Lael Neale directs and stars in the official video for “Acquainted With Night,” the title track from her new album, which is available worldwide from Sub Pop Records. Neale says: “‘Acquainted With Night’ is another homemade video that explores my complex relationship with technology. I am drawn to archaic machines, but that doesn’t mean I want to slip backwards into some idealized past. I’m more interested in stepping out of time entirely.”
Acquainted With Night features ten tracks, and includes the previously released standouts “Blue Vein,” “Every Star Shivers in the Dark,” “For No One For Now,” and the aforementioned title track. The album was composed and arranged by Neale, produced and mixed by Guy Blakeslee, and mastered by Chris Coady. Lael’s new album Acquainted With Night is a testament to this poetic devotion. Stripped of any extraneous word or sound, the songs are lit by Lael’s crystalline voice which lays on a lush bed of Omnichord. The collection touches on themes that have been thread into her work for years: isolation, mortality, yearning, and reaching ever toward the transcendent experience.
Lael grew up on a farm in rural Virginia, but for nearly 10 years called Los Angeles home. Those years were spent developing her song writing and performing in venues across the city, but the right way to record the songs proved more elusive. She says, “Every time I reached the end of recording, I felt the songs had been stripped of their vitality in the process of layering drums, bass, guitar, violin, and organ over them. They felt weighed down.”
Acquainted With Night has seen international praise from the likes of MOJO, who in its 4-star review, raved, “Who knew the world was lacking a country-folk version of Broadcast until now?” France’s Télérama said, “Stripped of frills, young Lael Neale sings the starry nights of her native Virginia. With grace and grit. And the soul of an old bluesman. Lael Neale confirms her talent with an intense second album.” Meanwhile Uncut in its feature on Acquainted With Night, offered this, “A thing of shimmering beauty, led by Neale’s otherworldly voice with its shades of Vashti Bunyan and Julia Holter.”
Neale and producer Blakeslee, recently performed songs for Flood’s Magazine’s “Neighborhood Sessions,” who says, “The pair took turns filming each other perform their new tracks—appropriately shot with grainy, camcorder-esque quality—on a farm in the area where Neale grew up. The back-to-back solo guitar performances of Neale’s “Blue Vein” and Blakeslee’s album opener “Sometimes” prove just how much musical chemistry the two share together. In a moment of illumination the solution presented itself: do the simple thing. In early 2019, in the midst of major transition, she acquired a new instrument, the omnichord, and began recording a deluge of songs. Guy Blakeslee, who had been an advocate for years, set up a cassette recorder in her bedroom and provided empathic guidance, subtle yet affecting accompaniment and engineering prowess. Limited to only 4-tracks and first takes, Lael had to surrender some of her perfectionism to deliver the songs in their essence.
Acquainted with Night is now available through Sub Pop Records. In the U.K., and in Europe will receive the album on white vinyl (while supplies last).
“Why We’re Excited: A little serendipity never hurt anyone, and it seems to be the very thing songwriter Lael Neale needed. In this case, that stroke of fortune was a friend loaning Neale an omnichord. That loan led the recent Sub Pop signee to tap into a wellspring of inspiration that directly led to her upcoming album, Acquainted with Night. With three singles, including the gorgeous “Blue Vein”, to judge from, we can only hope that Neale’s friend let her keep that omnichord. They’re a perfect match.”
“The grandeur of the organ tones, joined by a tinny drum machine, give it a similar feel to Beach House’s more recent albums.” [“Every Star Shivers in the Dark”] – Brooklyn Vegan
“Against a beat and organ based tones, Neale belts the vocals out like she’s singing to anyone who will listen. Her voice echoes like a ringing bell or alarm, the simplicity of the song’s structure works with her voice as the catalyst.” [“Every Star Shivers in the Dark”] – Closed Captioned
“…Lael taps into something universal, city or country, that we all long for, connection…and if you find the time to listen to Lael’s music, you’ll find plenty to love as well.”[ “Every Star Shivers in the Dark”/“Five Things We Liked This Week”] – For the Rabbits
“An absorbing two-chord hymnal” [“Every Star Shivers in the Dark”] – Joyzine
“‘Every Star Shivers in the Dark’ is far more reflective in its delivery, there is an undeniably optimistic undertone and a dreaminess liberally sprinkled throughout. It brings a crescendo of twinkling key changes at the end of the track which linger long in the mind like the last rays of sunshine on the perfect Summer day.” – Still Listening
While Lael returned to her family farm in April 2020, Los Angeles is a player on this album, and “Every Star Shivers in the Dark” is an ode to the sprawling city, the outskirts of Eden. One can envision her walking from Dodgers Stadium to downtown, observing strangers and her own strangeness but determined to find communion with others. “Blue Vein” is her personal anthem, a Paul Revere piece that gallops through the town as a strident declamation. It is an amalgam of thoughts, concerns, and lessons as she nearly speaks the words, unmasked by flourishes, ensuring the meaning cuts through.
Normally a morning person, Lael recorded most of these songs in the darkening of the early evening, and so became Acquainted With Night.
“Neale impressed us with ‘Every Star Shivers In The Dark,’…she’s back with another new track, the entrancing “For No One For Now.’ Like Neale’s prior single, this one is minimal and reflective while maintaining a strong backbeat. But rather than build to a cathartic breakthrough, ‘For No One For Now’ lingers in the unresolved tension, less a song than an atmosphere to exist inside.” – Stereogum
“‘For No One For Now’ is deceptively simple and strangely haunting and hypnotic.” [#1/ “Song of the Week”] – Under the Radar<
The story of the Pink Fairies is like a trip down a rabbit hole into a psychedelicized wonderland that includes characters like “Lemmy” Kilmister and Hawkwind, Mick FarrenandThe Deviants, Twink, Larry Wallis, Steve “Peregrin” Took, Sandy Sanderson, the MC5, Eno and a host of other tripped-out pranksters. Paul Rudolph, who was there for all of it as a member of both The Deviants and Pink Fairies. Most of the musicians involved were members of a drinking club called the Pink Fairies Motorcycle Cluband All-Star Rock and Roll Band, taken from a story written by Jamie Mandelkau . While the former Deviants’ sidemen were still stranded in America after the tour, Twink, Farren and former Tyrannosaurus Rex percussionist Steve Peregrin Took had used the Pink Fairies name for various activities including one shambolic gig in Manchester (with Farren on vocals, Took on guitar, Twink on drums and his girlfriend Sally “Silver Darling” Melzer on keyboards.
