The band sticks with the decade of decadence as their blueprint, but leaves behind the dust and dreams of West Coast cowboys and Canyon troubadours. Triptides embraces a disco skitter behind the kit, sliding deftly between the towering heights of modern psych-pop and a cream-crushed dose of blue-eyed soul doused with a touch of Yacht-rock’s gloss. Triptides is shedding the word “psychedelic” from its vocabulary – Maybe because after over a decade of adventurous songs and albums across genres and styles–ranging from bedroom pop to prog rock to Laurel Canyon country–the term “interdimensional” feels more appropriate to the Southern California-based band. Driven by the songwriting mind of multi-instrumentalist Glenn Brigman with longtime collaborator and multi-instrumentalist Stephen Burns, Triptides is moving through a galaxy of music following only their own compass. And with their latest album, “Starlight” ( via Curation Records), the duo proves there is a lot more they wish to explore.
It’s as close as the band has come to a full-tilt festival filler. Running on wisps of Gaucho and Takin’ It Easy, the new album feels more meticulous than anything in Triptides’ catalogue. If you held the notion of having Triptides typecast, “Starlight” is here to shake those assumptions.
With tightly interwoven rhythm guitars and basslines, coupled with Brigman’s keen sense of melody and harmony, there’s a new energy shining through with “Starlight”. It’s quite a departure from last year’s laid back acoustic strummer, “So Many Days”, and it’s lightyears from the surf-rock-cassette era of the group. But despite the unexpected movements, from the sounds and structures, you can instantly tell that it’s Triptides behind the wheel–ready to launch you to another star.
Triptides is moving through a galaxy of music following only their own compass. In an almost-jazzy fusion of electric keyboard textures and dancefloor grooves that dives into the worlds of Stereolab, Steely Dan and Cortex. With tightly interwoven rhythm guitars and basslines, coupled with Brigman’s keen sense of melody and harmony, there’s a new energy shining through with “Starlight”. This is the third chapter that started with fuzzed-out “Alter Echoes” and the folk-jangled “So Many Days”.
“People Like Me and You”, the fourth album from South Yorkshires Indie rock Band, The Sherlocks.
It’s the latest set from the indie / alt-rock quartet after three acclaimed albums which include their 2017 debut “Live For The Moment” and last year’s “World I Understand” – both of which hit the Top 10. They’ve also established a fiery live reputation on the back of sold-out headline shows,
Vocalist/Guitarist Kiaran teases, “The new album is honestly full of really good songs with strong choruses. When we were going in to make this album, we went in there with ideas as opposed to fully fledged songs and I believe that’s where the magic lies in this record.”
Their biggest, brightest and most expansive record to date with production elements and fresh sonic touches that broaden their guitar / bass / drums foundations. It’s a collection filled with personal and quintessential Sherlocks lyrical themes that are informed by the passing of time and the realisation that everyone is stepping into different stages in their lives – touching upon nostalgia, ageing, flawed relationships and escaping the rat race on wild, woozy weekends.
“PEOPLE LIKE ME & YOU” is going to be our biggest album we’ve ever released. The album isn’t coming out until august
Introducing, The Bruises. The third single from our forthcoming album ‘Excuse Me While I Vanish’, out 28th July on Chrysalis Records, the track is the follow-up to last month’s single ‘The Puppet and the Puppeteer’. The ten tracks on ‘Excuse Me While I Vanish’ marry earworm tunes with insistent, imperious, soaring rock shapes, punctuated by chorus hooks that are simultaneously nuanced and anthemic.
‘Excuse Me While I Vanish’, very nearly didn’t happen. Following the imposition of lockdown restrictions, Joseph found himself cocooned at home in Cornwall, ruminating on an uncertain creative future, watching on as his wife Mandy, a valiant mental health social worker, engaged with the all-too-real dilemmas of the pandemic-riven here and now. Her example motivated Joseph to become a temporary care worker, an experience which would provide renewed focus and influence the songwriting on the new album.
I started making videos with archival footage back in lockdown. There was no touring or work, I needed something that required no editing. A timeless image in a single take that I’d find within an hour of searching. It needed an opening shot I could put a title over and it needed to fade to black, magically and coincidentally at the same time the track ends. Not only that, it needed to convey the meaning of a song that attempts to articulate the complexities of a 23-year marriage, written from the point of view of an alter-ego so detached from reality he calls himself William The Conqueror.
I don’t know what I was searching for. I clicked on an image of a ballerina, muted the sound, pressed play on the song and sat back.
While William was bellowing at the top of his lungs, being complicated and forgetting to breathe, there was Laurie McDonald, juxtaposed to the singer’s desperation. A ballerina in 1975 trying to perform The Dying Swan on a frozen lake. She was graceful, calm, precise, undeterred by the uncertain footing. She’d slip sometimes but she never let on. She was stoic and focused. She’d get through it in her own time, all she had to do was stay committed.
