1970s
Album: Alice Cooper - RoadThursday, 24 August 2023
Let’s face it, well over 50 years into Alice Cooper’s career, you probably already know whether his umpteen-billionth album is for you. Over the last decade, he’s revitalised things by taking a meta look at himself, but, whether harking back to his... Read more... |
L'immensità review - enigmatic portrait of a trans teen in an unhappy familyThursday, 10 August 2023
Emanuele Crialese’s latest, L’immensità, is an oddity. It’s perfectly formed, yet still feels as if its final reel went missing. Its title – usually translated as “infinity” – is typical of this enigmatic quality. “L’immensità” turns out to be... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Thamp̄ (The Circus Tent)Tuesday, 25 July 2023
There are scores of films set in and around circuses. Aravindan Govindan’s bewitching Thamp̄ (The Circus Tent) isn’t like any of them, though I was fleetingly reminded of Jacques Tati’s largely plotless Jour de fête – which also opens and closes... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Autonomy - The Productions of Martin RushentSunday, 23 July 2023
Two producers named Martin worked with Buzzcocks and Joy Division. Martin Hannett was in the studio for Buzzcocks’ debut release, the Spiral Scratch EP, issued in January 1977, and also for the bulk of the tracks spread across their last three... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Keeping Control, Where Were You - Leeds and Manchester navigate the aftershocks of punkSunday, 16 July 2023
“Keeping Control” were the watchwords adopted by The Manchester Musicians’ Collective, an organisation founded in April 1977 to bring local musicians together and give them platforms. On 23 May 1977, it put on its first show – also the first live... Read more... |
The Super 8 Years review - Nobel laureate’s meditative self-portrait from home moviesSaturday, 24 June 2023
The French auto-fiction writer Annie Ernaux, now 82, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature last year; now a fascinating new facet of her creative life has been released via her home movies.With her now grown son David Ernaux-Briot (who was... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Tribal Rites of the New Saturday NightSunday, 18 June 2023
“It all started with a June 7, 1976 article in New York magazine about Queens, New York working-class young adults who flocked to a local disco in platform shoes and outlandish clothes to perform organized dances. [Bee Gees manager] Stigwood read... Read more... |
Album: Yusuf/Cat Stevens - King of a LandSaturday, 10 June 2023
Yusuf/Cat Stevens’ latest combines his apparently effortless immediacy at acoustic guitar songwriting with an orchestrated opulence that sometimes pushes the sound towards the realms of musical theatre. Lyrically, he’s in fine form too, but what... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Folk, Funk & Beyond - The Arrangements Of John CameronSunday, 28 May 2023
Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” was the UK’s first explicitly psychedelic record. Although there were delays with it hitting shops, it was recorded in December 1965. A large part of its impact came through the instrumentation and arrangement. Jazz... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Cock Sparrer - The Decca YearsSunday, 21 May 2023
“This is a record company’s idea of new wave. Clichéd heavy metal riffs and someone shouting in a cockney voice. This is a con and I hate it”.Notwithstanding that it would be a record company’s idea of things as just such an organisation was putting... Read more... |
Brokeback Mountain, @sohoplace review - emotionally inert take on acclaimed tale of queer loveFriday, 19 May 2023
For a masterclass in expansive adaptation, one could do worse than turn to Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain, based on American author Annie Proulx’s 1997 short story of the same title. Proulx’s restrained but searing tale of the queer... Read more... |
Album: Paul Simon - Seven PsalmsWednesday, 17 May 2023
Paul Simon is an ornery bugger. Full of awkwardness and perversity as a person, seemingly hugely detached, but as an artist capable of as much tenderness and directness as just about anyone out there. Capable of making world-changing artistic... Read more... |
