“Stranger Things’ was a celebrated collaboration between Marc Almond and the much-missed mercurial talent of Icelandic producer and arranger Jóhann Jóhannsson (Lhooq, Dip, Hafler Trio…) which gave the album a consciously cinematic musical coherence with its signature melodramatic and soaring string arrangements to the fore.
Deftly combining elements of Gothic tinged Synth Pop and orchestral grandeur, the album provoked much eulogising on its original release; Ian Shirley writing in Record Buyer in 2001 that, “This is a brilliant album. Lush, orchestral and with a delightful contemporary rhythmic sheen, it sounds like the soundtrack to an imaginary James Bond film. Almond is in torch mode playing Shirley Bassey. This is no put down… he sings with an emotional depth that is very moving.”
Online music site Allmusic described the album as “dreamy and swooning”, adding that Marc, “sounds in absolutely excellent voice.”
Marc and Johannsson were kindred spirits whose shared influences were a mash-up of Philip Glass, ‘70s music, John Barry, Martin Denny, striptease soundtracks, burlesque and Techno – all of which is richly manifested in the unique sensibility and beauty of the resultant album.
Also available as a three disc, newly expanded CD edition.
Pavement have announced another reissue, with their debut album “Slanted & Enchanted” set for a new 30th Anniversary edition. The new release is out August 12th via Matador Records and includes a cassette titled “Courting Shutdown Offers“. The tape is a replica of what the band first used to share proto–”Slanted & Enchanted” material with labels. Today, we celebrate 30 years of Pavement’s debut full-length, ‘Slanted & Enchanted,’ which was first released on this day in 1992. It remains a truly monumental album – one that defined/ruined a generation and a genre, depending on who you ask..
Also manufactred a lovingly detailed replica of the cassette Pavement used to shop ‘Slanted & Enchanted’ to prospective record labels, titled ‘Courting Shutdown Offers.’ This is an early version of the finished album with a different running order and a handful of alternate track titles. Pop it in a tape deck and experience ‘S&E’ as it was first heard by the era’s taste-making industry types.
The band most recently augmented its final album with “Terror Twilight: Farewell Horizontal”, which arrived alongside an update of the 1999 “Spit on a Stranger” EP earlier this month. Pavement are embarking on a set of long-awaited reunion tour dates across North America and Europe, beginning with a stop at Primavera Sound in Barcelona early June.
The update of the 1992 debut comes with a tape of demos that the band used to shop the LP to labels
Produced by Oneohtrix Point Never’s Daniel Lopatin, this is a true evolution of Soccer Mommy’s sound, without losing the adhesive melodic hooks that enamoured us to her from the start.
“Sometimes, Forever” refers to the idea that the good and bad are both temporary and always returning. feelings of sorrow and emptiness will pass but they will always come back around, as will feelings of joy. this album explores many ups and downs. It moves from the high of love to hopelessness and disconnect. a frustrated loss of control over life and a disconnect from the self reoccur throughout the record, only to circle back to a willingness to let go and be free, Whether through love (Shotgun, With U) or blissful ignorance (Don’t Ask Me). it’s a coexistence of light and dark, not only lyrically but tonally. Dan once called it the angels and demons record lol.
Soccer Mommy has shared another Daniel Lopatin–produced single from her forthcoming album “Sometimes Forever”. The new track is titled “Unholy Affliction.” Check it out below.
Sophie Allison’s follow-up to 2020’s Color Theory arrives on June 24th. She announced the album in March, sharing “Shotgun” from the album with the news. Last year, she shared a song titled “Kissing in the Rain,” her contribution to the soundtrack for the comic book Dark Nights: Death Metal. She also released another track in July, “Rom Com 2004,” which didn’t make the cut for “Sometimes Forever”.
Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, and Tom Skinner have revealed details of their first album as the Smile. It’s called “A Light for Attracting Attention” and it’s due out May 13th via XL Recordings. Today, they’ve shared the video for “Free in the Knowledge,” which Yorke premiered solo during an October performance in London before airings by the trio in January.
