CDs/DVDs
Albums of the Year 2020: Laura Marling - Song for Our DaughterWednesday, 30 December 2020
Dropped a month into the year’s first lockdown, Laura Marling’s seventh album landed like a soothing tonic to an odd and chaotic time. The stripped back production had an air of loneliness, yet the vocals were effervescent and soothing. The... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Visual AcousticsTuesday, 29 December 2020
One of the world’s leading architectural photographers, Julius Shulman was the subject of a show at London’s Photographers’ Gallery this autumn, “Altered States of America”. That title surely alluded to the visual modernism that changed the face of... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2020: Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt CuttersMonday, 28 December 2020
Back in October, Fiona Apple – whose Fetch the Bolt Cutters, released in April, captured a particular early pandemic mood – was interviewed by Emily Nussbaum for The New Yorker Festival. “I think we women should be marrying our friends,” she told... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Short Sharp ShocksSunday, 27 December 2020
This BFI compilation looks back to an age when an evening at the cinema was a proper night out, the main attraction preceded by a short supporting feature. Nine spooky and macabre examples are included here, though the set earns its four stars by... Read more... |
Blu-ray: PolytechniqueTuesday, 22 December 2020
The French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve is best known for mainstream films like Sicario, Arrival, and Blade Runner 2049, stylishly expressive in their harnessing of alienating terrains, notably deserts and plains. Their claustrophobic... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2020: Bob Dylan - Rough and Rowdy WaysMonday, 21 December 2020
Given Dylan’s last album of originals was in 2012, and his standards phase had concluded with a slightly meandering three-disc set in Triplicate, expectations of anything other than an archival release or new tour announcement from Dylan in 2020... Read more... |
Blu-ray: CrashSunday, 20 December 2020
Crash, David Cronenberg’s dazzling, daring, disturbing adaptation of JG Ballard’s novel about car crashes and sex is one of the most infamous of all cinema cause celebres.The film's premiere in Cannes in 1996 caused an extraordinary ballyhoo, with... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2020: Songhoy Blues - OptimismeSaturday, 19 December 2020
If there’s been one thing that has coloured the UK music scene in 2020, it’s been the lack of any type of performance in front of a living, breathing and sweating audience for much of the year. Who was to know back at the beginning of January that... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2020: Cleo Sol - Rose in the DarkFriday, 18 December 2020
Among the glints of light in this overcast year, one particularly bright one has been the state of British soul music. Not just in the sense of good records released, although there’ve been plenty of those – but something significantly deeper: a... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2020: Marius Neset – TributesWednesday, 16 December 2020
This year of all years – surely – we need music which takes us to better, happier places. And the new album from Norwegian-born saxophonist/composer Marius Neset does that. It also gives us a bit more hindsight and context as to what his two... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2020: Melt Yourself Down - 100% YesWednesday, 16 December 2020
I’ll leave it to others, better placed, to unpack 2020’s gruelling impact on so many. But one of its side effects was the elevation, alongside food and television, of recorded music. It became a salve, a focus, a locus of social media blather about... Read more... |
Album: Paul McCartney - McCartney IIIMonday, 14 December 2020
Leave a 78-year-old ex-Beatle locked down for long enough, and this what he comes up with: a sequel to his two previous wholly solo albums, cooked up in his Sussex home studio. The results find the once derided, “Thumbs Aloft” McCartney’s slow... Read more... |