There were many gigs from around that time when Rudolph’s band, Pink Fairies, would exchange headlining slots with Hawkwind, where both bands would combine at some point toward the end of the show to become: Pinkwind. As usual, everyone was very high. Paul remembered: “Preceding going on, everybody was partying in the dressing room; lots of psychedelics. They had these huge World War II strobes. Depending on the speed of the strobes, it can almost look like an old movie. All the lights in the place go out. Two big strobes are firing off: POW, POW, POW! And as it gets closer to the start of the set the lighting guys increase the speed of the strobes and then add a little bit of synthesizer drone into the P.A.
Often these shows could end up with three or more drummers onstage to only end with cops shutting the power off and physically removed them from their kits. Hawkwind were, of course, major league cosmic troglodytes, theirs was a sound that Lemmy Kilmister once described as “a black nightmare”: atonal jams about bleeding orifices, cosmic orgasms, and coma-induced trips through endless galactic nightmares, something akin to an inverted model of Funkadelic’s Mothership mythos with less funk in the oxygen supply. Pink Fairies were a more straightforward “rock.” Their first single, “Do It!”, has for a long time been known as punk before punk. Frequently naked, ferociously stoned, and always up for a good time, there was a brief window where these reprobates almost upended the financial arrangements of the music industry with public why-don’t-we-do-it-in-the-road warfare on the eardrums of squares.
“Do It!” had already been released as a single but was also the first track on 1971’s Never Never Land. The lyrics (by Twink) and music (by Rudolph) were more than just a mission statement for Pink Fairies, they were like a primitive cave painting illuminating the way for any band trying to make an anti-art punk rock tune for the next 50 years. And, yes, it went on to become a semi-hit for The Rollins Band.
“I’m a big fan of continuous performance,” Rudolph said recently, almost 50 years later, from his home in Victoria B.C. He still plays and is currently working on a new Pink Fairies album with original Motorhead drummer Lucas Fox and Hawkwind bassist Alan Davey. Their previous album, “Resident Reptiles”, came out in 2018.
Rudolph was doing gigs with Pink Fairies and Hawkwind somewhere between 1969 and 1976. “It was always like, ‘Well, who’s the headliner here?’ Well, nobody. So when we said: ‘Who’s going to go in first?’ We just drew straws. Then it rotated every other gig. We took turns. Then, of course, the idea was that at the end of the last band’s set everyone got on stage and started screaming and yelling and jumping.”
Centred around the Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill area of London, the sonic ooze of anarchic Pink Fairies feedback spilled out of theaters like The Blob to flow under freeways along Portobello Road and out to perform at free festivals like Phun City (24th July to 26th July 1970) which was a rock festival held at Ecclesden Common near Worthing. Those who did appear included MC5, The Pretty Things, Kevin Ayers, Steve Peregrin Took’s band Shagrat, Edgar Broughton Band, Mungo Jerry, Mighty Baby and Pink Fairies “who were taking all their clothes off as they played”. The Beat generation poet William Burroughs also appeared, excluding the one-day free concerts in London’s Hyde Park, Phun City became the first large-scale free festival in the UK along with the Glastonbury Fayre, then onto flatbed trucks outside the gates of ticketed festivals like Isle Of Wight and Bath. Pink Fairies and Hawkwind became a nebulous constellation of musical instigators. Paul Rudolph was the only one to “officially” record studio albums with both groups. Of course, this is all one part of a major geometric diagram that could be labelled “Stoned In The 1970’s.” Their sets climaxed with the lengthy “Uncle Harry’s Last Freakout”, essentially an amalgam of old Deviants riffs that included extended guitar and double drum solos.
Rudolph eventually replaced Lemmy in Hawkwind after leaving Pink Fairies, where he in turn was replaced by Larry Wallis, only for Lemmy to go on and form Motorhead with a post-FairiesLarry Wallis on guitar.
Pink Fairies” means different things depending on the time and place, a group that came out through a combination of many of the same members going into different bands and vice versa. But it is pretty much accepted that the peak line-up was that early 1970s’ version which orbited around Paul Rudolph, Larry Wallis, Twink, the continuous performances of drummer Russel Hunter and bassist Duncan Sandy Sanderson and, on the periphery, roadie David “Boss” Goodman and spirit animal Mick Farren.
Of course, without Mick Farren, none of this would have happened. Around 1966, Farren started a band called The Social Deviants while also contributing to the legendary anarchist newspaper International Times. Farren’s career as a writer, his involvement with The White Panthers as an agitprop instigator, and his contributions to IT, OZ, and other underground papers/comics .
For now, it’s enough to say that by 1967, the band had simplified their name to The Deviants and released an album known as Ptoof! This album and its followup in 1968, Disposable, were part of a theme for Farren which involved deconstructions of Bo Diddley riffs, Sixties R&B, doses of Blue Cheer fuzz, psychedelicized folk with antisocial lyrics, and raga beats overlaid with whispers and grunts all designed to make perfect sense to the deeply stoned: a beautiful ephemera of junk rock filtered through a malcontent brain. “Garbage can make you feel so good!” Farren proclaimed at one point on Ptoof! and the sounds on these albums were enough to make you believe it.
“My first night in London,” Paul Rudolph said, “ David “Boss” Goodman and my friend Jamie Mandelkau met me at the airport. Boss remarked that I looked like Black George, an old English pirate. I had really long hair and it just naturally fell into ringlets. Then (the name) got further cemented because I had corduroy bell bottoms and all the gear of the day, but decided I’d get something a little more durable. A couple of blocks up the road from the Marquis there was a place called Lewis Leathers that sold motorcycle gear. I went and bought black leather pants and boots and a jacket.”
