Alejandro González Iñárritu's follow-up to Amores Perros is an agonisingly bleak film about death and the apparent pointlessness of things, with a dying Sean Penn getting involved with distraught widow Naomi Watts and Benicio Del Toro's sweaty born-again ex-con. Highly charged, intensely acted but eventually somewhat predictable.
McGhie's solo debut is one of those funk records whose price (circa $600) and legend climbs in inverse proportion to the number of people who've actually heard it. Mercifully, it proves to be worth at least some of the fuss. A Studio One veteran who emigrated to Toronto in 1967, McGhie mostly abandoned reggae (save the fabulously amiable "Cool It") in favour of a grab-bag of funk and soul styles. The Sounds Of Joy have an easy grace, and McGhie makes a decent fist of "By The Time I Get To Phoenix". Militant crate diggers, though, will be weeping over the over-priced vinyl.
It may not include Bohannon's mid-'70s hits "Footstompin'Music"and "Disco Stomp", but stick around. Play it—his best moments from five albums for Mercury between '77 and '80 —and you're doing your thing like a hammer, knowing you got to stay funky. With a rhythmic fire that burns like a blaze-up between James Brown, Barry White and Talking Heads, mixing African beat with disco heat, Bohannon—drummer and former Motown arranger—took dance to the point of zen, years before people redefined the noun "trance".
As clinical as plastic surgery in Florida. Gabriel & Dresden are DJs who've remixed Madonna and Britney and had a hit as Motorcycle. Presumably the producers of the already notorious Nip/Tuck required a musical sheen as deceptively pristine and callously effective as its anti-hero sex-addict surgeon, and they've got it. This rush of modern techno-chill drives through The Engine Room, Poloroid and Wax Poetic (featuring Norah Jones) before getting fleshy and flirty with Client, Kinky and then Bebel Gilberto working with Thievery Corporation. What must America think of us Europeans?
Heading up Kansas indie band Butterglory, Matt Suggs ended the '90s in disarray as first the band, then his relationship with its girl drummer, dissolved. Returning home to California, he cut countrified solo debut The Golden Days Before They End in 2000. Returning with Brooklyn's Thee Higher Burning Fire as back-up, its successor is harder, crusted in antsy guitars, though Suggs' slightly distracted vocals give it a homemade quality that pushes Amigo Row into Hayden territory rather than straight-ahead rock.
Big, bright, effervescent Peanuts pop from Brighton sextet
