CDs/DVDs
graham.rickson
French director Maurice Tourneur (1876-1961) trained as an interior decorator and illustrator, the move into film a logical progression after working as an actor and designer in Parisian theatre. Emigrating to the US in 1916, he enjoyed a brief but successful Hollywood career before returning home in 1929 as a director ideally qualified to oversee the French film industry’s transition into the sound era.Released in 1943, The Devil’s Hand (La Main du diable) is a lively supernatural thriller, drawing inspiration from the Faust legend and WW Jacobs’s influential short story The Monkey’s Paw. Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Along with Harry Styles, Zayn is one of the stars to emerge from the immensely successful boy-band One Direction. Now no longer a mere "boy", he’s part of a mainstream in which music is carefully fashioned to gleam, the product of artisans of the kind of pop that reaches the widest possible audience – uncannily astute talent-spotters such as Simon Cowell and super-producers that hold the keys to dressing the songs up with catchy hooks, appealing riffs and contagious rhythms. Pop is now an industrialised hit-machine, with a seemingly endless supply of singer and songwriters trained in Read more ...
Tim Cumming
This is, surprisingly, Judie Tzuke’s 24th album since her 1979 debut with Welcome to the Cruise. After early stints with Elton John’s Rocket Records and later Chrysalis, Polydor, Columbia, then her own Big Moon label, it follows on from 2023’s Jude the Unsinkable which emerged out of the Covid years and her own confrontation with cancer. She’s had just the one chart entry in all those years, at No 16 in the UK charts for “Stay with me Til Dawn”, but anyone who heard that way back then, or saw her on Top of the Pops, or heard it in the decades later, tend to not forget that moment. Read more ...
Liz Thomson
It’s fifteen years since Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan, two boys from Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, let slip their debut album. “Released” is not the right word, for Prologue (2011) was posted quietly online as a free download, the link sent to friends. Fame and fortune weren’t the goal – it was another f-word: folk, in a pure sense. Simple, quietly affecting music-making with authenticity and honesty at its heart. “We were very conscious back then of trying to make our two voices sound like one thing,” Ryan recalls. “And we wanted our guitars to sound like one instrument too.” The San Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s ten years since Tiga’s last solo album, the slightly tepid No Fantasy Required was released. So, it is something of a relief to discover that the Canadian DJ, producer, remixer and label head has taken a somewhat more direct route with his new disc, Hotlife.In Tiga’s 2026, harsh and sleazy electro-clash tunes rub up against more minimalist techno-punk workouts in an album that reaches backwards as much as it pushes forward. So, while there are collaborations with contemporary fellow travellers like Boys Noize, Fcukers and Maara, there’s also a hypnotic reworking of INXS’ 1987 megahit “ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Blues? Maybe, in atmospheric terms. But not in the 12-bar, blues-rock or Delta blues sense. Or most other senses. The album title is a play on Miles Davis’ end-of-Sixties LP Bitches Brew which, at that point, was his most overt nod to the dynamics of rock music. Nonetheless, Bitches Blues doesn’t obviously use the 1969 set as a point from which to jump. But the reference sets up the first studio album from Hedvig Mollestad Weejuns – the latter word a slang reference to the trio’s Norwegian identity – as non-conformist, carving-out their own musical character; albeit just within the limits of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Superbloom is the third chapter in Jessie Ware’s transformation, over the last six years, into a self-proclaimed and full-blown disco diva. How does it differ from 2020’s What’s Your Pleasure? and 2023’s That! Feels Good!? Arguably, it leans further into Seventies stylings, as opposed to the more electronically updated direction of its predecessors. It is also juicy with sex and fleshy queer nightclub shenanigans.Ware is a hugely successful podcaster (Table Manners, with her mum) so she probably doesn’t need to make music anymore. This has clearly freed up her approach and she sounds like she Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The pairing of Chemical Brother Tom Rowlands and Norwegian pop star Aurora sounds interesting but not, on paper, like the formula for something extraordinary. Tomora’s debut album kicks such presumptions to the kerbside. It feels like a project they both urgently need, a vital escape from their “day jobs” which they dive into with effervescent giddiness, whether embracing the android-ethereal or the thunderously bangin’.The Chemical Brothers’ last two albums have showcased a unit who, three decades into their ravey career, are still alive to the possibilities of electronic music, to pushing Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Lincolnshire singer Holly Humberstone, now London-based, was awarded the Brit for Rising Star in 2022. A UK Top 5 album followed, Paint My Bedroom Black. But her second album, Cruel World, will showcase what long-term following she’s developed, via her support slots with Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo and Sam Fender. Well, things don’t go anywhere too unexpected but, by the same token, she knows her way around a honeyed hook.Humberstone is, at her best, a fine lyricist, telling stories, usually of angsty, youthful love, longing and break-up, with an evocative literate snappiness. “I think I Read more ...
Tom Carr
It is always fascinating recognising influences in a band or artists style, but noting how they have been adapted, morphed into something different and new. For the Brighton based three-piece rock band Tigercub, influences like Nirvana and Queens of The Stone Age are easy and obvious to grasp, but it is also apparent how the trio push through into their own style and making.For those not in the know, Tigercub consist of Jamie Stephen Hall (vocals and guitar), Jimi Wheelwright (bass) and James Allix (drums). For the last fifteen years they have honed and refined their alternative rock sound, Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
It was something of a miracle how long They Might Be Giants managed to preserve their trademark madcap optimism intact. It lasted right through to their last album, Book (2021). In The World is to Dig, they are still holding on to it in some tracks, but in others it is clear that even they have finally succumbed to ubiquitous world-weariness.Maybe the surprise is that they stayed immune from it for so long. The band’s two Johns, Flansburgh and Linnell, are now in their mid-sixties, their band has been going for over four decades, this is their 24th album. But it is hard to ignore a new vibe Read more ...
Ellie Roberts
Johnny Franck’s energy is palpable with the latest Bilmuri instalment, his signature comedic country metalcore style is as honed as ever and Kinda Hard really just sounds like it was a lot of fun to make. Even with the genre blending, this album falls very much under the pop punk umbrella, with humour through emotion being at the forefront of its style. It’s not hard to see why fans of this trope enjoy Bilmuri, even if the moment has slightly passed. Maybe it’s because the world felt lighter, because the genre was newer, or because we were younger, but the notion of comedy through Read more ...