CDs/DVDs
Jasper Rees
It’s open season on the Getty dynasty. Last month the BBC documentary The Gettys: The World’s Richest Art Dynasty briskly coursed through the family archives. In March the TV drama Trust began on FX, scripted by Simon Beaufoy and directed by Danny Boyle. But breasting the tape over Christmas was All the Money in the World, Ridley Scott’s account of the kidnap of J Paul Getty III in Italy in 1973. The film seems destined to be remembered for the excision of Kevin Spacey from the original cut, to be replaced by Christopher Plummer.A great deal closer in age to the dynasty’s founding father, Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The naturalism of Gabriel Mascaro’s Neon Bull has an engrossing inconsequence – if that's not a contradiction in terms – that surely betrays the Brazilian director’s origins as a documentarist. Narrative in any traditional plot sense is the least of the film’s concerns, subordinated to our growing engagement in the distinctive world that it captures, which is that of the vaquejada, the rodeo community of the country’s Nordeste region. It’s Mascaro’s second feature, and although he’s moved on to working with professional actors, the collective achievement here is to dial down any Read more ...
Matthew Wright
From Bach to the Beach Boys in three months. Though the right side of 50, pianist and bandleader Brad Mehldau has released 35 albums in over 25 years. In the Nineties, as a twenty-something, he recorded a five-volume series of albums with the title Art of the Trio. Today, he’s probably the best-known improvising pianist after Keith Jarrett. No one can accuse him of a lack of ambition or confidence. On the evidence here, it’s born of a great inspiration and gift. This is sumptuous, collective improvisation of the highest order.Listening to this album without a track listing, it would require Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Arctic Monkeys are the great British guitar band of the 21st century so far. Only now they’re not. For the last couple of albums, Sheffield’s ever-smart rock four-piece have pushed their innate indie guitar sound further and further into 21st pop territory. This time, centred on lead singer Alex Turner’s piano, Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino leaps off somewhere else entirely, dipped in Rat Pack cool and sun-blissed retro easy-listening.Turner’s lyrics remain as poetic as ever, but he’s become more conceptually abstract, positing rather than commenting. He lives in LA now and the lovely, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As it was with his last album Golden Sings That Have Been Sung, it’s impossible to listen to Ryley Walker without comparisons to John Martyn and Tim Buckley – the jazz-infused, non-linear Buckley of Lorca – springing to mind. But this time round, for his fifth album, Walker appears to have also been sponging up the free-flowing ethos of David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name and the lithe Arthur Lee of Four Sail. Additionally, there’s the spiralling instrumental current of fellow Chicago dwellers Tortoise and dashes of math rock.On his label’s website, Walker says the only music he Read more ...
mark.kidel
Ry Cooder is not only one of the greatest American guitarists of his time, a virtuoso who uses his technical mastery to make music with extraordinary soul, but he also has his heart firmly in the right place. On this new album, a close collaboration with his equally talented son Joachim, armed with some gospel classics and political songs of his own, he calls us to attention, at a time of ethical chaos and moral dissolution.The opener, “Straight Street", originally a slow-burner from the great Pilgrim Travellers, sets the tone, warning us against losing our souls. The song starts with a Read more ...
Guy Oddy
If her collaborations with other musicians is anything to go by, Courtney Barnett’s star has definitely been on the rise since the release of her wonderfully titled 2015 debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit. Last year there was her album of duets with Kurt Vile, Lotta Sea Lice. This year her second solo effort, Tell Me How You Really Feel, has added Deal sisters and a sprinkling of Breeders magic. Not bad for someone who didn’t really appear on anyone’s radar outside Australia only three years ago. All this doesn’t seem to have filled Courtney with any joie de Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Director James Erskine found a fascinating subject in the life of ice-skating legend John Curry and has fashioned it into an absolutely compelling 90-minute documentary. Curry was only 45 when he died of AIDS in 1994, but his professional career, in which he moved from ice-skating as competitive sport to performing and choreographing it as dance, was intense: Erskine describes him, in the short Q&A that appears as an extra on this DVD release, as “an artist more than an athlete,” and you end up agreeing resoundingly.The Ice King makes clear the struggles that Curry went through to reach Read more ...
Guy Oddy
RSO are a duo made up of ex-Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora and Australian guitar-shredder and present member of Alice Cooper’s band, Orianthi Panagaris – a couple who have decided to celebrate their relationship in song with what can only be described as a vanity project. While Radio Free America, a title that implies something more than what’s delivered, may be their debut album, a good chunk of these songs has already seen the light of day on their Rise and Making History EPs and “I Got You Babe"/ "Forever All the Way” single: none of which has managed to set the world on fire. Their Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Throughout their career, James Ford and Jas Shaw have proved themselves to be nothing if not versatile. From the subtly swirling psychedelia of Simian, to the various dancefloor shapes they’ve thrown as Simian Mobile Disco.On their last album, 2016’s Welcome to Sideways, the pair presented a collection of tracks that showed talented producers being talented at production. It was an engaging enough listen, but felt, at times, punishingly functional. Of course, in many ways, that’s dance music’s raison d'être – the clue’s in the name and the feet are on the floor. It’s the rhythm, the pulse, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Perfectly Unhappy’s sixth track makes the album’s case. Until this point, Andy Sheppard’s playing has largely gone with the flow; working through and around the melodies pianist Espen Eriksen has composed for his trio’s first recorded collaboration with the British saxophonist. A minute 20 seconds into “Naked Trees”, the double bass comes to the fore. Then, after another 55 seconds, Sheppard begins playing with a free-flowing sinuousness and spontaneity which wasn’t previously apparent. The next two tracks, “Revisited” and the album closer “Home”, are similarly energised.Sheppard and Norway’s Read more ...
mark.kidel
Jon Hopkins navigates the territory between avant-garde electronic and beat-driven dance music with brilliance. There’s plenty here to make you want to get up and move, but as much to persuade you lie down and let the symphony of textures and timbres open you ears and take you on an inner adventure.Hopkins claims that his 2013 album “Immunity” was an MDMA trip, while this new one evokes the rollercoaster of an out-and-out psychedelic experience. Hardly surprising then that this isn’t a party album, and even less background music. While there are moments of irresistible sweetness and stillness Read more ...