Archive for the ‘CLASSIC ALBUMS’ Category

DANNY KIRWEN – Fleetwood Mac Guitarist (13th May 1950 – 8th June 2018)

Posted: June 14, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

Image may contain: one or more people

Danny Kirwan, the former guitarist of Fleetwood Mac who was with the band for several albums in the late ’60s and early ’70s, has passed away at the age of 68.  Danny Kirwan played on Christine Perfect’s eponymous solo album in 1970 after she left Chicken Shack, but before she joined Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac later in the year, and subsequently married John McVie. Kirwan would contribute one song on the album “When You Say,”

He was a member of Fleetwood Mac from 1968-1972. Mick Fleetwood suggested Kirwan join the band in ’68 but there was some dissent among the other members (Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer and McVie) but the 18-year old won the day. He worked wonderfully with Green lending rhythm guitar support to some of Green’s greatest compositions. Kirwan advanced quickly playing a major gig in Hyde Park in August with Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After and Fairport Convention, and then began a 50-date tour of the U.K. with the band. There was an ensuing New Year’s Eve show with the Who, Small Faces, Pink Floyd and the Troggs, and finally, in December 1968, he joined the band in New York for a 30-date U.S tour, including appearances at the Fillmore’s East and West. In 1969, he played at the Chess studios in Chicago with some legendary Blues artists including Buddy Guy and Otis Spann. The subsequent double album “Blues Jam at Chess,” (later retitled “Fleetwood Mac in Chicago,”), featured two of Kirwan’s songs.

He got his chance to contribute about half of the “Then Play On,” album (1970) splitting lead vocals with Green, while writing seven of the fourteen tracks. After Green departed the band in later that year, Kirwan and slide master Jeremy Spencer shared guitar and vocal duties on the “Kiln House,” (1970). Kirwan also played on “Future Games,” (1971), and “Bare Trees,” (1972), his final album with Fleetwood Mac. The pressures of travel and life on the road finally caught up with him, and he began drinking excessively and displaying open hostility toward the band. He was eventually sacked by Fleetwood who had seen enough. Kirwan recorded three solo albums later in the 1970s, but none was successful, and by the end of the ’70s he left the music industry altogether, another casualty who couldn’t control his demons. Yet he was a brilliant guitar player who will be remembered for his outstanding work with Fleetwood Mac.

When Mick Fleetwood heard the news he commented: “Today was greeted by the sad news of the passing of Danny Kirwan in London, England,” the note reads. “Danny was a huge force in our early years. His love for the Blues led him to being asked to join Fleetwood Mac in 1968, where he made his musical home for many years.”

Kirwan was still a teenager when he was asked to join Fleetwood Mac, and the guitarist stayed with the band until 1972. His work can be heard on the albums Then Play On, Blues Jam at Chess, Kiln House, Future Games​ and Bare Trees​, along with a number of live an compilation releases. Kirwan was an influence on the group’s earlier blues days with co-founding guitarists Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer and contributed to their first UK #1 hit “Albatross.”

Danny was with the band from 1968 to 1972. Danny was still in the band for a while after Christine joined.  He wasn’t an original member of the band; Jeremy Spencer was Peter Green’s original guitaring partner, and he remained for a while after Danny joined, but Danny very clearly helped take the band into new terrains. His work in tandem with Green was brilliant, and produced some of the early band’s finest moments. After Green left in 1970, Danny remained.

After being fired from Fleetwood Mac for alcoholism in 1972, Kirwan released a number of unsuccessful solo albums, but sadly by the end of the decade his mental health was deteriorating. He endured long periods of homelessness in the 80s and 90s. Mick Fleetwood asked Missing Persons to find him in 1993.

“Danny was a huge force in our early years,” Fleetwood has said on Facebook. “Danny’s true legacy, in my mind, will forever live on in the music he wrote and played so beautifully as a part of the foundation of Fleetwood  Mac, that has now endured for over 50 years. Thank you Danny Kirwan. You shall forever be missed.”

Fleetwood Mac’s , Danny Kirwan, who was once the perfect foil for the band’s founding guitarist Peter Green, has sadly passed away at the age of 68.

