B.B. King’s openers had a rough time. As an announcer welcomes the likes of Sheriff Joseph Woods to the stage before the blues legend takes the stage for a 1970 show at Chicago’s Cook County Jail, the prisoners greet the officer with aggressive boos and jeers. It was a tough crowd, but King entranced them with ease and humility. He was gracious, flirtatious and even self-deprecating as he effortless ripped through songs like “Worry, Worry” and “Sweet Sixteen.” “It was the best show we ever had,” said the Department of Corrections Superintendent Winston Moore who had invited King to perform for the prisoners. By the time he finished on a sweet note with the ballad “Please Accept My Love,” King had the crowd on their feet, hollering ecstatically.
Every discussion of Hop Along begins with Frances Quinlan’s voice. It’s a force of nature, yes, but it’s also human, often painfully so, and she uses it to relate stories of humanity in all its rawness and imperfection, its ugliness and its grace. The band match her thorny intensity with knife-sharp guitars and rhythms, see-sawing from sweetness to noise, building to moments of musical and emotional catharsis that detonate with the force of a land-mine. So much of Painted Shut is about feeling small, feeling weak, letting people down and being let down, but Hop Along turn that into something explosive and strong and beautiful and triumphant. Powerlessness has never sounded so powerful.
The wiry, bookish sound of Painted Shut by the band Hop Along are at their vanguard. “By the time it’s old/ My face will have been seen/ And I’ll share a very/ Common poverty/ It’s a very common kind,” Frances Quinlan sings on “Waitress”, a vignette about a disgraced diner server. Hop Along spend all of their stellar third album leaping to capture these specific sorts of honors.
Quinlan’s rough voice always sounds on the verge of giving out, but as a writer she is a tender guardian who sees dignity everywhere she looks: On “The Knock”, she is moved to tears by the beaming Jehovah’s Witness who knocks on her door (“I never once seen a teenager look so radiant”), and “Buddy in the Parade” recalls the spectacular public breakdown of early-20th century cornetist Charles “Buddy” Bolden, who started frothing at the mouth during a parade performance and spent the rest of his life in a sanitarium. The songs are furiously angry in their energy and endlessly compassionate toward their targets, backing you into a corner and hugging you fiercely, like someone staging a very determined intervention on your behalf.
I do enjoy this music very much, the voice, the rhythms and the lyrics. Balancing wide-eyed winsomeness with admirable adventurism, “You Won’t” gallops all over the musical map, crafting badlands death ballads, bagpipes-over-Baghdad folk jams, and road-trip sing-alongs. Josh Arnoudse (vocals and guitar) and Raky Sastri (singing saw, electric bagpipes, whirly tube, and kitchen sink) do indeed come on as revolutionaries, taking one of rock’s most limited formats—the two-piece—and dragging it places the Black Keys and White Stripes never dreamed of.
I love all of You Won’t’s music videos so much that I can’t look away from YouTube while I’m listening to the music so the only way to really listen to the music by itself was to buy the album. Totally worth it, little lighter on the nostalgia and anticapitalism than Skeptic Goodbye but a little catchier. “Ya Ya Ya” is the obvious single but not the only fun and great song on the disc!
If in a parallel, time, Bruce Springsteen, instead of selling out arenas, ended up singing resentful songs in a dark Las Vegas bar. In our reality, this same person lives in the body of Alex Cameron. We see him in a smart suit with slicked back blond hair, sometimes his cheeks are wrinkled, as is an older version of himself possessed his figure unexpectedly. He is almost kneeling on stage while holding on to his microphone; It’s impossible to foresee if he’s about to burst into tears or into a fit of rage. But nothing happens, the song ends, the action stops. He’s still there, on the empty stage, in the empty room, and you can’t help but keep thinking of his words, his voice, his hopelessness.
“And I’ve sat here thinking, I hate my god damn life/ I used to be the number one entertainer, now I’m bumpkin with a knife/ I’ll never get my show back.” he sings, in one of his tracks, titled “The Comeback.” Oddly enough, despite what you might think, “The Comeback” isn’t the opening song on Cameron’s debut album: the first place in his record titled “Jumping the Shark” is, indeed, for a song named “Happy Ending.” It’s as if we are taken backwards in the life and the career of this unfathomable music business man from a timeless place. the fact that the record in question, “Jumping The Shark”, was actually sneakily released by Cameron way back in 2013, and merely saw a wider U.S. release last year, with the record getting a proper release this year from new label SecretlyCanadian and producing some of the best video clips this year, Alex, who knocked it out of the park this year with a aforementioned string of brilliant videos taken from the record,
“I’ve got, everything I need/ It’s a strong connection, that’s high-speed/ Got two modems, and a fax machine/ I got receptionists, they keep my office clean/ I’ve got, a master plan/ I’m my own boss, I’m the man/ I got business cards, you can find me;” .
