intro.
I don't know about where you are but the sun came out here. I was meeting someone at the station last night and it felt so balmy and pleasant, like a Southern California winter wonderland in Sandwell though. There's always that. This weeks sunny side up reviews come to you thanks to the ears and ingenuity of Alan Rider (8), Ancient Champion (9), John Robinson (3), Hamilton High (2), Paul Mortimer (1), Lee Paul (3) and David O'Byrne (1)
singles.
by Ancient Champion
Geese of course can be trusted no more than Captain Beefheart around that time you were lulled by Too Much Time or My Head is My Only Home Except When It Rains. I See Myself is from Geese's short LP 'Alive and In Person', and it is just fantastic, like Natalie Bergman, country love gospel drench. I See Myself liked as much anything I have ever loved stretching the Spendors speaker grills. This is the exceptional. Now we're together in funky country.
by John Robinson
Is it a single though? Focus track? Let's not start that again. More blistering guitar, a just GREAT voice for this sort of thing from their singer Vanessa Martin, a rollicking tune with obvious but not unwelcome blasts of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath: strong, blues based riffs. Not original enough to get five stars but close enough to the spirit of what it wishes to capture that someone like me - an old rocker at heart despite indie and experimental leanings - can get fully behind it. Sign of the devil, rock on and so forth. The name is ridiculous of course: "Occult" Witches, I ask you, what other type of bloody witch is there?
by Lee Paul
From the soon here LP 'Saint Sinner', which makes an excellent name for a saint. Raised in Nairobi, recipient of a host of Australian soul music awards, Elsy Wayemo inflects her soul with a kind of uncanny twist of art that might not unpleasantly suggest veering off into Bjork or old Sade territory or wherever she really wants to go. Here there are hints of the hits of Little Simz, right? The result is that just looking forward Saint Sinner is a fabulously entertaining past time. Conquer featuring Ywaya Tajiri, by the way, is great. Listen up friends!
by Lee Paul
Pale Jay is back and he is as colourful as ever. It's easy to imagine The Garden lcimbing the charts. Inviting in fans the Black Pumas or the Gabriels. This is out on super hip Italian I think but can be wrong, Karma Chief Records. Has a nice vintage expensive stereo vibe. Like it would sound good on there or after you've been talked into too much champagne and it's oh so late at a club. This would reverberate nicely. Pale Jay's new LP will be available in Spetember "“Low End Love Songs”, more so than previous releases, is a diary in form of song. I knew I just had to wait for the songs to be ready to be picked, like ripe fruit from a tree. The entire album came together in just four weeks, a process that was both cathartic and joyful." Pale Jay. Looking forward to hearing it.
by John Robinson
Coin are an intermittently interesting indie band whose own press release talks about "thinking they were out of stories to tell": this noughties-aping jingle rock isn't going to set the world alight at any point soon. Never mind that calling anything "take it or leave it" is just offering an open goal to a cynical jaded music reviewer. This particular song is predictable, unfortunately, not bad, as such, but while the main chorus hook "don't go breaking my heart, just tear me apart" (yes, really) is engaging enough live, no doubt, it will drift from your mind like a wisp of fresh meh.
by Hamilton High
This is a joy to be alive JTQ tune that could the Damned or the Undertones. 2 quik intense minutes. It's more likely to get into the Trunk of Punk than the Trunk of Funk. Workaday great and therein lies a humongous amount of beauty. Taylor says, "The track (Hung Up On You) was left over from a writing session for my other band 'The Prisoners' and it was interesting to see how my JTQ guys, usually funk players, took to this approach. We had a lot of fun in the studio and I think you can hear that in the recording." That's a 10:4 good buddy. If that means the affirmative?
by Ancient Champion
The voice... the players, the playing. The barking dogs down the road. If we've gotta have country, it should only be this country. Melissa Carper is amazing but you don't need me to tell you that.
by Ancient Champion
Taken from the compilation LP, 80s Poptronic - Gateway to the Information Era, I am not even kidding, Strolling Happy could keep any daytime TV segment producer happy. There's really something E-A-S-Y for everyone right here. Six views on YouTube as I write this. Standard Music Library are achieving the level of popularity I aspired to and now know so well. What's not to love?
by Alan Rider
Penthouse Dogs were one of those bands that really should have been far bigger at the time, but weren't, due, I guess, to the usual mixture of family and careers getting in the way, and their focussing too much on small local pub gigs in their home town of Norwich, with only the odd foray out to places like Great Yarmouth and Colchester, rather than setting their sights higher and getting out of town more. That's a shame as, on the evidence of the recently re-released single 'I am Legend', a track that puts many a post punk band to shame, they could have done so much more before they called it a day in the late '90s when, in the words of singer and founding member Martin Devenney, "it stopped being fun and became more like work". With a few more gigs outside of Anglia and overseas, along with a record contract, it may well have felt the other way round. There is a real interest now in re-discovering these bands, however, and a recognition that actually, they weren't half bad. There is an album recorded at the time that could be turned into vinyl for a modern audience, and it would be well worth someone stepping up to do that, I'd say. In the meantime, you can download this and other tracks from Bandcamp.
