We’re about to enter and highlight a bunch of great, (mostly) very obscure psych and krautrock releases so… pay attention Heads! We’ll kick it off with two from Motrik...Limited edition red colour vinyl. Møtrik are a krautrock four-piece from Portland who stick to the genre’s principles. Motorik grooves, harmonically ambiguous synths, curious snippets of vocal, not much else. Opener ‘Impossible/OK’ sounds like that War On Drugs song that got played to death a couple of years ago, except this time it’s good.
The long tail of krautrock in all its droney, repetitive permutations continues to be felt in modern music, some forty plus years after artists like Faust, Kraftwerk, and Can arrived in the world. It’s what one does with these influences that matters, and no one is doing more with the raw materials of this sound than Møtrik. This quartet from Portland, Oregon – bassist / vocalist Erik Goltz, drummer Lee Ritter, guitarist Cord Amato and synth wizard Dave Fulton – connect up with the sounds of the past like an M.C. Escher mural: it follows the same patterns but takes them in much different directions with much more colourful and mind-altering results.
Through seven extended jams, on the band’s long awaited second album “Safety Copy”, the band nod to their German forebears while applying their expertise in postrock, garage punk, prog, and more to those well-loved templates. Everything sounds clear and precise, thanks to being recorded DIY style by Jason Powers (Grails, Blue Cranes) in a remote coastal enclave.
The album is massive in scale, filling the stereo field with a cinematic grandeur.
Last year, Andy Shauf released his most recent and a terrific album, “The Neon Skyline”. (We named it among one of the vest albums of 2020 .) Now, Shauf’s finally about to hit the road and play these songs live, and ahead of kicking his tour off he’s shared a new single.
Shauf’s latest is called “Spanish On The Beach.” As usual with Shauf, it’s a story song — depicting a couple on a resort vacation. There is also reference to Judy, the character from The Neon Skyline. “It’s the same theme as the story ended up being at the Skyline but the narrator’s life is a little bit booze-fuelled,” Shauf said of the song. “And this vacation is kind of like the first stop on the way to destruction.”
“Spanish On The Beach” is out now via Anti-Records.
A couple months ago, Jay Som’s Melina Duterte and Palehound’s Ellen Kempner released a collaborative album together, “Doomin Sun” under the name Bachelor. Today, they’re back with a one-off single called “I See It Now,” a sticky and pinched sing-song tinged with bitterness. Its ending lines: “And when you guys fuck, do you lay and fake it?/ After he’s done, do you brush your teeth naked?/ Do you love him now?”
“Back in January when Bachelor was filming our music videos for Doomin’ Sun, we found ourselves with a day to kill at Ellen’s house in Poughkeepsie,” the pair wrote in a statement. “Ellen had assembled a small recording setup in her basement that she was mystified by and still figuring out how to work so we decided to record a song to mess around with the gear. Melina wrote the creepy intro keyboard part and we built the song from there. What came was ‘I See It Now,’ a kind of lethargic muse on sexual regret and insecurity.”
“I See It Now” is out now via Polyvinyl Records/Lucky Number/Milk! Records.
“I See It Now” is the new single from Bachelor (Jay Som & Palehound), out September 1st on Polyvinyl Records/Lucky Number/Milk! Records. Written, Arranged, and Performed by Melina Duterte and Ellen Kempner Produced by MelinaDuterte and Ellen Kempner
The solo project of Malmö songwriter Katja Nielsen, of acclaimed punk combo Arre! Arre!, is finally ready to unleash her debut LP “Violent Tendencies”, a ten-track deep dive into the stories of female murderers. Expertly produced by Joakim Lindberg, “Violent Tendencies”, takes its cues from ‘60s garage rock and girl groups rather than the eighties infused goth pop of her early EP’s, looking outward rather than inward for a rollercoaster that veers between a glut of different genres, themes and lyrical ideas, although still scored through with Nielsen’s sharp ear for melody.
