CDs/DVDs
Albums of the Year 2021: Toya Delazy - Afrorave Vol 1Saturday, 18 December 2021
2021 might not seem the most likely of years for the globalisation of dance music to intensify, what with the lack of travel and the lack of... well... dancing. But, in fact, thanks partly to the enforced time spent online which led to a lot of... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2021: Marina - Ancient Dreams in a Modern LandFriday, 17 December 2021
We did that whole state-of-things COVID/Brexit/anxiety/neurosis blah-blah in the end-of-year pieces last year. And, indeed, the year before (when Bozza was elected). Not this year. I’m over that. Let’s crack on. Live life. Own it. All that. An... Read more... |
Album: José James - Merry Christmas From José JamesThursday, 16 December 2021
José James regularly steps away from the straight jazz singer berthed for years at Blue Note, pining to be an R&B voice for broader black audiences. Covering both Freestyle Fellowship and Rashaan Roland Kirk on his debut The Dreamer (2008), his... Read more... |
Album: Norah Jones - I Dream of ChristmasWednesday, 15 December 2021
“I wanna hear the music play, I wanna dance and laugh and sway” sings Norah Jones on “Christmas Calling”, the opening track of this her first festive outing, “I wanna happy holiday for Christmas”. Doubtless when she recorded I Dream of Christmas,... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Love of Jeanne NeyTuesday, 14 December 2021
GW Pabst’s The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927), adapted from the novel by the Russian revolutionary author Ilya Ehrenburg, is a fascinating example of a major movie, vividly rendered by a filmmaker at his peak, that was compromised by its producers’... Read more... |
Album: Kathryn Williams & Carol Ann Duffy - Midnight ChorusMonday, 13 December 2021
Liverpudlian singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams has always had a literary bent. This doesn’t just manifest in overt ways, like writing a concept album about Sylvia Plath in 2015’s Hypoxia, but in perfectly potted narratives, microscopically... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Bleak MomentsSunday, 12 December 2021
That Bleak Moments exists at all is largely due to Albert Finney; the BFI funded Mike Leigh’s 1971 debut to the tune of £100, as an "experimental film", and Finney’s production company supplied the rest of the £18,000 budget. Shot on location in... Read more... |
Blu-ray: NakedSaturday, 11 December 2021
Naked (1993), the fifth and finest feature film written and directed by Mike Leigh, remains a searing, eerily prescient look at Britain on the verge of a social and economic breakdown.Maybe even a verbal breakdown, too, for Leigh, unlike any... Read more... |
Album: Pistol Annies - Hell of a HolidayFriday, 10 December 2021
“It was the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was sober, especially my spouse.” So runs the giggly spoken word opening line of “Harlan County Coal”, the third song on Hell of a Holiday by American country trio Pistol... Read more... |
Album: Hiss Golden Messenger - O Come All Ye FaithfulThursday, 09 December 2021
Irrespective of its seasonal nature, the thread running throughout O Come All Ye Faithful is a mood of contemplation which could colour any of Hiss Golden Messenger main-man M. C. Taylor’s albums. The opening cut is “Hung Fire,” a Band-esque,... Read more... |
Album: Neil Young and Crazy Horse – BarnWednesday, 08 December 2021
Neil Young’s ornery spontaneity has resulted in a remarkable number of mediocre songs. His sketchy 21st century has conjured audacious sonic conceits – the jazzy sparseness of Peace Trail, or the plastic-sounding live album Earth, both 2016 –... Read more... |
Album: Neil Young and Crazy Horse – BarnWednesday, 08 December 2021
Neil Young’s ornery spontaneity has resulted in a remarkable number of mediocre songs. His sketchy 21st century has conjured audacious sonic conceits – the jazzy sparseness of Peace Trail, or the plastic-sounding live album Earth, both 2016 –... Read more... |
