Reviews ...

Reviews

Belated CD release of 2001 Internet-only 'comeback' album

Draw – Simple To Severe

Debut from promising Scots indie-rockers

The Hours – Nonesuch

Philip Glass at his most minimal, repetitive, and inexplicably, magically, affecting. Apparently, Michael Nyman wrote a score for this, too, and was sore when Glass won that particular clash of the titans. Which, you have to concede, has a touch more aesthetic loftiness about it than "Ugly Noel tells someone to fuck off". It's lovely, though if we're candid, not as lovely as we were hoping. Many reviews of the film decried the music as over-insistent, which is akin to describing George Bush as a genius.

DJ Scud – The Bug

Uncompromising Londoners bring the noise to ragga

Lyle Lovett – Smile

Tenth album from actor, singer and one-time Mr Julia Roberts

Near The Knuckle

Imagine you're combing the racks of your favourite cool record store, one of those sub-High Fidelity dives with a coupla snooty geeks behind the counter and some Sun Ra covers on the wall. You're flipping through the '80s Hardcore section, looking for an ancient Millions Of Dead Cops LP, swimming in Raymond Pettibon graphics, when all of a sudden... What's this? The Finger's We Are Fuck You/Punk's Dead Let's Fuck? Who? What? Musta come from some boondock town in one of the "vowel states"—Ohio or Iowa.

Jackson Browne

Classy reissues from '70s songsmith

Mark Eric – A Midsummer’s Day Dream

Exceptional lost album echoing bittersweet mid-period Beach Boys

Nowhere In Africa

Touching, true saga of wartime Jewish refugees

Manhattan Murder Mystery

We tend to damn Woody Allen's lighter comedies as 'just' comedies: if anyone else had come up with this 1993 nugget, we'd acclaim it as a pearl. Allen and Diane Keaton-telepathic together again—are paranoid that the woman next door's been bumped off; Alan Alda and Anjelica Houston stir the confusion. A wholesome whodunnit, but, chiefly, a hoot.
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