Units made: 173 Limited-Edition Book, numbered and hand-signed by Mick Jagger, Michael Putland and Nick Kent.
Limited-Edition Tour Litho of 173 pieces, hand-signed by Mick Jagger.
Album: 180-gram Triple-Vinyl Set of the Brussels concert.
Watch: ’70s-era “Tongue & Lips” Watch—Japan Seiko movement and stainless steel face with brass dial.
History: In 1973, the government of France banned the Rolling Stones from entering French territory because of various run-ins with the law most of them occurring during summer of 1971, while the band members were in the South of France, recording one of their masterpieces, Exile on Main St. This was a blow to the Stones’ hordes of French fans, who would be shut out from experiencing the Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band In The World on their 1973 European Tour in support of the newly released Goats Head Soup. That October, the band organized a concert across the Belgian border in Brussels, and a local radio station chartered a bus to transport French fans to the now-historic gig.
All the sights and sounds from this historic show and tour have now been amassed for the first time in The BrusselsAffair, the inaugural release from the Stones Archive. The package features an 180-gram triple-vinyl album and rare photographs from the Brussels show by Claude Gassian, as well a book documenting the entire 1973 European tour, with exclusive photographs from Michael Putland and a newly written text by acclaimed NME scribe Nick Kent.
Contributors: Michael Putland, Nick Kent, Claude Gassian
The new vehicle for the music of Joshua Ostrander have everything in place for a big ’2017, including LA’s favorite song of ’2016, “Shine.” Expect a full-length via Republic Records by the spring.The hit-single “Shine” by Mondo Cozmo. MC is working class, honest, inspirational, cautiously hopeful, and socially observational.
Their long-awaited follow-up to 2012’s ‘Persistent Malaise’ offers shimmering, inward, mulch-heavy ballads — ‘A Change of Course’, ‘The Shaping of the Dream’, ‘Murmur of the Heart’ showing a sensitivity that inevitably does nothing for the craft beer revolution. Cold Pumas distill their catholic music tastes into a familiar yet original racket that recalls Sonic Youth as often as it does Can and Neu. With new album The Hanging Valley set for June release
Across its 38 minutes, the ‘The Hanging Valley’ instead covers such further peripheral subjects as the imperceptible bow towards the thirty-something honours list, the vacuous, rising diphthong of the inner-city commute and the suppressed rush of blood towards vainglorious internet smear.
The addition of Lindsay Corstorphine on the bass guitar, ‘cascading down the woodwork, slapping the pegs’ as he goes, In truth The Hanging Valley owes us much to Corstorphine’s ample string manship as his encouragement toward loosening the conservative shackles of olde. Ballads stare teary-eyed out of windows towards rain-swept rivieras, vocals and guitars have pulled themselves gamely out of the reverb-soaked hollow and those ‘for the rockers’ — ‘Slippery Slopes’, ‘Severed Estates’, ‘Fugue States’ et al — no longer grasp for the safety of the halfway house but aim for the stars.
Appropriately named Australian band descending from the Rainyard and the Palisades, “Edge of a Dream” is a record you immediately feel comfortable with. Like an old friend you haven’t seen in years, but the conversation picks up like you saw each other yesterday. In 2014 we released the brilliant “A Thousand Days” LP by the Rainyard, an early 90s quartet from Perth, Western Australia. Saddened to hear that their 2015 reformation was not to be, in their place we got the Jangle Band…
Lucky for us, this fill-in band featured a dream team of Australia pop musicians (including Jeff Baker from the Rainyard) and even better news was that they decided that it was to be more than a one-off live performance. Even though the members were spread across both sides of Australia, within 4 months they had written and recorded their debut album. We heard it, we loved it, we wanted it.
“Edge Of A Dream” is an album filled with 10 jewels and 10 reasons for still believing in melodies, harmonies and chiming guitars. It’s the sound of the Byrds, the wit of the Kinks and the heart of the Triffids.
It’s not a dream, it’s all here, don’t miss it, highly recommended!
Ian Freeman – vocals, tambourine
Jeff Baker – guitar, vocals
Joe Algeri – guitar, vocals
Dave Wallace – bass, vocals
Mark ‘Sid’ Eaton – drums, vocals
On this album everybody played guitar.
Joe played various keyboard instruments & other things.
