Outsideleft Week in Music Calling at all Stations from Aberystwyth...

After a bit of a break, multi-instrumentalist and DJ Georgia Ruth returns with a new single from her forthcoming album 'Cool Head' and also a book titled Tell Me Who I Am. A lovely slow burner of a song already garnering plays on Radio Cymru, Radio Wales and BBC 6Music. Sweeping strings,a nice bass line and Georgia Ruth's beautiful vocal melodies atop of everything. Enough to brighten the dullest of days. This week I'm jointly reviewing with Mrs Fuzzyfelt and my son Young Fuzz and between the 3 of us we give it 4 Hearts.   

Toronto Heavy Metal merchants Black Absinthe are concerned about the cleanliness of their home city's streets, it seems. "You never keep this city clean" they sing whilst walking the streets tutting over the amount of garbage and litter to be found.  It's unusual to find a band normally preoccupied with hell on earth, dead queens, and other such Hard Rock mumbo jumbo, and with songs like 'Essentially Fucked' in their set, taking such an interest in municipal waste collection and street cleaning, so I commend them for their level of social responsibility.  They may not look the types, but I'm sure they would all make fine, upstanding Town Councillors. Or street cleaners.

Who writes these lyrics? Oh, yes, its Blondshell (Sabrina Teitelbaum). "I said don’t shake my hand it’s wet. He said I’ll kiss it instead. He said I saw the whole show. I’m not scared of the sweat, but I’m scared of the touching. I have someone at home and I want his body more. When he leaves me alone".  Come again?  I'd say its probably best not to look for poetry in pop song lyrics. This is one of those collaborations between two manufactured teen pop stars who both gush about how much they love and admire each others work and enjoy spending the afternoon pouting at the camera and wearing sunglasses indoors.  The net result of all this nonsense is yet another indentikit alt rock-ish outing.  Its not bad.  Its not good.  It just is.

Merrit is a singer songwriter with clear talent for a Pop ballad, her vocal tones are super smooth and up front, the harmonies she uses fit really well. The arrangement is simple but effective, using some interesting sounds and percussion to keep us engaged, even as a ballad you can feel the energy build as the song flows. Merritt Gibson’s musical journey is defined by her cosmopolitan upbringing and innate talent for storytelling. From her roots in New York and Boston to her time in Nashville, Merritt’s artistic evolution reflects a blend of diverse influences and profound insights. Her upcoming releases promise to further showcase her unique blend of sophistication and authenticity in the indie pop landscape.

I know Diamanda Galas of old, largely for her stunning 1982 debut album, 'The Litanies of Satan', and the performance of that I witnessed.  She has the most incredible and expressive voice, truly quite unique.  She is like a modern torch singer, with a baritone range and a bit scary in the flesh actually, with a dark undercurrent to her songs.  In fact they are not really songs, more exorcisms.  This is taken from an upcoming live album and she has lost some of her range over the years, it has to be said. Some of this grates a little compared to her 1982 performances, but then that's an unfair comparison for me to make, but when she hits the right notes, this brings it all back.

Shabaka has an interesting history, from the big band funk of the Sons of Kemet, you can read Toon's review of this new single here→

Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome another hockey masked bunch of Goths.  Do they think it will scare us?  Or are they just too embarrassed by this load of old Goth bollox to show their faces?  I'm going for the latter.  Frankenstein was of course written by one of the most famous molluscs ever, Mary Shell-y.  Ba-dum! I'm here all week.

"Featuring", so here we are, post punk, post indy, post grunge, and we're into "superstar guest appearances as a selling point. Does it work? well it intrigued me to listen and review, and conclude, 1 - We have an 80's manc Baggy intro, Inspiral Carpets, and Stone Roses, very pleasing, 2- vocally we have low rent manc accent, slurred. leery, sneer. and a chanted, ranted chorus. It's in that land between tribute and revivalist. nothing new here, nothing adventurous, but still a rock along, clap along, skip along song. good start but downhill towards the end.

