A freshly minted reissue of The Band’s debut album, released as celebration of that record’s 50th birthday, was an absolute guarantee even before it was announced a few months’ back. It’s one of the most venerated rock records of the Woodstock era, analyzed to the level of work by Bob Dylan, the artist that this Canadian-American group backed for his first electric tours. And hearing it even today, the love for “Music From Big Pink” feels entirely justified. The Band crystallized a sound that groups like The Byrds and the Grateful Dead had been wrestling with for years: a muscular production informed by blues, soul, folk and country (a.k.a. the roots of American rock) that stayed true to all of the above genres and felt sharply original.
This new collection blows up the sound of Big Pink to THX levels via a stereo remix by beloved engineer Bob Clearmountain. To drive the point home, they’ve split the original LP up over four sides of vinyl to be played at 45 RPM. Clearmountain’s touch is surprisingly tasteful at times, emphasizing the album’s copious bottom end driven by Rick Danko’s fluttering bass lines, Levon Helm’s kick drum and the swarming organ parts played by Garth Hudson, while adding a healthy gleam to the whole thing. But when his hand gets heavy, it injects a feeling of sterility to some of the most vibrant sounds to come out of the ‘60s. And not just the strange injection of some studio chatter between a few tracks. “The Weight,” inarguably the best known song from this disc, feels pulled apart like taffy, losing much of the spirited energy of the original mix. The same goes for the two Dylan tunes (“This Wheel’s On Fire” and “I Shall BeReleased”) that wrap up the album. Hudson’s clavinet interjections lose their quaint charm and become almost obnoxious and The Band sounds less like a band and more like a bunch of studio players seeking a paycheck instead of musical enlightenment.
The year 1968 is often regarded as the most turbulent time in our history as a nation. Pop culture of that year tended to reflect the rage felt by America’s youth over the developments of the day. This was well represented in the music found on albums like Electric Ladyland, Beggars Banquet, and through ground breaking musicals like Hair. But an album considered among many to be the best of the year, “Music From Big Pink”, was somehow able to indirectly capture that spirit by leveraging themes and musical concepts that are inherently “American.” This was done in a manner that was clever, thoughtful, approachably complex, and remarkably calm and measured.
Fifty years later the music found on “Big Pink” remains fresh and equally riveting. So it was only fitting that to celebrate this milestone, band member Robbie Robertson would lead a charge to use modern technologies to “revisit” the record and some of its better known outtakes. Working with legendary engineer Bob Clearmountain (Bruce Springsteen, Rolling Stones) he is about to introduce a remix that lifts the sonic quality of the record without sacrificing any of its integrity. The result is a musical experience that feels contemporary and clean with an expanded sense of dimension.
It’s been a busy year for Robbie Robertson. Just last month he auctioned off the 1965 Fender Stratocaster that he and Bob Dylan famously shared and that Robbie used on the “Big Pink”. Robbie listened in wonder as he described as only he can, how “Music From Big Pink”was put to tape and why it continues to influence scores of musicians.
When this came out, records were still coming out in mono and stereo. And so these very definitive decisions had to be made. There was something exciting about that. Coming back to it, Clearmountain wanted to be extremely loyal to these recordings. He wasn’t interested in getting cute and putting special effects on things. He just wanted to give it more dimension and open it up in a way where you could hear more things, more detail than you ever could before. He nailed that. It was exciting all over again for me to revisit it with him.
When we went in to record “Big Pink”, we wanted to work at A&R studios in New York. That was known as the best sounding studio around and John Simon, our producer, really wanted us to work there. It had been the old Columbia Studio where some many great things were done. Phil Ramone at that time had taken it over and turned it around. So we go in and the engineers tell us where to set up and we do what they say because we want this to sound as good as it possibly can. We go into the first song and all of a sudden I have to stop everything. I said, “I’m sorry this doesn’t work for us at all.” They were like, “What do you mean? What’s wrong?” I said, “We can’t play like this. We need to see one another.” There are baffles, and I’m in one corner and he’s over there and we’re operating through headphones when we usually communicate the eye signals, and gestures, and looks. It’s a big part of our musical communication.
The first song we recorded for “Big Pink” ended up being the first song on the record, “Tears of Rage.” When I think about it now, it was a very personal thing and it’s just coming back to me now that the record company was saying, “You really want to start your record with a long slow song?” And we said “I guess, yeah!” In the studio we started to run through it a little bit and were kinda getting use to the sound in the room and the next thing John Simon says is, “Wow, I’m really liking this.” So we ran it down, we recorded it a couple of times and then John said we should come in and listen to it to see if there were any adjustments we wanted to make. We went into the control room and that was the first time we heard the sound of The Band. That was our sound. It was us for the first time witnessing it. We had made lots of music with Bob Dylan and with The Hawks. But this was a whole different flavour.
