CDs/DVDs
Guy Oddy
Tinariwen’s music has always been evocative of West African deserts with their mellow blues-like guitars and shuffling groove. Initially recording everything in Mali until it was invaded by religious fanatics who deemed playing music forbidden, Tinariwen have had to lay down their last few discs away from home. Amadjar, however, sees the band return to West Africa to team up with griotte singer, Noura Mint Seymali and her guitarist husband, Jeiche Ould Chighaly. Recorded in two weeks, in a large tent outside Nouakchott in Mauritania, Amadjar is soaked in nomadic grooves with a dromedary’s Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s half a century since Iggy shrieked that it was “No Fun”, that it was “1969, OK”, that he wanted to be your dog. His original Stooges and his storied cohorts David Bowie and Lou Reed are all no longer with us. The Ig is the last man standing and he knows it. 72 years old, he’s the lizard-punk shaman figurehead who, off-stage, is a considered literate gent, the radio presenter with the velvet croak. His new album acknowledges that he’s now an old dude. It does so with elegiac poetry, cheeky humour and unforced gravitas.While Pop’s last album, Post Pop Depression, was a sonic tribute to his Read more ...
graham.rickson
Seeing post-war London in vibrant colour is a delicious surprise, and the opening seconds of A Kid for Two Farthings follow a pigeon flying east from Trafalgar Square, eventually settling on a pub sign in Petticoat Lane. The location footage in Carol Reed’s first colour film, from 1955, is eye-popping, his cast mixing seamlessly with everyday market folk. Matthew Coniam’s booklet notes to this handsome BFI reissue reveal that a fake camera crew was deployed to distract from the real shooting. Reed mixes reality with nicely stylised studio sets: look out for the miniature tube train trundling Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Chrissie Hynde has always loved a cover song. But never before, has she strayed so far from her comfort zone. The 14 covers on Valve Bone Woe are a million miles from new wave. They're a kind of jazz odyssey - a journey from bebop to easy listening via early soul. It couldn't be any less like what usually happens when a rock star 'goes jazz'.Hynde's approach is both sophisticated and tasteful. Along with her Valve Bone Woe Ensemble, the Pretenders' singer explores songs as diverse as "Wild is the Wind" and Charlie Mingus's "Meditation (for a Pair of Wire Cutters)". The band Read more ...
graham.rickson
Karel Kachyňa’s The Ear (Ucho) begins innocently enough with an affluent couple’s petty squabbles after a boozy night out. He can’t find the house keys and she’s desperate for the toilet. He’s distracted, and she accuses him of having neglected her. Josef Illík’s sharp monochrome photography gleams, recalling classic noir thrillers. The mood darkens once Radoslav Brzobohatý’s Ludvik shimmies over the garden wall and discovers that the couple’s home has been broken into: spare keys are missing, there’s no power, and the phone is dead. That Ludvik and Anna (Jirina Bohdalová, pictured below with Read more ...
mark.kidel
Avant-folk differs from traditional music, as it isn't rooted in place but draws its inspiration from a cultural universe without boundaries. Širom are three Slovenian multi-instrumentalists, and the extraordinary array of sounds they make could at various times be mistaken as Chinese, African, Balinese or Appalachian. Slovenia is a country that sits on a fluid frontier between Italy, Austria and the Balkans and its liminal position has produced some outlandish cultural fireworks, not least the world-famous and mould-breaking philosopher Žižek. Širom have the same wide-roaming yet focused Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Parisian outfit Caravan Palace have now had a career that’s lasted over a decade. They’ve not busted the British charts open (although they have had hit albums in France), but they’ve long been festival favourites with multi-millions of YouTube plays, and their UK profile has never been higher. Their new album dials back the manic dancefloor energy they sometimes emanate, yet succeeds as a wittily constructed, summery, electronic dance-pop concoction.Caravan Palace have long been associated with the dance music sub-genre electro-swing (a mash-up of swing jazz and club beats), an easily Read more ...
joe.muggs
Of all grime's original generation, Kano has a strong claim to being the greatest rhyme-constructor in the old school hip hop sense of dense rhymes packed with multiple meanings. Add movie star looks and a penchant for fur coats in photoshoots and he was most young grime fans' tip for following Dizzee Rascal into the big league. But though he got the major label deal, MOBO awards, Mercury nominations and Damon Albarn collaborations, and though his 2016 Made in the Manor album hit the top ten, he's never quite parlayed that into becoming a breakout superstar, a household name in that Read more ...
Owen Richards
As days get shorter and the sun tucks itself behind a blanket of clouds, Whitney return with the bittersweet sound of summer ending. Forever Turned Around is the long-awaited follow up to 2016’s Light Upon the Lake, and the band have lost none of their melodic magic. It is old city soul brought to the hills and forests of the American frontier, and a much welcome break in these trying times.Opener and lead single “Giving Up” shows the band have opted for evolution over revolution. Those trademark falsetto vocals are still there, the horn-led breakdown and uplifting chorus are very on brand. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“This is our punk record,” says Ezra Furman of Twelve Nudes in its PR bumpf. In practice, the punk slant is manifested through distorted guitars, hell-for-leather tempi and howling vocals. The edgiest moment is the 55-second “Blown”, a close relative of the early Cloud Nothings and Swell Maps as they grappled with the then-current music zeitgeist.And as it was in 1976, when the momentum of The Ramones’ debut album was broken by the measured “I Wanna be Your Boyfriend”, the tumult is interrupted by the unhurried, similarly titled “I Wanna be Your Girlfriend”. Aside from this and “In America’s Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
If there's a central motif to the sprawling, 18-track opus that is Taylor Swift’s seventh release - and it’s an album that references both Drake and Springsteen, so it's hard to pin down - it first emerges in track three, the title track. Stripped of pop theatrics, “Lover” trades in what Swift does best: hyper-specific details made universal enough for every first dance, delivered with enough earnestness to rehabilitate a word pulled straight from the headlines of a tabloid magazine. And then, the bridge, delivered with the cadence of a wedding toast: “swear to be overdramatic and true”.While Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
When Johnny Cash and Rick Rubin released the former’s stripped back, soul-bearing American Recordings in 1994 the impact was massive. Not only did it show a way that country music could cross over to a much wider audience, the alt-rock crowd, for want of a better term, it also demonstrated a “pop musician” could reach a career peak at retirement age. Tanya Tucker had her first big hit at 13. She’s already had a longer career than Cash when he released American Recordings and While I’m Livin’, her first album in 17 years, very much succeeds as a similar kind of statement work.Tucker was one of Read more ...