Between his fifth and sixth album as Pictish Trail, Johnny Lynch decided to rework tracks from the former album into pared-back affairs, working well alongside two new instrumental compositions. The three “Island Family” tracks, now with harp and cello, are converted from bright psych-pop to primal but muscular, lightly psychedelic, quirky folk which fans of everyone from The Beta Band and Beck to James Yorkston, Martha Ffion, Mitski and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy may enjoy.
Isle-of-Eigg dwelling electro-acoustic psych-pop wonder Pictish Trail, AKA Johnny Lynch, released his fifth album “Island Family” in 2022 to critical acclaim from all from The Observer and The Times to Mojo, Uncut, Loud & Quiet and BBC 6 Music. As he works on a much-anticipated follow-up, Johnny has decided to revisit the family of songs that made up “Island Family” once again, and present “reduxes” of three of them in brand new, stripped-back form, recorded together with a specially assembled trio of musicians:
Semay Wu on cello, Gillian Fleetwood on harp, and long-time collaborator Susan Bear on keys/bass. The resulting EP, “Follow Footsteps”, will be released on limited-edition 12” vinyl in a gold-foil print sleeve, via Lost Map Records on September 13th, 2024, as well as on digital platforms via Fire Records. Pictish Trail will be playing some of these re-duxes live at tour dates throughout the summer and autumn, including at Green Man in August, in his 22nd consecutive appearance at the Welsh festival.
By putting the wild, untamed euphoric-bucolic psychedelia of ‘Island Family’, ‘Melody Something’ and ‘Nuclear Sunflower Swamp’ through a softer filter – complimented by a pair of short incidental instrumentals in ‘Follow Footsteps’ and ‘Flowers Rising Into The Black’ – Pictish Trail has discovered delicately kaleidoscopic new resonance in the songs.
About the making of the “Follow Footsteps” EP, Johnny writes: I’ve been working on writing songs for my sixth album as Pictish Trail for the past year, and wanted to try out something a bit different. “Island Family” came out just as lock-down restrictions were being lifted. It was an energetic, noisy, and distorted record, very much mirroring the frustration of being kept at home. Over the course of the next two years, I performed it loads with my full band, multiple headline tours, playing a ton of festivals, as well as supporting artists such as Pavement and Mogwai. The shows were sweaty and loud; making a racket felt cathartic.
“I’ve worked closely with my dear friend Susan Bear for the past 10 years – releasing music she made with her band Tuff Love, as well as solo stuff under her own name (including this year’s album, “AlgorithmicMood Music“). She’s also been a member of the Pictish Trail live band since 2014, as well as performing with other Lost Map acts. A staple of the Glasgow music scene, she also performs with The Pastels, Sacred Paws, Goodnight Louisa and does sound design and composition for theatre productions.
“Suse got in touch with me after one of my solo shows, saying she wanted to record the songs acoustically, capturing the intimacy of the performance. For years I’ve resisted doing anything like this, as a way of fighting off the dreaded ‘folk’ term – which seems to follow me wherever I go, whether I release an electronic-dance record or an industrial noise pop song.
“At the very start of 2024 I travelled down to La Chunky Studios in Glasgow, spending a few days recording guitar and vocal takes, along with Suse on electric piano and bass. We worked on three songs from “Island Family” – they sounded beautiful, but immediately we knew that they would benefit from some further accompaniment.
Pictish Trail’s critically acclaimed first pair of albums “Secret Soundz Vols. 1 & 2″ released in 2008 and 2013 respectively were gloriously eclectic slices of lo-fi folk-pop, later revived as a deluxe double-vinyl in 2014 by Moshi Moshi. His third album “Future Echoes” was released to further critical acclaim in September 2016, and went on to be shortlisted for the Scottish Album of the Year Award by popular vote, before being re-issued by Fire Records in the summer of 2018. His fourth album “Thumb World” was released on Fire Records in February 2020.
When not putting out his own music as Pictish Trail, Johnny is a fulcrum of Scotland and the UK’s independent music community. Through his label Lost Map Records, he champions a diverse and idiosyncratic array of talent.
Basically Nancy is a four-piece band based in Savannah, GA comprised of Alayna Bowen on bass and vocals, Greta Schroeder on guitar and vocals, Shea Benezra on drums, and Lakin Crawford on guitar. The group started by playing local open mics and sloppily playing punk covers around town in venues they couldn’t legally drink in. Now years later, Basically Nancy performs all over the US and commands a room with original songs made up of heavy tones and aggressive lyrics combined with melodic sweetness. Their music portrays the experience of being a young woman and the frustrations that come with it.
