CDs/DVDs
Guy Oddy
Anyone who is unfamiliar with Swans might reasonably assume that these veterans of New York’s early eighties “noise” scene to be well past their best by now. As powerful as Black Sabbath on steroids, Swans’ music has taken in industrial noise, art rock, gothic country and, since reforming as a going concern in 2010, brooding, apocalyptic mini-symphonies. To Be Kind is their 13th studio album, the band has been around (on and off and in various incarnations) for more than 30 years and, singer and bandleader, Michael Gira won’t be seeing his 60th birthday again. However, such an assumption Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Wayne Cochran: Goin’ Back to Miami – The Soul Sides 1965-1970With his dyed-blond pompadour, Wayne Cochran looks bizarre enough. But once he opens his mouth, the weirdness level is kicked into orbit. He sounds exactly like a wild cross between James Brown and Otis Redding. Although white, his soul music is not the smooth or sweet blue-eyed fare of a Len Barry or a Righteous Brothers. Goin’ Back to Miami convincingly makes the case for Cochran as a soul great.The compilation opens with the self-penned 1966 single and title track (watch a slightly fuzzy looking TV performance on the next Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
That Nikki Nack, the third album from tUnE-yArDs, sounds as if it could share the name with some brightly-coloured superhero from a nursery rhyme seems appropriate, because that’s always been how I’ve pictured Merrill Garbus. It’s a persona that she has seemed happy to play up to this time around, in the colourful publicity shots and Pee-wee’s Playhouse-inspired videos that have preceded this release, but it’s also one that’s a perfect fit: an eclectic and experimental creator of songs (“songwriter” seems a touch simplistic a way to describe the way that she loops beats, whoops and ukelele), Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Travelling minstrels once spread news and social commentary via song, leavening it with bawdiness, social satire and raw humour. On those terms, Lily Allen is the premier folkloric songwriter of our times. Her songs are filled with pin-sharp detail that places them right in the now, some so precisely that by the end of the year they’ll be outdated (notably the title track’s caustic crack at the girl-pop crown). If music were judged on lyrics alone Sheezus would receive a straightforward 5/5 score, for its ruthless, specific, righteous perspective on themes running from our blank-eyed i-celeb Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It's surely among the most grotesque factoids in the history of Hollywood that despite being nominated for 10 Oscars, American Hustle won a grand total of none. Its big mistakes were presumably being too entertaining and failing to concern itself with a historic social issue. My own theory is that the cast was just too good - the flick boasted five potential gong-winners, and perhaps it was beyond the capabilities of the Academy to choose wisely between them.Anyway, even compressed to TV-sized viewing, Hustle is a wild ride and a non-stop hoot, a crime caper with buckets of soul. In the DVD's Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Anyone who remembers the critical mauling that The Horrors received on the release of their first album, 2007’s Strange House, might be surprised to learn that seven years later, they have just put out a fourth set of new songs. Not only that, but that it wouldn’t be a stretch to describe Luminous as eagerly awaited by many.However, while the release of each previous Horrors album has seen significant stylistic musical leaps, Luminous sees the band settle into the sound of 2011’s Skying and build further upon its early Simple Minds-esque template. This isn’t to say, however, that Luminous is Read more ...
mark.kidel
Brian Eno is a born collaborator as well as a highly esteemed producer. He is one of those musicians with a strong personal signature but who work with a minimum of ego. Branded as an egghead – a barbed label which reflects as much as anything a deeply British mistrust of intelligence – Eno might seem an unlikely partner for Underworld’s Karl Hyde. But he’s, among other things, a lover of intricate rhythmic patterns – a love first revealed in the groundbreaking collaboration with David Byrne, My Life in a Bush of Ghosts, as well as a fan gospel's inspirational vibrancy. Both these Read more ...
Nick Hasted
“I’m going to make a porn film with these two,” Charlotte Gainsbourg remembers her Melancholia director Lars von Trier telling the press, indicating her and Kirsten Dunst. Nymphomaniac sounds like that film. In fact it’s another sometimes baggy, sometimes gripping study of a female rebel’s psychological state. Gainsbourg’s Joe (pictured below), is a nymphomaniac, but the erections and penetrations which mark her passage through the world are both fundamental and incidental. Porn is the aspect of sex this film is least interested in.When wide-eyed, monkish Stellan Skarsgård finds a badly Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Dreaming about teeth, teeth falling out specifically, is supposed to represent anxiety and transition. Already this year The Hold Steady have based an album around the concept and now, on his own band’s fourth album, Greg Barnett of Pennsylvania punks The Menzingers seems to be wrestling with similar visions. “Dreaming that my teeth are falling out,” he sings on “Bad Things”, the album’s second track; “I’m driving, there’s no steering wheel.”Sure, the four-piece are old hands at this by now, but it’s hard to believe that there isn’t a social subset of anxiety devoted to the album after the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The career of Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero is an anomaly. It’s heartening that such curveballs occur, with artists taking an alternative, individual route to success. To those with any rock’n’roll romance left, it’s a sign that, even in these ADD., Tweet-trending, homogenous times, there are still unexpected ways for atypical acts to sustain a career. The pair were metal-loving Mexican teens who became virtuoso acoustic Dublin street buskers, leading to an Irish hit album and, eventually, a global career that’s seen them working on Hollywood blockbusters. Appealingly, they fit no pop Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Was Britpop really two whole decades ago? As rumours fly around about an Oasis Glastonbury reunion, Noel’s nemesis Damon Albarn has certainly not stood still. After Mandarin opera, world music and fronting a cartoon band among other things, he has finally found time for his debut solo album. Everyday Robots is hardly likely to challenge Parklife in the sales department or receive retrospectives in 2034, but it is a strikingly memorable, strangely melancholy work.The tone from the start is distinctly mellow. Nothing jumps out at you but it all seeps in on repeated listens. Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Have you ever had one of those moments where your imagination has played out a situation the way you wish it had been? A witty comeback after a putdown, an irresistible one-liner after a brutal rejection. Meet Walter Mitty, full-time negative asset manager for Life magazine; part-time idealist who lives out his fantasies whilst appearing to be in some sort of trance.In the first and most exciting of these daydreams we see Mitty take a running leap from the train station platform to dive into a burning building. He emerges from the explosion with his co-worker's three-legged dog and wins Read more ...