This adventurous and brooding self-titled album by Sydney band Purplene is regarded by most as their definitive work, recorded by Steve Albini. A classic Australian record originally released 2004, finally now on vinyl and digital platforms.
This band should have been huge. Fantastic slo-core at times, post-punk, pre-emo. Fragile verses, and it gets sophisticatedly loud only at times where it should. Recorded by Mr. Albini. Sounds perfect.
Matt Blackman – Voice / Guitar (left) / Synth / Piano
Dave Ledlin – Guitar (right) / Mellotron on 4 / Bass on 2 / Voice on 6
Adam Jesson – Bass Guitar / Guitar (right) on 2
Matt Rossetti – Drums / Guitar (right) on 8
Limited Edition 7-Inch Single, Produced By Jimmy Page, To Be Released On Record Store Day Featuring Unreleased Versions Of “Rock And Roll” And “Friends”
Led Zeppelin are releasing something special for Record Store Day. Before the legendary band kicks off its 50th anniversary celebration this September, a special 7-inch vinyl single will arrive at independent record stores everywhere on April 21st from Atlantic Records and Rhino. The single, pressed on yellow vinyl, will premiere two previously unreleased studio mixes: the Sunset Sound Mix of “Rock and Roll” b/w the Olympic Studios Mix of “Friends.” Both of these tracks have been selected for this release by producer Jimmy Page.
“Rock and Roll” is only the third track released from the fabled Sunset Sound Mixes of Led Zeppelin IV. The studio mix of “When the Levee Breaks” actually made the original album, while the mix of “Stairway to Heaven” was included on the 2014 Deluxe Edition. The Olympic Studios Mix of “Friends” is described by the label as a “stripped-down version without the orchestration of the final mix, offering a true fly-on-the-wall feel from the band’s recording sessions for Led Zeppelin III at Headley Grange.”
This limited edition single will follow the release of the remastered How the West Was Wonin multiple formats on March 23rd including the first ever vinyl and Blu-ray Audio editions (with the Blu-ray containing hi-res 5.1 surround sound). The live album features performances from Led Zeppelin’s landmark California concerts at the Los Angeles Forum and Long Beach Arena on June 25th and 27th, 1972, as sequenced to replicate one entire concert.
In the 14 years since The Tigers Have Spoken, Neko Case has long since transcended her alt-country beginnings to become something more complex and harder to define. The Tigers Have Spoken captures her on the precipice of a shift that would begin on 2006’s Fox Confessor Brings The Flood. Here, Neko Case stays close to her twangy roots, leaning heavily on covers (from Loretta Lynn, Buffy Ste. Marie, traditionals, and others) and performing only four originals. One of those, “Favorite,” remains one of her best songs ever, and it was unavailable elsewhere until 2015, when a studio version finally appeared on the box set Truckdriver Gladiator Mule. Although The Tigers Have Spoken may disappoint fans looking for a more representative set, the album nicely captures Case’s voice and artistic restlessness.
I met this gorgeous girl called Gloria at Halifax town hall. I was 18. She was 16. Three years later, we got married. A few years after that, Gloria told me: “You don’t say ‘I love you’ much any more.” I told her that, if I said it all the time, it would sound glib. But I started wondering how I could say it without using those actual words. So “I’m not in love” became a rhetorical conversation with myself – and then a song.
I wrote the lyrics in a couple of days. The line “I keep your picture up on the wall, it hides a nasty stain” was about the crack in my bedroom wall at my parents’ house in Manchester. I’d put a photograph of Gloria over it. When I took the song to the band, they said: “‘I’m not in love’? What the fuck is that? You can’t say that!” But GrahamGouldman, our bass-player and chord-master, agreed to work on it with me. We both liked The Girl from Ipanema, so gave it a similar bossa nova style. Then Kevin Godley, our drummer, said it was crap.
We were about to scrap it and wipe the tape but, as I walked around the studio, I heard the secretary singing it and the window-cleaner whistling it. I knew we had a tune: we just hadn’t captured it properly. Kevin suggested doing it again, but with banks of voices. I thought that meant hiring a choir, but Lol Creme, our keyboard-player, said we could do it using tape loops.