If 2020 marked the birth of She/Beast, then 2021 is the year it evolves. When the pandemic cancelled Katja Nielsen’s best-laid plans, with her acclaimed punk outfit Arre! Arre! forced off the road, the singer and guitarist used the free time to develop her own identity as a singer-songwriter. That identity is She/Beast, and the fruits of her isolation writing sessions were two incendiary EPs: “In the Depths of Misery“, released last December, and “This Too Shall Pass“, which arrived back in March.
They held huge personal significance for Nielsen. Around a year before she began working on them, she finally received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, after more than a decade of suffering from it. She/Beast provided her with an outlet, one in which to pour a maelstrom of angst and complicated emotions surrounding her condition. “The lyrics on the two EPs were all about me and my mental disorder,” she explains. “Through the songs, I was putting all of my grief, trauma and anger to rest. It was a way of telling myself, “OK, so this happened, and now that you know why, you can do something about it when it happens again.” In fact, the disorder itself was something she found she was able to turn to her advantage; “for me, it comes with easy access to creative thinking and ‘flow’, even when I’m not having an episode.”
With those demons exorcised, Nielsen has moved on to break new ground with the first She/Beast full-length. Violent Tendencies is a ten-track rollercoaster that veers between a glut of different genres, themes and lyrical ideas, although still scored through with Nielsen’s sharp ear for melody. The eighties synth stylings of In the Depths of Misery and This Too Shall Pass are eschewed in favour of bringing the guitar to the forefront, forming the sonic backbone of the album, alongside a new reliance on organs. “I wanted to go from that 80s synth vibe to more of a pop-rock feeling.”
The tracks were again penned at home in Nielsen’s living room, while the songs were cut at Studio Sickan in her native Malmö, with Joakim Lindberg producing. The main focus, she says, was on developing the She/Beast sound, which meant shuffling the pack when it came to her influences; where bedroom pop and dark wave defined the sound of the EPs, Violent Tendencies owes a debt to everything from Motown to the Beatles. “I’ve always been a big fan of 50s and 60s pop, and I just knew I had an album inside of me, waiting to come out,” she says. “In my head, I already had ‘templates’ for songs that I wanted to work on, and when I decided on a main theme lyrically, it all came together quickly.”
That theme is a world away from the ones she was working with last time; whereas the EPs were introspective, the appropriately-titled Violent Tendencies has her looking outward, at a particularly dark historical thread: female murderers. Each track on the record looks unflinchingly at the topic, with every song looking at a different killer, from sinister tales of child kidnapping (‘Stranger Danger’) to the pitch-black, razor-sharp storytelling of ‘Two Wives, One Axe’. “I’m a big fan of true crime, and I never knew that there were so many women who’d killed somebody,” Nielsen explains. “It was very enticing to do the research needed for the lyrics – I found out that a lot of the murders were a crime of passion. So, I guess this is a way of highlighting women in history, even though they were sometimes vicious, and not well behaved.”
Having assembled a live band, it’s Nielsen’s eventual intention to take She/Beast on the road. By the time she does, she’ll have plenty of material to delve into; it’s difficult to believe that it remains such a fledgling project, with three varied and enthralling releases in the space of a year. “I always need a project to keep me busy,” she says. “It helps me to stay sane!”
Prog Rock classic band Yes have released a video for their new single “Dare To Know”, It’s the second single to be taken from the the band’s upcoming studio album “The Quest”, which will be released through InsideOut Music/SonyMusic on October 1st.
“Dare To Know” presents a guitar theme played within many different arrangements, with different chord structures and altered textures,” explains guitarist and album producer Steve Howe. “The ‘idea’ mentioned in the first verse gets described later as an awakening to the subtle goings on within our bodies and mind, all geared to nature’s scheme of things, all fluctuating and rearranging according to the principles of life, as we know it. The centrepiece leaves the orchestra alone to elaborate and develop the way the theme is heard, then augments the closing minutes of the song as it rests, with an acoustic guitar cadenza.
“Much of the music was written in late 2019 with the rest in 2020,” he adds of the new album. “We commissioned several orchestrations to augment and enhance the overall sound of these fresh new recordings, hoping that our emphasis on melody, coupled with some expansive instrumental solo breaks, keeps up the momentum for our listeners.”