The third album from indie/psych/folk quartet Quilt might come from old demos, but it bucks these common trends by showing that disparity can serve as a creative asset.Quilt expertly constructs solid psychadelic pop, They get the psychedelic revival correct, using sustained cord changes, modest effects and balance themselves between psych folk and dream-pop as if they’ve got one foot rooted in the past and one in the present.When Anna Fox Rochinski and Butler throw in a key shift on opener “Passerby” that evokes a sitar-like, resonator guitar tone, it’s as if they hit the whammy bar on the song itself during playback. It’s a trick they manage several times throughout this new set, where the entire band, which also includes drummer John Andrews and new bassist Keven Lareau, will suddenly go slack before the arrangement as a whole automatically snaps back like a guitar returning to its default string tension. At these times, usually the band will be cruising along at a pleasant pace before swerving toward a jagged, seemingly out-of-place chord or element, and the overall effect is like a friend suddenly tousling your hair.
Slightly atmospheric, with a presentation that’s flawless, as if they’ve handed out mood enhancers that sparkle the edges & fill this album with songs that are well crafted, intimate & own the space in which they exist, creating a package that’s downright flammable
The video for “Two Cousins,” a breakout track from Slow Club’s second album, 2011’s Paradise, still induces a smile. With a pair of impeccably dressed gentlemen high-kicking and stutter-step dancing to the song’s fractured drum beat, gliding along with plinking piano notes, the clip is a joyful introduction to the Sheffield, England duo’s charm. Five years later, that song sounds like an artifact of a band in happier times — a stark contrast to the winsome, world-weary iteration of Slow Club heard on the fittingly titled new album, One Day All Of This Won’t Matter Anymore.
The band’s music has always struck a balance between tugging heartstrings and uplifting with bittersweet voices and striking melodies. Yet with One Day, Rebecca Taylor and Charles Watson release their emotions and vulnerabilities more than ever. Sequenced as an intimate he-said, she-said narrative, the album’s 12 songs seem to find the songwriters embodying opposite ends of a collapsing relationship, with each equally accepting and doling out blame.
On the opener “Where the Light Gets Lost,” Watson sits alone, reeling and lost, knowing he missed his window. “I had my chance, and this is letting go,” he muses over a smoldering groove. In the bluesy dirge “Ancient Rolling Sea,” he describes blustery upheaval — “You’ve got your battles, and they rage like an ancient rolling sea” — then declares, “I’ll always be by your side.”
From Taylor’s end, the silvery R&B ballad “Come on Poet” unfurls in the chorus: “Did you think it was over? ‘Cuz so did I / I can’t take on the tiger while I’m still this child / and if something was worth saving, I’d have thought we’d try / it’s getting so hard to remember to be fair and kind.” The swaying gospel waltz “Give Me Some Peace” is a plea for relief. “And as toxic as ever, it turns into terror / my freedom gone to grief / give me some peace,” she sings about her partner’s reckless behavior, which threatens to pull them both under — all while gnarled guitar and voices soar to a climactic peak.
And on “Rebecca Casanova,” when Taylor sings, “And I don’t wanna be the one you call ‘the girl who brought me down’ / and I don’t wanna be guilty of knowing I could have let you out to find her sooner,” the song’s tick-tock guitar rhythms and glittery synth lines recast what could be a plaintive lament as a bouncy pop gem.
One Day is rich and nuanced, showing how Slow Club’s sonic sensibility is elastic enough to fold in an array of styles. While switching from folk (“In Waves”) to jangling rock (“Silver Morning”), pining torch song (“Sweetest Grape on the Vine”) to rollicking country (“Champion”) and even slinky disco glitz (“Tattoo”), the album remains impressively cohesive. That’s thanks in part to producer and songwriter Matthew E. White and the in-house band at his Spacebomb Studios in Richmond, Va. Their natural chemistry can be heard in the album’s familiar feel and warm instrumentation: mellow Fender Rhodes and Wurlitzer keyboards, swooning pedal steel and tasteful guitar licks with strings that blossom around Watson and Taylor’s close harmonies.
Whether these songs are biographical or fictional (or likely, a bit of both), Slow Club paints honest pictures of complications in romance and companionship, commitment and betrayal, with things that cannot be unsaid. While the title could be easily be viewed as expressing exasperation in the face of overwhelming struggle, it’s also reassuringly calming. No matter how heartbroken you are at the moment, if you can endure, you’ll be stronger.
