Former the Cure member Lol Tolhurst, former Siouxsie And The Banshees drummer Budgie, and veteran producer Jacknife Lee teamed up for an album called “Los Angeles” last year. Tolhurst and Budgie headed out on the road to promote it a few months back, a voyage that brought them to the KEXP studios in Seattle. In a session recorded on June 4th with Liam Hayden on bass, they performed a cover of the early Cure single “A Forest.” Tolhurst has a songwriting credit on “A Forest,” so maybe “cover” is not exactly the right word here. The point is these gothy post-punk veterans performed a gothy post-punk classic in a historically rainy West Coast locale
It’s a trip seeing Budgie playing drums, and the moody Blade Runner keyboards give it a different edge. It’s doesn’t have to be better, it has to be good. And it’s good. Lol is presenting similar very basic keyboards skills but we know he’s played drums and keyboards so often in the past, he’s just dumbed it down to give this interpretation of “A Forest”. Budgie working hard, maybe the bassist too low in mix. Really nice to see though, main thing for me is to see them fit and well and happy.
“This is not a project—it’s a band,” Stephen Malkmus has said of his new group with seasoned players Matt Sweeney (Chavez), Jim White (The Dirty Three), and Emmett Kelly (Ty Segall, Cairo Gang). “We’re all jazzed.” Listening to their debut album, it’s hard to argue with Malkmus. While all four had previously collaborated with other members of the group, The Hard Quartet marks the first time they’d collaborated as a unit. They say there was instant chemistry, though, and with three songwriters they had nearly an album’s worth of songs after the first week of playing together.
They wrote so many songs, in fact, that their debut is a double, but it’s one that sails by thanks to the variety and quality on display here.
Variety is really the key to “The Hard Quartet” Malkmus, Sweeney, and Kelly all bring songs to the group, each with a distinct but complementary style. All four are credited with the music but usually the lyrics are by the lead vocalist.
Malkmus delivers lots of memorable, very Malkmus’ lines (“Denim and door knobs that was our kink,” “Can you dredge emotion from me?”), a couple of his most Pavement-y songs since Pavement (“Thug Dynasty,” “Renegade”), at least three songs that reference rats, and one of his sweetest love songs ever (“Hey”). Sweeney, meanwhile, brings swagger on “Rio’s Song” and “It Suits You,” and folky choogle on “Jacked Existence” and “Killed by Death” which is one of the best songs on the album.
Kelly contributes two but they’re both great: the jangly, bittersweet “Our Hometown Boy,” and the dirgey “North of the Border.” As for White, who does let his Aussie accent fly, briefly, on “Action for the Military Boys,” he brings his dexterous, wide-range of skills behind the kit. It’s rare for him these days to play such a straight-ahead rock and this album make you glad someone is having him do it here. They are a cohesive unit, this Hard Quartet, a real, very good band, who hopefully will continue beyond this great record.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard on their last leg of their tour the band played a special acoustic set, and as soon as the Detroit show dropped on the Official Bootleggers’ series we knew we had to press it up. The acoustic Gizz sets almost prefer this version of “Theia” to the studio versions, “You Can Be Your Silhouette” sounds so good acoustically, and the tracks from “B741” as other notable highlights as well. However, it’s also funny to hear them attempt songs that don’t translate that well acoustically, While also allegedly being very drunk on stage, a very bold decision to play “Crumbling Castle/Fourth Color while wasted.
This bootleg album captures the first acoustic set of the 2024 tour in all its glory, pressed up on some sick tri-colour vinyl, each a different design over 3 LPs. Recorded Live at The Aretha Franklin Amphitheater, Detroit, MI, USA August 23rd, 2024.
Limited to 1000 Vinyl 3xLP Tri-Gatefolds featuring 18 acoustic tracks over three 12″ LP’s!, Each 12″ in a custom photo inner-sleeve A unique op art inner label for each 12″ This boot joins the Forest Hills 8xLP from the last leg of the tour.
