The Tierney Sutton Band
Screenplay
BFM Jazz
Formed around the delicate, classy vocals of the lead singer The Tierney Sutton Band features some great instrumentalists to help shape the sound – bassists Trey Henry and Kevin Axt, drummer/percussionist Ray Brinker and pianist Christian Jacob. They’ve made some great albums and are not opposed to a theme-record including a recent stab at some Sting covers called – rightly enough – The Sting Variations. Read More
‘Til Wrong Feels Right: Lyrics and More
Iggy Pop
Clarkson Potter
This new volume of Iggy Pop’s lyrics updates the previous collection (which went up to 1999, documenting the first 30 years of his work). Here now we go up to his most recent album – two further decades. Read More
Hell In A Cell 2019
WWE
Madman
It seems funny to even be discussing this Hell In A Cell event after that fucking ending! So I’ll start there. Chants of refund and rematch, boos galore and then chanting “AEW” – which is All Elite Wrestling (basically Ring of Honor via TNA for 2019/20).
So what went wrong? Read More
The Surprise Party
Direction: Conrad Newport (written by Dave Armstrong)
Circa Theatre; Circa One (January 18 – February 15)
In The Surprise Party – Dave Armstrong’s biting new satire – a minority party is elevated far beyond their station due to a series of scandals rocking the bigger players. We first join the action on election night and then check in again on how the party is doing the next morning and year later and then finally in a year again after that. Read More
Devil’s Elbow
ID [ep]
Hit Your Head Music
If you like when Steve Earle really rocks out or those final albums from Joe Strummer when he was fronting the The Mescaleros then check out the latest EP from Hawke’s Bay band, Devil’s Elbow. Actually, while we’re at it, can someone give them a long-service award. They’ve been making music – of increasing quality – since 2007; in the social media era that’s like a quarter-century already. Read More
A Traveller’s Guide to Turkish Dogs
Direction: Jonathan Price (written by Barnaby Olson & Company)
Circa Theatre; Circa Two (January 17 – February 8)
This is a repeat-season, but the play is retitled, reworked and though I didn’t see it 18 months or so ago in its earlier incarnation at BATS it’s clear that this is tighter, sharper – there’s such obvious skill on display from the opening moments. Read More
Thomas Newman
1917 [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
Sony Classical
Thomas Newman long ago proved himself as one of the safest sets of hands in the film-scoring trade. Need your film scored? Need a bloody good job? Well, you’d call any of the Newmans of course, it’s the family trade but Thomas, from the early 2000s, has been never less than quality – and he is a master of the careful, thoughtful integration of traditional strings and moody new shapes from synths and electronics. Subtle, wise. He hasn’t made a clanger. Read More
Zbiginew Preisner / Lisa Gerrard / Dominik Wania
Memories of My Youth
Supertrain Records
The Polish composer Zbiginew Preisner has worked widely across theatre, dance and film – including orchestrations for David Gilmour and perhaps is best known for a series of film-scores including music for The Secret Garden and the Three Colours series of works by Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski (also his A Short Film About Love and A Short Film About Killing). Read More
Bowie’s Books: The Hundred Literary Heroes Who Changed His Life
John O’Connell
Bloomsbury Publishing
Much was made of the fact that David Bowie liked to read – he had a list of his favourite books, and it included so many classics. Outside of that there were interesting choices including journalism, memoir, contemporary novels…
John O’Connell unpacks that all with this wonderful list-book which examines the 100 top books that Bowie loved. Read More
Tindersticks
No Treasure But Hope
City Slang
Subdued but always glorious in and of itself, it’s time for a new Tindersticks album – the band’s first studio album proper in a couple of years, but there’s always some activity bubbling away – a solo album from Stuart Staples say, or a soundtrack contribution – if not a full score, or a piece of music for an installation even. Read More
1917
Director: Sam Mendes
Universal Pictures
I am not the target-market for the movie 1917. Nothing about the trailer inspired me, I have never considered Sam Mendes a must-watch director, I can count the number of war films that have moved me in any way on three fingers – and normally describing a movie as being almost like living inside a video-game is my idea of hell. Read More
Dolly Parton: Here I Am
Director: Francis Whately
Man Alive Productions / BBC / Netflix
Dolly Parton is hosting a victory lap for herself. She’s always been a great and tireless self-promoter that understood the power of your personality as your brand long before ‘storytelling’ became a buzzword – but right now she’s leading a self-mythologising tribute session that has arrived so swiftly as to raise concerns she’s about to bow out. Is retirement on the way? In the last year there’s been this brilliant must-hear podcast, a set of fictionialised films based on various songs for Netflix and now this (almost career-spanning) documentary. Read More