New releases on CD & DVD
CD: Willie Nelson – Ride Me Back Home
Sunday, 16 June 2019
Willie’s new album opens with the singer calling out to all the tired old horses saved from the knackers and put out to pasture. It’s not just something he does in song, but in life. It’s co-written with Sonny Throckmorton, an old mucker of the Zen cowboy’s who lives next to Nelson’s Luck studio in Texas – and next door, too, to the ‘stud’ of 60 or so retired horses saved by Nelson from the slaughterhouse and given a retirement home on his ranch.
CD: Jane Weaver - Loops in the Secret Society
Friday, 14 June 2019
If contemplated without a context, Loops in the Secret Society initially appears to be a bold 68-minute, double-album fusion of Hawkwind’s hum and whir, Krautrock insistence, spacey electronica and folky otherness. Jane Weaver’s voice is disembodied, as if in a trance.
CD: Madonna - Madame X
Thursday, 13 June 2019
Madonna is the queen of reinvention and Madame X, her 14th studio album, marks another new brilliant, bonkers chapter in her 37-year career. The 13-...
CD: Hollywood Vampires – Rise
Wednesday, 12 June 2019
Four years after their debut album, the American supergroup the Hollywood Vampires has reached a new musical level with Rise while maintaining a...
Blu-ray: My Brilliant Career
Tuesday, 11 June 2019
Revisiting Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career for the first time since I saw it in its year of release, 1979, is a mixed experience. I...
CD: Bruce Springsteen - Western Stars
The Boss shows his smooth side |
CD: Kate Tempest - The Book of Traps and Lessons
Dynamic force in British poetry takes a bleak left turn that's sometimes musically flat |
DVD: Sink
Stark social drama about struggling to survive in a new East London world |
CD: Calexico and Iron & Wine - Years to Burn
Renewal of the partnership between Americana stalwarts offers few surprises |
CD: Avicii - TIM
The soul of extreme musical populism bared, heartbreakingly |
CD: Jamie Cullum - Taller
A divertingly eclectic set of originals from the all-embracing singer-songwriter |
Blu-ray: Track 29
The Dennis Potter-Nicolas Roeg collaboration that tapped Gary Oldman's early genius |
CD: Naomi Bedford & Paul Simmonds - Singing It All Back Home: Appalachian Ballads of English and Scottish Origin
First-rate folk music that defines that special relationship |
CD: Santana – Africa Speaks
The legendary guitarist gets personal and has fun doing it |
CD: Peter Perrett - Humanworld
A powerful second album confirms The Only Ones' singer's surprising resurrection |
CD: Fujiya & Miyagi – Flashback
Brighton's motorik genre hoppers make great strides forward by looking back |
Blu-ray: The Best of British Transport Films
Improbably enjoyable celebration of UK transport infrastructure |
CD: Richard Hawley - Further
South Yorkshire’s King of Cool takes it easy |
CD: Youssou N'Dour - History
Golden voice of Africa: over-produced |
CD: Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith - The Peyote Dance
Peyote, poetry and a voyage to the otherworld with Patti Smith |
Blu-ray: The Night of the Generals
Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif star in pedestrian Nazi-infested 1960s murder mystery |
CD: Morrissey - California Son
An often ear-pleasing covers album, but from a singer who urgently needs an artistic statement that clarifies his worldview |
CD: Honeyblood - In Plain Sight
Stina Tweeddale goes solo on tricksy third album |
Blu-ray: The Woman in the Window
Fritz Lang conjures a homicide that enmeshes a timid professor with another man's slinky mistress |
CD: Sting - My Songs
Mr Sumner updates his impressive back catalogue... slightly |
CD: Flying Lotus - Flamagra
Californian beat scene monarch continues his cosmic drift |
CD: The Waterboys - Where the Action Is
Mike Scott muses on his youthful musical, literary and geographical influences |
DVD/Blu-ray: Maurice
Merchant Ivory's celebrated EM Forster adaptation hits home with new maturity |
CD: Carly Rae Jepsen - Dedicated
The Canadian global cult pop star lets her songs breathe |
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