CDs/DVDs
Barney Harsent
Ride guitarist Andy Bell has clearly been busy since the release of his solo debut, 2020’s The View From Halfway Down. As well as getting his Space Station instrumental touring show up and running, he’s found time to record a sprawling, 18-track follow-up, Flicker, also released on Sonic Cathedral.Bell’s “other life”, as a DJ and producer of immersive electronica under his Glok moniker has, for some time, been an indicator of his willingness – and ability – to veer from the playbook and embrace other forms. On Flicker, however, this impulse is supersized. From shoegaze movers to krautrock Read more ...
Liz Thomson
What a joyous album for a grey winter’s day, any day in fact – a celebration of 20 springs by Le Vent du Nord, a wonderful five-piece band that hails from frigid Quebec and who make it their business to explore and collect the folk music of French-speaking Canada.If ever there’s a band, and an album, that demonstrates the idea of music as truly international language this is it. The sounds of Brittany and Ireland are blended in a beautiful and invigorating mix, but they are leavened by the plaintive melodies of Appalachia and the driving rhythms of Louisiana and much besides.Le Vent du Nord Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Animal Collective were getting themselves back to Joni Mitchell’s Edenic Woodstock garden right from the start – musically evoking the natural high of a 5-year-old’s wide-open wonder, in their case heightened by hippie schooling in rural Maryland. Since rejecting the regal indie status offered by their avant-pop breakthrough Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009), the very idea of career peaks and troughs has been ignored as an ego-trip dead-end, replaced by wandering, often fractured progress, as when a duo version of the Collective’s quartet made last year’s trippy Crestone soundtrack. As the Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Does restoration and upgrading to 4K always make a film better? I used to think so but after watching an unnervingly image-perfect Blu-ray of Down by Law, I’m not so sure.Jim Jarmusch's shaggy dog tale about three strangers thrown together in a prison cell was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1986. Shot in black and white by the late Robby Müller (Wim Wenders’ favourite cameraman), Down by Law stars John Lurie (the louche lead in Stranger Than Paradise), singer-songwriter Tom Waits, and the Italian comedian Roberto Benigni in his first English-language role.There are a few Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Eve Adams’s third album Metal Bird is a thing of exquisite beauty that is darkly alluring yet sparse and hazy. Melancholy and intimate vocals accompanied by little more than a guitar and an occasional unobtrusive saxophone tell tales of love and loss, of insecurity and loneliness, in a way that Hope Sandoval and Lana Del Rey often hint at but never quite manage.Mature and considered yet dreamy and ethereal, it’s an album to be heard alone, maybe with a glass of something strong to hand, in the middle of the night. Unfussy and often quite raw production adds to the confessional nature of Adams Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Danish pop star MØ is as well known for her collaborations as her own music. Shining brighter than all of them is the globe-slaying, 24 carat dance craze "Lean On” from 2015, created with Major Lazer and DJ Snake, and, for a few years, Spotify’s most-streamed song.MØ has, however, also steadily maintained her own career, her attitude and personality usually carving through the pop gloss that surrounds her work. Her latest album, her third, is, she reckons, a return to darker, more honest songwriting. She now says she’s unsure whether 2018’s Forever Neverland stayed “true” to herself. Indeed, Read more ...
Liz Thomson
A confession – one I have made down the years to many friends, who mostly disagree. I have never much liked Joni Mitchell. Yes, she has written some good and enduring songs, but the voice? To me it has no substance, no texture. Admirers say she led the way – those intimate, confessional songs. So ground-breaking!You want intimate and ground-breaking, coupled with real musicianship? Then listen to Janis Ian, in my opinion a far greater songwriter and a more complete musician than Mitchell. Check out Leonard Bernstein interviewing her on his 1967 television documentary Inside Pop: The Rock Read more ...
joe.muggs
Michael Stafford aka Maverick Sabre is the definition of a modern journeyman vocalist. Since 2008 he’s released three albums and appeared on a huge range of British and Irish rap, dubstep and drum’n’bass artists’ records. He’s had several top 40 singles and streams into the tens, even hundreds of millions on tracks, but he hasn’t necessarily got the name recognition of some of his contemporaries.Maybe it’s that range that’s the issue: he has an instantly recognisable voice, but given that he spans soul, rap and the kind of grand sweep Celtic romanticism that almost puts him in Lewis Capaldi Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Six months after the release of Common Ground, neo-proggers Big Big Train return with another album of meticulously crafted songs urging human connection, closing communication gaps, and celebrating what it is to be alive; the opener and closer of Welcome to the Planet are addressed to newborns. The sole love song is an ode to a wife. And just as “happiness writes white on the page", so naive idealism roars with silence in the ears. These ears anyway. Like its predecessor, Welcome to the Planet is not the most expansive or melodic BBT opus, but diehards will likely adore its typically Read more ...
Justine Elias
Champion (1949), one of many boxing films of the 1930s and 1940s, made a sculpture – and a star – of Kirk Douglas. In one of the few non-fight scenes, Douglas, as middleweight Midge Kelly, agrees to pose for an artist (Lola Albright), but quickly gets bored.A bruiser in and out of the ring, he’s got his eye on the artist. So he drops his robe, crushes his clay likeness, and moves in, even though she’s his manager’s wife. Midge is always on the make. What he wants, he takes. Women, trainers, managers. And he bails on them like a snake sheds its skin.“I’m not gonna be a ‘Hey, you’ all my life Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Fiona Monbet is a phenomenal violinist with a huge expressive range. Her credentials, above all in jazz, are impeccable: the late Didier Lockwood once declared the Franco-Irish musician to be his “spiritual daughter”, but her influences range considerably wider than that remark might suggest. Her previous album, Contrebande (Crescendo, 2018), established her not just as an astonishingly strong musical presence, but also gave clues to her versatility.Now, nearly four years on after the album release, she says that she has performed her very last “Contrebande” concert with guitarist Antoine Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Mr. E’s music examines hellish depths, but always climbs back towards the light. Electro-Shock Blues (1998) was soon redeemed by “Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues”, and a trilogy of sometimes feral, wracked albums ended with Tomorrow Morning (2010). As the hard blows of deaths, disaster and divorce were absorbed, The Deconstruction (2018) even found a kind of faith. All things considered, E’s a remarkably optimistic writer.Souljacker was, though, a plunge into heavy darkness with Unabomber vibes, coincidentally released in 9/11’s aftermath. PJ Harvey’s frequent collaborator John Parrish produced, and Read more ...