CDs/DVDs
Guy Oddy
Eli Paperboy Reed remembers a time when soul music didn’t just mean aping some of Michael Jackson’s old moves and wearing a daft hat: a time when Otis Redding and others on the Stax roster were making some seriously soulful music. Eli is also well-acquainted with gospel music, having played in the band at Mitty Collier’s South Side Chicago church when he was a college student and through his involvement with the Mama Foundation’s Gospel for Teens programme in Harlem in recent years. My Way Home sees Reed plunder heavily from both traditions and produce an album that is, in the main, a wild Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Adam Ant was one of the few who saw Sex Pistols’ first live show. On 6 November 1975, his band Bazooka Joe was playing Charing Cross Road’s St Martin’s School of Art. They found an uninvited support band had gatecrashed the evening. The impact of the interlopers on the then Stuart Goddard wasn’t instant, but he would go on to form The B-Sides and, then, Adam and the Ants, whose manager became Jordan, who worked at Malcolm McLaren’s King’s Road shop SEX. Adam was hotwired into what became codified as punk rock. But his music was never defined by templates.Mainstream impact took a while to come Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There are many ways to push musical boundaries. Some artists, from Albert Ayler to Can to Sunn O))) and far beyond, do it sonically. Xylaroo are not a band in this vein. Consisting of east London-based sisters Holly and Coco Chant, their music dramatically sparks listeners’ sensibilities through other means.On one level their strummed pop could be dismissed as something a friend might come up with, off the cuff, around the campfire. But only if that friend happened to be Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell or similar. Xylaroo push the boundaries, alright, but using a combination of glistening, Read more ...
joe.muggs
This record passes the Rainy Day Greasy Spoon Test with flying colours. It's a vital one for any music that tends to the middle of the road: picture yourself in a cafe, mid-morning, mid-week, perhaps with a hangover, perhaps trying to avoid thinking about a personal problem, certainly not feeling excellent, staring at a mug of tea and the remains of an egg sandwich, with everything outside the windows damp and grey. How do you feel as the music comes onto the radio?This is not about suspending critical faculties, and it's certainly not about snobbery: it's about understanding the Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Watching Victoria on home video is a good idea if you first hide the remote. It’s impossible to pause Sebastian Schipper’s ambitious heist thriller even for a few seconds without ruining its pleasurably disorienting effect: cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen shot it – digitally, of course – in real time in a single 138-minute take on 22 Berlin locations. It's unsurprising to learn that Schipper acted in Tom Tykwer’s kinetic Run Lola Run (1998) and has written with him.The story is not a little implausible. Victoria (Laia Costa), a friendless Spanish expat, meets feckless charmer Sonne ( Read more ...
howard.male
When producer Guilherme Kastrup asked this 78-year-old Brazilian icon what she wanted this album to be about she replied, “Sex and blackness.” Listening to the end result makes one wonder if she was referring to blackness as the colour of her skin or the colour of her mood. Perhaps a bit of both, because Soares’s 34th studio album is a corrosive cocktail of rock, jazz, funk and samba that at times becomes almost unlistenably intense. I say "almost" because if you steel yourself sufficiently, it’s an unpredictable and bracing sequence of songs that makes more formal and emotional sense with Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It may be half a decade since The Kills graced us with their Blood Pressures album and its more produced take on their original grubby punk blues sound. The wait for something new has been largely due to Jamie Hince undergoing several operations on his hand, and consequently having to relearn how to play his guitar, rather than to any great sonic re-evaluation and revamping of their shtick. For, despite band claims to the contrary, not that much has changed and Ash and Ice, like its predecessor, is a not-too-glossy bluesy art-rocker that exudes angst and misery and a more than slightly Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Penda’s Fen has so many constituent parts it could burst its seams. Almost-18 schoolboy Stephen Franklin is struggling with determining the nature of his sexuality. His school is about regimentation and promotes the army with drill, uniforms and expectations that commands are to be followed. With his father, the Reverend Franklin, Stephen has prolonged discussions about the nature of faith. The local landscape is mystical, and seems able to manifest historic and mythical figures from its own past. Reawakened Paganism is upsetting the Christian present. All this is happening against a backdrop Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Just over three years ago, I was swooning for this very site over Tegan and Sara’s masterful shift from indie rock to full-bodied, floor-filling, retro-inspired electropop. But as catchy and cathartic as that album, Heartthrob, was, ultimately it only hinted at the ability of the Quin twins to write an all-consuming, gigantic pop song. Their eighth album, Love You to Death, is the one on which the longest build in the history of modern pop finally breaks: that song is called “Boyfriend”, it’s a giddy rush of gender-bending sugar-spun queer-pop, and it deserves to be absolutely massive.As, too Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Last May, Malmö trio Death and Vanilla issued the To Where the Wild Things are album and it seemed they had arrived as a fully formed post-Broadcast proposition, harmoniously fusing vintage influences like the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Italian giallo soundtracks and The United States of America. With its cover imagery evoking the British Ghostbox label, To Where the Wild Things are could have been dismissed as havng thumbed a ride on a musical excursion begun by others. But the album was so assured and stuffed with such dreamy melodies it transcended the inspirations. Death and Vanilla were Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Kevin Rowland, throughout his career, has been a man who doesn’t brook compromise, whatever the consequences. He seems to have mellowed slightly with age but he still appears to do precisely what he wants, however bizarre, unexpected and possibly commercially suicidal.That he has followed up the enjoyable, witty and critically acclaimed 2012 concept album One Day I’m Going To Soar, and the magnificent theatrical shows that accompanied it, with an album of Irish songs – seasoned with a side order of Bee Gees, Rod Stewart, Joni Mitchell, LeAnn Rimes, and Jerome Kern – shouldn’t raise too Read more ...
joe.muggs
In 2016, grime is facing a new test of its ability to operate on its own terms. At the start of this decade the genre was flirting with major label crossover that resulted in a few great pop records, but all too often diluted its musical impact or left its stars stuck in contractual or “artist development” limbo. Other urban genres pushed it aside, and it was no longer the only game in town for inner city youth.By stages, though, it reasserted itself. Around 2012-13, its instrumental side became respected as a serious force within clubland, and the Butterz organisation proved that it was Read more ...