CDs/DVDs
joe.muggs
There’s only one problem with this album, really – if you can call it a problem – and that’s Chris Isaak’s indelible hint of David Lynch. Thanks to his “Wicked Game” being an integral part of Wild at Heart and creating an ongoing relationship between the singer and director, it’s hard to hear Isaak’s voice without thinking that something deeply disturbing is lurking just beneath the surface of his songs.That makes for a peculiar frisson, because for his Christmas album, Isaak has gone for all-out simple sweetness. He’s always played his rockabilly-country-swing pretty straight Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s nice to come across a Christmas album that more-or-less avoids the usual suspects that tend to appear out of the woodwork at this time of year. Macy Gray’s seasonal offering is just such a beast.There are no poptastic renditions of Christmas carols and certainly none of those hoary rock’n’roll yuletide perennials on Christmas with You. So, neither Noddy Holder nor Roy Wood will be earning any royalties from this set. For, while many artists seem to view the early 1970s as the Golden Age of Christmas Pop, Macy Gray has gone back somewhat further for her winter celebration. In fact, most Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Oy vey. Where to start. This is essentially painful – and I write that knowing that Neil Diamond is a genuinely nice guy and that he is now stricken with Parkinson’s. But there is no way round it: A Neil Diamond Christmas is an auditory assault.I’m not one for Christmas albums. I have Joan Baez’s Noel, a bit of a curate’s egg from the mid-1960s, tastefully arranged by Peter Schickele and featuring Baez’s sublime voice and some truly beautiful moments (“Cantique de Noel” and “Carol of the Birds”) but only because I’m a completist. That is, however, it. I certainly never bought Bob Dylan’s more Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Good things don’t tend to come in slews. Slews seem to be reserved, pretty much exclusively, for the bad stuff: legal issues, school shootings, Christmas albums… And so we come, with aching predictability, to this year’s festive releases. Young at heart if not young in fact, US pop outfit Backstreet Boys have an impressive track record of catchy AF pop tunes under their belt from their 90s heyday. Use that as the sparkly wrapping for some of the biggest hitters in the Yuletide arsenal, and the result should be festive cheer all round, right?Well, let’s have a look… First things first, Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Paramount added a late “old dark house” mystery comedy to Hollywood’s annus mirabilis of 1939 by teaming Bob Hope with Paulette Goddard in The Cat and the Canary, skilfully directed by Elliott Nugent. The death-trap mansion in the Louisiana bayous where family members gather to hear the reading of the deceased owner’s will – his niece Goddard inherits it – proved the perfect venue for Hope’s hilariously pusillanimous shtick.The movie was a hit, so the stars were reunited in an identikit picture, 1940's The Ghost Breakers. Adding a gangster intrigue to the genre mash-up, it was based on a Read more ...
Tom Carr
We Were Promised Jetpacks is a band name that seems off the cuff at first glance. This could be said for the Scottish indie-rock darlings' latest effort, an EP that reworks some of their record from last year, Enjoy the View – as remixed material may hold lukewarm appeal.But A Complete One-Eighty gave Jetpacks the chance to revisit their first album as a three-piece and push some of the songs in directions they couldn’t previously envision. Though far from a household name, Jetpacks’ sound is unmistakable: soaring guitar chords and leads, thundering drums, full basslines, and Adam Thompson’s Read more ...
joe.muggs
Want an antidote so forced seasonal cheer and the catchiness of Christmas pop? How about some almost entirely atonal drone, clatter and throb with titles like “Fish Death”, “Tales for Violent Days” and “Dissonance Émancipee”?Music presented as a “lucid nightmare” fuelled by “toxic relationships; job insecurity and exploitation; immateriality of the future, translated into frustration, exhaustion/desperation, claustrophobia and a desire to escape; anguish, panic and a sense of powerlessness towards nature and disease”?Well here’s the funny thing: this album by a Rome-based audiovisual artist Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Oh dear. 10 songs of very little consequence. And one which has sparked “controversy”. "I Hate You When You're Drunk" has generated more publicity for Mr Murs than his PR team has mustered for the launch campaign. But it simply doesn’t add up. The lyrics are so utterly at odds with the giddy, lightweight music, it’s as if an AI pop song generator has malfunctioned. Deemed misogynistic by the twiteratti, it’s hard to take offence at something so very lacking in malice. TV’s mister nice guy is, according to the album’s press release, a “solid-gold pop star”. And the figures don’t lie. Read more ...
Cheri Amour
In 2016’s abrasive album opener, "Dead Weight", frontwoman Mish Barber-Way laments over multiple miscarriages as her biological clock ticks away like a malevolent metronome.How much has changed in the last six years, then, and none more so than for Barber-Way. The track in question was taken from the band’s last official release, Paradise. A record that saw Deap Vally’s Lindsey Troy step up as a touring bass player and the Vancouver trio – completed by drummer Anne-Marie Vassiliou and guitarist Kenneth William – unintentionally entering into a hiatus.They had every intention of Read more ...
Guy Oddy
This Is What We Do is only Leftfield’s fourth album in a career that has lasted almost 35 years (on and off). But if there is a dance outfit that can demonstrate the worth of quality over quantity, it’s the duo of Neil Barnes and Adam Wren (Barnes’ original partner, Paul Daley jumped ship 20 years ago).By flatly refusing to chase fashion and by maintaining their Progressive House magpie vision, Leftfield have consistently put out tunes, like “Not Forgotten”, “Open Up” and “Afrika Shox” that still pack a punch years after their release and This Is What We Do sees absolutely no drop in the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Son of the White Mare (Fehérlófia), a 1981 Hungarian animated epic, defies easy description, Marcell Jankovics’ film blending folklore and psychedelia to startling effect.There’s violence, heartbreak, black humour and romance, all accompanied by István Vajda’s harsh but striking electronic score. Acclaimed on its original release and ranked highly on critics’ lists of best animated films, Son of the White Mare has been hard to find in recent years, making this reissue all the more welcome. You can’t help wondering what the youthful target audience made of it. Jankovics recognised that young Read more ...
Barney Harsent
“All of this music, it’s nothing to do with the listener,” Stormzy announced to Louis Theroux in a recent TV interview. “All I can do is feel what I feel and document that, and whatever that is, that’s what it’s going to be.”The 29-year-old rapper singer and songwriter, also known as Michael Omari, was talking about This Is What I Mean, his third album and, by some distance, the biggest departure, both musically and lyrically, since his incredible rise from the UK’s underground grime scene to stadium-filling stardom.The conversation comes after listening to a, then unfinished, version of “ Read more ...