Second to none in the stoner rock canon (save for the massive influence of Sabbath and Blue Cheer), Kyuss refined the art of psychedelic heaviness late in their career with “Welcome to Sky Valley”. The most focused and cohesive collection of the band’s “desert rock” jams, Sky Valley was sequenced in a way that allowed tracks to bleed into one another, grouped into threes for optimum vinyl listening (with optional chemical enhancement).
On paper this looks like some kind of cosmic odyssey, but the individual songs are among the band’s most direct and hardest rocking, whether on the opening burst of “Gardenia” (which resembles molten lava flowing down the side of a volcano), continues into the moody space jam instrumental “Asteroid,” and culminates in the strangely titled yet superbly diverse “Supa Scoopa and Mighty Scoop.” Other highlights include the solid thrashing of “100 Degrees,” the prog rock instrumental “Whitewater,”or the catchy single “Demon Cleaner” (the heaviest song about dental care in the canon). Though when the group did space out and go full-on psych-folk, as with the stunning dirge “Space Cadet,” it’s a thing of stoned wonder
But no song exemplifies the Kyusssound as well as the aptly titled “Odyssey,” which opens suite number three and provides a veritable blueprint of the band’s unique combination of ingredients. The track begins with a cryptic melody, explodes into a ferocious riff, glides into a psychedelic bridge, then returns to full-throttle for its conclusion.
One of the UK’s most charismatic and distinctive frontmen was taken from us when Steve Marriott, of the Small Faces and Humble Pie, died in a house fire on 20th April 1991. He was a cruelly young 44 years of age.
Thankfully, Steve’s achievements as a true figurehead of pop and rock music, especially in the 1960s and ’70s, are now widely acknowledged. His talents have been celebrated of late in the highly recommended musical All Or Nothing — The Mod Musical, which brings the Small Faces’ story vividly to life and continues to play to massive response.
Marriott, from Manor Park in the East of London, was a born performer. He started his first band at the age of 12 and starred on the West End stage in Lionel Bart’s hit production of Oliver! at just 13.
His dreams came true when the Small Faces, formed in 1965, made it big and enjoyed several years of hit singles and increasingly influential and experimental albums. Marriott’s wanderlust and disillusionment with the business of music led him to leave the band and form Humble Pie. There, he developed a creative partnership with a new group of like-minded players, including Peter Frampton. “It was the best band you could ever be in as far as I was concerned,” said Frampton, “because you’ve got my idol there.
Formed by Steve Marriott in 1969 after the break-up of Small Faces, Humble Pie epitomised the British rock supergroups emerging at the turn of the decade. With the charismatic Marriott taking on frontman duties, he enlisted Peter Frampton (then of The Herd) on guitar, Spooky Tooth’s Greg Ridley on bass and a teenage Jerry Shirley on drums. The group released two beloved albums on Small Faces’ former label, Immediate, before making a switch to A&M in 1970 and working up a harder, blues-rock sound that would earn acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic.
The group’s self-titled effort, released in summer 1970, solidified their new direction and set Humble Pie up for a run of albums that would make an indelible mark on the blues-rock scene, among them Rock On, Smokin’ and the classic live double-album, Performance Rockin’ The Fillmore, recorded at New York’s iconic Fillmore East, before the group temporarily disbanded in 1975. Steve Marriott fronted Humble Pie from 1969 to 1975, and briefly in a reunited version in the early 1980s. He also made some notable albums in his own name, including the 1976 solo debut Marriott. 1990’s Marriott & Band included versions of his treasured Small Faces songs ‘All Or Nothing’ and ‘What’cha Gonna Do About It.’
Shortly before the end of his life, Marriott was interviewed and he reflected with quiet satisfaction on his career. “I was seduced at 18,” he said, “and it was quite good but it paled very quickly. I realised it had nothing to do with music and everything to do with the shape of your bum…what’s been has gone, and I’m very proud of it.
“I’ve got what I wanted, which is just enough money to live on, in no great style but a nice way, and to have some respect from other musicians and play the pubs and clubs, where the music’s still real.
Steve Marriott and Greg Ridley are with us no more, but with the full input of both Frampton and Shirley, The A&M Vinyl Box Set 1970-1975 commemorates their great work. Collecting all seven of the group’s A&M albums across nine slabs of 180g vinyl, it presents this part of the group’s legacy in better-than-ever audio
“Eat It, in particular, had sound problems originally,” says Jerry Shirley, who adds that they have “now been eradicated once and for all, so that our fans, old and new, can hear it as was it was intended to be”. Much love and care has been put into assembling the package too, with the albums coming in a hardback slipcase and replica artwork – including the die-cut sleeve that originally housed Thunderbox.
“Jerry and I worked together with A&M for some time to get this released,” Peter Frampton notes, adding, “We pay tribute to our two lost brothers, Steve and Greg, and hope you enjoy this as much as we did putting it all together.
