MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a three-hander that broaches big themes, but doesn’t transcend dry academia
Patty Griffin, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
Impressive songs, old and new, from an accomplished interpreter of folk and Americana
Patty Griffin
DAN GLAZEBROOK eavesdrops on the bourgeois intelligentsia and the stories it tells itself at this moment of crisis
JAN WOOLF is bowled over by a major retrospective for the YBA artist
LEO BOIX, ANGUS REID and MARIA DUARTE review Night Stage, Two Women, Kim Novak’s Vertigo, and Fuze
KATHRYN JOHNSON recommends the work of Norman Kaplan that was a tool in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa
GAVIN O’TOOLE welcomes a bold feminist subversion of classic folktales that are ubiquitous in the Irish imagination
PATTY GRIFFIN is an impressive personality.
Emotional but measured in her musical and vocal criticisms of the contemporary US, she’s thoughtful on any range of subjects, from the post-industrial travails of her home town in Maine to the admission that although she’s always loved Billie Holiday, she’s rarely been able to listen to her music because it ventures into such sad places.
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