Archive for the ‘CLASSIC ALBUMS’ Category

KACY & CLAYTON Feat MARLON WILLIAMS – ” I’m Unfamiliar “

Posted: December 17, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Every December, Christchurch, NZ enjoys the start of summer as Saskatoon, SK begins to freeze over. For as far apart as these places may seem, you would never know it from the sound ofPlastic Bouquet, the debut collaborative album between Saskatoon duo Kacy and Clayton and Christchurch singer and songwriter Marlon Williams. While on tour across Europe in 2017, Kacy and Clayton quite literally stopped Marlon in his tracks. As if playing by divine design through the radio, the pair’s Springtime of the Year immediately enchanted him. Soon thereafter, Marlon hopped a flight to Saskatoon and they wrote and recorded the bulk of what would become Plastic Bouquet. They unlocked undeniable chemistry. With Plastic Bouquet, these three musicians find common ground in dusty country spun through a kaleidoscope of psychedelic soul and dreamy fifties delivery. They created an ethnosphere that is more than the sum of its parts. It’s also the beginning of something very exciting.

Kacy: ”For the album, this was the first song I wrote that I sent to Marlon. So it was written before I knew him, but there are some parts that maybe would make you think otherwise. He wrote a line or two on it. It was written before he arrived into Canada with this winter scene in mind. I added some lines like the one including the Southern Hemisphere, to make it more kitchy, ha ha!

We postponed the song because I was worried about it. I thought all the other songs were way better and I was embarrassed to present it. So I had to finish it up. The song is very short because I cut a lot of verses from it. The story changed and I just felt they were unnecessary information. The first verse is just half as long as the second. I felt the verse melody was too boring to keep going for too long, so hit the chorus and trick everyone into listening to the last minute of the song.

Clayton played the organ at the start of the song, he played most of the fancy stuff on the album which was a nice asset to have hanging around. Marlon and I are more for the singing but Marlon definitely changed that one up. He played the electric guitar which I think is a nice part. It was just a little acoustic fingerpicking song before. I think he actually provided the most guidance on that song out of all of them, arrangement wise and adding a line and such. I’m glad we got it out.”

Marlon: ”That’s a song that Kacy wrote early on in the process and one of the first songs we had good to go. She writes such beautiful melodies for her voice. You’re compelled to fall in love with her songs because of how she puts melodies to such a beautiful voice. For me there was a very rare moment to be able to play a guitar solo, I have never done one!

We produced the album together instead of having someone else. Because of our shared love for the same music and having that same bedrock of foundational, traditional country music, all of this happened very organically so there wasn’t really much of a need for an extra party to make it all gel. The way we had started sending the songs back and forth to each other, there was no point at which we couldn’t work things out on our own.”

Kacy Lee Anderson and Marlon Williams

CLEM SNIDE – ” Ballad Of Eef Barzelay “

Posted: December 17, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Clem Snide was a character created by William S Burroughs and adopted by Eef Barzelay as the name of the band that he created in 1991. Burroughs’s writing was often informed by personal tragedy. These included a lifelong heroin addiction and a conviction for the manslaughter of his second wife, who died in a gun accident. Like his inspiration, Barzelay has suffered more than his fair share of misfortune. Beginning with the collapse of his band and subsequently his marriage, Barzelay then lost his house and was declared bankrupt. Now, five years on from the last Clem Snide record, Barzelay is back with quite possibly the best album that he’s ever made, and there have been some very good ones along the way.

Whilst at his lowest ebb, a fan sent Barzelay a video of the Avett Brothers peforming one of his songs and an interview with Scott Avett in which he states that he is a big fan of Clem Snide. From this Barzelay contacted Avett, with the result that he agreed to produce the new Clem Snide album. Avett actually ended up co-writing some of the songs and also plays and adds harmony vocals on it. He brought in Avett Brothers drummer Mike Marsh and Band of Horses bassist Bill Reynolds.  This quartet then put down the majority of the album at Avett’s North Carolina farm. The album was then concluded in Nashville with finishing touches from Old Crow Medicine Show fiddler Ketch Secor and Avett Brothers cellist Joe Kwon.

