Archive for the ‘MUSIC’ Category

RICHARD HELL – ” Destiny Street ” Remixed

Posted: November 19, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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UNITED STATES - JANUARY 01: Photo of Richard HELL; B&W Posed (Photo by Peter Noble/Redferns)

On this day (November 18th) in 1976: Richard Hell & The Voidoids made their live debut at CBGB’s New York; their 1977 debut album, ‘Blank Generation‘, would influence many other punk bands – its title song was chosen by music writers as one of ‘The 500 Songs That Shaped Rock’ in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame listing, & is ranked as one of the all-time Top 10 punk songs by a 2006 poll of original British punk figures,

Richard Hell and the Voidoids will revisit their 1982 album “Destiny Street” as a “remastered, remixed, repaired” reissue that captures how the band’s second and final album was originally intended to sound. Destiny Street Remixed, due out January 21st, 2021 via Omnivore Recordings, makes use of the newly discovered three of the four original 24-track masters from the 1981 sessions for the album that, in its original form, “was a morass of trebly multi-guitar blare,” Hell writes in the reissue’s new liner notes. Never happy with the 1982 album, Hell first tinkered with it for 2009’s Destiny Street Repaired, which combined the original rhythm tracks with Hell’s new vocals and guitar overdubs courtesy of Marc Ribot, Bill Frisell, and Ivan Julian. After rediscovering the 24-track masters featuring the Voidoids’ contributions, Hell enlisted Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Nick Zinner for a full remix of the original Destiny Street.

Destiny Street was the follow-up album to one of the greatest punk albums of all time, 1977’s Blank Generation. The album was originally recorded in 1981 and released in 1982, but not to Richard Hell’s satisfaction. As he says in his new liner notes to Destiny Street Remixed, “The final mix was a morass of trebly multi-guitar blare.”

Now, for the 40th Anniversary of its creation, the album is at last presented improved the way Richard Hell has long hoped and intended: “The sound of a little combo playing real gone rock and roll.”

Richard Hell co-founded his first band, the Neon Boys, with Tom Verlaine in 1973. That band became Television. When Hell left Television in 1975, he formed, with Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan, both formerly of the New York Dolls, The Heartbreakers. After another year, Richard Hell departed The Heartbreakers and created Richard Hell And The Voidoids, which, along with other CBGB bands of the era, such as the Ramones and Patti Smith, formed the template for punk, the effects of which are still being felt.

Apart from Hell on vocals and bass, the original Voidoids comprised Robert Quine (guitar), Ivan Julian (guitar), and Marc Bell (drums). The Destiny Street-era band retained Quine, but otherwise the backing lineup became Naux (Juan Maciel) on guitar and Fred Maher on drums.

Richard had wished forever that he could remix the original Destiny Street, but was told by the record company that the original 24-track masters had been lost. In the early 2000s, Hell discovered a cassette from 1981 that contained just the album’s rhythm tracks (drums, bass and two rhythm guitars) and he realized he could add new guitar solos and vocals to that to obtain a cleaner, improved version of the songs. He enlisted Marc Ribot, Bill Frisell, and Ivan Julian to overdub the solos (Quine had died in 2004 and Naux in 2009) and he re-sang everything. This was released as Destiny Street Repaired in 2009. Hell was pleased.

Then, in 2019, three of the four original 24-track masters were discovered. Now, at long last, Destiny Street could be fully remixed, and Hell signed on Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) to help him with that. The result became the uncanny centerpiece of the 2-CD Destiny Street Complete extravaganza to be released in January of 2021. Destiny Street Remixed will also be available as a stand-alone vinyl LP.

Besides containing the three faithful versions of the album, the 40th anniversary 2-CD deluxe edition of Destiny Street includes not only Hell’s detailed liner notes, but a fourth LP’s worth of demos and prior studio versions of the album’s material—essentially all of Richard’s songwriting output recorded between the release of Blank Generation in 1977 and the recording of Destiny Street in 1981—including some of the best playing and singing in the four-part Complete—called Destiny Street Demos.

And for Record Store Day 2021, Omnivore Recordings will proudly offer this special material on its own stand-alone vinyl LP. Significantly, all the material in this entire collection has been freshly remastered (or in the case of the Remixed, mastered) for these releases by Michael Graves at Osiris Studios.

According to Hell: “I’ve been working on this release for 40 years. Long road! Three different versions of the same ten songs, from the same basic tracks by the same four musicians. I couldn’t help myself, and I’m glad, god damn it. But really, each of the four parts (including the collection of demos) has its points of interest and then the whole is greater than the parts, for my money. It was a good trip, with lots of roadside attractions, but I’m happy to have reached the destination.”

