CDs/DVDs
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The disappearance of a band for a while calls for a re-set. A reminder, perhaps, of why you fell for them in the first place. "[10 Good Reasons for Modern Drugs]", the four minutes of minor-key chaos that opens the new album from The Twilight Sad, is exactly that reminder: a title written by a computer programme, a sound like an air raid siren, and James Graham’s raw, tender, aching voice, screaming “I see the cracks all start to show” in a tone at once unhinged and pure.It Won/t Be Like This All The Time arrives with its own mythology, the band’s staggeringly intimate records and live Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Why You So Crazy is a woozy, disorientating and spaced-out affair with a similar understated production to the Dandy Warhols last album, 2016’s Distortland. Long gone is the brash, anthemic guitar glam-pop of the turn of the century. In those days, the Dandys gobbled horse-size pills, wouldn’t touch you if you were the last junky on Earth, and just wanted to be Bohemian like you. They were hipsters, before that became a term of abuse, with songs littered with tongue-in-cheek humour and Courtney Taylor-Taylor’s snarky barbs. However, the Dandy Warhols certainly haven’t settled down into middle Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Well this is a treat. Darren Morrissey and Greg Marshall, London-based Dubliners who began their musical life in the fair city as front men of Deshonos, repeat the trick they worked with We Rise (2017), returning to their 2014 debut album And So It Began Again and re-recording an all-acoustic version.Called (not too surprisingly) And So It Began Again… Acoustically, the album was recorded as-live in the studio – two guitars, two voices plus some overdubbed oohs and aahs. And three bonus tracks: “Plastic Jack” and “Martha” which didn’t make the final cut of the 2017 original, plus an Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Its Dali-esque sleeve image captures Goes West perfectly. Over its 10 instrumental tracks, the music drifts inwards from outside as if introducing the endless open space of an intensely lit desert. There’s a sadness-tinged reflectiveness too; one which could bring on tears and induce a need to look heavenwards for support.Goes West is the fourth solo album from William Tyler, the guitarist in Lambchop and Silver Jews. He’s set his electric guitar aside for this acoustic-bedded set. A full band accompanies him and Bill Frisell guests on the final cut, “Our Lady of the Desert”. John Fahey Read more ...
Tim Cumming
It’s not often that music of this kind gets a release outside of Morocco, and Arc Music and the producer/musicians must be applauded for curating such an intense, inside view on the ecstatic release of Sufi music across the kingdom, often drawn from a simple street or domestic setting. Jebda mixes the voices and music of six professional singers and players with an array of street musicians brought together by producer Abdesselam Damoussi, who encountered them en route through the Jemaa el Fna of Marrakech to his 15th-century riyad and studio, fitted out with Neumann microphones to record Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
If you’ve ever had an argument with a neighbour, watch Under the Tree and take notes. This mesmerising story of a dispute over a tree blocking the sun in a next-door garden is based, says Icelandic director Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson, on an actual domestic conflict, though surely one with less cataclysmic consequences. But trees are relatively rare in Iceland and the summer is short, so too much shade is no laughing matter.Although billed as a suburban satire, the film is much darker and more complex than that, with death, loss, sex and broken relationships examined with a dispassionate wit Read more ...
Liz Thomson
It’s more than 10 years since Katie Doherty, a new-minted music grad championed by the Sage-based Folkworks collective, was named Newcomer of the Year and released Bridges, her debut album. And Then is only her second – which is not to suggest she’s been resting on her laurels. In the intervening years she’s worked as a musical director for the RSC among other stage companies and has appeared alongside Ray Davies and the McGarrigles – and, as “Tiny Little Shoes” suggests, she has had a baby. The album comes elegantly packaged, a gatefold with pull-out lyrics and credits, and the CD contained Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Monzen Nakacho is an old and distinguished part of Tokyo that’s renowned for its nightlife. It’s also the moniker that Worthing musician Gary Short has given himself for his 21st century keyboard wizard persona. Short’s output has been called “giallo synthwave” because it owes a certain something to the music of 1970s Italian horror films, most especially prog band Goblin’s synth-driven soundtracks to the movies of Dario Argento. With his second album, however, he has upped the ante and moved well beyond his influences.Almost entirely instrumental, except for light vocoder vocals layered into Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It’s hard to see the first album under the Pedro the Lion name in 15 years as anything other than a homecoming. There’s the title, Phoenix, for one thing: a dual-purpose nod to both songwriter David Bazan’s hometown and the mythical bird, reborn from the ashes of what came before. There’s the lyrical time traveling to childhood: favourite toys, fickle friends, a litany of street names, fading out like a prayer, at the end of a long desert highway. There’s even, on the relatively upbeat “Clean Up”, a brazen nod of a lyric to the albums under his own name on which Bazan wrestled, to a more or Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Dallas writer-director Yen Tan has brought 1985 back to stylistic basics, and the resulting resolute lack of adornment enhances his film’s concentration on a story that achieves indisputably powerful, and notably reserved emotion. Independent cinema through and through, it’s economical in every sense and thrives on excellent all-round performances.Tan’s drama of family relations, set at the moment when the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic was gradually becoming clear to Middle America, takes us back three decades, and there’s a similar feel to the visual style that he and his cinematographer ( Read more ...
Barney Harsent
De Facto is the fifth album from Mexican duo Lorelle Meets the Obsolete and the first to be recorded in the home studio of core members Lorelle (Lorena Quintanella) and The Obsolete (Alberto González). The change has certainly served them well, seemingly freeing them up and giving them room to move. Movement is what De Facto is all about, you see. Whether it’s the shifting dynamics of the psychedelic instrumentals or the proud, propulsive wallop of the hypnotic grooves, Lorelle Meets the Obsolete have taken a bold step forward with this release. There is a densely layered structure Read more ...
Guy Oddy
“Hey you, motherfucker / What you looking at? / What a fucking loser / Acting like a twat.” Yes indeed. Venom, the originators of black metal, are back to celebrate 40 years of disregarding taste and decency at every opportunity with their confrontational mash-up of metal, biker rock and punk and they’ve not mellowed one iota.From “Bring Out Your Dead” all the way through to the title track, long-time band leader Cronos and more recent recruits guitarist Rage and drummer Dante (who have both actually been around for 10 years) take things by the scruff of the neck and don’t let go until they’ Read more ...