CDs/DVDs
howard.male
Was that "A waltz is a beat not a march" being hollered through what sounds like a megaphone on “Three Steps to a Development”? Sometimes it’s tricky to make out what vocalist Austin is on about, as he strains to be heard above the dazzling organised noise: such perversity and archness is pure art-school. But in this instance it also places focus on the relentless forward thrust and throbbing physical heft of the music itself. Snapped Ankles (great name, gentlemen) offer up a shiny new take on the post-punk aesthetic epitomised by bands as diverse as Devo, the B-52’s, Magazine and early Read more ...
graham.rickson
Marvel at Stranger in the House’s title sequence, the pulsating multi-coloured shapes accompanied by the cheesiest of title themes. It’s not Saul Bass, but it’s effective. Pierre Rouve’s 1967 film contains elements which may confound, irritate and annoy, though it fully deserves this handsome reissue in the BFI’s Flipside strand, with its mission “to rescue weird and wonderful British films from obscurity”. They don’t come much more weird and wonderful than this, with Hungarian émigré Rouve fresh from duty as executive producer on Antonioni’s Blow-Up. You can tell.Georges Simenon’s source Read more ...
Jo Southerd
Stella Donnelly does not suffer fools gladly. On her debut LP, she calls out all manner of bad behaviours, from crappy bosses to creepy guys, annoying family members to disappointing boyfriends. Donnelly’s very much a part of the new guard of songwriters who aren’t going to sit in silence, and aren’t afraid to stand up for themselves and others. And yet, angry music this is not. There are no pounding drums, no squealing riffs, no hateful growls. Rather, a quiet confidence and self-assuredness defines Beware of the Dogs. Album opener and first single "Old Man" sets the tone with Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Twenty years on from No Angel, the most successful debut ever by a British woman which went on to become the top-selling album, worldwide, of 2001, Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong releases her fifth album. Spare output by most standards, though she has contributed songs (Britney Spears, Rihanna) and backing vocals elsewhere in the interim.Dido has described Still On My Mind as “accidental” because she never plans anything, and the experience of its creation “magical”, perhaps because it was all so unexpected. It’s an album intended to capture “the rush” she herself gets Read more ...
Russ Coffey
In the summer of 2014, there was little getting away from Hozier's "Take Me to Church". Whenever you turned on the TV or the radio there it was. It wasn't just in this country. Eventually, the song became number one in 12 countries and number 2 in the States. Of course, for the singer, this massive success also brought a big problem: how to top it? When Hozier sat down to write his new album he must have agonised about what he'd got so right first time around.On paper, the recipe was simply a blend of soul, gospel, folk, and rock. The clever bit was how the ingredients were mixed. Hozier's Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although In the Dark comprises 11 tracks of outward-facing contemporary North European electronica-infused, dance-edged pop along the lines of “Faded”, the 2015 international hit helmed by Norwegian DJ/producer Alan Walker, an undercurrent implies a fondness for the Eighties.The evidence racks up. “Scarcity” sports a vocoder-like vocal effect. The title track and album opener suggests a familiarity with the keyboard saturation of Kim Carnes’ “Bette Davis Eyes”. The stuttering effects on “Erase You” and “Round Two” are akin to what cropped up when sampling keyboards became endemic. And a fair Read more ...
mark.kidel
Derek Jarman has always been described as irreverent, but, paradoxically, he is treated today with unreserved and probably excessive reverence. In the church of the avant-garde, and it’s perhaps not completely out of order to suggest that such an institution exists, he has been well and truly sanctified.Volume Two of the BFI’s monumental and impressive edition of Jarman’s video and film work will add to his status as genius and martyr. This lovingly assembled collection completes a remarkable account of the director’s work with the moving image, an extraordinary oeuvre as he was also writing Read more ...
howard.male
Although this is a review of an album and not a single song, Rhiannon Giddens’s extraordinary “Mama’s Cryin’ Long” is the hub (or perhaps emotional black hole might be a more apt description) around which the rest of this collection of new material inspired by historical accounts of slavery revolves. Nothing is more heartbreaking and chilling than a song brimming with pain that’s been designed to uplift. And of course slavery itself produced many such songs. But after just one listen to this extraordinary piece of call-and-response storytelling – with each of its vivid yet economic lines Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Their music is a bit wizard-y. It’s certainly imbued with a pungent sense of mammoth weed. And the “bastard” is surely for the sheer, meaty rock’n’roll heft of the word (much as Motörhead used it to title an album). But don’t be fooled. Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard are not a passing indie-punk turn with a novelty name in the vein of, say, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin or Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head. Their new album carries serious weight. It’s heavy as osmium.Fans of this quartet from Wrexham, Wales, will observe that Yn Ol I Annwn (Return to the Underworld in Welsh) isn’t as heavy as their previous Read more ...
joe.muggs
It's 18 years since the last Royal Trux album, but it might just as well be 18 months, so easily have they slipped back into their sound. OK, Neil Hegarty and Jennifer Herera have been gigging together again on and off since 2015, but even so it's quite astonishing how natural this record sounds. But then again, the Royal Trux sound was always something that sounded more like a channelling of something elemental than anything composed or contrived.As ever, the fundamentals of sleaze rock are here: lashings of Velvets and 1970s Stones, the “no wave” sound of New York, a little bit of Cramps Read more ...
Saskia Baron
It’s another night in an emergency services dispatch room in Copenhagen. Policeman Asger Holm has been taken off active patrol pending a conduct investigation and is stuck on the phones. Drunks, druggies, posh blokes complaining of being mugged in the red light district, he’s pretty brutal with these time-wasters. Then a call comes in from a desperate woman. She's pretending she’s phoned her child but has been kidnapped by a man who’s driving her to an unknown destination. Can Asger work out where she is, keep her on the line, and get the patrol car to her in time?The Guilty is a Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Bill Morrison’s Dawson City: Frozen Time is an intoxicating cinematic collage-compilation that embraces social history – in microcosm, via its story of the titular Canadian mining town – as well as the history of film itself. But it goes further, too, to achieve something that's close to a meditation on history itself, on time, on the organic process of development and decay. In the 21-minute interview that is the main extra on this Second Run release, Morrison calls it a “window into a time that’s gone”, his phrase capturing nicely the film’s treatment of the four decades or so of North Read more ...