In addition to the standalone Destiny Street Remixed, the remastered 1982 LP, the “Repaired” version, and the new remixed version will also be released together as the two-CD Destiny Street Complete, which adds a fourth disc of a dozen demos recorded between 1978 and 1980. “I’ve been working on this release for 40 years. Long road,” Hell said of the release in a statement. “Three different versions of the same 10 songs, from the same basic tracks by the same four musicians. I couldn’t help myself, and I’m glad, God damn it. But really, each of the four parts (including the collection of demos) has its points of interest and then the whole is greater than the parts, for my money. It was a good trip, with lots of roadside attractions, but I’m happy to have reached the destination.”

ELVIS COSTELLO – ” Armed Forces ” Box Set

Posted: November 19, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Elvis Costello Armed Forces SDE

As a follow-up to the agitation of “This Year’s Model,” 1979’s “Armed Forces” might have had even more rage to it — but it was better disguised, as Costello, his band the Attractions and Lowe committed to putting more of a pop sheen on the songs, trading organ for synths or, on the politicized “Oliver’s Army,” a piano sound they borrowed from ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.”

“By the time we got to ‘Armed Forces,’ we had the idea we wanted to make an actual studio record,” Elvis Costello recalls. “And that was our version of what a studio sounded like. We played cassettes in the station wagon driving around America for the first time, of the same four or five records round and around. Little wonder that became our language for that next record, things that we were listening to in that moment — including ABBA. We put aside the rock ’n’ roll, Small Faces/Rolling Stones references of ‘This Year’s Model’ and into it came the synthesizer, which came from those David Bowie and Iggy Pop records — ‘Station to Station,’ ‘Low,’ ‘Heroes,’ ‘The Idiot,’ ‘Lust for Life.’” Then, considering more stripped-down techno influences, he adds, “I don’t think we thought we were making a Giorgio Moroder record, but we liked the mechanistic sound of Kraftwerk, even if we weren’t going to make records that were that austere. I wanted the emotion in them.”

Guitar music figured in — barely. “Certainly ‘Party Girl’ has a reference to the Beatles, obviously in the arpeggio at the end. There are some Cheap Trick songs that sound like that too, though, and we loved Cheap Trick. So were we ripping off the Beatles, or were we just ‘Hey, Cheap Trick — I like them’?” He hears us chuckle at the idea he might’ve been influenced as much in the moment by Rick Nielsen as George Harrison. “You’re laughing,” he says, “but I’m deadly serious!”

Columbia Records added a cover of Nick Lowe’s “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding,” recorded for another project, to the album. “They thought it sounded more rock ’n’ roll than many of the other things, and that’s what they wanted. This record didn’t suit them at all.” Although Costello says of the song that “in my mind, it’s not even on this album” (and it wasn’t, on the original U.K. version), he’s not unhappy that it became so wildly popular that fans have expected to hear his version of Lowe’s tune closing out most of his shows for 40 years now.

“I think there was a little irony in the way Nick recorded it originally,” Costello says, recalling that Lowe first had the idea of gently satirizing hippie sentiments with “Peace, Love and Understanding.” “But if you’ve ever heard him perform it in recent years, he sings it very much like the lament that it deserves to be. I think both approaches to the song are really appropriate. I like all the versions of the song that I’ve heard. Sometimes it takes you a moment to hear it again in a different way, but I’ve had reason to sing it as a ballad, as a rocker and somewhere in between. I’ve heard Bruce Springsteen sing it and Chris Cornell sing it, and Josh Homme sang it with Sharon Van Etten. I mean,  there’s some really good versions. Nick’s version with a choir earlier this year was beautiful. You know, it shouldn’t be needed now, but we still have to sing it. How long, how long must we sing this song — as Bono said, you know?”

The “Armed Forces” boxed set is coming out on vinyl as well as digitally with several extra LPs’ or EPs’ worth of live material from ’79. He picked out only the performances he thought were great from that period, he says. “I appreciate the Grateful Dead fans really want all those ‘Dick’s Picks’ releases and want the differences between each show, but I don’t really think there’s a lot of difference between the performances over the course of one year of the Attractions. It’s more about the atmosphere of some of those shows. One is from a show in Sydney where there was a riot. You can hear the show just about to go out of control. I love records that fade out just before it goes somewhere; that one fades just before it goes somewhere, but nowhere good. ‘Live at Hollywood High’ has a great atmosphere because we were in this high school gym, and it slightly ironic that there were no high school students at that gig, just some 35-year-old divorcees dressed like teenagers, and record executives. And Linda Ronstadt apparently was at that show. I’m really thrilled to know that she actually heard ‘Party Girl’ at that show for the first time, and then went ahead and recorded it. Not that I was particularly grateful as my younger, very snotty self.”

Costello’s biggest project yet for 2020: a deluxe 9-disc vinyl “Super Deluxe Edition” ofArmed Forces with three 12-inch LPs, three 10-inch LPs, and three 7-inch singles including 23 previously unreleased live tracks and the complete contents of the previous Rhino/Edsel deluxe edition. It’s due from UMe on November 6th.

