Coming on to fifty years since they released the first ever British punk single, veterans The Damned present their twelfth studio album in 2023. ‘Darkadelic’ is the group’s first album with new drummer Will Taylor, and brings forward their latent psychedelic tendencies mainly in the shape of Captain Sensible’s guitar work but also Dave Vanian’s strongest vocal performances in years.
Punk legends The Damned return with their 12th studio album in the band’s 46-year history, a 12-song collection called “Darkadelic” that is preceded by the first single and opening track “The Invisible Man,” with its Martin Gooch-directed music video.
The Thomas Mitchener-produced “Darkadelic” will be released via earMUSIC on April 28th. It’s the band’s first album since 2018’s “Evil Spirits“.
Though the Damned performed a short run of concerts last year with the original lineup of Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible, Brian James and Rat Scabies, they’re not all on the album. The band’s current lineup includes Vanian, Sensible, Paul Gray,Monty Oxymoron and new drummer William Granville-Taylor.
The band is set to head out on tour in the U.K. and Europe through March and April.
Let it first be said that the title track of “The Hypnogogue“, the first new album from The Church in six years, is one of the most breathtaking singles they’ve released in years, a darkly psychedelic six minutes that slowly spirals into a menacing descent. That alone is reason to keep this one on your radar; the Australian neo-psych band have been going for over 40 years, with around a half dozen classic albums and zero bad ones, yet their ability to keep evolving and uncovering new aspects to their sound and approach only serves as a reminder of how vital they remain after four decades.
Reports from the factory floor of The Church’s collective imagination indicate that “The Hypnogogue” is working just as its creator intended. With futuristic software capable of downloading music from dreams, the mythical contraption fuels the widescreen, science-fiction narrative of an ambitious and mesmerizing concept album warning of the pitfalls of a burgeoning symbiotic relationship between a fading artist and artificial intelligence. Among the dystopian casualties is an ill-fated love affair and a soul damaged beyond repair. The road to renewed relevance is fraught with peril.
While true to some extent, rumors of The Church going full-blown prog on “The Hypnogogue” the Aussie stargazers’ sublime 25th album – are exaggerated, although its inky, shapeshifting beauty emerges from a lush gene pool. And yet, it’s still unmistakably The Church, cold as the moon and floating in immersive, celestial pop and slightly warped psychedelia. All of it poured out of the Big Dipper and carried aloft by echoing vocals, head-swimming effects and hypnotic acoustic guitar strum. Such elements grace otherworldly transmissions like “Thorn,” “Aerodrome” and a gently meandering “No Other You.”
Bathed in ghostly, amniotic reverb, “Flickering Lights” sends out an S.O.S. from a hoary, distant past via Morse code of piano falling to the murky ocean floor, while a lapping, watery “Albert Ross” washes ashore and awakens to expansive possibilities. None of them compare, however, to “Ascendance,” with its majestic gravitational pull and drifting elegance, or “C’est La Vie,” a space oddity overflowing with astral hooks, insistent beats and melodic bewilderment. Then again, the affecting and humbled “I Think I Knew” may hit closer to home for many, as it slowly unleashes a cloudburst of rich, intoxicating sound upon drought-stricken lives. It’s time to go back to The Church to find salvation.
Mike Peters singer songwriter and frontman of Welsh rockers The Alarm celebrated his medical recovery and return to music with the new single “Next” he is announcing a whole new album called “Forwards” — to be released in early June.
The 10-track album “Forwards” will be released June 2nd with the vinyl release featuring two different sleeves and coloured-vinyl pressings. A “classic green-and-white star white” pressing will be sold everywhere, while a limited-edition “unique metallic green vinyl” pressing will only be sold through independent record stores.
MikePeters, who was initially diagnosed with leukemia in 2005, spent much of the last year in hospitals, receiving chemo treatments and battling a life-threatening pneumonia brought on by his relapse, according to The Alarm’s publicist who added that Mike is now “newly energized from a healthy prognosis.”
The frontman recorded with producer George Williams in between hospitalization periods, calling the process “life or death” for him. At times, according to the band’s publicists, Peters was barely able to speak due to the affects of his chronic illness.
Peters, in a press release announcing the album, says: “A lot of artists have to kill to make a record like “Forwards” and with the challenges that came my way in 2022. I certainly had to kill or be killed to realize the ambition in these songs. It was literally life or death making this record. I’ve already taken so much from life, that when I was in the hospital stricken with chronic illness, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be spared another opportunity to live. Fortunately for me, I was granted more time on earth and the challenge remains as ever, to make the most of every single second — forwards.”
