mon 21/07/2025

New releases on CD & DVD

Album: Spafford Campbell - Tomorrow Held

Tim Cumming

Guitarist Louis Campbell and fiddle player Owen Spafford started playing together as teenagers in the National Youth Folk Ensemble when Sam Sweeney (of Bellowhead and Leveret) was its director. They released their first album, You Golden, three years ago. It featured audacious musical extrapolations from Playford’s English Dance Master – also a key source for Sweeney’s Leveret – and with an emphasis on ensuring an abundance space, rather than notes, in the playing.

Album: Bonnie Dobson & The Hanging Stars - Dreams

Liz Thomson

What a great album – and what a great story to lift the heart in these fetid times. A story that crosses oceans and decades and brings together a Canadian singer-songwriter for once worthy of the label “legend” and a bunch of Bob Harris Emerging Artist Award-winners with a clutch of well-received albums under their belt.

Album: Alex Warren - You'll Be Alright, Kid

Thomas H Green

The best-selling single so far this year in the UK is Californian singer Alex Warren’s “Ordinary”. It stayed at the top of the charts longer than any...

Album: Slikback - Attrition

Joe Muggs

In the eternal now of the strobe-lit sweatbox, innovation functions in a different way to the rest of culture. Yes of course, the thrill of the new...

Album: The Near Jazz Experience - Tritone

Guy Oddy

As the name suggests, the Near Jazz Experience owe a huge musical debt to jazz, but that’s not the full story by any means. For a start, the rhythm...

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Blu-ray: Heart of Stone

Graham Rickson

Deliciously dark fairy tale from post-war Eastern Europe

Album: Kokoroko - Tuff Times Never Last

Peter Quinn

Sophomore album embraces horn-driven grooves and genre-blending experimentation

Album: Wet Leg - moisturizer

Kathryn Reilly

A perfectly formed classic that will definitely be on those album of the year lists

Album: Tami Neilson - Neon Cowgirl

Thomas H Green

New Zealand country queen's latest chimes with America's heartland bars and highways

Album: Mark Stewart - The Fateful Symmetry

Joe Muggs

The Bristol agit-prop hero on philosophical form on his final album

Album: Gwenno - Utopia

Kieron Tyler

The Welsh musical explorer surveys her life

Blu-ray: A Hard Day's Night

John Carvill

The 'Citizen Kane' of jukebox musicals? Richard Lester's film captures Beatlemania in full flight

Album: Olafur Arnalds and Talos - A Dawning

Tim Cumming

Shimmery, shiny Icelandic-Irish ambience steeped in beauty

Album: Barry Can't Swim - Loner

Kathryn Reilly

Dive in to some sizzling summer dance music

Album: Kesha - .

Thomas H Green

After a decade of tribulation, a new beginning matches stadium heft to club-pop bounce

Album: Claudia Brücken - Night Mirror

Thomas H Green

The Propaganda singer returns with an album of elegant, varied grown-up pop

Album: Mocky - Music Will Explain (Choir Music Vol. 1)

Joe Muggs

Is the Canadian polymath hiding behind his exquisite production and arrangement skill?

Album: Brìghde Chaimbeul - Sunwise

Kieron Tyler

A singular sonic auteur reshapes traditional Celtic music

Album: JF Robitaille & Lail Arad - Wild Moves

Thomas H Green

A set of graceful, wry melancholy from an Anglo-Canadian singer-songwriter duo

Album: Lorde - Virgin

James Mellen

Sombre self-examination and scratchy cellos fail to ignite on the New Zealander's new LP

Album: Bruce Springsteen - Tracks II: The Lost Albums

Liz Thomson

The Boss: Finding joy in imperfections

Album: BC Camplight - A Sober Conversation

Kieron Tyler

Brian Christinzio exorcises childhood trauma

Album: Durand and the Indications - Flowers

Mark Kidel

Languorous neo-soul to chill by

Album: Yungblud - Idols

Guy Oddy

Dominic Harrison’s latest disc fails to live up to the hype

Album: Loyle Carner - Hopefully!

Ibi Keita

The rapper takes a deep breath with his latest release

Album: HAIM - I Quit

Thomas H Green

The Californian trio convincingly continue their ascent to the top of the pop-rock tree

Blu-ray: Darling

Demetrios Matheou

John Schlesinger's Sixties classic now feels problematic, but retains an icky fascination

Album: Yaya Bey - do it afraid

Joe Muggs

The continued maturation of Yaya Bey and of modern R&B dazzles and nourishes at every turn

Album: The Young Gods - Appear Disappear

Guy Oddy

Swiss electro-rockers unleash a techno-metal monster

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