Armed Forces was the third studio album from Elvis Costello and second with The Attractions, arriving in January 1979. It was originally conceived under the title Emotional Fascism, which says a lot about the artist’s state of mind while writing and recording. Much was made at the time about Costello moving away from the punk sound of its predecessors and embracing a new wave style, but (then as now) genre tags were simply reductive when it came to Costello’s oeuvre. He brought a deep and abiding love of pop, rock, and R&B in all their forms to Armed Forces, turning in some of his most beloved compositions including “Oliver’s Army” (anchored by Steve Nieve’s ABBA-inspired keyboard riff) about the Troubles in Northern Ireland; the tense, paranoid “Green Shirt”; and elegant, haunting “Accidents Will Happen,” inspired by Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Anyone Who Had a Heart.” One of the LP’s most famed songs wasn’t on the original U.K. issue, however. “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding” was introduced by Nick Lowe – the producer of Armed Forces – by his band Brinsley Schwarz in 1974 and re-recorded by Costello, The Attractions, and producer Lowe in 1978 credited to “Nick Lowe & His Sound.” Costello’s biting rendition was added to the U.S. version of the album where it replaced “Sunday’s Best.”

Various configurations of Armed Forces have been released over the years. The original U.K. LP had the “elephant stampede” cover, while the U.S. edition had the “splattered paint” artwork. Early pressings included a three-track EP, Live at Hollywood High, with a live version of “Accidents Will Happen” as well as “Alison” and “Watching the Detectives.” Rykodisc’s 1993 CD issue based on the original U.K. sequence appended “What’s So Funny” and the EP plus five additional bonus cuts. The 2002 deluxe edition, released by Rhino in the U.S. and Edsel in the U.K., upped the ante with an entire bonus disc of 17 selections including all of the Ryko bonuses and a generously expanded Hollywood High boasting nine songs. In 2007, Universal’s Hip-o imprint controversially restored Costello’s catalogue to its original form on CD, meaning that Armed Forces lost all additional material other than “What’s So Funny.” In 2010, the June 4th, 1978 Hollywood High show received its first standalone release on CD with 20 total songs.

After the disappointing string of early releases in the wake of the superlative Rhino/Edsel series, UMe has thrown down the gauntlet with this presentation of Armed Forces. The set has been personally curated by Costello. It’s housed in a slipcase bearing the Barney Bubbles “splattered paint” artwork and in effect expands on the 2002 Rhino/Edsel deluxe edition in the vinyl format. It contains:

  • New remaster by Bob Ludwig and EC of Armed Forces from the original tapes, “with the sonic fidelity matching the original 1979 U.K. pressing”;
  • Sketches for Emotional Fascism 10-inch, with four previously issued bonus tracks;
  • Riot at the Regent: Live in Sydney ’78 10-inch, with six previously unreleased live tracks;
  • Europe ’79: Live at Pinkpop 12-inch, with 13 previously unreleased live tracks;
  • Christmas in the Dominion: Live 24th December ’78 10-inch, with four previously unreleased live tracks;
  • Live at Hollywood High and Elsewhere 12-inch, with the 10 live tracks included on the 2002 Rhino/Edsel deluxe edition of Armed Forces;
  • “Oliver’s Army” b/w “Big Boys (Demo)” 7-inch single;
  • “Accidents Will Happen” b/w “Busy Bodies (Alternate)” 7-inch single;
  • “American Squirm” b/w “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding” – Nick Lowe & His Sound 7-inch single.

In addition to the nine vinyl platters, the box also includes seven notebooks including updated liner notes by Elvis (nearly 10,000 words in length) and his handwritten lyrics, plus a replica of the “grenade and gun” poster and original postcards of Elvis and the Attractions: keyboard maestro Steve Nieve, drummer Pete Thomas, and bassist Bruce Thomas.

ROXY GIRLS – ” A Wealth of Information “

Posted: November 19, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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‘A Wealth Of Information’ sees Roxy Girls expand on their unique and idiosyncratic take on the post-punk format. Whilst the band still conveys the same breathless intensity and intricacy in their instrumentation, the new material also finds them developing on their stripped-back sound and experimenting with warmer and more densely structured dynamics. Whereas ‘A Poverty Of Attention’ introduced Roxy Girls high-energy and mordacious lyrical humour to the world, ‘A Wealth Of Information’ exemplifies a more considered insight to the band. Whilst the musicianship is still largely rooted in hook-driven indie-rock territory, the new EP shows a very natural evolution of a sound that has become completely their own.

Speaking about the new EP, Tom Hawick (frontman) says, “A progression in musicianship and technicality, A Wealth Of Information takes A Poverty Of Attention and flips it on its head. Focusing on the tropes of 21st century living and the mundanity that comes with it, these songs focus on themes that have, in one way or another, affected each mortal modern human life.”

