Drove All Shite: The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra follow their successful ‘collaborations’ with Elvis by reviving another distinctive and much-missed voice from the past: The Big O, adding lush orchestration to seventeen of his best known hits. Orbison’s downbeat love songs are perfectly suited to the mournful strings of a full orchestra – something which, naturally,… Continue reading Roy Orbison & The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra – A Love So Beautiful
Author: James Robinson
Son of Dave – Music for Cop Shows
Down by John Thaw: Beat-boxing Canadian bluesmen are woefully under-represented in the world of pop music, so thank goodness for Son of Dave (real name Benjamin Darvill), who is back with another collection of tongue-in-cheek but impossibly infectious rock’n’roll stompers. In a return to the lo-fi sound of his early albums, Music for Cop Shows… Continue reading Son of Dave – Music for Cop Shows
Liam Gallagher – As You Were
All He Needs is Noel: If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery than John Lennon and Sir Paul McCartney ought to feel very flattered indeed: Liam Gallagher's first outing as a solo performer sounds so much like the Beatles that it could be Oasis. Paper Clown might have been lifted wholesale from Revolver; I've… Continue reading Liam Gallagher – As You Were
LA Witch – LA Witch
Double, Double, Echo and Reverb: All-female garage-punk trio LA Witch hark back to the gloomy and reverb-drenched sound of the 60s US underground: every track on their self-titled debut borrows shamelessly from the Stooges and the Velvets, but they produce a glorious racket. It’s pretty much impossible to make out the lyrics underneath all that echo… Continue reading LA Witch – LA Witch
Seán McGowan – Graft and Grief
Nationwide (adverts) Appeal: This short EP from indie punk-poet Seán McGowan opens, unusually, with a statement of intent encouraging the listener to remember that ‘there’s more to life than graft and grief.’ If this sounds a little rich coming from someone who also admits to having only been born in 1993, he at least articulates… Continue reading Seán McGowan – Graft and Grief
Mother!
Virgin Scary: A little-acknowledged flaw in the great works of cinema’s professional alienators – your Michael Hanekes, your Lars Von Triers – is that they never make it into the multiplexes; their outré antics are confined to the arthouses. There, they play to audiences who are very much in the business of not being alienated;… Continue reading Mother!
Mogwai – Every Country’s Sun
Sonic Gloom: The enigmatic Glasgow post-rock outfit have reunited with producer Dave Fridmann for this latest batch of instrumentals, and opener Coolverine’s languid, sonorous bassline at first suggests a return to the style of one of their earliest collaborations, the gloomily minimalist Come On Die Young. In fact many of the subsequent tracks are unexpectedly… Continue reading Mogwai – Every Country’s Sun
A Ghost Story
Unsentimental Journey: There is nothing festival critics enjoy more in a film than inscrutability, so it’s no wonder David Lowery’s latest emerged as the darling of this year’s Sundance. Lowery has no lack of credibility; his post-modern western Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and downbeat Disney remake Pete’s Dragon were both offbeat enough to stand out… Continue reading A Ghost Story
Camille – Oui
Gallic wheeze: Camille is well known in her native France for making music with a distinctly avant-garde flavour, but has enough pop-leanings that make her work also suitable for perfume adverts and collaborations with lounge-pop outfit Nouvelle Vague. OUi, her fifth solo album, sees her pitched somewhere between a French Bjork and a French Kate… Continue reading Camille – Oui
Arthur Alexander – Arthur Alexander
Lost hero of soul and rock&roll: Proof that talent is sadly no guarantee of success, Arthur Alexander wrote and performed songs that would inspire covers from icons including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, yet spent the later years of his life working as an anonymous bus driver. For those in the know,… Continue reading Arthur Alexander – Arthur Alexander
James JW Robinson 