CDs/DVDs
Ibi Keita
Sweden’s most gloriously unhinged export is back, and Viagr Aboys might just be Viagra Boys at their most fun, feral and fully realised. This album doesn’t try to out-clever the world; it grabs it by the collar, shakes it around, and laughs in its face.From the opening notes, you can tell this isn’t the band trying to reinvent the wheel. They’ve set the wheel on fire and are using it to roast marshmallows. Sebastian Murphy howls and rambles through songs that feel like the soundtrack to a party thrown by nihilistic philosophers and drunk uncles. It’s chaotic, weird, and totally locked in.“Man Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Luster’s fifth track “Halo” has the lyric “mystical creatures… of Éirne,” referencing the Irish river and lough of the same name – both of which are associated with a mother goddess. Earlier, the album’s opener is a short, ambient-styled, scene-setting instrumental titled “Réalt,” where birds, wordless vocals and a harp are heard. Réalt translates from Irish Gaelic as “star.”The second album, then, by the Connemara-born Maria Somerville affirms her Irish origin (the track "Corrib" is named after another lough, one located in Connemara). In contrast, Luster cleaves stylistically to a form of Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
In this new album, three top-flight musicians based in Berlin, guitarist Ronny Graupe, Lucia Cadotsch (voice) and Kit Downes (piano) work collaboratively, superbly, as a real team. The music, some well-known tunes which Cadotsch sings hauntingly, and some original tunes by Graupe – it’s hard to tell them apart – just flows superbly.I can’t help musing, incidentally, that we are a long way here from the typical set-up in classical music, where pianists who accompany singers can often suffer death by adjectives such as “supportive” or “sensitive”. (I even remember one pianist getting Read more ...
Tim Cumming
For lovers of British folk from the 1970s on, Peter Knight is a potent force – renowned for his years with Steeleye Span, in their 1970s heyday and from 1980 through to 2013’s classic set written with Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith.The first iteration of his band Gigspanner was as a trio, releasing four albums between 2009 and 2017, while the big band version has released a live set and a studio album, 2020’s Natural Invention. The sextet comprises the original trio of Knight, guitarist Roger Flack and percussionist Sacha Trochet, alongside relative newcomers in Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Mark Morton is best known as a guitarist with US metallers Lamb of God. They’ve been going for three decades, established and successful, at the more extreme, thrashier end of the spectrum, but still achieving Top Five albums on the Billboard charts.He’s also been developing a solo career. His debut, 2019’s Anesthetic, was straightforward heavy rock, featuring names such as Mark Lanegan and Chester Bennington, but his follow-up is more interesting, a riff-tastic dive into southern boogie, tipping its hat to The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd.There are guests throughout again, but this Read more ...
Nick Hasted
A longshot of transgender Elvira (Volker Spengler) circled by gay men, assignation turning to assault as dawn mist rises from Frankfurt’s Main river, suggests Pasolini’s brutal 1975 assassination. Rainer Werner Fassbinder instead had in mind the suicide of his lover Armin Meier in May 1978.“He was like a wounded animal recoiling in pain,” his editor and last partner Juliane Lorenz recalls, withdrawing for a month to a friend’s flat, and finally emerging with a treatment for In a Year of 13 Moons. The finished work is bracketed by its dates of filming, 24 July 1978-28 August 1978, like a Read more ...
Liz Thomson
At a time when the powers that sadly be in America are trying their damnedest to erase and rewrite history, the latest release from Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson is a welcome reminder of the rich culture of the Black community and how much it has given to the world. Twenty years after the Carolina Chocolate Drops emerged from the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, North Carolina, two of its founding members get together once more for a collection that comes quite literally from the back porches and orchards amid the low rolling hills of the Piedmont, a discrete province of the Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Tenor titan Joe Lovano is thrilled by how Homage has turned out. He actually told me so himself in person a few weeks ago, and his new album has a very appealing, natural, free-flowing ease.Cleveland-born saxophonist Lovano first met Polish pianist Marcin Wasilewski and his trio in 2009 through Tomasz Stanko. The first recording together for ECM was made in 2019, Arctic Riff. They have kept on working together since then, touring mainly in Europe. In late 2023 the Polish group joined Lovano for a week’s residency at the Village Vanguard in New York. Rather than recording live at the club, all Read more ...
Mark Kidel
With a sound that's instantly recognisable, Justin Vernon – known as Bon Iver - continues to astonish. Purveyor of wonder, sculptor of enchanting sounds, he treads a miraculous path between melancholy and joy and has established himself as one of the great voice of contemporary indie pop.His new album built on the EP Sable, which he has supplemented with new material, further explorations of love, a search for identity whose mixture of innocence and wisdom steers well clear of self-indulgence. From his first album, For Emma Forever Ago (2007), recorded in solitary retreat, he has made a Read more ...
Ibi Keita
Black Country, New Road’s Forever Howlong is an ambitious reinvention that both captivates and, at times, frustrates. Following Isaac Wood’s departure, the band leans into a more collaborative and folk-inspired direction, trading their post-punk chaos for something more delicate and introspective. It’s a bold move, and one that yields some truly beautiful moments, even if the overall experience doesn’t fully resonate.Tracks like “Two Horses” and “The Boy” stand out for their emotional clarity and nuanced storytelling. The former, in particular, showcases the band’s ability to create intimacy Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The titular “lighthouse of glass” is a place where the narrator is “crying into the sun,” in which there is a need to “stand by my solitude.” Choosing isolation and self-determination are themes running throughout Lighthouse of Glass the album and how Sweden’s Sofia Härdig has approached recording these 10 songs. As well as the songwriter, she is the arranger, engineer, producer and main instrumentalist.“April,” the chugging, string-infused album opener suggests a PJ Harvey influence, with a smidge of Nick Cave too. This soon dissipates in favour of broader nods to Patti Smith: “Kingdom Come Read more ...
graham.rickson
Akira Kurosawa described his 1961 hit Yojimbo as a tale of “rivalry on both sides, and both sides are equally bad… we are weakly caught in the middle, and it is impossible to choose between the evils”. Toshiro Mifune’s nameless rōnin pitches up a run-down village purely by chance, tossing a stick in the air at a fork in the road to choose which direction to take.Though taking place in mid-19th century Japan, the sets reflect Kurosawa’s love of classic westerns, the scruffy buildings facing onto a dusty main street. The presence of a dog carrying a severed hand is a bad omen, a dispute over Read more ...