Outsideleft Week in Music with Gnarly Dudes

What an astonishing track record of brilliant music El Michels has. Mr. Brew cooks up the filmic fistic excitement from the first blow. There are split seconds of El Michels melody and action here that are life enhancing. Life changing. And then it's gone. Like an entirely too massive retrospective gallery show, it's epic for sure, there is so much to absorb, and then it's over and things will never be the same again. 

Pumping out a take on the Spiritualized song from their (Spiritualized's, that is) 1997 'Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating In Space' album, which is shaping up to become one of the most influential post-punk albums ever, our new favourite band Two-Man Giant Squid decided on covering this song after hearing it on the bus.  I am assuming there that the bus driver wasn't playing it, but they had it streaming on their phones.  Regardless, its a good choice as its a very simple song in many ways, with the intro taking up almost a third of its length, but quickly builds to a crescendo, then its gone.  Psych like Psych should be done.  Pretty soon you will be able to read them having an exclusive chat with us at Outsideleft, but keep that to yourself for now.  Remember, you heard it here first.

When brits go to the USA to live they indulge in things that yanks take for granted. Or at least, they used to. And vice versa. Diners for pubs. Sun for damp. Irony for super-sized, giant irony. Lots of different ways to say sorry for indifference. This video, made by a British comedian who’s schtick is summed up in his waddle of a walk (Richard Ayoade) directs and appears and Kim Deal creates a series of cut-up sound sections that make less of a song but, together with the video, a mood. The two complement each other. My guess is that they bond over being a bit proudly humble. Who would have thought that seven inch singles would morph into… this?

Another quick-talking spoken word like if Siri was Phoebe Waller-Bridge just barely over a lurching gloomy recursive archipelago of arpeggio that inexplicably isn't the same person as the Dry Cleaning vocalist. You'd think this was a liimited trend with limited appeal but it gets me where I live. Maybe the best King Hannah song yet.

Unsure that Thom Yorke gets a lot of love within these pages. He has been an amazing artist for decades. This is a very compelling example of his art. And then someone begins to sing which sort of spoils the whole thing for me. Good til then. Not so good from then til the end.

It has been a real privilege to watch Hurray for the Riff Raff evolve from New Orleans busker punk into the lustrous Technicolor next Lucinda Williams over the years. Alynda Seagarra might be one of the only humans who's figured out how to evolve in this public eyeball timeline with pathos and doubt and a sense of self.  Calamity Jane and Darby Crash are stars in this dreamy constellation of a song, begging the heavens or the landlord for meaning. 

Ant can probably shuffle this stuff out during the REM portions of sleep and I would be perfectly happy if he did that every night. Synthetic stuttering and grumbling bits; Ghostly piano memories over there in the speakers. Brief and brilliant. Ant's 'Collection of Sounds Vol. 4' will be available on April 4th and if I did that sort of thing I would be lining up at the record shop door.

Excellent secretive self-spook-out from Lael Neale, guitar amp volume set at the limit where x approaches "Don't wake anyone up. I'm not ready for their shit." and a perfect descending synth thing, and a grand finish and our girl disappears in a puff of smoke, or maybe just sighs and gets ready for work at the one camera store in Los Angeles that still sells and processes Super-8 film on which the video is shot. And transferred to video. They do that there too.

Ohdearohdearohdear.  That's all I can say about this.  The donning of Halloween monster masks to hide your embarrassment whilst trying to score a Metal crossover hit is part of a fine old tradition in the vein of Kiss, Gwar, and Slipknot.  However, lets face it, this just looks a bit silly.  Unlikely fact of the day: this lot won the Eurovision Song Contest for hosts Finlands back in 2006.  True!  That is so bizarre you just have to see it to believe it.  Its a funny old world.

Not to be confused with the similarly titled other cover we review this week, that by Two-Man Giant Squid, this song was originally by The Partridge Family, that manufactured, cheese-heavy US 'band'/TV show that gifted the world David Cassidy.  When I say "gifted" I am, of course being very, very sarcastic.  However, I don't remember this song sounding half as good as this cover makes it.  Naturally, this is in itself a retro re-issue from 1991, with the accompanying album it featured on also rising from the bargain bins with a snazzy new sleeve, re-mastered and with digitally enhanced videos to accompany it.  As all we have to look forward to in the world we live in now is staring in the rear view mirror and sighing as we pine for the good old days, the trend for re-heating yesterdays pop dinners seems strangely appropriate.

