CDs/DVDs
CD: Mary Ocher - The West Against the PeopleSunday, 12 March 2017
OK, the title could be offputting, suggesting as it does the crassest of adversarial politics. But this record is something far deeper, far subtler and far more enjoyable than that. Yes, the Russia-born, Israel-raised, Berlin-based singer-songwriter... Read more... |
CD: Jarvis Cocker & Chilly Gonzales - Room 29Saturday, 11 March 2017
Jarvis Cocker and Chilly Gonzales’ first collaborative album is a song-cycle centred around the piano in the titular room of the Château Marmont in West Hollywood – a hotel with a reputation as something of a den of iniquity during the Roaring... Read more... |
CD: The Moonlandingz - Interplanetary Class ClassicsFriday, 10 March 2017
Musically, Interplanetary Class Classics breaks no new ground. Opening cut “Vessels” could be by the KLF and kicks off with Glitter Band drums, a Chicory Tip stomp and has robot-like declamatory vocals: what critically favoured Nineties band Earl... Read more... |
CD: Fink - Fink's Sunday Night Blues Club Vol 1Thursday, 09 March 2017
Fin Greenall’s career is developing as a reverse mirror image of musical history. Originally a DJ and electronic music pioneer working on the edge of contemporary performance, for the past decade he has been on a journey into the acoustic and... Read more... |
CD: Tamikrest - KidalWednesday, 08 March 2017
Tamikrest’s fourth album is well-presented, good enough, but a little hamstrung by what have become the clichés of the modern Touareg genre: the lilting rhythms of a camel cruising slowly across the dunes, intertwined guitars that smoothly swirl... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Cul-de-SacTuesday, 07 March 2017
Has the British seaside ever looked more alien than in Roman Polanski’s absurdist drama Cul-de-Sac? Filmed on Holy Island, the tide steals the causeway that led craggy American gangster, Richard (played by Lionel Stander) to an isolated, run-... Read more... |
CD: Miraculous Mule - Two Tonne TestimonyMonday, 06 March 2017
Miraculous Mule summon up that great feeling when you walk into an anonymous festival marquee and are caught up in a storm of music by someone you’ve never heard of. Two Tonne Testimony has a looseness, where songs matter less than hefty grooves, a... Read more... |
CD: Ed Sheeran - DivideSunday, 05 March 2017
It's part and parcel of Ed Sheeran's success that both your nan and your teenage kid can bond over his music. His newest album, Divide, pushes that generalisation even further, with its easy-to-compartmentalise songs underpinned by a distinctively... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Endless PoetrySaturday, 04 March 2017
This is psychohistory: an attempt to heal Alejandro Jodorowsky’s turbulent Forties youth by reimagining it. The 88-year-old director of the acid Western El Topo, which was loved by John Lennon, still plans a sequel to that surreal, midnight movie... Read more... |
CD: Laura Marling - Semper FeminaFriday, 03 March 2017
Laura Marling's new album is called Semper Femina - two words the singer-songwriter also has tattooed on her leg. It's Latin for "always a woman". Despite having the motto inscribed on her flesh, Marling claims to find it hard to write... Read more... |
CD: Paul Weller - Jawbone (Music from the Film)Thursday, 02 March 2017
Soundtrack work may have been seen as a respectable sideline for veterans of the punk era for a while but it has taken 40 years for Paul Weller to join the likes of Nick Cave and Barry Adamson and strike out in this genre. Somewhat fittingly, Weller... Read more... |
CD: Depeche Mode - SpiritWednesday, 01 March 2017
There is no band of the Eighties generation who've remained both as big, and as great, as Depeche Mode. Duran Duran? Lightweights. U2? Sunk into self-parody a long time ago. But the boys from Basildon are something else: they've come through all the... Read more... |
