Last month, Matt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy announced their new album, “Superwolves”, out digitally April 30th and physically June 18th. Today, they release a new single “My Blue Suit,” with an accompanying video directed by Geoff McFetridge, and announce their first tour together since 2014. The tour will see the duo return to their ancestral lupine roots in Big Sur, the site of one of their first live performances, and beyond. “My Blue Suit” follows previously released singles/videos “Make Worry For Me” and “Hall of Death.” Where “Hall of Death” featured a full band (courtesy of Tuareg guitar giant Mdou Moctar), “My Blue Suit” presents the duo at their core with Sweeney on acoustic guitar and Bonny (aka Will Oldham) on vocals.
McFetridge elaborates on the video below: “I started this video by painting. The work I created, in response to the song, was large scale figures I could use in scenes filmed on camera. All the images in the film are done in camera, there are no digital effects. The graphic sequences were done with paintings wrapped around a garbage can placed on a Techniques 1200 turntable. The tools used to create the effects were knives, glue, paint and tape. The pieces created for the film are nearly life size portraits done with acrylic on paper. These works, the film and the animated elements will be shown in the project space of Cooper Cole Gallery in Toronto, opening May 1st.”
Track from the Matt Sweeney & Bonnie “Prince” Billy album “Superwolves,” out on Digital & Streaming on April 30th, 2021 and LP/CS/CD on June 18th, 2021 from Drag City/Palace Records and Domino Recordings.
Husker Du helped invent alternative rock as we know it with their landmark 1984 double album “Zen Arcade” and its follow up albums (1985’s “Flip Your Wig” in particular predicted what the alt-rock mainstream wound sound like a decade later), and their impact was felt on pop punk too. It’s hard to pick just one Husker Du album for any best of list, but their 1986 major label debut “Candy Apple Grey” wins because of “Don’t Want to Know If You Are Lonely,” which would’ve been a pop punk smash if it came out in 1994.
It sounds as much as like proto-Green Day as the Buzzcocks did, and Green Day didn’t try to hide their love of the song — they released a faithful cover of it. Others on this album like “I Don’t Know For Sure” and “Eiffel Tower High” found Husker Du offering up punchy punk rock and sugary pop in equal measure, and it’s easy to hear how this former hardcore band was shaping pop punk with those songs too. Husker Du broke up before they were able to enjoy the same success that Green Day, Nirvana, and their other followers enjoyed, and even though co-frontman Bob Mould’s next band Sugar went on to release an alt-rock masterpiece with their 1992 debut Copper Blue, both Husker Du and Sugar remained underdogs compared to the bands they inspired.
Five years on from Candy Apple Grey, the roster of every major label would be heaving with angry young rock & roll powered by surging electric guitars, howling vocals and non-specific angst. This, of course, was a result of the success of Nirvana’s Nevermind. However, as Nirvana themselves never shied from admitting, Nirvana’s Nevermind was, in a major way, a result of Hüsker Dü, and specifically Hüsker Dü’s Candy Apple Grey. It is probably the first major label grunge album; the Minneapolis trio had already racked up around half a dozen albums of superior and weirdly tuneful punk rock before Warners signed them. “Candy Apple Grey” wasn’t markedly different from any of its indie predecessors in terms of style–basically Bob Mould’s buzzsaw guitar and jet-engine vocal competing to be heard over a rhythm section playing with the speed and abandon of a runaway locomotive–but the songs had never been this good before.
In drummer Grant Hart’s “Don’t Want To Know If You’re Lonely” and Mould’s “Eiffel Tower High”, Hüsker Dü came up with a giddying hybrid of Black Sabbath and The Byrds. Elsewhere, Mould’s acoustic “Hardly Getting Over It” amounted to the beginning of his absurdly overlooked solo career. Candy Apple Grey was the sort of dazzling, unnerving record that made people want to form bands of their own. The fact that so many of these bands were formed in and around Seattle is a phenomenon as yet unexplained by science.
