CDs/DVDs
graham.rickson
Begin describing Aftersun to someone who’s not seen it and you’ll struggle. Charlotte Wells’ debut feature looks embarrassingly slight on paper, its 93 minutes following a young girl on a Turkish package holiday in the late 1990s with her youthful dad.The trip is mostly seen through the eyes of 11-year-old Glaswegian Sophie (Frankie Corio) in flashback, much of the footage recorded by her on a camcorder. Paul Mescal’s affable Calum, seemingly amicably separated from Sophie’s mum, is a superficially sunny presence. Wells hints at Calum’s demons only obliquely; there’s a suggestion of money Read more ...
Liz Thomson
I have to confess, the name Harlan Howard meant little or nothing to me – but as I pressed play and the first twanging guitar notes of “Tiger by the Tail” filled the room, I quickly got the picture.Willie Nelson’s latest album celebrates the extraordinary work of the Detroit-born songwriter whose heart belonged to Nashville from an early age. The man who defined country music as “three chords and the truth” wrote (in some cases, co-wrote) songs such as “Heartaches by the Dozen”, “Pick Me Up on Your Way Down” and “I Fall to Pieces”, a country classic if ever there was one and a song most Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Sleep Standing Up is the debut album by a trio who, according to their press release, absolutely came together due to a mutual love of Roxy Music. This connection extends to an early performance being enjoyed by Bryan Ferry at a festival, resulting in them working in his studio, even utilising his old synthesisers.However, despite the streamlined opulence of their sound, Maven Grace do not channel Roxy. Instead, their music, at its best, is likeable, orchestrally-boosted, maximalist trip-hop pop.The band consists of friends-as-teenagers Mary Hope, Henry Jack and Tom White who, decades later, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Steve Mason has been impressively blunt about the inspiration behind his fifth solo album. “To me, this record is a massive “Fuck you” to Brexit and a giant “Fuck you” to anyone that is terrified of immigration,” he’s said, “Because there is nothing that immigration has brought to this country that isn’t to be applauded.” Thus, these 12 songs are riven not only with lyrical pith but also sounds borrowed from an international sound palette.The combination leavens his anger with the spiritual uplift of righteous protest. Mason has always been creatively restless, right from when the Beta Band Read more ...
Cheri Amour
The Raincoats are one of those revered names that I never believed I would witness live. (See also: Hole, Elastica and, until their last UK tour, extraterrestrial kooks the B52s). But in late 2019, there was a surge of activity from the godmothers of post-punk as founding members Gina Birch and Ana da Silva came together for a string of shows.And so it was, flanked by three of my favourite women, I stood in Glasgow’s Mono watching the cult group come together again. "Feminist Song" has been a regular in the band’s live set since but now finds its recorded home on Birch’s highly anticipated Read more ...
Guy Oddy
“What are the odds that we live in a simulated world where nothing is real?” ask the Death Valley Girls on their new album, Islands in the Sky. It’s a question that a fair few other people are probably asking themselves these days – and, with the way things are going, hoping it might be true.Islands in the Sky is no dystopian misery fest, though. Far from it. Instead, upbeat bubblegum psychedelic pop tunes rub shoulders with woozy and spaced-out vibes in a heady brew of dayglow grooviness that is aimed straight at the hips. In fact, as with 2020’s Under the Spell of Joy album, Islands in the Read more ...
mark.kidel
Another box-set from the BFI full of Bergman treasures, from core catalogue classics such as Fanny and Alexander (1982), Cries and Whispers (1972), Autumn Sonata (1978) and Scenes from a Marriage (1973) to less well-known films such as After the Rehearsal (1984) and From the Lives of Marionettes (1980).There are no comedies here – late mid-life brought out the full darkness of the Swedish director’s palette – although Fanny and Alexander both delights and shocks as it combines a characteristic lightness of touch, including a much-loved farting uncle and a child’s eye view of adult rituals, Read more ...
Nick Hasted
“He won’t get far on hot air and fantasy,” Jonathan Pryce’s cruel bureaucrat huffs, as Baron Munchausen (John Neville) bests besieged city walls in a balloon sewn from a half-ton of knickers. “I hope this movie expands people’s ideas of what is possible,” Terry Gilliam countered of this symptomatic creation, based on the absurdly tall tales of the titular, fictional 18th century nobleman.Though forged from a chaotic shoot, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) isn’t the folly of reputation, but one of Gilliam’s most finely wrought fantasies, embodying the power of imagination and Read more ...
joe.muggs
Ageing boppers may bristle at the idea of a dance album where the average track length is three minutes. Yet this, Sonny “Skrillex” Moore’s first solo album since his debut nine years ago, is the most groove-based thing he’s done. It’s certainly a long way from its predecessor, 2014’s Recess, which came as the EDM and commercial dubstep waves were really cresting in the States and – while its tracks were actually slightly longer – really pushed the high-spectacle, instant gratification hyperactivity of those styles to the limit, together with noisiness fitting with his previous life as a Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Orbital, one of the great electronic dance acts, had a run of albums during the 1990s that encapsulate that decade in the UK (at least, for those willing to ignore the historical revisionism around tired, retro-tastic Britpop by the same media "arbiters of taste" who invented it).Those five albums remain gorgeous. The run came to an end with the flabby The Altogether album in 2001, featuring a vocal by David Gray among other unlovable things. Their latest album, though, is their first to feature a welter of guest vocalists. It could have been a disaster, but it’s not.The 21st century has seen Read more ...
Graham Fuller
If post-war baroque cinema had been a school or movement rather than a style, its male icon would have been Anton Walbrook. Before Max Ophüls cast the suavely menacing Austrian actor as the master of ceremonies in La Ronde (1950) and as King Ludwig I in Lola Montès (1955), he starred as a German soldier who sells his soul for success at cards in the chilling supernatural drama The Queen of Spades (1949).The year before Walbrook had played Lermontov in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes. His Herman in The Queen of Spades is another gimlet-eyed obsessive, but Walbrook knocked Read more ...
Guy Oddy
During the Dark Ages, it wasn’t unusual for people throughout England to raise the prayer “From the fury of the Northmen, deliver us, O Lord!”. Over a thousand years later, with the release of Geordie rockers Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs’ new album, it will be no surprise to hear the same cries from chart-pop lovers of a nervous disposition.Land of Sleeper is fuelled by some mighty sonic thunder and lightning, a place where its pummelling power is fully capable of laying waste to eager ear drums with feral grooves and air raid siren-like guitar solos. It really is wild stuff and is Read more ...