It said everything I needed it to. So, thank you to Laurie for making this film 48 years ago. You saved William’s bacon big time.
Kentucky-born Richard Meyers moved to New York City after dropping out of high school in 1966 aspiring to become a poet. He and his best friend from high school, Tom Miller, founded the rock band the Neon Boys, which later became Television in 1973. They changed their names: Miller became Tom Verlaine, and Meyers became Richard Hell. The group were one of the first rock band’s to play the club CBGB, which soon became a breeding ground for the early punk rock scene in New York.
After a stint with Television and The Heartbreakers (both with essential early punk albums of their own), Richard Hell assembled a backing band called the Voidoids and released one of the era’s seminal albums. The title track has become a quintessential punk track and the entire album takes you through an entire checklist of what made the ‘70s New York music scene so exhilarating. “Blank Generation” has its fair share of volume and punch, but Richard Hell’s charismatic energetic stage presence vocal performances and wore torn clothing held together with safety pins and spiked his hair and the angular musicality of Robert Quine’s guitar playing make it a completely unique entry in the early punk catalogue.
Disputes with Verlaine led to Hell’s departure from Television in April 1975, and he co-founded theHeartbreakers with New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders and drummer Jerry Nolan. Hell lasted less than a year with this band. Hell was influenced and also drew from and covered garage rock bands such as the Seeds and the Count Five, both found on the 1972 Nuggets compilation.
Richard Hell had written the song “Blank Generation” while still in Television; he had played it regularly with the band since at least 1974, and later with the Heartbreakers. The Voidoids released a 7″ Blank Generation EP in November 1976 on Ork Records containing “Blank Generation”, “Another World” and “You Gotta Lose”. The cover featured a black-and-white photo by Hell’s former girlfriend and unofficial CBGB photographer Roberta Bayley, depicting a bare-chested Hell with an open jeans zipper.
According to Hell, they recorded and mixed the entire album at Electric Lady Studios in New York City across three weeks beginning on March 1977. Two months later, they were informed that the album release would be delayed until September because their label, Sire Records, was changing distributors. “In the meantime, I had noticed a lot of things about the record that I thought we could have done better,” recalls Hell. He asked their label if they could re-record the album, and after getting their approval, they booked three weeks in late June and early July at Plaza Sound Studio, located on the eighth floor of Radio City Music Hall. The final LP would use the Plaza Sound recordings for every song except “Liars Beware,” “New Pleasure” and “Another World,” where the Electric Lady recordings were retained. Their rendition of John and Tom Fogerty’s “Walking on the Water” was also added to the LP during the Plaza Sound sessions; the song had been added to their repertoire after it debuted during a CBGB performance.
Famous rock critic Lester Bangs,reviwed the record labeling it “seminal” and “essential to any modern music collection”, and describing the music as “shattering assaults by a band that prophesied the later No Wave punk-jazz fusion”
Uncle Tupelo only lasted a few years, but was the basis of both Wilco and Son Volt. In the early years of alt-country, I had a bit more with the albums of The Jayhawks, which showed a more melodic sound than the raw sound of Uncle Tupelo. When listening to “Genevieve” by the American band Fust, reminds you of the early albums of The Jayhawks and that is still a pleasant association.
Fust is a band from Durham, North Carolina, and released their debut album two years ago. That album didn’t get a whole lot of attention at the time, but “Genevieve” popped up in the recommendations of both Paste and Pitchfork last week . The fact that “Genevieve” was received so enthusiastically surprised me, because usually there is not much room for these types of albums on both platforms.
At “Genevieve”, Fust joins the pioneering days of alt-country and does so in a great way. There have been times when we have been inundated with these kinds of albums, but in recent years I have unfortunately seen them less and less. “Genevieve” is an album that absolutely deserves the label alt-country. The Durham band starts with the country rock of the 70s, but hasn’t stuck in this decade. The sound of Fust sometimes sounds nice and full, especially when the pedal steel is used, but “Genevieve” also contains a number of more subdued songs.
When a female voice pops up here and there, you can hear how much added value harmonies could have in the band’s sound. On this second album, Fust guarantees songs that stick around, but that are also interesting enough to keep entertaining.
The band has an excellent singer and also guarantees a lot of musical fireworks. This is mainly due to the guitars, which are prominent in the mix, but the contributions of keyboards and the pedal steel are also beautiful. Especially when the guitars are soloing, I hear a lot of similarities with the music of The Jayhawks, but Fust also has his own style, especially because of the vocals and the full sound.
