CDs/DVDs
Album: Biig Piig - BubblegumThursday, 19 January 2023
Despite the silly name, the pigtails, the propensity for cutesy posing with ice cream and candy, and of course the title Bubblegum all playing with ingenue tropes, Biig Piig – or Jessica Smyth – is a serious proposition. Irish born, partly Spanish... Read more... |
Album: John Cale - MercyWednesday, 18 January 2023
John Cale has always walked a cutting-edge. At 80, he is still making music that stretches the mind. He is accompanied on his most recent album by a number of talented and original ground-breakers from both sides of the pond – from the eccentric and... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Reservoir DogsTuesday, 17 January 2023
Quentin Tarantino’s is the first voice you hear in Reservoir Dogs (1992), riffing on Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”. The gang of fellow robbers we see gathered round his character all talk like versions of the obsessive ex-video store clerk at times... Read more... |
Album: Ghost Woman - Anne, IfMonday, 16 January 2023
After a few listens, the second album from Evan Uschenko’s musical alter-ego Ghost Woman increasingly resembles something which could have emerged from the early Eighties Los Angeles scene dubbed the "Paisley Underground". However, this does not... Read more... |
Album: Billy Nomates - CactiSaturday, 14 January 2023
As second-wave feminism vouched in the late 1960s, the personal is political. For Billy Nomates, the moniker of Sleaford Mods-approved musician Tor Maries, that sentiment is rife.Entrenched in her eponymously titled debut in 2020, the songwriter... Read more... |
Album: The Subways - Uncertain JoysFriday, 13 January 2023
What do power-poppers do when they get older and return to the fray after an eight-year lay-off? If they’re the Subways, they recruit a new drummer, invest in a synthesiser and add some alt-rock sounds to their repertoire.That said, plenty else has... Read more... |
Album: Ladytron - Time's ArrowThursday, 12 January 2023
Time’s Arrow is electro goths Ladytron’s seventh album since the late Nineties and marks their post-Covid re-emergence into the modern dystopia that is our seemingly never-ending, Brexit-damaged Tory Britain. However, while it isn’t an album that’s... Read more... |
Album: Iggy Pop - Every LoserWednesday, 11 January 2023
Iggy Pop is one of rock’s great survivors but his fans are divided into two categories; those who claim he hasn’t done anything worthwhile since the late-Seventies and those, like this writer, who find much to enjoy, right up to the present.Every... Read more... |
Blu-ray: CroupierTuesday, 10 January 2023
The recently-departed director Mike Hodges was one of our most underrated filmmakers. Along with Get Carter (1971), a dark story of revenge starring Michael Caine, Croupier (1998) – newly released on 4K Ultra HD – is one of the most fascinating and... Read more... |
Album: Lucas Santtana - O ParaisoSaturday, 07 January 2023
Perfect timing for the release of Lucas Santtana’s new album release. The return of Lula to the presidency of Brazil has been received with a surge of optimism and joy. We have witnessed the end of Bolsonaro’s corrupt, opportunistic and... Read more... |
Album: Juni Habel - CarvingsFriday, 06 January 2023
Carvings is recorded so it sounds as if Juni Habel is adjacent to the listener’s ear. The Norwegian singer-songwriter may as well be inches away. Such intimacy can be disconcerting, especially as Carvings evokes a reflective melancholy. Its eight... Read more... |
Album: CVC - Get RealThursday, 05 January 2023
CVC stands for Church Village Collective, a six-piece who hail from the countryside near Cardiff. They were the best live act I saw last year (of a long list which includes Melt Yourself Down, Paul McCartney, The Prodigy and Wet Leg). It was a... Read more... |
