“One of the greatest and most influential rock bands of all time is back with 13 tracks of pioneering and rip-roaring rock ‘n’ roll. Deep Purple continue their charge of recent years, releasing hit albums and filling arenas around the world. They are fronted by Ian Gillan, accompanied by the masterful bassist Roger Glover, the powerhouse drummer Ian Paice, and the maestro on keyboards Don Airey. This is the band’s first album with sensational guitarist Simon McBride, who seamlessly slotted in when long time member Steve Morse left in 2022.
But Deep Purple is more than just their members and “=1 “ embodies the essence and attitude of their 1970s incarnation possibly more than any other album in recent memory. With the legendary Bob Ezrin once again producing, the record evokes the pioneering band’s classic sound, without relying on nostalgia. The enigmatic title ‘=1’ symbolises the idea that in a world growing ever more complex, everything eventually simplifies down to a single, unified essence. Everything equals one.”
With three consecutive No.1 albums in their back pocket and a new energy powering them forward, =1 represents Deep Purple at their pinnacle.
Produced by the legendary Bob Ezrin, this record captures the band’s pioneering classic sound without relying on nostalgia, embodying the essence and attitude of their 1970s incarnation possibly more than any other recent album.
“Edwyn Collins’s tart cocktail of self-deprecation and self-assurance.” Pete Paphides’ beautiful, magnificent book Broken Greek is a love letter to the music that moves him, regardless of whether it does so for anyone else, or even if others in vast numbers appreciate it. His musical awakening took place in the late ’70s or early ’80s, so we get some wonderful prose about Orange Juice, the band that Edwyn Collins led before his solo career. Orange Juice’s small output, and fewer hits, nevertheless had a disproportionate influence on music in Scotland and beyond. A recent history and museum exhibit of Scottish pop was named “Rip It Up” after the band’s best-known single.
After Orange Juice split, Collins continued to be a vital cog in the machine of the Scottish music scene. He produced creditable collaborations with, for instance, Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins and RoddyFrame of Aztec Camera. All recognized his talent, not least himself, but it did not always translate itself to hits.
That changed in 1995 with the release of “A Girl Like You.” The worldwide hit encompasses a remarkable range of Collins’ skills and influences.
Collins uses a B&M Fuzzbox to achieve the distinctive riff, but enhances the refrain with a clean-sounding vibraphone. Sex Pistol Paul Cook played the drums that are not part of the four-on-the-floor sample. It is a sophisticated musical confection, And then there are the lyrics, which add a layer of universality. Who has not started a romance with the belief that their partner is unique? With an unparalleled set of lovely traits, never combined in a single, heavenly creation. That moves everyone.
In 2005 Collins suffered a cerebral haemorrhage, and was near death, and the after-effects of that illness have affected him ever since. However, with the love and support of his family, he returned to music making, including live performances, where his talent and self-belief continue to shine through.
A song characterized by a fuzzy, accomplished guitar, and driven by an insistent drum beat. Collins might have written it for Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney. On this Jimmy Fallon segment, they take their new lover to their garage band rehearsal room, not bothering to appreciate or note the clean notes from the original percussion, but adding guitar virtuosity.
The expanded reissue – which includes the original album remastered as well as live tracks and session rarities from the era – will be released on September 13th. Following the release of 1973’s “Over-nite Sensation“, which was also credited to the Mothers, Zappa began assembling “Apostrophe” from new recordings and some archival tracks dating back a few years.
The album was a hit for Zappa, reaching the Top 10 in 1974 – the only record of his to do so. It includes his first charting single, “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow,” It also features the fan favourite “Cosmik Debris.”
The five-CD and one Blu-ray Super Deluxe Edition of “Apostrophe (‘)” 50th Anniversary Edition includes 75 tracks, including a 2024 remaster, alternate takes, new mixes and two 1974 concert recordings from Colorado Springs and Dayton. Seven tracks of these live tracks were first issued on the out-of-print album “The Crux of the Biscuit” in 2016.
In addition to the Super Deluxe Edition set, the new “Apostrophe (‘)” will be released as a two-LP and 7-inch single edition, including white vinyl in a yellow-snow-splatter version; the single is a reproduction of “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” in a new “cosmic glow in the dark with yellow-snow splatter vinyl.”
A previously unreleased take of “Uncle Remus (Piano and Vocal Mix 2024)”. This newly mixed version is culled from the original 16-track master, featuring isolated piano and tack piano tracks by George Duke along with a spotlighting of FZ and The Ikettes’ vocal master tracks. It’s but one of the multiple versions of this classic Zappa/Duke joint composition that appears in the Super Deluxe Edition box set.
A Blu-ray in the box contains the core album newly remixed in Dolby Atmos and 5.1 surround sound by Karma Auger and Erich Gobel at Studio1LA, the same team behind the acclaimed mixes of 2022’s “Waka/Wazoo” and 2023’s “Over-Nite Sensation” release. Plus it includes Zappa’s original four-channel Quadraphonic mix (available again for the first time since 1974) as well as the hi-res stereo 2024 remaster. The lavish Super Deluxe Edition box comes complete with a 52-page booklet and unseen photos from the archives of Sam Emerson, the man who shot the now-iconic closeup cover image of Zappa, in addition to liner notes and new essays by noted British journalist Simon Prentis and, as always, Vaultmeister Travers.
