CDs/DVDs
Guy Oddy
Three years after the release of the Mark Ronson-produced Arabia Mountain, Black Lips are back in the ring with Underneath the Rainbow, a decidedly rawer take on their lo-fi, yet melodic, garage rock. This time, Patrick Carney of the Black Keys, has taken on co-production duties, so it will be no surprise to learn that there is more than a touch of bluesy rock to flavour the musical gumbo.Opening track, “Drive-by Buddy”, sounds like the Cold War Kids channelling the Monkees and sets the tone for the rest of the album. “Dorner Party” speeds things up to amphetamine levels with a buzz-saw riff Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Destin Daniel Cretton’s SXSW-award-winning debut is optimistically feel-good, bathed in Californian sunshine and night-time neon. This helps the sometimes bitter medicine of the damaged lives at its foster home setting slip down without a murmur. Cretton used to work at a “short term 12” home (where the state puts children for up to a year) and sympathises with everyone here.Self-help platitudes are never far away in a place where everyone’s in therapy and on medication, but neither are rougher barbs to hook you. Grace (Brie Larson) and Mason (John Gallagher Jr) lead a laid-back staff, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Lapland is one bearded bloke called Josh Mease who lives in New York. He makes his music in his home studio. That’s the back story and it’s not a good one, especially in an age when a voracious variety of media demand a narrative to go with their music. Mease isn’t a desperate visionary, living on the edge of his sanity, nor is he a photogenic teenager making music to honour a relation dying of cancer, nor is he anything in between. In point of fact, we don’t know much about what he is. All we have is a luscious set of songs comprising the loveliest album 2014 has yet produced.If Lapland Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Tyrannosaurus Rex: A Beard of Stars/T.Rex: T.Rex, Tanx/Marc Bolan & T. Rex: Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of TomorrowReactions to these reissues are going be determined by what level of fandom the band's acolytes subscribe to. These are not for the casual purchaser. Each is stuffed with masses of bonus tracks, many previously unreleased. The primary content is overwhelmed by the bonuses. Whether it's good or bad to put original albums in the shade is a matter of taste. The volume of extra material makes it hard to appreciate what Bolan intended each album to be in the first place.With Read more ...
Russ Coffey
They've been indie and they've been (quite) pop, but this time the band has firmly nailed its colours to the art-rock mast. The Take Off and Landing of Everything is a subtle, reflective piece which befits the age and intelligence of its creators. And while some will, of course, miss their arms-in-the-air anthems, it’s worth remembering 2011’s Build a Rocket Boys had already left much of that behind. How then has this post pop-rock Elbow progressed? It's not just the musical style that has evolved, but also the general landscape.That familiar northern, “ Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
For better or worse, it’s not enough these days to be a perfectly serviceable pop singer. With Saturday night TV shows churning them out by the dozen, you need more than an attractive face and an ability to hit the right notes to stand out. With her brassy voice and purposefully idiosyncratic looks Paloma Faith, who herself will shortly be mentoring a musician as part of yet another nationwide talent search, always seemed like somebody doing her own thing - it’s just a shame that doesn’t come across on her third album, A Perfect Contradiction.While this may be to do with the lengthy cast of Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
“Only connect!” might be the unexpected motto for this Hollywood Hills story – hard to call it a drama – from writer-director Sean Baker (Prince of Broadway). Because the worlds coming into contact in Starlet could hardly be more different: think, albeit with a generous pinch of salt, Legally Blonde mixing with an unhappy singlular version of On Golden Pond.Jane, played by newcomer Dree Hemingway (daughter of Mariel, for what it’s worth) has transplanted, complete with her titular chihuahua, from Florida to the San Fernando Valley to pursue what we might assume will be studies. Though as the Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Ealing Studios was known for comedy, but when it released Dead of Night in 1945, it unleashed on movie-goers the classic template of portmanteau horror for decades to come. The film comprises six tales – five supernatural stories and a framing narrative in which architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Jones) arrives at a country house, only to find he recognises not only the house and its rooms but everyone in it, as figures from half-remembered nightmares that slowly, inexorably come to life as each one embarks on a tale of the uncanny.This nightmarish, circular framing device is part of what gives Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It may not have won the Best Picture Oscar, but Gravity's sack of gongs for cinematography, sound editing, original score and more was richly deserved, while Alfonso Cuarón's acute directorial vision brought its own reward. I was amazed by Gravity on first viewing, and watching it again on disc it's even better. I've always found the notion of travelling into the infinite freezing vacuum of space a horrifying prospect, and perhaps only Kubrick's 2001 can match Gravity in its ability to evoke its incomprehensible and unfeeling emptiness. However, were one forced to part company with terra Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Just when you were getting sick of music that just offers wafty platitudes, Laibach return to save the day with Spectre, their first proper album since 2006’s Volk. While there is none of the laugh-out-loud subversion of their infamous covers of Queen’s “One Vision” or “Live is Life” by eighties horrors Opus, Spectre still packs a mighty punch of dirty, electronic beats and provocative and intensely political songs. This album is not polite background music.Opening track “The Whistleblowers” is a tribute to modern digital anarchists Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, set to a camp, Euro- Read more ...
mark.kidel
Fusion – so ubiquitous in the music of our time - can be contrived or blessed. Imed Alibi’s debut album, a rich tapestry of North African, Turkish, Brazilian, Balkan and rock sensibilities, works a treat because nothing feels forced: the conjunctions are happy ones, creating a web of contrasting connections that flow with a sense of inevitability rather than irritatingly clash.Built like a suite, “Safar” plays on changes of mood, each track leading into the next, with a perfectly judged sense of drama. There are widescreen cinematic moments, with multiple tracks built into a breathtaking wall Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
If English Oceans is the Drive-By Truckers finest album since 2004’s The Dirty South - and I’d argue that it is - I doubt it was intentional. A little time away; more of a partnership of equals between founder members and songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley; and inspirations rooted as much in real life (“Grand Canyon”, dedicated to the memory of crew member and friend Craig Leiske) as in fiction (“Pauline Hawkins”, named for a character in a Willy Vlautin novel) find the southern-fried country rock veterans in a creative place that sounds both vibrant and effortless.What probably helps Read more ...