“The Quest” is also now available for pre-order on various formats, including a limited deluxe box-set that features a gatefold 180g 2LP on exclusive coloured vinyl, 2CD+Blu-ray digipak (featuring 5.1 mix & backing tracks), 36-page perfect bound booklet, enamel pin badge, 60x90cm poster, slipmat & hand-numbered certificate of authenticity, all house in a rigid lift-off box, as well as a limited 2CD+Blu-ray artbook, 2CD Digipak, gatefold 2LP+2CD & as Digital Album.
YES, who are Steve Howe, Alan White, Geoff Downes, Jon Davison and Billy Sherwood,
“Dare To Know” is the second single from YES’ forthcoming album “The Quest”, released 1st October 2021.
The Specials have pushed back the release of their forthcoming protest song covers album by a week. The Specials who enjoyed a triumphant 2019 with the release of the critically acclaimed“Encore”, their first ever number 1 album, coming 40 years after they exploded onto the music scene and launched the 2 Tone movement, make a very timely return with the release of their brand new album Protest Songs – 1924 -2012. Standing up for your rights has always been paramount for The Specials. The very epitome of sharply-dressed cool when they first emerged in the late 70s, the Coventry group spearheaded the UK’s multi-racial 2-Tone movement, and their classic hits such as “Rat Race,” “Stereotypes,” and “Ghost Town” railed against socio-political problems ranging from racism to police harassment and mass unemployment.
Released through their new label Island Records, the album features twelve singular takes on specially chosen protest songs across an almost 100-year span and shows The Specials still care, are still protesting and are still pissed off! ‘Protest Songs – 1924 -2012’, which was originally due to hit shelves on September 24th, will now be released on October 1st to allow for the vinyl format to reach fans on the same day.
Protest Songs 1924-2012 allows The Specials the freedom to do exactly that. In the very broadest sense, it is a “covers” album, but as the titular dates suggest, it’s been drawn from the most diverse source material imaginable – and it’s offered the band the chance to broaden their own sonic palette.
As the recording process started, 50 songs were in contention, which The Specials then reduced to 30 and finally to the 12 cuts that made the record. After the lockdowns, Horace says that finally getting back in the studio “is what keeps us going – it’s our soul food,” so now he’s suitably nourished, the bassist is ready to give an exclusive track-by-track guide to Protest Songs 1924-2012.
The band confirmed the move in a statement posted to their Twitter: “In order to get everyone their vinyl on [the] release date we’ve had to move the release of ‘Protest Songs 1924-2012’ back a week to October 1st.”
Earlier this month the group shared the first track “Freedom Highway” a track written by the Staple Singers for the famous civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.
Across the album’s 12 songs, The Specials also take on versions of tracks by Talking Heads, Bob Marley, Leonard Cohen and more. Meanwhile, the band kick off a new UK tour today (August 31st) at Bristol’s O2 Academy before wrapping things up at London’s Troxy on September 25th. They also play Dublin’s Trinity College next year on July 2nd.
1: Freedom Highway (The Staples Singers) (1965)
This makes for a suitably anthemic way to start the album as it’s all about unity and it captures the spontaneity of the recording. With a lot of these songs, we didn’t have a set arrangement before we went into the studio and with “Freedom Highway,” what we ended up with came from us trying to perform the song in different ways.
We’d started to break a few rules of what The Specials’ “sound” supposedly constitutes on our last album, Encore, and we wanted to continue that with this record. We weren’t exactly throwing the rule book out, but the overriding attitude was”‘f__k it, let’s just play what we want to play,” so being constrained by what we’d done on our previous records went out of the window. “Liberation” is a word I use a lot and I think a sense of that runs through “Protest Songs“.
