Yusuf Islam, formerly known by the stage name Cat Stevens, celebrated George Harrison‘s 80th birthday this week with a new cover of “Here Comes The Sun”. The singer-songwriter’s rendition of The Beatles‘ “Abbey Road” classic arrives as Yusuf embarks on a new partnership with Dark Horse Records, the boutique label founded by George and still run by his son Dhani.
It’s hard to improve on a feel-good masterpiece like “Here Comes The Sun”, but the gentle timber of Yusuf’s voice—grown even softer in his 70s—somehow makes the tune even more serene. Add in sunny cover art designed by Yusuf’s 8-year-old granddaughter and it’s enough to elicit feel-good goosebumps.
In a statement, Yusuf spoke of Harrison not just as a great musician but also as a student of Eastern philosophy. Yusuf, who underwent his own spiritual transformation in 1976 when he converted to Islam and changed his name following a near-death experience, recalled first reading the Buddhist book The Secret Pathwhen he was hospitalized with tuberculosis in 1969.
“While most of my generation were just into the music, I was a bit like George, where music became the key to something much higher,” Yusuf said. “Following the rages of the 60s, his consciousness was awakened, and George transcended to levels not many people ever get to experience. You can hear it in his lyrics, and see it in the way he lived and dealt with the material world — looking for a way out.
“George was one of the first to put on a charity concert for the poor, at the time millions of Bangladeshis were fleeing from conflict and becoming refugees,” he continued. “It was a brave thing to do, and against all establishment rules. I’m happy to sing one of his songs, especially as it represents the returning of light and hope to a seriously dark and broken world.”
Yusuf’s partnership with Dark Horse will encompass re-releases of seven Yusuf/Cat Stevens albums from his own Cat-O-Log Records. He also has a new album in the works, though he has yet to announce any details.
“I’m thrilled to welcome Yusuf/Cat Stevens to the Dark Horse Records family,” Dhani Harrison said. “Not only is Yusuf a great musical legend but his songs could not fit the Dark Horse mythos any better. From his back catalogue, through to the new music we can’t wait for you to hear. Yusuf is without question one of the most influential singer-songwriters of all time, it is a great honour to be able to give his music a home on our humble yet historic label.”
Popularly regarded as one of the most important and ground breaking British albums of all time, 1979’s ‘Cut’, by The Slits has, rightly, seen several reissues on the LP format over the years. Its stature as a classic seems to have only grown since its initial impact and its influence on what came after remains incalculable – from Riot Grrrl to Culture Club, from Massive Attack and Tricky to Hole and Nirvana (Kurt Cobain cited ‘Typical Girls’ as one of his favourite recordings ever) it’s impossible to underestimate its influence on leftfield outsider musicians to this day.
For Record Store Day 2023 it’s a first outing on vinyl for pioneering producer Dennis Bovell’s ‘Rough Mixes’* of the album, previously unearthed as part of the research for 2009’s anniversary CD Deluxe Edition of the album. As a standalone vinyl piece ‘Rough Cut’, then, presents an entire alternative version of ‘Cut’, plus the addition of the band’s startling cover of ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’. It also shines a light on Bovell’s superb initial mixes which pack a raw power and punch to rival the final, finessed versions ultimately released as ‘Cut’. Arguably, these mixes could have ended up being the “official” versions and ‘Cut’ would still be able to claim its place alongside PiL’s ‘Metal Box’, and Joy Division’s ‘Unknown Pleasures’ as 1979’s most groundbreaking albums. What they demonstrate are a band and their producer pouring myriad musical influences in search of an entirely new musical language. For this incarnation of ‘Cut’ Slits guitarist Viv Albertine advised on a new alternate treatment for the sleeve and, for the inner bang’s sleeve notes, has donated a new Q&A essay reflecting on the album’s recording, The Slits’ uncompromising musical ethos, and their place in history as post-punk’s premiere female musical revolutionaries. ‘Rough Cut’ makes for both a fascinating listen and a fascinating read. *Note: as no Rough Mix of ‘Spend, Spend, Spend’ exists in the Island Records archive, ‘Rough Cut’ instead places the band’s original 8-track demo instead.
