Mika at the Roundhouse in Camden, review - Telegraph

t4p, Miro ....nice review!

Wow, what a review, it doesn't get any better than that, does it?!!

Mind you, it's about time that some people (reviewers) wised up to the fact that Mika is in this for the long-haul - he has a very wide fan base (age-wise) which will give his career longevity because he appeals to such a wide audience and not just a niche audience of, say, (younger) teenagers. But more to the point he has the extraordinary talent to keep coming up with the 'goods' with his songwriting (no way just a one-album wonder!!) - and of course he puts so much into his performing too as this review acknowledges. It's great that this review is so complimentary and positive!

I'm so pleased for Mika! Thank you for posting!

Nice review! hes a glitterball

Nice review! :thumb_yello:Thanks for posting!

Thanks for posting!

Love the review!

T4p!

This is really good, thanks for posting!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/live-music-reviews/5961593/Mika-at-the-Roundhouse-in-Camden-review.html including a pic (old one)

 

Mika controlled the crowd like a showbusiness veteran at the iTunes Festival at the Roundhouse in Camden. Rating: * * * * *

 

By Neil McCormick

Published: 7:04PM BST 02 Aug 2009

 

Completely covered in tin foil, the stage resembles an amateur dramatics production of the moon landing. The backdrop is lit up like a rainbow. Cannons fire glitter overhead. Pretty choir girls wear slinky skirts and shiny fairy princess hats and (while they don’t actually appear to do much singing) never stop grinning from one end of the show to the other. The featured backing singers wear silver feather dresses and do little hip-shaking routines. And the star of the show gambols about on top of his piano in glitter boots and white dungarees (with no shirt underneath), dancing with the geeky abandon of Pinocchio shucking off his strings. Watching Mika live is like stumbling into an alternate dimension where the Seventies never ended, Top of the Pops still rules the charts and the stars comport themselves as if life was one big children’s television show.

 

There is a flurry of big personalities in pop music but none come bigger or bolder than Mika. He should, by rights, be incredibly irritating. His stage persona is of a camp, perpetually grinning, buffed-up nerd caught between rampant narcissism and giddy incredulity at his luck as he goes about fulfilling all his childhood pop fantasies. White dungarees were a fashion crime even when they were considered fashionable, and Mika wears them without irony, rather with a kind of gleeful conviction that he has the talent and chutzpah to carry it off. Which he does.

The forthcoming follow-up to his five million-selling 2007 debut should be a testing time for Mika, especially given how fickle music audiences have become, yet for his comeback shows he is already behaving like a superstar in waiting. Five new songs slotted so effectively into his set that the crowd were soon singing along as if they were old favourites. Mika’s voice is high and clear and he doesn’t over-use it, happy to let his backing vocalists and the audience carry the tunes for him.

 

For all his relative youth (he is still only 25) he has the crowd-control instincts of a showbusiness veteran, switching instinctively between gushing humility and drama-queen teasing. But it is the sheer pleasure he communicates in performing, his exuberance and flamboyance, that makes it all so infectious. It’s one thing to see his natural audience of women and gay men jumping up and down and singing along with abandon, but by the end even reluctant, arms-folded husbands and boyfriends seem to shed their ambitions and surrender to the force of his choruses.

 

Mika writes monster pop tunes that have such rich emotional complexities gushing under their singalong surface it is almost as if he is daring listeners to call his bluff. These are songs of psycho-sexual drama tarted up with cascading melodies and irresistible hooklines, delivered with the camp showmanship of the Scissor Sisters channelling young Elton and Bowie.

 

At the centre of it all, Mika himself is a one-man glitterball, reflecting and refracting in his own shining light, impossible to pin down.

highlighted my fave parts. one man glitterball, how did the writer come up with that!?! it's such a great expression!

t4p miro:thumb_yello:

T4P. People are realising that we have a living legend in our midst, who's name is MIKA!

