Album: Beyoncé - Renaissance

★★★★★ BEYONCE - RENAISSANCE Musical life begins at 40: Beyoncé meets highest expectations

Musical life begins at 40 as Beyoncé lives up to the highest expectations

There’s polarising discourse and there’s polarising discourse, and then there’s Beyoncé discourse. On the one hand, there’s “the Bey Hive”: the very model of a furious modern fandom who will boost her and monster her critics at a microsecond’s notice. There are the commentators for whom everything she does is by definition profound, moral and important, regardless of any hypercapitalist excesses and hanging out with dicators’ offspring.

Album: The Cult of Dom Keller – They Carried the Dead in a UFO

★★★★ THE CULT OF DOM KELLER - THEY CARRIED THE DEAD IN A UFO Fierce psychedelic weirdery 

Fierce psychedelic weirdery straight out of Nottingham

While so many bands of a psychedelic bent treat the genre as if it has been pickled in aspic since the swinging sixties of London and San Francisco or maybe the motorik sounds of mid-70s West Germany, the Cult of Dom Keller don’t give any impression of being hemmed in by such self-imposed and heritage-worshipping rules.

DVD/Blu-ray: Catch Us If You Can

★★★★ CATCH US IF YOU CAN John Boorman's Swinging '60s satire of capitalism on DVD/Blu-ray

John Boorman's debut skewered the capitalist exploitation of youth culture

Catch Us If You Can, the 1965 road movie starring Barbara Ferris and the eponymous drummer and guiding force of the Dave Clark Five, proved a more trenchant satire of capitalism in the embryonic Swinging ‘60s than did the box-office smash it was piggybacking, the previous year’s A Hard Day’s Night.

Album: Róisín Murphy - Róisín Machine

★★★★★ ROISIN MURPHY - ROISIN MACHINE Delivering the disco goods

Murphy and long time Sheffield comrade deliver the disco goods

This is a musical homecoming for Róisín Murphy, both geographically and figuratively. She may have been raised in Dublin and spent her gig-going adolescence in Manchester, but Sheffield is where she began her life as a clubber and performer – and it’s with Sheffield scene mainstay of almost four decades, and Murphy’s friend of quarter of a century, Richard “Parrot” Barratt that she’s collaborated here.

Album: Rui Ho - Lov3 & L1ght

★★★ RUI HO - LOV3 & L1GHT Dayglo experimental pop from Chinese artist in Berlin

Dayglo experimental pop from Chinese artist in Berlin

A new and very strange kind of pop music has bubbled up over the past half-decade plus. It’s internationalist, rooted in both underground electronics and the most populist styles, bound up with playful but sometimes terrifying ultra high definition psychedelic aesthetics, and dominated by female and non-binary musicians. 

Album: Charli XCX - how i'm feeling now

★★★ CHARLI XCX - HOW I'M FEELING NOW Cutting edge electronics in lockdown album

Cutting edge electronics in lockdown album from the always exploratory pop star

This is an extremely impressive undertaking. how i'm feeling now was conceived, written and recorded in under two months, in isolation, with Charli XCX sourcing beats and artwork from a sprawling collective of regular collaborators and fans. The tracklist was finalised only in the last week or so, and even two days before release date, only “work in progress” promos were available, signalling that it was still in flux.

DVD: Every Picture Tells a Story

★★★★ DVD: EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY The art films of James Scott: a very mixed anthology, dating from 1966 to 1983

The art films of James Scott: a very mixed anthology, dating from 1966 to 1983

James Scott’s filmography is wide-ranging, including the 1982 short film A Shocking Accident, based on the Graham Greene story, which won an Academy Award the following year, and other works on social questions.

Robert Rauschenberg, Tate Modern

ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, TATE MODERN Inventive and idiosyncratic: the restless genius of an American pioneer

Inventive and idiosyncratic: the restless genius of an American pioneer

The Good American, a Texan no less, has landed at Tate Modern in style. This posthumous retrospective of the great Robert Rauschenberg includes a paint-bespattered, fully made-up bed hung vertically on the wall, and called – you guessed – Bed,1955 (pictured below right). A huge White Painting, 1951 – latex housepaint on seven panels, glossy and smooth – is joined by a huge, swirling, all-black painting, Untitled, c.1951, and an installation of various substances resembling bubbling mud, called Mud Muse, 1968-71.

'Before punk, there was Rauschenberg'

'BEFORE PUNK, THERE WAS RAUSCHENBERG' As a major retrospective opens at Tate Modern, musician and producer Justin Adams reflects on his lifelong love of an American great

As a major retrospective opens at Tate Modern, musician and producer Justin Adams reflects on his lifelong love of an American great

In this cut and paste world, we have become used to a multiplicity of images: screens, words and pictures from across the globe and across history flicker through our field of vision, competing for our attention with the natural world, the urban environment and our own memories, thoughts and dreams. The artist who most successfully began to express this new vision of the world was Robert Rauschenberg.