Coming out on Record Store Day 22nd April!
The Slits–‘Rough Cut’
1979’s pivotal album ‘Cut’ influenced generations of musicians – from Massive Attack to Björk to Nirvana – and continues to inspire today. This is a first-time outing on vinyl for Dennis Bovell’s ‘Rough Mixes’ of the album, previously unearthed during research for 2009’s CD deluxe edition, and compiled by Mark Wood. What emerges is an alternative version of ‘Cut’, with the addition of the band’s startling cover of ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’. It shines a light on Bovell’s superb first mixes which pack a power and punch to rival the “official” versions – in doing so it shows a band and their producer in search of an entirely new musical language.
‘Rough Cut’ LP Tracklisting Side A A1. Instant Hit (Rough Mix) 02:44 A2. So Tough (Rough Mix) 02:41 A2. Spend, Spend, Spend (8-Track Demo) 03:29 A3. Shoplifting (Rough Mix) 01:40 A4. F.M. (Rough Mix) 03:54 A5. I Heard It Through The Grapevine (Rough Mix) 03:47 Side B B1. Newtown (Rough Mix) 04:32 B2. Ping Pong Affair (Rough Mix) 04:41 B3. Love Und Romance (Rough Mix) 02:29 B4. Typical Girls (Rough Mix) 04:18 B5. Adventures Close To Home (Rough Mix) 03:28
Tiny Ruins are a band based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, comprising singer-songwriter & guitarist Hollie Fullbrook, bass player Cass Basil, drummer Alex Freer and electric guitarist/producer Tom Healy. A rare blend of eloquent lyrical craft and explorative musicianship, the songs of Tiny Ruins are etched into the memories of crowds and critics worldwide. Traversing influences that cross genre and era, the artistry of Hollie Fullbrook and her band spans delicate folk, lustrous dream pop. Their fourth album, “Ceremony”, out on April 28th.
“Dorothy Bay” and “The Crab/Water Baby” are both beautiful songs, such moving, emotional Melodies these have only strengthened my passion for this band who with each sweeping project never fail to intrigue, mystify and envelop the listener!
A rare blend of eloquent lyrical craft and explorative musicianship, the songs of Tiny Ruins have been treasured by crowds and critics for over a decade. Traversing influences that cross genre and era, the artistry of Hollie Fullbrook and her band spans delicate folk, lustrous dream pop and ebullient psychedelia.
Born in Bristol and raised in West Auckland, Fullbrook’s her songs put her on the map, and she took to the road from her home in New Zealand to tour extensively through the UK, Europe and North America – a passage repeated many times since.
written by Hollie Fullbrook performed by Tiny Ruins – Hollie Fullbrook, cass basil, alex freer & tom healy vocals, gibson firebird electric guitar, cello – hollie fretless fender jazz bass – cass fender jag electric guitar, mellotron, minimoog, oberheim xpander – tom
“Manzanita” Second solo album by La Luz singer / guitarist Shana Cleveland. is out March 10th, less than a month away! Thanks to everyone who has preordered thus far. Preorder and video links are in the link below and lots of news to come. I love this photo that Kristin Cofer took at one of my top 5 guitar playing spots at home.
“Manzanita”is the common name for a kind of small evergreen tree endemic to California which has strong medicinal properties. It’s also the name of the brand new full length by visual artist, writer, songwriter, and musician Shana Cleveland. Subtle, powerful, and unafraid. We can’t actually tell you how much we love this record because you’d never believe us, so we’ll just say that it is her strongest and most personal album to date. These songs are as strong as the bricks in the Brill building, and seem destined to be covered by others in years to come. Where her previous record, 2019’s “Night of the Worm Moon”(HardlyArtRecords) functions as a collection of speculative fictions equally inspired by Afro-futurist pioneers Herman “Sun Ra” Blount and Octavia Butler, “Manzanita”concerns the love that loves to love. “This is a supernatural love album set in the California wilderness,” Cleveland explains.
