CDs/DVDs
Serena Kutchinsky
I have always found Bob Dylan immensely irritating, so it stands to reason that the music of folk rocker Jake Bugg, who is often compared to the poetic Sixties icon, should evoke a similar reaction. At a time when British rock is on the wane, this reedy-voiced Nottingham lad is being hailed as its rockabilly saviour, and with a number one album, multiple award nominations and a brief fling with a supermodel under his belt, he is doing his best to justify the hype.The speed with which he has followed his self-titled debut is at least impressive. This effort, named after the legendary Malibu Read more ...
James Williams
Oh good, Robbie Williams is back. Now fully emerged from the self-imposed wilderness that saw him become immersed in the world of extraterrestrials and the paranormal while living a Howard Hughes-esque existence in Los Angeles a few years back, Williams is evidently attempting to make up for lost time. Unfortunately for him, his Rat Pack schtick is as tired as it was 13 years ago with the release of his original swing-influenced project, the revoltingly popular Swing When You’re Winning.The format of Swings Both Ways is almost identical to that of its predecessor. Williams is a canny fellow: Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although most readily pigeonholed as a minimalist pianist whose compositions are as much about the space between the notes as what he actually plays, Germany's Nils Frahm has also worked with the Juno synthesiser and released pieces which edge towards techno. Until now, he hasn't made it easy to get a handle on his full scope. Spaces is the first release to capture this. A live album which doesn’t sound live, it includes compositions which never been released before. Despite occasional bursts of applause, it feels like a studio album.At his last London performance, at St John at Hackney in Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Beyond being made in the 1930s, being a British production, being a musical and two having the same director, nothing links these four films. But the randomness of this double DVD set brings bucketloads of charm. There’s a songwriter trying to break into showbiz with the help of a plucky chorus gal (Harmony Heaven, 1930), a frothy Vienna-set love story about a star and her secretary who cannot reveal their emotions (The Song You Gave me, 1933), a tangled comedy of class and manners (Over She Goes, 1937) and – the jewel in this crown – a vehicle for bandleader Henry Hall (Music Hath Charms, Read more ...
mark.kidel
Dave Edmunds is one of a generation of rockers who came of age in the 1970s and excelled in channeling decades of American popular music: cue the pub rock bands, think Nick Lowe or Elvis Costello. There is a mixture of total knowingness and a nostalgic yearning for innocence that characterized the power pop of the period and a return to the three-minute single after the symphonic excesses of pomp and prog rock.Dave Edmunds channels The Beach Boys, Ray Charles, Elvis Presley and Otis Redding on this newly released album, most of which was originally available on his 1994 release Just Plugged. Read more ...
joe.muggs
Dev Hynes's path of artistic development is one of the most pleasing in 21st century music. The flamboyant black indie-kid risking life and limb to ride the local buses growing up in Hackney, who channeled his frustration at the lack of a place for him in the world through the awkward, aggro, occasionally inspiring but awfully named early 2000s electro-punk trio Test Icicles, has since then through sheer force of will carved out a space within the music world where he can be himself.Hynes clearly adores the whole aestheticHis sophisticated indie singer-songwriter guise Lightspeed Champion had Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The revitalisation of interest in films and TV dramas immersed in British folklore has seen the BFI issue Here's a Health to the Barley Mow, which is a 2011 DVD compilation of poetic documentaries going back a century, and last year's discs of the classic 1970s BBC ghost stories. This year's cinema releases of A Field in England and the restored The Wicker Man are now followed by the BFI DVD Robin Redbreast (1970), written by John Bowen and directed by James McTaggart for the BBC anthology series "Play for Today".It strongly anticipates The Wicker Man in its story of an outsider trapped Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although Confection is sonic ear-candy of a most seductive type, it’s hard to grasp what the point is. The album is lush, orchestrated and enfolding, but it does nothing new and says little beyond being the product of meticulous craftsmanship. Essentially, it’s the soundtrack to a film that does not exist. Themes are stated and then restated. A half-time interregnum comes with a playful synth outing which could be an alternate theme to the Magic Roundabout. Confection is the sound of hamster on treadmill – energy, lots of it, is expended but it is going nowhere.Of course, with Sébastien Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
This need to classify music with all sorts of made-up words might be irritating, but "toytronica" - a label frequently given to Psapp - is as succinct a description as any of the next 40 minutes after you hit "play" on their fourth album, What Makes Us Glow. The label comes from the odds and ends that the duo, made up of ex-Londonders Carim Clasmann and Galia Durant, have been known to incorporate into their signature sound, but it’s just as apt a descriptor of their playful rhythms and bursts of sweet melody.Yes, the album opens with a 17-second burst of the sombre mooing of milk-laden cows Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Brenda Holloway: The Artistry of Brenda Holloway / Various Artists: ERA Records Northern SoulAs the home of the Motown empire, Detroit dominated American soul music in the Sixties. Yet the label’s boss Berry Gordy bowed to the inevitable and opened a Los Angeles office in November 1963. The West Coast’s home of film was taking over as America’s music business hub. Brenda Holloway was among Motown’s first California signings and spent her time with the label shuttling between LA and Detroit, recording in both cities. ERA Records was Los Angeles born, and competed with Motown on its new turf. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Lady Gaga is many times more imaginative, intriguing and entertaining than her pop peers. Rihanna, Katy Perry, Ellie Goulding, Rita Ora, Jessie J, Miley Cyrus, et al - she beats the lot of ‘em, hands down. It’s always a pleasure when she arrives back into the fray, when she starts courting the media for her latest project. Her world is informed by avant-garde art, extreme fashion, literature, underground gay culture and much more. She martials it into a mesmeric melee of narcissism, performance art and high kitsch (ARTPOP’s cover, for instance, was created by Jeff Koons). What’s more, while Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The team behind The East also created 2011’s stunning Sound of my Voice, which scrutinised an enigmatic cult with a charismatic leader. It was going to be tough act to follow. The East has many of the same elements: a secretive cult with a charismatic leader on a mission; co-writer Brit Marling in a lead role and weird, unexplained semi-ritualistic behaviour. Unfortunately, The East is a halfway house of compromises, tropes and characters following well-worn emotional arcs. Unlike Sound of my Voice, the film does not surrender itself to the world it depicts.Marling plays Jane, an employee of Read more ...