The phrase “drunk tank pink” that Shame take the name of their new album from refers to the shade of paint used to pacify inhabitants of European jails who were picked up for disorderly conduct while inebriated. It’s also the colour of the closet-sized apartment frontman Charlie Steen shared with guitarist Sean Coyle-Smith though, in the context of their new album, I imagine it’s a more metaphorical usage, one referring to the reeling in of the group’s chaotic tendencies.
The result of (per Steen) “a bath and a good night’s sleep,” Drunk Tank Pinkcontinues the rousing tradition of the Shame project by relying on heavy experimentalism rather than the relentless punk that fuelled 2018’s preceding “Songs of Praise”. While more grounded than the chic, Black Midi-fied post-punk of fellow English acts like Black Country New Road and Squid, DTPsounds like the work of a band who’s fed up with the constraints of genre.
With the LP dropping today, we reached out to the band for a behind-the-scenes look at each track on the project, detailing themes ranging from “the beauty of all canines” to “lust and puppets.”
1. “Alphabet”
A direct question to the audience and the performer as to whether any of this will ever be enough to reach satisfaction. The genius of Drunk Tank Pink is how these lyrical themes dovetail with the music. Opener Alphabet dissects the premise of performance over a siren call of nervous, jerking guitars, its chorus thrown out like a beer bottle across a mosh pit. Songs spin off and lurch into unexpected directions throughout here,
2. “Nigel Hitter”
This song focuses on daily routine, the motions we go through, and how extraordinary all this seemed to me after coming home from touring.
3. “Born in Luton”
“Born in Luton” is about being locked outside a flat. It exaggerates the mundane and makes it into something unique and overtly dramatic.
4. “March Day”
This is about my consistent unwillingness to wake up on time—my obsession and devotion to my bed and my bedroom. March Day’s escalating aural panic attack
5. “Water in the Well”
Over the last few years we’ve been consistently inspired by the people we’ve met and the places we’ve been. All these locations and characters have an effect on us and seep their way into this song, including “Acid Dad,” the name of the person who runs Dewar Farm in which we wrote a lot of DTP.
6. “Snow Day”
A lot of this album focuses on the subconscious and dreams, this song being the pivotal moment of these themes. A song about love that is lost and the comfort and displeasure that comes after you close your eyes, fall into sleep, and are forced to confront yourself. the shapeshifting darkness of Snow Day
7. “Human, for a Minute”
The first song we wrote after Songs of Praise, the main focus being on a relationship slipping away and the discovery of my own identity through this collapse. There’s a Berlin era Bowie beauty to the lovelornHuman For A Minute .
From the womb to the clouds (sort of), Shame are currently very much in the pink.
8. “Great Dog”
One of the first ones we got down in Dewar Farm for DTP, a nonsense song about the perks of thievery and the beauty of all canines.
9. “6/1”
An intense evaluation of myself, exploiting my flaws, fears, and narcissism.
10. “Harsh Degrees”
A song of lust and puppets.
11. “Station Wagon”
Closer Station Wagon weaves from a downbeat mooch into a souring, soul- lifting climax in which Steen elevates himself beyond the clouds and into the heavens. Or at least that’s what it sounds like. A final conversation with myself and an ode to the great Sir Elton John at the end.
There are moments on “Drunk Tank Pink” where you almost have to reach for the sleeve to check this is the same band who made 2018’s Songs Of Praise. Such is the jump Shame have made from the riotous post-punk of their debut to the sprawling adventurism and twitching anxieties laid out here. The South Londoner’s blood and guts spirit, that wink and grin of devious charm, is still present, it’s just that it’s grown into something bigger, something deeper, more ambitious and unflinchingly honest.