To do a song like “Key to the Highway” and it not be a shuffle was almost illegal. We took it and turned it inside out. It was something that I was feeling at the time. I said to Levon (Helm), “How does this feel to you?” And I played the rhythm in the way we did it for him. He said, “Man, let’s give it a shot!” But we were quite aware of some blues enthusiasts who thought that doing in that way with that boldness was almost a sacrilege and I like that!
That record, “Music From Big Pink”, was like rebelling against the rebellion, and the rebellion was this loud psychedelia, everything on 11. This was about going the opposite direction and trying to get just as much emotion out of the music as possible.
“Florist” is the follow up to 2019’s critically acclaimed “Emily Alone”, and is the strongest album of the band’s decade- long career; an immersive work that conveys the magic of the earth and of family, and the whole of the band’s heart. For all of June of 2019, amid a hot and rainy summer, Emily Sprague (guitar, synth, vocals), Jonnie Baker (guitar, synth, sampling, bass, saxophone, vocals), Rick Spataro (bass, piano, synth, vocals) and Felix Walworth (percussion, synth, guitar, vocals) convened in a rented house in the Hudson Valley, to live and work together.
It was the first time the quartet recorded that way, and for that long. “In the past we’d meet up for a couple of days, or one day here and there,” Sprague recalls. “Living together for a month is a really big part of why the arrangements are the way they are, and also why the instrumentals are such a huge part of the record.” The result is 19 tracks that feel like the culmination of a decade-long journey, their fourth full- length album, but the first deserving of a self- titled designation. “We called it Florist because this is not just my songs with a backing band,” Sprague explains. “It’s a practice. It’s a collaboration. It’s our one life. These are my best friends and the music is the way that it is because of that.
19 tracks that culminate the decade-long journey of friendship and collaboration.
The roots of Naima Bock’s music are far reaching. Born in Glastonbury to a Brazilian father and a Greek mother, Naima spent her early childhood in Brazil before eventually returning to England and various homes in South-East London. This heritage combines with more recent pursuits in Naima’s music; from the Brazilian standards that the family would listen to driving to the beach, to the European folk traditions she tapped into on her own, and the pursuits that interest her today – studies in archaeology, work as a gardener, and walking the world’s great trails – Naima’s music draws from family, the earth and the handing down of music through generations.
Naima Bock’s debut is a real gem — the kind of album that sneaks up on you, one that for some reason I can’t stop returning to. “Giant Palm” makes me feel like I’m floating on a cloud. It is preternaturally calm; it’s subtle and enveloping and moves in unhurried, erosive waves. It’s not the type of music that one would expect from a former member of Goat Girl — the anxious, political, idiosyncratic punk group that Bock spent six years in — but perhaps it’s the kind of music that one needs after saying everything that needs to be said. Bock started working on music of her own as a way to escape the sort of always-analytical music that being in a punk band entails.
Bock recorded Giant Palm with close collaborator Joel Burton in the studio of Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey. (Carey produced both of Goat Girl’s albums while Bock was in the band.) It’s funny to imagine such chill music being made in a space that has turned out some of the most frenetic, energetic music of the UK’s post-punk wave.
But Giant Palm‘s recording process turned into something of a community. Because so many were floating around due to pandemic lockdowns, upwards of 30 musicians played on the album. It benefits from having so many people in and around it — it makes these solitary songs sound communal. And while the album feels shaggy and loose, “Giant Palm” has been laid down elegantly and precisely; its most striking moments are also its most composed — movements of swelling harmonies and horn trills and lifting atmosphere where the full surge of what Bock is doing with all of these slowly moving parts take hold.
Written over the space of years, each of Naima’s songs represents a snapshot of a specific feeling, of brief moments in Naima’s life that make up a larger whole. “I never change lyrics” she says, “even if I don’t relate to them anymore, I related to them once which means someone else could, somewhere”. Whether that’s in the playful humour of ‘Campervan’, the peaceful exhale of ‘Giant Palm’ or in the darker moments like in the stark, self-critical honesty of ‘Every Morning’, whatever the form it’s always laid bare. There’s also a feeling of clarity to the songs, which Naima largely credits to the fact that many of them were written while walking. She finds inspiration in the meditative and revealing nature of long walks with a fixed but far-off destination.
“There’s a stripping away that takes place”, she says, the slowing of thoughts by the rhythm of walking is often to thank for the sharp focus of her lyrics. Be that during a period of three years where she would return to Spanish pilgrimage network Camino de Santiago for weeks at a time, or simple hours spent in the English countryside.
