CDs/DVDs
Guy Oddy
When Jamie T first appeared in the early noughties, he was trumpeted by some who should have known better as the musical heir to Joe Strummer, while actually sounding more like a Kate Nash acolyte. Six years since his last album, The Theory of Whatever dips into a range of genres from dreary indie rock to low energy hip hop and acoustic ballads fuelled by a seemingly endlesss word-spaghetti of clichés.Opening track “90’s Cars” is low tempo, early-80's sounding electropop which comes over like a tribute to Ricky Gervais’s short-lived band Seona Dancing, while the tepid indie rock of “The Old Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Throughout the 1990s and the first decade of this century, Ben Harper achieved global stardom, although the UK was a territory where he never achieved lift-off. By contrast, in the US, Australia and much of Europe, he’s regarded as a heavyweight (he’s won three Grammys!).His career has combined the earnestness of Sixties/Seventies singer-songwriter political activism, with lively musical eclecticism, and, sometimes, a blander middle-of-the-road vibe redolent of his pal Jack Johnson. His latest album showcases the rawer end of his appeal.Bloodline Maintenance is Harper’s first “proper” album Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Kathryn Williams’ creativity leaves most singers standing. She’s always up to something and it’s usually interesting. As well as multiple albums over two decades, including one themed around Sylvia Plath and another created with the poet Carol Anne Duffy, last year she had her first novel published, the ominous island-set tale, The Ormering Tides. She’s done loads else too, her work often loosely in the folk form, heavily seasoned with the hurts of loving and living. Her latest contains much of the latter, but its production is more opulent, electronic and experimental than her usual Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Maybe it’s inevitable that their fate is to receive just a fraction of the recognition they deserve. Gareth Williams is one of the crop of truly remarkable – and now fully-formed – jazz pianists from the UK born in the years 1968 and 1969. I can think of three of them – there may be more.So, to over-simplify radically: Liam Noble is the one who will always, without fail, take a listener off in a surprising direction, and do so again and again. Jason Rebello has the most naturally poetic touch and can overwhelm with the sheer beauty of his playing, and yet is Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Jack White’s last couple of albums, Boarding House Reach from 2018 and Fear of the Dawn from April this year, were both driven by experimentalism, dipping into electronics, hip hop, noise and more. They were both, to differing degrees, admirable in intent, coming from an artist perceived as zealously retro, but they were also only partially successful.Entering Heaven Alive is a less wilful beast and, in terms of enjoyably straightforward songwriting, the better for it. It will, naturally, and as is undoubtedly intended, be viewed of-a-piece with Fear of the Dawn, since the latter only came Read more ...
graham.rickson
Jiří Menzel's Larks on a String (Skřivánci na niti) was in production while Soviet tanks rumbled into Prague in August 1968. Predictably, the film was banned by the new Czechoslovak regime and it remained unreleased until 1990, though illicit video copies were circulating for several years before.Like Menzel’s Oscar-winning Closely Observed Trains, Larks on a String took inspiration from the writings of Bohumil Hrabal, Menzel and Hrabal’s screenplay here based on a collection of short stories written in the 1950s. Set in the industrial town of Kladno, Hrabal’s characters are dissident members Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Many of her fans initially came across Filipino-born, London-raised singer Bea Laus – Beabadoobee – via the massive TikTok sensation “Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head)” by Canadian producer Powfu, which was centred on the extremely catchy chorus to her song “Coffee”.But Laus, now 22, has been releasing music since she was 17, and her debut album Fake It Flowers, hit the UK Top 10 in 2020. Beatopia moves things forward sonically. Its sound is more interesting, hazy and stoned, but the songs don’t always match its ambitions.Where Fake It Flowers trod a path somewhere between Avril Lavigne pop- Read more ...
Nick Hasted
“Arriving late at a performance… I looked up and saw what I thought was an actor having a seizure onstage,” the critic Pauline Kael wrote of watching Brando on Broadway in 1946. “I lowered my eyes, and it wasn’t until the young man who’d brought me grabbed my arm and said, 'Watch this guy!' that I realised he was acting.”Kael was recalling the first, visceral shock of the actor’s capacity to merge with a role, having just watched its climax in Last Tango in Paris (1972), in which he dug agonisingly deep into his raging, flailing masculinity. Brando’s screen debut as paraplegic war veteran Ken Read more ...
joe.muggs
You can’t really blame Lizzo for playing to her strengths. When she started putting out records some nine years ago, there wasn’t really a niche in the market for a flute playing, twerking, positive-thinking, plus-size rapper-stroke-disco-diva.Roundly ignored by the mainstream “urban” American music industry despite her obvious abundant talent, she went about building her own diverse – but leaning female and/or LGBTQ+ – cult following, which grew fast until she couldn’t be ignored. Without changing or dialling down her approach, this eventually resulted in her 2019 ascent to global mega fame Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Martin Jenkins, AKA The Head Technician, AKA Pye Corner Audio, is all about layers. From the stacked pseudonyms, to the dense, sound-steeped strata of his music, there’s lots going on.His Black Mill Tapes series, released over the last 12 years or so, blends elements of contemporary dance music, epic electronic soundtracks, music concrète and dense, brooding atmospherics. The sound of dark soot dust descending on a remote hillside, it’s simultaneously comforting and claustrophobic. 2021’s Entangled Roots, meanwhile, was inspired by the underground conversational pathways of plants, taking Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Oy vey, life is just too short for this kind of nonsense. Katie Melua fans will have to be very dedicated indeed to get into this particular groove. Post-classical, post-rock, post whatever."As the album reveals itself, so does a picture of two artists both pushing from and revelling in the conventions of their respective musical fields", reads the long portentous press release:For Simon Goff, who composed the album in its entirety, this amounted to a renewed respect for the art of lyric writing. “I remember Katie telling me about "Lay Lady Lay" and "Don’t Think Twice" by Bob Dylan, how she Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
We music journos miss stuff too. This writer had not come across New Zealand-based Canadian singer Tami Neilson before, despite the fact she’s been around for over a decade and this is her sixth studio album. How did I miss her?Kingmaker contains the best kind of raw heartfelt country and scalpel-sharp lyricism, catchy songs spiked with a sassy rockabilly twang that propels them towards fresh territory. It boasts direction and energy which, with any justice, would see it racking up sales well beyond the niche. In short, an absolute zinger of an album.Neilson hails from a family of singers, Read more ...