Australia
Music Reissues Weekly: The Twilights - Twilights Time The Complete 60s RecordingsSunday, 19 January 2025On 26 September 1966, The Twilights set-off from Australia to Britain. The journey, on the liner the Castel Felice, took six weeks. A day after boarding they learned their sixth single, “Needle in a Haystack,” was an Australian number one. There was... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2024: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Wild GodTuesday, 31 December 2024Young eldritch junkie Nick Cave would have struggled to predict his maturity as a font of wry and sacred wisdom, or the fathomless loss he reckoned with en route.Wild God followed the harrowed Skeleton Tree and grief-illumined Ghosteen, necessary... Read more... |
Album: Alice Ivy - Do What Makes You HappyMonday, 25 November 2024What’s to be said about an album that’s half well-executed body-moving, dancefloor pop and half sickly, slick schmaltz? It’s as if the creator is covering off all possible fanbases, those with taste and those lacking it. From a reviewing perspective... Read more... |
Amyl and the Sniffers, O2 Academy, Birmingham review - rowdy Aussies let looseTuesday, 12 November 2024Amy Taylor and the rest of the Sniffers ambled onto the stage of Birmingham’s O2 Academy to a huge roar of approval from a packed and diverse audience on Sunday evening. With her Farrah Fawcett hairstyle, toothy smile, sparkly bikini, knee length... Read more... |
London Film Festival 2024 - a shaman and shamSaturday, 26 October 2024Justin Kurzel’s Australian film subjects are out on the malign edge, from Snowtown’s suburban serial killer and Nitram’s mass shooter to Ned Kelly. His debut documentary’s protagonist Warren Ellis is a contrastingly loving renegade, an escapee from... Read more... |
Album: Amyl and the Sniffers - Cartoon DarknessWednesday, 23 October 2024Amy Taylor’s lyrics on Amyl and the Sniffers’ previous discs could hardly be described as demure – especially with song titles like “Don’t Need a Cunt (Like You to Love Me)”. So, it’s encouraging to hear that the band hasn’t decided to censor... Read more... |
London Film Festival 2024 - the Vatican, the Blitz, a trip to Poland and a surfin' nightmareSaturday, 12 October 2024ConclaveDirector Edward Berger won an Oscar for his last feature, All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), but here he concerns himself with the more intimate and claustrophobic battlefield of the Vatican. The Pope (Bruno Novelli) has died, and under... Read more... |
Our Country's Good, Lyric Hammersmith review - lively but patchy revivalFriday, 13 September 2024The latest Greatest Hit to land at the Lyric is Timberlake Wertenbaker’s 1988 award-winning play about a performance of Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer by British convicts in a New South Wales penal colony. It’s a piece about a true incident... Read more... |
Album: SJS - A Sequence of MistakesThursday, 08 August 2024Whether or not the lyrics Stuart Stawman writes and sings are autobiographical, the persona he’s created for himself as the leader of his neo-prog project SJS is that of a dutiful lover thwarted by the pressing of the self-destruct button no affair... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2024 reviews: Heartbreak Hotel / The Gummy Bears' Great War / The CeremonySaturday, 03 August 2024Heartbreak Hotel, Summerhall ★★★★ If the show’s title leaves you expecting schmaltz and dodgy Elvis impressions – well, you might be disappointed, and possibly pleasantly surprised. This quietly powerful two-hander from New Zealand-based... Read more... |
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire review - a bit of a monster let-downSaturday, 30 March 2024The latest blockbuster of 2024 is this disappointing fifth entry in the so-called MonsterVerse franchise, owned by Legendary Pictures. About half of the film contain actors, while half of it is computer-generated – the likely brief future of cinema... Read more... |
Late Night With the Devil review - indie-horror punches above its weightMonday, 25 March 2024In Late Night With the Devil, light entertainment rubs shoulders with demonic forces on a talk show. It isn't quite the homerun its 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating would suggest, but this Australian indie production punches above its weight with an... Read more... |
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