• Anderson .Paak – Oxnard

    November 20, 2018 - By 

    Anderson .Paak, the hardest working man on the southern Californian coast is back. After his breakthrough on Dr Dre’s Compton, he has gone from strength to strength, churning out his own unique hybrid of vintage soul, funk, hip hop and R&B across the so-called Beach trilogy (so far, 2014’s Venice and 2016’s Malibu). Between collaborations with Knxwledge (which bore the excellent NxWorries album), Kaytranada, the late Mac Miller and others, Paak has somehow managed to find the time to pen his latest album, Oxnard, thereby marking the end of the Beach trilogy. Aptly, Oxnard is Paak’s hometown, and as you might expect, the album…

  • Kurt Vile – Bottle It In

    November 17, 2018 - By 

    The sixth track on Kurt Vile’s latest opus is titled ‘Rollin’ With the Flow’ helpfully encapsulating the ambling, shambling rhythms and can kicking nonchalance the Philadelphia songwriter has long been celebrated for.  As always with Vile’s work though, clouds are never too far from spoiling his sunny skies and Bottle It In sees the darker depths of his artistry grow ever murkier. Typically preoccupied with Vile’s dazed yet disarmingly astute ponderings and observations, Bottle It In succeeds in creating an intensely personal connection with the listener, often lending the impression that we have a direct link to Vile’s inner monologue.…

  • Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

    November 16, 2018 - By 

    Not since The Hobbit has a studio franchise spin-off so thoroughly dropped the ball. The similarities between Peter Jackson’s 9-hour pilgrimage to the Lonely Mountain and the Fantastic Beasts trilogy, two in with The Crimes of Grindelwald, are immediate and obvious. Both series take a charming little throwaway book, J. K. Rowling’s 2001 Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, the real-life rendition of Hogwarts’ zoological textbook, and mount them on the rack, stretching them out until the joints give out. It’s gruesome textual torture. Close your eyes and whisper along with me: disapparate, disapparate, disapparate. Like An Unexpected Journey, Fantastic Beasts started…

  • Thom Yorke – Suspiria (Music for the Luca Guadagnino Film)

    November 15, 2018 - By 

    With the increasingly long gaps between Radiohead albums in their latter years, three of the band’s members so far have managed to put this downtime to good use exploring their own projects on the side. And for a band so heavily focused on sounds and texture, it’s no surprise that all three of them have found themselves drawn to soundtrack work in one way or another – most notably Jonny Greenwood, whose string of collaborations with Paul Thomas Anderson this year earned him an Oscar nomination for Phantom Thread. Drummer Philip Selway too, having reinvented himself as a hushed folk…

  • Slaves w/ The Murder Capital @ The Academy, Dublin

    November 14, 2018 - By 

    As Royal Turnbridge Wells punk duo Slaves take to the stage of the Academy, the sheer visceral energy in the air becomes palpable. The venue’s pit is overflowing with young adults dressed like their parents (with few pulling the look off), whilst the area surrounding the pit is packed to the brim, with what appears to be the aforementioned parents. An interesting demographic to say the very least. From the get-go, the pit is transformed into a vicious sea, with waves of people being thrown back and forth. Occasionally someone scrambles to the surface and crowdsurfs for a few seconds,…

  • Sun Kil Moon – This Is My Dinner

    November 13, 2018 - By 

    Mark Kozelek plays music, eats, and watches boxing matches. This is all that he does. This we learn towards the end of This Is My Dinner. This, we already knew. Let Sun Kil Moon’s ninth album, then, illuminate a few more of the obscure corners of Kozelek’s mind. His favourite Lou Reed album? Berlin. Favourite Jonathan Richman song? ‘Hospital’. Does he hate Steely Dan and The Eagles? Yes. Does he love AC/DC’s ‘A Touch Too Much’? Also yes. Will he ever eat reindeer? Definitely not. These are just a few mundane insights from the myriad details that are densely strewn…

  • Peterloo

    November 13, 2018 - By 

    The true story of the Peterloo Massacre is a shocking chapter in England’s history that needs to be told. In theory, writer/director Mike Leigh (Life Is Sweet, Mr Turner) should be the man for the job, given his track record of making classic films that delve into the everyday lives of the English working class. But while Leigh does manage to capture the look and feel of the time period in a very realistic and credible manner, the viewer may feel that he is a bit heavy-handed in getting his message across, creating a tone that off-sets the seriousness of…

  • Robyn – Honey

    November 12, 2018 - By 

    The strobes hit with unforgiving regularity. Across the humid room you see a couple kissing vigorously, their hands dancing over one another. You’re dancing too, twisting and moving your body simultaneously with guttural thumps of bass. A flash reveals the glistening face of the man to your left, he beams over and moves his jaw up and down inaudibly, his words pummelled by the entrancing waves. A tear suddenly sprouts from the outer corner of his eye, but rather than wipe it away he allows it to slide jerkily down his face. You turn to see someone else whose mascara is running,…

  • Suspiria

    November 13, 2018 - By 

    It is with careful and skilled hands that a director approaches the remake of a film such as the genre-defining, visual masterpiece that is Dario Argento’s Suspiria. When Luca Guadagnino was announced as the director for the cult classic remake, the self-confessed Argento super fan asserted that his Suspiria would be an homage to the original rather than a direct copy. This new and original take on the 1977 Italian classic sees intertwining themes of political struggle and feminism permeating a close knit but divided witches’ coven who operate under the cover of a dance studio in post-war Germany. The film…

  • Juliet, Naked

    November 8, 2018 - By 

    Nick Hornby’s most famous surrogate remains Rob Gordon, John Cusack’s musical obsessive in High Fidelity, the patron saint of record store assholes and stalled-adolescent gatekeepers of taste. Hornby has since carved out a strong second career as a screenwriter, but the adaptations of his books continue: easygoing rom-com Juliet, Naked gives us another pop culture snob, played in a less sardonic key, but relegates him to the sideline of the central serendipitous romance. Chris O’Dowd plays Duncan, a media lecturer in a small seaside town outside London who is devoted to the work and mythos of Tucker Crowe, a Jeff Buckley-esque…