sun 17/08/2025

CDs/DVDs

Blu-ray: Drugstore Cowboy

Rehab people will tell you there are three stages to drug abuse: fun; fun with problems; problems. There’s also a fourth phase, where there aren't any problems, because you’re dead.Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy maps out the territory between...

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Album: Artemis - Arboresque

Spare a thought – please – for Leipzig-born pianist Jutta Hipp (1925-2003). In 1956, she became the very first woman to record albums in her own name for the Blue Note label. Earlier this month was the centenary of her birth. It went by more or less...

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Album: Heather Nova - Breath and Air

With her 13th studio album, Heather Nova delivers what you might expect from one of the 90s' most distinctive alternative voices – though longtime fans of London Rain will find she's meandering down a sandier path. Breath and Air finds the...

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Album: Panda Bear - Sinister Grift

Sinister Grift is Panda Bear’s first album since his 2022 Reset collaboration with Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom. Anyone anticipating any lasting influence from working with Rugby’s premier psychedelic adventurer, however, is going to be sorely...

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Album: Sam Fender - People Watching

While discourse on many topics grows toxic and polarised, it’s the voices who speak plainly about the reality of everyday lives that provide some sanity and make us feel heard. Enter Sam Fender, whose straight talking and pride of his working-class...

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Album: Basia Bulat - Basia's Palace

Canadian singer Basia Bulat has tried on various musical hats during her career but is most associated with singer-songwriterly folk-pop. Her last album was the melancholic, string-swathed The Garden but with Basia’s Palace, her seventh album, she...

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Blu-ray: Golem

In Jewish folklore, a golem is an inanimate clay figure, brought to life when a magic word is placed inside its mouth. Piotr Szulkin’s dark 1979 film debut makes reference both to this legend and to Gustav Meyrink’s unsettling 1914 novel, moving the...

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Album: Tim Hecker - Shards

The question of personality in abstract and ambient music has always been a fascinating one. Without conventional signifiers of expressiveness, and especially in the age of AI, it’s easy for people to think “a computer could have done that”. Indeed...

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Album: Park Jiha - All Living Things

Park Jiha is a super-talented and gloriously inspired Korean multi-instrumentalist. Her new album follows Philos (2018) and The Gleam (2022) and continues to mine a rich vein of Korean tradition, which she filters through a contemporary aesthetic....

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Album: Rizzle Kicks - Competition Is For Losers

After more than 10 years away, Rizzle Kicks are finally back, and it feels long overdue. Their music was a huge part of my childhood – soundtracking summer days, parties, and just about any time I needed a pick-me-up.Thankfully, Competition Is...

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Album: Fantastic Twins - Suite of Rooms

This album is SHORT. At 27 minutes and just five tracks, one might wonder why Julienne Dessagne (this is a solo act) didn’t call it an EP. But maybe this is a good way to go in the trenches of the modern attention wars. It set me to thinking about...

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Album: Manic Street Preachers - Critical Thinking

Manic Street Preachers’ earnest and literate pretentiousness is both their Achilles Heel and their superpower. Their greatest songs are amped by full investment in whatever awkward path they’ve cussedly marched down. At these times, their ever-...

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