Michigan emo-punks Dogleg stirred up a lot of buzz last year with their first single “Fox” and its video, which gives you an idea of how wild this band’s live shows can get. Now, they’ve officially announced their debut album, “Melee”, due March 13th via Triple Crown Records. Along with the announcement comes second single “Kawasaki Backflip” and a video that finds the band rocking out in their garage and smashing a bunch of household items (and, eventually, their instruments). If you’re new to Dogleg but a fan of PUP, Title Fight, Joyce Manor, etc
Dogleg’s latest single “Kawasaki Backflip” immediately propels the listener through two options of how anxiety and depression will be dealt with––by burning it all down with fire, or letting yourself be blown away completely by the wind. The accompanying video shows the band at its most violent, destroying everything in its path in an effort to make sense of the internal turmoil of these important feelings.
Dogleg “Kawasaki Backflip” from the album Melee out March 13th!
“Live In Amsterdam 1969”. The Who’s performance at Amsterdam’sOpera House in September 1969 was remarkable in a number of ways. It was the first of a series of gigs in more formal surroundings and one of the longest live gigs the Who ever performed.
The recording was made by a Dutch radio/tv broadcast. It’s not 100% certain who did it, but it was probably done by the VPRO, who also did the Pink Floyd recording the same year at the same venue. And just like that Pink Floyd recording, this one was also bootlegged a million times from various very good to very poor sources. Alll of these sources were originated from radio broadcast/s. Back then, and today still, The Concertgebouw was not a place for rock bands but for opera’s and other classic music.
Mixed directly to 2-tracks, this may been one of the reasons why the mixing engineer had a hard time finding the right balance. The mix changes often, and sometimes the drums or the guitar just disappear or get buried for a while. It also must have been hard for the band to hear each other, because of the extremely reverbrating acoustics. Remember, this was 1969 and sound monitoring on stage was still a thing for the future.
When comparing this one to other Who shows from this period, this one probably isn’t the best. Roger Daltrey has once said that he didn’t think he sang very well this night. And playing the “Tommy” album on stage was obviously not a routine for the band yet. But, there is more than enough to enjoy here. It is the only complete soundboard recording from this year. It is also the only one with complete lineage, and it has the best sound. Beside that, all other Who ’69 board tapes are far from complete and don’t have most of Tommy.
Somewhere around 2000, a Pre-FM source of this show was unearthed. Funny enough, the same thing happended with the aforementioned Pink Floyd recording . They may have come from the same person though.
The recent boot “Amsterdam Journey” on the Hiwatt label is the one taken off his copy.
The Who, live at Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands 29th September, 1969
Following the release of Tommy in May 1969, the Who embarked on a series of epic concerts, soon earning themselves a reputation as the finest live band in the world. This amazing set was broadcast on AVRO-FM, in Amsterdam’s most prestigious concert hall on 29th September 1969. The only complete soundboard recording of them made that year, it boasts astounding fidelity and captures them at the peak of their powers, playing not only most of Tommy but also numerous other classics from the length of their career to date. It’s presented here together with background notes and images.
The Who – The Complete Amsterdam 1969
Venue: Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Date: 29th September 1969
Wellington based six-piece band Tidal Rave continues a New Zealand (and Australasian) tradition of dark, compelling guitar and keyboard lead garage rock. There’s something slightly claustrophobic and unsettling at times about the churning dense weave of the three guitars and bass backed by ghostly organ and insistent drum pulse.
Add the character provided by the interchange between three songwriter-guitarist-vocalists, one with distinctive vibrato reminiscent of The Terminals’ ominous baritone proclamations, and it’s possible to imagine this album as the product of another era.
Tidal Rave started out of bedroom jam sessions in a Nikau St flat in the inner-Wellington suburb of Newtown, developing into 6-piece band which released a self-titled EP in 2017 and toured NZ and Melbourne, Australia.
“Heart Screams” is the band’s first album. The 9 tracks by guitarist-songwriters Ellis, Gedye Taylor, and Paterson, woven together with backing vocals by keyboard player Keating, are alternately dark and euphoric; universal themes touching on inner hopes and anxieties, external threats (real and imagined), all set against the monotony of day to day living in the narrow streets of NZ’s wind-rattled capital city.
