CDs/DVDs
Russ Coffey
As many colleagues have remarked over the past week, Christmas is that time of the year when, musically speaking, all bets are off. Whilst some prefer the season's more artsy offerings, personally, I still enjoy the soothing and traditional. Which is why, as the wine is mulling and fire crackling, I may well be tempted to dip into the Wilde Winter Songbook: this new deluxe edition is a big soft hug of festive classics and Wilde originals.Proceedings start with a rousing duet of “Winter Wonderland”, featuring Rick Astley having a decent stab at some old time Read more ...
mark.kidel
There was a time when the BBC provided a creative context – free of the anxiety-fuelled micro-management that characterises commissioning today – that gave a great deal of space to original and experimental film-making. While the pioneering work of French documentarians in the 1950s and 1960s was subsidized by an enlightened state, British documentary made advances thanks to public (and later commercial) television.Subtitled "The Evolution of the British Documentary", this well-curated BFI compilation of BBC films from 1951-1967 pays homage to a variety of films and TV programmes that provide Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Any Christmas album worth its salt draws from the classics. Versions of, say, “We Three Kings”, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, “Silent Night”, “Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!” and “The Little Drummer boy” are compulsory. What is not so inevitable is how these musical and seasonal chestnuts are tackled. All five songs are covered on Lit Up: Music for Christmas, and all five sound like they never have before.Astrocolor are from Canada. The five-piece from Victoria, British Columbia formed specifically to make a Christmas album like no other. Want a Massive Attack-style “We Three Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Comsat Angels’ debut single for Polydor, July 1980’s “Independence Day”, was an instant classic. After setting a rhythmic bed, each subsequent instrumental contribution is measured out: a guitar string's harmonic; a spare keyboard line; drop-outs drawing from dub. The melody was anthemic, yet not overbearing, and the forward momentum unyielding. It still sounds fantastic.After an independently issued single, the Sheffield quartet released “Independence Day” on the major label which had brought The Jam and Siouxsie & the Banshees into the charts. In the wake of punk, Polydor seemed to Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Christmas albums have been part of the scenery almost since the invention of the gramophone. This has led to quite a motley crew of cash-in dross but also the odd hint of real gold. Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings’ multi-faith holiday album is certainly much closer to gold than the other end of the musical spectrum but as with many Christmas celebrations, there are times when things get just a bit too corny. Nevertheless, It’s a Holiday Soul Party does precisely what it sets out to do, with plenty of lively retro-soul tunes that will put smiles on faces and encourage hefty doses of Christmas Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Searching for artistic merit in most Christmas albums is a bit like looking for allegory in a Cliff Richard calendar. Under the sheen of one-size-fits-all production that’s necessary to compete in as wide a market as possible come the annual bunfight for plastic tat, pretty much everything is reduced to sounding like a nicely wrapped fancy box of nothing.That said, expectations are there to be confounded, so lets open Kylie Christmas and see what we’ve got…We’re covering disappointment straight from the off. As we smile sweetly and say “Thanks”, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” Read more ...
Graham Fuller
As a director of Westerns in the 1950s, André de Toth is seldom spoken of in the same breath as Budd Boetticher and Anthony Mann, but there’s a case to be made that he was their equal. Day of the Outlaw (1959), de Toth's ice-cold farewell to the genre, matches Mann’s James Stewart Westerns in its harnessing of landscape to psychological dynamics, while its story of a hardened loner who won’t be shaken from his mission recalls Boetticher’s Randolph Scott films.Constantly in dialogue with Shane (1953), it’s a redemption drama, set in a snow-shrouded Wyoming settlement called Bitters at the end Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Christmas albums are an annual parade of froth and fun, designed to be fluffy and celebratory rather than challenging, especially imaginative or, indeed, truly great. With the Smoke Fairies seasonal outing, however, no mulled wine-fuelled critical generosity is required. Wild Winter is by turns moving, gorgeous, funny, and rockin’ – a rich and enjoyably snappy 37 minutes.Female folk/blues/“dream-pop” duo Smoke Fairies have been going for over a decade, supported by a small coterie of fans including names such as Jack White and Public Service Broadcasting. This is their fifth album and it Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Kate’s no stranger to the Christmas collection – Sweet Bells from 2008, and While Mortals Sleep from 2011 both focused on South Yorkshire-inspired carols and seasonal songs, and the Kate Rusby at Christmas DVD from 2014, filmed at Harrogate Hall, put listeners firmly in the picture, with the Barnsley Nightingale supported by her excellent band, featuring partner and guitarist-singer Damien O’Kane, and a five-piece brass section.That soft northern brass sound features again on “Bradfield”, the mellifluous opener for The Frost Is All Over, a plump, pillowy arrangement that fits her voice very Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The story of the Soviet Union’s ice hockey team's pivotal role in relations with North America is fascinating. Its players were not just sportsmen. They were also in the army and integral to their home country's portrayal of itself on the world stage. Central to the Cold War battle of wills, the seemingly unbeatable team was a propaganda tool and, after perestroika, its members played for American and Canadian teams. Russia had infiltrated its adversaries. The Werner Herzog-produced documentary Red Army tells this tale.The film is packed with characters. Chief among them is Vyacheslav Fetisov Read more ...
joe.muggs
This has been a truly glorious year for electronica albums. Records by the likes of Arca, Kode9, Jlin, James Place and Rabit showed digital music could still feel like it was writing the future, while others like Altered Natives, The Orb, Syracuse and Levon Vincent made the decades-old templates of house, techno and chillout still feel as fresh as you like, and one-offs like King Midas Sound & Fennesz simply occupied their own unique emotional space. And it's into that final category that the second album by KRTS, AKA Kurtis Hairston, falls.Hairston is an African-American producer from Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
How many live versions of “Heroin” are necessary? The new four CD set The Complete Matrix Tapes includes, yes, four. One per disc. If that seems excessive, consider this: one version previously appeared, in the same mix, on last year’s reissue of the third Velvet Underground album; a second and third were included, in different mixes, on differing configurations of the 1969: The Velvet Underground Live album; an audience recording of a fourth was issued on 2001's The Velvet Underground Bootleg Series Volume 1: The Quine Tapes. All four versions are previously released.Overall, of The Read more ...