Coffee-Table Notes

Carling Academy, Glasgow 4 stars As art-rock pranks go, Devo’s marriage of stylised sci-fi geek chic and turbo-charged new wave power pop was a cartoon riot of high-concept bubblegum satire that laughed at itself as well as the system that spawned them. 35 years on from the band’s initial grouping in Akron, Ohio and touring for the first time in 15 years, despite advancing years, Devo remain a thrilling mix of performance art as pop song that the likes of Chicks On Speed have appropriated wholesale but without any of the tunes. Clad in trademark yellow boiler suits and Bill and Ben ‘energy dome’ hats (only £18 at the merchandise stall), Devo’s retrograde cod-philosophy of de-evolution, which acknowledged man’s ongoing backward slide during the Nixon and Reagan eras, has, in the Bush administration, unwittingly found its time. Musically, too, strip away the outfits and self-conscious quirks as the band themselves gradually disrobe to a shorts and t-shirts combo, and Devo’s analogue synt

Liquid Room, Edinburgh 3 stars In terms of inventing modern music, and as dance culture testified to, it’s the producers who matter. Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry is as significant as Phil Spector, Brian Wilson and Martin Hannett. Having just entered his 70s, Perry’s golden days at Jamaica’s Studio One and his own Black Ark studio have given him an iconic status his alleged unhinged status is acutely aware of to the point of calculated self-destruction. These days, given Perry’s status as a Swiss resident, it’s somehow understandable that his latest incarnation of backing band The Upsetters is a slickly louche combo who’ve fully absorbed their chops in a medium that never quite transcends its studio origins. An elongated wait eventually gives way to a couple of instrumental workouts before the lead mic is removed to allow the maestro himself to make his entrance in full vocal motion. What follows is a charming set only remarkable for proving just how much Perry, clad in more bargain-basement but

Steven Severin is clearly attracted to the dark side. As bass player in Siouxsie and the Banshees for two decades, he helped define the scarier, more mystical side of punk. When the band imploded in the mid 1990s, Severin’s first job was scoring the soundtrack to the only film to have been refused a certificate on the grounds of blasphemy. Other soundtracks have helped illustrate left-field supernatural fare onscreen in London Voodoo and Nature Morte. Severin has also worked with Edinburgh Festival Fringe favourite, Shakti. Even Severin’s name was taken from the Velvet Underground song, Venus In Furs, by way of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s erotic novel of the same name. It’s unlikely that the clientele of the bar on the edge of Edinburgh’s New Town would be able to glean any of this from the silver bearded and slightly donnish 52 year old sitting among them today. Nor the fact that Severin is about to make his first ever live appearance as a solo artist in the city he, his Texan wife

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh 4 stars TO protest, in its most literal sense, is to dissent from a mainstream that keeps the underdog tethered to its place. All creeds that allowed wars to be fought in their name aren't much different from today's holders of high office. Yet, if ever there was a faith that's been demonised as much as deified, its complex origins confused by some of its more bullish advocates, it's Protestantism. For a Belfast-based theatre company such as Ransom to tackle the subject seriously is still contentious, even as it puts fire on holy waters. You can almost feel the rumble of a once-pure legacy now warped and corrupted by zealots in Robert Welch's poetic cycle that maps a believer's full global sprawl, from London to Mississippi and Armagh, from puritan soldiers turned hangmen to latter-day Glasgow football thugs hanging on the coat-tails of someone else's second-hand battle. In Paul Hickey's electrifying solo performance, he becom

Rachel O' Riordan may have only taken up her post as creative director for theatre of Horsecross Arts at Perth Theatre two months ago, but, swishing into the building's foyer on a Thursday afternoon, she already looks like she owns the place. Indeed, as O'Riordan announces details of her first season at the venue, as well she might. Because, with this dynamic thirty-something Northern Irish woman at the helm, what is regarded as one of Scotland's more traditionally minded theatres might just about to undergo a very quiet revolution. Not that O'Riordan doesn't have a commercial track record, even if her best known works with Ransom, the company she co-founded to produce her actor husband Richard Dormer's play about snooker player Alex Higgins, Hurricane, and the decidedly odd The Gentleman's Tea Drinking Society, are studio pieces. One should bear in mind too, however, that while Hurricane began life in an eighty-seat venue before becoming an Edinburgh Fe

Kings Theatre, Edinburgh 4 stars The jungle drums are pounding from the off in this long overdue main stage revival of Tom McGrath and Jimmy Boyle's 1977 reimagining of Boyle's life and crimes. As seen through the figure of Gorbals gangster Johnny Byrne, what emerges in the first half of Phillip Breen's production is a music-hall sketchbook of cartoon dead-end kids and choreographed violence counterpointed by old time dancehall classics as Johnny and his gang take over the neighbourhood. All this is punctuated by a series of out-front monologues that point up the links between crime and economic disenfranchisement, with a pair of gossipy wifies making up a back-street chorus. After such a stylistic whirlwind, the second act's stark change of pace highlights the tedium of Johnny's incarceration, as it focuses on his own brutalisation. Out of this comes a sense of enlightenment he could never find on the mean streets in a voyage of discovery at odds with the cage he&#

Alex Ferns doesn't look like much of a tough guy anymore. One minute the actor best known for his stint in East Enders playing psychopathic wife beater Trevor is sitting backstage in Edinburgh's Festival Theatre, chatting amiably about his role in The Hard Man, Tom McGrath and convicted murderer Jimmy Boyle's 1977 play fictionalising Boyle's violent life, which receives a major revival this week at Edinburgh's King's Theatre prior to a national tour. The next, Ferns lapses into a long silence and looks off into the middle distance, his eyes glazed over with tears as he confronts his own past in a way he's never spoken about before. Ferns had just been talking about his stage debut in Colchester playing yet another tough guy, blue-collared bruiser Stanley Kowalsky in Tennessee Williams' classic, A Streetcar Named Desire. Why, exactly, he's just been asked, does he think he's continually cast as short-tempered brutes who were handy with their fist