Reviews

Ja Rule – The Last Temptation

Pumped and vacuous fourth album from rap's No 1 pin-up

The Sunshine Company – The Blades Of Grass

The Blades Of Grass ARE NOT FOR SMOKING REV-OLA Rating Star West Coast ex-folksters The Sunshine Company just missed stardom when their version of newcomer Jimmy Webb's "Up, Up And Away" was beaten into the charts by the Fifth Dimension's in 1967.

Uneasy Listening

Remastered 24-CD box set of live performances by establishment-baiting avant-noise terrorists

The Transporter

Jason Statham in Eurotrash potboiler

Paul Weller—Two Classic Performances

Comprising this summer's Hyde Park concert (a rocking preview of the Illumination album that followed) and last year's BBC Later... special of Paul unplugged circa Days Of Speed, this double-header is a timely celebration of the Modfather's continuing success. Both blinding, though the latter set of acoustic Jam and TSC chestnuts (a Noel Gallagher assisted "That's Entertainment" included) is pretty much unbeatable.

The Son’s Room

Nanni Moretti's Cannes-winner is restrained and moving, with the Italian writer/director forsaking his comic urges to examine how a teenage son's death affects a family. Moretti plays the father, a psychoanalyst who, grieving, loses interest in his patients. Awkward emotions are deftly handled: Hollywood should watch this and learn.

DPZ – Turn Off The Radio

Impressive revolutionary rap from Florida

Yann Tiersen – L’absente

He helped Audrey Tautou steal your heart in Amélie, and Tiersen, like that film, evokes the passing of French iconographies (Pernod, madeleines, poujadisme) and the culture's quiet assimilation of change, with or without accordions. The slyly sentimental, Nyman-leaning postmodernism of "A Quai" and "Bagatelle" absorbs genres from Rai to post-rock but remains uniquely French. Zazou and Eno, watch your arses.

Dj Me Dj You – Can You See The Music?

Third album of kitsch psychedelic pop comes with DVD

Echoboy – Giraffe

Idiosyncratic Liverpudlian's third LP reveals pop direction
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