Tag: Hair

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BPREVIEW: Gaygirl @ The Sunflower Lounge 30.06.19

Words by Ed King

On Sunday 30th June, Gaygirl come to The Sunflower Lounge – with support from (SKETCH), Modern Comforts, and P.E.T.

Doors open at 7:30pm, with tickets priced at £6 (+bf) – as presented by Indie Midlands. For direct gig info, including venue details and links to online ticket sales, click here.

Performing in Birmingham as part of their 14 date tour, Gaygirl take a Sunday night saunter through the second city before heading up, down, and along the UK – ending up in Portsmouth on 20th July. On the road since the start of June, Gaygirl have been traversing taverns and music clubs across the county promoting their latest single, ‘Hair’.

Released on 14th June this year through the Hoxton honed club night turned record label, Permanent Creeps, ‘Hair’ is laconic dark rock pop lament to the delusion of self-love (or the self-love of the deluded). More vocal focused that Gaygirl’s previous 2019 release, the guitar twisting noise fest (and fantastically illustrated) ‘Sick Note’ – ‘Hair’ puts Bex Morrison’s vocals firmly at the helm of this bluesy cry of angst Vs self-analysis.

An indulgent strut through the hallowed halls of our own self-worth, ‘Hair’ is an immediately seductive single – one which Line of Best Fit described as ‘noisy yet delicate, and at once intense and shoegazey’ and lesser journalists would pad out with references to Polly Jean Harvey… damn it.

But considering Morrison’s first ever gig was a Britney Spears concert (and apparently not for the last time either) she’s probably got her own muse in mind. Anyway, always best to check these things out live to be sure – and you’ve a few dates left to choose from until the summer starts to fade. Although if the title of this publcation means anything to you then we’d suggest The Sunflower Lounge on Sunday 30th June.

‘Hair’ – Gaygirl

Gaygirl play at The Sunflower Lounge on Sunday 30th June, with support from (SKETCH), Modern Comforts, and P.E.T – as presented by Indie Midlands. For direct gig info and links to online ticket sales, visit www.thesunflowerlounge.com/event/gaygirl-sketch-modern-comforts

For more on Gaygirl, visit www.gaygirl.band

For more on (SKETCH), visit www.sketchband.com
For more Modern Comforts, visit www.moderncomforts.co.uk
For more P.E.T, visit www.facebook.com/petbanduk

For more from Indie Midlands, including further event listings and stories from the region’s indie and alternative music scene, visit www.indiemidlands.com

For more on The Sunflower Lounge, including venue details and further event listings, visit www.thesunflowerlounge.com

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NOT NORMAL NOT OK is a campaign to encourage safety and respect within live music venues, and to combat the culture of sexual assault and aggression – from dance floor to dressing room.

To learn more about the NOT NORMAL NOT OK campaign, click here. To sign up and join the NOT NORMAL NOT OK campaign, click here.

If you have been affected by any of the issues surrounding sexual violence – or if you want to report an act of sexual aggression, abuse or assault – click here for information via the ‘Help & Support’ page on the NOT NORMAL NOT OK website.

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BREVIEW: Katherine Ryan – Glitter Room @ Symphony Hall 02.02.18

Katherine Ryan – Glitter Room @ Symphony Hall 02.02.18

Words by Ed King

We filed slowly, languidly into the hall. The auditorium was vast… But not silent, which is an immediate win for a Birmingham crowd.

I love my home city, but it can be a tough cookie for any touring artist – from the Insane Clown Posse to Ani DiFranco, you just can’t be sure when it come to a Birmingham gig. And I have never seen comedy at the Symphony Hall; a huge room, indeed a ‘vast auditorium’, one a friend astutely described as “the 1980’s trying to do the 1950’s”. 

But if tonight isn’t sold out, then it’s a damn near close. All I can count are the empty chairs stuck in traffic or cursing an AWOL babysitter. Booking Joe Lycett as support was a bold local move too. So bold it could have even backfired, as Lycett takes to the intimidating plateau that is the Symphony Hall stage (without a orchestra on it at least) and makes it as cosy as your living room. Cosier, in fact, like the living room of a good friend but one who won’t expect you to clean up afterwards. Or a total stranger’s when you’ve drunk too much to care.

Taking us to the interval and in some case to our seats, as with the unlucky couple that arrive a little late (once the show had started, once the stand up comedy show had started, once the stand up comedy show had started in front of thousands of people that can see you’re in the wrong aisle) Lycett confidently segues from jokes of civic humour to the best use for an Amazon Alexa. Extreme, funny, and extremely funny, the now Kings Heathen is about to embark on his I’m About to Lose Control and I think Joe Lycett (nice) tour, kicking off the day before Valentines. Definitely one to watch out for, and then watch. If you can. It’s pretty much sold out too.