Maybe it was for the best; extreme mainstream exposure took its toll on a lot of major pop punk and alt-rock bands, but Bob Mould is still churning out great record after great record today, nearly 40 years after the first Husker Du single.
As far as debut albums are concerned, Steely Dan’s “Can’t Buy a Thrill” is top-notch. Say what you will about this musically obsessive compulsive double act, they certainly knew how to write a stylish and sophisticated composition, and who seemed to approach the art of song writing in a similar way to a couple of high cuisine chefs or makers of fine wine .
“Can’t Buy a Thrill” is a perfect album. Though Donald Fagen and Walter Becker had been playing together since their days at Bard including a stint as the touring band for Jay and the Americans, it wasn’t until this 1972 recording that they formally had their own band together, even if that band included David Palmer, whose voice, while more “commercial,” lacks the smokey, ne’er-do-well quality of Fagen’s nasally croak.
This album is very much a band effort, a concept which would soon became a thing of the past with each subsequent release, as Becker and Fagen began to indulge their natural instinct for instrumental perfectionism. Strange really, considering that so much of the music they admired, i.e. jazz, blues, rock and roll etc, was basically performed off the cuff, and often under rather austere conditions.
First song “Do It Again” is a Latin-infused, Santana-esque six-minute exercise about a gambling addict, that was a popular hit on US radio. And little wonder. The electric sitar, played by Denny Dias, is a throwback to the late ‘60s, and an instrument which was largely forgotten by 1972 (even George Harrison seemed to have turned his back on it, or at least publicly). Donald Fagen sings the lead vocals and plays ‘plastic organ’, whatever the hell that is. But regardless, it all works. Cool, catchy, and a great driving number. If this tune doesn’t get your toe tapping, then you must be either deaf or deceased . Right from the top kick of “Do It Again,” listeners are introduced to the lowlifes, hustlers and punks that populate the Daniverse. And this album has them all–the hapless fuckboy of “Dirty Work,” the aging hipsters of “Midnight Cruiser” the rambling bums that populate Brooklyn. But alongside bleak tracks like “Fire in the Hole,” there is also lovely hope on tracks like “Change of the Guard.” It’s an album that spans the gamut of the human emotional spectrum.
The country roots-rock of “Dirty Work” is a throwback to The Band, with swirling organ (a la Garth Hudson), and an arrangement reminiscent of “The Weight”. Until the chorus comes in, which in itself is pure Steely Dan. And when you’ve finished planting your crop, and tilling the land, the next track “Kings” takes you out of the country and into the modern city, with a semi-funky beat, and some jazzy guitar courtesy of Elliot Randall, while the harmony vocals have an aspect of CSN about them.
“Midnite Cruiser” was obviously a clear attempt at making a dent in the ever competitive Billboard Top 20, but ultimately sounds a little too desperate in the process, especially when it comes to the chorus ). “Only a Fool Would Say That” is impeccably recorded, though lacks the sort of emotional quotient necessary to make it truly work. Although I have to say, that Jeff Baxter’s guitar flourishes are enjoyable.
More than the best moment on Steely Dan’s embryonic debut album, “Reelin’ In the Years” is their best-loved song. Not that Walter Becker or Donald Fagen ever agreed. “It’s dumb but effective,” Fagen once told Rolling Stone. Becker added: “It’s no fun.” Still, good luck resisting that soaring riff. In a sign of things to come, however, it wasn’t produced by any of the three very talented guitarists then on Steely Dan’s roster – Becker, Denny Dias and Jeff “Skunk” Baxter. Instead, they brought in Elliott Randall, a ringer who’d originally turned down an offer to join the band. He nailed it, almost instantly. “My second pass was what you hear on the record,” Randall told Guitarist in 2012. “It was completely unedited. It was just from top-to-bottom, all the way through. And it worked. We all just laughed afterwards.”
Side two starts off with the effervescent and upbeat “Reelin’ In the Years”, where Elliot Randall’s guitar playing pretty much dominates this pleasurable yet innocent number. “Fire In the Hole” is a hint at what would appear in the future, arrangement-wise, while “Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me)” is pretty much your standard country-pop replete with obligatory pedal steel and other plaintive arrangements which somehow fail to move the needle of my emotional register. Likewise “Change of the Guard”, a song overflowing with immaculate musicianship, but little in the way of poignant feeling, much less a handful of human emotion. Because if you’re going to express something meaningful, at least try not to be too mathematical about it.
