Sub-editors: Oren Brown, Lucy Bower & Rowan Christina Driver
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Monday 21st February 2022
Music
Good Morning Gorgeous Garvit Hora
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Blige rides the instrumental wonderfully, with harmonies that I contagiously attempted myself Love Will Never sees Blige grieving and coming to a twisted acceptance of a romantic loneliness. Being backed with more strings, Blige rides the instrumental wonderfully, giving my favourite chorus on the entire album and harmonies that I contagiously attempted myself. The third track in the listing Here With Me warmly welcomes the first of a handful of upcoming features on the rest of Good Morning Gorgeous. Anderson. Paak and Blige meld well on the chorus, and their verses work beautifully in tandem with one another, with direct lyrical responses. All this considered, however, the track is too short to feel full and developed, and. Paak’s verse is painfully average, coming together to make a disappointing overall song, with fairly raised expectations from his and Blige’s collaboration. The title track is a smooth, slow ballad, which has sentiments and a performance I can respect, but for a track defining the album, the chorus is incredibly weak. This plasticity and, dare I say, over-commercialisation – especially with knowledge of the existence of a ‘Target Exclusive’ version of the album – is prevalent in waves across the rest of the project’s runtime.
There were shambles that not even Fivio Foreign nor Usher could save on their respective tracks The repetitive production, bog-standard lyricism, and oftentimes forgettable melodies leave much to be desired. A shambles not even Fivio Foreign nor Usher could save on their respective tracks. Working in competition with R’n’B artists of her generation such as Jazmine Sullivan, who had a phenomenal 2021 with her project Heaux Tales, Mary J. Blige crumbles. Despite the promising opening tracks, which I will continue spinning, I left the project with my spirit crushed, feeling not so gorgeous.
COURIER
Live Review: Brockha
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Elena Corcobado
ary J. Blige returns with a fulllength project after a fiveyear hiatus, with her 2017 release Strength of a Woman. Although across this time she has been involved with soundtrack songs, and a few singles and features, Good Morning Gorgeous is a long-awaited cohesive effort from R’n’B legend Blige. Opening powerfully with the grandly produced No Idea, Blige puts on display a beautiful mix of fresh and old-school flows in the rap-sung verses and pre-choruses. The vocal layering, though questionable, is permissible considering the impact and groove of the rest of the song. Thematically, introducing the LP with a sense of confusion despite great volumes of experience is clever, and leads into the next track Love Will Never very well.
THE
rockhampton’s concert felt equally exciting and bittersweet. The gig was held at the O2 Brixton Academy, a venue many artists aspire to perform in. A few weeks ago the band officially announced their break-up (phrased by them as an indefinite hiatus) and entire tour cancellation, with the exception of their two London dates, February 7th and 8th, and Coachella. I was lucky to have bought tickets for London’s second night back in 2019 when the tour was first announced. After two years of postponed dates due to Covid-19, and after finding out I’d be attending their last gig as a group, I can say I was excited. Olivia and I travelled down to London on the day by train, had dinner in Brixton, and headed straight to the venue. The first thing that caught my attention was the amount of young people queuing up around the O2 — and when I say around, I mean the queue went all the way around the block (it was sold out, and 5000 people had to enter the venue). Once we made our way inside, my first thoughts were confirmed: the demographic was very young — 99% of people were between 20 and 25. Only after the gig did I see one man who looked to be in his 30s. In terms of the gender split, the audience was predominantly male, but with a considerable amount of women as well. It was a diverse crowd, at least to my eyes — I come from a predominantly white middle-sized city in Spain, and it was London after all. As soon as we entered the venue, we bumped into a heavily crowded merch stall selling t-shirts, hoodies and caps from £35 to £70. Spenny, but the merch was pretty rad. For the first hour (doors opened at 7pm), most people spent their time buying merch, making use of the cloakroom, getting drinks and going to the toilet. I thought the venue worked really efficiently — queues moved fast, there were plenty of staff and security, and it was highly organised. Those most passionate about being at the front were, well, claiming their spot as close as possible to the stage.
FTHC Frank Turner Calvin Breakwell
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s a huge Frank Turner fan (I even have a tattoo with his lyrics), I was so excited for the new album and its new direction and I wasn’t at all disappointed and I think it’s one of his best yet! The album starts with an explosion of punk rock energy in a new, yet, familiar direction in Frank’s solo career in what will turn out to be his most raw and emotional album yet. In this fourteen track, forty-two minutes and thirty second long album, he explores being depressed and suffering from anxiety.
