thu 03/04/2025

New releases on CD & DVD

Album: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - Death Hilarious

Guy Oddy

Pigsx7 have hardly got a reputation for penning tender and soulful ballads, but Death Hilarious is a particularly aggressive and punishing album even by their standards. Taking cues from Black Sabbath’s heft, Motorhead’s “bend not stab” sound and soul shaking noise rock, their new album is the aural equivalent of being mugged by a gang of feral kids and being left feeling particularly battered by the experience.

Album: Elton John and Brandi Carlile - Who Believes in Angels?

Liz Thomson

Spring may have sprung, but there’s little in life to truly raise the sprits, so this week’s release of Who Believes in Angels? the much-anticipated album from Elton John and Brandi Carlile is especially welcome.

DVD/Blu-ray: The Substance

Markie Robson-Scott

“I knew I wanted all the effects practical and made for real. The movie is about flesh and bones, about women’s bodies.”Coralie Fargeat, writer,...

Album: Erlend Apneseth - Song Over Støv

Kieron Tyler

A pizzicato violin opens Song Over Støv. Gradually, other instruments arrive: bowed violin, a fluttering flute, pattering percussion, an ominous...

Album: Bryan Ferry and Amelia Barratt - Loose Talk

Graham Fuller

On the spoken word LP Loose Talk, Amelia Barratt reflects on her or other women’s experiences, real or imagined, over tunes drawn from Bryan Ferry’s...

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Album: Will Smith - Based on a True Story

Ibi Keita

Big Willie’s back - but maybe he should’ve stayed home

Album: Perfume Genius - Glory

Joe Muggs

Album seven from an artist carving out his own space in the most modernist of ways

Album: Alison Krauss & Union Station - Arcadia

Tim Cumming

Their first album in 14 years looks hard at the past, and its role in the present

Blu-ray: Lifeforce

Nick Hasted

Tobe Hooper's frenzied, far out space sex vampire epic

Album: Toria Wooff - Toria Wooff

Kieron Tyler

Assured but too measured debut album from Americana-inclined singer-songwriter

Album: Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco - I Said I Love You First

Thomas H Green

An album by a pair of loved-up Hollywood celebs that is, whisper it, rather good

Album: The Horrors - Night Life

Thomas H Green

A new line-up proves no hindrance to a band bringing electro-rock zip to the darkness

Album: Billy Hart Quartet - Just

Sebastian Scotney

The drum legend's group in perfect balance

Album: Greentea Peng - Tell Dem It's Sunny

Guy Oddy

South Londoner’s smoky sophomore album is loaded with dope tunes

Album: The Loft - Everything Changes, Everything Stays The Same

Kieron Tyler

Belated debut album from the early Creation Records mainstays

Album: Jason Isbell - Foxes in the Snow

Joe Muggs

Small stories, big talent from the Alabaman storyteller extraordinaire

Album: Steven Wilson - The Overview

Graham Fuller

Infectious prog concept LP ponders Earth's insignificance and what lies beyond

Album: Coheed and Cambria - The Father of Make Believe

Ellie Roberts

An impressive welcome back to the group's imaginitive universe

Blu-ray: The Barnabáš Kos Case

Graham Rickson

Witty and stylish Slovak black comedy, alarmingly prescient

Album: Reg Meuross, Fire & Dust: A Woody Guthrie Story

Liz Thomson

At once a celebration and an exploration of the timeless Dust Bowl Balladeer

Album: Lady Gaga - Mayhem

Joe Muggs

The godmother of theatre-kid pop is back! Back!! BACK!!!

Blu-ray: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

Nick Hasted

Tobe Hooper's grisly, blackly comic sequel patents a surreal Texas zone all its own

Album: Spiritbox - Tsunami Sea

Tom Carr

Second album from Canadian metalcore band is a sonic assault yet graceful and beautiful

Album: The Burning Hell - Ghost Palace

Kieron Tyler

Reflective Canadians interpret an increasingly unfathomable world

Album: Anoushka Shankar - Chapter III: We Return to Light

Guy Oddy

Sitar titan blends the sounds of modern India into her travelogue triptych

Album: Jethro Tull - Curious Ruminant

Graham Fuller

Tull burst out again with a set of bristling folk-prog anthems

Album: Architects - The Sky, The Earth & All Between

Tom Carr

The Brighton metallers condense their 20-year career into an impactful concoction

Album: Abel Selaocoe - Hymns of Bantu

Mark Kidel

A celebration of the ancestors, African and European

Album: Doves - Constellations for the Lonely

Joe Muggs

Prog-rock existential wranglings from the grizzled Mancunians

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