A remastered new mix of Weir’s solo debut album with a new live version recorded earlier this year at Radio City Music Hall, featuring the Wolf bros. And special guests Tyler Childers and Brittney Spencer. The original album remixed by Derek Featherstone and mastered award-winning engineer David Glasser. Bobby Weir celebrated the 50th anniversary of his solo debut, “Ace”, on stage in April with two special shows at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall on both nights, he performed the entire album live with his group Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros featuring the Wolfpack, a string and brass quintet, pedal steel player Barry Sless.
When Weir started working on “Ace” at Wally Heider’s studio in San Francisco in early 1972, he wasn’t planning for the Grateful Dead to be his backing band. it just happened. “I pretty much knew in the back of my mind what would happen,” Weir told crawdaddy a few months after the sessions. “I go and get the time booked and start putting the material together. everybody gets wind of the fact I got the time booked and may be going into the studio. so, one by one, they start coming around…” it made sense, the band was already familiar with most of the music,
Having road-tested six of the album’s eight songs, including “Greatest Story Ever Told,” “Mexicali Blues,” and “Playing In The Band,” destined to become one of Weir’s signature tunes. “Ace” also marked the beginning of Weir’s long-running collaboration with lyricist John Perry Barlow and includes early standouts “Cassidy” and “Looks Like Rain.” the liner notes that accompany the new anniversary edition were written by Jesse Jarnow, co-host of the good ol’ grateful deadcast and author of “Heads: a Biography of Psychedelic America”. he writes about Weir realizing his 50-year dream of touring with strings and horns in 2021 when the Wolfpack joined him and the Wolf bros on the road.
Jarnow writes: “by the time they played a pair of nights at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in April 2022 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of “Ace”, Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros featuring the Wolfpack had found their flow at the thrilling, porous border of improvisation and arrangement. in the eternal present-tense of the Grateful Dead’s music, none of the songs had stopped evolving in the previous 50 years… at Radio City, everything was heard in its newest (and perhaps already outdated) incarnations, the evolutions acting as a progress report on the ensuing half-century of Weir’s life, musical and otherwise.”
Gabriels Frontman Jacob Lusk is nothing short of incredible on the trio’s debut album, a powerful half-hour of top-tier song writing that proves Gabriels are far more than soul revivalists.
Gabriels seemed to appear out of nowhere. They were hoisted into the public eye a couple of years ago, thanks to an extraordinary self-released five-track EP and an equally extraordinary video accompanying its lead track, “Love and Hate in a Different Time“. A perfectly synchronised selection of clips of people dancing (African tribes, saucer-eyed habituees of Wigan Casino, Theresa May at the Conservative party conference), the video suddenly stops dead, the final two minutes given over to what looks like cameraphone footage of a singer at a street demonstration, performing Lewis Allan’s Strange Fruit through a megaphone. The singer was Gabriels’ frontman, Jacob Lusk, at a Black Lives Matter protest.
The more you find out about them, the more curious Gabriels sound: Lusk was a choir director and a runner-up on the 2011 series of American Idol. His bandmates are a classically trained California composer called Ari Balouzian and a Sunderland-born video director, Ryan Hope, who named the band after the street in Bishopwearmouth where he grew up. They first collaborated on an advert for Prada in 2018, from which the EP’s opening track, “Loyalty“, had sprung: outside “Love and Hate in a Different Time“, Balouzian and Hope’s other 2020 release was the soundtrack to a documentary about Pepe the Frog.
However odd their background, Gabriels quickly gained momentum: critical acclaim; a major label deal; a showstopping appearance on Later With Jools Holland. It would be easy to suggest that their rise is down to Lusk, who has vast charisma and an entirely astonishing voice: he has a startling ability to sound intimate and warm one second, then unleash an agonised, shiver-inducing falsetto the next.
But an astonishing voice isn’t necessarily enough on its own, as evidenced by Lusk’s pleasant but inconsequential 2018 EP My Love Story, which framed him with too-slick production, equal parts early 90s slow jam and Mellow Magic-friendly 80s AOR. Without wishing to take away from the power of his vocals, it’s hard not to feel that Love and Hate in a Different Time derived its head-turning power from the fact that it was a fantastic song and from an overall sound that smartly keyed into soul music’s past without feeling like a painstakingly researched historical re-enactment. It was obviously cut from a very different, more traditional cloth to most contemporary R&B, but it was cheeringly hard to put your finger on exactly what aspects of the past it was evoking.