In 1969, The Stooges were a truth serum, forcing hippiedom to belch up the reality that flowers and hope had become just another guise for hucksters and snake-oil salesmen to take advantage of the naïve. By 1973, however, The Stooges were no longer the mirror to an era’s hypocrisy. They were the representatives par excellence of desiccated overindulgence and self-destruction. Too many bad shows, too many blatantly underage groupies, too much booze, too high — way too high. While The Stooges’ noise-rotted nihilism, originality, and underrated musicianship have ensured their longevity, the final six months of the band, as captured on Cherry Red’s new box-set, “You Think You’re Bad Man: The Road Tapes ’73 – ’74” were a squalid and chemically-warped stagger toward total collapse.
The five live shows captured are all previously released, originally licensed by Tony DeFries’ MainMan management company to record labels like Revenge, Bomp!, and Jungle during the 1980s and 1990s. However, this box-set is a very welcome tidying up exercise with good packaging and liner notes, all at a fair price. For decades, delving into the vast quantity of Stooges deep-cuts meant investing in a chaotic mishmash of compilations, so the 21st century has been wonderful in terms of labels (Easy Action in particular) bringing professional curation to the Stooges output. This Cherry Red Records compilation is a part of that positive trend, and one can only hope they get a similar grip on the many studio demos still out there.
Going on tour with the defeated, newly label-less Stooges—Los Angeles to Baltimore to New York, battered and defeated to their home, Detroit—via this Cherry Red box is akin to living through the hell of the worst tour ever, driving on Highway 1 with a cheap 1965 Chevy, low on gas, with its tires on fire and an incessant burning oil smell on your clothes. The car radio? Its speakers are blown, the perfect shredded tone for repeated, wired versions of “Search and Destroy,” the gothic “Gimme Danger,” and the stammering “I Got Nothin’.” The Cherry Red collection is the sound of brain-numbing, aggressive anger and disgust at a thousand nights of self-inflicted road food, drugs, and fucks tucked into a clamshell box.
It didn’t take long for The Stooges to acquire an afterlife. They played their final show in February 1974. In May 1975, Nick Kent wrote a multi-page feature for NME on the ups and downs of Iggy Pop and Co. In September 1975, Sounds reviewed a new album by the defunct band titled “Metallic KO”. One side of it was recorded at that final show.
“I’m a tasteless little bastard and I really enjoy it,” wrote Giovanni Dadomo of the wreckage captured on the vinyl. “It’s no great rock ‘n’ roll record per se. What I do believe is that it’s an astonishing piece of documentary work, revealing as it does the face of rock ‘n’ roll that few singers/musicians would ever be rude, angry, wrecked or impolite to reveal. Sure, it’s crass, conceited and unjustifiably vulgar plus a hell of a lot of other singularly ‘unpleasant things’, but still I like it. A record that quite literally has to be heard to be believed.”
“Metallic KO” began an apparently never-ending series of post-split Stooges releases. Few are essential – like the wonderful “Live at Goose Lake” August 8th, 1970, released earlier this year. Most are for the committed or completists. An intermittently great and handy one-stop collection collating various previously issued live releases, the new “You Think You’re Bad, Man? The Road Tapes 1973-74″ is in the latter camp.
A five-CD clamshell box with a booklet (its band pics and the cover shot are from 1972, not the period of what’s heard), You Think You’re Bad, Man? includes these shows: The Whisky a Go Go, L.A., 16th September 1973; Michigan Palace, Detroit, 10th October 1973; The Latin Casino, Baltimore (despite the credit it’s probably Cherry Hill, New Jersey), November 1973, The Academy of Music, New York (supporting Blue Öyster Cult. Kiss were also on the bill), 31st December 1973; Michigan Palace, Detroit 9th February 1974. The two Michigan Palace were filleted for Metallic KO.
It’s a bumpy ride, not just because of the spotty sound quality which ranges from a bootlegger’s “B” to “A-“. The Whisky gig is pretty tight, and its “Search and Destroy” and “Open Up and Bleed” are great; the best versions in the box. The New York show is a disorderly mess. The two Michigan Palace shows are well known, have been round the block many times and, of them, the final outing of the band is worse than a mess. The sound quality of the relatively disciplined Baltimore show is the poorest of them all, but it does have the box’s top run-through of “I Need Somebody”.
