CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
There has been conjecture that Motörhead’s latest album is titled in honour of frontman Lemmy Kilmister’s recent health problems, notably the insertion of an ICD (Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillator) in his chest after he suffered cardiac arrhythmia and other circulatory issues. However, one listen to Aftershock gives the finger to any notion that his band is slowing down. It may not be a match for 2010’s The World is Yours, a beast of an album whose fearless Götterdämmerung defiance was startling, but there’s enough solid Motörhead jolt to satisfy.Boasting the ramped-up amphetamine blues- Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Bees, whenever called upon, have always been ready for their close-up. They had a sizeable cameo in Disney’s Winnie the Pooh, played the lead villain opposite Michael Caine in The Swarm and got to be heroes in Bee Movie. Most recently there was The Secret Life of Bees, in which Dakota Fanning’s grieving teen finds solace in beekeeping. That was in 2008. Five years later the world is waking up to the fact that in reality there’s no solace to be had from making honey. More Than Honey explains why.From a very left field indeed, this documentary about the catastrophic collapse in world bee Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Open letters are so passe. There’s a track on Back to Forever, the second album from folk-pop crossover star-in-the-making Lissie, that addresses the recent shenanigans of Miley Cyrus and her ilk as well as the singer’s own place in the music industry. “I stole your magazine, the one with the beauty queen on the front,” she sings in that glorious, smoky voice of hers, half mocking, half angry. “I don’t want to be famous if I got to be shameless.”And yet wouldn’t a Lissie take on “We Can’t Stop”, all midwest drawl and laidback swagger, be the greatest thing? It’s easy to imagine: the singer is Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Kinks: Muswell HillbilliesRock’s rich tapestry currently has it that 1968’s The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society is their best album. This deluxe edition, 2CD reissue of 1971’s Muswell Hillbillies isn’t going to alter that, but it does force the emphasis away from the notion that their most lasting legacy will be a fascination with and celebration of Britishness.The album found Ray Davies and co looking to American archetypes, musical and cultural, and bringing them into songs drawing figurative links between the former colony and those still wedded to the old country. Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Over the decade and a half that I’ve been writing about music, it has been my goal to distinguish between music that I just don’t like and music that is, in a more objective sense, terrible. Sometimes the line is a fine one, and - as many a Leona Lewis fan reading this site will attest - I don’t always end up on the side of it I think I am on. But even bearing that in mind, the new album from Gary Numan is a genuine puzzler: I can’t decide if it’s a sluggish, noisy, unlistenable record, packed with laughably nihilistic lyrics; or if it’s just me.To give a bit of context I should note that new Read more ...
joe.muggs
The hip hop music of California has always been deeply stoned, and the wave of instrumental beats that have emerged from LA in recent years have taken this to quite some extreme. The scene around the Brainfeeder collective and Low End Theory club have, in fact, produced some of the most deeply psychedelic music of the 21st century, and Sam Baker aka Samiyam is one of the key figures within that.Baker's profile is relatively low outside the scene but he is a foundational figure within it, and his influence is subtly felt more widely: key UK label Hyperdub released an EP in 2008, and electronic Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
When piano-playing Vegas sensation and all round American entertainer Liberace (Michael Douglas) finds that his new live-in lover, Scott Thorson (Matt Damon), is bisexual, he responds by saying, “Good for you – I wish I could be that flexible.” For these sort of snappy camp comebacks alone, of which the first half of the film contains plenty, Behind the Candelabra is enjoyable enough. What really makes the film, however, is the performances of its two leads.Director Soderbergh lays out a familiar Hollywood tale, that of the wide-eyed ingénue (although gay bar-cruising Thorson is hardly an Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Morcheeba are sometimes dismissed as makers of dinner party music, of being the trio who drove the triphop juggernaut started by Massive Attack down an easy-listening dead end. Such a view, however, ignores the quality of their songwriting, especially their first two albums, featuring the impeccable likes of “The Sea”, “Trigger Hippy” and “Part of the Process”. For my money, their song with Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner, “What New York Couples Fight About?”, from their fourth album Charango, is a 24 carat classic, as lovely a lament for the confusions of lovers’ arguments as has ever been written. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
If there’s a problem with Jonathan Wilson’s astonishing second album, it’s the potentially distracting presence of the stunningly heavy list of contributors. Those mucking in to help out include Jackson Browne, David Crosby and Graham Nash who gather alongside Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench from Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers. Former Fleet Fox Josh Tillman is on board too. But they all take a back seat to Wilson on Fanfare, the mind-blowing follow up to 2011’s Gentle Spirit.Gentle Spirit was good, and a terrifically assured echo of LA’s early Seventies Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter scene. But Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
What would happen if a top Hollywood and TV director decided to take actors familiar to him to make a Shakespearean comedy? Something very interesting, especially to those enamoured of The Bard.Joss Whedon, creator of TV series like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, Dollhouse and the beguiling Firefly, used Shakespeare to cleanse his palette after the hard graft of Avengers Assemble. Shot in 12 days, using many of his favourite ensemble actors dressed in modern clothing, this lively black and white comedy emphasizes the screwball nature of Much Ado before it pulls an emotional sleight of hand Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The debates that come with music awards tend to be more interesting than the institutions themselves, which is why it was so novel to see this year’s SAY Award - the Creative Scotland-backed equivalent of the Mercury Prize - go to a work that was not only innovative but genuinely loved. Though it must have been tempting for RM Hubbert to take some time out and blow the prize money on a Porsche, the Glasgow guitarist - a 20-year veteran of the local music scene - announced his next album two weeks later.Breaks & Bone is the final part of what Hubbert has termed “the ampersand trilogy”, a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
National Wake: A Walk in Africa 1979–81South Africa’s National Wake would be noteworthy enough even if their music wasn’t. The mixed-race group emerged in 1978 in a country where the establishment and institutions were directly opposed to what they represented. In this compilation’s booklet the band’s Ivan Kadey recalls a typical show: “We were greeted by a promoter informing us that he had applied for permission for us to perform, and that it been denied. He wanted us to withdraw and go back to Johannesburg. I told him to shove it and that we were playing whether he liked it or not. Read more ...