Tidal Rave include members of Sweaty Betty, Kittentank, Echo Beach and Housewitches in a stellar lineup that features no less than three women playing loud guitars, driven by a tight rhythm section. With all the hallmark melody, chime and squall of excellent indie rock.
Releases February 28th, 2020
Emmie Ellis (vox and guitar), Esther Gedye Taylor (vox and guitar), Kristen Paterson (vox and guitar), Ann-Marie Keating (vox and keys), Frank Eggleton (bass), Scott Hakkaart (drums).
The long lost solo album “Love of Will” by the late David McComb, singer-songwriter for much loved West Australian band The Triffids, has finally received a release. Originally released at the end of 1993, nearly half a decade after the dissolution of the band with which he made his name, Love of Will was McComb’s final major release before his unexpected passing at the age of 36 in February 1999.
The album, which the NME later described as “a full-blown foray into country rock and reconciled his dark, almost Leonard Cohen-like songwriting with the Velvets-like psychedelia” was the only album that McComb recorded and released following the Triffids final album, 1989’s The Black Swan. The album originally appeared without much fanfare; remember The Triffids only received limited commercial success in their time, and their 2008 induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame would have seemed unimaginable in McComb’s lifetime. And it has disappointingly remained out of print for nearly two and a half decades, despite continued generational rediscoveries – and upgraded reissues – of McComb’s work with the Triffids.
Of course, that work with The Triffids includes classic albums like 1986’s Born Sandy Devotional and the now iconic minor hit “Wide Open Wide.” Hard works to live up to perhaps, but many of McComb’s fans believe Love of Will found McComb still at the peak of his writing and performing powers.
Although it was recorded from June to August 1993, and it was a return to something akin to The Triffids style after a couple of single releases that flirted with hip-hop, McComb reckoned the album was four and a half years in the making. His chosen band of musicians for the recording included some ex-Triffids, and members of the Black Eyed Susans, a group that McComb had formed and worked with part-time after The Triffids demise with a couple of old friends from Perth, Phil Kakulas (who had played in the original line-up of The Triffids) and Rob Snarski.
That band of musicians included amongst both Kakulas and Snarski as well as former Triffids Martyn Casey and “Evil” Graham Lee, and, on violin, Warren Ellis (who McComb described to Juice’s Toby Creswell as “the best musician in Australia”) who was then on the cusp of coming to prominence with the Dirty 3. Not long after the release of Love of Will, McComb and Ellis both appeared on Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ Let Love In, and Ellis became a full-time Bad Seed alongside Martyn Casey.
Love of Will inadvertently caused the demise of The Triffids, who had initially stopped playing just to take a breather. Their final gigs in New York in 1989 weren’t meant to be the end (although Casey did join the Bad Seeds the following year.) According to Graham Lee: “We didn’t know they were final performances. Dave wanted to do a solo album, and we were due to get back together after that. Much to his chagrin, his solo album took longer than expected, and he kept writing songs that sounded like Triffids songs. Domesticity snuck up on most of us, poor health snuck up on Dave, a planned ’94 reunion tour was put on hold, and The Triffids faded into the mist.”
Let’s remember David McComb with a video made for “Setting You Free” from his solo album’s original release, and a 1994 live performance by David and his band the Red Ponies (Warren Ellis, Graham Lee, Peter Luscombe on drums, Bruce Haymes on keys and Michael Vidale on bass) from Later… with Jools Holland in the UK.
There’s a palpable joy and freedom to these recordings that make it the most appealing Son Little album to date. The songs themselves benefit from a lack of spit and polish, as Aaron Livingston has always been a bluesman at heart. His compositions here are raw, unvarnished extrapolations of old country-blues and early rock and roll tropes, and they’re all the better for sounding a bhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpcl0_4cPnsit shaggy. And if Livingston has an old soul, he’s by no means stuck in the past, something evident from the SoundCloud-style naming conventions in some of these songs (“bbbaby,” “about her. again”).
“Letting go can be a scary prospect,” says Son Little. “But there’s beauty in it, too. Everything you leave behind opens up space for something new in your life.”