The Stooges of this period were in choppy waters. The Raw Power album had been released in February 1973 and guitarist James Williamson left in June. After a spell as a porn cinema projectionist, he returned to the band late that month with the proviso that a piano player came on board. First, that role was filled by Bob Scheff. Then, from late July, Scott Thurston joined. He appears throughout, with plinkity-plonk or barrelhouse playing which distracts. It is no fit with the band. The Stooges did not need Mrs Mills, or any piano player. Other wobbles came when the band’s management ditched them in August. Their label Columbia had already done so.
Nonetheless, there were snatches of the positive. In Raw Power’s wake the band had new songs and were clearly thinking of their future. A lot are heard on You Think You’re Bad, Man? “Open UpAnd Bleed” and “Head On” are the best. “Heavy Liquid” was good. “Cock in my Pocket”, “I Got Nothin’”, which prefigures The Stones’s “Fool to Cry”, and the puerile boogie rocker “Wet My Bed” are OK. The infantile, silly “Rich Bitch” is not alright. A new album could have been made. There was label interest too. In October 1973, Elton John wanted The Stooges for his Rocket Records imprint. But it all fell apart in February 1974. You Think You’re Bad, Man? is a series of bullet points in the narrative of the band’s collapse.
These are not the only post-Raw Power shows which have been released ). The 2010 Raw Power box included a scrappy October 1973 Atlanta gig with loads of the annoying piano – it was recorded off the sound desk though, so sounded fine. The 2005 Heavy Liquid set had one from Max’s in NYC from 30th July 1973 and another played in San Francisco in January 1974, as well the Whisky show.
This endless afterlife is further confirmed by another new release. Titled From K.O. To Chaos, it’s an 8-disc box set of random Iggy sniff-snaff. It includes Metallic KO on one disc, and its source shows on another two other discs – each of which is also collected on You Think You’re Bad, Man?
Although You Think You’re Bad, Man? The Road Tapes 1973-74 says nothing new, it neatly chronicles The Stooges in the wake of Raw Power’s release. The album was recorded in September and October 1972 and a year and more later, without a label and management, they had not given up. They could be dreadful. But they could also be impressive. It’s a disparity coursing through these five discs – five discs of shows which were originally never meant to be recorded and released, or even listened to.
The longest, at three and a half hours, and arguably the hottest of the three holiday shows. As Bruce told the crowd at the beginning, “This is our Saturday Night Special even though it’s Monday night.” There was little variation in the set, but as practice tends to make perfect, a tight night three had MVP Sam Moore in peak form. No DeVito or JBJ, though all of the other guests returned — and we got a little more Sam and a little more holiday spirit as the Soul Man joined in for the only “Merry Christmas Baby” of the run. We also got “96 Tears” in Garland’s set and a real highlight in Southside’s set, with the Bruce-penned “Talk to Me.” The blazing “What’s So Funny…” was again sent out to our troops in Iraq as a prayer for peace. Happy holidays and to all a good night!
Songs listed below have the most prominent guest-artist listed in parentheses, but many performers were on and off stage over the course of the night.
