CDs/DVDs
Lisa-Marie Ferla
There's a line of argument – and a fairly convincing one – that this is the decade that pop culture lost its imagination. Right now the cinemas are booked out with the latest sequel to a 38-year-old movie franchise, my Twitter feed is collectively losing its shit to a new Twin Peaks trailer and a Stone Roses reunion is headlining half of next year's festivals. We haven't even been bothered to come up with a name for this decade, although when our children's children run nostalgic compilation shows dedicated to the "twen-teens" I will happily take the credit.Against a backdrop of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Bar-debating recently, I argued that Jamie xx wasn’t a full crossover success, more a fringe thing. The next day I heard his gorgeous tune “Loud Places” playing as incidental music on the Strictly Come Dancing spin-off programme It Takes Two. So I was wrong. I am pleased to be. This album deserves the widest exposure possible. The self-effacing producer has created a rich, wide-ranging smörgåsbord that dips into rave culture’s 27-year electronic journey without ever predictably replicating club styles or falling into pastiche. My full review ran in May so I don’t propose to rehash it, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Michel Gondry’s last film, the unwatchably hyperglycaemic Mood Indigo (2013), was so arch and quirky it irritated more than appealed. Thankfully, Microbe and Gasoline resets the dial to the charm levels of 2008’s Be Kind Rewind. And things hadn’t been plain sailing before that too. The stilted, US-made The We and the I (2012) suggested that, after The Green Hornet, Gondry was a fish-out-of-water in America. Microbe and Gasoline is low-key, sweet, warm and made in France.Microbe and Gasoline (Microbe et Gasoil) is straightforward and feels autobiographical. It tells the story of the friendship Read more ...
Matthew Wright
You don’t have to take it from me. “How Much a Dollar Cost” is Barack Obama’s favourite song of this year. The album also has 11 Grammy nominations, more than any other. But the unanimous praise for Kendrick Lamar’s third studio album and its sprawling kaleidoscope of voices and styles doesn’t imply a consensus about why it’s a great piece of work. Some, including Obama, love his head-on take on political injustice. Others cite his breadth and inclusiveness, both of the sampling, often of crackling, period tracks, and the cosmopolitan ease with which Lamar slips between the musical Read more ...
Russ Coffey
As many colleagues have remarked over the past week, Christmas is that time of the year when, musically speaking, all bets are off. Whilst some prefer the season's more artsy offerings, personally, I still enjoy the soothing and traditional. Which is why, as the wine is mulling and fire crackling, I may well be tempted to dip into the Wilde Winter Songbook: this new deluxe edition is a big soft hug of festive classics and Wilde originals.Proceedings start with a rousing duet of “Winter Wonderland”, featuring Rick Astley having a decent stab at some old time Read more ...
mark.kidel
There was a time when the BBC provided a creative context – free of the anxiety-fuelled micro-management that characterises commissioning today – that gave a great deal of space to original and experimental film-making. While the pioneering work of French documentarians in the 1950s and 1960s was subsidized by an enlightened state, British documentary made advances thanks to public (and later commercial) television.Subtitled "The Evolution of the British Documentary", this well-curated BFI compilation of BBC films from 1951-1967 pays homage to a variety of films and TV programmes that provide Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Any Christmas album worth its salt draws from the classics. Versions of, say, “We Three Kings”, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, “Silent Night”, “Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!” and “The Little Drummer boy” are compulsory. What is not so inevitable is how these musical and seasonal chestnuts are tackled. All five songs are covered on Lit Up: Music for Christmas, and all five sound like they never have before.Astrocolor are from Canada. The five-piece from Victoria, British Columbia formed specifically to make a Christmas album like no other. Want a Massive Attack-style “We Three Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Comsat Angels’ debut single for Polydor, July 1980’s “Independence Day”, was an instant classic. After setting a rhythmic bed, each subsequent instrumental contribution is measured out: a guitar string's harmonic; a spare keyboard line; drop-outs drawing from dub. The melody was anthemic, yet not overbearing, and the forward momentum unyielding. It still sounds fantastic.After an independently issued single, the Sheffield quartet released “Independence Day” on the major label which had brought The Jam and Siouxsie & the Banshees into the charts. In the wake of punk, Polydor seemed to Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Christmas albums have been part of the scenery almost since the invention of the gramophone. This has led to quite a motley crew of cash-in dross but also the odd hint of real gold. Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings’ multi-faith holiday album is certainly much closer to gold than the other end of the musical spectrum but as with many Christmas celebrations, there are times when things get just a bit too corny. Nevertheless, It’s a Holiday Soul Party does precisely what it sets out to do, with plenty of lively retro-soul tunes that will put smiles on faces and encourage hefty doses of Christmas Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Searching for artistic merit in most Christmas albums is a bit like looking for allegory in a Cliff Richard calendar. Under the sheen of one-size-fits-all production that’s necessary to compete in as wide a market as possible come the annual bunfight for plastic tat, pretty much everything is reduced to sounding like a nicely wrapped fancy box of nothing.That said, expectations are there to be confounded, so lets open Kylie Christmas and see what we’ve got…We’re covering disappointment straight from the off. As we smile sweetly and say “Thanks”, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” Read more ...
Graham Fuller
As a director of Westerns in the 1950s, André de Toth is seldom spoken of in the same breath as Budd Boetticher and Anthony Mann, but there’s a case to be made that he was their equal. Day of the Outlaw (1959), de Toth's ice-cold farewell to the genre, matches Mann’s James Stewart Westerns in its harnessing of landscape to psychological dynamics, while its story of a hardened loner who won’t be shaken from his mission recalls Boetticher’s Randolph Scott films.Constantly in dialogue with Shane (1953), it’s a redemption drama, set in a snow-shrouded Wyoming settlement called Bitters at the end Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Christmas albums are an annual parade of froth and fun, designed to be fluffy and celebratory rather than challenging, especially imaginative or, indeed, truly great. With the Smoke Fairies seasonal outing, however, no mulled wine-fuelled critical generosity is required. Wild Winter is by turns moving, gorgeous, funny, and rockin’ – a rich and enjoyably snappy 37 minutes.Female folk/blues/“dream-pop” duo Smoke Fairies have been going for over a decade, supported by a small coterie of fans including names such as Jack White and Public Service Broadcasting. This is their fifth album and it Read more ...