Annie Dressner is a New Yorker not at all adrift in the UK. Since decamping over a decade ago, Annie has carved a niche in the observational pop end of folk inhabited by the likes of Kathleen Edwards, or a lot of the Big Stir Records poptician guys like Sparkle*jets UK. For The Thrill Of It features Kathryn Williams. Annie makes the difficult business of navigating verse-chorus-verse-chorus plus other song components sound not at all boring. "The message in the lyrics," Annie says, "is about the pervasive issue of misogyny in the music industry, where inappropriate behaviour too often goes unaddressed or overlooked." There's a joyous tone to singing out and aiming to inspire positive change in an industry where merely whispering it out can be career ending. I don't know whether to cry or cheer.

Back in the 1990s I once watched Peter Murphy dressed in a white, billowing blousant stand on stage at a music festival in Arizona, in 35 degree midday sunshine, waiting for him to melt into a horrible goth mess on stage, screeching. He didn’t. Instead, he made some music remarkably like this, which I suppose he has been doing for many years now. If you liked Bauhaus, then this is them, a little sanitised, with our Pete, still sounding very young and vital, which does make me wonder...

A little conflicted… according to her PR company George Clinton has given her a ‘co-sign’ but… I see on the two videos available, a long blonde-haired white woman, singing template FM rock, surrounded by her band of straight from casting LA musos and, there it is: the six Black women doing the old gospel bit, surrounding her. And, somehow, of course, only she has a microphone, a nice white one on a nice white mic stand. And, the PR tells us, this is “a fully realized grand vision of a lifetime… profoundly soulful rock and gorgeous fashionista fantasy as swaggering, escapist empowerment”. Was this her vision? If so, albeit ‘inspired by luxe fashion’, it must have come to her some point between her sparkling water with a slice of cucumber and a visit to Bombshell Salon on Main Street, Santa Monica and taken a whole kilobyte of a voice note on her iPhone. If that.

I love a good theme to a release. 'Inside Out' looks into the sociology of active shooters and their media coverage and associated socio-media-ecosystem that creates, and sustains, the sensationalised horror beloved of 24 hour news streaming. That's a tough thing to cover without trivialising it.  Baltimore electronic duo Nahja Mora have majored on the intense and "sample-based, heavy, video-game-addled industrial rock" approach to generate the necessary level of unease.  It works, I have to say. Its not especially easy listening, but certainly gets the point across powerfully in the EP's 15 minutes.  For a topic this heavy, 15 minutes is enough, trust me.

The All Seeing I was the one-off musical project of Sheffield electronic music miscreants Dean Honer, Jason Buckle and Richard Barrett (aka DJ Parrot). Their one album, Pickled Eggs & Sherbet, was released in 1999, and in many ways is a time capsule to that bizarre post-Britpop period of UK indie music. London Records are issuing it on vinyl for the first time ever, with an entire disc of bonus material and a concurrent CD rerelease. The All Seeing I was basically a rumage through Sheffield's musical history, featuring guest vocals from Phil Oakey on '1st Man In Space', Tony Christie on 'Walk Like A Panther', and Pulp's Jarvis Cocker provides characteristically brilliant and humorous lyrics throughout. There's definitely a whiff of novelty, but Cocker's lyrics, wryly exploring the mundanity of everyday life in Britain, and the group's musical adventurousness mean that the end result is far more fun than it has any right to be. An entire bonus disc is perhaps overkill, but I'd definitely pick up the CD, particularly if you're a fan of Jarvis' lyrics and turn-of-the-millenium sampledelic electronica. And it's all worth it anyway for the absolutely bonkers Top Of The Pops performance, linked below, with Jarvis subbing in for Tony on 'Walk Like A Panther'.  

Andy Bell's third solo album pinball wanderer sees the Ride guitarist in fine form. It's not so much a guitar record - although there are some lovely washes of guitar sound, plus the thrill of hearing Bell and krautrock legend Michael Rother play together on one track - as it is a beautiful mood piece. Bell experiments with delicate electronics, funky basslines, and krautrock-indebted grooves to create a glorious dreampop experience. Bell's vocals are buried in the mix, allowing the instrumentation to take centre stage. Dot Allison provides ethereal guest vocals on a cover of the Passions' 'I'm In Love With A German Filmstar', an obvious highlight. But second single 'apple green ufo' is a great piece of NEU! and Talking Heads-inflected post-punk funk, 'panic attack' wraps Bells' vocals in chiming, coruscating guitar loops, and closer 'space station mantra', with its trance-like instrumentation and wordless vocals, could stand in for the closing track on any of Eno's first four solo albums. Brilliant and unexpected.