From walking around town to putting your foot through a wall, this new track from Halifax’s Monomyth is told from a minimalist’s point of view, with each verse building on the common factor of “looking for a place to go.” It feels to me like watching food-coloured milk being hit with dish soap (don’t lie, you’ve done this before): a beautiful mess of opposites, constantly swaying, waving and tumbling between intentionally harmonious guitar riffs. Unconventional, yet completely satisfying build-ups lead from one scene to the next. Monomyth gives you something to think about with every song the band writes, and with “Re:Lease Life (Place 2 Go),” it gives you a reason to sit down, and truly enjoy four minutes and 48 seconds. Look out for Monomyth’s new album, Happy Pop Family, out via Mint Records .
The third studio long-player from the Muscle Shoals-born crooner, the aptly named Cautionary Tale finds singer songwriter Dylan LeBlanc exorcizing some personal demons while injecting some much needed pomp and circumstance into his signature blend of breezy, ’70s West Coast singer/songwriter pop and Bible Belt-bred Gothic Americana. A conscious attempt to avoid relying on the self-described “sad bastard songs” that were so prevalent on his prior two releases, Cautionary Tale doesn’t exactly shake the rafters, but the addition of a rhythm section, along with copious amounts of cello, violin, and viola, certainly helps to expand the young troubadour’s sound.
His high and lonesome croon sits much higher in the mix this time around, and imbues highlights like the lush and lovely tracks “Roll the Dice,” the snappy and soulful “Easy Way Out,” and the road trip-ready title cut with an air of confidence that had been missing up to now. Even the quieter moments, of which there are still quite a few, especially on the LP’s more laconic back half, are bolstered by tight production and the sterling performances of both LeBlanc and his band.
LeBlanc hasn’t travelled the easiest road. And while some would find it hard to shed a tear for the young balladeer, the trials and tribulations that strode alongside his first two albums are the cornerstones of Cautionary Tale, and we are all the beneficiaries. Spin often, and with much care.
A lot of people still worship at the alter of New Zealand label Flying Nun. If you are one of those folk then I’m sure you were bowing down to this record all year. Its among the best jangle pop album since the Bats’ Fear of God. This Australian trio Chook Race put out an impressive debut album in 2015.
This is the work of a band deeply in debt to the scrappy sound of early Flying Nun bands like The Clean and The Bats , with the chiming guitars of the early-’80s jangle pop bands in the U.S. like R.E.M and the insistent, detached sound of the early Go Betweens . “Around The House” , makes good while delivering strong songs and more assured performances. Working as they did on their debut “About Time” Tom Hardisty of the band WoollenKits, this album is cleaner and stronger, with fuller guitars that blast their jangle directly into the listener’s brain. The songs are sticky too, with lots of simple hooks that sink in deeply and nice male/female voices that combine to sing relatable tales of life’s small struggles and love’s tender disappointments. Nearly every song has a big hook — Chook Race are not afraid of “bah bah bah” choruses .
It’s an easy sound to swallow and the album makes for a very pleasant listen with a melancholy tinge around the edges. When the band puts some extra zip in the rhythms or some bite in the guitars, like on “Sometimes” or “At Your Door,” the album really takes off. They do a good job of balancing these amped-up moments with quieter songs that allow for lyrical introspection and musical reflection.
“Who needs to think when your feet just go?” So sings Tina Weymouth on Tom Tom Clubs debut album. And rightly so — this was the sunny break in the islands that the rhythm section of Talking Heads wanted, and they got it, away from the art-school intellectualism that had resulted in the classic but understandably very unsunny “Remain In light”. This album, a collection of funky, sprightly little tunes recorded in Barbados with Weymouths sisters, hubbie and drummer Chris Frantz , and several of the members of the Heads band tour group: Adrian Belew, guitar, and Steven Stanley ,
If you didn’t pick a copy of this one up when it was first released this year, you may be out of luck—only 800 copies of Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth’s debut album were pressed to translucent green vinyl for this reissue. Recorded in Barbados after Talking Heads “Remain in Light” sessions, Tom Tom Club is a hugely influential, spawning singles like “Genius of Love” and “Wordy Rappinghood” and taking some cues from the growing hip-hop movement of the era. It’s hard to believe this is the first time it’s been reissued since its 1981 release.
