MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable study of the friendship between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, broken by a hostile state
John Cooper Clarke
Albert Hall, Manchester/Touring
5/5
DR JOHN Cooper Clarke knows he has a new album anthology out — appropriately entitled Anthologia — but he isn’t entirely sure which of his compositions are on it.
He takes a good guess, though, closing his main set with Evidently Chickentown. It’s a song used on an episode of The Sopranos and one that fits in with the New York accent he drifts in and out of throughout the night.
ALAN MORRISON recommends a consummate, heart-warming collection about a working-class upbringing in the industrial north-east
RUTH AYLETT reviews two collections of outright political poetry
WILL STONE is impressed by a tour de force rendition of three decades’ worth of orchestral chamber pop
Fiery words from the Bard in Blackpool and Edinburgh, and Evidence Based Punk Rock from The Protest Family



