Sister Midnight

A quite startling and surreal viewing experience by Karan Kandhari

Fashioned from influences ranging from Wes Anderson to stop motion animation, the film is a rare beast in that it makes no apologies for the forthright nature of the lead female protagonist. She has been ushered into this world of one she does not want to be in, yet through grit and gumption (much like early Capra heroines) she grows into her role as a domestic goddess in spite of her plight and lot in life. Lumbered with a husband who is no help whatsoever, she becomes a beacon in the community and admired by women who share the same problematic life and grows towards her husband.

In a great year for cinema from the sub-continent (All We Imagine As Light and Girls will be Girls), these are films of universal themes that are attractive to western audiences with moments of hilarity and subtlety that would not look out of place in Apatow comedies. This along with the utilising of western music (Buddy Holly for consumation anyone), at times surprising yet equally refreshing, with the director picking the brain of Jim Jarmusch seemingly.

Anchored by a noteworthy central performance by Radhika Apte, which is both vulnerable and affecting; she grows more and more misanthropic with her behaviour become more manic which subverts the audience anticipation

Sister Midnight is a film that is light with moments of darkness attempting to seep in, but one that reminds you of the power of human imagination amidst painful moments of loneliness and isolation. This is a film that is not the restrained human drama you expect, instead a free-spirited view of a brave new world available to a burgeoning sub-continent.

When the twist of the film occurs, the pathway of the film alters to a second journey for the women as she seeks a new path to discover. If the film is flawed it is the use of animated animals to depict the emotional psyche of the woman's state, it falls down on this trope because the caustic humour of the film's first hour is lost sadly.

However, the bold and brave style of performance and aesthetic should hold this film in good stead to garner a wider critical response and cult following due to its very nature of being something you have never seen before yet embracing influences of world cinema from Wenders to Ozu.

This has already garnered a Best British Film Debut nomination at the Baftas in February for the director in a highly competitive category. As well as being nominated for Camera D'Or in Cannes last year

Sister Midnight is out on 14th March from Wellington Films

Pax and the Secret Swarm

 

Final book in the Pax trilogy by David Barker

David Barker is a prolific writer, whose first published books were about the threat of global warming and the impending threat of water and eventual lack of it in three books that were scientific thrillers.

Following that successful publication run, he has turned his head to young adult fare in the Pax trilogy which has reached its conclusion.

Short sharp books that elicit fond memories of bygone schooldays and the lore of English literature ranging from Tom Brown to Grange Hill with a hint of a wizarding school on top.

The story revolves around the eponymous Pax, an assertive and industrious young boy, who gains admission to the elite school in the hope of becoming an Engineer in New London. This New London is run by a powerful Mayor who has built up new walls around London effectively keeping everyone they do not like out of the capital. 

Pax over the three books disrupts plans by the Mayor to garner more control over his population by way of mind-numbing propaganda and lies about those outside the walls namely the Countryside Alliance. 

Throughout Barkers's work he has always been able to bring an element of real-world truth to his writing as all the best science fiction does; the writing elicits an element of fear of what may be. And with the unsavoury images and stories coming out of America and that countries insatiable desire of total authoritarianism it certainly does ring true. 

Author David Barker 

Pleasingly, Barker knowing his main readers will be young adults he writes with a simpler good versus evil template with Pax and his erstwhile friends the ones wearing capes and flying around doing heroic things with robots, while the bad guys are those that wear masks and hold guns. Again, images all the more familiar nowadays in the days of ICE. 

While this book itself does not hit the heights of the second book in the series in this reader's opinion, the book is a fine straight-shooting end to this thrilling dystopian trilogy.

Pax and the Secret Swarm is out from Tiny Tree Books now on all formats.

My thanks to them for the review copy for an honest review.

Pynch - Beautiful Noise

Back with their second album, Pynch return 

When they first appeared on the Speedy Wunderground label with Disco Lights, Pynch have slowly built a loyal following based upon their clever rhythms and technical prowess with an ear for a hook with vital vocal delivery. Their first album 'Howling at a Concrete Moon' was an amalgamation of their singles with some filler but nevertheless a great listen about the disenchantment and allure of city life.

