Few artists can quieten a room quite like Angelo De Augustine. You cannot help but admire the intimacy of this LA-based singer-songwriter, from his hushed whisper-vocals to the gorgeous finger-picked acoustic guitar, he can make a music venue feel like a living room, demanding the audience’s full attention by simply refusing to raise his voice. When the news of Augustine’s new record, “Tomb”, hit, it was announced that he was working with Thomas Bartlett aka Doveman, a renowned musician and producer who helmed recent records by St. Vincent, Rhye, Glen Hansard and Stevens.
If a lot of why earlier album Swim Inside the Moon was so heartbreakingly striking stemmed from its rough and lo-fi recording, how would a studio-produced release even remotely capture this same closeness? By and large, Bartlett’s cleaner mix works wonders for De Augustine. With cleaner vocals and an emphasis on a variety of instrumentation, Tomb is more direct than anything De Augustine’s has released prior.
By adding cleaner production, synth and string flourishes alongside poppier and catchier refrains, De Augustine largely hits the mark on Tomb. With a few curveballs thrown throughout, the warm and comforting lull of Swim Inside the Moon is long gone, replaced by a fascinating record that updates his prior work without losing any of its intimacy.
I’m gonna put this out there: ever since I found out about collaboration with Sufjan Stevens’ strong affiliation with church, I pretty much banned him from my earlobes. Anyway, this one slipped through the cracks because Angelo De Augustine is singing it instead
The music of You Tell Me exists in this glorious place where several decades of British pop gently collide. That is to be expected considering the pedigree of the two singer/songwriters at the helm of this project. Peter Brewis is one-half of the flint-edged post-punk group Field Music, and Sarah Hayes has logged time in the glittering indie pop outfit Admiral Fallow and dabbled in traditional folk as a solo artist. Add in the detail that the pair met for the first time at a Kate Bush concert and the sound of You Tell Me may start coming into focus even before you get a chance to listen to their self-titled debut. The pair’s 11-song album weaves in and out of those varied sonic worlds with ease and wide-eyed joy, often grabbing little fragments into a lovely patchwork. Opener “Enough To Notice” layers the dreamy spirit of The Pentangle and their ‘70s psych-folk ilk with bubblegum pop, while “Water Cooler” and “Get Out Of The Room” imagines The Blue Nile’s sophisticated gleam meeting a hearty post-rock rumble.
There is a tendency within the running time of You Tell Me for the duo to maintain their cruising altitude for long stretches when they clearly have the abilities to hit the accelerator and soar. The languid pace that they lend to the majority of the songs here suits them just fine, but put up against the peppier numbers, you may long for a bit more variation. At the same time, You Tell Me concocts such a spell with their debut that the journey will still delight and intoxicate.
This relatively unknown band formed out of the Yardbirds‘ ashes and recorded an eponymous debut album. Spearheaded by guitarist Jimmy Page, the band was predicted to “go down like a lead zeppelin” by Keith Moon, drummer for The Who. The album was recorded in September and October 1968 at Olympic Studios, London, shortly after the band’s formation. It contains a mix of original material worked out in the first rehearsals, and remakes and rearrangements of contemporary blues and folk songs. The sessions took place before the group had secured a recording contract and were paid for directly, and took 36 hours and less than £2,000 to complete.
Released on the 12th January 1969, Led Zeppelin’s self-titled debut arrived out of the ashes of guitarist Jimmy Page’s former group, the Yardbirds. With singer Robert Plant, bassist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham, the record built upon the heavy blues sound created by Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Page’s one-time bandmate Jeff Beck by adding elements of American and British folk and Indian music into the mix. Along with Black Sabbath and the Who, as well as less popular but influential acts such as Blue Cheer, they would also help pave the way for heavy rock in the ’70s.
