Valley Queen front woman Natalie Carol leads a band reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac and My Morning Jacket with evocative vocals. Neil Wogensen (Bass & Vocals), Shawn Morones (Lead Guitar & Vocals) and Gerry Doot (drums), enrich the songs with energy, excitement and emotion.
In 2016, the band released the singles “In My Place” and “High Expectations” on Canvasback Music/AtlanticRecords to wide acclaim, and have played lauded shows at an array of venues,
Pranav Trewn from Stereogum praised that Valley Queen has “never sounded better than they do on “In My Place,” and Bob Boilen from NPR’s All Songs Considered believes that “Valley Queen comes from the Neil Young school of great music.”
March 2017 marks the debut of Valley Queen’s premiere EP, featuring their newest songs produced by Lewis Pesacov (Best Coast, Nikki Lane, Fool’s Gold, FIDLAR). The songs show the band’s sonic evolution since their first release, and will set the stage for an exciting year to come.
2016 was a busy year in the world of this Welsh unit. They slimmed down to a 5 piece and took their blend of heavy shoegaze and tough post-punk well outside of their Cardiff home, embarking on a run of UK and European gigs with Nothing (Relapse Records) and also their own tour of the USA and Canada. This all culminated with an appearance at the annual Blackest Ever Black rave in London where they held their own on a bill with drum & bass stalwart Felix K and Bristol’s Ossia. In 2017 the band plan to return for a full tour of the USA, followed by their biggest European tour yet including the Nothing Nice To Say festival in Berlin. We’ve repressed the bands debut album on Clear Vinyl to tie in with this and also keep this modern classic in print for a little while longer.
If the New York underground scene was something of another home for Vagabon over the preceding couple of years, then “Fear & Force”, the lead track from Infinite Worlds, album unveiled in November, opened up many new doors for Lætitia, gaining plaudits from much further afield, including a number of UK publications. A totemic capturing of her craft, the track is a wonderful burst of impassioned guitar-pop, swelling from a tender, heavy-hearted opening – all memorable vocal refrains and playful production – to something far more robust; the sight and sound of an artist growing in stature right in front of your eyes. As is the case with many joyful musical moments, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what makes it such a compelling excursion; something to do with the affection with which it’s delivered, something to do with the sophistication of the voice that carries it.
“I definitely loved performing and singing at a young age,” Lætitia admits, “but that’s a memory I’ve been forced to kind of think of recently, and one that I’d somewhat forgot about. I don’t think I ever thought I could play or sing professionally.” While most artists present there work with this kind of modesty, in this case of Vagabon it’s much more meaningful to acknowledge the work she’s put in to honing her skills, rather than simply write off such endeavours as an excise in humility. “I spent the last few years really working on my voice,” she says, “I played around New York when I could and I’ve been on tour a lot; I’ve worked on it as much as possible and I think the results are finally becoming tangible.”
‘Tangible” is something of an understatement. While ‘Infinite Worlds’ comes beautifully alive in the small, exquisite gaps between her vocals, thanks to Lætitia’s schooled-skill as a music engineer, it’s her voice that really grips. When spoken it’s almost enchantingly delicate; add a the flame of a song to it though and it makes like touch-paper; sparking in to life, as fierce and powerful and vigorous as Lætitia wishes it to be
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever Melbourne quintet Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever shows that there’s a distinct difference between American surf rock and the Aussie breed. There’s an utter lack of slackerdom in their polished riffs and vocals from this band, which also sounds like it took influence from Morrissey and Rachel Aggs of Brit-punk outfit Shopping. This determination, emphasized on the the eponymous single from their upcoming “The French Press” EP hints that they may be the next big thing to come out of Melbourne’s rich scene
The first album to completely blow me away in 2017 was Priests’ “Nothing Feels Natural” . I’ve been waiting for a new release from Priests! for awile after a couple of EP’s, But I Love this record and what this group is all about The first 3 tracks are simply perfect : so musically subversive, great.
The Washington D.C. punk outfit can give you an accessible hint of balladry on the album’s title track, but come for blood on the Dick Dale-like twang of “Jj.” Singer Katie Alice Greer might as well be standing at the podium when we damn all the bullshit society constructs to hell, with pianos and horns backing her every decree. Much like some of their contemporaries they blend a combination of old Post Punk and newer influences to create a sound that stands out. Priest’s are a powerful and necessary band
This album is a companion piece to 2016’s “Ruminations”. When Oberst wrote and recorded the songs on Ruminations, entirely solo with just vocals, piano, guitar and harmonica, he intended to ultimately record them with a full band. But in the midst of putting together that band – upstate New York’s The Felice Brothers plus the legendary drummer Jim Keltner (Neil Young, Jackson Browne, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and many more) – the passionate responses Oberst was getting to those first solo recordings, from friends and colleagues, encouraged him to release the songs as-is, in their original sparse form.