Jamie Mandelkau was living with The Deviants and sleeping with Mick Farren’s wife. He said, ‘These guys are looking for a guitar player. But if you don’t like this band there’s lots of other bands.’ So, when I arrived and started to get the lay of the land, I realized that The Deviants had two bass players. I thought, ‘No, this is not going to work.’ But I started trying to put in my own two bits.” Rudolph’s first album with the band was Deviants 3 which, like the others, was very weird, but now with more actual bad ass rock guitar solos due to Rudolph’s more musical/less experimental but still totally fuzzed-out senses on songs like “Rumbling B(l)ack Transit Blues.”
Mick Farren might not have been totally stoked about the new direction, even supposedly making the comment: “(Rudolph) really had this idea to be Jimmy Page.” Sound wise, Rudolph probably has more in common with Pete Townshend. But whether Farren really believed that or not, the Page comparison is worth noting for the mutual affinity with Les Pauls and for Rudolph’s resemblance to the pirate Black George.
Mick Farren’s vocals and musical ideas might’ve been moved to the back burner, but everyone got along well enough with Mick filling his role as ringleader, organizer of free shows, and causer of general mayhem: “The Deviants were the ones who started the Portobello Road free outside concerts,” Rudolph said. “Mick Farren decided that it’d be a great idea. We got a generator and there was a huge motorway flyover right through Notting Hill Gate, there’s all these empty arches open to the elements. We got a generator and went down there on a Saturday. About halfway through the set police showed up, and there were thousands of people by that time. The head cop said, ‘Stop, stop, stop.’ He’s standing on stage and the mic’s on and he says to Mick Farren. ‘What are you doing?’’ Mick says, ‘We’re putting on a free concert!’ and (the cop) says, ‘Do you have permission to do this?’ And Mick says, ‘We need permission? This is vacant land!’ Over the course of a couple of months, (the shows) became so popular that the local council put in a powerpoint, so people could actually plug in and not use a generator.”
The Deviants eventually got involved with the enigmatic drummer John Alder who went by the name Twink he was known as a charismatic wild man and a good enough drummer to play on several of the tracks from The Pretty Things classic album “SF Sorrow”.
But it is the 1970 LP “Think Pink” where he made his mark. The album featured Mick Farren, Boss Goodman, and some ripping guitar from Paul Rudolph on the tracks “Ten Thousand Words In a Cardboard Box” and “The Sparrow Is A Sign” The latter jam was written by Steve “Peregrin” Took, who also appeared on the album and, at the time, was still partners with Marc Bolan in Tyrannosaurus Rex. “Think Pink” is the rare studio recording that somehow captured both the menace and playfulness of a genuine psychedelic experience. This group of people playing together at that point would become a catalyst for what occurred when The Deviants later returned from a disastrous tour of North America. The Deviants had just begun their American odyssey when certain things started to crack. One of them being Mick Farren’s mind. “It was a broken tour. He had a psychotic break when we were in Vancouver and Jamie, who was with us, arranged to get him back home. The band quickly ran out of money, ended up heading south to San Francisco, and crashed at a commune in Haight Ashbury.
Despite their close proximity in the psychedelic scene, reports that Pink Fairies later adopted the idea for two drummers from seeing the Grateful Dead during this time are not accurate. “It came about because Russ and Twink (both) played drums, and we wanted to start this band. As it turned out the two of them were pretty powerful together.”
Rudolph and the Fairies also found themselves at the Altamont Festival. “Boss was a good friend of Sam Cutler, the Rolling Stones tour manager. We got picked up by the green Family Dog school bus, got driven out, and were parked about twenty feet behind the stage for the whole thing. It was interesting to see it winding up because by mid-afternoon the younger members of the Hells Angels were really trying to show their stripes. There were a couple of them behind the stage: one guy with like six joints in one hand and a half a gallon of wine in the other. They were just going for it. I thought, ‘There’s trouble a-brewin here.’ For me, watching all that stuff go down was almost like watching a dream crumble.”
Meanwhile in England, Mick Farren was recording his solo album Mona – The Carnivorous Circus while Rudolph’s old friend, Jamie Mandelkau, was hanging out with Twink. “Eventually somebody from the record company got us plane tickets to Montreal. We were playing gigs in Montreal to get enough money to get back to the U.K. My friend Jamie had gone back and had been going out for some drinks with Twink. Jamie suggested to him: ‘When those guys get back, why don’t we just start up another band and see what happens?’ So that was the plan. We’d do some rehearsing, and if it sounded good, we’d go with it. Everybody got along at that time, everybody got along well with Twink, so it just kind of took off.”
When they returned from America in 1970, the band known as The Deviants transformed into Pink Fairies. With Twink now installed as sometime lyricist/singer and second drummer, they emerged fully formed and covered in glowing lysergic afterbirth at The Roundhouse in April 1970. Polydor Records commissioned the group to record a single, “The Snake” / “Do It”, and were happy enough with the results to offer the group an album contract. The debut album “Never Never Land” was released in 1971. It featured live favourites “Uncle Harry’s Last Freakout” and “Do It” but curiously omitted “The Snake”. Their first single was “The Snake” b/w “Do It”.
Though he had first landed in England a few years before, the sound of these two songs heralded the true arrival for Rudolph with his Vox Fuzz Tone distortion cannon laying waste to entire coastlines of tabla-chanting acoustic-strumming hippie mindscapes. One famous free gig from around that time was the Phun City fest. “It was incredible,” recalls Rudolph. “It was very spontaneous. Free wouldn’t play because they didn’t get paid. It’s the first time I saw the MC5 and they were absolutely mind-blowing, and really nice guys. I thought, ‘Okay now that is American rock and roll with a bit of an edge!’ That was a great gig. I mean, we were extremely… right out there. And I remember we’re playing away and the drum solo started off with a thunderous roar, then petered down to one drummer. I was banging on the cowbell, next thing I know the two drummers are on the front of the stage with their clothes off. And that started a whole trend.”
In addition to being the first UK gig for MC5 and a chance to witness these rock drummers in their natural state, Phun City was notable as one of the first appearances of Shagrat, which featured Steve Took and a future Pink Fairies guitarist Larry Wallis.