Their latest EP, a testament to their creative vision, was recorded with the late great Steve Albini. Albini’s influence on the band was profound, and his collaboration with Basically Nancy marks a significant moment in their career.
released August 30th, 2024
Recorded live-to-tape & mixed by Steve Albini at Electrical Audio
One of the greatest Rock ’n’ Roll Anthem’s of all time and most covered, garage-rock anthems of the 1960s. That was it, nothing more to it. Our boy is so taken by this glorious being whose name is “Gloria” that he’s going to shout her name all night; in fact, he’s gonna shout it every day. You could say he’s smitten.
Written by 18-year-old George Ivan Morrison, better known as Van, “Gloria” has received the Grammy Hall of Fame Award and is included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll—twice, although neither of the recorded versions cited is Morrison’s original. Perhaps that’s because “Gloria,” credited to Them, the Irish band Morrison fronted, was not a hit in the United States in its original form. It peaked at #93 on singles chart, slightly higher than its flip side, “Baby, Please Don’t Go.” In the U.K., “Gloria” was the B-side and “Baby, Please Don’t Go” what radio folks called at the time the “plug side.” The latter made the top 10; “Gloria” was noticed only by the few who bothered to turn the record over.
It should be noted that the “Gloria” from Van Morrison wasn’t even the first song by that name to make its presence known during the rock era. The tale told in that tune was pretty simple too. She’s Gloria. She’s not Marie. She’s not Sherie. Get her name right: Gloria. It seems this particular Gloria is “not in love with me.” That may change, the singers hope: “Well, maybe she’ll love me, but how am I to know?/And maybe she’ll want me, but how am I to know?” We never find out—as the song ends, Gloria still hasn’t come around.
In any case, the Gloria on the mind of Van Morrison in that summer of 1963, when he penned his song during an engagement in Germany with his group the Monarchs, bore little in common with doo-wop Gloria or disco Gloria. Morrison’s Gloria had one purpose in life: to please him.
It begins, inexplicably, with a description of her height:
“Like to tell you about my baby You know she comes around About five feet four A-from her head to the ground”
She may be fairly short, the singer then explains, but she’s determined:
“You know she comes around here Just about midnight She make me feel so good, Lord She make me feel all right”
The chorus follows, sung—one might say snarled—by the precocious red-headed Morrison, only five-foot-five himself and already so excited that a guitar solo is needed to give him a few seconds to catch his breath. But he’s just starting to get worked up. When he returns from the chorus, our young stud, a teasing organ riff helping him along, goes graphic. You can hear his lust:
“You know she comes around here At just about midnight She make me feel so good, Lord I wanna say she make me feel all right Comes a-walkin’ down my street When she comes to my house She knocks upon my door And then she comes in my room Yeah, an’ she make me feel alright”
Another chorus or two, the band builds its slinky, bluesy vamp to a frenzied crescendo, and Gloria and Van are presumably doing whatever.
The name’s six letters just happened to fit the particular rhythm he’d conjured up, sounded especially cool when shouted, and worked well with the three chords he assigned to his tune: E, D and A. (So easy, anyone can play it!) Morrison didn’t perform his new composition regularly until the year after he’d written it, upon his return to his home base of Northern Ireland from his stint in Germany. By that time, he’d decided to leave his then-current band, the Golden Eagles, and quickly hooked up with an already-working group called the Gamblers: Billy Harrison (guitar, vocals), Eric Wrixon (keyboards), AlanHenderson (bass) and Ronnie Milling (drums). Morrison both sang and played the saxophone.
A new, more memorable name was needed, they decided, and so they became Them, taken from a campy 1954 sci-fi film about colossal ants attacking L.A. “Gloria” made its debut when Them performed one of their regular gigs at Belfast’s Maritime Hotel. The song, Morrison once recalled, could last up to 20 minutes onstage, with long improvised sections that found him extending the story of his night time visitor every which way.
Decca Records took notice, and on July 1964, with Pat John McAuley replacing Wrixon on keyboards and session musicians filling in some of the parts, Them recorded “Gloria.”
Them steadily grew their audience not only in Ireland but in England, touring frequently, and soon set their sights on America, where, by mid-1965, the British Invasion was in full swing. Signed to ParrotRecords in the U.S., Them sat back and waited for “Gloria”/“Baby, Please Don’t Go” to take off. And waited, and waited…
But Them simply did not make it in the U.S., even while they continued to score in the U.K. (the phenomenal “Here Comes the Night” hit the number #2 spring of ’65). By 1966, Morrison had decided it was time to strike out on his own. having released more than 40 albums and attained the status of rock god. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the famously curmudgeonly Van Morrison became the first living inductee to not attend his own ceremony.