And finally! A release date for our new album “A Light For Attracting Attention“, a new song, the artwork that Thom and Stanley have been painting all winter – and a sense that we will get to share, at last, our new music in full. I feel grateful that we managed, with Nigel’s help, to record these songs in a way they deserve. And the singles released so far have been liked – as far as I can tell – which makes me feel dangerously confident in the rest of the record.
So yes, we’re properly proud and excited for everyone to have the whole thing – but, it’s been a drawn-out process so far, with so many single songs released. I can only apologise for our tentativeness.
The Radiohead duo and jazz drummer unveiled the Smile project last spring when they announced a surprise appearance at the livestream-only Glastonbury festival. (Though they made the record in conjunction with producer Nigel Godrich, he is not a member of the live band.) The Smile took their name from a Ted Hughes poem, with Greenwood telling NME, “The Smile came about from just wanting to work on music with Thom in lockdown. We didn’t have much time, but we just wanted to finish some songs together. It’s been very stop-start, but it’s felt a happy way to make music.”
In January, after teasing material in a rehearsal broadcast to Instagram Live, the Smile released their first single, “You Will Never Work in Television Again.” They followed it with “The Smoke,” “Skrting on theSurface,” and “Pana-vision.” The band has a spring and summer tour of Europe set to begin in Croatia in mid-May.
Greenwood has continued to develop his film scores repertoire, writing music for Licorice Pizza, Spencer, and The Power of the Dog. In February, the latter earned Greenwood an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score. Drummer Tom Skinner joined Greenwood on the Spencer soundtrack and regrouped with Sons of Kemet last year for “Black to the Future”, the follow-up to 2018’s “Your Queen Is a Reptile”.
In addition to the Smile, Yorke, Greenwood, and Skinner have all had numerous other active pursuits in recent years. Radiohead reissued the albums “Kid A” and “Amnesiac” with previously unreleased material and a virtual counterpart. Yorke also joined Four Tet and Burial for “Her Revolution” and “His Rope” for a rare collaboration at the end of 2020. And, last summer, he officially released new versions of the late MF Doom’s “Gazzillion Ear” and Radiohead’s “Creep.”
Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, and Tom Skinner’s new album “A Light for Attracting Attention” is out May 13th
It has, astonishingly, been 334 issues since LiamGallagher first loped into the pages of MOJO. Jim Irvin, still on our team, spots him fronting Oasis at London’s Marquee club in the summer of 1994, “Impassively cocksure, quietly convinced of [his] roughly distilled essence of Everything Rock Delights In.” “Our kid’s not got the faintest idea what’s going on,” Noel Gallagher tells Jim later. “He’ll be one of the greats because he doesn’t know.”
Twenty-eight years later, Liam Gallagher is nudging 50, probably in need of double hip surgery, still to a preternatural degree untroubled by self-analysis, and back on the cover of the brand new MOJO 343, on sale now.
It’s disingenuous to suggest that Everything Rock Delights In is purely instinctual; some of the great musical thinkers assembled in this issue of MOJO might like a word with you about that. There’s Sting, explaining how “ The Police were outsiders from the start”. Or post-punk’s neglected pioneers, Magazine, and their self-appointed “benign dictator” Howard Devoto. Cocteau Twin Elizabeth Fraser, launching her new band Sun’s Signature with an exclusive MOJO chat, could hardly be accused of rushing things.
Elsewhere, we’re extremely proud to have teamed up with the Grateful Dead this month to produce an extremely collectable CD of exceptional Dead tracks, complementing our big piece celebrating the 50thanniversary of the band’s storied “Europe ’72” jaunt. Plus we preview the Sex Pistols on TV, and Nick Cave on film, check in with Sharon Van Etten, Scritti Politti and the last Four Top, Duke Fakir . Hear of Ava Cherry’s time in and out of the Court Of Bowie . And pull together exceptional long reads on Mighty Baby and Labelle. “We didn’t know what ‘Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir’ meant,” Patti Labelle tells us.