Now, 50 years later, Led Zeppelin I stands up to the test of time. From the opening chords of “Good Times Bad Times” to the closing notes of the blues saga “How Many More Times,” there isn’t a single dull moment on the whole album. Songs genres bounce from hard rock to deep blues to folky, three styles that the band would embrace throughout their career. Transitions like “Black Mountain Side” a steel-string acoustic guitar ballad, into “Communication Breakdown” a fast-paced rocker, immediately showcased this band’s extraordinary talent. For the recordings, Page played a psychedelically painted Fender Telecaster, a gift from friend Jeff Beck after Page recommended him to join the Yardbirds in 1965, replacing Eric Clapton.
But for all the originality found in the virtuoso musicianship and Page’s production, Led Zeppelin has a checkered history with regards to songwriting credits. Although Willie Dixon was listed as the writer of “You Shook Me” and “I Can’t Quit You Baby,” four of the seven other tracks have roots in songs composed by other artists.
Led Zeppelin was recorded with almost no overdubs in London’s Olympic Studios by musicians still looking for a shared language. “Nobody really knew each other,” said Plant, who had never been in a high-caliber studio before. “I’d go back to the playback room and listen. It had so much weight, so much power — it was devastating. I had a long way to go with my voice then, but the enthusiasm and sparking of working with Jimmy’s guitar … it was so raunchy.” That raunch was rendered overwhelming and spectral by Page, who placed mics all over the studio to get a vérité sound that might recall the raw, big-room ambience of old Chess and Sun records. Uncredited engineer GlynJohns added to the effect by putting Bonham’s drum kit on a riser to enhance his “phenomenal” sound. Much has been made of Bonham’s power (the beat on “Communication Breakdown” is nearly punk-speed), but Jones was just as impressed by his restraint: “John kept a really straight beat on slow numbers like ‘You Shook Me” he recalled.
“Good Times Bad Times”
As the opening track on Led Zeppelin’s first album and their debut single, it was the first music from them that many people heard. And yet, according to reports, the band rarely played “Good Times Bad Times” in concert. Bits of the song were occasionally included in their early days as part of a full performance of its b-side, “Communication Breakdown,” but it’s believed that the only time they played it in its entirety was their 2007 reunion concert, when it opened the show. Perhaps John Paul Jones explained why they never played the whole song until then when he spoke with Rolling Stone after the show. “That’s the hardest riff I ever wrote, the hardest to play,” he said. “But it was a good starter, because everybody had to focus.”
“Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”
Jimmy Page heard “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” on Joan Baez’s In Concert, Part 1 record. Baez didn’t know that the song was written by Anne Johannsen (later Bredon) — she’d learned it from another folksinger, Janet Smith — so she credited it, as was often the case with folk songs, as traditional, with Baez providing the arrangement. Zeppelin followed suit, with Page credited as the arranger. In the ’80s, Smith heard Led Zeppelin’s version and contacted Bredon about the lack of credit. Bredon worked out a deal with Zeppelin’s publishing company, Superhype, and, since the early ’90s, has received 50 percent of the songwriter’s royalties.
“You Shook Me”
As with “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” “You Shook Me” was another example of what Pete Seeger called the “folk process,” whereby music evolves by building upon existing works. In 1962, Muddy Waters took an instrumental recorded a year earlier by one of his Chicago blues contemporaries, Earl Hooker, added lyrics by Willie Dixon, which he sung in tandem with Hooker’s guitar, and released it as “You Shook Me.” Jones, Plant and Page took a solo on Hammond organ, harmonica and guitar respectively. Page put backwards echo on the track, which was then a novel production device.
Six years later, Waters‘ track was reinterpreted twice within a few months of each other. Jeff Beck recorded a blistering take for the album Truth, but Led Zeppelin’s version redefined the song even further. In addition to more-than doubling the original’s length (Muddy’s was under three minutes while Zeppelin’s lasted nearly six-and-a-half minutes), with Plant wailing away on the harmonica and Jones, who also played on Beck’s rendition, taking a keyboard solo. Plant also changed the lyrics to have the woman in question leaving the singer instead of being involved in an extramarital affair.
“Dazed and Confused”
“Dazed and Confused” With its slow, descending bass-line, the song lingers in the mysterious before punching its way into hard rock legend. Add in a guitar solo played with a violin bow, and you have yourself an instant classic.
