MARIA DUARTE reviews Desperate Journey, Blue Moon, Pillion, and Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
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Oldies still goldies
PETER MASON sees PP Arnold and Mavis Staples deliver blistering sets at the Cornbury Festival
WILL STONE enjoys a set by an artist too eclectic to be pigeonholed
RUTH AYLETT reviews two collections of outright political poetry
The book feels like a writer working within his limits and not breaking any new ground, believes KEN COCKBURN
PRAGYA AGARWAL recommends a collection of drawings that explore the relation of indigenous people to the land in south Asia, Africa and the Caribbean
CHRIS SEALE speaks to Palestinian sound artist BINT MBAREH
MARY CONWAY applauds a brave and timely two hander that explores the difference between intimacy and abuse
PP Arnold + Mavis Staples
Cornbury Festival, Great Tew
SOMETIMES the old ones are the best. On a second day of the Cornbury festival dominated by 20-something female singer-songwriters of a tepid, insipid ilk, it was left to two women in their seventies to inject some much-needed soul into proceedings.
PP Arnold and Mavis Staples have followed very different routes to musical stardom – the former by moving from the US into the excitement of swinging-sixties Britain, the latter mainly by staying close to her bluesy Chicago roots.
But both have retained a heartfelt and joyous faith in the redemptive quality of music that the likes of Pixie Lott, Megan McKenna and Amy MacDonald were unable to convey on other Cornbury stages. Both also possess an easy charisma and gospel-inspired feistiness that can hardly fail to move anyone watching.
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