CDs/DVDs
Owen Richards
Not all One Direction solo albums are created equally, and after Liam Payne's public ostracization for LP1, all eyes are on Harry Styles. His self-titled debut earned some baffling comparisons to David Bowie, so what to expect next?Fine Line is akin to a seasonal selection box, picking the sweetest styles from across the genres. A bit of precision art pop here, a touch of dramatic blues rock there, a sprinkling of calypso on top. It certainly isn't comfortable staying still. Single "Adore You" owes a heavy debt to The 1975 by way of Simply Red, but still works thanks to an irresistible chorus Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Appearing on NPR Music’s legendary Tiny Desk Concert series back in autumn, Taylor Swift talked about how, in interviews over the years, she’d been asked a thousand variations on “what would you write about if you ever get happy?” “Would I not be able to do my favourite thing in the world anymore?” she mused. “I love breakup songs!” Happily for Swift – and for the rest of us who love breakup songs – falling in love didn’t affect her ability to craft heartbreak poetry. “Death by a Thousand Cuts” – which, in “I dress to kill my time”, features perhaps my favourite ever of her lines – is, she Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A Fistful of Dynamite and Once Upon a Time in America are Sergio Leone’s films with the most explicit political underpinning. Indeed, given recent events, A Fistful of Dynamite is a thoroughly pertinent film, asking how we might achieve social change when the only human resource to hand is venal and self-serving. On the other hand, the conclusion offered by James Coburn’s world-weary - but still driven - IRA man on the run in Mexico veers towards anarchic nihilism: “I used to believe in many things – all of it! – but now I believe only in dynamite.”Also known as Duck, You Sucker, a Read more ...
Guy Oddy
No-one needs to be told that 2019 was a year which saw the UK, USA and many other countries looking somewhat at unease with themselves. Inevitably, this filtered down into much of the music that was produced under these conditions. Even Peter Perrett – a man not known for his political pronouncements – sang of how “The so-called Free World stands for evil incarnate” on the storming “War Plan Red” from his superb second solo album, Humanworld.The album that really held up a mirror to 2019, however, came from Imperial Wax, the band predominantly consisting of the remaining members of the Fall’s Read more ...
Ellie Porter
Nebraska-born singer-songwriter Josh Rouse made his name in Nashville and has spent the past 15 years living in Spain, and his latest offering gathers together elements of both sides of the Atlantic in a meandering, twinkling collection of Christmas songs.The Holiday Sounds of Josh Rouse is a pretty slight affair, clocking in at just over half an hour, filled with dreamy, laidback vocals, jazzy elements and a dash of retro charm. It's pleasant enough but, unfortunately, the first handful of tracks really noodle along, pianos a-tinkling everywhere, which means the album takes much too Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Here’s some Christmas cheer for you – Robbie Williams now ties Elvis for the most number ones in a solo career. Take that in (pun intended). While there was a fleeting moment in the late Nineties when he could do no wrong, chart-wise, Mr Williams seems happy to take the caricature to the max.Do we really need yet another version of "Winter Wonderland", or the "Christmas Song", or "Let it Snow"? And do we need them to come with a thick icing of smarm, as deep as only Robbie (sly wink, cheeky grin) Williams can serve up? Here’s hoping that Noddy Holder hasn’t heard this big-band-style Read more ...
Graham Fuller
British cinema has done so badly by Christmas that the revival of a film that parses the nature of the festival while mining its potential for sparking family strife is cause for celebration. Long neglected, The Holly and the Ivy (1952) has been handsomely restored by StudioCanal and deserves to become a seasonal staple alongside Scrooge (1951), Comfort and Joy (1984), and the BBC adaptation of Alan Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings (1986), which is currently available on YouTube only. The Holly and the Ivy was adapted by Anatole de Grunwald from Wynyard Brown’s West End hit. Set on Read more ...
Russ Coffey
In a season awash with limp carols, dodgy glam-rock and schmaltzy jazz, all credit to Los Lobos for coming up with something different. LLegó Navidad (Christmas is Here) contains 12 festive folk songs, mostly hailing from Latin America. There's not a sprig of tinsel or ho ho ho in sight. Instead, we get a series of simple, homespun textures warmed by the Southern Californian sun. It's all a lot softer than the Los Lobos of "La Bamba" (1987). This is much more like their acoustic Mexican album La Pistola y La Corazon. The East LA quintet researched over 150 lesser- Read more ...
Guy Oddy
If there’s one man who has got the chutzpah to sing songs about the Baby Jesus while flashing the Devil’s horns, it’s Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford. In fact, on the CD cover to his latest solo album, this is exactly what he’s doing – for Celestial is Rob Halford’s Christmas album. It is also a record which shows serious brass neck by taking a handful of original tunes and a truckload of traditional Christmas carols and applying a total New Wave of British Heavy Metal make-over throughout.“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” keeps all of the original lyrics but accompanies them with monster Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Liam Payne is a Simon Cowell-manufactured pop star worth tens of millions off the back of music that’ll be regarded in a few years’ time much as the Bay City Rollers or Curiosity Killed The Cat are regarded now. Aesthetically an easy target, then, so there’s a temptation to take a counterintuitive approach and explore only what’s great about his debut album – and it does have its moments – but the short of it is that a wide range of mostly female 15-25 year olds are going to like this, and most others won’t.Where Harry Styles’ solo output has been courting an audience outside chart–pop, Liam Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Before the days of stardom on Jay-Z and Kanye’s scale, before Brooklyn became a millionaire’s playground, Gang Starr were deeply influential in hip hop and became pioneers of jazz rap. However, Guru disassociated himself from long-term partner DJ Premier as far back as 2006 and yet here we are, nine years after his death and 16 years after their last album together listening to the duo in stereo. A long legal battle resulted in some of Guru’s old tapes featuring around 30 unreleased rhymes being given to his family, allowing DJ Premier the opportunity to "retrofit" melodies and samples around Read more ...
Tim Cumming
From the off, with a bellicose Daltrey declaring “I don’t care, I know you’re going to hate this song,” on the opener “This Music Must Fade” to the ferocious vocal hitched up to a careering chariot of a riff that drives “Ball and Chain”, and the look-back-in-anger ravings of “I Don’t Wanna Get Wise”, WHO sets its stall as The Who thriving on the kind of energy that fuelled this band in the Sixties and Seventies, while dwelling in that wordy introspective philosophical space Townshend has occupied for decades, in interview and in song. The sound and fury of this bracing set of openers harks Read more ...