2: Everybody Knows (Leonard Cohen) (1988)
Terry [Hall, The Specials’ vocalist] chose this one. He’s a big fan of Leonard Cohen’s, though I’ve since discovered this song has been covered several times, including for one of the Marvel movies and (in 2008) for an anti-smoking campaign in Australia, of all things. We changed the song’s original arrangement quite considerably. The original version features an oud, it’s brilliant but insane. We’ve given it a Sly and Robbie or Grace Jones kind of vibe, which I really like. It’s got a quintessential Specials-style groove, but we haven’t detracted from the laconic way Leonard Cohen delivered his original recording.
3: I Don’t Mind Failing (Malvina Reynolds) (1967)
One of the joys of making Protest Songs was discovering Malvina Reynolds’ catalog. Most people only know her for the songs “Little Boxes” and (anti-nuclear anthem) “What Have They Done To The Rain?” – but there’s so much more to her. She was from a Jewish immigrant background and her people were opposed to the Second World War. She studied music theory at the University of California in Berkeley and she was a contemporary of Pete Seeger’s.
There were actually five Malvina Reynolds songs up for selection at one time, though we ended up picking this one and “I Live In A City” for Protest Songs. I particularly like “I Don’t Mind Failing,” because it’s saying you absolutely don’t have to be perfect as a person, but it doesn’t point its finger about it. It’s not saying “you mustn’t succeed”’ either, but it’s saying “so what if you don’t.” Just do your best, but if you fail that’s fine – you’re human. The message is ideal for The Specials, because we like to put things out there and give our audience the space to make up their own minds rather than trying to ram things down their throats.
4: Black, Brown & White (Big Bill Broonzy) (1938)
This is sung by Lynval [Golding, vocals, and guitar]. Big Bill Broonzy was a great influence on a lot of the English guys who became famous during Britain’s 1960s blues boom, like John Mayall and Jeff Beck. People mostly remember him for the song “Key To The Highway,” but he wrote loads of songs, he copyrighted over 300 during his lifetime. The version of this song that inspired us was recorded in 1947, but he recorded “Black Brown And White” quite a few times. In those days, the situation would be, “Hey, I’ll give you $15 if you go in the studio and record that song,” to which Broonzy would say “But I’ve already recorded it,” but the reply would be “Doesn’t matter, go and do it again.”
5: Ain’t Going To Let Nobody Turn Us Around (The Dixie Jubilee Singers) (1924)
This is the oldest song on the record. The version that inspired us was by the Dixie Jubilee Singers and theirs was a capella take. But I’m pretty sure the song was around much longer than that. It could well have been around since the American Civil War and I would imagine it originally came straight out of the church as it has that gospel thing going on.
It’s been covered any number of times. I remember we heard another jazzy version of it by a woman singer whose name escapes me, but Steve Miller also cut a version of it for an album called “Your Saving Grace” in 1969 (as “Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around”) which I also remembered from my youth. That’s why our version of it starts with the a capella part and then the band comes in full tilt. It was a blast to record and the organ solo on it is just amazing. It captures the joy of us actually being in a room together and being able to play music together – that’s what being in The Specials is all about, after all.
6: F__k All The Perfect People (Chip Taylor & The New Ukrainians) (2012)
By comparison, this is the newest song on Protest Songs and it might surprise you to learn this was written and performed by Chip Taylor, who – to most people – is best known for writing “Wild Thing” (The Troggs, Jimi Hendrix) and Juice Newton’s “Angel Of The Morning.” But he’s had quite a career. He’s something of an Americana cult figure (he’s also actor Jon Voight’s brother) and he recorded this with his recent band, The New Ukrainians.
Apparently, he was in Norway and he visited a prison, so he wrote this with the prisoners in mind. It’s more about perspective than anything and it goes back to the same kind of sentiments that MalvinaReynolds expresses on “I Don’t Mind Failing.” It’s a great song and it was made for Terry [Hall] to sing. Chip Taylor’s version is good – it’s pretty laconic – but I think Terry certainly equals it, if not betters it.
7: My Next Door Neighbor (Jerry McCain & His Upstarts) (1957)
We originally found this on an American Library Of Congress compilation as I recall, but mostly I remember hearing this for the first time and thinking”‘this is insane – we have to do this song!’” Jerry McCain was apparently a contemporary of [another harmonica wizard] Little Walter and yes, effectively the song’s a jump blues, so it’s the sound of The Specials playing jump blues, but why not?
