Irish band Inhaler have unveiled an emotive new track called ‘If You’re Gonna Break My Heart’
It’s the third single to be released from their upcoming second album, ‘Cuts & Bruises’, released on February 17th. Prior to this, the band had shared two more tracks from the album, ‘Love Will Get You There‘ and ‘These Are The Days‘.
Speaking about how the inspiration behind their new new piano-driven track, the band said: “Whilst on tour in America last year we were listening to a lot of music by some of the great American writers such as Bob Dylan, The Band, Bruce Springsteen etc. “Listening to these artists while travelling on big open highways resonated with us and helped shape this song into making us sound more like a live band than we had before.”
Recently, Inhaler spoke about their experience of touring with Arctic Monkeys, calling the band “the most lovely and welcoming guys”, The Irish group played a run of shows with Alex Turner and co. in Europe last summer, and are set to open for them again on the European leg of their world tour later this year.
Inhaler frontman Eli Hewson said: “It still isn’t really resonating that we’re doing it. But they’re the most lovely and welcoming guys, so we’ve just got to try and be the best band we can.”
Bassist Robert Keating then joked that Inhaler were “searching for better leather jackets” for the upcoming Monkeys tour. “It’s hard to not feel like a child when you’re around them,” he added.
As for what fans can expect from this year’s gigs, Hewson said “It’s going to be a better show. It’s not just five lads on stage chancing their arm anymore; we actually have to step up and make it a real thing.” Inhaler said that watching the Beatles documentary Get Back helped them to relieve the pressure of making their forthcoming second album, ‘Cuts & Bruises’.
Additionally, Hewson told us that creating the follow up to their 2021 debut was a “struggle” for the band. “We had such a hard time making this record,” he said. “We thought, ‘Aren’t you meant to enjoy making a record to some extent?’”
Inhaler are due to embark on a UK headline tour next month
Australian Singer Songwriter Gena Rose Bruce gives you mere seconds on ‘Deep is the Way’ before she slices through the ambience and tremolo-laden guitar chords. “It’s time to wake up / Stop calling it love”, she sings on the opening track ‘Future’ – sounding like the angel on your shoulder while coming across as the devil on the other. “It’s time to get real / I’m only hurting myself.” As far as scene-setters go, it’s as arresting and alluring as you could hope for – particularly when an undercurrent of drums and a subtle synth arpeggio shuffles in beneath Bruce’s trembling soft falsetto. The title track is out today featuring Bill Callahans of Smog
“Deep Is The Way” – Album no 2 – out January 27th via Remote Control Records It took some deep digging, I was up and down but in the end I’m so proud of this record and how it sounds.
On her second studio album, Bruce is clearly determined to do things differently. It makes sense: The world has changed significantly since her tasteful 2019 debut ‘Can’t Make You Love Me’, and it only seems natural to adapt and evolve with it. While that album was largely streamlined into bittersweet folk-rock not unlike that of her contemporaries ‘Deep’ showcases considerable artistic development that should significantly shift the conversation around Bruce and her music – while simultaneously starting some new ones.
Cable Ties the Melbourne band’s first new song since 2020 is “about the inability of the health care system to care for someone who experiences addiction and complex mental health problems” a bracing single titled ‘Perfect Client’.
“Perfect Client’ is about the inability of the health care system to care for someone who experiences addiction and complex mental health problems,” singer and guitarist Jenny McKechnie explained in a statement.
“It voices the frustration I have felt watching someone close to me go in and out of detox, rehab and hospitalisation over many years.
‘Far Enough’, Cable Ties’ second album, arrived in March 2020 after being previewed with singles like ‘Self-Made Man’ and ‘Hope’. It marked their debut on US independent label Merge Records, who released it jointly with Poison City in Australia.
Declaring it one of the 25 best Australian albums of the year, : “With great riffs comes great rewards – and Cables Ties’ extraordinary second album ‘Far Enough’ smokes. Jenny McKechnie has a voice that transports you directly into her experience. You feel everything she’s feeling.