Solo albums

  • Second Chapter (DJM 1975)
  • Midnight in San Juan (DJM 1976)
  • Danny Kirwan (DJM 1977 – US release of Midnight in San Juan)
  • Hello There Big Boy! (DJM 1979)
  • Ram Jam City (Mooncrest 2000 – recorded in the mid-1970s as demo tracks for the Second Chapter album)

LAURA JEAN – ” Devotion “

Posted: June 13, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , ,
1

Image may contain: 1 person, flower

Devotion is a stunning artistic about-face from revered Melbourne songwriter Laura Jean. Loved for her piercing, intimate, folk-based albums such as 2014’s Laura Jean and 2011’s A fool who’ll, Laura has worked with producer John Lee (Beaches, Lost Animal) to create an enveloping, deep pop album like nothing she has done before.
Laura’s last self-titled album, recorded in the UK with John Parish (Perfume Genius, Aldous Harding, PJ Harvey) and featuring Jenny Hval on backing vocals, was a critical smash in Australia, shortlisted for the Australian Music Prize and nominated for two Age Music Victoria Awards.
The album lead to Australian and New Zealand tours with Aldous Harding and Marlon Williams, plus shows with Julianna Barwick, Jessica Pratt and more.
But soon Laura found herself tinkering with a 90s Kawai keyboard, enjoying its built-in drum rhythms and moody synth sounds. Laura began a series of shows performing with nothing but the keyboard, as the idea for her next album grew and developed.
Devotion is an album about teenage obsession, coastal child- hood and vivid memory – universal themes filtered through Laura’s razor sharp lyrical focus. Initial influences for the record took in R’n’B, 80s adult contemporary pop and 70s disco, but the end result is transformed into something wholly other, full of depth, resonance and mystery.
Played entirely by Laura, John Lee and drummer Dave Williams (Augie March), Devotion is both contemporary and timeless.

http://


About the album, Laura says: “Devotion is about how a lonely coastal childhood filters into a contemporary adult life built hundreds of miles away. I wrote this album for my mum, middle sister and myself as we were at that time – eccentric, romantically-unfulfilled teens and a stressed out single mum trying to have a love life. In those times we needed to hear songs that were loving and uplifting, about the reality of intimacy, longing, romantic risk and reward. The album is narrated by me in the present, a detached adult figure far away from home, but still driven by an inner fantasy world that is set on the beach where I grew up.”

JASON ISBELL – ” Sirens Of the Ditch “

Posted: June 13, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , ,
0

New West Records is set to release Jason Isbell’s debut solo album, Sirens Of The Ditch, in a deluxe edition with four never-heard-before tracks from the original studio recordings.

Originally released in 2007, Sirens Of The Ditch was met with critical acclaim upon its release calling it “…a gorgeously whiskey-soaked country-soul masterpiece,” American Songwriter declaring it, “…a decadent debut,” and Pitchfork stating that it was “…a strong debut full of the kind of confident, charismatic songwriting that just can’t be taught.”  When Jason Isbell left Drive-By Truckers in 2007, his future was by no means secure: His time in the band had been marred by substance-abuse issues, and he wasn’t a known quantity as a solo artist after years spent sharing the spotlight with other songwriters. But when Isbell released Sirens of the Ditch that same year, it was clear that he’d been working from an almost bottomless well of talent and star potential.

Sirens’ forthcoming reissue features four previously unreleased studio tracks: “Racetrack Romeo,” “Crystal Clear” and two songs you can hear for the first time here. “The Assassin” is a Patterson Hood composition Isbell still plays in concert, while the churning original roots-rock ballad “Whisper” burns slowly and wearily. Notably, both fit seamlessly alongside the singer’s later songs about stumbling hard and finding saviors on the road to peace and redemption.

This new deluxe edition features four previously unreleased songs from the original sessions at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, bringing the new, expanded track listing to 15 total songs. NPR Music premiered two of the unreleased tracks today, including the Patterson Hood-penned “The Assassin,” which Isbell performs in concert to this day, and the track “Whisper.” The former Drive-By Truckers lead guitarist, album was released on July 10, 2007

After leaving Drive-By Truckers amicably in 2007, Isbell released Sirens of the Ditch on New West Records. Sirens of the Ditch was recorded at Fame Studios, where among the musicians helping to record the album was Patterson Hood of Isbell’s previous band Drive by Truckers and Spooner Oldham, famous for his work with Aretha Franklin and Neil Young among others . The first single from the album was, “Brand New Kind of Actress,” deals with the death of Lana Clarkson in Phil Spector’s mansion.  Another single, “Dress Blues,” concerns the death of Corporal Matthew Conley, a US Marine from Isbell’s hometown who was killed in the Iraq War.