Originally written by Jake Holmes, who didn’t receive credit until he sued the band in 2011, “Dazed and Confused” was first heard by Page after Holmes opened up for the Yardbirds in 1967. The Yardbirds had covered the song regularly in concert during 1968, and performed it for several radio and television sessions. But as with the other covers, it underwent a few changes by the time Led Zeppelin recorded it, including the famous solo where he played guitar with a violin bow. Although Page didn’t invent the technique — it was used by Eddie Phillips of the Creation on “Making Time” — he learned about it through David McCallum Sr., with whom Page was chatting during a session. The song was an important part of Led Zeppelin’s live show throughout their early career, and became a vehicle for group improvisation, eventually stretching in length to over 30 minutes. The improvisation would sometimes include parts of another song, including the group’s “The Crunge” and “Walter’s Walk” (released later on Houses Of The Holy and Coda, respectively), Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” and Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)”. It was briefly dropped from the live set in 1975 after Page injured a finger, but was re-instated for the remainder of the tour. The last full live performance during Led Zeppelin’s main career was at Earl’s Court, London later that year, after which the violin bow section of the song’s guitar solo was played as a standalone piece.
As Page recalled, “[O]ne of the violinists came to me one day and he said, ‘Have you ever considered playing a guitar with a bow?’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t think it’ll work.’ Because the strings are uniformed wheres a violin is arched. And he said ‘Well here’s my bow. Would you like to try?’ And I said ‘Absolutely.’ So I tried it and i could see there was massive potential. After that I went and bought my own bow.”
“Your Time Is Gonna Come”
Page pulled out another weapon from his bag on “Your Time Is Gonna Come,” the track that opens the second side, with a pedal steel guitar entering the mix during the first chorus. As with “Good Times Bad Times,” the song didn’t feature into their live set, with its only known performance coming at a 1971 show in Tokyo during the “Whole Lotta Love” medley. However, Page brought it out during his 1999-2000 tour with the Black Crowes, as heard on their Live at the Greek: Excess All Areas live album.
“Black Mountain Side”
The instrumental “Black Mountain Side” is another instance on the record where the folk process calls into question the authorship of the work. Bert Jansch, a fixture on the British folk scene, recorded his own version of the traditional Irish folk song “Down by Blackwaterside” in 1966. Page adapted Jansch’s arrangement, added a tabla for percussion, gave it a new name and claimed it as an original.
By the time of Led Zeppelin’s release, Jansch had already formed Pentangle and released a pair of albums. A year later, Basket of Light reached No. 5 on the British album chart. They split in 1973, with Jansch eventually returning to his solo career, although several reunions followed until his death in 2011.
As Colin Harper noted in Dazzling Stranger: Bert Jansch and the British Folk and Blues Revival, Jansch never sued Page because he was never in a position to afford the legal costs involved. But it remained a sore point with him throughout his life, particularly when his path crossed with Page’s.
“The thing I’ve noticed about Jimmy whenever we meet is that he can’t look me in the eye,” Jansch said in 2007, later adding, “Well, he ripped me off, didn’t he? Or let’s just say he learned from me. I wouldn’t want to sound impolite.”
“Communication Breakdown”
While much has been made about Led Zeppelin’s influence on the development of ’70s hard rock and metal, and punk’s overall disdain for those styles, “Communication Breakdown” turned out to be influential on Johnny Ramone. As Mickey Leigh of the Rattlers wrote in I Slept with Joey Ramone: A Family Memoir, he performed the riff note-for-note for the future Ramones guitarist, and he dug how Page created the riff’s power using only downstrokes.
“Most people don’t realize that,” Leigh recalled Ramone as saying. “That’s how rock & roll should be played. All of it! Everything should be a down stroke.” Drummer Marky Ramone confirmed the influence, saying that Johnny “loves Jimmy Page and he also likes ‘Communication Breakdown.’ Even though he’s not the lead guitar player, those are rhythm songs. That’s why he likes that stuff.”
