proposition live than he was in the past (when liquid lunches didn’t sit well with knock-out performances).

Martin Smith: His brass instruments were refreshingly to the fore

The 18-tune set at the sold-out Crescent featured his May 2024 album Loophole prominently. Ciao, Ciao Bambino was the pick of the new tunes and is also the title for Head’s autobiography (slated for release next August). Described by another reviewer as “Toxteth Tijuana”, Martin Smith’s different brass instruments were refreshingly to the fore.

Loophole is receiving both critical praise and has gone Top Ten. Rightly so. While it may not be a Christmas party banger, it is a record that repays multiple listens. The four-piece Red Elastic Band re-create the album with subtle backing that is full of interesting touches.

“Harmony heaven”: The Coral’s Paul Molloy performing his closing number with Fiona Skelly

Opening act Paul Molloy needed (nor received) any introduction for his tuneful conspiracies. The singer and guitarist for that other Liverpool/Wirral institution, The Coral, has a voice that was seemingly minted on the West Coast in the late 1960s.

Like Dylan or P.F. Sloane, Molloy’s voice has a certain quality that lifts anything. Dungaree Day was far better than its title, although his Arlo Guthrie-like tune Artificial Intelligence felt a bit laboured. The closing duet with Fiona Skelly was harmony heaven.

Head above the rest: “More than earned the right to enjoy his very slow in-coming popularity,” says reviewer Paul Rhodes

Head has always worn his Laurel Canyon influences proudly. “This one is for the believers,” he said as he introduced Comedy. This tune in some ways mirrors Head’s fortunes: written as his first band The Pale Fountains were splitting, it resurfaced on Shack’s over-produced HMS Fable (the unstable 1999 album that quickly sank).

Add a quarter of a century more perspective, however, and Comedy is now rightly held up as one of the finest jewels in Head’s career. More conker than diamond perhaps, since his unshowy songs have their own internal glow.

The cover artwork for Loophole, Michael Head’s May 2024 album

The best cast a blissed-out spell. Somethin’ Like You, from The Magical World Of The Strands, to this reviewer as good as anything by Burt Bacharach, was rather underwhelming live.

More effective in person were the comparatively up-tempo closing numbers, Pretty Child and Meant To Be. They finished, as is their habit, with a rousing A House Is Not A Motel by the Californian band Love before heading back to Liverpool to finish the tour on home turf.

Review by Paul Rhodes

Drumming home the band’s name at The Crescent on Tuesday
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Kaiser Chiefs mark 20 years of gainful Employment with Temple Newsam Park gig with mid-Noughties cronies next May

Kaiser Chiefs: Feeling the benefit of 20 years of Employment at Temple Newsam, Leeds, next May

KAISER Chiefs will mark the 20th anniversary of debut album Employment with a home-city concert at Temple Newsam Park, Leeds, on May 31 2025.

Joining the Yorkshire indie band that day will be mid-Noughties peers Razorlight, The Cribs, The Coral and We Are Scientists, plus Hastings trio HotWax and West Yorkshire’s Ellur, “two of the most exciting new indie artists in the UK”. Tickets go on sale today at https://tix.to/KCTempleNewsam.
 
Released in March 2005, the seven-times platinum and multi-award winning Employment remains the biggest-selling record from a Leeds artist, propelling I Predict A Riot and Oh My God to becoming anthems for the city, forever intertwined with Leeds life, culture, football and more.
 
To honour that special connection, as well as the 20th anniversary, Kaiser Chiefs will take to one of Leeds’s biggest stages for a celebration of Employment and the city that inspired it.

Kaiser Chiefs, minus Ricky Wilson that day, launching their When All Is Quiet: Kaiser Chiefs in Conversation with York Art Gallery exhibition in December 2018

London quintet Razorlight will perform a special set to mark the 20th anniversary of their debut album, Up All Night; Wakefield band The Cribs celebrate the same anniversary for sophomore album The New Fellas; The Coral, from the Wirral, will dive into their back catalogue, and cult American indie rockers We Are Scientists will highlight the 20th anniversary of their major label debut,  With Love And Squalor.

Kaiser Chiefs are “very excited to announce our biggest Leeds gig ever”. “Twenty years since Employment, and 23 years since we last played at Temple Newsam, we are delighted to be back,” say Ricky Wilson (vocals), Simon Rix (bass), Nick “Peanut” Baines (keyboards), Andrew “Whitey” White (guitar) and Vijay Mistry (drums).

