CDs/DVDs
Matthew Wright
Polar Bear have been re-shaping the musical landscape (the experimental jazz end of it, at least), since 2004, and after a few years’ hibernation after 2010, the creature is back in rude health, this year’s album hot on the heels of last year’s Mercury-nominated In Each And Every One. Identifying the group’s generic mix feels increasingly daunting, as new elements are constantly layered onto the existing work. Leafcutter John’s electronica have always been an important part of the mix; here, their role is a more subdued, but crucial ambient underpinning, as rattly dub beats do more of the Read more ...
mark.kidel
The music of melancholia takes on varied forms on different continents: the religious spirit and anger of the blues contrasts with the edgy rebelliousness of Greek rembetika, and the spiritual longing and melismatic vocal whirling of the Turkish aman with the sweet sadness of Portuguese fado. In Vietnam, the black dog barks softly and blue moods are tinged with resignation and regret, an acceptance of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that owes a great deal to Confucian teachings on surrendering to one’s fate.In this collection of recent field recordings, we hear from a variety of Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The 19 films directed by Anthony Mann between 1950 and 1960 included all 11 of his Westerns – five of them psychologically nuanced vehicles for James Stewart as an irascible loner scourged or mutilated for his obsessive pursuit of some goal. The zenith of Mann’s unflinching study of violence and compromised masculinity was 1953’s Naked Spur, though 1958’s Man of the West, starring Gary Cooper, runs it close. Jean-Luc Godard, for one, has raved about it.A family man travelling to Fort Worth to hire his rural town’s first schoolmarm, Cooper’s middle-aged Link Jones is disconcertingly meek at Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The two-and-a-quarter years between the release of Motorama’s last album Calendar and Poverty hitting the shops have done nothing to dim the Russian band’s aural resemblance to the roster of early-Eighties Factory Records. At this remove, it’s hard to ascertain whether records by Section 25, Stockholm Monsters or The Wake were shipped to the southern port city of Rostov-on-Don. It’s more likely Motorama evolved their Northern British leanings picking up on what they liked via the internet and then doing what came naturally.Reviewing Calendar, theartsdesk noted “their sound has been Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: The Odyssey - A Northern Soul Time CapsuleIt begins with “Open the Door to Your Heart” by Darrell Banks. Over a mid-tempo rhythm, Banks sings in an affecting voice obviously schooled in gospel. Choppy Motown-style guitar is punctuated by brass, lifting both singer and the song through the choruses. A US hit for the independent Revilot Records label in 1966, it reached number two on Billboard’s R&B charts. The UK issue on London Records barely sold. A copy went for £14,500 last year. The song was early floor-filler on the Britain’s then emergent Northern Soul scene, Read more ...
Guy Oddy
As thoughts begin to turn to this summer’s music festivals, it only seems appropriate that along comes Sonic Soul Surfer, the latest album from festie-perennial Seasick Steve. In fact, it’s hard to believe, given what seems to be his ubiquity among the fields of England, that it’s less than 10 years since Steve Wold became the self-proclaimed “cat’s meow” with his appearance on Jools Holland’s 2006 annual Hootenanny TV show.Seasick Steve’s sixth album, is prime-time, rough and ready hobo music that puts a spring in your step and a smile on your face. To be honest, this doesn’t really mark it Read more ...
Russ Coffey
The best singer-songwriters, you might say, survey life's experiences with a forensic eye. That’s certainly true of Laura Marling. Her new album Short Movie chronicles the singer's recent stint in LA where she'd relocated for a couple of years. Marling's adventures are catalogued with a satisfying mix of introspection and free-form vibes. That, of course, was also partly true of her last offering, Once I Was an Eagle. The difference here is that her hopes and disappointments are expressed with a Seventies rawness that also hints at an inner rock-chick.Artists rarely Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“You're plain as an old tin pail and you're bossy.” Tommy Lee Jones’s George Briggs doesn’t mince his words while sitting across the table from Hilary Swank’s Mary Bee Cuddy. She’s just told him that “if you lied to me and intend on abandoning your responsibility, then you are a man of low character, more disgusting pig than honourable man.” This undeniably funny exchange shines like a gold nugget in mud when set against the overall tone of the formidable The Homesman, a western which Jones describes, in one of the DVD’s on-set extras, as “minimal.”The Homesman also focuses on women in Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
You couldn’t make this guy up. A pianist from age 11, he grew up in a strict Ghanaian Christian household in deepest north London, had his teenage world turned upside down when he saw New York indie-alternative torch act Antony & the Johnsons in a rare peek at TV, ran away to become homeless in Paris, busking for a living, then slowly made a name for himself. This biography is dealt with in the serialist piano stomp of “Adios”, before the song blooms into an Ennio Morricone-meets-Philip Glass escapade.Now 26 and striking looking, with a notably chiselled jaw and a giant pompadour haircut Read more ...
Barney Harsent
After waiting a quarter of a century for Blancmange’s last album, 2011’s Blanc Burn, this new offering, effectively a Neil Arthur solo project, almost feels like a rush release. There’s a much changed visual aesthetic – gone is the stylised, Fifties cover kitsch, replaced by something much more stark and impenetrable. Now, I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but what about CDs?This new collection is certainly darker, but, before we address that, let’s get the negative stuff out of the way. Don’t worry, it really won’t take long. So… “Useless” sounds like the Wedding Present trying Read more ...
David Nice
Filming in bombed locations around Italy and Germany, the immediate evocation of wartime and post-war moral zeros, ordinary Italian locals and American GIs playing themselves alongside professional actors: all these assets would be enough to make Rossellini’s gritty films made between 1945 and 1948 essential to the history of cinema. But cinema as vibrant life itself breathes in the pace and in most of the performances.You’ll probably be familiar with Anna Magnani’s passionate mother and lover and Aldo Fabrizi’s heartbreaking Father Pietro in Roma citta apertà (Rome, Open City). These were Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Anyone whose attention was caught by Royal Blood’s recent explosion in popularity and who imagines the Brighton duo as rock innovators, with their bass and drum approach, may be surprised to hear that Lightning Bolt have been ploughing that particular furrow since the 1990s. In fact, Fantasy Empire is the Rhode Island band’s sixth album and its first since 2009’s monumental Earthly Delights. The two bands’ chosen instrumentation is their only similarity though. Instead of heavy blues riffs, Lightning Bolt churn out joyous, high-speed noise-rock that frequently suggests twisted, industrial Read more ...