CDs/DVDs
Kieron Tyler
Canadian singer-songwriter Basia Bulat’s first three albums were recognisably folky. Her main instrument was the autoharp. Good Advice is different. With its more upfront songwriting and verve, her fourth album is a giant leap. It is also Bulat’s best to date.Good Advice abandons her previous approach to embrace an R ‘n’ B-influenced pop with gospel-inclined melodies (the only element nodding back to her former self). The instrumental framing is totally new: booming drums, bubbling bass, shuffling percussion, keyboards, odd stabs of sax and a supporting chorale. Her voice is more powerful Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Kula Shaker first tasted success in 1996, with the monster hit K. While the album was a commercial success, their Eastern-hippy image meant some of the guys - especially singer Crispin Mills - found it hard to be taken seriously. In 1999, Mills put the band on hold while he tried his hand at other projects. Some years later Kula Shaker was reformed. They have been slowly chugging along, millimetres under the radar, ever since. K2.0 aims to be a a straight return to the old, 'classic', formula: sitars communing with guitars whilst karmic words float over the top. The Read more ...
graham.rickson
The jokes come thick and fast in this debut feature from the team behind the BBC’s Horrible Histories. Released theatrically to little fanfare last autumn, Richard Bracewell’s Bill is a delight – a joyously funny film which wears its erudition lightly. An examination of Shakespeare’s lost early years, it follows the young writer’s unwitting embroilment in a fiendish Spanish plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. Matthew Baynton’s Shakespeare is a likeable doofus, kicked out of his boy band Mortal Coil (yes, they do shuffle off) after one too many extended lute solos. He decides to become a Read more ...
peter.quinn
With everything they touch seemingly transforming into artistic gold, shapeshifting US collective Snarky Puppy are currently on a roll. Following their 2014 Grammy win for Family Dinner Volume One, they’ve since chalked up ‘Best Jazz Group’ in the 2015 Downbeat Readers Poll, plus a Grammy nomination in the ‘Best Contemporary Instrumental Album’ category for last year’s Sylva. This purple patch looks set to continue with the arrival of Family Dinner Volume Two.Serving up another appetizing smorgasbord of songs that range from the hyperventilated funk of “I Remember” (take a bow, LA duo Knower Read more ...
Guy Oddy
A lot of water has gone under the bridge since Elton John famously jumped onstage at a 1973 Stooges gig in Atlanta dressed as a gorilla and almost gave the drug-addled Iggy Pop a heart attack. While the Godfather of Punk is still playing the wildman when he hits the stage, it’s fair to say that the ennobled Elton has slowed down somewhat.Elton John has, of course, long embraced sobriety, family life and Disney soundtrack appearances and anyone hoping for a David Bowie-like radical reinvention of his easy-on-the ear shtick is going to be disappointed. Wonderful Crazy Night is Elton’s 32nd Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The opening scene of Ramin Bahrani’s 99 Homes plunges us into the darker depths of American society, post-2008 financial crisis. We’re in the world of home repossessions, and the blood spattered around the bathroom of one property by an ex-owner who wouldn’t go quietly speaks chillingly for what is in store.Bahrani’s title hints at wider issues, principally the 99/1 wealth distribution inequality that was a slogan of the Occupy movement, and his film shows how that process is consolidated in practice. We first encounter single father Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) as he attends a court hearing Read more ...
mark.kidel
Sidestepper have been ploughing the rich ground of "electro-cumbia" for some years now. Their appealing contribution to the world dance scene is the fruit of a collaboration between Richard Blair, with his taste for drum‘n’bass and dub, and a number of Colombian talents who’ve grown up with a heady mix of Afro-Caribbean polyrhythms and traditional tribal melodies.Made in the laid-back barrios of Bogota, the new album juxtaposes tracks rooted in the irresistible and intricate local beats, driven by delicately played hand drums and other percussion, with slightly more mainstream pop and rock Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Of all the idiosyncratic artists coming through the door opened by punk, Adrian Sherwood remains one of the most singular. Reggae had been given a new platform and Sherwood, though he has never done anything remotely musically akin to punk rock, comfortably found a place alongside boundary-crossing post-punk individualists like The Pop Group and Public Image Ltd. The former’s Mark Stewart and the latter’s Jah Wobble went on to record with Sherwood’s On-U Sound label.Although Sherwood would deconstruct and then reassemble hip-hop with Tackhead and similarly explore various forms of electronic Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Penguins tend to be associated with slow and ungainly progress, slithering about in the snow. Yet there’s nothing cumbersome or awkward about the progress Manchester trio GoGo Penguin has made since emerging on the local jazz scene based around Matt and Phred’s club and their friend Matt Hallsall’s label Gondwana Records, which released their first two albums. In the past year they have broken through with North American audiences, and this, their third album, is not on Gondwana, but – applause – Blue Note. Much more GoGo than Penguin.The work is well titled. Man Made Object sums up Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The Cult, functionally Ian Astbury, Billy Duffy and whoever else is joining them at any given time, have, like a peculiarly showy chameleon, constantly changed their colours without ever blending in. From goth pirates banging out breakthrough, incense-smoked anthems, they've progresssed through hoary heroics of cock-rock cliché, to dark, occasionally industrial and deeply confessional folly.Refusing to rest on their extravagant laurels, The Cult have largely avoided the heritage shades of many of their peers. Yes, there were a couple of tours to celebrate the albums Love and Electric, but Read more ...
joe.muggs
It's hard to imagine what the weight of public anticipation must feel like for 27-year-old Rihanna and her team. A pop star for ten years, and one of the planet's biggest since the all-conquering success of “Umbrella” two years into that career, she maintained a Stakhanovite work ethic and has the startling record being equalled only by The Beatles and Elvis Presley for having US number one hit singles in seven consecutive years. But it's now over three years since her last full album, Unapologetic, with only a scattering of singles and soundtrack contributions to fill that gap, and repeated Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Georgian director Zaza Urushadze’s Tangerines made the shortlist of five for last year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar category (it didn't win). It was nominated from Georgia, but could equally well have represented Estonia: this incrementally powerful anti-war film is that rarest of things, a co-production between two rather different countries with a story that draws genuinely on the worlds of both.The consequences – human, most of all – of the break-up of the Soviet Union as it accelerated through the second half of 1991 haven’t been reflected all that widely in cinema, and Tangerines is Read more ...