Setlist: Hold Out Hold Out (Victorious Gospel Choir) I’ve Got a Feeling [Everything’s Gonna Be All Right] (Victorious Gospel Choir) Christmas Day (MW7) So Young and In Love None But the Brave (Alliance Singers, Soozie & Lisa) Queen of the Underworld (Jesse Malin) Wendy (Jesse Malin) R.O.C.K. Rock (Garland Jeffreys) 96 Tears (Garland Jeffreys) Merry Christmas [I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight] (Little Steven) This Time It’s for Real (Southside Johnny, Little Steven) Talk to Me (Southside Johnny, Little Steven) It’s Been a Long Time (Southside Johnny, Little Steven) Seaside Bar Song Thundercrack The Wish (Bruce on piano) Hold On, I’m Comin’ (Sam Moore, the Alliance Singers) When Something is Wrong with My Baby (Sam Moore) Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa [Sad Song] / I Thank You (Sam Moore) Soul Man (Sam Moore) Shine Silently (Nils Lofgren) Because the Night (Nils Lofgren) Kitty’s Back Christmas [Baby, Please Come Home] (all) Encore: Merry Christmas Baby I Don’t Want to Go Home (Southside, Little Steven) My City of Ruins (Sam Moore) What’s So Funny about Peace, Love and Understanding Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (all)
Anna B Savage is a London singer-songwriter and musician. Her songs are stark, skeletal paintings of moods and reflection, using a palette of mainly voice and guitar. They are candid if not entirely confessional, feeling like a window into an eloquent yet unflinchingly written diary – snapshots of experience suffused with a raw, unresolved nerve. Most prominent is her voice – strong and sonorous, yet with a vulnerability that feels as if it is in the same room with you.
Corncrakes is part of Anna B Savage’s debut Album “A Common Turn”, out the 29th January 2021 on City Slang Records .
Pete Yorn was born in New Jersey. He has put out 8 records under his own name and some more albums with other people too. His most recent recording “Caretakers” came out in August of 2019. It features the singles “Calm Down” and “I Wanna Be The One”. Pete has toured all over the world with his band and also solo acoustic. He enjoys backgammon, Curb Your Enthusiasm and drawing Barney.
Last night, Pete Yorn revealed that he’d uploaded a full album’s worth of covers to his Bandcamp page as an exclusive purchase on the site. Ten covers—ranging from a Roxy Music single to Audrey Hepburn’s “Moon River” comprise “Pete Yorn Sings the Classics”, a project seemingly instigated by Yorn’s love for the songs and the joy of recording with his friend Marc “Doc” Dauer (apparently Liz Phair also contributed vocals on a track).
“As you know, I’ve never been shy about celebrating my musical influences,” Yorn wrote on the record’s Bandcamp page. “I honour them and appreciate the fact that they have helped to inspire the style of music I create as my own. I have chosen to interpret and record this particular collection of songs for various reasons. Whether it was The Pixies “Here Comes Your Man” or The Stone Roses “Ten Storey Love Song,” these songs all have one thing in common…they all stopped me in my tracks upon first discovery, simply because I loved the way they made me feel. They compelled me to listen repetitively…almost compulsively over and over again.”
“Here Comes Your Man” Although the Pixies’ classic fits Yorn like a glove, he says it was mostly a spontaneous decision to take it on for the record:
“I just started strumming one day. And that’s how it starts sometimes. Out of nowhere I’m singing a song and I think, ‘Maybe I can do this.’ That’s probably why that happened. I’m really happy with the way that one evolved and turned out. And I loved Liz (Phair) singing backing vocals on that, she does a little Kim Deal. I love the energy of it. It’s different from theirs. I try to pay respect to the originals but I try to make them my own.”
“Lay Lady Lay” Yorn used some surprising horn arrangements, suggested by his co-producer and musical collaborator on the album Doc Dauer, to spruce up this Bob Dylan country smash:
“The way that all of a sudden evolved into this mariachi horns production was a surprise to me. That came later when Doc had the idea. He said, ‘I got this guy who’s a horn player. Let me send it to him and see what he does with it.’ He put down this beautiful Herb Albert-style, mariachi, crazy composition on top of it. These songs, when I go into record them, they can go in a million different directions, depending on the day I hit the studio and how I’m feeling. It’s just whatever in the moment feels good. And we go for it.”
“Theme From Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To)” The Diana Ross original might seem far from Yorn’s style, but when he dug into it, he found something almost on the eerie side which inspired his recording:
“Although I was so familiar with those songs and loved them since my parents introduced me to them as a kid, that and ‘Moon River’ were ones I had to study, in terms of the composition and the chording of them. I had to really lean in and study how to find all the chords for those two. The theme from Mahogany version, to me, it’s spooky. I played drums and bass on it, and, to me, the drums have that kind of spooky Zeppelin feel to it. I’m trying to do some John Paul Jones sort of things on the bass.”