In 2024, the long-thought-lost 16mm reels of Cameron Crowe’s first film ‘Tom Petty: Heartbreakers Beach Party’ . His directorial debut, has been unearthed from the archives, restored, and is getting a theatrical rerelease on October 17 & 20 at theatres across the country.
Now more than 40 years later, this cult classic, era-defining documentary has been fully restored and will make its debut on the big screen. Follow Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers in their ‘80s golden era of completing and touring ‘Long After Dark’, including the filming of the iconic “You Got Lucky” music video.
The documentary, which surrounded the making and release of the band’s 1982 album “Long After Dark”, only aired once on MTV. “Heartbreakers Beach Party” occupies a special place in my heart,” says Crowe. “Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers leaned into the making of the film with a kind of hilarious music-filled honesty that still feels fresh forty years later. It was also my first experience as a director. Thanks to Adria Petty and the Petty Estate, along with our co-filmmakers Danny Bramson, Phil Savenick, Doug Dowdle and Greg Mariotti, I’m so happy we’re bringing it back in all its reckless glory. The fact that it was yanked from MTV after only one airing at 2:00 a.m. just shows that it was indeed an outlandish feast for fans in all the best ways.
The restored version of “Heartbreakers Beach Party features footage of Petty and the band which didn’t make the original cut.
“The Shepperton Studios” 16mm film we originally bought 20 years ago at an estate sale auction, and the first SD transfer paid for by a small group of fans at the Meeksgenesis forum… This transfer was then used by the band for the official boxed sets. It has now been 10 years since the last time the film was transferred in HD and 50 years since Genesis were on the stage performing.
There is a lot of new technology, faster computers, larger/cheaper storage, etc. Thomas Manchon even interviewed the director Gerry Harrison and talked with sound engineer John Burns to get some background information on how the film was made. They rescanned the reels (both audio and video) and started the project from scratch to see where this could lead. Not only do 4K scanners make more resolution available, but the audio scanning technology has been greatly improved. The amount of work was immense, so we hope it was all worthwhile in the end. To my eyes the results are cleaner and clearer, with smoother motion, much better detail from the dark areas as well as the spotlights, more balanced colour and brightness throughout especially the effects of the ultraviolet, and much improved audio AI remixed by TM. Since this is the first time I scanned the film in 10 years, and the first time anyone has done this kind of detail work on it, I see it as the only true “remaster”.
The Genesis Museum in association with TM Productions and Thomas Manchon, proudly present: The Shepperton 50th Anniversary Remaster
Tracklist with introduction subtitles: 00:00 Watcher of the Skies 08:37 Dancing With The Moonlit Knight 17:41 I Know What I Like 23:09 The Musical Box Story 24:13 The Musical Box 34:47 Supper’s Ready Story 37:27 Supper’s Ready
Geordie Greep’s debut solo album comes 4th October on Rough Trade Records. “The main theme of the record is desperation; you don’t hear an unreliable narrator but someone who is kidding themselves that they have everything under control, but they don’t.” – Geordie Greep
Geordie Greep (guitarist and vocalist in black midi) releases his debut solo album ‘The New Sound’ and shares its first single ‘Holy, Holy’ plus video directed by Ethan and Tom.
Following three astonishing albums with black midi, most recently 2023’s ‘Hellfire’, and almost non-stop worldwide tours for near-on five years, Geordie Greep has somehow found time to record his first solo album ‘The New Sound’, an album that has allowed him scope to explore creative ideas like never before. It boasts a brand of high quality, all-embracing alternative pop fun not heard in a very long time. Geordie Greep; “With recording ‘The New Sound’, it was the first time I have had no one to answer to. And with every impulse I had, I was able to completely follow it through to its conclusion. Being in a band (black midi), we often have this ‘we can do everything’ feeling, but you are also kind of limited in that approach, and sometimes it’s good to do something else, to let go of things.”
Over thirty session musicians were involved in the making of the album, on two continents, in São Paulo and London. Geordie Greep; “Some of the tracks we had recorded already, elsewhere, but it just wasn’t right, so we re-recorded them with new people. Half of the tracks were done in Brazil, with local musicians pulled together at the last minute. They’d never heard anything I’d done before, they were just interested in the demos I’d made. The tracking was all done in one, maybe two days. Then we did the overdubs later, in London.”