T4P

Couldn't stop smiling whilst reading that ... it's so nice that a reviewer finally get's him .... He's incredible ... and reading things like that make me bloody proud to be a MIKA fan ..... long may he reign

Thank you for posting Miro

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/live-music-reviews/5961593/Mika-at-the-Roundhouse-in-Camden-review.html including a pic (old one)

 

Mika controlled the crowd like a showbusiness veteran at the iTunes Festival at the Roundhouse in Camden. Rating: * * * * *

 

By Neil McCormick

Published: 7:04PM BST 02 Aug 2009

 

Completely covered in tin foil, the stage resembles an amateur dramatics production of the moon landing. The backdrop is lit up like a rainbow. Cannons fire glitter overhead. Pretty choir girls wear slinky skirts and shiny fairy princess hats and (while they don’t actually appear to do much singing) never stop grinning from one end of the show to the other. The featured backing singers wear silver feather dresses and do little hip-shaking routines. And the star of the show gambols about on top of his piano in glitter boots and white dungarees (with no shirt underneath), dancing with the geeky abandon of Pinocchio shucking off his strings. Watching Mika live is like stumbling into an alternate dimension where the Seventies never ended, Top of the Pops still rules the charts and the stars comport themselves as if life was one big children’s television show.

 

There is a flurry of big personalities in pop music but none come bigger or bolder than Mika. He should, by rights, be incredibly irritating. His stage persona is of a camp, perpetually grinning, buffed-up nerd caught between rampant narcissism and giddy incredulity at his luck as he goes about fulfilling all his childhood pop fantasies. White dungarees were a fashion crime even when they were considered fashionable, and Mika wears them without irony, rather with a kind of gleeful conviction that he has the talent and chutzpah to carry it off. Which he does.

 

The forthcoming follow-up to his five million-selling 2007 debut should be a testing time for Mika, especially given how fickle music audiences have become, yet for his comeback shows he is already behaving like a superstar in waiting. Five new songs slotted so effectively into his set that the crowd were soon singing along as if they were old favourites. Mika’s voice is high and clear and he doesn’t over-use it, happy to let his backing vocalists and the audience carry the tunes for him.

 

For all his relative youth (he is still only 25) he has the crowd-control instincts of a showbusiness veteran, switching instinctively between gushing humility and drama-queen teasing. But it is the sheer pleasure he communicates in performing, his exuberance and flamboyance, that makes it all so infectious. It’s one thing to see his natural audience of women and gay men jumping up and down and singing along with abandon, but by the end even reluctant, arms-folded husbands and boyfriends seem to shed their ambitions and surrender to the force of his choruses.

 

Mika writes monster pop tunes that have such rich emotional complexities gushing under their singalong surface it is almost as if he is daring listeners to call his bluff. These are songs of psycho-sexual drama tarted up with cascading melodies and irresistible hooklines, delivered with the camp showmanship of the Scissor Sisters channelling young Elton and Bowie.

 

At the centre of it all, Mika himself is a one-man glitterball, reflecting and refracting in his own shining light, impossible to pin down.

WOW review ... still I wish they would stop comparing him to other artists ...

Cheers,

Id3

Wow, this review is amazing:wub2:

Thanks for posting Miro!

I keep coming back to this review - at last a critic that has realised how complex and talented Mika really is.

I really liked the bit about arms-folded husbands.

A review like that makes me feel so glad to be a Mika fan from the beginning.

I feel like screaming

SEE?

SEE?

SEE?

I knew it. I have always known it. We have always known it. At last:aah:

So right Blue Sky

I really liked the bit about arms-folded husbands.

 

A review like that makes me feel so glad to be a Mika fan from the beginning.

 

I feel like screaming

 

SEE?

SEE?

SEE?

 

I knew it. I have always known it. We have always known it. At last:aah:

Jepp!

We are just waiting for the rest of the world to discover it!

Thanks to Mikasounds here is a scan of the article

Thanks to Mikasounds here is a scan of the article