sun 26/01/2025

New releases on CD & DVD

Album: Ludovico Einaudi - The Summer Portraits

Sebastian Scotney

Nine billion streams a year. That’s the sheer scale on which the music of Ludovico Einaudi reaches audiences. The Italian, who will be 70 this November, is courteous and genial in person – I interviewed him in Montreal a couple of years ago – but is also, patently, a superstar.

Album: FKA Twigs - Eusexua

Katie Colombus

It would be really easy to get hung up on the definition for this album. Is it a new sexuality term? A holiday genre of technopop? A planet that will align with the others on January 29th?English singer Tahliah Debrett Barnett, aka FKA Twig, describes via X, that "eusexua is a practice, eusexua is a state of being, eusexua is the pinnacle of human experience".

Album: Tunng - Love You All Over Again

Joe Muggs

This is Tunng’s ninth album, their first in five years, and marks their 20th anniversary by consciously going full circle to the gentle sound...

Blu-ray: Mikey and Nicky

John Carvill

The blurb that accompanies this Criterion Blu-ray calls Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky, which co-stars John Cassavetes and Peter Falk as scuzzy, low-...

Album: Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis &...

Liz Thomson

It’s been five years since the last studio album by the inestimable Mary Chapin Carpenter, the lyrical and intimate The Dirt and the Stars, recorded...

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Album: Larkin Poe - Bloom

Tim Cumming

Heavy blues-rock riffery guides the Lovell sisters’ introspective new songs

Album: Kele - The Singing Winds Pt. 3

Joe Muggs

The road less travelled has led to a fantastically focused creative identity

Album: The Weather Station - Humanhood

Kieron Tyler

Canadian singer-songwriter makes sense of a period of crisis

Album: Ethel Cain - Perverts

Ibi Keita

Cain’s new album is a far cry from her debut - and much more painful

Album: Moonchild Sanelly - Full Moon

Thomas H Green

The rising South African sex'n'beats whirlwind is on ripe dancefloor-friendly form

Album: Lambrini Girls - Who Let the Dogs Out

Guy Oddy

Politically-savvy hardcore punk rock with a Riot Grrrl flavour

Album: Franz Ferdinand - The Human Fear

Tom Carr

Indie rockers' sixth album may not live up to their iconic debut but is no less striking

Album: Bridget Hayden and The Apparitions - Cold Blows The Rain

Kieron Tyler

Classic folk songs are given a desolate new setting

Album: Snoop Dogg - Missionary

Kathryn Reilly

A 30-year reunion which fails to pleasure

Blu-ray: The Hop-Pickers

Graham Rickson

Ground-breaking and colourful Czech musical

Albums of the Year 2024: Chihei Hatakeyama & Shun Ishiwaka - Magnificent Little Dudes Vol. 1

Harry Thorfinn-George

A wonderful meeting of minds

Albums of the Year 2024: Mk.gee - Two Star and the Dream Police

Ibi Keita

US singer-songwriter’s debut really hits the spot

Albums of the Year 2024: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Wild God

Nick Hasted

Muscular emotion and mystery in redemptive big music

Albums of the Year: Beth Gibbons - Lives Outgrown

Mark Kidel

Mature songs for trying times

Albums of the Year 2024: Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology

Ellie Roberts

A casual masterpiece that keeps getting better

Best of 2024: Blu-ray

Graham Rickson

The pick of the year's releases: films spanning decades, continents and genres

Albums of the Year 2024: Katherine Priddy - The Pendulum Swing

Tim Cumming

One of the great British folk-acoustic albums of the decade

Albums of the Year 2024: Everything Everything - Mountainhead

Tom Carr

The Manchester art-rockers seventh album illustrates their unmatched creative vision

Blu-ray: Hitchcock - The Beginning

Graham Fuller

A box set shows how Alfred Hitchcock embraced the sound revolution – pathologies intact

Albums of the Year 2024: Samara Joy - Portrait

Peter Quinn

From Grammy triumphs to sonic odysseys: nine of the year's most transcendent jazz albums

Albums of the Year 2024: Mercury Rev - Born Horses

Kieron Tyler

An exploration of inner space, freeze-dried electronica, French nursery rhymes and more

Albums of the Year 2024: Kneecap - Fine Art

Guy Oddy

The music sector finely emerges from the long shadow of Covid with a bumper year

Blu-ray: Three Wishes for Cinderella

Graham Rickson

Witty, engaging Czech fairy tale with an appealingly feisty heroine

Albums of the Year 2024: Meemo Comma - Decimation of I

Joe Muggs

A concept album from the perspective of an infected planet provides succour and sustenance

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Album: Ludovico Einaudi - The Summer Portraits

Nine billion streams a year. That’s the sheer scale on which the music of Ludovico Einaudi reaches audiences. The Italian, who will be 70 this...