Geordie Greep has had plenty of practice with black midi over the years in performing musical and lyrical Cruyff turns, full of stop-starts, blasts and bangs and whispered soliloquies. Here the method is employed to ask: what part of the narrative should we listeners believe, or take as our emotional crutch? The mercurial, insouciant tone set in ‘Terra’, or the gruesome imagery it is juxtaposed with? After all, Greep tells us, this is the story of “the museum of human suffering.” Consider, too, the strange emotional undulations created in ‘Through a War’, where the music makes a very polished stab at aping a soul revue; or a salsa class. It’s there to give colour to a set of imaginings which include cannibalism, being boiled alive, and a woman giving birth to a goat. You’re never quite sure when, or whether, you are supposed to be shocked; or laugh. Even if, as with the latter, Geordie Greep gives us the punchline; “And that’s how I spent my adolescence.”
Street life is all around: the listener is thrown into a world of cafes, bars and clubs, visit theatres, cabarets and strange museums, or rented rooms. Here we see our heroes carry out a series of naughty assignations, military cosplay or socio-economic triumphs. Greep; “I was often thinking of walking through a city, and thinking about a million dollars, showing that kind of feeling, you know?” Taking on The New Sound in its entirety can feel like you are trying to cross Piccadilly Circus after a skinful.
Single ‘Holy Holy’ is possibly the best example: has urbane romantic fantasy ever sounded this way? Probably not since Noël Coward. This story of an imaginary liaison in a nightclub is soundtracked by ’noughties indie pop chords and bravura Latin big band arrangements – including a three-piano attack (Steinway, Bechstein, electric). ‘Motorbike’ sees a change in vocal duties: as bassist and album producer Seth ‘Shank’ Evans starts up a doleful soliloquy about not getting what he wants.
It’s certainly an album that fully engages the listener, throughout the eleven tracks. Greep; “I was worried about the length in terms of not overblowing it. But I’m also really bloody bored of listening to music and, for better or worse, knowing in advance what it means or what it’s trying to do. All my favourite music is about the listener coming to terms with what is going on. My favourite singers, like Peter Hammill or Nat King Cole, are literally one of a kind. I love that. Especially with lyrics, where you’re not sure what they’re going on about, but you know it’s not just abstract thoughts.”
What next? Could we see “The New Sound” as a live concept or is the album going to stay forever in our collective imagination? Greep; “My plan is to ‘do a Keith Jarrett thing’, have a different group of session musicians in a different place and lean into the fact that we’re not going to get it the same.” How can anything ever be ‘the same’ with Greep at the helm?
Radiohead began taking longer and longer gaps between albums over the years (But there’s still hope that they’ll do another album together), but with The Smile, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood are already more prolific than Radiohead have been in years, if not ever. “Cutouts” is their third album in a two-and-a-half year span, and their second released this year. And as “Kid A/Amnesiac” fans know, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood releasing two albums in close succession does not mean that one is leftovers.
If anything, this follow up to January’s acclaimed “Wall of Eyes” might be even better than its predecessor. It’s at least more accessible; it harnesses some of the same psychedelia that fuelled “Wall of Eyes” (particularly on the hallucinogenic “Colours Fly”), but it’s less jammy and freeform. It veers closer to the tight, futuristic art rock of 2000s-era Radiohead, with Thom’s ever-angelic voice supported by a bed of stabbing guitar riffs, buzzing synths, sweeping string arrangements from the London ContemporaryOrchestra, and the heart-pounding rhythms of drummer Tom Skinner.
These songs are some of the strongest that Thom and Jonny have written together in recent memory, and they scratch so many different types of Radiohead-esque itches, from the chaos of “Zero Sum” to the gentle acoustics of “Instant Psalm” to the paranoid pop of “Don’t Get Me Started.”
It can be easy to start to take brilliant, lifer songwriters like Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood for granted, especially when they give you two albums in the same year, but a great album like “Cutouts” is as good a reminder as any to never do that.