“They Don’t Know” American audiences might know the version of this Kirsty MacColl track that was a sleeper 80s hit in the U.S. for Tracey Ullman, as Yorn got the chance to tackle the iconic “Baby” exclamation that leads off the final verse. (“I knew that I had to,” Yorn laughs. “I just said, ‘Let’s hit it!’”) He ended up getting some meaningful feedback:
“We were able to get Tracey a copy of the record, and she hit back and she said she loves the version so much and she said she thinks that Kirsty would have loved this version too. She said some other fun stuff. I really liked the feel of the song. When we put the record together and the sequence, that was my favourite for a while. It’s kind of this forgotten song that everyone loves.”
“More Than This” When finding the feel for this Roxy Music number, Yorn took inspiration from an album he loved in his younger days:
“I remember after we finished it, I was driving in the desert and I cranked it, and it had all the pedal steel on it and the mountains are in the background and I just thought, wow, this is such a desert drive song. And it hit hard. I was really into a record called Teenage Symphonies To God by a band called Velvet Crush in the ’90s. They had all these beautiful songs. They had Greg Leisz, the great steel guitar player, all over that record. And I really wanted to get that kind of feeling on this song. That’s why there’s that long, ‘Layla’-like outro at the end with the pedal steel. I think that thing went on for 15 minutes, just going over and over again, staying in that emotional space. But we trimmed it down and had a nice fade-out. I appreciate a nice fade on a song like that.”
“Surfer Girl” Yorn found some separation from the well-known Beach Boys ballad by taking on the vocals without any harmonies:
“That song and ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ and ‘God Only Knows’ were like my ultimate Beach Boys song. I know that Brian Wilson spoke of it as he wanted to write a song like ‘When You Wish Upon A Star.’ I always heard it as this sad, more emotional song. I did a slightly darker version of it. I was really happy with the way it turned out. To me it has a bit of a dark undercurrent to it that I put into it. I didn’t want it to be flowery.”
“Ten Storey Love Song” Yorn’s love of the Stone Roses lead to this track, which highlights the album’s versatility:
“That one I just had so much fun with. I said, ‘I’m just going to do my super-Stone Roses thing and just jam and play, let it rip.’ That’s what we did. It’s important that the record gets presented as a whole. It’s not just about one song. It’s a whole picture. A lot of people have messaged me when they see this song on there and the Roses fans are like, ‘Dude, ‘Ten Storey Love Song!’ The ones who know, know. I love that everyone is going to have a favourite and something they are most attached to. That’s the fun thing about it.”
“I Am A Rock” Yorn identified loneliness of Paul Simon’s lyrics, helping him to capture this track’s desolate vibe:
“That’s the one on the record where I’ve been that guy. When I read the lyrics, it was like, ‘Holy shit, I’ve got to sing this song because I’ve been here.’ In adult life, in some ways, I’ve shaken it off. But for a while, from 30 to 35, I was in a very dark place. A lot of people go through this, but in hindsight, I think I was so scared to commit to something because I was afraid of pain. That song spoke to me in such a brilliant way, that I was like, ‘I just gotta sing this song.’ It’s one of the greatest songs written about fear and cutting yourself off. I’ve lived those emotions, so the song hit really hard for me.”
“New Age” Doing a Velvet Underground track may not have been surprising, but Yorn went off the beaten path for this song, which once ended up bleeding into his original work:
“I was obsessed with Loaded for a while. I will reveal this now: If you go back to Nightcrawler and listen to ‘Broken Bottle,’ you will hear ‘New Age’ and you will hear how heavily that song influenced me. I don’t even hide it that well, to be honest. That song opened me up lyrically. Obviously, Lou Reed opened us all up into a way of talking about stuff in song and describing things that were very influential to a lot of artists. The song, if you follow it all the way through, it goes to this whole other triumphant place. It’s just a special song.”