Never Never Land was not without hippy dippy interludes like “War Girl” and the title track, no doubt the result of everyone being completely high. But by the end of the album, it’s back to the cosmic rock boogie fuzz of “Teenage Rebel” and the steamrolling “Uncle Harry’s Last Freak-Out” which was one of the most durable freakout pieces of sonic ever made by any band.
Though Pink Fairies did not make it into Nicolas Roeg’s 1972 documentary about Glastonbury Fayre, there are recordings of “Do It!” and “Uncle Harry’s…” on A Musical Anthology For Glastonbury Fayre and a more recent comp: Live Fuzz 1970-1971 that give a good idea of the forces these guys were meddling with. After the whole thing crash lands, someone in the band appeals to the crowd to: “Keep it together!” as if their collective mind has just been melted and they will now have to figure out a way to carry on. In July 1971 Twink left to travel to Morocco. The band continued as a three-piece occasionally augmented by former The Move bassist Trevor Burton on guitar. They released their second album “What a Bunch of Sweeties” in 1972, which featured some contributions from Burton.
One of the first actual Pinkwind gigs was at the Bath Festival: “We went to the gig with a generator and our roadie Boss was a good friend of Pete (Watts), who was Pink Floyd’s road manager. We were on a hill overlooking the festival site and Boss went to have a beer with Pete and Pete said, ‘As soon as I finish unloading Floyd’s gear, I’ll drive the flatbed truck up to the top of the hill where you guys are and you can have it as a stage.’ So, you know, both bands on the flatbed truck playing with a garbage can on the ground at each end of the truck where people threw in donations. We’d get everything from dope to money to food.”
Despite these run-ins with the man, Pink Fairies socio-political connections had mostly to do with just playing benefits. Besides, they never lost touch with a comedy streak that originated during the Social Deviants days. In fact, it is a spoken word prologue based on a comic strip by Texas artist Gilbert Shelton (creator of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers) that opens Pink Fairies second album: “What a Bunch Of Sweeties”. It features an intergalactic promoter offering the band 15,000 for a gig on Ur-anus. “I instigated some of it and went along with it,” Rudolph said of the stoner comedy aspects of The Deviants/Fairies before adding in true no horse shit fashion: “It was something to do.”
The radio show ridiculousness became much more pronounced later, during Rudolph’s time working on Hawkwind singer Robert Calvert’s quasi-historical solo concept album from 1974: Captain Lockheed and The Starfighters. This was also a “what if” type of event that featured most of Hawkwind, including Lemmy on bass, and Rudolph on guitar, plus Brian Eno and Arthur Brown.
“Bob Calvert was much more theatrical,” says Rudolph. “And he was also friends with some of the crew from the Bonzo Dog Band who were very theatrical on stage. That’s where he got a bit of his stuff from. (But) a lot of that was his concept. So everybody just sort of played along.”
“What A Bunch Of Sweeties” provided the most open landscape yet for Rudolph to expand his rolling sustain over green fields scattered with weed plants and monolithic monuments. “Marilyn” includes that ultimate rarity: a non-boring mid-album drum solo. But it’s on a very loose cover of The Ventures “Walk Don’t Run” where the cosmic swell rolls in, with the Fairies alternately riding inside a tube passing a joint back and forth and running for their lives in a futile attempt at escaping the canyon of a tidal wave.
“I don’t want to sound like a hypocrite,” Rudolph said “but my main concern was the heavy drugs. Once the heroin thing started, it was such a down vibe. What really struck me was that a lot of the Pink Fairies fans were younger, and it was becoming pretty obvious that there was heroin use going on. I thought, ‘If this continues, it’s going to become known that this is what’s going on and some of the younger crowd are going to think this is cool.’ And it ain’t cool. It was just bumming me out. I was feeling responsible.”
In 1972 former Shagrat/UFO/Entire Sioux Nation guitarist Larry Wallis became the new guitarist/singer for Pink Fairies as Rudolph began working with Brian Eno on his first post Roxy Music solo album Here Come The Warm Jets. The Eno albums are also their own whole story, but one thing Rudolph mentioned could be of interest to guitar geeks worldwide. It has to do with the question of who really played on the reality shattering solo of “Baby’s On Fire”, a solo that has always been credited only to Robert Fripp: “I haven’t listened to it for a while, but I think it was both of us. What used to happen was Eno was basically a facilitator. So, if it was a session that both me and Robert Fripp were on, sometimes he’d say, ‘Okay, you play a solo.’ And then he’d say to Robert, ‘You play a solo. See if you can kind of get the (same) sort of genre, but do it an octave up.’ Then when he was mixing it, he would just sit at the mixer pressing the channel cut buttons. Cause when you listen to it, there’s no way anybody could ever jump octaves like that. So that was a lot of Eno’s ideas.”
Mick Wayne was Rudolph’s replacement, having recorded with Sanderson, Hunter and Steve Peregrin Took on sessions for Took at Olympic Studios and later on loose sessions (along with sundry other underground musicians) in Took’s flat in the basement of manager Tony Secunda’s office, the fruits of which were released by Cleopatra Records in 1995. Feeling that Took’s exceptionally heavy drug consumption would not make him a going concern, the remaining three instead formed a new version of The Pink Fairies (much to Took’s subsequent chagrin), releasing the single “Well, Well, Well” / “Hold On”, as well as doing a radio session for Radio One.
However Sanderson and Hunter became unhappy with the musical direction Wayne was taking the band. They convinced Larry Wallis, who had played with Steve Took’s Shagrat and later UFO, to join the group as a second guitarist. Shortly after, they sacked Wayne, passing songwriting and singing duties onto Wallis. This new three piece then recorded the 1973 album Kings of Oblivion. Out of contract with Polydor, the band continued touring to a decreasing audience until finally calling it a day. Wallis went on become the in-house record producer for Stiff Records. Sanderson joined The Lightning Raiders. Hunter left the music business.
Larry Wallis was thrown in the deep end. Apparently not realizing he was joining a Rudolph-less version of The Fairies he was, at first, bummed out. But once the band kicked out temporary replacement Mick Wayne, Wallis was handed the reins and told to write some tunes. Wallis claims to have never sung live or written music before the Pink Fairies classic “Kings Of Oblivion”. The album is a combination of naive good times and dirty rock ‘n’ roll kept afloat by Wallis’ Strat with certain similarities to Love It To Death-era Alice Cooper. “When’s The Fun Begin” was co-written with Mick Farren, and Sandy Sanderson co-wrote “City Kids” which, after Wallis joined Motorhead, showed up on that band’s first album and continued as a Motorhead regular live jam even after Wallis had left the band, even turning up as the finale of the What’s Wordsworth? live album.