It’s amazing how Fust manages to reproduce the sound from the early years of alt-country. The band does not stop there, because the band also sounds absolutely contemporary on its second album. The fact that Fust sounds like a timeless alt-country album is also to the credit of producer Alex Farrar, one of the emerging talents in North Carolina, who once again delivers craftsmanship.
American indie rock band Warpaint from Los Angeles, California, were formed in 2004. The band consists of Emily Kokal (vocals, guitar), Theresa Wayman (vocals, guitar), Jenny Lee Lindberg (bass, vocals), and Stella Mozgawa (drums). The original lineup consisted of childhood friends Wayman and Kokal alongside sisters Lindberg and Shannyn Sossamon. The band played around the Los Angeles area for three years, writing songs (“Stars”, “Beetles” and “Elephants”) which would eventually compose their debut EP. Warpaint’s style has been characterized as art rock, dream pop and psychedelic rock. They play expansive, lushly-harmonic psych-rock songs with enough time-changes to satisfy even the most beardy prog-rock bong-tokers. The band has also cited hip-hop as an influence of their work. Two songs have been named after their favourite rappers: Biggy and Dre.
To date, the band has released four studio albums: “The Fool” (2010), “Warpaint” (2014), “Heads Up” (2016), and “Radiate Like This” (2022).
“Exquisite Corpse”
The band began recording their debut EP, “Exquisite Corpse”, in December 2007, with producer Jacob Bercovici. The sessions took over two months and concluded with mixing and mastering by Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante, who was also Kokal’s boyfriend at the time. Former RHCP guitarist Josh Klinghoffer performed drums and guitar on the EP. Australian drummer Mozgawa (formerly of Mink and Swahili Blonde) joined the band in the winter of 2009. Shortly afterwards, Warpaint self-released the EP in 2008, In 2009, “Exquisite Corpse” was re-released worldwide by Manimal Vinyl, to critical acclaim.
If there’s one thing to be said of Warpaint’s debut EP, ‘Exquisite Corpse’, it is this: The whole thing oozes sex, seduction, and a drug-like haze. In fact, at times it can seem that everything is designed this way – but never overwhelmingly so, as the EP generally feels very spontaneous. Firstly, it is impossibly smooth, slick almost; though instead of feeling overly polished and manufactured, it feels wholly organic. Secondly, the breathy vocals of Emily Kokal (lead vocalist) and Theresa Wayman (back-ups, lead on ‘Beetles’) are siren-like, entrancing and inviting throughout.
Shimmering guitar melodies characterised by hammer-ons and gentle arpeggios flow in and out of another like water, simultaneously marrying tendencies from shoegaze, post-rock and psychedelica – sometimes in the space of one song (‘Elephants’). All of this is masterfully underpinned by the elegant bass lines penned by Jenny Lee Lindberg, often melodies themselves, as opposed to simple root-note progressions. The relationship between the guitars, and between guitars and bass is, at times, sensually breath-taking, and goes a long way to defining the album’s sound and feel. This tentative, but no less effective interplay between the two is especially gorgeous on the ‘How Strange, Innocence’-era Explosions in the Sky flavoured ‘Stars’. The rhythm section is completed by Jenny’s sister, Shannyn Sossamon, a competent drummer (Warpaint’s rhythm section would exponentially improve after the arrival of Stella Mozgawa after ‘Exquisite Corpse’s” release), but an effective one nonetheless. For example, it is her drumming which facilitates a mesmerising mood change in the EP’s opener.
“The Fool”
In October 2010, the band released their debut album, “The Fool.” The album received a glowing review from various music magazine’s “Shadows”, the first single from their debut album, was released as 12″ vinyl on January 2011. A remix of the single, “Shadows (Neon Lights Remix)”, proved popular.
Warpaint toured the U.S. and Europe in the spring and summer of 2011 to promote the album. They played at various major festivals including Glastonbury Festival, Reading and Leeds Festivals, Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Rock Werchter, and Electric Picnic. In 2011, the rerelease of the track “Undertow” as a single.
On Warpaint’s debut album the LA-based quartet might be addressing their listeners directly. “Now I’ve got you in the undertow,” singer-guitarists Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman chime, in voices sweet and lethally seductive. The line feels apposite because Warpaint make music to submerge yourself in, Ripples of guitar rise above and sink beneath bold waves of bass, while drum lines surge hither and thither, pushing the songs to change their course. There is something subtly contrary about this band: their most enigmatic song bears the name Warpaint, while their least-composed song – which opens in a fury of shouted vocals and uncoils in a meandering jam of slowly detuned guitars – is called Composure. But if this slipperiness makes them intriguing, it’s the consistent sensuality of Warpaint’s sound that makes them mesmerise.
