CDs/DVDs
joe.muggs
This album starts on a slightly odd footing, thanks to the opener “As a Man” having phrases that sound by turns a lot like Propellorheads and Shirley Bassey's “History Repeating” and Grace Jones's cover of Flash And The Pan's “Walking in the Rain”. Not that those are bad records – both are still highly playable – and it certainly sets a tone of arch assurance and cabaret sass. But being reminded so early of such entirely distinctive and out-on-their-own tracks makes it a little hard to triangulate where Calvi is coming from here.As on previous records, there's a great degree of classicism Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Following on from last year’s blistering blast of conviction, Every Country’s Sun, it’s tempting to view Mogwai’s latest offering – the soundtrack to a new sci-fi action drama from the producers of Stranger Things – as a continuation of this return to form. There are, however, a couple of problems with this view. Firstly, it’s not strictly speaking a return to form. Mogwai are a band who have rarely, if ever, put a foot wrong in their 23-year career. From 95’s Mogwai Young Team onwards, their career has been defined by deft assurance in their compelling and singular vision. It’s hard to Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Fifty years after the 1968 Soviet invasion that so brutally interrupted it, the Czech New Wave really is a gift that keeps on giving. It still astounds that such a sheer variety of cinema was created in so short a time – really just six or seven years, not even a decade – by such a range of talent. It’s a rich vein of film history, one that has been revealed in recent years in exemplary releases from distributor Second Run; if it left you with any concern, it was when this remarkable source might begin to dry up.Not for a long time, if their latest is anything to go by, though it’s no less Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
Over their past five albums, Interpol have crafted a strong sound that rests on the heavily reverbed, emotive vocals of singer Paul Banks, the subtly discordant guitars, and drums that pound along underneath it all. Although these can still be found on Marauder, the album holds some of the poppiest songs Interpol have ever done – something which doesn’t always work in their favour.This is evident from the very first song, “If You Really Love Nothing”, which couples typically cryptic and morose lyrics with galloping drums and a happy chord sequence that appears to nod to Noughties indie-pop Read more ...
Ellie Porter
Once pleasingly described on the Flight of the Conchords radio show as "the King of New Zealand", Neil Finn has a new gift for his subjects (and the rest of the world, happily) in the form of this album, which sees him recording with son Liam for the first time. Neil and Liam have toured together a lot, joining forces in 2015 and sharing the setlists. They decided to continue the collaboration in the studio, with the curious Lightsleeper the result. The family theme (in both personnel and thematic terms) goes beyond father and son, though, with Sharon Finn – Neil’s wife and Liam’s mum – Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s It Happened Here surely deserves the acclaim often accorded it as “the most ambitious amateur film ever made”, and the rich supporting extras on this BFI dual-format release make clear why. Best of all is a 65-minute interview with Brownlow, in which he recounts how he set out in 1956, at the age of 18, to make this ambitious “alternative history” of England living under wartime Nazi collaboration.The development of the film – the 17-year-old Mollo came on board the following year as co-director after Brownlow sought his advice on war-time costuming and Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Birth and death are nowhere more entwined than in folk music, and the seventh album by Radio 2 Young Folk Award-winner Jackie Oates poignantly honours both her father and her daughter, his unexpected death just five days before the birth of Rosie. Inevitably, her life went into free-fall, “intense emotion at the joy and sadness that had struck me all at once”.The album, dedicated to her father, whose love of music inspired Oates, and to her daughter, is very English. Its title comes, of course, from Ewan MacColl’s great song, written as his life drew to a close “to turn grief and loss into Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Kate Nash is no quitter. For years her heavy London accent and kitchen-sink lyrics made her an easy target for mockery. Nash always brushed it off. Even, last year, when her record label dropped her, she refused to take things lying down. So she turned to the internet and Kickstarter. The result is Yesterday Was Forever. Some are saying it's her most sophisticated record yet.Maybe it is, maybe it's not. What is for certain is that, since her massive hit "Foundations" (2007), the sing-song voice has progressed beyond recognition. Much of the album feels more Katy Perry than Kate Nash. There's Read more ...
joe.muggs
This may be tempting fate, and minutes after publication of this she'll probably be arrested for stabbing a dog or something, but Ariana Grande seems like an abnormally benevolent presence in the superstar stratosphere. Even leaving aside her dignified and genuine-seeming reactions in the aftermath of the bombing at her Manchester concert, she generally has an air of unstarry, unforced enjoyment of what she does, which stands in stark contrast to the gimlet-eyed faux-sincerity of the Drakes, Taylor Swifts and Ed Sheerans of this world.She can also really, really sing. And not just in the way Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There are plenty of reasons to be apprehensive about biopics of poets. The activity of writing is most often, after all, anything but cinematic, unless its moments of creativity are forced, while the “myth” of the poet all too easily becomes stereotypical. The very first scene of Portugese director Vicente Alves do Ó’s Al Berto suggests a heavy dose of tragédia to come: what else do you expect from a line like “All men whose eyes are too sad are poets”, delivered by a mysterious woman – Dietrich, eat your heart out – who infuses it with a glorious nocturnal mystery?So it’s something of a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Last month, theartsdesk reviewed Skadedyr’s Musikk!, an eccentric album which skipped “through jazz, traditional music, atonal scrapings and wind instrument burblings.” Twelve Norwegian musicians were heard. Amongst them were Fredrik Luhr Dietrichson, Hans Hulbækmo and Anja Lauvdal, all of whom also trade as Moskus. Mirakler, their fourth album as such, isn’t as out there as Musikk! but it’s still an idiosyncratic ride.Double bass (played by Dietrichson), drums (Hulbækmo) and piano (Lauvdal) are Moskus’ core instruments. Hammond organ, a musical saw, various synthesisers and vibes also crop Read more ...
mark.kidel
Arcadia is the latest and the best of a series of films which draw on the archives of the BFI and the BBC, collages of often forgotten footage, designed to make the riches held by those venerable institutions come alive.Folllowing in the footsteps of Kim Longinotto’s Love Is All (2014) and Penny Woolcock’s From the Sea and Land Beyond (2012), good films in their own right, Paul Wright’s documentary, a poetic essay that explores the myths and realities connected with the British countryside, goes that little bit further, driven by a willingness to take creative risks with immensely varied Read more ...