During 1973-1976, Paul Rudolph alternated between recording sessions with Robert Calvert and Brian Eno, but played two more classic gigs with Pink Fairies: one opening for Hawkwind at The Roundhouse in February 1975 that included the line-up of Rudolph, Wallis, Sanderson and Hunter and again in July 1975 with the same line up, plus Twink. Rudolph confirmed “Yeah. Those were the only times” that he and Wallis played live, though they both worked together in the studio for Mick Farren’s fantastic 1977 EP, “Screwed Up”. (Farren’s 1978 “Vampires Stole My Lunch Money” is also a terrific combo of jams that mix MC5, Velvet Underground, and Dr. Feelgood, including several tracks with Wilko Johnson.)
Not too long after, Lemmy was fired from Hawkwind for total bullshit reasons and Rudolph was asked to step in as replacement. Rudolph says: “I was still doing the recording sessions for Eno, trying to get some impetus together to get another band going but basically hanging out with my old beatnik friend who had a house in West London. And we were just trying to keep the wolf from the door. He was a Ferrari restorer and I was helping him. One afternoon there was a phone message from (Hawkwind manager) Doug Smith saying, ‘Can you fly out tomorrow? Lemmy’s been busted.’ I said, ‘Sure. I already know all the numbers.’
Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music had desert-dry production and was a change from the Neanderthal hypnotized at the black monolith sounds of earlier Hawkwind records. The idea that Rudolph was taking the band in a more ”funky” direction seem unfounded. Regardless, it’s one of the last truly good Hawkwind albums, the other last good one being Quark, Strangeness, and Charm on which Dave Brock replaced all of Paul Rudolph’s guitar parts after recording the entire album.
In 1987 Jake Riviera, head of Demon Records, offered a recording contract for a reformed Pink Fairies. Of the five group members, Paul Rudolph was not involved so the second guitarist position was taken up by Andy Colquhoun, who had previously played alongside Wallis. This band released the album Kill ‘Em and Eat ‘Em and toured following a sell-out show and London’s Town & Country Club before once again splitting up in 1988. After Twink’s ignominious departure they had carried on until Wallis too left at which time the remaining members toured and recorded as Flying Colours.
“Dave Brock was upset at the carryings-on at the session because everybody was a little spaced out, to say the least,” Rudolph said as he remembered getting hit with a similar line of bullshit (though different circumstance) that had befallen Lemmy. “Dave didn’t like what was going on at that point and so Nick Turner, Alan Powell, and myself got called into the manager’s office and he said, ‘Dave’s really upset with you guys. You need to apologize for your behaviour or, basically, you’re out of the band.’ And we all looked at each other and said, ‘Fuck you, what behaviour?’ Everybody was misbehaving and coked-out. Anyway, Dave was so upset that he erased everybody’s stuff off the album before it got mixed and got in session musicians. The only thing that didn’t get changed was “Hassan I Sahba” a tune I wrote with Bob Calvert, because nobody could play guitar like that.”
Some of the Rudolph versions of the other songs have since turned up on special edition reissues of the album.
Rudolph has continued to collaborate with Nik Turner and played on the track “End of The World” on the Life In Space album from 2017.
“Nik Turner was a founding member. I still stay in touch with Nik. He wanted to go out on tour and he thought, ‘I’m going to call it Nick Turner’s Hawkwind.’ Dave sued him. Every time even “Hawk” is mentioned, everybody gets sued.” There are other shenanigans involving Dave Brock but Paul Rudolph maintains “Dave wrote some great songs.”
It turns out that the problem with everyone in a band being high all the time is that, eventually, you gotta come down to the reality that no one is (or maybe only certain people) watching the finances. “A lot of it was to do with (was) sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and honestly we didn’t care if we got paid or not. We just wanted to get the music out there and do stuff and have fun.” There is no doubt that another factor in the dissolution of the Fairies involved getting screwed by Polydor: “Some of our biggest mistakes were not treating the music business like it was the music business. Nobody in the whole record company ever played music or had ever been in a band. It was just an old boys club.”
Boss Goodman, who went on to become a renowned chef, once cooking for US President Bill Clinton at the Portobello Gold. Larry Wallis died in September 2019, and Duncan Sanderson died just two months later in November 2019.
In the mid-1990s Twink collaborated with Paul Rudolph and the pair recorded 1996’s Pleasure Island and 1997’s No Picture, released as the Pink Fairies on Twink’s own label. Twink also issued a plethora of albums featuring outtakes, alternative versions, BBC sessions and live material including: The Golden Years 1969-1971, Do It, Live at Weeley Festival 1971 and Mandies and Mescaline Round at Uncle Harry’s.
During the early 2000s Polydor remastered and released their Pink Fairies back catalogue with bonus cuts and issued the sampler albums Master Series and Up the Pinks: An Introduction.
Then there is the ever-complicated issue of Twink. After departing the Fairies, the trickster-like drummer played some gigs with Syd Barret in a band called Stars and in ‘77 put out a really killer punk single called “I Wanna Be Free” as vocalist of The Rings. He has continued to release sequels to Think Pink, an album good enough to not need much improvement. At the current point in time, Twink and Paul Rudolph are the last men standing from the classic Fairies lineup, but their relationship is, at best, frosty.
Despite whatever financial clusterfucks still exist, the hippie barbarians legacy of Deviants/Pink Fairies/Hawkwind remains intact. “We always thought that the audience was part of the band,” said Paul. “You get on stage and start playing, particularly in places like The Roundhouse and a lot of the festivals, you could feel the energy in the air. That may sound very hippy dippy, but the audience was kind of steering the band.