“Warpaint”
As early as 2011, drummer Mozgawa, in an interview with NME, expressed the band’s intention to “experiment and write with one another” as the current line-up had never composed songs “from the ground up” together. Bassist Lindberg further indicated that most of the newer songs were written by “just jam[ming] and free-flow[ing] onstage”. In February 2013, Wayman confirmed that the band intended to create a minimalist sound on “Warpaint”, revealing that the band developed the songs at soundchecks, and experimented more with acoustic guitars and percussion instruments on the album. Lead vocalist Kokal noted that R&B and rap music were influences on “Warpaint” and stated that the album featured “things that have drum machines and ambience, music that’s more than standard rock”. Kokal added that the album was largely keyboards-based, which contributed to the overall sound being “definitely different” from the band’s previous album, “The Fool”.
Produced and mixed by Flood, except two tracks which were mixed by Nigel Godrich, A snippet of the album’s lead single, “Love Is to Die”, was featured in an advertisement for Calvin Klein and later as part of a teaser for an upcoming documentary of the same name about the recording of Warpaint.
A music video, composed of a two-song vignette from the second album—“Disco//very” and “Keep it Healthy” Directed by Laban Pheidias, the video featured skateboarding from professional skateboarders Justin Eldridge, Kris Markovich and Patrick Melcher.
“Heads Up”
On August 2016, Warpaint released a single titled “New Song”,and announced the September release of its third studio album, “Heads Up” they toured as special guest and opening act of Depeche Mode’s Global Spirit Tour. Their four dates opening for Depeche Mode at the Hollywood Bowl marked the first time a band played four consecutive shows at the famed Los Angeles venue. The band also toured in support of Harry Styles on a handful of dates.
After delving in various solo endeavors, including bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg’s solo debut, the members of Warpaint reconvened and began recording the new LP in January. Accompanied by producer Jacob Bercovici, who helped helm their 2008 “Exquisite Corpse” EP, they logged time in local studio House on the Hill as well as Papap’s Palace and their own home studios.
The Los Angeles dream pop outfit tried a new approach during the sessions for “Heads Up” for the first time ever, they recorded in pairs and alone rather than as a full band, a press release notes. “The doors were a little more open in terms of what was accepted and what wasn’t, because we were sharing ideas so rapidly between us,” says the band’s drummer Stella Mozgawa of the recording process. “The roles that each of us individually had or had established were a little more malleable.”
The band were largely inactive across 2020 and 2021, with Mozgawa returning to Australia and recording with Courtney Barnett.
“Radiate Like This”
Warpaint then new album their first since 2016’s called “Radiate Like This” their first song from the album, “Champion” The song is about “being a champion to oneself and for others,” the band said in a press release. “We are all in this together, life is too short not to strive for excellence in all that we do.”
On “Champion” Theresa Wayman started this in my room at my house in El Sereno. I actually sampled a Warpaint song “The Stall” – and that’s what started the whole thing. Then made the beat. I use logic and a program called geist to make beats… We went to Stella’s house/studio out in Joshua Tree to do some preproduction and I showed the girls my demo. We put it on and Stella started playing along with it…really brought it to life to have her layers over it. And then Jen wrote the acoustic guitar… This was one of the first songs we made for the album.
As a drummer Stella Mozgawa in Warpaint, she’s always leaned into her psych background and in this episode we hear how much it has helped her to navigate her way in Warpaint, and any other musical project or otherwise that she’s been involved with—from producing for Courtney Barnett to playing with Kurt Vile.a band with three strong lyricists, she knows her strengths are in the sonic production aspects of songwriting. But after 12 years of “being in each other’s pockets” through three albums she shares some of the struggles she experienced with completing songs like “Send Nudes” and “Champion” the standout opening and closing tracks of “Radiate Like This“.
This one was started by Em. We also worked on this in that first desert session. I wrote that guitar line in the verses really quickly..felt like I was channelling something..that can sound cliche but it’s not always like that! I really felt it with this one. In fact, everything about this song came together like that. Em’s vocals, that middle bridge section, all of it! I’m in love with this one!
Hard To Tell youEm wrote this song on guitar originally. We recorded a version like that at an early recording session in Joshua tree at Rancho De La Luna. It had a much longer arrangement… We then re-imagined it with synths..leaned into an 80s synth ballad feel. This one also came together quickly. I had a lot of fun weaving guitar lines around the vocals in the verses… We did a lot of pre-production on this one at our rehearsal space downtown before we ever went to the studio.
“Stevie” is a love song that was originally written by Emily. She started during the heads up album but it didn’t make it on there. She would play the chords during soundchecks from time to time and we’d all start playing along. Always found the progression very alluring.
There was a little demo chasing with this one because the beat Stella did when we first started demoing just had this perfect feel that was hard to recreate. We got it in the end but re-recorded it 3 times in 3 different studios.
