Rock NYC

Bright Eyes: Radio City Music Hall, NYC

Live Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 10 March 2011

THE LAST word we heard as we left Radio City Music Hall last night, was "Mercy", repeated twice – once by Conor Oberst and once ...

Bright Eyes: Oh, Mercy: Bright Eyes at Radio City Music Hall, NYC

Live Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 10 March 2011

THE LAST word we heard as we left Radio City Music Hall last night, was "Mercy", repeated twice – once by Conor Oberst and once ...

LCD Soundsystem: Madison Square Garden

Live Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 3 April 2011

JAMES MURPHY is Irish, so why not a wake? Following his decision to kill off the LCD Soundsystem franchise, lead singer Murphy announced a last hurrah ...

Tyler, The Creator: Goblin

Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 26 May 2011

FORGET THE controversy. No, wait, we can't. The controversy is a breath of fresh air. If you listen to the album you might be confused ...

Adele: 21

Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 16 August 2011

I HAVE HELD off writing about this hugely successful slice of AOR for months and months because it didn't seem worth the effort. ...

David Guetta: Nothing But the Beat

Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 13 September 2011

IT IS NOT THAT Nothing But the Beat is substantially worse than One Love; it is worse but not substantially. It is that it is a stylistic dead ...

Katy Perry: Madison Square Garden, New York

Live Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 16 November 2011

IT WAS THE 118th date on Katy Perry's California Dreaming Tour. I know that for certain because, standing on a pink cloud, held up by ...

Rihanna: Talk That Talk

Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 21 November 2011

RATED R FOUND THE Barbadian well pissed at Chris Brown and out for revenge to disappointing results. Loud seemed to find the middle ground behind the bucolic Rated ...

Swedish House Mafia: Madison Square Garden, New York NY

Live Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 18 December 2011

THE DIFFERENCE between House as the prevailing form of dance and house as a texture in modern pop is the difference between foreground and background. ...

Glen Campbell: Town Hall, New York

Live Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 9 January 2012

IT WAS 64 DEGREES in Manhattan Saturday afternoon, the world had taken a turn for the milder and, though it was the dead of winter, spring ...

Megadeth: Theater at Madison Square Garden, NYC

Live Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 31 January 2012

DAVE MUSTAINE made a fan out of me with two actions. Neither musical. ...

Ed Sheeran: Mercury Lounge, NYC

Live Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 2 February 2012

WHAT'S WITH Ed Sheeran and homelessness? The subject provides two short stories and three songs during his second set ever in the US at Mercury ...

Madonna: Yankee Stadium, Bronx NY

Live Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 7 September 2012

AT THE MIDWAY point of Madonna's lousy Yankee Stadium set Thursday night, she hectors the exhausted audience like a shrewish old maid, on the use ...

The Beatles, Marshall Crenshaw: Marshall Crenshaw's Incredible Simulators: B.B. Kings, New York

Live Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 6 January 2013

IN 1978, Marshall Crenshaw played John Lennon to Glen Burtnik's Paul McCartney in the touring company of Beatlemania. 35 years later the two men were ...

One Direction: Midnight Memories

Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 29 November 2013

IF NIALL HORAN, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson, referred to as One Direction, had thought it through, they would have cut at ...

Lana Del Rey: Ultraviolence (Interscope)

Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 23 June 2014

SOMETIMES OTHER writers do your work for you and Caryn Ganz's  (former editor at Spin) excellent Rolling Stone review of Lana Del Rey's sophomore effort ...

Sufjan Stevens: Beacon Theatre, New York NY

Live Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 12 April 2015

THE DIFFERENCE between Rufus Wainwright's full length lament for his late mother, All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu, and Sufjan Stevens, Carrie And Lowell, is ...

Swet Shop Boys: Webster Hall, New York NY

Live Review by Iman Lababedi, Rock NYC, 14 April 2017

SWET SHOP BOYS performed a very neat trick at Webster Hall on Wednesday night: they made Pakistan cool again and brought the 90 million odd ...