CDs/DVDs
Adam Sweeting
This is Earle's first collection of new material since 2007's Washington Square Serenade, since when he has made a disappointing tribute album to Townes van Zandt, taken a role as a street musician in HBO's New Orleans series Treme, and written a novel, also called I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive. Signs are he may be spreading himself too thin, because this new disc is best described as patchy, and is unlikely to end up as anybody's favourite-ever Earle album.Washington Square Serenade succeeded because it had some gripping songs, a unifying theme (Earle's move from Tennessee to New Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Dan Kelly is rapidly becoming a big noise Down Under. His uncle, Paul Kelly, is a star of long standing in Australia, but Kelly junior's profile is also now rising fast. Judging from his fifth album, the only thing I've heard by him, such attention is well deserved. In truth, it's his second solo album as he usually works with a group called the Alpha Males. Details aside, though, he's a joy to listen to because he combines the whacked-out madcap lyricism of Julian Cope with a musical sensibility that falls between the Beach Boys and Seventies glam dons The Sweet. In other words, his way with Read more ...
joe.muggs
One of the most powerful things about the dubstep movement – aside from the monumental sound itself – is how its rootedness has provided a platform for a generation of artists to launch out into other things from. The spaciousness, drama and flexibility of the template has allowed maverick producers like Mala, Shackleton and Kode 9 to create their own unique sound worlds that bridge the gap between clubland and the avant-garde, far more than, say, drum'n'bass ever did. And now Bristol-based producer David Corney can be added to that list.At first listen to Broadcast, you might not even Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It always amazes me that so many commentators dismiss drug experiences as somehow puerile, irrelevant, or even immature. Of course they can be all three but they're also integrally wrapped up in being human, in one's body, alive, so they can also be very much else.Gaspar Noé's film gets this, drawing a direct line, as Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley and shamen for millennia before them did, between psychedelic drugs and the process of dying. Enter the Void undoubtedly drags, becoming increasingly turgid during the last quarter of its two hours and 41 minutes, but it aims so much higher than Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The self-titled debut album by London-based three-piece Rayographs is one of those surprises you hope for - a virtually unknown band referencing little that’s going on right now and capturing it in long-playing form with panache and a compelling vision. On this evidence, Rayographs are the spooked-out, somewhat cross third-generation offspring of early ballroom-era Jefferson Airplane.Opening cut “In Her Light” lays it out. The atmosphere is psychedelic, the mood vexed, the rhythm taught, the whole ragged. Throbbing out from under an oil-wheel light show, Rayographs would have inspired plenty Read more ...
bruce.dessau
The question used to be: “Can white men rap?” A more apt variant today is, “Can white men in their middle forties with juvenile nicknames rap?” Mike D, Ad-Rock and MCA recorded Hot Sauce Committee Part Two in 2009, but then put the release on ice when MCA, aka Adam Yauch, was diagnosed with parotid gland cancer. Two years on he is on the mend and the album has been tweaked for our discerning 2011 ears.Any changes made since 2009 have hardly been to bring the style bang up to date. From the opening Starsky soundtrack wah-wah guitar and cowbells on “Make Some Noise”, this is an album that Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Molly Dineen would go on to make films about Tony Blair and Geri Halliwell, but her career began among cut-glass colonials of the (very) old school. Home from the Hill and My African Farm, two films for 40 Minutes in the late 1980s, portrayed a crusty pair of Brits in stately Kenyan retirement. One, a charming old cavalry officer who had spent his life in the colonies, decided to return to a Blighty he barely knew. The other, a childless widowed battleaxe, sold her farm but dug her feet in. Viewed together, they made for a double portrait of a dying species: the lesser-spotted casually racist Read more ...
howard.male
Even the cover artwork refuses to conform, breaking the first rule of graphic design by utilising a dozen different typefaces and alternating upper and lower-case lettering for maximum optical anarchy. In fact, the inference is that we should play by Merril Garbus’s rules by typing “tUnE-YaRdS” rather than “Tune-Yards”. Such wilful solipsism could be interpreted as pretentiousness, but after several listens to this New England lass’s second album I’d be more than happy to write her band’s name in raspberry jam with my finger, if that was her wish.Once in a bright blue moon some new music Read more ...
joe.muggs
If, as the cliché goes, hardship begets soulfulness, then given her life story between her 2008 debut and this (Wikipedia can provide the details if you're feeling ghoulish), Jennifer Hudson should now be the new Aretha. As it goes, she wasn't short of raw soul talent before: she veritably shone as an American Idol contestant in 2004, and her turn in the movie Dreamgirls has become a watchword for stop-you-in-your-tracks expressive vocal power as well as comic acting talent – ironically, her performance in that film of the song “And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going” has since spawned 10,000 Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
For 30 years African Head Charge have been ploughing their unique sonic furrow, wandering hazy-dazed around the outer borders of experimental dub and super-mellow sounds. When they first appeared in 1981 on Adrian Sherwood's groundbreaking On-U Sound label there was no equivalent band to compare them to, except some of Brian Eno's global magpie studio excursions, notably My Life in the Bush of Ghosts with David Byrne which provided them with a sonic template.However, led by percussionist Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah, who's based in Ghana and London these days, they found a wider, if still niche, Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
At the heart of the creative orgy that was the Nouvelle Vague was one key love affair. A love affair so passionate it wasn't long before it turned into a full-blown hate affair. The friendship and fallout of directors Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut is the subject of Emmanuel Laurent's new documentary, Two in the Wave. For any Nouvelle Vague-ist, it ought to have been a joy. And for 50 minutes or so, it was. The story begins with the night of Les quatre cents coups's 1959 Cannes premiere. The night Truffaut the critic became Truffaut the director. The night the Nouvelle Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Without intending to, Fleet Foxes set a benchmark with their debut album in 2008. One that resonated. So much so that the release of their second album, Helplessness Blues, is accompanied by sell-out shows at top-drawer venues. The love of their sensitively delivered, beautifully crafted and emotive folk rock is clear. But anyone expecting a rerun of the debut on Helplessness Blues is in for a surprise. What’s known and loved is here. There’re also more than a few left turns.Fleet Foxes will keep the fans they have, but the broadened musical palette and new idiosyncrasies exhibited on Read more ...