Katherine Ryan – Glitter Room / UK TourSauntering onto the big and empty Symphony Hall stage, “it’s a long walk…”, Katherine Ryan looks resplendent in pink silk (I think) with red frills. Or her Vagina Trousers, as we are quickly informed. So there’s an image that will never leave my mind. Assured, tempered by a tour that’s been running since September, and all the qualities that a stand up Faust would be picking his scabs to sign, seal and deliver, Ryan opens with jokes about relationships, the ending of relationships, and moving six thousand miles away with your fingers crossed – an oddly narcissistic approach to putting your emotional cards on the table. Immediately engaging, Ryan turns what could have been trite into fresh and personal material, inviting us into walk though the weird worlds we all inhabit (even if some of us aren’t totally aware of our terrain). Honest, the fun side of frustrated, and cut to perfection; I will never look at a dolphin in quite the same way again.

From jibes about her “ineffectual butler” daughter, be it stalking Anna Kendrick or learning the difference between “day wine and night wine”, to an accentuated recount of when her family came over from the “trashy part” of Canada to see her small London freehold, Ryan has a firm grip on her delivery. Its gut wrenching; at one point I honestly feel the cartilage between my ribs ask me to stop. But by the time my favourite line of the night is uttered, namely that the Frank Sinatra standard ‘My Way’ is the “anthem of a cunt”, it’s clear there is to be little respite. And I will love that sentence until the day that I die.

But Ryan’s wrath is anything than just pure self deprecation, as everyone from her school gate peers – the bake sale obsessed Julie (who I swear is a more fertile version of my step mother) to the Lycra obsessed husband who would get “hate fucked” back in his box, get an astute poke in the ribs. And if you’ve ever spent “two Christmases” traversing a bitter and empty motorway…

Celebrity culture is also in range, as public domain miscreants – from R Kelly to the misogynists of musical theatre – receive a taste of the lash. But don’t worry, an escape to any would be sexual predator is offered; just “don’t fuck vulnerable women”, as the chant that never was (but should have been) rings around the back rows of the West End.

There is even a little time for some proxy president poking, filtered through the plight of “the world’s most unlucky gold digger” Melania Trump. And despite the clear attack at the abject horror that currently sits in The White House, this once again over used subject is the conduit for another piece of acerbic genius – namely that the maligned First Lady is only “one line of coke and an aggressive hand job” away from inheritance and freedom. We can but hope. Or perhaps even help, to a point. I know a guy with some cracking Colombian flake…

Katherine Ryan’s Glitter Room is on tour across the UK until the 24th March 2018. For more on Katherine Ryan, including full tour dates and online ticket sales, visit www.katherineryan.co.uk

For more on Joe Lycett, visit www.joelycettcomedy.co.uk

For more from Live Nation UK, including further event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.livenation.co.uk

For more from both the Symphony and Town Halls, including further event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.thsh.co.uk

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BPREVIEW: Katherine Ryan – Glitter Room @ Symphony Hall 02.02.18

Katherine Ryan – Glitter Room @ Symphony Hall 02.02.18

Words by Ed King

On Friday 2nd February, Katherine Ryan brings her Glitter Room Tour to Birmingham’s Symphony Hall – with Joe Lycett as the stand up support act. 

Katherine Ryan’s Glitter Room is scheduled for 8pm at the Symphony Hall, with tickets priced at £24.50 (+bf) as presented by Live Nation UK. For direct show information, including venue details and online ticket sales, click here.

Queen of the acerbic broad smile, Katherine Ryan has been poking the ribs of our populous since settling in Britain about a decade ago – winning the Nivea sponsored Funny Women Award in 2008.

Katherine Ryan – Glitter Room @ Symphony Hall 02.02.18Born, raised and educated in Ontario, Ryan initially moved to the UK to help the restaurant chain Hooters set up in Nottingham – sticking around in Albion longer than expected, picking up some solid bookings as a comedian and setting into the tight lipped day to day of England. Now a self described “typical British mum – a young, uneducated immigrant”, Ryan has become a familiar face in Britain as a TV presenter, regular guest on TV panel shows, and part of the festival stand up circuit.

With a self deprecating, child (adulation) bashing, velvet glove punch approach to her material, Katherine Ryan is not likely to appear at a Pontins family cabaret anytime soon (I once saw both mother and daughter on stage for a skit… not your standard red coat fodder). Likewise, I can’t imagine there’s too much sleep being lost in the Ryan household when Waitrose run out of Chai Latte mix.

But for those anti-millennials who enjoy a sticking a good two fingers up at the tacit/absurd sides of society, you might find yourself in the right room with Katherine Ryan.

Although her latest tour, Glitter Room (named after her daughter’s bedroom) sees Ryan shift from the ‘waspish put-down to a more positive celebration of her life’ – with a little room left for Trump bashing and jabs at Baby Machine Julie. Personally, I’m fingers crossed for another attack of the Beyoncés. But a boy can dream.

Katherine Ryan – on Conan, February 2017

Katherine Ryan brings her Glitter Room Tour to Birmingham’s Symphony Hall on Friday 2nd February, with Joe Lycett as the support stand up act. For direct show information, including venue details and online ticket sales, visit www.thsh.co.uk/event/katherine-ryan 

For more on Katherine Ryan, visit www.katherineryan.co.uk

For more on Joe Lycett, visit www.joelycettcomedy.co.uk

For more from Live Nation UK, including further event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.livenation.co.uk

For more from both the Symphony and Town Halls, including further event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.thsh.co.uk