Archive for the ‘CLASSIC ALBUMS’ Category

CONTROL OF THE GOING – ” I Love You But It’s Going To Rain “

Posted: February 23, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , ,
0

The debut album by Manchester psychedelic rock & roll 6-piece, Control Of The Going. “I Love You, But It’s Going To Rain” is the majestically-titled debut album from Control Of The Going, a band that’s blossomed from the slightly awkward kids that you’d see at every vaguely psychedelic gig in town to one of the leading lights in that very scene that they belonged to. They’ve naturally spread their wings further afield as this record demonstrates, its real power and beauty in the way they’ve taken their influences, span them round, put their own twist on them and made something so ambitious, widescreen yet still peculiarly (Greater) Mancunian in its impact. The rumbling guitars that usher in opening track War Crime give way to pulsating drums, but quickly come back to reclaim their crown. One of the most immediate observations with the album is the amount of space that producer Dean Glover affords these songs, no mean feat given that there’s six of Control Of The Going in action. Liam half sings, half drawls through the chorus, one part dark Californian, one part resembling Ride’s earliest work. As we’ll discover listening further, they never stand still at any point on this record.

Star is a real juxtaposition, guitars deep in the mix, jangling away menacingly with an imminent threat of blowing you away, with deliciously layered vocals in the forefront as Liam breathlessly asks the question “why won’t you be my star tonight?” before almost channeling another famous Liam from these parts as he enunciates the star in the question with increasing intensity. The band then take the song away from him, off into a whirlpool of guitars that feel like they’ve blindfolded you and turning you round and round until you’re dizzy with the impact.

Sell Your Soul also starts with Liam centre stage, with the slow build behind him alluding to what’s to come, but here the guitars have a longing metallic edge to them that feels so far removed from their roots. This is of course what makes Control Of The Going unique from their contemporaries, there’s no attempt here to overpower the listener, to blast them away with a wall of noise that them being a six-piece would feel like a logical approach. Subtlety is the key here, both in the playing and the production that affords each member the oxygen to allow the songs to breathe

http://

 

ANNA McCLELLAN – ” Yes and No “

Posted: February 23, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , , ,
0

Image result for ANNA McCLELLAN

“This record is ultimately about women and the ways in which we love men. It is the byproduct of me healing my need for male validation, or rather not letting male validation control my choices. The one thing I keep taking away from life through all the shuffle is that there is always both. Intense happiness and intense sadness mingle. The longer I’m alive, the more I can’t feel one without the other. It is the crushing beauty of existing.” — Anna McClellan

The road to Anna McClellan’s Yes and No was not just a metaphorical one. Born out of a long solo road trip McClellan took in 2015, the songs map her emotions of the two year period in which they were written like a highway is laid out before its driver. With decent savings, she set off due west, keyboard laid across the backseat, with little plan other than a call ahead to some friends and the idea that playing shows along the way would be cool. Though the trip lasted only four months, McClellan continued bouncing around from New York to Omaha and back, until finally settling in NYC in January of 2017. It is fitting that these songs were conceived in a period of restlessness.

http://

McClellan’s singular voice mixes earnest intensity with nonchalant melancholy that puts the listener in a distant place, far away from other humans, as most of the subject matter deals with loneliness and internal emotional navigation. Often though, the songs stray outward and upward, pondering the confused nature of people, elaborating on the one thing we all cling to: the knowledge that no one is excluded from feeling weird sometimes.

Yes and No is out February 23rd, 2018 via Father/Daughter Records.

BONNY DOON – ” Longwave ” Best Albums Of 2018

Posted: February 23, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , ,
0

Image result

Bonny Doon leaped into the conscious of many early last year, with the release of their subtle and beautiful debut album. The Michigan quartet impressed with their hazy melodies and sonic exploration, yet they were already thinking about what would be next. The answer will come next month, with the release of their second album, “Longwave”, described the band as, “a conscious about-face…and a journey inward”.

