CDs/DVDs
Album: A Certain Ratio - It All Comes Down to ThisSaturday, 13 April 2024
After a long period of relative inactivity, the last five years has had A Certain Ratio getting the bit between their teeth, trying out new sounds and releasing new tunes at a rate not seen since the early 1980s. It All Comes Down to This is their... Read more... |
Album: Maggie Rogers - Don't Forget MeFriday, 12 April 2024
For the past almost two years, Maggie Rogers has taken an unexpectedly special place in my heart and musical tastes. Upon reviewing her previous album, Surrender, because of the difference in style and sound to my usual tastes I was caught... Read more... |
Album: Lizz Wright - ShadowThursday, 11 April 2024
Lizz Wright has established herself, over a number of steadfastly excellent albums, as one of the very best vocalists of her generation. Not so long after a gripping live album recorded in Berlin Holding Space (2022), her latest offering shines with... Read more... |
Album: Shabaka - Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its GraceWednesday, 10 April 2024
Gal Beckerman’s 2023 book The Quiet Before makes a plea that if ideas, revolutionary or otherwise, are to grow, there needs to be a retreat from “our current cacophony”. And if there is one artist who is truly living out that principle in his... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Happy End (Šťastný konec)Tuesday, 09 April 2024
Happy End’s big draw is its central conceit, that of a convicted murderer narrating his life story backwards from the guillotine to the cradle. Made in 1967 by Oldfřich Lipský (1924-1986), renowned as a director of off-beat comedies, you wonder how... Read more... |
Album: Nia Archives - Silence is LoudMonday, 08 April 2024
At 24, Bradfordian Nia Archives has already clearly marked out her musical territory.While many of her Gen Z contemporaries have embraced the rave, jungle and drum’n’bass sounds of the early-mid 1990s, she’s done it more wholeheartedly than most:... Read more... |
Album: Fabiana Palladino - Fabiana PalladinoSunday, 07 April 2024
A Fabiana Palladino album has felt like a possibility since the early 2010s. Back then she was a session musician touring with the likes of SBTRKT, Jessie Ware and Sampha. In 2017 she was approached by the elusive producer Jai Paul to join his new... Read more... |
Album: Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties - In Lieu of FlowersSaturday, 06 April 2024
Perfecting Ernest Hemingway’s advice that “a writer should create living people; people not characters”, In Lieu of Flowers sees Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties’ Dan Campbell invite fans back into the fictional universe of open-wound Aaron in a... Read more... |
Album: Khruangbin - A LA SALAFriday, 05 April 2024
This is a reviewer’s nightmare: it’s literally just Khruangbin doing what Khruangbin do. As ever, the Texan trio are rolling out laid-back psychedelic spaghetti western Tex-Mex country-soul-funk groove after laid-back psychedelic spaghetti western... Read more... |
Album: The Black Keys - Ohio PlayersThursday, 04 April 2024
It’s been a winding road to album number 12 for blues rock duo Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, better known as The Black Keys. Albums one to five – from debut The Big Come Up to 2008’s Attack & Release – all played in a modern,... Read more... |
Album: The Libertines - All Quiet on the Eastern EsplanadeWednesday, 03 April 2024
Carl Barat and Peter Doherty are "the Glimmer Twins" of their own wayward trajectory through the worlds of rock and roll, stardom, drugs, distraction and destruction.The noughties indie stars, releasing their first album in a decade,... Read more... |
Album: Beyoncé - Cowboy CarterMonday, 01 April 2024
The second act of a trilogy, launched with “Renaissance” (2022), Beyoncé’s latest release has been loudly proclaimed as her “Country” album. In a tradition of surprising and controversial self-reinventions that includes among others Bob Dylan’s... Read more... |