Scott Avett’s simple arrangements and minimal instrumentation allow Barzelay’s songs to live, breathe and flourish as their words are expressed by the compelling idiosyncrasies of his voice. This back-to-basics approach is the perfect platform for Barzelay. Shaped by his difficult experiences, the songs deal with issues of depression, identity, mortality, God and the afterlife. However, this is not an album of hopeless self-pity. The songs also raise the prospect of hope, discovery, reinvention and regeneration. The very personal nature of the songs underline that although it carries the Clem Snide name, to all intents and purposes this is an Eef Bazerlay solo record.

The album’s opening track ‘Roger Ebert’ serves as a prologue to the whole album. Based around the celebrated film critic’s last words “It’s all an elaborate hoax” Barzelay contemplates the nature and meaning of life, spirituality and God. Boy meets girl it isn’t. Subsequent songs investigate, contemplate and reflect upon similarly weighty themes. In ‘Don’t Bring No Ladder’ Barzelay recalls that “I thought to ask the voice inside my head/if it would still be there once I was dead” and in ‘The Stuff of Us’ he notes that “to be blessed is always to be cursed as well” Yet, despite all the darkness, at the end of ‘The Ballad of Eef Barzelay’ he concludes that “ As I kept falling/I came to realise/I finally realised/that there was no ground” thus raising the possibility of a turnaround and new beginnings.

The intensity is punctuated by three co-writes. ‘Sorry Charlie’ is a song about reaching middle age (Barzelay recently turned 50) in which he offers reflections on leaving the wildness of younger days behind “Sorry Charlie/We can’t party anymore” and the acceptance of responsibilities and a steadier existence “I’ve got a good job now”. The album concludes with‘Some Ghost’ another co-write which offers some hope “after we stumble/we’ll find a path”. We can only hope that the path that Eef Barzelay is now on is a straight and steady one. Plans to tour the album have, in the present circumstances, been shelved. For a man who has been in such a perilous financial state, this will come as a major blow. We could all help out by buying this album. I suggest that not as an act of charity, but because you will be getting one of the best albums you’re likely to hear this year.

“I think we always feel like we’re falling through life? Desperately grabbing at whatever little snappy branch we can but if there is no ground then there is no fear and then we’re flying or least floating… And in the end, a leap of faith is inevitable. Like the song says ‘to live is to fly’.

Also, it satisfies the rhyme of job and kebob and advocates for ‘the secret’. I named it after myself to be cheeky but it is an accurate expression of what I believe.” Eef Barzelay

Forever Just Beyond / Ramseur Records marketed and distributed by Thirty Tigers Released on: 2020-03-27

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NICOLE ATKINS – ” Domino “

Posted: December 17, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Hazy scenes from Asbury Park abound in the stylish new video, one directed with a VHS-inspired and retro cool by Taylor McFadden. “Domino” is the Hammond-drenched and funk-fueled new single from Nicole Atkins, and it’s taken from her forthcoming Italian Ice LP. Out from May 29th,

“One summer while touring, my band and I got really into listening to French electro music. It’s the perfect kind of music to drive to for long hours at night. Back at home in Nashville, I turned my friend Dex Green onto some of it while we were recording for my other project with Jim Sclavunos of the Bad Seeds. Dex caught the bug and got into it too and we talked about how we could write something together that felt like French electro but would still fit into my style. A few days later he sent over a drum and keys track and we finished the song from there fairly quickly.”

– Nicole Atkins

“Domino” – from the new album ‘Italian Ice out May 29th.

SHOPPING – ” All or Nothing ” Best Albums Of 2020

Posted: December 17, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Shopping are propulsive bass lines, primitive disco-not-disco drums and guitar lines sharp as broken glass. The band was formed in 2012 by members Rachel Aggs (guitar), Billy Easter (bass) and Andrew Milk (drums), who’ve all done time in a plethora of notable UK DIY bands 

This is the fourth long player from Rachel, Andrew and Billy, with their adept lo-fi take on that mutant disco/no wave dance-punk sound. Shopping pull the neat trick of getting better with every album, leaving you restless to hear what they do next. Album centerpiece “For Your Pleasure” is a treatise on hedonism set to retrofuturist synthesizers and artificial handclaps; perhaps too frantic for the ’70s discotechques Shopping has conjured in the past, it would sound right at home in the cocaine ’80s. It resembles no other Shopping song before it, raising the ceiling for a promising band with plenty left to say.

