The world was very different in 1992, Dry is the debut studio album by PJ Harvey, originally released on Too Pure Records on 30 March 1992. The album was recorded at The Icehouse, a local studio in Yeovil. Critically lauded both on release and retrospectively, the album contains the singles Dress and Sheela-Na-Gig. Back in print for the first time in almost 20 years. but some of the greatest musical moments from that year stand the test of time. Just take Polly Jean Harvey’s staggering debut – the making of a musical icon and one of the era’s finest examples of song writing.
It still sounds exceptional and its messages still resonate, lifting the woke-washed veil of our age in one fell swoop, laying bare the fact that many toxic attitudes prevail. It’s rock music, but that’s hardly the point. What matters isn’t so much what’s being played, but how and what’s being said. Delivered with an air of Pixies and nod to Patti Smith, written in the wake of a relationship imploding, our introduction to Harvey remains vital as ever. A refusal to accept simplistic, patriarchal views of womanhood and femininity, or indeed simplistic patriarchal views of anything, the record’s razor sharp observations, cunning wit and deft ability to reference but feel original is remarkable.
Plus the Archive collection containing demos of PJ Harvey’s seminal 1992 debut album. Dry features the singles “Dress” and “Sheela-Na-Gig” which heralded Harvey’s burst onto the global stage. The Los Angeles Times’ Robert Hilburn described the record as “… a seductive calling card that signals the arrival of an extraordinary new artist.” NME wrote, “Polly dredges these sounds from the pit of her dissected soul and drags them out of her mouth with clenched fists,” while Pitchfork said, “On her debut, Polly Jean Harvey matched Patti Smith’s incandescence with Bessie Smith’s lasciviousness, outplayed everyone on the British indie circuit, and became an instant star.”
The debut single and a track from the debut album “Dry”, released in 1992.
After her first band Automatic Dlamini, Harvey continued with band mates Rob Ellis and Ian Oliver and formed her own band PJ Harvey. Her first gig was almost her last, given the experience she later described:
“We started playing and I suppose there was about fifty people there, and during the first song we cleared the hall. There was only about two people left. And a woman came up to us, came up to my drummer, it was only a three piece, while we were playing and shouted at him ‘Don’t you realize nobody likes you! We’ll pay you, you can stop playing, we’ll still pay you!'”.
She did no give up and her solo debut was one of that year’s best received albums.
PJ Harvey doesn’t talk about individual songs and never included a lyric sheet with her albums: “It seems silly to me, ‘cos they’re not poetry, they’re not meant to be read. They’re meant to be heard with the music. If I buy an album with a lyric sheet, I always end up reading it the first few times I listen, and you don’t even listen to the music properly. A song is a song, not a poem or a play.”
The Chicago euphoric country soul outfit return to pay homage to Labi Siffre, Brian Eno, John Denver, Kelela & others. Whitney was born from a series of laidback early-morning song-writing sessions during one of the harshest winters in Chicagohistory, after Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek (former members of Smith Westerns) reconnected – first as roommates splitting rent in a small Chicago apartment and later as musical collaborators passing the guitar and the lyrics sheet back and forth.
Back in February we got the whole band together in Chicago with the idea of recording 2-3 covers to share throughout 2020. Those 2-3 tracks turned into a 10 song cover album called “Candid” out August 14th. Along with this announcement we’re releasing our cover of “Hammond Song” By The Roches. We hope you enjoy it. Stay safe and please continue to remain active and committed to the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Covers have long been an integral part of Whitney’s ethos. Ever since the band first formed in 2014, tackling songs by the Everly Brothers, Allen Toussaint, and more played an important part in the breakthrough 2016 debut Light Upon The Lake. Since then, their takes on NRBQ’s Magnet and Neil Young’s On the Way Home have become live staples, an essential and communal part of their sets. Their love for the music that makes up their deepest influences has always been genuine and tangible.