“I Can’t Quit You Baby”
Another Willie Dixon composition, “I Can’t Quit You Baby” was made famous by Otis Rush in 1956. But for all of the inspired call-and-response interplay between Plant’s vocals and Page’s guitar, the take released on Led Zeppelin has never been a favorite of the guitarist.
“There are mistakes in it, but it doesn’t make any difference,” he told Guitar Player in 1977. “I’ll always leave the mistakes in. I can’t help it. The timing bits on the A and Bb parts [the power chords] are right, though it might sound wrong. The timing just sounds off. But there are some wrong notes. You’ve got to be reasonably honest about it.”
“How Many More Times”
While many of the tracks on Led Zeppelin have their antecedents in one specific song, the eight-and-a-half minute album-closing “How Many More Times” drew its influence from several sources. Zeppelin honed their virtuosity into compositions; even the eight-minute “How Many More Times” was designed for maximum impact. “There was very little free-form anything,” said Johns. “They were very hard-working. The Stones took nine months to make a record; these guys took nine days including mixing.”
“That has the kitchen sink on it, doesn’t it?” Page told Brad Tolinski. “It was made up of little pieces I developed when I was with the Yardbirds, as were other numbers such as ‘Dazed and Confused.’ It was played live in the studio with cues and nods.
As Aaron Krerowicz noted, the bass line that kicks it off has its roots in the Yardbirds‘ live cover of Howlin’ Wolf’s“Smokestack Lightning,” and its title and opening verse were rewritten from another Wolf track, “How Many More Years,” while other verses borrow from Albert King’s “The Hunter” and Jimmie Rodgers’ “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine.” The rhythm from another cut off Jeff Beck’s Truth, the Page-composed “Beck’s Bolero,” shows up around the three-minute mark.
Page brought back the bow for the solo. “I think I did some good things with the bow on that track,” he told Tolinski, “but I really got much better with it later on. For example, I think there is some really serious bow playing on the live album [The Song Remains the Same]. I think some of the melodic lines are pretty incredible. I remember being really surprised with it when I heard it played back. I thought, Boy, that really was an innovation that meant something.”
Led Zeppelin was produced by Page and engineered by Glyn Johns, both of whom had known each other since teenagers in the suburb of Epsom. According to Page, most of the album was recorded live, Two other songs from the Olympic sessions, “Baby Come On Home” and “Sugar Mama”, were left off the album. They were released on the 2015 reissue of the retrospective album Coda.
Fontaines D.C. are a punk band from the “back-arse of nowhere” in Dublin – and their debut album Dogrel, wears those hometown influences proudly on its sleeve. To mark its imminent release, drummer Tom Coll gives us a guide to the city’s record stores, venues, artists and best Sunday night residencies. DUBLIN is a city steeped in a rich musical history – from the beginnings of The Dubliners in O’Donoghue’s on Baggot Street to the mid-noughties singer-songwriter scene that ambled the likes of Glen Hansard and Damien Dempsey out the front door of Whelan’s on Wexford Street.
The last couple of years has seen the city explore more alternative independent movements – whether it be the likes of Girl Band’s inspirational noise rock debut Holding Hands With Jamie, Villagers’ own brand of alternative folk, The city’s counterculture movement is certainly something to be very proud of right now.
Over the past five years there has been a real resurgence in more guitar driven music in Dublin and that’s been really exciting to have seen it grow into what it is now. I remember when we were starting out playing small shows in Dublin, we found it really hard to find bands to play with and it’s so encouraging to see a really healthy scene these days. Checkout the likes of Just Mustard, Melts, and The Murder Capital have all been relatively recent and important additions to a really healthy scene. In that sense, Dublin is definitely thriving.
