The Big Star death disc industry - releasing different demos, alternate mixes and live versions in different packaging to people with more money than interest in new music - hasn't come close to unearthing a song as good as Mysterious Lady. Or the b-side, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which is even better.
There's no escaping that Big Star (or perhaps more accurately Chris Bell) is the number one influence on Chicago's Ryan Krga. You can add the Everly Brothers and Badfinger if you want. But these ringing guitars, sad-eyed laments and country-tinged breakdowns pull off the Chilton/Bell trick brilliantly and stand tall on their own without ever coming close to pastiche.
Saturday, 31 August 2019
Wednesday, 28 August 2019
Portishead: Dummy original press release and biography
Geoff has long admired the works of John Barry, A Tribe Called Quest, Giorgio Moroder and Isaac Hayes.
This is coupled with Beth's specific beat for Janis Joplin, Elizabeth Fraser and Astrud Gilberto.
Geoff and beth met on an Enterprise Training Scheme in 1991.
Dummy is the sound of 90s urban blues.
This is coupled with Beth's specific beat for Janis Joplin, Elizabeth Fraser and Astrud Gilberto.
Geoff and beth met on an Enterprise Training Scheme in 1991.
Dummy is the sound of 90s urban blues.
Sunday, 28 July 2019
Les Milous - Annie Hall
Jerky and jangly like Josef K with a surf guitar motif and a fun-sized melody played on what can only be a child’s keyboard. This excellent single doesn’t so much have a genre as see Les Milous - the mysterious one-man band JH, recorded in a Stockholm flat - grab whatever the hell he wants and make it work together.
Whatever it's doing, Annie Hall blurs the line between avant-garde and naive art and is all the better for it.
I can’t offer any insights into the lyrics, but I can say with some confidence that the words “Annie” and “Hall” are used at various points. Stare too long and you’ll fall over. Listen once and you’ll fall in love.
Want it? Act fast. UK buyers head to Low Company.
Whatever it's doing, Annie Hall blurs the line between avant-garde and naive art and is all the better for it.
I can’t offer any insights into the lyrics, but I can say with some confidence that the words “Annie” and “Hall” are used at various points. Stare too long and you’ll fall over. Listen once and you’ll fall in love.
Want it? Act fast. UK buyers head to Low Company.
Sunday, 21 July 2019
Lachlan Denton & Studio Magic - A Brother
During sessions of sweet silent thought Lachlan Denton summons remembrance of his brother Zachary (“quiet and painfully shy”), his bandmate in Ciggie Witch and The Ocean Party, who died last year at the age of 24.
A Brother is a profoundly moving, emotionally bruising and tender album about love, loss and the unbreakable ties that bind their relationship (“I carry your songs, your blood runs through me”).
The songs are elegies (“a brother and best friend, I love you to the end), they’re tributes and desperately devotional. Over the album’s course, the joys of companionship are contrasted with grief (“this Christmas I won’t be alone, I’ll be with the ones you loved so much”) in an episodic invocation of a life of love and friendship.
How Lachlan has responded so eloquently, so quickly, with such grace suggests not only the love but that their relationship, and Zac himself, offered so rich a palette that inspiration appeared readily.
A Brother doesn’t exactly lay waste to the Dentons’ back catalogue, but it’s better - more powerful, fresher, rawer - than what’s come before. Musically, it rubs shoulders with Wilco’s best. On love and loss, it’s there with Blood On The Tracks and Tonight’s The Night.
This is a record that had to be made. Without A Brother, all that’s left in death is silence. With A Brother, which will live long, there is celebration.
A Brother is a profoundly moving, emotionally bruising and tender album about love, loss and the unbreakable ties that bind their relationship (“I carry your songs, your blood runs through me”).
The songs are elegies (“a brother and best friend, I love you to the end), they’re tributes and desperately devotional. Over the album’s course, the joys of companionship are contrasted with grief (“this Christmas I won’t be alone, I’ll be with the ones you loved so much”) in an episodic invocation of a life of love and friendship.
How Lachlan has responded so eloquently, so quickly, with such grace suggests not only the love but that their relationship, and Zac himself, offered so rich a palette that inspiration appeared readily.
A Brother doesn’t exactly lay waste to the Dentons’ back catalogue, but it’s better - more powerful, fresher, rawer - than what’s come before. Musically, it rubs shoulders with Wilco’s best. On love and loss, it’s there with Blood On The Tracks and Tonight’s The Night.
This is a record that had to be made. Without A Brother, all that’s left in death is silence. With A Brother, which will live long, there is celebration.
Wednesday, 17 July 2019
Oroskällan – Oroskällans musikaliska resa i tro, missmod och fantasi
Imagine The Wicker Man soundtrack played by the inpatients of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest after they've flung themselves down Alice's rabbit hole to chase impossible dreams. I don't know if I'm frightened by it or enchanted by its wyrdness. Either way I'm held hostage by its dark powers.
Oroskällan are an acid folk band from Gothenburg. If any of them have day jobs, I'm absolutely certain they'd fail every random drugs test. Their music is hypnotic and cryptic and spellbinding. Maybe there's a 1970s Swedish children's animation where all the kids are kidnapped by a religious cult then sacrificed to a pagan god. And this is the soundtrack.
Part horror noir, part disturbing fairy tale and full-time mind-fuck on psychedelia's fried fringes, this is the sort of album that cratediggers can only dream about disinterring from the private pressing graveyard. But it's brand new.