Similarly the album’s last track, “Turn That Heartbeat Over Again”, a song which fails to resonate due once again, to the one flaw which seems to serve as the Achilles heel of Fagen and Becker, and that is craft over Art, where perfection always comes first before sentiment.
“Sometime in November” of 1972 is the official date Steely Dan’s debut LP “Can’t Buy A Thrill” was released on ABCRecords. The original band line-up included founder Denny Dias – lead guitar and electric sitar; David Palmer – who sang the lead vocals on “Dirty Work”; Donald Fagan – keyboards and lead vocals; Walter Becker – bass, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter – lead and pedal steel guitar, and spoken word; and Jim Hodder – drums, percussion, and lead vocals on “Midnight Cruiser”. The album was produced by Gary Katz, who produced all of Steely Dan’s albums from the debut here up through 1980’s “Gaucho”. The band got its name from a William S Burroughs novel. The tracks are, side one “Do It Again”, “Dirty Work”, “Kings”,“Midnight Cruiser”, “Only a Fool Would Say That”, “Reelin’ in the Years”, “Fire in the Hole”, “Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me)”, “Change of the Guard”, and “Turn That Heartbeat Over Again”. Elliot Randall handled the lead guitar on “Reelin in the Years” and “Kings”. The album peeled at number 17 on the pop charts in 1973. The sexy and colourful cover design by Robert Lockart is signed by Donald Fagan and Walter Becker… “Why, you wouldn’t even know a diamond if you held it in your hand.”
Anna B Savage Solo on an electric guitar, the English songwriter Anna B Savage has dealt in ruthless, self-lacerating confessionals, delivered in a tremulous, vehement contralto that brought drama to each phrase. Revealing her pain, she exorcised it. Anna B Savage only just released her debut album, “A Common Turn”, earlier this year, but she already performs like an incredible cult artist from yesteryear. Taking the stage at the British Music Embassy, Savage sounded raw and completely in her element, wielding and fluctuating her glaring contralto voice to staggering effect and performing without a backing band. Alongside rough guitar strums, her voice floated between jazzy and folky tones, but never settled neatly into either. Her quiet-loud dynamic was arresting, lending room for her deep, poetic lyricism—it honestly felt like you were watching a soon-to-be-influential singer/songwriter in a coffee shop from decades past. Her songs are fully realized, with a nuanced emotional perspective and a deep ache at their core, heightened by the liquidy rhythms of her near-operatic voice. With gorgeous imperfections and a unique sound, Savage’s set was positively masterful.
The debut album of London based singer-songwriter Anna B Savage! Her 2015 EP was deeply intriguing and quickly drew the attention of Father John Misty and later Jenny Hval, both of whom brought Savage out on European tours.
Anna B Savage’s first full-length record A Common Turn is question mark music. Her songs are heavy with unanswered queries, with dilemmas and insecurities, or often just with wondering.
Savage’s voice is endlessly warm, but producer William Doyle (East India Youth) consistently finds the iron in it. Even the darkest moments in this music don’t stick in their devastation, though – Savage’s fire burns too brightly. Her voice can drop to a whisper, but then it will open all the way up in a flash flood of cavernous guitar, echoes, and swelling strings that expand and then vanish just as suddenly as they arrived
Savage’s music is deeply vulnerable, without being submissive. She lays claim to her own fragility, and the stories she tells are of taking up space, finding connections, and owning the power in not knowing all the answers. Hers are songs for anyone who thinks hard, feels deeply, and asks big questions. Produced by William Doyle (East India Youth), A Common Turn presents us a nest of fully-formed and room-filling artistry.
Anna B Savage’s debut Album “A Common Turn”, out on City Slang Records.
