as a thanksgiving treat Play Some Pool, Skip Some School, Act Real Cool – a Global POP Tribute to Bruce Springsteen is available to pay-what-you-want
it features 38 often surprising covers of the Boss by the likes of The Wave Pictures Allo Darlin’ Darren Hayman Butcher Boy Jeff Mellin Joel MellinEux Autres The Manhattan Love Suicides Harvey Williams (musician)Piney Gir Jeniferever Pete Weiss & the Rock Band Darren Hanlon MJ Hibbett Jennifer O’Connor Eddie Argos and many more
glory days
Daylight Versions is the debut full-length album from London quintet The Leaf Library, released on 30th October via WIAIWYA. The record is full of wonderfully woozy, drone-pop tunes about meteorology, the seasons and the incoming sea; from songs about the ghostly Suffolk coastline to the slowly rising waters of London marshes, these ten tracks channel the warm fuzz of Yo La Tengo, the spacious repetition of Talk Talk and Movietone’s seaside melancholy to beautiful effect.
The song is inspired by the disappearing coastline of Suffolk, with lyrics that evoke the lunar landscape of Orford Ness (an old radar testing site that is home to a forest of radio masts and the mysterious ‘Black Beacon’) and guitar drones that could come straight from the nearby Sizewell B nuclear reactor. Filmed a little way up the coast from Orford on Dunwich beach, the beautiful time lapse video dips in and out of the North Sea, under the waves and over the sunken town and collapsed cliffs. The swelling horns and massed chiming guitar arpeggios all build together to summon the expanse of an enigmatic, twilight coast.
Much of Daylight Versions was recorded at Studio Klank in North London with Simon Nelson (Cosines). Musically, Daylight Versions is a shift away from the Stereolab and Electrelane influenced buzz and drone of the previous couple of singles. The album generally has a more contemplative, nocturnal feel, with songs that gradually unfurl over a greater length of time. There are more horns, strings and piano, plus lots more synths and drones.
Lyrically the album shifts the focus away from the cities and buildings of their early work and towards the outdoors, the coast, the weather and the sea, with recurring themes of water and flooding as well as the seasons. Inspired by the countryside of The Lake District and coastal Suffolk, The Leaf Library also looked towards English pastoral literature, such as Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald and The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane, as well as sharing themes of place and home with PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake.
The Leaf Library consists of guitarist and songwriter Matt Ashton (previously of John Peel favourites Saloon), Kate Gibson on vocals, bassist Gareth Jones (from Wintergreen), guitarist Ben Smith and Lewis Young on drums. The band brought in a host of guests to help fulfill their musical vision including Steven James Adams, Rob Smoughton from Hot Chip, Alison Cotton and Mark Nicholas from The Left Outsides, Daniel Fordham and David Stewart from The Drink, as well as Alasdair Maclean from The Clientele and Amor de Dias.
The Leaf Library have produced an album full of uneasy beauty. Graceful yet grandiose, Daylight Versions captures the feeling of living amongst England’s eccentric weather, of being on a small island floating in the North Sea, as it slowly disappears beneath the waves.
Did you happen to order this year’s most talked-about big box set? By that, I mean the complete 18-CD edition of Bob Dylan’s The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series Volume 12? If you did, I’d advise you to sit down while reading this and start checking your email now!
The folks at Columbia Records have a very special Christmas present for those who purchased the big Bob box: a free digital download of an additional 208 tracks from the period chronicled in the box set. Yes, that’s 208 tracks and more than 10 hours of previously unreleased Bob Dylan music from his storied 1965 tours including 14 complete concerts (both acoustic and electric) plus never-before-released recordings from Dylan’s television performances, hotel rooms, and other far-flung venues! Yes, that’s a whopping, entire digital box set coming your way…
These live performances are exclusively downloadable in 320 Kbps MP3 format to purchasers of the 18-CD edition of The Cutting Edge by redeeming a special code that will be sent to you via email. Watch for more information as it develops!
The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us. You get 1 track now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app ), released 30th October 2015. Beach Slang took off so quickly. With nothing but a pair of EPs under their belt, the scrappy Philadelphia three-piece was able to get themselves booked on festivals and tours alongside bands like Cursive, Knapsack, Modern Baseball, and The Hotelier, not to mention a label deal with indie stalwart Polyvinyl Records. But it’s not hard to crack the code of the Slang’s appeal. There is a timeless universality behind Beach Slang’s lyrics, one that celebrates the idea of being young and carefree (regardless of how old you actually are). Throw a dart at any of their insert sheets and you’ll no doubt nail a lyric about turning the stereo up, singing along with your best friends, and feeling alive.