Today, they release their sophomore album Beautiful Noise. For some bands, this is always referred to as the difficult second album. But Pynch are not like some bands, they are a special four piece and have been since they released the slacker/covid-19 anthem 'Somebody Else' a track written before the global pandemic but whose tale of alienation and loneliness meant more within the troubled times.

The new album begins with 'Forever' and it is a reminder that Pynch unlike a lot of their contemporaries are well aware of the strength of the intro to a track - an enticing conduit for fans to get excited before Spencer Enock's distinct vocals come through.

Throughout the album, there is that spirit of DIY and shoegaze, a feeling that they are going to make music that they like without the hope that it connects but the belief that it will. There are winks to current music trends in 'Post-Punk/New-Wave' with the band themselves refusing to be pigeon-holed coupled with the single 'The Supermarket' with its driving bassline.

Upon further listenings, this album is a joy, for fans of early New Order whose post-Curtis' death were works of disillusionment along with the late 80s Depeche Mode. Think of 'Microwave Rhapsody', a song about sitting around and daydreaming; their unique knack of making universal the kitchen sink dramas they illustrate bodes well when they see the larger world available through touring.

They have already travelled to wider parts of Europe and the East coast of America; their guitar/electro sound sitting nice with the recent nostalgia binge of the Strokes/Yeah Yeah Yeah's period.

Title track and the longest one on the album, is perhaps their most, angry song, the lyric is about wanting to stay in bed and ignore the beautiful noise he sings about. And yet despite the heaviest sounding song, Spencer's forlorn earnest vocal remains engaging and it even detours into a jazzy sound ending which is rich and different in their scope. 

Even the penultimate track 'Come Outside' which showcases Spencer singing with drummer Julianna Hopkins, shows another avenue of invention possible to the band in future outings.

This is not so much a band with a foot in the door ready to eat at the top table, they are ready to kick that door down fully and announce themselves.

Self-released and self-produced on their Chillburn Recordings label, Beautiful Noise is out now on all formats.

Rebecca Schiffman - Before The Future

New York born singer-songwriter, Rebecca Schiffman, releases her fourth album on 25th July entitled Before The Future.

Born and raised on the East Coast, Schiffman has seemingly found her musical home on the west coast and the city of Los Angeles. This album features a multitude of guest artists and collaborators ranging from Deerhoof's Chris Cohen and Tim Carr (Perfume Genius) to name a couple. These new collaborative forces also changed her style of recording from the ten day relocation to the studio as she did with her first three albums; instead this album was recorded in more piecemeal due to the input of others. 

Starting with the title track and another with Cohen, creating this euphoric and anthemic sound for said title track that runs to nine plus minutes (an usual feat to front end an album with a long track). That track is about the grief from the untimely death of a childhood friend. It is the difficulty of grief and understanding of that emotion that is the underlying theme of the album throughout, as heard on 'Rudy's Song' which is about her bereavement for her beloved dog.

Schiffman has a gorgeous lilting voice, a soft delivery that works well with the pleasant melodies being played. Reminiscent of Margaret Glaspy in terms of singing style and Lori Anderson from yesteryear; Schiffman has crafted an album of a sunny disposition but with a more serious undercurrent to proceedings.

And yet there is joy such as 'Little Mr. Civility' about her two year old son, the new life in the world can change your outlook on many things. For Schiffman she did not want to become demonstrative in terms of making the rules and being strict, and this juggling of nature and nurture is the touchstone of the song.

All in all, this is an album of being aware of your feelings, expressing them the best way and how moments can channel or alter creative output. Schiffman is seeking balance between her long in the tooth East coast attitude and new found West coast sensibility; and in some ways she may have found it.

Before The Future is out on all platforms from 25th July

My thanks to OneBeatPR for the review opportunity.

Friend or Foe? - Ken Lussey

 

New entry in the Bob Sutherland WW2 series, 

out July 14th from Arachnid Press

Ken Lussey returns with Bob Sutherland and Monique Dubois with another thrilling, fast-paced tale set amidst the height of World War Two in Scotland.