We’re really lucky to work with some fantastic musicians to be able to pull this off. Kenrick [Rowe] is a fantastic drummer, who also works with Jazz Jamaica and Aswad and he also previously worked with PJ Harvey. He’s world-class and so is Steve [Cradock] who everyone knows from his work with Paul Weller and Ocean Colour Scene. And Nikolaj [Torp Larsen] is a consummate musician. His arranging skills are great as well as his keyboard playing.”
It all meant we could tackle a song like this and it was great fun. As for the song itself – well, obviously it’s important to talk about the big issues like civil rights, but what about the guy next door who won’t give you your vacuum cleaner back? That’s something to protest about too!”
8: Trouble Every Day (The Mothers Of Invention) (1966)
Freak Out! was the first album I ever bought and I didn’t like it. I remember thinking “What is this?” The second side, especially, was unplayable to me, but the first side was OK. But back then I couldn’t tell anybody that I didn’t like it because I was only 15 and trying to be hip!
But this particular song stuck with me and it seemed to fit as we were doing an album called Protest Songs as it’s about the Watts Riots of 1965. Listening to it again, I thought it could have been written last week. I like the fact it doesn’t condone violence. It’s more about the stupidity of human nature. It’s about the man who burns down the shop during the riot, but doesn’t think about where he’s going to get his milk from the next day now he’s burnt the shop down.”
It was great fun to record. We’re were trying to goad Steve [Cradock] into freaking out on guitar and we succeeded as he goes crazy on it. Once again, we’ve never recorded anything like it with The Specials. It’s got that driving, motorik beat and it sounds German. It could be Amon Düül or something.”
9: Listening Wind (Talking Heads) (1980)
This is sung by Hannah Hu, a young and very talented singer from Bradford, Yorkshire, who also features on “Freedom Highway.” Terry [Hall] brought this one to the table because he’s a big Talking Heads fan, but he also said “I love this song, but I can’t sing it convincingly,” which is why Hannah was brought in.
We didn’t want to do it like Talking Heads did, which was like a sparse, proto-electro song. I suggested we do it in an indigenous Rasta way, so Kenrick [Rowe] brought up two guys he knew from Brixton, Bammy and Tony. The latter’s 92 years old, but he did this amazing drumming and it just sounded fantastic when added to the Count Rastafarian horns.
To have all these guys work with us and also this terrific 23-year old from Bradford singing was just something else. It’s that inter-generational thing about working together and making music sound astonishing.
10: I Live In A City (Malvina Reynolds) (1960)
This song has a really childlike quality about it. I was surfing around on the internet looking at videos when we were researching this song and there was one of Malvina [Reynolds] looking like a school teacher-y mom with a big acoustic guitar playing this song. You can hear why, because it’s almost like a nursery rhyme, like “The Wheels On The Bus” or something – it has that innocence about it. It’s just lovely and that was its innate charm. But it’s also an important song because it’s about equality. It’s saying, “well, everybody here helped to make this world we live in, so we need to look after it – and each other while we’re at it.”
11: Soldiers Who Want To Be Heroes (Rod McKuen) (1963)
Rod McKuen was an American singer-songwriter and a poet, too, but he fell between stools. He was derided by a lot of the hippies for being some sort of whimsical, Kingston Trio-type folky, but he spent a lot of time in Europe. He’s well known for having discovered Jacques Brel and for translating his work into English – and of course, a lot of Brel’s stuff was later popularized by Scott Walker. McKuen also had one of the biggest record collections in the world at the time of his death, which I didn’t know either.
But this one is a strange song. It was first recorded in 1963, before America’s wide-scale involvement in Vietnam. It’s got an almost whimsical quality, as if it could have been written at the time of the American Civil War. But then, when it was re-released in 1971, it immediately struck a chord and became this anti-war anthem, because of the draft. It’s got those lines about “Come and take my eldest son/Show him how to shoot a gun” – about the idealism and promise of youth being destroyed by war, so every generation can relate to it.
