CDs/DVDs
Tim Cumming
For lovers of British folk from the 1970s on, Peter Knight is a potent force – renowned for his years with Steeleye Span, in their 1970s heyday and from 1980 through to 2013’s classic set written with Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith.The first iteration of his band Gigspanner was as a trio, releasing four albums between 2009 and 2017, while the big band version has released a live set and a studio album, 2020’s Natural Invention. The sextet comprises the original trio of Knight, guitarist Roger Flack and percussionist Sacha Trochet, alongside relative newcomers in Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Mark Morton is best known as a guitarist with US metallers Lamb of God. They’ve been going for three decades, established and successful, at the more extreme, thrashier end of the spectrum, but still achieving Top Five albums on the Billboard charts.He’s also been developing a solo career. His debut, 2019’s Anesthetic, was straightforward heavy rock, featuring names such as Mark Lanegan and Chester Bennington, but his follow-up is more interesting, a riff-tastic dive into southern boogie, tipping its hat to The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd.There are guests throughout again, but this Read more ...
Nick Hasted
A longshot of transgender Elvira (Volker Spengler) circled by gay men, assignation turning to assault as dawn mist rises from Frankfurt’s Main river, suggests Pasolini’s brutal 1975 assassination. Rainer Werner Fassbinder instead had in mind the suicide of his lover Armin Meier in May 1978.“He was like a wounded animal recoiling in pain,” his editor and last partner Juliane Lorenz recalls, withdrawing for a month to a friend’s flat, and finally emerging with a treatment for In a Year of 13 Moons. The finished work is bracketed by its dates of filming, 24 July 1978-28 August 1978, like a Read more ...
Liz Thomson
At a time when the powers that sadly be in America are trying their damnedest to erase and rewrite history, the latest release from Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson is a welcome reminder of the rich culture of the Black community and how much it has given to the world. Twenty years after the Carolina Chocolate Drops emerged from the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, North Carolina, two of its founding members get together once more for a collection that comes quite literally from the back porches and orchards amid the low rolling hills of the Piedmont, a discrete province of the Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Tenor titan Joe Lovano is thrilled by how Homage has turned out. He actually told me so himself in person a few weeks ago, and his new album has a very appealing, natural, free-flowing ease.Cleveland-born saxophonist Lovano first met Polish pianist Marcin Wasilewski and his trio in 2009 through Tomasz Stanko. The first recording together for ECM was made in 2019, Arctic Riff. They have kept on working together since then, touring mainly in Europe. In late 2023 the Polish group joined Lovano for a week’s residency at the Village Vanguard in New York. Rather than recording live at the club, all Read more ...
mark.kidel
With a sound that's instantly recognisable, Justin Vernon – known as Bon Iver - continues to astonish. Purveyor of wonder, sculptor of enchanting sounds, he treads a miraculous path between melancholy and joy and has established himself as one of the great voice of contemporary indie pop.His new album built on the EP Sable, which he has supplemented with new material, further explorations of love, a search for identity whose mixture of innocence and wisdom steers well clear of self-indulgence. From his first album, For Emma Forever Ago (2007), recorded in solitary retreat, he has made a Read more ...
Ibi Keita
Black Country, New Road’s Forever Howlong is an ambitious reinvention that both captivates and, at times, frustrates. Following Isaac Wood’s departure, the band leans into a more collaborative and folk-inspired direction, trading their post-punk chaos for something more delicate and introspective. It’s a bold move, and one that yields some truly beautiful moments, even if the overall experience doesn’t fully resonate.Tracks like “Two Horses” and “The Boy” stand out for their emotional clarity and nuanced storytelling. The former, in particular, showcases the band’s ability to create intimacy Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The titular “lighthouse of glass” is a place where the narrator is “crying into the sun,” in which there is a need to “stand by my solitude.” Choosing isolation and self-determination are themes running throughout Lighthouse of Glass the album and how Sweden’s Sofia Härdig has approached recording these 10 songs. As well as the songwriter, she is the arranger, engineer, producer and main instrumentalist.“April,” the chugging, string-infused album opener suggests a PJ Harvey influence, with a smidge of Nick Cave too. This soon dissipates in favour of broader nods to Patti Smith: “Kingdom Come Read more ...
graham.rickson
Akira Kurosawa described his 1961 hit Yojimbo as a tale of “rivalry on both sides, and both sides are equally bad… we are weakly caught in the middle, and it is impossible to choose between the evils”. Toshiro Mifune’s nameless rōnin pitches up a run-down village purely by chance, tossing a stick in the air at a fork in the road to choose which direction to take.Though taking place in mid-19th century Japan, the sets reflect Kurosawa’s love of classic westerns, the scruffy buildings facing onto a dusty main street. The presence of a dog carrying a severed hand is a bad omen, a dispute over Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Mike Scott is The Waterboys. Launched by wide-eyed 1980s folk-rock, and “The Whole of the Moon”, he’s long since roamed into whatever stylistic gumbo he fancies. The latest album – the band’s 16th – is a concept piece, a 25-track sonic biography of the late Hollywood maverick Dennis Hopper.It’s sometimes entertaining, sometimes preposterous, and sometimes pure cringe. The songs follow the chronology of Hopper’s life. For instance, there’s a floaty Floyd-ish song early on called “Blues for Terry Southern”, in honour of Easy Rider’s co-writer, while near the end is “Golf, They Say”, a southern Read more ...
Tim Cumming
I saw the Miki Berenyi Trio play a warmly received sold out set at the Lexington last autumn, at which many of the songs now coming out on Tripla ("three" in Hungarian) had their live previews, alongside a few from the Lush years – the likes of “Kiss Chase” and “Ladykillers” – and Piroshka, the four-piece that emerged briefly from the ashes of the 2016 Lush reunion.Berenyi has since written a superb memoir (Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me from Success), looking back at her idiosyncratic – at times traumatic – family life and history, as well as her trajectory from zine-making teen music Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Pigsx7 have hardly got a reputation for penning tender and soulful ballads, but Death Hilarious is a particularly aggressive and punishing album even by their standards. Taking cues from Black Sabbath’s heft, Motorhead’s “bend not stab” sound and soul shaking noise rock, their new album is the aural equivalent of being mugged by a gang of feral kids and being left feeling particularly battered by the experience.Starting as they mean to go on, opening track “Blockage” is a riotous barrage of speedy riffs and heavy beats punctuated by atonal guitar soloing that’s reminiscent of Black Flag’s Read more ...