Following their acclaimed sophomore 2019 album Forever Turned Around, Whitney have decided to return with a loving tribute to songs that have been formative and lasting to the entire band. Candidis a 10-song collection boasting covers of artists like Kelela, David Byrne, John Denver, SWV, and others but it’s also a band challenging themselves to explore more than their musical comfort zone. Recorded in January and February of 2020 over multiple sessions at Treehouse Studios in Chicago and Flora Recording and Playback in Portland, ”Candid” finally sees the full touring band in a recording studio together. Whitney has brought their cinematic sound to The Roches’ “Hammond Song.” Whitney’s sound can best be described by the feeling of nostalgia. It makes you long for that one summer and for a sun-drenched drive. If you haven’t had the pleasure of hearing the beautiful harmonies of the original song, be sure to check it out as well!/
Their chemistry exudes throughout the tracklist but it’s especially apparent when they open up the dynamic to their friends, like Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee joining John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads. On the cover of the classic, Ehrlich and Crutchfield’s voices merge for a joyous harmony over the chorus. Over eight days at Treehouse Studios, the band would show up in the morning, learn a song together, and choose an instrument, leading to a freewheeling and adventurous atmosphere. Their renditions of SWV’s ’90s R&B heater Rain or David Byrne and Brian Eno’s 2008 track Strange Overtones prove this, as they stretch Whitney into new musical directions.
At its core, Candid is a celebration of both the songs Whitney has adored throughout its formation and the band’s evolving bond through years of relentless touring and an enduring friendship.
The Archive collection containing demo’s of PJ Harvey’s seminal 1992 debut album. “Dry” features the singles “Dress” and “Sheela-Na-Gig” which heralded Harvey’s burst onto the global stage. The Los Angeles Times’ Robert Hilburn described the record as “… a seductive calling card that signals the arrival of an extraordinary new artist.” NME wrote, “Polly dredges these sounds from the pit of her dissected soul and drags them out of her mouth with clenched fists,” while Pitchfork said, “On her debut, Polly Jean Harvey matched Patti Smith’s incandescence with Bessie Smith’s lasciviousness, outplayed everyone on the British indie circuit, and became an instant star.” [Dry has also been reissued this week on 180gm vinyl.
The 11 track collection of demo’s of all songs from the debut studio album “Dry” by PJ Harvey, available for the first time since 1992, and previously unreleased as a standalone album. PJ Harvey‘s demos for her 1992 debut album Dry will be issued for the first time as a standalone album in July.
The news that Island Records would be reissuing PJ Harvey’s discography on vinyl—along with accompanying LPs of the demos she recorded for each album—was exactly the ray of light music fans needed in this dreary year. And the release schedule is following the timeline of Harvey’s impeccable career, which meant starting with her 1992 debut Dry and Dry Demos, a collection of home recordings originally included with the first UK pressings of Dry. 28 years after the fact, the music still has the power to startle and electrify. While the rhythm section of drummer Rob Ellis and Steve Vaughn cartwheel and trundle and wrestle, Harvey holds firm with choppy downward strums and a voice that could crack concrete. Remastered with care by original co-producer Head, Dry is hackles-raising, mouth-watering post-punk perfection. Even in its more stripped down form on Dry Demos, the music still electrifies—and provides a testament to just how clear Harvey’s vision was for these songs. You can spot the little changes and adjustments she and her backing band made getting the songs to the finish line, but otherwise the framework for her explosive opening salvo remains solid and commanding.
Initial quantities of both the CD and vinyl versions of Dry came with a bonus disc of demos and it is those 11 tracks that are being made available here, for the first time in almost 30 years.
The album is newly art-worked to reflect the ‘demos’ nature of this edition of Dry and uses previously unseen photos by Maria Mochnacz. The vinyl is black and comes with CD quality (16 bit / 44.1kHz) WAV file downloads. It was cut by Jason Mitchell at Loud Mastering under the guidance of producer Head. Good to see the label not only ensure that this is released on CD too, but do a decent job of it. As can be seen above, it comes as gatefold card wallet with printed inner sleeve for the CD itself. This is the start of a new reissue campaign from UMC/Island and Beggars which will see all PJ Harvey’s albums reissued and on each occasion the demos will be issued on vinyl and CD!
Dry – Demos was released on 24th July 2020 via UMC/Island. A remastered version of the actual studio album Dry is also being reissued on vinyl on the same day (but not CD).
