Reviews

Enterprising debut from lo-fi New York singer-songwriter

Lavishly annotated four-disc box collates albums 3-6 from Tom Rapp's gently stoned psych-folk collective

First and third LPs from contemporaries of The Association and The 5th Dimension

Fifties classic revived for NFT's James Mason season

Dennis Hopper is Huey Walker, a '60s radical who's been wanted by the Feds for decades. When he's captured in the late '80s, repressed, clean-cut young FBI man Kiefer Sutherland lands the job of escorting him to trial through Reagan-era America, but Hopper turns the tables, and teaches him how to drop out. Your average, idealistic, pan-generational odd-couple road movie, but Hopper, spoofing his Easy Rider persona, is a howl.

NOBODY DID SUAVE like Cary Grant; few would be stupid enough to try. When a whole way of being is personified that definitively, even a George Clooney looks like a stammering schoolboy in comparison. Grant's worst films are worth watching for his expressions of charm and much-tried patience, but here are some of his best, digitally remastered. In Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby, Katharine Hepburn causes his "zoology professor"to lose precious dinosaur bones and a pet leopard.

If Scorsese skimps on the British blues in his box set, he compensates with a single spin-off disc focusing solely on Slowhand's contribution to the devil's music. Ten tracks trace Clapton's development through his days with John Mayall to Cream, Blind Faith and Derek And The Dominos. We also get "Rockin' Today" from the famous 1970 London sessions with Howlin' Wolf. There's nothing of more recent vintage, such as his 2001 collaboration with BB King. But it's still an impressive summary of Clapton's credentials as—surely—the greatest white blues man of them all.

Five-CD epitaph includes 64 never-before-heard tracks

This timid compilation suffers from the eternal failing of dance's left field in mistaking an imitation of Eno, Reich etc for a genuine response. And where Herbert is a maverick provocateur, making music from McDonalds wrappers or lurching into revisionist big band music, his prodigies are more faint-hearted. The majority of cuts (including those from Herbert himself) are sleepy and heavy-lidded-boring, even. There's nothing wrong with this LP if you like smoochy post-dance or cocktail jazz, but it's hardly sensual or murderous.

The Man Who Wasn't There's second solo album