CDs/DVDs
Album: La Roux - SupervisionThursday, 06 February 2020
10 years ago, a wave of exciting femme-pop was cresting, women taking the reins with singular visions; the results were shiny, personally honest, inventive and ebullient, from Gaga to Adele and beyond. A leading light was La Roux, a duo fronted by... Read more... |
Album: Sepultura – QuadraWednesday, 05 February 2020
After 35 years on the global scene, Sepultura are entering the Twenties with the force of great quality metal music. Quadra is unlikely to bring new hits that resemble Sepultura’s classic “Roots Bloody Roots”, 1996, or “Refuse/Resist”, 1993; however... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Black AngelTuesday, 04 February 2020
Waking at a pivotal moment in Black Angel, alcoholic songwriter-pianist Marty Blair (Dan Duryea) momentarily mistakes his new professional partner Catherine Bennett (June Vincent) for his estranged wife Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling). Each is a... Read more... |
Album: Seth Lakeman - A Pilgrim's TaleMonday, 03 February 2020
The Dartmoor folk star’s latest album launches into a dramatic retelling of the voyage of the Mayflower, from its departure from the iconic Mayflower Steps in Plymouth (actually, the real steps are down to the women’s loo at the Admiral MacBride pub... Read more... |
Album: Isobel Campbell - There Is No OtherSaturday, 01 February 2020
There Is No Other’s third track “Vultures” is about Isobel Campbell’s adopted city Los Angeles and the music business. Instead of assuming a hard-edged tone the song is crystalline, reflecting on “vultures, circling round… tall trees reaching so... Read more... |
Album: Meghan Trainor - Treat MyselfFriday, 31 January 2020
Here it is, at last: Meghan Trainor's long-anticipated third album, scheduled for last summer, but mysteriously delayed because Trainor wanted to "add more songs". Not everyone was convinced by that story – there were rumours she was really planning... Read more... |
Album: Kesha - High RoadWednesday, 29 January 2020
Doubters presume Kesha’s multi-million-selling success derives mainly from a decade ago, the time of her monster hit, “Tik Tok”? Since then, the thinking goes, after the gruelling, much-publicised sexual abuse court cases with Dr Luke, she’s more a... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: BaitMonday, 27 January 2020
Mark Jenkin’s black and white masterpiece about clashes between incomers and locals in a Cornish fishing village was made on a 1976 clockwork Bolex camera that doesn’t record sound – all that’s added later, including the actors’ voices – and hand-... Read more... |
Album: Sam Lee, Old Wow - a hymn to Mother NatureMonday, 27 January 2020
Folk music has always thrived in times of adversity and danger and in times when (to coin a phrase) “nothing is real”. All the above apply now and folk music, its roots in the dirt of our septic isle, speaks to us eloquently as balm, warning, and... Read more... |
Album: Squirrel Flower - I Was Born SwimmingSaturday, 25 January 2020
The first album from the Boston-bred songwriter Squirrel Flower opens and closes with autobiographical songs. “I-80” opens with the artist - real name Ella O’Connor Williams - giving up on lyrics, poetry and, later, giving up on love, its rootless... Read more... |
Album: Black Lips - Sing In A World That’s Falling ApartThursday, 23 January 2020
Since first getting together at the fag end of the 20th century, Black Lips have largely played the role of garage rockers with a hint of country and western about them. The songs on their latest album, however, turns their schtick somewhat on its... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Night TideTuesday, 21 January 2020
Dennis Hopper’s first starring role, in Night Tide from 1961, as a naïve but curious young sailor bewitched by a siren, offers a strange mirror to his role as the evil Frank Booth in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986). If anything, he offers a preview... Read more... |
