CDs/DVDs
CD: The Horrors - VThursday, 21 September 2017
The Horrors have always had a penchant for churning out pop-tinged gems, and on V, with help from Adele/Coldplay/Florence and the Machine producer Paul Epworth, they’ve applied their same winning formula to darker music. The album cover, a mishmash... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Life Is SweetTuesday, 26 September 2017
Sweet isn’t the right word; in Mike Leigh’s 1990 film, life is unfair, frustrating and confusing by turns. Though, despite the darkness, Life Is Sweet exudes positivity and remains one of Leigh’s funniest, most quotable features.Many of the best... Read more... |
CD: Jon Boden - AfterglowMonday, 25 September 2017
The main man of folk big band Bellowhead steps out solo with a companion piece to his 2009 outing Songs from the Floodplain. Where that album was essentially rural, the new one is altogether more urban, Boden describing it as a story of "two star-... Read more... |
CD: David Crosby - Sky TrailsSunday, 24 September 2017
David Crosby might be entering life’s twilight but, like a tired drummer, he seems to be speeding up towards the end. Perhaps he’s simply hit a rich vein of form – the success, both artistic and critical, of 2014’s Croz, and the 2016 follow-up,... Read more... |
CD: The Killers - Wonderful, WonderfulSaturday, 23 September 2017
The last song on The Killers' new record is called "Have All the Songs Been Written?". The words refer to Brandon Flowers' writers' block during the album's recording. Apparently, he tried everything to get out of the slump, including asking... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Journey to the Centre of the EarthThursday, 21 September 2017
Oh dear. I thought that this was going to be one of those exciting fantasy films that livened up TV on weekend afternoons in my childhood, and that there would be kitschy special effects and ludicrous dialogue. But no, it's not 20,00 Leagues under... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Legend of the Holy DrinkerWednesday, 20 September 2017
A decade after his masterpiece, The Tree of Wooden Clogs, won the 1978 Palme d’Or at Cannes, Italian director Ermanno Olmi took Venice’s 1988 Golden Lion for The Legend of the Holy Drinker (La leggenda del santo bevitore). Festival victories aside,... Read more... |
CD: Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Luciferian TowersTuesday, 19 September 2017
Luciferian Towers, the third album since Canadian oddballs Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s 2011 reunion, is an instrumental psychedelic masterpiece that reflects our times without resorting to political bluster. Indeed, with two of its four tracks... Read more... |
CD: Josh Ritter - GatheringMonday, 18 September 2017
Recorded in Rhinebeck, upstate New York, the ninth album in Josh Ritter’s 18-year career strikes many moods, from the manic to the contemplative. It is, he has said, a record of storms, internal and external; of the darkness before a summer storm, “... Read more... |
CD: Marc Almond - Shadows and ReflectionsSunday, 17 September 2017
In the UK, the best-known version of “Shadows and Reflections” is by mod band The Action, who issued it as a single in June 1967. At that point, the north London outfit had merged their predisposition towards soul with a taste for American harmony... Read more... |
CD: Foo Fighters - Concrete and GoldSaturday, 16 September 2017
Foo Fighters are a global superstar act. And why not, as the late film critic Barry Norman used to say. After seeing them at Glastonbury, they strike me as an irresistible proposition; their Sonic Highways TV documentaries, about music in American... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: My Life as a CourgetteFriday, 15 September 2017
Describe the plot of My Life as a Courgette to someone who’s not been lucky enough to see it and they'll find it hard to understand how a film with such a bleak premise can be so funny and emotionally involving. Swiss director Claude Barras’s... Read more... |
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