“Gloria,” of course, did not die with Morrison’s split from Them. The song’s ascendance to garage-rock immortality seemingly every local rock ’n’ roll band worth its twang had discovered the tune despite its lack of airplay and sales, and had begun including it in their own sets. Among those was the Shadows of Knight, a band from the Chicago suburb of Mt. Prospect that took the British version of blues favoured by groups like the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds and the Animals—and Them—and gave it a tough, soulful, Chicago-style toughening up.
Fronted by 16-year-old Jim Sohns, the Shadows of Knight had formed in 1964 as the Shadows, but when it was pointed out to them that a very popular group existed in Britain by that name, they added the “of Knight” and carried on. Their live performances of “Gloria” went over well with audiences and when they were signed by the local Dunwich label, the group recorded its own take on “Gloria,” close in its approach and arrangement to the Irish original, changing a few words to make it radio-friendly in America (no more “She comes in my room”).
Released in December 1965, “Gloria” was a local hit at first, aired all over Chicago radio. Eventually, it was picked up by other stations around the country and on March 19, 1966, the Shadows of Knight’s “Gloria” entered the singles chart. “Gloria” went into temporary hibernation as the ’60s faded into the more cerebral 1970s. The garage sound in general became dormant as new offshoots of rock came into play. In 1972, rock journalist/record store clerk Lenny Kaye created, for Elektra Records, a two-LP collection of ’60s singles titled “Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era”, which included the Shadows of Knight’s cover of Bo Diddley’s “Oh Yeah,” their follow up single to “Gloria,” but only a few took notice of the album at first. (Later it would become massively influential and a must have in any collection.) Among the handful that did pay attention to “Nuggets”, however, were other budding musicians, who were growing tired of the excesses of ’70s rock and longing for a return to the simple, more aggressive sounds proffered by bands like the Shadows of Knight, the Standells, the Count Five and the Barbarians.
Among those who got what Kaye was offering was a young woman from New Jersey named Patti Smith, a poet who had begun setting her words to music onstage around New York City—with Lenny Kaye backing her on guitar. Signed by Clive Davis to his Arista Records in 1975, Patti Smith and her eponymous band cut their debut album.
The album, “Horses”, launched with Smith’s own interpretation of the now-10-year-old Van Morrison tune, “Gloria,” which she retitled “Gloria: In Excelsis Deo” and reworked so completely that the familiar “G-L-O-R-I-A” chant doesn’t surface until halfway into its six minutes. Starting with the provocative lyric “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine,” Smith’s slow-building “Gloria” is a tour de force of the emerging punk rock, nothing less than one of the most exhilarating and thought-provoking marriages of rock and poetry ever committed to tape.
“Horses” wasn’t a big hit, in early 1976. Although her concerts sold out and her reputation as an innovator was stellar, Smith wouldn’t enjoy a hit single until “Because the Night” in 1978, which she co-wrote with Bruce Springsteen. But she too, like Van Morrison, managed to survive any disappointing lack of early commercial success: Smith is still recording and live performing today (with Lenny Kaye still accompanying her) and her version of “Gloria” is considered a classic in its own right.
The song has, in fact, long lived a life of its own. Among those who’ve covered it over the decades are The Doors, who performed it between 1968 and ’70 and included it on their 1983 live album “Alive, She Cried”.
AC/DC covered the tune in their early days, U2 grafted it onto the ending of their song “Exit,” and David Bowie sang it on his 1990 Sound and Vision tour. The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s version can be found on a few different compilations and boxed sets, Tom Petty included it on his 2006 Highway Companion tour, and Bruce Springsteen has also been known to perform it at select live shows.
IggyPop’s 2011 album “Roadkill Rising” features his take, while Green Day, Bon Jovi, Robert Plant and the Grateful Dead have also bowed to its genius.
“Gloria” began life humbly, as a barely acknowledged vamp by an up-and-coming Irish blues-rocker. More than half a century later it’s recognized as a cornerstone of rock music.