Sunderland band, Roxy Girls consists of… boys and kit on his A wealth of information, released by Moshi Moshi Records, a good string of pieces of post-punk obedience, nervous and no frills although not hesitating, within a single essay, to change lanes. Active, in terms of releases, since 2017, the English have been plotting with Dirtier, establishing a punk emergency, recalling Parquet Courts and touching the impact. Commands ,just as jerky and in between, evokes Gang of Four for the raw riffs a tad funky, and demonstrates that here, it seems that we came across a bunch of four guys who do things without derailing, with a youthful spirit that makes them win, again, in impact. You Have To Waste Your Time (if it’s to listen to this skeud, it won’t be a waste of time), based on a similar approach, also unfusses on a short time that makes it all the more efficient. Poor Cow, at first hesitant, then sets up his jolts without softness, his songs allied to the snatch. We’re a taker.

The sketch takes well, it sends itself a draft. Suddenly, she breaks, slightly tempers the ardour of the men. The droid features chatty guitars, one of the advantages of the quartet of Tom  Vocals/Six String, Matthew  Four String, Aidan  Drums/Cowbell, and Isaac  Vox/Six String. By regaling us with their late 70’s impulses, with a rough modernism, the young wolves display real virtues.

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All talk, its riffs and dry rhythms, confirms. This is a reliable tape, whose work betrays nothing wrong. It sends continuously, nuanced by remaining in excellence. At Moshi Moshi, it is rare for the product to smell bland. The proof here is assailed, with a noticeable aplomb. Get Up (Seize The Day), carried by the “high energy” mentioned on the Bandcamp of Roxy Girls, completes the work without crumbling. From a block, A Wealth of information reveals tense and vigorous tracks, crossed by a beautiful inspiration.

At the end, and after replay, we will go to explore the previous releases of the clique, while keeping an eye on the products of his laudable label. This one offers indeed, and in frequency, a nice scramble of records that deserve an extended stay in our readers of his indies.

Released June 5th, 2020

The DIRTY KNOBS – ” Wreckless Abandon “

Posted: November 19, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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While 2020’s “Wreckless Abandon” is their first official release and occasion to tour, The Dirty Knobs first came together 15 years ago after Mike Campbell met guitarist Jason Sinay at a session and liked the way their guitars sounded together. More than a decade ago, Campbell took the helm of his own band, the Dirty Knobs—an irreverent, spontaneous unit that veered from originals to a grab bag of ’60s and ’70s deep-cut covers and curiosities. But with the Heartbreakers and Fleetwood Mac taking the lion’s share of Campbell’s time, there was rarely time to accomplish much until now.

 Wreckless Abandon was whittled down from a backlog of eclectic originals to a slab of boisterous, rockin’ economy that reflects the rowdiest and most irreverent side of the band.

GUM – ” Low To Low “

Posted: November 19, 2020 in MUSIC
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Following the release of his critically acclaimed fifth studio album “Out In The World”, GUM has unveiled the video for new single Low To Low. The DIY-vibe video was shot in Fremantle with POND co-conspirator Jamie Terry. “My mate Az gave me 16 panels of Perspex he had found, who knows where? GUM thinks outside (and inside) the box,” says Watson of the video.  “Now that the dust has settled on Out In The World, I think this is probably my favourite track from the album, and I know it is for lots of other people too, so I wanted to make a visual for it,” 

Official video for new single Low To Low by GUM. Listen to the new album Out In The World:

HANNAH’S LITTLE SISTER ” Gum “

Posted: November 19, 2020 in MUSIC
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Liverpool quartet Hannah’s Little Sister share the grungy, helter-skelter video for recent chaotic anti-capitalist call-to-arms ‘Gum’. With the release of the single they announced debut EP – ‘EP.mp3′ – for November 20th via Heist or Hit (Her’s, Pizzagirl, Brad Stank), and gained support from Blogging Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan and DIY Magazine.

‘Gum’ is a wild ride. Skittish rhythms teetering over the edge, psychotic Jack-in-the-box synths and manic, yelped vocals are the chief ingredients of the psychedelic stew. However, amongst the madness, lead vocalist Meg Grooters finds crystal clarity in the anti-establishment message: 

“Gum is another sort of rant (oops!) about consumerism and how it’s constantly distracting us from ourselves and from the state of our society/country/government/world etc. – all of the things!  

I wrote it to remind myself there’s a difference between what I want and need, and what I’m being told or shown I should want or need. We’re encouraged by the Big Boys in power to become addicted to materialistic things and social media, because it’s a great way of keeping us under control as a society that continues to put money in a small number of very rich people’s pockets. 

Whether it’s social media, new trends, cool clothes or whatever, they’re vices pushed upon us that keep us pretty mind numbed and depressed. Yet we cling on to them in the false belief that these things can provide us with greater happiness or status, and help us climb up the socioeconomic ladder.”  The perfect experimental pop exploration, this rapid track emerges itself as one of the most energetic and immense listens. Hannah’s Little Sister provides completely compelling arrangements that are unique, fun, and alluring. Whereas the dress up couture, sketchball storylines and freakadelic artwork exudes a space cadet vibe, the band themselves are very self-aware and grounded. The surreal world they’ve built is used as a way of sending up the music industry, as well as the corporate structures in the crosshairs across ‘Gum’ – whilst also accepting that as individuals it is hard to disassociate from it: 

“I get so frustrated at myself when I spend hours scrolling through a timeline, knowing I’ve just drained a bunch of my energy and wasted time on something useless that didn’t make me feel very good. But we’re all pushed and pressured to do so and honestly I’m probably still going to do it again a couple of days later. It’s an addiction and it’s easy.  

