Album: The Struts - Strange Days

★★★★ THE STRUTS - STRANGE DAYS Glam rock revivalists get productive during lockdown for entertaining third album

Glam rock revivalists get productive during lockdown for entertaining third album

Making sourdough, PE with Joe Wicks, writing a novel… none of that for Derby’s finest purveyors of unapologetically retro rock. Instead, the Struts decided to make the most of lockdown by recording a new album – all piling into producer Jon Levine’s Los Angeles house (having got themselves COVID-tested first) and spending ten days coming up with this, the follow up to their 2014 debut Everybody Wants and 2016's Young&Dangerous.

Album: Annie - Dark Hearts

★★★★ ANNIE - DARK HEARTS Cult Norwegian pop star makes welcome synth-pop return

Cult Norwegian pop star makes a long overdue and welcome synth-pop return

The term electro-pop has kind of lost its meaning, The Top 20 has, for many years, been full of music created on computers, from Charli XCX to BTS to Clean Bandit. Yet still, as a genre header, it's often used to refer to music that riffs on the sound of the 1980s synthesizer pioneers.

Blu-ray: Ivansxtc

★★★★ IVANSXTC From Tolstoy to Tinseltown, flavoured with 'Tristan' - Bernard Rose's satire of Hollywood is as sharp as ever

From Tolstoy to Tinseltown, flavoured with 'Tristan' - Bernard Rose's satire of Hollywood is as sharp as ever

“Every cliché about Hollywood is true,” director Bernard Rose remarked in 2018, at the screening Q&A of the restored version of his 1999 Ivansxtc that appears as an extra on this Arrow release – and, post-#MeToo, the film’s satire of that mi

Album: Katie Melua - Album No 8

★★★ KATIE MELUA - ALBUM NO 8 Full of light and air and pleasing textures

Grown-up at last

When Katie Melua arrived on the scene in 2003, a graduate of the BRIT School and a protégé of Mike "Wombling" Batt, I was somewhat underwhelmed. Another one in a long list of tepid female singer-songwriters that were pleasant enough, but… Then I pitched up, without too much enthusiasm, to review her Christmas concert at Westminster Central Hall with the Gori Women’s Choir in December 2018 and was both moved and impressed.

Album: Emmy the Great - April / 月音

★★★★ EMMY THE GREAT - APRIL / 月音 Singer-songwriter comes back with a luscious album loosely conceived around her Hong Kong origins

Singer-songwriter comes back with a luscious album loosely conceived around her Hong Kong origins

Emma-Lee Moss has a lovely voice. It conveys an ache, a longing, but is sweet too, and well-mannered. Combine this with an aptitude for literate, thought-provoking lyrics and hooky songs, and Emmy the Great is quite the package. It’s a mystery, then, why she has not been critically and commercially elevated to the status of peers such as Laura Marling and KT Tunstall. Her fourth album is a delight, rich in imagery and ideas. It confirms her as an artist always well worth following.

DVD/Blu-ray: Vitalina Varela

★★★★★ VITALINA VARELA Austere, moving meditation on exile, memory and regret

Austere, moving meditation on exile, memory and regret

Much of Vitalina Varela takes place in near darkness, the lack of movement in several scenes enough to make you think you’re watching a succession of still images. Pedro Costa’s protagonists may wrestle with a multitude of intractable issues, but the warmth and humanity with which they’re portrayed is humbling.