The new record captures Steve Miller’s legendary 1977 line-up at the beginning of their turn from playing ballrooms and theatres to arenas and football stadiums. The Guitarist, multi-platinum-selling singer-songwriter, bandleader, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and Songwriters Hall of Fame electee Steve Miller has dug deep into his archives and found an unreleased, full-length concert recording, Steve Miller Band Live! Breaking Ground: August 3rd, 1977, arriving via Sailor/Capitol/UMe Records on Friday, May 14th.
A variety of formats will be available, including digital, CD, and 2xLP black vinyl. The accompanying live concert film featuring the full performance will be available to stream on The Coda Collection on Amazon Prime Video.
Says Miller: “This show from August of 1977 at the Cap Center in Landover, Maryland, captures the band right at the peak after The Joker, and in the middle of “Fly Like an Eagle” and “Book of Dreams”, a stream of hits…We decided to call it Breaking Ground because that’s exactly what we were doing.”
Steve Miller Band Live! Breaking Ground: August 3, 1977 –includes original liner notes by music journalist David Fricke who says – “Breaking Ground captures the Steve Miller Band on stage in one of their biggest years, 1977. They were at a perfect crossroads of psychedelic zeal and progressive, popcraft while staying true to Miller’s first love, the blues.”
Steve Miller Band Live! Breaking Ground: August 3, 1977 captures Miller’s legendary 1977 line up at the beginning of the band’s turn from playing ballrooms and theatres to arenas and football stadiums. Recorded at the Capital Centre in Landover, MD on multi-track tape and newly mixed and mastered by Miller and his veteran audio engineer Kent Hertz.
TheSteve Miller Band Greatest Hits 74-78 album is in the top 40 of the best-selling albums of all time according to the RIAA. Recent releases for SMB include the 9LP 180-gram vinyl box set, Complete Albums Volume 2 (1977-2011), as well as the 3CD + DVD archival box set, Welcome To The Vault, both available via uDiscover.
“Steve Miller Band Live! Breaking Ground”: August 3rd, 1977 is out on May 14th.
Hailing from Lafayette, Louisiana, Renée Reed is one of my favourite new voices of 2021. With her blend of Cajun Music, alt-folk and whatever else she could wrap her ears around at the music festivals of Southwest Louisiana, Renée creates a musical style that’s not quite like anyone else I’ve stumbled upon. With her self-titled album just a fortnight away, this week Renée has shared the latest single from it, “Neboj”.
If you needed any further evidence of the eclecticism of Renée’s influences, Neboj, translating roughly as Don’t Worry, lifts its name from a word discovered on a deep-dive into Czech animation. Lyrically, the track touches on the idea of being open to falling in love, of letting go of your worries and trusting your heart to lead the way. The whole thing is set to a musical backing of stunning finger-picked guitar work and Renée’s voice, timeless and compelling,
We’re super excited to announce our exclusive Fuzz Club Edition of the second entry to the ‘Live at Levitation’ series with festival founders, The Black Angels. Our version comes on transparent black ice vinyl with heavy tangerine splatter. From deep in the heart of Texas, armed with the home-grown mantra “Turn On, Tune In, Drone Out,” The Black Angels ring real and rugged like a crimson full moon-lit night. Formed in May of 2004, the band’s sanctified holy racket was breech-born out of life-long friendships drawn up in blood and sealed with a kiss.
The artists and sets showcased on Live at Levitation have been chosen from over a decade of recordings at the world-renowned event, and documents key artists in the scene performing for a crowd of their peers and fans who gather at Levitation annually from all over the world. The LP captures a slice of the early days of the festival, with tracks from The Black Angels’ first two LPs – with 6 tracks recorded in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
The Black Angels – Live at Levitation has been given deluxe treatment on mind melting vinyl.
“Collections From The Whiteout” is a big return from our fellow South Westerner, Ben Howard. Produced alongside Aaron Dessner, it’s a very different beast to his earlier work. His voice and songs are part of something broader instead of being the main event. Dense, pretty and sonically interesting.