This week Bonny Doon have shared the second snapshot of Longwave, in the shape of new single A Lotta Things. The track showcases the band’s change of musical direction, gone are the rich sonic textures, and to the fore is letting the songwriting speak for itself. The track is a stripped back, and subtle affair, just entwined guitar-lines, a steady pulsing drum beat and an unprocessed, gorgeously honest vocal line. There’s a touch of Ultimate Painting to the shuffling churn of the guitar lines, while the vocal has all the easy charm of A. Savage or Kevin Morby. It’s a brave move to follow a successful debut by ripping up the rule book and creating something entirely different, yet by the sound of this Bonny Doon were absolutely right to do so.

http://

Longwave, improves on the homespun charm that made their debut so inviting. The leap is partially due to the fact that the band is more confident now as their debut’s songs were just the first songs Lennox ever wrote, but as Lennox explains it also comes from a more cohesive vision. He says, “The whole goal of this new album was to try and capture the band’s sound at its essence with everything stripped down and vulnerable. We were trying to just capture the sound of the band in a room. We were happy to just kind of bear more of ourselves and be more open.”

Written of over the course of a trip to a lake house in Northern Michigan, and recorded at Key Club Studios downstate, the mesmerizing songs on Longwave are patient enough to ruminate on a musical idea without meandering. It’s this lack of urgency that has given the band the lyrical space to perfectly capture twenty-something malaise. Though the previously shared single “I Am Here (I Am Alive)” found Lennox frustrated, “Is there something missing I can’t tell / Is there more I can’t see,” Bonny Doon’s latest, “A Lotta Things,”.

Longwave is out March 23rd via Woodsist Records.

http://

ED DOWIE – ‘Red Or Grey’

Posted: February 23, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , ,
0

No automatic alt text available.

Ed Dowie learned the piano and the organ as a child from his father, before becoming a chorister and an organist in Dorset. His music career began in earnest in 1998 when his Bournemouth-based psychedelic-dub-pop band Brothers in Sound – stablemates of the legendary Beta Band on cult Parlophone subsidiary Regal Recordings  released three EPs and the album Family Is For Sharing, all of which were met with considerable critical acclaim. After Brothers in Sound’s untimely demise, Ed spent several years studying experimental music in Leicester, Montreal and York, before moving to London in 2008 and joining puppetry/animation/film company The Paper Cinema as a composer for various theatre, short films and art projects. He has played at venues including the Tate Britain, the Barbican and the National Portrait Gallery, as well as further afield at festivals in France, Denmark, Portugal, Spain and Azerbaijan.

http://

 

Ed’s debut album The Uncle Sold takes its title from the 1995 Kazuo Ishiguro novel The Unconsoled, a unique and inspirational book that takes the reader on a continually evolving, dream-like journey around a non-specified city. Recorded in London at studio spaces in Dalston and Haringey, it’s a sometimes wistful, sometimes sad, sometimes uplifting and at all times surprising listen that paints a picture of a range of characters struggling for certainty in a metropolis beset by continually changing forces, be they political, personal or financial.

Openers ‘Verbarhemiopia’ and ‘Red or Grey’ are gently prismatic wonders each, variously encompassing dreamy multi-layered voices, firework field recordings, static hiss, twirling fairground ride melodies and a playful, vaguely Gallic sounding accordion solo. A slowly crashing wave of heavy-hearted electronica with ethereal yet understated vocals summoning the spirit of Robert Wyatt and Arthur Russell, ‘Yungpawel’ is a song about “a couple of very good friends of mine who sort of represent an ideal of how it’s possible to be,” says Ed, “inspiring, intelligent, active, self-aware, conscious, caring”. Set to a field recording of pouring rain, ‘Bastard Harbour’ is a hauntingly melancholic piano meditation on ageing and death. Climactic closer ‘Richard’, a drowsy collage of needling guitars and sparkling synths with hints of Spiritualized and Super Furry Animals, brings a note of acceptance to the album’s final phase as the song’s titular drifter finally comes home.

http://

FIRESTATIONS – ” Receiver “

Posted: February 23, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

No automatic alt text available.

