New releases on CD & DVD
Album: Elton John, The Lockdown Sessions - review
Thursday, 21 October 2021
I always thought those celebrity duets albums, recorded across the miles – or sometimes with someone who had long since passed to the great arena in the sky – were generally fraudulent, always cheesy and sometimes mawkish. Now Covid and eighteen months of forced separation have legitimised them, and all sorts of other things to boot.
Blu-ray: La Dolce Vita
Tuesday, 19 October 2021
One of those films weighed down by a considerable reputation, La Dolce Vita (1960) is rarely taken as seriously as it should be. From the very first sequence in which a figure of Christ sails across Rome’s skies, suspended from a helicopter, a sensational image that summed up the spiritual bankruptcy of the time, until the last when an innocent and beautiful girl smiles quizically in close-up, this is a deeply moral film.
Album: Young Thug - Punk
Monday, 18 October 2021
From underground curiosity to cult icon, now label head and superstar, Atlanta’s Young Thug has continued to reinvent himself, as well as rap at...
Album: Jarvis Cocker – Chansons d’Ennui Tip-Top
Saturday, 16 October 2021
Wes Anderson and Jarvis Cocker do 1960s French pop – this frothy confection couldn’t be any more “art school” if it were smoking a gauloise in a...
Album: Coldplay - Music Of The Spheres
Friday, 15 October 2021
Chris Martin has talked, not for the first time, of this finally being the Coldplay era of “no rules or fear”. Swedish pop producer Max Martin (The...
Album: Finneas - Optimist
Brother and collaborator of one of the biggest stars on earth steps out on his own |
Album: Pokey LaFarge - In the Blossom of Their Shade
Pokey's lockdown escape |
Blu-ray: The Lighthouse (Mayak)
Subdued, elegiac meditation on wartime life in the Caucasus |
Album: Santana - Blessings and Miracles
Latin Jazz pioneer hampered by a surfeit of brilliant guests |
Album: James Blake - Friends That Break Your Heart
Our James Blake-phobic reviewer has to admit the singer's latest has much to admire |
Album: The Courettes - Back In Mono
Garage rock revivalists go-go girl group crazy |
Album: Sam Fender - Seventeen Going Under
The Geordie stadium singer-songwriter unleashes fury while maturing his sound |
Album: Ministry - Moral Hygiene
Uncle Al raises a battle flag against the US political right-wing |
DVD/Blu-ray: Another Round
Thomas Vinterberg's superbly ambivalent drama about drinking in Denmark |
Album: Efterklang - Windflowers
The Danish art-poppers balance the tension between reserve and forthrightness |
DVD/Blu-ray: Maigret - The Complete Series
Entertaining, idiomatic Simenon adaptation, brilliantly cast |
Album: BADBADNOTGOOD - Talk Memory
Jazz/hip-hop mavericks' psychedelic voyage has a Hollywood ending |
Album: Vangelis - Juno to Jupiter
The septuagenarian electronic don maintains his course to the stars |
Album: The Specials - Protest Songs 1924 - 2012
Raw, spirited covers set featuring well-chosen songs of dissent and satire |
Album: Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga - Love for Sale
A new Tony Bennett album...at 95 |
Blu-ray: Johnny Guitar
Nicholas Ray's operatic Western gets the revival treatment |
Album: Catherine Graindorge - Eldorado
Ambient reflections on lockdown and death |
Album: Black Dice - Mod Prog Sic
Twenty-three years into their career, the raw electronic trio get to the hub of things |
Album: Amon Tobin - How Do You Live
Perennial electronic wizard pushes yet further into unexplored, sometimes loud, always compulsive terrain |
Album: Nao - And Then Life Was Beautiful
The soulful singer goes for a more organic musical approach on her third album |
Album: Lindsey Buckingham - Lindsey Buckingham
A lovely reckoning with ambiguity, loss and Fleetwood Mac by their exiled leader |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Servant
Downton Abbey goes to hell: Dirk Bogarde captures the first of the three Losey-Pinter collaborations |
Album: Public Service Broadcasting - Bright Magic
Willgoose and Wrigglesworth celebrate Berlin |
Album: Sufjan Stevens & Angelo De Augustine - A Beginner's Mind
An intriguing album of music inspired by film |
latest in today
Album: Elton John, The Lockdown Sessions - review
I always thought those celebrity duets albums, recorded across the miles – or sometimes with someone who had long since passed to the great arena...
Grenfell: Value Engineering, The Tabernacle review - bruisin...
Grenfell: Value Engineering isn’t actually a play. It’s an edited version of the testimony heard by the Grenfell Tower Inquiry,...
L'Heure Exquise, Linbury Theatre review - an exquisite...
Ballet dancers, even the greatest, don’t expect longevity. There are no Maggie Smiths or Helen Mirrens in the ballet world – there just aren’t the...
Dune review - awesome display of sci-fi world-building
I’d venture that Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965...
Colin Currie Group, RFH review - Reich premiere explores fre...
Single-composer programmes can be a bit dicey and there was a bit of trepidation approaching this one as Steve Reich is not a composer of massive...
Dave Chappelle: The Closer, Netflix review - race and class...
Say what you like about Dave Chappelle, but if nothing else he's an equal-opportunities offender, as his latest Netflix special, The Closer...
Rufus Wainwright, London Palladium review - superb musicians...
Rufus Wainwright believes opera to be “the greatest art form that has...
Die ägyptische Helena, Fulham Opera review - mythological me...
So Helen of Troy arrives at a church in Fulham via Poseidon’s island palace and a pavilion at the foot of the Atlas Mountains. She’s trickier than...
Love and Other Acts of Violence, Donmar Warehouse review - s...
This is simultaneously a love story and an archaeology of hate, a...
Rice, Orange Tree Theatre review - whip-smart, but unsure wh...
“Careful, there’s a hole in the floor.” The warning’s an unusual one, passed along conscientiously by the stewards at the door of the tiny...