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Post-punk trio Shopping have long been heralded as queer icons of the London DIY scene—but things change. For one, Shopping no longer consider London as their home base: Guitarist Rachel Aggs and drummer Andrew Milk have relocated to Glasgow, while bassist Billy Easter is currently living in L.A. The trio is also shaking off their pared-down sound, instead choosing to embrace the possibilities of synths, beats and a polished studio feel.

The band is, obviously, still emblematic of queer artistic expression, but just maybe not in the way you were so sure that they were. On All or Nothing, Shopping’s fourth album since their inception in 2012, they deliver some of their most articulate, exciting songs as a group, while also eschewing some of the formulaic components of their music that made them so interesting in the first place. They teased the electronic-leaning sound of the album with singles “Initiative” and “For Your Pleasure,” but while many bands lose their edge when they adopt a smoother, synthier aesthetic, Shopping still remain punk in a restless and frenetic way—even when the guitars are put down.

I’ve always thought that Shopping are all about bringing a dance ideal to the punk aesthetic. Or maybe they’re all about adding a punk ideal to a dance aesthetic? I’m not really sure which it is, but I’m still really impressed with the result, an effortless blend that speaks to a perfect understanding of both forms, along with being a great collection of songs that make you wanna dance.

Relatively few artists have produced as many albums in as much time of equally high quality and interest, and the latest really showcases them at their most punchy and impactful yet. They really peak when they are all singing together.

OHMME – ” Fantasize Your Ghost ” Best Albums Of 2020

Posted: December 17, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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With their 2018 debut Parts, Ohmme introduced a combustive art-rock style based on tightly intertwined dual vocals and improvisatory guitars, wringing sing-song catchiness from baroque complexity. On “Fantasize Your Ghost”, the Chicago band further explores this craggy terrain, with detours into noisenik squalls, Krautrock grooves, and chamber-pop delicacy. Core duo Macie Stewart and Sima Cunningham (who has worked for the company that produces Pitchfork Music Festival) are most impressive in their sharp-tongued songcraft, whether confronting a distant partner or conjuring up a childhood reverie that juxtaposes hot lava and hot dogs—unsettlingly delectable. 

OHMME presents: “Fantasize Your Ghost” is a special concert film recorded live at Constellation in their hometown, Chicago. Bridging the gap between their frenetic live shows and their carefully crafted studio albums, the film presents their latest full length album in its entirety with the addition of their newest songs “Mine” and “Miasma” The show captures Ohmme with an expanded line-up featuring Nnamdï Ogbonnaya on drums, Ruby Parker and Quinn Tsan on backing vox and V.V. Lightbody on backing vox and flute.

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Co-directed by Jake Saner and Lauren Pratt with set design by Delaney Stewart, sound by Dorian Gehring, movement by Ashley Robicheaux, and co-produced with Constellation, the film pulls you in close with the band, enveloping you in their music and their dreams.

Chicago duo Ohmme was started by Macie Stewart and Sima Cunningham in the summer of 2014, combining their love for lush vocals and song writing with their love of experimentation and sound.

Released June 5th, 2020

OHMME is Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart
All songs written and performed by OHMME
All drums and percussion performed by Matt Carroll

MELKBELLY – ” Pith “

Posted: December 17, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Melkbelly sculpts their signature balance between subtle melody and frantic noise on new album “Pith”, their second for Carpark Records/Wax Nine. The Chicago-based foursome has made spatial dynamics central to its arrangements, reaching for weirder highs and more startling atmospherics, negative space giving way to enveloping walls of chaos. This sense of form is reflected not only in the purposeful production, but in the ceramic cover art created by Chicago artist Deborah Handler. Since their 2017 debut Nothing Valley, the members of Melkbelly have an even better understanding of their sonic motivations. “We’re always going to sort through the past to make better sense of the present,” Miranda says, and in doing so Melkbelly continually finds ways to mutate its sound. On Pith, Melkbelly sought space, and succeeded in crafting it. What a pleasure to be let in. 