More than that, it prevents us from noticing, caring or becoming too vocal about the more severe injustices surrounding our society, such as racism or sexism, or the wealth gap in this country.  

Government, financers and big corporations bank on these addictions and insecurities that keep us from feeling powerful enough to try and change that and I hate it. We’re knowingly brain washed and we all feel powerless to change a fake world we’ve accepted and I just think it’s NAFF. So go pirate our single!!”  

This sound was aided in achievement by rising producer Saam Jafarzadeh, also responsible for helping to build the transportive sonic worlds of fellow Merseysiders Her’s and Brad Stank. 

The band originally started turning heads with debut single ‘20’ – a fizzing shock from the blue that earned them champions at The Guardian, The Line of Best Fit and Clash Magazine. A sort of LoFi gap year took place after that, the group taking time to hone their sound and anarchic stage show, up to the point that the unique power of controlled chaos is but a finger click away. 

Hannah’s Little Sister are Meg Grooters (Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards, the colour Green), Will Brown (Drums, Ciggies), Nina Himmelreich (Bass, Vocals, German) and Ashley Snook (Guitar, Vocals, Gossip). 

The WEATHER STATION – ” Ignorance “

Posted: November 18, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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“Ignorance”, is the new album by the The Weather Station, It begins enigmatically; a hissing hi hat, a stuttering drum beat.  A full minute passes before the entry of Tamara Lindeman’s voice, gentle, conversational, intoning; “I never believed in the robber”.  A jagged music builds, with stabbing strings, saxophone, and several layers of percussion, and the song undulates through five minutes of growing tension, seesawing between just two chords.  Once again, Toronto songwriter Tamara Lindeman has remade what The Weather Station sounds like; once again, she has used the occasion of a new record to create a new sonic landscape, tailor-made to express an emotional idea.  Ignorance, Lindeman’s debut for Mississippi label Fat Possum Records, is sensuous, ravishing, as hi fi a record as Lindeman has ever made, breaking into pure pop at moments, at others a dense wilderness of notes; a deeply rhythmic, deeply painful record that feels more urgent, more clear than her work ever has. 

On the cover, Lindeman lays in the woods, wearing a hand made suit covered in mirrors.  She was struck by the compulsion to build a mirror suit on tour one summer, assembling it in a hotel room in PEI and at a friend’s place in Halifax.  “I used to be an actor, now I’m a performer” she says.  In those roles, she points out, she often finds herself to be the subject of projection, reflecting back the ideas and emotions of others.  On the album, she sings of trying to wear the world as a kind of ill fitting, torn garment, dangerously cold; “it does not keep me warm / I cannot ever seem to fasten it” and of walking the streets in it, so disguised, so exposed.  Photographed by visual artist Jeff Bierk in midday, the cover purposefully calls to mind Renaissance paintings; with rich blacks and deep colour, and an incongruous blue sky glimpsed through the trees.

The title of the album, Ignorance, feels confrontational, calling to mind perhaps wilful ignorance, but Lindeman insists she meant it in a different context.  In 1915 Virginia Woolfe wrote: “the future is dark, which is the best thing a future can be, I think.”  Written amidst the brutal first world war, the darkness of the future connoted for Woolfe a not knowing, which by definition holds a sliver of hope; the possibility for something, somewhere, to change.  In french, the verb ignorer connotes a humble, unashamed not knowing, and it is this ignorance Lindeman refers to here; the blank space at an intersection of hope and despair, a darkness that does not have to be dark. We are so proud and relieved to finally announce that my next album, the fifth Weather Station album, is set for release February 5th. It’s called “Ignorance”. It’s the strangest record I’ve made, and also the most pop record I’ve made. It’s a bit of a monster. It’s available now for pre-order through Fat Possum Records and Next Door Records and also my new web store. Cover art by the one and only Jeff Bierk. Today also marks the release of a new song ‘Tried To Tell You’ with accompanying video. 

Ignorance

SHAME – ” Drunk Tank Pink “

Posted: November 18, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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What especially takes the biscuit, for us, is the news of Shame’s new album! since we witnessed their debut shake the very foundations of modern post-punk, we’ve been feverishly awaiting the next chapter in the saga of these lovely boys & it looks like they’ve swerved hard out of the path of any career ruts with this newie. their second album expands their sound into more anxious & atmospheric environs, tautly roped together by frontman Charlie Steen’s agitated vocals. what’s cause for even more excitement is the choice of coloured vinyl on offer! you can have any colour you like as long as it’s pink (or standard black). get your pre-orders in extra quick if you fancy grabbing the limited indies exclusive on galaxy pink vinyl with signed insert or the limited indies opaque pink lp.

