1960s
Tom Birchenough
There’s black-and-white style aplenty in Štefan Uher’s The Sun in a Net, an elliptical look at a youthful boy-girl relationship that intermingles with a whole range of themes left open for the viewer’s interpretation. Heralding the better-known Czech New Wave and rather ignored in the aftermath of that movement, it earned opposition from the authorities in its time, but impresses today for its filmic rather than social edginess.It’s a story of young lovers and their families: Fayolo (Marián Bielik) and Bela (Jana Beláková) meet on the roof of their Bratislava apartment block, both to Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
This is a buoyant, likeable album but – to be dismal and pessimistic – maybe the moment has passed for The Polyphonic Spree. This would be a shame as they’re more interesting than 90 per cent of the wannabe guitar pop stars out there. However, a dozen years and four albums (five, if you include the Christmas one) into their career they appear no closer to catching on. Yes, It’s True is not a great deal different in quality or style from any of their previous albums. The band are experts in light psych-pop that beams out a benign smile and melodic warmth. This is no slight on their music, just Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Nilsson: The RCA Albums CollectionThe irony with Harry Nilsson is that despite being one of pop’s most distinctive and lauded songwriters, his two best-known singles were cover versions. In 1969 he hit the American and British charts with “Everybody’s Talkin’”, written by the ill-stared Fred Neil. Nilsson’s rendering was helped on its path by being featured in the film Midnight Cowboy. Then, in 1972, his interpretation of “Without You” topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. It was penned by Tom Evans and Pete Ham of the Beatles-propagated band Badfinger, both of whom would Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Saint Etienne Present Songs for a Central Park PicnicThis is the perfect compilation for days when heat brings an enervation so overwhelming it’s possible only to bask like a seal flopped on a rock. Compiled by Saint Etienne, Songs for a Central Park Picnic’s 25 tracks capture moods of calm and wistfulness, something to help you take it easy. Yma Sumac’s swinging “Gopher Mambo” and Sammy Davis Jr’s “Bee Bom” are uptempo, but their relaxed groove won’t induce a sweat.The picnic kicks off with the definition of cool. On Vince Guaraldi’s “Softly as in a Morning Sunrise” notes Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Few real-life subjects of a film would allow themselves to be seen in the way Ginger Baker is in Beware of Mr. Baker. He’s violent, bullying, self obsessed, a control freak, irresponsible, sexist, foul-mouthed and harbours decades-long grudges. Since he doesn't appear to be ill, it's difficult to ascribe his behaviour to forces beyond his control. He does, though, love animals and is a legendary drummer. So that’s all right then. Not only is Beware of Mr. Baker a testament to director Jay Bulger’s tenacity, it’s a portrait of a human so grotesque that even William Hogarth couldn’t have Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Michael Hurley: Armchair Boogie / Hi Fi Snock UptownWith songs about werewolves, penguins, the English upper classes, trains, the police and more werewolves, these albums from surrealist folk maverick Michael Hurley are charming and occasionally disconcerting. His ramshackle delivery seems a little offhand but it brings an intimacy that can’t fail to worm its way in. Armchair Boogie (credited to Michael Hurley & Pals) was originally issued in 1971; Hi Fi Snock Uptown in 1972. Both originally came out Raccoon, the label run The Youngbloods.Armchair Boogie was the belated follow-up to Read more ...
David Nice
No theatre in London, surely, has offered us more miracles of transformed space than the Young Vic. Small it may be, but its productions often feel big in every way, and none more so than Joe Wright’s total-theatre take on Aimé Césaire’s A Season in the Congo. Enter the auditorium and designer Lizzie Clachan immediately places you – in all but the humidity, which doesn’t seep through from outside – on a street or square in Kinshasa, quickly taking you back to its former status as colonial Léopoldville in 1955 where Patrice Lumumba is selling beer. None of this would work, though, if it weren’ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Sophisticated Boom Boom!! – The Shadow Morton StoryWithout Shadow Morton, Amy Winehouse could not have made Back to Black. The songs the enigmatic sonic wizard wrote and produced for The Shangri-Las in the mid Sixties were integral to what made Back to Black tick. Amazingly, Sophisticated Boom Boom!! – The Shadow Morton Story is the first career-spanning collection of Morton’s work. For that alone, it would be, at the least, exciting. But with its massive, well-illustrated booklet, the involvement of and interviews with Morton – who died in February this year, before he Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Rod Stewart isn't cool and he doesn't care. He made a complete pillock of himself with the likes of "Hot Legs" and "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?", but they were some of his biggest-ever hits. He plunged gleefully into the WAGS-and-riches fantasyland of Los Angeles, became a living cartoon of pop star excess, and loved it. "I enjoyed myself hugely, every hour of every day," he told Alan Yentob in this entertaining Imagine... profile.Nonetheless, the success of his recent album Time, and matching live shows, represent a resounding comeback for Stewart. They've restored a chunk of the credibility that Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
If Mae West was once described as a plumber’s idea of Cleopatra, Elizabeth Taylor, clad in gold and covered in real diamonds, is Hollywood’s ideal in Cleopatra (1963). Sumptuously restored to 2K DCPs and rereleased on the big screen, Taylor’s beauty and the chemistry with future husband Richard Burton remain throbbingly alive - in a production so mired and luckless that it tried to spend its way out of trouble.Winning four Oscars, Cleopatra became the highest-grossing film of its year. Its $300m modern equivalent production cost will forever be outshone by its own scandal: Taylor and Burton’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Off we jolly well go.” With that, The Flamin’ Groovies’s Chris Wilson announced the arrival of “Shake Some Action”, the band’s classic evocation of rock ‘n’ roll swagger. In 2013, 40 years after it was first recorded, it's still magnificent, a headlong rush of chiming, descending chords and soaring vocals. “If you don't dig what I say, then I will go away,” sang Wilson. And without a mass audience, The Flamin’ Groovies had gone away. Wilson left in 1981 and the band fizzled out in 1992. Now, they’re back.Beginning last night with a ragged version of 1973’s “Let Me Rock” was a statement. This Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Giorgio Moroder: Schlagermoroder Volume 1 1966-1975 / On the Groove Train Volume 1 1975-1993 / On the Groove Train Volume 2 1974-1985 / Son of my FatherSo far, this year has been good for Giorgio Moroder. He’s been integral to Daft Punk’s world-conquering Random Access Memories. “I Feel Love”, the timeless, pulsing synth-dance fantasia he fashioned for Donna Summer, opened the Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra. At once, he’s evocative of a particular era and his influence is shaping the contemporary. The voyage through these seven CDs (three doubles and a single) shows how hard he’s Read more ...