CDs/DVDs
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The best music has the power to lift the listener out of whatever else she may be doing, to transport her somewhere else. I listened to Traces, fifth album from doyenne of Scottish folk Karine Polwart, in a cafe in Edinburgh in what for that city is the busiest month of the year. Outside it was raining and the pavements were crowded, but as the record expanded to fill my headphones there was space in my reality for very little else.That being said, Traces is an album that is firmly grounded in reality - whether it's the burning political issues of contemporary Scotland or the singer's own Read more ...
mark.kidel
Antony & the Johnsons’ melancholy songs of love and loss, steeped in a contemporary classical aesthetic, lend themselves to the full orchestral treatment. There is also something theatrical about the singer’s delivery, not so much high opera hysterics as more subtle explorations of the darker ranges of human emotion. Cut the World brings together live orchestral versions of a number of Antony’s best tracks drawn from his four studio albums. The title track alone is a new composition, featuring the artist’s signature sense of poetry, vocals whose quality of almost unbearable vulnerability Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Trojan Presents Freedom Sounds, a Celebration of Jamaican MusicKieron TylerThree-and-a-half minutes in, a heavily reverbed drum suddenly rattles and the track heads off into outer space. Morse-code bass dominates, the hi-hat swishes and odd bits of the full instrumental track waft in and out. Something like a home fire alarm bleeps. “None Shall Escape the Judgement” begins normally enough, a mid-tempo two-step reggae shuffler with a swooning, devotional vocal from Johnny Clarke. But really, it's two songs in one, that second half the creation of sonic auteur King Tubby and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Kody Nielsen is possibly best known outside his native New Zealand as the producer of singer-songwriter Bic Runga, but since her star shines very much brighter at home than in Europe, that isn’t necessarily an especially high profile. He has also long been front man of The Mint Chicks, self-proclaimed “trouble gum art punks”, but now they’ve split up he returns with a new outfit, Opossum, and an even newer bag of tricks.Opossum’s sound is rooted in surf music, but only in the loosest sense, borrowing keening harmony vocals and chord structures from the classic Californian sound. Around these Read more ...
Sarah Kent
The first time I saw Orlando, on general release in 1992, I was blown away by the beauty of Sally Potter’s homage to Virginia Woolf. Beginning in 1600 when Orlando (the suitably androgynous Tilda Swinton) is a young man, the film skips and hops through to the present day. The first scene, a banquet for Elizabeth I (Quentin Crisp resembling a pantomime dame in a tall red wig) takes place after dark and, in the glow of candlelight, everything is burnished a rich golden brown.The aged queen gives Orlando the deeds to a grand house – on one condition: “Do not fade,” she commands; “Do not wither, Read more ...
peter.quinn
This debut album from Leeds-based Roller Trio epitomises the can-do, DIY approach of the younger generation of jazz musicians. With their achievements recognised by a prestigious Peter Whittingham Jazz Award last year, the band - James Mainwairing (tenor sax/fx), Luke Wynter (guitar/fx) and Luke Reddin-Williams (drums) - sent a tape of their first concert to the London-based F-IRE label who subsequently invited the band to release an album on its "F-IRE presents" imprint.With influences ranging from Tim Berne to Queens of the Stone Age to J Dilla, as well as artists much closer to home such Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Describing the music of Franz Nicolay is a formidable task: it’s almost as easy to imagine the work of some of the bands he has loaned his considerable talents to in the past - most notably during his five years as a member of The Hold Steady - and then imagine the exact opposite. As proficient on accordion, saw and banjo as he is on keyboard or guitar; Nicolay’s music fuses elements of folk and punk with polka, gypsy and klezmer influences to create an articulate, joyful mix that is always entertaining.At least, that’s how I would have described it before my first listen to Do The Struggle, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
You’d have to have a heart of coal not to be moved by Aki Kaurismäki’s celebration of tolerance, redemption and the goodness that people can do. Le Havre isn’t quite It a Wonderful Life, but it’s not far short. The sensitivity with which the Finnish – now resident in France – director brings together unlikely elements makes him more than a humanist and takes him further into the political than any of his previous films.Le Havre is the story of shoe-shine man Marcel Marx (an impressively ragged but still noble André Wilms). He scrapes a living in Le Havre, where the real focus of his life is Read more ...
howard.male
It’s perfect timing for the release of this collection of cover versions of London-themed songs by multi-cultural London-based musicians. The big surprise is that some of the tracks could so easily have descended into cheesiness or simply not measured up to the original, yet nearly every band has successfully put a new spin on the song they’ve chosen, in some instances even momentarily blocked the original from memory.The Soothsayers reggaefied “Streets of London” makes you forget Mctell’s maudlin original, Katy Prado & The Mamboleros retain the punk spirit of 77 on their version of the Read more ...
Russ Coffey
They're calling it "Conormania". One website says that unless you don’t “like things that are awesome” you should be developing a healthy obsession with him. He is Conor Maynard and his debut album is Contrast. Over the last three years, Maynard has built up a massive fan base from YouTube cover songs recorded in his bedroom, and mixed by Anth Melo, his American “sick rapper brother from another mother”. Then came a subsequent record deal and MTV award. Now many are calling him the British Justin Bieber.Maynard hates that comparison. He wants to be taken more seriously. Rather than using his Read more ...
theartsdesk
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Nocturama, Abattoir Blues, The Lyre of Orpheus, DIG!!! LAZARUS, DIG!!!Howard MaleThere’s something just not right about having to reassess a bunch of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds albums in August, just as the sun is finally making a concerted effort to do its job. Cave is generally either icily cold or autumnally melancholic with the only heat being issued from the fiery hell awaiting some of his vividly conjured protagonists.The first three of these rather swiftly re-released albums - Nocturama, Abattoir Blues, and The Lyre of Orpheus (2003, 2004, 2004 Read more ...
bruce.dessau
If there was ever an album that could be reviewed on the basis of its track titles it is this one. "Helping the Retarded to Know God", "I'm Working at NASA on Acid" and "That Ain't My Trip" sound like they have been automatically generated via some Flaming Lips Title-Generating Machine. Luckily the music, recorded with chums including Nick Cave, Yoko Ono, Ke$ha, Bon Iver and Erykah Badu and first released in limited edition outside the UK on this April's Record Store Day, does not feel quite so formulaic.It is definitely thrilling to hear Nick Cave in playful comedy sex god mode barking out Read more ...