CDs/DVDs
Erin Lewis
It’s tempting to focus on the peripheral aspects of Olivia Rodrigo’s career, dissecting who a particular song is about in relation to her personal life. However where Taylor Swift, an early source of inspiration for Rodrigo, overtly ties her music to her feuds and relationships, causing them to bleed into each other, Rodrigo has seemed keen to maintain a degree of separation between art and life. This means that even though you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love is widely believed to be about Rodrigo’s British actor ex Louis Partridge, the album doesn’t feel preoccupied with minutiae of Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
I just don’t get it. Jon Batiste, deservedly, has a huge career as pianist, composer, inspirer. The prospect of his forthcoming extended residency in various formations at KOKO in London is an exciting one. But after several attempts to reach the opposite conclusion, I still have no clue why someone decided it was a good idea to “drop” Black Mozart – Batiste Piano Series Vol. 2.The narrative from Decca is that it is part of a series which started with Beethoven Blues, and which is set to continue with two more droppings, both of them albums inspired by Thelonious Monk, in just a couple of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
As I started to write this review, I found that Tucker Zimmerman died in January this year. This was news to me, sad news, made worse by the fact he died in a house fire at his home in Belgium, alongside his wife of more than five decades, Marie-Claire. I’d no idea and, as a fan taken by unhappy surprise, it likely affects my writing and perspective on this, his final album. At 84, Zimmerman was not young, and had decades of sporadically released, underheard music behind him, starting with his Tony Visconti-produced 1968 debut, Ten Songs (which David Bowie listed in Vanity Fair in 2003 Read more ...
Guy Oddy
While it’s four years since the Bobby Lees’ excellent Bellevue album was released, they haven’t been stumbling around in the slow lane since then. Having gone on a burnout-enforced hiatus in 2023 with guitarist Nick Casa moving on to pastures new, singer and all-round Renaissance woman Sam Quartin has appeared in a couple of films, while rhythm section, Macky Bowman and Kendall Wind have been seen playing with veteran garage rocker, Jon Spencer of late. So, they’ve certainly been keeping themselves busy.This busyness may explain the brevity of their new disc, which only clocks in at a little Read more ...
Joe Muggs
There’s not – and never has been, really – that much discourse about commercial dance music as music. It’s either talked about by ageing doomers (“oh the kids just want to film on their phones, they don’t dance any more”), as spectacle or social phenomenon, without ever really differentiating EDM from big room house from bassline from whatever else. Not that musicians like Sonny Fodera probably care, mind. Over 13 years and now six albums, racking up quarter-billion stream songs at a time, and ubiquitous in pop radio as much as mega-raves, Fodera has constantly trodden an interesting line Read more ...
Mark Kidel
In a cultural world with no frontiers, French-Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf has a musical CV that ranges very widely: collaborations with Angélique Kidjo, Sting, Quincy Jones, Amadou et Mariam, Archie Shepp and countless others. While rooted in Lebanese and Arab tradition, he moves with ease through jazz, rock, hip-hop and other genres. His new album, Vol 2 of the Michel-Ange project dedicated to his trumpet-playing father Nassim whom he revered as a kind of musical Michelangelo, is once again focused on a contagiously festive brass sound, part-Balkan Roma, part-Herb Albert and the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Back when One Direction alumnus Niall Horan released his second album, Heartbreak Weather, in 2020, songs such as “Nice to Meet Ya”, “Arms of a Stranger” and “Small Talk” hinted that new sonic adventures might be opening. Not in the vanguard sense of, say, St Vincent or FKA Twigs, but hints of envelope-pushing, nonetheless. These did not lead anywhere and, now up to album number four, he’s settled to a very 2026 gumbo that melds 1970s West Coast soft rock/yacht rock with a pinch of indie edge, but without the tunes to match his own poppiest (such as the contagiously joyful, if saccharine, “ Read more ...
Erin Lewis
Lizzo used to be fun. For a long time, the now 38-year-old singer-songwriter emitted a vibrant energy but that has lately seeped out of her music. This may be down to any of a litany of reasons that span her musical and personal life, but the result is the same regardless: Bitch is a deeply uninspired album. Her lyrics, which used to be full of interesting turns of phrase, if occasionally corny or overwrought, are now flat repetitions of previous work. Proclamations of self-love on “That Grrrl” are just recycled phrases from her number one single “About Damn Time” and “Bitch” is just “ Read more ...
Joe Muggs
The concept of political rap has always been a slippery fish. Even as hip hop first hit the mainstream, there was a myth perpetuated by well-meaning cheerleaders that it was a form of protest music first and for partying second – and this is an assumption that then metastasised into received opinion among critics and rock-centric audiences that worthy, angry rap was more authentic and had more value, than anything fun. This is, of course, patronising, silly, and a false dichotomy. It’s a distortion of an entire, vast, culture which has all too often led to mediocre talents (Michael Franti), Read more ...
Tom Carr
A new album from Evanescence doesn’t come around all that often. But when they do, they are always worth at least a pause and cursory listen: their reputation precedes them ever since their seminal hit “Bring Me To Life” first took over the airwaves in the early noughties.In the years since and across their five previous albums, their dramatic blend of modern Nu Metal stylings with symphonic melodies is an often-captivating premise that is hard to come by elsewhere. Best embodied by Amy Lee’s signature vocals and lyrics, they have an uncanny knack at tying up varied textures and influences Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Freshly-exhumed from the vaults, this latest Children's Film Foundation selection follows an established template. We get nine pacy short features taken from different eras in the CFF’s existence (in this case, between 1954 and 1980), along with a selection of choice extras. BFI producer and film historian Vic Pratt’s booklet notes are worth this set’s purchase price alone: that “CFF films were good, clean, fast-moving fun: short, sweet, high on kid-based comedy hi-jinks and straightforward adventure; low on boring grown-ups’ stuff like romance or overly complicated plots” pretty much sums up Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Irish fiddler Martin Hayes, star of The Gloaming supergroup, says of Ryan Young: “He is an up-and-coming musician who is gaining more and more well-deserved recognition. I feel that he has the potential to make a very significant contribution to the Scottish tradition.” And beyond his carefully measured words, Hayes has gone on to produce Young’s third album, as well as play on a couple of tune sets, which means you can strike out “up and coming” and replace it with “fully arrived”. And what an album it is – the playing, the discipline, invention and feel is exemplary. Young’s Read more ...