CDs/DVDs
Graham Fuller
Abel Gance’s remake of his 1919 classic was a worthy but overwrought attempt to avert World War II, which by 1938 was already a fait accompli. In their comparative sombreness, King Vidor’s The Big Parade (1925) and Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) are greater anti-war films, but then Vidor and Milestone couldn’t possibly have feared, as did Gance, the coming conflagration.Gance’s sardonic dedication to those viewers who would become “the Dead of tomorrow’s war” sets the tone of the second J’Accuse as an awful mirror of death. Transactions between the living and the dead Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme recently declared that, while recording Villains, his intention had been to redefine the band's old sound. His recent work with Iggy Pop, he said, had recharged his imagination and now he wanted to make some changes. Two objectives seem to have been uppermost in Homme's mind - to keep things fresh and to make people dance. To achieve these he hired none other than producer Mark "Uptown Funk" Ronson.On paper, the combination sounds pretty mind-boggling. But on record, the results are less radical. Certainly, there are no disco-rock tracks Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Dylan aficionados will get the cover art reference immediately: one of Elliott Landy’s celebrated Woodstock photos, taken in 1968. Joan Osborne, Grammy nominated “no-nonsense Dylan” (New York Times) interpreter, is wearing neither hat nor guitar on the sleeve of her latest album but the allusion is clear and two of the songs on what she hopes will develop into a “songbook series” (in the manner of Ella Fitzgerald’s homage to the great American songwriters) are from The Basement Tapes.On this her ninth studio album, the Kentucky-born singer-songwriter who’s called New York City home for some Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
One of the stranger things about popular music is how unwilling most are to crossbreed and experiment. Surely that’s where the real kicks are? Most seem to prefer ploughing ruts that were overfamiliar 10, 20, 30, even 40 years ago. Either that or slavishly imitating contemporary cheese. Why’s there not more avant-salsa? Where’s the ambient country scene? Who’s into Teutonic electro-ska? The career of New Jersey three-piece Dälek hints at the answer to such questions. Consistently firing out an absorbing and original fusion of hip hop and feedback-laden space-rock/noise, they’re no nearer the Read more ...
mark.kidel
Iron and Wine’s songs sweet melancholy songs are instantly recognisable, as if their principal author Sam Beam inhabited a parallel universe of the American imagination, a slightly whimsical and yet soulful territory, in which the extremes of hope and despair, love and disappointment, joy and grief, co-exist, feed of one another and provide one of the essential tonal colours of what is know as Americana.There has always been a strain of hard-sought purity in the American adventure, a natural and yet paradoxical contrast with the greed and a territorial expansion and exploitation that have as Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It seems quite a shock to consider that it’s now 10 years since Portico Quartet’s breakthrough album Knee-Deep in the North Sea was released to much acclaim and a Mercury Prize nomination for its melding of jazz, ambient electronic and minimalist sounds. Since then, the Londoners’ sound has edged progressively away from their cool jazz foundation until they wholeheartedly embraced a more electronic vibe as the three-piece, Portico in 2014.Their new album, Art in the Age of Automation, finds Keir Vine rejoining the band with his hang drum, ensuring a return to many elements of the instrumental Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
Mogwai’s ability to create both frighteningly intense and gorgeously understated compositions has led to them being one of post-rock’s most celebrated and accessible bands. In recent years, they’ve increasingly become known for their unnerving and ingenious soundtracks (most recently Atomic, which underscored Mark Cousins' documentary Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise). Every Country’s Sun continues in this vein, largely leaving behind the heavy shoegaze textures Mogwai were once known for in favour of undulating sounds and subtle synth trickery. Picking up where Atomic left off, album Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There are three bravura scenes in Ronin that merit the price of acquisition. Two of them are French car chases, one along the twisting alleys of Nice, the other through the tunnels and up the wrong side of the carriageway in Paris. It’s a mark of John Frankenheimer’s punctilious attention to white-knuckle thrills that both chases have individual character. Imagine how bland they’d be now in the age of CGI, when anything is possible and everything improbable (Ronin was released in 1998). You can learn all about them in the extras of this welcome Blu-ray release.The third scene features Robert Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
True to their name, Finland’s Man Duo are male and there are two of them. The better-known half is former Helsinki tram driver Jaakko Eino Kalevi. Born Jaakko Savolainen – the Kalevi nods to his home country’s epic tale, The Kalevala – his long solo discography stretches back to 2001. That year, he made a collaborative single with Sami Toroi, who traded as Long-Sam. Following a 2012 album credited to Jaakko Eino Kalevi & Long-Sam they’re back, but as Man Duo.Orbit isn’t going to upset those familiar with Kalevi’s most recent, internationally issued, releases. On these, he’s taken a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
As a live phenomenon Gogol Bordello are unstoppable, a crowd-whipping Balkan-punk storm that sweeps venues away with them. For some years this blinded me to their recorded output. Their albums sent shivers up my spine, a tinctured version of their explosive performances, and I was unable to understand why, despite their wildness, rock’n’roll attitude, and ability to rip out a solid tune, their success remained of the cult variety. Listening to Seekers and Finders, things are clearer.Frontman Eugene Hutz has the charisma and zip of Joe Strummer, with whom his artistry has much in common, but Read more ...
graham.rickson
There are lots of ideas bubbling away under the surface of The 5000 Fingers of Dr T. There would have been even more had the studio not panicked after a disastrous preview screening. Half the musical numbers were scrapped, subplots ditched and a new prologue and epilogue inserted. What remains of Roy Rowlands’s 1953 fantasy is described by singer Michael Feinstein in an extra on this release as “a mangled masterpiece”. The excised songs have been located, but the missing footage still hasn’t been found.The film's component parts are promising: the screenplay was co-authored by Dr Seuss, and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As the title and Seventies-style cover image indicate, Across the Multiverse is knowing. Though the “Across the Universe” reference nods to The Beatles, it is the spirit of the Alessi Brothers, Hall & Oates, Harry Nilsson, Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson which are nearest. But whatever Dent May’s smarts, his fourth album is shot through with instantly memorable melodies.While his previous trio of albums were recorded in his native Mississippi, Across the Multiverse was completed in Los Angeles, now his home. More specifically, the entire album was written and recorded in the bedroom of Read more ...