The combinations of words and song structure are so strong throughout that one hardly notices Cleveland’s nimble fingerpicking on first listen, or how much is packed into the arrangements. The lyrics are satisfyingly direct, with the buoyantly whimsical descriptions typical of the 1960s New York School of poetry. It’s peppered with the kind of unexpected turns that make the words more modern, and in their spookiness they are more West Coast, as in “Mystic Mine,” with its “Mystic Mine Lane, cars rotting away/ I feel so relieved to be/ Back in the country.” So much of the pop music we love is propelled by those first blushes of infatuation and lust, but “Manzanita” concerns the kind of love that one can only experience with time, work, and devotion. Cleveland says: “The songs were all written while I was pregnant (side A) or shortly after my son’s birth in that weird everything-has-quietly-but-monumentally-shifted state (side B),” she says. Moving to the country, starting a family, laughing for real at the same joke the thirteenth time you’ve heard it, surviving heavy shit (this is the first release since Cleveland’s successful treatment for a diagnosis of breast cancer at the start of 2022).
This is a love album that’s somehow populated with the insect world, ghosts, and evil spirits. Sonically, “Manzanita”sits in a meadow similar to her previous solo records, set back and away from the genre-recombinant garage pop of her band La Luz. This is part due to the fact that there’s a different sonic palette in use here. While Cleveland continues to play guitar and vocals; Johnny Goss, who has recorded all of Shana’s solo material and early La Luz recordings, and Abbey Blackwell (Alvvays, La Luz) play the bass; Olie Eshleman is on pedal steel; and Will Sprott plays the keyboards, dulcimer, glockenspiel, and harpsichord—little of which would have been out of place on her previous two solo records—Sprott also adds layers of synthesizer infused with the sounds of the natural world.
For fans of Robert Wyatt, Opal, Nilsson, Kevin Ayers and his Whole Wide World, Norma Tanega, Jessica Pratt, Julie Driscoll, Michael Nesmith, Sibylle Baier
There’s a killer song on this new Screaming Females album called “Beyond the Void” that implies that the other side of nothingness sounds like Led Zeppelin and Thin Lizzy dancing a cosmic waltz. You can hear singer-guitarist Marissa Paternoster loud and clear out there in that fifth-dimensional ballroom, making her electric guitar gust while she sings about coming “undone” which is funny, considering she and her bandmates sound more together than ever.
Or maybe Screaming Females sound as together as they always have. Our praise reflex leans toward the superlative in this dank information age, an era when the only artists who transcend the digital noise seem to be the ones whose music gets overpraised on social media for being the most this or the best that. Out here in reality, Screaming Females only concern themselves with being. The New Jersey-born trio remain adamantly DIY in their day-to-day affairs, which makes their year-after-year music feel proud and principled — but also less resonant than it deserves to be. Instead of being loudly hyped, they remain quietly respected.
But they keep going. Screaming Females still tour every corner of the map, including an upcoming stint across Alaska. They still draw nostalgic audiences who admire them for carrying a DIY torch that burned brighter back in the ’90s, just as they continue to inspire younger ears who know there’s an even cooler future to be written. Bassist Mike Abbate still silk-screens the band’s T-shirts. Paternoster still designs the band’s album covers. They’re still self-managed, and on their eighth album, “Desire Pathway,” their music still sounds completely self-possessed.
Screaming Females are somewhat of an anomaly in today’s indie-rock space, where, yes, young musicians face dream-snuffing obstacles in nearly every direction: exploitative streaming services, impenetrable algorithmic playlists, a pandemic-damaged touring circuit. But when was making the planet care about your band ever an easy thing to pull off? Cash and clout have never been promised in rock-and-roll, but everyone still has the option to keep showing up and making the art. Screaming Females have been showing up for nearly two decades now, and their commitment to their sound, to their scene, to their principles and to each other should be upheld as a blueprint for freedom.