Now, after a seemingly endless wait, Beach Slang are finally, finally ready to unleash The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us, their long-anticipated debut album. Though they’ve got a few new tricks in their arsenal, including additional guitarist Ruben Gallego, the album is more of the same, thematically, from the Slangers. The album’s first single, “Bad Art & Weirdo Ideas” is a pretty good example of where they’re at. It packs in their trademark hopeless romanticism and a lust for nostalgia over emotional vulnerability. “I’ve always felt stuck, alone, or ashamed!” James Alex sings with a hushed scream, before giving way to the “ah-ah-ahs!” and “ooo-oohs!” that you’ll no doubt be shouting back instantly.
So here it is, the first taste of one of the most anticipated records of the year. Let its chords dig into your brain. Turn your speakers up, and feel this song—the soundtrack for the angry, young, and wild.
The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us came out on October 30th from Polyvinyl. Catch Beach Slang on tour.
An album that makes the discographies of Propagandhi and Rise Against look impenetrably subtle by comparison, Payola proudly bears its politics in song titles like “The Left Is Right,” “MariKKKopa,” and “Slacktivist.” There’s no mistaking the passion that seethes in each of Payola’s 14 tracks, some of the most ferociously melodic rock songs released this year.
If there was any knock to be made on Desaparecidos’ otherwise perfect 2002 album Read Music/Speak Spanish, it was that it was too Omaha. The band’s brilliantly crafted songs chronicling the growing pains and local politics of their hometown were almost enviable from a national perspective. How about directing some of that energy outwards, dudes? Fortunately, when Conor Oberst and crew returned for their lonnnnng-awaited sophomore album, Payola, 13 years later, they did just that. Each of the record’s 14 songs is a self-contained indictment of a large-scale American problem, which, unfortunately for the country but fortunately for music, there is no shortage of. Failed healthcare systems, institutionalized xenophobia, and Wall Street bro culture all feel the vengeful and sometimes wonderfully sarcastic hand of Desaparecidos. Not to mention that sonically, Payola is about as solid of a distortion-heavy rock record as you’re gonna get.
Black Sabbath have confirmed their first three albums will be released as deluxe editions in January.
Their 1970 self-titled debut, its same-year follow-up Paranoid and 1971’s Master Of Reality were remastered in 2012 but only previously available in digital format.
Each album comes with a second disc of outtakes and alternate versions, while the launch date coincides with the beginning of their final world tour.
Frontman Ozzy Osbourne recently stated that, although they’d planned to make one more album before splitting, the idea had been shelved. Guitarist Tony Iommi later said it had been bassist Geezer Butler’s decision.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iR-pddN1IQ
Sabbath’s The End tour begins on January 20th in North America and takes in Australia, New Zealand and Europe – including a headline set at Download in the UK – before winding up back in the US on September 21st. The deluxe albums are released on January 22nd. Black Sabbath are the cover stars of the current edition of Metal Hammer, on sale now in print, digital and via TeamRock+.
This is an astonishing album in its depth and scope. It has many elements from Teeth of the Sea’s previous work. It represents a real step forward from the previous and already excellent album ‘Master’, and also takes clues from the band’s more recent soundtrack release ‘A Field In England:Re-imagined’. ‘Highly Deadly Black Tarantula’ is very much an album for our times, an album of desolation and perhaps in the final track also one of hope; although that hope is not without ambiguity
Highly Deadly Black Tarantula is a stripped down, monolithic behemoth of a technoid dystopian ritual psychedelia record, that sounds brave in this Brave New World.
Teeth Of The Seas‘ breakthrough third LP, which helped introduce the world to a wider global audience, myself included – was the perfect hybridization of Carpenter-esque synth horrorscores and epic metallic guitar-centric Post-Rock, Ramping up the industrial noise levels, Teeth of the Sea made a compact snarler of an album. Masterful.
Theory of Mind by Electric Moon released on Sulatron Records. If you like your psych droney, trance-like and with the nod-factor cranked up to 11 then “Theory of Mind” is for you as it basically ticks all the boxes. The vinyl version has four tracks spread out over two slabs of wax with the shortest track being a tad under 14 and half minutes long! As it was recorded live there is a relaxed, jam-like feel to the playing but the production is so shit-hot that, apart from the odd whistle or cheer, you could be mistaken for thinking that it is a studio album. The musicianship never dips below incredible and the individual members work as one and really feed off each other. All four tracks start off slow and its usually Sula Bassana’s guitar genius which is the catalyst for the rest of the band to take off and do their thing. There is a hypnotic quality to their music epitomised by the title track which draws you in with its gradual build up and motorik beat before all hell breaks loose. How the rest of the band manage to even attempt to keep up with Sula’s guitar is an impressive feat in itself but the fact that they almost seem to encourage him to take the psychedelic whig-out further and further just has to be commended. A new Electric Moon album is apparently just around the corner and I, for one, can not wait. Definite album of the year contender for sure.
