CDs/DVDs
joe.muggs
There's a narrative that I recall from one particular "Ball Boy" strip in the Beano comic many years ago, but I'm pretty sure was recurring in similar cartoon strips too, of a bookworm or boffin character impinging on the tough kids' game, but then proving his worth by using his book learning to calculate, say, the perfect goal-scoring kick in a football match. Maybe it was far-fetched, but it spoke to a deep hope – not just as a simple “revenge of the nerds” narrative, but a hint that maybe the complexities of life and of human games and teams could actually be worked out.And maybe there's Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
All lovers of music have styles they're drawn to and others they loathe. For me the continuing rise of the whiney, vulnerable, male singer-songwriter, his falsetto-flecked voice emoting non-specific but all-encompassing woes, is anathema. Poor old Jeff Buckley, dead these last 17 years, has so much to answer for. The gigantic and continuing public appetite for solipsistic carefully highlighted sensitivity, from Damien Rice to Ben Howard - and way too many more - is apparently and unfortunately endless.The arrival, then, of flop-haired, falsetto-flecked 24-year-old singer-songwriter Andrew Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
In his director’s interview for Goltzius and the Pelican Company Peter Greenaway describes the public profiles that his films have achieved over the years, dividing them into an effective A and B list. He counts his 1982 The Draughtsman's Contract as his most approachable work, while acknowledging that its follow-up A Zed & Two Noughts was greeted by a really savage critical and popular reaction (though the director himself thinks it’s his best film).With Goltzius Greenaway is back on form, coming at least close to the four-star mark, and the film achieved acclaim on its release around Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Thom Yorke’s second solo LP arrived unexpectedly this week via BitTorrent as a paid-for fileshare, a medium Yorke and producer Nigel Godrich hope to promote to empower artists to sell direct, without the need for a corporate hosting system. In a striking dissonance of form and content, the upbeat, seize-your-destiny message of the BitTorrent medium has conveyed to us a set of tracks that, never less than intriguing, are nearly all on the downbeat mood spectrum, from pensive to virtually apocalyptic.As expected from a Yorke solo project, this is an electronic collection: Radiohead guitar Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Over the years Weezer’s greatest skill has surely been to stimulate the inner schoolboy in us. Who, for instance, could deny hits like “Beverley Hills” paint a charming and cheeky picture of being young and nerdy? The thing is, though, Rivers Cuomo and friends are now in their forties with little sign of growing up. How then should they continue? The press release says that Everything will Be Alright in the End is more “complex and layered”. But unfortunately it sounds like a paler version of business as usual. Only the lead single “Back to the Shack” reasonably Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Black Widow: SacrificeIt wasn’t John Lennon’s fault, but things weren’t the same after the “bigger than Jesus” scandal of 1966. Pop music had been connected to religion in a way slightly edgier than Cliff Richard or the Salvation Army's The Joystrings' happy celebrations in song. The doors were now open to a darker take on faith.The Rolling Stones waxed about evil in 1968’s “Sympathy for the Devil”. The B-side of the same year’s “Jumpin' Jack Flash" was "Child of the Moon", which referenced Aleister Crowley’s magical novel Moonchild. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown’s “Fire”, with its “ Read more ...
joe.muggs
The last thing I remember of my 40th birthday party this year is propping up a bar with a few similarly middle-aged men, discussing whether Kate Bush's comeback shows were as worth getting excited about as Prince's recent comeback shows. It was most enjoyable, and – I feel – age-appropriate, to boot, but somewhere among the slurred repetitions there was the kernel of something serious about music fandom, especially as you and your favourite artists grow older.Particularly with musicians as totally individualist as Kate Bush and Prince, there is a strange combination of gambling and religious Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Art-student rock sounds like a terribly dated concept, but listening to This Is All Yours for the first time, it suddenly feels very relevant. This is music of the broadest cultural horizons, that takes in global influences, but can’t resist the desire to shock, sometimes just for the sake of it.There are warm, folksy songs like “Warm Foothills”, piano and acoustic guitar and strings dancing around lyrics of touching sensuousness, alongside an eerie, electro-tinged folk hymn, “The Gospel of John Hurt”, about the actor with an alien bursting from his stomach. The touchingly obtuse falsetto Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The Vaselines were originally one of a slew of bands that came out of the mid- to late-80s’ Shambling/C86 scene. Characterised by low production values and low commercial expectations, their Dum-Dum album and a couple of EPs made little impression on Planet Pop and the band split. Then along came Kurt Cobain – who declared the band’s mainstays, Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee, his “favourite songwriters in the whole world” and recorded three of their songs with Nirvana. Kelly and McKee’s songwriting royalties swelled accordingly and, after a couple of false starts, the Vaselines finally Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There was a time, around 25 years ago, when Inspiral Carpets’ psyche-eyed cow logo, accompanied by the motto “Cool as Fuck”, was ubiquitous on tee-shirts. Along with the Charlatans, they represented the second tier of the “Madchester” movement, trailing behind Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses. Unlike the preposterously revered Roses, however, Inspiral Carpets’ music has drifted out of the radio-played heritage rock canon.This is a shame. Inspiral Carpets touted a rather different sound from Manchester’s slew of “baggy” also-rans. Not for them a pastiche of Clyde Stubblefield’s “Funky Drummer Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The name of Czech director Karel Zeman is far less-known in the English-speaking world than it deserves to be. He began working during World War Two, establishing a name for himself in the rich Czech animation school (and proving a later influence on that movement’s master, Jan Švankmajer), and thus is a decade or two earlier than that country’s celebrated New Wave cinema movement of the 1960s. His later work often combined animation with the feature format in distinctive, and different way: among his fans is Terry Gilliam, who has acknowledged Zeman’s influence, especially in his treatment Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Though advertised as a heartfelt and autobiographical work, U2's 13th studio album tells you far more about the state of the music industry than it does about the intimate inner stories of the musicians. Tying the album release to the launch of Apple's iPhone 6 merely reinforced the view that U2 is no longer a band, more an offshore corporation, and was bound to strike many people as a desperate ploy from an outfit struggling to stay meaningful. Humiliatingly, many iTunes users have been so enraged by finding Songs of Innocence landing uninvited in their libraries that Apple have had to Read more ...