CDs/DVDs
Graham Fuller
The 1942 thriller This Gun for Hire, which opened five months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was closely adapted from Graham Greene’s 1936 novel A Gun for Sale by Albert Maltz and W.R. Burnett and directed for Paramount by the veteran William Tuttle. Though no masterpiece, it's a film noir landmark – an essential watch.Noir style wasn’t yet fully established, but there are glimmerings of them here in cinematographer John Seitz’s low-key lighting and Hans Dreier’s disorienting sets. The film’s fatalistic tone was marred by touches of comedy, a near-Gothic interlude Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
“Produced by Tommy LiPuma.” That phrase has appeared on just about every Diana Krall album since the summer of 1995, when the Cleveland-born mogul arrived at the GRP label – it would be his sixth and last music industry affiliation – and promptly signed the Canadian singer-pianist.The four words appear again in the credits for each of the twelve tracks of This Dream of You. They are the album’s anomaly. And also, sad to say, its problem.It is an anomaly because Lipuma, with 33 Grammy nominations and 5 Grammys to his name, and 75 million albums sold, passed away Read more ...
joe.muggs
Alicia Keys is a puzzling mixture. On the one hand she’s the hyper-achieving, multi-platinum, 752-Grammy-winning America’s sweetheart, all dimply smiles, positive-thinking ultra sincerity and the kind of showbiz over-emoting and singing-technique-as-competitive-sport so beloved of talent show contestants. On the other, she’s an undeniably interesting artist on multiple levels.Solo and with her husband Swizz Beats she’s a skilled and prolific songwriter and producer for others as well as herself: the pair’s work on Whitney Houston’s “Million Dollar Bill” alone is premier league material. And Read more ...
Russ Coffey
"This party's over" snarls Fish on Weltschmerz, and, this time, it seems the big man really means it. After threatening retirement for many years, the ex-Marillion singer has finally called time on his recording career. His final present to the fans is a double album that looks back on his 32 years as a solo artist.Over the decades the charismatic Scot has moved steadily from mainstream to cult status. He's dabbled in pop (e.g "State of Mind"), hard rock ("Faithhealer") and punk ("The Perception of Johnny Punter). But, of course, the Bard of East Lothian is best known as Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Michael Gira, Swans’ band leader and last remaining original member, has a reputation for being an intense and difficult individual who doesn’t compromise easily. This is illustrated by the band having been home to some 35 different musicians since its 1982 beginnings in a desolate and dangerous New York City. However, as one-time drummer Bill Rieflin has said: “Michael is a singular creator and that puts him in a world where there are few members.” He is also clearly much respected by many of his former band mates, as many of them turn up as talking heads in Marco Porsia’s documentary of one Read more ...
Russ Coffey
It's the self-portrait on the cover that gives the first hint that something's changed with Marilyn Manson. The eyes are blank, his face weary. No longer does the singer look like the Antichrist Superstar. He seems more like a middle-aged rocker in the midst of an identity crisis.He says as much, too, on the title track. During the bridge section, Manson rasps "Am I a man or a show, or moment ?" What really strikes you, though, is not the existential questioning. It's the change of musical style.The song's gently strummed chords usher in a strangely plaintive baritone. On the verse, Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Kantemir Balagov’s second feature announces the arrival of a major new talent in arthouse cinema. Made by the Russian director when he was just 27, and premiered at Cannes last year, where it won in the “Un Certain Regard” strand, Beanpole approaches its bleak aftermath-of-war story with all the practised subtlety of an established auteur while delivering an emotional impact that is empathetic and shocking in equal measure.Set in 1945 in Leningrad, months after the end of the Great Patriotic War at a time when any elation of victory has given way to an understanding that the future will be Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Toots Hibbert may have invented the term “reggae” with his 1968 hit “Do the Reggay” but he has never felt boxed in by the genre. During his almost 60-year singing career, he may have recorded some of the greatest ska and reggae tunes of all time, from “Monkey Man” to “Pressure Drop” and “54-46, That’s My Number”, but has also dipped his toe into soul music and even tried his hand at a version of John Denver’s “Country Roads”. Got to be Tough is similarly a fine musical stew that takes from all quarters, never sags and is heavily flavoured with socially conscious lyrics throughout.Things kick Read more ...
mark.kidel
Ammar 808, named after the 1980s Roland drum machine TR-808 is the vehicle for Tunisian producer Sofyann Ben Youssef. He has been exploring, notably in Maghreb United (2018), a rich vein of resonance between the music of North Africa and electronic technology.This time around, the territory is Asian rather than African: Ben Youssef, who'd spent months studying Carnatic music in South India in his early twenties, has returned to Chennai and collaborated with some of the most open-minded musicians of this vibrant city as well as with some more traditional ones. Fusion can misfire, but in this Read more ...
Barney Harsent
If Doves have a “thing”, it’s that they do “big” with impeccable intimacy. Over ten years and four albums, they consistently displayed exactly the sort of connection that bands like Coldplay and Keane pretend to have. Huge, sweeping scores and broad emotional swells that feel like an old friend putting their arm around you and telling you you're not on your own.More than a decade since Kingdom of Rust, their farewell (of sorts), Doves are back, and not a moment too soon. Given the year so far, we could all do with a cuddle, sonic or otherwise.The seeds of The Universal Want were sown in a no- Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Seattle-born Allison Neale’s alto saxophone sound is instantly appealing. Her playing has the light wispy, airy quality from the "cool", "West Coast" school of Paul Desmond. One day last year, she spent just six hours (10am-5pm minus an hour for lunch, I gather) with three other top-flight jazz musicians at Angel Studios in Islington – shortly before it closed, in fact. The result, Quietly There (Ubuntu Music) is a completely delightful album.Neale’s totally assured sense of how to convey melodies finds the perfect complement in New York guitarist Peter Bernstein. And if there are echoes Read more ...
Saskia Baron
It’s always a timeslip moment, revisiting films first seen in your teens, but never more so than when watching this beautifully restored print of Walkabout. Nicolas Roeg filmed and directed this fever dream of a movie in 1970, after co-directing Performance with Donald Cammell. Very loosely inspired by an Australian novel, Roeg enlisted playwright Edward Bond to write a script that diverged fundamentally from the original plot and barely amounted to 65 pages but it won Roeg the necessary funding. He set off with his wife, young sons, a teenage Jenny Agutter and a small crew to film this near Read more ...