“Like Sweetness” was started this one on piano. Stella and I were working at our rehearsal space downtown, doing a lot of demoing and trying to find out where this album wanted to go. We did a few different demos of this one on piano and then moved it over to the prophet. The initial beat she played on this one was really laid back, a lot of ride. We changed it when we got to the studio… was too similar to another track so we had to dig for something else. Nice where it ended up. It’s a song about self-love.
“Trouble” is another piano song that Em wrote a while ago… finally came together after a couple of different versions. We all played this in our rehearsal space and figured out the arrangement. Played our parts and fell into the song really easily. One of the only ones we recorded together as a band at the same time. Did it at the studio in highland park, 64 Sound. We tried to get the piano at the desert studio but that didn’t work out. And then we still didn’t have the right piano take. Emily re-did it and finally got it at a studio in Portland, Oregon during the pandemic. Also, love the harmonies on this one. We did a lot of work on honing those during the pandemic.
Proof Love the harms on this one. And all the little sonic gems… Stella, Emily and I did a lot of work on this one at the rehearsal space downtown…throwing paint at the wall with my prophet 12 and piano and guitar. And then we arranged them all into the song and that generally helped structure the song. The proof is in the pudding melody was a funny little thing my brother Ivan (he worked with us on ‘Head’s Up’) and Emily made up during a party, years ago. Em realized that this was finally its moment to make it to actual song status! Love it.
Altar is also from the very first batch of songs that were sprinkled with love during the Stella desert studio session. I wrote this song around the time I started champion. The drums, em guitars in the chorus and the bass was added right away. The structure was still very long when we went into the studio. We added more parts but it wasn’t until our remote arranging sessions during the pandemic that we really trimmed it up. I went out to Emily’s house a couple of times during the pandemic and we added more guitar to a few songs. The ending em guitar part that really changes the tone of the song in such an interesting way, came from one of these sessions.
Melting is the only song on the album that came from a jam, written in true Warpaint fashion. It was arranged and written by all of us in the room together. We wrote and recorded this one a year before we did any of the other ones. Did a version with producer Jon Congleton in a studio in LA. I loved that recording but it was also such early days that we needed to breathe different life into it and make it match our other songs a bit more. Em, and I added more guitars during the pandemic at one of our home desert recording sessions.
Send Nudes is a song written during the pandemic. I went on a camping trip with my family and this was written around a campfire. Initially called camping song. Inspired by Erykah Badu and her song, Phone Down. The incredible effective simplicity of that song is addictive. So I approached from that angle. What was initially “send a cup of noodles” quickly became “send a couple nudes”.. Took it out of the PG zone once the kids went to bed ;). Stella did her drums in a studio in Melbourne. One of those back and forth file sharing songs. Not ideal but do-able. At least I got to be in person with Jen to get the bass.
Each of the 10 tracks on the LP were crafted layer by intricate layer, which has yielded a more refined and sharper sounding record overall in comparison to the groups previous releases. Emily Kokal, one-fourth of Warpaint elaborating that “Radiate Like This” captures what’s always been the magic of Warpaint—the delicate interplay of four separate parts coalescing in motion while somehow allowing each individual to shine a little brighter.”
“Long before their entwined voices took them around the world — first as harmony singers for Jenny Lewis, then as leaders of their own critically acclaimed band — The Watson Twins grew up in the American South. They sang in the church choir. They listened to gospel classics and country standards. Those sounds became part of their musical foundation, connecting the siblings to their Kentucky hometown even after they relocated to Los Angeles and, years later, settled in Nashville. Chandraand Leigh Watson’s southern roots break through the surface once again with Holler. Recorded with their Tennessee-based touring band and produced by Grammy nominee Butch Walker, it’s an album that highlights the identical twin sisters’ songwriting chops and vocal chemistry.
Together, these 10 songs nod to the siblings’ old-school influences while boldly pushing forward into new territory. Captured during a series of live-in-the-studio recording sessions, Holler isn’t just The Watson Twins’ most collaborative album to date — it’s their strongest, too.”
The official music video for The Watson Twins’ song “Holler”, the title track from their forthcoming album available June 23rd on Bloodshot Records.
Celebrating twenty-five years of seminal San Francisco rock collective The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s seventh album “Strung Out In Heaven”, released on this day in 1998. The album is named after a lyric from the David Bowie song “Ashes to Ashes”.
Matt Hollywood contributed more to this record due to Anton Newcombe being incapable of writing as many songs as he was addicted to heroin at the time. After releasing a number of well-received recordings on the smaller psychedelia-focused Bomp! Records label, The Brian Jonestown Massacre were signed to a multi-record deal with TVT. It was released in June 1998 and was the band’s first and only recording with the large independent label, TVT Records. The recording didn’t sell as many records as TVT had hoped, and they later mutually dissolved their remaining contractual obligations.
