CDs/DVDs
bruce.dessau
The shock could barely be greater if he turned up in loon pants and a tie-dyed T-shirt and swapped his quiff for an afro. As soon as the first track on Richard Hawley's new album roars out of the speakers it signifies a change. "She Brings the Sunlight" kicks off proceedings with a squall of swirling psychedelic guitars and possibly even a sitar. More Jimmy Page than Jim Reeves. Has the inveterate smoker been on the jazz Woodbines? As a statement of intent it is pretty bold. And even more impressively, the album largely sustains this intriguing departure. Forget the cinerama romanticism of “ Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Celebrations of Dickens’ bicentenary will soon be elbowed aside by the Olympics, Jubilee and European Football Championships. Amidst all that flag-waving, these two mid-20th century Dickens films convey a love for England’s landscape and character truer than patriotism.Alberto Cavalcanti, Ealing Studios’ Brazilian wild card, brings an outsider’s brisk enjoyment to his 1947 Nickleby. Set in the 1830s of Dickens’ youth, the bright garb of pre-Victorian fops and sunny Hampshire countryside make this black-and-white film dazzle with life. Cavalcanti finds film noir shadows and corners from which Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Choosing such a loaded name is wilful. Scottish trio Haight-Ashbury are going to be identified with psychedelic-era San Francisco whatever they do. Should they wish to extend their musical wings, diversions into drum and bass or metal aren’t going to be easily accommodated. It's just as well then that Haight-Ashbury are top-drawer practitioners of a terrifically attractive dark psychedelia.Their second album (released under the name Haight-Ashbury 2, but they still trade as Haight-Ashbury too) opens with hand percussion, a jangling sitar and a keening, modal vocal line. Rhythm is Mo Tucker Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
With confirmation earlier this month that Blur’s Olympic gig in August will be their last - or not, depending which interviews you’ve read - only a fool could have approached the new studio album by Damon Albarn expecting anything like the projects for which he is more famously known. Particularly having read the press release introducing the titular Dr (John) Dee: “mathematician, polymath and advisor to Elizabeth I.”This fool did not read the press release. At least not until after a first, jarring and longer-than-anticipated listen.A word of background, presuming I am not the only one who Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Wicker Man is a great British film, one of the top horror films of all time. Since its release in 1973, its curious combination of queasily jolly folkloric ritual and sinister paganism has only grown to seem more discomfiting, reeking of the uncanny, and flavouring new films as recently as the extraordinary Kill List. I propose, then, to assume The Wicker Man is 5/5 smash - if you haven’t seen it, you should do so at once - but this review will deal with the other film in a new DVD set, Wicker Man director Robin Hardy’s 2010 sequel, the far less well-known The Wicker Tree.The plot has a Read more ...
mark.hudson
If Pink Floyd were always just businessmen in loonpants, Hawkwind really did appear to live the dream – or was it the nightmare? The early Seventies people’s band looked as though they permanently camped out, though live at least they weren’t easy to see: just masses of tangled hair, glimpsed through flickering strobes and acid-fuelled projections, their music a wind tunnel of remorseless two-chord riffing. Indeed, while "Silver Machine", their one hit single, is a true rock'n'roll classic, Hawkwind’s albums always seemed the least reason to get excited about them, compared to freakin’ Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Cartoon goth-metal boogieman Brian Warner and his gang return with their first album in three years, and their 10th in all. In Europe Marilyn Manson – the stage name of both the front man and the band - are rightly seen as an industrialised update of Alice Cooper’s horror-film showbiz rock but in the States the country’s more conservative elements really do seem to buy into their cabaret antichrist schtick. This even led to Warner’s articulate and amusing appearance defending himself from accusations of driving the nation’s youth to gun-crime in Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine.Marilyn Read more ...
theartsdesk
Carole King: The Legendary DemosLisa-Marie Ferla For one whose appreciation of Carole King, the songwriter, has never truly been distinguishable from her appreciation of Carole King, the performer, a listen to the treasure trove that is The Legendary Demos is a curious exercise indeed. Perhaps it’s the presence on this collection of early cuts of six tracks that would later appear on Tapestry, King’s 1971 breakthrough in her own right, but even with the knowledge that many of these recordings were put together as showcases to be pitched to other artists, it is hard to dissociate them from a Read more ...
joe.muggs
Well, this is lovely. Low-down-and-lazy country-soul grooves, a bit of Morricone, a bit of Nancy'n'Lee, a sprinkling of Southern Gothic, and through it all Norah Jones's satin voice delivering tidy little narratives tied up in gently insinuating melodic hooks. Jones has been accused many times of making latterday easylistening, music that's nothing more than analgesic, but there's always been more too her than that. Yes, sometimes it's just sweet whimsy, but as often as not, there's a bittersweet tang to the simple lyrics, a Carver short story sense of offstage drama. It could be Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Just as you think you’ve got Tuesday, After Christmas pegged as an Eric Rohmer-style relationship drama, it gradually becomes clear it’s something else. The impact left by this ambiguous, non-judgmental examination of the emotional crisis affecting a married man and those around him is a result of its measured approach and deft sensitivity. Less about the dialogue, it’s more about interaction and nuance.Paul Hanganu (Mimi Brănescu) is married to Adriana (Mirela Oprişor). They have a bright little daughter. He works in some unspecified role for a bank, Adriana works in law. Adriana doesn’t Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It’s a long way from Eel Pie Island to the Lone Star State, but if the Mystery Jets didn’t want people remarking that fourth album Radlands marked a departure from a certain strain of poppy, guitar-driven indie love song the London band have always done adequately they shouldn’t have chopped a porchside photo of the four of them (following the sudden resignation of bass player Kai Fish earlier this month) into the shape of the latter on the cover.Artwork aside, singer Blaine Harrison readily dons a pair of dusty snakeskin boots to play the cast of desert-crossed lovers and fighters who make Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Kooky ladies are very much of the moment, an ongoing moment, actually - the last couple of years, to be precise - but they seem to be with us to stay which is surely a good thing, especially in the playground. Better them than unreconstructed pole-dancing, as promulgated by the Pussycat Dolls et al. Then there’s Gaga, of course, who’s a lot of both. Now the kook generation, from Ellie Goulding to Paloma Faith, have to decide (once they've steered clear of wannabe-Mariah X Factor tedium) what ratio of gay club 3am hard house stomp to inject into their cod-Kate Bush freakery.Marina Diamandis Read more ...