Legendary progressive rock band Yes toured the USA and performed their 1980 album “Drama” in its entirety, together with sides one and four of their 1973 classic “Tales from Topographic Oceans”. The band released a live album, “Topographic Drama: Live Across America”, which features recordings from this tour.
This live release – which also includes some fan favourites like “Roundabout” and “Starship Trooper” – has audio taken from 12 dates recorded in February 2017, by the then current Yes line-up: Steve Howe (guitars), Alan White (drums), Geoff Downes (keyboards), Billy Sherwood (bass), Jon Davison (vocals), and additional drummer for this tour Jay Schellen.
“Topographic Drama”– Live Across America” highlights the best performances from the 2017 leg of the 28-show tour and mirrors the set list from those concerts. Each night, Yes opened with all six songs from the 1980 album “Drama” the band’s tenth studio album, which peaked at #2 on the U.K. album chart. Standouts include “Machine Messiah,” “Tempus Fugit” and the album’s only single “Into The Lens.” After Drama, the band shifted gears for songs from two of its best-selling albums: “And You And I” from 1972’s “Close To The Edge” and “Heart Of The Sunrise” from 1971’s “Fragile”.
Next, the group played the opening and closing tracks of its concept album, “Tales From Topographic Oceans” (1973). Howe’s exceptional guitar work on “The Revealing Science Of God” and White’s propulsive drumming on “Ritual” have always been regarded as ground-breaking. The album concludes with two live staples: “Roundabout” from “Fragile” (1971) and “Starship Trooper” from “The Yes Album” (1971). Among the world’s most influential, ground-breaking, and respected progressive rock bands, Yes was founded in 1968. The Grammy-Award® winning recording artistshave sold more than 50 million records in a career that has so far spanned six decades.
This set is on double CD and as a 3LP vinyl package, with cover and design by – you guessed it – Roger Dean.
“Topographic Drama: Live Across America” released by Rhino Records in November 2017.
“The Valley Of Vision” is the follow up project to Manchester Orchestra’s masterpiece, “A Black Mile To The Surface”. These songs stemmed from Black Mile but the band switched things up creatively and holed themselves up in a home studio in Muscle Shoals. This is another excellent piece of work from the band which really showcases how they are becoming important record makers both through Andy Hull’s song writing and their innovation of sound in the studio.
Manchester Orchestra are the best Rock Band in America and “The Valley Of Vision” continues to prove that to us.
It shall forever remain a mystery as to why Juicy Lucy (like The Pink Fairies)never hit the big time. They had all the essential ingredients including a hard, bluesy sound but I guess kick ass rock bands were an oversubscribed profession in the early ‘70s and it was easy to get lost in the shuffle. However, as if to remind the record buying public of their folly BGO Records have lovingly remastered the band’s first three albums to show us exactly what we’ve been missing.
The Blues rockers Juicy Lucy were formed after the demise of The Misunderstood by Glenn Ross Campbell with Chris Mercer, ex-John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. They recruited Keith Ellis (Koobas), Neil Hubbard (The Grease Band), Ray Owen and Pete Dobson
In March 1970, ‘Who Do You Love’ entered the UK Top 10 singles chart (the first single released on the Vertigo label), shortly followed by the ‘Juicy Lucy’ album, which made the Top 50 albums chart ‘Lie Back And Enjoy It’ came out later in the year (again on Vertigo), this time with ex-Zoot Money vocalist and bassist Paul Williams and with Micky Moody on guitar
‘Get A Whiff’ was released by Bronze Records in 1971, but by 1972, with an ever-changing personnel, the group disbanded
Formed by Glenn Ross Campbell who relocated to London (via the States) and brought with him a slice of Americana that was married to the British blues and the result was the energetic Juicy Lucy. Their debut album, 1970’s eponymously titled “JuicyLucy“, opened with more than a touch of southern rock and ‘Mississippi Woman’ could quite easily have originated in New Orleans but what set Juicy Lucy apart was the addition of Chris Mercer’s saxophone. Maybe not your first thought when thinking hard rock instrumentation but it works precisely because it’s not overplayed; brought to the fore at certain moments it adds another texture to an already luxuriant, fruity sound. A cover of Bo Diddley’s ‘Who Do You Love?’ was the album’s lead single and gate crashed the national charts and it’s a high octane rendition that foreshadowed the energetic pub rock of Dr. Feelgood.
