New releases on CD & DVD
Album: Guided By Voices - Universe Room
Saturday, 01 February 2025
Tireless rockers Guided By Voices confidently play with sound throughout Universe Room, their eighteenth album in 10 years. Experimental in nature, it consists of 17 short tracks that take you through a non-cohesive sonic journey. It’s fun to listen to but it has obvious highlights.
Album: The Weeknd - Hurry Up Tomorrow
Friday, 31 January 2025
The Weeknd is a global megastar, one of the biggest music sensations of the age. Last year, his compilation, The Highlights, was the second best-selling album in the world, and he has 27 songs with over a billion streams on Spotify, which is a record. His latest album is the third part of a trilogy which started, back in 2020 with After Hours.
Album: Cymande - Renascence
Thursday, 30 January 2025
When you’ve achieved the truly sublime, trying to recapture it can be bittersweet. Cymande, for the mere three years they existed in the early 1970s...
Album: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - The...
Wednesday, 29 January 2025
Somewhat astoundingly, The Purple Bird is Will Oldham’s album number 21 using his Bonnie “Prince” Billy alias. A fine set of alt country tunes,...
Album: Gary Kemp - This Destination
Monday, 27 January 2025
If I’d listened to this blind, I would have absolutely no idea who it was by. This isn’t the voice I remember on those Spandau backing tracks. In...
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Album: Ludovico Einaudi - The Summer Portraits
Long summer holidays remembered |
Album: FKA Twigs - Eusexua
A transformative electronic journey across diverse sonic and emotional landscapes |
Album: Tunng - Love You All Over Again
Tunng go full circle after 20 years of dreams and conjuration |
Blu-ray: Mikey and Nicky
Elaine May's edgy 1976 crime drama deglamorises the gangster archetype |
Album: Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis & Karine Polwart - Looking For the Thread
It's only January but this is an album of the year |
Album: Larkin Poe - Bloom
Heavy blues-rock riffery guides the Lovell sisters’ introspective new songs |
Album: Kele - The Singing Winds Pt. 3
The road less travelled has led to a fantastically focused creative identity |
Album: The Weather Station - Humanhood
Canadian singer-songwriter makes sense of a period of crisis |
Album: Ethel Cain - Perverts
Cain’s new album is a far cry from her debut - and much more painful |
Album: Moonchild Sanelly - Full Moon
The rising South African sex'n'beats whirlwind is on ripe dancefloor-friendly form |
Album: Lambrini Girls - Who Let the Dogs Out
Politically-savvy hardcore punk rock with a Riot Grrrl flavour |
Album: Franz Ferdinand - The Human Fear
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
Classic folk songs are given a desolate new setting |
Album: Snoop Dogg - Missionary
A 30-year reunion which fails to pleasure |
Blu-ray: The Hop-Pickers
Ground-breaking and colourful Czech musical |
Albums of the Year 2024: Chihei Hatakeyama & Shun Ishiwaka - Magnificent Little Dudes Vol. 1
A wonderful meeting of minds |
Albums of the Year 2024: Mk.gee - Two Star and the Dream Police
US singer-songwriter’s debut really hits the spot |
Albums of the Year 2024: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Wild God
Muscular emotion and mystery in redemptive big music |
Albums of the Year: Beth Gibbons - Lives Outgrown
Mature songs for trying times |
Albums of the Year 2024: Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology
A casual masterpiece that keeps getting better |
Best of 2024: Blu-ray
The pick of the year's releases: films spanning decades, continents and genres |
Albums of the Year 2024: Katherine Priddy - The Pendulum Swing
One of the great British folk-acoustic albums of the decade |
Albums of the Year 2024: Everything Everything - Mountainhead
The Manchester art-rockers seventh album illustrates their unmatched creative vision |
Blu-ray: Hitchcock - The Beginning
A box set shows how Alfred Hitchcock embraced the sound revolution – pathologies intact |
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Album: The Weeknd - Hurry Up Tomorrow
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