Outsideleft Week in Music Now, Forever

No prizes for guessing what vibe they are going for here.  With an upcoming album called 'Manual for Dying' and previous releases with names like 'Hurt' and 'Suffer With Me', you could surmise that they are looking to shock, possibly.  You don't say!  She spends most (ok, all!) of the video in her pants.  He beats a big drum and tries to strangle her, but not really.  Their baby is in the video playing with a fake skull.  Its a desperate attempt at shock rock.  We saw it all before with Wendy O'Williams/Plasmatics and also The Tubes and maybe that first Frankie Goes to Hollywood video they banned on TV.  Its all a bit silly tbh and about as sexy as a bucket of cold rice.  Musically, its as pants as her flesh coloured knickers too.

Yes, very good playing, now make some mistakes! Go on! Spice it up with a bum note, or a flam, or something, anything to take away the vague feel of being sucked back in time to the jazzfunk80s. Kinda like Joviale’s singing, though, sounds like she’s eating a kiwi.

Risking the ire of my fellow musicologist reviewers, I have to to say I can't stand this sort of thing.  Full of overblown self pity and produced solely for radio play and destined to be bawled out of tune by drunken girls on a hen night, it apparently features Debbie Harry, not that you'd know.  It helps sell it I guess.  The video is of Andy Bell rattling around in what I guess is his massive house.  Show off.

The ultimate example of a melodic power metal band well known over there but hardly a peep over here, Germany's Primal Fear have been at it since 1997, with Mat Sinner and Ralf Scheepers permanent members. The song is a by-the-numbers reminiscence of a missing friend, the chorus so sweetly melodic you know that stripped of the certainly impressive rhythm section it could be a Taylor Swift hit. Their two-guitar set up fires out in the solo and considering the length of their teeth Scheeper's vocal is pretty powerful. There are no surprises here, essentially, and nothing to disappoint their fans or match their more essential works.

Oh this is so gently epic. Life affirming and life changing and featuring Kalia Vandever who we are very much into. First Coverdale's first new LP in eight years, From Where You Came, out May 9th via Smalltown Supersound. I'll be lining up at my record store, knowing I'll be able to lie down and when I get back. For a long time. How about you?

Loyle Carner continuing on his contemplative path. His voice sits you down, his search is yours pretty much. But you know that already. All I Need sounds gorgeous too. He still has it all going on.

The Gambler was beautiful to begin with. But here a super sonic delight.

good to great as the somnolent shipping forecaster might say, leaving you to wonder whether you'd heard that right. 'Every Song on the Radio Reminds Me Of You' is quite an almost quiet conflab between an indie all-star band, The Catenary Wires — consisting of Amelia Fletcher, Rob Pursey and Ian Button; and rising poetry star Brian Bilston. Using whatever means available, Brian began by sharing his work online and now here he is swimming clear of poetry's backwaters. 'Every Song...' is really quite special and to be cherished, purposefully, and blissfully so,it melding indie pop and Brian's words so riven with poignant humour, it's like these guys like are reaching for a new art form.

I need more time with ‘We Do Not Fear Ruins’ before I review it, but this, the focus track is far too good not to mention, it’s catchy beyond reason and warming, somehow. Honestly - if you have 5 minutes, just put this on immediately, it’s beyond great.

I did think of reviewing this just so I could say how much Billy Idol looks like a Thunderbirds puppet (mind you, they all do now, just look at Gary Numan), but then I realised that any brief seconds I spend listening to this will be a waste of my infinitely more valuable life and I am worth way more than that.  So I will leave this for the crows.

Taken from the film "Plight", which is about four autistic men in a dystopian future who must journey to find medicine for their caregiver, this has about the same sort of energy. It's a nu-country twangy nasal plod-along which has a destination of nowhere in particular. Which does fit the narrative of the film, I suppose so there is that. Also, speaking as someone autistic, the whole thing did not keep my attention and the film does not sound enticing.

Genuine, authentic, 100% real Captain B52sheart juice. Distilled somewhere hot.

This week’s only love song to a woman with a metallic hand. Perfectly pointless with acoustic guitars and a cardboard box.

Review 1: ’They show their teeth and we kick them in!’ As punk has its Happy Days moment and 1977 is remembered as a cartoon soundtracked by the worst of the American punk pop bands, an old man and a woman in her forties play the breathless punk rockers kinging it down the Kings Road. Billy has always had an eye on the main chance and, after more years in the prefab city of Los Angeles than he spent in south London it’s no wonder he has decided to commemorate his musical beginnings with this AI pastiche of a pastiche of a pastiche. review 2: if you thought John Travolta and Olivia Newton John were too inappropriately old to play high school teens in Grease…

This man took 40 years off to paint. And by paint, I don’t mean barn doors. I want to be a member of his union. Although he doesn’t sound very cheery, it’s got to be said, in a BBCR2 sort of fashion.

