CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
Back in the Seventies, Sniffin’ Glue kicked off a punk and post-punk trend for fanzines. By the following decade this had become a deluge, surrounding the burgeoning, self-consciously “alternative” indie music scene but also offering thousands of otherwise unheard voices a chance to rage at Thatcher’s Government in smudgily typed, crudely stapled, photocopied A5 pamphlets. The whole thing had an invigorating energy about it, connected to the times. The drive and feel of Sleaford Mods: Invisible Britain has something of that lo-fi, politically raging, high excitement.Those wanting a Read more ...
Katie Colombus
I love Gwen. I really do. She is a Queen. And I love that she's on a journey, falling in love with The Voice co-star Blake Shelton after what we thought was one of Hollywood's most stable marriages to Gavin Rossdale fell apart. But there is much about her new album that is difficult to vibe with.This Is What The Truth Feels Like is a soundtrack to love the second time around, the songs a mix of reflecting on the past and looking towards the future. There's nostalgia in the fun, bouncy and hooky "Make Me Like You" with echoes of Cardigans Love Fool and a hark back to Kylie Minogue in her Stock Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Despite her best efforts, Jasmine Lucilla van den Bogaerde aka Birdy is, probably, still best known for covering Bon Iver's "Skinny Love", aged 14. Like a John Lewis ad that never was, the song possessed a winsome sophistication that won her a diversity of admirers.It also prompted the question, "what next?" Would Birdy go on to tread a gentle folk-rock path like Laura Marling – another well-heeled ex prodigy from Hampshire? Or would her sound develop into something altogether more idiosyncratic? Birdy's first self-penned album Fire Within failed to settle the issue. Read more ...
Barney Harsent
After the release of 2006’s Barking, it was difficult to know what to make of Underworld. A couple of decent songs aside, collaboration seemed to have stripped away identity, leaving us with sketches on which a host of different producers had scribbled with their own, vivid, Crayola colours. For a band whose strength had been found in the album format, this was an unwelcome volte-face. Six years on, Rick Smith and Karl Hyde are back, but is Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future a return we should welcome with open arms?Early indications are certainly promising. “I Exhale” slaps us Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Damien Jurado’s last album, 2014’s Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son, was, as theartsdesk noted, about “a man setting off in search of himself but never returning”. Its follow-up tracks the same unnamed character and his companion Silver Katherine on a road trip which may or may not be in his mind. Following a concept album with another integrally linked to its predecessor – and the album before that too, 2012’s Maraqopa – suggests Durado has faith in his listeners. They are, implicitly, going to follow the singer-songwriter on this journey.Ambition, creativity and an overarching vision Read more ...
Veronica Lee
If you saw The Social Network, for which Aaron Sorkin wrote the script, you will recognise the type also on display here – a hugely driven, arrogant genius who is emotionally illiterate. In The Social Network it was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg; in Steve Jobs, it’s the co-founder of Apple.Directed by Danny Boyle and written by Sorkin from Walter Isaacson’s authorised biography, the film focuses on three tumultuous periods in Jobs's life: his private crisis before the Macintosh launch in 1984, the unveiling of his ill-fated NeXT computer in 1988, and the iMac launch in 1998, and seeks to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The variables which help records attain cult status are usually permutations of obscurity, patronage, rarity and perceived or received notions of greatness. This fluid formula can make an album the acme of grooviness, even if barely anyone cared or had even heard of it when it was originally issued. Witness the Lewis album, L’Amour.This sanctioning process will never cease. There will always be something ripe for resurrection. The price of original pressings is a fair guide to interest and therefore a possible indicator of new audiences for records which had fallen between the cracks. Of Read more ...
Guy Oddy
No one could ever accuse Bob Mould of coming across like Mr Happy. Coupling lively melodies with punk heft and angsty lyrics has been his shtick for most of his 40-year career, first with hardcore punk rock titans Hüsker Dü, then ‘90s power trio Sugar and finally in his own right. Nevertheless it would be fair to say that things have been a bit grim for Bob since 2014’s excellent Beauty and Ruin album and it shows. The death of his mother, relationships ending and reflections on life getting shorter all leave their mark on the lyrics of Patch the Sky.As with Beauty and Ruin though, there is Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
From the late Eighties to the early 2000s, Iggy Pop turned out a succession of sassy rock albums that ranged in quality but usually contained a greasy, dirt-ingrained gem or three. These albums appeared with a garage-punk lack of self-consciousness, doing the rock’n’roll job like a lifer born to it. More recently, however, when not in Stooges mode, the Ig has gone adventuring. He made a couple of albums themed around jazz and French chanson and his latest is also a statement album. It’s a timely one too for Post Pop Depression takes its cue from the two fantastic albums Pop made with David Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The powers at Hammer Films were right if they thought they were getting a horror flick to titillate straight men when they made The Vampire Lovers. Ingrid Pitt and Madeline Smith agreed to do partially nude scenes and wore décolletage gowns throughout. However, the movie’s reputation as conventionally exploitative isn’t justified. The British censor withdrew objections to the screenplay when he learned that the lesbian content originated in Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, which imparted a veneer of literary cred to the project. The adaptation by Tudor Gates, Harry Fine, and Michael Styne – Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Primal Scream might reasonably be referred to as elder statesmen of rock‘n’roll these days, and 30 years or so since first getting together, it would be fair so say that they’ve tried a few different music genres on for size. There's been gentle Byrds-like melodies, MC5 rock action, blissed-out dance music, Rolling Stones swagger, and monstrously heavy motorik jackhammers. The latest incarnation of the Scream, however, seem to have decided to take on the electro-goth mantle from Depeche Mode for a guitar-lite bunch of tunes that's unlikely to be viewed as a classic release anytime soon. Read more ...
mark.kidel
The opening track of Leonard Cohen’s new album says it all: the hum of a spine-chillingly eerie male choir, joined by the throb of an irresistible bass line. We're in for a slow joy-ride through the depths of the underworld. In “You Want It Darker”, one of his unquestioned masterpieces, a title-song as rich in soulful images as anything he has ever written, and in a voice close to a whisper, Cohen alludes to “a million candles burning for the help that never came”. He is, as ever, singing of the shadows that fill our inner and outer worlds, “a lullaby for suffering” in which the only Read more ...