Tracklisting:
Oh My Lover (Demo)
O Stella (Demo)
Dress (Demo)
Victory (Demo)
Happy And Bleeding (Demo)
Sheela-Na-Gig (Demo)
Hair (Demo)
Joe (Demo)
Plants And Rags (Demo)
Fountain (Demo)
Water (Demo)
“On Heart’s Ease”, Shirley delivers a record even stronger than Lodestar having completely regained her confidence, and singing so well that you can’t believe she was away for so long. As Shirley put it, “Lodestar wasn’t too bad, was it? But when I listen to it, it does sometimes sound rather tentative. I had to record it at home because I was just too nervous to sing in front of somebody I didn’t know. This time I was far more relaxed – even though I went into a studio.” Recorded at Metway in Brighton, Heart’s Ease is as compelling and original as Shirley’s great albums from the Sixties and Seventies. There are traditional songs, of course, from England and the USA, but there are also more new songs than in the past (four non-traditional tracks) and there’s even a burst of experimentation that hints at possible new directions to come.
Shirley Collins – “Sweet Greens and Blues”, from ‘Heart’s Ease’, released 24th July 2020 on Domino Recordings.
Where to start is out today, crazy to finally be putting out the first single of the third record after three years of work. It feels insensitive to be releasing music at a time like this as I don’t want to take up space from everybody sharing important information on how to stay active and informed on racial inequality. I’ve pushed the release back as far as I could and for many reasons I’ve gotta bite the bullet and put it out into the world. With touring not being an option for the foreseeable future, all musicians have right now to keep their jobs going is social media to promote music. I’ll continue to post ways to stay active alongside posts about the single and record to come, as we all should keep doing. Injustice for people of colour has been an ongoing issue since day one and all of us that have never experienced the pain and prejudice that happens daily in the black community need to make not a week or a month, but a lifelong commitment to stay active and work towards equality.
Yes indeed, you read that headline right. Bully will release “Sugaregg”, her third album, worldwide on August 21st through Sub Pop Records. The 12-track effort was produced and mixed by John Congleton and Bully’s Alicia Bognanno, with additional production and mixing by Graham Walsh, recorded at Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, and Palace Sound in Toronto, Ontario, and mastered by Heba Kadry. You can now watch the official video for the cathartic lead single “Where to Start” right here. The visual is directed by Alan Del Rio Ortiz and Bognanno.
The single, “’Where to Start’ boasts Bully’s characteristic high-energy snarl, as growling guitars lead into Bognanno’s raspy-throated condemnation: “I don’t know where to start/I don’t know where to start with you.” Decidedly more jangly guitars then usher us all the way into the guts of the song — a mixture of sweet and sour, soft and frustrated,
Preorders of “SUGAREGG” are now available from Sub Pop. The limited Loser edition on a translucent blue w/white “smoke” colored vinyl. Meanwhile, preorders in the U.K. and Europe through select independent retailers will receive the Loser edition on transparent red vinyl. There will also be a new t-shirt design available.
About Bully’s “SUGAREGG” A very old saying goes that no one saves us but ourselves. Recognizing and breaking free from the patterns impeding our forward progress can be transformative — just ask Bully’s Alicia Bognanno. Indeed, the third Bully album, SUGAREGG, may not ever have come to fruition had Bognanno not navigated every kind of upheaval imaginable and completely overhauled her working process along the way.
“There was change that needed to happen and it happened on this record,” she says. “Derailing my ego and insecurities allowed me to give these songs the attention they deserved.”
“SUGAREGG” roars from the speakers and jumpstarts both heart and mind. Like My Bloody Valentine after three double espressos, opener “Add It On” zooms heavenward within seconds, epitomizing Bognanno’s newfound clarity of purpose, while the bass-driven melodies and propulsive beats of “Where to Start” and “Let You” are the musical equivalents of the sun piercing through a perpetually cloudy sky.
On songs like the strident “Every Tradition” and “Not Ashamed,” Bognanno doesn’t shy away from addressing “how I feel as a human holds up against what society expects or assumes of me as a woman, and what it feels like to naturally challenge those expectations.”
But amongst the more dense topics, there’s also a light-heartedness that was lacking on Bully’s last album, 2017’s Losing. Pointing to “Where to Start,” “You” and “Let You,” Bognanno says “there are more songs about erratic, dysfunctional love in an upbeat way, like, ‘I’m going down and that’s the only way I want to go because the momentary joy is worth it.’”
The artist admits that finding the proper treatment for bipolar 2 disorder radically altered her mindset, freeing her from a cycle of paranoia and insecurity about her work. “Being able to finally navigate that opened the door for me to write about it,” she says, pointing to the sweet, swirly “Like Fire” and slower, more contemplative songs such as “Prism” and “Come Down” as having been born of this new headspace. Even small changes like listening to music instead of the news first thing in the morning “made me want to write and bring that pleasure to other people.”