“Juicy Lucy”was released in an age when music was strictly codified and psych, blues, funk and rock all existed as separate entities and, although it makes perfect sense now, the mixing of these genres to contemporary ears must have sounded a tad eclectic. With a touch of The Stooges ‘Just One Time’ perfectly captured that moment in time when the hippy dream turned into a LSD nightmare while Campbell’s steel guitar adds a country vibe to ‘Chicago-North Western’. A funked up version of ‘Nadine’ puts a quintessentially English slant on Chuck Berry’s rock n’ roll classic and while this may sound a musical dichotomy
Juicy Lucy push it with enough confidence so it actually works. The late night Stones-ish ‘Are You Satisfied’ brings the album to a fitting conclusion while ‘Walking Down The Highway’ is added as a bonus cut. Far to be good to tucked away on the flip of their debut single it shows what a rich seam the band were mining and is testament to their being criminally overlooked.
By the time “Lie Back And Enjoy It” hit the streets in October 1970 Juicy Lucy had undergone some major line up changes but this second disc pretty much continues where the first left off. If anything it’s a brash, more confident band painting their sound with bold splashes of vibrant colours. New drummer Rod Coombes immediately makes his presence felt on opener ‘Thinking Of My Life’ and he brings the funky vibe, previously hiding in the shadows, to the fore. Likewise, Paul Williams stakes his claim to the mic and his whisky-croak adds an authenticity to a muscular version of Willie Dixon’s ‘Built For Comfort’. Williams was also a fine songwriter and his contribution to almost every original track gives
“Lie Back” a more focused, unified feel than its predecessor. Guitarist Mick Moody (later of Whitesnake) was another new edition and he compliments Campbell well on a run through of Frank Zappa’s ‘Willie The Pimp’ while another strong B-side ‘I Am A Thief’ is added as a bonus cut and bolsters an already strong album.
Released in August ‘71 the provocatively titled“Get A Whiff Of This” found more changes in the Juicy Lucy camp (this time Jim Leverton replacing original bassist Keith Ellis) leaving just two members who released their debut barely a year before. Internal band tribulations mean you can definitely hear the musical dynamic shifting with Moody’s slide guitar overriding Campbell’s steel and Mercer’s sax, once a key component, now rather subdued and buried deep in the mix. It’s essentially the same Juicy Lucy only delivering a more straight ahead rock sound that was more in keeping with the times. There’s flashes of Lucy’s former brilliance on cuts like ‘Sunday Morning’ and ‘Big Lil’ but “Get A Whiff Of This”shines brightest on its cover versions. Both the Allman Brothers’ ‘Midnight Rider’ and a lively take of Bobby Darin’s ‘Harvest’ add a touch of variety and make a good album great.
For far too long Juicy Lucy have been a mere footnote in the annuls of rock but hopefully this set, lovingly and respectfully compiled by BGO Records, will elevate their status.
A group of name-banders recording three well-reviewed albums on major labels in barely 18 months, by most criteria should have laid solid foundations for a glittering career. Their debut single was a hit for them (but not its famous writer), and in May 1970 featured in the NME’s poll-winners concert as well as renowned festivals such as Weeley. Their origins were pretty tasty too. It’s those defining three LPs that have just been reissued by BGO on two remastered CDs, slipcased with a fascinating chunky booklet penned by one who saw them in 1970.
Half the band formed as The Misunderstood in California during 1965, first as a blues band then mixing feedback and Eastern raga rhythms as psychedelia dawned. Enter a deejay/salesman who happened to be a local Liverpudlian at the time of Mersey mania, John Peel. Seeing them at a new shopping centre, he was mesmerized by the energetic performance and sound, later saying that their gig in Hollywood was among the best he’d ever seen. One of two Misunderstood ignored singles on Fontana remained in his box of 50 favourites to the end.
