CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
As I started to write this review, I found that Tucker Zimmerman died in January this year. This was news to me, sad news, made worse by the fact he died in a house fire at his home in Belgium, alongside his wife of more than five decades, Marie-Claire. I’d no idea and, as a fan taken by unhappy surprise, it likely affects my writing and perspective on this, his final album. At 84, Zimmerman was not young, and had decades of sporadically released, underheard music behind him, starting with his Tony Visconti-produced 1968 debut, Ten Songs (which David Bowie listed in Vanity Fair in 2003 Read more ...
Guy Oddy
While it’s four years since the Bobby Lees’ excellent Bellevue album was released, they haven’t been stumbling around in the slow lane since then. Having gone on a burnout-enforced hiatus in 2023 with guitarist Nick Casa moving on to pastures new, singer and all-round Renaissance woman Sam Quartin has appeared in a couple of films, while rhythm section, Macky Bowman and Kendall Wind have been seen playing with veteran garage rocker, Jon Spencer of late. So, they’ve certainly been keeping themselves busy.This busyness may explain the brevity of their new disc, which only clocks in at a little Read more ...
Joe Muggs
There’s not – and never has been, really – that much discourse about commercial dance music as music. It’s either talked about by ageing doomers (“oh the kids just want to film on their phones, they don’t dance any more”), as spectacle or social phenomenon, without ever really differentiating EDM from big room house from bassline from whatever else. Not that musicians like Sonny Fodera probably care, mind. Over 13 years and now six albums, racking up quarter-billion stream songs at a time, and ubiquitous in pop radio as much as mega-raves, Fodera has constantly trodden an interesting line Read more ...
Mark Kidel
In a cultural world with no frontiers, French-Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf has a musical CV that ranges very widely: collaborations with Angélique Kidjo, Sting, Quincy Jones, Amadou et Mariam, Archie Shepp and countless others. While rooted in Lebanese and Arab tradition, he moves with ease through jazz, rock, hip-hop and other genres. His new album, Vol 2 of the Michel-Ange project dedicated to his trumpet-playing father Nassim whom he revered as a kind of musical Michelangelo, is once again focused on a contagiously festive brass sound, part-Balkan Roma, part-Herb Albert and the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Back when One Direction alumnus Niall Horan released his second album, Heartbreak Weather, in 2020, songs such as “Nice to Meet Ya”, “Arms of a Stranger” and “Small Talk” hinted that new sonic adventures might be opening. Not in the vanguard sense of, say, St Vincent or FKA Twigs, but hints of envelope-pushing, nonetheless. These did not lead anywhere and, now up to album number four, he’s settled to a very 2026 gumbo that melds 1970s West Coast soft rock/yacht rock with a pinch of indie edge, but without the tunes to match his own poppiest (such as the contagiously joyful, if saccharine, “ Read more ...
Erin Lewis
Lizzo used to be fun. For a long time, the now 38-year-old singer-songwriter emitted a vibrant energy but that has lately seeped out of her music. This may be down to any of a litany of reasons that span her musical and personal life, but the result is the same regardless: Bitch is a deeply uninspired album. Her lyrics, which used to be full of interesting turns of phrase, if occasionally corny or overwrought, are now flat repetitions of previous work. Proclamations of self-love on “That Grrrl” are just recycled phrases from her number one single “About Damn Time” and “Bitch” is just “ Read more ...
Joe Muggs
The concept of political rap has always been a slippery fish. Even as hip hop first hit the mainstream, there was a myth perpetuated by well-meaning cheerleaders that it was a form of protest music first and for partying second – and this is an assumption that then metastasised into received opinion among critics and rock-centric audiences that worthy, angry rap was more authentic and had more value, than anything fun. This is, of course, patronising, silly, and a false dichotomy. It’s a distortion of an entire, vast, culture which has all too often led to mediocre talents (Michael Franti), Read more ...
Tom Carr
A new album from Evanescence doesn’t come around all that often. But when they do, they are always worth at least a pause and cursory listen: their reputation precedes them ever since their seminal hit “Bring Me To Life” first took over the airwaves in the early noughties.In the years since and across their five previous albums, their dramatic blend of modern Nu Metal stylings with symphonic melodies is an often-captivating premise that is hard to come by elsewhere. Best embodied by Amy Lee’s signature vocals and lyrics, they have an uncanny knack at tying up varied textures and influences Read more ...
Graham Rickson
Freshly-exhumed from the vaults, this latest Children's Film Foundation selection follows an established template. We get nine pacy short features taken from different eras in the CFF’s existence (in this case, between 1954 and 1980), along with a selection of choice extras. BFI producer and film historian Vic Pratt’s booklet notes are worth this set’s purchase price alone: that “CFF films were good, clean, fast-moving fun: short, sweet, high on kid-based comedy hi-jinks and straightforward adventure; low on boring grown-ups’ stuff like romance or overly complicated plots” pretty much sums up Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Irish fiddler Martin Hayes, star of The Gloaming supergroup, says of Ryan Young: “He is an up-and-coming musician who is gaining more and more well-deserved recognition. I feel that he has the potential to make a very significant contribution to the Scottish tradition.” And beyond his carefully measured words, Hayes has gone on to produce Young’s third album, as well as play on a couple of tune sets, which means you can strike out “up and coming” and replace it with “fully arrived”. And what an album it is – the playing, the discipline, invention and feel is exemplary. Young’s Read more ...
Tim Cumming
There’s been quite a breadcrumb trail leading up to the release of Paul McCartney’s 20th solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane – a The Rest is History podcast recorded at Abbey Road, interviews galore, and the expectation of an octogenarian McCartney delving into the deeper end of his past (almost a decade after he released Memory Almost Full).Thus the Dungeon Lane of the title – a local boyhood hangout for McCartney, a kind of second-tier Penny Lane. Recorded between tours over a period of five years, the 14-song album is packed with tunes and melodies brought together in a busy rush of songs Read more ...
Ibi Keita
Admittedly, my journey into the strange world of IDM, electronica and ambient music has not been a complex one. Whilst finding Aphex Twin, Burial, Squarepusher and the other entry level artists that pioneered these genres, I more than once tried to venture further out, and stumbled across the now classic Music Has the Right to Children by Scottish duo Boards of Canada. Deep fulfilling synths, trudging rhythms and precise vocal chops and samples, the album defines what they do best, and now, 13 years since Tomorrow’s Harvest, Boards of Canada are back with the dark and twisted Read more ...