The Flavor Crystals are among the champions of the new wave psych from the United States of America and which includes, among others, Magic Castles, Myrrors, Mystic Braves.
Led by guitarist and singer Josh Richardson, also author of all the songs (if we exclude ‘Diamond Mine’ , a song by David Kilgour of the Clean and betrays a taste for the lo-fi and all Dunedin Sound), the band arrives the publication of the fourth LP in the studio after the previous work, simply titled ‘Three’ , he rightly got a good response and great acclaim from audiences and critics. To act as the guarantor of the rest was the guru Anton Newcombe, who took the Flavor Crystals under his wing: the band then went on tour with Brian Jonestown Massacre, when the record came out for The Committee To Keep Music Evil, which then it would always be one of the many creations of assets and more and more ‘relevant’ Newcombe.
After three years the Flavor Crystals are back and confirm this with out the good proposed earlier if possible improving itself further and in particular for what concerns a more mature approach to the so-called ‘song form’.Josh Richardson is indeed a songwriter shrewd and intelligent and with a keen sensitivity, while the band has now acquired its own sound identity well defined. Recorded in the Old Blackberry Way of Minneapolis, Minnesota, ‘The Shiver of the Flavor Crystals’ is a record that can only please the aficionados of the band and generally to all fans of psychedelic music.
Listening to this disc drops us into a particular size. Almost surreal. I am reminded of a scene described in the film ‘The Legend of the Pianist on the Ocean’ by Giuseppe Tornatore. It seems to the listener to walk barefoot and trying not to make noise in the corridors of an old brothel do not bother others who at that precise moment are sweeping or maybe you are just doing embrace. What then for the writer is a bit ‘the same thing. The disc never reaches the level of the noise those that could be considered somewhat of excesses, and rather than trying to hit and displace and to surprise at first glance, it is proposed then slowly enter into the ears of the listener to reach the heart and soul and then convey a sense of infinity and cosmic peace.
Do not miss also excursions to the wonderful world of sound and psychedelia, such as in the case of ‘Wednesday Bloody Wednesday’ or ‘Bridge of Noise’ and ‘Bumble Birds’, practically the mantra recited softly.‘Mirror In My Mind’ is a real trip where stand a couple of excellent collaborations, namely that of Ricky Maymi, one of the most eclectic musicians outstanding and here plays the drums, and that of Stephen Lawrie Telescopes of the synthesizer. More pronounced in some cases the component shoegaze: ‘Billy Dee Williams’ Parking Spot’ for example has the connotations of the genre. A concert of guitars screeching like the brakes of a car on the asphalt bagntato serve as the backdrop to a singing suffused and atmosphere, almost ‘numb’, while the battery obsessively repeats the same time.
Among the most interesting releases of recent times, ‘The Shiver of the Flavor Crystals’ is a hard discrete, but how could it be a cat, a domestic cat, and that makes us rediscover those principles that are important for achieving a size freer of the human race: the trust and confidence in relating to themselves and therefore with others. Even where the tones are more melancholy prevails nonetheless a certain serenity background. This disc is great for those who need to pull the oars and rest for a while ‘, for those who want to return to believe in anything, simply for those who now want to switch off and dream a little’ to open eyes . Better if together. The loneliness of the rest never did anyone any good.
There are many inspiring moments on Joy, Departed, the kinds of isolated flickers of genius that most triumphant rock music is made of: fiery guitar squalls, drum fills that hit like avalanches, roaring swells of bombast, and especially Cameron Boucher’s clever, heart-wrecking turns of phrase. These details are so plentiful and so frequent that it’s possible to appreciate the album on a micro level, as a series of nonstop thrills, without ever zooming out. But the big picture, an honest portrait of pressing through addiction and depression, is worth meditating on long after the endorphin rush is gone.
Joy, Departed is Sorority Noise’s second full length. 2014 saw the band release a split with Somos, another with Radiator Hospital and their debut full length Forgettable. Joy, Departed shows growth in the band’s song writing while taking influences from Brand New, introducing more atmospheric and angular guitars while keeping true to the bands quirky honest lyrics. FFO: Brand New, Joyce Manor, Modern Baseball. 200 on clear beer with royal blue splatter vinyl,
Members: Cameron Boucher – guitar/vocals Ryan McKenna – bass/vocals Adam Ackerman – guitar/vocals Charlie Singer- drums
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