It’s late June 1943. Bob and Monique Sutherland’s journey home from Malta is interrupted, first in London to hear Soviet claims of a German spy in Scotland and then by a shoot-out between US military units in Lancashire.

 

Having returned to Edinburgh, they remain only briefly before travelling with a Military Intelligence 11 team to Galloway to track down the spy. How best to catch a ghost who may already have uncovered vital military secrets? Can they find him before it’s too late? 

When two Soviet agents arrive in Galloway to help, Bob and Monique need to work out the difference between friend and foe. Does the German spy exist, or is he a Soviet invention intended to lure MI11 into danger?

Lussey as ever writes with such an assuredness in proceedings ranging from rations and the ability to drink champagne during wartime. This is thanks to his diligent research which even touches upon precise train times in Scotland. It is these details that help elevate this work above mere folly/

The most enticing entry of the book is the beginning when the Battle of Bamber surfaces; a real life occasion when Black American GIs had a fight with British civilians. This melding of fact and fiction always raises Lussey's works to that of importance and how we should look to the past to better understand our present, and how little has been learnt in nearly 80 years of passing.

Enticing and frantic, Lussey has again written a thrilling book of action set in real-life incidents a melding of fact and fiction in great unison. Another pleasing entry in this unique and special series.

Friend or Foe? is available from Arachnid Press now 

Getting Away - Kate Sawyer

New summer read by Kate Sawyer

This was a very pleasing read. A word of caution though, you will require a family tree/understanding of genealogy to remember the names and relations of all the people. However, once you get your head around that - this book was entertaining and enlightening. 

Using family holidays as the means to show familial relationships and how they alter over the years, decades and generations coupled with the ever-changing types of family holidays - from day outs to the beach by train, to the growing market of package holidays booked on Ceefax, to the globe-trotting gap years of the grandchildren.

Indebted to the work of David Nicholls, nevertheless Sawyer has crafted a work that is original yet familiar, comforting but challenging and by the end the reader would have developed a lump in their throat. Delicately handled with poise and guile by a writer with nuance. As you get nearer to the present day, the writer is able to incorporate the ever changing landscape of communication - using tweets, emails and magazine articles as a changing style of writing from by-gone eras of postcards and diary entries.

Sawyer writes with assuredness having an ear for how characters talk to each other, and she does this well with her plethora of protagonists ranging from the overweight police officer, to the shy retiring teenager who was born premature and must keep on fighting for his place in society

This is a book that will stay with the reader after completing it, and is a real find and a must for the summer of this year.

My thanks to Compulsive Readers for letting me be part of the blog tour for this title and the preview copy in advance.

Getting Away is published by Zaffre/Bonnier Books, thanks to them 

God As My Witness (2025)

A new documentary examines the Catholic clergy molestation scandal in Louisiana, screens at the 33rd Raindance Film Festival this June. The film is directed by Lindsay Quinn Pitre.

A harrowing and hard watch of a film over its 82 minute run time, about the lengths and depths of depravity men of the cloth went to hide their illicit behaviour.

The film is produced by Michael Brandner Sr, who in 2018 discovered a set of love letters from a priest to his younger brother, Scot. Scot committed suicide in the early 1990s at the age of 29.

After the first twenty minutes of talking head personal accounts of individuals who suffered molestation at the hands of clergymen. The film then shows the legal ramifications as attorneys of New Orleans brought claims against the church. The church faced so many clerical claims it had to file for federal bankruptcy protection in May 2020.

The case has cost the Archdiocese more than $40m in fees which remain unresolved. 

Tellingly, the film is left open-ended as this is an ongoing case with more people still to come forward. It allows you to see the story come to the viewer at this pace which is deliberate under the circumstances.

Heartfelt due to the personal nature of the Brander situation, this is a film that is a good companion to the Alex Gibney documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In the House of God (2012) which itself delved into the claims of abuse in the catholic church and touched upon in the Oscar winning film, Spotlight. 

