CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
The new Boomtown Rats album – their first for 36 years! – is both preposterous and rather wonderful. This is as it should be. The Irish band surfed the so-called “New Wave” after punk rock to brief chart-topping stardom. They had some cracking songs (“Rat Trap” is a gem), but were reviled by the era’s Year Zero arbiters of taste. This was because they were clearly a Stones-ish R&B unit who’d jumped the bandwagon, the outrageous mugging of frontman Bob Geldof sealing the deal. That, however, is all ancient history and they return with a set that’s as goofy as it is contagious, clearly Read more ...
Barney Harsent
“I’m not your fucking friend,” intones Baxter Dury as recent single “I’m Not Your Dog” begins. As opening salvos go, it’s right up there with the best of them, full of sneering hostility and fiery intent. As an introduction, it’s a writer’s hook – pushing us away while drawing us in.If 2017’s Prince of Tears was an exercise in autobiographical confessional, The Night Chancers feels like Dury’s first, full-blown novel. The songs here boast a keen-eyed observation that creates a tableau into which his sharply drawn characters dive and thrive.That’s not to say it’s not grounded in personal Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Moby is perhaps better known these days for his two ultra-candid biographies, Porcelain and Then It Fell Apart, than he is for his massive album successes of two decades ago. His memoirs are compulsive, unique windows into the screwed up life of an intellectually inquisitive, punk rock-spirited, rave nerd who accidentally, briefly experienced superstardom. But he’s also fired out a series of dynamic, varied albums over the last decade, including music the match of anything in his back catalogue (“Almost Home”, featuring Damien Jurado, from 2013, is one of this century’s loveliest songs). Read more ...
mark.kidel
King Hu is the original master of wuxia or martial arts films – visual feasts of balletic conflict and near-slapstick humour – and this 1979 film is one of his best, though perhaps less well-known than Dragon Inn (1967), A Touch of Zen (1971) and Legend of the Mountain (1979). The director's trailblazing and stylish work inspired the later renaissance of wuxia films, with Ang Lee’s masterful Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers (2004)The action, overflowing with complex and unfolding intrigue, takes place in 16th century Ming dynasty China, in a Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Paul Heaton’s career-spanning compilation The Last King of Pop depicted him crowned and enthroned like a Salford Solomon Burke, or self-aware Michael Jackson. The unique kingdom he has staked out through The Housemartins and The Beautiful South is peopled by the unglamorous and unhip, and secretes bile in bumptiously bouncing, infectious melodies. The return of latter-day South singer Jacqui Abbott for four albums now has commercially shored up his career, and helped define Heaton’s happily married, mostly sober, Greater Manchester-residing middle-age. But though he pays tribute to this Read more ...
graham.rickson
Jaromil Jireš’s Valerie and Her Week of Wonders contains many mysteries, the main one being exactly how such a strange and subversive film could have been released in 1970, so soon after the Prague Spring. That the author on whose 1935 novel the film was based was a loyal member of the Communist Party helped, avant-garde poet Vítězslav Nezval even heading the Czechoslovak government’s Film Unit in the 1950s. Splashes of blood seen dripping onto daisies signal the start of 13-year old Valerie’s transition to adulthood; what follows is a deeply peculiar, visually sumptuous fantasy.That we’re Read more ...
howard.male
Inevitably expectations were high, given that this Chicago experimental rock band are one of my favourite groups of the 21st century, and this is their first album for seven years. And at first it’s hard to know what to make of Echo Mine. There are only three traditionally structured songs (and one of those comes in two versions), while the surrounded tracks are largely meandering minimalist instrumentals of various shades and angularity. But then I discover that this is music for a dance piece by Robyn Mineko Williams inspired by the Chicago dancer Claire Bataille (who sadly died lost her Read more ...
Liz Thomson
“Fire and Rain”. Who doesn’t recall James Taylor’s first number one 50 years ago! Born in Carolina and a “graduate” of the 1960s Greenwich Village music scene, Sweet Baby James has given the world some enduring songs and been part of some of music’s greatest scenes. American Standard is his 19th album, his first in five years, and it’s a refreshing dip into the Great American Songbook – “songs I grew up with that I remember really well, that were part of the family record collection”. As indeed they were for many of us.This is classy comfort food which will appeal to those familiar with both Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Norwich is not the first place most people think of as a hub of riveting music but it’s where female duo Sink Ya Teeth hail from. Consisting of bassist Gemma Cullingford and singer Maria Uzor - with both throwing synth into the pot where necessary – the pair have proved themselves a vital presence in the live arena. Their propulsive take on post-punk’s spiked, deadpan funkiness is timely and more-ish, and has been the backbone of their sets, as well as their self-titled debut album. The foundations of their second album retain that purposeful throb, but musically they’ve persuasively expanded Read more ...
peter.quinn
Released to coincide with a new documentary on his life by filmmaker John Scheinfeld, In the Key of Joy celebrates the multifaceted genius of Brazilian producer, composer, keyboardist and vocalist, Sergio Mendes.Recorded between Brazil and California, disc one contains some noticeably fine things, not least collaborations with long-standing friends whom Mendes refers to as his “Three Magi” – bossa pianist João Donato cowrites and performs on the perky “Muganga”; Hermeto Pascoal features on the sinuous groove of “This Is It (É Isso)”, while Guinga writes and plays guitar on one of the album’s Read more ...
graham.rickson
Though set in a handsomely-realised 1912, many of The Winslow Boy’s period details seem disconcertingly contemporary, from aggressive tabloid journalists doorstepping an unfortunate family to boorish behaviour in the Commons. There’s a very funny rant early on from patriarch Arthur Winslow (Cedric Hardwicke), complaining about his elder son Dickie’s insufferable musical tastes, in this case 78rpm records played on a huge wind-up gramophone. However this is a commendably sombre, serious film, adapted in 1948 from Terence Rattigan’s then-recent stage play and based, fairly faithfully, on an Read more ...
joe.muggs
Around the turn of the millennium, when Dan Snaith started releasing music – initially as Manitoba, then Caribou, and latterly also Daphni – he tended to get lumped in with the folktronica movement. In fact, the closest he came to actual folk was a heavy influence from the more delicate side of late 60s psychedelia. But, as with many of the other acts tagged with the f-word like his friend and ally Kieran “Four Tet” Hebden, it was really a clumsy signifier for people who were refusing to accept the artificial separation between “electronic music” and the rest which had become reified with the Read more ...