CDs/DVDs
joe.muggs
This is a weird one: I do try and stay on top of pop culture, but for several years, Ethel Cain completely passed me by. You’d think I would have noticed a gothic bisexual Baptist trans woman achieving great enough success to be championed by Barack Obama, but no – until streaming algorithms put me on to her record Perverts, released earlier this year. It’s an incredible work of fathomlessly deep ambient and drone music, and I was baffled to see something so out-there clocking up millions upon millions of views, until I finally clocked her previous success. Though Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The default setting for Brighton indie quartet Black Honey is pop-grunge. There are plenty of moments during their fourth album when Nineties femme-rockers L7 spring to mind. But Black Honey also spread their wings and fly in other directions. The latter songs tend to be Soak’s most noticeable, although whatever style the band chose, they know enough about hooks to keep listeners onside.Singer Izzy B Phillips, newly sober and with a recent autism diagnosis, veers lyrically between cinematic impressionism and a more specific observational approach. The album’s closing song, “Medication”, Read more ...
graham.rickson
The years between 1955’s The Ladykillers and 1964’s Dr Strangelove were the years of what Sanjeev Bhaskar recently described as "peak Sellers", a period when the great comic actor rarely seemed to put a foot wrong. Two Way Stretch and Heavens Above! succeed largely because both films feature Peter Sellers alongside talented supporting casts, his performances by necessity subtler and more nuanced. Two Way Stretch (★★★★★) stands up brilliantly, Robert Day’s compact prison-set comedy, released in 1960, prefiguring La Frenais and Clement’s 70s sitcom Porridge. We first see Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Molly Tuttle is a star of the US bluegrass scene whose last couple of albums have broadened her appeal. On them she wandered into country, folk, and rock. She featured the likes of Gillian Welch, Dave Matthews and Old Crow Medicine Show, intimating, perhaps, a desired trajectory.Her latest album, her fifth solo, tones down these tendencies in favour, much of the time, of a gentler, smoother direction. While it doesn’t imitate Taylor Swift, there’s something of that superstar’s pop-country style and relationship lyricism.“Mistakes, bad dates, man, I’ve had a few/Cheap thrills, bitter pills, I Read more ...
joe.muggs
I like to think I’m open to most things, but even so I never thought that I’d be getting an education in prog metal in the summer of 2025. Let alone that it would be from groovy young Brit jazz players. But so it goes. Last week I interviewed the Wakefield-via-London trumpeter / singer / composer Emma-Jean Thackray and she revealed a youthful penchant for Dream Theater, Liquid Tension Experiment, King Crimson and even Marillion.This provided a suden “ahhh” moment, illuminating certain tendencies in her music. And now comes South Londoner Mansur Brown’s third album proper, which kicks off Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The stage musical update of Mean Girls, and the film adaptation, pushed Reneé Rapp into the public eye. She played queen bitch Regina George. She’s become well-known for her forthright public persona, especially since coming out as a lesbian last year.Her second album, Bite Me, is a glorious celebration of her sexuality; bright, witty pop that’s loudly lesbian and full of vim. The most immediate material is sensually alert, but playful too. There’s plenty of getting it on, much enthusiastic cunnilingus. Notable in the latter department is “Kiss It”, a catchy 4/4 yacht-rock-tinted club bouncer Read more ...
James Mellen
Cian Ducrot cut his teeth on a blend of intimate singer-songwriter balladry and lowkey alt-pop, most of his debut album Victory sounding like a less personable Lewis Capaldi. There’s a modernity to Ducrot’s sound, though. The palette is spotless, bordering on the sterile, his solid vocal performances the key, and perhaps only, selling point of his music. New album Little Dreaming takes this to the extreme: opener “It’s Cian Bitch” is half bastardised turn of the millennium French disco-house, half Fleetwood Mac pastiche, all wrapped up in a lifeless bow. Little Dreaming is Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s not foregrounded, but as Strangest Feeling beds in after repeated listens it becomes clear that one of its core traits is The Pixies-originated quiet-loud, soft-hard dynamic which oozed into grunge. The second LP from the Irish-born, Sydney dwelling Bonnie Stewart isn’t a grunge album, but it has a kindred sensibility.Take third track “Bittersweet”. It has a My Bloody Valentine / Pale Saints haziness but as a verse gives way to the chorus – boom, an explosion. The voice is folky, lilting, the melodies honeyed. Yet Stewart likes offsetting this with flare-ups indicating that – presumably Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Debby Friday is a Nigerian-Canadian singer-producer who found some success a couple of years ago with her debut album Good Luck. It won the Best Electronic Album 2023 Polaris Prize, the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy or Brit. That album had a moody rock-tronic feel.The new one, created in her new London base with her guitarist, the Australian producer Darcy Baylis, is more straightforward EDM, but draws from a varied palette and retains her personality. It’s a likeable club-centric outing.Initially, it appears she’s going to go 4/4-bangers-all-the-way but, as the album goes on, she becomes Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Indigo de Souza, a singer from North Carolina, has established some reputation, mostly in the States, for combining indie, pop and emotionally open lyrical heft. This is her fourth album, but her first on a larger label, Loma Vista (she was previously on Bright Eyes-associated Saddle Creek). On Precipice she lays down a fusion of chart-style femme-pop and heartfelt guitar anthems.It’s usually engaging and sometimes outstanding. Precipice was put together with musician-producer Elliott Kozel, who’s worked with SZA, Billie Eilish’s brother FINNEAS, and others. It has a polish to it – Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There can be few musicians on the planet from a more storied musical dynasty than Mádé Kuti. He is the son of Femi, the grandson of Fela. He grew up in and around Femi’s New Afrika Shrine in Lagos, international hub of all things Afrobeat. A multi-instrumentalist from an early age, and a member of his father’s band, he now cuts loose on his own. His second solo album showcases a mighty compositional talent.Mádé released an initial solo effort in 2020 but it was part of his father’s Legacy+ double package. So, in some ways, as per its title, Chapter 1: Where Does Happiness Come From? is his Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Great (and not so great) bands reforming, either in the studio or in the live arena, is something of a trend at the moment. However, who would have thought that the original Alice Cooper band would not only be part of this trend but the creators of one of the best new albums to emerge from it – more than 50 years since their last long-player?Of course, the name Alice Cooper never actually disappeared and, to most people, it’s the stage name of a charismatic singer who was born Vincent Furnier in Detroit in 1948. However, in the early and mid-1970s, Alice Cooper was a lairy gang of hard- Read more ...