CDs/DVDs
Jasper Rees
After 29 studio albums, eight compilations, four live albums, amounting to a total of 41 at pretty much one for every year of their existence, the denimosaurus we know as Status Quo has issued a release the title of which is entirely, and for the first time ever, in Latin. Unless you count Quo (1974). Quid Pro Quo, one very much suspects, does not translate in Rossi-Parfitt speak as “this for that”. Indeed “quid” looks to be a reference to lucre, which the Quo have been raking in for what feels like centuries on an unvarying diet of three- and, when they can get away with it, two-chord Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Why gripe about Lady Gaga? The biggest pop star on the planet is a surrealist fashion icon, fag hag hedonist, high school outsider, art pusher, sex kitten, New York hustler, tween-pop cartoon, and a whole lot more besides. What's not to like? Gaga combines freakhood with selling 68 million singles, 22 million albums, 31 million "like"s on Facebook, numero uno on Twitter and on and on. She is surely a far more exciting public figure than most of her competition put together?And so to the music. The new album doesn't pause for chirpy prepubescent summer romance like its predecessor; indeed, the Read more ...
david.cheal
A young outdoorsman is shimmying through a canyon in Utah when a boulder falls and pins him by his arm. He is trapped for 127 hours before he severs the arm with a blunt knife and makes his way out. It’s a compelling scenario, but there are two difficulties that might have presented themselves to any film-maker planning on making the true story of Aaron Ralston’s survival into a movie.First, there’s the Touching the Void problem: we know how it will end (in Touching the Void: he cut the rope! In 127 Hours: he cut the arm!). Whence will the narrative tension derive? And second, it’s a static Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A couple of years ago Morton Valence appeared out of nowhere with a fan-financed concept album, Bob and Veronica Ride Again, full of plucky imagination, indie sweetness and Nancy Sinatra vibes. It arrived with a CD-sized novelette and had a faintly burlesque feel that spoke of the group's background as resident band at the Soho Theatre Arts Club. It was an unexpected treat and I'm happy to report that their new one is more than its match.Where they were a duo - of Robert Hacker Jessett and Anne Gilpin - they're now a proper band and their sound has become fuller as a result, relying less on Read more ...
emma.simmonds
With more claret than a blood bank and more skin than a nudist colony, True Blood is HBO at its most gleefully provocative. Unencumbered by the cerebral depth of The Sopranos, the social conscience of The Wire, or the historical obligations of Deadwood, it’s a two-backed beast of a TV show. That’s not to say it’s not smart or satirical, but from its opening credits it announces its dishonourable intentions as a gravelly voiced stranger croons, “I wanna do bad things with you.”Based on the novels by Charlaine Harris, True Blood is the televisual brainchild of Six Feet Under’s Alan Ball. It Read more ...
howard.male
When I saw Jim White perform at the Jazz Café a couple of weeks ago, he rather undersold his new album. But take no notice of the wilfully perverse Southern American singer-songwriter. Even if White appears to view this collection of songs for an adaptation of Sam Shepard’s play The Americans: Part 1: Lay of the Land as a bit of a side project, that doesn’t mean it’s not worthy of your attention. In fact, it might have actually benefited from not being over-worked in the way that a new album proper might have been.Without the overriding concern for making something self-consciously cohesive, Read more ...
graham.rickson
This week we’ve some neglected British orchestral music played by the UK’s oldest professional orchestra, including a spectacular work later championed by Britten. An offbeat disc of concertos for two pianos provides scintillating entertainment. And there’s a contemporary opera by a composer best known for his film soundtracks.Michael Nyman: Facing Goya Soloists, Michael Nyman Band/Michael Nyman (MN Records)
Michael Nyman’s jaunty brand of Minimalism is still powerfully evocative – memories of late-night screenings of impenetrable Peter Greenaway films came flooding back within seconds of Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Peter Mullan’s incendiary and long-overdue third feature is an unflinching, often hilarious look at a teenager’s inexorable descent into delinquency. NEDS (or Non-Educated Delinquents) begins in Glasgow in 1972, immersed in a rosy haze of promise as the chubby-cheeked, saucer-eyed John McGill graduates from primary school. Moments later he’s being threatened with a beating to end all beatings by a malevolent peer.It’s a story told in academic milestones, violent street clashes and graffiti. When the talented scholar John starts secondary school his older brother Benny’s name adorns the walls Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Kate Bush’s musical legacy may speak for itself, but she’s more than just her songs. Her persona seems woven into the nation’s consciousness, and her time-lapse approach to making albums makes her every move an event. Her last record was in 2005, and before that 1993. Now she's made an album of covers of her own work. The question is, can it possibly live up to the expectations?Director’s Cut is a reworking of tunes from the The Red Shoes and its predecessor, The Sensual World. You can see why she would want to revisit them. As albums they always seemed patchy, but equally within those 25 Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore has never been constrained by being in one of the planet’s coolest and always-interesting bands. Since the late Eighties he’s released a string of collaborations and solo releases that are mainly experimental, atonal or outré – he still issues material solely on cassette. Enthusiasms define who he is and as a card-carrying record collector he’s never been shy of declaring his favourites. Holding a torch for improvisers like Derek Bailey, he’s also a supporter of outer-edge folk artists like Ed Askew. His new, Beck-produced solo album is the culmination – so far - Read more ...
Graham Fuller
At the end of Joanna Hogg’s acutely observed drama of bourgeois manners, Patricia (Kate Fahy) and her grown-up children Cynthia (Lydia Leonard) and Edward (Tom Hiddleston) restore to the living-room wall of their Scilly Isles holiday house a painting they’d removed for being “rather horrible". It turns out to be a dark, stormy seascape - a metaphor not only for their miserable vacation, which had been intended to give Edward a happy send-off to Africa where he is (or was) to work as a sexual-reproduction health volunteer during his gap year, but also for the family's compatability. William, Read more ...
david.cheal
What is it with synthesisers and sadness? There’s something inherently melancholic about this instrument, a quality that’s been accentuated by its use in the soundtracks to dystopian movies such as Blade Runner. Moby is a man who has exploited this quality to the full during his 20-year recording career, and he does so more than ever on this, his 10th album: Destroyed is really sad. Not bleak, or dark, or bitter; just really sad.Written in hotel rooms in the course of a world tour, it reflects the rootless, shifting and lonely existence of a man who finds himself in a string of strange Read more ...