Following the massive buzz that grew up around their series of 2018 singles including recent hit ‘Too Real’ and their support slots with Shame at larger venues across the UK the Irish four-piece are on a promise for their debut album, expected at some point early this year and produced by the great Dan Carey. Judging by new tracks debuted at a recent secret show at Camden’s Good Mixer we can look forward to something that could potentially bridge the gap between the poetic sensitivity of the Smiths and the intense, purposeful awkwardness of The Fall. They really are that good – and we’re hoping for a debut that reflects their brilliance. Fontaines D.C are set to be one of the breakout bands of 2019
The Debut album from the much loved Fontaines D.C. They don’t pretend to be from anywhere but Dublin, and that charges their colloquial rock’n’roll garage music with an authenticity that makes them stand apart. The album is sharp, gritty and intense. The band are locked in and the vocals mixed high with Grian Chatten’s irish accent prominent.
Standouts include Hurricane Laughter which is an insistent and repetitive song built on a Mark E Smith style spoken vocal and a band who are locked into a rock n roll groove. The hook of “And there is no connection available” lingers long in your mind after the song has left the building.
Boys in the Better Land is another golden nugget that has the sound of The Modern Lovers if they’d grown up in Dublin whilst first single on Partisan Too Real is a masterclass in repetition. It employs hypnotic, kraut-rock infused cyclical riffs, whilst channeling Dublin into their concise and often-unassumingly poetic lyrics with a distinctive gritty Irish drawl.
Seriously you won’t find a better debut album this year. It oozes class and is the sound of 2019.
‘Too Real’ is taken from the latest Fontaines D.C. release, out now on digital and on 7″ on 21st December 2018 on Partisan Records.
In their early years, Atlanta trio The Coathangers were very much of the classic punk ethos—the band was a live entity, and the records were a document of the charisma and chaos projected from stage. But after 12 years of relentlessly touring on a steady flow of EPs and LPs, The Coathangers finally took a moment to recalibrate before diving into the creation of their sixth studio album The Devil You Know. The band regrouped to make an album that captures all the vitality of their early years while honing their individual strengths into new communal achievements. It’s a record that takes their established takes on vitriolic punk, playful house-party anthems, and heartworn ballads and melds them into a new sound that retains all their former live show glories while revealing a new level of songwriting and nuance. “The writing process was done with an open heart,” says guitarist/vocalist Julia Kugel. “Everything that came before had to go away. And we started there, at ground zero.” With each album, you could hear the individual songwriters honing their style. But with The Devil You Know, it feels like we’re hearing the first Coathangers record written as a true unit.
Part 1 was released out of the blue at the back end of September 2018. It was known that Aurora Asknes had been writing songs and poems since she finished touring her debut album All my Demons Greeting Me As A Friend in 2016 (she reputedly has more than 1000 of them) and envisages “many albums” to come, but she took just about everyone by surprise with the under-publicised release of this eight-track album.
Infections of a Different Kind – Part 1 marked something of a sea change for the Norwegian, who seems to have been around for many years but is still only 22. Like many with her talent, she began writing young, in her case at the age of nine, and several of the tracks on the debut album were written before she reached the age of 12, though influenced by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.
Queendom is about celebrating all the differences in us. It’s about celebrating the women and the children and animals and the men also. The quiet ones and the introverts, where they can sing and be seen. It’s about the shy people and the lonely people and I hope it can be a place where we can come and be lonely together and then not be lonely anymore. Queendom is a place for all of us.
Once again the New Year promises great things from listings of new albums to be released, already announced in late 2018, and top of that tree is the third album from Desperate Journalist, In Search of the Miraculous. Arguably, they already found it on 2017’s Grow Up but on the other hand, if that was near perfection then maybe they needed to find the “miraculous” to improve on it. The first single ‘Cedars’ showcases Rob Hardy and Jo Bevan’s ability to create a pop song that improves with every listen, slowly creeping under the skin, new elements appear and surprise until it’s so deep in your soul that you can never escape and you become a full blown evangelist.