With a lightning-fast ascent, Wet Leg forming in 2019 – Their very first single going viral in 2021 – their debut album shooting straight to the number one slot on the charts and now one of the “bands to keep watching” at Glastonbury in 2022.
Wet Leg are Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers. Teasdale had performed for many years on the Isle of Wight as a local musician and pianist, and prior to forming Wet Leg, was known as Rhain and was linked to the music scene in Bristol. In 2013 the promising solo artist Teasdale had performed as Rhain with her song “Humdrum Drivel”. In 2014 she was photographed by Cosmopolitan Magazine while attending the Isle of Wight music festival.
Teasdale and Chambers first met at Isle of Wight College. After ten years of friendship, they became a musical duo in 2019 under the name Wet Leg, signed with Domino Recording Company. They chose the name by playing a game picking different emoji combinations and getting to Wet Leg, which stuck.
Their debut single, “Chaise Longue”, was released on 15th June 2021, and gained media notice for earning millions of streams and video views. Their second single, “Wet Dream”, was released on 28th September 2021. Variety noted, “It’s rare that a new group releases two songs and they’re both great”. They appeared on Later… with Jools Holland on BBC2, In November 2021, they announced their debut self-titled album, released on 8th April 2022 via Domino. The same day, Wet Leg released the double-single “Too Late Now” / “Oh No”.
In an interview the band stated that their name came from a regional epithet from the Isle of Wight to describe non-islanders on the island. Those who had crossed the Solent to enter the isle were said to have a wet leg from getting off the boat.
In 2019 they toured the UK playing songs from their first album. It was announced that they would tour Australia and New Zealand as the support band for a tour by Harry Styles in 2023. Wet Leg appeared on Later… with Jools Holland and they returned for the first part of his next series in May 2022.
In an interview in June 2022, Wet Leg announced that they had already completed their second studio album, but it “wouldn’t be arriving anytime soon”. So just to make sure you aren’t imagining things, here they are as they were last weekend in Glastonbury – wowing the crowd.
It’s a body of work way too impressive to just dip into half-heartedly. All five albums and three EP’s provide essential listening. 1981’s “From The Lion’s Mouth” and the following year’s response to their record label, “All Fall Down“, a kind of Kid A of the early 80s, are their absolute best, but all of them are beautiful pieces of work, devoid of deserving attention, but totally essential. There’s a lot of music here. You should go and listen to it yourself, the band were massively under-rated but totally essential, The Sound are one of the most important UK rock bands of the 1980s with an almost perfect back catalogue waiting to tell you its story.
Their real debut was the album “Propaganda” released so late to honour Borland’s tragic death in 1999. It has seeds of classic punk, which they had later encapsulated in “Jeopardy” very juvenile, but at the same time incredibly moving and sincere release, a simple’s man “Joy Division” of sorts, which is a good thing, because unpretentiousness & fragile honesty is what made The Sound so relatable. Suffice to say, it’s indicative of all the post-punk aesthetics – fear of oneself amidst social insensitivity.
Though it doesn’t mean, that Borland hasn’t ever tried something epic and monumental, akin to Ian Curtis universal mindset. Bootleg “The Korova Demos” contained the yet not officially released song “Falling Boy”, showcasing Adrian’s endeavors at goth rock. He tried something similar with “Skeletons” with some of the most stylish song’s bridges and bass lines in all of the post-punk and surprisingly grandiose “The New Dark Age”, especially considering that the album “From The Lion’s Mouth” has fruits of Curtis approach to symbolism: similar to Joy Division’s “Closer” cover art uses ancient imagery, namely “Daniel in the Lions’ den” painting, to underline hope as a main theme of this release.
There’s also a documentary on Borland’s life currently in production.
Jeopardy
“Jeopardy” is a gloomy, skeletal post-punk album that’s frequently compared to Joy Division, but it’s really so much more than that and it’s too unique to live in Joy Division’s shadow. It’s kind of somewhere between a catchier Joy Division and rawer, punkier Cure, but even that undersells it. One listen to “I Can’tEscape Myself” is all it takes to hear how special The Sound really were. The song is in a constant state of nervous tension — the perfect musical backdrop to the inner demons that inspired the lyrics — and when Adrian finally erupts for the “I-aaaaayeee” on the titular line, it’s like the earth shakes beneath you. TheSound was truly post-punk in that Adrian brought over all that punk energy from The Outsiders, and it really came through when he let himself belt it. (And The Sound were still pretty much a punk band when they first formed, as heard on their three-song debut 1979 EP Physical World and their scrapped 1979 album Propaganda, which was released in 1999.)
