sun 13/04/2025

New releases on CD & DVD

Album: Joe Lovano - Homage

Sebastian Scotney

Tenor titan Joe Lovano is thrilled by how Homage has turned out. He actually told me so himself in person a few weeks ago, and his new album has a very appealing, natural, free-flowing ease.

Album: Bon Iver - SABLE ƒABLE

Mark Kidel

With a sound that's instantly recognisable, Justin Vernon – known as Bon Iver - continues to astonish. Purveyor of wonder, sculptor of enchanting sounds, he treads a miraculous path between melancholy and joy and has established himself as one of the great voice of contemporary indie pop.

Album: Black Country, New Road - Forever Howlong

Ibi Keita

Black Country, New Road’s Forever Howlong is an ambitious reinvention that both captivates and, at times, frustrates. Following Isaac Wood’s...

Album: Sofia Härdig - Lighthouse of Glass

Kieron Tyler

The titular “lighthouse of glass” is a place where the narrator is “crying into the sun,” in which there is a need to “stand by my solitude.”...

Blu-ray: Yojimbo / Sanjuro

Graham Rickson

Akira Kurosawa described his 1961 hit Yojimbo as a tale of “rivalry on both sides, and both sides are equally bad… we are weakly caught in the middle...

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

Album: The Waterboys - Life, Death and Dennis Hopper

Thomas H Green

An alternately involving then naff tribute to a countercultural film figurehead

Album: Miki Berenyi Trio - Tripla

Tim Cumming

Debut set from Lush singer-songwriter’s new trio

Album: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - Death Hilarious

Guy Oddy

Geordie rockers’ pulverising psych metal is guaranteed to rattle windows

Album: Elton John and Brandi Carlile - Who Believes in Angels?

Liz Thomson

Elton John & Brandi Carlile step out in style

DVD/Blu-ray: The Substance

Markie Robson-Scott

French director Coralie Fargeat on the making of her award-winning body-horror movie

Album: Erlend Apneseth - Song Over Støv

Kieron Tyler

Norwegian musical impressionist’s journey into the centre of a vortex

Album: Bryan Ferry and Amelia Barratt - Loose Talk

Graham Fuller

A match made in urban nightlife and the mysteries of everyday living

Album: Will Smith - Based on a True Story

Ibi Keita

Big Willie’s back - but maybe he should’ve stayed home

Album: Perfume Genius - Glory

Joe Muggs

Album seven from an artist carving out his own space in the most modernist of ways

Album: Alison Krauss & Union Station - Arcadia

Tim Cumming

Their first album in 14 years looks hard at the past, and its role in the present

Blu-ray: Lifeforce

Nick Hasted

Tobe Hooper's frenzied, far out space sex vampire epic

Album: Toria Wooff - Toria Wooff

Kieron Tyler

Assured but too measured debut album from Americana-inclined singer-songwriter

Album: Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco - I Said I Love You First

Thomas H Green

An album by a pair of loved-up Hollywood celebs that is, whisper it, rather good

Album: The Horrors - Night Life

Thomas H Green

A new line-up proves no hindrance to a band bringing electro-rock zip to the darkness

Album: Billy Hart Quartet - Just

Sebastian Scotney

The drum legend's group in perfect balance

Album: Greentea Peng - Tell Dem It's Sunny

Guy Oddy

South Londoner’s smoky sophomore album is loaded with dope tunes

Album: The Loft - Everything Changes, Everything Stays The Same

Kieron Tyler

Belated debut album from the early Creation Records mainstays

Album: Jason Isbell - Foxes in the Snow

Joe Muggs

Small stories, big talent from the Alabaman storyteller extraordinaire

Album: Steven Wilson - The Overview

Graham Fuller

Infectious prog concept LP ponders Earth's insignificance and what lies beyond

Album: Coheed and Cambria - The Father of Make Believe

Ellie Roberts

An impressive welcome back to the group's imaginitive universe

Blu-ray: The Barnabáš Kos Case

Graham Rickson

Witty and stylish Slovak black comedy, alarmingly prescient

Album: Reg Meuross, Fire & Dust: A Woody Guthrie Story

Liz Thomson

At once a celebration and an exploration of the timeless Dust Bowl Balladeer

Album: Lady Gaga - Mayhem

Joe Muggs

The godmother of theatre-kid pop is back! Back!! BACK!!!

Blu-ray: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

Nick Hasted

Tobe Hooper's grisly, blackly comic sequel patents a surreal Texas zone all its own

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters

The future of Arts Journalism

 

You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!

We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d

And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.

latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

Midnight Cowboy, Southwark Playhouse - new musical cannot es...

It seems a bizarre idea. Take a pivotal film in American culture that reset the perception of The Great American Dream at this,...

Music Reissues Weekly: Motor City Is Burning - A Michigan An...

In October 1967, John Lee Hooker released a single titled “The Motor City is Burning.” The song commented on the civil unrest which had taken...

St Matthew Passion, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whelan, St Patr...

When you’ve already come as close as possible to perfection in the greatest masterpiece, why risk a repeat performance with a difference? Because...

Thanks for Having Me, Riverside Studios review - snappily pe...

Keelan Kember’s play Thanks for Having Me may look like a vehicle for Kedar Williams-Stirling (Sex Education, Red Pitch...

Kraggerud, Irish Chamber Orchestra, RIAM Dublin review - sto...

A lot hung upon the delivery last night of Henning Kraggerud, whom I last witnessed leading performances of Strauss’s Metamorphosen and...

theartsdesk on Vinyl: Record Store Day Special 2025

Record Store Day 2025 is tomorrow (Saturday 12th April 2025)! At theartsdesk on Vinyl we’ve been sent a selection of exclusive...

Sad Book, Hackney Empire review - What we feel, what we show...

Who goes to the theatre to feel sad? That is, knowing full well that they won’t be going home with a skip in their step. Many people, it would...

Small, Hallé, Wong, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - re...

Kahchun Wong returned to the symphony with which he made his first big impression conducting the Hallé – and made a big impression with it again...

The Amateur review - revenge of the nerd

In a world of macho super-achievers like Jack Reacher and Ethan Hunt, maybe it’s time to hear it for the nerdy guys. The Amateur (based...