Meanwhile, there are extraordinary times spent with Liam Gallagher, as he readies himself for a return to peak Oasis’ Knebworth stamping ground. At one point in Ted Kessler’s wise and hilarious interview this month, Gallagher briefly contemplates how, in June, he will play to 160,000 people over two nights back at Knebworth. “Blows my mind,” he admits. “Not that I’ve thought about it yet… Well, I have, maybe, a little, on the sly. Don’t tell anyone.”
Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack have been playing music together and apart in Baltimore for most of their lives. On stage, they perform with raw energy and sophistication, creating a surprising amount of noise for two people. Their music can be classified as 21st-century folk music, imbued with dense shoegaze guitars, nearly melodic rhythms, and impeccable splashes of electronic colour.
Originally self-released in 2007 under the moniker Monarch, Wye Oak’s debut If Children was given a proper introduction to the world the following spring on Merge Records. Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack take their minimalist setup to maximalist ends, pairing gentle campfire folk with bombastic hazy shoegaze, sometimes within the same song.
Their assured mission statement makes its vinyl debut, on red and white splatter, no less, exclusively for RSD 2022.
“Holy Scum”. Say it out loud. It’s a name that can’t help but be spat out viciously; a snarling exclamative that fits the bludgeoning sludge and feedback drenched improv rock that its progenitors unleash on their debut for Rocket Recordings, “Strange Desires”.
Initially a Manchester-based collaboration between guitarist Peter J Taylor (formerly of Action Beat) Gnod co-founder Chris Haslam on bass and his bandmate Jon Perry on drums, the thick gauze of Holy Scum’s jams have been pulled apart in production by one of half of legendary hip-hop duo Dälek, Mike Mare (aka Mike Manteca). He also provides the growling, guttural vocals.
“When Mike got involved it became another thing entirely to what we had originally perceived” notes Haslam “He added a whole new dimension to what we had been working on.”“He kept asking if it was okay to fuck what we sent him up and we kept asking him to fuck it up even more” adds Taylor. “I kept referencing My Bloody Valentine in terms of creating a wall of noise, but we wanted it to be heavy as fuck.” The resulting dystopian tumult of sound thus also finds itself somewhere above and beyond the sonic scorched earth inhabited by early Swans, Godflesh and Shit And Shine.“
All of the lyrics revolve around the collapse of society, feeling numb watching it happen, what it’s like on the other side communicating with the dead and looking to other worlds for relief” reckons Mare” Indeed, “Strange Desires”is a record for the moment, and beyond. A howl amidst a world fallen off its axis. Holy Scum are unflinching in their confrontation, meeting fire with fire on this most stunning debut.
Nonesuch Releases Special Editions of Wilco’s Iconic “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” on September 16th in Celebration of Album’s 20th Anniversary, Wilco’s fourth studio set saw the departure of guitarist Jay Bennett and drummer Ken Coomer – and famously prompted a break with the group’s record label – yet somehow triumph emerged from adversity. Picked up by Nonesuch, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” would become the Chicago-based alternative rock band’s most successful album. From opener “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” onward, the collection’s ambition is undeniable, with Sonic Youth stalwart Jim O’Rourke’s multi-layered mix applied to some of Wilco founder Jeff Tweedy’s most varied and distinctive songs. With its No1 ranking in the year’s on best-of-the-decade lists in Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and Paste, critical acclaim for the gold-certified “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” So please give the set another spin to wish Jeff Tweedy a happy birthday.
Named in honour of the three-word codes used by short-wave radio operators, Wilco’s fourth album sounds like a late-night broadcast of some weirdly wonderful pop station punctuated by static and the sonic bleed of competing signals. Songs that begin with simple, elegiac grace—“Ashes of American Flags” and “Poor Places”—end in a cathartic squall of distortion. The results can be initially jarring, but it’s these tracks more than the sturdy jangle pop of “Kamera” or “Heavy Metal Drummer” that demand, and reward, repeated listens. Mixed by studio experimentalist Jim O’Rourke and produced by the band, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” harkens back to a time when the words “pop” and “sonic adventurism” weren’t mutually exclusive.
