CDs/DVDs
Album: Macy Gray & the California Jet Club - Christmas with YouFriday, 09 December 2022
It’s nice to come across a Christmas album that more-or-less avoids the usual suspects that tend to appear out of the woodwork at this time of year. Macy Gray’s seasonal offering is just such a beast.There are no poptastic renditions of Christmas... Read more... |
Album: Neil Diamond - A Neil Diamond ChristmasThursday, 08 December 2022
Oy vey. Where to start. This is essentially painful – and I write that knowing that Neil Diamond is a genuinely nice guy and that he is now stricken with Parkinson’s. But there is no way round it: A Neil Diamond Christmas is an auditory assault.I’m... Read more... |
Album: Backstreet Boys - A Very Backstreet ChristmasWednesday, 07 December 2022
Good things don’t tend to come in slews. Slews seem to be reserved, pretty much exclusively, for the bad stuff: legal issues, school shootings, Christmas albums… And so we come, with aching predictability, to this year’s festive releases.... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Cat and the Canary (1939) / The Ghost Breakers (1940)Tuesday, 06 December 2022
Paramount added a late “old dark house” mystery comedy to Hollywood’s annus mirabilis of 1939 by teaming Bob Hope with Paulette Goddard in The Cat and the Canary, skilfully directed by Elliott Nugent. The death-trap mansion in the Louisiana bayous... Read more... |
Album: We Were Promised Jetpacks - A Complete One-EightyMonday, 05 December 2022
We Were Promised Jetpacks is a band name that seems off the cuff at first glance. This could be said for the Scottish indie-rock darlings' latest effort, an EP that reworks some of their record from last year, Enjoy the View – as remixed material... Read more... |
Album: Camilla Pisani - Phant[as]Saturday, 03 December 2022
Want an antidote so forced seasonal cheer and the catchiness of Christmas pop? How about some almost entirely atonal drone, clatter and throb with titles like “Fish Death”, “Tales for Violent Days” and “Dissonance Émancipee”?Music presented as a “... Read more... |
Album: Olly Murs - Marry MeFriday, 02 December 2022
Oh dear. 10 songs of very little consequence. And one which has sparked “controversy”. "I Hate You When You're Drunk" has generated more publicity for Mr Murs than his PR team has mustered for the launch campaign. But it simply doesn’t add up. The... Read more... |
Album: White Lung - PremonitionThursday, 01 December 2022
In 2016’s abrasive album opener, "Dead Weight", frontwoman Mish Barber-Way laments over multiple miscarriages as her biological clock ticks away like a malevolent metronome.How much has changed in the last six years, then, and none more so than for... Read more... |
Album: Leftfield - This Is What We DoWednesday, 30 November 2022
This Is What We Do is only Leftfield’s fourth album in a career that has lasted almost 35 years (on and off). But if there is a dance outfit that can demonstrate the worth of quality over quantity, it’s the duo of Neil Barnes and Adam Wren (Barnes’... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Son of the White MareTuesday, 29 November 2022
Son of the White Mare (Fehérlófia), a 1981 Hungarian animated epic, defies easy description, Marcell Jankovics’ film blending folklore and psychedelia to startling effect.There’s violence, heartbreak, black humour and romance, all accompanied by... Read more... |
Album: Stormzy - This Is What I MeanMonday, 28 November 2022
“All of this music, it’s nothing to do with the listener,” Stormzy announced to Louis Theroux in a recent TV interview. “All I can do is feel what I feel and document that, and whatever that is, that’s what it’s going to be.”The 29-year-old rapper... Read more... |
Album: Sophie Jamieson - ChoosingSaturday, 26 November 2022
Choosing packs a punch – the effect of which lingers. What’s captured by these 11 songs comes across as unfiltered, disconcertingly direct. And what it is that’s captured appears to be an account of someone getting to grips with how their lifestyle... Read more... |