Walthamstow’s finest dream-pop band is probably a more open competition than you’d imagine thanks to the existence of The Leaf Library and The Great Electric, but definitely one of the finest are Lost Map signed quintet, Firestations. The band are set to release their new album, The Year Dot, in April and have this week shared the second single from it, “Receiver”.

Our new single, Receiver, is out now on Lost Map. You are the receiver, you get the message”. You send out a signal and hope that it reaches someone – it’s our dystopian sci-fi electro-pop love song.

It’ll be out as a ltd edition PostMap postcard as well, with an exclusive track, on 16th March.

Described by frontman Mike Cranny as being about, “the joy of finding someone who can receive your frequency and just knowing they’re in the world making everything bearable somehow”, it’s an early contender for the year’s most scientifically accurate love song. With its clinking electronics and driving rhythms, there’s a touch of retro-futurism about the sound, like a child of the 1980’s picturing what pop music would sound like in 2018, which it turns is much better than what most actual pop music sounds like.

http://

 

Firestations have suggested The Year Dot was written as a distillation of a world of admin jobs, depression and dreaming the days away, listening to Receiver it’s hard not to get whisked away in a moment of pure, perfect escapism.

The Year Dot is out April 6th via Lost Map Records.

http://

Band Members
Mike Cranny, Laura Copsey,
Martin Thompson,
Giles Littleford, Tom Hargreaves

 

HOT SNAKES – ” Six Wave Hold Down / Death Camp Fantasy “

Posted: February 23, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , ,
0

Image may contain: 2 people, sunglasses

Swami John Reis and Rick Froberg have been making noises together since high school. In 1986 it was the post-hardcore chime of Pitchfork. 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.

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.”

March 16th will see the release of San Diego based Hot Snakes’ Jericho Sirens, the band’s fourth album, and their first in 14 long years. It will be out on Sub Pop Records.

We’ve already heard the track Six Wave Hold Down and now we have the equally good second offering from the new record, entitled, Death Camp Fantasy, it is another doozy of snarling garage punk.

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 Hot Snakes 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.”

Jericho Sirens (Release Date: March 16, 2018)

The BREEDERS – ” Nervous Mary “

Posted: February 23, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , ,
0

No automatic alt text available.

They may have been away from the spotlight for a while, but the Breeders haven’t had their last splash. Today, the band released “Nervous Mary” It’s the third single from their upcoming album All Nerve, their first in a decade.

Following the release of “Wait in the Car” and the title track, “Nervous Mary” which opens the record, after nearly 30 years in the music business is only their fifth LP. Due out March 2nd via 4AD Records, the album features the same lineup as their seminal 1993 record Last Splash — which includes frontwoman Kim Deal, her twin sister Kelley on guitar, Josephine Wiggs on bass and drummer Jim MacPherson. The group reconnected in 2013 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the album with a series of shows.

“Kim thought I hated her, and I thought she hated me,” for 15 years, Macpherson told the New York Times. The group has learned how to appreciate one another and get along, a big part of which was the Deal sisters finding sobriety.

“Nervous Mary” focuses on a central character who never gets what’s coming to her. “Nervous Mary had a nervous day/ Oxbow, strange glow/ She runs for the exit, but she never got away,” the Deals sing.

‘All Nerve’, the new album by The Breeders, will be released on March 2nd 2018 on 4AD Records:

ZOLA JESUS – ” Okovi Additions ” Remixes

Posted: February 22, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , ,
0

Zola Jesus signed to Sacred Bones in 2008. In the seven years that followed, she has released eight albums together (three LPs, two EPs, two 7”s, a CD-R, and even a DVD).  Zola Jesus’ Okovi: Additions LP offers a new angle on her 2017 album, Okovi. The collection pairs four previously unreleased songs from the Okovi sessions with four remixes by a diverse cast of artists.

