Although listed as a Record Store Day special release in the UK, Neil Young‘s Roxy: Tonight’s The Night Live is freely available to order in the USA on double vinyl, and it’s very cheap, too. The Tonight’s The Night album was recorded in mid-1973 with the ‘Santa Monica Flyers’ who were NilsLofgren (piano), Ben Keith (pedal steel guitar), Billy Talbot (bass) and Ralph Molina (drums). The album wasn’t released until 1975 but not long after it was recorded Neil and his band head decided to play it live. Here’s what Neil has to say about it:
“We had finished recording and decided to celebrate with a gig at a new club opening on the Sunset Strip, Roxy. We went there and recorded for a few nights, opening Roxy We really knew the Tonight’s the Night songs after playing them for a month, so we just played them again, the album, top to bottom, without the added songs, two sets a night for a few days. We had a great time.”
The ‘added songs’ Young refers to are Borrowed Tune, Come on Baby Let’s Go Downtown and Lookout Joe which were added to the studio the album, but not part of those original sessions (or the live performance). Walk On would end up on 1974’s On The Beach.
None of these live recordings have been released before and with Neil Young vinyl notoriously expensive, this double album is a bargain at $26 on Amazon US – that’s about £19.
Roxy: Tonight’s The Night Live is released in the US on 24th April and will also be for sale in the UK on Record Store Day on 21st April.
There’s a whole lot to love about Wilco’s “The Whole Love”. It’s a career-spanning set of songs that appeared in the fall of 2011. Start with “Art of Almost” (you shouldbe starting with this song, unless you have the album on shuffle.) The opening cut is the group’s most ambitious, confrontational piece since the Jim O’Rourke days. Plus, there’s the infectious “I Might,” the lovely, shuffling title track—all great. If The Whole Love has a weakness, it’s that the album spends so much time exploring the stylistic terrain of Wilco’s career to date that it never quite establishes an identity of its own. Plus, at 55 minutes and some change, Whole Love sags in its latter half. But man, “Art of Almost.” What a song
Has Wilco ever sequenced as perfect a coupling as “Art of Almost,” the band’s theme song, and the driving organ-pop number “I Might”? Those are 11 minutes to get lost in the music. The album ends with the 12-minute anti-epic “One Sunday Morning,” containing some of JeffTweedy’s best lyrics. You have to find your own meaning, but “One Sunday” seems inspired by a troubled father-son relationship, with Tweedy’s somber delivery over lovely piano accompaniment eventually leading to an understated jam that follows the tone of the proceedings. The album’s a little soft in the middle, but it includes a song that predicted Diamond Rugs (“Standing O”) and one (“Black Moon”) that cuts through Townes Van Zandt’s backyard on the way to the symphony.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Exile in Guyville, the landmark debut album from Liz Phair. In commemoration, she and Matador Records will soon release a limited edition box set containing the record as well as music from Phair’s pre-Exile days.
Due out May 4th, the Girly-Sound to Guyville: The 25th Anniversary Box Set comes with a fully remastered version of the 1993 debut, overseen by Grammy-nominated mastering engineer Emily Lazar at The Lodge. It also boasts the first official restored audio of Phair’s three Girly-Sound demo cassettes: Yo Yo Buddy Yup Yup Word To Ya Mutha, Girls! Girls! Girls!, and Sooty. These date back to 1991, during the pre-Exile era when Phair recorded under the moniker Girly-Sound.
Also included in the bundle is a lavish book featuring an oral history by Jason Cohen and essays penned by journalist Ann Powers and Phair herself. The box set will be available as a 3-CD set or 7-LP set (with added goodies like never-before-seen photos and artwork), and will also be offered in digital formats and on streaming platforms.
For fans just looking for the debut, Exile in Guyville will be reissued on its own on the same day on CD and double LP; it hasn’t been widely available on LP in years. As a teaser for the box set, the veteran singer-songwriter has shared an early alternate version of “Divorce Song”, which appears on Girly-Sounds tape Yo Yo Buddy.
Philadelphia’s Hop Along will release their third studio album “Bark Your Head Off, Dog” on April 6th! Available on black vinyl, and a tri-color striped vinyl that is limited to 750 copies and sold exclusively on the Saddle Creek Store. The formidable 9-song collection is the band’s strongest and most cohesive album to date. Crafted by Frances Quinlan (songwriter, lead vocalist, and rhythm guitarist), Tyler Long (bass), Joe Reinhart (guitar), and Mark Quinlan (drums), the album considers what it’s like to cast off longheld and misguided perceptions, yet without the assurance of knowing what new ones will replace them. Quinlan has been meditating a lot on power.
