CDs/DVDs
Ellie Roberts
From the iconic Pop anthems that dominated this Summer, to the Pop Punk resurgence that is still going strong, it’s been an exciting twelve months of new music. I haven’t struggled to choose an album of the year, but I acknowledge that my choice is in great company. To Dream of Something Wicked by Mat Kerekes deserves a mention before I continue, the solo career of the Citizen lead singer receives a criminal lack of attention, and his latest album is a perfect addition to his growing catalogue. It is melodically and lyrically fascinating, gentle, and captivating, and would have been a strong Read more ...
graham.rickson
Someone told me recently that Netflix subscribers can view just 22 films made before 1980. I've no idea if this is true (please correct me if not), but it’s certainly a reason to continue watching and collecting films on physical discs. Plus, there’s the bonus features, booklet notes, commentaries and deleted scenes, all things which you won’t find on streaming services. Here’s my pick of the year’s Blu-ray releases, in no particular order:Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s Pharaoh (Second Run) is an eye-popping Egyptian epic from 1966. Filmed mostly in the deserts of Uzbekistan with scores of Soviet Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Back in November Katherine Priddy released a winter single with the Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, “Close Season”, wrapping the spirit of winter and snowfall into the uncertainty and possession of attraction, possession, desire – warm things that glow in the seasonal dark.It’s a good song, Priddy is in fine voice, the musical setting a little more emphatically ‘rock’, but the Poet Laureate’s lyrics, smart and succinct as they are in their character sketching and double-edged evocation of the ‘closed season’, do not quite reach Priddy’s lyrical depth and prowess on on her second album, The Read more ...
Tom Carr
There are some years where my pick for album of the year is obvious; something stands out so clearly amongst the crowd, something that takes a hold and doesn’t relent for a sustained length throughout the year. For me, 2024 was not one of those years.There are a few worthy contenders that came close to clinching it, each having their time dominating my Spotify listens. There’s Pearl Jam rolling back the years with their highly energetic and driven Dark Matter, a heaping dose of solid, earnest alternative-rock. Or, there’s Bring Me The Horizon and the second instalment of their Post Human Read more ...
Graham Fuller
There's a tension in Alfred Hitchcock’s early films between misogyny and condemnation of the patriarchal suppression of women. The suppression was inherent in the original sources from which The Pleasure Garden (1926), Easy Virtue (1927), Champagne (1928), The Manxman (1929), Blackmail (1929), Juno and the Paycock (1930), and The Skin Game (1931) were adapted. Unconscious or not, the gynophobia that also flickers in these films is shared by The Lodger (1926), Downhill (1927), and Rich and Strange (1931). That it's intensified in Hitchcock's mature work, culminating in Psycho (1960) Read more ...
peter.quinn
From placing first in the Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Jazz Competition in 2019 to being a triple Grammy winner, Samara Joy’s rise has been nothing short of meteoric. Joy’s third album, Portrait – an astonishingly good collection which saw the vocalist, songwriter, arranger and bandleader reach ever greater heights of artistic expression – is my Album of the Year. The splicing together of “Peace of Mind/Dreams Come True”, the first co-written by Joy and tenor saxist Kendric McCallister, the second a song from Sun Ra’s felicitously titled album Sound of Joy, was one of this year’s most Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Born Horses remains as inscrutable as it was when it was issued in the summer. While it is about the search for enlightenment through journeying into inner space, much of what’s described – the album’s words are largely spoken – is allegorical, coming across as beatnik-style reportage documenting a form of psychedelic experience.This seeming exploration of inner space resulted in the album’s narrator discovering that they were born a horse, one which developed wings. Spiritual bonds are also found. A bird is discovered within. Musically, the album is similarly audacious: jazz-psychedelia, or Read more ...
Guy Oddy
In many ways, 2024 has been a stellar year for New Music. There have certainly been plenty of albums released that could easily have gained “year’s best” status in recent times and would have buried those that actually did receive those plaudits.Veteran artists like the Very Things, Peter Perrett and Les Amazones d’Afrique all put out career highlights. As did plenty of bands who finally found their feet after making initial tentative steps, such as Aussie pub rockers Amyl and the Sniffers, political punk-rappers Bob Vylan and French-Moroccan psychedelicists Bab L’Bluz. However, the record Read more ...
graham.rickson
Three Wishes for Cinderella (Tři oříšky pro Popelku) is one of Czech cinema’s best-loved pohadky, or "fairy tales".Director Václav Vorlíček and blacklisted screenwriter František Pavlíček (credited under a pseudonym) tone down the story’s supernatural elements and accentuate the realism; this Popelka (brilliantly played by Libuše Šafránková) lives with her stepmother and stepsister in a grubby, muddy village, the residents clad in muted greys and browns. Popelka isn’t a passive Disney princess: she’s feisty and resourceful, quick to answer her bullying stepmother and stepsister back.As such, Read more ...
joe.muggs
I don’t really want to talk about this year. Genuinely.It’s been so horrific on the macro scale with deranged Fascism and the effects of rampant and undeniable climate change looming everywhere you look – and on the personal level I’ve been been bombarded with all the inevitable, arbitrary slings and arrows that life can muster, from multiple bereavements on down – that I’d very much rather just neck a load of tranquilisers and fine wines and resolutely enter my hands-over-ears, “lalalala can’t hear you”, era. And yet, and yet… life persists, culture persists, community persists, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
I’ve known for some time that Ariel Sharratt & Matthias Kom’s Never Work is my Album of the Year. This lividly witty, no-filler take-down of workplace servitude arrived on vinyl in May. The creation of two Canadian indie-folkies (from The Burning Hell), it’s my most-played album of 2024, containing my most-played songs, the title track and the poignant, “The Rich Stuff”, the latter a call to revolution themed around The Goonies.One big problem. I just discovered Never Work came out in 2020. Was it a vinyl reissue? Who knows!With its disqualification I scrabble about. A couple of monster Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Death of Music was created in Estonia. Despite the English lyrics, directness is absent. Take the title track. “Drop the music” exhorts Mart Avi over its pulsing five minutes. “Fight the music” he declares. The word “execution” crops up. There is reference to a “rope ladder.” The specific meaning of this torrent of imagery is unclear. Nonetheless, it is certain the untrammelled outpouring confirms Avi’s total surrender to the music.This duo album is partially about its impact. However, as it unfurls over its 66 minutes it is increasingly clear that – whatever the lyrical opacity – Death of Read more ...