CDs/DVDs
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Rachael Yamagata likes to take her time. Tightrope Walker comes a full five years after the American songwriter’s last release, and it’s an album that demands to be listened to with as much care as clearly went into its creation. Like the French daredevil Philippe Petit, for whom her latest album was apparently named, slow and steady wins the race for Yamagata: it’s there in its staid, rhythmic opener and title track; and it’s there in the atmospheric, but no less deliberate, “Money Fame Thunder”, which closes proceedings with another nod to its central character.Best known for the sort of Read more ...
Liz Thomson
After four years, Martha Wainwright is back with her fourth solo album. While she’s been away she’s turned 40 and now says that on this outing she’s “a songwriter, but also just a singer and interpreter. This is perhaps the essence of who I truly am.”Wainwright is, of course, folk royalty: the daughter of Kate McGarrigle (whose loss understandably dominated Come Home to Mama in 2012) and Loudon Wainwright, sister of Rufus. All have washed the family laundry in full public view. Her aunt is Anna McGarrigle, one of an eclectic range of writers who share the album’s credits: novelists Merrill Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Even now, Sting's reputation as one of rock's most earnest men looms large. His last two projects consisted of a Broadway musical about Newcastle's ship industry and a "symphonic" retrospective of his greatest hits. Before that it was saving bees and Elizabethan madrigals with a Bosnian lutenist. Now, however, the singer promises something lighter. 57th and 9th has been heralded as the return of "Sting the rock star". Could it really be the tantric one is returning to the sound he created in the early Eighties? The first signs of familiarity come Read more ...
Saskia Baron
In case one thought that turning hit TV shows into movies was a 21st century phenomenon, here comes a restoration of The Small World of Sammy Lee to prove that film-makers were at it back in 1963.Writer-director Ken Hughes's noir drama started off as Sammy, a tense, one-hour, one-location television play made in 1958. Its small screen success allowed Hughes to hire the incomparable documentary photographer Wolf Suschitzky as his DP and cast musical star Anthony Newley for the feature film version. Newley plays Sammy, a small-time hustler in Soho, dodging the bookies' heavies who are chasing Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Only a film which is very sure of itself would set one of its climactic scenes against a backdrop of wallpaper dominated by swastikas. Such audaciousness is typical of Nicolas Winding Refn who, with the startling Neon Demon, confirms he is now mainstream cinema’s most adroit director of films rooted in shock traditions stretching back to the Sixties. There are no laboured, knowing winks or clunky, long-winded exercises in genre recreation. Instead, Winding Refn hurtles pell-mell into his tale with nary a look back over his shoulder.The Neon Demon is as fantastic as its predecessor Only God Read more ...
Katie Colombus
When the world seems to be so politically off-kilter, fracturing before our eyes into a typhoon of misogyny and racism, Alicia Keys is singing out with a defiant voice, with positive songs about society and, in particular, women.Keys’ music is interspersed with powerful spoken word poetry that demands a connection with her audience: “I'm the dramatic static before the song begins, I'm the erratic energy that gets in your skin, And if you don't let me in, I'm the shot in the air when the party ends.” It’s inspiring and compelling, and leads you in to be “here”, in her moment.There is strength Read more ...
Nick Hasted
This tragicomic romp is loosely based on a bizarre footnote in Spanish history. The Italian Duke Amadeo was offered the throne after the previous occupant’s violent overthrow. But when the kingmaker who invited him was assassinated just before his 1870 coronation, the new monarch went from guest of honour to gatecrasher at a convoluted constitutional party, where the last thing anyone wanted him to do was rule.As Amadeo, Alex Brendemühl is quietly dignified, looks smoulderingly good in uniform, and yearns to bring enlightened reform to a sclerotic, corrupt nation. Humiliations are heaped on Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
To anybody who was able to resist the girl gang siren call that was Honeyblood’s 2014 debut album, the Glasgow duo is upping their offer. Babes Never Die is both a motto and a call to arms, the words – apparently – tattooed on the ribcage of singer/guitarist Stina Tweeddale and echoing, mantra-like, through the hypnotic chug of the album’s 45-second “Intro” track.Sure, tacking a mostly instrumental fade onto either end of an album is the calling card of the self-important prog rocker, but, as with most things Honeyblood, it’s done with a knowing smirk and a tongue firmly in cheek (never more Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Man & Myth, released in September 2013, was Roy Harper’s best album in two decades. The live shows which came on its back were stunning. Amongst this activity – instead of building on the momentum – he was arrested and charged with historic sexual abuse. Police had contacted him about allegations in February 2013. Following an innocent verdict, all other charges were dropped in November 2015.Of the ordeal, Harper said “I have now been acquitted on all the charges that were brought. This case should never have gone as far as this, or taken so long to resolve. I lost my livelihood and I Read more ...
Liz Thomson
It’s 58 years since “Britain’s answer to Elvis Presley” had his first top 10 hit and now he’s back, and back to his roots, with a new CD, Just… Fabulous Rock ‘n’ Roll, released by Sony with whom, at the grand old age of 76, he has signed a lucrative new contract. And don’t mock. It’s a terrific album: 15 classic songs including a “duet” with Elvis Presley, without whom.Recorded at the Blackbird Studio in Nashville, where the likes of Dolly Parton, Sheryl Crow, Hank Williams Jr, Taylor Swift and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers have worked, it’s produced by Steve Mandile of country quintet. Sixwire Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
At 15 seconds in, it becomes obvious Ruins means business. A brief snatch of acoustic guitar lays the table for a hard-edged, groove-driven slab of melodic guitar psych immediately bringing to mind the heavier moments of Sun Dial’s classic 1990 album Other Way Out. Dungen (and their flute) are in there too. As are Kak’s “Trieulogy” and a hefty dose of vintage Swedish progg.These touchstones make it overwhelmingly clear that the Bedfordshire-formed Wolf People are aiming high on their third album proper. Where its predecessors were a little ragged, unfocused and seemingly born from jamming, Read more ...
graham.rickson
This new Blu-ray release of Ken Loach’s Kes looks and sounds terrific, but the film’s glories would be just as well-suited by a scratchy print projected in a school hall, or on a distressed VHS cassette. Chris Menges’ cinematography is outstanding, capturing the coal-streaked grime of 1968 Barnsley along with its beauty. This is a work of bright, cool light and pitch blackness, the dark bedroom which Billy shares with his step-brother, Jud, a contrast with the bleached skies where the titular kestrel soars. Kes feels eerily contemporary: Barnsley’s streets look marginally smarter in 2016 but Read more ...