“Sure, 2020 turned into a write-off just as Cable Ties were about to go global. But their time will come again, and by then the trio’s ball of rage will have the might and momentum of a rolling boulder. New 2023 single out now on all DSPs via Poison City /Merge Records. Touring UK/ EU Feb 2023 w/ OFF! (US)
Taken from their 1968 “White Light/White Heat” album, ‘Sister Ray’ sees The Velvet Underground at their most debauched. The product of a hitherto unseen Vox sponsorship and a nascent desire to return to their roots as an improvisational avant-garde outfit, the track is a near-20-minute swirl of black leather and white noise.
The song concerns drug use, violence, homosexuality, and transvestism. Reed said of the lyrics: “‘Sister Ray’ was done as a joke it has eight characters in it and this guy gets killed and nobody does anything. It was built around this story that I wrote about this scene of total debauchery and decay. I like to think of ‘Sister Ray’ as a transvestite smack dealer. The situation is a bunch of drag queens taking some sailors home with them, shooting up on smack and having this orgy when the police appear.”
‘Sister Ray’ was the Velvet Underground’s take on The Odyssey, only with more prostitutes and junkies. In The Velvet Underground Companion: Four Decades of Commentary, frontman Lou Reed claims the song was “done as a joke – no, not as a joke, but it has eight characters in it, and this guy gets killed, and nobody does anything,” he said. “The situation is a bunch of drag queens taking some sailors home with them, shooting up on smack and having this orgy when the police appear.”
The track was recorded in one single take, with the Velvets agreeing that, whatever the result of the studio session, they would accept the song and work it into something album-worthy. They were sensible enough to start with an incredibly simple riff, which over the course of the song’s 17-minute run time, swerves between a-tonal chaos and infectious groove-ability, absorbing the aura of the previous section and regenerating itself again and again and again. Reed is a streetside preacher erratically converting passersby, while Cale is a Cagian experimentalist, Morrison a West Coast dope smoker, and Tucker, the half-deaf drummer in a high-school marching band.
Rock critic Lester Bangs wrote in 1970, “The early Velvets had the good sense to realize that whatever your capabilities, music with a simple base structure was the best. Thus, ‘Sister Ray’ evolved from a most basic funk riff seventeen minutes into stark sound structures of incredible complexity
The Velvets were, by all accounts, left to their own devices during the recording of ‘Sister Ray’. Andy Warhol, who had produced the band’s first album and invited Nico into the fold, didn’t produce but did help steer the band in a certain direction. According to Reed: “When we were making the second record, [Warhol] said, ‘Now you gotta make sure that you do the ‘sucking on my ding dong song.’” It’s also rumoured that the engineer hired to record the ‘Sister Ray’ set up the microphones, pressed record and then left the building so as not to hear the Velvets destroying their equipment in real-time.
The song was recorded with Reed providing lead vocals and guitar, Morrison on guitar, and Tucker on drums, while Cale plays an organ routed through a distorted guitar amplifier. Morrison remarked that he was amazed at the volume of Cale’s organ during the recording and that he had switched the guitar pickup on his Fender Stratocaster from the bridge position to the neck position to get “more oomph”.
The Velvet Underground were no strangers to extended improvised jams. Cale had been a member of La Monte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music, and when the young violist met a budding songwriter called Lou Reed, he bought his experimental musical leanings with him, combining them with Reed’s rough-shod pop songwriting to create an early incarnation of The Velvet Underground called The Primitives. Cale’s amplified viola drones quickly defined the group’s primordial, deeply textural sound, the startling nature of which sent their early audiences fumbling for the exit. ‘Sister Ray’ seems to have been designed with a similar effect in mind, with Cale routing his organ through a distorted Vox guitar amplifier, one of the many high-end pieces of kit The Velvets had received from their sponsors and proceeded to push to breaking point.
After the opening sequence, which is a modally flavored I-♭VII-IV G-F-C chord progression, much of the song is led by Cale and Reed exchanging percussive chords and noise for over ten minutes, similar to avant-jazz. Reed recalled that recording engineer Gary Kellgren walked out while recording the song: “The engineer said, ‘I don’t have to listen to this. I’ll put it in Record, and then I’m leaving. When you’re done, come get me
Neo-psychedelia legends King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, will bring their whirling, experimental sounds to the Woods Stage, alongside fellow kings of the genre Unknown Mortal Orchestra – whose fuzzy psychedelic pop will have you dancing all weekend long.
