CDs/DVDs
Graham Fuller
Folk rock has long been one of Jethro Tull’s strongest suits. Ian Anderson’s integration of Anglo-Celtic folk influences goes all the way back to the band’s second LP, Stand Up (1969), which drew also on Eastern and Eastern European music to affirm Tull wasn’t going to be hidebound by the blues rock sound of This Was (1968). Curious Ruminant, their 24th studio album, is their folkiest since Stormwatch (1979), which followed Songs From the Wood (1977) and Heavy Horses (1978) to complete the band’s inspired and – given the era, counter-intuitive – folk-rock trilogy. Though the hard-rocking Read more ...
Tom Carr
Brighton metallers Architects have weathered various tribulations in their almost 20-year career. Formed by twins Dan and Tom Searle, after various line-up changes and a devasting, personal loss, the band now consist of long-time vocalist Sam Carter, Dan on drums, rounded out by Ali Dean on bass and Adam Christianson on guitar.Their path hasn't been straightforward, as the band themselves admit it wasn't until four albums in that they started to achieve wider renown. But they are now one of the foremost UK metalcore bands – that genre which blends the thrash of metal with the ferocity of Read more ...
mark.kidel
The musician Abel Selaocoe reaches out to the ancestors, African and European, continuing a journey that spans continents and centuries, an adventurer guided by love and respect for those who have departed, and yet nourish by the splendour of now.On his second album, Selaocoe plays many of his own compositions, some of them rooted in African tradition, others drawing from the baroque repertoire that he’s felt drawn to since he was a child. From the opening track, “Tshole Tshole”, an invitation to the spirit world and a composition based on a South African hymn, the album weaves in and out of Read more ...
joe.muggs
Doves really are quite prog rock aren’t they? It’s never really leapt out at me before, probably because I’d always thought of them as brooding indie first and foremost.There are elements of things like spaghetti western soundtracks, Scott Walker vadevillianism, krautrock rhythms and electronica woven in, sure, but those things were all in service of songs that definitely seemed to come from an unpretentious “alternative” tradition, dosed with northern kitchen sink grit, light years away from the flash of big Seventies acts. Perhaps it’s because their initial flush of success in Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Microtonic comes into focus on its third track, “Infinity Peaking.” Album opener “Goit,” featuring a guest vocal by Working Men’s Club’s Syd Minsky-Sargeant, is doomy post-Balearic impressionism with spoken lyrics seemingly about the loss of self. Next, the distant-sounding rave-shoegazing hybrid “John on the Ceiling.” “Infinity Peaking” is the point of coalescence; where beats-bedded, drifting electronica is suited to the comedown experience.After this, bdrmm’s third album – their second for Mogwai’s Rock Action label – settles into developing the marriage of Seefeel-esque post-rock Read more ...
John Carvill
Rehab people will tell you there are three stages to drug abuse: fun; fun with problems; problems. There’s also a fourth phase, where there aren't any problems, because you’re dead.Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy maps out the territory between stages two and four. Bob (Matt Dillon) and his girlfriend Dianne (Kelly Lynch) lead Rick (James LeGros) and his girlfriend Nadine (Heather Graham) in a gang of chronic narcotics addicts robbing pharmacies around Portland, Oregon, and the Pacific Northwest in order to stay one step ahead of withdrawal. Timewise, the film is hard to pin Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Spare a thought – please – for Leipzig-born pianist Jutta Hipp (1925-2003). In 1956, she became the very first woman to record albums in her own name for the Blue Note label. Earlier this month was the centenary of her birth. It went by more or less unremarked.Whereas in 2025 Artemis, the first ever all-star all-female jazz group on Blue Note, is made up of five highly respected musicians, each a bandleader in her own right, and has the benefit of global support from Blue Note/Universal, Jutta Hipp made just three albums in 1956 for the label, after which she never recorded again. Within Read more ...
Katie Colombus
With her 13th studio album, Heather Nova delivers what you might expect from one of the 90s' most distinctive alternative voices – though longtime fans of London Rain will find she's meandering down a sandier path. Breath and Air finds the Bermudian singer-songwriter in a mellower space, trading alternative rock edges for a contemplative acoustic approach. The result feels like a summer afternoon by the Mediterranean, complete with salt spray and whispered confessions."Hey Poseidon" drifts along on gentle, hopeful acoustic currents, while "The Lights of Sicily" paints pictures as rich as Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Sinister Grift is Panda Bear’s first album since his 2022 Reset collaboration with Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom. Anyone anticipating any lasting influence from working with Rugby’s premier psychedelic adventurer, however, is going to be sorely disappointed.Noah Lennox’s first solo album in five years comes on more like a collection of demo tracks and out-takes from a Smiley Smile-era Beach Boys than anything that implies that Animal Collective’s leading light has been taking the perfect prescription of drugs to make music to take drugs to. Sure, there are laidback but gently hip-swinging tunes Read more ...
Tom Carr
While discourse on many topics grows toxic and polarised, it’s the voices who speak plainly about the reality of everyday lives that provide some sanity and make us feel heard. Enter Sam Fender, whose straight talking and pride of his working-class roots has seen him emerge as a figurehead for the younger generation, who at times feel unheard and underappreciated.Fender rocketed to stardom with his 2019 debut Hypersonic Missiles, which paired cutting takes at the political elite with a huge, spacious indie rock sound that harkened back to Eighties era Springsteen. With his follow up, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Canadian singer Basia Bulat has tried on various musical hats during her career but is most associated with singer-songwriterly folk-pop. Her last album was the melancholic, string-swathed The Garden but with Basia’s Palace, her seventh album, she seems in a jollier frame of mind. She has veered into overtly electronic pop before, especially on her 2016 album Good Advice, but this time it’s a bubblier, warmer version. Then again, these nine songs still find room for heartache.Bulat’s voice and style remind of Emmy the Great. This isn’t to hint at plagiarism – both singers started releasing Read more ...
graham.rickson
In Jewish folklore, a golem is an inanimate clay figure, brought to life when a magic word is placed inside its mouth. Piotr Szulkin’s dark 1979 film debut makes reference both to this legend and to Gustav Meyrink’s unsettling 1914 novel, moving the action forward from the latter’s fin-de-siècle Prague to a geographically non-specific dystopian future.Tomasz Kolankiewicz’s booklet essay describes Szulkin and co-screenwriter Tadeusz Sobolewski’s struggling to adapt the Meyrink, Szulkin’s Golem ultimately becoming “a philosophical riddle about our true identity”, clearly alluding to “the day-to Read more ...