CDs/DVDs
Mark Kidel
The songs of Richard Thompson have always been tinged with a hint of bitterness and anger, passions that are tempered by guitar paying of near-miraculous fluency. His new album, produced with brilliance and tact by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, is no exception. The standards are as high as ever, and the self-penned material, with the exception of “Guitar Heroes”, a somewhat tedious homage to masters of the instrument, is characterized by Thompson’s usual mix of poetry and irony.As with much of Thompson’s previous work, he ranges from the tropes of folk-rock – jaunty yet slightly melancholy tunes Read more ...
Graham Rickson
If you’ve ever cycled down a potholed inner city street, dodging white vans and errant pedestrians, you’ll howl with envy at the cycling safety shorts collected in this BFI compilation. What did these riders have to worry about? 1947’s Pedal Cyclists shows a suited wag combing his hair whilst riding, and the same year’s Stringing Along illustrates what will happen if you patch your brakes up with, er, string. The surprise is the dearth of traffic, apart from the occasional slow moving bus. Leave a bicycle unattended in any major city and it’ll probably vanish within minutes; in these films, Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Do you remember Alisha’s Attic? The '90s sister-duo’s debut was the first album I bought, and it was full of pretty pop songs soaked in vinegar and malice. Wolf Alice, a grunge-pop four-piece from north London, remind me of Alisha’s Attic, at least on those songs fronted by angelic-voiced co-founder Ellie Rowsell - or more specifically, they remind me of Alisha’s Attic if the latter's Shelly and Karen were fronting My Bloody Valentine.My Love is Cool is a debut five years in the making but its protagonists – Rowsell and guitarist Joff Oddie, who takes lead vocals on meandering late-album Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Peter Zinovieff: Electronic Calendar – The EMS TapesRoxy Music’s June 1972 debut appearance on The Old Grey Whistle Test found them miming to “Ladytron” from their debut album, released that week. A prime focus for the camera was Eno, in a fake leopard-skin jacket and shiny gold gloves. Twiddling knobs and waggling a joystick, he stood at what was obviously an instrument but not a conventional one. There was no keyboard and the noises generated bubbled and swooped. This was an EMS synthesiser.The EMS synthesiser was British and a favourite of Hawkwind, Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, The Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Being on everyone’s list of top jazz singers isn’t always helpful. Elling’s eleventh album, a kind of musical travelogue inspired by his onerous touring schedule, is a compendium of international repertoire extending from traditional pieces such as the “Loch Tay Boat Song”, to new arrangements like “Bonito Cuba”, Elling’s adaptation of Arturo Sandoval’s melody.The pieces are played with exquisite precision by an enviably world-class procession of instrumentalists, including Cuban trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, French accordionist Richard Galliano and the WDR Big Band. Elling himself is in Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s way too much proficiency in music these days. There’s way too much interest in high production values. Also, half the people involved in popular music seem more interested in the business side, the branding and the online imprint. It is very, very boring. They are very, very boring. The Parrots will not change this, but I doubt they care and that’s a good thing. I’m not even sure they’d call this an album. Maybe they’d term it an EP. Who cares, it has six songs on it so we’ll say mini-album. Mika was supposed to be today's review but it never arrived. Probably for the best. That dude Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The LaFontaines are one of Scotland’s biggest new bands but have yet to make the same impact south of the border. There is, however, nothing about their debut album that’s parochial. To make a crude comparison, they sound, at first, like a grime-flavoured Biffy Clyro. What makes them stand out is the rapping of frontman Kerr Okan, whose lyrics occasionally land a punch. What’s less appealing is an over-reliance on predictable air-punching choruses, tiresomely tailored for giant venues. These make them sound ordinary.The five-piece from Motherwell have gone the traditional route of endless Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Every 75 years or so, Halley’s Comet comes round to say, "Hi". When it does, there’s genuine excitement, not because there’s any kind of stock trade in fond reminiscence when it comes to glowing lumps of rock, but because it’s a genuinely captivating event. The Orb’s latest offering is similarly hurtling through space once more, and reminding us of their conceptual debut that slapped us around our collective face back in 1991. It feels like a similar event.The first thing to say is that this is, without doubt, the most coherent offering from the Orb (currently comprised of Alex Paterson and Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford camped it up superbly as 1950s Western matriarchs in Rancho Notorious and Johnny Guitar respectively. Yet they were outflanked by the steelier Barbara Stanwyck, an actress passionate about the genre. She carved a niche for herself as a fierce, cynical frontierswoman of property in The Furies, Cattle Queen of Montana, The Maverick Queen, and Forty Guns, though love or justice typically compromised the feminist slant of these films, which led Stanwyck eventually to her 1965-69 Western series The Big Valley.Forty Guns wasn’t as thematically rich as Run of the Read more ...
ellin.stein
The clue is in the name: Selma, after the Alabama city that was the site of three crucial confrontations in the 1960s struggle for African-American civil rights, not King, after the eloquent spokesman and de facto leader of that struggle. Because director Ava DuVernay is more interested in saluting the power of a grassroots movement than in lionizing a Great Man of History, this inspiring, profoundly moving film avoids the pussyfooting and over-reverence that has afflicted biopics of other secular saints like Gandhi, Lincoln, and Mandela.The moral courage of David Oyelowo’s Martin Luther King Read more ...
Joe Muggs
The story of singer-songwriter-cellist-composer Arthur Russell is tragic and life-affirming in equal measure. A Zelig-like figure, from his corn-belt beginnings he glided through underground scenes in the 1970s and '80s, collaborating with everyone from Alan Ginsberg to Talking Heads to Philip Glass. Though he died aged just 40 in 1992, he directly inspired everyone from the early pioneers of house music to current luminaries like Sufjan Stevens and Hot Chip.When I interviewed his biographer Tim Lawrence for theartsdesk in 2009 it was clear that interest in Russell's work was continuing to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Lesley Gore: California NightsThe reissue of 1967’s California Nights is a timely tribute to both Lesley Gore, who died in February this year, and Bob Crewe, the producer of most of the album’s tracks, who died in September last year. Gore first charted in 1963 with “It’s my Party”, which was followed by a string of hits including the feminist-slanted “You Don’t Own me”. Crewe was prodigious: he was a songwriter, manager, producer and singer. With Bob Gaudio, he steered The Four Seasons to success and wrote or co-wrote classics like "Big Girls Don't Cry" and "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine ( Read more ...