There are moments on ‘Drunk Tank Pink’ where you almost have to reach for the sleeve to check this is the same band who made 2018’s ‘Songs Of Praise’. Such is the jump Shame have made from the riotous post-punk of their debut to the sprawling adventurism and twitching anxieties laid out here. The South Londoner’s blood and guts spirit, that wink and grin of devious charm, is still present, it’s just that it’s grown into something bigger, something deeper, more ambitious and unflinchingly honest.

To understand this creative leap you need to first understand the journey Shame undertook to get here. From their beginnings as wide-eyed teenagers taken under the decrepit wing of The Fat White Family to becoming the most celebrated new band in Britain and their subsequent crash back down to earth. Come in, and close the door behind you…It’s no exaggeration to say the members of Shame have spent their entire adult life on the road. A wild-eyed tour of duty marked by glorious music and damaged psyches, when it eventually careered to a stop the band were parachuted back into home territory. Shell shocked, dislocated and grasping for some semblance of self.

Shame’s previous bases – the notorious den of iniquity that was The Queens Head pub, the musical petri dish of Brixton’s Windmill – were either gentrified into obsolescence or no longer viable as an HQ. Sometimes home just isn’t home anymore. Or at least it’s not the way you remember it.

To cope, guitarist Sean Coyle-Smith barricaded himself in his bedroom. Barely leaving the house and instead obsessively deconstructing his very approach to playing and making music, he picked apart the threads of the music he was devouring (Talking Heads, Nigerian High Life, the dry funk of ESG, Talk Talk…) and created work infused with panic and crackling intensity.

“For this album I was so bored of playing guitar,” he recalls, “the thought of even playing it was mind-numbing. So I started to write and experiment in all these alternative tunings and not write or play in a conventional ‘rock’ way.”

Frontman Charlie Steen, meanwhile, took a different tac and attempted to party his way out of psychosis. “When you’re exposed to all of that for the first time you think you’re fucking indestructible,” he notes. “After a few years you reach a point where you realise everyone need a bath and a good night’s sleep sometimes.” An intense bout of waking fever-dreams convinced Steen that self medicating his demons wasn’t a very healthy plan of action and it was probably time to stop and take a look inward. Shame had always been about exposure – be that the rogues’ gallery of characters they drew inspiration from or the cornucopia of joy to be had from simply being in a band – this time, however, they were exposed to themselves.

“You become very aware of yourself and when all of the music stops, you’re left with the silence,” reflects Steen. “And that silence is a lot of what this record is about.”

Pass along the plant-strewn corridor leading into Steen and Coyle-Smith’s shared living space in South East London and hidden away to your left is a dank, brown curtain. Pull it back and open the door… welcome to the womb.

More of a cupboard than a room (it used to house the washing machine until they lugged it outside and put a bed in) and painted floor to ceiling in the specific shade of pink used to calm down drunk tank inmates, the womb is where Steen cocooned himself away to reflect and write. Scraping and shaking lyrics out of himself that – through the prism of his own surrealistic dreams – addressed the psychological toll life in the band had taken on him. The disintegration of his relationship, the loss of a sense of self and the growing identity crisis both the band and an entire generation were feeling.

“The common theme when I was catching up with my mates was this identity crisis everyone was having,” reflects Steen. “No one knows what the fuck is going on.”

“It didn’t matter that we’d just come back off tour thinking, ‘How do we deal with reality?!?’” agrees Coyle-Smith. “I had mates that were working in a pub and they were also like, ‘How do I deal with reality?!?’ Everyone was going through it.”

The genius of ‘Drunk Tank Pink’ is how these lyrical themes dovetail with the music. Opener “Alphabet” dissects the premise of performance over a siren call of nervous, jerking guitars, its chorus thrown out like a beer bottle across a mosh pit. “Nigel Hitter”, meanwhile, turns the mundanity of routine into something spectacular via a disjointed jigsaw of syncopated rhythms and broken wristed punk funk.

Bassist Josh Finerty had begun to record the band’s divergent ideas at home in South London which were then fleshed out in a writing trip in the Scottish highlands with electronic artist Makeness, before sessions in La Frette studios in France with Arctic Monkeys producer James Ford. The result is an enormous expansion of Shame’s sonic arsenal.

Songs spin off and lurch into unexpected directions throughout here, be it “March Day’s” escalating aural panic attack or the shapeshifting darkness of “Snow Day”. There’s a Berlin era Bowie beauty to the lovelorn “Human For A Minute” while closer “Station Wagon” weaves from a downbeat mooch into a souring, soul-lifting climax in which Steen elevates himself beyond the clouds and into the heavens. Or at least that’s what it sounds like.