"The only thing I hadn't accounted for was love" references his binging and addiction problems On top of this, Turner comes to terms with his father’s transition to becoming Miranda and their fractured relationship healing and the process towards feeling great after undergoing Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (previously explored in the song “Little Changes”). Leaving his home in
Once we got all our things sorted, Olivia and I headed into the main venue. We were roughly around the middle, near the mixing desk. People were pretty spaced out at this point, and some people came to make conversation with us, asking about the band, how long had we been fans for, and whatnot. We quickly noticed people smoking weed in the venue. As a short girl, my favourite thing about the venue was that it’s tilted, so we could still get a pretty decent view. The architecture of the upper area of the venue had some sort of Roman colosseum design, something we were slightly confused about. Around 8pm the opener act came out. It was Christian Alexander, a young boy I had never heard of before. As a first impression from a few songs, the guy seemed pretty bland and novice, playing songs with a singer-songwriter style to it, switching between playing chords on an acoustic and electric guitar, or just singing. He was backed by a drummer, and a keyboard player on one song, from what I got from my view. I assumed everything else was played as a backing track. I have to give him the fact that the sound was quite shit — the guitar and voice sounded flat and the drums overtook them. I was surprised he was the opening act to a hip-hop group. By the end of his set, I was pretty sleepy. We had to wait until a bit after 9pm for Brockhampton to come out; that was standard timing. I was worried I wouldn’t feel hyped enough as I felt pretty tired. But then the guys came out, and oh boy, did my energy take a 180 turn as soon as they did. ‘BUZZCUT’, from their last album Roadrunner, started playing and the energy in the room instantly went up immensely — the crowd got packed, it was hot, people cheered and sang at the top of their lungs, and everyone was very engaged in the performance. The energy kept on going up and as soon as ‘STAR’, the second track, came on, the crowd went so mad Olivia and I were pushed
London after getting married and ready to settle down is also discussed by Turner. One of the stand out lines on the album which follows such a great series of “Break up albums” is the line in ‘Untainted Love’, “The only thing I hadn’t accounted for was love” in reference to his binging and addiction problems which feature a lot on this album. He credits his wife Jess with helping him bring to an end by encouraging him to go to therapy. He deals with growing up without a father figure and being “shipped” off to Eton aged 8 in 'Fatherless'. This has one of the best lines on the album for me, about meeting Jesus, having a whitey, and talking about judgemental fathers. The latter half of the album includes some of FT’s best work, this includes “Punches” which has a punchy (sic) riff and great lyrics about that one day when everything goes to plan and you feel absolutely awesome. The last few songs are about his leaving London and starting a new quiet life in Essex with his wife. These make it seem like this album is the start of a new chapter in Frank’s career and life.In summary, I think this is one of Frank’s best albums and signals a new and positive direction in his music and life and I really look forward to the future! Best song: Punches Image: IMDb
around and lost each other, and I got beer spilled over my head. While surrendering to the mercy of the crowd, we were able to miraculously spot each other and reunite. The setlist was pretty spread between all their discography — covering 7 albums on a 90-minute performance is no easy task. In their harder songs, like ‘GUMMY’ and ‘JUNKY’, the crowd was hyped (as expected in a hiph o p gig),
Image: YouTube
The sounds of t Johnathan Lee
We take a look at the scores nominated for this year's Oscars
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resh off the heels of what was a muted, socially distanced award ceremony that was held at Los Angeles’s Union Station last year, the Oscars will be back this year on the 27th of March. I usually turn to a category of the awards that some consider niche, the Best Original Score category, and this year’s nominees were quite the treat. Power of the Dog, Jane Campion’s western which swept up twelve nominations, made an appearance in this category. Composed by Radiohead’s guitarist Jonny Greenwood, the track evokes a disturbed introversion, mirroring that of the film’s main character. Traces of Western can be heard everywhere; from the opening track 25 Years where the picking of guitar strings takes centre stage to Detuned Mechanical Piano that sounds like a piano player running amok in a saloon, it certainly is a strong contender. Less impressive, however, is the soundtrack to Don’t Look Up. There are two main motifs to the soundtrack, which became repetitive over the listening of the album. What stood out to me, however, was its main title theme which featured blaring trumpets that felt vibrant and fun. What many may remember from the movie would probably
