Archive for the ‘CLASSIC ALBUMS’ Category

INDIGO SPARKE – ” Colourblind “

Posted: February 5, 2021 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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The third single from Australian artist Indigo Sparke’s forthcoming debut album “Echo” , “Colourblind” is an intimate, yet expansive indie-folk track on which Big Thief songwriter, solo artist and Echo co-producer Adrianne Lenker makes her presence felt. Sparke’s stunning vocals are sandwiched between soft electric guitar on one side and rustic acoustic chords on the other as she sings, “There’s a knowing in your eyes / There’s a truth behind my lies,” stretching that last syllable for what feels like miles. Indeed, the song has a distinctly pastoral, wide-open appeal to it, particularly in the whistled outro—you half-expect a tumbleweed to blow through the track, and its Paris, Texas-inspired video (co-directed by Sparke and DP Monica Buscarino) only adds to the effect. It’s rare to encounter a young singer/songwriter with that sort of transportive power. “I think there was a period of time when I was almost laughing at how sad I was in the space of ambiguous liminal love.

If you don’t start laughing, you just cry more,” Sparke says of the song. “Its a feeling when you are kind of sick to your stomach and anxious but excited and not knowing what the fuck is going on. The space of waiting. Waiting to know someone else’s truth, or waiting to see someone, or waiting to see what the future holds for you and that person, or waiting to see if it’s even real. Everything becomes that person, everything reminds you of that person, everything speaks that persons name. It’s a bittersweet thing.

Indigo Sparke brings her deeply personal lived experiences to her music, highlighting the spaces between the polarity of softness and grit. Pulling her experiences of addiction, of healing, of queerness, of heartbreak, of joy, of connection, of the softness and of the grit alchemising it all into tenderness through her music, she conjures up a myriad of feelings that is undeniably potent. Indigo was born in the belly of Sydney, Australia straight into the heart of a family with music in their bones. Her parents, a jazz singer and a musician, named her after the Duke Ellington song “Mood Indigo,” and her childhood was spent serenaded by a rich soundtrack of Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. From a young age Indigo felt called to the stage, attending a performing arts high school, and followed it with three years in an acting school, working as an actress before embedding herself and heeding the call to the path of music.

Indigo taught herself to play guitar in her early twenties. Over the next few years, she established herself on the Australian music scene, and released her EP “Night Bloom” in 2016. Indigo’s career continually bloomed, opening for Big Thief on the Australian dates of their 2017/ 2018 tour, and then was invited to play at South by Southwest 2019. There, NPR’s Bob Boilen was first taken by Indigo, writing that her lyrics ”both cut hard and comfort” and that her performance “balanced heavy, reverb-drenched verses with moments of airy and acoustic whispers.” Sparke began 2020 with a February Tiny Desk Concert at NPR, and had been booked as the opening act for Big Thief’s sold-out tour of Australia and New Zealand, including a scheduled performance at the Sydney Opera House before Covid-19 saw everything change.

It was in 2019 that Indigo lived and travelled across America, in places like NYC, Minneapolis, Topanga, Taos, in many hotel rooms and amidst the vast stretching landscapes on the never ending highways, channelling her creative energy into the completion of her latest album, “echo”. “echo” was recorded between LA, Italy and New York, co-produced by Sparke, Adrianne Lenker (of Big Thief), and Andrew Sarlo (producer of Big Thief, Nick Hakim, Hovvdy, Courtney Marie Andrews, Bon Iver, Hand Habits, Active Child). The record was completed at Figure 8 Studio in New York City, studio of musician Shahzad Ismaily. Phil Weinrobe (producer/engineer for Leonard Cohen, Damien Rice, Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek, JFDR, and Lonnie Holley) engineered and mixed the album. Of this incredibly deep and intimate record, Indigo says, “When writing and recording the record, I wondered how it would all come together. I felt like I was standing back in the desert, looking up at the blue night sky, wondering how all the stars would connect. I think sometimes it’s the dark matter or void space between them, that holds it all together.