Johnny Jewel turns “Ash to Bone” into a late-night cinematic torch song, Tri Angle composer Katie Gately’s “Siphon” is a dark choir of warping angels, black metal band Wolves in the Throne Room turn “Exhumed” makes the pounding industrial anthem even denser and heavier, and Toronto producer Joanne Pollock (formerly one half of Poemss with Venetian Snares’ Aaron Funk) makes “Soak” feel like an aching classical standard— until it starts warping in on itself and goes somewhere else entirely.

“The songs on Additions traverse a vast amount of sonic ground, but taken together, they cohere remarkably well as an album, all while serving to enrich the experience of Okovi.”

“These four new songs were intended to be on Okovi,” Nika Roza Danilova explains. “Each of them represents a snapshot of my journey in making the record, and are just as precious to me as the songs that made it onto the final track listing. The remixes are beloved in their own way, as most were born from organic circumstances, and have drawn the original songs into completely new atmospheres.”

Released April 6th, 2018

http://

RADIOHEAD – ” I Might Be Wrong ” Great Live Recordings

Posted: February 22, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , ,
0

The closest thing we have to a proper Radiohead live album, “I Might Be Wrong” documents how the band transforms its intricate songs for the stage—an especially tricky feat when talking about the moody, unconventional tracks of the Kid A and Amnesiac era. Some are redone here completely: The unearthly, backward-playing “Like Spinning Plates” becomes a glowing piano ballad, while the free-jazz horns of “The National Anthem” are replaced with Thom Yorke’s frantic beatboxing. Others, like “Morning Bell” and “Idioteque” are tweaked just enough to turn them from chilly and ominous to furious and alarming. The whole thing concludes with what was, for ages, the only official release of “True Love Waits” a mythical fan-favorite live staple that’s forever preserved here in its original, acoustic-guitar-driven form

DANE JONESHILL – ” Everything That Rises Must Converge “

Posted: February 22, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
Tags: , , ,
0

Dane Joneshill : Everything That Rises Must Converge

Dane Joneshill is a Searcy local who released his debut album on January. 19th, 2018. “Everything That Rises Must Converge” is a breathtaking work of art. It is an album to get lost in. Each song is tender and true, and can inspire you to see goodness in the hard times. “I hope that anyone can listen to the songs and at least feel two things,” Joneshill said. “I hope they can say, ‘I’m not totally alone’ and ‘There’s a hope worth at least looking for. They can at least hope that there is hope.”

“I’ve been writing songs for 20 years and have always waited to make an album,” Joneshill said. “Something about now felt like the right time. I could not hang onto those songs anymore.” Joneshill has created an album that is intimate and pure for a stunning debut. Each song is created with passion, goodness and an outstanding amount of talent. “I think in some ways the record was just the most empathetic thing I could do, just extend it to people and go, ‘I hope that things will be better. I hope that somehow it will come back together in something else that is beautiful and helpful, That was the theme in the back of my head as I wrote songs the last few years.”

“A lot of them are about the struggles peoples find themselves in sometimes, not knowing how to wrestle their experience with pain, Joneshill said. “Hopefully that is there in all of these stories, people wrestling with that, looking for the light and just trying to hang on.” .“What will you do with your wild and precious life?” is the first line of the song “Fragments.” The song is about one character wondering about what he has done with his life. He had all of these things he wanted and intended to do and places he wanted to go. But life chips away at him. He gets surrounded by darkness and ends up feeling like he’s nothing. One night he sleeps and he dreams all of these grand and hopeful aspirations, realizing he still has things to hold onto. “I thought that was a beautiful picture of just hanging on,” Joneshill said.

Dane Joneshill is a talented storyteller. This track grabs listeners with its engaging narrative immediately. Armed with a classic piano, slide guitar, and cello, he creates one hell of a track. He is classic Americana, through and through. There is something for everyone on this track as the talented artist croons. His influences are expansive and exciting. We love this track on so many levels and believe you will too. It’s catchy gospel tinged climax is something special too.

http://

Older Entries
Newer Entries