To understand that freedom in full, it helps to listen to the band in its entirety: eight pithy albums you can blaze through between dusk and midnight. Start back in 2006 with “Baby Teeth,” a batch of sweet-and-sour melodies forged at basement shows in the band’s native New Brunswick. Before long, you’ll get to 2012’s “Ugly,” produced by Steve Albini, and with riffs as gnarly as the title suggests. Everything starts to feel more aerodynamic on 2015’s “Rose Mountain,” then heavier on 2018’s “All At Once,” and now a little more of both on “Desire Pathway,” which features songs about feeling trapped, feeling heartsick, feeling like you’re a haunted freight train barreling across a forgotten wasteland, and feeling free.
Yet, for all of their tightness and concision, their sound can feel all over the place, too. It’s not that Screaming Females are channelling rock-and-roll writ large — Blue Cheer, Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, Van Halen, Heart, the Pretenders, X, Black Flag, the Wipers, R.E.M., Dinosaur Jr., Dead Moon, Nirvana, Ride, the Breeders, Hum, Elastica, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs — so much as they know all of those bands, and that their music becomes a physical expression of all that knowing.
It’s a sort of wisdom at this point. Drummer Jarrett Dougherty is about as no-nonsense as it gets. Abbate only seems to play melodic rebar. And Paternoster totally shreds, on her guitar and in her throat. Her singing feels broad, like a yawn, but urgent, like a shout, and whenever she approaches the top of her register, she tends to elongate her words like someone in a search party calling out the name of the disappeared. Whenever the music grows especially intense, she likes to bounce notes across the back of her windpipe. Technically, it’s vibrato, but it can sound like awkward laughter, or a grieving animal, or PJ Harvey choking on a helicopter.
There are probably a few thousand more metaphors hiding in her guitar playing, but if you widen your ears and listen to Paternoster’s fireworks in a cumulative way, her questing solos begin to rip parallel to the Screaming Females’ general road-dog philosophy: Whether they skew utilitarian or peacockish, anchoring or acrobatic, all of those pealing notes eventually add up to an expression of determination, discipline and continued forward motion. On the fretboard, on the road, through space and time, this band goes anywhere.
On “Desire Pathway,” they’re driving toward some kind of psychic void, perhaps in hopes of drawing a border around it. That aforementioned tune about a choo-choo ride to oblivion, “Desert Train,” feels like perpetual acceleration, somehow evoking the hormonal itchiness of ’80s hair metal without exuding a molecule of cheeky wink-wink. “Ornament” does a similar trick, conjuring an assortment of ’90s alt-rock ghosts with its roaring melodies and slack tempo, but when Paternoster sings, “Now I got what I want/It won’t make me feel better,” she sounds forsaken in a world of her own. Turns out that zones of complete freedom are good places to sing about feeling stuck.
Screaming Females keep going — and when a band stays together for this long, their music gets to tell a bigger story about how everyone moves through time. The Beatles progress narrative is about aesthetic expansion, and how something improves as it blooms. The Rolling Stones progress narrative is about exhilaration and endurance, about starting up and never stopping. The David Bowie progress narrative is about the thrill of perpetually changing shape. The AC/DC progress narrative is about the triumph of never changing shape. The Fall progress narrative has something to do with making so much music that it starts to self-cancel, annihilating the notion of progress altogether. The Fugazi progress narrative is about upholding your ideals, not out of dogma, but so they can better support an art that grows.
As for the Screaming Females narrative, it’s a messy hybrid of all of those. Refusing a tidy arc through time, their mission feels more like an unbroken scribble on a flat surface. They aren’t rising ever upward or expanding ever outward; they’re over here, then they’re over there, then they’re back this way again — always themselves, but constantly changed by where they’ve been, forever unfinished, because there are still new places to go, new ways to be. A band like that can be hard to find, hard to hype, but easy to recognize, at least to us listeners who, like Screaming Females, know no other path through life’s wild unknowability than forward.
Mike Abbate, Marissa Paternoster and Jarrett Dougherty are Screaming Females.