Recording in two short sessions six months apart, the band worked with long time collaborator Dave Vettraino, this time at Bloomington, Indiana’s Russian Recording. Alongside an arsenal of rock gear and airy synth layers coaxed from a Moog Prodigy, “Pith’s multidimensionality was refined by the studio’s collection of rare Russian tube mics, which were placed in every corner to capture Melkbelly’s unabashed loudness. Frontperson Miranda Winters’ charmingly bright vocals are newly effected, delayed to a menacing, mysterious thickness. Guitars, handled by Miranda and Bart Winters, interlock and separate with dizzying ease, riffs dissolving into floating trails and reappearing with metallic edges. Bassist Liam Winters’ low grooves bounce and kick along with drummer James Wetzel’s rhythmically unsettling performance, which stretches time yet never falters.

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On “Pith”, Melkbelly’s second full-length, the Chicago foursome refine their knotty but melodic noise rock. Singer-guitarist Miranda Winters calls out from murky depths, conjuring memories of loss, anxiety, frustration, and occasional bliss. On standout track “THC,” the band slowly cranks up the tension until it erupts into an onslaught of guitar fuzz. Melkbelly rarely stays in one place for long, whiplashing from one fractured groove to the next, always finding new ways to shift from quiet to explosive. 

Recorded at Russian Recording in Bloomington, Indiana, Released April 3rd, 2020

Miranda Winters – Guitar, Vocals
James Wetzel – Drums, Moog, STS
Bart Winters – Guitar
Liam Winters – Bass Guitar
All songs written by Melkbelly
Lyrics by Miranda Winters

MAGIK MARKERS – ” 2020 “

Posted: December 17, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Magik Markers  distinguished themselves in the early 2000s with unfettered noise jams and a merch table so teeming with CD-Rs, tapes, and LPs as to render the idea of a coherent discography faintly obsolete. The New England trio led by singer/guitarist Elisa Ambrogio has slowed down and tightened up considerably as of late. Their first album in seven years is their most finely honed, though it is still rumpled in all the right places. With creaking Crazy Horse guitar solos, basement-Sabbath sludge, and A Thousand Leaves-rustling mysticism, “2020” finds clarity in controlled chaos, an eye in the year’s hurricane.

 All of the complexities of a world’s collapse in a blissed out, horribly gentle, rugged, ragged rock n’ roll album. Rock back and forth as you hum these songs through a muddled shaken voice.

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Released October 23rd, 2020 Drag City Inc

JEFF ROSENSTOCK – ” No Dream “

Posted: December 17, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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After living his whole life in New York, Jeff Rosenstock moved to L.A. while making this one, and that’s reflected not just on the album artwork but in the sound of these songs. This sounds more like a ’90s California pop punk record than anything else Jeff has made as a solo artist, and Jeff knows how to recreate ’90s California pop punk in a way that sounds tasteful and fresh. “No Dream” might be the most wall-to-wall fun album Jeff has released under his own name — almost all the songs are short, fast, punchy, and Jeff even writes “we hope it makes you feel good” on his Bandcamp — but like his last few albums, it’s fun music with a purpose. It may sound like classic pop punk but the lyrics are never carefree or juvenile or any other negative stereotype associated with the genre. “No Dream” is an angry, socially conscious record that tackles Trump’s immigration policies, capitalism, hypocrisy, and other topics in a way that’s smart, incisive and avoids cliche punk sloganeering. No Dream makes you feel good, but it also makes you think, and as has been the case with Jeff’s last few records, I have a feeling it’ll keep making you think as time goes on. His music has an immediacy and instant adrenaline rush to it, but it also has layers buried deep within the songs that reveal themselves over time. I can’t claim to have cracked the surface just 48 hours after the album came into our lives, but I already can tell there’s a lot to dig into on No Dream, and that it’s gonna be worth it.