Mezanmi - Fran O'Hanlon - who formerly recorded as Ajimal - is an NHS doctor and this fact is reflected in his previous and current work, still engineered and produced by Guy Massey. Mezanmi's folk, contemporary classical sound is now mixed with electronic landscapes, here bedding a raw and angry lyric with a fractured, distorted violence beneath. His delivery is measured, as he takes a scalpel to the lies of those desperate to cling to power, clearly directed at those in charge of us over the lockdown and since: "You peddle pretty lies like spun gold, Considered and malign, they take hold"... His gorgeous earlier track "To You, My Friends", celebrated the immigrant population who he works alongside and who suffer the hatred and malignity of our current administration. If anything this new track spends more beauty than its targets deserve.

A singer songwriter opening, a delicious female voice, plaintiff not pleading, clear, precise, cool, not cold. Starts off reflective and pensive, builds as sympathetic strings slip slowly into consciousness, adding to the sense of a melancholic life, love in recovery. A drum fill, changes tempo, mood and atmosphere, steps from a cold spring shadow into a warm tender golden spring sun. It's atmosphere, it's life, it's joyous, it's tender, it's just a delight, of hope in dull, dimmed, uncertain apprehensive year we all face in the UK. 

I'm losing the will to live with this week's releases, I really am.  I thought we'd done away with this sort of prog rock bilge in the late 70's, but no, its still hanging around like a bad smell. Pass the smelling salts!

Seems timely, a Blue Orchids release. Who are these kids? They're grreeeaaat! An phlegm-stacked, energetic pair of tunes at that. The guitars overbite from the beginning of Overractor - in a great way; meanwhile Music of a Werewolf, amps up the psychedelic melodies. But you already know all about the Blue Orchids or by this late hour you don't want to know anything about them. They're like daddies, seriously showing the youngsters how it supposed to be done.

That's a sentimental 5 first of all. 5 hearts for John. Because it ain't any old John it is the John Cale. Now let me listen to it and wonder how terrible would I think this was if it wasn't John Cale. Maybe pretty very. If yous are preparing to open yous wallets on the strength of his name, what do us get you might be asking? Well there were exciting moments at the opening that sounded just like that popular band Elbow cranking out another made for tv travelogue commercial bit of chaff. But then, that is, music as only they can. John rapidly moved on from baked in hyperaccessibility. Got the narrative, surrounded it with singular musical motifs, pulsing, repetitive, insistent, and choral vibes all at once. Chant-y. Like working til you're musclebound in a drab joyless office. How We See The Light is from John's POPtical Illusion LP due in June. This is really very much okay. 

Am taking in the latest single Hold Your Tongue from the new LP Mother. A soft slice of Americana, lovely harmony vocals, just enough darkness to leave me slightly unsettled, as if the sweetness, is really strychnine. At times was reminded of my favourite alt-country band, Snakefarm. Not as dark, it sure ain't a Taylor S. copyist. If you're a swiftie, dash away from this NOW. It may open your ears, and minds, to a whole world of dark side country. There's pain, there's reflection, and there's anger, soda popsicle it's ain't. If you think Country is all whiskey, two timing women, and tears on a winding road, in a flat back chevy, then give this a listen, it'll turn your head around. There's insight into the pain of life's, first love lost. An achingly plaintiff, pleading, cello passage; that's sheer heart string tugging. Soft harmonies, cover pain and ends in the anger of a hard rocking guitar solo, pain transformed into resentment and anger.

Alan Rider says that ‘Long awaited’ is a much over used phrase in the PR world, but in the case of Attrition’s latest, The Black Maria it is justified. Read Alan's review here→

To round off our week featuring Coventry's Attrition, it felt right to draw your attention to the 2018 spin off project Engram, who are (or rather, were) Martin Bowes and John Costello, who we have come across here before in his guise as The Indoor Show. This is a bit of a toe tapper.

Created entirely from insect sounds he sampled himself over 35 years ago, 'The Insect Musicians' is one of the many innovative albums by Hollywood film soundtrack maestro and former leader of '80s industrial metal bashing pioneers SPK, Graeme Revell.  It is a very unusual and interesting album, it really is.