Also joining us are Baltimore-based pervasive synth-pop disruptors Future Islands and masterful country-adjacent indie rock icons and Grammy Award winners Wilco – who will kick things off on Thursday night.
Indie favourite Angel Olsen will (finally) return to End Of The Road, whilst trailblazing Pakistani composer Arooj Aftab will introduce us to her Grammy-winning ambient jazz.
Plus Ezra Furman, Greentea Peng, Caitlin Rose, Overmono and many many more.
For two days, The city of Southampton was blessed with the presence of the world’s top rock band.
On the first, it was the turn of the town, with Led Zeppelin blowing the minds of 2 1/2 thousand fans at the Gaumont Theatre. But the next day, our heroes came to the Union, and played to us in the Old Ref. as it is sometimes known. The Gaumont concert had been pretty tight, but not as good as 1 would have expected from a band that had been on the road for the past two months. They enjoyed it. and we enjoyed it, and that’s what matters. As usual, they were a bit slow to warm up – in fact “Rock and Roll”. their opening number, was very rough, and the next, “The Lady”, a track from Led Zeppelin 5, wasn’t much better either.
“Black Dog” followed, and the audience joined in instantly “Misty Mountain Hop” and “Since I’ve Been Loving You” came next, giving John Paul Jones a chance to show us his dexterity on the keyboards. Until “Loving You” Jimmy Page had been churning out the riffs to make the numbers boogie, but on this one he gave us his first solo, very fast one second, and slow the next, getting everything out of each note. “Dancing Days” and “The Song Remains the Same”, two new numbers were the next, the first, a straight rocker very much in the Zepp style, and the second. a longish complex number, starting and finishing with some low tempo-melodic guitar playing, and connected with a heavy rocking bit and a superb organ solo from John Paul Jones. The next number Robert Plant dedicated to the manager of the Gaumont — “Dazed and Confused”. This, a track from their first album, was used as a showpiece for Page’s long guitar solo. For part of this he used a big bow, and the highlight was when he hit the strings and got the note to echo back to him. When he’d been playing for about 10 minutes, the rest of the band joined in and stretched the number out to about 25 minutes.
Next was a beam of clear, white light, as Plant called “Stairway to Heaven”. Plant’s vocals, which had been a bit hidden by Page’s guitar before, came through beautifully, the song gradually rising to the peak of that superb rocking ending. That got everybody on their feet, and shouting for every Led Zeppelin number under the sun. But Plant asked everybody to shut up for a moment, while he told them about his visit to the toilet. On the bog wall, he saw this name — Alan Whitehead and this next number was dedicated to him. It was “Whole Lotta Love”. The band went into a number of old rock and roll tunes, then “I Can’t Quit You Babe”, and back to “Whole Lotta Love“- for a tremendous climax to the show. A few minutes clapping, and they were back to give us “Heartbreaker”, and then “Thank You”, featuring John Paul Jones with a long organ intro, and back for a third time.
Plant said how much they’d enjoyed the gig, and then they proceeded play “How Many More Times”, the first time they’d done it for 2 1/2 years. But you’d never have known it, it was so tight. Straight into “Communication Breakdown”, and then it was all over. See you again, they said, and a very nackered goodnight.
This was the only gig they recorded on the whole tour because they reckon the acoustics of the old Ref are good —and after the show Jimmy Page said there would probably be a live album later this year. Let’s hope so — it’d be a great souvenir of a great show. –JOHN CLARK. (University of Southampton / Wessex Scene)
Setlist:0:00 Intro 0:17 Rock and Roll 4:00 Over the Hills and Far Away 10:33 Black Dog 16:14 Misty Mountain Hop 20:46 Since I’ve Been Loving You 29:23 Dancing Days 33:57 The Song Remains the Same 39:27 The Rain Song 48:43 Dazed and Confused 1:16:55 Stairway to Heaven (partial) 1:23:04 Whole Lotta Love 1:50:24 Heartbreaker 2:01:40 Mellotron Solo 2:05:07 Thank You 2:14:44 How Many More Times 2:23:04 Communication Breakdown
Kid Congo Powers has had a busy 2022. He released a memoir, “Some Kind of Kick”, an “intimate coming of age tale, of a young, queer, Chicano kid, growing up in a suburb east of East LA, in the mid-‘70s, exploring his sexual identity through glam rock” and eventually being a member of three iconic bands, The Gun Club, The Cramps and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, among many other musical and artistic accomplishments.
