New releases on CD & DVD
Album: Imelda May - 11 Past the Hour
Tuesday, 13 April 2021
11 Past the Hour opens with its title song, a delicious, twangy, string-laden Nancy Sinatra Bond theme that never was. The album closes with a lyrically empowered torch song, “Never Look Back”, which rises and rises over a marching band drum tattoo and swelling orchestration. Its enormousness is hard to argue with. Unfortunately, in between these two, Imelda May’s sixth album is a bit of a stinker.
Album: Lady Dan - I Am the Prophet
Monday, 12 April 2021
There’s a line in “No Home”, the staggering centrepiece of Lady Dan’s debut album, that perhaps sums up the project. “Wolves will never be my masters again,” the artist, real name Tyler Dozier, sings as the strings swell, in a voice like the wilderness. “Men will never be my owners again.”
DVD/Blu-ray: Catch Us If You Can
Sunday, 11 April 2021
Catch Us If You Can, the 1965 road movie starring Barbara Ferris and the eponymous drummer and guiding force of the Dave Clark Five, proved a more...
Album: Alan Vega - Mutator
Saturday, 10 April 2021
If there’s someone who could claim to have proved Arnold Schoenberg’s pithy phrase “If it is art, it is not for all” it was Alan Vega. His and Martin...
Album: Cheap Trick - In Another World
Friday, 09 April 2021
A trend's been emerging, of late, for ageing rockers to actually sound younger on each new record. We saw it with AC/DC's Power Up (2020), an...
Album: Raf Rundell - O.M. Days
Deeper, stranger and more personal visions from the alt-pop journeyman |
Album: Peggy Seeger - First Farewell
Carrying the torch - at 85, she still can't keep from singing |
Blu-ray: Beginning
A masterpiece of 'slow cinema' from a hugely promising new festival talent |
Album: Ballaké Sissoko - Djourou
Scintillating collaborations from a master of the kora |
Blu-ray: I Start Counting
Arresting late '60s thriller, superbly acted and directed |
Album: They're Calling Me Home - Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi
Homecoming songs for life after Covid |
Album: Caoilfhionn Rose - Truly
Mancunian musician's second is a comfort in strange times |
Album: Glasvegas - Godspeed
Big Glasgow music finds its heart in quieter moments |
Album: Ryley Walker - Course In Fable
The musically aware singer-songwriter at his most assured, most direct |
Blu-ray: Silent Action
Violent 1970s thriller from Italy, very much of its time |
Album: Godspeed You! Black Emperor - G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END!
No substantial changes for the Canadian post-rock power orchestra |
Blu-ray: Romeo is Bleeding
Peter Medak's neo-noir is let down by genre clichés |
Album: Hannah Peel - Fir Wave
Enveloping drama from the queen of headphone dreamscapes |
Album: Tune-Yards - Sketchy
Californian alt-pop innovators sounding fresh and maintaining their unique trajectory |
Album: Suzi Quatro - The Devil In Me
Seventies icon proves she's still rock and roll royalty |
Album: Bheki Mseleku - Beyond The Stars
Essential album from a South African "gentle genius" |
DVD/Blu-ray: Mädchen in Uniform
Striking early-1930s Weimar study of female sexuality in social rebellion |
Album: Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and The London Symphony Orchestra – Promises
46 minutes and 37 seconds of electronic, jazz and classical spiritual transcendence |
Blu-ray: Restless Natives
Ramshackle but endearing Scottish comedy |
Album: Frida Hyvönen - Dream Of Independence
Forensic, unflinching accounts of change and loss from the Swedish singer-songwriter |
Album: Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over the Country Club
More cinematic confessionals from Pop Art queen |
Album: Black Honey - Written & Directed
Brighton band's second album gives indie a good name with huge-sounding and catchy guitar pop |
Album: Ted Barnes - 17 Postcards
Devastating bulletins from a world where craft and care matter above all else |
Blu-ray: Charade
Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn breeze through a Hitchcockian confection |
latest in today
Album: Imelda May - 11 Past the Hour
11 Past the Hour opens with its title song, a delicious, twangy, string-laden Nancy Sinatra Bond theme that never was. The album closes...
Singer-songwriter Peggy Seeger: still in the vanguard of her...
If American music has a royal family, it’s surely the Seeger clan. Charles, the patriarch, the composer, musicologist and teacher who could be...
Album: Lady Dan - I Am the Prophet
There’s a line in “No Home”, the staggering centrepiece of Lady Dan’s debut album, that perhaps sums up the project. “Wolves will never...
Reissue CDs Weekly: Wes Montgomery - The NDR Hamburg Studio...
Speaking to America’s Hit Parader magazine in August 1967...
Night in Paradise review - lukewarm bloodbath
Since launching his directing career in 2011 with The Showdown, Park Hoon-jung has established himself as a promising devotee of the...
DVD/Blu-ray: Catch Us If You Can
Catch Us If You Can, the 1965 road movie starring Barbara Ferris and the eponymous drummer and guiding force of the Dave Clark Five,...
Sequin in a Blue Room review - soullessness and sex in Sydne...
Sequin is the screen name for the questing 16-year...
The Seven Deadly Sins / Mahagonny Songspiel, Royal Opera onl...
There are so many good ideas, so much talented hard work from the singers of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme and two dancers, such a...
Album: Alan Vega - Mutator
If there’s someone who could claim to have proved Arnold Schoenberg’s pithy phrase “If it is art, it is not for all” it was Alan Vega. His and...