Tom Birchenough
Articles By Tom Birchenough
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Music Reissues Weekly: Chelsea - The Step-Forward Years
On 21 June 1977, listeners to John Peel’s radio show heard a song titled “Pretty Vacant.” It wasn’t a preview of the forthcoming Sex Pistols...
Please Don't Destroy: Treasure of Foggy Mountain review...
Despite an ominous title, there’s always fair weather in the debut comic adventure film featuring Please Don’t Destroy, a NYC sketch...
Wonka review - a confusingly mixed bag of bonbons
As the 117 minutes of Wonka tick by, the question it poses gains momentum: who is this film actually for? Children of all ages...
Smyrna review - Greece at twilight
The Smyrna Catastrophe of 1922, in which tens of thousands of Greeks and Armenians were slaughtered by Turkish soldiers, is a topical subject...
The Peasants review - earthbound animation
After a few years of cinema, the wow factor of seeing actual things moving about on a screen wore off a bit and showmen saw that jump cuts...
Mathias Énard: The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers'...
"Death, as a general statement, is so easy of utterance, of belief", wrote Amy Levy, "it is only when we come face to face with it that we find...
Album: Samara Joy - A Joyful Holiday
This six-track EP on Verve/UMG brings the breakthrough year of 2023 for Samara Joy to a neat close. In February she won two Grammys, as Best New...
Monica review - sombre American drama
There’s a rich seam of folk stories about changelings, infants snatched from home and replaced with a substitute child, to the horror and...
Album: Cher - Christmas
I honestly never thought I'd add a Cher song to my painstakingly curated ...