“Forwards” is released everywhere and in all formats on June 2nd 2023.
One of the leading bands from the Paisley Underground scene in early- and mid-’80s Los Angeles, The reunited Rain Parade will release“Last Rays of a Dying Sun”, the band’s third studio album and its first collection of new songs in nearly four decades.
The album, featuring new songs written by original band members Matt Piucci and Steven Roback, will be released in May, the first title from new Colorado-based label Flatiron Recordings, co-founded by Bill Hein, who co-founded and ran Enigma Records with his brother in the 1980s.
Piucci and the late David Roback formed Rain Parade in 1981, with the two singer-guitarists drafting Roback’s brother, Steven Roback, and Will Glenn and Eddie Kalwa to fill out the band’s ranks. Rain Parade’s 1983 classic debut, “Emergency Third RailPower Trip”, remains a high-water mark for Los Angeles’ Paisley Underground scene, which also counted The Bangles, TheDream Syndicate and The Three O’Clock as key members.
Rain Parade followed up that debut with the “Explosions in the Glass Palace” EP in 1984 and a final, major-label full-length, “Crashing Dream”, in 1986, before disbanding for the first time.
David Roback, died in 2020 of cancer, left Rain Parade following the release of the band’s debut and later formed Opal with Kendra Smith of The Dream Syndicate and Mazzy Star with Hope Sandoval.
In 2012, Piucci and Steven Roback reunited as Rain Parade for a benefit concert and, in 2018, joined The Dream Syndicate, The Bangles and The Three O’Clock to record the “3×4” album, a celebration of the Paisley Underground that featured the four bands each covering one song by each of the other three bands.
Rain Parade has recorded “Last Rays of a Dying Sun”, with Picucci and Roback joined by guitarist John Thoman, who’s been in the band since 1984, as well as drummer Stephan Junca and guitarist/keyboardist Derek See. The new record also features Debbi and Vicki Peterson from The Bangles on background vocals.
Rain Parade are currently in the midst of a U.K. tour supporting The Dream Syndicate.
A 2xLP set of rare, early Hüsker Dü live recordings, featuring original flyers and artwork Drawn from the historical Hüsker Dü recording archives compiled by Terry Katzman, this double disc live set is an essential companion piece to the band’s “SavageYoung Du” Box Set. Recorded more than a year before Grant Hart, Bob Mould and Greg Norton released their first Hüsker Dü single .While the SYD release principally featured studio demos, the 28 tracks presented on “Tonite Longhorn” are the time machine that vividly thrusts the listener straight back to Hüsker Dü’s embryonic unsheathing on stage.
Side A dates to July 1979. Side B gives us a full year’s evolution to July 1980, while Sides C and D land the listener in September 1980. Perhaps 120 people in total saw these three Longhorn performances; until now, a handful at most have heard the playbacks. So, rare and fresh, it’s all here: the songs, the driven performances, the small club intimacy of being in front of select friends, fans, and peers, with one fair shot at getting it right. These four sides compellingly document that you can’t doubt that they did.
“Tonite Longhorn” features recordings taken from across four different shows that took place between July 1979 and September 1980 at Jay’s Longhorn Bar in Minneapolis. The collection will be officially released in August on their own Reflex Records, though a limited-edition 2xLP vinyl release will be available much sooner: on this year’s Record Store Day, which takes place on April 22. “Tonite Longhorn” features 28 live recordings in all, and the 2xLP edition has original artwork by Grant Hart and liner notes from Thurston Moore.
“Most artists begin their careers by looking to their heroes for inspiration. “Tonite Longhorn” is a comprehensive overview of three teenagers paying homage, experimenting with different genres, and — most importantly — building a foundation for things to come,” Bob Mould shared in a statement. “We knew what we had: good chemistry, great melodies and harmonies, and an overabundance of young (and sometimes dumb) enthusiasm. We knew we were different, and we knew we were on to something different.”
Norton added: The audition. Bob was done with his freshman year and we didn’t have any gigs lined up,” says Grant Hart. “He was considering going home to Malone for the summer. Grant shows up all frantic and tells us we need to load the gear and get to the Longhorn, we had an audition. We arrived during their lunch service, load in and start playing. The manager comes storming out of his office and stops us. What the hell do you guys want? He asks. Grant says, we want to play here. He replies, fine, you can play the opening set Friday night, just stop playing and get out of here.
The set features new liner notes from Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, who writes: “Hüsker Dü could play hardcore to death but they were not hardcore through and through – they were something else. And that’s what I fully related to and what I’m hearing in these live recordings unearthed from those days which made such magnanimous impressions it’s as if they are the batteries of our lives as we continue to tick off the years.”