Initially, the song had a middle section that went: “Don’t feel let down. Don’t get hung up. We do what we can – do what we must.” But it was pathetic. We knew it needed something else. Just as we were discussing this, our secretary Kathypopped her head round the door to tell us someone was on the phone. Lol heard her voice and said: “What about Kathy?” She took some persuading, but he got her to speak the words: “Be quiet, big boys don’t cry.” It was beautiful.
When it was done, we thought: “What the hell have we done?” It was six minutes and 12 seconds long, so we knew we’d never get it on the radio. But, after it appeared on our Original Soundtrack album, people like Bryan Ferry and Roy Wood were ringing up and going: “You’ve got to release this as a single. It’s brilliant.” When it went to No 29, the BBC had to play it, but they asked me to make a shorter version. I came out with some crap like: “Would you ask Mozart to chop Symphony No 4?” Three weeks later, it was No 1 around the world.
That was 1975. Gloria and I have now been married for 51 years. And every day I tell her: “I love you.”
Lol Creme, keyboard, backing vocals
I’d become obsessed with tape loops after listening to the Beatles’ Revolution 9. Our studio used to do recordings for the Mellotron, a keyboard that played prerecorded notes. Session musicians would come in and do these painstaking recordings for every instrument of an orchestra, one note at a time, so that when they were all played together on a Mellotron it sounded like an orchestra. I was fascinated by this, and wanted to try it with banks and banks of voices.
That lead voice was actually the guide vocal, from the first take you do just to test everything out. Eric tried to do a better one, but we all agreed that one had the magic. He sang it from the heart.
•Eric Stewart’s Anthology LP and autobiography, Things I Do for Love, are out now, along with the box set Before, During, After: The Story of 10cc.
Stella Donnelly‘s rapid rise continues with today’s announcement that she’s signed an international record deal with leading US indie label, Secretly Canadian. The signing comes after label co-founder and co-owner Ben Swanson saw the Perth songwriter’s “stunning” live shows at last year’s BIGSOUND Festival.
“With her clever, yet direct lyrics, Stella’s work is threaded with a rare mix of wit and emotion,” Swanson said. “I couldn’t be more honoured to be working with Stella and cannot wait to hear what she unleashes on the world next.” Donnelly added, “I am so excited and grateful to be joining the Secretly Canadian family!
“I’m very grateful to be working with the people who, in turn, work with some of my favourite artists in the world and I know that Secretly Canadian is a nurturing space to write music and grow as an artist.”
Donnelly joins a roster that already boasts the likes of Alex Cameron and Antony and the Johnsons.
Meanwhile, to celebrate the re-release of her debut EP, Thrush Metal, Donnelly has revealed the brand new music video for her track, Mechanical Bull;
Donnelly will embark on a co-headline tour of Australia with Alex The Astronaut this April;
XTC detractors would often accuse the band of being “too quirky.” While they definitely had that side, their debut, ‘White Music,’ showed that they were not going to be some cookie-cutter new wave or punk rock band. The opening frantic surge of “Radios in Motion” gets things rolling and it’s all forward drive from there. “Statue ofLiberty” and “This Is Pop?” are among the many treasures here as they sounded like none of the punk era brethren, but rather like some holy merging of ‘Trout Mask Replica’ and ‘With the Beatles’ on an amphetamine bender. While they would rapidly move forward with each release, ‘White Music’ was a hell of a place to start.
This one is a bit uneven, I think mainly due to the band attempting to find its voice. Overall, the album has all that quirkiness that defined the band in their early years, which works most of the time. It seems Colin Moulding is trying a little too hard to be quirky on two of the three songs he wrote, but I’ll Set Myself On Fire is a good early effort. Radios In Motion is a fantastic opening track and Andy Partridge also scores well with Into The AtomAge, New Town Animal, and This Is Pop? (I do agree with that other list-maker that the later single version of this song is much better). However, their cover of Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower really does fall flat.
They’re one of the best groups that Britain ever produced. I don’t know why everyone goes on about someone like Morrissey making the best British pop when in fact XTC did it better that anyone else. I remember when they did ‘This Is Pop’, and I just thought, ‘Yeah this is pop. This is pop.’ It seemed like such a brilliant thing for them to say. Pop is what they were doing and they were writing all these great songs, going on about the whole punk thing and not being embarrassed about writing great pop songs.”