As with The Outsiders’ “Close Up“, the best song on Jeopardy is the first song, but it’s full of other great moments, like the punk-ish “Heartland” and “Words Fail Me,” the super catchy “Heyday” (which was released as a single), the glistening title track, the brooding album closer “Desire,” and much more.
Originally recorded by Borland’s previous group The Outsiders and included on The Sound’s debut album “Jeopardy“, “Missiles” washis dramatic highlight was also the showpiece of their live set. The version included on their live album “In The Hot House” shows off what an incendiary live act The Sound were. Borland’s protest about missiles “Who the hell makes those missiles / when you know what they can do?” is accompanied by slashes of post punk guitar doom and a bullet sharp rhythm section. Live, they extended to the track to around the ten minute mark allowing Borland’s impassioned protests against the weapons of destruction to spiral thrillingly out of control.
The album got a perfect score from NME, Sounds, and Melody Maker upon its release, and it’s not hard to hear why it was praised so highly at the time. (It is hard to figure out how it was praised that highly yet feels so obscure today, though.) This was genuinely ground breaking music in 1980, and even today, it sounds refreshing. Especially with yet another post-punk revival happening at the moment, “Jeopardy” feels like an album that could come out right now and win plenty of people over.
From the Lions Mouth
After the well-received “Jeopardy”, The Sound’s label Korova (which was also home to Echo & the Bunnymen, who The Sound also opened for at the time) gave them a bigger budget for their sophomore album, 1981’s “From the Lions Mouth“, and keyboardist Belinda Marshall was replaced by former Cardiacs member Colvin “Max” Mayers. Max brought a fuller, new wavier style to The Sound, which paired with the clearer production resulted in an all-around more accessible album than “Jeopardy“.
The Sound released their second album, ‘From The Lion’s Mouth’, on Korova Records; critical wisdom suggests it should have shot them directly into the sweet spot between the likes of Joy Division & Echo & The Bunnymen as successful British post-punk legends; sadly, the quartet instead took their place alongside touring-mates The Comsat Angels in the category of “Cult favorites
I’m kind of partial to the bare-bones sound of “Jeopardy“, but “From the Lions Mouth” which was once again met with rave reviews is an overall stronger record. There’s no single song as show-stopping as “I Can’t Escape Myself” but it’s a more consistent album with potential hit after potential hit. “Jeopardy” was built to be a cult classic, but “From the Lions Mouth” really sounds like it could’ve made The Sound as big as the Bunnymen, The Cure or even U2.
On opener “Winning,” Adrian rivals Robert Smith at his most desperate, while the driving goth rock of “Skeletons” gave the New Order singles from that same year a run for their money. Those are just two of the many highlights — this album seriously does not let up.
This should’ve been the crossover hit. Urgent, slightly threatening and with the right amount of bombast, U2 – arguably listening pretty closely at the time – should have been sued for their blatant pilferage of it on their 1983 album War. Their track “Two Hearts Beat As One” in particular is the work of Borland in all but name, but it’s without the emotional lyrical poetry of this number – could Bono ever come up with something as hopelessly desolate as “I’ll take my life into my own hands / I’m the one that I will blame / I’m the one who understands” and make it as catchy as this?.
All Fall Down
For their third album, The Sound moved up to Korova’s parent label WEA, and as legend has it, the label gave them an even bigger budget and was really wanting them to make something even more accessible than “From the Lions Mouth” (in the documentary, Duran Duran is frequently brought up as an example of what the label wanted The Sound to sound like). Adrian wasn’t having it, and he took that budget and came out with 1982’s “All Fall Down“, which was apparently a blatant attempt to make something anti-commercial. The label wasn’t happy and they dropped the band, and apparently the album didn’t get such great reviews either, but it really isn’t the total misstep that it’s often made out to be.
It’s darker than From the Lions Mouth and certainly nothing like Duran Duran, but it’s still structured and accessible and just a great gothy post-punk record. Its brooding, opening title track is the weirdest it gets, and if you want to hear The Sound at their gothiest, that’s a great place to start. The rest of the record is classic TheSound, and pretty on par with either of their first two LPs.
Shock Of Daylight
Whilst The Sound may never have matched the commercial success of their peers, the group are frequently hailed as one of the greatest bands of the 1980s and have a cult following to this day.
After the uncommercial sound of their “All Fall Down” album, 1984’s “Shock Of Daylight” was seen by many as a triumphant comeback for the band and a return to form. It includes some of the Sound’s best recordings including the singles “Counting The Days” and “Golden Soldiers“.
