CDs/DVDs
Tim Cumming
There are two Richard Thompsons – the deft acoustic magician and the electric guitarist shaking the rafters and the bones of the most committed air-guitar headbangers. He's unique in that no other guitarist could kick out the jams on the electric and seduce and beguile with the acoustic the way Thompson does.While his records are band affairs, his stage work encompasses band and solo acoustic tours. I recall seeing him in a small club in Paris, in the early 2000s, playing one of the best acoustic sets I’ve ever heard, and though it’s more than 30 years old now, one of my favourite Thompson Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Ruthann Friedman: The Complete Constant Companion SessionsRuthann Friedman’s debut album ought to have clicked. Issued in October 1969, Constant Companion arrived after her composition “Windy” topped the US charts in 1967 when it was recorded by The Association. A consummate songwriter, she should surely have been set to parallel her similarly inclined close contemporaries Carole King or Laura Nyro, both of whose songs were hits for others before they established themselves as successful solo artists.Friedman had support and connections too. She actually lived with The Association – who Read more ...
Russ Coffey
That King Creosote’s latest album was indirectly commissioned as part of this week's Commonwealth Games celebrations immediately qualifies it as one of the more interesting musical pieces to be inspired by a sports event. And that's not meant as faint praise either - this is an indisputably fine album, irrespective of context. But fans of the hirsute singer will surely want to know more. They'll want to hear how it compares to Creosote's own back catalogue - in particular 2011’s wonderful Diamond Mine.The albums have more in common than you might, at first, think. From Scotland Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
That 1971’s Harold and Maude still confounds and delights in equal measure is a tribute to its timelessness. Despite evocative, period-specific music from Cat Stevens, and settings and trappings which place it as a film conceived and completed as the Sixties still cast a shadow, it still hinges on finely honed characterisations and a story which was, and remains, unique. Although mainstream, it played with the nature of romance and what is or isn’t acceptable in the day-to-day to such an extent that it continues to be both uncomfortable viewing and engender warm-hearted feelings. Reactions Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
London duo Jungle are to be commended for their desire to stay away from predictability. The result of their falsetto-voiced, twinkly alt-pop mission has been plenty of attention in the right quarters. Nominees for the BBC Sound of 2014, multi-million YouTube hitters, and hyped as festival musts-sees, they’ve certainly achieved hot band status, so it’s now just down to this debut album to dunk the ball through the hoop.It doesn’t, really, although it occasionally reaches the right end of the court. Over the course of twelve songs the pair massage the android edges off electro-pop, smear it Read more ...
joe.muggs
The Eighties revival, as is now well documented, has lasted far longer than the actual Eighties. And Elly “La Roux” Jackson is a vital figure in maintaining its durability, coming as she did to massive fame just as the effects of the turn-of-the-millenium club scene electroclash were wearing off, and making sure that plinky-plonky electropop keyboards, icy attitude and sculpted hair were kept on the cultural agenda.Her musical style was entirely distinctive, if a little piercing – it was no surprise that she achieved the success she did, so complete was her mix of sound, look and persona. It Read more ...
Katie Colombus
The sign of a good film is one that lingers, one that you return to after days, months or even years – a snapshot of an image, a feeling that struck a chord within you, a memorable character that inspired or excited, or a line that you just can’t shake. But what of one that does the total opposite, that makes you appalled and apathetic in equal measure so that you to want to forget it immediately and never return to it?An 11-year-old girl jumps to her death from the balcony of her family’s apartment on the day of her birthday. To begin with, every line of Miss Violence could be misconstrued Read more ...
Matthew Wright
As the name suggests, New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Band was established to promote traditional New Orleans Jazz. This release is the band’s first of original material, and the fact they haven’t been short of a tune since foundation in 1961 only confirms what any jazz-lover will already know, that the traditional New Orleans repertoire is pretty well represented in the record catalogue already.The famous community spirit of New Orleans is reflected in two characteristics of the city’s music in particular: the quality of the ensemble playing, and the relaxed approach to genre. While the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Lewis: L'AmourImagine a very subdued Antony Hegarty whispering over the spookiest moments of Angelo Badalamenti’s music for Twin Peaks. Or conjure up a marriage of Arthur Russell’s shimmering World of Echo and John Martyn at his most intimate, but shorn of all but the most necessary instrumentation. To say that L’Amour, the only album by Lewis, is arresting underplays it. This is one of the most direct and affecting series of songs ever captured in a studio. Yet until a few years ago it was unknown and, even then, only available as a dodgy download with added colour from the scratches Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Ostensibly folk, Emma Tricca’s second album Relic sounds more like a devotional song cycle heard in a church than on a club or festival stage. The massed chorale of Tricca’s voice which opens “Sunday Reverie”, the spectral organ of “Golden Chimes” and the lyrics of “Take me Away”, which yearn of being transported to somewhere she has never been where the trees are aging, all invoke the search for the spiritual.Initially pegged as a Greenwich Village-fascinated folkie inspired by encounters with John Renbourn and Bob Dylan's early champion Odetta, Tricca's voice is as singular and as Read more ...
Jasper Rees
When is an adaptation no such thing? Novelist Michael Faber has been more or less faithfully televised by the BBC in The Crimson Petal and the White starring Romola Garai as an autodidactic Victorian prostitute, while at the other polarity stands Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, featuring an almost wordless Scarlett Johansson as a man-slaying alien loose on the streets of Glasgow. From under the skin of the film the guts of the novel have been ripped out, leaving the viewer free to read what they will into a chilling parable about (when all's said and done) alienation.The film has already Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Maybe they really just don’t make ‘em like they used to. The latest in 2014’s prestigious roll-call of bus-pass rockers is Judas Priest - back minus one original guitarist (relative youngster Richie Faulkner replaces K.K. Dowling). Redeemer of Souls may have been recorded by a bunch of guys mainly in their sixties but the LP feels almost as preposterous, exhilarating and entertaining as anything they’ve ever done. It’s also a real contender for metal album of the year.Comparisons will inevitably be made with Sabbath’s recent 13. Both are comebacks of sorts and both bands are synonymous with Read more ...