CDs/DVDs
Kieron Tyler
Une Femme Mariée has been all but lost. Made in 1964 and barely seen since, it lurked silently in Godard's filmography between Bande à Part and Alphaville. Its availability on Dual Format DVD/Blu-ray plugs a gap and also offers the chance to find a continuity in Godard’s film-making that previously didn’t seem to be there.Although Une Femme Mariée shares much of its languorously disassociated atmosphere with Alphaville, it’s more comfortably slotted into a line traced from Une Femme est une Femme and Vivre sa Vie to, later, Masculin Féminin: films dissecting the female role and perspective, Read more ...
bruce.dessau
When I heard that Meat Loaf's new album was called Hell in a Handbasket I thought for moment that this lover of rock operatics might have decided to set the collected scribbles of Richard Littlejohn to music. If that thought chills your marrow brace yourselves, because this is worse than that. Hell in a Handbasket is a titanic misfire wherein Meat Loaf dips his toes into the world of rap and hip hop.The good news is that he does not rap like some over-lubricated dad at a disco, but gets in the likes of Chuck D and Lil Jon to do it for him between rather cloying reflections on the vicissitudes Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Nottingham's Tindersticks were always a band out of time. They may have had something of the night about them when they started two decades ago, but they were too late for the Nick Cave-franchised post-goth party. By the time they had brightened up a little the Britpop bandwagon had saddled up and left town. They split, then reformed in 2006. Now on their ninth studio album, the remaining originals and some interesting chums have come up with a swirling, elegant, multi-genre beast, which manages to be both melancholic and wry, proudly defying categorisation."Chocolate", the opening nine- Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach: Trauer-Music: Music to Mourn Prince Leopold Taverner Consort and Players/Parrott (Avie)Prince Leopold was Bach’s patron in the small town of Cöthen, where the young composer arrived to take up the post of Capellmeister in 1717. Leopold was a cultured and genial employer, who, according to Bach, “both knew and loved music”. And though the composer only stayed until 1723, his Cöthen years were creatively productive. Much of Bach’s music from this period has been sadly lost, including the sequence of pieces written in 1728 to mourn Leopold’s sudden death at the age of 34. A libretto Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Nanci Griffith, the Lone Star State’s dirty realist, has done much of her better work with a Democrat in the White House. I remember interviewing her once soon after the first Gulf War, when she was glum about the prospect of George Bush Snr walking the next election. She turned out to be wrong about that, and the Clinton years confirmed her as the pre-eminent godmother of rootsy, narrative singer-songwriting. Then the next Bush, far from firing up her busy liberal wrath, ushered in an emotional downturn.This intoxicating set of songs finds her defiantly in recovery mode, never louder or Read more ...
emma.simmonds
In Gerardo Naranjo’s Miss Bala, an aspiring beauty queen becomes an unwitting accomplice in the dirty deeds of a criminal gang. If it sounds like the plot of a cheap thriller, it isn’t – it’s visceral and uncommon, capturing the ferocity and reach of Mexico’s criminal underworld and the terror of being caught in its crossfire.
After witnessing a massacre and confiding in a (unbeknownst to her) corrupt police officer, a shell-shocked Laura Guerrero (Stephanie Sigman) find herself in the grubby hands of the perpetrators. Dragged from one hideous predicament to another, her life becomes a blur Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Ah, the difficult second album. Except that’s a music hack cliche, isn’t it, rarely a statement of truth. Sleigh Bells sprang fully-formed and perfect, as if from nowhere, back in 2010, and if they have a tough act in following their bombastic debut Treats then it's our fault, not theirs. Not that it’s stopped me anticipating, half-dreading, their second album; knowing that nothing the Brooklyn duo could produce now will ever punch me right between the eyes the same way “Rill Rill” did the first time I heard it, but at the same time half-hoping...Certainly they've made all the right moves. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The credibility of blues-rock has ebbed and flowed wildly for 40 years. Once upon a time it was simply the common currency for all major British and American rock bands, as exemplified by Led Zeppelin. Punk’s Seventies heyday put the kybosh on all that and blues-rock has been a less loved creature since, redolent of lazy parochial pub jam bands. However, from George Thorogood and the Destroyers to the White Stripes via Mississippi’s Fat Possum Records, it’s also become a major niche flavour for connoisseurs of raw guitar Americana - the scuzzier, the better.Leading the contemporary blues-rock Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Calling Zift hard-boiled undersells it. This Bulgarian film is so tough, it’s as though director Javor Gardev blow-torched the conventions of film noir so the picture he paints from the ashes is pure black. It’s in black and white, and had to be. Despite the darkness and violence, Zift is a compelling, breathless ride which flies by.The word "zift" has a few meanings. Medically, it’s the acronym for Zygote Intrafallopian Transfer. In Bulgarian slang it doubles for shit. It’s also Bulgarian for tar, wads of which were a predecessor of chewing gum. Zift’s main man Moth (Zachary Baharov) is a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Remember Primal Scream’s woozy “Higher Than the Sun”? It’s a fair bet Mauro Remiddi does. His debut album as Porcelain Raft drifts through 10 foggy songs as disconnected, yet warmly melodic, as that era-defining excursion through the ether.Italian born and America-dwelling, Remiddi has been through a few musical incarnations. He’s played klezmer for the Berlin Youth Circus, was pianist for a New York tap-dance show and in the Sixties-ish band Sunny Day Sets Fire. Where he’s landed up is familiar, but still satisfying. As well as nodding towards the rave/indie crossover, he’s got the chillwave Read more ...
graeme.thomson
Such is the nature of the music industry these days that artists are anointed even before they’ve released a record. So it has been with Emeli Sandé, a medical student from the north-east of Scotland who has not only bagged this year's BRITs Critics' Choice Award (former winners: Adele, Florence Welch, Ellie Goulding) but is, apparently, Simon Cowell’s favourite songwriter. Stop! Come back...Sandé has written for everyone from Leona Lewis and Tinie Tempah to Susan Boyle and Cher Lloyd, but it’s her voice that you’ll recognise from Professor Green’s recent number one “Read all About It” (which Read more ...
peter.quinn
Just how good is Gregory Porter's Be Good? Put it this way, over the course of a single song Porter can deliver an emotional payload which some jazz wannabes fail to achieve over an entire career. Combining the tropes of jazz and soul in an entirely seamless way, all wrapped up in a fabulously rich baritone, it's an album to relish from start to finish. The oft-made comparisons with the likes of greats such as Nat King Cole and Donny Hathaway appear far from fanciful.As heard on songs such as “Real Good Hands” and “Our Love” - the latter inspired by the imposing edifice of the Tower of London Read more ...