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The Guardian
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Flaming Lips review – stops and starts make this too much of a good thing
'You could have had a wee and got back,' the chap behind me says to his partner as Wayne Coyne comes to the close of another rambling between-song anecdote in an oddly frustrating, stop-start evening: over the course of two-and-three-quarter hours, there's an awful lot of time when nothing is happening – the gap between She Don't Use Jelly and Flowers of Neptune 6 stretches to seven minutes, what with watching balloons, and Coyne's anecdote about Kacey Musgraves dropping acid. The frustrations start before the band take to the stage. Plainly it is better that Brixton Academy is safe for visitors now, but there must surely be a middle ground where those arriving half an hour before show time don't have to queue for 50 minutes to enter. When the Flaming Lips take to the stage, 15 minutes late, there are still many hundreds outside, and big gaps in the crowd. That's a shame, given that they miss a good chunk of the main purpose of the evening: a complete rendition of the 2002 album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. That, too, keeps losing momentum, as assorted stage effects are brought on and off between songs (over the course of the evening we get confetti cannon, streamer guns, mirror balls, video screens, giant balloons, costume changes, giant inflatable pink robots, lasers, inflatable rainbows, swinging lamps and more), and the music pauses for minutes at a time. It being Brixton, the sound is boomy and muddy at first. It settles down – but for 20 minutes there's almost no middle. Sign up to Sleeve Notes Get music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras. Every genre, every era, every week after newsletter promotion After an hour, the band leave the stage for a longish interval before a second set, less gauzy and electronically shaped than the Yoshimi material, but just as suffused with the Lips's peculiar ecstasy: Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung may be the only psych-rock song to ponder the upsides of petrification. But the evening is too much of a good thing, especially when 45 minutes could be shed without even losing a song. By the time a glorious Race for the Prize closes the show, the gaps are back in the crowd, last trains calling time long before the band.
The Guardian
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Gallagher brothers perform together for first time in 16 years in closed London pub
Liam and Noel Gallagher have performed together for the first time in 16 years in a closed pub in north London, according to reports. The brothers were pictured arriving at the Mildmay club in Newington Green, north London, on Thursday where they are believed to have filmed a promotional video for this summer's sold-out Oasis reunion tour. According to The Sun, they arrived at the venue separately, stayed for just over an hour, and made enough noise to provoke the ire of local people. Set to begin in Cardiff on 4 July, the much-anticipated Oasis '25 tour will come 16 years after the band bitterly split after an infamous backstage fight at Rock en Seine festival in Paris, and 30 years after the release of their bestselling second album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory?. In a joint statement after the tour's announcement, the band said: 'The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised.' The brothers are thought to be back in each other's good graces, with Noel confirming to TalkSport earlier this week that rehearsals for the tour will begin in the next few weeks. When asked about Liam, he said: 'He's alright. He's on tip-top form. I was with him yesterday, actually.' The UK leg of the tour will include seven shows at Wembley Stadium in London, as well as five in the Gallaghers' home town of Manchester. They will then tour the US, Mexico, Japan, South Korea and Australia, before ending in South America in November. The tour made headlines earlier this week when data from Lloyds Banking Group revealed that fans have collectively lost more than £2m to scams since tickets went on sale in August 2024. Sign up to Sleeve Notes Get music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras. Every genre, every era, every week after newsletter promotion The Competition and Markets Authority previously found that Ticketmaster may have 'breached' consumer protection law in the way it sold more than 900,000 tickets, with some fans ending up paying more than £350 for tickets worth £150. The band shrugged off any criticism of ticket pricing, saying in a statement last year: 'Inevitably interest in this tour is so overwhelming that it's impossible to schedule enough shows to fulfil public demand. 'As for the well-reported complaints many buyers had over the operation of Ticketmaster's dynamic ticketing: it needs to be made clear that Oasis leave decisions on ticketing and pricing entirely to their promoters and management, and at no time had any awareness that dynamic pricing was going to be used.' In response to one fan, who wrote on X that they 'didn't expect [Oasis] to rip off the fans as much as they have', Liam curtly replied: 'SHUTUP'.