In this particular moment in history, this thought begs a greater question: what do we do with power and the men who so freely brandish it? “So strange to be shaped by such strange men” is a line that repeats on more than one song on the album. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot. That I just deferred to men throughout my life,” Quinlan says. “But by thinking you’re powerless, you’re really robbing yourself. I’m at a point in my life where I’m saying instead, ‘Well, what can I do?’
On album opener, “How Simple,”Quinlan wrangles with what it’s like to learn about yourself—which can get ugly. Quinlan explains, “People romanticize the idea of finding themselves, but when they do, at least in my experience, it can be really difficult. You see how you fail others and how others fail you.” Offering fans a classic dose of Hop Along’s searing songwriting and unabashed honesty.
Self-produced and recorded at The Headroom in Philadelphia by Reinhart and Kyle Pulley,Bark Your Head Off, Dog features the familiar sounds that have always made the band allergic to genre: grunge, folk, punk, and power pop all appear, with inspiration from ELO to Elvis Costello to ‘70s girl group vocal arrangements.
This time around, they’ve added strings, more intricate rhythms, lush harmonies (featuring Thin Lips’ Chrissy Tashjian), along with a momentary visit with a vocoder. In more than one place, Mark Quinlan drums like he’s at a disco with Built to Spill. Bark Your Head Off, Dog is, without question, Hop Along’s most dynamic and textured record yet.
Throughout the album, one gets the sense that Quinlan is wandering in the thicket of a forest—a state of being that will feel familiar to longtime listeners—and on this outing, she hasn’t left a trail of breadcrumbs behind her. The album’s artwork, which Quinlan painted herself, invites the listener into that forest, as well. The record calls upon references that Quinlan has woven throughout all of the band’s albums: the wild presence of animals (rabbits, foxes, dogs, and blue jays all appear on this record) and historical touchstones (from a podcast on World War I to books by Karl Ove Knausgaard). Hop Along’s songs continue to reveal the curiosities nesting in Quinlan’s mind.
“If Philadelphia is the capital of indie rock, then Hop Along sits at the table with its top leaders. […] Quinlan’s gripping vocals, an earworm of a chorus, and an unexpectedly dreamy violin outro. “How Simple” may leave you feeling a touch of whiplash, but the ride is undeniably fun.”
– Pitchfork,
Best New Track“ …with some extra touches like layered vocal tracks and a touching string outro, [“How Simple”] is a song that hits all the emotions that Quinlan can reach in one breath.”
– Esquire
“How Simple” is easily one of Hop Along’s poppiest moments, and as the two parties at the center of the song try to make sense of their confused situation, the answer comes in a glorious gang vocal you can’t help but sing along to: “Don’t worry, we will both find out, just not together.”
– NPR
New album “Bark Your Head Off, Dog” out April 6th!
Swami John Reis and Rick Froberg have been making noises together since high school. In 1986 it was the post-hardcore chime. In 1991 it was the sprawling, multi-faceted arrangements of Drive Like Jehu. In 1999 it was the lean, mean swagger of Hot Snakes. Reis and Froberg are responsible for some of the most turbulent rock and roll of their, or any, generation.
Hot Snakes streamlined Jehu’s complex compositions and emerged as bona fide downstroke warlords. They made 3 studio albums of high-velocity, slash-your-face, piss-punk: 2000’s Automatic Midnight, 2002’s Suicide Invoice and 2004’s Audit in Progress. The band ceased activity in 2005 but reunited for a triumphant world tour in 2011,
Now, after a 14-year hiatus from the studio, Hot Snakes have kicked down the door back into our lives with their new album, Jericho Sirens, due out March 16th from Sub Pop.
“I considered stopping playing guitar on a social media poll after I completely mastered the instrument,” Reis says. “But so many people kept sending me letters and voicemail messages, asking me at the dry cleaners, or the butcher shop to bring back Hot Snakes. They were missing rock and roll music. I’ve always considered Hot Snakes to be more in the vein of the proto-Vog movement of the early ‘70s. But to these people, this is their rock ‘n’ roll. I understand that. I totally understand people’s desire to be controlled and humiliated by my guitar. Anyone can play the stupid guitar. The new album blasts out of the speakers with the furious “I Need a Doctor,” inspired by Froberg’s experience needing a doctor’s note in order to miss an important work function. “Yeah, I had to be quick on my feet,” says Rick.