An unexpected foray into the film world also helped set the table for Sugaregg when Bognanno was asked to write songs for the 2019 movie Her Smell, starring Elisabeth Moss as the frontwoman of the fictional rock band Something She. “It got me motivated to play music again after the last album,” she says. “I loved reading the script and trying to think, what music would the character write? People asked if I’d play those songs with Bully but the whole point was for them to not be Bully songs. It was nice to get my head out of my own ass for a second and work on a project for someone else,” she says with a laugh.
A highly accomplished engineer who ran the boards herself on the first two Bully albums, Bognanno was ready to be free “from the weight of feeling like I had to prove to the world I was capable of engineering a record, and wanted to be content knowing for myself what I can do without needing the approval of others to validate that.”
So for SUGAREGG, she yielded recording and mixing responsibilities to outside collaborators for the first time and trekked to the remote Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minn., an unexpected return to her home state. Behind the console was John Congleton, a Grammy-winner who has worked with everyone from St. Vincent and Sleater-Kinney to The War on Drugs and Modest Mouse. “Naturally, I still had reservations, but John was sensitive to where I was coming from,” Bognanno says. “He was very respectful that I’d never worked with a producer before.”
The studio’s rich history (classics such as Nirvana’s In Utero, PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me and Superchunk’s Foolish were recorded there) and woodsy setting quickly put Bognanno’s mind at ease. Being able to bring her dog Mezzi along for the trip didn’t hurt either. “I had never tracked a record in the summer, so waking up and going outside with her before we started each day was a great way to refresh,” she says.
SUGAREGG features additional contributions from long time touring drummer Wesley Mitchell and bassist Zach Dawes, renowned for his work on recent albums by Sharon Van Etten and Lana Del Rey. Dawes and Bognanno met at Pachyderm to work on parts just two days before tracking, “but it ended up being so much less stressful than I had expected and I loved it,” she says. “Zach wanted to be there to help and make my vision happen.”
With 14 songs on tape, Bognanno and friends left Pachyderm thinking SUGAREGG was done. But once back home in Nashville, she realized there was more to be written, and spent the next five months doing exactly that. Moving to Palace Studios in Toronto with Graham Walsh (Alvvays, METZ, !!!), Bognanno and Mitchell recorded “Where to Start” and “Let You,” which proved to be two of the new album’s key tracks.
Ultimately, SUGAREGG is a testament that profound change can yield profound results — in this case, the most expressive and powerful music of Bognanno’s career. “This is me longing to see the bigger picture, motivated and eager for contentment in the best way,” she says. “I hope the happy go lucky / fuck-it-all attitude shines through some of these songs because I really did feel like I was reentering a place I hadn’t been to in a while and was excited to be back there.”
Bully from their album “SUGAREGG” (Release Date: 21st August 2020 on Sub Pop Records.
At the time of it’s release, this album was under apprciated. They were part of a group of bands in the really early ’90s—My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride, Moose—and those first Slowdive records were right in the wheelhouse. Reverbed-out, cascading guitars and distant, female-male voices, in kinship with what My Bloody Valentine were doing. Even though it was airy and ethereal, it was also still very loud. In England, Slowdive were successful somewhat, but in America they started gaining cult status even through the late ’90s. There was definitely a time when this stuff was happening, There was something about their music that struck a bigger chord with me than some of the other bands from around that time. Something about the way Neil and Rachel’s vocals blended that drew me in more, something more personal about the song writing and singing that made them my favourite noisy guitar band around that time.
“Pygmalion” now it’s become heralded as a masterpiece. And it is. When Slowdive disbanded in 1995 music fans widely associated it with the demise of the shoegaze genre. Their last sign of life was “Pygmalion” (before they reunited in 2014) and it was, after “Just For A Day” and “Souvlaki” a totally different and more abstract album. Where the band attempted to put more song structures in place on “Souvlaki“, they began to incorporate more elements of ambient electronica on “Pygmalion” .
This majestic record became a cult touchstone for its ambient detours and post-rock experiments. Nothing else sounds quite like it, and Slowdive themselves fell silent for years afterward, save for side projects, only to finally re-emerge with 2017’s triumphant, self-titled reunion album.