This record is an ode to death and decay. And the restlessness I feel to belong to something greater. 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.” Indigo’s art searches for the vulnerability that comes with a feeling of true safety, a vulnerability that can grant access to a world behind tangible experience. It is clear Indigo has lived and woven her many lives into these songs, telling us, “I feel and have often felt a million different women ramble and reconfigure the corners of my mind and soul. I think in my life, I have ricocheted off so many different walls within myself. It’s an endless search to understand the mysteries of life and love and history. As soon as you think you’ve got it, it’s gone. Sometimes I feel so thin. Sometimes I feel so robust. I think that comes through the music.” “I feel that death and time hang over me like questions, I have felt the shimmer and the edge for so long now but what I long for are the worlds of safety and safe love. There are so many windows in life to look through and so many ways to heal and express. My photography, poetry and music, were born at a juncture mirroring different parts of me. I see and feel visually, I am obsessed with immortalizing memory.”

Indigo Sparke – the album “Echo”, out February 19th 2021, via Sacred Bones Records

MOONTYPE – ” About You “

Posted: February 5, 2021 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Chicago trio Moontype have announced their debut album “Bodies of Water”, due out on April 2nd via Born Yesterday Records. They’ve also shared a new track, “About You,” which follows their debut single “Ferry.” “About You” is a snappy, easy going piece of indie-pop tune, and its giddy tempo changes mimic the excitement of being drawn to someone who’s an instant mood-booster. Lead singer/bassist Margaret McCarthy’s vocals are trustworthy and sweet, as she beams about touching memories with a close friend over peppy guitars. “When I wrote ‘About You’ I was sitting in my apartment missing my friend who had gone abroad for the semester and thinking about all the moments that made our friendship so special. The friendship began as a crush but it slowly melted into something more lasting we made a synth together, we wrote songs together and I really just wanted to be around them most of the time!”

McCarthy says. “There was this feeling of being two magnets, pulling towards each other, but the pull doesn’t stay that strong forever and I wanted to remember what it felt like at the start. I’m grateful I wrote it down in that way because now me and my friend fall in and out of touch but every time we play that song I remember how special they are and how important they are to me.

Bandcamp: https://moontype.bandcamp.com/album/b…

Moontype is Ben Cruz, Emerson Hunton, and Margaret McCarthy.

From “Bodies of Water” out April 2nd on Born Yesterday Records.

BULLY – ” Losing “

Posted: February 5, 2021 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Bully

For Alicia Bognanno, the onset of each tour begins with a familiar ritual. She gathers her 16 distortion pedals (yes, you read that right: 16) and begins a process of elimination – “a distortion off,” as she likes to call it. Starting with a batch of five, she narrows down the winning gritty, aggressive tone and repeats the procedure until just three are left standing. And, as always, her Greer Amps pedal is triumphant.

“For some reason in my head I’ll be like, ‘What if I’m not maximising my pedal tone.’ I hate myself for saying that, but it’s true.” She laughs. “It’s just such a waste of time. I go through it and every time it’s the same. What the fuck am I doing?”

I suggest it has therapeutic benefits. “Clearly it’s doing something for my mental health. So yeah, that’s my relationship with pedals. Maybe we leave that bit out,” she jokes. The singer and engineer behind gritty punk act Bully eases into conversation gently. I can sense we’re both a little anxious, which is oddly comforting. She eagerly offers up pictures of her “ginormous” nine-year-old dog that she lives alone with in Nashville.

We discuss everything from the excess of over-the-top dudes doing pedal demonstrations on Youtube – “there’s a guy noodling on like a blues guitar and you’re like, ‘What the fuck?’ Like, does this translate? … He’s got his foot up on his amp, and it’s like, ‘Okay we get it’,” she says between laughter, – to the need for the representation of friendship between teenage women in film.

“I think that’s why Ladybird was cool. There’s so much you need from [those friendships]. Like talking about getting your fucking period and what’s supposed to be normal,” she explains. The track ‘Focused’ was written about her best friend growing up. She reflects on what they went through as teens; how they confided in one another when they couldn’t speak with their families. “As culture we’re told to hide our tampons when we’re walking to the bathroom, you know what I’m saying? When you’re kids you’re so embarrassed. You’re constantly being shamed for it in middle school,” Bognanno explains.