Throughout Jericho Sirens, Froberg commiserates with the frustration and torrential apathy that seems to be a fixture in our daily lives, while also reminding us that we have no fucking clue. “Songs like ‘Death Camp Fantasy’ and ‘Jericho Sirens’ are about that,” he says. “No matter where you look, there’re always people saying the world’s about to end. Every movie is a disaster movie. I’m super fascinated by it. It is hysterical, and it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. It snowballs, like feedback, or my balls on the windshield.”
Musically, the album incorporates the most extreme fringes of the Hot Snakes sound (the vein-bulging, 78-second “Why Don’t It Sink In?” the manic, Asian Blues on speed of “Having Another?”), while staying true to longstanding influences such as the Wipers, Dead Moon, Michael Jackson, and Suicide on propulsive tracks such as “Six Wave Hold-Down,” one of the first songs written for the project during a Mummer Parade 2017 session in Philadelphia. Other moments like the choruses of “Jericho Sirens” and “Psychoactive” nod to Status Quo and AC/DC with Froberg admitting, “I still flip bird and ride my BMX on top of cop cars.”
“My muse was love. It sounds like panic and chaos,” Reis says. “Restlessness and unease. That’s a sound that I would ask for. I want that record. The inspiration would be simple, maybe even kind of straightforward. Very early rock ‘n’ roll DNA with lots of rules. I would find some note or rhythm in it that captivated me and I dwelled on it and bent it. That’s where I found dissonance. Bending and rubbing against each other uncomfortably. Marinate and refine. A lot of the other Hot Snakes records always had tension and release, but this one is mainly just tension.”
Jericho Sirens was recorded in short bursts over the past year, mostly in San Diego and Philadelphia with longtime bassist Gar Wood, Jason Kourkounis and Mario Rubalcaba, both of whom drummed on prior HotSnakes releases but never on the same one. For Reis, reactivating his creative partnership with Froberg was one of the most rewarding aspects of the process: “Our perspectives are similar. Our tastes are similar. He is my family. And what more is there to say? My favorite part of making this record was hearing him find his voice and direction for this record. I came hard.”
In tandem with a full back catalog reissue series and the new album, Hot Snakes will return to the road in 2018 to incinerate the villages, and they’re already looking ahead to more music. Says Gar Wood, “There’re already 2 more records written and recorded. We wanted to come out with this one using the more mainstream sounding stuff to give people a chance to catch up.”
Courtney Barnett has shared brand new song ‘Need a Little Time’.
The latest track, taken from her new album Tell Me How You Really Feel, was directed by Danny Cohen and follows Barnett floating through space. The new album will be released on May 18th via Mom + Pop Records, Marathon Artists, and Milk! Records. This new song follows the album’s first single ‘Nameless, Faceless’ .
On top of the latest news, Courtney Barnett has revealed that she will be taking new material on the road. The tour, which includes several UK shows in May, will be in Leeds, Glasgow, Manchester, Bristol and London:
Courtney Barnett 2018 UK tour dates:
Tue 29 May – O2 Academy, Leeds
Sat 2 Jun – Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow
Mon 4 Jun – Manchester Academy
Tue 5 Jun – O2 Academy, Bristol
Wed 6 Jun – Roundhouse, London
On 1st June a week before Roger Daltrey begins a tour where he’ll perform Tommy with an orchestra, the Who vocalist will release “As Long as I Have You”. This will be Daltrey’s first record in four years since Going Back Home, his collaboration with Dr. Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson.
The album is a mixture of self-penned tracks such as ‘Certified Rose’ and the soulful ballad ‘Always Heading Home’ along with songs that have inspired Daltrey over the years including Nick Cave’s ‘Into My Arms’, ‘You Haven’t Done Nothing’ by Stevie Wonder, Stephen Stills’ ‘How Far’ and the title track originally recorded by Garnet Mimms in 1964; the year that Daltrey, Townshend, Entwistle and Moon changed their name from The High Numbers and became The Who.
It’s a return to his roots mixed with the wisdom that can only come with age. “This is a return to the very beginning, to the time before Pete [Townshend] started writing our songs to a time when we were a teenage band playing soul music to small crowds in church halls.