He also released a new album with The Wolfmanhattan Project, his group with The Gories’ Mick Collins and former SonicYouth drummer Bob Bert, as well as a live album with his group Kid Congo Powers & The Near Death Experience where he’s backed by Australians Harry Howard, brother of the late Rowland S. Howard (The Birthday Party, Crime & The City Solution), and Dave Graney of The Moodists.
Kid Congo Powers and the Pink Monkey Birds performing live in the KEXP studio. Recorded February 7th, 2014.
Songlist: Conjur Man Killer Diller I Don’t Like Bubble Trouble
I have woken up to the news of the passing of virtuoso guitarist and singer-songwriter Tom Verlaine. An enormously inspirational figure with his New York band Television. A swarm of bands to form and bloom in the wake of Verlaine and his fabulous group.
The news that Tom Verlaine, singer and guitarist with iconic NYC band Television, had died had been confirmed, tributes had started to pour onto social media from fellow artists. No surprise, as the group’s debut album, “Marquee Moon”, is one of the most influential albums of the the ’70s NYC scene and Verlaine’s expansive style can be head in groups today some 45 years later.
Tom Verlaine, frontman and guitarist in iconic NYC band Television, has died at age 73. The news was shared by Jesse Paris Smith who said he died after “a brief illness.” Verlaine, who was born Thomas Miller in Denville, New Jersey, began studying piano at an early age but switched to the saxophone after hearing a record by Stan Getz. He adopted his stage name in a reference to the French symbolist poet Paul Verlaine.
Teenage friends with Richard Hell, they both moved to New York around the same time and played in groups together before forming Television with guitarist Richard Lloyd and became regular performers at CBGB’s and other NYC clubs. (Hell would leave to form the Voidoids in 1975.) He and his school friend, Richard Hell, who shared a passion for music and poetry, moved to New York City separately and in 1972 they formed the group Neon Boys, which comprised Verlaine on guitar and vocals, Hell on bass and vocals, and Billy Ficca on drums. The group lasted a short while then in March 1973 they reformed, calling themselves Television, and recruited Richard Lloyd as a second guitarist. Their first gig was in March 1974. In 1975, Hell left the band and they released their first single with Fred Sonic Smith replacing Hell.
Verlaine, who was the band’s lead singer and did most of the song writing, once dated poet and musician Patti Smith when they were part of the emerging New York punk scene, and they would collaborate many times over the years. Verlaine was considered one of the more skilled musical practitioners to emerge from the now-defunct CBGBs club in New York’s Bowery, where their contemporaries included Blondie, The Ramones and Talking Heads.
Beginning with their landmark 1975 debut single, “Little Johnny Jewel,” Television became one of the most renowned groups on the burgeoning New York underground scene; though lumped together with the punk phenomenon, the band’s complex songcraft — powered by Verlaine’s strangled vocals, oblique lyrics, and finely honed guitar work — clearly set them apart from their peers. The unique guitar interplay between Verlaine and Lloyd, and Verlaine’s reedy vocal style would be Televsion’s signature elements found on their classic debut album, 1977’s “Marquee Moon”, one of the most influential albums of the era. Television broke up not long after the release of their second album, 1978’s “Adventure”, but reformed briefly in the early ’90s and then again in 2001 .
After Television split, he released a string of solo albums, with his song “Kingdom Come” inspiring a rare cover version by David Bowie on his “Scary Monsters” album.
