CDs/DVDs
Matthew Wright
Like so much inspirational endeavour, it began in a garden shed. Enya (Eithne Ní Bhraonáin in her native Irish), dissatisfied with her role in Clannad, was experimenting with Nicky Ryan, the band’s manager, and Ryan’s wife Roma, a poet. Using multi-tracking, a shimmering electronic sound, and melodies that had a similar relationship with Irish folklore as an O’Neill’s pub, they created in the 1980s a style of soft-focus electro-folk so earwormingly catchy that “Orinoco Flow”, on her second, 1988 album Watermark, parked itself at number one for three weeks, and became the song Alan Partridge Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Justin Bieber’s undoubtedly had a tricky time of it, living in the full glare of the world’s media. While it’s demonstrably not “the toughest thing in the world”, as he recently suggested in Billboard magazine, it can’t be much fun having your every misdemeanour writ large. His fourth album, Purpose, purports to be his mea culpa, but I’m left wondering what he’s supposed to be apologising for. Surely a teenager who has been gifted unimaginable wealth should be forgiven for occasionally acting like an impatient dick and driving badly? We let pensioners get away with it all the time.At the time Read more ...
Graham Fuller
A Derby County footballer said of his boss Brian Clough in the late 1960s: “He’s a swine, but you’d give him your last half-dollar". Clough’s ability to inspire a do-or-die mentality – and undying loyalty – in the Nottingham Forest players he forged into Europe’s dominant club side comes across forcefully through their comments in I Believe in Miracles, which arrives on DVD, Blu-ray, and digital next week with a 31-minute making-of featurette.There’s nothing of the “swine” in Jonny Owen’s upbeat documentary: a celebration of Clough and his assistant Peter Taylor’s guiding of Forest to Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Ellie Goulding's new album is one to be experienced rather than merely heard. With a bit of drum and bass, a touch of techno, a little bit of house and a flirtation with dubstep rhythms, it’s a full-on roster of proper pop tunes.It’s not the kind of album to enjoy on vinyl with a nice glass of red; Delirium is to be lived, like a soundtrack to your Saturday night. "Army" is like queuing up for a nightclub, a solid, powerful number, amassing strength of feeling and clubbing compadres before strolling to the bar, taking in the lyrics, basking in the song’s bassy beat. "Outside" is like a warm- Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There’s nothing like the Palio, the race which twice each summer plunges the city of Siena into a state of collective derangement. If you’ve been you’ll know. If you haven’t, watch Palio for the closest approximation to actual attendance that any filmmaker has yet achieved. And there have been many attempts.The horse race, consisting of three circuits of the city’s apron-shaped Piazza del Campo, contains multitudes. Its roots in medieval history go so deep they’re virtually unfathomable, while the loyalty of each citizen to their district – ingested with la latte della mamma – must be Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Death of a Gentleman begins as a hymn to Test cricket, and becomes an elegy, as its makers cross the globe in a deceptively haphazard-looking pursuit of the men who run the game. Jarrod Kimber and Sam Collins are two journalists in search of a story. That the plot is not a murder mystery (who killed cricket?) but a jellyfish – Who’s running cricket? What do they want? Is anyone not in the pocket of an Indian concrete company? – becomes the story itself.Tightly cut from around 50 talking heads, it’s a film that shouldn’t work. There is no silver bullet. Cricket-lovers have watched the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
CeeLo Green is a real character, a personality in an age when pop is dominated by a homogenous mush of “sexy”, gym-bodied, media-trained nothingness. Hits such as "Crazy", with Gnarls Barkley, and his own “Fuck You” propelled him from a quirky southern US hip hop outsider into the pantheon of proper stars. More recently, his career has been mired in a court case wherein he was accused of spiking a dinner date with Ecstasy. Last summer he acceded to the drug aspect but was cleared of non-consensual sex. His fifth album, then, can be seen, especially in America where the case received more Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s one of the greatest rock songs of the Seventies. The production is dense and the churning guitars are thick with tension. Beginning with a minor-key riff suggesting a familiarity with The Stooges’ “No Fun”, the whole band lock into a groove which isn’t strayed from. The tempo does not shift. Rhythmically, this forward motion has the power of a tank stuck in third gear. The voice suggests John Lennon at his most raw. Two squalling guitar breaks set the Jimi Hendrix of “Third Stone from the Sun” in a hard rock context. Produced by former Hendrix co-manager Chas Chandler, it could be Read more ...
Matthew Wright
It seems perverse and self-defeating to record Australian piano trio The Necks. Acquiring over 25 years a reputation as the ultimate long-form improvisers, their single-take performances unfold with intricate, mesmerising drama, each one differing according the environment, acoustic, and mood. A dedicated groupie who followed this month’s extensive European tour (15 venues, 19 gigs, 19 days) would hear a noticeably different piece every time. So there’s something of the lepidopterist’s specimen about the idea of fixing these organic musical creatures in the binary certainty of a recording. Read more ...
joe.muggs
There's something reassuringly resistant to modernity about Jeff Lynne. In much the same way that his cast iron Brummie accent and demeanour have remained unchanged despite decades in Los Angeles, so his music remains in a late 20th century interzone – its real concerns being the songwriting of the Sixties and the huge, glossy production values of the Seventies and Eighties.And so it is here. The songs and vocal delivery are full of shameless nods to his sometime fellow Travelling Wilburys Bob Dylan (“Ain't it a Drag”) and Roy Orbison (“I'm Leaving You”), as well as to Paul McCartney (almost Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“A huge lizard in sunglasses” was Robin Askwith’s impression of Pier Paolo Pasolini on first meeting the Italian director. The actor’s entertaining, often funny and affectionate recollections of Pasolini are heard during a lengthy interview which is one of the extras on the home cinema release of Abel Ferrara’s homage to the director of Accattone, Theorem, Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom and The Canterbury Tales, which featured Askwith. By bringing a wider context, the interview contrasts with Pasolini which, instead of dramatising Pasolini’s career, focuses on the events in the hours Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
For those missing the glory days of pop-dance crossover acts such as Faithless and Basement Jaxx, Free School just might be the answer. Their second album bubbles over with euphoria and catchy tunes, shaded with a multiplicity of well-chosen dancefloor styles. Their name is ill-chosen, disappearing on Google unless you write “free school band Birmingham”, but these two Midlands producers have hit a purple patch and it’s time to pay attention.There are plenty of guest vocalists although only Mute Records’ wonk-tronic act Maps, who appears on the Dirty Vegas-style pop-house throbber “Good Read more ...