That’s even more true of Angels and Queens Part One. Lusk is, plainly, incredible throughout – the sound of his voice multitracked to infinity on If You Only Knew is quite something – and the standard of song writing set by Love and Hate in a Different Time never dips, as evidenced by the dense funk of the title track and piano ballad If You Only Knew, written from the perspective of Lusk’s late godsister, which shifts from wrenching misery to euphoria.
This album highlights that Gabriels, having drafted Kendrick Lamar collaborator Sound wave as producer, are far more than revivalists. He helps craft a sound that feels entirely of the moment, and not merely because there’s a constant, nagging sense of tumult and foreboding lurking behind even its prettiest songs. There’s certainly nothing retro about a track such as The Blind, where the beat is made of a stumbling, clattering array of samples, Lusk’s vocal is drenched in backwards reverb and the piano and strings battle for space with droning, overcast synths. The orchestration that opens To the Moon and Back could have transported there directly from a 1940s jazz ballad, but it’s swiftly replaced by a cavernous-sounding swirl of massed vocals and an insistent, cyclical bass riff.
You can hear Lusk’s background in gospel, but it’s tempting to say that you can hear his collaborators’ previous jobs, too. There’s something weirdly cinematic about both the songs’ structures – they’re filled with sudden cuts and strange twists, as when Remember Me dramatically shifts gear halfway through, and moments when they suddenly focus in on tiny details, not least the agonising scrape of a plectrum being dragged down a guitar string on To the Moon – and the arrangements. The orchestrations frequently seem to be there, not as a lush embellishment or a nod to the days when soul records were orchestrated as a matter of course, but to heighten the tension, as on a soundtrack. On the album’s murky highlight, Taboo, every snare crack is amplified by a vicious stab of brass; the strings, meanwhile, slice through the track at unexpected angles, ratcheting up the drama.
If it seems counterintuitive to split your debut album in two – Part Two is due in March – a song like Taboo makes it feel like common sense: like a lot of Angels and Queens Part One, it’s intense listening. The seven songs here last barely 30 minutes, but a powerful, concentrated half hour dose is all you need. Certainly – it’s all you need to stake a strong claim to the title of album of the year.
The debut album from Brisbane artist Baby Cool, ‘Earthling On The Road To Self Love’, is coming out February 10th via Bad Vibrations Records , Baby Cool is the new project from Grace Cuell of Nice Biscuit and alongside the album news she’s also sharing the sublime first single & video ‘The Sea’.
There’s a beautiful Dinked Edition available to pre-order now! Limited to 300 hand-numbered copies, it comes on 180g clear vinyl with pink and blue splatter with a bonus track flexi-disc and postcard! Available exclusively from the Dinked stores
Marrying psychedelic pop with folk and a touch of country, Grace says of the record: “The songs on “Earthling” are deeply sentimental. I have a lot I need to sing about to help me make sense of this earthly pod I have been gifted. If in singing these words out loud, I can help others find solace in knowing that we’re all out here flailing about in the cosmos, then it feels good to me.”
Marrying hazy psychedelic pop with folk and a touch of country, this delectably unhurried, cosmic & dreamy record builds to a vibrant denouement. we were instant fans!, brought to you by the bad vibrations label (the same imprint as crows), this is another substantial fan package to support a brilliant album and at only a 300 pressing, it’s also stupidly limited. be cool – be baby cool!
Cuell says of the record, which follows her debut single ‘Magic’ and tours with Babe Rainbow and The Lazy Eyes: “The songs on this album are deeply sentimental. I have a lot I need to sing about to help me make sense of this earthly pod I have been gifted. If in singing these words out loud, I can help others find solace in knowing that we’re all out here flailing about in the cosmos, then it feels good to me.”
Performed by: Grace Cuell (Vocals, Guitar, Percussion) Jess Ferronato (Drums, Guitar) Nick Cavendish (Bass) Drew Heyden (Keys) Lisa Kelly (Harp)
Sisters Jennifer and Jessie Clavin grew up deep in the San Fernando Valley, and they became teenaged underground staples at all-ages Downtown DIY venue The Smell after years of sneaking into punk shows over the hill in Hollywood. Bleached originally formed when the Clavin sisters resolved to continue working with each other upon the break up of their all-girl punk band Mika Miko.
released October 13th, 2022 Written by Jennifer and Jessica Clavin Vocals by Jennifer Clavin Guitars, bass, vocal harmonies by Jessica Clavin Organ by Dean Reid Drums by Spencer Lere
The Frowning Clouds are an important Australian band that were under-appreciated while active, but over time ignited a garage-rock scene in Djilang/Geelong and beyond, influencing countless creatives. Clouds’ members went on to evolve their craft, innovate and continue to inspire in bands Bananagun, Orb, Traffik island, Ausmuteants, Alien Nosejob and more. Frowning Clouds’ guitarist-vocalist Nick Van Bakel tried to get an insight into the band and release what you could view as the Clouds’ sophomore album that never came out… until now. Over a decade after it was recorded it still feels fresh and rousing.