It was only a few weeks back we were falling head-over-heels in love with “Daylight Matters”, the first single from Cate Le Bon’s upcoming album “Reward”, and this week Cate might just have gone and released an even better track! Reward’s second single, “Home To You”, is a stunning exploration of the idea of home, and how subjective a concept that can be.
Clocking in at nearly seven dreamy minutes, Home To You, is something of a low-key epic; the drums shuffle, the guitars pluck out easy runs and burbling, as the year’s finest bass-line adds much of the propulsion. Only the marimba like keys seem to step out of the dreamy gorgeousness, adding a gently tropical feel, like a cocktail umbrella adorned drink in a working men’s club. In its own subtle way, Home To You, is a reflection on the modern world, questioning how we are so quick to judge whether someone belongs, and where they should call home; “home to you, is atrocity in the town”.In that unique way she possesses, Cate seems to fuse her abstract lyricism into something moving and relatable. Without seeing the scene, you still feel the painting her words her create, instinctively you relate, instinctively you know this is the kind of song that can change your life.
“Reward” is out May 24th via Mexican Summer Records.
With a sonic style that swirls effortlessly inside a generous melding of warm psych-folk, explosive garage psych and entrancingly fuzzy sixties sounding musings (or retro-psych as the kids like to call it these days), ‘The Dandelion’ began life as a solo project by ‘The Dolly Rocker Movement’ frontman, Daniel J Poulter, eventually releasing it’s debut long player ‘The Strange Case Of The Dandelion’ back in 2013. Shortly after the release however, Poulter walked out and the super talented Nathalie de Silver took over songwriting duties, subsequently releasing some impressive collections of music alongside a revolving door of live musicians.
With a brilliant self-titled EP released in 2014, a very interesting sophomore release in 2015 called ‘Seeds Flowers and Magical Powers of The Dandelion’ and a dedicated worldwide following, ‘The Dandelion’ have announced a brand new thirteen track album entitled ‘Old Habits & New Ways Of The Dandelion’ via the Greek-based independent record label ‘Blackspin Records’, and have just launched a lengthy European tour throughout April taking in France, Spain, Greece, England, Scotland, Belgium, Austria, Croatia & Germany to support the album. ‘Old Habits & New Ways Of The Dandelion’ is penned in for official release on April 1st 2019 and will be available on various vinyl formats
The Dandelion (Sydney, Australia) The unstoppable 60’s garage druids are back after a 2 year break…
THE NEW LP “Old Habits & New Ways of The Dandelion” will be out April 1st! On Deluxe SpiderChild cassette with foldout lyric sheet & CD / colored Vinyl via Blackspin Records,
The current line up though, consists of Nathalie de Silver – vocals/guitar/songwriting/producer,Laura Murdoch – organ/vocals/theremin, Josh White – drums/vocals & Lauren Crew – bass.
We last heard from She Keeps Bees, the duo of Jessica Larrabee and Andy LaPlant, back in 2014, when they shared the critically acclaimed record, Eight Houses. The subsequent five years have been something of a personal journey, Jessica losing her father, before the pair moved to upstate New York and began a family of their own. The result of all that change is their new record, “Kinship”; a record full of death, birth and the endless cycles of nature as we know it.
This week the band have shared the latest offering from Kinship, in the shape of the striking title track. Built around a primal, pounding drum beat and Jessica’s prominent vocal, it’s only on repeat listens that all of the intricate musical details reveal themselves, whether that’s the twitching keys or the subtle percussive flourishes that counter the main driving beat. Lyrically, as you’d perhaps expect it’s a song of togetherness and connectivity, in particular it focuses on the idea of water as the binding force of all nature, the one constant that links us to all life and the planet around us, “living water mother of all, visible manifestation of chaos”. Hypnotic and never hopeless, Kinship seems to be a record that sits on the cusp of an environmental, and very human, crisis, yet it refuses to go meekly, it is a record ready to fight for a better future, for ourselves, our children and our planet as we know it.
The new single from one of our emerging Cardiff acts Silent Forum. With shades of XTC and Idlewild this is a slowly building hymn to community and looking after your friends.
‘Safety in Numbers’ is the third single released by this Cardiff based Post-Punk / New Wave four piece Silent Forum on Libertino out on the 10th of May. Following on from the swaggering, off-kilter, infectious pop energy of ‘How I Faked The Moon Landing’ and ‘Robot’, ‘Safety in Numbers’ explores a far more reflective musical landscape. This is a song that “expresses the importance of looking after your friends……that time will forget us, but that our relationships are the most meaningful thing we can achieve in life.”
Performing under the name Silent Forum since late 2015, the four-piece deemed Wales‘ most promising band blends shadowy Post Punk with uplifting, inspiring New Wave. They move unpredictably from serious and direct to playful and overblown. Since they signed to Libertino records their sound has taken an ambitious turn, They have an eagerly awaited debut album set for release later this year.