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For many years, Long Island DIY pop-punker Jeff Rosenstock has been writing urgent, biting, extremely catchy songs about smart-phone anxiety and late-capitalist collapse. The message hasn’t changed, but the substance seems to get more urgent all the time, and so does the music. Rosenstock and his furious Death Rosenstock band recorded No Dream live to tape, all the better to capture the euphoric energy of their live shows, and the album bursts with hooks and ideas. It ends with “Ohio Tpke,” a masterfully Springsteenian six-minute lament about how road life can destroy you. I bet Rosenstock misses it so bad right now.

NO DREAM is the 4th studio record from the Death Rosenstock band full of chords, words, beats and more! Tracked live in a big room for that classic “is that a mistake?” sound by Grammy-nominated recorded “Grammy Jack” Shirley, you are GUARANTEED to have not heard this record before you’ve listened to it! We hope it makes you feel good, but if it doesn’t, that’s on you sorry.
Released May 20th, 2020
The Band:
JOHN DEDOMENICI – BASS
KEVIN HIGUCHI – DRUMS
MIKE HUGUENOR – GUITAR, VOCALS
DAN POTTHAST – ACOUSTIC GUITAR, KEYS, VOCALS
JEFF ROSENSTOCK – VOCALS, GUITAR, KEYS N MORE

H.C McENTIRE – ” One Great Thunder “

Posted: December 17, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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With her mega world tour in progress, H.C. McEntire thought it was a perfect time to unveil the music video for “One Great Thunder” from her debut solo album “Lionheart”. Shot while McEntire was in Los Angeles playing solo dates, it shows the North Carolinian bringing some calming Southern vibes to the metropolis that surrounds her.

Watch the previously released music videos for “Baby’s Got the Blues” and “Quartz in the Valley”, then head to the Merge Record store where we’ve got “Lionheart” on CD, LP, and limited-edition white Peak Vinyl.  There’s a ton of love, light, and friendship in and all around this record.

released January 26th, 2018 From the album LIONHEART, out now on Merge Records.

RICHARD HELL – ” Blank Generation ” (November 1976)

Posted: December 17, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Richard_Hell_Blank_Generation

By 1976, Richard Hell was already the lynchpin stabbed through the tattered rags of punk before the genre barely had a name. He’d already served in seminal groups The Neon Boys, The Heartbreakers, and Television. He’d popularized the spiked hair and torn clothing aesthetic that would be soon copied by The Sex Pistols (and a million more). And that year he formed Richard Hell And The Voidoids, which wasted no time in releasing its debut (under just Hell’s name), the Another World EP, on foundational punk label Ork Records. Hell had been performing its standout track, “Blank Generation,” in his other groups for at least a year, and it shows: Although the 1976 version is slower than the one that would break wide on The Voidoids’ self-titled, Sire rercords debut the next year, there’s nothing hesitant about Hell’s performance—a sneering, yelping, nihilist cry in which Hell expounds on the existential freedom of being born into an indifferent world. “Blank Generation” became an underground hit and instant rallying cry for an entire movement, lending its title to a 1976 documentary on New York’s burgeoning punk scene (not to be confused with the rambling, faux-Godardian romance starring Hell released in 1980), and laying the blueprint for countless punk acts and proud misfits to follow.

Blank Generation, the iconic and influential 1977 debut album from Richard Hell & the Voidoids, upgrade for its 40th anniversary, albeit a limited-edition one for the 9,000 or so people that have heard of it.

The 2-LP (4,500 copies) and 2-CD (5,250 copies) deluxe edition, released November. 24th as part of the Record Store Day Black Friday promotion, includes the original album remastered, along with a second CD/LP of alternate studio versions, out-of-print single tracks and live recordings from a pair of shows at CBGB in ’76 and ’77.

I Belong to The] Blank Generation · Richard Hell Ork Records: New York, New York ℗ 2015 Numero Group Released on: 2015-10-30

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