CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
The heartland of America burns a special candle for two genres in particular: country music and heavy metal. What’s curious, then, is that there’s not been more cross-breeding between the styles. On a cartoon level, this can be attributed to one being God’s music and the other, Satan’s, but you’d have thought that would only encourage determined, disenfranchised teenagers in Lexington, Kentucky, or wherever. It is left, then, to Californian band DevilDriver to join the dots.Mega-tattooed frontman Dez Fafara made his name with Nineties nu-metallers Coal Chamber but the last decade-and-a-half Read more ...
Guy Oddy
If Florence + the Machine’s last album, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful marked a break from the exuberant, anthemic pop of her first two albums, her latest disc takes things even further with a more mature and stripped-down sound that often feels one step away from dispensing with instrumentation altogether. This is especially true of “No Choir”, which features little more than sparse piano chords, and the confessional lament of “Grace”. Elsewhere, “June” comes on like a torch song before finally exploding into overblown orchestration but it never gets its groove on and lets loose. “Sky Full Read more ...
Liz Thomson
There aren’t too many folk singers that make it into the pages of Vogue and Interview magazines, but that’s what comes of being a face of Burberry – attire that’s not necessarily a good folk fit. He’s also been snapped in the Augustus Hare catalogue modelling a rather sharp suit and tie. He’s studied theology, likes Bob Dylan and Nick Drake, and his favourite city is Jerusalem. He describes himself as “a classical folk singer”. Sometimes he sounds a little like Donovan.Quiet Man is the third outing by the Dorset-born singer-songwriter Roo Panes and it is, he says, about “contentment” and has Read more ...
Owen Richards
It’s hard to know who to write about when reviewing a new Gorillaz release. According to the official line, the band have shorn their usual guests to focus on the core creative team: vocalist 2D, drummer Russell, guitarist Noodle, and new bassist Ace, borrowed from The Powerpuff Girls. Of course, behind these virtual masks is Damon Albarn, who’s teamed with experienced producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Simian Mobile Disco, Haim) and regular collaborator Remi Kabaka to create a surprisingly personal and upbeat record.Gone are the dystopian worlds of environmental ruin and elitist overlords Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s long been a fascination with the death of busty, blonde, Marilyn-alike Hollywood star Jayne Mansfield. The fact that it supposedly resulted from a curse by the occult showman and head of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey, builds in an element of preposterousness that’s proved irresistible to generations of conspiracy theorists. The first thing to note, then, for connoisseurs of golden age high trash, is that Mansfield 66/67 in no way gives definitive answers, selling itself as “A true story based on rumour and hearsay”. It does, however, prove an entertaining gumbo of fact, supposition Read more ...
Jo Southerd
Gota Fría, or “cold drop”, is a Spanish weather phenomenon associated with violent rainstorms, when high pressure has caused a pocket of cold air to dissociate itself from the warmer clouds. Meteorologists, please excuse my basic and probably erroneous interpretation; the point here is that any person who’s experienced mental ill-health will likely relate to the idea of a sudden dip in temperature, a torrential downpour, and the accompanying isolation. On Gota Fría, the Peru-born, Bristol-based singer-songwriter Beth Rowley explores darkness and light via classic songwriting, delivered Read more ...
Russ Coffey
When Ray Davies released his Americana LP last year, much was made of how the the ex-Kink's lyrical focus had shifted from English villages to the mid-western plains of the big old USA. Really, though, Davies was just looking back over his life. America had always loomed large in Kinks' songs - if only in the imagination of the English characters - and after their infamous touring ban, they played there relentlessly. Our Country - Americana Act II, completes the story.As before, the album is largely inspired by Davies autobiography, Americana: The Kinks, the Road and the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Norwich is remote, out near the Norfolk Broads, doing its own thing on Britain’s eastern-most edge. It’s not renowned as a place that’s contributed much to rock and pop. This may be about to change. The music of Let’s Eat Grandma, 19-year-old lifelong friends Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth from Norwich, could only have developed in isolation, cultivated unhindered by the taste-arbiters of the outside world. They’re a fascinating unit and, happily, also engagingly off-the-wall.Where their debut album, 2016’s I, Gemini, was an intriguingly bizarre oddity, their new one moves towards Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Un beau soleil intérieur, the film’s French title, is part of a piece of advice given by a clairvoyant (Gérard Depardieu, in a surprise 15-minute cameo at the end of the movie). Try to find the beautiful sun within, he tells Isabelle (a glowing Juliette Binoche) and be “open” (he uses the English word). His huge, dented face seems to take up most of the screen. Isabelle, a lonely, recently divorced artist, who wants him to tell her which of her potential lovers is the best bet, laps his words up tearfully. Any port in a storm.Whether you enjoy this film by revered director Claire Denis (Beau Read more ...
Ellie Porter
Concluding a trilogy of releases that began with the EPs Not the Actual Events (2016) and Add Violence (2017) – Bad Witch is being called an LP despite its six tracks clocking in at only 30 minutes, a discrepancy that reportedly led an exasperated Trent Reznor to sound out a pernickety fan in an online forum. Short and sharp opening track "Shit Mirror", despite lyrics that speak of "new world, new times, mutation", does feel a little like the NIN of old – that familiar industrial groove and shouty vocal combo – but as soon as that’s done and dusted, it’s swiftly followed by "Ahead of Read more ...
Matthew Wright
It would always be difficult to follow The Epic, the 2015 release which turned LA saxophonist Kamasi Washington from leader of the local scene to international star. So this musical and spiritual journey lifts off into the heavens, the 16 pieces divided equally into firstly Earth - the external world perceived by Kamasi - then Heaven, which Kamasi describes as the world he sees inwardly. He’s always been in the West Coast spiritual jazz tradition, though this time the mood, in places, is positively hymnal. The music’s passion, energy and momentum is irresistible, even in the more Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Force of Evil is much more than a stunning film noir classic: it’s first and foremost a film about money and power and their tragic power of attraction. Set in the world of the numbers racket in New York, where the big combinations, created by gangsters who've barely gone legit, are pitted against the smaller "banks", or players. This Hobbesian struggle feeds off the lesser but still significant desire of the betting man on the street, driven by hopeless dreams and always close to the breadline.The story, based on a novel by Ira Wolfert, and adapted by Polonsky himself for his first film as a Read more ...