That was certainly the case with Little’s remarkable new album, ‘aloha.’ Written in only eight days and recorded at Paris’s iconic Studio Ferber, the entire project was an exercise in letting go, in ceding control, in surrendering to fate. While Little still plays nearly every instrument on the album himself, he put his songs in the hands of an outside producer for the first time here, collaborating with French studio wizard Renaud Letang (Feist, Manu Chao) to create his boldest, most self-assured statement yet.
“I’d always produced myself in the past,” explains Little, “but it’s easy to get caught up in an endless quest for perfection when you do that. Working with Renaud let me see my work from an outsider’s perspective, and that helped me get out of my own way.”
When Australian music legends Kate Ceberano, Steve Kilbey and Sean Sennett announced that they were forming a new group together last year, fans were immediately curious.
It didn’t take long to conclude that this supergroup would be an impressive one following the release of their first single, “Monument City Lights, 1973″ , and today’s release of the debut record, “The Dangerous Age”, only proves this is no side project for the trio – this is the real deal.
“Creating [Monument City Lights, 1973] with Steve and Kate was a dream,” Sennett at the time. “You can hear where both of these artists came from in the grooves. To write with them – let alone sing and play with them – was a joy.”
To celebrate The Dangerous Age’s release the group have shared the exclusive music video for “Not The LovingKind”, recorded at David Bromley’s studio in Melbourne. “Not The Loving Kind is our power-pop song,” the trio said .
“Three or four chords … and the truth. Fittingly, it was written in a garage by Kate and Sean. For the clip, the boys weren’t around, so we roped in Alison and Jessie to play the guitars and had it filmed by a wonderful emerging director Tash Curato and edited by Cassie Chechinelli.”
Not The Loving Kind from the Kate Ceberano, Steve Kilbey & Sean Sennett from the album The Dangerous Age. Written by Kate Ceberano and Sean Sennett
If you are searching endlessly for new music and bands. So, let us save you from the hours of endless scrolling. We have your new favorite indie band right here. Pretoria is a four piece alternative/indie rock band out of Grand Rapids Michigan. Josh Bilisko (Guitar) met Rob Gullett(Vocals/Bass) and Ben DeWitt (Drums) in high school and they all decided to start playing music in and around the area. Soon after releasing their first EP they added Evelyn Timmis (Synth/Guitar/Vocals) to round out their new indie sound.
The band formed when guitarist Josh Bilisko and bassist Rob Gullet met in high school. After that, Ben Dewitt came in to play drums. The group bonded over their mutual music interests (Nirvana) and they immediately clicked. Pretoria already has an EP and a couple of singles under their belt. Now, they can add their latest “Cape Town” to their discography.
EP opener “You Can’t Explain” is the peak of the album (which implies that there are pits, but there really, really aren’t). Kicking off with high energy, good vibes, and just a taste of what else is to come is a great way to start off this EP. “Cody Maverick” has the funky, beach feel that the band seems keen on embracing. It’s meant to be loud, listened to with the windows down. “Laundry” takes on a more med-tempo beat, but instead of feeling slow, it feels sultry. “Don’t Forget Me” is the melancholy EP closer. It still keeps up the summer vibes, but it’s more toned down. It’s the kind of summer day where it hits you that life isn’t always like a movie, and sometimes you have to be introspective. Lead singer, Bilisko, begs “Don’t forget me” more desperately as the song starts to draw to a close, bringing the EP to a desperate end.
They just sound good. It’s a fun album, that offers something relatable when you need it, but something fun-loving when you don’t. “Cape Town” feels airy, summer-y, and shows something great in this tiny indie band.
Pretoria just released their EP, “Cape Town,” in June. The four track long EP is an indie music lover’s wet dream.
Hamilton Leithauser (formerly of The Walkmen) shared a new song, “Here They Come.” Part of the song could heard in a funny teaser video that we posted yesterday in which Leithauser got beaten up by actor/writer Ethan Hawke. The single features backing vocals by Leithauser’s wife Anna Stumpf and is out now via Glassnote Records.
There’s no word yet on when the new album from Leithauser will be released. In the teaser video Leithauser said his new album is made up of songs about real people, many of them his friends. “‘Here They Come’ is about a friend who tends to run from his problems,” Leithauser further explained in a voice over, as he walked around New York City. “When the going gets tough, he tends to just cut and run. The song is about the specific moment when the lights are coming up in a movie theater where he’s been hiding out all day.”
