CDs/DVDs
Tom Birchenough
Robert Guediguian has spoken of the influence of Chekhov on The House by the Sea (Le Villa), and the shadow of the Russian dramatist, particularly The Cherry Orchard, can certainly be felt in the French director’s latest film, his 20th in a career that stretches back now some four decades. It’s there in ways that are thematic and structural equally, from its sense that a particular environment, a precious place that has defined the lives of the film’s protagonists in the past, is changing, to an unstudied story development defined by the loosely theatrical, almost “fly-on-the-wall” way in Read more ...
Asya Draganova
In the End, the final album by Limerick band the Cranberries arrives three decades after they first formed and just over a year after Dolores O’Riordan’s unexpected death. As a full-stop to their career, it therefore also marks something of a legacy for the singer as well as the band.As might be expected, Dolores’ angelic and powerful voice delivers raw emotion and energy throughout their swansong - the unchanging signature of the Cranberries’ sound. The melodic tracks from In the End embrace the simplicity of familiar chord progressions, maintaining their alternative rock and pop sound with Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Indie-rock sure ain't what it used to be. These days boys-with-guitars sound no less manufactured than actual boy bands. And, of all these generic outfits, few appear to have less musical substance than Welsh four-piece Catfish and the Bottlemen.The Balance, the Llandudno bands' third LP, is pure indie-by-numbers. It's full of chugging guitars with angsty vocals sung in a regional accent. Occasionally everything goes quiet before bursting into a massive chorus. It's as the band has sat down and tried to recreate the essence of Kasabian and Arctic Monkeys.The problem is Read more ...
Guy Oddy
There aren’t many musicians to catch the ear of a substantial community of music lovers that includes both metalheads and world music fans, as well as having been invited to play the White House – especially when playing only instrumental tunes on acoustic guitars. Given that Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero hail from Mexico, however, it’s no surprise that their appearance in Washington DC was at the invitation of Barack Obama and not President Tiny Hands.Mettavolution is be Rodrigo y Gabriela’s sixth studio album and their first since 2014’s 9 Dead Alive, but it certainly doesn’t betray Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
How to put a full-stop on an over 50 year recording career? For multiple Music Hall of Fame-rs The O’Jays, the answer includes a party track penned by Bruno Mars, a reworked 60s single and a final chance to ruminate on the state of the world. The appropriately-named The Last Word packs a lot into a mere nine songs, and while the result is a bit of a mixed bag, it’s great to see one of the leading lights of the Philadelphia sound call time on a storied career on their own terms.The Last Word finds the trio - founding members Walter Williams and Eddie Levert plus Eric Grant, who joined in 1995 Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
When poetic London MC Loyle Carner first appeared a couple years ago he was hailed for his fresh take on UK hip hop. Compared to the street-centric machismo of much grime music, he offered a welcome insight into a more sensitive 21st century masculinity that was a hit with both arts media sorts and the public. His second album, named for a Stevie Smith poem, contains two songs titled after virtuoso chefs (“Ottolenghi” and “Carluccio”), and one dedicated to his mother. It will do nothing to dent this reputation for emotional articulacy.Carner doesn’t so much spit verses as let them flow out of Read more ...
mark.kidel
Billy Wilder’s co-writing collaboration with IAL Diamond encompassed comedy masterpieces such as Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, Irma La Douce, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and several others, and One, Two, Three (1961) is just as polished a quick-fire performance of story-telling and dialogue. A Cold War satire, the film pokes fun at the Soviets and the Americans, the extremes of capitalist opportunism and the idiocy of communist dogma, ridiculing both with zest and Olympian detachment.James Cagney, in one of his last roles, plays the boss of the West German division of Coca-Cola Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 early masterpiece Rashomon was a revelation for post-war western screen audiences, winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival that year and becoming a standard-bearer for the new generation of Japanese film. Its lead actor, Toshiro Mifune, would become known as “Japanese cinema’s biggest export after Godzilla”, a pioneering star – the first recognisable such figure from outside Europe and the US – whose charisma crossed national boundaries. His work with Kurosawa has been described as the greatest actor-director collaboration of all time in cinema, best known Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The French have developed an international reputation for a certain smooth style of electronic music. It’s the place where disco and house collide with something more urbane and far less sweaty. Daft Punk provided a defining moment with their 2013 album Random Access Memories, but the sound referred to is touched upon all the way from the louche downtempo of Air to more recent yacht rock sumptuousness from Papooz. And now L’Impératrice arrive to join the party.The toast of Parisian hipsters for a while, L’Impératrice (The Empress) now release their debut album and it’s sleek as an invitation Read more ...
Barney Harsent
And then there were two... again. Following on from the Original Line-Up tour, Bananarama are back to the core duo of Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward for their first album in 10 years. If it is true that co-founding member Siobhan Fahey’s 1988 departure was due, in part, to the pop chops of 1987’s Stock Aitken and Waterman-produced Wow!, it might be just as well that she didn’t stick around this time. In Stereo is VERY pop.When it works best, the album manages to fuse this tendency with the kind of grown-up disco savvy you’d expect from former SAW labelmate Kylie. The heavily previewed “Dance Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Fat White Family’s second album, 2016’s Songs for Our Mothers, caused something of a stir in indie circles and even generated a fair amount of radio play with its wide-eyed exuberance and chaotic motorik sounds. However, after the musical madness of three years ago, comes the sonic crash of Serfs Up! Bonkers psychedelic sounds are now firmly out of the window for Peckham’s Lias and Nathan Saoudi and their musical confederates. In their place come an electronics-heavy, purposely unpolished dirge with half-heard, reedy vocals.This is even more disappointing given the promising song titles, such Read more ...
joe.muggs
Impressively, this collaboration of three of pop's hardest grafters feels like a real group endeavour. Certainly, the multi-quintillion-selling Australian songwriter Sia's piercing tones and melodic style are the most recognisable thing here, but they weave around Hackney-raised Simon Cowell protege Labrinth's more understated voice and globally ubiquitous DJ/producer Diplo's military-grade Latin / dancehall / hip hop derived beats to create impressive coherence. It's not the trip-out the group name might suggest, but it's certainly got its share of odd twists, dizzying quick shifts and Read more ...