A treat for West London on Wednesday when Jarvis Cocker bought the kind of evening only he can to the Shepherds Bush Empire, to celebrate Rough Trade’s 30th birthday. Jarvis promised a combination of a lecture, gig and disco and certainly delivered, hopping from Wogan to Westfield and then straight into great new solo tracks. The crowd was a friendly, pleased-to-be there selection of mainly thirty somethings, revelling in a bit of Britpop reminiscence.......

The promise of being at Hot Chip's last stop on their UK tour followed by an after-party DJ set has had us raring to rave for months and the electro-pop five-piece almost didn't disappoint. The billed support artist grime "grandad" Wiley was a no-show and it's shame that Hot Chip didn't decide to compensate by performing their fabulously soft-core cover of 'Wearing My Rolex'. The Invisible provided a reasonable soft-rock background as people began......

On the 8th August London’s Underage Festival, designed specifically for 14-18 year olds, returned to Victoria Park for a bigger and better sequel, bringing a huge line-up with it. With more space and more stages, it easily matched the success of last year. Pull In Emergency, a team of underage musicians who are becoming more popular by the day, rocked a full tent with their cool, poppy sound and friendly stage presence. Meanwhile, Poppy......

London girl Catherine Anne Davies has had some outstanding press, so with high hopes we attended her gig at Bush Hall on Thursday night. A fair size audience, made up largely of young indie chicks and industry heads, demonstrated Catherine's growing popularity - a singer described by the NME as "How Kate Bush would sound if she died and went to hell" (which is supposed to be a compliment). Described as a 'gothic folk......

L-R: Ed Harcourt, Baby Gramps, Sandy Dillon, Gavin Friday When Hal Willner takes the stage dressed as a pirate to introduce wily mountain man Baby Gramps, the show ahead is guaranteed to be out of the ordinary. After the third or fourth performer, the artists got tired of calling "ahoy!" and growling "arrrrgh," but it made the evening no less nautical. Running nearly four hours with no interval, the show was something of a test......

The last Friday of every month the function room at St. Aloysius Social Club is given over to the club night Tapestry. Music spanning genres and decades fills the comfortable church basement and bands take to the low, streamer strewn stage, and for a few hours the Somers Town space feels like it belongs someplace a bit further east. While a quartet of young women harmonizing classic folk tunes and Prince covers were in......

Although Bat For Lashes cut out mid-set - whoops - Radiohead were always going to be awesome. Thankfully, crew were on hand to fix the temporary blow out that left Victoria Park rather stunned, mid organic sausage and paper pint Carling, and Radiohead rocked on stage only a little late and dazzled E9. Kicking off with a stretch of In Rainbows (Bodysnatchers is unstoppably funky and everyone adores Nude, even though Skins tried to......

Pirates and Vikings invaded London late last week for a triple bill of metal, mayhem and melee. It was time for us to cover ourselves with red paint and grab our plastic axes - Turisas, Norther and Alestorm were in town. What are the best Scottish exports - whisky, haggis, prime ministers? Nah, we say. The newest product of Scotland to hit London came in the form of Alestorm, a rowdy troupe playing what they have termed "true Scottish pirate metal" which really describes their sound to a T....

It’s now over ten years since the Spice Girls entrenched themselves into the mindsets of teenyboppers around the world. Now all of those teenyboppers are in their early to mid-twenties and apparently desperate for a slice of retro-tastic cheese. Armed with plenty of alcohol in our system and a set of fuzzily fond memories we set off to the O2 to see the reunited Spice Girls in action. A quick glance round the audience......