An album that was more influential than successful, White Music was the first album by the much-loved English new wave popsters around whom an obsessive cult following has grown over the years. The album includes one of Andy Partridge’s most enduring song “This Is Pop”, and was produced by John Leckie, who subsequently has gone on to work with the Stone Roses, Radiohead and others.
Smells like 30 new minutes of new music via seven new electric hues, shocks of light that flagrantly provoke the dark, a posy’s clutch of purple, fuchsia, green and snowy white that curl against the stench of plague. With “Perfume”, Wand presents olfactory events that recall futures and pasts.
If the emblem of Wand‘sPlum was the stark blue cloud – a condensation, a linking between longing molecules, data hungering for more data, a flotilla of vapor between eye and sky – then Wand‘s new EP reeks of something more forceful, more seductive, more intoxicating, more insidious: this is “Perfume.”
Here are seven electric hues, shocks of light that flagrantly provoke the dark, a posy’s clutch of purple, fuchsia, green and snowy white that curl against a stench of plague. Recorded between tours and fire seasons in Grass Valley, CA by Tim Green, Perfume‘s potent, expansive tunes were mixed in Woodstock, NY by Daniel James Goodwin. The band features Sofia Arreguin, Evan Burrows,Robbie Cody, Cory Hanson and Lee Landey.
Montero is an Australian musician and artist Ben Montero. His New album “Performer” was recorded at Mark Ronson’s Tileyard studios in London. It is co-produced by Ben, Jay Watson of TameImpala/Pond/Gum, and Grammy Award winning engineer Riccardo Damian. All instruments were played by Ben, Jay and Riccardo, save some violin by Emily, a waitress from the studio cafe, and electric piano from Ben’s uncle Jason. Performer glories in the widescreen soft rock tradition, updating the romantic classicism of golden era love songs with a psychedelic pop brush. Montero’s music evokes the extended soundscapes and textures of 70s prog, the easy listening adult weirdness of Jimmy Webb and Burt Bacharach, and the sports arena pounding of vintage MOR rock – sometimes all in the space of one song. With an emphasis on clear vocals, soaring melodies, lush instrumentation and dreamy glam pomp, Performer ventures into gently surreal realms of romance, yearning, and wonder.
As a visual artist, Ben’s much-loved comic-based style highlights the universality of small human moments via a cast of furry (or sometimes slimy) friends. His art has graced album covers, t-shirts and posters for Mac Demarco, Ariel Pink, Kurt Vile, Pond and others. Ben has lost count of the number of fans who have had his drawings tattooed on their body. His Facebook page Ben Montero Sketchbook has more than 80,000 fans.
In Australia, Montero has played with Ariel Pink, Kurt Vile, John Maus, Yeasayer, Sonny & the Sunsets and The Bats. Ben currently lives in Athens, Greece and his live band are made up of members of Greek psych heads Acid BabyJesus, plus other friends. The Montero band tour UK/Europe in November 2017 supporting Mac Demarco.
In the process of writing and recording her new album, Richmond, Va.-based singer-songwriter Natalie Prass ran into what has become a familiar artistic roadblock nowadays: the 2016 U.S presedential election.
Prass had her album written, her band assembled, her studio booked … and had to change course completely after you-know-who somehow came out on top. The result was The Future and The Past, due out on June 1st via ATORecords, the follow-up to Prass’ breakthrough, self-titled debut and her covers EP Side by Side, both released in 2015. the press release for the new album “finds Prass tapping into deep, dancey grooves that glisten with ‘80s pop and ‘90s R&B, nestled alongside quivering, lushly orchestrated ballads.” The first of those is “Short CourtStyle,” the video for which debuts here.
Directed by Prass herself and Erica Price, with Jethro Waters (Angel Olsen) as Director of Photography, the “Short Court Style” visual features a colorfully dressed Prass bringing jubilation to an otherwise-dreary park in her home state. She spins on a merry-go-round, performs with ribbon dancers and generally delights. “Short Court Style” itself is equally joyous: Prass offers figurative revolutions to match the video’s literal ones, singing, “Oh you spin me round / Round and round / Had ups and downs / No but I can’t be without / My love that I have found.” The song’s irresistible groove makes for a slick and spirited showcase of Prass’ exquisite vocals, emphasizing her R&B leanings in irresistible fashion.