In addition to the Super Deluxe Edition, there will be two separate vinyl releases: A two-LP + 7” single edition with both 180-gram audiophile LPs appearing on white vinyl with yellow-snow splatter, as cut from the original analog tape by Grundman. The 7” of “Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow” is a reproduction of the original 1974 single — but this time, it comes on glow-in-the-dark-with-yellow-splatter vinyl. The single-LP edition features the original album’s nine tracks on 180-gram audiophile gold vinyl. Additionally, the Super Deluxe Edition will be available digitally, as will a Dolby Atmos mix of the core album’s nine tracks.
“Gum / Ambrose Kenny-Smith — consisting of Jay Watson (Gum, Pond, Tame Impala) and Kenny-Smith (King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Murlocs) — are about to release a new collaborative album, “Ill Times”, an album born out of the friendship between that began over a decade ago. Watson and Kenny-Smith first met at the bar in the hazy hours after Tame Impala played in Kenny-Smith’s hometown of Geelong in 2009. But it wasn’t until Kenny-Smith’s bands came to prominence a couple of years later that the bond between these groups was formed.
Co-founder of Pond and touring member of Tame Impala, Jay Watson, also makes music as Gum. “Gum is my brain, unfiltered,” Watson says. A labour of love and an exercise in joy, written and recorded with Ambrose Kenny-Smith,
“Ill Times” is an album that takes swings at losers with god complexes, that builds the Impressions’ slow-burning ballad “Fool For You” into something so massive and brawny it’d give Jack White the willies, and closes with Watson and Kenny-Smith delivering righteous rough justice to an unabashed villain, and then riding off into the sunset like the heroes they are. The album is easily as much fun as the duo had making it, and that was a truly ridiculous amount of fun.”
At 9:30 p.m., the Rolling Stones hit the stage with a somewhat de rigueur “Start Me Up.” The overwhelming size of their stage was immediately apparent: 180 feet wide by 65 feet deep, flanked by 46-foot-tall digital screens that showed the band and their eight auxiliary musicians from multiple angles.
The Rolling Stones dug out another rarity for their second of two shows in Inglewood, CA, last night (July 13th). Mick Jagger and company delivered “Fool to Cry” from 1976 album “Black and Blue” for the third-from-final show of their Hackney Diamonds tour. The ballad, recorded soon after Mick Taylor had quit the band, reached No. 10 when released as the album’s lead single, and featured session guitarist Wayne Perkins.
Favourably compared with another ballad, “Angie,” . While they performed “Fool to Cry” 42 times on tour during the year of its release, last night was only the 14th time they’d done so since 1977.
The audience enthusiastically responded to a sing-along, gospel-inspired “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Other highlights included “Gimme Shelter,” featuring an incendiary showcase from backing singer Chanel Haynes; and the extended “Midnight Rambler” that showed off Jagger’s harmonica skills and a bluesy guitar interplay by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood.
“Whenever we have played live shows, ‘Norwegian Wood’ is the song that we talk about when we all come offstage; we are always like, ‘Wow, that one was really special.’” Risi jumps in: “Playing live is a massive part of who we are. We’ve gigged so much, and embraced the reception to [‘Norwegian Wood’] so many times now that it felt like the obvious choice.
Beyond the release of their debut single, they are gearing up for festival appearances across the UK, “If there’s a ‘buzz’ around us as a band, then we’ll keep it going,” Parlour says firmly. We’ve worked really hard for this – and this is just the beginning.”
Courtney Love even shared a live recording of Picture Parlour to her Instagram story earlier this year, praising the quartet’s “songs and swagger”. Risi giddily holds up a screenshot of the post as she talks: “It gives me a lump in my throat when I think about the fact that a legend knows who we are.”
Parlour and Risi met while studying philosophy and music respectively in Manchester, having previously been part of other various bands and projects. Yet Risi was the only woman in her class of guitar players – and was often made subject to patronising comments from her peers. In an industry that continues to sneer at emerging female-identifying acts – Panic Shack and The Last Dinner Party have both been subject to unsolicited critique online in recent months .
In 1979, two school-kids all hopped-up on punk-rock started their own group in their hometown of Hawthorne, Los Angeles (birthplace of the Beach Boys) and soon found themselves opening shows for notorious scene pioneers Black Flag. Jeff McDonald was fifteen, his brother Steven McDonald only eleven. But that didn’t stop their group from becoming one of the most remarkable, enduring and unique outfits punk-rock ever brought together.
2024, then, marks Redd Kross’s forty-fifth birthday – an important anniversary for any group whose heart pulses at 45RPM – and the brothers celebrate the event with a veritable multimedia extravaganza. There’s a memoir, Now “You’re One Of Us”, author Dan Epstein telling the group’s story in the McDonalds’ unmistakable (and occasionally contrary) voices. A brilliant rockumentary, “Born Innocent”, directed by Andrew Reich, will premiere later in the year.
