CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
Nick Mulvey’s first two albums, First Mind in 2014 and Wake Up Now in 2017, are among the loveliest singer-songwriter fare released this century. With his last album, 2022’s New Mythology, his ayahuasca-fuelled search for spiritual meaning went full-blown mystic. Where has it led him? To Jesus.The first Dark Harvest album (the second is due in the autumn) is touched by Christianity, notably on the slightly preachy “My Maker” (“God shares His secrets with those who fear Him”). But, like Bob Dylan’s first Born Again outing, Slow Train Coming, upon occasion the spark of religion lights the fuse Read more ...
Joe Muggs
A couple of months ago, I wrote here that Lady Gaga was the godmother of the new generation of ostentatiously “theatre kid” pop stars – but actually, perhaps I was wrong and Miley Cyrus deserves that title. Ever since her teens, she has consistently gone the extra mile in adding pizazz and razzle dazzle to a gloriously messy discography and personal presence, smashing together her Disney Channel past and country royalty family ties with garish influences from across club and hip hop culture and a punkish, pansexual, psychedelic presentation that, given where she’s come from, makes her perhaps Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Ready to Live a Lie is so sonically vaporous it almost isn’t there. While the album’s 11 tracks draw from continental European musical archetypes – specifically Italian disco and Eurovision-styled balladry – there is little solidity which can be grasped. The wispy clouds in the album’s cover image are emblematic.Taken individually, tracks can be lovely: slices of glacial electro-dance, of sighing balladry. There is pulsing album opener “The Other Days”; a glistening cover of Pet Shop Boys’ “Rent”; the languid, bossa nova-infused “He's Not You”; “Guarding Shell”, with its vague intimations of Read more ...
graham.rickson
DEFA was East Germany’s state film studio, operating between 1946 and 1992. Among its vast output were four lavish science fiction adventures, released between 1960 and 1976 and shown here in gleaming new transfers. Each one, to varying degrees, depicts the future through a rose-coloured lens, the world evolving into a utopian socialist paradise where disputes are settled peacefully.While Hollywood sci-fi films tended to resemble action-packed westerns set in space, these DEFA features are more cerebral and thoughtful. Their tone is closer to the humanist ethos espoused by Gene Roddenberry’s Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
This album Firedove (Sony Classical), surely, has to be seen as part of a bigger story: that of organist, choir director and broadcaster Anna Lapwood, who, still in her twenties – just – has become an essential part of the (often cautious and conservative) classical music fabric of this country at a pace which defies belief. She works punishingly hard and has thoroughly earned her pivotal position both as performer and as advocate. Her passion for the organ as an instrument with a unique power to appeal to large audiences has already upturned perceptions, changed attitudes, broadened Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Morcheeba reach their 30th anniversary this year. The 1990s band, a unit once synonymous with phrases such as “trip hop” and “chill-out”, are up to album number 11. Their multi-million-selling oeuvre is based around a hazy combination of low-slung hip hop beats, stoned electronic atmospherics, spacey, slightly John Barry wah-wah guitar, and the luxurious voice of frontwoman Skye Edwards. Because the formula is always approximately the same, each album wins or loses dependent on whether they’ve nailed a sweet set of songs. On this occasion they do.Morcheeba has been the duo of singer Skye Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Ammar 808 is the high octane vehicle for the Tunisian-born producer Sofyann Ben Youssef, now based in Denmark. His first album Maghreb United (2018) struck hard and fast in a field already well-populated by the fusion of traditional Arab sounds and modern electronics. It was a marriage made in heaven. His second album Global Control/Invisible Invasion (2020) explored links with South Indian sounds, but in the latest, he returns to his roots and the result is a frenetic and very danceable mix of ancient and modern.In the company of some of Tunisia’s most popular vocalists, the producer weaves Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
How do you solve a problem like Sports Team? Taking them at face value, they’re a living metaphor for the slow music biz relegation of the working class in favour of the privileged, a bunch of snarky ex-Cambridge University students who make smug guitar pop, a Brideshead Revisited version of The Kooks. And yet, and yet, that’s too trite, too obvious; they mine their background and image with self-awareness, their songs smart, ironic observations of the world they’re perceived to inhabit. They’re gunning for Roxy Music’s elegant trick of rendering monied louche wryly cool. On their third album Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Stereolab always walked a knife edge between deadly serious and dead silly. Their sound was constructed around the sort of reference points – French, German and Brazilian psychedelia, Radiophonic Workshop sound effects, 1960s library music – which back in pre-streaming, pre-discogs days of the early 1990s when they started out you had to be a proper nerd to have any grasp of.Lyrics were shot through with references to obscure Marxist theory, situationism, obsolete electronics catalogues and so on, with layer upon layer of absurdism and earnestness interleaved to the point you could very Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Tell me what you see” invites Robert Forster during Strawberries' “Tell it Back to me.” The album’s eight songs do not, however, necessarily say what Forster actually sees. These vignettes about encounters between characters come across as imaginary scenarios.This contrasts with the former Go-Betweens lynchpin’s last album, The Candle and the Flame, which was a direct – albeit allusive – reaction to the diagnosis and treatment of his wife Karin Bäumler’s cancer.“Tell it Back to me,” the tale opening Forster’s ninth solo album, tells of a man – an English teacher – who meets a woman who Read more ...
Ibi Keita
Rico Nasty’s new album LETHAL signals a shift in direction, but whether it is a bold evolution or a step towards something less distinct is up for debate. Known for her fiery rage-rap and punk energy, Rico tones things down here, trading some of her wild unpredictability for a more polished, trend-aware sound.Tracks like “TEETHSUCKER (YEAH 3x)” bring back her signature distortion and chaotic charm, but those moments are scattered. Songs like “Butterfly Kisses” and “Soul Snatcher” lean into vulnerability, showing a softer side of Rico that feels genuine, but are not especially groundbreaking. Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Metalhorse is a concept album that uses visions of a dilapidated funfair as a metaphor for life’s various ups and downs. It especially seems to concentrate on the downs though, especially when it employs opening lines like “My best friend’s dying” on “Nothin Worth Winnin”.Metalhorse is also Billy Nomates’ third album but the first to be recorded with a full band. More surprisingly, it also sees Sleaford Mods’ former collaborator, Tor Maries veer away from her previous DIY fare and towards less spikey, more middle of the road, yacht rock sounds. This largely involves replacing melodic heft Read more ...