De Facto is the fifth album from Mexican duo Lorelle Meets the Obsolete and the first to be recorded in the home studio of core members Lorelle (Lorena Quintanella) and The Obsolete (Alberto González). The change has certainly served them well, seemingly freeing them up and giving them room to move.
“Hey you, motherfucker / What you looking at? / What a fucking loser / Acting like a twat.” Yes indeed. Venom, the originators of black metal, are back to celebrate 40 years of disregarding taste and decency at every opportunity with their confrontational mash-up of metal, biker rock and punk and they’ve not mellowed one iota.
A cannily crafted biographical docudrama about the Lakota Sioux broncobuster and horse trainer Brady Jandreau – playing himself as Brady Blackburn – The Rider will resonate with anyone whose dreams have gone up in smoke. Jandreau was 20 when, on April 1, 2016, a horse stomped on his skull, fracturing it in three places, severely damaging two regions of his brain, and penetrating it with bone fragments caked in manure and sand. Defying doctors’ orders, he walked out of hospital shortly after having life-saving brain surgery. Six weeks after returning home he began training horses again. The video footage of Jandreau/Blackburn pulling staples out of his head is real.
The Chinese-American filmmaker Chloe Zhao got to know Jandreau when she was making her promising 2015 debut feature Songs My Brothers Taught Me about life on the impoverished Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Seeking a way to build a new movie around Jandreau, she was inspired by his recovery from his catastrophic accident, only five months after which filming began. Jandreau gives an affectingly low-key performance as the melancholy, laconic Brady Blackburn.
At the heart of The Rider is the sombre recognition that, for many poor young men in the West, not least Native Americans, becoming a rodeo rider is the only way of escaping a hand-to-mouth existence. With a metal plate holding his head together, Brady dare not enter the arena on horseback again though, at one point, temptation proves too much.
Zhao’s direction is cool and objective, scarcely lyrical. Jandreau’s affectionate, learning-impaired teenage sister Lilly plays herself movingly; their father Tim portrays himself as a gambler, harsh and selfish. Jandreau’s childhood friend Lane Scott, a one-time bull-rider who was paralysed in a car accident, also appears. Brady twice visits Lane in his care facility and helps him with rehabilitation exercises, such as rocking on a saddle – haunting scenes that are testament to the human spirit but also indicate Jandreau’s comparative good fortune. Correlative to Brady’’s recuperation – and perhaps to Lane’s – is his tender breaking and training of a volatile wild horse that heartbreakingly comes to grief.
One extra only accompanies The Rider's DVD release – and it’s riveting. Jandreau participates, with British psychologist Dr Chloe Paidoussis-Mitchell, in a 45-mimute post-screening on-stage interview that reveals his charisma as a smart, optimistic young cowboy more truthful than Hollywood would ever allow. Happily, he wants to act again.
Overleaf: watch the trailer for The Rider
This 11-tracker begins with 35 seconds of rhythmically bedded instrumental colour which opens the curtain for a lovely, folky slab of art-pop titled “Enough to Notice”. Odd touchstones surface: Skylarking XTC, Stackridge, Dirty Projectors. Yet there’s something else going on. During the album’s second track, it dawns. Field Music. This is who You Tell Me evoke. It’s all here.
“Are you tired of being pissed and confused?” opens the epic title track of Yak’s second album. Later on singer Oli Burslem brokenly croons, “For now I’m in pursuit of momentary happiness; it’s vacuous and a game gonna lose [sic]. Do you remember when we said it’d be easier if nobody felt a thing, no love, no loss, nothing…” The nihilistic lyrics belie an indie strum that blossoms into a sweeping explosion of melodically inclined space rock. Thus it is throughout.
Genuine authorship in popular music often manifests as eccentricity. Commercially driven musical entertainment thrives on treading familiar paths, tweaking well-established genres, often rooted in the various traditions of African-American styles and their many white imitations. Daniel Knox is a musician with a unique voice: he sings in his own way and tells stories that startle and surprise at every turn.
Věra Chytilová’s 1966 film Daisies almost defies description, though what initially seems like 75 minutes of plot-free silliness does coalesce into something bordering on the coherent. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, to quote Seinfeld. Daisies is what it is, and approaching it with open eyes is a whole lot of fun.
It’s been a great year for music: trailblazing and unforgettable EPs from Stella Donnelly and boygenius; the triumphant returns of Robyn, and Janelle Monáe; flawless albums from Kurt Vile and Tunng; stunning re-imaginings from St Vincent and Waxahatchee; and confident debuts from Snail Mail and The Orielles.
Ashley McBryde had a very busy year in 2018. After the Arkansas singer-songwriter and "curly-headed bourbon enthusiast" played a tiny stage at Country To Country, she released her debut album to huge acclaim and a Grammy nod; toured with fellow no-nonsense country star Luke Combs; played Jools Holland; sold out her first headline show in London – and made Barack Obama’s "favorite songs of 2018" list.
Janelle Monáe had already established herself as pop’s next great innovator with The ArchAndroid and Electric Ladyland, two albums full of earworms, high production and retro-futuristic lyrics. This all-too-brief musical career seemed in jeopardy when Monáe successfully made the jump to film, with her debut features Hidden Figures and Moonlight winning heavily at the Oscars.