” Daltrey said in a statement. “That’s what we were, a soul band,” he continued. “And now, I can sing soul with all the experience you need to sing it. Life puts the soul in. I’ve always sung from the heart but when you’re 19, you haven’t had the life experience with all its emotional trials and traumas that you have by the time you get to my age. You carry all the emotional bruises of life and when you sing these songs, those emotions are in your voice. You feel the pain of a lost love. You feel it and you sing it and that’s soul. For a long time, I’ve wanted to return to the simplicity of these songs, to show people my voice, a voice they won’t have heard before. It felt like the right time. It’s where I am, looking back to that time, looking across all those years but also being here, now, in the soulful moment”
Daltrey worked with a band that includes former Style Council keyboardist Mick Talbot and Sean Genockey on lead guitar. Townshend contributed guitar on seven tracks, and noted that the record “shows Roger at the height of his powers as a vocalist.” .
Last December Wilco issued a deluxe 4 CD edition of their classic 1996 album “Being There”. Among the treats of this version were discs 4 and 5: the first official release of their November 12th, 1996 performance at Los Angeles iconic Troubadour, previously held in common consensus as one of Wilco’s shortlist essential live recordings circulating among fans. Now Wilco is issuing Live At The Troubadour 11/12/96 on its own as a 2 LP set April 21, 2018 for Record Store Day. Rhino/Reprise will press 5000 copies in the US, 8500 worldwide, marking the first time it’ll be available on vinyl (and as a self-contained set on any format).
It includes the following tracks:
Tracklist : Sunken Treasure, Red-Eyed And Blue, I Got You (At The End Of The Century), Someone Else’s Song, Someday Soon,
Forget The Flowers, New Madrid, I Must Be High, Passenger Side (Punk Version), Passenger Side, Hotel Arizona,
Monday, Say You Miss Me, Outtasite (Outta Mind), The Long Cut, Kingpin, Misunderstood, Far, Far Away,
Give Back The Key To My Heart,Gun,
Record Store Day 2018 will sweep America’s record shops, bringing with it performances, parties, and plenty of drool-worthy new and exclusives releases. Uncle Tupelo (the band that predated and eventually morphed into Wilco) will release No Depression – Demos on Record Store Day. Previously released as disc two of the 2014 deluxe reissue of the landmark 1990 album, this marks the first time these tracks will be available on vinyl. Legacy will press 3000 copies.
One release we’re particularly excited about is Uncle Tupelo’s No Depression (Demos). the site and publication No Depression originally got its name from that 1990 album from Uncle Tupelo, a history former ND editor Kim Ruehl outlined in a recent piece for the Columbia Journalism Review.
Referencing ND founding editor Peter Blackstock, Ruehl writes, “Blackstock occasionally participated in an online message board called NoDepression.AltCountry, named for the 1993 debut album of Midwest alt-country group Uncle Tupelo (who had, in turn, named their inaugural recording, No Depression, for a song The Carter Family had recorded a half-century earlier, during the Great Depression).”
Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy, and Mike Heidorn formed the group Uncle Tupelo after the lead singer of their previous band, The Primitives, left to attend college. The trio recorded three albums for Rockville Records, before signing with Sire Records and expanding to a five-piece. Shortly after the release of the band’s major label debut album Anodyne, Farrar announced his decision to leave the band due to a soured relationship with his co-songwriter Tweedy. Uncle Tupelo split on May 1, 1994, after completing a farewell tour. Following the breakup, Farrar formed Son Volt with Heidorn, while the remaining members continued as Wilco. Although Uncle Tupelo broke up before it achieved commercial success, the band is renowned for its impact on the alternative country music scene. The group’s first album, No Depression, became a byword for the genre and was widely influential. Uncle Tupelo’s sound was unlike popular country music of the time, drawing inspiration from styles as diverse as the hardcore punk of The Minutemen and the country instrumentation and harmony of the Carter Family and Hank Williams. Farrar and Tweedy lyrics frequently referred to Middle America and the working class of Belleville.
This Record Store Day release features a handful of exclusives, including a 1988 demo of the title track, which has never before been released on vinyl. Check out more details and a track list for No Depression (Demos)here.
Released in 1990, Uncle Tupelo’s debut album No Depression was a genuine milestone in American rock and roll, a striking fusion of traditional folk and country with post-punk innovation and hardcore ferocity. For the first time on vinyl, fans can hear Jeff Tweedy, Jay Farrar and Mike Heidorn’s legendary demo tape Not Forever, Just For Now, recorded in 1989, plus a demo of “No Depression” recorded a year earlier.
