CDs/DVDs
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 ...
Kieron Tyler
The Delta Sweete was Bobbie Gentry's second album. Issued in February 1968 six months after her single “Ode to Billie Joe” topped the US charts, it did not make the US Top 100. Nonetheless, it is classic southern-gothic country and a peerless concept album about her roots. Of its 12 tracks, eight were written by Gentry.Mercury Rev’s Pledgemusic-supported homage Bobbie Gentry's The Delta Sweete Revisited employs 12 singers – one for each track. Their frontman Jonathan Donahue crops up in brief supporting vocal roles. The core line-up is Donahue, band-mate Grasshopper and former Midlake Read more ...
graham.rickson
The opening shot of Jan Němec’s 1964 debut feature, Diamonds of the Night, recalls the start of Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil. Němec’s camera also ducks and dives, here following a pair of teenagers fleeing from a moving train and escaping into a forest (cinematography, Jaroslav Kucera). Steadicam wasn’t an option back in 1964: Nemec’s solution involved building an elaborate wooden track for his camera. Stretching for hundreds of metres, it consumed a third of the film’s budget. As a special effect it’s both extraordinary and unobtrusive, entirely in keeping with Diamonds’ pared-down aesthetic Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Tip of the Sphere is a freewheeling blend of vintage sounds that evokes San Francisco in the early Seventies. To fans this will come as little surprise. McCombs has been moving in this direction for a while, and his new album draws heavily on his earlier work. There's a some of the intimacy of Wit's End and a lot of the prettiness of Catacombs. More than anything, the singer takes what he did with his last LP, Mangy Love, and makes it all a little better.The opener starts with a looping psychedelic riff reminiscent of early Tim Buckley. Over the next few Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Ripples may be Ian Brown’s first album in nine years but it gives absolutely no impression of a man grasping at straws to resurrect his career after the non-event that was the Stone Roses’ 2011 reunion. Baggy grooves, dancehall reggae vibes and socially conscious lyrics mark King Monkey’s latest solo set, all delivered with characteristic swagger. In fact, such is Brown’s confidence that he hasn’t just sung on Ripples but produced, created the artwork, played guitar, drums and various other instruments, and pulled in his sons to contribute both their musical and song-writing talents.Lead Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Specials were era-defining, making this a hugely anticipated album for many. On paper they’ve released a bunch of albums since the Eighties but their discography is misleading. Encore is their first major work in decades. It’s a big ask for it to match their iconic status, akin to when The Stooges and Kraftwerk reappeared with new music decades after their legendary prime. It succeeds in places but does not – and, of course, never could – match the impact of their early work.On their first two albums The Specials brilliantly embodied the unfettered possibility of a vital and uniquely Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Barbara Sukowa won Best Actress at Cannes in 1986 for her title role in Margarethe von Trotta’s Rosa Luxemburg, and the power of her performance looks every bit as engaging and insistent today. A century after Luxemburg’s death (she was assassinated in Berlin on January 15 1919, her body then thrown into a canal), as her significance and influence as a political figure attracts new attention, the film deserves the handsome restoration it receives here in StudioCanal’s “Vintage World Cinema” strand; particularly – remarkable though it may seem, even given von Trotta’s rather neglected Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Japanese band MONO have been around for 20 years, inhabiting a musical landscape that straddles post-rock and contemporary classical sounds. Not ones to let things go stale, however, their 10th album not only sees the debut appearance of drummer Dahm Majuri Cipolla, but also brings some new elements to their signature sound.In particular, Nowhere Now Here adds washes of electronics throughout MONO’s deliberate and studied tones, while bass and keyboard player Tamaki Kunishi also brings her Nico-like vocals to the band for the first time on the maudlin ballad, “Breathe”. That’s not to say that Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
If we think of Robert De Niro and Brian De Palma, we likely think of The Untouchables from 1987 with the great actor in his career pomp, chewing up the scenery in a memorable cameo as Al Capone. However, the pair had history. They made three films together in the 1960s – Greetings, The Wedding Party and Hi, Mom! – which are now gathered together in 2K restorations from the original negatives. The short of it is that two of them are now little more than historical curios for archivists, but the other is revelatory on a number of counts and well worth exploring.The Wedding Party began Read more ...