CDs/DVDs
peter.quinn
Materializing out of London's thriving traditional Irish music scene, this debut recording from new five-piece CrossHarbour presents an 11-track collection whose appeal should go way beyond traditional Irish music initiates. Featuring a judicious mix of tunes and songs, the quintet's musicianship is fabulously impressive.In flute player Órlaith McAuliffe the band has a once-in-a-generation talent, a brilliant, preposterously accomplished musician who has bagged so many All-Ireland titles that her mantelpiece must be groaning under the weight. The band's other melody player, fiddler Sam Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Many films fuse humour with horror and many of those fail to be accomplished in either genre. Bringing fun to the scary often results in a clunkiness which neither raises laughs or goosebumps. The worst example might be the utterly awful Bloodbath at the House of Death, a 1984 film which teamed all-round showbiz eccentric Kenny Everett with veteran actor Vincent Price. What Price thought as he navigated his way through this stinker is not a matter of record, but he may have ruefully cast his mind back a decade to the contrastingly wonderful Theatre of Blood. Released in 1973, it is one of the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Ah, Jeff Buckley - so much to answer for. Damien Rice, Bon Iver, William Fitzsimmons, James Morrison, David Gray, James Vincent McMorrow, Chet Faker, Joshua Radin and on and on and on, endless waves of male singer-songwriters – usually bearded - who signify emotion through falsetto voice-breaking, the most tired, tedious technique in modern pop and rock. There have been valiant attempts to send things in new directions but no one bought them (eg Jack Peñate’s “Tonight’s Today” single). It would be a welcome wonder, then, if the sterling debut solo album from Nick Mulvey, once of crossover Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
“If 50 is the new black, hooray, this could be your lucky day,” Tori Amos sings on “16 Shades of Blue”, the track from new album Unrepentant Geraldines most obviously touched by the big birthday that the singer, who has been releasing music since her early 20s, just passed. With its woozy beats, odd sound effects and references to the paintings of Paul Cézanne it’s a curious song, likely to throw those more fond of Amos’ recent forays into classical and orchestral music. Still it’s the one whose lyrics - a meandering stream-of-consciousness on femininity and ageing - that have struck me the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Josef K: The Only Fun in TownJosef K seem like one that got away. Their fellow Postcard Records’ bands Aztec Camera and Orange Juice had high-profile afterlives with, respectively, the careers of their songwriters and front men Roddy Frame and Edwin Collins. After his band split, Josef K’s Paul Haig went on to have a string of fantastic, accessible releases – including collaborations with New Order – but none clicked with the mainstream. His old outfit’s legacy is though heard less directly through Franz Ferdinand, whose agitated forward-thrust derives directly from Josek K. It’s also Read more ...
joe.muggs
Little Dragon are all about the slow burn. The Swedish band had been going for 10 years before they released their first single in 2006, and in the time since then they've built their profile steadily through hard gigging and interesting collaborations, rather than any massive smashes. Their music reflects this too, tending to the insidious rather than the immediate, and that seems to be the case more than ever on their fourth album.They have a lot going for them, but above all else their strengths are in Yukimi Nagano's voice, and in their production. Both of these have all the control, Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Films in which poetry is almost a character can often become bombastic, but there’s no danger of that in Bruno Barreto’s Reaching for the Moon, whose heroine is the repressed, rather quiet American poet Elizabeth Bishop (Miranda Otto): speaking loudly, we feel, was little in her character, even when she was in her cups (which she quite often is in this deluxe Brazilian English-language biopic).Barreto’s film is about Bishop’s complicated 15-year relationship with the affluent Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares (Glória Pires), who is the exact opposite of her partner – she’s forthright Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although the trademark aqueous shimmer is still recognisable on Life Among the Savages, the sound of San Francisco’s Papercuts has changed since 2011’s Fading Parade. On his fifth album as Papercuts, Jason Quever has kept arrangements more sparse than ever yet everything has a distance. His world appears to be one of permanent dusk, when melancholy is inescapable. Life Among the Savages is the sound of outside looking in.The song titles lay it out: “Still Knocking at the Door”, “New Body”, “Staring at the Bright Lights”, “Afterlife Blues”, “Tourist”. Quever’s sense of isolation brings to this Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Anyone who is unfamiliar with Swans might reasonably assume that these veterans of New York’s early eighties “noise” scene to be well past their best by now. As powerful as Black Sabbath on steroids, Swans’ music has taken in industrial noise, art rock, gothic country and, since reforming as a going concern in 2010, brooding, apocalyptic mini-symphonies. To Be Kind is their 13th studio album, the band has been around (on and off and in various incarnations) for more than 30 years and, singer and bandleader, Michael Gira won’t be seeing his 60th birthday again. However, such an assumption Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Wayne Cochran: Goin’ Back to Miami – The Soul Sides 1965-1970With his dyed-blond pompadour, Wayne Cochran looks bizarre enough. But once he opens his mouth, the weirdness level is kicked into orbit. He sounds exactly like a wild cross between James Brown and Otis Redding. Although white, his soul music is not the smooth or sweet blue-eyed fare of a Len Barry or a Righteous Brothers. Goin’ Back to Miami convincingly makes the case for Cochran as a soul great.The compilation opens with the self-penned 1966 single and title track (watch a slightly fuzzy looking TV performance on the next Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
That Nikki Nack, the third album from tUnE-yArDs, sounds as if it could share the name with some brightly-coloured superhero from a nursery rhyme seems appropriate, because that’s always been how I’ve pictured Merrill Garbus. It’s a persona that she has seemed happy to play up to this time around, in the colourful publicity shots and Pee-wee’s Playhouse-inspired videos that have preceded this release, but it’s also one that’s a perfect fit: an eclectic and experimental creator of songs (“songwriter” seems a touch simplistic a way to describe the way that she loops beats, whoops and ukelele), Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Travelling minstrels once spread news and social commentary via song, leavening it with bawdiness, social satire and raw humour. On those terms, Lily Allen is the premier folkloric songwriter of our times. Her songs are filled with pin-sharp detail that places them right in the now, some so precisely that by the end of the year they’ll be outdated (notably the title track’s caustic crack at the girl-pop crown). If music were judged on lyrics alone Sheezus would receive a straightforward 5/5 score, for its ruthless, specific, righteous perspective on themes running from our blank-eyed i-celeb Read more ...