Demob Happy

Weightless 4/10 I’m loathe to criticise British cinema since it needs all the help it can get, but this doesn’t play to our nation’s filmmaking strengths. It’s worthy sci-fi which borrows a little from all corners of the genre (e.g., Event Horizon, the Alien franchise, 2001, Solaris) and garnishes it masses of relentless visual trickery. [...]

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In the grips of drug addiction 7/10 Half Nelson tells the story of an idealistic young teacher Dan, unable to break his cycle of cocaine and crack abuse. Labouring under the delusion that he will finish an illustrated children’s book on ‘dialectics’, he teaches history at a run-down innercity school. Bringing left-wing theory into his [...]

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‘Just Like Heaven’ 9/10 While some of The Cure faithful may feel aggrieved by the absence – ‘A Forest’ notwithstanding – of tracks from their gloomiest period (Faith, Seventeen Seconds, Pornography), the more casual listener will find much to enjoy here. Having had a big Cure phase in my teens, I might quibble that the [...]

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‘Something to Look Forward to’ 8/10 Anyone who got into Spoon’s later albums, ‘Gimme Fiction‘ and ‘Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga‘, will certainly not want to miss out on 2002′s ‘Kill the Moonlight‘. Spoon are a hard band to categorise, at once both willfully experimental and with plenty of crossover appeal. They make lean, concise [...]

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‘Ease Your Feet In The Sea’ 8/10 On first inspection the Amazon.co.uk review’s favourable comparison to the Smiths and the Velvet Underground seems a little generous. And while the lyrical concerns bear resemblance to those of Morrissey and Stuart Murdoch’s vocals make for a less smokey Nick Drake, Belle & Sebastian don’t quite reach that [...]

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‘Top Ranking’ 9/10 Blonde Redhead’s breathtaking album ‘23‘ combines the sonic intensity of shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine with the dream pop of Cocteau Twins and Lush. Despite the stylistic conceits, they overwhelm the listener with the strength of the songwriting and dazzling, dizzying soundscapes. Like contemporaries Asobi Seksu (check out their stunning single ‘Thursday‘), [...]

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Hail Radiohead! 8/10 It can take a few years to properly appraise an album by a band as great as Radiohead. It is important to shake off the initial impressions – distorted as they are by the weight of expectation – and allow the album time to grow on you. A band that has so [...]

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Snapshots of the subcontinent 9/10 William Dalrymple’s ‘The Age of Kali’ carries the subtitle ‘Indian Travels and Encounters’ but actually includes writings on Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Indian Ocean island of Reunion (in fact a département of France). It is less a historical analysis in the mold of the brilliant ‘City of Djinns’ but [...]

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