12: Get Up, Stand Up (Bob Marley & The Wailers) (1973)
It’s really difficult to do a Bob Marley cover because…well, how can you do anything with something that’s perfect to begin with? Besides, everyone knows it as a full band song and you can’t top The Wailers’ performance. So we tried to deconstruct it to get down to what the words really mean. The music’s great, but sometimes the words get lost as a result. Lynval [Golding] did a really good job on it, he got right inside the song.
With help from Peter Tosh, Bob Marley originally wrote the song after he’d toured in Haiti, where he experienced the poverty that people were going through first-hand and the regime the people were forced to live under at the time. He was deeply moved by it and “Get Up, Stand Up” was the result. Sadly, the message is just as relevant now and the song resonates as strongly as it ever did.
Since Rachel Angel returned to her hometown last year after a sojourn in Brooklyn and a tour of the U.S. and U.K., the alt-country songwriter has released an EP and played shows around town. Now she’s hitting the road again. “I just got back from recording a nine-track album at Miner Street Recordings,” she tells New Times. With support of fellow Miami musician Rick Moon, the album was recorded at the well-known Philadelphia recording studio, which has hosted the likes of Kurt Vile, Sufjan Stevens, Sharon Van Etten, the War on Drugs, and more. Release details are still being firmed up for Angel’s first full-length album, but she’s already off to New York and thence to Valencia, Spain (to explore higher education, she explains). Her roots, though, remain in Miami.
When Rachel Angel sings “I wanna be a renegade,” she is speaking to the experience of personal transformation and resilience, like putting on a protective coat of armour to meet the world with grace and courage. While the songs on the EP were inspired by the spirit of outlaw country, her sense of the outlaw is metaphorical rather than literal. These songs are about taking the unconventional artists path, and staring in the face of danger, fear, and pain. In her latest EP “Highway Songs,” the country-folk troubadour takes the listener on a wild journey— physical, emotional, spiritual, and everywhere in between.
These songs were written in the midst of a harrowing time for Angel— she was physically sick with an auto-immune disease, self-quarantined in her Brooklyn apartment, writing at a feverish pace. She reflected on her recent travels, both as a touring musician, and time spent in Mexico during a 7.1 earthquake with her family.
“Highway Songs” was recorded live in two days with an all star line-up at Figure 8 Studios in Brooklyn, NY.
Released August 21st, 2020
Rachel Angel – Vocals/Guitar Brian Betancourt – Bass Sam Owens – Lead Guitar/Keys Noah Hecht – Drums Dan Iead – Pedal Steel Guitar Clyde Daley – Trumpet on “Mexico”
By the time “Sweetheart Of The Rodeo” was released in 1968, The Byrds had already changed the sound of rock music twice; from jangling folk-rock to experimental acid-rock, they constantly sought to push the boundaries of what rock music could be. The 1967 departure of David Crosby left a creative void filled quickly by country music-loving GramParsons, whose addition led Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman and company to record an album comprised mostly of authentic country material in Nashville, with the aid of local session aces (including future Byrd Clarence White).
For the first time on vinyl—and on the heels of a 50th anniversary tour of the album by original members McGuinn and Hillman—this Legacy Edition of Sweetheart Of The Rodeo showcases this country-rock masterpiece alongside 28 bonus tracks, including demos, outtakes, rehearsal versions and tracks by Parsons’ pre-Byrds outfit, The International Submarine Band.
Fifty years after its creation, Sweetheart of the Rodeo looms as a cornerstone of country-rock and point source for alt-country and Americana, The Byrds’ most consequential stylistic stroke since the band’s pioneering folk-rock debut three years earlier. Yet when planning for the album began during the first months of 1968, the group was struggling against commercial headwinds and crippled by personnel changes, reduced to co-founder and lead guitarist Roger McGuinn and bassist Chris Hillman.
