TheRetroCritic

Anyone who knows me knows I have worshipped Metric since their kickass breakout album Old World Underground (Where Are You Now?) .   Their unique blend of punk rock attitude and electro pop acting like a kind of best-of-music-I-like for me. Since that album, a few others followed, all good, so I had high hopes for Synthetica . The result? Well it is indeed good, about as strong as Grow Up And Blow Away  I would say. It opens with the very Metric "Artificial Nocturne" which never fully takes off the way "Help, I'm Alive" did, for example, but which nonetheless lures you hypnotically into the album. It has a great build-up. "Youth Without Youth" is next and adds a bit of Black Keys-style blues to the mix. Again, it doesn't have that extra level to it but it's still a cool tune. "Speed The Collapse" brings with it a darker tone and is all the better for it. One of the best songs on the album, definitely. The following song

Well, The Offspring's long-awaited new album Days Go By is out and, having grown up listening to the band (among others), I thought I'd give this one a listen and *gasp* a review. Days Go By is a mixed bag to say the least. On the one hand you've got those decent new Offspring tunes which, though hardly groundbreaking, are always fun. " The Future Is Now" kicks off the album on a high note, " Secrets From The Underground" follows and, as familiar as it sounds, it's still energetic and enjoyable enough to justify its existence. Then we get title song " Days Go By" , a remarkably dull effort. I can never seem to listen to it all the way through. It's not "terrible" I guess, the chorus is fine at least, but it never takes off. I just couldn't get interested in it at all. Thinking about it, this one would work on a Green Day album with Billy Joe Armstrong's voice more suited to this type of tune. " Turning I

My favourite Siouxsie and the Banshees song, written by Danny Elfman for Batman Returns . Love it.

I just thought I'd post this little gem, since I'm The RetroCritic and all...

If you thought the Batman Forever soundtrack was uneven, wait till you get a load of this one... Believe it or not, this OST starts off really well with a Smashing Pumpkins song that, regardless of whether you like the band of not, you gotta admit is pretty darn cool. It's the usual moody, high-pitched angst we expect from the Pumpkins but "The End Is The Beginning Is The End" is definitely worth a listen. It's actually so good there's two versions of it on the album, the slower "The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning" (what's with the silly titles, you guys?) ending the soundtrack in style. In between you get the usual mix of teen-friendly rock and hip-hop/R&B. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's "Look Into My Eyes" is a catchy effort and strangely, I quite like it. R. Kelly's "Gotham City" is fine, I guess, if you like that sort of syrupy ballad but frankly if you're gonna sing about Gotham City choose someth

Courtesy of Empire , you can now listen to the soundtrack for The Dark Knight Rises . Wow, sounds awesome.

More Prince-tastic goodness...

There was a time when this Prince soundtrack just wasn't for me. It was just so distracting, so 80's and so not in line with anything else in the movie which went for more of a 1940's film noir-style vibe. I actually used to count it as one of the film's (very few) shortcomings. Listening back to it now though, I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it. It's a guilty pleasure, for sure, but there's just something irresistible about a "funky" Batman soundtrack. Prince opens the album with " The Future" , a song you hear roughly in the background during the opening scene of the film where that family is wandering the streets of Gotham. It doesn't build up to anything particularly memorable but it's fine. Things get good with the second track though, " Electric Chair" sounding like a cross between Stevie Wonder and... AC/DC, as Prince gets to rock-scream a bit near the end of it. Gotta love the rock-screamin&#

Another year, another extended Chanel advert. Unfortunately, unlike Coco Before Chanel , this doesn't have much to work with. What we get is not so much a Chanel biopic as a vague Stravinski biopic awkwardly stuck inside a sexy Chanel bubble. The main problem is that, really, the film has nothing interesting to say: Chanel and Stravinski had an affair...they had sex...buy our perfume! This is literally it. Having said that, Jan Kounen does a remarkable job making such an empty narrative interesting. The cinematography is stylish and well crafted and the score is beautiful. A terrific scene involving a Stravinski concert going awry is definitely a highlight. There's good performances here. Anna Mouglalis' over-cool but genuinely manipulative and really pretty dislikable Chanel is a lot of fun and Mads Mikkelsen conveys a lot with the shameful 5 lines he was given to work with (!). His performance, although practically silent, is nevertheless the most compelling in the e