She misses the depth of those youthful, devious and playful friendships. “Even just having sex when you’re young and being called a slut. I mean, guys don’t get that. Ever. That’s an award for them.” She wishes these dynamics were examined with a greater degree of wisdom in film. And in a way that is truly accessible, so you’re not trawling through the deepest, darkest corners of Rotten Tomatoes to find a story that’s told well.

Having grown up in a small town in Tennessee, Bognanno didn’t start playing guitar until she was 20 after moving to Nashville. She wasn’t raised in a musical family. In fact, she was only exposed to one local band growing up. “Playing music was not a thing,” she explains. She dabbled with piano at home, but found the instrument limiting. “I was really bad,” Bognanno says, comparing it to sounding like the soft and polished pop singer-songwriter, Sara Bareilles.

When she first picked up an electric guitar, her music started to translate into the gritty, high-velocity punk that it was destined to be. “I got my first SG when someone was like, ‘If you can fix this, you can have it.’ And it was just a soldering point in the input jack that was messed up, so I was like, ‘Perfect’,” she says.

She’s noted a sense of imposter syndrome in previous interviews. Asked if this feeling remains, she says it does, but Bognanno is thankful for the team behind Bully and their manager, Ryan Matteson. “[He’s] constantly just like, ‘You’re worth more than that’,” she explains. “I’m [consistently] just in this headspace where I’m like, somebody is going to say what I’m doing isn’t fair or that I don’t do deserve what I’m getting, which I do. I work my fucking ass off.”

Bully have been constantly on the move, having played at least 85 shows across the States, the UK and Europe,

Asked how guitarist Clayton Parker, bassist Reece Lazarus, and herself prevent burn out on tour, she explains, “We are really independent. I think when we’re touring around other bands they get confused, because we’ll just get to places and scatter … Everyone really likes their alone time.” Small acts of thoughtfulness helps to ease tension. “It’s like, don’t crack open a hard boiled egg in the van,” she says, laughing. “We went out to band dinner last night. It’s a lot of silence, but it’s good – it’s the thought that counts.”

Her songs have always been personal, and instilled with whatever anxieties were playing on her mind at the time of writing. However, after Trump’s election, she decided to be more outright. “The election in the states, whether or not it was intentional or subconscious, definitely affected everybody’s art,” she says. “It’s just built up the need to more vocal about everything in general.

“There was a lot of stuff that I kept more personal because I didn’t feel like I needed to talk about it, like my sexuality and stuff,” she explains. “I’ve brought it up this year because it’s just like, let’s just make a safe space for everybody … I think people are just searching for that connection a lot more.”

As for how she’ll connect with her audiences in the future, we’ll have to wait and see: Bully are currently working with five new songs, and Bognanno plans to start demoing fresh material from mid this month to September. “[Whether or not I’ll] think those songs are total garbage in five months is still up in the air.”

“Losing” is out now through Sub Pop Records

BORED AT MY GRANDMA’S HOUSE – ” Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too ” EP

Posted: February 5, 2021 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Bored At My Grandma’s House is the moniker of 19-year old Leeds-based Amber Strawbridge, starting out as an exercise in passing time when she was quite literally bored at her grandma’s place. First single & EPp opener ‘Showers’ is about time alone & listening to your mind – “do you ever think of showers as like a new beginning?“ is a poignant opening line, about that therapeutic space for you to really think and let your thoughts surface. In Amber’s own words “showers are a kind of therapy in my opinion, they give you time to reflect and think without influence from anything external.” born in Whitehaven, Cumbria to musical family, and raised on the likes of Bowie & Pink Floyd there was always plenty of opportunity to mess around on the various instruments lying around the house.

Attempts at proper music lessons went awry as Amber shunned the rules & rigidity, and so instead she gradually taught herself piano, guitar & drums. after time travelling in Cambodia, teaching English & helping with projects in various villages, Amber stayed with her grandma & began to use the aeons of spare time to make tunes on garageband & upload them to soundcloud. as a wave of BBC introducing support rolled in, coupled with a move to Leeds to study music, the bedroom set-up evolved & a full EP began to take shape. Playing all the instruments & self-recording most of the EP at home, Amber took the tracks to Alex Greaves (Working Men’s Club, bdrmm) at the Nave studio for live drums & some final mixing flourishes, leaving an EP full of lo-fi charm but with a studio feel.