The Albums:
“Never Never Land (Polydor) – Rudolph; Sanderson; Hunter; Twink “What a Bunch of Sweeties” (Polydor) – Rudolph; Sanderson; Hunter “Kings of Oblivion”(Polydor) – Wallis; Sanderson; Hunter “Previously Unreleased” (Big Beat) – Wallis; Sanderson; Butler “Kill ‘Em and Eat ‘Em” (Demon) – Wallis; Colquhoun; Sanderson; Hunter; Twink
Columbia, South Carolina-based singer/songwriter Austin Crane has released his third album as Valley Maker via Frenchkiss Records. The follow-up to 2018’s Rhododendron, When the Day Leaves finds Crane melding folksy acoustic sounds with more entrancing electric textures, all of which evoke the unknowable natural forces that are the focus of much of his song writing. Contemplative and serene, though never at the expense of their many tendrils of melody, Crane’s new songs are soothing in a way we all need nowadays.
I’m excited to share that my new record, When The Day Leaves, is out today I’m so happy for these songs to be out in the world, and I hope the record can be a meaningful companion for you in these strange times we’re living through. I recently did an interview with KEXP about the making of the new record, along with a live video. There’s a kind and thoughtful review, out today, of the album from The Line of Best Fit. And here are two other interviews fresh out today from Beats Per Minute and Gigwise.
I also want to let you know that I’ll be playing a special livestream concert of the new album (plus a few old songs) on Saturday, March 20th: the premiere will be at 8pm EST, and then it will be available for 48 hours thereafter (for those in other time zones, or those who prefer to have a Sunday viewing). The LPs (on limited edition sky blue vinyl) and CDs are available at your local record store and various places online. Shirts, hats, totes, etc. are also for sale in my merch store.
Thank you all for listening, I hope you enjoy the new record. I’ve been thinking a lot this past year about the community of people that surround this project, and how truly fortunate I am to be connected to you all, even in this socially distant season. I’m grateful for the support and care – it means the world.
With much love and gratitude, Austin
No One Is Missing” is from Valley Maker’s new record, When The Day Leaves, out February 19th on Frenchkiss Records.
Wild Pink’s last album, 2018’s “Yolk In The Fur”, concluded with a song about the strange sense of relief that comes with “letting go of youth.” Frontman John Ross, then in his early thirties, was singing from a place of newfound comfort and wisdom, but it ended with a repetition of the line, “I don’t know what happens next.” The song, titled “All Some Frenchman’s Joke”, is a beautifully concise rendering of a universal milestone: levelling up from the wide-eyed naivety and self-destructive routines of our youth, only to realize that we’re as unprepared for the future as we were for the past.
On Wild Pink’s third album and first for Royal Mountain Records, “A Billion Little Lights”, Ross explores that dichotomy of finally achieving emotional security—of accepting the love and peace he deprived himself of in his twenties—while also feeling existentially smaller and more directionless than ever before. The record is a two-pronged triumph: an extraordinary reflection on the human condition presented through the sharpest, grandest, and most captivating songs Wild Pink have ever composed.
The band, which is rounded out by bassist T.C. Brownell and drummer Dan Keegan, formed in New York City in 2015 and put out a handful of EP’s before releasing their critically acclaimed self-titled debut in 2017. It was a sophisticated showing for a band’s first album, but it was the striking maturation of Yolk In The Fur that established Wild Pink’s unique sound: a glistening variety of pastoral indie-rock akin to The War On Drugs, Death Cab For Cutie, and Kurt Vile, but informed by classic American rock poets like Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty. The album received glowing praise from Pitchfork (a score of 8.1), Billboard, NPR, Stereogum, and Uproxx, the latter deeming them “one of indie’s best emerging bands.”
Even though Wild Pink were operating within the relatively modest world of contemporary indie-rock, critics likened them to the types of revered rock auteurs who rack up Grammy nominations. So for A Billion Little Lights, they actually made that leap. The record was produced, mixed, and co-engineered by producer David Greenbaum, who’s worked with the likes of Beck, U2, Cage The Elephant, and Jenny Lewis. Like all Wild Pink records, the songs were entirely written and arranged by Ross, who shaped them into high-quality demos over the course of a year in his new home in New York’s Hudson Valley. But unlike previous Wild Pink albums, Ross enlisted a deep bench of session musicians and friends to perform a litany of additional instruments, finally granting Ross’s musical visions the space and sonic resources they needed to achieve their finest forms.
The ten songs on A Billion Little Lights are adorned with fiddles, violins, wurlitzers, saxophones, accordions, pedal steel guitars, and a variety of richly textured synths and keyboards. In addition to the instrumentation, Julia Steiner of the Chicago band Ratboys provides beautiful harmonies throughout the record, her soft voice recalling the friendly glow of a porch light when it switches on behind Ross’s dusky coo. On past records, Ross’s breathy delivery rarely raised above a hushed murmur, but here he sings with a melodic confidence that makes songs like “Pacific City”, “DieOutside”, and “The Shining But Tropical” some of the catchiest, most anthemic cuts in the Wild Pink catalogue. The band have never sounded dated or nostalgic, but the lingering twinge of Americana in their sound has always given their songs a familiar, classicist resonance. On A Billion Little Lights, there are little details like speckles of auto-tune, flashing synths, and even trip-hop-esque drum loops that subtly yet effectively rebuff the notion that Wild Pink’s music yearns for a bygone era: the album sounds at once timeless and unmistakably modern.
That sonic quality is a fitting complement to the album’s lyrics, which see Ross caught in the bramble between his past and his present; feeling suffocated by the repetition of life while simultaneously gazing at the stars above and marvelling at the unquantifiable vastness of it all. “Time spreads like Jasmine on a fence / Always behind, I can let go but I’m still always behind” he sings on the shimmering “Bigger Than Christmas”. On the sprightly folk-rocker “You Can Have It Back”, he cheekily sizes up his flaws (“Everybody laughs easily / There’s something wrong with me”) and outwardly admits, “Never figured out how to live / Just dreaming all the time.” “Family Friends” and “Track Mud” are musings on day-to-day stasis: “Every day is Groundhog’s Day now” he sings in the former, while lamenting about being “lost in anxious thoughts again” in the latter.
