Reviews

The Marx Brothers Collection

"O JOY!"IS NOT THE UNIVERSAL response to the idea of a sofa, a bag of toffees, a long weekend and six Marx Brothers movies to sit through. Inexplicably, there are those whose funny bones are immune to the work of Groucho, Harpo and the rest of the crew. When it comes to the Marx brand of sideways lunacy, seems you either get it or you don't. This latest DVD set gathers up A Day At The Races, A Night At The Opera, At The Circus, Go West, The Big Store and A Night In Casablanca.

The Missouri Breaks

Arthur Penn's smouldering anti-western tells the story of Nicholson's Montana horse-rustlers and the pursuit of them by Brando's regulator Lee Clayton. The action is rationed into short, ferocious bursts and used as a counterpoint to the director's paced dissection of power and politics on the anarchic frontier. Brando's whispering Irish accent flirts with parody, but ultimately helps to lend Clayton a compelling air of psychotic menace.

Blank Veneration

Four-CD box set of bolshy Ozpunks' three late-'70s albums and unreleased Live In London set from late '77, plus numerous outtakes, B-sides and EP tracks

Blondie – Singles Box Set

Pop art taken to logical extreme

Slapp Happy – Henry Cow

Reissue of unlikely 1974 alliance between would-be art-pop stars and Marxist Canterbury art-rockers

The Residents

Originally recorded in 1971, The Residents' debut The Warner Bros Album was rejected and has remained unreleased until now. Its first outing is as a remix LP, and it's fabulous. Prime early-era Residents, it's an idiosyncratic assault on contemporary music (The Beatles, Dylan) and society using chaotic avant jazz/rock/classical weaponry. To hear this already deconstructed music fed through the mincer of contemporary electronica only makes it even more confusing, disorienting, beguiling and downright delightful.

Rachel Goswell – Waves Are Universal

Debut solo album from Mojave 3 and ex-Slowdive singer/guitarist

The Black Keys – Rubber Factory

Fiery follow-up to 2003's acclaimed Thickfreakness

My Architect: A Son’S Journey

Film-maker's quest to discover more about his late father

King Arthur

...or There's Something About Guinevere
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