His narrative is evil and repulsive, yet we can’t help but listen carefully to the stories he sings, fascinated by this corruption and determined to save his poor, self-destructive soul, always concerned to find out that its us he’s talking about. The electronic arrangement, made of straight synths and guitars, remind of the new-wave, post-punk era – vintage or out-of-date, it’s difficult to tell. But the result is an album that sticks in the listener’s mind, persistent in the thoughts, coming back when least expected; impossible to give up on, just like a crushing addiction.
“I had a dream that we were doing hard drugs in a street alley” is a hell of a line to kick off a song, and seems emblematic of your typical rock and roll band. But Susto are far from the typical band. This Charleston five-piece covers vast sonic ground on their new album “& I’m Fine Today”, swaying between country-tinged rock “CosmicCowboy”, contemplative pop ballads “Mountain Top”, and any number of other genres that exist somewhere within the expansive fabric of Southern music. But the lead single “Hard Drugs” is perhaps most typical of their nakedly honest, narrative approach to songwriting, covering themes of heartbreak and loneliness with an added dose of creative flair.
“& I’m Fine Today” is our most earnest effort to create unique emotional soundscapes while speaking candidly and openly about the realities of existence,” We are a group of people, touring musicians, who feel privileged to do what we do and we have given all of our energy to create an album that captures both the pain and beauty of being human.”
It can seem like a pretty hopeless world out there sometimes, but this is the kind of music that just hits in the right way on those long, dark nights of the soul. Hell, it might even make you laugh when you’re done moppin’ up those tears. “& I’m Fine Today” is out January 13th via Missing Piece/Caroline.
Every now and then, Milk! Records artists get together and make some art.
Thanks for another great year y’all !! 2016 has seen the release of The Finks “Middling” and Loose Tooth “SaturnsReturns”. As well as our 2nd Milk! Records Compilation “Good For You” (not to mention the Good For You TOUR where we all piled into a bus and drove up the East Coast of America )
Let’s face facts — in 2016 it is remarkable that there’s a new Dinosuar Jr album to go ape over. After all, the original line-up of the band (J Mascis, Lou Barlow & Murph) only recorded three full albums during their initial run in the 1980s. Everyone was gob-smacked when they reunited in 2005. Even more so when they opted to stay together, as they have for 11 years now . And with the release of ‘Give a Glimpse Of What Yer Not’, this trio has released more albums in the 21st Century than they did in the 20th.
Last year, 2015, saw the amazing live shows Dinosaur Jr played to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their eponymous debut LP. and the songs they were celebrating are amazing enough, But essentially that was a nostalgia fest a very fine nostalgia fest too but it’s the future that beckons the living. So you have to be pretty damn chuffed that the band has managed to pull another magnificent rabbit out of their collective hat.
The songs on ‘Give a Glimpse...’ were recorded over the past year or so, again at Amherst’s Bisquiteen Studio (located in a secret nook of J’s basement). The sound is great and roaring with J’Mascis various bleeding-ear psychedelic guitar touches oozing their way into the smudge-pop modeling, while Murph’s drums pound like Fred Flintstone’s feet, and Lou’s bass weaves back and forth between proggy melodicism and post-core thug-hunch.
Of the 11 songs presented, nine are J’s. Mascis he has had so many projects going at various times — from the retro glam of Sweet Apple to the metal dunt of Witch to the ostrich-rock overload of Heavy Blanket — it’s always a little shocking he can compartmentalize well enough to keep his tunes with Dinosaur Jr sounding so instantly recognizable. Which is not to say they’re interchangeable, it’s just that he has a very idiosyncratic way of structurally assembling and presenting the songs. Even when they’re not being played in concert (with amps turned to 12, and vibrating ’til they glow red).the way he hits his guitar strings has a unique quality that immediately lets you know you’re listening to Dinosaur Jr.
The other two songs here were written and sung by Lou, and they’re quite great as well. Although Barlow’s template and palette are more mercurial and shifting (as they are with his other ongoing projects, like Sebadoh), the two here have a consonant resonance. Both songs carry the same vibe as Roger McGuinn’s great early sides with the Byrds (although this has to do more with spirit than specific notes), reminding us that albums like Fifth Dimension and Notorious Byrd Brothers were among the main models for East Coast bands like the Soft White Underbelly. “Love Is…” and “Left/Right” represent the same kind of style displacement.