However, it’s the final two songs, the record’s musical standouts, that offer a tepidly hopeful counter to those periods of despair. In “Pacific City”, Ross sings about barely being able to recognize the person he once was, a self left behind once he shedded self-hatred (“For every little thing about myself I couldn’t change”) and learned to “make hay while the sun shined.” “And you deserve the good things that’ll come to you / You just need a little room”, goes its hook. It’s unclear whether that “room” is a reference to his literal relocation to rural upstate New York, or a metaphor for emotional space, but either way “Die Outside” is all about making it. With a stadium-sized hook and the rhythmic swing of a two-ton pendulum, Ross calls to “let every wall come down” with a windswept sing-song of a delivery, a barn raiser of a hook.
Whereas Yolk In The Fur ended with an admission of utter uncertainty, this album ends with a more conclusive observation: “Your blood is like ocean water.” It’s an almost soothing acceptance of our primordial nature, that like the ancient water of the sea or the billions of little stars above, we’re as much a part of something greater and everlasting as we are a mere flicker in the night sky. Wild Pink’s music has always rooted around in those sort of immortal complexities, but A Billion Little Lights is the first time the surrounding music truly captures those alternatingly micro and macro quandaries. It, too, is something to marvel at.
It might be a stretch to say Psymon Spine is a group inspired by LCD Soundsystem, as the boisterous, colourful sound they create as a unit stretches well beyond the parameters of James Murphy’s discography. With the gleaming, taffy-like synths that open Psymon Spine’s sophomore album Charismatic Megafauna, the Brooklyn-and-Berlin quartet flexes a muscle it previously showed only occasionally. Although the band’s 2017 debut LP You Are Coming to My Birthday often comprised muddy, thickly overdriven rock experiments, the edges of tracks such as “Transfiguration Church” and “Shocked” glowed with traces of sugary psychedelia. This melty, gooey sound comes into full view on Charismatic Megafauna lead-off “Confusion,” which springs vividly from the uniquely joyous soil where the roots of psychedelia and pop wrap around one another. It’s a fitting intro: Charismatic Megafauna is far more vibrant and colourful than its challenging, formidable predecessor
The latest sample from their forthcoming Charismatic Megafauna is PS at their most extreme—particularly signified by the strained vocal performance from Noah Prebish (who you may also know as a member of Barrie). “‘Channels’ was written in Acadia National Park, Maine, where we stayed for a few weeks to begin writing Charismatic Megafauna,” Prebish shares of the cathartic recording experience. “We spend the majority of our time in Brooklyn, NY absorbing energy, stress, and excitement, then go into the middle of nowhere to process all of those feelings through writing/recording.
Additional composition, keys, and vocals on ‘Milk’ by Barrie Lindsay. Percussion on ‘Modmed’, ‘Jumprope’, and ‘Channels’ by Pablo Eluchans. Violin on ‘Different Patterns’ by Ruby Z Wang.
Released February 19th, 2021
All tracks written and performed by Noah Prebish, Peter Spears, Brother Michael Rudinski, Sabine Holler, and Nathaniel Coffey.
The lyrics of “Angry Man” lay out an emotional dilemma in plain, direct language – knowing you have to move on from a relationship with a negative and angry person who doesn’t treat you well, but wishing you didn’t have to because you do love them and you’re not ready to put in the time and energy necessarily for someone else to truly know you well. Aerial East sings all of this as though she’s addressing her ex but it comes across like a letter never sent, things she has to say in the clearest words possible in order to process these complicated feelings. Her voice is sweet but raw as she sings these words to a melody so gorgeous that it hardly matters she doesn’t break away from it for a chorus or bridge.
The song just builds on the theme with a simple beat that has the ambiance of classic Mazzy Star, some lovely understated lead guitar and piano flourishes, and backing vocals that seem to reinforce her as she finds the strength to commit to the decision to move on
“Angry Man” from her new album, ‘Try Harder,’ out now on Partisan Records.
The inevitable messiness of life is what makes it so painful, interesting and enjoyable, but learning to be okay with it all is much easier said than done. Nashville-via-Texas singer/songwriter Katy Kirby is well on her way in that journey. On her debut album “Cool Dry Place”, Kirby tries to decide what’s worth holding on to and what’s worth seeking, but also allows herself the freedom to pause and just revel in precious moments, like a drunken walk home (“Peppermint”) or the fantasy of protecting someone you love (“Eyelids”).
Whether slipping into playful metaphors or arriving at an important realization, Kirby sounds, at once, comfortable and uncomfortable with the fluidity of interactions and situations, which is what makes this record more than just an incredibly pleasing collection of songs. Wants and needs are blurred, relationships shapeshift, but more than anything, a human desire for intimacy and understanding underpins it all. After dropping in and out of school, religion and recording music, Kirby is searching for a sustainable source of warmth—whether a person, a plant, Target lingerie or “a secret chord that David played.
Katy Kirby is a songwriter and indie rock practitioner with a writerly focus on unspoken rules, misunderstandings of all kinds, and boredom. Kirby was born, raised, and home schooled by two ex-cheerleaders in small-town Texas, where she started singing in church amidst the soaring, pasteurized-pop choruses of evangelical worship services. After high school, Kirby moved to Nashville, where she managed to graduate college with a rapidly expanding circle of artistic allies, an amorphous collection of leftist beliefs, and a few handfuls of songs. After a series of painful failures to complete a record that reflected the temperament of those songs, Kirby finally turned to dear friends and co-conspirators to form a band capable of constructing a satisfying full length.
When Adrianne Lenker says an artist’s “writing and voice are ethereal and angelic and guide me through internal canyons and plains,” you stop and take notice. Lenker (alongside Big Thief producer Andrew Sarlo) co-produced the debut album from Sydney, Australia-born singer/songwriter Indigo Sparke, who lives up to her collaborator’s praise on echo. Songs like “Colourblind” and “Carnival” draw the bulk of their power from Sparke’s bewitching vocals, with only sparse instrumentation to pull focus from her mystic storytelling—a deliberate decision she and Lenker made. “This record is an ode to death and decay. And the restlessness I feel to belong to something greater,” Spark explains. “Adrianne and I talked so much about keeping the record stripped back and simple, that is, we are all just constantly getting stripped back and humbled by life.” Listening to echo feels like standing in the shadow of an entity so large, you can’t see its entire outline, flooding you with fear, but also an unknowable awe.