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Inspired by Slowdive, Wolf Alice & Alvvays, “Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too” showcases Amber’s singular vision of indie-pop, on an ep that deals with topics like humanity, nostalgia & the current refugee crisis. speaking on the EP title Amber says “Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too” is the realisation that everyone is the same. in the sense that we are all human, everyone has issues and problems to face, everyone makes mistakes and has success. I used to compare myself to others a lot and think ‘wow they have their life together’ or ‘how are they so happy all of the time’ but that’s not the case it’s just what you can see on the outside …so it’s kind of an EP of self assurance and reminding myself that it’s ok to not have it together all the time because no one does as we’re all just human after all” .

The EP is just the start for Bored At My Grandma’s House “I’ve already got a few tracks which I’m thinking could be potentially for an album, I’d definitely like to do a bigger project next and have the sound I’d like in mind. I’ve recently just got a band together so hopefully when live shows are resurrected 2021 is looking to be anything but boring for Amber Strawbridge.

Released February 5th, 2021

HUSKER DU – ” New Day Rising “

Posted: February 5, 2021 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Hüsker Dü

If there’s one word that describes Hüsker Dü it’s speed, whether that’s found in the ferocity of their earliest songs, the amphetamines charging through their veins, or the fact that their whole body of work including seven albums from the live freakout Land Speed Record through to their swansong Warehouse: Songs and Stories – was released between 1981 and 1987.

But amid this breakneck charge, one flex perhaps best sums up their power as a group: “New Day Rising” emerging blinking into the light in January 1985, only six months after Zen Arcade had blown hardcore up from the inside.

Zen Arcade was an album with a sense of scope that bled beyond its borders, a blockbuster nightmarescape that pushed Bob Mould, Grant Hart and Greg Norton as artists—not just punk kids out of the Twin Cities across four sides of vinyl. Shifting perspective again, New Day Rising was about refinement, and drilling down into the melodic smarts that allow us to view Hüsker Dü as a cornerstone of modern indie-rock. “I’m really glad New Day Rising was done and dusted before Zen Arcade really started to resonate,” guitarist-vocalist Mould wrote in his autobiography. “Can you imagine if we hadn’t had another record ready? We’d have been sitting around with the earth shaking underneath us, trying to get settled and centred enough to make another strong album but instead we struck while the iron is hot.”

Hüsker Dü’s music was always driven by tension – between Mould and drummer-vocalist Hart as songwriters, between the band and their label, SST Records, between the band and their hardcore purist fans, who were always one step away from crying sellout – and New Day Rising was no different.

With a power struggle ongoing between the trio, who sought to self-produce the LP, and SST’s in-house engineer Spot, who was forced upon them by the cash-conscious label, that tension is welded to the presentation of the songs. They’re scratchy and raw, washed out at times. They’re imperfect, just as Mould and Hart began to reach for pop-punk perfection with cast-iron classics such as “I Apologize” and “The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill”.

“They were kind of working from within a classic pop structure,” Spot told Michael Azerrad in Our Band Could Be Your Life. “And doing something else with it. Kind of like they broke into it with a coat hanger and got the keys out and went on a joy ride. And then wore the tires out.”

It’s entirely thrilling to see Mould, in particular, figure out what he’s capable of almost in real time. Celebrated Summer, from its coruscating, infinitely catchy riff through to its runaway train of a hook and pensive acoustic break, is close to a perfect encapsulation of the elements that would sustain a 40-year career. But Hart’s “Terms of Psychic Warfare” – a wonderfully wonky, quasi-Stones styled pop-rocker – is just around the bend and shows him in lockstep with his bandmate.

The garbled jangle of Perfect Example is Mould finding the willingness to take his foot off the pedal, and also a snapshot of the drinking habit he carried throughout recording. “I was coming to the end of my drinking time and was realising I wasn’t the easiest person to be around at times,” . “I could be a fully functioning yet contrary alcoholic at 23 or 24. So songs like “I Apologize” are clearly me feeling like a bad young man, like I should apologise globally for something I probably did but was not fully aware of because I was drunk a lot.”

