CDs/DVDs
CD: Wilco - Ode to JoyThursday, 03 October 2019
Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy has been pondering how to react to oppression, and his own music’s obsolescence. What use is a rock band’s eleventh album at the best of times, he’s wondered, let alone in these worse ones under Trump?Wilco’s response is not to... Read more... |
CD: The Menzingers - Hello ExileWednesday, 02 October 2019
Punk rock, more so than any other genre, comes with a built-in age limit. There’s only so long you can play weeknights at basement venues for a share of the door and travel expenses; only so many years your back can withstand so many nights on... Read more... |
CD: Tonbruket - Masters of FogMonday, 30 September 2019
Bassist Dan Berglund was a founding member of the highly influential euro-jazz Esbjörn Svensson Trio (e.s.t.) until the accidental death of Svensson, while diving, in 2008. The first Tonbruket album appeared the following year, with Berglund joined... Read more... |
CD: The Darkness – Easter is CancelledSaturday, 28 September 2019
The Darkness have become something of an institution in British rock music since exploding onto the scene with their 2003 debut album, Permission to Land and its breakthrough single “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”. Over-the-top stage costumes and... Read more... |
CD: Tegan & Sara - Hey I'm Just Like YouFriday, 27 September 2019
There comes a time for reflection in everyone’s lives – perhaps for Canadian indie-pop duo Tegan & Sara this is it. Harking back to the 1990s, they have found and re-worked tracks written in their teenage years, taking grains of truth from their... Read more... |
CD: Trentemøller - ObverseThursday, 26 September 2019
Since the mid-2000s, Anders Trentemøller has been a major part of the European live circuit. A long time indie rock musician in his native Copenhagen, he had actually come to prominence as a fairly commercial electro-house remixer, but it was his... Read more... |
CD: 65daysofstatic - replicr, 2019Wednesday, 25 September 2019
65daysofstatic, the instrumentals-only post-rock experimental band from Sheffield, have suffered from the obsessive need to brand every supposed sub-genre of music when, in their case, they are much more than a math rock or glitch band. They are... Read more... |
Blu-ray: High NoonTuesday, 24 September 2019
The canonical town-taming Western High Noon brought Gary Cooper the 1952 Academy Award for Best Actor (his second). It also won Oscars for Best Editing, Best Score, and Best Song, Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington’s “Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darlin... Read more... |
CD: The New Pornographers – In the Morse Code of Brake LightsMonday, 23 September 2019
New Pornographer-in-chief AC Newman grew up enraptured by how much and how little pop could be: from David Bowie shucking skins to the rush of the Monkees’ “Daydream Believer”, to Pixies' boiling down of a song to three chords and a scream. Eight... Read more... |
CD: Rachid Taha - Je suis africainSaturday, 21 September 2019
Rachid Taha, sadly felled by a heart attack just over a year ago, has come back from the dead! He could not sound more lively than on this vibrant posthumous offering, definitely not something cooked up from tasty leftovers, but a well thought-... Read more... |
CD: Keane - Cause And EffectFriday, 20 September 2019
Keane were always the best of that post-millennium Coldplay crowd. Tim Rice-Oxley showed adult craft in his lyrics and keyboard textures on their 5 million-selling debut, Hopes and Fears, where the small-town specificity of Battle, Sussex’s biggest... Read more... |
CD: Liam Gallagher - Why Me? Why Not.Thursday, 19 September 2019
Liam Gallagher's 2017 solo debut, As You Were, took everybody by surprise. Not only did it show Gallagher Jnr to be still capable of capturing the public's imagination, but it also revealed him to be a much more capable writer than anyone had... Read more... |