Indigo Sparke brings her deeply personal lived experiences to her music, highlighting the spaces between the polarity of softness and grit. Pulling from her experiences of addiction, of healing, of queerness, of heartbreak, of joy, of connection, of the softness and of the grit alchemizing it all into tenderness through her music, she conjures up a myriad of feelings that is undeniably potent. Echo was co-produced by Sparke, Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker and Andrew Sarlo, and features playing from Nick Hakim and Big Thief’s James Krivchenia.
The voice of Indigo Sparke feels fearless, but at moments it comes at a whisper. I was first taken by this Australian singer on a random journey, listening to around 1300 songs for last year’s SXSW music fest. Her song “the day i drove the car around the block” has a mundane title that made me smile, but lyrics that both cut hard and comfort. “Take off all my clothes, kiss me where the bruises are,” and later the refrain, “Love is the drug, and you are in my blood now.” Indigo told the NPR crowd about the song’s origins of trying to learn how to drive on the other side of the road while in Los Angeles, with a huge vehicle and a stick shift.
She just gave up and wrote this tale of defeat and solace. On her third song, a tune that was so new at the time of this performance it had no title (now it’s called “Burn”), she’s joined on guitar by her partner, Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief. It all made for a most intimate and sincere expression of honest emotion and a beautiful day with friends in the office.
SET LIST: “Colourblind” “the day i drove the car around the block” “Burn” MUSICIANSIndigo Sparke: vocals, guitar; Adrianne Lenker: guitar
Indigo Sparke From the album Echo, out February 19th 2021, via Sacred Bones Records
When Maine-based singer/songwriter Jess Abbott originally started writing her third album under the Tancred moniker, she was grappling with feelings of aloneness that floated to the surface in the wake of newfound confidence. With a deeper sense of self came a deeper pondering upon human connectedness and isolation. It was during this nebulous time that allowed Abbott to reclaim and make space for the things that were lost somewhere along the way… personal connections, friendships, books, hobbies.
“I wrote Nightstand during a period in my life where I was beginning to better understand my own emotional nature,” says Abbott. “I had to figure out how to lyrically respect the emotionality I was feeling, while still letting my louder, much less emotional guitar work express itself.” It was through the process of finding this balance that Abbott made songwriting a ritual; half of the week was dedicated to her craft.
Much like the myriad contemplations Jess was facing in her emotional life, her songs also shared a theme of contrast. “That was actually part of why I named the album Nightstand — a nightstand is a place where we collect this and that, and yet to us, our nightstand is very personal and the items on it make sense together.” In an effort to understand how the songs she wrote for Nightstand could best fit together sonically, Abbott systematically rerecorded each song’s demo acoustically. Through this intimate process of documentation, she would ultimately connect with the songs, and herself. “I fell completely in love with the songs in a new way.”
“Nightstand (Acoustic)” is a collection of these initial ideas starting to take form — an intimate look at the songwriter’s process, and a beautiful foreshadowing of what would eventually become Nightstand. Originally released on cassette as an exclusive memento for fans who pre-ordered the album, these recordings were lovingly remixed and remastered with the help of songwriter Jenny Owen Youngs and engineer Jett Galindo.
Detailing a personal memory, Abbott shares “My favourite little piece of the whole release is the sound of a snow plough going down my street, three stories below the bedroom where I wrote this album, during the biggest New England snowstorm of 2017.” As Abbott reveals, “That is the essence of “Nightstand” — a time and place where I would dip inside from a busy cycle of touring and socializing, isolate myself, listen to the world outside my window, and stare a bit too long at my nightstand, wondering what it would say if it could speak.”
Where does a piece of music originate? Before decisions about form and refinement of material, before building up or carving down, before composition itself—what lies in this white room, and how does one find it? Dan Knishkowy of Adeline Hotel did not set out to answer these questions when he began recording “Good Timing”, a mostly instrumental album whose crystalline latticework of acoustic guitar marks a departure of sorts from his previous releases as a songwriter. But as he worked, he found a certain freedom in a process uninhibited by pretense. “I liked the idea of embracing that,” he says, “instead of turning this into something more conventionally polished.”
The fifth album from Dan Knishkowy’s psych-folk project Adeline Hotel is aptly named: Arriving at the end of an rougher-than-average week for our collective psyche, Good Timing feels designed to envelop and ease any troubled mind. Knishkowy interweaves crystalline acoustic guitar improvisations, creating a kaleidoscope of bright, glassy finger-picking that expands and recedes unceasingly, as if shaping itself of its own volition. Reverb functions like a distinct instrument on the album, elongating Knishkowy’s guitar work and complicating the interplay between its layers. At just 23 minutes, Good Timing’s glow is fleeting, but when it passes, it will take your troubles—or at least their sharp edges—with it.
Knishkowy created Good Timing by layering improvised guitar parts, each one reacting intuitively to those that came before and guiding those that came after. Like a fractal blooming or a snowflake accumulating ice, the music dictated its own shape as it grew, a dynamic that is perceptible in the shifting surfaces of each piece. Rhythms unspool slowly, without tether to any strict pulse. Lines begin in apparent disarray, then converge for an epiphanic moment, then separate again. Though Knishkowy is well versed in the greats of solo guitar—among several possible connotations of the album’s title is a sly homage to a Jim O’Rourke acoustic masterwork—the effect of these multitracked pieces may have more in common with ambient music than anything from the American Primitive school. Low strings toll like distant bells; high ones sparkle like windchimes just outside the window. The physical properties of Dan’s instrument are as present in the music as his own hands.
He arrived at this instinctual approach while working alone at home in the quarantine summer of 2020, when more precisely arranged compositions began to feel stifling. As a reprieve, he began recording the sort of ostensibly aimless music that had often uncovered the seeds of songs in the past. By centering these embryonic sounds as an expression in themselves, rather than a route to some other end, he crafted 10 pieces that glow with intimacy and presence, vessels for capturing memory in real time. “I feel like all records are approximations of your creative process, in a way” he says, “but with Good Timing, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to the source.” – Andy Cush
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The Fat Angel Sings 