This album came out two decades ago. Here’s what I had to say about it back then (with some minor editing):
I beg their pardon. But with all due respect to the title of their third album The Blossom Filled Streets, life seems like anything but a rose garden for Bristol’s Movietone. On the plus side, I get the sense that’s the way they like it.
This co-ed sextet of slowcore multi-instrumentalists seem quite at home in their self-contained netherworld, where the dreamy despair of Kate Wright’s vocals floats lazily above a hypnotic current of shoegazing minimalism that swirls together languid trip-hop, creaky chamber folk, noirish torch balladry and noisy entropic post-rock. Take away the vocals and Movietone’s narcotically relaxing soundscapes easily live up to their filmic name. With or without vocals, these tracks have all the sad beauty of a vase full of roses — dead roses, that is.
