CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
Massively successful Irish trio The Script could, loosely speaking, be called a rock band. But they aren’t really, are they? Their sixth album is an indictment of the kind of music they play. It’s packed with over-produced post-Coldplay anthem-pop featuring lyrics calibrated for a generation gnawed by social media anxiety. Listening to it is an edgeless, squeaky clean experience. The buzz, if there is one, is all sugar rush and no sharp edges. Who could have known a quarter century ago that a key genetic ancestor of 21st century “rock” would be the Benidorm-friendly Euro-cheese of Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Pumarosa picked the perfect time of year to launch their second album into the world: its skittish drums, claustrophobic melodies and haunted vocals are the perfect soundtrack to witching season. But the horrors that inspired Devastation are far more personal: frontwoman Isabel Muñoz-Newsome was diagnosed with cervical cancer the week the band’s 2017 debut was released, with the band playing Glastonbury mere weeks after her surgery.With that back story in mind, you’d be forgiven for thinking tracks like “Fall Apart”, “Lose Control” and “Devastation” are primed to tell a particular story - but Read more ...
Nick Hasted
After the bleakness in the parts of Skeleton Tree touched directly by his son Arthur’s death, and the desolate grief of the accompanying documentary One More Time with Feeling, this is Nick Cave’s statement of faith. Ghosteen is unlike any record he’s made before, often sung in a desperate, reckless, heedless, loving voice unheard till now. If his heart has had to be torn open to reveal its varieties of vulnerability – the bereft croon and shaking falsetto on “Spinning Song”, the absolutely lovelorn, unabashed full-heartedness of “Bright Horses” – they remain remarkable sounds. The Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Tahliah Barnett has been having a rough old time of it. There was that doomed celebrity romance (Robert Pattinson) and some health issues (I’m not entirely sure if we need to know about her operation to have fibroids removed) but suffering, as we are all aware, is the fuel of creativity. Unclassifiable but leaning towards the classical, fka twigs’ gut-wrenching, soul-bearing second album – her first since the Mercury Prize nominated LP1 – showcases her soprano vocals against bare, eerie arrangements which will without doubt never be played in a club. Upbeat this is not; but Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Land of Kush are an ambitious 20-piece plus ensemble which features all manner of instruments from strings, horns, piano, guitar, santur, darbouka, oud and synths, as well as multiple vocalists and percussionists. Led by Sam Shalabi of the trippy Dwarfs of East Agouza, as well as numerous other Arabic-leaning Montreal ensembles, they have been fusing jazzy sounds with modern classical music, Arabic Café and distinctly experimental grooves for over a decade. Sand Enigma, however, is the band’s first album since 2013’s hymn to Cairo, The Big Mango, and again has an experimental yet distinctly Read more ...
Nick Hasted
At once grandiose and down to earth, ELO belong to the Seventies moment which lovingly pastiched simple Fifties rock’n’roll, with added sweeping strings left over from their own early conceptual prog. Double-album Out of the Blue’s status as 1978’s 10-million-selling hit of the year saw them sturdily survive New Wave, thanks to Jeff Lynne’s single-writing knack matching any skinny tie-sporting rival.Lynne’s first loves of classic pop and production saw him mothball ELO in the Eighties (only for bassist Bev Bevan to gallingly tour as ELO Part II), and give an early digital gloss to his teenage Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Jeff Goldblum’s 2018 debut, Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra - The Capitol Studios Sessions, was one of the great surprises of last autumn, its infectious, feel-good vibe and self-deprecating retro pastiche as engaging as a favourite Hollywood movie on a grey day. And live at the Cadogan Hall Goldblum was a treat, a real-life Mr Nice Guy who was just so good and so funny.I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This is a far more serious outing, by which I don’t mean dull and boring. Rather high-quality jazz that can stand tall and needs no apology. The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra – Goldblum Read more ...
mark.kidel
This new Eureka! boxset of 4K and 2K restorations provides ample evidence as to why Samuel Fuller was venerated by such a wide range of film-makers, including Godard, Wenders, Scorsese and Tarantino. Often characterised as a purveyor of pulp cinema, Fuller was much more than that: his command of filmic story-telling across a multitude of genres – western, film noir, war film and melodrama – was exceptional. He had a very special mastery of film language, a fine sense of when to go from wide to close shot, change the pace of editing unexpectedly, and move the camera at the service of Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Underworld’s first album in three years comes in two versions: a seven-CD box set with a disc of Blu-ray visuals and an 80-page full-colour book or a stand-alone ten-track sampler, which is also included in the gargantuan release. As theartsdesk has only been sent the single disc, we can only comment on the condensed version. This is, however, more than enough to excite interest in the present activities of a band that for a generation of old ravers provided the high point of many evenings on the dancefloor, shouting “lager, lager, lager, lager”. For while DRIFT Series 1 slips comfortably Read more ...
peter.quinn
From brooding masterpieces (”Love for Sale”) to classic list songs ("Let's Do It"), Cole Porter was one of the greatest songsmiths of the 20th century. As one of his peers, Richard Rodgers, eloquently put it: "Few people realise how architecturally excellent his music is. There's a foundation, a structure and an embellishment. Then you add the emotion he's put in and the result is Cole Porter."For his debut album on his new label, the legendary Verve Records, musician and actor Harry Connick Jr. takes a deep dive into 13 of the 1,000-plus songs that Porter composed during a career that Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Michael Kiwanuka looks set to conquer. His previous two albums set him up as the sensitive singer-songwriter who tips his hat to the muscular soul music of Bill Withers and Curtis Mayfield; the lone troubadour who’s clearly listened to more than a smidgeon of tough-edged indie in his time. Iggy Pop kept playing him on BBC Radio 6. The people at HBO used his “Cold Little Heart” as the theme for their flagship Hollywood star series Big Little Lies. In this light, and because his momentum doesn’t falter, Kiwanuka could be his Back to Black-style commercial monster.The Winehouse comparison is apt Read more ...
Russ Coffey
James Blunt loves to joke about how gloomy his songs are and he says Once Upon a Mind is his most depressing collection yet. But the truth is that the album is really just agonisingly safe and painfully middle-of-the-road. (For the most part) Blunt has stared into his dark night of the soul and turned it into something beige and inoffensive.Partly it's the voice. That thin, strangely inert warble. It's also Blunt's tendency to treat every subject as a melancholy singalong. You might imagine a song about your relationship with your wife, would aim for a close, intimate feel. Instead Read more ...