Prass recalls the rocky road that led to her uplifting new album:
The record was ready to go, and then the election happened. I was devastated. It made me question what it means to be a woman in America, whether any of the things I thought were getting better were actually improving, who I am and what I believe in. I knew I would be so upset with myself if I didn’t take the opportunity to say some of the things that meant so much to me, so I decided to rewrite the record. I needed to make an album that was going to get me out of my funk, one that would hopefully lift other people out of theirs, too, because that’s what music is all about.
Prass recorded The Future and The Past in Richmond with long-time collaborator Matthew E. White at his Spacebomb Studios, teaming up with artists including Blue (Solange’s A Seat At The Table, Blood Orange, Carly Rae Jepsen) and Michael Brauer (Elle King and James Bay).
The new album from Natalie Prass, The Future and the Past, out June 1st
Spring is a time of rebirth and renewal—both for the individual and, obviously, the environment. Winter releases its grasp, the trees turn green, and flowerbeds come back to colorful life. But before flowers can bloom or those vegetables can sprout, there are a million little things that need to be done: there are bulbs to be planted, earth to till, seeds to be watered. So it’s fitting that Haley Heynderickx is releasing her debut record, the gentle and gorgeous I Need to Start a Garden, as the new season starts to peek around the corner. Throughout the album, Heynderickx focuses on the small moments in life—those necessary moments of toil and work that, ultimately, cause a person to grow. And though the album’s title refers to a literal garden, it should be noted that it’s aspirational.
“I grew up with some really wonderful gardeners,” she says. “My mother, for example, has really good intuition of what to plant and how. I was always bad at science in school. I want to get to know nature better.”
On I Need to Start a Garden, it often feels like Heynderickx has been getting to know herself better, too. “Show You a Body” is a stark, striking number where piano flutters between gently-strummed guitar and Heynderickx’s bell-clear voice. “I am humbled by breaking down,” she sings. On “The Bug Collector,” Heynderickx reconciles herself with her desire for perfection, and on “Oom Sha La La,” she sounds as though she’s working through her own insecurities in real time. “I’m tired of my mind getting heavy with mold / I need to start a garden,” she sings, building up to a shout as she repeats the lyric that gives the record its title.
Despite the songs’ effortless beauty—classic folk and Appalachia built around Heynderickx’s equally old-timey voice—the record didn’t come easily: it took three tries with three different producers for I Need to Start a Garden to bear fruit. Most of the issues came down to bad timing, but Heynderickx nevertheless found herself repeatedly wondering whether or not she wanted to keep going.“I felt like an onion, just so many layers of insecurity and weeping over not knowing how to do it right,” she says. “I found the right people with the right intentions, and it kind of became a labor of love, which is what I wanted it to be all along.”
The record isn’t Heynderickx’s only passion project—she also works as a teacher in an after-school music program helping middle-school students form rock bands. As they learn their instruments and write songs with a mentor’s guidance, the students learn about communication, self-actualization, and collaboration with each other. That, too, has found its way into Heyndrickx’s work. “It humbles me, getting to see them through different phases of feeling embarrassed and feeling empowered, and trying new things,” she says. “It makes music more human to me.”
Heynderickx has a keen eye and ear for those tender moments of humanity, and those observations turn up most explicitly in “Untitled God Song.” The track is a poignant take on spirituality: God doesn’t have to be some omnipotent force; rather, it’s possible to find tethers to something bigger than yourself through unconventional forces. Heynderickx sings that maybe her god has thick hips, a knockoff designer bag, and “a trot in her walk.”
At the time that she wrote it, Heynderickx says that she was struggling to find emotional support in her life. But she found unexpected strength through the advice of older women—most of them strangers, like customers at the bakery where Heynderickx once worked—who somehow happened to show up and say the right thing at exactly the right time.
“And then you’re crying at your customer service job because this older lady just saw the root of what you’re going through,” she says with a laugh. “It’s a really wonderful experience. Kind of embarrassing, but it’s kind of cool when someone older can see through you for a second. Recognizing those people in our lives that feel sacred—that was my way of saying thank you to that force, whatever it was.”
Though Heynderickx has her first record behind her and a long stretch of U.S. touring ahead of her, she says she’s still unsure what she’ll do next, artistically. “I have a lot of groundwork to do again, finding that safe space in myself to create again. I just want to write songs that feel honest and feel good to share, she says. “I hope I get to just do this again.” In the meantime, though, there’s always that garden to tend to.