Great records don’t necessarily always have interesting stories behind them. There’s probably a compelling argument to say that Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” doesn’t need one – that regardless of context, it’s simply just an outstanding piece of work. In this instance, however, it’s difficult to separate the album from all of the noise surrounding it. These eleven songs on the original album represent so much more than just the sum of their parts. They stand for the existence (and complete vindication) of integrity and artistic freedom, in a world so often dominated by corporate structures and commercial pressures. Because if something can simultaneously feel like both an instant classic and a slow-burner, then surely this is it.
The backstory is something I’m sure a lot of readers will be aware of, so here goes a brief summary; having recorded the album, and with frontman Jeff Tweedy correctly believing it to be their best work to date, the band submit to their label Reprise records (a subsidiary of Warner) who following an internal shakeup refuse to release it on the grounds that it has no commercial potential. The band negotiate a costly split from Reprise, retaining the rights to the record which they then streamed on their website for free, a ground breaking move (and pretty unheard of at the time). Bizarrely, the band end up signing with Nonesuch records, another subsidiary of the same major label – a move that many critics believe exemplifies just how messed up the music industry is in modern times. The album goes on to amass a huge amount of critical acclaim, and just so happened to shift hundreds of thousands of copies, becoming a gold-selling LP in the process.
Nonesuch release seven special editions of Wilco’s landmark 2002 album “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”. The now-classic record has been remastered and will be available as part of each set. “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” was the first Wilco release on Nonesuch Records following the band’s infamous split with Reprise (both labels are part of Warner Music Group). It was also the first release featuring the line-up of drummer Glenn Kotche and multi-instrumentalist Leroy Bach joining founding members Jeff Tweedy and John Stirratt. The 2002 Sam Jones film “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” documented the fraught recording and mixing process, personnel changes, and label issues.
Given the legend that surrounds it, the remarkable part is probably that in the fifteen years since its release, the most enduring thing is the music itself. For me, there’s pretty much the whole spectrum of human emotion explored within a microcosm; at times, Tweedy’s abstractly poetic lyrics serve to cryptically mask what is actually quite a personal record while at other points, relationships and communicative failures lie at its heart. It’s the sending of signals in the hope that someone, somewhere will receive – audibly characterised in the broken static and shortwave radio samples that regularly weave in and out. There’s the playful denouncement of love in the opener ‘I Am Trying To Break Your Heart’, but also the hopeful celebration of it by the time the album draws to a heart wrenching close, with Tweedy declaring: “I’ve got reservations about so many things / But not about you”, a chaotic and confused yet beautiful love letter for the modern era.
There’s a penetrating weight to it all, a sincerity which somehow never falls into over-earnestness. It is in many ways a record of constant tension – mostly between the beautiful and destructive – but also mirroring the ongoing conflicts outside the music; between bandmates (guitarist and co-writer Jay Bennett left the band shortly after the album’s completion), and between band and label, the tension between artistic freedom and commercial potential. At once both pretty and dissonant, conventional yet weird, both instant and challenging, it’s a record that rewards the listener with each spin, a phrase which always sounded to me like a useless cliché until I found it to be true. I think the thing I love most about “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” is that ultimately there’s just classic song writing and melody at its core, with Tweedy’s voice broken and exposed at the centre of everything, but with complete chaos ensuing all around it.
For me, Jay Bennett perfectly summarizes it with this quote from the documentary “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” – “If the overall song feels good to you, you’re going to fall in love with the little parts of it that are fucked up”. There are swirling organs, crashing drums, distant voices, and dissonant pianos, and in ‘Ashes Of American Flags’ and ‘Poor Places, anthemic moments that descend into walls of white noise and feedback. It comes to me as no surprise whatsoever that over time this is an album that has been repeatedly referenced as being “Americana’s Kid A”.
Wilco marked the anniversary of “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” which was released commercially on April 23rd, 2002, after a circuitous and storied gestation, including a period of streaming for free on the band’s website—with a performance of the album’s “Poor Places” on last night’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which may be seen below. The band is currently performing “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” in its entirety (plus a mix of concert favorites and rarities) in two limited runs at New York City’s United Palace and Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre.
