CDs/DVDs
joe.muggs
As I sat down to write this review, the sun came out. It was a salutory reminder of the importance of context: where I’d previously thought “mmm, that’s pretty nice”, now it was more “mmmmmmm, that’s pretty niiiiiice!” That’s not just a suble distinction, either. It was a fundamental shift in how and where the music was hitting mentally, emotionally and physiologically. It went from being a slickly pleasant mood enhancer to something that made my shoulders drop, my chest expand, my limbs loosen, my attention let go of distractions zoom in on what was happenning in the moment. Read more ...
Tom Carr
Thirty years, and over 75 million copies sold. It’s been a long journey from Nineties Seattle for Pearl Jam, the grunge era icons fronted by Eddie Vedder's commanding vocals.Pearl Jam have since carved out a legacy as one of the most forward-thinking bands around. The band have long stood against unfair ticket pricing and raised millions for causes like abortion access and homelessness, and funding research into and raising awareness for Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. While previous album, 2020’s acclaimed Gigaton, touched on environmental and political Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Death Songbook is, says Charles Hazlewood, founder, artistic director and conductor of Paraorchestra, an album of “music which is about death, or the death of love, about loss, about anxiety.” Suede’s Brett Anderson, on board for this endeavour, notes “I've always found dark material more inspiring than upbeat songs. Upbeat songs always make me depressed somehow. I've always liked those songs that deal with the murkier sides of life.”The resultant 12-track album also features Nadine Shah (on two tracks) and Gwenno (on one track). Sebastian Rochford and Adrian Utley are in there too. The songs Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
At a time when conflicts in the Middle East are reaching fever pitch, Emel Mathlouthi represents hope. Her new album MRA, is titled for the Arabic word for “woman” and was created entirely by women, as in, every single person involved with it at any level is female. She has said of it, “I've come to discover the true meaning of sisterhood… I want us to change the system from within, by and through women.” Happily, this outlook is attached to music that’s sonically exciting.Based in New York, the Tunisian-born singer first created waves when her initially banned song “Kelmti Horra (My Word is Read more ...
Guy Oddy
After a long period of relative inactivity, the last five years has had A Certain Ratio getting the bit between their teeth, trying out new sounds and releasing new tunes at a rate not seen since the early 1980s. It All Comes Down to This is their third album since 2020, as well as the four stand-alone EPs.Despite coming out almost exactly a year since its 1982 predecessor, this set would actually have been released six months ago if bass guitarist Jez Kerr hadn’t broken his pelvis and fractured a hip just as recording was meant to begin. So, it seems that precious little slows them down Read more ...
Tom Carr
For the past almost two years, Maggie Rogers has taken an unexpectedly special place in my heart and musical tastes. Upon reviewing her previous album, Surrender, because of the difference in style and sound to my usual tastes I was caught completely off guard.Combined with just as unforeseen changes in my personal life, Surrender was an unfounded delight that chimed completely at that point in time. Now it’s not just an album, but a time capsule of those summer months of 2022.Fast forward, and Rogers has provided another tapestry of sounds steeped in texture and personal depth with third Read more ...
mark.kidel
Lizz Wright has established herself, over a number of steadfastly excellent albums, as one of the very best vocalists of her generation. Not so long after a gripping live album recorded in Berlin Holding Space (2022), her latest offering shines with all the brilliance and originality she brings to her own cross-genre mix of jazz, soul, gospel, country and folk.What holds it together is her deep contralto voice, as distinctive in its own way as the sound of Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Horn, or Aretha Franklin. There’s a combination of delicacy and force, Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Gal Beckerman’s 2023 book The Quiet Before makes a plea that if ideas, revolutionary or otherwise, are to grow, there needs to be a retreat from “our current cacophony”. And if there is one artist who is truly living out that principle in his musical life, it is Shabaka. As he said to the audience at this year’s Winter Jazzfest in NYC: “Change is never easy.”What is clear, though, is how utterly serious and focused he is on the change. Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace is almost entirely a meditative and quiet album. His live shows in the past few months have all been in Read more ...
graham.rickson
Happy End’s big draw is its central conceit, that of a convicted murderer narrating his life story backwards from the guillotine to the cradle. Made in 1967 by Oldfřich Lipský (1924-1986), renowned as a director of off-beat comedies, you wonder how on earth such a peculiar film was produced during such a turbulent time in Czechoslovak history.Lipský himself described Happy End as an experiment, “though not in the sense of the new waves…”, he and co-screenwriter Milos Macourek more worried about viewers finding Happy End incomprehensible than in any political interference. What could be a Read more ...
joe.muggs
At 24, Bradfordian Nia Archives has already clearly marked out her musical territory.While many of her Gen Z contemporaries have embraced the rave, jungle and drum’n’bass sounds of the early-mid 1990s, she’s done it more wholeheartedly than most: particularly rebuilding the rolling breakbeats and deep bass of jungle as a kind of British urban folk music, collaborating with older generations (original junglists DJ Die and Randall of Watch The Ride), and demonstrating how her natural Caribbean-influenced Yorkshire vocal articulation fits perfectly into that. Crucially, though, having shown Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
A Fabiana Palladino album has felt like a possibility since the early 2010s. Back then she was a session musician touring with the likes of SBTRKT, Jessie Ware and Sampha. In 2017 she was approached by the elusive producer Jai Paul to join his new label, Paul Institute. She released three excellent singles with the label over the next four years, making a name for herself as an unhurried perfectionist with a knack for warped 1980s grooves.After many years then, there is finally a Fabiana Palladino debut. It is a meticulously crafted album of funky, downcast 80s R&B and synth-pop which Read more ...
Ellie Roberts
Perfecting Ernest Hemingway’s advice that “a writer should create living people; people not characters”, In Lieu of Flowers sees Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties’ Dan Campbell invite fans back into the fictional universe of open-wound Aaron in a way that is so intimate and descriptive, you can’t help but hurt for him.The Emo-Americana band, now made up of 16 musicians, introduced Aaron West’s tragic story a decade ago. We Don’t Have Each Other was followed by a three-track EP and a single; and then a second album, 2019’s Routine Maintenance. The fervent interest in the next chapter of this Read more ...