CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
There’s been wave after wave of successful acoustic singer-songwriters this century, whimpering so-and-sos from David Gray onwards, through Damien Rice, Newton Faulkner, James Blunt, Ed Sheeran, and on and on and on. Every year sees a new heap of them dumped on the public like bowls of flea eggs. Meanwhile, and here’s the real point, one of the genre’s giants remains relatively unheard. Malcolm Middleton’s dourly humorous, existential albums are studded with gems of heartache, wry gloom and inspired observation. Unfortunately, after five of them, he closed up shop in 2009. Until now.Middleton Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Journalism is not what it was and nor quite is the journalism movie. Spotlight is released as a home entertainment with a sticker on the packaging announcing its Oscars for best picture and best original screenplay. It is certainly a gripping story of old-school hacks speaking truth to power. In this case the honours go to the Boston Globe, which took on the might of the Catholic Church to expose the cover-up in which the names of 90 priests linked to cases of historic sexual abuse were locked in a bottom drawer and out of the public domain.The film tells of the efforts by the newspaper’s Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Transmission fades in with “Metal Box”, a droning minimalist soundscape that evolves with a steadily building pulse that is brooding, cinematic and a tasty hint of things to come. Icy European synths dominate the sonic pallet of Death In Vegas’s sixth album, with Richard Fearless and new collaborator, the artist, writer and former porn actor Sasha Grey, dumping the restraints of guitars and song structure and laying down some enthralling electronic sounds and grooves that make for quite a trip.Transmission’s ambience takes the same cues from JG Ballard’s dystopian visions as sonic pioneers Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Over the horizon they come; the anniversaries; joyous, arduous, remorseless.” The opening words of Stuart Maconie’s fine, nuanced essay in the book accompanying this 20th-anniversary reissue of Manic Street Preachers’ fourth album acknowledge the inescapable fact that today’s heritage rock industry is indeed largely about anniversaries and their close cousin the reunion. Bands tour to air one of their past albums in track-by-track order. Others reform to run through their catalogue of 20, 30 years ago. These living jukeboxes seek to revitalise music that was frozen in time, so kept fresh Read more ...
howard.male
Brave is the songwriter who sets a piece of classic poetry to music, never mind creates almost a whole album of such Frankenstein creations. Poetry is meant to work against silence, not compete for attention with melody and rhythm. Yet miraculously this New York-born Hiatian-American singer-songwriter granted new life to a number of Langston Hughes poems on her haunting 2013 debut album Vari-Coloured Songs by bringing light (in both senses of the word) to weightiness. The languid melancholy "Heart of Gold", in particular, would surely have delighted Hughes with its indearing oddball charm. Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Beth Orton is generally filed under folktronica, but neither the label, nor the pigeonhole, do such a restless musician any favours. After a gradual transition from the gauzy electronic sound of her 1990s albums towards a more acoustic set-up, this latest outing – which follows her move to California, and emerged from what Orton has described as an intense process of discovery – draws on an intriguing array of electronic effects. But this is not a return to where she started: it shows that Orton has been listening with new ears, as it were, to what the electronic can offer, and is striking Read more ...
mark.kidel
The Janis Joplin bio-doc has been a long time coming. The rock star’s family were notoriously cautious about exposure: who wouldn’t be, with a career so tragic and brief?As it happens, their collaboration made possible the inclusion of the rock star’s poignant letters home, which the documentary uses to great effect throughout, revealing something of the singer’s inner life and vulnerability, in contrast with her careful self-presentation as a mixture of bad girl, sex bomb and Etta James impersonator.Some of her inner torment may have been caused by a continuing and profound sense of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s a foolish game to wonder who might fill the musical void left by Amy Winehouse’s passing. She was a one-off, after all. However, it’s natural to occasionally look about and ponder where there might be talent of a similar ilk. Not all the doomed druggy stuff, just a female singer who does it from the gut rather than X Factor-flavoured fluffing. Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, Zara Larsson et al seem unlikely to even get their round in; of Winehouse’s immediate peers, Duffy’s disappeared and Adele’s become a theatrical torch singer (albeit a very likeable one), and all those Kate Bushy kooks, Read more ...
mark.kidel
In his latest album, Bob Dylan once again interprets, in his own slightly ironic and yet lovingly respectful way, standards that Sinatra made famous. This is one of those moments when it feels like he's treading water, or perhaps allowing himself to gently sink into sad-eyed resignation, rather than break unexpected new ground as he's periodically done over the decades.There is nothing much really to distinguish Fallen Angels from Shadows in the Night, almost as if the two were parts of a double album. The honeyed tone of the pedal steel, the gentle lull of a standup bass, and a great deal of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The premise driving A War – lead character Claus Pedersen’s war – is the decision he makes as Company Commander while leading an army patrol in Afghanistan: whether or not to say he and his Danish unit are under attack from a specific house in a village.Up to this pivotal moment, Pedersen (Pilou Asbæk) and his fellow soldiers are seen in their camp and going out on patrol. Routine. The day-to-day life of his wife and children, at home in Copenhagen, is contrasted with the posting. Although apart, each lives in a pressure cooker: his due to the conflict; hers as a result of dealing with their Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
There was always something otherworldly about Kate Jackson, the voice of late, great Sheffield rockers The Long Blondes. Guitarist Dorian Cox, whose stroke in 2008 precipitated the premature breakup of the band, may have been its primary songwriter but it was Jackson’s voice – cool, poised, arrestingly strident – that set it apart. That the love child of Sophia Loren and Nico was technically a biological impossibility only added to her mystique.British Road Movies may be Jackson’s solo project, but there’s plenty here for fans of her previous band to devour: the same desolate views of urban Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Ladies and gentlemen, in view of the controversy already aroused the producers of this film wish to re-emphasise what is already stated in the film: that there is no established scientific connection between mongolism and psychotic or criminal behaviour”. With these opening words, Twisted Nerve instantly defined itself as a film out to attract attention. Despite this questionable exploitation aspect, the genuinely unsettling 1968 work is ripe for reassessment.Like their predecessor feature The Family Way, Roy and Thomas Boulting’s Twisted Nerve starred Roy’s then wife Hayley Mills. She Read more ...