Among Yankee’s inspirations was a recording Tweedy bought at Tower Records in the late 1990s, The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations. As Bob Mehr points out in his new album note, the record got “deep under Tweedy’s skin.” Tweedy said in his 2017 memoir, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), “It was as fascinating to me as anything being made by actual musicians using actual instruments … I wanted to know why it was so hypnotic to me. Why could I listen to hours of this stuff, even though I had no clue what any of them were saying. That question became the foundation for “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” … the way people communicated or ultimately failed to communicate.” The album takes its title from a haunting recording of a woman repeating those words that is included in The Conet Project; that recording is sampled in the penultimate song on “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”, “Poor Places.”
The film gives a great insight into the recording process. Tweedy notes they “generally go for a pretty straight definitive version of what the song sounds like it should be…and then deconstruct it a little bit and see if there’s some more exciting way to approach it”. I adore this as a concept – the fact that what is theirs to have created is also theirs to destroy, and that a song can take any number of routes before it becomes the one that people hear. Ultimately, I think what probably sets the results apart is the combination of the band’s willingness to experimentally rip up the Americana rulebook, but crucially also the mixing work of Jim O’Rourke (Sonic Youth), whose mixes lift them far beyond the Alt-Country genre they had practically created in the first place. At the heart these are gorgeously simple songs, reimagined in an exciting, experimental vision.
Retrospectively, quite how many people these songs have resonated with may have come as some surprise to Wilco’s former label bosses, but not to me. For a record that very nearly didn’t see the light of day, that it exists at all is truly wonderful, and that it exists without compromise is nothing short of remarkable. Maybe some things are worth waiting for.
Wilco was Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, Leroy Bach, Glenn Kotche, and Jay Bennett with Craig Christiansen, Ken Coomer, Jessy Greene, Fred Lonberg-Holm, and Jim O’Rourke.
11LP – The Super Deluxe version comprises eleven vinyl LPs and one CD – including demos, drafts, and instrumentals, charting the making of “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” – plus a live 2002 concert recording and a September 2001 radio performance and interview. That box set includes eighty-two previously unreleased music tracks as well as a new book featuring an interview with singer/songwriter/guitarist Jeff Tweedy, drummer Glenn Kotche, and Jim O’Rourke, who mixed the acclaimed 2002 album; an in-depth essay by journalist/author Bob Mehr; and previously unseen photos of the band making the album in their Chicago studio, The Loft.
7LP – Deluxe edition comes in a sturdy box with soft cover book. The set includes the original album, remastered, plus 39 previously unreleased tracks—“The Unified Theory of Everything” alternate album versions plus bonus tracks, a live 2002 concert recording, and a September 2001 radio performance. The set also includes a booklet with an in-depth essay by journalist / author Bob Mehr.
2CD – Expanded Edition includes the original album, remastered, plus 18 previously unreleased tracks—“The Unified Theory of Everything” alternate album versions plus bonus tracks.
8CD – Super Deluxe Edition comprises the original album, remastered for its 20th anniversary in 2022, plus 82 previously unreleased tracks. Includes demos, drafts, and instrumentals, charting the making of the album; a live 2002 concert recording; and a September 2001 radio performance and interview. The set also includes a new book featuring an interview with Jeff Tweedy, Glenn Kotche, and Jim O’Rourke; an in-depth essay by journalist/author Bob Mehr; and previously unseen photos of the band making the album in their Chicago studio.
A live version of “Reservations” from a legendary concert contained on Snoozin’ at The Pageant – Live 7/23/02 at The Pageant, St. Louis, MO—a recording that is part of the Super Deluxe LP and CD sets as well as the Deluxe LP and digital sets—is available now. Full details of each of the seven versions is below; album pre-orders are available here. A limited-edition vinyl 7” with versions of “I’m the Man Who Loves You” and “War on War,” from the Super Deluxe box set, is available now from wilcostore.com.