Tracks like “Blue Skied An’ Clear” and “Crazy For You” demonstrate that the songs are still there, somewhere – they’re just buried under more abstract sounds than before.
“Under the Spell of Joy” is a space-gospel record. While singer and multi-instrumentalist Bonnie Bloomgarden and guitarist Larry Schemel knew their intention for the album before a single note was written, the actual nature and direction of the music was a mystery. The initial inspiration for the record came from the jubilant spirit of Ethiopian funk records the band had been listening to on tour, but once they began to channel the songs it seemed like the music came from somewhere not in the past but in the future. In the weeks leading up to recording, Death Valley Girls relied on their subconscious and effortlessly conjured Under the Spell of Joy’s eleven tracks as if they’d tapped into the Akashic Chronicle and pulled the music from the ether.
The album opens with Hypnagogia, an ode to the space between sleep and wakefulness where we are open to other realms of consciousness. The song slowly builds along a steady pulse provided by bassist Pickle (Nicole Smith) and drummer Rikki Styxx. Tripped out saxophone bleats from guest player Gabe Flores swirl on top of the organ drones laid out by guest keyboardist Gregg Foreman. The band’s choral objectives for Under the Spell of Joy are established right off the bat, with Bloomgarden’s melodic invocations bolstered by a choir, giving the album a rich and vibrant wall-of-sound aesthetic. The song ominously builds on its hypnotic foundation until it opens up into a raucous revelry at the four-minute mark. The portentous simmer of the opening track yields to the ecstatic rocker Hold My Hand, where verses reminiscent of Velvet Underground’s I’m Waiting For The Man explode into big triumphant choruses. From there the band launches into the title track, which marries the griminess of The Stooges with an innocence provided by a children’s choir chanting the album’s primary mantra “under the spell of joy / under the spell of love.”
Death Valley Girls have always vacillated between lightness and darkness, and on Bliss Out they demonstrate their current exuberant focus with a patina-hued pop song driven by an irrepressibly buoyant organ line laid down by keyboardist The Kid (Laura Kelsey). A similar cosmic euphoria is obtained on The Universe, where alternating chords on the organ help elevate soaring saxophone and keyboard lines out beyond the stratosphere. If you’re looking for transcendental rock music, look no further.
Under the Spell of Joy out October 2nd, 2020, on Suicide Squeeze Records
METZ have released a new single entitled “A Boat To Drown In”, taken from their forthcoming album, “Atlas Vending”, due out 9th October.
Atlas Vending comes as the Toronto noise-rock trio’s fourth studio album, following 2017’s Strange Peace, which was recorded with revered engineer Steve Albini. The upcoming release was co-produced by Uniform’s Ben Greenburg and was engineered by Seth Manchester at Pawtucket, Rhode Island studio Machines With Magnets. Released alongside A Boat To Drown In was a music video directed by Tony Wolski.
Speaking of Metz’s upcoming release, guitarist/vocalist Alex Edkins explained in a press release that the band’s goal when approaching their fourth release was to “remain in flux” and “grow in a natural and gradual way”. “Change is inevitable if you’re lucky,” Edkins said. “We’ve always been wary to not overthink or intellectualize the music we love but also not [to be] satisfied until we’ve accomplished something that pushes us forward.” The music made by Edkins and his compatriots Hayden Menzies (drums) and Chris Slorach (bass) has always been a little difficult to pin down. Their earliest recordings contained nods to the teeming energy of early ‘90s DIY hardcore, the aggravated angularities of This Heat, and the noisy riffing of AmRep’s quintessential guitar manglers. but there was never a moment where Metz sounded like they were paying tribute to the heroes of their youth. If anything, the sonic trajectory of their albums captured the journey of a band shedding influences and digging deeper into their fundamental core—steady propulsive drums, chest-thumping bass lines, bloody-fingered guitar riffs, the howling angst of our fading innocence. With Atlas Vending, Metz not only continues to push their music into new territories of dynamics, crooked melodies, and sweat-drenched rhythms, they explore the theme of growing up and maturing within a format typically suspended in youth. Covering seemingly disparate themes such as paternity, crushing social anxiety, addiction, isolation, media-induced paranoia, and the restless urge to leave everything behind, each of Atlas Vending’s ten songs offer a snapshot of today’s modern condition and together form a musical and narrative whole.
