CDs/DVDs
Bernard Hughes
The Christmas album is an American phenomenon that doesn’t really exist in British music. Dating back to Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley in the late 50s, it has long been a regular part of the business – with even Bob Dylan having a go in 2009.Ben Folds hasn’t done one before and, not surprisingly for this most inventive and wry of songwriters, his first is not a straightforward celebration of the clichés of the season, but a collection of songs now bittersweet, now sardonic, always with his poignant storytelling eye. It’s also something of a game of two halves, the understated ambiguity of Read more ...
Guy Oddy
By and large, most Christmas albums seem to fall into one of two camps. There’s either the lively poptastic soundtracks favoured at family or work celebrations, which generally feature plenty of sleighbells and a cover of something by either Slade or Wizzard, or the choral and rather more religious affairs of Aled Jones and his ilk.Northumbrian folkies, the Unthanks, however, have decided to try a third way: a dreamlike collection of woozy tunes that might accompany the feeling of having over-indulged on mulled wine while being slumped comfortably by a warm and cosey fireplace. It’s an Read more ...
joe.muggs
There’s a lot of anger at algorithm-driven music discovery around – a lot of it justified, as the big platforms push the already-big acts and lowest common demoninator slop is aided in rising to the top. But we can’t talk about the topic without also acknowledging that it has provided some surprising opportunities for unorthodox music. One such is Santa Cruz, California 90s “slowcore” indie rock band Duster, who not long after they’d reformed found a two-minute sketch of theirs from 1998 called “Inside Out” going supernova on TikTok, eventually clocking up over 17 billion plays. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Amid the electro-rock crunch of “Sorry, Etc”, Lauren Mayberry spits out, “I killed myself to be one of the boys/I lost my head to be one of the boys/I bit my tongue to be one of the boys/I sold my soul to be one of the boys”. The singer for successful Scottish indie-tronic trio CHVRCHES says her debut solo album explicitly expresses her feminine/feminist aspect, while also embracing pop. Lyrically, she nails it, but the music is not always as convincing.Promoting for the album, Mayberry has namechecked a who’s who of female singers, including Sugababes, Lily Allen, Fiona Apple, Annie Lennox, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
White Denim’s literally titled 12th album opens with the fidgety “Light on.” Drawing a line between electronica and Tropicália, it exudes sunniness. “Econolining” and “Flash Bare Ass,” up next, are equally peppy, as bright and similarly accord with the idea of pop as a mix-and-match grab bag – albeit from an off-centre perspective.After this, 12 is about left turns. No one style is embraced. Each track has its own character, distinct from what has come before. “Flash Bare Ass” – a wry commentary on forming relationships in the mobile-phone era – is followed by “Cat City #2”, a 40-ish seconds Read more ...
graham.rickson
That Juggernaut is as good as it is seems in hindsight to have been a happy accident. Inspired by a bomb hoax on the QE2 in 1972, the producers fired two directors (Bryan Forbes and Don Taylor) in succession before hiring Richard Lester in desperation. His quest to salvage Juggernaut in a just a few weeks mirrors events in the film, its protagonists attempting to defuse a set of bombs planted in the bowels of a transatlantic liner.Lester’s masterstroke was to call in Alan Plater to help him rewrite the original script, the end result as much a political thriller as a disaster movie, following Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Nothing and All at Once is the debut album from New Delhi electronica producer Jay Pei in his Panelia guise. Featuring a broad but seamless tapestry of electronica, beats and breaks, often with widescreen cinematic vibes, it veers from driving grooves to ambient atmospheres that seem marinated in leftfield 90s sounds.Tipped for great things by the likes of Mixmag Asia, Pei is hardly a newcomer to the electronica scene, having already released a good number of EPs in his own name. However, under his Panelia moniker, he has mined the sounds of maverick producers from just before the dawn of the Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The universal fear of dying is the theme of Black Tuesday, a terse, bleak 1954 thriller that is belatedly being recognized as a major film noir and has just been released on a Masters of Cinema Blu-ray.Written by the former newspaperman Sydney Boehm (who also scripted The Big Heat), the movie was directed by Hugo Fregonese, the nomadic Argentine auteur whose films frequently explored entrapment. Stanley Cortez’s expressionistic black and white camerawork, notably his use of chiaroscuro and huge closeups of faces juxtaposed to faces in medium shot within the same frame, captures rapid shifts Read more ...
Liz Thomson
When first I clicked on the stream for this album, I really wasn’t sure about it. In fact, I thought I wasn’t going to like it, much as I had wanted to. But I’ve had it playing almost continuously while I’ve been dealing with mindless stuff – and I’ve come to like it.Not without reservations of course – there are always reservations – but it’s got under my skin and I’m now properly in the groove, appreciating what Lucinda Williams is doing, delving into this most hallowed of song catalogues and bravely tackling numbers that are rarely, if ever, covered. As is her way.Take “Yer Blues”, and “I’ Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Since their eponymous 2011 debut, Three Cane Whale have kept it small without losing scale. A trio of Spiro’s Alex Vann, Get The Blessing’s Pete Judge, and guitarist Paul Bradley, together they often often recorded plein air, on hillsides, above waterfalls, in ancient churches and old barns. For their sixth set, they chose St George’s Bristol, famed for its acoustic, and turned to Leveret’s Rob Harbron as producer, who was also there for them for Holts & Hovers, and the charming mini-album 303 recorded in 2019 on the slopes of Cadbury Hill, in earshot of the A303, and all the traffic on Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A sycamore tree is described to an appaloosa horse before it is mounted to ride off to visit a friend. The thread used for sewing evokes a map where each street has a doorway which, once opened, reveals memories of those who are missed.Midwinter Swimmers is the musical analogue of Monet’s Nymphéas (Water Lilies) series of paintings, where the familiar is depicted in a way which brings new meaning. Imagery where detail which might be missed brings a fresh understanding of a recognisable setting, and where connections are made between the everyday and the imagined. Or, as The Innocence Mission’ Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
What’s to be said about an album that’s half well-executed body-moving, dancefloor pop and half sickly, slick schmaltz? It’s as if the creator is covering off all possible fanbases, those with taste and those lacking it. From a reviewing perspective, with theartsdesk’s score-out-of-five system, it’s tricky; one song I’m thinking, “Yes, a whopper, and the next, yuk, a pure zero.” But, staying positive, about 20 minutes of Do What Makes You Happy’s approximately 40, are full of entertaining verve and bounce.Alice Ivy is the stage-name of Melbourne-based German-Australian electronic producer Read more ...