CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
What sometimes gets lost in the great blur of testosterone and hype surrounding Kasabian’s public image is that a decade ago they released a self-titled debut that’s one of the most exciting albums of the 21st century. A bunch of hairies from a commune in Leicester with a sexy guitarist and a good line in drug-endorsing, anarchistic, Sixties-style patter, they turned out to be one of those bands who decide, week-by-week, which of their heroes they fancy emulating. Like Primal Scream before them, sometimes the results spectacularly surpass mere imitation.If their last album, 2011’s Read more ...
Russ Coffey
According to Chrissie Hynde's press release, Stockholm has a kind of Abba-meets-John Lennon vibe. That may seem like the kind of gobbledegook statement you'd expect from an artist going solo but at least it kind of hints at the influence of producer Bjorn Yttling and guest presence of, uh, Neil Young. More than anything, though, Stockholm just sounds like a tenth Pretenders album, and there’s little wrong with that.Hynde was once described as having a voice half-way between Elvis and Dusty Springfield. Remarkably, at 62 she still does. Fans are already claiming that the power-pop of Read more ...
Tim Cumming
They've performed together on stage and in the studio since the first Waterson:Carthy albums of the early 1990s, but this is the first time Martin and Eliza Carthy have recorded as a duo, and they've kept it lean and clear with just their voices, Eliza's fiddle and Martin's guitar – each element distinct enough by itself, but together creating a very pure, personal kind of austere beauty. There's no excess baggage, and the tunes are handled with the kind of expertise, love and assured interpretation that comes with a lifetime's immersion.The opening “Her Servant Man” is a succinct Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Any fears that Howling Bells’ short hiatus, or the new motherhood of frontwoman and lead songwriter Juanita Stein, had softened the band’s deliciously dark yet melodic songwriting must surely be assuaged by the huge, squalling riff that opens new album Heartstrings - and its lead track, “Paris”. While the song itself is a gorgeous, languid meditation on Europe’s romantic capital (“oh Paris, every song’s about you, every romance calls you”) it’s the sonic power of the four-piece’s simple guitar-drums-bass approach that makes its mission statement clear.Loud but never knowingly jarring is as Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Once upon a time, Matthew “Matisyahu” Miller was the Hasidic reggae singer. There was only one, and the beard he sported for the first three albums made him pretty easy to spot. He still calls himself the “Hasidic reggae superstar” (on “Watch the Walls Melt Down”), but now, for this fifth studio album, he’s sleek, smooth and groomed, like any successful performer from LA, with a cosmopolitan stylistic palette to match. The generic diversification is, it seems, deliberate. While reggae, rap and hip hop have been converging for some time, and the Jewish sounds have always been there, he Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Holland-Dozier-Holland - The Complete 45s Collection, Invictus, Hot Wax, Music MerchantAs Holland-Dozier-Holland, Lamont Dozier and brothers Brian and Eddie Holland wrote and produced for The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes and every other top-flight Motown act between 1962 and 1968. Their credit was behind “Baby Love”, “Nowhere to Run”, “Reach Out I’ll Be There”, “Where Did Our Love Go” and many other classics. But that wasn’t enough for the trio. At Motown, they increasingly felt, as the book with this package puts it, “overworked and under-appreciated”. Splitting from Read more ...
joe.muggs
Electronic music, it seems, is finally being seen broadly as something with heritage. Perhaps it's the alienating qualities of sounds that don't emanate from any easily graspable human action, perhaps it's the association with either academia or the subcultures of psychedelia, industrial culture and rave, perhaps it's just that people are naturally conservative, but there has long been a sense in the mainstream that electronic sound-making had to do just with novelty and modernity rather than being part of any deeper cultural flow.If any label can prove otherwise, it's Mute, the label that Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Perhaps capitalizing on the much-lauded success of the current television series of the same name starring Hayden Panettiere, Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975) is now out on DVD. Both film and TV show merge music and drama in the same way and both detail the social and political issues constantly swirling around country music’s hometown. But that’s where the similarities end.Those currently gripped by Nashville fever will be intrigued by the style, stars, songwriting process and provincial nature of the inhabitants of music city in the Seventies – before the notion of celebrity imploded in on Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s stockbroker Goodfellas, basically. If you enjoyed Martin Scorsese’s pacey, flashy, beautifully shot ensemble gangster flicks, Goodfellas and Casino, there’s little doubt you’ll enjoy this. Here the master director, absolutely on fire, has his cake and eats it with the “based-on-a-true-story” saga of corrupt stockbroker Jordan Belfort’s rise and fall. The central character, played with audacious, astounding flare by Leonardo DiCaprio, exudes charisma from every pore and guzzles pleasure by the raw ton, taking no prisoners. While Belfort is a ruthless, unpleasant protagonist, the sort of Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Anyone with more than a passing interest in the Radio One playlist will have been aware that 2013 was, without doubt, the year of Rudimental on Planet Pop. Hit singles, a massive album in Home and plenty of well-received festival and live performances followed and the accolades rolled in. In 2014, it looks like it is going to be Clean Bandit’s turn. January’s monster hit single, “Rather Be”, topped the UK charts for four weeks, they have just finished a hugely successful UK tour and it’s not even festival season yet, with its wall-to-wall TV coverage.Clean Bandit have already made significant Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Good Morning, Midnight is the 1939 Jean Rhys novel portraying an alienated woman moving through the present while being confronted with, but not necessarily recognising, her own past. In the book, Sasha Jensen wanted to be acknowledged but also unseen. Good Morning, Midnight the album is the first by Becky Becky, the new persona of Gemma L Williams, who previously recorded as Woodpecker Wooliams. She said goodbye to that guise at a show where she performed naked. The novel's alienation reverberates throughout the album.On Good Morning, Midnight, she is joined by Peter Mason, formerly of Fence Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The first thing you’ll notice about Sharon Van Etten’s Are We There is how crystal-clear and clean it sounds. “Afraid of Nothing”, the album’s opening track, fizzes with hope and expectation like the long tail of a firework from its giddy opening lines: “you told me the day that you showed me your face we’d be in trouble for a long time - I can’t wait”. Listen to it on headphones, though, and the component parts of that giddiness will stun you: the interplay between simple piano chords and guitar; the soaring strings that fill the chorus line with anticipation; the booming bass drum you can Read more ...