CDs/DVDs
mark.kidel
John Mayall is not just the dean of British blues fans, but he has done as much for the genre as anyone else around, from his early promotion of stars such as Eric Clapton and Mick Taylor through to his continuing devotion to the purest form of the genre.His latest album features lead guitar by Joe Bonamassa, Larry McCray, Alex Lifeson, Todd Rungren, Steve Van Zandt and Carolyn Wonderland. They are all very good at churning out the licks with virtuosity and feeling, and rising above the standard-form blues solo, as Carolyn Wonderland does with her slide on “Distant Lonesome Train”. Mayall is Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Lyrics such as “are we hunting for life among misery, Satan have pity on my long distress” and “we’re on a ship of fools, sails laughing and singing to hell” telegraph that, as a commentary on the present, Garden of Earthly Delights isn’t painting a rosy picture. The narrator of the title track, which opens the album, lives next door to the garden, climbs its fence and describes what’s encountered within: a devil offers money in exchange for a good time and ecstasy is achievable only by following the Goddess of Darkness.Norway’s Susanna Wallumrød is not the first musician to co-opt the Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Beth Jeans Houghton’s world seems to have been characterised by an over-supply of half-empty, small glasses of late – especially when it comes to romantic relationships with men. That’s not to say that she’s completely given up on half the globe’s population though, as she grudgingly admits that she’d “rather have a man than a coffee machine” on “Coffee Machine”. Nevertheless, there’s not much to suggest in the lyrics of Lung Bread for Daddy that she feels ready to make peace with that end of the human race, even making enough space among her feckless exes to give everyone’s favourite target Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Avril Lavigne was the original Punk Pop Queen. Fearless, feisty and perfectly fitting for the early noughties as the manufactured antithesis of Britney and Christina, she was the rebellious antidote alongside the likes of Pink and Gwen Stefani. After a six-year hiatus, a battle with Lyme Disease, a divorce and a new millionaire boyfriend she’s back with what I was hoping would be a new, evolved sound that mirrored the growth from angsty teen sensation to mature female musician, working with her distinctive sound and vocal prowess.Her new album is capped up with a strong piano ballad, the Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Tides tells of fortysomething angst and camaraderie, though “tells” might be an exaggeration. In a concerted attempt to make a film with minimal incidents and structure, first-time feature director Tupac Felber made a likeable observational piece, based mostly on improvisation, rather than a compelling “watch”.Over a long summer weekend, Jon (Jon Foster), matey but highly-strung, and his quiet and equable friend Zooby (Jamie Zubairi) travel on a barge along some lovely Surrey waterways. They are joined by their cheerful, mouthy woman pal Red (Robyn Isaac), and the self-contained Simon (Simon Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Chaka Khan’s last album, 2007’s Funk This was billed as the Queen of Funk’s comeback after her 80s and 90s purple patch. But after its release, apart from the odd cameo vocal on other people’s tracks, she stepped back out of the spotlight and retreated back into relative obscurity. 12 years on and she’s back again with the groove-driven Hello Happiness – an album with her new label owners, former Major Lazer man Switch and Ruba Taylor’s contributions all over both the songwriting and the production. Gone are the anthemic dancefloor vibes of “Ain’t Nobody” and “I Feel For You”, to be replaced Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
When Ladytron appeared in 1999, at a time when electronic music was glutted with pop-trance, Mitsubishis and superclubs, they drew instead directly on the post-punk synth-pop explosion of 20 years before, The Human League and the like. While all about revelled in warmth, hedonism and groove, Ladytron embraced the android: crisp in appearance, dry and enigmatic of lyric, symmetrically stylish. Coming back now from a five-year break, it’s their own music of 20 years before they may be defined against, a striking back catalogue they often match.When I first heard Ladytron all that time ago, I Read more ...
Saskia Baron
In an interview with Fritz Lang towards the end of his life, he dismisses Human Desire as a film he was contractually obliged to make and for which he had no great fondness. Certainly it isn’t his masterpiece, but it’s a lot more interesting than its director allows and worth revisiting in this restored reissue.Made in 1954, two years after Lang’s American tour de force The Big Heat, Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame are once again in front of his camera. This time Ford is the hero, Jeff Warren, returning from the war in Korea to his job as a train engineer riding the rails. Much Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The nature of the product that is pop music is that its stars rarely get the chance to be prolific. It’s something that Ariana Grande – the biggest pop star in the world right now, at least on the numbers – complained about in a recent interview: how, when it came to music, she just wanted to “drop it the way these [rap] boys do”. Arriving a mere six months after the smash hit Sweetener, thank u, next may be her attempt to do just that, and it makes sense from both personal and professional standpoints: it’s fair to say that Grande’s previous album had no worlds left to conquer, and besides Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Jimmy Hendix’s Greenwich Village studios are the venue for LCD Soundsystem’s third live album, which features the most recent touring line-up playing a set heavy with songs from 2017’s American Dream album along with a smattering of covers. Live albums often come with the promise of dynamic abandon – the chance to see a band communicating directly with their fans and pushing emotional dynamics and song structures to the limit, but here, in a closed studio, there’s none of that – so what is the point? The answer for most bands would be “not much”, but LCD Soundsystem aren’t most Read more ...
mark.kidel
Tinariwen and others have made taken the haunting sonorities and lolloping camel rhythms of the Sahara far and wide. Kel Assouf are the next wave, more deeply soaked in the rock energy of bands like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath or Queens of the Stone Age.Sofyann Ben Youssef, the band’s keyboardist and producer of the album brings to the mix a subtle infusion of electronics as well as a taste for trance-inducing repetition and psychedelic textures that works well with the force of Kel Tamsahek (Tuareg) music, and yet doesn’t fully avoid the sameness that characterises so much of this music, not Read more ...
howard.male
Who doesn’t like the rolling swagger of a bunch of seasoned Louisiana musicians? And that’s what New Yorker McCalla has assembled here to create a wider sound pallet for her third album. But we don’t just get a dozen generic New Orleans jazz tunes here. There’s also a calypso, a Zydeco dance number, a rollicking boogie-woogie and a doom-laden rocker with a Hendrix-style solo from Jimmy Horn that's like a knife slashing a canvas. And then to go straight into a Hawaiian guitar-drenched ballad?! I’ve not heard such a delightful collision of moods since the Velvets set “The Black Angel Death Song Read more ...