CDs/DVDs
Album: Alice Cooper - RoadThursday, 24 August 2023
Let’s face it, well over 50 years into Alice Cooper’s career, you probably already know whether his umpteen-billionth album is for you. Over the last decade, he’s revitalised things by taking a meta look at himself, but, whether harking back to his... Read more... |
Album: Hiss Golden Messenger - Jump for JoyWednesday, 23 August 2023
Any surprises which Jump for Joy brings aren’t about the nature of the music or the unfailingly open lyrics recounting Hiss Golden Messenger main-man M.C. Taylor’s outlook on his life, but an intermittent undertone suggesting he’s been considering... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Thieves Like UsTuesday, 22 August 2023
Thieves Like Us, Robert Altman’s 1974 evocation of 1930s Mississippi, wasn’t a commercial hit on its original release, even though Pauline Kael called it a masterpiece.This Depression-era tale of a trio of hapless bank-robbers was shot on... Read more... |
Album: Ratboys - The WindowMonday, 21 August 2023
Ratboys have been around since 2010, knocking out their guitar-powered indie fare over three albums in their home city of Chicago. However, with album number four, they have decided to branch out and pay homage to the US alt-rock scene of the early... Read more... |
Album: ¿Téo? - LunaFriday, 18 August 2023
A little remarked fact of modern music is just how lush the sound of modern R&B and adjacent music is. A decade ago, the relative harshness of trap beats and EDM synths seemed to dominate sonically, or on the more bohemian fringes... Read more... |
Album: Hozier - Unreal, UnearthThursday, 17 August 2023
Only a few artists can be said to have exploded on to the scene like Hozier. The solo, Irish musician – full name Andrew John Hozier-Byrne – shot to stardom with the omnipresent hit “Take Me To Church” back in 2014. Although his work since hasn... Read more... |
Album: Genesis Owusu - StrugglerWednesday, 16 August 2023
There’s been a sense of anticipation around Ghanaian-Australian Genesis Owusu ever since his ebullient 2021 debut album Smiling with No Teeth. He won a bunch of Arias, Australia’s Grammys, but could he break internationally? He’s toured the US with... Read more... |
Blu-ray: EarwigTuesday, 15 August 2023
Even more than David Lynch, to whom her work has been compared, director Lucile Hadžihalilović is a strange agent between this world and the dreamworld.From her debut feature, Innocence, an adaptation of Frank Wedekind’s symbolist novel about pre-... Read more... |
Album: OSEES - Intercepted MessageMonday, 14 August 2023
On the face of it, this is an extremely simple record. It is big, stomping, party-monster neanderthal synth-rock.There’s no new sounds here: the structures are classic garage punk, the synthesisers’ growl and squeal sounds like some jerry-rigged... Read more... |
Album: Rhiannon Giddens - You're the OneSaturday, 12 August 2023
In late 2019, BC, another age, Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi stepped on to a Southbank Centre stage and gave one of those mesmerising performances that forever stays in the memory.In the three years or so since, Giddens has been given a... Read more... |
Album: Neil Young - Chrome DreamsFriday, 11 August 2023
A curious and rather marvellous sonic chimera manifests in the twilight of the rock gods, an album from 1977 finding its physical release 46 years after it was committed to acetate, and then abandoned, reasons unknown. Neil Young’s Chrome... Read more... |
Album: Laura Groves - Radio RedThursday, 10 August 2023
“Sky at Night” begins Radio Red. Its brooding atmosphere is shared with Saint Etienne’s “Hobart Paving.” Also, a sinuous sense of melody is at one with Todd Rundgren’s finest ballads. Melodic filigrees suggest Laura Nyro or Brighton band The Mummers... Read more... |