Perhaps their best track, and certainly their funkiest. Released on the EP Shock of Daylight, it contains some of Borland’s bleakest lyrics, cleverly masked behind a feiry punk-pop tune, the kind absent mindly hummed by the masses without knowing the kind of artistic despair that gave birth to it (“Looks like an open road / what’s up ahead / with opened arms, I’m frightened too / looks like a new way of life, takes me away from you”). The surging synths and transcendent guitar solo that follows evokes images of a lost soul trying desperately to find a glimmer of light within the oppressive darkness of reality, but ultimately failing.
Probably the most anxious thing they recorded with Borland at his most tormented: “I’ve arrived at the point somewhere in between / the person that I wanted to be and the person I’ve been”. It’s backed with one of the best performances of the band as a whole. The furious pianos and chiming guitars which predate the shoegaze sound by at least five years, are underpinned by some of the greatest rock drumming of all time (Listen to the clanking percussion of Radiohead’s “Reckoner”, then head to this track – there’s severe lineage).
Again, “All Fall Down” is not a misstep, but there was an undeniable feeling that The Sound had something to “come back” from, given WEA dropping them and the lukewarm reviews, and they did just that with 1984’s “Shock of Daylight” EP. It was the tightest, most confident, and most energized that The Sound had ever sounded. It had the punk power of “Jeopardy“, the bigger and more accessible sound of “From the Lions Mouth“, and some of the most immediate songs in the band’s catalogue (“Golden Soldiers,” “Counting the Days”). It’s just a brief six songs, but it’s among the band’s finest work and is as essential as any of their full-lengths. It also set the stage for what would become The Sound’s only real-time live album, 1985’s essential “In the Hothouse“.
The Sound were a fantastic live band from the start; while some gloomy post-punk bands were known for giving the cold shoulder to the audience on stage, The Sound rocked the fuck out. “Regardless of what was happening [in his personal life], he went on stage and became a different person,” said a member of Adrian’s solo band the Citizens in Walking in the Opposite Direction. He battled so many demons and his lyrics could be highly introverted, but on stage he was a magnetic performer who always played to the people in the cheap seats. “In the Hothouse” and videos from the band’s mid ’80s era capture this perfectly.
The Sound – Live in Madrid 1984
1985 also brought a new full-length studio album, “Heads and Hearts“, and unfortunately, this was around the time Adrian’s mental health started to take a big hit. One more album came after that (1987’s “Thunder Up“), and The Sound ended up calling it quits the following year. The last two albums are good, as almost everything Adrian touched was, but you get the sense that the band kind of knew they were falling apart, and the untamed urgency of the earlier records isn’t quite there.
In The Hothouse
Whilst The Sound may never have matched the commercial success of their peers, the group are frequently hailed as one of the greatest bands of the 1980s and have a cult following to this day.
Recorded at the Marquee Club across two August nights in 1985,“In The Hothouse” is the only live album released whilst the band were still active. The set draws on highlights from the group’s back catalogue as well as material from“Heads And Hearts” which had been released a few months earlier.
Pressed on two 140 gram clear vinyl and housed in a deluxe replica gatefold sleeve and printed inner sleeves.
Counting The Days
Formed in south London in 1979, the Sound fronted by singer-songwriter AdrianBorland. Whilst the Sound may never have matched the commercial success of their peers, the group are frequently hailed as one of the greatest bands of the 1980s and have a cult following to this day. Issued in 1986, ‘Counting The Days’ was the sole compilation released during the band’s years together and gathers together tracks from their acclaimed releases“Shock Of Daylight”, “Heads And Hearts” and “In The Hothouse“. The complete collection is now issued on vinyl for the very first time, pressed on two 180g clear vinyl.
Thunder Up
The final testament of the tragically underrated (at least in their own time) The Sound, whose best albums (the first three) would make any admirer of moody-broody Mancunian pop blush with shame for missing out on this band’s dark treasures during their short existence. Regarded as their masterpiece by several of the band members, “Thunder Up” is the rawest account of Borland’s inner turmoil in terms of lyrical content while also being the band’s most conventional sounding. It is hard to ignore the gauzy, reverb-drenched late 80s overproduction. The Sound really benefited from a more minimalist approach when capturing their unique sense of ennui, a feeling of unrest that never fully boils into rage but simmers at a pitch of melancholic contempt. The most obvious detail that distracts the ears, particularly in terms of production, is the use of pre-set synth sounds.
“Thunder Up” was the fifth and final studio album by the post-punk band, released in 1987 on Belgian record label Play It Again Sam.
Two singles were released from the album: “Hand of Love” and “Iron Years”. The album and its subsequent tour precipitated the band’s breakup in early 1988. Like the Sound’s previous records, the album was not commercially successful, but the band largely considered it to be their best work.
