Royal Festival Hall

AWARDS SHORTLIST: MONSTAS: Best Gig of 2025

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It’s been quite the year, it’s almost Christmas and what would the festive season be without some recognition of the best of 2025? Over the next 2 months we’ll shortlist five nominees in each of 17 categories for our Oscars, or monstas if you will, of 2025.

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GIG REVIEW: Goldfrapp performs Felt Mountain live at Royal Festival Hall

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By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

WHEN?: Friday 15 April 2022

SETLIST: Felt Mountain; Paper Bag; Pilots; Deer Stop; Human; Hairy Trees; Road To Somewhere; Eat Yourself; Moon In Your Mouth; You Never Know; Black Cherry; Utopia; Lovely Head; Ride A White Horse; Strict Machine; Train; Oompa Radar

An hour into tonight’s show and singer Alison Goldfrapp announces from the stage that she wants to take a picture of the audience and instructs us to get to our feet.

  • Read on for reasons including how we hope new studio album number 8 is not far off
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GIG REVIEW: Sophie Ellis-Bextor at the Royal Festival Hall

Posted on by mrmonstagigz

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

WHERE?: Royal Festival Hall

WHEN?: 3/10, tour next year

SETLIST: Groovejet; Wild Forever; Catch You; Me & My Imagination; Youngblood; Love Is A Camera; Not Giving Up; The Sun’s On Us; Music Gets The Best Of Me; Bittersweet; Take Me Home; Young Hearts Run Free; Love Is You; Groovejet; Don’t Leave Me This Way; Heartbreak Make Me A Dancer; Murder On The Dancefloor; A Pessimist Is Never Disappointed

Perhaps it’s having a former Blue Peter presenter as a mother but Sophie Ellis-Bextor has always been refreshingly down-to-earth. So, when she describes tonight’s orchestral pop extravaganza as a ‘dream come true’, the qualification that: ‘All I had to do was pay for it’ comes as little surprise.

  • Read on for reasons including how you can see Sophie on this tour next summer

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5 things we know about next John Grant album Grey Tickles, Black Pressure

Posted on by mrmonstagigz

  1. Lead track Disappointing is more pop than anything on Pale Green Ghosts

Does anyone have a better taste in female duet partners? We saw Grant three times last year: Glastonbury, Royal Festival Hall and duetting with Alison Goldfrapp at the Albert Hall. Sinead O’Connor appeared on last proper album Pale Green Ghosts and here former Everything But The Girl star Thorn is duetting (see YouTube clip above) on gorgeous lines like: ‘Francis Bacon, the Dolomites, ballet dancers with or without tights, Central Park on an autumn day, always stunning and never cliche.’ And if that sounds too Vogue Madonna, the chorus reverts to type (‘All these things, they’re just Disappointing …’) until the O’Connor-esque payoff (‘… compared to you.’) Musically, it’s a return to the jauntier elements of breakthrough Queen of Denmark album.

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