CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
London duo Jungle are to be commended for their desire to stay away from predictability. The result of their falsetto-voiced, twinkly alt-pop mission has been plenty of attention in the right quarters. Nominees for the BBC Sound of 2014, multi-million YouTube hitters, and hyped as festival musts-sees, they’ve certainly achieved hot band status, so it’s now just down to this debut album to dunk the ball through the hoop.It doesn’t, really, although it occasionally reaches the right end of the court. Over the course of twelve songs the pair massage the android edges off electro-pop, smear it Read more ...
joe.muggs
The Eighties revival, as is now well documented, has lasted far longer than the actual Eighties. And Elly “La Roux” Jackson is a vital figure in maintaining its durability, coming as she did to massive fame just as the effects of the turn-of-the-millenium club scene electroclash were wearing off, and making sure that plinky-plonky electropop keyboards, icy attitude and sculpted hair were kept on the cultural agenda.Her musical style was entirely distinctive, if a little piercing – it was no surprise that she achieved the success she did, so complete was her mix of sound, look and persona. It Read more ...
Katie Colombus
The sign of a good film is one that lingers, one that you return to after days, months or even years – a snapshot of an image, a feeling that struck a chord within you, a memorable character that inspired or excited, or a line that you just can’t shake. But what of one that does the total opposite, that makes you appalled and apathetic in equal measure so that you to want to forget it immediately and never return to it?An 11-year-old girl jumps to her death from the balcony of her family’s apartment on the day of her birthday. To begin with, every line of Miss Violence could be misconstrued Read more ...
Matthew Wright
As the name suggests, New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Band was established to promote traditional New Orleans Jazz. This release is the band’s first of original material, and the fact they haven’t been short of a tune since foundation in 1961 only confirms what any jazz-lover will already know, that the traditional New Orleans repertoire is pretty well represented in the record catalogue already.The famous community spirit of New Orleans is reflected in two characteristics of the city’s music in particular: the quality of the ensemble playing, and the relaxed approach to genre. While the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Lewis: L'AmourImagine a very subdued Antony Hegarty whispering over the spookiest moments of Angelo Badalamenti’s music for Twin Peaks. Or conjure up a marriage of Arthur Russell’s shimmering World of Echo and John Martyn at his most intimate, but shorn of all but the most necessary instrumentation. To say that L’Amour, the only album by Lewis, is arresting underplays it. This is one of the most direct and affecting series of songs ever captured in a studio. Yet until a few years ago it was unknown and, even then, only available as a dodgy download with added colour from the scratches Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Ostensibly folk, Emma Tricca’s second album Relic sounds more like a devotional song cycle heard in a church than on a club or festival stage. The massed chorale of Tricca’s voice which opens “Sunday Reverie”, the spectral organ of “Golden Chimes” and the lyrics of “Take me Away”, which yearn of being transported to somewhere she has never been where the trees are aging, all invoke the search for the spiritual.Initially pegged as a Greenwich Village-fascinated folkie inspired by encounters with John Renbourn and Bob Dylan's early champion Odetta, Tricca's voice is as singular and as Read more ...
Jasper Rees
When is an adaptation no such thing? Novelist Michael Faber has been more or less faithfully televised by the BBC in The Crimson Petal and the White starring Romola Garai as an autodidactic Victorian prostitute, while at the other polarity stands Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, featuring an almost wordless Scarlett Johansson as a man-slaying alien loose on the streets of Glasgow. From under the skin of the film the guts of the novel have been ripped out, leaving the viewer free to read what they will into a chilling parable about (when all's said and done) alienation.The film has already Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Maybe they really just don’t make ‘em like they used to. The latest in 2014’s prestigious roll-call of bus-pass rockers is Judas Priest - back minus one original guitarist (relative youngster Richie Faulkner replaces K.K. Dowling). Redeemer of Souls may have been recorded by a bunch of guys mainly in their sixties but the LP feels almost as preposterous, exhilarating and entertaining as anything they’ve ever done. It’s also a real contender for metal album of the year.Comparisons will inevitably be made with Sabbath’s recent 13. Both are comebacks of sorts and both bands are synonymous with Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The Minstrel of Misery or the Poet Laureate of Bedsitland: Morrissey has been musical marmite since he first entered the public consciousness with The Smiths’ debut single, “Hand in Glove”, over thirty years ago. World Peace Is None Of Your Business may be a return to form, but it is unlikely to change his public image. No doubt he will be fine with that.The lyrics, predictably enough, are from the Morrissey that we have all come to recognise and the music is still mostly dominated by the white boy, indie sound that he has long made his own – albeit with occasional trumpet and acoustic guitar Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Right from their lo-fi beginnings, Glasgow’s Honeyblood have always been able to deliver the perfect kiss-off. It’s why it’s a relief to see that the duo’s self-titled debut album retains a fair slice of that crackle and hiss, Stina Tweeddale’s candy-coated vocals still providing a deceptive delivery method for her often venomous lyrics.It’s not always big and it’s certainly not always clever - new single “Super Rat”, for example, combines three minutes of likening a cheating ex-boyfriend to the titular rodent with a playground chant of “scumbag, sleaze, slimeball, grease” - but Honeyblood Read more ...
joe.muggs
As dance music once more sweeps the mainstream, we're returned to the situation of the 1990s where singer and song can seem to become a little detached. Parades of “featured vocalists” deliver refrains for the producer teams who are queueing up to repeat the success of Route 94, Clean Bandit, Duke Dumont and above all Disclosure. And as the field gets more crowded, so the requirements for the singers to sit back, know their place and deliver the simplest hooks become more pressing.Some new generation singers do manage to step into the spotlight of course. Rita Ora parlayed her big hit with DJ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After the initial wave of exhilaration which comes with experiencing the latest of director Wes Anderson’s fanciful creations wears off, the most striking aspect of The Grand Budapest Hotel is its formal compositions. The framing and centring are as strictly regimented as Alain Resnais’ Last Year in Marienbad and the palette is as impressive as Nicolas Winding Refn's more recent Only God Forgives.Anderson must have approached each scene with a ruler in hand, a protractor to ensure symmetry and a swatch of colour samples to ensure one tone complements another. Once that's become familiar, it Read more ...