CDs/DVDs
Kieron Tyler
Any appreciation of Scotland’s The Associates is coloured by the knowledge that Billy MacKenzie took his own life at age 39 in January 1997. More than his band’s voice, he personified their unique approach to music. Between 1979 and 1982, with collaborator Alan Rankine, he created a string of vital records which defy genre pigeonholing and define their vehicle The Associates as one of Britain’s most wilful pop acts. Rankine split from MacKenzie in 1982 at the point when they had broken into the charts. MacKenzie, despite continuing to record as The Associates, solo and in collaboration, never Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Corinne Bailey Rae’s heart may speak in whispers, but it dreams in glorious technicolour. The title of the Leeds-born songwriter’s new album is an echoey chorus line that swims among the layers of its opening track – a song with the bridge of a boiling ocean that hints at dance-pop beats, reinvention. “The Skies Will Break” was surely an album title contender in its own right, perhaps not so much for its dubious poetry as for the glorious moment of catharsis it signals – a head rush, and then a moment of serenity.Fans concerned, from that giddy opener, that new love and a six-year hiatus have Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
When US singer Meghan Trainor broke through a couple of years back with the massive hit “All About That Bass”, it seemed a clear-cut case of a woman’s response to lollipop-headed, bulimic mainstream media images of her sex. No argument, right? But no, a backlash quickly arrived, saying that Trainor was anti-feminist and the song was “skinny-shaming”. What a load of bollocks. In a culture where women are consistently, ruinously, continually portrayed as pneumatic bikini babes, or with the bodies of adolescent boys, Trainor was a breath of fresh air.She still is, and Thank You’s standout Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The concept of Room as a home entertainment is freighted with irony. Emma Donoghue’s 2010 novel, which she adapted for Lenny Abrahamson to direct, tells of a young woman who, abducted at 17 and held in captivity, has for five years brought up her son in the eponymous room. Their world – the world of Ma and Jack - is 121 feet square, and they have to make their own home entertainment.The film is most celebrated for the compelling performances. Brie Larson won an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a Bafta as a mother who like a magus recreates her narrow world from scratch. Just as remarkable is Jacob Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Canadian singer/producer Jessy Lanza's records – and this one more than ever – can feel like they're mapping an alternative history, one where populist and leftfield electronic music were never separate. Two aspects dominate her sound: her crisp, clear pop vocal, and a palpable love of the sonorities of drum machines. Through every song you can hear echoing a history of electro, from its roots in Suicide, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwerk, on the one hand through eighties pop, new wave, Madonna, Prince and Timbaland, and on the other through the underground Detroit techno Read more ...
howard.male
When the Tuareg band Tinariwen first started to come to prominence a decade or so ago, world music purists tried to lay claim that they were purveyors of what they called "desert blues". The reason being, presumably, that the blues in their blinkered eyes was a purer, more authentic form than rock (which was what Tinariwen were really all about). But having said that, Tinariwen sound like Tanita Tikaram compared to parts of this second album from fellow Saharan desert rockers Kel Assouf (who feature Tinariwen guitarist and singer Anana Harouna). The title translates as "Surprise" and a Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Tarantino’s latest bloodfest is a claustrophobic piece of cinema in which a very wild bunch, holed up in a Wyoming shack in the middle of a blizzard, confront their various pasts, recent and less so, and gradually eliminate each other in a stunningly staged series of surprises, reversals of fortunes and outbursts of homicidal frenzy.Tarantino is the master of meta-narrative, subverting genre and yet paying homage to it. This is a riveting story of the old frontier but also a meditation on the Western, not least the sub-genre that draws on the violent heritage of the Civil War, which Tarantino Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Snarky Puppy make music on their own terms. Boundary-straddling is their stock in trade, from their origins between Brooklyn and Texas, their technique comprising complex orchestration and individual improv, an expansive approach to genre that spans spiky experimental to the seediest lounge-funk, and an aesthetic that’s heavily amplified but flavoured with horn-driven acoustic sound.After a series of Family Dinner albums that flouted their eclecticism with guest appearances from world music, gospel and blues stars including Lalah Hathaway, Salif Keita and Laura Mvula, for this, their 11th Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The figures are approximate, but the Yardbirds’ first studio album has been issued on CD at least 12 separate times. With The Move, their debut album and its follow-up Shazam have each had a comparatively paltry eight outings on CD. As for vinyl editions, setting aside the UK originals in mono and stereo and contemporaneous worldwide pressings, similar quantities of reissues of the three albums have hit shops from the mid-Seventies onwards. The Move have not been afforded au courant hipster vinyl editions, but a few versions of the Yardbirds’ set have been issued over the past six or so years Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
I find myself incredibly conflicted by a musician like Gregory Porter. Is my lack of response to his effortlessly soulful voice (the “liquid spirit”, perhaps, of the 2013 Grammy-award winning album of the same name) a symptom of some sort of emotional lack, or a product of the music itself being, objectively, pretty dull? Crossover appeal thanks to last year’s hit collaboration with UK dance duo Disclosure means cross-genre review assignments, so forgive me if I’ve simply missed the point, but for an album that boasts as many as eight jazz musicians and vocalists at times, Take Me to the Read more ...
Katie Colombus
When life gives you lemons, what do you do? Well, Beyoncé took the fruits of her musical labour, those of the black women before her and those hanging between her husband's thighs, to create something pretty sharp. This is a new sound, a new music movement, a new way of hearing her music.Her sixth studio album is way more than just that. It is accompanied by a film, a "visual album" that premiered on HBO and is streamed on Jay-Z's subscription-based music service Tidal, which allows a way more kaleidoscopic, intense and profound experience.Accompanied by spoken-word Read more ...
Saskia Baron
It’s fascinating to revisit Tootsie, some 30 years after its original success – in 1982 it was the biggest comedy hit of all time (though it was overtaken by Ghostbusters shortly after). Dustin Hoffman gives a pitch-perfect performance as an overly serious East Coast theatre actor who takes to cross-dressing when his agent (played by the film's director Sydney Pollack) can no longer get him work. He "passes" as a frumpy middle-aged actress and wins a part in a terrible daytime soap playing a feisty feminist. He falls in love with its star, Jessica Lange, who unfortunately wants to set him up Read more ...