“Thunder Up” was a favourite among Sound band members. Drummer Michael Dudley named it as one of his favourite Sound albums (along with “Propaganda“), while Graham Bailey called it the band’s “crowning glory”. In a 1988 interview, frontman Adrian Borland said, “Ultimately I find “Thunder Up” the very best album, because it sounds like the band ‘live’ in the studio and, in a way, it actually was”
Back in the 80s, tiny indie rock acts having one off Top 20 hits were a regular occurrence. The likes of The Railway Children, Lotus Eaters, Brilliant and Dream Academy all managed to have genuine crossover hits, only to disappear as quickly as they appeared. These were bands who were quietly going about their business, but once success struck, they were all derailed by record label demand. “Kinetic” of course wasn’t a hit, but if it was released as a single, then maybe the subsequent future of the band after the failure of the parent album of this track may have panned out differently. It’s shiny, bright and almost optimistic.
Whereas in earlier Sound albums, they always managed to develop evocatively chilly synth sounds to match the specific mood of each song (the best example being the palette used in their existential masterpiece “Silent Air” from The Lion’s Mouth), most of the keyboard tones used here sound like they were shaped in a Casio factory. Of course, it should be noted that this album is a contemporary of late 80’s Cure, a discography replete with ridiculous but effective synthetic horn sections (thinking of “Why Can’t I Be You” in particular). Robert Smith’s manic whimsy somehow makes up for those embarrassing synth pre-sets. But if there is one topic that The Sound is not known for exploring, it is manic whimsy. Borland does not take on different characters or experiment with irony; he can only express his own misery from his own point of view, which is why this band is so great, but it also means that their sound can come of as brittle when drenched with glossy production.
On the 26th of April 1999, Adrian Borland, a man who had spent a significant part of his adult life dealing with manic depression, took the decision to end his own life.
The signs had been there for the best part of two decades, be they behavioural or lyrical. The lyrics AdrianBorland composed for his bands The Outsiders, Second Layer, or with his greatest artistic achievement, the South London 80’s post-punk pop outfit The Sound, were a glimpse into a troubled mind set to music. One of the first lines to “I Can’t Escape Myself”, the opening track on their debut LP “Jeopardy“, lays it out there for all to see: “Left all alone, I’m with the one I most fear / I’m sick and tired of reasoning / Just want to break out, shake off this skin”.
ADRIAN BORLAND & THE CITIZENS
Around the same time as The Sound’s demise, Adrian played guitar (under the pseudonym Joachim Piment) for the experimental rock band Honolulu Mountain Daffodils, he did some production work (including on Felt’s 1989 album Me and a Monkey on the Moon), and then he began his solo career as Adrian Borland & the Citizens with 1989’s “Alexandria“. It marked a fairly major departure from The Sound and went into brighter jangle pop and alternative rock territory, both of which suited Adrian’s song writing style just fine. As ever, when he opened his mouth to sing, you felt it. “Alexandria” is a little more light hearted on the surface than The Sound, but Adrian’s distinct style makes it more than that. It’s joyful on the surface, but haunted at its core. It’s an album that couldn’t have come from anyone else.
Adrian’s solo career continued into the ’90s, first with the even more joyous (and polished) 1992 album “Brittle Heaven“, and then with the more ethereal, dream pop-leaning “Beautiful Ammunition” (1994), the folkier “Cinematic” (1995), and the little-bit-of-everything “5:00 AM” (1997).
It’s all good and all very worth hearing, but perhaps the most stunning album he made in the ’90s was the one that was cut short when he took his own life, “Harmony and Destruction“. He was working on it in 1999 and it found him diving a little deeper into psychedelic rock than he ever really had before, and he had to have known it’d be the last thing he ever did. Apparently he felt like his medication was hindering his performance in the studio and he stopped taking it, despite his bandmates and producer telling him otherwise, and ultimately Adrian decided it was time for him to leave us, before the album was done.
Thankfully, he had done vocals for all 14 songs on the album and his bandmates and producer were able to finish it, and it came out posthumously as “Harmony and Destruction (The Unfinished Journey)” in 2002. From the jammy psychedelia of “Forever From Here” to the melancholic folk of “Startime,” it covers so much musical ground, and it features some of the most powerful material in Adrian’s rich catalogue. The song that’ll really stop you in your tracks, though, is the hidden track, “Death Of A Star.” “How do you feel when a star dies?” Adrian asks in the lyrics, and maybe he wasn’t talking about himself, but it’s hard to hear it any other way.
