film soundtrack
THE RAINMAKER (HOLLYWOOD RECORDS)
Elmer Bernstein has produced a characteristic score that matches exactly the various moody, sinister and humorous elements in Francis Ford Coppola's new film of John Grisham's novel. Although not, perhaps, Bernstein's most original score, it draws freely on his own distinctive palette: the jazzy world of Walk on the Wild Side (with a focus on the Hammond organ that will delight devotees of the breathy monster), the offbeat music of Ghostbusters and The Grifters, and - for the movie's romantic theme - the composer's own preferred penchant for chamber music textures. Bernstein conducts the original score.
MICHAEL TUMELTY
rock
THE BEST OF NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS, NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS (MUTE)
An essential 16-track retrospective culled from the 10 albums of hard'n'greasy Antipodean death-blues-guts-rock cranked out over the past 13 years by that frankly spooksome howler Mr Cave and his primordial cohorts. Listen to this and hear raging rivers rise, hurricanes blow, and souls get swept away into perdition. Scare yourself whole with Ol' Nick real soon.
DAVID BELCHER
jazz
A GO GO, JOHN SCOFIELD (VERVE)
After Quiet's rather solemn, acoustic gracefulness, Sco has decided to party, get loose, shakedown, play the blues - and he could hardly have chosen fitter companions for his clipped, snarling guitar lines than the irredeemably groovesome Hammond road rats Medeski, Martin and Wood. Imagine Booker T & the MGs, in a bad mood, playing the Cannonball songbook. Filthy 'n' nasty but decidedly tasty.
ROB ADAMS
folk
THE COLD GREY LIGHT OF DAWN, ALISTAIR HULETT & DAVE SWARBRICK (MUSIKFOLK)
As Swarbrick's fiddle and mandolin flit impishly among Hulett's percussive guitar figures, it's hard to resist calling this a 1990s successor to Swarbrick's revered partnership with Martin Carthy. A very Scottish successor, though, with Hulett's voice (kind of Dick Gaughan meets Michael Marra) variously and grippingly disturbing, ironic, bitter and mischievous on his own starkly realistic songs and traditional items alike.
ROB ADAMS
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