CDs/DVDs
Kieron Tyler
Simple Minds: Celebrate – The Greatest Hits +Of all the bands which surfaced in 1977 in response to punk, Simple Minds occupy a singular status. Despite line-up changes, they have never split up. After their 1982 success with “Promised You a Miracle”, they have never surrendered the glittering prize. Their enviable career is defined by a tenacity which can go hand-in-hand with a music that runs on rails. Although they can’t be faulted for sometimes putting their musical development on hold to embrace causes and the needs of the stadium, this chronologically sequenced triple CD suggests their Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
“That’s the sad thing today,” said Martin Gore of Depeche Mode in the Guardian last Friday, “Most people who get involved in music are so normal. It’s supposed to be full of weirdos.” What’s great about the Flaming Lips, whatever your opinion of the sound they make, is that they are a major league indie-rock band who truly are weirdos.Led by the maverick Wayne Coyne, renowned for wandering across his audiences in a giant transparent bubble, they are both imaginative and unpredictable. Unlike so many bands who simply adopt psychedelia as a sonic style, they understand the psychedelic mindset, Read more ...
Rob Copsey
Those who have seen the music video that accompanies NKOTB’s new single “Remix (I Like The)” may be shocked to learn they own a wicked sense of humour. The clip itself sees an unassuming fan - played by “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” actress Artemis Pebdani - strutting her stuff a little too exuberantly at a pool party. While it’s a brilliantly self-aware nod to the now mature groupies they’ve no doubt encountered on their recent world tour with the Backstreet Boys, the song itself is a perky slice of dance-pop that sounds - whisper it - surprisingly fresh.Unfortunately, it’s also a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
If you go down to the woods today, it’s possible a Huldra might be encountered. A Norwegian wood, that is. She goes by other names across Scandinavia, but this be-tailed woman is to be avoided. Men lured into her lair are never seen again. Thale turns the legend on its head and tells the tale of Thale, a Huldra who’s been captured by a man and imprisoned in his basement. The story of the Siren-like Huldra is one that’s ripe for a film treatment, especially after Norway’s Troll Hunter became an international hit. Unfortunately, Thale is somewhat undercooked.Thale’s just-over-70 minutes opens Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Among the artists Aly Spaltro, the 23-year-old who makes music as Lady Lamb the Beekeeper, calls to mind is Laura Marling. The whispery vocals of the youthful English folk singer may not seem like the most obvious reference point for Spaltro’s guttural, animalistic howl but bear with me: like Marling’s, Spaltro’s vocals are heavy with a wisdom far beyond her years and, much like Marling’s, the subject matter of Spaltro’s songs is often deeply horrific.Ripely Pine is a debut album four years in the making, but has lost none of its rawness for that. It opens in contemplative mode; Spaltro part- Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Cold War Kids remain all mixed up. The Californian band appeared in 2006 bearing tasty blues-rock indie that leapt about in the same places Jack White hangs out. There was lots of media blather about their being a Christian band since most of them had met at the private Christian college, Biola University. Then it turned out they had much more complex and conflicted theological perspectives than were easy to sum up in music mag pull-quotes.Their first two albums were lively, punchy efforts in the blues-indie vein but on their last one, Mine is Yours, they appeared to be strugging to find Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Thomas Vinterberg made his name with Festen’s queasy social discomfort, but has struggled to match his Danish compatriot and Dogme 95 co-founder Lars von Trier’s iconoclastic career. The Hunt’s stomach-knotting intensity as an innocent man is accused of paedophilia restores him to the front rank.Mads Mikkelsen is Lucas, a small-town nursery worker coming back to life after a bruising divorce, and loved by the kids in his charge. Klara (Anikka Wedderkopp, pictured right), the daughter of his childhood friend Theo (Thomas Bo Larsen), is an imaginative, sad-eyed child. Hurt by Lucas’s chiding of Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Mark Hamilton, with his bushy beard and plaid shirts, looks like he might be the singer with indie hipsters Grizzly Bear. In fact he is Woodpigeon - an act with a similar sound, but whom some consider a little more twee. But, in truth, although Hamilton and friends can sound quite light, there are very few albums anywhere that can match the pastoral beauty of Woodpigeon’s first three releases. On Thumbtacks and Glue, however, the introspective Canadian seems to have decided that prettiness is not enough.Much of the album was written deep in the plains of Saskatchewan, where Hamilton travelled Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Stephen Stills: Carry OnSprawling across these four discs is the curious saga of the megastar who fell to earth. From early 1967, when Stephen Stills's song "For What It's Worth" became a Top 10 hit for LA folk-rockers Buffalo Springfield, to 1973's Down the Road, the second and final album with his band Manassas, Stills was leading the charge at the white-hot edge of the rock revolution. But after that his stock plummeted, his albums falling lower and lower in the charts as his imperious aura dwindled bewilderingly. He last appeared on Billboard's Top 200 when his 1984 disc Right Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Sympathy vote time is over. After Edwyn Collins suffered two cerebral haemorrhages in 2005 his comeback album, 2007’s Losing Sleep, was greeted with ecstatic reviews. It was a certainly pretty good, but maybe critics, being the old softies we are at heart, were slightly swayed by our unbridled joy at the fact that the former Orange Juice frontman was simply back in the game. So the new album, Understated, is the real test of whether Collins can still cut the musical mustard.The verdict was hardly ever in doubt. From the opening Northern Soul stomp of "Dilemma" to the unashamedly sentimental Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Unlike the Rai masters Khaled and Mami, who grew up in Algeria and are slightly uncomfortable with the audience-winning slide into rock, Rachid Taha is a beur, a North African born in France, raised on punk but with a thorough knowledge of his heritage: for him, music has always combined partying with political protest, fuelled by the righteous frustration of the second generation immigrant.On stage, Taha is an erratic performer: some of his gigs are magical invocations in which supercharged rock energy meets the complex rhythms of the Maghreb, and the singer darts around the stage displaying Read more ...
Jasper Rees
When Tess was released in 1979 much was made of the fact that Hardy’s western England had become Polanski’s northern France. Also, that he had cast a German actress in the title role with a wobbly Wessex burr. All these years on, Nastassja Kinksi’s performance looks as ravishing as ever, and doesn’t sound too bad either. An extra layer of otherness is added to her portrayal of a beautiful young country girl passively buffeted by fate – and seduced, possibly raped by a powerful male - with the recent revelation that her father Klaus Kinski abused her half-sister and tried it on with her too. Read more ...