CDs/DVDs
Guy Oddy
Made of Rain is the Psychedelic Furs’ seventh album since their 1980, self-titled debut and, while the band has shed a few original members since then, brothers Richard and Tim Butler are still front and centre of this post-punk colossus. After a break that lasted most of the 90s, the Furs have been touring again since the turn of the century, but it is only now that they have inevitably tired of playing the part of living juke boxes, knocking out the hits from their glam-tinged purple patch. Hence a return to the studio and a new album which displays the band’s distinctive swagger, even if Read more ...
mark.kidel
Max Richter is the million-selling star of post-Minimalism, the composer of moody symphonies of a stillness that suggests otherworldly bliss and inner peace. The boundary between Richter and New Age isn’t always clear, not least in the work he makes outside his justly celebrated film soundtracks, where drama demands a greater variety of tones, textures, paces and rhythms.Voices features crowd-sourced readings from the UN declaration Declaration of Human Rights, in many different languages (from children as well as adults), spoken with the authentic passion that such a grounding text demands. Read more ...
mark.kidel
The tortuous drama of James M Cain’s 1940’s thriller The Postman Always Rings Twice has inspired many films: the slow-burning mix of erotic desire, temptation, murder and guilt was ideally suited to American film noir, so it’s in some ways surprising to find is as the source of inspiration for Michelangelo Antonioni’s first full-length film (Cronaca di un Amore – Story of a Love Affair) a kind of counterblast to the neo-realism that dominated Italian cinema in 1950, the year of the film’s release.The story is only loosely based on the Cain classic, more the tawdry spirit than the thrilling Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
When she announced her “surprise” 8th album on social media this week, Taylor Swift described its subject matter as a combination of “fantasy, history and memory” told with “love, wonder and whimsy”. For the listener, this hits home around track three. “The Last Great American Dynasty” tells the story of Rebekah, a “middle-class divorcée” who marries a heir to the Standard Oil fortune and spends her widowhood - and inheritance - on boys, ballet and annoying the neighbours of her Rhode Island mansion. And then? “It was bought by me,” sings Swift, turning the song’s misogynist refrain of “who Read more ...
Liz Thomson
There are moments of this album that hint at Emmylou Harris, whose voice – even as it ages – has always been the sound of heartbreak. Moments too of Rosanne Cash, perhaps Mary Chapin Carpenter. This is singer-songwriter Courtney Marie Andrews’ fifth studio outing and she’s not quite 30 so it remains to be seen whether she can stay the course, but Old Flowers holds the promise of many more goodies to come.From the three-quarter time of “Burlap String” to the closing cut, “Ships in the Night”, it’s a suite of songs that draws you in, Andrews’ delicate voice, surrounded by echo, gliding Read more ...
Graham Fuller
“Know thyself” is the theme of A Rainy Day in New York. Woody Allen’s 48th film as writer-director, is – despite what you may have heard – at once his funniest and most reflective movie in years. Either wilfully archaic or stubbornly nostalgic, as his later work has tended to be, its story of a privileged youth who learns he must reject the life prescribed for him by an overbearing parent is universal; Allen’s unfamiliarity with Gen Z lingo and smarts doesn’t invalidate its core truths.Issued on DVD and Blu-ray (without extras) in the UK 52 days after its VOD release, the film remains Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
At this year’s Oscars Bong Joon Ho brought the audience to its feet in honour of the director whose words had struck a chord with him as a film student. The comment, simple but difficult to adhere to in the cut-throat, risk-averse movie business, was that “the most personal is the most creative”. The director, Martin Scorsese.Of course, Scorsese’s The Irishman was also in contention in the same ceremony, the film a powerful continuation of themes, collaborations and inimitable film language of a career spanning more than 50 years – and proof that the American is still following his Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Imagine, if you will, that the Internet doesn’t allow you to see other people. Because that is the premise upon which Safy Nebbou's Who Do You Think I Am rests. It smacks of an idea that hails from the days of Friends Reunited (one for the younger readers). This is, ultimately, a Juliet Binoche vehicle – and there’s nothing wrong with that. She is a fine actress and she is utterly mesmerising in this very French psycho-emotional thriller.Binoche plays 50-something lecturer, Claire – a mother of two boys whose husband has left her for (we discover later) a much younger woman. Her attempts Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Heart’s Ease is about more than the music. Through its songs, it also chronicles a life lived. Shirley Collins learnt “Barbara Allen” at school. She first encountered “The Christmas Song” when it was sung by her early influence and inspiration The Copper Family. “Merry Golden Tree” was originally heard in 1959, in Arkansas. One song takes lyrics by her former husband, Austin John Marshall, and sets them to music. “Sweet Blues and Greens” draws from her 1964 collaboration with Davy Graham for the Folk Roots, New Routes album. “Locked in Ice” interprets a composition by her late nephew Buz Read more ...
mark.kidel
Everything Ellie Goulding touches turns to pop gold: her first three albums were big hits. She is yet another of those miracles bred in the British provinces, in this case a Herefordshire village. Inspired no doubt by a string of power-women from Madonna to Beyoncé, Shakira to Joss Stone, Goulding mixes and matches a variety of styles in a manner that exploits familiarity with just enough freshness to make it sound new.The girl-wonder has matured a little: in a recent interview she spoke of having freed herself from the ubiquitous sexual pressures of a male-dominated industry. But her Read more ...
Katie Colombus
I have had an obsessive-loop Dixie Chicks tune for every eventuality of my life so far – “Ready To Run” for a big break up; “Wide Open Spaces” for road tripping; “Cowboy Take Me Away” for whimsical love affairs; “Not Ready To Make Nice” for general rage and “Travelin’ Soldier” for a good old cry.With the release of their 8th album, some 14 years after the last, I am wondering if there is a fitting sound for unkempt-hairy-make-up-lacking-global-pandemic-PJ-wearing-lockdown-lacklustre. And I’m delighted to say, that of course there is. Not only have the 13 time Grammy winning group produced an Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The last experience that this writer had of Nicolas Jaar’s glitchy soundscapes was through his 2011 debut album Space Is Only Noise. Nine years and five discs on, as well as other releases under the Against All Logic alias, not much has changed. However, Jaar’s work remains distinctly strange yet compelling on Telas and rarely lurches into formless noodling. This disc, his second in 2020 after this spring’s Cenizas, is divided into four tracks, each about a quarter of an hour long, incorporating minimalist and abstract sounds, woven and entangled to produce a laidback conceptual soundtrack Read more ...