CDs/DVDs
mark.kidel
The Turkish psych folk band Baba Zula are at their very best live: the essence of their appeal depends on slow-burning climbs towards an ever-elusive climax, perfectly honed for a crowd that wishes to dance their minds away. Their latest release is a studio recording, but done as live, in this case cut directly to disc as part of Night Dreamer’s project featuring a startling kind of presence that appeals to audiophiles.The band have been around for a while now, and the music on the album is nothing particularly new in terms of style and sound – indeed several of the tracks, including “Çöl Read more ...
joe.muggs
There’s a lot to like about Melanie Chisholm. She was always the Spice Girl who came over as most genuine and down to earth – not to mention the one who could sing. From the beginning her “Sporty Spice” image was quietly subversive, a body-positive role model well away from cliched feminine norms, something that she carries through to this day: in videos and photoshoots, though she’s clearly no stranger to stylists, personal trainers and makeup artists, she proudly looks her un-botoxed, un-fillered, un-filtered 46 years.She still comes over as a natural enthusiast, and generous to boot: her Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
This fifth feature from Claire Denis must surely be the director’s most sheerly concentrated film. Scaling back narrative and dialogue alike – story elucidation relies mainly on intermittent retrospective voice-over narration – Beau Travail engages the viewer instead with its sensual elements (“A Cinema of Sensation” is the title of the essay by critic Girish Shambu that comes with this new Criterion edition). It’s absorbing in every sense – from the choreographically stylised gestures of its military protagonists to the parched desert surroundings of Djibouti, a striking presence in itself, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Alongside Basement Jaxx, Groove Armada were one of the last big acts to blossom from the 1990s boom in clubland and DJ culture. They are responsible for bona fide classics in “Superstylin’”, “At the River” and “I See You Baby”, and also founded the Lovebox Festival, which was named after their fourth album. Their last albums, the Black Light/White Light pairing, arrived a decade ago, and mined Eighties electronics to decent effect. Such biographical positivity is included to counterpoint the fact their latest album is a yacht rock horror story, possibly seeking the ears of Balearic ironists Read more ...
joe.muggs
This is a musical homecoming for Róisín Murphy, both geographically and figuratively. She may have been raised in Dublin and spent her gig-going adolescence in Manchester, but Sheffield is where she began her life as a clubber and performer – and it’s with Sheffield scene mainstay of almost four decades, and Murphy’s friend of quarter of a century, Richard “Parrot” Barratt that she’s collaborated here. And Murphy may have explored all kinds of experimental and pop styles, but the place where she’s always been at her most confident (not that she lacks confidence anywhere) is on the dancefloor Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The graveyard of tedious musical vanity projects – and the bargain bins of many record shops – is filled with solo albums by the lead vocalists of many fine rock bands. They may sell well initially, due to the power of well-financed record company marketing teams, but they are soon forgotten and adding to landfill sites around the country. In all likelihood, Corey Taylor’s disappointing solo effort, CMFT is destined to follow this path.Taylor is best known in the UK as the potty-mouthed lead singer of the excellent, bemasked fright-rockers Slipknot. Providing lyrics for six albums of Read more ...
mark.kidel
Mademoiselle is Jeanne Moreau, in smouldering femme fatale mode: a school-teacher and town hall secretary in a small French village, she wreaks havoc by setting fire to barns, poisoning cattle and unleashing flood waters in a farm yard full of animals. As a seemingly uptight spinster of a certain age, she is above suspicion, and the villagers cast their eye instead on a stud of an Italian woodcutter (a suitably beefy Ettore Manni), who has sent the menfolk into jealous fury by seducing their frustrated wives. The savage finale, as the men of the village beat the outsider to death – a Read more ...
mark.kidel
Sufjan Stevens is an artist of remarkable ambition. His 80-minute long new album, with 15 beautiful and poetic songs, belongs to a long line of pop experimentation that runs through from The Beatles and George Martin’s Stg Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to Björk’s own highly literate and endlessly inventive mix of dance music and daredevil sonic exploration. He's as much at home baring his soul as he is evoking the turmoil of our times.The Ascension takes us on a rollercoaster of a journey, fuelled by the richness of analog keyboards – in this case a range of Prophet synthesisers whose Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The 1942 thriller This Gun for Hire, which opened five months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was closely adapted from Graham Greene’s 1936 novel A Gun for Sale by Albert Maltz and W.R. Burnett and directed for Paramount by the veteran William Tuttle. Though no masterpiece, it's a film noir landmark – an essential watch.Noir style wasn’t yet fully established, but there are glimmerings of them here in cinematographer John Seitz’s low-key lighting and Hans Dreier’s disorienting sets. The film’s fatalistic tone was marred by touches of comedy, a near-Gothic interlude Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
“Produced by Tommy LiPuma.” That phrase has appeared on just about every Diana Krall album since the summer of 1995, when the Cleveland-born mogul arrived at the GRP label – it would be his sixth and last music industry affiliation – and promptly signed the Canadian singer-pianist.The four words appear again in the credits for each of the twelve tracks of This Dream of You. They are the album’s anomaly. And also, sad to say, its problem.It is an anomaly because Lipuma, with 33 Grammy nominations and 5 Grammys to his name, and 75 million albums sold, passed away Read more ...
joe.muggs
Alicia Keys is a puzzling mixture. On the one hand she’s the hyper-achieving, multi-platinum, 752-Grammy-winning America’s sweetheart, all dimply smiles, positive-thinking ultra sincerity and the kind of showbiz over-emoting and singing-technique-as-competitive-sport so beloved of talent show contestants. On the other, she’s an undeniably interesting artist on multiple levels.Solo and with her husband Swizz Beats she’s a skilled and prolific songwriter and producer for others as well as herself: the pair’s work on Whitney Houston’s “Million Dollar Bill” alone is premier league material. And Read more ...
Russ Coffey
"This party's over" snarls Fish on Weltschmerz, and, this time, it seems the big man really means it. After threatening retirement for many years, the ex-Marillion singer has finally called time on his recording career. His final present to the fans is a double album that looks back on his 32 years as a solo artist.Over the decades the charismatic Scot has moved steadily from mainstream to cult status. He's dabbled in pop (e.g "State of Mind"), hard rock ("Faithhealer") and punk ("The Perception of Johnny Punter). But, of course, the Bard of East Lothian is best known as Read more ...