Produced alongside Aaron Dessner (The National, Sharon Van Etten, Taylor Swift), Collections From The Whiteout heralds the first time Ben has opened the door to production outside of he and his bands closer confines.The foreboding darkness that coated Ben’s second record I Forget Where We Were and thinly veiled its follow up Noonday Dream, isn’t so evident on Collections.. These are songs written from headlines scanned, or news stories scrolled past. Ben has taken those snippets and let his curiosity take control, creating an aural scrapbook that reverberates with tape loops and guitar FXs.
Ben Howard has shared his latest single “Sorry Kid” from his forthcoming album. “Sorry Kid” joins previously released tracks “What A Day,” “Follies Fixture,” “Crowhurst’s Meme” and “Far Out” as the final preview of the album Howard has offered to fans ahead of its release. Like “Crowhurst’s Meme,” “Sorry Kid” was inspired by an elaborate and interesting true story. The song is loosely built around the narrative of Anna Sorokin. The German woman, born in Russia, is best known for her stint posing as a billionaire heiress under the moniker Anna Delvey. Sorokin was later convicted for numerous counts of fraud-related crimes in America. Take the cash and all the jewels,” Howard sings over the song’s punching beat. “The world was made for only you.”
The door was also left open to some new players too. Yussef Dayes, one of the UK’s most innovative young drummer/producer’ especially in the field of jazz features, as does Kate Stables from This Is The Kit, James Krivchenia from Big Thief, Kyle Keegan from Hiss Golden Messenger, and the aforementioned Aaron Dessner lent his hand too where needed. Long-term guitarist to Ben’s band, Mickey Smith, remains a reassuring presence. Rob Moose, a long-standing arranger of strings for Bon Iver and a collaborator to Laura Marling, Blake Mills, and Phoebe Bridgers is also present, peppering the mix.
The Devon singer-songwriter is said to have based a number of songs on the “Collections From The Whiteout” around stories he came across in the news while taking creative liberties to expand and explore the worlds within those narratives. Through the creation of new characters and details in his lyricism, the British musician adds a fresh perspective to moments in history.
“Shunning the faux authenticity of many of his bigger-selling pop contemporaries, Ben Howard has spent a decade pursuing music that blends a legitimate passion for folk tradition with inventive sonic flavors,”
+ Indie exclusive is pressed on transparent vinyl housed in gatefold + plain unprinted bag + SOV download code + standard gloss dispersion.
The album, which arrives on March 26th, also features the previously released tracks ‘What A Day’ and ‘Crowhurst’s Meme.’ Ben Howard Music Limited, under exclusive licence to Island Records, a division of Universal Music Operations Ltd.
On June 25th, Deadheads will get their hands on the new, 50th anniversary edition of the Grateful Dead’s second live LP “Skull & Roses”, The release including 60+ minutes of unreleased audio from the band’s July 2nd, 1971 performance at the Fillmore West.
As 2021 marches along so do the reissues for classic 50th Anniversary celebrations of some titles. For The Grateful Dead, which has a solid following even among newer generations who were not around at their peak, the albums, in their order, are moving along. Last year, “Workingman’s Dead” arrived in definitive CD and LP editions. The year before it was “Aoxomoxoa”. Now, it’s the turn for the ‘Skull and Roses’ collected live tracks album officially titled Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead’s second live release was an eponymously titled double LP whose cover bears the striking skull-and-roses visual motif that would become instantly recognizable and an indelibly linked trademark of the band. As opposed to their debut concert recording, Live/Dead (1969), this hour and ten minutes concentrates on newer material, which consisted of shorter self-contained originals and covers.
Explains GD legacy manager/archivist David Lemieux, “Skull & Roses” captures the quintessential quintet, the original five piece band, playing some of their hardest hitting rock ‘n’ roll (‘Johnny B. Goode,’ ‘Not Fade Away’), showing off their authentic Bakersfield bona fides (‘Me & My Uncle,’ ‘Mama Tried,’ ‘Me & Bobby McGee’), and some originals that would be important parts of the Dead’s live repertoire for the next 24 years (‘Bertha,’ ‘Playing In The Band,’ ‘Wharf Rat’). Of course, the GratefulDead were never defined by one specific ‘sound’ and amongst the aforementioned genres and styles the band brought to this album, they also delved deeply into their psychedelic, primal playbook with an entire side dedicated to their 1968 masterpiece ‘The Other One.’.. Skull & Roses sounds as fresh today as the first time I heard it in 1985, and as fresh as it was upon its spectacularly well-received release in 1971.”
