Early on in Susanna Nicchiarelli’s Miss Marx, the writer-director makes it clear she considers her subject to be a kind of punk rock icon. Pity then that her film largely shuns that angle and instead meanders into becoming another tepid costume drama. The film ostensibly features a fiery feminist icon, but it plays out as…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 4 March 2022. GRAMMY-nominated saxophonist and composer Melissa Aldana joins Blue Note Records with the release of 12 Stars, her debut album as a leader for the legendary jazz label. At 33, the Brooklyn-based tenor player from Santiago, Chile…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 25 February 2022. There’s something almost excruciating about the places in between. The feeling of falling. A reassertion of gravity as one step leads to another but just before the foot lands. The purgatory between borders, before clarity becomes…
Although Cyrano de Bergerac was a real person, most of the works that bear his name stem from Edmond Rostan’s 1897 play. Film versions of the story date back to 1900, but recent efforts include Roxanne (1987) with Steve Martin, and Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) with Gerard Depardieu. But the latest has a more circuitous…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 18 February 2022. Through the hazy daze of a smoky folk opus, Modern Studies craft rich soundtracks, stuttering Super-8 sketches from a washed-out world of melancholy, hand-tinted and tantalising. Lullaby couplets blossom into gorgeous chamber pop melodies, the drama…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 11 February 2022. Ride guitarist and songwriter Andy Bell has released his second solo album, Flicker. Written almost as a conversation with his teenage self, it follows the triumphant solo debut that was 2020’s The View From Halfway Down…
From little things, big things grow. Director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi transforms a short story by Haruki Murakami into a 3-hour paean to love, loss and healing with Drive My Car. The film is a transcendent exploration of almost unbearable pathos, but with a shining light at the end. Another Murakami short story provided the source material…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 4 February 2022. The music of saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins is filled with empathy and conviction, bonding arcs of melody and lamentation to pluming gestures of space and breath. Listeners were introduced to this riveting sound with his…
Hindsight, they say, is 20-20. But the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia can distort the lens. In Belfast, director Kenneth Branagh delivers a love letter to his childhood hometown. But I couldn’t shake the feeling his memory might have taken the hard edges off a tumultuous time in Northern Ireland. That’s understandable – after all, the…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 28 January 2022. Piece of Me is the sophomore full length offering from Lady Wray. This is something of a homecoming for Nicole. Where her 2016 solo debut Queen Alone leaned more towards Soul and R&B with tinges of…