Zak [Olsen] playing a couple of originals, some Velvets & 13th Floor Elevator songs in my bedroom and our friend Danny recording it on his video camera. We took the audio off it for our first recordings we’d heard some more obvious stuff like The Kinks and The Stones etc., but the deep garage comps were like even more outlaw than that. The attitude and spirit of it all. We were real young and those comps are mostly all teen bands, so it was what we wanted to do. Also they’re just amazing songs played with high energy.
Second LP from The Frowning Clouds. Originally released December 12th, 2013 on Anti Fade Records & Saturno Records (EU).
British power pop hype Wet Leg from the Isle of Wight (UK) proved that the press was right with their self-titled debut LP released last April. A colourful collection of sickly addictive tunes with witty, absurd, and hilarious stories. Since then the utterly cool duo is everywhere. At big festivals making me smile from start to finish), on TV, in the charts, in magazines, on the Net.
And this week they inflamed the Jimmy Kimmel Live Show (US) with their by now signature earworm “Chaise Longue”.
Wet Leg performs the song “Chaise Longue” on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Florence and the Machine appeared on The Late Late Show With James Corden last night (October 12th) to perform ‘King’. Florence Welch also sat down for an interview to talk about a fan offering her a severed hand during her ongoing tour, the band’s obsession with perfumes, and horror films, while fellow guest and Big Mouth star Nick Kroll performed the choreography to ‘King’.
‘King’ appears on Florence and the Machine’s latest album “Dance Fever”, which came out earlier this year. The LP also includes the early singles ‘Free’, ‘Heaven is Here’, and ‘My Love’, which Florence brought to The Tonight Show back in May.
Drugdealer, the project led by singer-songwriter Michael Collins, has teamed up with Kate Bollinger for the new single ‘Pictures of You’. Bollinger takes on lead vocals on the track, which follow previous offerings ‘Madison’ and ‘Someone to Love’.
“I was on the East Coast visiting my parents when my publisher suggested a possible writing session with Kate,” Collins explained in a statement. “I had been itching to ride a freight train since the beginning of the pandemic so I used the opportunity to do so from Baltimore down to Richmond. When I got there, we became friends really quickly and ended up writing this song at Spacebomb Studios. The whole experience was really spur of the moment and organic.”
Kate Bollinger added: Michael and I wrote this song last summer on a day when he was stopping through Virginia. I picked him up near the train station and we went and hung out in a park by my house. We stayed up late drinking with my roommate and went to my friend’s studio the next day to make some music together. I went upstairs and took a nap and in the meantime, while I was sleeping, he had written the music and melody to “Pictures of You”.
When I woke up we wrote the lyrics and finished the song together. I’ve always approached lyrics in isolation and writing this song showed me a whole other way of making music with someone else. A month after becoming friends with Michael, I visited him in Los Angeles for the first time and decided I wanted to live there, so it feels special having this song come out a month after my move to Los Angeles, a year after we wrote it.
Drugdealer’s new album, “Hiding in Plain Sight”, will be released on October 28th via Mexican Summer.
Queen commissioned Self Esteem to record this cover, giving her the nerve-making task of playing her cover for the Roger Taylor himself. She says she wasn’t anxious about it though: “I was just excited. I’m a show-off, aren’t I?” You can see his reaction in this video. Spoiler (though not entirely given that this is sort of a Queen promo piece): He approves!
Self Esteem performs her own unique version of Queen’s iconic track “Radio Ga Ga” for MTV Originals.
Matthew Houck, for he is Phosphorescent, likes to work. The Alabama native, now resident in Brooklyn has delivered five albums as Phosphorescent since his 2003 debut. Houck has a highly distinctive artistic voice, but also a refreshing, rolled-sleeves approach to his expression, and if he had his way, he’d have twice as many albums under his belt by now.
Matthew Houck continues his monthly largely-but-not-entirely covers series going with this wonderful “Storms.” Reminds us of the equally wonderful Bonnie “Prince” Billy take on the tune.
Voice, Guitar, Bass, Percussion: Matthew Houck, Organ, Keys: Jo Schornikow, Guitar: Ricky Ray Jackson