You can really spend a lifetime digging into Adrian’s work (I can’t even claim to have heard every single thing he’s released, and more stuff keeps coming out — 2019 saw another posthumous release, Lovefield), and once you get sucked into his world, every new thing you hear by him starts to hit immediately. Maybe those mid ’90s solo albums aren’t as essential for casual fans as The Sound’s classic early ’80s material, but once you get deep into his work, you just can’t stop exploring, and his catalogue is almost always rewarding. It’s that voice. As soon as you hear it, even when it’s a song you had never heard before, it feels comfortingly familiar. Adrian was the kind of talent you only get a few times in each generation.
Despite releasing six albums in their lifetime, The Sound remain one of the great unheard bands of the 80s. This goes with the underground territory, of course, but what exactly is the sound of The Sound? There was much in common with Korova label-mates, Echo and the Bunnymen, with Adrian Borland’s vocals falling somewhere between Ian McCulloch and The Comsat Angels’ Steve Fellows. And if you need further comparisons, it’s broadly similar to other early 80s alternative acts like the Teardrop Explodes and Mancunian underground doomsters, The Chameleons.
The Walking in the Opposite Direction documentary features interviews with Adrian’s family members, bandmates, producers, and significant others, and it really does a great job of showing what a fascinating and troubled life Adrian lived. It’s full of fantastic live footage and all kinds of intriguing insight into Adrian’s music and personal life. Interviewees describe some of Adrian’s scariest episodes, but the documentary is full of fond memories as well. It’s clear that the people who were closest to him thought so highly of Adrian as an artist, and that music was truly so important to him. “His music was more important to him than his health,” his father said.
Young Guv has shared the third single, “Cry 2 Sleep,” from GUV IV. The new album is due out June 24th from Run For Cover and Hand Drawn Dracula Records. The track follows “Change Your Mind” and “Nowhere At All” (which drew praise from the likes of Stereogum, Paste Magazine, Uproxx, BrookylnVegan, New Commute, and more) and sees Ben Cook combining hazy pedal steel with bubbling keyboards and his gentle harmonies to make something that spans the many different moods of Guv.
Young Guv has also announced a run of UK shows in June. Guv will be touring around his performance at Outbreak Festival, including shows with One Step Closer, Chastity, and more.
Young Guv (aka songwriter Ben Cook) has released his new album “GUV IV“. the album comes hot on the heels of Young Guv‘s previous full-length, “GUV III”, which just came out in March. The ever-prolific musician has amassed an impressive and wide-reaching catalogue over the years and “GUV III” and “GUV IV” are the perfect place for new listeners to jump aboard.
Where “GUV III” captured Cook’s most instantly accessible guitar pop songwriting, “GUV IV” represents the most sonically adventurous side of Young Guv. The record (which has drawn early attention from the likes of Stereogum, NPR, BrooklynVegan, Uproxx, Paste Magazine, and many more) effortlessly moves between hazy Madchester-inspired rave ups, twangy California jangle, and even homemade sophisti-pop, with Cook’s knack for melody always leading the way.
If you missed “GUV III”, you can now order “GUV III” & “IV” 2xLP. The official street date is July 15th, “Cry 2 Sleep” by Young Guv, from the album “GUV IV” out June 24th, 2022 via Run For Cover Records and Hand Drawn Dracula
June 24 Glasgow, UK @ The Rum Shack w/ Chastity June 25 Manchester, UK @ Outbreak Festival June 26 London, UK @ Windmill Brixton June 27 Leeds, UK @ The Lending Room w/ Chastity June 29 Birmingham, UK @ The Victoria June 30 Brighton, UK @ The Hope & Ruin w/ One Step Closer
Pink Floyd’s long-awaited reissue of their 1977 studio album “Animals” will be issued in September (and October) of this year. This will be the first time the album will have been available on 5.1 Surround Sound. The band’s tenth studio album, Animals was recorded by band members David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters and Richard Wright at Britannia Row Studios in London throughout 1976 and early 1977, and was produced by the band themselves. The record peaked at number two in the UK and number three in the US, and is considered as one of the band’s best works.
The 32-page booklet features rarely seen behind the scenes photographs of the album sleeve shoot along with live images and memorabilia. The album’s iconic artwork has been reimagined for the new release, which you can see in full below.
“With the original 1977 album cover being such an iconic piece of stand-alone art, I had the chance to update it, which was a rather daunting task,” says Storm Thorgerson’s Hipgnosis partner Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell who has has re-designed the album cover for the modern era. “Hipgnosis took the opportunity to re photograph the image to reflect a changing world, and by using modern digital colouring techniques I kept Pink Floyd’s rather bleak message of moral decay using the Orwellian themes of animals, the pig ‘Algie’, faithful to the message of the album.”