As manager he suggested England, though they arrived before he did in ‘67, then split due to hassles such as draft dodging despite Peel showcasing them on Radio London’s Perfumed Garden. An Emi disc acetate exists of four recordings soon after landing in London, probably helped by Peel’s brother Alan. Calling Peel their “surrogate father”, it seems odds-on that the next incarnation would be watched. Misunderstood’s Glenn Ross Campbell (vocals, steel guitar, mandolin, ex-Dirty Blues Band), Neil Hubbard (guitars, ex-Graham Bond, Bluesology), Chris Mercer (sax, keys, ex-John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers) were joined by Ray Owen (vocals), Keith Ellis (bass, vocals, ex-Koobas, VDGG) and Pete Dobson (drums, ex-Junior Conquest) forming Juicy Lucy named after a sex-worker in Leslie Thomas’ bestseller The Virgin Soldiers; Sweaty Betty was one rejected moniker.
They signed to Bronze Agency founded by Gerry Bron (1933-2012), brother of the well-known actress Eleanor; he also managed Uriah Heep (producing 14 of their LPs) and Colosseum. Bron was involved with Philips who wanted a progressive rock label, Vertigo, in late 1969. Producing their LP at IBC Studio in London, full-page adverts in IT (International Times) and NME announced the initial three releases with Juicy Lucy’s eponymous platter climbing to #53 in the UK charts. The cover, featuring dancer Zelda Plum (who appeared with them live sometimes) covered in fruit, caught attention in the same way as Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland. But her maturer years was a conscious decision pointing to their musical experience.
Over the past 20 years, The New Pornographers have proven themselves one of the most excellent bands in indie rock. The group’s ninth album and first for Merge establishes them alongside modern luminaries like Yo La Tengo and Superchunk when it comes to their ability to evolve while still retaining what made them so special in the first place. A dazzling and intriguing collection of songs, “Continue as a Guest” finds bandleader A.C. Newman and his compatriots Neko Case, Kathryn Calder, John Collins, Todd Fancey, and Joe Seiders exploring fresh territory and shattering the barriers of their collective comfort zone.
The Canadian indie-rock band The New Pornographers have graced the new year with a new single, “Really Really Light,” the first from their upcoming album “Continue as a Guest”, set to release on March 31st with Merge Records. A.C. Newman began work on “Continue as a Guest” over the course of a year after the band had just finished touring behind 2019’s “In The Morse Code Of Brake Lights”. The album covers themes of isolation, mundane feelings of everyday life and being chronically online amidst the pandemic. The 10-track record is produced by Newman.
Newman says that “Continue as a Guest’s” title track also addresses the concerns that come with being in a band for so long. “The idea of continuing as a guest felt apropos to the times,” he explains. “Feeling out of place in culture, in society, being in a band that has been around for so long—not feeling like a part of any zeitgeist, but happy to be separate and living your simple life, your long fade-out. Living in a secluded place in an isolated time, it felt like a positive form of acceptance: find your own little nowhere, find some space to fall apart, continue as a guest.”
Newman discovered new vocal approaches within his own talent. There are new and rich tones to Newman’s voice throughout “Continue as a Guest”, from his dusky lower register over “Angelcover” to his slippery slide over the glimmering synths of “Firework in the Falling Snow,” to bold tones he embraces on the soaring “Bottle Episodes.” Another sonic change comes courtesy of saxophonist Zach Djanikian, whose tenor and bass luxuriate all over “Continue as a Guest’s” alluring chassis, especially on the menacing build of “Pontius Pilate’s Home Movies.”
Along with Newman’s usual collaborators, several songwriters contribute. The bursting opener and first single “Really Really Light” is a co-write with Dan Bejar (Destroyer, the New Pornographers). Then there’s “Firework in the Falling Snow,” a collaboration with Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz and Sad13. “I was feeling like I wanted some help, so I sent it to Sadie and she sent me back this complete song that had these great lyrics,” Newman says. “She included the line ‘A firework in the falling snow,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s great.’ Sometimes you need that one thing to center the song, and even though I only used a few lines of hers in the end, I couldn’t have finished it without her.”
