Reviews

Atmospheric debut featuring past and present members of Piano Magic

Concept album from uncompromising American singer about killing the corporate beast

It's over a decade since former actor Will Oldham took his first faltering steps in a forgotten backwater of American music. When Oldham began recording with his brother Paul in 1992 he was recovering from a nervous breakdown, staking out an area that provided a refuge for his skewed, haunted but unusually perceptive sensibility.

Don't be misled by the title. This is not Martyn's classic 1973 album Solid Air, but a best-of that isn't even really that. Yes, all his greatest songs from two decades of back catalogue are here. Yet they're not the original recordings but reinterpretations made in 1992-93 with a soft-rock, dinner party backing provided by such mates as Phil Collins and Dave Gilmour. The songs still sound pretty good and his voice is as wonderfully slurred as ever. But nobody could claim any of these 28 retreads are improvements on the originals.

Five-CD anthology from swing-era rebel

Inner-city ensemble comedy

When, in '91, this wasn't nominated for a best foreign film Oscar, nearly every living German director signed a protest letter. Agnieszka Holland hasn't since matched the story of a Polish Jew who pretends to be a Nazi in order to survive. Suspenseful and sensitive, it avoids traps which even Polanski's The Pianist falls into.

Kathryn Bigelow's lavish direction can't keep this creaky adventure afloat. Catherine McCormack is Jean, a photo-journalist researching a century-old double murder while rekindling her relationship to Thomas (Sean Penn) on a sailing trip. A cliché-soaked script and Liz Hurley's wobbly acting lends a made-for-TV ambience.

Probably the most wistful music you'll hear this year is on this debut album by Casino Versus Japan, which takes us back to the good old days when electronica wasn't afraid to be beautiful. Tracks like "The Possible Light" and "Summer Clip" have the same kind of warped grandiloquence as the Aphex Twin and Global Communications a decade ago: delicate melodic flakes magnified through a cosmic amplifier. On tracks like "Moonlupe", Vangelis is even brought to mind—and there's nothing illegal about that.

Sultry debut from British newcomer with big potential