The Deluxe Gatefold version includes LP, CD, audio Blu-ray, audio DVD and a 32-page book. The Blu-ray and DVD audio include the 2018 remix in Stereo, 5.1 Surround (both by James Guthrie) and the original 1977 Stereo mix. The 32-page booklet features rarely seen behind the scenes photographs of the album sleeve shoot along with live images and memorabilia. The album artwork has been reimagined for this release. “Animals” is a concept album, focusing on the social-political conditions of mid-1970s Britain, and was a change from the style of the band’s earlier work.
The album was developed from a collection of unrelated songs into a concept which describes the apparent social and moral decay of society, likening the human condition to that of animals. Taking inspiration from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the album depicts the different classes of people as animals with pigs being at the top of the social chain, dropping down to the sheep as the mindless herd following what they are told, with dogs as the business bosses getting fat on the money and power they hold over the other. Although it’s been a long time since 1977, the narrative of the album still resonates today as our social and economical situation mirrors that of the time.
The album’s iconic cover shows an inflatable pig (now known as Algie) floating between two chimneys of the Battersea Power Station, conceived by Roger Waters, and designed by long-time collaborator Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis Studios. For this new release, the artwork has been re-designed for the modern era by Storm’s Hipgnosis partner Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell. Taking new shots of the building as it appeared during the recent conversion work, Po experimented with new angles and produce some striking new takes on the classic original. Po elaborates: “With the original 1977 album cover being such an iconic piece of stand-alone art, I had the chance to update it, which was a rather daunting task, but Hipgnosis took the opportunity to re photograph the image to reflect a changing world, and by using modern digital colouring techniques I kept Pink Floyd’s rather bleak message of moral decay using the Orwellian themes of animals, the pig ‘Algie’, faithful to the message of the album.”
“Animals 2018″ mix will be reissued in all formats on 16th September, except for the deluxe gatefold edition which is 7th October 2022.
Released in the days of punk rock, and generally hated and ignored by the new generation. But dig a bit deeper and you’ll find ‘Animals’ to be much more ‘punk’ than most punk albums. ‘Animals’ by Pink Floyd is a piece of sarcastic, ironic, sour and exceptionally accurate social criticism. Lyrically, the album has more in common with punk than prog. But ironically, musically, “Animals” is also the closest Pink Floyd ever got to P{rog.
This 2018 remix largely corrects what was found to be wrong with the original mix – the slightly mushy and “flat” sound. The 2018 remix sounds so much better.
The details emerge more clearly, and each instrument has been given more room to ‘breath’. But this one is ace. It’s like having something clogged up in your ears for 45 years, and suddenly your ears pop and you can hear clearly again.
“To me, The Cure is the bluesiest song we have,” says vocalist/guitarist Josh Kennedy, of the Phoenix trio’s moody latest single; a lush yet primal marriage of emotion and Zeppelin-infused blues rock heat. “It came together very naturally and has all the sex appeal in it. It’s a love song about something being so good, but so bad for you at the same time. She’s Bella Donna.”
Their new album, Into The Night, is out on June 3rd.
These Los Angeles freakniks made their name with blood-spattered live shows, propelled by wire-thin, straitjacketed singer Arrow De Wilde – described as what would’ve happened if Ozzy Osbourne and Patti Smith had a kid in ‘75. It was mad. Unpolished. Just what you want from a bunch of rock kids starting out and declaring themselves to the world. Now a little older and signed to a major label, they’ve swapped the shlock for a driving combustion of Go Gos, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and 70s punk-meets-90s indie tones.
Johnny Knoxville and crew just released an expanded version of the new Jackass film, titled Jackass 4.5, and the soundtrack features this new, appropriately titled cover of Roger Alan Wade’s “If You’re Gonna Be Dumb, You Gotta Be Tough” by Starcrawler.
Finally a new song! Excellent as always. Was great so see a real rocking band with great songs musicianship and a great stage presence. All we need now is a third album!.
Turn up your stereo, warn the neighbours, “All Cranked Up” is here! A blistering original Rock’n’Roll song that demands you turn it up to 11, and blast it all night long. This is the first single and video to be taken from His Lordship’s debut E.P of the same name. The garage-fresh brainchild of guitarist James Walbourne (The Pretenders, The Pogues, The Rails) and Kristoffer Sonne (Chrissie Hynde, Willie Nelson), His Lordship play with the urgency of men being chased with flaming torches and gallons of petrol. A ram-jam barrage of 50s rock’n’roll mania, shot through with punk venom, “All Cranked Up” (the song and the EP from which it’s taken) is one of the most energising things you’ll hear all year – if you like your energy with a side of debauched, unclean living. Catch them on tour up and down the UK all this month.
The Fat Angel Sings 