CDs/DVDs
Guy Oddy
Nadah El Shazly may have started her musical journey by singing Misfits covers in Cairo’s underground scene, but her debut album offers something altogether more tasty and esoteric – as those who saw her at this summer’s Supersonic Festival will already know. Coming on like an Arabic Björk, Nadah serves up abstract grooves and laid-back rhythms that weld together the ancient and the modern, the Eastern and the Western. Ahwar brings classical Egyptian sounds, jazzy atmospheres and loop-fueled electronica production with abstract time signatures. It’s a beautiful and unexpected treat that has Read more ...
joe.muggs
It seems to be the season for light entertainers to show us their musical chops, with Nick Knowles, Bardley Walsh and Jason Manford all doing their level best to prove that they are All Round Entertainters. Matt Berry, however, provides a rather different twist on the comedian-troubadour trope. Though he's best known for his appearances in the likes of The Mighty Boosh, House of Fools, Toast of London and so forth, he's already several albums deep in a musical career on a variety of extremely credible labels, touching on various flavours of psychedelia. The real surprise, given Berry's Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
In “Look What You Made Me Do”, the tabloid-level diss track that heralded the arrival of Taylor Swift’s sixth album, the one-time darling of Nashville declares the "old" Taylor “dead”. That song, and its follow-up procession of lukewarm singles in desperate need of a chorus, raised a gloomy prospect: had contemporary pop’s cleverest, wittiest, most sensitive lyricist been killed off in favour of score-setting and clumsy Bonnie and Clyde comparisons?Turns out the "new" Taylor is pretty much the same as the old one, albeit with cut-glass EDM hooks in place of teardrops on her guitar. Reputation Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The German director Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947) is best known for the insouciant screwball comedies he made in Hollywood. Many who haven’t seen his films will have heard of “the Lubitsch Touch” – at its most basic, his winking way of signifying sexual activity was afoot without breaking the censorious Production Code. A form of visual evasiveness, it reminds us Lubitsch was the slyest of sophisticates.The six films included on Masters of Cinema’s Lubitsch in Berlin are packed with moments of deftness that seldom require the imprimatur of sex. Having said that, the comedy Ich möchte kein Mann Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Fresh from their triumphant return to the Royal Albert Hall last month, the Corrs – one of Ireland’s great Nineties exports – are back with a new album, the second since their 2015 comeback, White Light, and the seventh since their 1995 debut, Forgiven, Not Forgotten, thought it was Talk on Corners (1997) which made them international superstars. Jupiter Calling is produced by T Bone Burnett who presided over sessions that were, said Caroline Corr, “the most freeing experience we’ve ever had in the studio”. The 13 tracks were recorded as live, with minimal overdubs, an approach that Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Possibly named after a variety of magic mushroom, left-field Glaswegian six-piece Golden Teacher have been turning out their very strange idea of party music since 2013. Initially they did so for local freak-fostering collective Optimo but have since appeared via various outlets, finally ending up on their own eponymous label. Their sound is electronic but also organic, with percussion that rolls and sometimes has a touch of the more polyrhythmic, advanced drum circle about it. Don’t let the words “drum circle” put you off for Golden Teacher are an invigorating proposition.Heavily stewed in Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
While bird-lovers will certainly not be disappointed by Portuguese auteur João Pedro Rodrigues’ new film, the ambitions of The Ornithologist stretch considerably beyond such avine fascinations. Its opening title, “Whoever approaches the Spirit will feel its warmth, hence his heart will be lifted up to new heights,” ascribed to St Anthony of Padua, hints at a distinctly sacred element, and in fact Rodrigues’ film is (very) loosely based on the life of that saint, the patron both of the director’s native Lisbon and of the lost, another theme that becomes central to his film.That is not, however Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
An underground American star since 2010’s Strange Cacti EP, Angel Olsen’s distinctive brand of indie folk-rock was propelled to new heights in both Burn Your Fire For No Witness (2014) and then last year with MY WOMAN. After years of touring, interviews, videos and topping end-of-year lists, Phases, the singer-songwriter's new album of rarities, B-sides, and previously unreleased songs, takes us back to a time when delicacy ruled her music. Its vulnerability suggests that long-time fans will be more than happy to follow Olsen musically back in time and out of the spotlight.“Fly on Your Wall Read more ...
peter.quinn
This fourth studio album from pianist, vocalist, songwriter and producer Oli Rockberger highlights his remarkable knack of marrying instantly memorable chorus hooks with captivating harmonies steeped in jazz, soul, gospel and R&B.Consisting of 10 beautifully crafted explorations of love, desire and loss, Sovereign was conceived and recorded in New York with the trusted rhythm section of bassist Jordan Scannella and drummer Jordan Perlson, just as Rockberger was on the cusp of returning to his London birthplace following 16 years in the US – a journey which began with study at Boston’s Read more ...
joe.muggs
In a sense, the air of tedium that surrounds Sam Smith is a wonderful thing. This is a person who can talk about having fluid gender identity and make it sound as if he's simply unsure whether he prefers boiled or mashed potatoes: that is, he's somehow able to dip into one of the spiciest political topics of the age without scaring your gran. It doesn't, though, make him a great pop star.One imagines he'd like to be seen alongside the modern indie/soul likes of Sampha – both came through featuring on early 2010s bass/dance tracks, then emerged as obliquely emoting frontmen. But there's Read more ...
Saskia Baron
To quote the genius sax player Dexter Gordon, "In nuclear war, all men are cremated equal" – or in this case, all adorable couples will burn as one. Anthony Edwards plays Harry, a not-so-genius trombone player who one sunny afternoon in Los Angeles meets Julie (Mare Cunningham), a waitress enjoying her afternoon off. They flirt amid the remains of extinct animals once dug out of the prehistoric La Brea Tar Pits in downtown LA. Harry makes a date for later, when Julie finishes her shift at an all-night diner, but he oversleeps and she gives up waiting for him.So far, so Eighties romcom. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“The Babysitter” tells the story of a Scottish spy embedded with the Nazis during World War Two who has come home. His sister tells him that Unity Mitford is convalescing at a nearby cottage. Visiting, he finds that it’s a maternity home. The details are not revealed, but our spy duly becomes a full-time baby sitter: “The world is safe from an English orphan Hitler,” sings Mathias Kom of The Burning Hell. Mitford, real-life Nazi sympathiser and chum of Hitler, had in this tale been preparing to give birth to the Führer's child.Canadian trio The Burning Hell’s eighth album is a collection of Read more ...