This is a poignant documentary that is as much about healing as about the horrific acts put upon this vulnerable individuals.

God As My Witness has its World Premiere at the 33rd Raindance Film Festival on 26th June.

My thanks to Raindance for the screening link for review.

What The Dark Whispers - MJ Lee

 

Book 11 in the DI Ridpath series released 3rd July from Canelo

Having had the pleasure to read the DI Ridpath series from its genesis in the years prior to the global pandemic, it is the first time in my long tenure of reading that this reader has followed such a new detective series and character from its inception to the present day. Following, enjoying and anticipating.

Lee returns along with Ridpath in a Halloween set tale that sees the maverick Ridpath again having to uncover the truth behind a series of recent murders in the Greater Manchester area which may or may not be connected. A man sets himself on fire at a petrol station, a family is brutally murdered in their home and a single mother is strangled by her daughter.

Ridpath under his guise as policeman and assistant to the Coroner, has to battle familiar office politics - those who have been promoted ahead of him - with his embatteled support staff who endeavour to do the right thing despite the best efforts of those to merely tick a box. 

This along with his daughter, Eve, going through the tumultuous period of hormones and school coupled with the conclusion of the last book - What The Dead Want - where she was attacked by a male teen; with the two navigating their life together without mother, Penny around. 

A familiar experience when reading Lee's series (and this can be said for his contemporary Marion Todd) is that the books start off sprightly with the problem laid out before our hero in the first act. Only when he starts investigating and is at loggerheads with a superior officer, does the narrative gain pace and reads at a clip that is enjoyable as this reader digests with aplomb.

The last act of the book as the answers become clear to Ridpath and his team - a credit and salute to the leg work and diligence of police work - before the murderer can kill again, is pulsating and heart racing. The last quarter of the book flies past with a mixture of thrill and enjoyment as the plot unravels

Written with flair, pace and tension, Lee again has written a thriller of exceptional quality that in time may well rank as one of the best in the series overall. Lee like Ridpath has done it again.

What The Dark Whispers is out from Canelo on all formats from 3rd July 

Row (2025)

Premiered at the 2025 Raindance Film Festival, Released 5th September 

Row is written and directed by Matt Losasso.

It tells the story of a woman washed ashore in a blood stained boat as part of a doomed trans-atlantic World record attempt. While she has survived, her three shipmates are missing and presumed dead. She attempts to piece together her fractured memories.

The premise of this film is a good one and it does create an effective claustrophobic atmosphere of the cabin fever that takes hold of the shipmates in treacherous waters. However, these confinements are also restrictions and with a young cast trying their best, they are unfortunately let down by a quite a damp script which falls too swiftly into cliché and signposted direction of narrative flow.

This is a pity as the potential is clearly apparent with little nods to the work of John Carpenter and his evocative scores and economical storytelling, and yet that is all this film is, wanting to be something more than it is.

Female lead, Bella Dayne, is lacking in her conviction of performance sadly when the film desperately needs a strong one for the stakes required and with the whole narrative upon her shoulders. Sophie Skelton (Outlander) shows some brief spark in her time onscreen. 

For something so tense the pace is incredibly plodding and pedestrian. No rhythm or tension is apparent, perhaps the writer-director could have done with a polish of his rudderless script. 

It is frustrating when funding goes to films such as this, when the message is not clear and nothing new is being spoken of and with an overlong run time, this film really needed to have a good pay-off which unfortunately when it arrives it is with as little fanfare as the two hours that preceded it and lacks any sort of resolution for the tested audience.

Shot without any invention or colour, this is a film that is unwittingly all at sea.

Row receives its World Premiere on 21st June at 33rd Raindance Film Festival

Row has been nominated for four awards at the festival: Best Performance in a UK Feature (Dayne), Best UK Feature, Best Director of a UK Feature (Losssso) and Best UK Cinematography.

My thanks to Strike Media for the screener link 

Brian Wilson (1942-2025)

Brian Wilson, who passed away Wednesday at the age of 82, leaves behind a musical legacy that is untouchable in the pantheon of pop and rock and roll music.