At this point Mould was playing Ibanez Flying Vs, with his graduation to Fender Strats still a few years down the road at the start of his solo career. A relic from this era also turned up on his searing 13th solo record Blue Hearts: a reissue ‘65 silverface Fender Deluxe. “That adds a lot of the constant, upper-mid saturation that you’re hearing on the record,” he told us last autumn.

New Day Rising was another outsider hit, and a line in the sand for Hüsker Dü. They’d put out three more records in their last two years together, with the (finally) self-produced Flip Your Wig released in September ’85. An almost faultless missive from the nascent indie-rock scene, it pushed the melodic envelope even further and set the table for their divisive decision to jump to a major for 1986’s Candy Apple Grey.

Eventually, addiction and infighting swallowed Hüsker Dü whole and they folded with more acrimony than ceremony in 1987. Mould got into acoustic writing with Workbook and ignited a power-pop renaissance with his band Sugar as the 80s ticked over into the 90s.  In 1994, he came out as gay in a article. “The army’s credo was ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’” he told the Guardian last year. “In hardcore, it was ‘don’t advertise, don’t worry.’ I had a handful of casual encounters with guys on the road. But it was a community of misfits, and mostly no one cared what you did behind closed doors. 

Grant Hart and Norton also pursued their own careers, with Hart’s 1988 2541 EP tracing its roots back to writing sessions for New Day Rising. He’d later play with the underrated Nova Mob and release a run of solo records. After years of animosity and backbiting, Hüsker Dü’s three members patched things up long enough to work on the exceptional early years archive release Savage Young Dü, which was released only weeks after Hart’s death from liver cancer in September 2017.

The Band:

  • Bob Mould – vocals, guitar
  • Grant Hart – vocals, drums
  • Greg Norton – bass
Hüsker Dü - New Day Rising

The BAND – ” Live at Royal Albert Hall ” June 1971

Posted: February 4, 2021 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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(L-R) Garth Hudson, Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel and Rick Danko of The Band pose for a group portrait in London in June 1971. (Photo by Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns)

Fans of The Band celebrated the 50th anniversary of the band’s 1970 Stage Fright studio album in 2020, and to mark the ongoing celebration, Universal Music Enterprises has shared a previously-unreleased live version of the band performing their most well-known hit, “The Weight”.

This live take on the celebrated Music From Big Pink track was recorded during The Band’s June 3rd, 1971 show at London’s famed Royal Albert Hall. The previously-unreleased concert is set to be included in full on The Band’s upcoming Stage Fright 50th Anniversary Edition box set, due out on February 12th.

The song that perfectly encapsulates The Band’s deep arsenal of talented singers in Levon Helm, Rick Danko, and Richard Manuel came in at the three slot of the show as the group explodes out of the starting gate. Coming into London hot on the tail end of a 1971 European tour, this two-night run at the Royal Albert Hall was The Band’s first time back at the famous venue since backing Bob Dylan in 1966. Given the crowd’s vitriolic reaction to the newly-electrified demeanor of the iconic singer-songwriter five years prior, the group’s 1971 return was justifiably much more rewarding.

“Everybody was on their game. And it was such a great relief to come back to Albert Hall from the last experience of playing with Bob there, [Laughs]” Robertson said “When we played with Bob, we were on a ridiculous schedule on tour. I’m amazed that Bob, you know, could even pull it off physically. This time, the crowd was just over the top on enthusiasm and we were trying to give it back to them.”

Just when you think “The Weight” has reached peak exposure in the culture, Robbie Robertson’s 1968 song and its original recording by the Band — always manages to stage a comeback. During the past five decades, it’s repeatedly popped up in soundtracks, from Easy Rider to The Big Chill to the recent Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. In 2019, an all-star remake featuring Robertson, Ringo Starr and musicians from around the world generated millions of views. And next week, a new Band box set will revive “The Weight” again, this time by way of an excavated live version.

Starting with Music From Big Pink, Robertson has started the process of digging through master tapes and archives of each of the Band’s albums in time for their five-decade anniversaries. This year, the time has come for an upgrade of their third LP, Stage Fright. A 50th-anniversary edition of the album, out February 12th, will include a new stereo mix of the album, a few alternate takes, and a collection of hotel-room jams featuring Robertson, bassist Rick Danko, and pianist-drummer Richard Manuel.

