James Blake has evolved
There is also new music from New York artist Porches
SHARON CORR — THE FOOL AND THE SCORPION
ON HER third solo album, the second oldest of the four Corr siblings largely sticks to the musical template set out in her previous works.
Celtic folk-pop remains the dominant sound although jazz-inflected piano gives her a chance to stretch out on the whispered Lend Me Your Shoulder and The Heart Of A Lonely Hunter sees her exploring widescreen alternative rock.
But it is Corr’s vulnerability that lifts these 10 songs above their predecessors.
The Fool And The Scorpion emerged out of Corr’s divorce from her husband of 18 years, barrister Gavin Bonnar, with who she shares two children — a period she revisits in often painful detail.
The album is full of allusions, such as the title track’s refrain of “May you choke on the tears of a mother’s love”.
But the song finishes with the line “I am free, I am free — I have been reborn” as proof Corr has moved past her righteous anger and scorn towards acceptance.
It is never quite clear whether Corr sees herself as the fool or the scorpion, the hunter or the hunted.
But perhaps that’s the point. She is both.
6/10
(Review by Alex Green)
CARAVAN — IT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS
CARAVAN has never been a particularly commercial band.
Even their 1971 opus In the Land of Grey And Pink, considered one of the defining works of the Caterbury progressive rock scene, initially failed to chart in the UK. Despite this, a shifting line-up has allowed them to tour and record almost constantly since their heyday, led by guitarist and vocalist Pye Hastings.
It’s None Of Your Business is their 15th album and sees the group reinvigorated by the pandemic.
Recorded at Rimshot Studio near Sittingbourne in Kent, it sees the band shifting away from the glossy soft-rock of 2013’s Paradise Filter.
This may not be a return to the band’s folk roots but tracks like Spare A Thought and There Is You lean towards their more traditional influences.
Hastings and his band deliver an album that will please long-standing fans and perhaps entice some new ones as well. 6/10
(Review by Alex Green)
PORCHES — ALL DAY GENTLE HOLD !
NEW York artist Aaron Maine has created both indie rock and auto-tuned synth-pop since bursting onto the scene a decade ago.
But until last year’s Ricky Music, he had never managed to imbue his scrappy musical experiments with genuine personality.
Ricky Music explored the end of a relationship and provided a compelling portrait of Maine at his most emotionally vulnerable.
All Day Gentle Hold ! is something else entirely, returning Maine to his early rock roots (such as first loves Nirvana and The Ramones) while maintaining the more spiky, spasmodic elements from his recent albums.
It’s a suitably angsty affair as Maine revisits his teenage self on tracks such as Swimming Big and Back3School.
But unsurprisingly, for an album conceived quickly during lockdown, there is a lack of development.
Ideas bubble up without warning and often feel underbaked.
There’s no doubt, however, that listening to these 11 tracks will transport listeners back to their own heady teenage days.
6/10
(Review by Alex Green)
JAMES BLAKE — FRIENDS THAT BREAK YOUR HEART
OVER the last decade, James Blake has evolved from an electronic music producer with a distinctive sound into something closer to a sonic troubadour — a singer-songwriter in the vein of Joni Mitchell or Bob Dylan, aided by a sound palette that draws from all areas of contemporary music but is totally his own.
Friends That Break Your Heart, his fifth album, was inspired by the realisation that the dynamics of crumbling friendships have not been written about as much as their romantic counterparts.
It was also inspired, at least in part, by the way certain friends melted away during the pandemic, while others became invaluable supports.
By his own standards, it is a rather uplifting work.
Foot Forward is a futuristic R&B jam with one of Blake’s most compelling choruses in years.
“It’s okay / I know I’ll be replaced / Ignore the bitter taste / It’s not that bad,” he sings.
The cast is less starry than on 2019’s Assume Form, which featured Travis Scott, Rosalia and Andre 3000 in ill-fitting guest slots.
SZA is a better fit on the undulating trap of Coming Back, while Atlanta rapper JID sprays languid bars over spectral, shifting beats.
Assume Form described the happiness Blake found with his girlfriend Jameela Jamil in Los Angeles and functioned as a full stop to the first stage of his career.
