CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
Since the release of her last album, Eternal Sunshine, in 2024, Ariana Grande, already a multi-platform superstar, has exploded to even greater fame, via the Wicked film franchise. Given her peaking global profile, one might have expected the 33-year-old, ex-teen TV idol to come charging out with a maximalist pop whopper in the vein of, say, Lady Gaga’s Mayhem. But, no, she’s headed to contemplative waters.Where Eternal Sunshine, a funky Dua Lipa-esque disco riff, celebrated pop, petal (sold to us in lowercase letters) has the smeary, slightly opiated-sounding production that the kids seem to Read more ...
Joe Muggs
You can’t really understand house music without grasping the influence of the Black American church. As it coalesced from the remnants of disco in Eighties Chicago, New York and New Jersey, the style brought together important influences: new technology, queer culture, Latin rhythms, and crucially, a sense that the club is a church. All of those joyous piano riffs, full throated singers, songs of peace and harmony / coming together / hope for a better world – which would in turn be sampled and used to amplify the ecstasy experience for UK ravers – and the sense of dancing, even without that Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
This album is such a remarkable document, and on so many levels. Perhaps its main "story" is that it could well be the very last studio recording by Jack DeJohnette (1942-2025), having been made during sessions on two successive days at a studio near the great drummer’s home just outside Woodstock in upstate New York, at a time when he was already avoiding travel, and, as it was to turn out, not quite a year before he died.DeJohnette was indisputably one of jazz’s greats and the sheer wonder of his musicianship shines through on this wonderful record. As Ethan Iverson has written, among jazz Read more ...
Graham Rickson
“Your civilisation is young but controlled by minds which are old,” says one of the alien Alphoids in Toomorrow to the four young musicians beamed aboard his spacecraft. He’s also hinting at one of the film’s problems; Toomorrow often feels like it’s been helmed by a creative team rather creakier than the young target audience, one contemporary review describing it as "a film for youngsters made by oldsters who are attempting to commercialise everything that’s dear to the teenage heart". That parts of it it resemble an extended episode of The Monkees is unsurprising, given that one of the Read more ...
Joe Muggs
We’ve said it before but it bears repeating. The globalisation of music culture, from ultra mainstream to underground, in the past decade has been a bigger revolution, affecting more people, than punk or acid house ever were. Case in point is the rise of South African dance music, in particular the slow and sensuous amapiano sound which exploded worldwide in 2020 as millions stuck inside in COVID lockdown simultaneously discovered its mood-lifting properties via online DJ sets. It got adopted by stars from Beyoncé and Drake down, created huge DJ careers, and has generated one bona fide Read more ...
Tom Carr
If there is only one artist who you could say is in their moment, then it would be hard to look past Charli XCX. Having set in motion a whole cultural zeitgeist with previous album Brat, the pop and dance extraordinaire has forayed into fashion and film, lending to the score of Emerald Fennel’s take on Wuthering Heights last year. With seemingly the world at her beck and call, Charli could have gone in any direction for album seven. Having conquered the mainstream with Brat, marrying electropop with dance and rave to wide acclaim, the easy choice could have been to return to that well Read more ...
Ibi Keita
Fans have been waiting for a new Strokes album for six years, and after a few listens, Reality Awaits left me feeling more disappointed than excited. There are moments where the band remind you why they've been one of the most influential rock bands of the last 25 years. The guitars still lock together effortlessly, the rhythm section is as tight as ever, and there are flashes of melodies that stick around long after the album ends. I can hear what they were aiming for, and I respect that they didn't just make The New Abnormal again. Some reviews have praised that willingness to push Read more ...
Mark Kidel
It’s always a pleasure to meet again with Charles Lloyd, whose sweet and expressive tone first enchanted me as a teenager in 1963, when he graced the Chico Hamilton Quartet, along with the guitarist Gabor Szabo – notably on the classic album Passin’ Thru Lloyd’s – affinity with Eastern spirituality which he demonstrates in his latest release, a homage to the sadly missed Indian percussion master Zakir Hussain, was always evident, long before his first visit to India in 2009, when most of the tracks on this album were recorded.Lloyd had first heard Indian music in 1957 – Ravi Shankar and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The key track gives the album its title. “Where the Fades Meet” opens with swelling strings, which are swiftly underpinned by groovy, shuffling, percussion. The lyrics are carried by a chorale singing of a “fading signal”, “stillness” and “shadows.” It seems to about what lies in the gaps between the perceivable. The melody has a vaguely eastern Mediterranean lilt. Overall, it leans into evoking an exotica-inclined Rotary Connection – the late-Sixties/early Seventies outfit that was a core influence on acid jazz.“Where the Fades Meet” is the sixth track on the seventh album – there has also Read more ...
Graham Rickson
The completion of the Berlin Wall in 1961 severely damaged the East German industrial economy, the fallout soon affecting the GDR’s film industry. December 1965 saw the 11th Plenum of the Central Committee of the East German Socialist Unity Party. Nominally a forum where the country’s economic future could be discussed and planned, the gathering also addressed perceived deficiencies in the GDR’s cultural output. Books, plays and music were attacked, and 11 films made by the state production house DEFA, some still under production, were taken out of circulation. One of these was Frank Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
I didn’t want to review Shania Twain. My sense of her is of ancient mega-selling hits I can’t stand. I didn’t even go to her Sunday afternoon set at Glastonbury 2024. But it’s difficult to get most music writers to cover the biggest pop stars of our era. So here we are. And, you know what? It's a much better album than I was anticipating.I wasn’t looking forward to slating a smorgasbord of nursery rhyme, line-dance cheese. Given her remit, it felt unfair and pointless. But I’m off the hook. Even the songs that head that way, such as the breakbeat-rolling “That’s the Money”, boast acceptable Read more ...
Liz Thomson
What an extraordinary band are The Punch Brothers, a bunch of conspicuously talented musicians whose six albums never fail to delight and stimulate as they push the boundaries of acoustic music to what you think would be beyond breaking point. It’s been said that they’ve taken “bluegrass to its next evolutionary stage, drawing equal inspiration from the brain and the heart”.Virtuosos all, The Unsung Adventures of Punch Brothers marks the debut of fiddler Brittany Haas with the band which, in addition to Chris Thiele, includes Chris Eldridge on guitar, Paul Kowert on bass, and Noam Pikelny on Read more ...