Also included is the never-before-released Live at Royal Albert Hall, June 1971, which carries additional significance. The previous time the Band had played at that austere venue, in 1966, they were known as the Hawks and were backing Bob Dylan on his controversial European tour. The last two shows of the tour took place at the hall, where, as at other shows, some in the audience were less than thrilled by the sound of Dylan backed by a plugged-in band — and let their frustrations be known by way of booing and yelling.

By 1971, though, things had changed: “The Hawks had been booed there last time out,” wrote Levon Helm in his memoir This Wheel’s on Fire. “Not this time. Take my word for it — pandemonium. They were on their feet and dancing from the first notes.”

Naturally, Live at Royal Albert Hall, June 1971, includes a version of “The Weight.” The song was also in the news last December when Dylan sold his song catalogue to Universal Music Publishing for a reported $400 million — a deal that, to the bafflement of some, included all the original Band songs from Music From Big Pink. (The Band had signed with Dylan’s publishing company, Dwarf Music, back in 1968.) 

The STRAY CATS – ” Stray Cats ” Released February 1981

Posted: February 4, 2021 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Stray Cats in Japan

Brian Setzer, vocalist and guitarist of the Stray Cats, was born in 1959, the year that many of the earth-shaking first-generation rock ’n’ roll stars were seemingly plucked from the public consciousness. Elvis Presley had been shipped overseas, Buddy Holly had boarded his final plane journey, Little Richard had became an evangelist, Chuck Berry had been arrested—soon after to be thrown in jail—and Eddie Cochran was unknowingly concluding his life and career. Luckily, despite its downfall, the vast influence of the subgenre later to be dubbed rockabilly persevered, discovering its place within the new rock ’n’ roll of each subsequent generation, shaping the music that was just starting to emerge from the Beatles and many others.

But It wasn’t until the early 1980s that rockabilly itself would be revived in a big way–by a trio from Long Island.

Initially impacted by the rhythmic guitars rooted within several of the earliest Beatles records, Setzer began playing guitar at age 8 in hopes of successfully mimicking the music of his idols. It wasn’t until his father informed him that his beloved Beatles’ tune “Honey Don’t” was in fact a Carl Perkins number that Setzer began to delve into rockabilly’s bountiful past, recognizing the 1950s pioneers of the music that would become such an influential pillar in his life.

By the time Setzer started high school, disco had erupted throughout the United States, making his admiration for rockabilly a unique trait to possess. Once he began playing in clubs, sporting an exaggerated pompadour, leather jacket and bowling shirts, he received a mixed reaction from audiences. Many celebrated Setzer’s throwback tunes and nostalgic appearance, while others felt he was outrageously outdated and awkwardly behind the times. Regardless of the opinions of onlookers, Setzer remained true to his intent. Eventually his aesthetic attracted two hopeful musicians, friends of Setzer’s brother, who became avid fans and supporters of this surprising, yet intriguing, nascent rockabilly revival.

Jim McDonnell, drummer, and Leon Drucker, upright bassist–calling themselves Lee Rocker and Slim Jim Phantom, respectively–were close friends and bandmates prior to joining Setzer on stage. Once key openings within Setzer’s band became available, Phantom and Rocker wasted no time in securing their positions. In 1979, the trio officially adopted its iconic name, the Stray Cats, and began performing together within their home town of Massapequa, Long Island. Sadly, despite acquiring the beginning stages of a fandom, the Stray Cats couldn’t compete with the popularity of disco and local rock clubs’ adversity to their distinctively 1950s aesthetic.

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After receiving a tip from friend, bartender, old-school British rocker and soon-to-be-manager Tony Bidgood that British rock fans would rally behind this authentic rockabilly, the Stray Cats bought one-way tickets to London. rockabilly too appeared to have never truly died within the United Kingdom. Bill Haley, Gene Vincent and many other 1950s rockers had successfully toured throughout England long past what was considered their American prime. This admiration for the sound and appearance of rockabilly musicians, especially those prepared to craft fresh tunes, provided the Stray Cats with an enthusiastic fan base from the very moment their boots hit the British pavement.