Oroskällan are an acid folk band from Gothenburg. If any of them have day jobs, I'm absolutely certain they'd fail every random drugs test. Their music is hypnotic and cryptic and spellbinding. Maybe there's a 1970s Swedish children's animation where all the kids are kidnapped by a religious cult then sacrificed to a pagan god. And this is the soundtrack.
Part horror noir, part disturbing fairy tale and full-time mind-fuck on psychedelia's fried fringes, this is the sort of album that cratediggers can only dream about disinterring from the private pressing graveyard. But it's brand new.
Wednesday, 19 June 2019
Jeanines album
This is a story about pop music and its essence. Last Friday, the record shop had 4 albums fresh out the box I was interested in: Bruce Springsteen, Bill Callahan, Neil Young and Jeanines. Reader, I bought just the Jeanines.
The others were all £25. Jeanines was half that price. There was a thing in the 1980s about 7” singles being the pop music ideal and 12” singles were a rip off. This was obviously an indie-centric argument - the public demand for Public Enemy and A Guy Called Gerald singles on 7” was low.
The vinyl size format argument was lost, or its importance diminished, because tapes in the mid 80s outsold vinyl on album, then CDs by 1989 outsold vinyl and tapes together on album. Singles weren’t that important to the industry, even though they remained crucial to indie labels and bands as often the only format they’d release. And that would be on vinyl.
CDs were phenomenally expensive. Now vinyl is. The market for CD albums in the late 80s is the same as for vinyl now: wealthier adults. And the commercial impulse from big labels is the same: raise the margins on heritage music acts’ releases by marketing it as a status product. A London record shop owner told me recently that the high price on new releases he stocks is down to labels raising the dealer price. Pure profiteering.
The 1980s argument for 7” singles largely centred on the tenets of pop music being cheap and disposable, the thrills renewed every week with a new purchase.
Jeanines make exactly that kind of thrilling, disposable pop music. I’m uncertain if I’ll be playing this excellent album in two weeks’ time, but I’ll remember it fondly. Will there be something as good to replace it? I can only dream.
It sounds like 1980s indiepop (The Siddeleys cover isn’t an accident), and slightly later acts, particularly Go Sailor and Heavenly: route one jangle, sharp, simple and effective with inventive, playful basslines. It’s bright and immediate enough to win over fans from outside the indiepop scene.
I don’t know how many pop fans have bought this on vinyl. The label Slumberland has done everything it can - a coloured vinyl import for £12.50? Don’t expect there’ll be a profit there. It’ll be even cheaper in the US.
The romance of this release is that it’s a musical throwback that sounds fresh and is priced affordably. Many of the 16 songs complete their business in 90 seconds and some wrap up everything in under a minute. Its built-in obsolescence is at odds with Springsteen’s expensive string arrangements, a record that sounds like it was made to last or, possibly, not be laughed at.
Albums by heritage rock artists are released on vinyl to make hefty profits and for people to take seriously. They’re really making a case for the CD revival. This Jeanines record has been released to make people happy. Job done.
The others were all £25. Jeanines was half that price. There was a thing in the 1980s about 7” singles being the pop music ideal and 12” singles were a rip off. This was obviously an indie-centric argument - the public demand for Public Enemy and A Guy Called Gerald singles on 7” was low.
The vinyl size format argument was lost, or its importance diminished, because tapes in the mid 80s outsold vinyl on album, then CDs by 1989 outsold vinyl and tapes together on album. Singles weren’t that important to the industry, even though they remained crucial to indie labels and bands as often the only format they’d release. And that would be on vinyl.
CDs were phenomenally expensive. Now vinyl is. The market for CD albums in the late 80s is the same as for vinyl now: wealthier adults. And the commercial impulse from big labels is the same: raise the margins on heritage music acts’ releases by marketing it as a status product. A London record shop owner told me recently that the high price on new releases he stocks is down to labels raising the dealer price. Pure profiteering.
The 1980s argument for 7” singles largely centred on the tenets of pop music being cheap and disposable, the thrills renewed every week with a new purchase.
Jeanines make exactly that kind of thrilling, disposable pop music. I’m uncertain if I’ll be playing this excellent album in two weeks’ time, but I’ll remember it fondly. Will there be something as good to replace it? I can only dream.
It sounds like 1980s indiepop (The Siddeleys cover isn’t an accident), and slightly later acts, particularly Go Sailor and Heavenly: route one jangle, sharp, simple and effective with inventive, playful basslines. It’s bright and immediate enough to win over fans from outside the indiepop scene.
I don’t know how many pop fans have bought this on vinyl. The label Slumberland has done everything it can - a coloured vinyl import for £12.50? Don’t expect there’ll be a profit there. It’ll be even cheaper in the US.
The romance of this release is that it’s a musical throwback that sounds fresh and is priced affordably. Many of the 16 songs complete their business in 90 seconds and some wrap up everything in under a minute. Its built-in obsolescence is at odds with Springsteen’s expensive string arrangements, a record that sounds like it was made to last or, possibly, not be laughed at.
Albums by heritage rock artists are released on vinyl to make hefty profits and for people to take seriously. They’re really making a case for the CD revival. This Jeanines record has been released to make people happy. Job done.
Saturday, 8 June 2019
Peter Perrett interview
Last time Halley's Comet came whizzing down from the heavens, Perrett was sitting on it.NME, 8 February 1992
Johnny Thunders said to me, 'If you fitted in more then you could make it easy.' But I've never liked conforming to anything.
By the time I was 5 I could do simple algebra which meant I knew more than the teacher. I used to correct the teacher.
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