CDs/DVDs
Graham Fuller
One of the triumphs of the decade so far, Leos Carax’s fifth feature, and his first since 1999’s Pola X, takes the form of a day-long limousine ride around a gloomy Paris. Before it starts, a dreamer (played by Carax himself) breaks through his apartment wall into a cinema and conjures into existence Mr Oscar (Denis Lavant once again playing the director’s alter ego), apparently a business tycoon who sets off in the morning to do his daily work of mastering the universe.He soon casts off that guise. As he’s ferried from appointment to appointment by his elegant lady chauffeur (75-year-old Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There is a distinct art to following up an album that established an artist. Of the many possible paths, perhaps the most astute is delivering a twist on what came before, similar enough to satisfy those that liked it but different enough to seem fresh. Moby, for instance, successfully tweaked the sound of his multi-million-selling Play for the intriguing but accessible 18, whereas The Klaxons fluffed it completely when they followed up the fantastic Myths of the Near Future with what appeared to be a pastiche of it. Esben and the Witch, the gloom-rock trio from Brighton, drew attention with Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Writing about True without naming the elephant in the room was always going to be a challenge, even if the younger Ms Knowles’ next move had built on the more experimental sounds of her earlier work or “Stillness is the Move”, her 2009 collaboration with Dirty Projectors. But then “Losing You” dropped in October, and it just so happened to feature one of the greatest female R&B vocals since, well...The song is a gripping opener to this seven-track mini-album, Solange’s first release on Grizzly Bear’s Terrible imprint. Fusing choppy, tribal beats with an understated vocal performance, the Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Like the Will Hay classic Oh! Mr. Porter and the droll BBC miniseries Love on a Branch Line, Charles Crichton’s 1953 Ealing comedy, the first shot in Technicolor, celebrates the English love of rural railways run by unworldly eccentrics in whose hands ancient locomotives are objects of love, and sometimes dangerous weapons. A slight but ineffably charming pipedream, it was both nostalgic for pre-war village life and prophetic of the Beeching railway cuts that slashed branch lines in the mid-1960s, ending a way of life. When a greedy bus company threatens the fictional Titfield Read more ...
peter.quinn
On this debut album for Blue Note, Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter José James effortlessly blends the beat-driven mien of hip-hop, the surprising transitions of jazz and the raw emotion of classic R&B to produce his strongest statement to date. Following three critically acclaimed albums for the Brownswood and Verve labels, James seems to have discovered the key to making the simple resonate.With its oh-so-smooth foundation of bass, Fender Rhodes and tight horn stabs, the single “Trouble” sees him channelling the spirits of Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke. The singer is blessed with the very Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Marianne Faithfull: Broken EnglishIn 1979, there was no obvious place for Marianne Faithfull. Identified with the Sixties and the baggage which came from her relationship with Mick Jagger, she had spent part of the decade living on a wall in Soho, a drug addict with few prospects, a period harrowingly detailed in her autobiography. There was an album in 1976, the humdrum, country flavoured Dreamin’ my Dreams, but punk, surprisingly, offered a life line. She appeared on stage with pop-punkers The Boys and, in 1979, issued the extraordinary Broken English, which sounded of its time yet Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
“The boys are back and they’re looking for trouble.” So goes the opening chorus on Signed and Sealed in Blood, the eighth album from cult Celtic punks Dropkick Murphys. As battle cries go it’s a sight more rousing than the similar one by Thin Lizzy, belted out as it is by a choir of Hell’s Angels against a backdrop of squalling bagpipes.You’d think it would be a tough call to make the beleaguered instrument so beloved by those kilted walking tourist traps that peddle their wares on the high streets of Edinburgh sound hardcore, but backed with shipyard shouts and Al Barr and Ken Casey’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
With David Bowie’s return prompting thoughts on British art rock, it’s apt that Dutch Uncles’ third album is hitting the streets now. A through-and-through example of smartly constructed pop, this would in another era have been called prog rock.From Marple near Stockport and formed in 2004 as Headlines, Dutch Uncles haven’t made it easy for themselves. Their first album snuck out on the Hamburg label Tapete. Their second – like this – was issued by British indie Memphis Industries. Although that was nominally inclined to math rock, with the de rigueur jagged song structures, it also had a Read more ...
mark.kidel
The director James Marsh has made his name as a documentarian who brilliantly blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction. Both Man on Wire and Project Nim seamlessly wove together archive and reconstruction. Although Shadow Dancer, an IRA thriller set in the early Nineties, is in many ways very stylised, it is not as needlessly overwrought as Marsh’s TV drama Red Riding, but nevertheless characterised by a cool absence of cliff-hanging narrative tension that is typical of documentary.With a script by former ITN newsman Tom Bradby, Marsh tells the grim story of Colette (Andrea Riseborough) Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Along with bands like Belle and Sebastian and The Beta Band, Yo La Tengo represent a kind of lo-fi vibe indie-aficionados can get a little smug about. To be found in the section marked “cult", they have been going forever, never broken into the mainstream, and exude an effortless superiority. YLT's cred, however, doesn’t always guarantee a thumbs-up. Not from me anyway. Previously I've gone both ways on them.It’s hard to argue with Fade, however, their thirteenth studio album. This is, quite simply, a very pretty record. Gone are the unnecessary jazz diversions or rummaging through blues and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Deep Forest have sold in the region of 10 million albums. That’s a shocker, isn’t it? Then again we’ve probably all heard them at some point, burbling away in an incense-saturated shop selling mass-imported batiks, carvings, hammocks and knickknacks from Thailand. And anyone who’s undergone massage at their local tie-dye emporium will undoubtedly have been subjected to them. Deep Forest are anonymous but inescapable.There used to be two of them until 2005 but, nowadays, Deep Forest consists solely of French recording studio hippy Eric Mouquet. Twenty years ago they broke into the then new Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Contemporary homages to the silent age are tuppence are dozen, but none are quite as eccentric as Miguel Gomes’s Tabu. One of last year’s oddball gems, it joins The Artist and Hugo in sending a love letter to cinema’s formative geniuses and yet sets its swooningly romantic silent section in a Portuguese colony of Africa in the turbulent early 1960s. Its starcrossed protagonists have a scene of frank lovemaking, and one of the silent stars is a baby crocodile.Tabu’s two segments – which take the names of Paradise Lost and Paradise – are the story’s effect and cause. The first is set in wintry Read more ...