Shortly after their first English gig, the Stray Cats signed with Arista Records, a deal that would allow their music to be released in all countries with the exclusion of the United States. The next massive step on the Stray Cats’ walkway to stardom was meeting musician and noted rockabilly expert Dave Edmunds. Edmunds approached the Stray Cats as a hopeful producer and collaborator whose intention was to ensure that their sound and musical identity would remain intact. Intrigued by the proposal and prepared to record, the Stray Cats, with Edmunds’ guidance, released their self-titled debut album in February 1981.

Peaking at #6 on the U.K. albums chart, “Stray Cats” debut solidified what the band had been attempting to prove since its late 1970s inception, that rockabilly music was exceedingly cool, impressively innovative and forever timeless. Stray Cats was an accurate representation of the band’s live excitement, granting younger audiences the rare opportunity for an authentic glimpse into the past. 

Stray Cats debut album produced three U.K. top 40 hits, including the band’s first single, “Runaway Boys,” driven by thumping upright bass, anchored by heavily grounded drums and dressed in vibrant guitar licks. With lyrics that harkened back to misunderstood teenage days, “Runaway Boys” provided listeners with the ability to transport to a simpler, more carefree time. “Runaway Boys” would hit #9 on the U.K. charts and is considered one of the Stray Cats’ signature tunes.

“Rock This Town,” the second single off Stray Cats, accelerated the band’s popularity and heightened their status as a genuine neo-rockabilly band. The single reached #9 on the U.K. charts. Lyrically, the tune spoke of the early frustration the band faced when attempting to promote rockabilly . Turning struggle into triumph, “Rock This Town” proved rock ’n’ roll music to be a danceable, upbeat genre that was, and is, entirely jukebox-worthy.

The third and final smash hit off Stray Cats was the velvety smooth and ultra-catchy “Stray Cat Strut.” A contrast to “Rock This Town,” “Stray Cat Strut” mellowed the trio’s signature beat, but remained true to their back-to-basics tone. “Stray Cat Strut” rounded off the Stray Cats’ first album, providing them with a third single that would inevitably aid in their eventual success within the United States.

After the release of their second and less commercially successful album, Gonna Ball, the Stray Cats headed back to their homeland and signed a deal with EMI America Records. The label assembled Built for Speed, which included six of the most popular tunes from Stray Cats. Now equipped with the perfect recipe of material and solid live performance experience, as well as copious video play–thanks in no small part to their unique look and visual appeal–on the nascent MTV cable network, the Stray Cats became a sensation in the U.S. too. 

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The WEATHER STATION – ” Ignorance “

Posted: February 4, 2021 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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The exquisitely voiced Tamara Lindeman returns as The Weather Station with new LP Ignorance, her first in partnership with Fat Possum. We’ve long adored her work (she is a Sea Change alumna you know), but there is something very special about this one, beautifully delivered and fascinating.

“Ignorance”, is the fifth album from The Weather Station and their first on Mississippi’s Fat Possum Records, finds Toronto songwriter Tamara Lindeman continuing to move beyond her project’s folk beginnings, like a rocket that’s left the launchpad. The more rock-oriented arc of her 2017 self-titled curves even further on Ignorance, as Lindeman gracefully embraces art-pop sounds, setting the record’s propulsive, enigmatic tone with opener “Robber”—Max Freedman called that track “a welcome left turn for Lindeman” and “a bold reintroduction” in highlighting it as one of this last year 2020’s best songs. 

Through Ignorance, Lindeman has remade what The Weather Station sounds like, using the occasion of a new record to create a novel sonic landscape, tailor-made to express an emotional idea. Ignorance is sensuous, ravishing, as hi-fi a record as Lindeman has ever made, breaking into pure pop at moments, at others a dense wilderness of notes; a deeply rhythmic and painful record that feels more urgent and clear than her work ever has. Ignorance began when Lindeman became obsessed with rhythm; specifically straight rhythm, dance rhythm, those achingly simple beats that had never showed up on a Weather Station album before. The album marks Lindeman’s first experience writing on keyboard, not guitar, and her first time building out arrangements before bringing them to a band. Montreal producer Marcus Paquin (Arcade Fire) co-produced, with Lindeman, and also mixed the record. The lyrics across Ignorance roil with conflict.