“Salutations” so soon after is a surprise release. After the previous “Ruminations” 10-track album written and recorded by Conor Oberst in the cold confines of Omaha, Nebraska which came out last year, the news that a second album, with full-band arrangements of those same 10 songs plus seven more, would be released this year was an unexpected bonus. Featuring the contributions of The Felice Brothers and Jim Keltner, it promised a new treatment of some of Oberst’s most raw compositions. The result is a fulsome new release, markedly different from its 2016 cousin.
If nothing else, Salutations is a fascinating look at the changes that come from collaboration and evolution in a studio setting versus the isolation in which these songs were born. Instead of relying solely on piano, acoustic guitar, and harmonica, Conor Oberst and company employ accordions, organs, strings (of both the orchestral and fiddle varieties), and ethereal sound collage elements to build up these tracks and give them a more unique new character.
In place of sparse confessionals, Oberst offers amblers, anthems, and torch songs. The first track of the album, “Too Late to Fixate”, announces Salutations as such – a slow groove with his trademark combination of wry humor, self-pity, and world-weary reflection. The album’s new additions tend to be its more raucous ones, approaching a Southern rock vibe in songs like “Napalm” and “Anytime Soon”. Despite those rollicking numbers, much of Salutations moves at a slower pace, with the addition of percussion and string-accompaniment often turning Oberst into a crooner see: “Rain Follows the Plough”. The record has an overall jam band quality, but it’s one to sway and swoon to, with clean electric guitars and steady ballads.
The themes are recognizable to anyone familiar with Oberst’s prior work. There is a particular focus on the peculiar nature of celebrity, most notably “It’s a Little Uncanny” and “You Loved Him Once”. Oberst seems captivated by how people in the public eye have a strange hold over the rest of us in ways that can affect the lives of both those adoring and adored.
The album also presents Conor Oberst struggling with his own mortality. Health issues, including a diagnosis of a cyst in his brain, originally prompted the singer to step back from a planned tour and pour his worries onto the page. The echoes of that remain on Salutations in songs like “Tachycardia” and “Counting Sheep” with lyrics like “everything ends, everything has to.” Oberst seems to be contemplating his own end, trying to reassure himself about both the meaning and inevitability of it.
Through the fuller production, however, Oberst softens the blow of these thoughts. There was a bare earnestness to Salutations’ predecessor, a sense in which Oberst was sequestered in his own confessional in Nebraska, pleading his case and wrestling with his demons. In the confines of the studio, the lyrics have the same potency, but Oberst himself is more languid, the instrumentation more amiable than arresting. It turns passages in songs like “A Little Uncanny”, where Oberst sings “I miss poor Robin Williams”, from sad laments into fond remembrances.
But the same ruminative qualities remain on the record. Salutations focuses on the fleeting, fickle nature of just about everything. Success, romance, veneration, discipline, fidelity, and life itself all appear to be phantoms that can never truly be captured or pinned down in Oberst’s estimation , “Salutation”, “Afterthought”. Oberst is seemingly beleaguered by the uncertainty and the march of years, with many songs that mention his finding refuge in various substances, geographic escapes, or more carnal distractions.
In “Mamah Borthwick (A Sketch)”, he speaks of finding something “sacred till the end,” after beauty, wealth, and achievement have faded and crumbled. He seems to settle on art as one of those few things that can be pure, that can withstand the panicked paradoxes of the day-to-day and perhaps even death itself .
Oberst strikes the notes of a man trying to find something permanent, beautiful, and unblemished .
Two unreleased David Bowie albums will be unearthed as part of this year’s Record Store Day on April 22nd.
Cracked Actor (Live in Los Angeles 1974) marks the first official release of a Philly Dogs Tour show from September 1974 at Los Angeles’ Universal Ampitheatre. The full concert is documented on the triple-LP, five-sided album, with a sixth side featuring an etching of the Diamond Dogs era Bowie logo. It was mixed by longtime Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti, The album features a different set-list from David Live and a new band line-up which included Luther Vandross on vocals (he would go on to contribute vocals to Young Americans and indeed gets a co-writing credit for Fascination).