Side A 1. Outdone [1989 Demo] 2. That Year [1989 Demo] 3. Whiskey Bottle [1989 Demo] 4. Flatness [1989 Demo] 5. I Got Drunk [1989 Demo] Side B 1. Before I Break [1989 Demo] 2. Life Worth Living [1989 Demo] 3. Train [1989 Demo] 4. Graveyard Shift [1989 Demo] 5. Screen Door [1989 Demo] 6. No Depression [1988 Demo]
Legendary artist Graham Nash is a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee – with Crosby, Stills, and Nash and also with the Hollies. He was also inducted twice into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, as a solo artist and with CSN, and he is a GRAMMY Award winner.
Towering above virtually everything that Graham Nash has accomplished in his first seventy-five years on this planet, stands the litany of songs that he has written and introduced to the soundtrack of the past half-century. His remarkable body of work, beginning with his contributions to the Hollies opus from 1964 to ’68, including “Stop Stop Stop,” “Pay You Back With Interest,” “On A Carousel,” “Carrie Anne,” “King Midas In Reverse,” and “Jennifer Eccles,” continues all the way to This Path Tonight (2016), his most recent solo album.
The original classic union of Crosby, Stills & Nash (& Young) lasted but twenty months. Yet their songs are lightning rods embedded in our DNA, starting with Nash’s “Marrakesh Express,” “Pre-Road Downs” (written for then-girlfriend Joni Mitchell), and “Lady Of the Island,” from the first Crosby, Stills & Nash LP (1969). On CSNY’s Déjà Vu (1970), Nash’s “Teach Your Children” and “Our House” beseeched us to hold love tightly, to fend off the madness that was on its way.
Overlapping CSNY, Nash’s solo career debuted with Songs For Beginners (1971), whose “Chicago/We Can Change the World” and “Military Madness” were fueled by the Long Hot Summer, the trial of the Chicago Eight, and the ongoing Vietnam war. Songs from that LP stayed in Nash’s concert sets for years including “I Used To Be A King” and “Simple Man”. His next album, Wild Tales (1974), addressed (among other issues) unfair jail terms for minor drug offenses (“Prison Song”), unfair treatment of Vietnam vets (“Oh! Camil”), the unfairness of fame (“You’ll Never Be the Same”), and his muse, Joni (“Another Sleep Song”).
The most resilient, long-lived and productive partnership to emerge from the CSNY camp launched with the eponymously titled Graham Nash/David Crosby (1972), bookended by Nash’s “Southbound Train” as the opening track and “Immigration Man” as the closer. The duo contributed further to the soundtrack of the ’70s on their back-to-back albums, Wind On the Water (1975) and Whistling Down the Wire (1976).
On the CSN reunion studio LP (1977), Nash took top honors with “Just A Song Before I Go” (written in the space of one hour, and a Top 10 hit single). Lightning struck once more on CSN’s Daylight Again (1982), on which Nash penned their second (and final) Top 10 hit, “Wasted On the Way,” lamenting the energy, time and love lost by the group due to years of internecine quarrels.
Nash’s passionate voice continues to be heard in support of peace, and social and environmental justice. The No Nukes/Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) concerts he organized with Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt in 1979 remain seminal benefit events. In 2011, Nash was instrumental in bringing MUSE back to the forefront with a concert to benefit Japan disaster relief and groups promoting non-nuclear energy worldwide. That same year, he and Crosby were among the many musicians who made their way to the Occupy Wall Street actions in lower Manhattan.
In September 2013, Nash released his long-awaited autobiography Wild Tales, which delivers an engrossing, no-holds-barred look back at his remarkable career and the music that defined a generation. The book landed him on the New York Times Best Sellers list, and was released in paperback in late 2014.
In recognition for his contributions as a musician and philanthropist, Nash was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth. While continually building his musical legacy, Nash is also an internationally renowned photographer and visual artist. With his photography, Nash has drawn honors including the New York Institute of Technology’s Arts & Technology Medal and Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters and the Hollywood Film Festival’s inaugural Hollywood Visionary Cyber Award. His work is collected in the book Eye to Eye: Photographs by Graham Nash; he curated others’ work in the volume Taking Aim: Unforgettable Rock ‘n’ Roll Photographs Selected by Graham Nash (2009).
Nash’s work has been shown in galleries and museums worldwide. His company Nash Editions’ original IRIS 3047 digital printer and one of its first published works—Nash’s 1969 portrait of David Crosby— is now housed in the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution in recognition of his revolutionary accomplishments in the fine arts and digital printing world.
