CDs/DVDs
Album: Jehnny Beth - To Love Is To LiveWednesday, 10 June 2020![]() Jehnny Beth was the formidable and mysterious leader of Savages’ flinty monochrome attack, remoulding stark post-punk into gender-fluid shapes. Retiring the band after two Mercury-nominated albums, and returning to France after more than a decade of... Read more... |
Blu-ray: HagazussaTuesday, 09 June 2020![]() Was witchhood a vocation in the Middle Ages or, as seems more likely, a charge levelled at sick or troublesome women by superstitious neighbours anxious to be rid of them? One of the merits of the gravely beautiful folk horror film Hagazussa is the... Read more... |
EP: Imelda May - Slip of the TongueMonday, 08 June 2020![]() Dublin’s Imelda May, who made her name as a superlative performer of high-energy rockabilly in a way that reflected the music’s partly Irish roots, has just released her first poetry recordings: nine punchy, moving, sometimes humourous and well-... Read more... |
Album: John Scofield, Steve Swallow, Bill Stewart - Swallow TalesSaturday, 06 June 2020![]() Swallow Tales is a great album. It took three musicians fewer than five hours on one afternoon in New York studio in March 2019 to make. But there again, it also took them more than 40 years.John Scofield became aware of bassist Steve Swallow in the... Read more... |
Album: Hinds - The Prettiest CurseFriday, 05 June 2020![]() The Prettiest Curse is the third album by Spain’s indie-foursome Hinds and sees them take a substantial step up from the lo-fi, C86/Pastels’ like sound of their previous discs Leave Me Alone and I Don’t Run. Now they have embraced considerably more... Read more... |
Album: Dion - Blues With FriendsThursday, 04 June 2020![]() As news bulletins compare events in America to 1968, the mental jukebox spins almost inevitably to “Abraham, Martin and John”, first recorded by Dion – the price of a new record contract after he‘d got clean and split from The Belmonts. It’s not the... Read more... |
Album: Westerman - Your Hero is not DeadWednesday, 03 June 2020![]() Will Westerman is not afraid of sounding retro. It's clear his influences are diverse, from jazz fusion to the bedroom proto-house experiments of Arthur Russell. But in their final form, his high gloss production, highly literate songs and fretless... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: ParasiteTuesday, 02 June 2020![]() So what exactly is all the fuss about? For those of us from a cinema-deprived area, it’s been a long wait for the homevideo release of this much vaunted "masterpiece". And the trailer gives away so much, there’s probably little to surprise us, right... Read more... |
Album: Sonic Boom - All Things Being EqualMonday, 01 June 2020![]() Experiencing All Things Being Equal is akin to taking a trip through The Time Tunnel. Although the songs and the recordings on the new solo album from former Spacemen 3 man Pete Kember aka Sonic Boom are recent, they could have been lifted from his... Read more... |
Blu-ray/DVD: Little WomenSunday, 31 May 2020![]() For the average female millennial, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women is the perfect film to watch in lockdown. Brought up on Winona Ryder’s Jo March, then Gerwig’s Frances Ha in our teen years, we never expected this blessing but are most ardently... Read more... |
Album: Bab L'Bluz - NaydaSaturday, 30 May 2020![]() Bab L’Bluz are a Franco-Moroccan band, They’re the latest in a succession of musicians - going back to the pioneers Nass El Ghiwane, and the recently departed Rachid Taha - to have created a vibrant fusion of traditional sounds from the Maghreb with... Read more... |
Album: Lady Gaga - ChromaticaFriday, 29 May 2020![]() Lady Gaga proclaimed by Tweet that her sixth album represents her “absolute love of electronic music”. Chromatica features EDM names such as Axwell from Swedish House Mafia, French DJ-producers Tchami and Madeon, bro’step superstar Skillex, as well... Read more... |