The BEACH BOYS – “ Disney Girls (1957) ” Classic Songs

Posted: June 13, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , ,
0

The way the story is sometimes erroneously told, The Beach Boys were nothing more than a convenient vehicle for Brian Wilson’s incendiary songwriting and brilliant producing. Of course, that misconception overlooks the crucial contributions of the talented men at Brian’s side bringing his artistic vision to thrilling life with their vocals. It also neglects to take into account the years when the troubled genius contributed only sporadically to the band’s output. Consider 1971’s album Surf’s Up, where the rest of the band picked up the songwriting slack for their leader and Bruce Johnson’s wistful waltz “Disney Girls (1957)” stood out as one of the disc’s finest moments.

Johnston would make a mint later in the decade as the writer of Barry Manilow’s “I Write The Songs,” but this earlier effort is the stronger song. “That’s just the way I write,” Johnston said of “Disney Girls (1957)” in a 2011 interview. “That wasn’t anything other than a really nice song. I was able to weave the voices into it, oohs and aahs. Not that it was ever a hit, but it sold millions of copies riding around other people’s albums. People just loved the lyrical point of view. That’s just one of those nice accidents.”

If you’re not listening closely enough, you might read the title, hear some of the references in Johnston’s opus, and think that it’s easy nostalgia, something in which The Beach Boys have been known to trade. But what you come to realize, either by perusing the lyrics or listening to the subtle ache in those “oohs and aahs,” is that the “fantasy world” on which the narrator fixates is just that, an idealized vision of happiness that he hasn’t yet attained. “Oh, reality, it’s not for me/ And it makes me laugh,” he says. So he instead conjures something that’s part romanticized past and part desired future, a world filled with Tootsie Rolls, Patti Page and “a local girl in a smaller town.”

The unspoken context is that this song comes from a touring musician leading what was likely a hectic life with one of the most famous bands on the planet, so when he sings, “Guess I’m slowing down,” it doesn’t sound like he’s fighting that instinct. In fact, he suggests that this new lifestyle might actually be good for his muse: “Just in time, words that rhyme/ Well, bless your soul.”

In the bridge, the narrator even brings his whole family in to meet the hypothetical girl who will transform him from the rat race to church bingo; he even uses the word “swell” to describe her without a trace of irony. When he reaches the final verse, his longing for this simpler life is palpable, and he seems to regret the path that led him to miss out on this dream girl and idyllic life the first time around. It even seems like he has completely shunned reality by song’s end: “Guess I’m going to stay/ It’d be a peaceful life/ With a forever wife/ And a kid someday.”

In each refrain, the narrator promises, “Fantasy world and Disney girls/ I’m coming back.” The chance that he might never get back there to fulfill that promise is what lends “Disney Girls (1957)” its melancholic air. No Brian Wilson, no problem on this one, as Bruce Johnston stepped up for his signature moment in The Beach Boys.

SPIRITUALIZED – ” I’m Your Man “

Posted: June 13, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , ,
0

Image may contain: text

Spiritualized have announced their first new album in six years, And Nothing Hurt, also sharing the first two singles, “A Perfect Miracle” and “I’m Your Man.”

Created and recorded entirely by the band’s leading force, Jason Pierce, the band’s eighth album could likely be their last. “It was such hard work. I found myself going crazy for so long,” said Pierce in a statement. “It’s not like there’s no coming back, I’m fine now … it’s just such a hard thing to do, to make a record like this on your own.”

Usually, nothing good comes of aging British rock stars playing around with mythic Americana. But when Jason Pierce straps on that spacesuit, magical things happen.

Along with streaming the two tracks, Spiritualized have also released a video for “I’m Your Man,” which sees Pierce, A.K.A J.Spaceman, as a lonely astronaut roaming the desert.

And Nothing Hurt is due out September. 7th. Check out the video for “I’m Your Man,”

MENACE BEACH – ” Black Rainbow Sound ” feat. Brix Smith

Posted: June 13, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , , ,
0

Menace Beach announce new album ‘Black Rainbow Sound’ with the dark, probing title track ft Brix Smith

Leeds band Menace Beach are back with details of a new album! Now billed as a duo are set to release new record ‘Black Rainbow Sound’ in August via Memphis Industries, the brilliantly bleak title track, which features Brix Smith, formerly of The Fall.

