CDs/DVDs
Guy Oddy
Emperor of Sand is Mastodon’s eighth album and showcases a band that exhibits absolutely no sign of letting up on the epic riffing and thunderous beat or of edging towards the mainstream. Make no mistake, Mastodon remain resolutely heavy in both their sound and their lyrics.A concept album which tells the tale of a man sentenced to death in a never-ending desert, Emperor of Sand also doubles as an allegory for human mortality and the passing of the sands of time. If this sounds all a bit too heavy on the Game of Thrones-type sword and sorcery imagery, Mastodon have certainly earned the right Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Of all the major sports, boxing has much the most distinguished filmography. Of course that’s to the Homeric nature of the contest. With the honourable exception of Raging Bull, the best fight films are at least semi-fictionalised, from Rocky to The Fighter. The dramatised lives of Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali, and Jack Dempsey were less of a knockout, which is why there shouldn’t have been high expectations about Bleed For This, a biopic which tells the story of Vinny Pazienza, a world champ whose career was cut short by a car crash in which he broke his neck.Mystifyingly, the story is much Read more ...
mark.kidel
The baby-boomers, we are told, postpone thoughts of mortality, workaholically keeping the image of the grim reaper at bay. The rock’n’rollers among them keep the teen spirit flowing, rebellious to the last, even though they are now the elders of the tribe, often stuck in old postures of revolt.Bob Dylan still rocks when playing live, but, no longer angry at the world, his heart is fixed on oldies’ music, as he meanders melancholically through the great American songbook: he is now on his fourth album (if you count the seasonal outing Christmas in the Heart from 2009) dedicated to songs made Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Residents' famous fusion of Fred Astaire’s most dapper top hat’n’tails look with a giant eyeball head is a masterpiece of surreal imagery. The subversive California outfit, who’ve been going for over 40 years, have regularly veered into other visual identities, but it’s their classic monocular showman who appears on the front of the latest album.However, if their image is well-known, The Residents’ music is less loved. Even alternative sorts tend to enjoy their conceptual direction more than the sounds. Much of The Residents’ appeal lies in their talent for anarchic satire and Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Two Rode Together (1961) depicts the humanising of Guthrie McCabe (James Stewart), a corrupt, mercenary border town marshal, as it builds to a denunciation of white racism. John Ford, who made the film as a favour to Columbia Pictures (and for a $225,000 salary), considered it “crap”. Yet it was a key transitional work in his career – and the bridge between his late masterpieces The Searchers (1956) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). As such, the new Masters of Cinema dual format release is a must-own for Ford and Western fans.McCabe grudgingly accepts a commission from an army Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
Although Wire have regularly fired out albums, ever since their inimitable strain of angular punk first exploded into the Seventies, their later efforts have never quite reached the same coveted cult status as 1977’s Pink Flag or 1978’s Chairs Missing. Silver/Lead does, however, continue the upwards trajectory the four-piece are currently on, sparked by 2015’s frenzied and cathartic Wire.With musical nods to Bowie, Killing Joke, and even Johnny Cash holding up the first half of the album, Wire wait until the second half to delve into more uncharted territory. This Wire is more melancholy and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s nowhere to go with this one, is there? Like any music writer, I want to come at James Blunt afresh. I’d love to say, “No, put your prejudices away, this album is actually alright and here’s why…”, but even the most accomplished sophist would, I suspect, find this impossible. That said, there’s not much quality difference between the better tracks here and those on Ed Sheeran’s well-loved, hugely successful Divide. The Bee Gees-like “Heartbeat”, with its simple guitar motif, underplayed drum tattoos and subtle, catchy tune is the best song on The Afterlove and I’d as soon listen to it Read more ...
joe.muggs
One tries not to conflate the man and the music too much. Getting overly tangled up in questions of authenticity is a fool's errand, songs are ultimately public property, and in general, short of Gary Glitter-level crimes, dislike of a pop star's demeanour or attitudes shouldn't stand in the way of enjoyment of a good piece of music. All that said, snide, smirking, condescending, tax-avoiding Gary Barlow makes it very, very hard to enjoy his work.Not that there's a huge amount to enjoy here. It's a shame, because after being a good to excellent boyband, Take That upset every standard pop Read more ...
Nick Hasted
This is the Italian cinema Berlusconi suppressed. Elio Petri directed broadsides between the crossfire of the Sixties and Seventies’ Years of Lead, as fascists, communists and ill-defined fifth columns brought ideological violence to rock gigs and terrorist murder to, most notoriously, Bologna train station. Petri was the pulp politician among the era’s film Maestros. His early Seventies work was a committed enquiry into his country’s corrupt, Janus-faced soul.Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) won the Foreign Language Oscar, and by this 1973 release, capitalism’s iniquity was Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Silver Eye is Goldfrapp’s seventh long-player in an 18-year career that has taken in electronica sounds of all stripes. It sees the duo make a stab at melding together the club-friendly electropop and the witchy rural folk-noir sounds of their repertoire. Not ones to repeat themselves sonically, this involves the band inhabiting a sound characterised by dirty and sparse electronics with distorted, helium-powered vocals that annoyingly bring to mind Thereza Bazar of Eighties pop-muppets, Dollar.While this is initially an interesting and intriguing concept, it soon starts to wear pretty thin. Read more ...
Russ Coffey
On Jethro Tull's classic "Songs from the Wood" Ian Anderson promised "all things refined". And refined the band certain has been. Musically educated, too. For 40-odd years they have specialised in baroque rock and minstrel ballads all served up with harpsichords and flutes. There were even a couple of albums featuring a full orchestra. Yet, notably, string quartets have only made the occasional appearance. In a way, then, you could say an album like this is actually a little overdue. The thing is, though, Jethro Tull – The String Quartets isn't really a Tull album. Nor is it Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The two words cut to the chase. The cast play, or actually are, maniacs. There are lots of them. Multiple Maniacs also nods to the title of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ 1964 proto-gore movie Two Thousand Maniacs! John Waters’ 1970 second full-length film also borrows from Ingmar Bergman’s Sawdust and Tinsel and Tod Browning’s’ Freaks as well as demonstrating a fondness for John Cassavetes’ affected naturalism. And yet this was, and remains, a film like no other.That the black-and-white Multiple Maniacs is perverse is a given, but seeing it with fresh eyes rams home its aberrance and wilfulness. Read more ...