“Wisdom” is a re-recording of the same song that originally appeared on the band’s second album, “Methodrone”. “Dawn” is also a re-recording, with the original version appearing on “Take It fromthe Man!”. “Spun” is also a re-recording of the same song that appears on the band’s album “Thank God for Mental Illness”. It’s with typical perversity that the Brian Jonestown Massacre makes the leap from the indie ghetto into the majors with their least immediate, most restrained record to date; given time to sink in, however, “Strung Out in Heaven” proves as engaging as their past efforts, with a focus and cohesiveness often lacking from their more visceral work. Settling into a blissfully psychedelic drift, the album opts not for the Stones-inspired raunch of before but for Byrds-like guitars, muffled drums and pulsating Hammond organ lines, all topped off by Anton Newcombe’s half-stoned, half-shamanic vocals; thanks to standout tracks like “Going to Hell,” “Wasting Away” and “Maybe Tomorrow,”.
Listening to this album its hard to understand that it was recorded in 1997/98 it has a sort of timeless sound that could easily been made in 1968 or 1973 for that matter. The songs on this album very much fit together almost as a concept album and as theatre of the mind it work marvellously. You can hear the joy in some bits but mostly you hear the struggle, the struggle of a band who’s talent is greater than the infighting and insanity brought on by hard drug addiction.
Critics praised the album, calling it “their least immediate, most restrained record to date “Strung Out in Heaven” proves as engaging as their past efforts, with a focus and cohesiveness often lacking from their more visceral work”, also calling it “the BJM’s most mature outing yet”. This truly is one of those albums that I can find no fault with.
“The Endless Coloured Ways” is a collection of songs by the legendary singer/ songwriter, Nick Drake, performed and recorded by over 30 incredible artists from a range of different backgrounds, genres, age groups and audiences. From Fontaines D.C. to Guy Garvey, Aurora to Feist, and Self-Esteem and David Gray, each artist has offered their own incredible take on a timeless classic.
The latest track to be released from it is from former Czars singer-keyboardist John Grant. Drake’s music is inextricably associated with the acoustic guitar, so covers from keyboard players are particularly welcome as they reframe his music in new and interesting ways. Grant slows down the song to a crawl and slowly layers different synthesizer parts on top of each other. This time the feeling is more of impressionism than baroque (albeit impressionism via ambient.) Grant doesn’t start singing until over 90 seconds into the song, which gives you an idea of the pace since the original is around two and a half minutes.
“The Endless Coloured Ways: The Songs Of Nick Drake” is out July 7th and here are two more songs from it: John Grant creates a baroque synth orchestra on his cover of “Day is Done,” “Day is Done” is one of Nick Drake‘s most sophisticated-sounding compositions from his debut album, “Five Leaves Left”. It consists of merely his voice, his complicated guitar pattern and an elaborate string part by arranger Robert Kirby. Though it’s a brief song, it has an air of neo baroque art music, due to the intricacies of the instrumentation.
Grant treats his voice with an echo. About three minutes in, some faux baroque keyboards kick in at a much faster tempo, and an elaborate keyboard orchestra places us in some kind of Tangerine Dream-meets-Switched on Bach space. That briefly drops out to Grant and just a single keyboard before many of the keyboards come back in to build to a climax.
As great as “The Who Sell Out” turned out to be setting the standard as one of the first true concept albums as well as becoming viewed as both a pop-art masterpiece and the turning point in The Who’s career even Pete Townshend thinks it could have been better.
“The songs we recorded in the six months after the album came out were better,” Townshend, say’s the band’s guitarist and principal songwriter . “If our label who were also our managers, by the way had just waited, maybe it could have been our greatest album. Ultimately, of course, “The Who Sell Out” came to be seen as a one of the band’s best. Released in December 1967, it elevated The Who, largely a singles band up to that point, into a league with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
“No one who saw The Who at that time could deny that they were the best live band going,” recalls Richard “Barney” Barnes, Who biographer and Townshend’s art school roommate who also named the group. “Even the biggest Kinks fan, if the Kinks and The Who were both playing in town, would go see The Who over the Kinks. They were a real show when no one else was putting on a show. And that album catapulted them into that rarified company.”
Available now in a hugely expanded, super deluxe box set — 112 tracks that include both the mono and stereo mixes of the original album, plus singles and B-sides from the era, as well as the band’s post-Sell Out /pre-Tommy recordings, and Pete Townshend’s demos from the period “The Who Sell Out” is nothing if not a band reinventing itself.
