CDs/DVDs
Kieron Tyler
“Climb upon a bridge to far, go anywhere your heart desires.” The key phrase from the title track of Midlake’s sixth studio album conveys the perception that anything is within reach should an appropriate mind-set be attained. However, later on the album there are references to a “lion’s den” and “war within the valley of roselesss thorns,” a setting where “power and glory were in store.”It seems, then, that this is a realm where escaping to a place called “far” is necessary for self-protection. Midlake singer and frontman Eric Pulido has said of the album’s "The Calling" that the song “has Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Three of last year’s finest singles were by Luvcat, a classy-but-naughty Eartha Kitt-style bad girl steeped in burlesque-rock’n’roll spirit. In fact, she’s the wanton basque’n’fishnets persona that, during a decadent sojourn in Paris, possessed the soul of Liverpudlian singer Sophie Morgan.The question is, can she engagingly maintain this wordy, filmic conceit for a whole album? The answer is… yes.First, those singles, all golden and placed in sequence early on this 13-track set. Her debut, “Matador”, is a mariachi nightworld chanson of lust and vengeful rage; “He’s My Man” is a sinister Read more ...
Tom Carr
If you were looking for the most perfectly brooding autumnal album this year, Florence Welch and her Machine may have been one of the least likely places you would have expected. However, motivated by deeply personal tumult of the past few years, Welch and co return with an ominous, hauntingly beautiful sixth album, Everybody Scream. Since their iconic, evergreen debut album in 2009, Welch’s voice has beckoned the Machine to be an everlasting presence across the airwaves and atop the charts ever since. Following their last album, 2022’s Dance Fever, Florence had an unexpected brush with death Read more ...
joe.muggs
Twenty-five-year-old South Londoner and current Celebrity Traitors contestant Cat Burns is a charming performer. Her songs have a rare ability to present the most fundamental of youthful relationship ups and downs as fresh and real. They also make more modern expressions of hope and solidarity around sexuality and neurodivergence escape the twee, flowery framing of live-laugh-love Mum’s-on-Facebook-again posting.Maybe most important of all, sings in her own accent with her own mannerisms, with a rich tone. All of which makes me want to like her second album Read more ...
Tim Cumming
The youthful subject of A Complete Unknown, which closes with him "going electric" at Newport as the culmination of a rainbow arc that began in monochrome, distant Minnesota, is currently lightly treading the boards across Europe’s arenas, concert halls and theatres.This new iteration of a complete unknown is largely hidden from view from his audiences, sat behind a baby grand and lyric sheets for most of the set, only the top of the head visible to many paying punters. Bootlegs and fan reports suggest an 84-year-old artist in fine form as he enters the fourth year of touring his most recent Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Night CRIÚ evokes clandestine ceremonies in forest glades, covert rituals taking place in the depths of a cave. Crepuscular and ghostly, this is a realm where an intoned, reverberant voice meshes with ritualistic choirs, undulating brass, methodically bowed strings and unhurried percussion.Musically, the lineage could be the solo work of Dead Can Dance’s Lisa Gerrard or Anna von Hausswolff at her most reductive. If the fifth solo album from the Ireland’s Hilary Woods were employed as the soundtrack to the 1967 Czech film Marketa Lazarová or Werner Herzog’s 1976 Herz aus Glas, it would be a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Even in our garish online age, most celebrities and pop stars sensibly obfuscate the details of their private lives.Not so much Lily Allen. She seems to work through her issues by laying it all out there. No tabloid can pull a scoop if you’ve Tweeted everything already (as she did when announcing she’d hired female prostitutes on her Sheezus tour to spike Daily Mail revelations). Her 2018 memoir, My Thoughts Exactly, was eye-wateringly candid. It’s not just the juice she shares, but the way it makes her feel, why she reckons she behaves as she does. Our attention is drawn, but engaging can Read more ...
graham.rickson
Wendy and Lucy is a road movie with a protagonist who’s unable to move on, and a study of friendship where one half of the partnership is mostly absent from the screen. Originally released during the 2008 financial crisis, Kelly Reichardt’s third feature film is ripe for reissue, its depiction of life on society’s margins more relevant than ever.We’re not told what events have prompted the central character to up sticks from her Indiana home and head north-west with her beloved dog Lucy. As played by Michelle Williams, Wendy is an unconventional runaway. She’s conventionally dressed, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Witch Fever are a rising four-piece, originally formed in Manchester. Their debut album, 2022’s Congregation, was a raw, sludge-punk howl that represented singer Amy Walpole’s livid rejection of the stridently patriarchal Charismatic Church of her upbringing.Since then, they’ve toured with everyone from Biffy Clyro to IDLES, and gathered a righteous amount of attention (and, of course, they look great). Their second album is less laser-focused on religious subject matter. It’s a match for its predecessor but with greater use of atmospheric effects and electronic trimmings.Opener “Dead to Me Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Demi Lovato is impressive on many fronts. She’s a Noughties Disney tween star who’s become an outspoken activist in an America where it’s increasingly dangerous to be one. She’s lived a rollercoaster ride of a life, rampantly exploring sexuality, drink and drugs amid chaos, abuse and serious mental health calamities, and she’s overcome the worst of it.Alongside all that, unlike most of her Disney child star peers, she’s maintained a successful career, both as a film and TV actor, and as a singer who, for well over a decade-and-a-half, has consistently taken her albums Top 10 in the UK and US Read more ...
joe.muggs
We are in – it needs to be shouted from the rooftops every day – a golden age of British soul and jazz. It isn’t just about a few quality artists, either, but a movement. Londoner Yazmin Lacey is key within that: in the past year, she’s featured on stupendous albums by both Ezra Collective and that band’s keyboard wizard Joe Armon-Jones.On her second LP she shares producers with Joy Crookes, Little Simz and Kokoroko, all of whom have also recently dropped glorious records – and with Joel Culpepper, who is about to. Many of these acts share other personnel too, a lot of whom came up through Read more ...
Miriam Figueras
From its opening scene, Le Quai des Brumes (Port of Shadows,1938) feels like a reverie, a period of sustained waiting, during which the characters stand at a threshold knowing that a tragedy will occur if they cross it.As mist settles over a highway at dawn, a deserter (Jean Gabin) from the French colonial army gets a lift from a lorry driver heading to Le Havre. As they pull into the city, the driver notes the heavy fog. The soldier says he knows all about fog – the fog in his brain. He’s weary and burdened by trauma and an unspoken sense of disillusionment. Marcel Carné’s film is a Read more ...