CDs/DVDs
Album: Amber Arcades - Barefoot On Diamond RoadWednesday, 08 February 2023
In this context, what’s named “diamond road” is a metaphor for staying on course rather than, as the lyrics of the song “Diamond Road” put it, letting yourself go or sprawling all over the floor. Follow this route and life won’t be a mess.Barefoot... Read more... |
DVD: Babylon Berlin, Season FourTuesday, 07 February 2023
It’s coming up for two years since some of us watched the first three seasons of what’s increasingly coming to seem like television’s greatest dramatic triumph. Babylon Berlin. So we might be excused for being in a bit of brainwhirl when it comes to... Read more... |
Album: Yo La Tengo - This Stupid WorldMonday, 06 February 2023
Yo La Tengo’s new disc would appear to be an homage to the indie scene of the mid 1980s: a place before baggy beats became the groove du jour and where dancing with wild abandon was somewhat of a rare occurrence. Indeed, in This Stupid World maudlin... Read more... |
Album: Shania Twain - Queen of MeSaturday, 04 February 2023
Shania Twain describes her sixth studio album as “a song of gratitude and appreciation. I was inspired that I still had air in my lungs” – and it certainly is a hi-energy affair, a long way from The Woman in Me, the sophomore outing that established... Read more... |
Album: The Waeve - The WaeveThursday, 02 February 2023
The Waeve is the debut album from life partners Rose Elinor Dougall (long ago in The Pipettes) and Graham Coxon (of Blur), working with James Ford (of Simian Mobile Disco), who co-produces and provides occasional bits of instrumentation. Their album... Read more... |
Album: Lisa O'Neill - All of This Is ChanceWednesday, 01 February 2023
Lisa O’Neill is a part of the new wave of Irish contemporary folk artists, one that encompasses the likes of Lankum, Ye Vagabonds and John Francis Flynn, all of them putting their albums out on Rough Trade, which makes the venerable English Indie... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The War Trilogy - Three Films by Andrzej WajdaTuesday, 31 January 2023
Watching these harrowing films in rapid succession allows us to watch a great director’s confidence develop at close hand; though 1955’s A Generation (Pokolenie) is an impressive debut for a 27-year old director, both Kanał (1957) and 1958’s Ashes... Read more... |
Album: Robert Forster - The Candle and the FlameMonday, 30 January 2023
Reflections on how the past relates to now suffuse The Candle and the Flame. The album’s closing track is “When I Was a Young Man.” When he was 21, sings Robert Forster, “I wrote songs, I was unsung, unheralded and undone”. His figurative brothers... Read more... |
Album: Sebastian Rochford, Kit Downes - A Short DiarySaturday, 28 January 2023
A Short Diary, a duo album for piano and drums, contains music of astonishing directness, calm and concentration. The story of how it came into being is fascinating, but it also stands on its own as pure music of luminous quality, and is bound to be... Read more... |
Album: Deathprod - CompositionsThursday, 26 January 2023
Ambient is everywhere now. After a quiet (lol) 2000s, when it rather disappeared into the cracks, perhaps tarred with the sense that the more cosmic sides of the Nineties rave experience were passé, beatless music steadily rose in profile through... Read more... |
Album: Låpsley - Cautionary Tales of YouthWednesday, 25 January 2023
Let me start by being pretentious and self-referential, spending ages doing that rather than reviewing the album. My theory is that most male music journalists aged between 45-65, like me, don’t PROPERLY love the music of 21st century female pop... Read more... |
DVD: Oscar Peterson - Black + WhiteTuesday, 24 January 2023
I can’t help enjoying the continuing elevation of the jazz pianist Oscar Peterson (1925-2007) to national monument status in Canada. A park or a square here (Montreal), a boulevard there (Mississauga), a school, a concert hall, a statue, a... Read more... |