“No that’s about Elton John,” laughs Steen. “I read somewhere about him being so cracked out that he told his PA to move a cloud that was blocking the sun. I just thought that was the greatest, Shakespearean expression of ego. Humour is a massive part of this band. We’re not some French existential act where everything is actually sad. There’s light in it as well.” From the womb to the clouds (sort of), Shame are currently very much in the pink

“Water in the Well” taken from Shame’s new album ‘Drunk Tank Pink’, out 15th January 2021 on Dead Oceans Records

TRAFFIC – ” The Low Spark of High Heeled ” Classic Album

Posted: November 18, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Between their formation in 1967 and implosion seven years later, Traffic was as mercurial as their music was mesmerizing, thanks to the members’ unstable chemistry. What had begun as an on-trend exercise in post-Sgt. Pepper psychedelia turned toward a darker, more idiosyncratic synthesis of jazz, blues, world music and English folk elements as the band’s founders—Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood and Dave Mason—fluctuated from quartet to trio and back. Mason quit and then rejoined (twice) in revolt over his partners’ more esoteric instincts. Winwood, meanwhile, scuttled the band in late ’68 to join Blind Faith, the short-lived supergroup he fronted with Eric Clapton.

Traffic’s subsequent return was less conscious relaunch than casual reunion. At 21, Winwood was already a veteran of three successful bands, a precocious multi-instrumentalist who landed as the de facto star of the Spencer Davis Group in his mid-teens. He began work on a solo debut in February 1970, but after tracking two songs as a virtual one-man band, he longed to interact with other players, enlisting Capaldi (drums, percussion, vocals) and Wood (reeds). The resulting album, John Barleycorn Must Die, pared the group’s ensemble sound to a sturdy spine of Winwood’s keyboards and guitar, and added a more pronounced British accent in its title song, a traditional English ballad that moved the band toward British folk-rock spearheaded by Pentangle, Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span.

On their fifth full-length studio album, “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys”, Traffic cast aside commercial wisdom to build the album around an epic title track that looms as their creative apogee. At just under 12 minutes, the tune draws from the full range of the British band’s influences and then steps beyond them with an exploratory intensity that nearly eclipses the set’s other originals, yet its power was sufficient to bring them the strongest sales of their career without a competitive single hit.

That reconciliation reaped Traffic’s highest U.S. album chart performance ever, along with a gold record, as they reinforced the line-up with bassist Ric Grech (Family, Blind Faith), drummer Jim Gordon (Derek and the Dominos) and Ghanaian percussionist Rebop Kwaku Baah. Entering Island’s London studios in September 1971, the newly aligned sextet leaned into its more layered rhythm section as it tracked new songs.

Where Traffic’s earlier albums teed up with radio-ready singles candidates, The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys opened quietly. “Hidden Treasure” points back to “John Barleycorn” in its modal melody and spacious acoustic arrangement, interweaving Winwood’s acoustic guitar with Wood’s delicate flute lines. Punctuated with spare percussion, the song is one degree removed from Pentangle’s intersection of folk and jazz, with Capaldi’s pensive lyrics invoking water imagery and evoking a pastoral atmosphere.

That song’s languid close leaves the listener in a silence that lingers beyond the usual between-tracks interval, as the title song doesn’t so much begin as lay in ambush. After 13 seconds, a faint pulse begins to surface, distant percussion setting a glacial pace as a five-note piano figure anchors the arrangement in D minor. Hand percussion and tolling piano march slowly forward, as if moving from darkness into a half light. At 1:21, a vibraslap strikes, ominous as a rattlesnake’s lunge, jolting us fully awake.

Having taken so slow and deliberate a path to capture the listener, “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” has us in its grip as soon as Winwood begins crooning Jim Capaldi’s feverish lyrics:

If you see something that looks like a star, and it’s shooting up out of the ground
And your head is spinning from a loud guitar
And you just can’t escape from the sound
Don’t worry too much, it will happen to you
We were children once, playing with toys…

The lyrics’ sense of dislocation and distraction, set against the hypnotic languor of the rhythm section’s deliberate pace, suggests nothing so much as a drugged torpor that quickens as Winwood’s piano and Wood’s saxophone shift into double-time figures between the sung lines.

The gauzy euphoria teased in early Traffic songs from the late ’60s was by now a distant memory; Winwood and Capaldi would be all too familiar with the harder drugs clouding rock’s early ’70s demi-monde, while Wood would struggle with drugs and alcohol for much of his adult life. Capaldi’s wistful allusion to childhood reveries leads inevitably to a sense of lost innocence and even betrayal as the song swells into the chorus, modulating to D major:

The percentage you’re paying is too high a price, while you’re living beyond all your means
And the man in the suit has just bought a new car with the profits he’s made on your dreams…
And the sound that you’re hearing is only the sound of the low spark of high heeled boys

Who those “boys” are remains a mystery beyond the certainty that they’re no longer children. (Capaldi reportedly took the phrase from a casual remark by a friend, actor Michael J. Pollard.)