Sub Pop Records, the band’s record label, noted that Atlas Vending will mark a change from the band’s previous releases, describing the record as METZ’s most “dynamic, dimensional, and compelling work of their career”.
“While past METZ albums thrived on an abrasive relentlessness, the trio embarked on Atlas Vending with the goal to make a more patient and honest record – something that invited repeated listens rather than a few exhilarating bludgeonings.” “It’s as if the band realised they were in it for the long haul, and their music could serve as a constant as they navigated life’s trials and tribulations.”
“Atlas Vending” by METZ on Sub Pop Records released 9th October
We’re not sure it was their desired effect, but Silversun Pickups’ new video for “Toy Soldiers” puts one thought at the forefront of our mind: What really happened with Martika, the Cuban-American child actress-turned pop sensation who had a No. 1 hit at age 19, collaborated with Prince on her second album and walked away from the music industry at age 22?
“Toy Soldiers” was Martika’s big breakout hit, and Silversun Pickups chose to re-imagine it while “thinking about songs from the ’80s that we loved growing up, that had a big radio moment and [were] part of our cultural DNA,” frontman Brian Aubert says of the tune, which was made with Butch Vig, who produced the L.A. quartet’s 2019 album “Widow’s Weeds.”
“This version doesn’t feel bombastic and over-the-top; it’s crackling and tiny at times,” Aubert says. “Butch really helped with this. I don’t think I’ve ever sung this intimately before. The guitar solo during it was very important to me, and we quickly realized that the solo worked during that time period, but not when we did it. We threw in a curve ball, some weird things, inspired by Johnny Greenwood. We put our weird stamp on it and it really came together.”
We were performing a cover of a song from The Lost Boys soundtrack for a for SiriusXM special and that got us thinking about songs from the ‘80s that we loved growing up, that had a big radio moment and was part of our cultural DNA. A song that you know right away when you hear it. We thought of “Toy Soldiers” as a great example of this and decided we should try and record it.
There’s something about this song that hits me emotionally – this song has always hit me that way. At first, it wasn’t about the lyrics, but the feel of it. To be honest, I was not initially aware what the song was about, but listening to the lyrics, it was clearly about addiction. Someone else’s addiction. It’s pretty painful and very personal. You realize it doesn’t matter what the shell is, what the production is, what the era is…this is obviously a very personal story that at first I wasn’t sure we could touch. We ended up framing it into our own world and we think it works.
We recorded this back in January and didn’t know where it would land, but now with this world the way it is, we felt it was a good time to release the song. We just wanted to shine a spotlight on MARTIKA and this song…_b
The video for the song, directed by Claire Marie Vogel and animator Aaron Hymes, captures the pandemic-era vibe. “Creating a video from a distance makes for many limitations, but I love how limitations can shape an idea,” Vogel says. “The song’s melancholy nature and the sense of isolation permeating the world right now were both very influential when writing the treatment. The video we made speaks to that collective sense of yearning and disconnection many of us are experiencing.”
As for Martika, the singer has said in interviews promoting occasional nostalgia tours that her retirement was a case of “too much too soon.” Surely there’s a longer story to be told there.
Equal parts Neil Young, Cat Power and Blink 182, Porridge Radio’s songs are 2 cups of emotion for every tablespoon of salt. The crisp, golden brown surface of Rice, Pasta and Other Fillers belies a childhood misspent consuming The Carpenters, Supertramp and Guns ‘n’ Roses, with a generous sprinkling of the Cranberries.
After a series of home recorded solo demos, a split EP with West America, a single on CHUD records, and a comp with No Dice records, and the growing legend of their live shows, Rice, Pasta and Other Fillers is the dragged out remnants of sessions done in the band’s earliest stage (summer 2k15). Many of the songs are full band reworkings of Porridge Radio’s earliest bedroom demos.
Rice, Pasta and Other Fillers lyrics, title and artwork, as well as the group’s name, brings to mind a certain scrapbook absurdism at the core of Porridge Radio’s work. Faced with the dark abyss of existence, the band scrapes together some value from malarky, baloney and balderdash, and then cling to it, giggling, for dear life. This isn’t revivalism, stylised posturing, or calculated blog fodder. It’s not really anything, other than some sad friends expressing some weird feelings in a way that they like and find fun. I like it a lot too. At the dawn of midnight they sacrifice the goat to satan, praying for the end of mankind and the dawn of a new satanic era.