J Mascis‘ songs offer a lot of formal style moves as well. Over the last three decades, J’s songwriting has continued to pursue confusion, isolation and mis-communication as its main themes (which is one of the reasons he’s always been the artist-of-choice for so many misfits), but he has really worked on the craft of songwriting, and he’s constantly improving his ability to convey these feelings rather than merely inhabit them. “Lost All Day” might be the most eloquently sad of the songs on ‘Give a Glimpse...’, but my favorite is probably “Mirror,” which comes off like the best song Blue Osyter Cult song they didn’t record for Agents of Fortune. The opening (and repeating) line, “I’ve been crawling around since I met you,” branded itself onto my brain the instant I heard it. But then, “Goin’Down” (not the Freddie King tune) is a stone classic as well. And “Tiny” has the prettiest pop architecture. “Be APart” continually makes me flash on the first time I heard “Cowgirl in the Sand.” “I Told Everyone” is almost like a Bowie tribute when you hear it from another room. “Good to Know” has the record’s most insane guitar solo. “IWalk for Miles” contains the most thuggish riffs. “Knocked Around” features the most elegant use of falsetto. And the whole damn thing is great. In short, on its 11th LP, Dinosaur Jr does what it has done best for the past 30-plus years, which is to remind us of the life-giving force of guitar, bass, drums and scary-big stack of Marshall amps.
Porcelain Raft has returned with his third full length “Microclimate”, his biggest sounding and most expansive collection of songs to date.
Microclimate will be released on February 3rd via Volcanic Field, Porcelain Raft’s own label and creative space with a special limited edition run of 250 units on colored vinyl.
The album was recorded by Mauro Remiddi in his studio in East LA’s Highland Park neighbourhood and was mixed by Remiddi’s longtime collaborator Chris Coady at the legendary Sunset Sounds Studios. Throughout Microclimate, we hear acoustic guitars mixed with rusty-like synths, strings morph into underwater drum machines, and at the centre of each song Remiddi’s voice is as present as ever.
Following the album’s previously-shared first single, Distant Shore, Porcelain Raft returns this week with another dreamy song from the album, titled “Big Sur”.
Microclimate is the third full length from Porcelain Raft and arguably his most powerful record to date
New York based singer-songwriter Julie Byrne has announced her sophomore album, “Not Even Happiness”, is set to be released on January 27th via UK-based label Basin Rock Records.
“The title of the album comes from a letter I wrote to a friend after a trip to Riis Park’s ‘The People’s Beach’,” Byrne says in a press release. “It was the first warm afternoon of the year. I walked alongside the Atlantic as the Earth came alive for the sun. There was a palpable sense of emergence to everything. I felt it in myself too, and remember thinking I would trade that feeling for nothing… not even happiness.”
Today, JulieByrne has shared the song I Live Now As A Singer, the elegant closing track from her upcoming album, “Not Even Happiness”. It is Julie Byrne’s first song ever to be recorded without a guitar.
Her husky voice ebbs and swoops in one of those wordless melodies that seems like the singer is channeling some ancient wavelength, Byrne’s voice is so delicate it sounds like she’s harmonizing with a breeze, her songs are so transfixing — the sun is setting, and the magic-hour light is warm and enveloping that those of us who’ve gathered to watch her are sitting slack-jawed.”
Little Feat is an American rock band formed by singer songwriter and lead vocalist and guitarist LowellGeorge and keyboard player Bill Payne in 1969 in Los Angeles. George disbanded the group due to creative differences in 1979, shortly before his death. Surviving members reformed Little Feat in 1987, remaining intermittently active to the present day.
Lowell George had met Bill Payne when playing in Frank Zappa’s Mothers Of Invention, Lowell says that Zappa fired him because “Willin'” contains drug references (“weed, whites and wine”). George often introduced the song as the reason he was asked to leave the band. On October 18th, 1975 at the Auditorium Theater in Rochester New York while introducing the song, George commented that he was asked to leave the band for “writing a song about dope”.
Zappa was instrumental in getting George and his new band a contract withWarner Bros. Records. The eponymous first album delivered to Warner Bros. was recorded mostly in August and September 1970, and was released in January 1971. When it came time to record “Willin’,” George had hurt his hand in an accident with a model airplane, so Ry Cooder sat in and played the song’s slide part. Lowell’s accident is referenced on the cover art of the band’s 1998 album Under the Radar. “Willin'” would be re-recorded with George playing slide for Little Feat’s second album Sailin’ Shoes, which was also the first Little Feat album to include cover art by Neon Park, who had painted the cover for FrankZappa’s Weasels Ripped My Flesh.
The cover shows a mural in Venice California, painted by the L. A. Fine Arts Squad in 1970 – “Venice in the Snow”.
Guitarist Jimmy Page stated Little Feat was his favorite American band