In place of the group’s early, “My Generation“-era mod leanings are a Swinging London pop-art sensibility, with Townshend’s most fascinating compositions up to that point linked together by advertising jingles and radio announcements paying tribute to mid-’60s England’s all-important pirate radio, all wrapped up in one of the greatest album sleeves from the golden age of rock and roll. In fact, in the context of the new box set, “The Who Sell Out” can now been seen as the origin story of everything The Who would later become in the aftermath of the huge success of “Tommy”, the band’s appearance at Woodstock and its “Live at Leeds” album.
But in 1967, as one of the most in-demand live acts in the world, The Who were running themselves ragged, shoehorning recording sessions in between a relentless schedule of shows, Barnes recalls. “How they accomplished anything is beyond me,” he says.
Meanwhile, Kit Lambert, who co-managed The Who with his partner Chris Stamp, had installed the band’s lead guitarist in an apartment in Knightsbridge, complete with a crude recording studio, where Townshend had begun exploring the art of song writing in just about every manner, if not with an eye toward writing hit singles, or even, necessarily, music for The Who.
“I think I was just writing for myself and hoped that if I wrote maybe 20 or 30 or, on a good run, 40 pieces of music, at least 20 would get recorded and then we could handpick maybe 10 to 12 for an album,” Townshend recalls. “It was like throwing shit at the wall.”
The process had yielded an undeniable classic, but not much else that Townshend deemed worthy of release.
“I would write for myself, to have fun with it, and even ‘I Can See for Miles’ is probably one of those songs that I wrote for me, not for the band,” he says.
The Who’s managers, Lambert and Stamp, also ran Track Records, the band’s label — a conflict of interest between the group’s creative and business sides.
“It wasn’t ethical, of course it wasn’t,” Barnes says. “But Kit and Chris didn’t think it was going to last — none of us did and they had this great songwriter, and Keith Moon, who was a publicist’s dream, and they were doing what they could to keep things going as long as they could. But they were hugely important, as important as Brian Epstein was to the Beatles or Andrew Loog Oldham was for the Stones, and I think that sometimes gets forgotten.”
“Chris Stamp, our manager, told me, ‘This album is coming out whether you like it or not,’” Townshend recalls. “I said, ‘Well, let’s try to dress it up in some way.’”
Worried that the material wouldn’t hold up against the remarkable albums — then new territory for pop bands being released at the time, which included the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Are You Experienced? and so many others, Townshend says Stamp’s pre-Christmas deadline led to a brilliant idea, even if it did arise out of near-desperation.
“We were walking into the studio with a) not enough songs for an album, and b) most of them which were songs I had written for fun,” he says. “The only way that I felt that we could save the record was to turn it into a fun exercise, and so the idea of the commercials which came from a brainstorm session between me and Chris Stamp became the way to do that.”
With pirate radio ruling the popular culture in the UK at the time thanks to boats moored off the English coast broadcasting pop music night and day, the album would become an homage to everything the BBC was not.
“I don’t know if Americans can understand how significant pirate radio was, but it was completely driving the culture, at least in London,” Barnes says. “And it was perfect for what The Who was all about: pop art.”
“The BBC wasn’t playing any tunes,” Townshend says flatly at the memory. “Pirate radio was everything. It put us on the map in a big, big way. It helped everybody.”
The radio concept also allowed for outsized creative input from bassist John Entwistle and drummer Keith Moon, who were deputized into creating many of the jingles that linked Townshend’s pop songs and created the unmistakable feel of a live radio broadcast, in turn making The Who Sell Out one of rock’s very first concept albums, if only in spirit.
“The Beatles were in a class to themselves, and the Stones had their blues thing down, so first The Who went the Tamla-Motown route, but they needed to move on and develop,” Barnes recalls. “Kit really encouraged Pete to think in new and incredibly creative ways. His father was Constance Lambert [the British composer], and it was Kit’s idea for Pete to try to write in an operatic way or to tackle concepts bigger than the three-minute pop song, which opened doors none of us even knew existed.”
And so, “The Who Sell Out” set The Who on a new course. But it was the obvious next step for the band, argues Barnes, who says the band had clearly outgrown the Modernist label that had helped them make a mark on the cut-throat UK music scene of the day.
“The Mod scene had grown out of the Teddy Boy scene before it and had given the band a natural and immediate audience,” Barnes, who wrote what is considered the Mod bible, says. “But they were quickly outgrowing that, and needed to.”
“I think people tend to see us in those days through the lens of the documentaries and the way the history was documented, but The Who were not really part of the Mod movement, the Mod movement was our support system,” adds Townshend. “We were able to observe it and use it and ride on it, and we were supported, as long as we stuck to a fairly straightened set of rules. One was that it was mainly a male audience, so we had to be pretty brutal, and then, there was the fact that we also had to have our hair short and not look scruffy like the Rolling Stones, and not care whether girls screamed at us like they did at the Beatles. And so, for a while, we tried to look like our audience. But then after a while, we realized that it was colourless.”
