Outsideleft Week in Music... Green Shots

GSYBE are the absolute masters of the slow build to an almost unbearably loud crescendo followed by calm. They took the blueprint invented by Slint and have run with it for 30 years. The likes of Mogwai owe them a huge debt. Unusually for them this track is less than 7 minutes long and, as a result, doesnt quite reach their usual immersive heights, more of a palate cleanser for the album that is sure to follow. Still worthy of attention though.

Lenderman continues promoting forthcoming album Manning Fireworks with another slacker-rock tale, lo-fi, grounded, wistful and melancholy. In this song, he's not got much except a wristwatch "that's a compass and a cellphone", and that "tells me I'm on my own". A sharp guitar sound, drawled vocal, genuine, rough and late-night philosophical about his situation, having possibly "wasted my life away". 

The newly released single Tombstone Junction is a southern/country rock track by  JC Miller (a one-time composer in the advertising industry for clients such as Coca-Cola and Nike) and it wouldn't feel out of place on my (or any) Americana road trip playlist alongside the likes of Lucinda Williams, Tom Petty and early Springsteen. It is getting very positive feedback from critics and if the comments on the YouTube video for the song are anything to go by, it is definitely liked by its intended audience. I’m sure it will get a lot of airplay on the country radio. I really like Miller's vocals, but they (and the lyrics) get a bit lost at times in the mix and I think the same is true of some of the tracks from his album ‘Southern Buckthorn’ (2022). However, I think I said this in my last review and maybe it’s because I’m a singer. Miller says the single Tombstone Junction is about "a theme park that burned down twice and was mismanaged, but it was also a place where Dolly Parton, Randy Travis, Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn, and a ton of others played live concerts. That venue is gone but echoes of the music and the ghostly memories of the concert goers remain." It is a nostalgic song about a lost and maybe mythical past and storytelling is always what a classic country song does best, and this is a classic country song.

Not everyone loves him but me and Michelle and Barack still do. Sounds like the old Donny Trumpet Social Experiment stuff. So I am going back and adding a star. I will be told off.

Much in the vein of the previous 'Psychelic Experiment' single, this is a Beefheart-y take on US punk by a bunch of journeymen who look as if they have been around the block a few times and is quite at odds with the normal sort of clunky punk rubble they get put on the same bill with at local festivals.  They have a cello on stage with them, ferkrissakes!  Singer George Murillo is also quite something, like a dad who has just dropped acid.

A single from the greatest hits collection with the same name. When they call if Greatest Hits, damn the psychedelic guitar breaks Hit hard. Wow! Way to go, Amadou & Miriam. They were stars at the WOMAD 2024 without a doubt. “We’ve always dreamed of tearing down walls and opening people's ears to new sounds so the whole world can discover and appreciate Malian music” Amadou & Mariam. La Vie Est Belle is fun for relaxing under the sun, if there is any, wherever you are.

I always shake with not pre-diabetes low blood sugar dizzyness but that feeling, er, trepidation, in case something I should love turns out to be too Dylan & The Dead. For White Denim I turn vol. on the stereo way up. 

The first single from Joe Geni's album got one star from me, this is better, more restrained and deserves some recognition for the line "It takes courage sometimes to turn up to life at all". His work is expansive, "cinematic", and the impending album sees life as a series of cities which we inhabit, thus the "City where the sky subsides" which I reviewed before, and "City of Energy", his last single. City of Light is clearly a closing track, slightly more anthemic, optimistic in the end. It's his voice that I find most absurd here, constantly at the same level of emotion, rather whiny, with the lyrics usually at the level of "That's just the way these things go, arrayed just so". The line I praised above notwithstanding, the lyrics need attention.

This one features Augustus Muller from Boy Harsher.  This is his new act apparently.  What was he thinking???  This is horrible.

"The journey of a solitary sock searching for its missing pair, a metaphor for the longing and incompleteness that comes from being separated from one's true love. The sock's quest symbolizes the universal human desire to find connection and wholeness”  Crikey!  Aside from that, what you get is a sub Delta 5/Slits outing with sock related lyrics.  You couldn't make it up.

Gazelle Twin is certainly extracting the most value out of last October's 'Black Dog' studio album, first with a live album, and now this, a Beak> remix of 'Fear Keeps Us Alive', taken from the forthcoming ’Shadow Dogs’ album featuring reinterpretations/mixes of ‘Black Dog’ tracks by various folk she has worked with, including Gary Numan, Mark Jenkin, Penelope Trappes, Beak, Sealionwoman, Keeley Forsyth, and Marta Salogni.  As with many remix albums, you have to look for what that really adds.  Here it adds a bit, but not a huge amount.  It is different I'd say. Good, but not better.  The original still eclipses it, in my view.  That is so often the way.  Be that as it may, Gazelle Twin is an extraordinary talent and we are badgering, badgering, badgering, for her to talk to Outsideleft about that.  We are good at badgering, so are hopeful of a result.  She is performing at various events too, including with the LCO at the British Library in November. Every Gazelle Twin performance is more of an exorcism than a 'gig', so intense are they. That is why you won't find any Gazelle Twin 40 date tours coming up.  You just can't turn on the tap and perform this sort of material every night. In the meantime, 'Black Dog 'is a superb album ('Black Dog' being the description Churchill famously used to describe his bouts of depression), and well worth your spending your hard earned pennies on.

