CDs/DVDs
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Classroom ProjectsIt starts with a plummy voice: “The poems, the words and the music on this record all come from children at primary schools, boys and girls of eight, nine, 10 and 11 years old.” Although the introduction to Classroom Projects sounds like a BBC continuity announcement from a lost era, what follows is more than entertainment. This collection of tracks from albums made by and for British schools is enlightening. Compiled here are music concrête, folk, chamber experiments and songs written about road safety. All of it is amazing.An important release, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Back when Placebo were the androgynous face of late period Brit-pop, back when singer Brian Molko’s every sneered utterance was snapped up by a lapdog music media desperate to fuel their retro-guitar addiction, they were supremely annoying. They trod well-worn musical ground, did so with an unappealing, entitled arrogance, and sold millions. Like Suede, they even made sexual debauchery and ravenous drug-taking look dull and passé. Thus, I have to admit I came to their seventh album with the intent of giving it a good hiding. It’s a surprise, then, to find it an emotive, involving stab at Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Raoul Walsh's 1941 High Sierra, a late entry in the Warner Bros gangster cycle, made Humphrey Bogart a star. It was adapted by John Huston from the novel by WR Burnett, who was also the author of Little Caesar and one of Scarface's screenwriters. A fatalistic character study of a Dillinger-like bankrobber with a craving for domestic bliss, the film indicates that human striving is a fool's errand. It thus augurs film noir – notwithstanding Tony Gaudio's gleaming black-and-white outdoors cinematography (surely influenced by Ansel Adams). Huston and Bogart's next collaboration, The Maltese Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Mark Lanegan is a forbidding figure, which makes him appealing. In interviews he’s often taciturn and not very likeable, as if he cannot be bothered with the presentation of his art to the media. Good on him. There are now a billion bum-suckers out there who’d fuck a chicken on YouTube if they thought it would draw attention to whatever paltry excuse for music they were pushing at the time.Lanegan, on the other hand, is a dark horse, a 48-year-old ex-junkie from Seattle who was making grunge before that term existed, and who’s gone on to become a grizzled Americana vocalist-for-hire, from his Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
MGMT’s last album, 2010’s Congratulations, defined a modern psychedelia of the highest order. Bold of sweep, full of ambition and tinged with the airs of defeat and desperation, it set Ben Goldwasser and Andrew Van Wyngarden up as ones to watch: a duo whose early electropop-inclined work had been left far behind. It’s unfortunate then that their self-titled third album does not take them even further out. Instead, MGMT is the sound of a band stuck in low gear.To a degree, Goldwasser and Van Wyngarden have had some of their thunder stolen by the rise of Tame Impala and their leader Kevin Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Alex Turner says he wants to sound like 50 Cent. Adele has recently been recording with Wiz Khalifa. There really are very few musical barriers to be demolished these days. But 59-year-old Elvis Costello goes hip hop? Now that's a turn up for the books that shows that, not far off 40 years of making music, the man out of time still has the ability to shock.Calm down. Wise Up Ghost is not exactly Kanye. This stylistically mixed album was recorded in late-night sessions with skilful all-rounders The Roots, who Elvis bonded with on Jimmy Fallon's chat show when they aired their Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Ed Askew’s singing voice is made for melancholy. When not carrying a melody, his reedy vibrato becomes conversational, telling of a turtle laying her eggs, a baby crying in a cradle, a boy arguing with his girlfriend. The graceful, harpsichord-like tone of his Martin Tiple – a plangent, 10-string ukelele-sized instrument – makes the whole all the more wistful. Askew’s haunting, minor-key contemplations probably aren’t going to win him a wide audience but this, his sixth album in 45 years, brings Marc Ribot and Sharon Van Etten on board as collaborators.For the World is an album of great Read more ...
Serena Kutchinsky
The glam pop duo’s new album heralds a striking change of direction away from their trademark stadium disco towards a more intimate, cinematic sound. A seductive collection of character studies inspired by film noir, books and song lyrics, this 10-track album is heavy on atmosphere and light on sequins. Exquisitely woven together, it’s inspired by the like of French crooner Jacques Brel, Bon Iver and Leonard Cohen. On this their sixth album, Goldfrapp appear mellow and restrained, leaving the world of glossy pop and BDSM-inspired costumes firmly behind.It’s a marked contrast to their Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Roky Erickson & the Aliens: The Evil One Roky Erickson: Don’t Slander Me, Gremlins Have PicturesRoky Erickson is usually depicted as America’s Syd Barrett: the leader of a pioneering psychedelic-era band who took too many drugs, had mental health issues and then dropped off the face of the earth. But unlike Barrett, or even his American contemporary Skip Spence, Erickson returned from the abyss.In 1980 he pulled off the remarkable coup of releasing an album on the British major label CBS. That first solo album – untitled in the UK (but usually referred to as Five Symbols due to Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
There’s something about the Arctic Monkeys that calls to mind the Rolling Stones. Not now, obviously - it might feel like it’s been forever since four messy hairdos and northern accents burst out of Sheffield, though in truth it’s only been about a decade - but the Stones that scandalised an America expecting another Beatles with their sleazy, bluesy rock. Recorded in California, if there’s one thing AM does not sound like it’s an album by a band whose name still sounds like a practical joke dreamed up in some spotty kid’s bedroom.Because AM is - despite a collection of song titles that come Read more ...
fisun.guner
Fall of Eagles, a 13-part series which combines history and lavish costume drama, was first broadcast in the same year as The World at War. But while one continues to be seen as landmark television 40 years after it hit our small screens, I vouch that few have heard of the BBC's Fall of Eagles. Both productions at any rate testify to a time when broadcasters were not afraid of length (Simon Schama’s The Story of the Jews, currently on BBC Two, seems to defy what has become the usual three-part BBC format with its five episodes).Though half the length of The World at War, Thames Television's Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Newcastle’s Lanterns on the Lake have quietly gone about the business of perfecting their mood music. Each time they surface, their music gains another level of intensity and assumes a greater focus. This progress suggests their second album, Until the Colours Run, won’t be the culmination of their journey, but it does take them to a stage where they could extend their audience to any size they wish.Until the Colours Run is reflective modern rock with roots in Mazzy Star and latter-day Sigur Rós. The glitchiness of their debut, Gracious Tide, Take me Home, has largely gone, replaced by a Read more ...