The set also includes reproductions of original flyers and artwork, That set is here, July 13th, 1979. We passed the “audition” and the rest is history.
Tracks: Insects Rule The World / I’m Not Interested / Sex Dolls / Can’t See You Anymore / Sexual Economics / Do You Remember? / Nuclear Nightmare / All Tensed Up / Strange Week / Don’t Try To Call / Industrial Grocery Store / Do The Bee / Do You Remember? / Ode To Bode / Don’t Have A Life / All I’ve Got To Lose / Don’t Try It / Writer’s Cramp / Gilligan’s Island / What Went Wrong? / Uncle Ron / MTC / Drug Party / Chinese Rock / Termination / Call On Me / Gravity / Statues
Canadian alt-folkies Cowboy Junkies are back with a new studio album that’s due to be released in June, a 10-song collection called “Such Ferocious Beauty” which is the group’s fourth album since ending a six-year break in recording in 2018.
The band consisting of Margo Timmins, Michael Timmins, Peter Timmins and Alan Anton will release the new album June 2nd on Cooking Vinyl.
The first track to be released off the album “What I Lost” Of that video, Michael Timmins writes: “The new video was created by brother Pete and features our Dad as well as some super 8 footage of our Dad and Mom and family from the late 50’s and early 60’s. It’s an intense video for an intense song about an intense subject.”
This is the band’s first release of new material in five years following their heralded 2022 collection of covers. The first song, ‘What I Lost’, explores the struggles involved with dementia – influenced by band member Michael Timmins’ conversations with his father.
Musicians Margo Timmins (vocals) Michael Timmins (guitar) Peter Timmins (drums) Alan Anton (bass and keyboards) Janes McKie: (fiddle, and electric guitar )
Cowboy Junkies announce their upcoming album ‘Such Ferocious Beauty’ releasing on June 2nd, 2023.
The Connells have released their first new album in two decades in 2021 “Steadman’s Wake” and they’re now following that up with the first-ever live album in the band’s 37-year history, a 12-song collection called “Set the Stage” due out next month.
The new live set, to be released May 5th by Missing Piece Group, was recorded at a variety of shows between 2014 and 2022. This new live recording of the band’s early single “Hats Off,” recorded last year.
Of that recording, singer-guitarist/songwriter Mike Connell says: “‘Hats Off’ was one of the first songs we ever released. This was back in 1985, and it became a staple of our live shows in the early days of the band… The version on ‘Set the Stage’ is from a show we played in Columbia, South Carolina… it was one of the highlights from that show and I think Doug (vocals) should be given his props for leaning into it that night.”
The Connells formed in at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in 1984, and released their first album, “Darker Days”, in 1985, and continued making records through the 1980s and ’90s, up through 2001’s “Old School Dropouts”. Though the band never broke up, the line-up changed and they played more sporadically in the ensuing decades, not releasing new a new album until 2021.
The current lineup features original members David Connell, Mike Connell and Doug MacMillan, plus keyboardist Steve Potak, who joined in 1991, guitarist Mike Ayers, who came on board in 2001, and the most recent addition, drummer Rob Ladd, who joined the band in 2012.
As for why a live album now, Mike Connell says: “Over the years fans have asked why we haven’t released a live record. The best explanation I can give is that when we walked off the stage on any given night, I was ready to move on from what we had just done. Maybe more to the point, I was scared of listening to what we had just done. I tend to fixate on the mistakes — the flat notes and the clams. Recently though, I was encouraged to finally listen to some performances we had in the vault and I liked a lot of what I heard. With ‘Set the Stage’ I think we finally captured ‘the loose precision’ that is a Connells show and I am grateful that some steadfast friends of the band want to hear it.”
Recently, XTC’s Andy Partridge said he no longer writes new songs and is “waiting for my music mojo to return, in between researching UFO events.” I guess his music mojo returned? Patridge has a new band called the 3 Clubmen, and their debut single is out now.
Britain’s Lighterthieflabel has announced an exciting new project. The 3 Clubmen – a new project comprised of Andy Partridge, Jen Olive and Stu Rowe – will release their eponymous debut EP on June 30th. The first taste is ‘Aviatrix’, an avant-pop delight offering a strange, seductive blend of experimental pop, jazz and sci-fi cinema excellence.
I throw paint, Jen throws paint, Stu throws paint…and we walk away. If, when we return, something in there calls to us, we’ll move heaven and earth to get it out and let it breath. Using whatever it takes, be it contrary musical ideas, parts in clashing keys incongruous sounds, contradictory words/phrases. It’s all clay to us.