The new Fat White Family album has landed. Look at that poster too. On Limited gold vinyl. Serfs Up! is a lush and masterful work, lascivious and personal. Tropical, sympathetic and monumental. It invites the listener in rather than repel them through wilful abrasion. Fat White Family have broken previous default patterns of behaviour, and as such their third album heralds a new day dawning. Echoing within the arrangements throughout are traces of blissed-out 60s Tropicalia, Velvets / Bowie sleaze-making and star-gazing, 80s digital dancehall, David Axelrod-style easy listening, joyous Pet Shop Boys synth crescendos, acid house, post-PIL dub, metropolitan murder ballads, doom-disco and mouth-gurning, slow-mo psychedelia so by the time it comes to a close only a fool would deny that Serfs Up! is something very special indeed.
An album steeped in lush, lascivious, tropical warmth – imagine Arcade Fire in a trippy haze with Alan Vega heading down to the doom-psych-disco.
Fat White Family – “When I Leave”, from ‘Serfs Up!‘, out 19th April 2019 on Domino Record Co
Fat White Family – “Tastes Good With The Money”, from ‘Serfs Up!’, out 19th April 2019 on Domino Record Co.
Another Sky have unveiled their new single ‘The Cracks’ along with details of new EP ‘Life Was Coming In Through The Blinds’. Check out the new Steve Turvey-directed video. Due for release on June 14th, the new EP from the band is led by the song ‘The Cracks’. Debuted as Annie Mac’s Hottest Record In The World, it was inspired by a Leonard Cohen lyric and written as “an ode to our generation, one that is more self-aware and being forced to have the difficult conversations that lead to progress and evolution”
Over their few releases so far, the band have been praised for their socio-politically aware lyrics. As to what draws her to these ideas, Vincent said she’s simply reflecting many of the anxieties that come with the zeitgeist.
“I’m very open about it and don’t believe there should be any kind of stigma around mental health,” Vincent said. “Going through the process of mental illness is bloody difficult, and I’m really interested in how it touches our generation. It has been affecting our generation worse, and I think it’s tied to things like global warming.
New song ‘The Cracks’ echoes the themes of the band’s other recent material, acting as a call for action as well as echoing a struggle to find one’s place in a fractured society.
“‘We have a song called ‘The Water Below’, which was about being a depressed young woman and not really knowing what it meant to be ‘a woman’ or what to do,” said Vincent. “There’s another new song called ‘Riverbed’ and it explores feeling like you’re at the bottom of a river but being told that everything is different. You’ve sunk to the bottom but you’re being told that you’re actually flying.
“There’s this feeling like we can’t talk about the things that are going to happen. There’s a pressure to be really hopeful about global warming rather than saying ‘More needs to be done’. ‘Riverbed’ is about being told that how you’re feeling is wrong.”
“I’m always changing,” Esther Rose sings at the top of her sophomore album, “You Made It This Far”. The line is at once a promise and a plea, a concise distillation of her commitment to evolution as well as her dogged determination to meet every challenge in her path with unconditional acceptance. Laid-back yet deliberate, her delivery here marries old-school country and rural folk with a plainspoken philosophy that’s thoroughly modern, and the end result is a record that’s as joyful as it is restless, one that weaves fiddle and lap steel around profound revelations .
“There’s this theme of radical acceptance running through the whole album,” explains Rose, who recorded the album live to tape at Mashed Potato Records in New Orleans in just four days. “I didn’t realize it until after I’d finished writing the songs, but they all came from this place of trying to understand and truly accept myself and others in our most vulnerable moments of confusion or despair.”
A New Orleanian for the last decade, Rose first gained national prominence with the release of 2017’s This Time Last Night, an intoxicating debut, her “honest, gorgeous country songs” and rave that “her voice has a pitched-up June Carter quality, her melodies are simple like Jimmie Rodgers’s, and her tone is reminiscent of bluesy, lovelorn greats like Rex Griffin and Patsy Cline.” The record earned Rose many festival performances from Savannah Stopover to AmericanaFest alongside dates with The Punch Brothers, Pokey Lafarge, and The Deslondes, and it even caught the ear of fellow Detroit native Jack White, who was so taken with the music that he invited Rose to duet with him on his Boarding House Reach album and to share the stage for a live performance at Jazz Fest.
While writing the songs that would become You Made It This Far, Rose found herself working through a period of tumultuous change, grappling with a breakup, a move, and a family illness all at once. Splitting her time between New Mexico and New Orleans, she pondered what it takes to love and to be loved, to be vulnerable enough to let someone in and brave enough to face the pain when they’re gone.
We hope you have been enjoying the latest single from Fort Frances, “A Thousand Years From Now.” released at the end of March, and it is an explosion of good vibes that makes us excited to continue putting music into the world. After it was released though, The band started thinking about what will actually occur a thousand years from now. Forget being in a band. We want to be psychics.
Predicting the next millennium is not easy. (Very important note: That is millennium, not Willennium, the acclaimed release from Will Smith that includes classic hits like “Wild Wild West”, “Da Butta” and “Freakin’ It”.) So we have spent the past few weeks combing through dense books about the future, analyzing reports about population trends, talking with government leaders and interviewing technology experts.