The duo was licking its wounds at the disappointing reception to the band’s fifth and most ambitious album, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, which found them stretching to meet the high bar set by Sgt. Pepper. With its aggressive electronic edge and topical material reflecting political and cultural unrest, Notorious had earned them some of the best reviews of their career. By the time of its completion, however, internal dysfunction had boiled over, with McGuinn and Hillman firing David Crosby and drummer Michael Clarke. That album’s lead-in single, a wistful version of Gerry Goffin and Carole King’s “Goin’ Back,” had stalled after its October ’67 release.
By February, the two surviving members had drafted Hillman’s cousin, Kevin Kelley, as drummer and embarked on a trio tour that exposed their lack of firepower. With McGuinn and Hillman as the only signatories to a new Columbia Records contract, the plan was to proceed with hired sidemen. McGuinn, meanwhile, envisioned an even more ambitious full-length that would double down on Notorious’ scale by attempting a pan-generic survey of 20th century music.
Enter Gram Parsons. The Florida-born, Georgia-raised Parsons was a new kid in town seeking success with the International Submarine Band, whose debut album was weeks from release. Invited by Hillman to audition for the Byrds on piano, Parsons’ voice, guitar and original songs quickly established him as more versatile—and ambitious. Not content to be a mere hired hand, the charismatic Parsons lobbied for a shift away from McGuinn’s grand concept. Instead, Parsons pushed for a narrower focus highlighting the country elements he was already exploring with the ISB.
Not that the Byrds were strangers to country, especially Chris Hillman. As a teenager, he’d established himself as a mandolin player with Southern California bluegrass bands. As a Byrd, he had persuaded his bandmates to cover Porter Wagoner’s 1955 hit, “A Satisfied Mind,” and his Byrds debut as lead singer and songwriter came with “Time Between,” a brisk country shuffle on 1967’s Younger Than Yesterday. In Hillman, Parsons gained a crucial ally and future collaborator, and together they closed ranks with McGuinn around Sweetheart’s focal concept. With producer Gary Usher, they headed for Nashville and a week of March sessions reinforced by seasoned country session musicians. Subsequent Los Angeles sessions would follow in April and May.
Sweetheart’s opening track underlined the Byrds’ pivot from Hollywood to Music Row vividly. “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” found them turning yet again to Bob Dylan for material, this time tapping into the bucolic spirit of the as-yet-unreleased Basement Tapes. In place of McGuinn’s signature Rickenbacker 12-string, the arrangement spotlighted Lloyd Green’s giddy pedal steel filigree, dancing between the vocals above a loping country beat. The album would close with another Basement Tapes gem, “Nothing Was Delivered,” but the set list otherwise leaned on country and folk material, plus a recent R&B ballad, William Bell’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water.”
Bell’s soulful weeper was tied to Parsons’ no-longer-hidden agenda in his Sweetheart input, a second draft for what he deemed “cosmic American music”—a junction of Southern idioms that prized both white country and black rhythm ’n’ blues. Vocal harmonies, pedal steel (by Jay Dee Maness) and honky-tonk piano (by Earl P. Ball) were anchored in Nashville, while Bell’s lyrics were pure Memphis, but Parsons’ original vocal ran afoul of protest from Lee Hazlewood and LHI Records, to which the International Submarine Band was signed. McGuinn tracked a new vocal lead in a compromise intended to quell the dispute.
The same fate befell several other Sweethearttracks, most notably “The Christian Life,” an Ira and Charlie Louvin classic celebrating faith despite the loss of less devout friends. Parsons may have been a wealthy trust-fund kid and practicing libertine, but his reverent vocal featured here honoured the Louvins’ sincerity, nodding toward the axis of sin and soul shared by country and R&B. As heard on the finished album, McGuinn’s sarcastic drawl betrays his ambivalence, if not contempt, for the Louvins’ fervour.
The legal détente with Hazlewood and LHI over Parsons’ ISB obligations didn’t entirely erase him from the tracks. Most crucially, Parsons landed two original songs on the album. “Hickory Wind,” written with former ISB member BobBuchanan, was a homesick reverie, a country waltz set against sighing fiddles and graced with gorgeous vocal harmonies. Parsons’ aching lead vocal projected weary vulnerability, alluding to worldly “riches and pleasures” that prove powerless against loneliness.