With the band members stretching out on solos, clocking in at 11:41, “Low Spark” can stand favourably beside those fusion standard-bearers. Winwood adds keening synthesizer lines that diverge from more familiar chordal and arpeggiated synth voicings of the era. Instead, he shapes monophonic riffs answering Wood’s sax, moving Traffic’s ensemble sound closer to the contemporary fusion of Miles Davis’ electric bands and Weather Report’s next jazz-rock wave.

From that point onward, Traffic lightens the tone with “Light Up or Leave Me Alone,” an atypically uptempo rocker featuring a lead vocal from Capaldi, who has sole writer credit. Usually content to add baritone harmonies below Winwood’s soulful tenor, Capaldi offers a good-humoured takedown of a lover that teases the title’s easy implication of something other than tobacco, aided by Winwood’s mocking electric guitar figures. That the track would find FM airplay more easily than the album’s title song is no surprise.

“Rock & Roll Stew” likewise hews to more familiar rock tropes as a mid-tempo ode to life on the road, written by new members Grech and Gordon, with Capaldi’s lead vocal and Winwood’s electric guitar again grounding the band in foursquare rock in another track more readily added to radio playlists. The album’s two remaining songs, “Many a Mile to Freedom” and “Rainmaker,” were deep cuts that worked within the atmospheric terrain familiar to fans, yet, on balance, Low Spark would ultimately remain defined by its risk-taking title track. With FM rock radio stations still on the cusp of more freewheeling playlists, “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” would earn significant airplay from savvy stations despite its extended length.

Even as the November 1971 release went gold, personnel changes once more roiled Traffic as Grech and Gordon left and Winwood was sidelined with peritonitis. Capaldi recruited Muscle Shoals Sound house band aces Roger Hawkins (drums) and David Hood (bass) to the line-up that tracked their next studio album and a live set captured during the band’s 1973 tour before a final studio album, When the Eagle Flies, was recorded by Winwood, Capaldi (back on the drum stool), Wood and bassist Rosko Gee. The original trio’s core sound survived, yet none of those later recordings would surpass the high bar set by Low Spark on its defining performance.

Traffic Sessions: The Low Spark of High Heeled 1971 Recorded at Olympic Studios, London

00:00 The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys – Alternate Take – 2/9/71 11.46 11:41 Rock And Roll Stew – Different Take – 5/19/71 3.20 14:57 Rainmaker – Different Take – 5/19/71 7.29 22:22 Rock And Roll Stew – Different Mix – 8/25/71 6.19 28:35 Light Up Or Leave Me Alone – Different Mix – 8/25/71 5.03 33:34 Command Performance – Traffic Jam #1 Take 2 5.04 38:26 Crispy Duck – Traffic Jam #2 W/ Muscle Shoals Horns 3.34 41:55 Steal From A King – Traffic Jam #3 W/ Muscle Shoals Horns 5.19 47:10 It’s So Hard – Demo #1 – Capaldi And Gordon 7.41 54:48 It’s So Hard – Demo #2 – Capaldi And Gordon 9.42 1:04:26 Easter Weekend – Demo #1 – Capaldi 3.26 1:07:55 Easter Weekend – Demo #2 – Capaldi 3.46

KEVIN MORBY – ” US Mail / Don’t Underestimate Midwest American Sun “

Posted: November 18, 2020 in MUSIC
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Listen: Kevin Morby Shares New Single “US Mail”

Kevin Morby has released a new standalone single, “US Mail.” It was originally debuted during his Sundowner livestream last week; however, the new track is not a part of the album.

“‘US Mail’ is a song I wrote about a mother communicating with her daughter via the USPS from within an inpatient rehab facility,” Morby wrote in a statement (via press release). “Restricted from any forms of electronic communication, the two must rely on postcards carried by the United States Postal Service to reach one another.”

Morby also called on his fans to write him letters, as his PO Box address is featured on the single’s artwork (pictured below): “Please feel free to write me a letter and continue sending mail to your loved ones to support the USPS. It’s service has been integral to my career and I have been passionate about both sending and receiving physical mail since I was a child. It is simply one of my favourite things. I will do my best to write you back, but even if I don’t, please know that your letters mean the world to me and that I read and cherish them all.”

Kevin Morby has shared a further video for “Don’t Underestimate Midwest American Sun,” a track from his latest album, Sundowner, out now on Dead Oceans. Following the videos for “Wander” and “Campfire,” this is the final installment in a trilogy of videos made for the album.

At the time of writing the album, it felt like Katie [Crutchfield] and I were the only two people on earth—living out in suburban Kansas away from the chaos of our lives on the road and on the coasts and our days became very childlike and innocent: riding bikes, making up games and singing songs. When we found ourselves back in a similar environment due to the lockdown, and it came time to make videos, I wanted to depict our lives in solitude from when I wrote the album.

“Don’t Underestimate Midwest American Sun, the song by Kevin Morby, out now on Dead Oceans.

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