The 3 Clubmen is the culmination of a decade of antics from these long time collaborators, who started writing and recording this material years ago. While each artist has worked with the others in some form since 2008, The 3 Clubmen marks the first time that Stu, Andy and Jen have combined forces as a trio, an inevitable partnership once described as “a three-headed Frankenstein’s monster dancing at a neurodivergent singles club”.
“Like an ‘action painter’ throws colour at a canvas, we tend to throw musical and sound things, knowing that we’ll cut through this seemingly insane mess later, to hopefully find some beautiful garden, hiding there,” says Andy Partridge.
“Aviatrix” is out now on Lighterthief.
The 3 Clubmen brings together Partridge plus Jen Olive and Stu Rowe.
The Lemonheads’ 1993 album “Come On Feel The Lemonheads” will be reissued for its 30th anniversary in May.
The Expanded 30th anniversary re-issue of The Lemonheads’ classic 1993 album. The breakthrough record that took American alt rock global and catapulted Evan Dando into the hearts of a generation. With a wealth of unreleased demos, alternative versions and rarities – including covers of Victoria Williams, Buddy Holly and The Flying Burrito Brothers plus The Lemonhead’s take on the Cole Porter standard ‘Miss Otis Regrets’.
“Come On Feel” was home to some of his best, sharpest writing – fabulous sunny powerpop and beautiful ballads” The Guardian
In the 90’s Evan’s Lemonheads produced hit after a hit, a string of super cool singles: ‘Big Gay Heart’, ‘Into Your Arms’, ‘It’s About Time’, and ‘The Great Big NO’. Pure genius filling the radio waves and taking the stage… Some 30 years on; Evan is still knocking that song writing thing out of the park and ‘Come On Feel The Lemonheads’ sounds as fresh and perky as it ever did. Amid the hits on the original record are stencils and outlines for yet more magical music and now this deluxe edition adds a second disc of demos and acoustic versions, plus a host of one-offs from sessions and compilations that add further colour to the myth and how it was created.
There’s the in-demand combo lovingly covering Victoria Williams’ ‘Frying Pan’ from her ‘Sweet Relief’ album, which is joined by an eclectic set of flipsides and out-takes, like their version of original garage punk nugget ‘Little Black Egg’ by The Nightcrawlers, Evan’s homage to Gram Parsons on the winsome ‘Streets Of Baltimore’ and Buddy Holly’s melancholy ‘Learning The Game’. Evan knows a good song when he hears it, as ‘Come On Feel The Lemonheads’ certainly proved.
“’Come On Feel The Lemonheads’ is all it purports to be: a chance to dip into Evan’s jumbled-up, dope-smoking love-buggy of a life and celebrate it” NME
The album was the follow-up to 1992’s “It’s A Shame About Ray” and features the singles ‘Into Your Arms’, ‘It’s About Time’ and ‘Big Gay Heart’.
The reissue offers a selection of alternative/acoustic tracks and covers and curiosities on the bonus LP or CD. Both the 2CD and 2LP sets are available as deluxe ‘bookback’ (hardcover book) editions, as well as standard offerings.
Rough Trade in the UK have two special vinyl editions a 2LP black vinyl with a strawberry ‘Scratch N Sniff’ sleeve and a 2LP yellow and red vinyl edition.
“Come On Feel The Lemonheads” will be reissued on 15th May 2023, via Fire Records.
One of the most influential bands of the 80s British underground, the number of bands with a sonic debt to the Kember/Pierce partnership seems to grow every year. Like a lot of bands that have forged iconic status in the guitar world, even though they were much more than a noisy guitar band, they reinvented noise in music.
An exclusive release for Record Store Day 2014. This title may be available on sale one week after the event on Monday 28th April, dependant on availability.
Fire Records bring together Spacemen 3’s ultra rare first three singles as “Translucent Flashbacks” – each of the 3x 12″s are individually packaged and bundled into a wide spine outer sleeve including the singles ‘Walkin’ with Jesus’, ‘Transparent Radiation’ and ‘Take Me to the Other Side’ on 180gram vinyl of all three releases.
Spacemen 3 were a band from Rugby in Warwickshire who formed in 1982 and went on to become one of the most distinctive and influential bands from that era or any other. Led by Pete Kember (Sonic Boom) and Jason Pierce, Spacemen 3 have never been more important and Fire Records are running a series of reissues of some of the band’s earliest material including these special Record Store Day Releases.