The second release is a recreation of the ultra rare 1971 pressing Bowpromo. Featuring alternate mixes of some songs that eventually wound up Hunky Dory, Bowie’s manager Tony Defries originally had 500 copies of the promotional album made in order to secure the singer a new record deal. The Record Store Day version adds five exclusive Bowie prints and new sleeve notes, while it leaves off the five B-side tracks by fellow GEM artist Dana Gillespie. Bowpromo is largely comprised of alternate versions of songs that would later appear on Hunky Dory, as well as a version of “It Ain’t Easy”, which would eventually appear on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
Stef Chura’s star is definitely on the rise: The Detroit native recently released her debut, “Messes”, via Urinal Cake Records, Its an 11-song set of warbling guitar-pop anthems that showcase her husky, perpetually down turned vocals. She’s earned coverage across music web sites like on Stereogum, Pitchfork and NPR, and she can count Fred Thomas (Saturday Looks Good to Me) as a fan; the noted indie-rock vet produced and played bass on her first LP. Reflecting a post-adolescent period of trial and error,
Chura’s debut appears to writhe with growing pains as she quavers to an unwilling crush, “Right when it starts to feel like home / It’s time to go” on album opener “Slow Motion.” The conflicts repeat on the withered follow-up, “You,” where Chura trills like skeptical Dolores O’Riordan: “Sick and tired / Always admired you from afar.”
Chura’s internal debates, which are featured prominently on Messes, can also spill out in person. She admits to sometimes wishing she’d put more effort into music earlier in her 20s, despite her blossoming visibility (she’s about to tour with Washington D.C. punks Priests next). Then, just as suddenly, she changes her mind. “I think a lot of people think there’s these picture-perfect stories of someone getting really successful when they’re young, There’s no right age to be doing anything.”
Today marks the release of The Shins new album “Heartworms”. However, the record may actually just be the first taste of something more to come, as the band has revealed that they recorded an alternate, “flipped” version.
According to a press release, James Mercer undertook a songwriting exercise in which he rewrote each song “from scratch” until he had two completely different albums. “Mercer’s ability to create two totally divergent albums from the same underlying compositions not only highlights his immense capability as a songwriter,” explains the press release, “but also functions as a reminder of what it means to be an artist, how an artist acts as both the master and facilitator of his artistic product.”
Our first listen to what this “parallel reality” album sounds like comes thanks to the twin videos for “Name For You”. the band have released the album version of the track. Directed by The Shins’ drummer Jon Sortland, the video follows skateboarders Savannah Headden and Samarria Brevard on a lo-fi day in Southern California.
Now take a listen to the “flipped” version, which is a far darker, new-wave take on the catchy single. The video for this version was directed by Zaiba Jabbar with help from Sortland and Mark Watrous, and it stars Transparent actress Trace Lysette. If you head to The Shins’ website, you can play both videos simultaneously, seamlessly switching back and forth with an interactive switch. There’s no word yet on when we might get a listen to the entire alternate versions of Heartworms, so lookout for more details .
In addition to the videos and new music, The Shins have expanded the itinerary for one of the most anticipated tours this year .
The Shins are normally focused on the future, but “Heartworms”, their first album in five years and fifth since 2001, takes a small step into the past. From the first notes of opening track “Name for You”, we get a hint that this album may not stray too far from its predecessors. The nicely placed “Mildenhall” hearkens back to old Shins music. We hear an acoustic guitar and distant, gentle electronic beats accompanying James Mercer as he shows off his lower range. In a Willie Nelson-esque singing style, he remembers being a lonely boy, moving around the country because his father, a member of the Royal Air Force, had to transfer locations. After a classmate passes Mercer a tape, he finds a passion for music and, as he sings: “That’s how we get to where we are now.”
Fans respect artists who evolve, improve, and explore new sounds, or some combination of those. And it’s not always pretty, but it’s admirable as long as done valiantly and with curiosity. The Shins tried to do that; they attempted to step out of their comfort zone with Heartworms.
Another lyric that takes us down memory highway surfaces in “So Now What”. After introducing the song with a mini-me of the iconic synth in The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly”, The Shins put the most memorable melody of the album in the chorus of this song. “I had this crazy idea,” Mercer sings. “Somehow we’d coast to the end/ Change lies in every direction, tonight/ Guess we’ll just begin again.”