Wilson, the songwriter and composer, of the five piece California band that brought surf culture to the wider popular attention and was a competitive contemporary of Lennon-McCartney during the British invasion of the mid-1960s.

Wilson, was a writer of huge acclaim and mainstream appeal, jaunty numbers that were talking about surfing, driving and having girlfriends. It was music for the teenager and young adult hot off the heels of Chuck Berry's hooks, the Beach Boys spoke for people from 'Little Deuce Coupe' and 'Fun Fun Fun'

He made California a destination for the globe, a place to aspire to visit. I remember seeing an interview with Billy Corgan (The Smashing Pumpkins) and he said, 'Brian Wilson should be paid royalties by the state of California, for the work he has done for the state'

Listening back to his catalogue over there is just a wave of joy and exuberance from the beginning - 'Surfin USA', 'Barbara Ann' and the jam nature of 'I Get Around', the jaunty nature of the works coupled with the nature of being young.

While Wilson would write at a clip unmatched, his attention to composition and complex arrangements were gaining traction. By the time Pet Sounds arrived in May 1966 a reaction to the Beatles' Rubber Soul; he had incorporated a wall-of-sound reminiscent of Phil Spector but the key was partnering with advertising writer Tony Asher as the lyricist. The lyrics while sentimental when married with Wilson's sound were a match made in heaven - the key change in 'God Only Knows' remains something from another dimension.

It is of course a shame that Wilson's dependency on psychedelic drugs curtailed his creative juices, yet the works still come and remain totems that soundtrack the summer as well as that inevitable question of growing old from 'Sail on Sailor' and 'Do It Again'

For me personally, Brian Wilson has been with me always. I worked overseas in a Catalan resort and many a time at the end of the shift I would listen to the Best of the Beach Boys and eventually Pet Sounds in its entirety; it became one of the touchstones works of my impressionable coming of age. I came out of my shell during those summers and the positive mindset that Wilson's music gives you is a jolt of lightning through your veins.

As with anything, it is a shame when someone you admire passes but his work remains and to enjoy. While people dream of better times and time of peace, just think of 'Good Vibrations' and 'Smile'.

The Bones of Chester - MJ Lee

 

Third book in DI Emma Christie series by prolific MJ Lee

Returning for the third book in the series, MJ Lee again writes a pulsating book set in and around the historic city of Chester. 

DI Emma Chrisite, is again tasked with a troubling case after human remains are found near a landmark in the Cheshire city. After an autopsy and inspection by pathologists, it is determined that the remains are from three different female skeletons.

Christie, must contend with office politics and the police hierarchy who want her to fail and have the men pick up the pieces. With her diligent and devoted team, they set about trying to find out firstly who the women are who have been buried and who did the heinous acts of maceration - the removal of flesh from human bones. 

Based around the mythic folk tale of Santa Muerte, who speaks to our villain; the plot revolves around the disappearance of young girls on two specific dates every calendar year. This nugget of truth amidst a fictitious tale helps somewhat ground it in reality - this is helped by Lee writing the discombobulating effect of the politicking in her job. Not to mention, her ongoing care for her ailing father and ex-super cop who is battling Alzheimer's at home.

That facet of the narrative is dealt with delicately, as the father's back story is slowing growing along with the history of the original crime gang family - the Gilligan's from Liverpool - who are always sniffing about. Another thing sniffing, is that familiar rat Gavin Newton, the journalist with no morals and even less ethics. 

A familiar trait of Lee's books is that the first half of the book seems to tread water in narrative construction and obstacles for our protagonists as if it is going uphill to reach a summit. Then when it reaches that summit, the downhill portion is all-go, thrill seeking page turning of the highest order.

Highly recommended for fans old and new, a book to get your teeth into. The fourth book cannot come soon enough.

The Bones of Chester is a self-published book by Author MJ Lee and available on all formats now.

The Famous - Rachel Lynch

New novel by prolific Rachel Lynch set in the world of celebrity and television

Lynch returns with another standalone thriller set amidst the world of the rich and famous following her successful departure from Cheshire set crime series, with The Rich.