In the teaser Leithauser then arrives at Café Carlyle (where he had a series of residency shows in January) to play the song for one of his friends, who turns out to be Hawke. Right off the bat, the actor is annoyed that Leithauser is late. Then Hawke has a violent reaction to the song.
Back in 2016 Leithauser teamed up with Rostam Batmanglij (formerly of Vampire Weekend) to release a collaborative album, I Had a Dream That You Were Mine,via Glassnote Records.
Sharon Van Etten moved away from New York, what, a couple of months ago? And she’s already making artfully expressionistic black-and-white videos where she wears floppy hats and stares and desert horizons. Nicky and Juliana Giraffe at Giraffe Studios directed the black and white video, which features Van Etten and the dancing duo of Allison and Veronica Huber in the California desert. John Congleton produced the song, which simply has a very cool vibe.
Van Etten had this to say about the video in a press release: “‘Beaten Down’ is about love, patience and empathy. It’s about making life-changing choices and remaining strong enough to see them through.”
Just a year ago, Van Etten shook off all vestiges of stereotypical singer-songwriter fare to release Remind Me Tomorrow, a dank and scuzzy electronic rock record. What’s so marvelous about her new single “Beaten Down” is how she’s managed to keep those sharp, hard textures while turning them toward something more languid and expansive. “Beaten Down” is a song of support and encouragement, and Van Etten delivers it over a miles-deep bass groove, layering her own voice up symphonically and soaring high on the chorus. It sounds like space opening up. It’s the sound of somebody who can breathe.
“Beaten Down”, the new track from Sharon Van Etten, available now on Jagjaguwar Records
After putting out Magic in September 2007 and touring it for the better part of 12 months, Bruce began 2009 with the drop of another studio album, Working on a Dream, followed a week later by the band’s Super Bowl, his most widely viewed performance ever. Barely catching their breath, Springsteen and the band kicked off the WOAD tour on April 1st, which would run through November .
Nassau Coliseum 4th May 2009 presents the first opportunity in the archive series to revisit the WOAD tour in its purest form, the first leg, before the full-album shows of the fall and on a night when Max Weinberg played drums the entire performance. Max’s son Jay had been drafted to take his sticks while the Mighty One was fulfilling his day job leading the house band for Conan O’Brien’s short-lived stint hostingThe Tonight Show. Because he was training his understudy, Max shared the drum stool with Jay for the preceding eight concerts. Max’s full participation at Nassau may be one of the factors energizing this excellent performance which offers a winsome mix of recent material, welcome returns, and a few true surprises.
The first half of the show is straight fire. There’s a real sense of purpose and focus right out of the gate with a punchy “Badlands” straight into “No Surrender.” Familiar territory, yet sounding mighty fresh indeed, buoyed by the E Street Band in especially fine voice (a good example of details you can only hear in the archive series recordings). Listen for lovely vocals from Soozie and Patti at the top of “No Surrender” and clear evidence of the night’s high spirits: after Bruce sings “Hearts of fire grow cold,” Clarence shouts an affirmative, “YEAH!”
With the show clipping along, Bruce goes all-in for “Outlaw Pete,” and damn if it doesn’t work, as his conviction brings the hokum narrative to life. Springsteen and the band have a rollicking good romp through the mini Western epic, and there’s even a quick nod to “Be True” in the final solo.
A snappy “She’s the One” makes an unusually early and appreciated appearance in the set, continuing the cool E Street vibes. Like “Outlaw Pete,” Bruce digs deep for “Working on a Dream” in what has to be one of the best versions of the song, sounding vital and rich, once again resplendent with background vocals from the band. One of the tour’s hallmarks was Springsteen’s preacher rap in the middle of the title track, and his gospel will surely move you, especially with the The Big Man’s call-and-response intonations so clear and heartfelt.
“Seeds” made a much-appreciated reappearance in 2009, the first E Street Band turn for the song since the Tunnel of Love Express Tour and played in a potent, straightforward arrangement that wraps with inspired guitar soloing. “Johnny 99” marks another WOAD tour return in a full-band version that bears an unmistakable Jerry Lee Lewis flavor. There’s no mistaking the blast the band is having, with Nils taking a sinewy slide guitar solo and Soozie and Patti singing sweet, train whistle “Woo Hoo”s.
