Reviews

Cosmic collaboration from two electronic masters...

Pounding folk debut album from Denver, Colorado-based trio...

More death, Vicar? Aged 76, KK faces down the Reaper...

The last wilful testaments of a true original...

Satisfaction guaranteed! The band's fascinated early days...

Paul Thomas Anderson begins and ends The Master with the same image: Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), lying on a beach in the South Pacific in the closing days of World War II, nestled up close to the figure of a woman carved in the sand. Bent out of shape by the war, he is alcoholic and possibly deranged. In a series of weird, unconnected images, we see Freddie siphoning petrol from the tank of an aircraft, masturbating into the Pacific surf, lying in a hammock on a warship.

Hard to believe that Woody Guthrie, conceivably, could still be alive in 2012, given that he’s been gone for 45 years. Yet his incomparable work, especially circa 1939-1949, and the indomitable spirit of that work, a Big Bang of social-consciousness-in-song that set off reverberations down through history – from Dylan and Ochs and the whole early ’60s folk revival and on to Joe Strummer’s righteous punk rebellion – resonates still, as long as repression, corruption, and abuse of power still flourish.

Los Angeles quartet the Allah-Las have the most perfect of backstories for a group making such informed, articulate pop music. Three of the group’s members met while serving time at the legendary LA record store, Amoeba, one of the best ways to learn your craft and do your listening, all while getting paid to schlep CD cases and LP sleeves into the aisles and across the counter. They’ve been playing together since late 2008, slowly chipping away at a vision that’s equal parts genteel psychedelia, ’60s beat movement, and softly strummed, post-Byrdsian jangle-pop.

The banana’s back. Not before time. Late last year, Lou Reed’s reputation suffered a serious blow when his ill-fated collaboration with Metallica met with hostility not witnessed since Metal Machine Music. He even had death threats. This 45th anniversary edition of The Velvet Underground & Nico is a timely reminder (if one is needed) that Reed at his best had few peers and no equals, and that his writer’s eye – literate, probing, explicit – was unflinching right from the start. He was always hardcore.

An unexpected new treat from the Hall of Famer...