Verlaine soon released a self-titled solo album that began a fruitful 1980s solo career. He took up residence in England for a brief period in response to the positive reception his work had received there and in Europe at large. In the 1990s he collaborated with different artists, including Patti Smith, and composed a film score for “Love and a .45”. In the early 1990s, Television reformed releasing a self-titled third album, and were sporadically active in later years, hailed as a prime influence on the alternative rock of the 1980s and 1990s. to record that one studio album and a live recording “Live at the Academy” released 1992; they have reunited periodically for touring.
Verlaine released his first new album in many years in 2006, titled “Songs and Other Things”.
Tom Verlaine, front man and guitar player with Television. “Marquee Moon”, for me the best guitar album ever released in 1977, was one of the best albums to come out of the New York punk and rock scene of that period. The title track stands out for its innovative guitar work and an incredible solo by Verlaine. That lengthy solo that comes in at 4:52 is a real stoner. The band’s second guitarist Richard Lloyd discussed the unique dual guitar roles in the band: “There weren’t many bands where the two guitars played rhythm and melody back and forth, like a jigsaw puzzle. It was clear between us that I played the lead, or the single-note lines, while Tom was singing, then took over the rhythm if he was going to take the solo. If I was going to take the solo, he’d just keep playing rhythm. The split was supposed to be 50-50, or 40-60, but we had this giant ‘Marquee Moon,’ where Tom gets to solo for five minutes or whatever, but it was so good that I couldn’t argue about it.”
And then he summarized the legacy of that amazing album: “I don’t think of that album as just a collection of songs. I think of “Marquee Moon” as one thing. It contains so many songs that reach you, but there’s no way to separate them. You know, these days, people download a song or two from an album. Well, “Marquee Moon” is not for that. “Marquee Moon” is the whole thing. One thing. Like Mount Everest.”
Mike Scott of The Waterboys tweeted: “Tom Verlaine has passed over to the beyond that his guitar playing always hinted at. He was the best rock and roll guitarist of all time, and like Hendrix could dance from the spheres of the cosmos to garage rock. That takes a special greatness.” He added: Tom Verlaine … first heard on Patti Smith’s “Hey Joe” and “Break It Up”, He played with Smith in 2005 for a 30th-anniversary concert of “Horses” in its entirety, which was later released on CD and Television’s “Little Johnny Jewel”, the most incredible, otherworldly guitar playing. Jazzblown, fantastic, inspired. Never surpassed, never equalled except by himself.”
Stuart Braithwaite of the band Mogwai tweeted: “Devastated by this news. Tom Verlaine was a true great. His role in our culture and straight up awesomeness on the electric guitar was completely legendary. Name 10 minutes of music as good as “Marquee Moon”. You can’t. It’s perfect. Rest in peace Tom.”
“I think what I took from Verlaine was not really his style,” U2’sthe Edge told Rolling Stone in 1988, “but the fact that he did something no one else had done.”
Will Sergeant, guitarist of Echo & The Bunnymen, said: “Tom Verlaine’s playing meant the world to me. If I ever played anything that sounded like him I was happy. He set me on my path as a guitarist, thank you Tom.”
Robert Forster of the Go-Betweens: said thinking of Verlaine’s guitar playing this morning – and that’s what really hit me- was the influence of his tone in Seventies Rock. He ended or at least challenged the heavy bluesy thrust of Page/Clapton/Richards. Verlaine’s guitar was loaded but sweet. It sang and soared. It was lyrical. it possesses enormous beauty. It hinted at jazz. It was ethereal and other worldly. And for someone like me, who was not a follower of guitar players and their lengthy solos, here was a guitar player for my age. And you just have to listen to the shape of guitar bands of the Eighties and beyond to hear the legacy of his playing.
Simon Raymonde wrote: A true original. No one played guitar like Tom Verlaine before or since. Sat crossed legged on the floor on his side of the stage in Roskilde as he played in Patti Smith’s band and that was as close to perfection as you can get. A sad sad day. Rest in Peace Tom
Steve Wynn of The Dream Syndicate wrote, “such an immeasurable influence on me and, of course, on so many of fellow guitarist friends.” Real Estate wrote, “this band would probably exist – but would surely not sound the way it does without Tom Verlaine.”
