CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
In these meta times when everything – EVERYTHING! – is ironic, a smirk to be replayed forever on a screen, the last thing we expect is a hippy, a proper real-life hippy, preaching oneness and love. Even yoga sorts these days mostly go on about their own “wellness”, rather than the cosmic inference of it all. Nick Mulvey’s previous albums were lightly marinaded in Baba Ram Dass and ayahuasca revelation but, with his third solo album, New Mythology, he’s gone full mystic.After creating some of the most gorgeous, original singer-songwriter music of the last decade he doesn’t let empyrean Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The title The Great Awakening is a metaphor for America’s switch from its previous presidential administration to the current: the arrival of a new era and, with it, a fresh phase of life. Emblematic of this is the xenarthran, a type of armadillo, which lends its name to the album’s third track. Native to South America, it slogs its way into Texas where it deals with a new environment.While Texas outfit Shearwater’s seventh album, the follow-up to 2016’s Jet Plane and Oxbow (there are other, less formal, releases) is chock-full of allusions, the band’s driver Jonathan Meiburg has chosen a Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Commenting on Australia’s horrendous colonial history at the start of an audio commentary packaged with this BFI Blu-ray release of John Hillcoat’s impeccably directed, newly restored The Proposition (2005), Alexandra Heller-Nicholas declares, “It’s fucking awful.”Critics are usually more circumspect on the record, but Heller-Nicholas’s reflection on the genocide of the First Nations people and the attendant squalor visited on the Lucky Country by the lawless settlers of the 19th century strikes the right note. She and her colleague Josh Nelson sustain her anger and disgust throughout their Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Who’d have thought that Steve “Interesting” Davis OBE (as he was mercilessly dubbed by the original Spitting Image in the 80s – at a time when he was wiping the floor with the best of the international snooker world on a regular basis) would turn out to be the most interesting ex-World Snooker Champion in living memory?In fact, Steve’s a bit of a polymath these days as a radio broadcaster, author, DJ and, most unexpected of all, a member of seriously spaced out ambient kosmiche heads, the Utopia Strong. Writing the outfit off as some kind of hobby group would be well wide of the mark though, Read more ...
mark.kidel
Nick Cave has always been a spoken-word man, and these seven short poems set to music with regular collaborator Warren Ellis are the latest in a genre he explores with exceptional talent. He is an artist driven by a need to create, constantly and in many forms, from concept albums to collage, and from drawing and song-writing to shamanic stage performances.This latest excursion was written over seven days in lockdown and recorded at the tail-end of a more conventional studio session. These are short texts, prayers to a God who is as wrathful as he is a saviour. The psalms invoke the deity Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Initially, the weird thing about this is it’s being released as a Neneh Cherry album rather than a compilation of artists doing Neneh Cherry covers, which is what it is. That said, awareness slowly grows of a kindred sensibility to recent Neneh Cherry output, the esoteric jazzual spirit that’s imbued her last couple of albums. The Versions is a crafted, mellow, late night affair containing material different enough from the originals to be interesting, even if it cannot top their cheeky hip hop-pop potency.Take the version of 1989 cut “Heart” by Los Angeles violinist-singer Sudan Archives, Read more ...
joe.muggs
It’s hard to know exactly when new age music passed from being a retro curio to being part of the language of alternative music. Certainly it can be traced back to the early-mid Noughties, with acts like Emeralds, Oneohtrix Point Never and James Ferraro, and labels like Kranky and RVNG Intl. bringing synth repetitions and cosmic aesthetics into the world of North American noise and DIY music. This was linked in part to newer internet-native genres like vaporwave – and in the case of Oneohtrix Point Never, to a vast and sprawling web of connections which led to his behind the scenes Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Side Two of A Child’s Chant for a New Millennium opens with “Wrenbird,” a consideration of whether it’s possible to have a bird’s freedom of mobility. “Anywhere but here,” sings Wren Hinds. He may not be happy where he is, but the accompanying soundtrack is enough to make anyone stick around.During its four-and-a-half minutes, “Wrenbird” shifts from an acoustic guitar-accompanied reverie to incorporate strings, brushed drums and flute-like keyboard lines. By the mid-point, it’s epic – albeit in a restrained way. When wordless vocals appear towards the end, there’s a hint Hinds may have taken Read more ...
Liz Thomson
“Songs are what feelings sound like,” Mary Gauthier told medics from Brigham & Women’s Hospital as she participated in the Frontline Songs post-Covid initiative that aimed to help doctors, nurses and first responders process their pandemic trauma. No stranger to loss and trauma herself, Gauthier had earlier worked with Songwriting with Soldiers, a programme that led to her last (Grammy-nominated) album, Rifles and Rosary Beads (2018).Gauthier’s ninth studio outing, Dark Enough to See the Stars, is as empathetic as anything she’s written. Music in its highest form, she believes, “is Read more ...
Nick Hasted
As the pandemic receded, Wilco huddled together in Jeff Tweedy’s Chicago studio and played country songs, an easefully naturally act as the world around them shook. Though famed for the experimental, eerily timely Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2001) and the crackling electric contrails of its further-out follow-up A Ghost Is Born (2004), Wilco have often returned to simpler verities.Now their 12th album adds a recognisable branch to Tweedy’s ex-band Uncle Tupelo’s tree, as this founding father revisits Americana: 21 songs framed by steel and acoustic guitar, stripping himself and his country to their Read more ...
Guy Oddy
If you’re feeling that you might be missing a certain glide in your stride and a dip in your hip during these uncertain times, then perhaps you might benefit from some funk on your record player. Well, cometh the hour, cometh the men.Boston’s Lettuce may have been in the game for some thirty years, but their latest (double) album Unify, suggests that they’re still running with a finely tuned engine, which shows no sign of grinding to a halt. In fact, they’ve even managed to get the great Bootsy Collins on board to bring some primetime P-Funk to the very fine “Keep That Funk Alive” – and when Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Crispy Moon is a musical kaleidoscope encompassing free-jazz skronk, Japanese folk melodies, Krautrock insistence, echoes of Recurring-era Spacemen 3, South African percussion styles and space rock. One is overlain onto another, or there are sections where one approach dominates before diving into another.The album opens with the gentle “Makkuroi Mizu (まっくろい水)” where a reggae lope gradually gives way to a more linear rhythm. Next, “Dividual Individual” – with the album's only English-language lyrics: declaring “you are free to go” – brings more on board: bubbling sounds, spacey synth and what Read more ...