CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
Like electronica, metal is an umbrella term that contains multitudes of micro-genres. How do you fancy sludge, blackened crust or funeral doom? And that’s just scraping the surface. One of the more common ones is metalcore, a portmanteau word for the heaviest metal crashing into hardcore punk. A rising band in this category is São Paulo’s AXTY whose fourth album is as inventive as it is apoplectic.They’re a three-piece, with frontman Felipe Martins delivering hacksaw-throated, gurgle-growled lyrics. There’s also drummer Gabriel Marques and guitarist Jonathas Xavier, and one of them Read more ...
Katie Colombus
A lost weekend is time you can't account for: you come out of it changed, unsure quite how. Phoebe Bridgers, it seems, has been living inside one. Six years after Punisher, she returns not with interviews but phone-free pop-up shows for $20, and an album that drifts further out than anything she's done before: sixteen songs about losing her father, ending a relationship and falling headlong in love."The Outside" opens muffled and distorted, Bridgers' delicate voice melting through the static as she watches someone "get carried away", frozen in place but not afraid. It is an introduction to an Read more ...
Joe Muggs
It’s easy to miss what an interesting artist Carly Simon is. I’ve certainly been guilty of it; bar a few undeniable gems, it felt like her oeuvre was based in a 1970s white rock music retreat from the innovations of the previous decade – a footnote to The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and Elton John’s mega-big building of a new conventionality. It didn’t help that contemporary reviews or cultural commentary tended to mention her almost entirely in gossipy terms about her glamour and social / romantic life – essentially through a prism of her relationship to famous men. As such I ignored her later Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Temple Songs opens with “Arc Still Bends”. The song begins with filigreed acoustic guitar and Laura Veirs singing “the arc still bends towards justice, right?” “So why I am still holding this fucking sign,” she continues. It’s not hard to get where this is coming from. Atmospherically, what’s conjured suggests the glacial shimmer of Linda Perhacs. As the album beds in, a Joni Mitchell-evoking jazziness is apparent. A recurrent cross talk between Veirs’ lead voice and her dubbed-in backing vocals is another Perhacs-like quality. Lyrics are questioning, asking to be accepted at face value Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Czech animator Jiří Trnka’s rise to international fame mirrored that of his contemporary Karel Zeman, both filmmakers producing work as sophisticated as anything from the Disney studios but utterly different in style. Trnka (1912-1969) was a polymath, a gifted puppet maker, graphic artist, illustrator, sculptor and costume designer whose earliest shorts featured conventional two-dimensional drawings. Stop-motion animation offered more possibilities; however, one reason for Trnka’s preference for puppets being that it was possible to show figures in a state of stillness, of contemplation. His Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Tread softly into Jon Batiste’s third volume of his Piano Series, Monk Meditations, drawing on and drawing out a number of introspective solo piano pieces inspired and adapted from Thelonius Monk. It’s one of two Monk-based sets (Monk Movements is its twin) that land on the same day along with a second volume of Black Mozart – August 14. While Movements sees Monk classics, such as the title track of his 1967 album Brilliant Corners, transform into classical piano suites, Batiste’s aim on Meditations is to erase barriers between jazz, blues and classical by embracing a minimalist, ambient New Read more ...
Joe Muggs
On first impressions, London vocal trio FLO’s music can seem very familiar. Their sound has always been that of American R&B rooted heavily in the 00s – before EDM throb and then hazy, narcotic atmospheres started to dominate it – with vocal acrobatics and rich harmonies front and centre. And the lyrics very much have the preoccupations of that era: luxury, self-confidence, a lot of sex, and “popping bottles in the club”. On their second album, though, the closer you listen, the more you realise that there are some extremely interesting things going on the lyrics, which drip with Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Comparatively speaking, Rotherham appears in the news more than most British towns of an equivalent size. And much of that news is not good. Much of it is representative of poverty, social disenfranchisement, and the ugly face of flag-waving Britain. But self-released, 2020s grass roots indie rockers The Reytons offer a reminder of working class community power, a band who hark back to the days when the only way out of big city estates was through football and pop.Their last couple of albums (of four, including this one), made it to No.1 and No.2 in the UK album charts, respectively. This Read more ...
Ibi Keita
There is something quietly reassuring to me about hearing a record that knows exactly what it wants to be. Wales-born duo Overmono's latest release Pure Devotion isn't chasing reinvention or festival-sized maximalism. Instead, it leans into groove, atmosphere and immaculate production, trusting subtlety over spectacle.The opening tracks, "Lockup" and "Knight in Shining Prada", immediately set the tone. Both pulse with an unmistakable French house influence, their filtered loops, buoyant basslines and crisp drums recalling the house party fantasies of Daft Punk. It's a comparison that feels Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s absolutely normal to expect the weird and the wonderful each time those prolific Australian psychedelicists, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard release a new album. Yet, guitars are also pretty much expected to be somewhere in the mix. Not so with Alien Metal: their 28th album in 14 years.Fuelled by Joey Walker’s recent synthesizer obsession, Alien Metal apparently evolved from an extended seamless Eurorack jam that took in techno, breakbeat, house and the electronic end of prog rock to make something that is part thumping hardcore foot-stomper and part tripped out hard-spinner. However Read more ...
Ellie Roberts
The staggering musical talent of Citizen has become more and more apparent with each album they have released, and Halcyon Blues continues the trend.This album would in fact be a perfectly acceptable place to start for anyone who is still missing out on this band. Opening track “Good Fortune” immediately invites you to sit next to them before they take you on an almost 40 minute immersive experience, offering refined but effortless elements of everything that makes them unique as the tracks go on. Mat Kerekes’ imaginative, alluring lyricism and soothing but commanding vocals lead the way Read more ...
Guy Oddy
These days, Alfie Agnew is a Maths professor at California State University Fullerton. Back in the 1980s, however, he was singer and guitarist with US punks the Adolescents, as well as DI along with Sean Elliot. However, while academia might provide a more regular income than playing music, it clearly isn’t anything like as much fun. So, for the last decade, the pair of them have been scratching that itch in their side hustle, Professor and the Madman, along with Rat Scabies and Paul Gray of the Damned.Dreamworld is far from a group of punk veterans revisiting old glories though. In fact, its Read more ...