“Moon River” You won’t often hear this standard adorned with backwards guitar, but Yorn found a way to add specific touches like that while still tapping into the melancholy beauty of the original to close out the record:
“The version of it that really got me, and still any time I hear it will bring tears to my eyes, is when Audrey Hepburn sings it on the fire escape with her little nylon-string guitar in Breakfast At Tiffany’s. I’ve always been a fan of that sparse French feeling, like a Claudine Longet-type of thing, which heavily influenced my song ‘The Party.’ That version of it just crushes me. My grandpa, who lived to 104, would say he loved a sad song, that you could hear in the singer a cry in their voice. I got that from him. It just resonates. There are certain types of songs that make you feel sad but in that good way. The healthy release of emotion or whatever. There are certain lines that are just like hyper-nostalgic lines, like ‘we’re after the same rainbow’s end’ or ‘my huckleberry friend.’ Just flash some family photos in front of me and I’ll be on the floor weeping. And I’m proud of that. It’s a hyper-slow version of it, but we really tried to pull out the feeling, put it in overdrive.”
The lucky thirteenth record by Hey Colossus is the work of six musicians in tune with the dualities of life as a loud rock band, fit to channel both the dances of aspiration and the curses of reality into a record that transcends all limitations in a blinding volley of incandescence.
When the band first began work their innate chemistry apparently took care of itself, and whatever sparks were spontaneously flying gave rise to enough material to make “Dances/Curses” a double record, running the gamut from the rhythmically-driven and infectious ‘Donkey Jaw’ and ‘Medal’ to the mightily motorik-powered and cinematic 15 minute travelogue that is ‘A Trembling Rose’,
Longterm Hey Colossus fan Mark Lanegan makes an appearance amidst the languid and sun-soaked denouement of ‘The Mirror’, the existential gravitas of his tones entirely at home in these revelatory surroundings. Fittingly Dances/Curses is released on bassist Joe Thompson’s own Wrong Speed Records, his latest such venture in a lifetime of steadfast belief in the DIY maxim, “It’s 100% time for all bands to take control of their shit” he notes. All the tools are there to do it yourself. Back your own horse. It’s practical. It’s positive”
This serendipitous album marks something even these six musicians never necessarily intended – a work in the tradition of the double album that somehow changes itself every time it returns to the shelf. Somewhere on the great continuum between Unwound’s Leaves Turn Inside You and Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through “The Secret Life Of Plants”, Hey Colossus have created their finest alchemical achievement to date.
It’s now over fifty years since Trees’ formation, a band who helped define ‘Acid Folk’, creating a sub-category in the lexicon of record dealers and music critics alike. “When we are talking about psych folk or acid folk, we are really talking about music like this by Trees” Stuart Maconie, BBC6 Music
Trees first album, ‘The Garden of Jane Delawney’ (1970) snuggles nicely into contemporary nu-folkies’ idea of the genre, and shares some of the pastoral-whimsy that characterised The Incredible String Band or Donovan, offset by some stunning interpretations of traditional material and Bias’ own songs. The record includes readings of ‘Lady Margaret’, ‘Glasgerion’, the old standard ‘She Moved Thro’ The Fair’, and the extended fade of the group’s own ‘Road’, presage the explosive instrumental duelling that would come to characterise the follow up album, ‘On The Shore’.
Following the recently released and highly praised Trees 50th Anniversary box set on Earth Recordings, Trees reissue their debut album ‘The Garden of Jane Delawney’as a standalone release.
It’s now over fifty years since Trees’ formation, a band who helped define ‘Acid Folk’, creating a sub-category in the lexicon of record dealers and music critics alike.