A veteran journalist for the U.K.’s best-selling music weekly has written his memoir about the era that he covered. Just Backdated – Melody Maker: Seven Years in the Seventies, comes from Chris Charlesworth who, between 1970 and 1977, was at Melody Maker in an era when rock stars fell over themselves to appear in its pages. It’ll be published on September 27th in the U.K.,
Initially the paper’s News Editor, Charlesworth was for four years the publication’s U.S. editor, based in New York, a unique position in music journalism, and in that time regularly rubbed shoulders with rock’s most iconic heroes.
From the publisher’s announcement: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Elton John and dozens more found themselves face to face with Charlesworth. He went on tour in America with The Who, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and many others. He was at 27 concerts by the original Who, often backstage or onstage. Somewhere above Colorado he took the controls of Led Zeppelin’s private plane. He saw an unknown Elton John at a disastrous festival in 1970 and predicted he would become a world star. He ambushed Pink Floyd in Glasgow and chased Bob Dylan in New England.
“I never felt closer to The Who than I did in New York in June [1974],” Charlesworth writes. “I tried to maintain my neutrality with them but I admired them so much, both as a group and as individuals that becoming close to them was somehow important to me and, of course, it helped me get the hot Who scoops for Melody Maker.
“They were bound together musically but not socially. [And] they were not as rich as the world imagined them to be. To survive, they needed to work, performing live as often as possible, perfecting the show and pocketing the fees they could command. This had the additional benefit of making them the greatest live band in the world.”
Charlesworth watched Bruce Springsteen in Norfolk, Virginia, and acclaimed his flair 18 months before “Born To Run” was released. He was the first music writer to write about the nascent CBGBs scene in New York, introducing MM readers to Debbie Harry long before she became a household name. He identified Slade as future stars a year before they had their first hit single. His only regret was never seeing Elvis.
Charlesworth says: “Looking back now, from the perspective of the 21st century, what I did and who I met between 1970 and 1977 seems unreal, a fantasy. Unlike the tightly controlled situation we have today, it was access all areas for rock writers in those years. Perhaps John Lennon’s tragic murder was to blame for that tight control. John tops the list of those I hung out with, along with The Who, Led Zep, Bowie and many more, but my memoir does not name-drop for name-dropping’s sake, just tells it how it was when I was lucky enough to be slap band in the middle of it all.”
Just Backdated – Melody Maker: Seven Years in the Seventies , which takes its title from a lyric from The Who’s 1966 single, “Substitute,” is Illustrated with selected photographs by celebrated rock photographers Bob Gruen and Barrie Wentzell. Charlesworth later become the managing director of Omnibus Books, Britain’s biggest music book publisher, a role he held for over 30 years.
Radiohead have not released an album in more than eight years, but principal members Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood continue their hot streak with their other band the Smile, The Smile has officially announced “Cutouts”, after dropping a series of clues on social media. The album, their third, is set for release on October. 4th. “We lovingly submit our latest 45-minute (?) record “Cutouts,” the Smile said in an new statement, “to be swallowed up by the fast running stream, down into the giant ever-growing river and on to the sea.“Cutouts” is available for pre-order now on compact disc, black or white vinyl, cassette and digital formats.
New videos for “Zero Sum” and “Foreign Spies” were also released. See both clips,
Internet sleuths have been working feverishly to sort and solve clues from the supergroup featuring Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead and Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner. One Instagram post, for instance, was said to spell out the words “three zero sum” when using a Polybius cipher. The best guess was that these clues hinted at song titles.
In the meantime, the Smile quietly released a new single in early August featuring a studio version of the 2024 concert staple “Don’t Get Me Started,” backed by “The Slip.” (Clues from a band tweet led another fan decoder to believe the song would be sixth on the track listing – and that turned out to be true.)
The single was produced and mixed by Sam Petts-Davies, who also helmed the Smile’s widely acclaimed “Wall of Eyes” from earlier this year. An accompanying video for “Don’t Get Me Started Again” was then released a week later.
“Cutouts” is also produced by Petts-Davies, with string accompaniment from the London Contemporary Orchestra. The album art was painted during the recording process by Stanley Donwood and Yorke.
“Wall of Eyes” followed the Smile’s debut, 2022’s “A Light for Attracting Attention“. The band also released a pair of live recordings after their first LP went to No. 5 in the U.K., “The Smile at Montreux Jazz Festival July 2022″ and “Europe: Live Recordings 2022″.