Featuring interviews with band members, fellow musicians Bob Geldof, Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie, Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan, The Specials’ Jerry Dammers, Texas’ Sharleen Spiteri, Manic Street Preachers’ James Dean Bradfield, writer Irvine Welsh, actress Molly Ringwald and album producers John Leckie, Pete Walsh, Steve Hillage, Trevor Horn and Jimmy Iovine. Produced and Directed by Joss Crowley
Considered one of the greatest live bands of the past 40 years
“An engaging look back at an inspiring backstory through the eyes of the band’s founding friends. As Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill prepared to tour their latest version of Simple Minds – described by Kerr in the film as being as much of a “theatrical ensemble” as a traditional band – Joss Crowley’s film goes back to the start, when the pair met in a building site at their new flats in Toryglen in Glasgow – a city “in a rush to modernise” as Kerr recalls.” – Peter Watts (UNCUT)
‘Simple Minds: Everything Is Possible’ The first ever feature length documentary-film chronicling the most iconic and influential Scottish band in history.
Nearly two decades since their beginnings, TheHorrors are set to release their 6th album and with this new record comes a new captivating sound that still encompasses those early years with even more gothic allure. Nearly 20 years since they first began, there are few bands who’ve created a canon as determinedly innovative and consistently critically acclaimed as The Horrors. Emerging as zeitgeist-shaking garage-goths on their 2007 debut “Strange House”, before taking a shoegaze-nodding sharp left on their Mercury-nominated follow up“Primary Colours“, since the beginning they’ve roamed between genres and atmospheres freely. 2011’s “Skying” won the NME Award for Best Album; “V” was heralded as “a triumph” in a five-star Guardian review, while 2021’s pair of EPs – ‘Lout’ and ‘Against The Blade’ – marked a visceral new chapter with their most industrial, uncompromising output yet.
Whilst the end results have changed, however, at their core has always been the same unbending commitment and bloody-minded allegiance to the cause. The Horrors are not and will never be a band that approach the job lightly. They’re musicians who’ll funnel everything they are into the process, at the expense of health, wealth and sometimes sanity. And so, whilst sixth album “Night Life” sees the band once more shapeshift into a new form, with a new sonic outlook and – this time – a new line up, in some ways The Horrors are still as they ever were.
We’ll be playing some special intimate UK shows in November and December.
This is the first single from our coming album, “Night Life”, out 21.03.25.
Vince Vaughn‘s AppleTV+ series “Bad Monkey” has almost wrapped up its first season, and the soundtrack, with an impressive list of artists covering Tom Petty‘s music, is officially out today.
Vince Vaughn stars as a former detective in black comedy series “Bad Monkey”. Based on the novel by Carl Hiaasen, the series follows former police detective turned restaurant inspector Andrew Yancy (Vaughn) who is pulled into a world of greed and corruption after a tourist finds a severed arm while fishing.
We’d already heard renditions of Petty’s songs from Eddie Vedder, Larkin Poe, Fitz & The Tantrums, flipturn, The War on Drugs, Jason Isbell, and Kurt Vile from it, and now you can hear the rest, including Sharon Van Etten‘s take on “I Won’t Back Down,”Weezer‘s version of “Here Comes My Girl,” also Nathaniel Rateliff‘s rendition of “Don’t Come Around Here No More,”Stephen Marley‘s cover of “You Don’t Know How It Feels,” and more.
Vedder also did a solo take on Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down,” playing a guitar Petty had given him, at Pearl Jam’s Philadelphia show last month,
Jason Isbell included a rendition of Petty’s “Room at the Top” on his new live album, “Live From The Ryman Vol. 2”, which is also out today. Isbell’s contribution is “You’re Gonna Get It,” which, accordingly is not one of the eleven Petty covers that Isbell has performed live over the years. As you might expect, Jason nails a perfect balance between staying faithful to the original and making it his own.
Sharon Van Etten, meanwhile, did a fantastic cover of “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with Shearwater for the AV Club in 2012.
The Fat Angel Sings 