To celebrate, Grateful Dead HQ has shared “The Other One” from the previously-mentioned Summer ’71 rarity at San Francisco’s Fillmore West. Grateful Dead perform “The Other One” live from Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA 7/2/71.
The standout centerpiece of the 1971 live album was Side 2’s “The Other One”, and this one from a little over two months later is every bit its equal. Every version of “The Other One” from 1971 is unique and different, but they all maintain a hold on the spirit of the song and can be viewed as one big, continuous piece of music.
The release is out June 18th, Rhino Records will unleash a 2CD and a separately available 2LP (Black) 180g-weight vinyl 50th Anniversary set for fans. The album, of course, will be newly remastered for this package. It will also contain a previously unreleased July 2nd, 1971 concert on the expanded bonus disc. This set will also be made available on DD format in both the expanded edition and the remastered album only. Hi-res DD (FLAC and ALAC) can be purchased at Dead.net. There will also be a limited edition collectable black and white propeller-coloured vinyl set that is limited to 5,000 copies only.
Stone Temple Pilots are celebrating the 25th anniversary of their 1996 LP “Tiny Music…Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop” by releasing a three-disc/one-LP deluxe edition featuring a remastered version of the original album, alternate versions and mixes of several of the songs, and a complete concert taped at the Club La Vela in Panama City Beach, Florida, on March 14th, 1997. Released 25 years ago on 26th March 1996, the album is a pitch-perfect amalgamation of the band members’ musical personalities, yielding three us #1 hits – “Big Bang Baby,” “Lady Picture Show,”Rhino records announces the upcoming release of a newly remastered version of tiny music… expanded with unreleased studio and live recordings.
It’s coming out July 23rd, but you can hear a previously unreleased version of “Big Bang Baby” right here.
“Tiny Music…Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop” landed in stores after a very difficult period in the group’s history marked by Scott Weiland’s arrest for heroin and cocaine possession and guitarist Dean DeLeo, bassist Robert DeLeo, and drummer Eric Kretz’s decision to form the side project Talk Show with vocalist Dave Coutts.
But they came together with producer Brendan O’Brien in late 1995 at the Westerly Ranch in Santa Ynez, California, to create the album, which generated the hits “Big Bang Baby,” “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart,” and “Lady Picture Show.”
“Coming into our third album, we knew we wanted to get into uncharted waters as a band, and not just make an album that was a continuation of the first two, but really experiment with a homegrown mentality,” said Kretz . “Deciding to record in a house instead of a proper studio was our collective first choice. Once we started recording, we tried different songs and different overdubs in every nook and cranny the house had to offer.
For Dean DeLeo, going through the tape vault to assemble this new edition of the album was an emotional experience. “Re-listening to this album brought back some beautiful memories of all of us living, writing, and recording the record in the beautiful Santa Ynez Valley,” “And of course, every time I revisit this stuff I miss Scott.”
It also gave him the chance to hear music he hadn’t thought about in many years, including “Kretz’s Acoustic Song.” “I always really loved that song, even when Eric laid it out for us back in ’95 or ’96,” DeLeo says. “What I dig most about it is that Eric played everything.” The very first stop on the Tiny Music tour was the Panama City gig they are releasing on the set. It was filmed for an MTV Spring Break special. “Back in 1997, MTV was a tour de force in the music world,” says Kretz. “To play a whole set in the surroundings of a beach with a crowd that was having more fun than us was really fantastic.”
Stone Temple Pilots parted ways with Scott Weiland in 2013, two years before his death. They are now fronted by Jeff Gutt. A year ago, they released their 8th LP, “Perdida”.
The Fat Angel Sings 