by Alan Rider
Recorded at the iconic Joshua Tree recording studio way out in that trippy American desert full of the sort of weird cactus that grow there, this sounds like the band have been drinking a bit too much of the cactus juice themselves. Spiritualized and psychedelia-ized in equal doses, 'Take This Love' is pinned onto a driving beat and bass combination, monotone mantra vocals, and even a toy xylophone. Forged late at night, that is the only time to play this. Daylight would make it wither and burn.
by Ancient Champion
What's to love and respect here. Well, a nine-piece band intent on doing as little as possible, it might appear. Gently, insistently melding a succinct diapason, then tripping the studio electrics with their mesmerising and meandering melody. There's folk and there improvisational jazzy lines. It's the most splendid cornucopia, really is. Don't forget to enjoy the mumbling over the top. Like everything here though, nothing is over the top. Ace!
by Alan Rider
A Glaswegian Sleaford Mods? The Low Fi rinky-dink electronics and "awlroit, mayte!" fake cockernee vocals certainly bring that to mind here. In the flesh, though, this duo look very little like Sleaford Mods. Whereas the former look like they'd happily leave you for dead in an alleyway, Unholy Frankenstein look more like a pair of retired 1960's gangsters. who'd regale you with tales of Reggie and Ronnie over a pint in an East End boozer. 'Every Little Skelp' is a game effort though, and grows on you, being one of the very few songs (are there any others?) you will find bemoaning the lack of a Tesco Clubcard whilst out shopping. Scroll down for a dissection of their album from April, 'Released!'.
by Ancient Champion
Great. Does sound like Thurston has mastered the looper, there's so many of them out there now and often so cheap and cheerless to choose from. So for three of the five minutes here there's a waiting for the bus to come feeling. You're anticipating the 126 into town and but it turns out to be an X8 and while that that could work, it doesn't pick up at the stop you are waiting at. Finally, finally you get on board with Letitia Sadler's four or so words. It's been a trip. Thanks. I always thank the bus driver when I get off. Do you still do that too?
by Ancient Champion
Oh this is just a super reggae dubby delight. Out again for the umpteenth time. And deservedly so...
by John Robinson
Strong soul and jazz sound from Sammy Rae and her band, her distinctive smoky vocals lending weight to a fusion sound, all about tearing up the rulebook when it comes to physical love and losing inhibitions. You may have to get past the band photo which is reminiscent of the cover of Haircut 100's album (showing my age, yes), but the 'cuts (as no-one ever called them) didn't have the bluesy feel or virtuosity that the saxophones weaving through this single do. Great musicianship and a great voice, as the live video of previous single Thieves demonstrates.
by Hamilton High
it's alright. Modern stoner music sounds like this right? You know there's a long line of bands I really fucking loathe that make this type of music. So Spooky Mansion, all unkempt offered, unsure where they keep the iron, offered me less than no hope at all and then, and then, well... "I decided to write a song about spending time with the person I love. After getting married and moving to the country, it’s become clear that having someone to love is the most important thing. Saturday is the day we finally get to leave it all behind and focus on each other. When the days have finally whittled away and we’re left with wrinkly old bodies, and fading memories, it will be the days we had together that we’ll remember most of all." Grayson Converse, Spooky Mansion. And then I realised Spooky Mansion are way more than the other people who don't know how to iron shirts. They have melody and not the moldy old type. Sadly I know a lot of people who are going to love this.
by Ancient Champion
From the LP, trust me, i'm trying. At last, this week's quiet revolutionaries have revealed themselves. Let me wind this back and find out what they are on about. That flag... That's really a tablecloth, right? I love it. Everything is battened down with a baton, subjected to downward pressure. Except for thing's vocal, that an atmospheric river over the ocean. Whatever her name is. Meanwhile, Acoustic guitar, birdplay, string, ride cymbal, effervescently gently charm. There's a fear that Alabaster DePlume might blunder in and spoil it all. He doesn't. Oh. "music for softies made in Vermont." They say. That's hard. This is hard to do. Being quiet. Vega are your new greatest.
by Ancient Champion
So the 13th Ward Social Club have everything and they're not slovenly about gently shoving it into Caipirinha right here. The handiwork of Providence based artist Justin Catoni. They are so believably unbelievably acclaimed. This one I liked, "Gainsbourg and Kuti leading a religious procession.” He has the crits. He has the critics on their knees, tongues licking his ruminants off the floor. I know, I am down there amongst them. Also, music critic Matt Gagnon said, "I wouldn't let him play the dinner triangle for my deaf son." I am going to work on my aphorisms for the 13th WSC. What I will say is I recommend with some urgency that you listen to this dude. He has what could have been your life. In music.
ep's.
by Lee Paul
We've talked about Gitkin in this space before, mainly because Gitkin is great. High Noon is the old West European style. Maybe more Portuguese plains. It's got that going for it. Less West. But armed with a subsonic/understated undisputable organ amd cliquey guitar twang, this is cool trio instrumental greatness.