US hyperpop outfit 100 Gecs have shared their latest single, ‘Hollywood Baby’. The single is taken from 100 Gecs’ forthcoming second album, “10,000 gecs”, which arrives on Friday, 17th March.
‘Hollywood Baby’ is a typically unhinged number from the enigmatic duo of Laura Les and Dylan Brady, featuring heavy synths and autotuned vocals. Live performance videos of ‘Hollywood Baby’ have been circulating among the band’s fanbase since 2021.
‘Hollywood Baby’ comes with a self-directed video that concretises the incendiary nature of the song – i.e. it centres on Les and Brady setting off fireworks in their apartment. The new single follows the duo’s 2021 single ‘mememe’, 2022’s ‘Doritos & Fritos’, and the surprise EP, “Snake Eyes”, from December 2022.
The forthcoming “10,000 gecs” is the follow-up to 100 gecs’ 2019 debut, 1000 gecs. The record was written, produced, and performed by Les and Brady, with additional drumming from Josh Freese (Devo, The Vandals, A Perfect Circle).
100 Gecs have been playing this song in their boisterous, ridiculously fun live sets for a minute now, and its recorded version doesn’t disappoint, combusting in a cascade of crunchy pop-punk sparks.
The latest issue of Record Collector is out next Thursday. Bit of a Pink Floyd “Dark Side” spectacular, with a cover image created by Jill Furmanovsky, buffed to a brilliant purple shine by the design team at RC. Over 18 pages we revisit the 1973-4 Dark Side gigs, offer a Buyers’ Guide to all the DSOTM iterations, name some of Dark Side’s progeny, speak to Jill F about her collaborations with the Floyd, and present the 50 most sought-after Dark Side collectables. Oh, and Alan Parsons recalls his stint manning the boards during Floyd (and Beatles, and Pilot) recording sessions. Plus, Van Morrison talks (don’t mention Covid), Sam Brown explains how she made a new album ‘without’ her voice, Rick Buckley takes us on a photo by photo journey through The Jam’s peak period, and Lee John recalls bringing some US polish to Britfunk. And there are appreciations of David Crosby, Jeff Beck and Tom Verlaine.
Out of print for more than a decade, the first Keith Richards solo anthology returns for Record Store Day.2023
Originally released in 2011, “Vintage Vinos” included key cuts from “Talk Is Cheap”, “Main Offender”, “Live At The Hollywood Palladium“, and the the rare Katrina benefit track, “Hurricane.” The vinyl edition, limited to a single pressing, sold out immediately and has been a highly sought after collector’s item ever since, trading for hundreds of dollars on the second-hand market.
This RSD-exclusive pressing replicates “Vintage Vino’s” original tracklist and heavyweight, tip-on gatefold jacket but adds unique upgrades over the original. Now pressed on 180g black-on-red vinyl protected by black inner-sleeves, the reissue also features a new etching of the X-Pensive Winos logo on Side 4 and three new lithographs unique to this edition.
A1. Take It So Hard A2. Big Enough A3. You Don’t Move Me A4. Struggle A5. Make No Mistake
B1. Too Rude B2. Time Is On My Side B3. Happy B4. Connection
C1. Wicked As It Seems C2. Eileen C3. Hate It When You Leave C4. Locked Away C5. Hurricane
Thurston Moore unveils new song “Hypnogram” The track features bassist Deb Googe, guitarist James Sedwards, percussionist Jem Doulton, and electronic musician Jon Leidecker, with lyrics by poet Radieux Radio. It was mixed by London-based producer Margo Broom. Take a listen below.
According to a press release, ‘Hypnogram’ is the first taste of an upcoming album Thurston arranged with Sedwards in 2022. It’s also the first of two songs Moore plans to release digitally this spring before heading out on tour in Europe.
Last year, Moore issued “Screen Time”, a collection of instrumental guitar pieces recorded during the summer of 2020.
“Hypnogram” follows Moore’s 2021 album “Screen Time”, and was created in a session with Moore’s London-based group
Thurston Moore’s “Hypnogram” song is out now via his own Daydream Library Series label.