‘Cedars’ is taken from the LP ‘In Search of the Miraculous’, out on 22nd February 2019 on Fierce Panda Records
The Spielberg’s have been noted as The Guardian’s “Ones To Watch” for 2019, The band have the perfect introduction to this Norwegian trio with clattering rhythms and razor-sharp riffs combining for a devastating listen. With Big, heart-on-sleeve guitar-rock with a go-for-broke anthemic intensity…the combination of their singles, plus their debut EP, Distant Star, led to plaudits from rock press and beyond. Check out the earlier track “We Are All Going To Die” will have you either tearing up, punching the sky, or both.” This is for fans of fuzzy, propulsive cathartic jams, are about to have a new favourite band.”
“Pummelling yet melodic guitars batter you round the heart with nary a pause for breath… Full of huge, lung-busting, shouting-into-the-wind vocals and relentless drums, guitars and everything else, cheerily-titled new single ‘We Are All Going To Die’ shows little concern for restraint.” – DIY
“We Are All Going To Die” is encased in a relentless soundscape of drums and guitars, owing its all-encompassing musicianship to shoegaze that is underpinned by a distinctly emo heart.” – The Line of Best Fit
“A roller coaster ride of rollicking riffs, descending and ascending with a luminous fury and friskiness, before delivering us back home again safe and sound, but breathless.” – The 405
“Guitars drill down at all angles, while the pummelling percussion sounds like a cement mixer trying to chew up a steel beam.” – CLASH
“It offers the kind of swaggering, punch-drunk escapism we used to spend all our time wishing for in our teenage years, while making it feel utterly achievable even now we’re much older and far more cynical.” – Gold Flake Paint “One of the most exciting bands for 2019. – The i Paper
The Wave Pictures are a band who are sometimes a victim of their own productivity. Even when trying to keep up with their album releases, the odd one is bound to slip through the gaps. If we’re honest, in our case that was true of the excellent Look Inside Your Heart, released last year on Moshi Moshi Records. Listening back to it recently, what fools we were, what silly foolish fools to not have taken this record to our hearts and embraced it with the tender loving it so richly deserves.
This week, ahead of a series of UK dates later this month, the band have shared a new video to the album’s understated highlight, the track “Shelly”. The track is a gentle shuffle of a track, frontman David Tattersall describes as, “a love song in the laid back style of late 70s Grateful Dead only with even better lyrics” – and we wouldn’t argue with that. It’s a track that is musically a lot more complex than a cursory listen would suggest; the complex fluttering drums, the propulsive hum of soothing bass, they even, quite rarely for The Wave Pictures, throw in some delightfully lush harmonies. The addition of backing-vocals from Holly Holden, adding an almost French-pop feel to the blissed-out outro. Don’t make the same mistake we did, don’t ever let a record by The Wave Pictures pass you by, they’re far too special for that.
Band Members
Dave Tattersall
Franic Rozycki,
Jonny Helm
Shelly is taken from The Wave Pictures’ new album ‘Look Inside Your Heart’ – the second album they released in 2018 on Moshi Moshi Records:
Sharon Van Etten’s full length album, Are We There, was released in 2014, but she’s been anything but idle in the time since. She tried her hand at acting with a role on The OA, and appeared at The Bang Bang Bar on an episode of Twin Peaks: The Return (as well as playing David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption). That’s not the only musical project she’s been involved with, either; she lent vocals to music from Lee Ranaldo, Land of Talk, Hercules & LoveAffair, Michael Cera, and Lost Horizons. She also scored Strange Weather, appeared on the soundtrack for The Man in High Castle, and re-released her 2009 debut, Because I Was in Love. We may be able to expect even more new music from Sharon who Also became a mother .In an interview with The Creative Independent that was published last November, she said she was heading back to the studio “next week.” The interview also talks about how motherhood is inspiring her writing now,
The motivation behind the re-release was related to music people heard on The OA, her getting her masters back, and just perfect timing in general: “During this off time, where I probably won’t have a record out for another year, why not share something that will feel new to people? Why not remind people where I came from a little bit, before I scare them with my next record?” We promise we won’t be scared!
“Seventeen” off Sharon Van Etten’s new album “Remind Me Tomorrow” out Jan 18th on Jagjaguwar Records