long plays.
by Alan Rider
Soundtrack music is unique in that it has a power to steer your emotions in a way that a Rock, Folk, Country, Dance, or Electronic/Industrial act can't. That is down to the non song structured nature and purpose of it. It exists solely to convey feeling and emotion, to set the mood and then change the mood. Previously we have reviewed soundtrack albums that exist without a film to accompany them. That leaves them feeling somewhat naked sometimes. On other occasions it works brilliantly, as on Ian William's previous outing, the five heart rated 'Slow Motion Apocalypse'. That is followed up here with a soundtrack for the 2023 French documentary ‘Le Mystère Lucie (Des Espions Contre Le Nazisme)’ | Codename Lucy (Spies Against Nazism), which tells the story of a spy network led by the Swiss-based Jewish communist Sándor Radó, and which was instrumental in assisting in the victory of the Allies during the Second World War. The film is linked to below, but if you are not fluent in French, you will need to turn on subtitles and the auto translate setting to get an English subtitled version. With 23 tracks, all instrumental and orchestral in nature, some clocking in at a mere 27 seconds, this is a far more traditional style of soundtrack album than 'Slow Motion Apocalypse', full of incidental music and mood setting pieces. There will also be a companion album of music written for, but not used in, the film entitled ‘Le Mystère Lucie (Dossier Secret)’ to accompany this coming out soon. Ian Williams is most definitely a master of his art, and if you like soundtracks, then this should certainly ring a few bells. Available via Bandcamp.
by Alan Rider
All Hail The New King! Unholy Frankenstein make an almighty noise for a duo, pumping out pulsating electro ('Andys an Android') brutality reminiscent of early Prodigy . There is a disconnect between the vocals and backing though. They are mixed very high, annoyingly so, with the electronics themselves very top heavy to boot. That makes it hard to listen to. I'm not sure either whether they want to be an electronic Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, or The Shamen, but this sort of comedy electronica seems to be a thing at the moment. Not for me though, as it will quickly wear thin. However, when they let go of all that, as you can hear on the remixed version of 'Andys an Android' in the Youtube link below, the whole thing transforms. So boys, drop the comedy routine and focus on the music, at which you are actually quite good.
by Paul Mortimer
Paul Mortimer has been a Van fan since the 60s, he rates the new live set, recorded in 2014 in Belfast as one of the best ever... Se his review here→
by Alan Rider
Alan Rider reviews the most musically ambitious Luminous' LP Precious Karma right over here...
by David O'Byrne
Colin Fischer is a Toronto based multi instrumentalist and composer. A mainstay of the city's avante garde music scene for more than two decades he has been a frequent collaborator with other artists as well producing his own work. Suns of the Heart is his sixth solo album and sees Fisher employing a wide range of instrumentation. Synths and a range of percussion provide a backwash against which are deployed, fretless bass, saxophone and a heavily treated lead guitar sound that spans from warm melodic through to teetering on the edge of feedback oblivion. The six compositions featured veer between the trance like ambience of say, Eno's Music For Films through to the more abrasive shapings of Ornette Coleman, and even - as on Luminous light, Hendrix at his wildest. Overall the impact is in turns soothing and unsettling. An album to relax into without fear of drifting off to sleep. Nice cover art too.
so, have you got anything else.
by Ancient Champion
This has everything. It's like a soul-rap precursor with gospelly vowels and foodie consonants. Did he just say that every bird that goes by just gets me high. From a Clear Spot you can see Forever.
ZERO s
by Alan Rider
Jeezus! Could any band be more up themselves than Blur? You'd think that this was the second coming, rather than yet another stadium band from yesteryear taking a really big, wallet emptying, shit on all their gullible fans desperate to forget they now have kids and jobs, and to believe that Top Of The Pops is still on TV, that people know and care who is number one in the pop charts, and that Britpop actually mattered. The gurning faces and eager puppy dog eyes of the plebs in the bland teaser video to this cash generator designed to keep the band in cheese are truly heartbreaking. That people can be so easily manipulated. Its a crime, it really is.
by Alan Rider
Sheep On Drugs were absolutely my favourite band, along with Daisy Chainsaw, in the early 90's, and I must have seen them play dozens of times, even carrying out one of their rare music press interviews once. Their live shows were never a safe proposition, with gaffa taped crucifixes, Barbie dolls and motorbike headlights adorning the stage, and unhinged, dog collar sporting singer Duncan spraying himself and the audience with black car paint as he sang, whilst pointing what could easily have been a loaded pistol at them. It's a cliche to say they don't make them like that any more, but it's so true. SOD are still knocking about in a different form, but are a shallow echo of this, and their 'Greatest Hits' debut album is still a classic even now.
essential info.
Main image Penthouse Dogs I am Legend screengrab from YouTube
The previous Week in Music 'Outsideleft Week in Love with Everything Ancient' is here→