A kraut-influenced rollercoaster, ‘Black Rainbow Sound’ is an intoxicating ride, with the band pushing the limits of last LP – 2017’s ‘Lemon Memory’ – to its extremes, to stunning results. The affect is just heightened by Brix’s vicious, moving spoken word.

“We’ve always used synths and electronic elements,” the band’s Ryan Needham says of the new record, ”but for me the eureka moment in defining the sound of this record was hearing Dean Honer’s (Moonlandingz/add n to x/all seeing eye) remix of ‘Maybe We’ll Drown’ from the last record. He just tele=ported the song in another world but it totally worked not only sonically but by retaining all the wonkiness and kinda low-fi ’Menace Beach’ character. It was really inspiring that something we’d been reaching for sonically for ages, and almost given up on, just sounded so perfect.”

Liza adds: “There’s always been a bit of artistic push and pull between us on the balance of synth noise vs guitars noise and the guitars have previously always taken over by the time we leave the studio, probably because we all know now how to make loud guitars sound really exciting in a room. But lately I’ve been feeling too much reality in the sound of a guitar and I really wanted to give something more this time. I wasn’t really prepared to compromise”

‘Black Rainbow Sound’ is out on 31st August. The band have also announced UK headline tour dates.

OCTOBER
18 Derby, The Hairy Dog
20 Birmingham, Hare & Hounds
22 Glasgow, Broadcast
23 Newcastle, The Cluny 2
24 Manchester, Deaf Institute
25 London, Oslo
26 Bristol, Rough Trade
27 Sheffield, Picture House Social

NOVEMBER
02 Leeds, Brudenell Social Club

RIVER WHYLESS – ” Kindness, A Rebel “

Posted: June 13, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , , , ,
0

In creating this album, we somewhat recreated ourselves, settling into a fresh method of collaboration in which each of us contributed equally and openly to the creative process. The result is a newly synergetic vision we’re proud and excited to share.

When I heard the burbling synth at the top of River Whyless‘ new album, Kindness, A Rebel, I knew I was in for something different from this Asheville-birthed quartet. Their 2016 folky world-beat album We All The Light was a favorite of mine, but this album has more drive, it’s more cohesive and lyrically more thematic; the album’s title is a hint. Drummer Alex McWalters, one of four songwriters in the band, says, “We’ve reached a point where we just understand that the songs are more important than the egos.”

That opening song is called “All of My Friends,” and it’s a good example of how River Whyless is changing. Singer and violinist Halli Anderson wrote the song and quite liked it, but the album’s producer Paul Butler didn’t. And since this album was to be a group effort instead of relying on the individual strengths of these four songwriters, she initially let the song go. But a few days later, that burbling sound resonated from the synthesizer and the song was reborn. Singer and guitarist Ryan O’Keeffe said, “It was the first time I felt like we captured a song in the moment of creation. Lyrics were changing in the moment. Melodies were changing in the moment. Singers were changing. It was really difficult and emotionally intense but so gratifying when we were done.”

http://

Released June 8th, 2018

BLACK HELIUM – ” Curtains At The Mausoleum “

Posted: June 13, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , ,
0

London underground band Black Helium are everything I love about Psychedelica bands this release could help them ascend to great heights through the release of this debut album. Comprised of heavy friends Stuart Gray (vocals/guitar), Beck Harvey (vocals/bass) Davey Mulka (guitar) and Ben Davies (drums), this band brought a truly unique mix of sound to my ears. Being a big fan of an expansive build up in songs, this song represents what I love about psych and space rock. Solid drum and bass keeping the groove with guitars and noise just lifting you off to higher grounds.

‘Curtains At The Mausoleum’ taken from the BLACK HELIUM debut album ‘Primitive Fuck’ coming July 20th 2018 on Riot Season Records.

