CDs/DVDs
Guy Oddy
Forty years ago, the songs of New Jersey’s Kool and the Gang formed an essential soundtrack to many a suburban lothario’s weekend. “Celebration”, “Ladies’ Night” and “Get Down on It” were undisputed chart classics of the time – laying down slick grooves that focused wholly on having a good time and not having a care in the world.James “JT” Taylor, lead singer during the band’s commercial peak, may be long gone but bassist, Robert “Kool” Bell and keyboard player, George “Funky” Brown (all the original band members seem to be obliged to have a one-word nickname) are still very much on board for Read more ...
Mark Kidel
As an authentic artist, PJ Harvey manages to remain true to her essence as well as constantly shifting her creative stance. Each of her albums has been a leap forward, and yet anchored in a sound and style that are immediately recognisable as hers.This new album, the first in seven years, is in character – sensual, mysterious, a mixture of introverted softness and extrovert violence. It's very good, full of surprises, slow to reveal itself, like a really well-accomplished piece of poetry.Her previous release, The Hope Six Demolition Project (2016) was a collection of demos, Read more ...
Cheri Amour
You could say the catalyst behind it all was Rocketman himself. During his Apple Music Show, celebrated CBE Elton John named Gabriels’ self-released EP, Love and Hate in a Different Time, one of the most seminal releases in the last ten years. At that time, little was known about the US-UK trio. When they eventually signed a major record deal a few months later, there wasn’t a single photograph of the three of them in the same room.Despite the inconspicuous start, the band has already racked up a performance at The Royal Albert Hall (for Letters Live). They supported Harry Styles in Texas and Read more ...
joe.muggs
A “back to basics” album is a risky thing. When an act has expanded into big, lavish or experimental production, it’s not a simple act to strip that away. Trying to go back to the intimacy or spontaneity of early work can feel forced: they may find they’ve become reliant on the possibilities of studio craft, or simply evolved into a different kind of artist. U2’s recent horrorshow of a catalogue-reworking album, for example, shows just how laboured such an exercise can be. And for those who’ve thrived on electronic sound it can even seem like a betrayal to step into Jools Holland-friendly Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Writer-director Pat Jackson’s Western Approaches (1944), a Technicolor tour de force partly shot in turbulent seas by Jack Cardiff, is a stirring World War II story documentary that demonstrates the bravery, resilience, selflessness, and collective spirit of men of the British Merchant Navy during the Battle of the Atlantic. The merchantman Jason having been torpedoed by a U-boat, its 22 survivors (including one seriously wounded) struggles towards Ireland’s west coast – 18 days away if the rate of 60 miles in 24 hours is maintained, though neither its rations nor its radio will hold out Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Summer Glass” is The Greater Wings’ fourth track. A synthesiser pulse evoking water dripping from eaves unites with glistening harp arpeggios and muted strings. The voice weaving through this is distant, shrouded in fog. Lyrics are about “being ready to travel again,” wanting “to be whole enough to risk again.” Atmospherically, there are intimations of the intense 1969 Jerry Yester and Judy Henske LP Farewell Aldebaran and Beach House at their most oblique.The new album by the Buffalo, New York-born Julie Byrne initially seems weightless. The delivery is light, nothing bludgeons, textures Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Dartmoor-born folk star Seth Lakeman has an illustrious album catalogue behind him, and this is the general release of a limited-edition vinyl released earlier this year for Record Store Day.Lakeman’s songs embrace traditional folk, pop music and plenty of folk rock – often all at the same time – and he’s long had a knack for a memorably catchy hook and for encapsulating a narrative in a handful of verses, as much on classics like the Mercury nominated “Kitty Jay” as on this album's opener, “The Giant”. He’s recently been seen supporting Van Morrison on The Man’s superb Moving On Skiffle set Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Richard Jobson may be the only original member left standing in first wave Scottish post-punkers, the Skids’ line up. But almost 45 years on from the release of their debut album, Sacred to Dance, the band is again pumping out anthemic rockers in the same vein as when they first started out.Original guitarist, Stuart Adamson is sadly long gone but Bruce Watson from Adamson’s post-Skids group, Big Country, has picked up the torch from his former band mate. “Open Your Eyes” and “Tidal Wave” particularly see him standing confidently in Adamson’s shoes, banging out the riffs and lending his voice Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Barb Jungr has made a speciality – some might even say her own art form – out of taking well-known songs, and discovering far more subtlety and meaning in them than people ever knew they had. As she explains in the notes accompanying My Marquee: “ I love well-constructed songs with lyrics that, however apparently simple, can yield other levels of interpretation and subtlety.” One writer has called what she finds in these songs “confessional depth”.That is certainly a part of the story. She has interpreted Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Sting, The Beatles, Appalachian folk songs... One thing I Read more ...
Graham Fuller
It’s an odalisque to arouse envy in Titian, Boucher, Ingres, or Manet.Filtered amber, white, and blue lights successively bathe Brigitte Bardot, crowned by that golden cloud, as she asks Michel Piccoli, her co-star and screen husband in Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris (1963, Contempt), to evaluate her naked body’s flawless components while she inventories them post-coitally – feet, ankles, knees, thighs, behind, breasts, nipples, shoulders, arms, face, mouth, eyes, nose, ears.In assessing her economic power as a sexual commodity, however, Bardot (playing ex-typist Camille Javal but also herself) Read more ...
Liz Thomson
2020 was a cruel year for everybody but in addition to the horrors of Covid which included the loss of her compadre John Prine to the virus, Lucinda Williams endured damage to her Nashville home in a tornado and then, in November 2020, she suffered a stroke, which left her with impaired motor skills on her left side. Playing the guitar was no longer as natural as breathing and that would in turn make songwriting difficult. She needed a cane to walk. But within a year, she was road-ready and back in front of an audience though not (yet) playing guitar.So Stories from a Rock ‘n’ Roll Heart is Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The cover versions on Dream From The Deep Well include “I Know Who is Sick,” most familiar from the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Maken interpretation, and “Down by the Glenside,” which The Dubliners incorporated into their repertoire. The first opens the album, the second closes it. Between, amongst the original compositions, there is also an adaptation of Tim Buckley’s “I Must Have Been Blind.”Taking these as a way in to the fourth studio album from the UK-born but Irish singer-songwriter Brigid Mae Power is an understandable path to follow, but after Dream From The Deep Well concludes it Read more ...