I hoped for a second this would be a heartfelt homage to The Iceman - Anthony Irvine - who used to take blocks of ice on stage in the 80s and try to melt them in various ways. He appeared on Chris Tarrant's Prove It (a 1988 You Bet rip-off) failing to melt ice in a way Tarrant couldn't seem to take ironically. But this is death metal and a homage to the other Iceman - serial killer Richard Kuklinski - and the lyrics are mostly about how he dismembered his victims - and the music fits perfectly - the solo is killer!

So. I know this has been out since February and it's an expansion of the original, (I guess that must mean) less special ed Post Industrial Hometown Blues that came out last year. And I know too that they are allegedly the best thing to come out of the Black Country since The Black Country New Road and Jorja Smith, and people like me wanna carp because someone told Steve Lamacq to like them and the dude on the R6 breakfast show uses their music on occasion to fill in the gaps between when he talks about himself. Having said all that, Post Industrial Hometown Blues the special edition is a monumentally large record. The sounds are a thick as the accents around here. Thicker. And the musical gears they can move through seemingly at a whim really...Wow! It's an audacious giant of a record. You just know if they were London people would be talking about them like they were the new Clash or something. They're not anybody else though, they are Big Special. Very Big Special. They are on tour with the Pixies from mid May, what a line up, don't miss it.

Re-emerging seven years after the release of The Moon Viewing Garden EP, this is what you might term standard Goth fare. Think swirling chorus'd and flanged guitars chiming away, pulsing bass, ethereal reverb drenched vocals and, er, drums! There are YouTube videos that will show you EXACTLY how to get this sort of sound if you are so disposed. When I reviewed the single off this, 'The Reflecting Skin', I felt it was competent, if derivative Goth.  Think of Black Tape for a Blue Girl and you'd be in the right ball park, so it is no surprise that Mercury's Antennae started out on US Gothic trailblazer label Projekt.  Normally I would pick out a couple of standout tracks from an album in a review, but in this case they all kind of merge into one.  If I had to sum this up I'd say it was 'Bland Goth', which I guess is also what Shoegaze is. Goth fans will find it pleasing. They may even crack a smile, except that Goths never smile. Everyone else will let it come and go. There is, inexplicably, an ongoing market for this school of wispy Goth, so it will do fine I'm sure and garner the usual five star reviews from  music biz mouthpiece sites (which we are most definitely not).  I'm fast coming to the realisation that I do not understand why people like certain musical offerings and why they seem to crave so little variety or challenge in their tastes. That's possibly because music is now largely seen as background, or some sort of archaeological freak show, peering at the relics of a bygone era (step forward Billy Idol, Sisters of Mercy, Sex Pistols etc), rather than a lifestyle. So fill your boots, I guess.

I’ve never formed a strong opinion on Self Esteem, I can hear that Rebecca Lucy Taylor has got talent in spades, and on paper I should have loved what she’s doing from the get-go, ‘experimental-art-pop’ is so far up my street it should be my postcode. And yet, she exists in the realm of enjoyed when heard, but never actively sought out. I wasn’t then expecting to be so taken aback by ‘A Complicated Woman’ which manages to blend heavy beats, orchestral sections and a backing choir into the realm of pop music without pretension, flowing seamlessly within itself demanding your attention and continually directing it to the focal point. There is a lot of reflection in Taylor's lyrics, be that self-reflection or tapping somehow in to the broader consciousness of the feminine experience, and a sense of acceptance of not being in perfect working order, foibles and cynicism embraced against an upbeat backdrop of musical elements which should not be working this well in combination. Can I say I’m a convert after listening? Will I cheekily co-opt Self Esteem as a Sheffield act, somehow - not yet - there remains a sense of internal disconnect from the music, don’t let that put you off though - I need more time with ‘A Complicated Woman’ - I haven’t had chance to fully hear it yet is all.

In 2006, Alex V. Cook wrote about Pere Ubu's 20th LP 'Why I Hate Women', for Outsideleft. Read that review here. Before you do take another listen to the super non-alignment pact.

Ancient Champion's short long player 'Music Inspired By The Museumgoer of Baton Rouge' is difficult to find now. Still streams but all the physical copies are lost and with Ancient Champion electric band I don't even know if any of those tracks get an airing. Ancient Champion though will be live at the Ousideleft Night Out on Saturday May 10th, go along and see  → [more info...]

One of his greats. So beautiful. Recorded for a broadcast earlier this year of an Italian television documentary, Ultima Fermata,  about the crisis of homelessness in America.

The Guitar Shorty, when you're asked. This is the Guitar Shorty the one you'd know from 1970s NC back porches. Wow!