Marty Wilson Piper of the Church: The other end of the sphere of classic original and inspired guitar players, I played with him most nights on the US tour in 1988 where he opened for the ex-band acoustic and we played “Cortez the Killer” as an encore (electric of course), trading solos. He travelled on our bus and I spent a substantial amount of time in his company which led to me playing guitar (uncredited along with Jay Dee Daugherty) on his 1990 album “The Wonder”. Verlaine was a great inspiration to me as he never seemed to hit the notes that others chose. He was that intoxicating mixture of high competence and risk, emotional and raw, and able to sustain long guitar solos that were always disappointing when they stopped.
Solo albums:
Tom Verlaine (1979)
Dreamtime (1981)
Words from the Front (1982)
Cover (1984)
Flash Light (1987)
The Wonder (1990)
Warm and Cool (1992, reissued in 2005)
The Miller’s Tale: A Tom Verlaine Anthology (1996)
Songs and Other Things (2006)
Around (2006)
Blondie simply shared a photo of Verlaine, and guitarist Chris Stein recalled, “I met Tom Verlaine when he just arrived in NYC I guess ’72. He had long hair and came to my apartment with an acoustic guitar and played some songs he’d written. Both Tom and Richard Hell have told me that I auditioned for the Neon Boys but I don’t remember.”
Four albums into their career, White Reaper is really etching a place for itself in the contemporary rock scene.
The Louisville-based band can be best described as garage glam/punk, if that makes sense. There’s a specific energy to the band’s songs, one that calls to mind Irish glam/rock greats Thin Lizzy as much as it does the thrashy sentiments of early Metallica.
White Reaper unleashed the band’s latest album, “Asking For a Ride”, its second major-label release, on Elektra Records. It begins with the ripping title track:
Recorded and largely self-produced in Nashville with the help of close friend and engineer Jeremy Ferguson, “Asking for a Ride” finds the Louisville band taking a more direct and in-your-face approach, prioritizing the collection’s raw energy and its ability to translate live through ripping and nervy compositions. It’s White Reaper at their most exciting – dialing up the chrome-plated riffs and monster hooks – a welcome reminder of just how much fun rock music can be.
“We ask ourselves: ‘Does it sound good when we play it in the room together?’ And if it does, those are the songs we want to pursue,” Esposito noted.
Guitarist Hunter Thompson concurred: “We started to recognize how we operate best as a band.”
“Fog Machine” was a pre-release track shared ahead of the album, and it’s a crystallized version of White Reaper’s whole aesthetic (and some of those Thin Lizzy-esque riffs): prioritizing the collection’s raw energy and its ability to translate live through ripping and nervy compositions. It’s White Reaper at their most exciting – dialling up the chrome-plated riffs and monster hooks – a welcome reminder of just how much fun rock music can be.
“Pages,” the first song shared from “Asking for a Ride”, reached the Top 20 at Alternative radio upon its release, and exemplifies the band’s ability to slow down and embrace some killer melodies:
Way back in 2003, the first episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! was filmed in Los Angeles. The musical guest on that episode was Coldplay, who performed the single “Clocks.” Fast-forward two decades later, and Coldplay visited the Kimmelset once again on Thursday night, to help celebrate the show’s 20th anniversary — and the English pop/rock band did so with a wonderful performance that ended on the roof of the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.
Initially, Chris Martin came out alone to chat with Kimmel, apologizing that he and the band didn’t have enough time to put together a performance. After giving Jimmy a gift (a music box playing the iconic piano lead to “Clocks”), Martin began singing the song, and soon an in-studio orchestra appeared, backing Martin as he continued, walked up the stairs in the set and made his way to the roof, where he and his band performed the song to a backdrop of fireworks.
Jimmy Kimmel also appeared playing a little saxophone in what made for a pretty epic performance:
This special appearance by Coldplay came as the band is prepping for a big year, with three more Grammy nominations in tow and a newly announced batch of West Coast dates of the group’s ongoing “Music of the Spheres” world tour.
To fully grasp the scope of Coldplay’s live experience these days, which has been delighting massive crowds around the world for some time now in support of the band’s 2021 album “Music of the Spheres”,
The Fat Angel Sings 