Besides these two songs, the record’s other high point is “Painting a Hole”, a song with a contagious beat and somewhat ominous la-las. The synth-keyboard sound pulses while the bass runs, sliding up and down the neck. Once you hit the chorus, Mercer shows off his edgier falsetto. Fortunately, the album sends us off with the best song, the “The Fear”. It begins with a kick-ride-rim shot combo, joined by a mandolin and violins, Even though most of the song consists of two chords, it quickly proves itself to be the perfect ending to decent collection of songs.
This week in 1972: Jethro Tull started a two-week run at the top of the US albums chart with their 5th studio release, ‘Thick As A Brick’, on Reprise Records it was arguably the first rock album to feature one song for an entire album (the 44-minute-long title track); while musically ambitious & successful on its own merits, it was originally intended as a parody of the ‘concept’ album genre – the original packaging, designed like a newspaper, claimed the album to be a musical adaptation of an epic poem by the (fictional) eight-year-old ‘Gerald Bostock’ (though the lyrics were actually written by the band’s front man, Ian Anderson); in 2012, Ian Anderson released a follow-up album, ‘Thick As A Brick 2: Whatever Happened to Gerald Bostock?’, that examined various potential scenarios of Gerald’s adult life…
In 1971, Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson set out with tongue-in-cheek to make “the mother of all concept albums”. With Thick As A Brick, he ended up fulfilling his ambition.
It might seem a little odd to mention the influential British comedy troupe Monty Python as we begin a journey through the story of the groundbreaking album Thick As A Brick. But Jethro Tull mainman Ian Anderson believed there’s a common thread.
“Monty Python lampooned the British way of life,” says Anderson. “Yet did it in such a way that made us all laugh while celebrating it. To me, that’s what we as a band did on Thick As A Brick. We were spoofing the idea of the concept album, but in a fun way that didn’t totally mock it.”
It’s often been said that the seeds for 1972’s Thick As A Brick (It was the band’s fifth album) were sown when its predecessor, ’71’s Aqualung, was wrongly perceived as a fully-blown conceptual piece. Myth has it that Anderson was angry about this misconception.
“Not angry, no,” explains the man nearly four decades on. “I was actually mildly irritated and wryly amused. However much I insisted that “Aqualung” wasn’t a concept album, the media still persisted in treating it as such. They seemed to believe the whole record was a major religious story. The truth was that three or four songs were linked by questioning the nature of religion. But the rest were stand-alone tracks. So, after this whole scenario, I thought, ‘OK, we’ll not only now do a real concept album, but we’re going to make it the mother of all concept albums!’.”
Adding to this determination was Anderson’s belief that progressive rock had become a touch too self important, needing to be pulled down a peg or two from its Olympian pretensions.
“When progressive rock started out, it was all about bands such as ourselves moving beyond merely being influenced by American blues. We stopped trying to be the next Fleetwood Mac or Chicken Shack – in other words, derivative of Elmore James – and began to take on board so many diverse musical ideas. It was exciting and dynamic. But, by the time the 1970s had begun, bands like ELP were a little up their own arses. Everything was too serious and overblown. So, we set out with Thick As A Brick to show up this side of the genre.”
The centrepiece of the album was a poem, ostensibly written by 12-year-old Gerald Bostock. However, this is a totally fictitious character, created by Anderson himself. Despite attempts over the years to uncover the true identity of the poet, the truth is that ‘Bostock’ has no connection to anyone from Anderson’s past. However, we can reveal that the poem itself does draw from the man’s childhood.
“Yes, there’s an autobiographical element in what I wrote. As a child, I was a bit of a rebel. Most of my peers aspired to going to grammar school, getting eight O Levels and three A Levels, then becoming part of conventional society. That never appealed to me. I was the sort of child who loved spending time collecting pond life and then analysing it. I also loved science fiction stories of the era (the 1950s), because they told of a different, exciting future. So, I stood apart from others of my age, and drew on this for the character of Gerald Bostock. But he himself is a fiction.”
Having written the crucial poem that became the fulcrum for the concept, Anderson and his band – guitarist Martin Barre, bassist Jeffrey Hammond, keyboard player John Evan, string/brass arranger David Palmer and new drummer Barriemore Barlow – now had the challenge of making the musical form work.
“I suppose I have to admit that I really imposed the whole idea on the other guys,” laughs Anderson, a benign dictator in this instance. “But, for whatever reason they went along with it, and actually warmed to the task once we got stuck into the music.”
Jethro Tull elected to work out the album during two weeks of intense rehearsals using the Rolling Stones mobile studio.