This probably deserves a David O'Byrne deep dive with a bit of well-researched providence, etc. And your experience here I am certain would benefit from that. Instead here I am, taking my shaky chances on a Friday morning in the face of the monumental and generously corruscating force field of energy that is House of All, it is buffeting. Is it okay to say you probably cannot play this record loud enough? It's so exciting to hear a band of vaguely, from some angles, gnarly looking dudes — characters surely from Neil Campbell fiction, making this seriously unkempt guitar music. Who else does it this well? I do know what everybody knows though, House of All Souls worst kept secret I guess is the return to the team of Karl Burns, the drummer who dates back to the very early recordings of the Fall. Oh how I wish I still had that badly worn copy of Bingo Masters Breakout that... Well, what the hell did happen to it. Music isn't to be owned it's to be shared with people let themselves into the downstairs of your house while you are upstairs sleeping. Take what they are feeling. Leave no notes. Ten heavy tracks inhabit the House of All Souls showing you where what is going on right now with all that half talking over guitars type of thing that seems so popular is coming from. It's seared into the souls of House of All. Is it okay to say I love this record and you should try to too. Not least of all because there is not a bad song on it. I love the guitars, the shapes they throw, so much so I so nearly got to the end without typing 'angular'. 

1979 was a pivotal year for popular music. In the UK, punk was developing a creditable second head of steam with the release of 'Machine Gun Etiquette' - the third album by The Damned's, 'London Calling' - the third by The Clash, 'Inflammable Material' - the first by Stiff Little Fingers, and the eponymous first by The Undertones. Also that year the 'New Wave's' favourite songwriter cum troubadour, Elvis Costello had reached No 2 in the UK hit parade with 'Oliver's Army' - a coruscating satire on the British army and narrow minded British imperialism. Simultaneously, the genre that came to be known as 'post punk' was frankly bursting out all over with albums from Magazine, XTC, Simple Minds, Gang of Four, Joy Division and a veritable host of others - many released by newly appeared 'independent' record companies who would expand to dominate the creative end of the UK music scene for pretty much the next decade.  Much of what wasn't indie in 1979 was appearing on Richard Branson's Virgin label, whose 'Front Line' subsidiary spent the year churning out UK releases of pretty much every worthwhile reggae track appearing in Jamaica. Over in the States meanwhile, Ze records was surfing the 'No Wave' with ground breaking discs by Suicide and 'James White and the Blacks', while preparing the ground for the even more genre busting sounds of Kid Creole and 'Was Not Was'. Not to be outdone, down in Africa  Nigerian Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti was releasing 'Unknown Soldier' and 'Vagabonds in Power (VIP)' - his latest in a seemingly endless line of stupendous albums which 45 years on still sound fresh, vibrant and cutting edge. Yes, 1979, to paraphrase Wordsworth on the French Revolution: "Bliss it was in that year to be alive, and to be young was very heaven".  Sadly for the French, in place of revolution, in December of 1979 they had Supertramp for two nights at the 8,000 seat Pavilion de Paris. Two evenings when, in defence of French culture, it should be noted that the other 8,631,000 Parisians had the good sense to be elsewhere. Those concerts have now been released as a triple LP and double CD, which I would hope, goes without saying, should be treated avec le même dédain... 
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!...

To expand on what I said about them last week, Horsegirl do have a full album out now, full of prickly guitar and oooh-ooohs and coy lowercaseness peering at you from 'round a tree, giggling. If you are well-insulated to the charms of such shambly pleasures and demand high production value and clarity to allow in love to your life, well, great for you and your heart of stone. If not, prepare to be smitten.

You know why this is here. Not for great reasons. But always good to hear it.

When the original punk bands began to scatter, they took their creativity with them and kept stretching beyond where they were told they belonged. The backfill of bands came greedily behind in them, looking like something while tearing down what the punks had built, and collectively desperately seeing to it... The restoration of Status Quo. Mick Jones exited the Clash, but kept right on on his astonishing musical path. There's a distinguished aberrance to Big Audio Dynamite, escaping the formula with a formula! Mick Jones's RocknRoll Public Library of his collected ephemera opens next week at the Farsight Gallery in London.. Big Audio Dynamite was was only Mick Jones' first next step.

Prodigy were just an insane live band.  In 1996 there was no one who could touch them.  I loved The Prodigy back then.  They scared people.  Turn up the volume on this and feel the sheer energy on show here.  Incredible.  Who says electronic music is soulless?