CDs/DVDs
Jo Southerd
What makes a great Christmas song? There’s an alchemy to finding the winning combination of whimsy and humour, juxtaposed with a healthy slice of Christmas angst. This formula has led us to spin the same handful of pop bangers that endure down the decades, soundtracking generation after generation of tinsel and mince pies.This Christmas Day makes no attempt to pen an original hit, it’s simply a covers album of all the classic festive tunes. "Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town", "Man With The Bag", "Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree" – are all given the Jessie J treatment with vocal acrobatics Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Christmas is traditionally that time of the year when cool rock-dudes like to come over all silly and tinselly. Not Eric Clapton. On this, his first Christmas LP, the veteran axe-man spurns the usual seasonal schmaltz, in favour of some good old-fashioned blues. The results, unsurprisingly, go a little easy on the comfort and joy.Xmas chez Clapton it would seem, is more about melancholy and regret. The start of "White Christmas", for instance, could almost be an outtake from "Me and Mr Johnson". Similarly "Away in A Manger" is virtually "Run So Far". If you're a sucker for EC's back Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Laurent Cantet’s The Workshop (L’Atelier) is something of a puzzle. There’s a fair deal that recalls his marvellous 2009 Palme d’Or winner The Class, including a young, unprofessional cast playing with considerable accomplishment, but the magic isn’t quite the same. And the film’s interest in a social issue, how the young and disaffected come to be engaged with far-right politics, remains an adjunct to a story that becomes finally more involved with itself.As in The Class, Cantet (together with his co-writer for both films, Robin Campillo) has developed his story around a strong sense of Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
This first feature from Paraguayan director Marcelo Martinessi is a delicate study in confinement, and of how the chance of freedom can bring an equal sense of exhilaration and apprehension. The two heroines of The Heiresses, Chela (Ana Brun) and Chiquita (Margarita Irún), are longterm lovers who inhabit an environment of familiar privilege and comfortable claustrophobia. When confronted by new circumstances that disrupt their long-established private world, the former faces an opportunity for change that may look set to break her, but actually has the potential to make her anew.The Read more ...
Liz Thomson
The Albion Christmas Band is as much of a fixture as Yuletide itself and their tour runs right through till Christmas – and of course there’s an album, Under the Christmas Tree. Specially formed for the festive period and featuring Simon Nicol (Fairport Convention), Kellie While (Albion Band), Simon Care (Edward II) and of course Ashley Hutchings, it’s a journey through Christmas and its traditions, with songs, instrumentals and readings. The fiddles and accordion certainly add a warm festive feel of chestnuts roasting on an open fire and all that and all is beautifully played.It’s a long way Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s astounding to think that given the commercial basis for their whole existence, The Monkees have never released a Christmas album before now. However, it’s a shame that they have waited until the death of one of their number to put out Christmas Party. Even that hasn’t prevented Davy Jones, who passed away in 2012, from performing lead vocals on two of the tunes though.Christmas Party actually has more of a feel of a Micky Dolenz (who sings on eight of the 13 cuts) solo album with occasional input from Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork. In fact, Tork’s only contribution seems to be a banjo- Read more ...
Barney Harsent
As befits an album preceded by lofty claims and vaulting ambition, A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships is long. Very, very long. Last year, Matt Healy stated that the next album The 1975 produced had to be an OK Computer or The Queen Is Dead for our times, and gave journalists up and down the country a convenient strapline in waiting. The truth is that it’s more like their Sandinista! (The Clash's triple album), by which I mean it’s great in places, but in dire need of editing. The band fidget throughout, flitting between musical styles with the kind of abandon that perfectly Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
My Baby are one of the most exciting live acts currently in existence. They’re a three-piece consisting of Dutch frontwoman guitarist/bassist Cato van Dijk, her brother, drummer Joost, and New Zealand blues rock guitar virtuoso Daniel Johnston. Together they whip up tight, rollin’ sets that are also supremely danceable, leading the audience into jammed psychedelia that also emanates sex, sweat and wildness, their own shamanic performance personas – especially Caro van Dijk’s mesmeric stage presence - only amping up the heat. Their latest release finally lives up to their concerts.My Baby’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although both are Swedish, this particular Majken has nothing to do with the pop-reggae-ska band Majken Tajken which has issued a couple of albums. The singular Majken – Anna Majken to her family – is from Malmö and Young Believer is her debut album. Instead of setting up a shuffling groove like the band, she’s a singer-songwriter whose downbeat songs are infused with her harp playing and a careworn, cracked voice suggesting she’s older than Father Time. Titles like “This War Belongs to You”, “Oak Bench Birch Grave” and “Oh Mighty Discomfort” telegraph Young Believer’s concerns with life’s Read more ...
Jo Southerd
Take a deep breath and surround yourself with some comfortable furnishings before hitting play on this one. Yawn, recorded by Bill at his West Kirby studio of the same name, is just beautiful: a word that’s overused, but feels totally apt in this case. The album hums with emotion, fragility rippling throughout. Classically informed motifs punctuate sad, grizzly guitar, his barely-there voice a close whisper.Subjects are poignant, universal, finding the intensity in the everyday, and many songs clock in at five minutes or more, giving each idea plenty of breathing room. Uninhibited outros are Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The director of this deeply charming debut feature is the Korean-American film critic who writes under the pseudonym Kogonada; one of his principle interests over the years has been the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, and there’s something of the same considered emotional restraint of feeling in Columbus, which takes its title from the Indiana location where its slight action is set.The small Midwestern town turns out to boast – or rather not, since it seems to remain rather little known – a remarkable selection of contemporary architecture, buildings commissioned over the years by Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
If a new soundtrack for L'Année dernière à Marienbad was needed, Pressing Clouds Passing Crowds is it. Thematically, the collaboration between Norwegian guitarist Kim Myhr, French-Norwegian poet Caroline Bergvall, the Québécois string quartet Quatour Bozzini and Norwegian percussionist Ingar Zach hits the film’s pressure points: the slippages between experience and perception of space and time. Lyrically and musically, the six tracks connect with the images conjured for the screen by the Alains Resnais and Robbe-Grillet as everything about the album is fluid.While Myhr’s glistening acoustic Read more ...