CDs/DVDs
Kieron Tyler
According to the press release for Karin Dreijer’s third album as Fever Ray, its completion was preceded by many hours of therapy with the result new things are known. Amongst them that Dreijer “can be struck by despair but also by the big feeling of love and awe”. Dreijer declares “I know what love is and I want to show you”. Radical Romantics is the result of these realisations.However, despite the seeming openness getting to Dreijer is difficult, not least as the person is hidden behind so total a stylisation it could be anyone beneath the make-up, cloaked by the artifice. Nothing under Read more ...
graham.rickson
As films involving cats go, The Cassandra Cat (Až přijde kocour) is up there with the best. Part fairy-tale, part political satire, Vojtěch Jasný’s 1963 fantasy, shot on location in the picturesque village of Telcis, is an offbeat, unclassifiable gem. Unsurprisingly, the post-1968 Czech authorities disapproved, withdrawing it from circulation.Jasný’s characters have their lives turned upside down by the titular feline, a hefty tabby wearing dark glasses. If they're removed, those who the cat gazes at will change colour according to their nature.A prologue features Jan Werich’s affable Read more ...
Guy Oddy
“I’ve found another way / I’ve found another Heaven” sings Stuart Gray on the feedback-soaked opening track of Black Helium’s new album, Um. And if that’s what has fed into these psychedelic barbarians’ tunes on their third disc, it’s truly something that he needs to share around.Um certainly feels like a noticeable step-up when measured against 2020’s The Wholly Other and their debut album, Primitive Fuck, due to both Black Helium’s significantly improved song writing and Wayne Adams’ magical production skills – even if song titles like “Summer of Hair” aren’t of quite the same calibre as “ Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
The years since slowthai’s Mercury Prize nominated debut have been patchy. There was the public reckoning after his oafish behaviour at the NME awards, but then he scored his first number one album a year later. He’s become a father but also struggled with his mental health. UGLY is slowthai's third album and he continues to grapple with who he is and his hedonistic impulses. What’s noticeable with UGLY is how he now firmly draws more from rock than grime. Despite the new sound, slowthai is still best when he is rapping. Slowthai has flirted with rock music since “Doorman” off his Read more ...
joe.muggs
One of the greatest things a musical artist can achieve is world building. That is, creating a distinctive type of environment, language and coordinates for everything they do such that the listener is forced to come into the musical world, and to engage with it on its own terms rather than by comparison. It’s something that musicians as diverse as Prince, Kate Bush and Wu-Tang Clan achieve have achieved, likewise plenty of more underground creators too.Belgian polymath Marc Hollander has achieved this in particularly special way. Over more than 45 years, he’s built his sonic world not only Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Colombian-American singer Kali Uchis knocked it out of the park with the vibrant, eclectic global pop of debut Isolation, one of the best albums of 2018.Since then, she's gained career traction via guest appearances with Gorillaz, Little Dragon, Mac Miller, and others, and consolidated things with a new, determinedly downtempo direction on the Spanish-language album Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios), and its breakout tune, “Telepatía” (nigh-on-800 million streams on Spotify). Her third album continues the trajectory, but mostly in English, a stoned bedroom affair of warm, squidgy, modern Read more ...
graham.rickson
Begin describing Aftersun to someone who’s not seen it and you’ll struggle. Charlotte Wells’ debut feature looks embarrassingly slight on paper, its 93 minutes following a young girl on a Turkish package holiday in the late 1990s with her youthful dad.The trip is mostly seen through the eyes of 11-year-old Glaswegian Sophie (Frankie Corio) in flashback, much of the footage recorded by her on a camcorder. Paul Mescal’s affable Calum, seemingly amicably separated from Sophie’s mum, is a superficially sunny presence. Wells hints at Calum’s demons only obliquely; there’s a suggestion of money Read more ...
Liz Thomson
I have to confess, the name Harlan Howard meant little or nothing to me – but as I pressed play and the first twanging guitar notes of “Tiger by the Tail” filled the room, I quickly got the picture.Willie Nelson’s latest album celebrates the extraordinary work of the Detroit-born songwriter whose heart belonged to Nashville from an early age. The man who defined country music as “three chords and the truth” wrote (in some cases, co-wrote) songs such as “Heartaches by the Dozen”, “Pick Me Up on Your Way Down” and “I Fall to Pieces”, a country classic if ever there was one and a song most Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Sleep Standing Up is the debut album by a trio who, according to their press release, absolutely came together due to a mutual love of Roxy Music. This connection extends to an early performance being enjoyed by Bryan Ferry at a festival, resulting in them working in his studio, even utilising his old synthesisers.However, despite the streamlined opulence of their sound, Maven Grace do not channel Roxy. Instead, their music, at its best, is likeable, orchestrally-boosted, maximalist trip-hop pop.The band consists of friends-as-teenagers Mary Hope, Henry Jack and Tom White who, decades later, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Steve Mason has been impressively blunt about the inspiration behind his fifth solo album. “To me, this record is a massive “Fuck you” to Brexit and a giant “Fuck you” to anyone that is terrified of immigration,” he’s said, “Because there is nothing that immigration has brought to this country that isn’t to be applauded.” Thus, these 12 songs are riven not only with lyrical pith but also sounds borrowed from an international sound palette.The combination leavens his anger with the spiritual uplift of righteous protest. Mason has always been creatively restless, right from when the Beta Band Read more ...
Cheri Amour
The Raincoats are one of those revered names that I never believed I would witness live. (See also: Hole, Elastica and, until their last UK tour, extraterrestrial kooks the B52s). But in late 2019, there was a surge of activity from the godmothers of post-punk as founding members Gina Birch and Ana da Silva came together for a string of shows.And so it was, flanked by three of my favourite women, I stood in Glasgow’s Mono watching the cult group come together again. "Feminist Song" has been a regular in the band’s live set since but now finds its recorded home on Birch’s highly anticipated Read more ...
Guy Oddy
“What are the odds that we live in a simulated world where nothing is real?” ask the Death Valley Girls on their new album, Islands in the Sky. It’s a question that a fair few other people are probably asking themselves these days – and, with the way things are going, hoping it might be true.Islands in the Sky is no dystopian misery fest, though. Far from it. Instead, upbeat bubblegum psychedelic pop tunes rub shoulders with woozy and spaced-out vibes in a heady brew of dayglow grooviness that is aimed straight at the hips. In fact, as with 2020’s Under the Spell of Joy album, Islands in the Read more ...