Lynch creatively exposes the darkness underneath the sheen of superficiality we see amongst Instagram reels and stories.

In this book, we meet Gloria White, the aging mid-morning television host who is being subjected to a series of vicious anonymous letters culminating in the kidnapping of her daughter; while dealing with the loss of her media mogul father-in-law Roger Wade and the stress this leads.

Hot on the heels of the highly acclaimed film 'The Substance', where the varnish vanishes from an ageing starlet as she seeks the elixir of youth; this shows a highly esteemed television personality's life slowly unravel when her integrity is questioned.

Unlike The Rich which was one of those Crash-like scenarios, when lives are entwinned unknowingly, this story focuses solely on a main matriarch and her behaviour impacts everyone, while her arc revolves around this eventual realisation of her actions before it is too late.

Truth is buried and lives are ruined by the acts of the rich and famous. Lynch who touched upon such things in her previous work, invents more fictional tales that focus upon cancel culture, celebrity and money buying power.

Thrilling and tantalising in equal measure, fans of Lynch's Kelly Porter books will know what to expect with the intricately plotted narrative, but the realisation of a character such as Gloria White, at her advanced age is a successful one.

The Famous is out from Canelo on 6th March in all formats

FACS - Wish Defense

 

Chicago trio FACS return with sixth studio album from Trouble In Mind on February 7th

FACS are unlike any band you would have heard of before. They remain an enigmatic threesome who have garnered a cult following since the release of Void Moments in March 2020, when the world took a turn.

That album was an insular one, and one whose lyrical content coupled with that throbbing basslines and persistent drums along with a vocal of insolence. Yet it is still able to connect due to the musicianship on display by Brian Case (vocals), Jonathan Van Herik (original returning member on bass) and Noah Leger on drums.

Case, the main writer, states that this album revolves around the idea of doppelgangers or doubles, in a sense FACS are holding a mirror up to themselves to make tackle yourself and what motivations lie ahead.

Second track 'Ordinary Voices' is one that is familiar in the FACS form; pulsating and unrelenting in its message, which is quickly followed by title track 'Wish Defense' which has this ear worm of a bass line at the outset, culminating in the shout 'I'm not here' on repeat as a chorus. It is not so much disillusionment they are trying to sell, they can see the listener and can relate.

 

Track four, 'A Room' is an archetypal wall of sound number, with Case's vocals merely being held up by the roaring sound being created.

While it may not reach the heights or lightning in the bottle of Void or the follow up Present Tense (2021), this nevertheless remains a supreme statement of art by a band who are firing on all cylinders. This sort of album gives you hope that when given a chance a band can still be heard.

At seven songs in length and thirty minutes in runtime, this is still a curated piece of production helmed by the late Steve Albini, in his last professional work.

Wish Defense is released from Trouble in Mind on February 7th

My thanks to them and OneBeat PR for the review opportunity.

Dead Man's Shoes - Marion Todd

 

Marion Todd returns with another instalment in the DI Clare Slater world

Having followed Todd's career - a second career as her life as a novelist started in later years - it has been a joy to see this writer grow as an author creating a world she is happily swimming in as the crime washes up on the nearby shores in St Andrews.

This most recent adventure follows the death of a young man found dead near a nightclub. The marks on his neck are indicative and a symbol of a serial killer in the North of England, labelled 'The Choker', a killer who targets gay men.

From that death, another death follows and on and on and with further attacks on men happening, Slater must again balance the extremes of work pressure with the crucial home-life balance with a fellow member of the Police force. 

It is always difficult to find new problems or obstacles for a character in a continuing series without it becoming old hat or sound like you are repeating yourself. In this edition, Todd gives Slater the difficulty of a back injury sustained in the line of duty meaning she becomes a passenger driven to crime scenes and has to slow down while trying to get the same results.

Written as ever with such enthusiasm and with a great ear for dialogue in the workplace, Todd again has written a winner of a crime read. 

Dead Man's Shoes is released on 9th January 2025 from Canelo Crime

My thanks to them for the pre-approval on NetGalley