The Brown Note Movie Review

Spiritualized - Everything Was Beautiful (2022) Album Review

Jason Pierce's longstanding coda to his previous band, Spacemen 3, have been ploughing the maximalist space rock field for decades now, and their high point, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, is my second favorite album of all time. After the excellent and very underappreciated, And Nothing Hurt in 2018, Pierce has now opted for a full-on Phil Spector wall of sound assault, touching on most parts of the bands history, to mainly great effect.

Sault - Air (2022) Album Review

Arguably the world's most important band, after the still largely anonymous London collective have now put out six near fantastic albums in only three years. But this one is a shocker, after five albums steeped in "black" music, whether that be retro, contemporary or future - they decided a classical album was the way to go. Even more surprising is how white it is - as least in its wholehearted embrace of a very European classical tradition of choral, brass and orchestral traditions. Beautiful paced, overlaying imaginative shifts to this paradigm at expertly placed spots - a triumph.

All the Old Knives (2022) Movie Review

Released to zero fanfare and tepid reviews - my most undervalued film so far this year, it's wonderful. Perhaps it is an ordinary spy thriller but that's just a framing device (like the beautifully shot and helmed dinner sequence) for what the film really is, a tragic love story. Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton are sublime, subsumed with passion and regret, it's beautifully shot, sound-tracked and story-boarded - so the delicate pace drip feeds a continually changing and compelling world. The riveting story here isn't a who done it spy drama but the question that has defined each of the two leads lives, why did you break my heart? The answers are shattering.

Ambulance (2022) Movie Review

I honestly try to give Michael Bay the benefit of the doubt every time. I figure the further we get from the Transformers era, the more we will get films like Pain and Gain, 13 Hours or even the better half of 6 Underground but alas, despite some of best reviews of his later career, Ambulance is a steaming pile of crap and the worst film I've seen so far this year. All his worst is on continual display - the world's most annoying headache inducing over-editing, the nausea inducing camera that cant stop swooping and spinning around and painfully thin not at all written characters with awful dialogue and poor, very poor performances. And sadly, incomprehensibly, the great Jake Gyllenhaal's worst performance and role ever.

Bringing Out the Dead (1999) Movie Review

We are living in the AGE OF CAGE and finally the world is waking up, surely we are close to a Keanufication of this living deity. This one is a real treat - arguably the most un-watched Martin Scorcese film since Goodfellas, his last with writer Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver/Raging Bull) and a link to the later man's recent First Reformed. It's also the only post 1980's art film Scorcese has made. Plus this heartbreaking look at the people who look after us, barely holding it together feels even more relevant in COVID times. A still underappreciated near masterpiece.

The Batman (2022) Movie Review

The relentless recasting and rebooting of this character continues unabated, now completely ignoring the failed DCU universe - though it's serious and dark tone (a high point) make it more relatable to the Snyder Cut and The Joker than those films. In fact it rivals the Snyder Cut of Justice League as one of the best looking superhero films ever - without Christopher Nolan's reliance on massive scope, the cinematography is unexpectedly art-house, even recalling hyper-stylized films like Mandy at times, the sound-stage is nearly as good. The Agatha Twistie detective yarn that runs through the main part of the film is another high. HOWEVER, the writing of both dialogue and characters is really poor, leading to great actors, who've been better every other time I've seen them, wrestle with place holder roles. Given the writing track record of the uniformly excellent director Matt Reeves, it smacks of written by committee. Add to the that a main protagonist and labored final hour that are both completely inconsequential and it all adds up to a bit of a big nothing.

Pig (2021) - Movie Review

I have been promoting the AGE OF CAGE for some years now and am pleased the Keanu-fication of the deity Nick Cage is nearly complete. Adding to his raft of actually great performances in actually great indie fair, is one of the most surprising films of recent years. Better to watch it thinking you are getting a John Wick rip off with a pig, than read up on just how far wrong that assertion is. Wonderful, in the truest sense of the word.

Wet Leg - Wet Leg (2022) - Album Review

I love that the UK music press has remembered it's past and has unrealistically amped up this duo to second coming of Christ levels. Despite the ear catching singles, the albums is a very patchy affair, and patches are almost all second hand, despite a fine and charismatic lead from Rhian Teasdale, a whiff of emperors new clothes permeates like moth balls.

Digga D - Noughty By Nature (2022)- Album Review

UK Drill is the most zeitgeist rap genre in the world right now and originator Digga D's third 'album' the current epicenter of it, despite the best efforts of the 1984 like London Metropolitan police. It's an album that had to be given to them to vet, shockingly on every level. It's also an album of two halves, a consistently good, if slightly staid ordinary album offset by the seven incendiary extra tracks of the extended version.

Kurt Vile: (watch my moves) (2022) Album Review

The ex War on Drugs Alumni is undoubtedly one of my favorite artists but this Covid-distanced production is his least consequential or compelling album. Something got lost in translation as the band traded parts back and forth in the process of making it. Still lovely chilled out background music but with none of the zest of detail of almost any other album of his.