CDs/DVDs
Album: Mark Morton - Without the PainWednesday, 16 April 2025
Mark Morton is best known as a guitarist with US metallers Lamb of God. They’ve been going for three decades, established and successful, at the more extreme, thrashier end of the spectrum, but still achieving Top Five albums on the Billboard charts... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: In a Year of 13 MoonsTuesday, 15 April 2025
A longshot of transgender Elvira (Volker Spengler) circled by gay men, assignation turning to assault as dawn mist rises from Frankfurt’s Main river, suggests Pasolini’s brutal 1975 assassination. Rainer Werner Fassbinder instead had in mind the... Read more... |
Album: Rhiannon Giddens & Justin Robinson - What Did the Blackbird Say to the CrowMonday, 14 April 2025
At a time when the powers that sadly be in America are trying their damnedest to erase and rewrite history, the latest release from Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson is a welcome reminder of the rich culture of the Black community and how much it... Read more... |
Album: Joe Lovano - HomageFriday, 11 April 2025
Tenor titan Joe Lovano is thrilled by how Homage has turned out. He actually told me so himself in person a few weeks ago, and his new album has a very appealing, natural, free-flowing ease.Cleveland-born saxophonist Lovano first met Polish pianist... Read more... |
Album: Bon Iver - SABLE ƒABLEThursday, 10 April 2025
With a sound that's instantly recognisable, Justin Vernon – known as Bon Iver - continues to astonish. Purveyor of wonder, sculptor of enchanting sounds, he treads a miraculous path between melancholy and joy and has established himself as one of... Read more... |
Album: Black Country, New Road - Forever HowlongWednesday, 09 April 2025
Black Country, New Road’s Forever Howlong is an ambitious reinvention that both captivates and, at times, frustrates. Following Isaac Wood’s departure, the band leans into a more collaborative and folk-inspired direction, trading their post-punk... Read more... |
Album: Sofia Härdig - Lighthouse of GlassMonday, 07 April 2025
The titular “lighthouse of glass” is a place where the narrator is “crying into the sun,” in which there is a need to “stand by my solitude.” Choosing isolation and self-determination are themes running throughout Lighthouse of Glass the album and... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Yojimbo / SanjuroSunday, 06 April 2025
Akira Kurosawa described his 1961 hit Yojimbo as a tale of “rivalry on both sides, and both sides are equally bad… we are weakly caught in the middle, and it is impossible to choose between the evils”. Toshiro Mifune’s nameless rōnin pitches up a... Read more... |
Album: The Waterboys - Life, Death and Dennis HopperSaturday, 05 April 2025
Mike Scott is The Waterboys. Launched by wide-eyed 1980s folk-rock, and “The Whole of the Moon”, he’s long since roamed into whatever stylistic gumbo he fancies. The latest album – the band’s 16th – is a concept piece, a 25-track sonic biography of... Read more... |
Album: Miki Berenyi Trio - TriplaFriday, 04 April 2025
I saw the Miki Berenyi Trio play a warmly received sold out set at the Lexington last autumn, at which many of the songs now coming out on Tripla ("three" in Hungarian) had their live previews, alongside a few from the Lush years – the likes of “... Read more... |
Album: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - Death HilariousThursday, 03 April 2025
Pigsx7 have hardly got a reputation for penning tender and soulful ballads, but Death Hilarious is a particularly aggressive and punishing album even by their standards. Taking cues from Black Sabbath’s heft, Motorhead’s “bend not stab” sound and... Read more... |
Album: Elton John and Brandi Carlile - Who Believes in Angels?Wednesday, 02 April 2025
Spring may have sprung, but there’s little in life to truly raise the sprits, so this week’s release of Who Believes in Angels? the much-anticipated album from Elton John and Brandi Carlile is especially welcome.The album cover alone is... Read more... |
