CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
Nebraskan singer-songwriter Conor Oberst – AKA Bright Eyes - was a famously contrary soul when he first broke through. This greatly benefited his music, if not his commercial potential. Rather than become your typical indie-acoustic whiner, he embraced a multiplicity of styles, an obtuse, upset, punk-electronic filtering of American roots music. I dismissed him initially as yet more NME-endorsed guitar crap but, after seeing him at Glastonbury a few years ago, I realised he was the real deal, an unpredictable, intriguing artist worth watching.Thus I was pleased to see he had a Christmas album Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
This year, even legendary punk rockers Bad Religion released a Christmas-themed album - as if to underline that, for just about any recording artist, it’s not a matter of "if" but of "when". Christmas Songs only shares one track with Kelly Clarkson’s Wrapped in Red - two if you’re counting the bonus tracks - but I can imagine them nestled comfortably together in some completist’s iTunes folder, alongside every other version of “White Christmas” committed to tape.With a Greatest Hits collection now under her belt, it’s probably as good a time as any for the American Idol-winning Texan to Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Mr Arkadin, wedged between two greats – Othello and Touch of Evil – is Welles’ most chaotic film, its production scarred by budget restraints and a terminal quarrel with the producer, who barred Welles from the final edit – yet again. What you see is often a mess of dismal dubbing, painfully abrupt (as well as daringly innovative) cuts, and swathes of voiceover to cram in the necessary plot explication.As a whole, it doesn’t hang together at all. Welles sails close over the border of the ludicrous with his face make-up as billionaire Arkadin – Harry Harryhausen’s models are more convincing – Read more ...
graham.rickson
There's an impressive guest list on Joshua Bell's Christmas disc. Vocalists include Renée Fleming, Plácido Domingo, Gloria Estefan and Alison Krauss. Cellist Steven Isserlis pops up, along with Chick Corea. Sony would have us believe that this is meant to sound like a spontaneous seasonal shindig held in Bell's Manhattan apartment, though the range of recording venues suggest that many of the performances must have been phoned in.But, against all expectations, there are some very sweet things here; the successes just about outweigh the stinkers. The instrumental tracks come off best: a lovely Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Reactions to Only God Forgives are going to be defined by expectations. Its star, Ryan Gosling, is an all-purpose arts polymath equally at home with music and film, who has directed and written as well as acted. Its director, the Danish-born Nicolas Winding Refn, has no problems with pushing genres beyond their limits despite working within America’s film industry. Gosling was in Refn’s 2011 film Drive, and their follow-up might have been expected to develop that film’s approach by once again hyper-stylising the familiar.To some extent, Only God Forgives does. But it also goes further – and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Do people really find this sensual? R Kelly’s rise to the very top of the R&B tree cannot, surely, be based on multi-million sales caused by a gigantic ironic in-joke. His Trapped in the Closet series of films showed a knowing wink but, no, the truth is that, like Barry White once was, he’s become the emperor of bedroom music.The album is called Black Panties. Given its content he should have called it Moist Black Panties, just to ram the point home. Listening to it is like biting into a doughnut filled with another man’s day-old spunk. We can speak about the production, which is a Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Even on first listen, without context or introduction, the music of The Fauns already seems familiar. Their sound is an amalgam of many of the things I have enjoyed in 2013: The History of Apple Pie, all guitar fuzz and sweetness; the shimmer of the newly-reunited Mazzy Star; the soundtrack to an early Sofia Coppola film; and, on “Point Zero”, the buzz of the crowd at an open-air rock show as imagined by somebody who decided to stay at home on a Friday night.Lights is actually the second album from the five-piece who - and no offence to people of the south west - couldn’t sound less like they Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Velvet Underground: White Light/White HeatThe shadow cast over the reissue of The Velvet Underground’s second album White Light/White Heat by Lou Reed’s recent death is a poignant reminder that an awful lot of time has passed since this still-vital inspiration for much of today’s indie rock was first released. As a 45th anniversry edition, this does mark an unusual milestone but as seemingly the last word on the album it’s hard to imagine what could constitute a 50th anniverary edition. The Velvet Underground have been endlessly examined and re-examined. The vaults must now be bare. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Britney has become an icon. Partly this is down to her shiny, unreadable Hollywood exterior, partly down to her classic child star downfall, partly her relentless campness, partly the way she’s become unstoppable, but most of all because her career has been speckled with some fantastic songs – “Toxic”, “Piece of Me”, “Sometimes”, “Oops, I Did It Again”, “If You Seek Amy”. Again and again she has defied her critics’ desire to dismiss her. These are songs that long outlive their crass promotional campaigns and objectifyjng videos. The question is, then, whether, Britney Jean is packed with such Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
A fascinating and heart-breaking relationship is charted through cross-cutting flashbacks (a technique recently used in Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine, which this film has a lot in common with), which hint at future happiness and sorrow. In this Flemish film from Felix Van Groeningen, tattooist Elise falls madly in love with cowboy and bluegrass musician Didier who’s more than a little obsessed with America. We then witness their highs and lows as their young daughter, Maybelle, is treated for a life-threatening disease.At odds with each other from the beginning, Elise seeks spiritual Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Oozing like “liquefied sucrose,” whilst offering “a Ritalin-buzzed rictus of happiness” was how theartsdesk described One Direction’s 2012 offering, Take Me Home. That, however, was a year ago, and a year is a long a time in the life of a heavily coiffured twenty-ish year-old pop idol. So, how then, have the intervening months treated the Anglo-Irish quintet? Are procedings now a little more adult or is it simply business as usual for Simon Cowell’s protégés?Surprisingly, things actually have moved forward a fair bit. The tunes may still go a little heavy on the sugar, but it’s no Read more ...
joe.muggs
New Yorker band Gang Gang Dance have been one of the odder acts of the past decade. Presented as a kind of hippie multimedia collective, they were among the earliest non-UK adopters of the sonics of grime and dubstep, which they wove in alongside global music influences, jam band psychedelia and more into an extremely rich and sometimes slightly confusing stew.They have been signed to some of the biggest left field labels (WARP, 4AD), worked with filmmaker Harmony Korine, been “innocently” plagiarised by the ghastly Florence & The Machine, had many moments of brilliance, but seemingly Read more ...