CDs/DVDs
Album: Debbie Gibson - WinterliciousWednesday, 14 December 2022
Those old enough will recall Debbie Gibson as a squeaky clean, flash-in-the-pan teen pop star of the late 1980s. She was globe-trottingly huge for a couple of years – a peer of Tiffany “I Think We’re Alone Now” Darwish – but then her star waned.... Read more... |
Album: Emma Smith - SnowboundMonday, 12 December 2022
You wait a whole decade for an album by UK jazz vocalist Emma Smith to turn up… and then...if not quite two, then one and most of a second (a full album Meshuga Baby, released in June, and this five-track Christmas EP)... turn up.Not that Emma Smith... Read more... |
Album: Chris Isaak - Everybody Knows It's ChristmasSaturday, 10 December 2022
There’s only one problem with this album, really – if you can call it a problem – and that’s Chris Isaak’s indelible hint of David Lynch. Thanks to his “Wicked Game” being an integral part of Wild at Heart and creating an ongoing... Read more... |
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... |