“Last time we played there [in their days as Parva], we joked we were on after Guns N’ Roses, who had played the previous night, so it’s been a long wait to finally actually headline the Park.

“We are a band that historically always looked forwards, but after 20 years of people telling us how important Employment is to them and how it soundtracked people’s lives, we felt we had to organise a celebration.
 
“We’ve managed to get a few of our old touring friends to come and celebrate with us and of course everyone is invited. Come celebrate the 2000s, Employment, When Leeds took over the World. See you all in May.”

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Richard Hawley concludes tour at Scarborough Spa on Thursday after In This City They Call You Love goes top five

Richard Hawley: Made in Sheffield, performing in Scarborough on Thursday. Picture: Dean Chalkley

RICHARD Hawley concludes his 13-date tour with the only Yorkshire gig at Scarborough Spa on Thursday night.

On the heels of his Olivier Award-winning Sheffield musical Standing At The Sky’s Edge opening a six-month West End run at the Gillian Lynne Theatre, the South Yorkshireman will be showcasing his May 31 album, In This City They Call You Love.

Released on BMG, the track listing is Two For His Heels; Have Love; Prism In Jeans; Heavy Rain; People; Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow; Deep Space; Deep Waters; I’ll Never Get Over You; Do I Really Need To Know?; When The Lights Go Out and ‘Tis Night.

Latest single Two For His Heels is a blues rumble reminiscent of Link Wray and Duane Eddy: a sparse, atmospheric and cinematic song about a deal that goes wrong.

The album title is derived from the lyrics for People, a hymn to his beloved home of Sheffield, the steel city’s proud industrial past and the enduring determination of its citizens.

Summing up his new material, Hawley, 57, says: “I’ve made three albums where I had the title before I’d even begun to record, where I had an agenda. One was Truelove’s Gutter. Another was Standing At The Sky’s Edge, when I wanted to turn everything up and make the music a lot more aggressive, and then this one.

“I wanted it to be multi-coloured in a way…focusing on the voice and what voices can do together. I deliberately only played a handful of guitar solos, to keep it focused on voices, the song and space.”

Two decades have elapsed since Hawley abandoned band life full-time, first with The Longpigs  and then as  Pulp’s guitarist. Nine studio albums have ensued, along with film scores, a self-titled mini album and the 2023 compilation Now Then: The Very Best Of Richard Hawley, his fourth Top Ten album.

The cover artwork for Richard Hawley’s new album, In This City They Call You Love

In addition, he has worked with such collaborators as Arctic Monkeys, Manic Street Preachers, Elbow, Paul Weller, Duane Eddy (co-producing his 2011 album Road Trip), Nancy Sinatra and English folk royalty Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson on 2013’s Bright Phoebus Revisited tour.

In 2002, he co-wrote Clean for Robbie Williams’ debut solo album, Life Thru A Lens; in 2009, he wrote the smouldering ballad After The Rain for Shirley Bassey, and down the years he has performed with All Saints and Texas.

His song Tonight The Streets Are Ours was featured in The Simpsons and Exit Through The Gift Shop: A Banksy Film and Hawley numbers have featured in television dramas Peaky Blinders, The Full Monty and Hijack.

Dear Alien (Who Art In Heaven), co-written with Jarvis Cocker and Wes Anderson for Anderson’s film Asteroid City, was shortlisted for Best Original Song in this year’s Oscars.

Premiered at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre, the musical Standing At The Sky’s Edge combines 20 Hawley songs with a book by University of York-educated Chris Bush. Winner of Best New Musical and Best Original Score at the 2023 Olivier Awards, the show has moved to the Gillian Lynne Theatre after sold-out Crucible and National Theatre runs.

In 2023, Hawley played five shows with American musician John Grant, former frontman of The Czars, performing the songs of country legend Patsy Cline. 

In This City They Call You Love has become his sixth Top Ten album in a row, available on digipack CD, standard black vinyl, limited-edition transparent blue vinyl exclusive to HMV and indie stores and transparent yellow vinyl, on sale exclusively from the official store, richardhawley.co.uk. 

Richard Hawley, supported by James Bagshaw, Scarborough Spa, June 20, 7.30pm. Also plays Don Valley Bowl, Sheffield, with The Coral and The Divine Comedy, on August 29. Box office: Scarborough, scarboroughspa.co.uk; Sheffield, richardhawley.co.uk.