“After half a year living with a bootleg copy, the music remains revelatory. Complex and dangerously catchy, lyrically sophisticated and provocative, noisy and somehow serene, Wilco’s aging new album is simply a masterpiece; it is equally magnificent in headphones, cars and parties… Beneath the great story of “Yankee HotelFoxtrot“, there are all the tropes and symbols and coincidences of a little mythology; but under that is a fantastic rock record. And why tell you? You all already knew this.”
Announcing “Wild Creatures” A career-spanning retrospective album featuring a new song and video for “Oh, Shadowless”, plus essays and track commentary from friends and collaborators A.C. Newman, M.Ward, David Byrne, Shirley Manson, Jeff Tweedy, Rosanne Cash, and many more.
Neko Case steps out, cutting the sky and singing the stars, spinning fury and mercy as she goes. She loves the world and wears her heart on her sleeve, but she might eat it before you get to thinking it belongs to you. “Wild Creatures” pulls together some high points of feral joy from twenty-one years of solo work by Neko Case.
“The Virginian” marked Neko’s debut as a solo artist in 1997. She delved into darkness in 2000 with “Furnace Room Lullaby“, scrawled “Blacklisted” in 2004 and recorded “The Tigers Have Spoken” live the same year. In 2006, she dreamed “Fox Confessor Brings the Flood“, and in 2009 unleashed “MiddleCyclone“. She plumbed her own life in 2013 for “The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You“, and raised hell in 2018 with “Hell-On“. Now in her third decade of recording under her own name, she’s just getting started.
Gathering power year after year, Neko sings with the fierce abandon of a newborn infant crying in a basket in the woods. Since escaping the labels of country and Americana, the gorgeous train-whistle vocals of her early career sit submerged in her later style, where their ghost can appear any minute. When her voice jumps an octave, it’s almost visible, like sparks at night. “I never knew where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do with my voice,” she says, “but I just wanted to do it so bad.”
The world tends to love women singer-songwriters most when they’re wounded and helpless. Neko’s music spans a broader spectrum, from longing to malice. Her lyrics evoke worlds, imagining a woman pilot ready to die, a serial killer, a murdered child, and a tornado, just for starters. Is there any perspective she can’t write a song from or about? “I am a man,” she sings. “I am the man in the fucking moon.”
You might try to come away from a Neko Case tune without a head full of images—but it’s impossible. Still, her songs won’t tell the whole story, rarely offering a panoramic view or a chronology. Instead, she offers up a series of snapshots, as if from a crime scene, and leaves the audience space to inhabit the closets and cathedrals she’s built.
Neko seems to live to bend the shape of the melodies she writes. Listeners might feel the music going in unexpected directions, as she looks for the note that will negotiate a truce to fuse it to her lyrics. It’s not that you can’t find a verse-chorus-verse structure in a Neko song. But you’re just as likely to find any chorus you hitch a ride with going off a cliff, or to hear a hook you think might be the chorus, only to watch it disappear.
Neko Case songs often exist with distinct sections that recall symphonies. Changing from ballads or waltz time to a rock beat and back, the elements sometimes seem wired together to make an improvised explosive device.
In studio, Neko obsesses over sound. Always involved with how her albums were recorded, she’s seized and embraced the role of producer. Standing halfway up a half-built stairway, she hammers nails into place as she goes along. Despite blowing every deadline she’s ever been given, Neko feels in her bones when a song or a project is done.
What if some wild creature drags you out to the woods, but the woods begin to become the whole world, and your earlier home, still visible in the distance, suddenly seems less interesting than where you are now? You might be in the middle of a Neko Case song.
She’s doing it on her own terms, but the legacy she’s building is one that can stand up to music made by any other solo artist in her lifetime. Don’t look away; you never know what might happen. “I’m just trying,” she says, “to be myself as hard as I can.”
We’ve also announced additional tour dates, and ‘Wild Creatures: Live From The Lung’ — a livestream recorded from Neko’s home studio in Vermont, and available exclusively for Substack subscribers
The Fat Angel Sings 