Most exciting of all, this new album – an eponymous double-album, no less, packed with eighteen of their sharpest, most addictive songs yet. These years of joyful service to rock’n’roll have seen Redd Kross evolve into a killer pop-rock concern, dealing in dayglo power-chords, choruses as tall as skyscrapers and a lyric sheet thick with acid couplets and arch pop cultural references their loyal following will gobble up like quaaludes.
“Redd Kross” is part of a 45th-anniversary celebration campaign that includes Reich’s documentary and an upcoming memoir (Now You’re One of Us), and it’s a self-reflexive exercise in every way, from the cover art (a ruby-tinged makeover of the Beatles’ White Album, the first record Jeff bought as a kid) to the uncharacteristically wistful, introspective songwriting. But seeing as Redd Kross are the rare band who can celebrate 45 years in showbiz while one founding member is still in their 50s, the eternally youthful McDonalds are still committed to chasing new glories.
The Magpie Salute is an American rock band formed in 2016 by the Black Crowes guitarist Co-founding member Rich Robinson. Rich Robinson announced the formation of the Magpie Salute in October 2016. In addition to Robinson, the group features UK singer John Hogg, former Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford and bassist Sven Pipien, as well as keyboardist Matt Slocum, plus drummer Joe Magistro, and backing vocalists Adrien Reju and Katrine Ottosen from Robinson’s solo band. John Hogg; songwriter and singer of Moke and song writing partner on Robinsons’ Hookah Brown, was invited to support Rich on his 2015 tour in Europe and the UK.
The name The Magpie Salute comes from a superstition based in the UK,” Rich explained about the band’s moniker. “There are many variations, but the version I’m drawn to is the belief that if you see a Magpie, you would do well to salute it ‘to ward off negativity, or to have a good day.’ The way you salute the Magpie, based on some traditions is to say ‘Good Mornin’ Captain.
Hogg and Robinson picked up from where they left off with Magpie Salutes first single ‘Omission’, Hogg bringing a well crafted and soulful voice and his own London flavour to the lyrics.
This came on the heels of a series of shows Robinson performed earlier in 2016 in Woodstock, New York, where he was joined by Ford, Pipien and former Black Crowes keyboard player Eddie Harsch. Harsch was slated to tour as a member of the band until his sudden death in November 2016, and his appearance on their self-titled debut marks his last recording.
The Magpie Salute released their debut studio album “High Water I” in August 2018, The band’s second studio album “High Water II” was released October 2019, Rating it four out of five stars for American Songwriter, commented, “High Water II” has a consistent quality, never veering too far off the boys’ true sonic course, which starts and ends with the blues.
The Magpie Salute’s “High Water II”, on Eagle Rock Entertainment, its titular Part One (the band’s 2018 debut, “High Water“) receives a worthy expansion of style and exuberance. Produced by Magpie guitarist/vocalist Rich Robinson, the album was recorded at the same time as its predecessor, but it stands out as a cantered, less introductory release.
Much of the album was written during those early recordings at Dark Horse Studios in Nashville, which is why the album feels like a perfect continuation of its predecessor.
While “High Water”contained a mélange of blues, folk, soft and hard Southern rock tracks, packaged together as a first impression of the group’s impressive musical bandwidth, the new LP has a uniformity which, even in its delicate moments, is always tethered to the members’ bluesy, hard-edged approach.
Rich talked about the decision to feature multiple players and singers within The Magpie Salute, “I wanted to try something different. I wanted to hear this music with two drummers, two keyboard players, and multiple singers. I, and everyone involved, love playing music. Not only on our own, in The Crowes and in my band, but playing music in general.
The first single, “In Here,” follows an uplifting heartland rock groove as Robinson sings imagery-rich verses urging people to let go of any hang-ups which keep them from living in the moment. “Mother Storm,” an acoustic-driven anthem, similarly inspires some version of self-empowerment with its choruses’ tuneful peroration: “you made it here, you faded here, you shine your light down on the empty floor.” In fact, a great deal of the album consists of second-person reassurance, including the Alison Krauss-assisted ballad “Lost Boy,” in which she and Robinson comfort a wayward adolescent (“lost boy, let me tell you what you mean to me”).
From sweltering hard rockers like album opener “Sooner or Later” to soft drifters like “You and I,” B3 organ, lead guitar riffs and Robinson’s high-octane voice connect the dots with blues licks and swagger.
Will Butler (formerly of Arcade Fire) and his band Sister Squares released a self-titled album last year, and they’ve followed it with a new single, “Burn It Away,” an anthemic synth-pop track. “I wanted to make an open-hearted song about destroying the world, about despair in the face of trying your best to find hope,” Will says. “There’s a lyric that got cut about thinking you see the sun rise but it’s just the forest fires burning over the horizon. But I think music is intrinsically hopeful—always implicitly arguing in favour of creation—so maybe the song balances itself out.”
Next up for Will is a tour with Sister Squares of the UK and Europe, which starts on Saturday (7/13) and runs through the end of the month.
The Fat Angel Sings 