Do me a favor and name a band that has been good, for about 40 f’n years? Seems bloody unlikely, but Redd Kross are that band, and their 2024 album, simply and aptly titled “Redd Kross”, might just be the best thing they’ve ever done. Jeff and Steve McDonald (singer/guitarist and bassist/singer, respectively) helped put SoCal punk on the map in the late 1970’s as teenage miscreants. Need proof of their OG status? Redd Kross’s very first gig was opening for Black Flag. But what made Redd Kross so beloved—and so distinctive—was and still remains their eternally youthful, rainbow-streaked, Beatlesesque, Cheap Trick-influenced, 60’s-and-70’s-pop-culture-obsessed power-pop nuggets.
From their groovy 1987 touchstone “Neurotica” to their underappreciated 90’s-era output, then up through their 2012 comeback “Researching the Blues”, Redd Kross have trudged on—shredding through their debaucherous and glammed-out “bubble-grunge” without losing a bit of the fresh-faced euphoria they’re known for. While 2019’s “Beyond The Door” extended the hot streak started on “Researching the Blues”, the 18-song epic “Redd Kross” is on a whole other level of Technicolor goodness. The McDonalds—along with producer/multi-instrumentalist Josh Klinghoffer (the ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist and current Pearl Jam touring member) and guitarist Jason Shapiro—blow through one should-be hit after another in seemingly the blink of an eye. “Redd Kross” might be sprawling, but you won’t find even a flash of filler. Instead, it’s loaded with massive hooks, tingly-all-over melodies, singalong choruses, and sha-la-la harmonies.
The new album has all the wham-bam glam-meets-glitter punk thing they’ve always been aces at, then adds some well-earned nostalgia, some trenchant thoughts about modern life, plenty of rollicking humour, plus blazing anger too. The brothers McDonald came out of the pandemic ready to tear things up, and the release of “Redd Kross” is a bracing reminder that they are probably, most likely, definitely the best rock & roll band still daring to call themselves that.
Redd Kross “Redd Kross” (In The Red, 2024) The 9th studio album from this legendary California band lays down the power pop with a capital “P”! They have been making albums for 40+ years and sound like they’re still peaking.
Eighteen songs rip and rock through earworm melodies with overblown guitars in an irresistible blast of garage/punk energy. The McDonald brothers’ vocal harmonies feed off a reverence for the 60s and the pure exuberance of performing, while their guitars color the sound with feedback squalls and irresistible pop/punk chords. Bass and drums drive the rhythm with style and vigor. The songs call to every sense of rock ‘n’ roll immersion. Opener “Candy Coloured Catastrophe” sets the standard for this rollicking hour-long explosion of kick-ass melodic bliss. The following track, “Stunt Queen” rips into a punkier noise flair that shakes the speakers. This pattern of energy-driven songcraft permeates the album with one catchy tune after another. “Redd Kross” shimmers with the band’s trademark mix of hum-along hooks and high-spirited garage energy.
It’s a triumphant blast of electrified power pop that will charge your inputs with a revitalizing bolt of vibrant pop/rock musicianship. Like the wild-ass side of The Beatles, Guided By Voices, Sloan, The Nerves, The Wildhearts, Cheap Trick, Ash, Elf Power, Fountains Of Wayne, The Barraracudas, The Exploding Hearts, Joy Cleaner, The Rezillos, Painted Doll, The Boo Radleys.
Redd Kross have devoted their career to making subversive entertainment in a high pop celebrity style, reintroducing forbidden classic-rock tropes as melodies, harmonies, ripping musicianship, & primary colours-stuff that had (largely) been ditched in the underground rock’s post-punk, No Wave, hardcore, & sensitive-egghead scenes
To say we are excited about this release would be a gross understatement. We are over the moon to announce that we’re releasing the new album by one of our all-time favourite bands – REDD KROSS. This self-titled double LP (with artwork that pays tribute to another self titled LP) is the band’s ninth studio full length and it’s a monster! Eighteen brand new original songs that show that the McDonald brothers are at the peak of their powers. Vinyl comes in a gatefold sleeve with limited edition red vinyl. The band will be doing a full US tour this summer, a memoir about them will be hitting book stores soon and an amazing documentary titled Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story is hitting theaters – 2024 is the year of Redd Kross!
So, new-ish, in new ways anyway. But don’t . . . the new Wand’s built upon the exalted altars of old. There’s flashes of sentiment and tension, nudity and evasion, theatrical elevation, giant pieces chunked throughout alongside little bits of things. Since their 2014 debut, Ganglion Reef, the Los Angeles.-based Wand have braided garage, psych, and classic rock into a fuzzed-out whole that constantly swings between inspiration and tribute.