Even as Newman embraces a collaborative spirit more than ever, “Continue as a Guest” is a testament to his ability to discover new artistic sides of himself. “I started out as a songwriter more than as a singer, but at some point, you have to sing your own songs,” he says with a chuckle. “For a long time, I felt like the idea of changing a song because I couldn’t hit a note wasn’t okay – I could just get someone else to sing it. But I’m learning now that my songs can actually be a lot more malleable than I thought.” And it’s in that spirit that “Continue as a Guest” sounds like a thrilling path forward for The New Pornographers, with songs that generate a contagious feeling of excitement for the future as well.
Nation of Language’s third album, “Strange Disciple”, is somewhere on the horizon, but, for now, we have “Sole Obsession” to gush over. As always, the synths are shimmering, the bass and drums waltz together in perfect harmony and frontman IanDevaney’s vocals careen like the perfect amalgamation of Bernard Sumner and Andy McCluskey.
It’s a perfect dancefloor number about devotion and human compulsions; delicate, soulful swagger ripe with post-punk undertones. Nation of Language remains an eternal synth-pop powerhouse. NOL keeps surprising me with such lush vocals mixed with etheric beats. And the video is stunning! Can’t wait for the full album!“Sole Obsession” written by Nation of Language
To keep the momentum ahead of her forthcoming album, “All of This Will End”, The immense, De Souza is back with “Smog,” a backbreaker indie track glossed over with delicious disco inflections. Where “Younger & Dumber” found her reflecting on the heartbreaking loss of her own youth, “Smog” is a story spun with doubt in the present. Here, she is restless, attempting to understand her own flaws, which include feeling most like herself at night, when everyone else is asleep. The arrangements are catchy and balanced and, in the verses, De Souza takes a monotone, patient approach, until she lets her vocals cascade perfectly into a sound wall packed with an atmospheric pastiche of drum machines and synths. “I come alive in the nighttime, when everybody else is done / I come alive, it’s the right time to really start having fun / I don’t know how to turn around if I’m not ready / I don’t know how to tell you that your jokes aren’t funny,” De Souza sings.
My new single “Smog” from my upcoming album ‘All of This Will End’ is out today
New Album: “All of This Will End” out April 28th on Saddle CreekRecords
Less than a year after releasing her honky-tonk opus “Big Time”, Olsen is back with “Forever Means”, an EP of songs she wrote and recorded during those same sessions. Lead single “Nothing’s Free” makes sense as a post-Big Time release. Sonically, it wouldn’t have fit within the architecture of the record. It is its own elegant and strange cosmos. “Here it comes / No way to stop it now / I’m broken / Down for you like no one else / No one else,” Olsen sings in a trembling, haunting octave glazed atop a jazz lounge-style piano with horns and organs surrounding her. It’s eerie, queer, gothic and perfect; the ultimate cocktail of grandeur from one of our greatest living songwriters.
Last year’s “Big Time” brought Angel Olsen to a deeper, truer sense of self than ever before. Borne from the twin stars of grief and love, the album delivered beautiful sense of certainty, the sure-footed sound of an artist fully, finally at home with herself. But within that wisdom comes the realisation that there is no finish line, no destination or static end point to life while you’re living it, and “Forever Means” collects songs from the “Big Time” sessions that hold this common theme. They are, in Olsen’s words, “in search of something else.”
“I was somewhere traveling,” says Olsen, “stopped for a few days and wandering the city, and I was thinking ‘what does ‘forever’ really mean? What are the things I’m seeking in friendship or love, and how can ‘forever’ be attainable if we’re always changing?’” Sitting with the reality of that entropy, Olsen realised “maybe the secret to ongoing love is to embrace change as part of love itself, that forever must have something to do with playing, looking, constantly searching things out for yourself, never letting yourself think you’re finished learning or exploring.”