“This was based in Bermondsey, a rather dreadful part of South London. The way it worked was that I’d spend the morning in my home in Hampstead – sadly, not the posh part of that North London suburb – and get three or four minutes of music down on a sheet of paper from an exercise book. Then we’d meet as a band and go through not just the new part I’d written, but everything from the beginning. So, gradually we’d build up the piece.”
Finally, in December 1971, the band entered Morgan Studios in North West London and, under the production aegis of Anderson himself, recorded the album (which is effectively just one composition, split into two movements) over a period of a fortnight, including the mixing stage.
“It’s only in recent times that I’ve appreciated how complex the music is,” admits Anderson. “I was only 24 at the time we began to put this together. Yet there are so many weird time changes and musical innovations on the album. I would never compare what we did back then to jazz rockers like Weather Report or the Mahavishnu Orchestra – they were really amazing musicians – but we were a little more sophisticated than the usual riff rockers you’d find on the scene.”
But the music was just part of the ambitious concept the band put together. Almost of equal importance was the cover, which was in effect a 16-page newspaper called The St. Cleve Chronicle & Linwall Advertiser, which was a spoof of the sort of local newspapers prevalent around the UK at the time.
“That was a massive undertaking,” says Anderson. “Fortunately Roy Eldridge, our A&R man at the label [Chrysalis], had worked as a journalist on local papers prior to joining the company. So, we drew on his experience. We put together a lot of silly stories and also used lyrics from the album itself. We also got the road crew, label people and girlfriends to pose for photos.”
One of those names used was Derek Smalls, who emerged over a decade later as the bassist with the fictional heavy metal band Spinal Tap. “I was convinced that Harry Shearer (the actor who played the character in the celebrated movie) must have gotten the name from Thick As A Brick, especially as the Smalls in the film smoked a Peterson pipe – and the only three people I know in rock’n’roll who smoke such a pipe were all members of Jethro Tull! But, when I got the chance to interview Harry for a US TV show, he denied ever hearing Thick As A Brick. I find that somewhat hard to believe.”
However, the album did get some cultural recognition in the States when it was featured in an episode of The Simpsons. Not only does the character of Martin Prince sing part of the song in the episode Girls Just Want To Have Sums, but the original is used over the end credits. Perhaps this isn’t too surprising when you consider that the album reached Number One in the US when released in May 1972 (it hit Number Five in the UK).
“I must admit to being a little surprised that we got to the top of the charts over there,” says Anderson. “But everything had been building for us. Aqualung sold steadily, so either Thick As A Brick was going to take off, or we’d just sink. However, I’m not sure our American fans understood the humour behind our live performance on the subsequent tour.
“We decided to bring all the characters mentioned on the album and in the cover newspaper to life, and it was quirky, very British. We weren’t trying to be comedians, just to enhance the concept. The rest of the band got the chance to step outside of their dapper personae. It was funny because we had a laugh. But in the US… well, all I can say is that I’m none too certain they understood what we were doing. But perhaps this comes down more to the whole premise of progressive rock rather than anything else – at least as far as Anderson is concerned.
“Progressive rock is a purely British phenomenon. And these days all of us – and I include the likes of ELP here – know that there was a sense of fun about it. Privately, we all saw the silly side, we were like John Cleese in a bowler hat lampooning the bureaucrats, while revelling in it.”
Any spoof done well enough enhances both the perpetrators and the intended victims – think of Spinal Tap and the heavy metal genre. But, surely if it’s done too well then it becomes indistinguishable from the real thing? How does Anderson react to the fact that Thick As A Brick is frequently cited as the ultimate prog rock album?
“Job done, I’d say. We set out to make the mother of all concept records, as I stated earlier, and if that’s the way people see the album after all these years, then we achieved the ambition. It is hard sometimes to differentiate between what’s serious and what’s a send-up. But, for me, that’s beauty of true prog rock – it must have both.”
Jethro Tull’s classic 1972 concept album ‘Thick As A Brick’ was reissued on 5th November to commemorate it’s 40th anniversary with new SW stereo and surround mixes. The CD contains the 2012 stereo remix, while the DVD contains a 5.1 mix in DTS & Dolby Digital surround sound, the stereo remix in high quality 96/24, and the original 1972 stereo mix flat transferred to 96/24 PCM.
also being made available on the same date, which also includes Ian Anderson’s‘Thick As A Brick 2′ (which was also mixed by SW), and a coffee table book.
Jethro Tull
Ian Anderson – lead vocals, acoustic guitar, flute, violin, trumpet, saxophone, cover art, producer