Sliding between the bodies in the street, cutting across the contrails that bisect our sky, Wand find melody and the anxiety beats as they hum the soundtrack for a new gravitational centre. Seeking connections against the plan of niche interest and anonymity, “Vertigo” is the sound of slippage, rocks of contradiction (in soft focus); feet lost, regained, lost again, a multi-chromatic swaying, more automatic, associative, directed, in time. “Vertigo” offers a lot of what makes Wand a moody delight, from the pulsating fuzzwave of “Hangman” to the dreamy horns and plinked keys of “Lifeboat.” It meanders with curiosity, having been semi-improvised in the writing process, and it’s rife with decades of comforting rock and folk landmarks.
For Corey Hanson lyrics are built around things he doesn’t want to do—things hidden, unsaid, and locked inside his brain. His high, smooth voice is a stark contrast to the nakedly hero-worshipping (or maybe oblivious channeling) of Pavement’s “Summer Babe” on “Smile,” which is practically a half-speed cover. Seventies Latin and soft-rock sounds soak the Santana-meets-Steely-Dan “Lifeboat,” and album closer “Seaweed Head” rolls like a Loaded outtake, a sun-faded poster for VU’s “I Found a Reason” hanging in their resin-stained practice room.
Wandies – and all conceivable others! Their new album release bonus offer for the hardcore among you: now, you can Turn On, Turn Off, and Tune Into the “Vertigo” Bundle – your choice of format on the new Wand record (LP-CD-or-CS), complete with Black Light Poster and Bumper Sticker!
Tom Pettyand The Heartbreakers‘ fifth studio album is getting a deluxe makeover. On October 18th, Geffen/UMe will revisit 1982’s oft-overlooked “Long After Dark”, originally released on Backstreet Records, in various formats including 1LP, 2LP, and 2CD+Blu-ray.
Petty was joined by Mike Campbell (lead guitar), Benmont Tench (keyboards), Stan Lynch (drums), and new recruit Howie Epstein (bass/backing vocals) as well as co-producer Jimmy Iovine for “Long AfterDark”. The third and final of Petty’s three LPs on MCA imprint Backstreet, it followed 1979’s landmark “Damn the Torpedoes” and 1981’s “Hard Promises“, the final album to feature the original Heartbreakers line-up.
Bolstered by “You Got Lucky” as well as the single “Change of Heart” and the third single “Straight into Darkness” failed to chart – “Long After Dark” was assessed by Petty in an interview with Paul Zollo, shared in the press release for this reissue. He called it “a good little rock and roll record” but also “a tough record because I never knew if we were making the right decisions about songs.” The non-LP B-side of “Change of Heart,” “Heartbreakers Beach Party,” didn’t appear on CD until the box set “Playback”.
In addition to a remastered version of the original album sourced from master tapes, the expanded “Long After Dark” features a dozen bonus tracks, including songs that were discarded as Petty struggled to hit upon the right direction for the album.
Among these is his version of “Never Be You,” a 1985 Country chart-topper for Rosanne Cash; the pop-flavoured “Don’t Make Me Walk the Line;” and an uptempo treatment of Petty and Campbell’s “Ways toBe Wicked,” covered by Lone Justice on the band’s 1985 debut LP.
An extended version “Heartbreakers Beach Party” has also been discovered, as well as a number of tracks originally recorded by the band for French television. The bonus tracks have been mixed by Petty’s long time associate Ryan Ulyate. The Blu-ray Disc in the 2CD/1BD package contains high-resolution stereo and new Dolby Atmos mixes of the original album and bonus tracks, also mixed by Ulyate.
The Deluxe Edition of “Long After Dark” has been designed by Jeri Heiden, with liner notes by rock journalist and Tom Petty Radio host David Fricke, commentary from Jimmy Iovine and Cameron Crowe; and rare archival photographs by Dennis Callahan, Neal Preston, and Aaron Rapoport.
In addition to the 3-disc (2CD/1BD) set and black vinyl versions of the 1LP (remastered album only) and 2LP sets, vinyl variants include a 2LP pressing on 180-gram red-with-black-splatter vinyl (with a numbered, foil tip-on jacket) exclusive to TomPetty.com and a 1LP 180-gram turquoise pressing with a double-sided lithograph of Blaze Brooks’ illustrations, exclusive to indie record stores.
The Petty Legacy archives have been opened to share newly remastered video and audio from 1982-1983 to coincide with this release. The French TV performance of “Straight Into Darkness,” directed by Alan Bibby, is streaming now. The video (which aired on French television) captures the band performing at The Record Plant.
Look for Long After Dark: Deluxe Edition on October 18 from Geffen/UMe.