“A beautiful hybrid, Trees found a unique space between intimate folk and freewheeling psychedelia. Musically ambitious yet brilliantly balanced, they have left an enduring legacy for those lucky enough to be in on the secret” Edd Gibson, Friendly Fires
Released just months after their debut second album, ‘On The Shore’ sees a shift from the first record into something darker and more ambivalent with an arcane Englishness. The product of an era characterised by clunky polemic, arcadian sentimentality or English fuzzy-felt surrealism, the album, like all classic records, is so much greater than the sum of its parts. Opening with ‘Soldiers Three’, learned from Dave Swarbrick, the album includes another traditional tune and one of the definitive moments in English folk rock ‘Polly On The Shore’ alongside ’Sally Free and Easy’ and ‘Streets of Derry’.
Following the recently released and highly praised Trees 50th Anniversary box set on Earth Recordings,Trees reissue their second album as a standalone release.
“When we are talking about psych folk or acid folk, we are really talking about music like this by Trees” Stuart Maconie, BBC6 Music
In the week your new album comes out, it’s no bad thing if the lead single from it is in contention for the No. 1 spot. That’s why January 20th, 1966 was a very good date for the Spencer Davis Group. On the UK charts for that week, “Keep On Running” became Britain’s favourite single, helping “The Second Album”, as it was called, to debut at No.14. To make things even sweeter, they also climbed into the Top 10 with its predecessor, the equally imaginatively titled Their First LP, which had made a belated chart debut two weeks earlier, thanks to the group’s new-found popularity.
The Spencer Davis Group. had had three chart singles in 1965 and 1966, but not one of them had made the Top 40. “Keep On Running,” written by Jamaican artist Jackie Edwards, changed all that, and hit No.1 half a century ago exactly, during a four-week run in the Top 2. With that track on it, The Second Album sold steadily and, in the last chart of February, as The Beatles’ Revolver did battle for the top spot with the soundtrack of The Sound Of Music, Spencer and co peaked at No.3.
The album was a mixture of originals and R&B/blues covers. Steve Winwood contributed “Stevie’s Blues” as well as a co-write with Davis, “Hey Darling,” and “This Hammer,” which credited the whole group, also including Muff Winwood and Pete York. The remakes included Don Covay’s “Please Do Something,” Ivory Joe Hunter’s “Since I Met You Baby,” Curtis Mayfield’s “You MustBelieve Me,” Bobby Parker’s “Watch Your Step” and Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell’s endlessly-covered “Georgia On My Mind.”
Spencer, Steve, Muff and Pete had much to thank Jackie Edwards for. After “Keep On Running,” they released a second cover of one of his songs, this time “Somebody Help Me,” which wasn’t on The Second Album. The result was the same, giving the group their second UK No.1 in less than three months.
Told Slant is the songwriting project of Felix Walworth , Brooklyn based lyricist, producer, and founding member of The Epoch arts collective. Walworth started the project in 2011 as a means of marking a stylistic shift in their song writing, specifically a shift toward understated, ambling arrangements and simple, illustrative lyrics.
Told Slant’s debut LP, Still Water, was self-released in 2012, then re-released and pressed to vinyl by Broken World Media in 2014. The band released their follow full-length record, “Going By”, with Double Double Whammy Records in the summer of 2016.
Though Told Slant functions more like a “solo project” in its recorded state, its live incarnation is arranged and performed by Walworth and Epoch co-collaborators Emily Sprague of Florist , Oliver Kalb of Bellows (He/Him), and Gabrielle Smith of Eskimeaux (She/Her). Sprague, Kalb, and Smith bring their particular sets of influences and intuitions to the band’s live sets in a way that draws out more energetic and dynamic arrangements from the songs.
Told Slant’s members live in Brooklyn, NY,
Told Slant has released the new single “Run Around the School” from their first new album in 4 years, “Point the Flashlight and Walk“. Of the song Walworth says: “Run Around The School’ is about the allure of loving another regardless of reciprocity or the promise of being loved. It explores the beauty and delusion of pining, and of love’s power to satiate us even with its table scraps.”
The Fat Angel Sings 