Friends That Break Your Heart marks the start of something new. 8/10
(Review by Alex Green)
ANDY Serkis is no stranger to creatures. The British actor has been globally acclaimed for his pioneering use of motion capture and CGI as Gollum in The Lord Of The Rings and as Caesar in the Planet Of The Apes films, as well as playing Snoke in Star Wars.
But the next creatures he is tackling are as a director, not an actor, and they carry with them the weight of expectation.
He steps into the director’s chair for the Marvel film Venom: Let There Be Carnage, a sequel to the 2018 blockbuster helmed by Ruben Fleischer.
Serkis, whose previous directing credits include Breathe, starring Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy, and Jungle Book re-telling Mowgli: Legend Of The Jungle, didn’t have his eye on directing a superhero blockbuster until he got a call from the film’s star, Tom Hardy.
“I was working on something else, I was developing something to shoot, and out of the blue came this call from Tom and he just said ‘Andy, I want to throw your hat in the ring to direct Venom’,” he recalls.
“I was like ‘OK!’ It wasn’t something that I was seeking out originally but then we started to talk and obviously I loved his performance in the original one, so very rapidly it kind of became something, and I’m so glad that he did because we had a ball making it.
“I’ve always wanted to work with Tom and we’d sort of talked around other projects, as director and actor and also acting together, so it was really wonderful to finally get to work together.”
The film sees Hardy reprise his role as journalist Eddie Brock, who is still living with the symbiote Venom inside him. After Brock attempts to reignite his career by interviewing the serial killer Cletus Kasady (played by Woody Harrelson), the convicted killer becomes the host of the symbiote Carnage and Eddie and Venom must race to stop him on his deadly mission.
“I’ve never done anything like that before,” Serkis admits, “so it was a challenge at first but, but the way it was written and the way the story was crafted, and where it sat in terms of the evolution of the relationship with Eddie and Venom, and also the introduction of such a main new character Carnage, allowed for a lot of exploration as if it were almost a film in its own right.
“I was standing on the shoulders of Ruben Fleischer’s great first movie and Tom’s performance particularly, and so there was wonderful material to work with.
“But what was exciting about this were two things really — where the relationship sits — you saw the meeting of the symbiote and its host and now we get to enjoy the development of that, now we get to see the kind of the odd couple relationship, the sort of the seven-year-itch, the playfulness between them now they have spent time with each other, so that was really exciting.
“And then there was the design and finding the colour and palette and the tone of this movie, which is much more humorous in a way, but it’s also a lot darker in terms of the villain and the brilliant performance that Woody gives as Cletus and Carnage.”
In fact it was Harrelson’s nerve-shredding performance that gave Serkis a real pinch-me moment on set.
“I was looking at Woody thinking ‘I remember watching you playing Larry Flynt’ and thinking one day I’d like to do something like that, I’d like to be involved in cinema.
“Then suddenly you find yourself, 30 years later, working with someone that you’ve admired all this time. So I always have to pinch myself and think how lucky I am doing the job that I do.”
But for 57-year-old Serkis, time in the director’s chair means time away from acting, which has been long been his first love, and he’s adamant he is not planning on retiring from his career on screen any time soon.
“I’m really enjoying directing, I love it and it sort of satisfies all the variants that I’ve gone off in during my career to explore. And even before I became an actor I was very much into painting and graphics and visual storytelling, so it really suits me, and I know I’m not going to stop acting.
“I love acting and I will continue and I’m doing more acting. But with this journey the great thing is you can go from one to the other and I do love helming the whole thing and having the experiences of working with all of the entire crew and post production and visual effects and music and so on.
“But equally I really enjoy just kind of shutting all of that out and getting inside the head of a character and playing.”
It was particularly thrilling for Serkis to dive into the world of a Marvel film because he had grown up with Spider-Man comics as a child, but had drifted away from them in later life.
“It was lovely to be able to dive back into that world,” he enthuses. “The world of graphic storytelling is something I’ve been interested in and obviously creating characters of these kinds, working with technology which allows you to bring these kinds of characters to life, mean I felt very at home.”
And as a fan, that must surely means he wants what scores of Marvel fans want — the chance to see Venom and Spider-Man together on the big screen?
“Well, I think everyone wants that,” he says with a grin. “I mean, who knows what will happen? We hope that one day they might come across each other, I guess . . .”
Venom: Let There Be Carnage is showing in UK cinemas now.