Influenced by bands such as Black Sabbath, Hawkwind, Amon Düül II and The Stooges; Primitive Fuck channels an era when psychedelic rock stood for mind expanding eclecticism, and hip shaking sonic hedonism in equal measure, moving from motor city heroism, to shapeless Kosmische ambient ego-death via space ritual riff worship. Now, with new drummer, Diogo Gomes on board, Primitive Fuck represents the birth of a band your psychiatrist warned you about.
Band Members
Beck Harvey: Bass/Vocals
Stuart Gray: Guitar/Vocals
Davey Mulka: Guitar Vocals
Diogo Gomez: Drums

FLASHER – ” Constant Image “

Posted: June 13, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , , , ,
0

Flasher-Constant-Image

All three members of Flasher, the great young indie rock band, are lifelong habitués of Washington DC and its environs. They know this landscape. They know Rock Creek Park and summer Fort Reno afternoons and those few spots in the infamous 9:30 Club balcony where you can sit down and still kind of see what’s happening onstage. They are current cogs in the DC machine, restaurant workers who haven’t been able to quit their day jobs even after becoming Arctic Monkeys’ labelmates. (All three of them have worked at Comet Ping Pong, the Northwest eatery where some of the most bizarre undercurrents of DC life recently collided in hallucinatory and violent ways.) If they stay in DC, maybe they’ll never quit their day jobs, no matter how successful their band becomes. They seem to know this. And Constant Image, their full-length debut, feels like an ode to the torpor and inertia of present-day young urban service-industry life. It is an album rife with fatalism, with blank-faced acceptance.

“Go,” the album’s buzzing headrush of an opening track, is all about snorting coke with coworkers after getting done with a long shift — or, at least, that’s what I hear in it. (Flasher’s lyrics are oblique enough that they could imply a lot of different things.) Other moments on the album are full of dazed, intense little epigraphs: “Laughter in this century is a misery afterglow,” “It’s not like I had a reason for leaving you / Thinking I could fix it if it wasn’t for Adderall,” “History, how’d you get so mean? / Who’d you beat?” These aren’t fleshed-out philosophies; they’re the bemused musings of people who have been forced, through economic circumstances, to spend their days working as friendliness machines, who have to work to hang onto their humanity whenever they’re not working to live. Seen from a certain perspective, Constant Image works as a symphony of numbness.

But when you actually listen to the thing, it bursts with life, with purpose. Singer and guitarist Taylor Mulitz used to play bass for Priests, but he’s not Flasher’s frontman. Instead, the band has no leader, and Mulitz and Daniel Saperstein divide up lead-vocal parts like they were splitting tips at the end of the night. Voices overlap, or weave throughout each other. Hooks burst in from every angle. Constant Image is a short album, but its melodies and ideas never stop flying. The songs don’t belong to any clear genre; they’re punk and post-punk and new wave and shoegaze and classic rock all at once. When you’re listening, it’s hard to think about genre dividing lines or societal collapse. Instead, those euphoric synth-smears and sun-dappled guitar lines fill up your entire consciousness and sweep you away.

Not that long ago, Flasher were a punk band — or, at least, a band that came from a cultural context that had something to do with punk. Institutions like Comet Ping Pong, and like the venues that the band came up playing, are the product of a city where people spent years fighting for inclusive all-ages spaces and unbound-by-scene free expression. And yet the band’s (excellent) 2016 debut EP was a raw, nervy post-punk record, a record with traceable antecedents. For Constant Image, though, they’ve pushed themselves away from the sounds that might’ve come naturally. Instead, they decamped for Brooklyn and went to work with producer Nicolas Vernhes, someone who’s put in work with bands like Animal Collective and the War On Drugs. And they’ve come away with all these beautiful sounds, these layered guitar-twinkles and synth-whirrs and bass throbs, their voices piling all over each other in some kind of communal ecstasy.

The songs on Constant Image are just great songs. They’re songs that would get heavy airplay on alt-rock radio in a better world, a world where alt-rock radio still exists in any appreciable way. It’s an album about hopelessness that, in its craft and its spirit, still radiates hope and joy and possibility. It’s one of those albums that feels like it alters my entire brain chemistry every time the next chorus hits, and that’s Constant Image.

I love how this DC band blend Hometown influences like Unrest and Holland with Three O’clock style paisley underground into a brilliant record that goes against the current grain. If this came out 25 years ago it would have been on Teenbeat fer sure!

Constant Image is out 8th June on Domino Recordings

The COATHANGERS – ” Live “

Posted: June 13, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: ,
0

There is a definitive strength in the vernacular of The Coathangers‘ songwriting. Anyone who has witnessed their live show would likely confirm the long-ago founded rumor that the band brings the party. But what the band brings to a greater degree, whether performing live or on record, is a beautiful exhaustion: a feeling both empty and full, like at the end of intense physical activity when your body feels melted yet brimming with energy. 

Live at Alex’s Bar, Long Beach CA The Coathangers LIVE out now

Older Entries
Newer Entries