CDs/DVDs
Blu-ray: The AscentTuesday, 23 February 2021
There’s a striking interview among the extras for this Criterion edition of Russian director Larisa Shepitko’s fourth and final feature. The director was talking in 1978 to Bavarian Television at the Berlin Film Festival, where The Ascent had won... Read more... |
Album: Willie Nelson - That's LifeMonday, 22 February 2021
“That cat’s a blues singer,” Frank Sinatra famously said of Willie Nelson. “He can sing my stuff but I don’t know if I can sing his.” The two men sang together, on stage and on record, and Nelson, 87, is now older than Sinatra when he took his final... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Grand Budapest HotelSunday, 21 February 2021
Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig gets an acknowledgement in The Grand Budapest Hotel’s closing credits and if you’ve read Zweig’s Beware of Pity you’ll recognise why, Wes Anderson’s Mitteleuropa setting and penchant for flashbacks within flashbacks... Read more... |
Album: Maxïmo Park – Nature Always WinsSaturday, 20 February 2021
Composed in the first lockdown, and recorded remotely, the seventh album from Newcastle’s Maxïmo Park was produced by Ben Allen (Animal Collective, Deerhunter). But it is not so much a record of the times as a snapshot of a time in the... Read more... |
Album: Ghetts - Conflict of InterestFriday, 19 February 2021
Immersively arranged and intricately lyrical, Ghetts’ third full album further boosts grime’s takeover of British music’s front rank. Aged 36, he’s a contemporary of Kano, and similarly still evolving.Last year’s eerily mesmeric single, “Mozambique... Read more... |
Album: Mathieu Boogaerts - En AnglaisThursday, 18 February 2021
Mathieu Boogaerts has been recording since the mid 1990s, emerging from the nouvelle chanson scene in Paris, a chansonnier who’s performed at the likes of Cafe Oto over here, while establishing himself as a star turn on the Tôt ou Tard label in... Read more... |
Album: Mogwai - As the Love ContinuesWednesday, 17 February 2021
It’s odd to hear a band benefit from becoming more conventional. But where Glasgow’s Mogwai used to fiercely stake out a very distinctive musical space of their own, here they’re letting their influences flood into their songs – and note the word “... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Mogul MowgliTuesday, 16 February 2021
Can one use the term autofiction about a film? If so, Mogul Mowgli would be a perfect example. Riz Ahmed, the actor who came to fame with Four Lions, has in recent years appeared in a Star Wars spin-off and a Marvel... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Last WarningSunday, 14 February 2021
Stuttgart-born auteur and film theoretician Paul Leni, whose illusionistic production designs and direction of Waxworks (1924) helped define German Expressionist cinema, was 44 and approaching master status when he died of sepsis on 2 September... Read more... |
Album: Tindersticks - DistractionsSaturday, 13 February 2021
Nottingham’s perpetually disappointed romantics, Tindersticks would seem to have spent 2020’s almost never-ending Covid lockdown creating their 21st album (including film soundtracks), Distractions. However, just as the pandemic has been for the... Read more... |
Album: Sia - MusicFriday, 12 February 2021
It’s difficult to know where to start with Sia’s Music. The album is billed as a collection of songs “from and inspired by” the film of the same name – so not a soundtrack, except for when it is. It tracks range from candy coated to overly... Read more... |
Album: The Pretty Reckless - Death By Rock And RollThursday, 11 February 2021
Four albums in and The Pretty Reckless singer, Taylor Momsen, still feels the need to explain herself to her doubters. In a recent interview, the former actress reiterated that quitting the TV show Gossip Girl, a decade ago, was her best decision... Read more... |