“I remember I said to them, at least a year before “The Who Sell Out“, when they were starting to outgrow that scene, ‘Why don’t you do adverts?’” Barnes says. “Because I saw The Who not simply as Mod, but as a pop art, art pop, comic book sort of thing. I thought, that’s the thing they should be doing, and Roger said, ‘That’s a fucking great idea!’ Which was unusual for Roger to support me. But the thing is that Pete was much more articulate than Roger, and then Pete made this joke, and then they went at it. And they did end up doing an advert for Coca-Cola. But you could see they were chaffing at the confines of being labelled Mod, even early on. It gave them an audience, but then they’d become much bigger than the whole Mod movement, which didn’t last long originally, anyway.”
It was also around that time that The Who started to drift away from some of the iconic Mod looks they helped popularize and that are still associated with them to this day.
“Chris Stamp and I, again, started to talk about how we could brighten it up,” Townshend says. “So when we started our residency at the Marquee, we appeared with target t-shirts, Union Jack jackets, Chevrons. This was early, but not so early. We’d already had our incarnation as faux-Mods with [previous manager] Peter Meaden, as the High Numbers. This was when we became leaders of the field, in a fashion sense, because immediately, the people around us on Carnaby Street, who were observing us very closely, like Trisha Locke, who had been working for Mary Quant. She brought Mary and her husband to come and see us, and immediately, they started to cop some of our designs into their designs. I’m not saying they stole from us. It just the way the drift was going. And that’s what made the Carnaby Street/Swinging London theme work and eventually become Austin Powers parody. It was amusing and light hearted. But the backdrop of it was that when the violence happened, as I wrote about in “Quadrophenia” the violence that happened on the streets of the seaside towns in the spring of ’65 — that was the end of Mod.”
“That was not what Mods did,” he continues. “They were too cool to fight. And the way that they were portrayed caused it to just disappear overnight. Pretty soon, we went from wearing Union Jack jackets — which we were wearing a few months before we appeared at Monterey — to me going on stage at the Monterey Pop Festival wearing something like a bed cover.”
That 1967 festival appearance not only introduced The Who to a U.S. audience, it helped set the stage for the band’s next act.
“After the Monterey Pop festival, the Herman’s Hermits tour followed that,” Townshend recalls. It was another gruelling tour, with The Who at the peak of its auto-destructive art phase smashing guitars and amps and destroying drum kits opening for one of the poppiest pop acts ever. “But we got to go back to San Francisco a couple of times, and on one of those trips I was introduced to the teachings of Meher Baba, who had taken a stance against the use of psychedelic drugs, and even marijuana, as damaging for someone who is a sincere seeker. And from that day forward, I stopped smoking pot. I wasn’t a huge pot smoker, but I did occasionally smoke it. That made a real change.”
Townshend’s writing shifted dramatically. No longer writing songs from the point of view of an “angry young man,” his songs became imbued with the thoughts of a man on a spiritual journey, as the songs on Disc Four of the new box set, recorded in the months after the release of “The Who Sell Out“, show. Tommy, “The Seeker,” “Who’s Next” and, of course, a lifetime of songs about searching for the divine and a greater self followed. But it was the period around “The Who Sell Out“that had kicked it all off and set The Who on a new course, away from being a singles band and onto bigger and greater things — growth that, in turn, inspired Townshend to write some of his greatest songs: “Pinball Wizard,”“Pure and Easy,” “Behind Blue Eyes,” and, of course, “Baba O’Riley.”
“I was always conscious of the fact that the band — the other members of the band — were hugely talented and hugely vital to me as a vehicle and, also, vital to me as a place where that Pete onstage that I don’t know, recognize, or have any empathy with to make sure that he has a day job,” he says of the period after “The Who Sell Out” which birthed “Tommy“. “These were real extremes. There’s always been this sense that what The Who could do onstage — and what it could do when it just let rip and riffed — was very different to what I often did in a room as a songwriter. So, did I write for myself or did I write to appease the band? I think the rift was under my skin, under the surface.”
It’s a tug of war that Townshend still wrestles with today, as recently as “WHO”, the band’s 2019 album, its first in more than a decade and one of only 12 studio albums the band has made in its nearly-60-year existence.
“We just didn’t make very many albums,” he says. “One of the difficulties has always been trying to bridge the gap between what I wanted to do creatively and my song writing demos, and commissioning for TheWho. I’m willing to accept that a few times I’ve written songs for commission for The Who, but it’s very rarely worked out. So, I think, from my position, I just see the whole story as being one of coming up with ideas that might help me to write songs when I’ve been in an exhausted period coming back from touring or whatever it has been, and needing to keep myself creative.”
