CDs/DVDs
Liz Thomson
Cliff Richard has been the butt of many jokes down the years, but he’s always looked the other way, true to himself. But he couldn’t look the other way when BBC TV conspired to air live coverage of a police raid on his home. Vindicated in court (through all he wanted was an apology), Sir Cliff has now emerged from that dark period with his first album of new material in 14 years.It’s an appropriate way to mark the sixtieth anniversary of “Move It”, which established the bequiffed Richard as Britain’s Elvis. And how extraordinary is it to think that his own career has been three times as long Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s fair to assume that the current state of American politics has US underground punker Justin Pearson and hip-hop producer Luke Henshaw somewhat riled. Planet B’s debut album is a 35-minute rant in the form of a relentless anti-love letter to Donald J Trump. So, while it is a set that doesn’t rely on lazy sloganeering, its subject matter is bound to turn some listeners off straight away. For the rest of us, however, Planet B picks up the sonic torch from 90s politico-industrial hip-hoppers Consolidated and high-octane punks The Death Set and rocks and grooves while skewering President Tiny Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Wow, can it really be 10 years since Mumford & Sons blazed their trail across the musical world with Sigh No More? The release of Delta, the band’s fourth album, marks the start of a 60-date world tour, which will keep them on the road – first in the UK and Ireland – until mid-May.Recorded in London and produced by Paul Epworth (Adele, Coldplay, Florence and The Machine), it’s generously filled (around an hour of music) and immediately engaging, even if the material is preoccupied with “the four Ds: death, divorce, drugs and depression,” as keyboardist Ben Lovett told Rolling Stone. One Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
London’s Palace Theatre this week celebrated the thousandth performance of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which opened there back in 2016. Like everything else JK Rowing puts her hand to, it’s been an outrageous success, taking the post-Hogwarts wizarding world further into the future than any other part of the franchise. At least that’s what I understand: I’ve only watched four of the films and read none of the books. However, the music from the production, in and of its own right, assuredly has something.Imogen Heap has been many times around the music biz block, never quite making it Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
My Name is Safe in Your Mouth takes off with “Above You, Around You”, its fourth track. Up to that point, progress has been stately. Minimal piano refrains, distantly chiming guitars, heartbeat percussion, string swells and a plaintive, multi-tracked voice have summoned a subdued yet intense mood. Then, the curtain is drawn and an ascending musical drama spills from the speakers.Once the new ambience is established, the ensuing songs maintain the undulating flow to culminate with the grandeur – even more so than “Above You, Around You” – of album closer “Hidden Sea”. My Name is Safe in Your Read more ...
howard.male
Whatever happened to real singer-songwriters? That is to say the kind of artist that raged against society’s ills in one song, and sung tenderly or bitterly of lost love in the next. Today’s insipid equivalent tends to be stuck in a perpetual adolescence, imparting solipsistic lyrics that have no more depth than their tweets. But then there’s Sarah Gillespie. Wishbones is her fourth album in just under a decade and what a gem it is. It’s so brimming over with memorable characters and imagery, so alive with her characteristic wit, savvy and sensitivity, that it leaves the afterglow of a great Read more ...
joe.muggs
“I don't peak early / I don't peak at all,” goes the wryly self-aware line in the opening song here, “Take me to the Movies”. Thirty-five years since he started releasing records, Mascis isn't interested in peaking, progress or much else beyond delivering the same he always has.Weary, anhedonic introversion delivered in a cracked Neil Young moan, and primal blues rock guitar soloing, are packed into perfect pop structures with pithy or heartstring-tugging couplets that twinkle like a razor sharp intelligence shining out from behind heavy lidded eyes. The differences between Dinosaur albums Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Apart from Leni Riefenstahl’s insidiously seductive celebrations of Nazism and the propaganda excesses of Veit Harlan’s Jud Süß (1940), the films that were made in Germany during the Hitler period have been air-brushed out of cinema history, almost in mirror image of the culture that was entartet, or banned by the Nazis themselves. There is something repulsive about cinema that was micro-managed by “Dr” Goebbels, in most cases served the regime rather than questioned it, and during the war provided increasingly fantasy-driven escapism to soothe both the women left behind and the troops at the Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Olly Murs has done alright for himself. After finishing second in 2009’s X Factor, he’s managed to forge a successful pop career and made a genuinely decent fist of TV presenting (most recently as a mentor on The Voice). Now he’s back with his first album in two years, You Know I Know, which comes with a CD of past hits bolted on. The album proper features collaborations with an impressive list of names, including Ed Sheeran, Shaggy, Snoop Dogg and even Nile Rogers. It’s also predictably, unspeakably and mind-numbingly ordinary. “Move” is, by some Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Pram are an experimental pop band from Moseley in Birmingham, who specialise in creating quirky soundscapes, eerie songs and whoozy instrumentals using all manner of strange instruments. They are also unlikely to ever achieve a mass following. The Good, The Bad & The Queen, on the other hand, are a modern-day supergroup, made up of former members of The Clash, Fela Anikulapo Kuti's Africa '70, Blur and The Verve, who have seemingly tried to appropriate Pram’s sonic template to make music that is infinitely less interesting but is likely to be heard by considerably more people than our Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There’s a lovely feel of folk freedom to Carlos Marques-Marcet’s second film, which sees the Spanish writer-director setting up creative shop resoundingly in London – or rather, on the waters of the city’s canals that provide the backdrop for Anchor & Hope. It’s there right from the film’s opening song “Dirty Old Town”, in the Ewan MacColl original, rather than the better-known, and far grittier Pogues version: these London waterscapes are lived-in and naturalistic but they’re also photogenic (and beautifully shot by Dagmar Weaver-Madsen).The gist of the action is nicely caught in MacColl Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Wow, this is truly infectious! Feel-good music played so well and by a guy whose day job is as an actor. And not a bit-part player – this is the man who gave us David Levinson in Independence Day and Dr Iain Malcolm in Jurassic Park and who made his screen debut with Charles Bronson in Death Wish. He also had a cameo in Annie Hall, one of the most beloved of movies by another part-time jazz man. “I Wish I Knew (How It Would Feel to be Free)” is a nice nod to what is now a dual career.Take a bow Jeff Goldblum who, with a little help from friends Imelda May, Haley Reinhart, Sarah Silverman and Read more ...