Six-string pyrotechnics continue with a showcase for Lofgren on “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” completing the so-called “recession pack” of songs that started with “Seeds.” Thanks to Jon Altschiller’s revealing mix, the song is also a showcase for Roy Bittan, who, unbeknownst to most of us until now, plays a beautiful piano part behind Nils’ soaring solo. Another distinguishing feature of the WOAD tour was the impact of song-request signs made by the audience. The acknowledgment of these signs organically evolved the show to feature a moment where, during “Raise Your Hand,” Bruce collected signs and decided what requests to grant. Kismet was definitely in play for the first request granted, the one and to-date only performance of “Expressway to Your Heart,” a minor hit for the Soul Survivors in 1967 written by the legendary Philadelphia songwriting and producing team Gamble & Huff. Anticipating the request, Springsteen and the band rehearsed and sound checked the song, which helps explain why their one-off version is so bloody good.
Bruce has a rich history of covering minor hits (“Double Shot of My Baby’s Love,” “Little Latin Lupe Lu,” “Mountain of Love”) and making them his own, and “Expressway to Your Heart” joins the pantheon of the best of them. With its irresistible hook and infectious chorus, the song is an instant E Street classic cover worth the price of admission. The request section goes from strength to strength as a well-oiled “For You” follows “Expressway,” then the tour premiere of “Rendezvous,” an asset to any set list. This wonderful sequence concludes with a fizzing version of “Night.” What more could you want?
The back nine of Nassau holds up its end of the bargain, too. Some consider “The Wrestler” to be the signature performance on this leg of the tour, and the case is made strongly tonight. The song’s rustic, fleeting majesty is on full display (does anyone else hear hints of U2’s “Kite”?), with Bruce’s voice rough-edged and full of emotion. In hindsight, the story told by “The Wrestler” echoes some of the sentiment expressed first-person in Bruce’s autobiography and Broadway show.
Beckoning Patti to the mic, Bruce changes the mood with a soaring “Kingdom of Days,” pledging his partnership in full voice in this underappreciated song, rare for celebrating love not at its inception, but further on up the road.
A trio of 2000s songs (“Radio Nowhere,” “Lonesome Day” and “The Rising”) carries us to “Born to Run” and the encore, where Bruce speaks nostalgically about how “these old buildings” — arenas like Nassau Coliseum, the Spectrum in Philadelphia, and the Sports Arena in Los Angeles — are “great concert halls” that are being torn down one by one. Springsteen’s history in Nassau Coliseum alone, site of the epic New Year’s Eve 1980 set among others, is significant and resonates through this final performance in the original arena which has since been renovated. The encore ends, as it should, in joy mode, with “Dancing in the Dark” (in which Garry Talent keeps the time very tight indeed) and “Rosalita.” And surely any performance of “Jungleland” from Clarence’s final tour should be treasured. But it is the first line of a song unique to the WOAD tour, “Hard Times (Come Again No More),” that lingers: “Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears.”
Following Bruce’s comments about the value of old buildings like Nassau Coliseum and his suggestion to the audience to support Long Island Cares (founded by Harry Chapin), the sentiment of “Hard Times” — making its live archive debut here — is fitting. In early 2020, a time marked by national travails and reminders of how precious and fleeting life can be, the 166-year-old lyric sounds even more like a directive all should heed.
Bruce Springsteen – Lead vocal, electric and acoustic guitars, harmonica; Roy Bittan – Piano, keyboards, accordion; Clarence Clemons – Tenor and baritone saxophones, percussion, backing vocal; Charlie Giordano – Organ, keyboards, accordion; Nils Lofgren – Electric and acoustic guitars, backing vocal; Patti Scialfa – Electric and acoustic guitars; backing vocal; Garry Tallent – Bass; Stevie Van Zandt – Electric and acoustic guitars, mandolin, backing vocal; Max Weinberg: Drums; Curtis King: Backing vocal, tambourine; Cindy Mizelle: Backing vocal; tambourine; Soozie Tyrell – Violin, acoustic guitar, percussion, backing vocal