Parsons was less fortunate, however, with his second Sweetheart original, “One Hundred Years From Now,” another concession to LHI. Once more, McGuinn was pressed into service for the lead vocal, providing one of the set’s two mid-tempo rockers alongside “Nothing Was Delivered.”
Parsons’ lead vocals were retained for covers of Merle Haggard’s penitent “Life in Prison” and Luke McDaniels’ barroom lament, “You’re Still on My Mind,” clinching the newest Byrd’s prominence on Sweetheart.
Elsewhere on the album, McGuinn turned to Woody Guthrie for “Pretty Boy Floyd,” which cast the ’30s gangster as a Depression-era Robin Hood. Hillman, meanwhile, contributed the album’s other nod to country gospel, “I Am a Pilgrim,” and took the lead vocal on Cindy Walker’s “Blue Canadian Rockies.”
By the time “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” was released on August 30th, 1968, Parsons had left the group after refusing to play dates in South Africa. Hillman would soon follow him to join forces in the Flying Burrito Brothers, building on the “cosmic American” blueprint that would be further refined with Parsons’ solo albums with protégé Emmylou Harris.
Although other bands, including the Beatles, Lovin’ Spoonful, Buffalo Springfield and Monkees had nodded affectionately toward country, the Byrds had leaned into country too far, too soon, for Sweetheart, notching the lowest sales of any Byrds album to date: however, the project’s legacy would slowly reveal itself in a rising tide of country-rock full-lengths from the Burritos, Poco, ex-Byrd Gene Clark and, yes, the Byrds themselves, in a line-up now featuring Clarence White, whose nimble country guitar leads had been featured on the band’s studio albums since 1967.
Out on September 24th – Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection, limited edition green LP, CD and Rough Trade Exclusive clear LP in hand-numbered sleeve. If you’re yet to hear this wonderful, eclectic record, please give the tracks a spin – there’s something for everyone; acid folk, nashville americana, kosmiche…the list goes on.
With an arm’s length list of credits stretching from the likes of Kesha, Dolly Parton and Deer Tick, to Miranda Lambert and Little Big Town, pedal steel savant Spencer Cullum is one of Nashville’s most in-demand session cats. That’s in addition to making up half of acclaimed, primarily instrumental space-country duo “Steelism.” Clearly he’s had little trouble fitting in since moving from his native London to Music City by way of Detroit eight years ago, even if it’s mostly meant blending into the background. “I guess I’ve always hidden behind [the instrument],” he deadpans. “I’m always the guy who looks like he’s studying for a test in the background.”
Now, with a debut solo album, Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection, paying homage to the ’60s and ‘70s psych-pop, folk and proto prog heroes of his homeland, this Nashville sideman’s stepping out from the shadows into the spotlight. Along with a supporting cast of fellow Music City stage and studio aces like guitarist Sean Thompson and multi-instrumentalist Luke Reynolds, as well as singing and writing partners like Caitlin Rose, Andrew Combs, Erin Rae, AnnieWilliams and James “Skyway Man” Wallace — he’s bringing a bit of Britain to Tennessee.
“I wanted to write a very quintessential English folk record, but with really good Nashville players.” Cullum says of Canterbury Scene conjuring Coin Collection. Cuts like glass-lake-placid album opener “Jack of Fools”, “Seaside” and the dreamlike “The Dusty Floor,” recall the prime work of the influences he name-checks: Kevin Ayers, Robert Wyatt, Fairport Convention and Sandy Denny. Beyond that, the album manifests his love for psych-prog ground-breakers the Soft Machine (“Tombre En Morceaux”), digs deep into cerebral ambient inspirations like Robert Fripp and Brian Eno (“My Protector”) and krautrock icons NEU! (“Dietrich Buxtehude”) – references he’d previously explored with Steelism. “I’ve always wanted to mix krautrock music into folk and psychedelic,” he explains.
The Fat Angel Sings 