CDs/DVDs
Adam Sweeting
I hope Todd Haynes isn't consumed with bitterness about the way Carol was ignored at the Oscars – mind you, a world where the dreary Spotlight can get Best Film probably isn't one he misses much – but the discerning filmgoer can be in little doubt that this is a masterpiece. A lesbian love story derived from Patricia Highsmith's novel The Price of Salt, it's as poignant and haunting an exploration of the ways of the human heart as you could hope to find, graced with central performances by Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara which are as brilliant as they're dissimilar.As Carol Aird, a fashion- Read more ...
joe.muggs
Once upon a time, techno was the future, and Orlando Voorn was right at the heart of building that future. The Dutchman was in early on the late-1980s wave of Detroit electronic production – in which small groups of black Americans surrounded by decaying industry drew the natural link between Kraftwerk and funk, filled themselves with equal quantities of utopian and dystopian visions, and set a blueprint that would irrevocably alter the sound of music worldwide. Indeed, he worked with and for many of Detroit's finest, and his tracks were very often some of the most stunningly beautiful of the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although The Kinks’ world was turned upside down from the moment “You Really Got Me” hit the charts in August 1964, the band’s main songwriter Ray Davies still had songs to spare. Some of his compositions ended up with singers like Dave Berry, Leapy Lee and Mo & Steve. Ray’s brother Dave even found that one of his songs was recorded by Shel Naylor. This extra-mural world fascinates Kinks fans.Even more enticing are the recordings by other artists to which The Kinks actually contributed. Leapy Lee’s 1966 single “King of the Whole Wide World” featured Dave, Pete Quaife and maybe Mick Avory Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
News that Richmond Fontaine were calling it a day with one final album and tour was not itself a surprise: across latter-day releases, from at least 2009’s We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River, the music had become progressively incidental, an increasingly subtle backdrop to frontman Willy Vlautin’s surprisingly widescreen storyteller’s vision of small-town Americana. Their decision to tie up loose ends with one final album, described by Vlautin as “an end piece for all the characters who inhabited the world of Richmond Fontaine over the years”, is not one most bands would take Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Back in the Seventies, Sniffin’ Glue kicked off a punk and post-punk trend for fanzines. By the following decade this had become a deluge, surrounding the burgeoning, self-consciously “alternative” indie music scene but also offering thousands of otherwise unheard voices a chance to rage at Thatcher’s Government in smudgily typed, crudely stapled, photocopied A5 pamphlets. The whole thing had an invigorating energy about it, connected to the times. The drive and feel of Sleaford Mods: Invisible Britain has something of that lo-fi, politically raging, high excitement.Those wanting a Read more ...
Katie Colombus
I love Gwen. I really do. She is a Queen. And I love that she's on a journey, falling in love with The Voice co-star Blake Shelton after what we thought was one of Hollywood's most stable marriages to Gavin Rossdale fell apart. But there is much about her new album that is difficult to vibe with.This Is What The Truth Feels Like is a soundtrack to love the second time around, the songs a mix of reflecting on the past and looking towards the future. There's nostalgia in the fun, bouncy and hooky "Make Me Like You" with echoes of Cardigans Love Fool and a hark back to Kylie Minogue in her Stock Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Despite her best efforts, Jasmine Lucilla van den Bogaerde aka Birdy is, probably, still best known for covering Bon Iver's "Skinny Love", aged 14. Like a John Lewis ad that never was, the song possessed a winsome sophistication that won her a diversity of admirers.It also prompted the question, "what next?" Would Birdy go on to tread a gentle folk-rock path like Laura Marling – another well-heeled ex prodigy from Hampshire? Or would her sound develop into something altogether more idiosyncratic? Birdy's first self-penned album Fire Within failed to settle the issue. Read more ...
Barney Harsent
After the release of 2006’s Barking, it was difficult to know what to make of Underworld. A couple of decent songs aside, collaboration seemed to have stripped away identity, leaving us with sketches on which a host of different producers had scribbled with their own, vivid, Crayola colours. For a band whose strength had been found in the album format, this was an unwelcome volte-face. Six years on, Rick Smith and Karl Hyde are back, but is Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future a return we should welcome with open arms?Early indications are certainly promising. “I Exhale” slaps us Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Damien Jurado’s last album, 2014’s Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son, was, as theartsdesk noted, about “a man setting off in search of himself but never returning”. Its follow-up tracks the same unnamed character and his companion Silver Katherine on a road trip which may or may not be in his mind. Following a concept album with another integrally linked to its predecessor – and the album before that too, 2012’s Maraqopa – suggests Durado has faith in his listeners. They are, implicitly, going to follow the singer-songwriter on this journey.Ambition, creativity and an overarching vision Read more ...
Veronica Lee
If you saw The Social Network, for which Aaron Sorkin wrote the script, you will recognise the type also on display here – a hugely driven, arrogant genius who is emotionally illiterate. In The Social Network it was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg; in Steve Jobs, it’s the co-founder of Apple.Directed by Danny Boyle and written by Sorkin from Walter Isaacson’s authorised biography, the film focuses on three tumultuous periods in Jobs's life: his private crisis before the Macintosh launch in 1984, the unveiling of his ill-fated NeXT computer in 1988, and the iMac launch in 1998, and seeks to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The variables which help records attain cult status are usually permutations of obscurity, patronage, rarity and perceived or received notions of greatness. This fluid formula can make an album the acme of grooviness, even if barely anyone cared or had even heard of it when it was originally issued. Witness the Lewis album, L’Amour.This sanctioning process will never cease. There will always be something ripe for resurrection. The price of original pressings is a fair guide to interest and therefore a possible indicator of new audiences for records which had fallen between the cracks. Of Read more ...
Guy Oddy
No one could ever accuse Bob Mould of coming across like Mr Happy. Coupling lively melodies with punk heft and angsty lyrics has been his shtick for most of his 40-year career, first with hardcore punk rock titans Hüsker Dü, then ‘90s power trio Sugar and finally in his own right. Nevertheless it would be fair to say that things have been a bit grim for Bob since 2014’s excellent Beauty and Ruin album and it shows. The death of his mother, relationships ending and reflections on life getting shorter all leave their mark on the lyrics of Patch the Sky.As with Beauty and Ruin though, there is Read more ...