The narrator confronts characters who turn away from love. “I used to be an actor, now I’m a performer,” Lindeman says. In those roles she often finds herself to be the subject of projection, reflecting back the ideas and emotions of others. In turn, the album cover shows Lindeman laying in the woods, wearing a hand made suit covered in mirrors. Throughout Ignorance, she sings of trying to wear the world as a kind of ill fitting, torn garment, dangerously cold; “it does not keep me warm / I cannot ever seem to fasten it” and of walking the streets in it, so disguised and exposed.

Elsewhere on the record, Lindeman imbues her surprisingly dancefloor-friendly tracks with nimble poise and unknowable intrigue, wielding strings, synths and keys with equal ease. She named her album for the French verb ignorer, which “connotes a humble, unashamed not knowing,” per the LP’s bio. Here in early 2021, what could be more important?

JULIEN BAKER – ” Favor ” Feat Boygenius Lucy Dacus & Phoebe Bridgers

Posted: February 4, 2021 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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boygenius, Assemble: Julien Baker Shares New Single "Favor," Featuring Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus

The third album from Julien Baker is nearly here, and ahead of “Little Oblivions” Matador Records,  Baker shared its third single, “Favor,” featuring her boygenius bandmates Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, and a lyric video created by Sabrina Nichols.

“Favor” finds Baker looking backwards and inwards over shuffling drums and winding guitars, singing, “I used to think about myself / like I was a talented liar / Turns out that all my friends were / trying to do me a favor.” It’s there Baker’s friends come in, with Bridgers and Dacus joining their voices to hers on the cathartic choruses as they collectively stretch towards redemption.

“Julien is one of those people whose opinion you want to hear about everything. A true critical thinker with an ever-changing and ridiculously articulate worldview,” says Bridgers in a statement. “Her music changes in the same way, and this record is my favourite thing she’s ever done. I’m sure I’ll think the same about the next one.”

“We sang on ‘Favor’ in Nashville the same day we recorded vocals for ‘Graceland Too’ [off Bridgers’ album Punisher] and a song of mine. That day had the same atmosphere as when we recorded the boygenius EP,” Dacus recalls. “Making music was just a natural result of being together, easy as can be but also rare in a way that feels irreplicable.”

“I love the song for its stark but sensitive picture of friendship, what it looks like to recover from broken trust,” Dacus says of “Favor” itself. “Makes me think about how truth only ever breaks what should be broken, and how love is never one of those things. I’m always honoured to be brought into Julien’s life and music.”

“Favor” follows previous Little Oblivions singles “Hardline” and “Faith Healer,” the new album “Little Oblivions” is released this weekend.

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SPACEY JANE – ” Booster Seat “

Posted: February 4, 2021 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Fast-rising Australian four-piece Spacey Jane have announced they are set to take their debut album “Sunlight” on a huge national tour. With numerous shows across the country planned, cancelled, rescheduled and cancelled again in 2020, the Fremantle act are keen to get the show on the road with over two months of gigs scheduled right across the country.

Western Australians fans might not have waited as long for the chance to see the band live, but expect demand to be high for tickets to shows at Fremantle Arts Centre on Friday, April 9 and Mandurah Performing Arts Centre on Friday, May 14.

Spacey Jane kicked off 2021 with a bang, taking out the No2 spot in triple j’s Aussie chart with “Booster Seat”. Three more tracks from Sunlight made the countdown, with Weightless at , Straightfaced and Skin placing’s, marking a momentous and celebratory day for the band. They backed it up last week taking on triple j’s Like a Version with a cover of The Beatles’ Here Comes The Sun,” along with a performance of “Booster Seat”.

Released in June last year, Sunlight  voted Album of the Year in the triple j Listener’s Poll. And just a few days ago, one of their earliest singles Feeding The Family achieved Gold Status.

The band have revealed how pleased they are to finally be taking the full album on a tour, stating “we’re so excited to finally have the opportunity to play these songs on the road! It’s been a long time since we’ve managed to tour Australia, and we’re all rearing to go! These will be our biggest shows to date, in venues we’ve only dreamed of playing – see you out there.”

Spacey Jane will be joined on the tour by another of Perth’s most prized musical acts Carla Geneve, who has just announced the exciting news that her debut album Learn to Like It is coming out in April.

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