London

Albion’s Light: William Blake at the Tate Britain

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William Blake critiqued the Enlightenment, industrialization, and the expansion of the British empire. His work shines at the Tate as the shadows of Brexit loom.

With England at a critical juncture in terms of national identity, the time seems right for a retrospective of William Blake’s artwork. The seminal poet of the Romantic Age famously cautioned against the expansion of the British empire, the Enlightenment, and mass industrialization. But his paintings, prints, and drawings had almost as much to say, and now, as Brexit freshly looms, the Tate Britain is displaying more than three hundred such works in a show billed as the largest exhibit of his art in more than a generation.

William Blake runs at the Tate Britain through February 2, 2020, and it doesn’t disappoint. Indeed, it opens with Blake’s iconic Albion Rose, which depicts a pristine white figure posed after Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. He stands on a rock, arms outstretched, backlit by rays of gold, fiery

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Concert review: Sinéad O’Connor- classics, with a hint of the new

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Sinead

The queues for Sinéad O’Connor’s first London show in four years curled around the outside of the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Inside and throughout her performance, voices in the crowd shouted their love for a singer whose voice is astounding, at a point in her career when her peers’ singing quality begins to betray age.

O’Connor walked onto the stage barefoot, all in black, a small figure supported by her band – an electric guitar and bass, acoustic guitar, drums, and keys. She began with three powerful songs, all marked by the humour and rage that characterise much of her output. The first, “Queen of Denmark”, began softly, with flashes of anger that were all the more effective because of their measured explosions. Her second, “Take Me To Church”, from her latest album I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss (2014), as with many of her songs, was undercut by wistfulness, a raw pain beneath euphoria. The culmination of this triptych, “4th and Vine”, was again inflected with humour, a reference to her pink dress and the hope of marriage. She skipped barefoot across the stage, whilst her guitarist played a solo.

Then came a tonal shift, a quieter beginning, and yet more sorrow offset by wry lyrics – “I sold your granny’s rosary for 50p” as a particularly memorable line in “Reason With You”. The guitar undercut O’Connor’s singing with a soft howl, a complement to the repeated lyric, “If I loved someone I might lose someone”.

The next two songs betrayed the only flaw in the whole performance, a slight tendency towards the mellow, ballady, overly smooth sound that such a classic instrumental set-up of practised musicians can produce. Then, in a brilliant switch, O’Connor was spotlit on stage, singing “I Am Stretched On Your Grave” with a clarity and grace that was deeply affecting. What was shown through the preceding songs was foregrounded here – the lasting brilliance of O’Connor’s voice. Then all instruments were stripped away, with just O’Connor singing “In This Heart”, then one of her band joining her in song, then another, in an affecting harmonisation.

With more than a nod to current politics, O’Connor introduced her next song with a soft “I think you’ll like this one”, launching into the resonant “Black Boys on Mopeds”. Reaching the climax of “please”, her voice became a keen, a frustrated plea.The songs moved forwards through O’Connor’s repertoire, to 2000’s “’Til I Whisper You Something”, then to 2014’s “Harbour”, before travelling backwards to 1994’s “Thank You For Loving Me”, then arriving at the popular shores of three songs from 1990’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. The culmination of these was her most popular, “Nothing Compares 2U”: again, she coped well with a technically difficult song, substituting some of the higher notes with breathy tones.One more song, then the encore, and into the powerful “Three Babies”, before she began her last, “Milestones’ (her newest, a teaser for her next album, No Mud No Lotus), without the microphone, then ended with just the keyboard for accompaniment. A haunting end to a brilliant show, whose only fault was the potential to sound, at times, just a little too rehearsed.

Source: Sinéad O’Connor, Shepherd’s Bush Empire review – classics, with a hint of the new

In Search Of London’s Last Cockneys 

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“We had to move away, Cos’ the rent we couldn’t pay.”

What does it mean to be cockney? Pearly kings and queens? Rhyming slang? Pie and liquor? It’s commonly believed that to be truly cockney, you must be born within earshot of Bow Bells, which peal from Cheapside’s St Mary-le-Bow church.

Noise pollution and a lack of maternity wards in the area have rendered this definition practically obsolete. The term ‘cockney’ dates back to the 1300s and was originally used as a pejorative label for the city’s toffee-nosed urban folk. It’s since become a term of endearment primarily referring to the working class, down-to-earth, East Enders of London.

But in 2010, Professor Paul Kerswill of the University of York estimated that the cockney accent would disappear from London “within 30 years”. 10 of those years have now elapsed. Is this native London breed really set to become brown bread? And what has triggered the mass exodus of these former city-dwellers to surrounding counties such as Essex and Kent?

“We’re still alive and kicking, but we’re hanging by a thread”

Think cockney and Pearly Kings and Queens often spring to mind. The tradition, dating back to the Victorian costermongers (street traders) of north London, was founded by Henry Croft, a former workhouse inmate, who — inspired by the style-savvy costermongers who sewed lines of pearls onto their clothes to mimic the rich — chose to go one step further by completely embellishing suits with pearl buttons [ . . . ]

Read complete feature story in THE LONDONIST: In Search Of London’s Last Cockneys | Londonist