The video initially threatened twee, and there's some truth to that, but the song itself turns out to be delightful. A New Zealand band, led by Crystal Choi, trained on jazz but converted to dream pop. The track jangles along with influences from French pop, the sixties, and Stereolab. Beautiful beats, developing into swirling electronics in the last third reminiscent of Sneaker Pimps or Morcheeba, retro-futurism with a smile. Love the bass, love the harmonies and the backbeat. 

Daiv O'Byrne is our almost official non official Hinds correspondent. Maybe because they live nearer to David than OL HQ? His review of the new Hinds LP is over here.

If you like your garage punk at supernumber of xxxx's mph Martin Devenney says, I'm not telling you how many miles per hour, find out over here

Well. Is he or isn't he a National Treasure. And I don't mean David O'Byrne who writes lenghtily about this new Robyn Hitchcock collection,here.

Dot Dash have been around since 2011, pumping out seven albums in that time under the Pop Punk banner.  That description could mean either Green Day/Blink 182, or Buzzcocks.  Given that the title of this compilation of tracks from those seven albums, (plus a TV Personalities cover -‘Jackanory Stories’) is taken from a Buzzcocks song, I think it's safe to guess the latter applies here. In fact, its more of a hybrid of the two.  The jangly, two minute, cheery chappy, tracks certainly evoke the Buzzcocks, but have an American twist, mainly in the vocals.  Tracks like 'Tense and Nervous' are summery punky fluff.  I am actually struggling a bit to equate punk with this at all tbh, as tracks like 'Trip Over Clouds' sound far more 60's influenced.  As with most compilations, you get a very selective view of a band, and this is billed as "a Greatest Hits for a band with no hits".  Every track on here clocks in at around the 2 minute mark, so you get what they are going for here.  The short, sharp, pop hook.  They'd love these all to be ear worms and for us to leave humming them, but sorry guys, I had forgotten each track the instant it finished and after 10 tracks I'd had enough, so stopped.  Might have been better as an EP than an album, I think.

‘The London I knew has gone gone gone’ What the? That's the word from a London cabbie, read much more about how the world is changing around Matt Johnson,right here.

Alan Rider has a confession to make about Hello Mary. And he makes it, right over  here.

I can see what they are aiming at in the album title, reversing the phase "Ghost In The Machine", but sorry, it just doesn't work.  No matter, as we should be focussing on the music.  Even great albums often come with a poor title. Leipzig based duo Haujobb have been at this game a while, this being their tenth album and, in common with others, they are looking around for something different to inspire them, tired as they are of the same old digital and analogue 'industrial' sounds of their contemporaries.  Everyone is heading to field recordings for that, and of late we are seeing a plethora of drill sounds, clunks, crashes, and grinds appearing on recordings.  Think of when the council collect the bins each week.  The collection of industrial sounds those trucks generate as they inch their way down the street is impressive.  If only I could capture that, I often think as I emerge bleary eyed from beneath my duvet.  That's what field recordings are.  Haujobb make a jolly good fist of it too.  It still sounds like them, and the vocals are still a little annoying, lyrics being just a series of meaningless phases that I suspect they chose because they liked how the words sounded rather than for any other reason, making them sound like a low rent 'Construction Time' Depeche Mode at times.  Many bands lyrics are like that, so I'm not picking on them here. Each track is best seen as an instrumental workout with a bit of speaking added on top because, well, its expected, isn't it?  It shouldn't be, as this is really great soundtrack material and would work best as that.  Where it gets it spot on, on tracks such as 'Tomorrow', it moves it up to another level.  If this album was instrumental, it'd be a five heart score.  You may think I am being hard on them, but I am not.  I genuinely think they have done a fantastic job here with the melding of field recording and electronics. The music on some tracks is exceptional and where they use the voice as another found sound, it works at its best. Finding new twists in any music is an impossible task, but Haujobb have grasped the nettle here, and for an electronic/industrial act, have gone a deal further than most of their contemporaries can dream of.  This is released on 20th September.

Despite my reputation for liking experimental electronic music, much of what I play at home is gritty garage rock and there is no better an example than Funhouse.  What I love about this album is that it is scrappy, the timing isn't perfect, they often don't know how to end a song, so just stop, Iggy whoops and growls, and the instruments all seem to be fighting for space rather than being forensically mixed.  Its basically imperfect and, therefore, very human.  All recorded at a time when taking this sort of confrontational rock out on the road in late '60s America was a dangerous business.  That Iggy is even still alive, let alone still taking his shirt off and throwing himself around the stage is a miracle. And amen to that.