‘Forever’”, says Olsen, “remains curious while trying also to be kind and honest.” All this packs into the four precious songs that comprise “Forever Means”, songs from Olsen’s roads travelled and the ones ahead. “Nothing’s free / like breaking free” Olsen sings, comfortable with the costs of her clarity, her heart and voice fixed on the present, the future, the not-yet-known and the beautifully unknowable.
“Nothing’s Free” by Angel Olsen from the upcoming EP ‘Forever Means’, out April 14th on Jagjaguwar Records.
Ben Folds’ masterful new collection, “What Matters Most”, isn’t so much a statement as it is an offering, an open hand reaching out to all those wounded and bewildered by a world that seems to make less and less sense every day. Recorded in East Nashville with co-producer Joe Pisapia, the album marks Folds’ first new studio release in eight years, and it’s a bold, timely, cinematic work, one that examines the tragic and the absurd in equal measure as it reckons with hope and despair, gratitude and loss, identity and perspective. The songs are bittersweet here, hilarious at times, but often laced with a quiet sense of longing and dread: a text message goes unanswered; an old classmate descends into the dark depths of internet conspiracies; a relationship unravels in the middle of a lake. And yet, taken as a whole, the result is an undeniably joyful record that refuses to succumb to the weight of the world around it, an ecstatic reminder of all the beauty and promise hiding in plain sight for anyone willing (and present enough) to recognize their moments as they arrive.
After eight years, Ben Folds is returning with a new album “What Matters Most”. Its first single, “Winslow Gardens,” is a light, springy tune backed by his iconic keys. The lyrics hint at a couple going away for a trip and finding themselves in that place much longer than expected. Ten weeks turns to ten years, while it all feels like just ten minutes—you lose track of time as small routines with your loved ones become the only things that matter. The swirling, repetitive melody at the end of the chorus, “You started all over / We’ve started all over again,” makes you feel like you’re in a that time loop with the characters—and it’s not particularly a bad feeling, but a comforting one.
From the new album ‘What Matters Most’ out June 2nd New West Records.
Florence + The Machine (aka Florence Welch and backing band) has shared a new cover of No Doubt’s 1995 hit “Just a Girl” for season 2 of Showtime’s acclaimed drama Yellowjackets. The show returns March 24th.
Florence commented “I’m such a huge fan of Yellowjackets and this era of music, and this song especially had a huge impact on me growing up, so I was thrilled to be asked to interpret it in a ‘deeply unsettling’ way for the show,” says Welch in a press release. “We tried to really add some horror elements to this iconic song to fit the tone of the show. And as someone who’s first musical love was pop punk and Gwen Stefani it was a dream job.”
Depeche Mode are releasing a new album, “Memento Mori”, on March 24th via Columbia Records. Now they have shared the album’s second single, the atmospheric and ghostly slow-burner “My Cosmos Is Mine.”
Previously Depeche Mode had shared “Memento Mori’s” first single, “Ghosts Again,” via an Anton Corbijn-directed video. Then they were the musical guests on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, in which they performed “Ghosts Again” and their classic single “Personal Jesus.”
“Memento Mori” will be the first Depeche Mode album to be released since the death of the band’s Andy ‘Fletch’ Fletcher, who passed away in May at age 60. It was announced last October.
Fletcher did work on the album before his death. “Memento Mori”will be the band’s 15th studio album and the follow-up to 2017’s “Spirit”. The band also annonuced the “Memento Mori”tour will be the band’s first tour in five years and the band’s 19th tour overall. With Fletcher’s passing, that makes the official lineup for Depeche Mode as Dave Gahan and Martin Gore.
Gore had this to say about the album in a previous press release: “We started work on this project early in the pandemic, and its themes were directly inspired by that time. After Fletch’s passing, we decided to continue as we’re sure this is what he would have wanted, and that has really given the project an extra level of meaning.”
Gahan added: “Fletch would have loved this album. We’re really looking forward to sharing it with you soon.”
The Fat Angel Sings 