Girl Ray, the London three-piece comprising Poppy Hankin, Iris McConnell and Sophie Moss, share a rework of Sophie Ellis Bextor’s classic “Murder On The Dancefloor” as their festive offering this year with all proceeds going to the Hackney Night Shelter (www.hwns.org.uk)
The band, who have weaved their signature sound into the track – a highlight during their recent festival appearances – said the following:
“Murder On The Dancefloor” has always had a special place in our hearts – it was forever etched into our memory when a few years back at a post-show karaoke session in Bristol, I over-excitedly shoved the microphone to Iris’ lips when it was finally our turn to sing, chipping her front tooth in half for the remainder of the tour. Since then it has of course remained our karaoke song, and a favourite at our DJ sets. When we were looking for a song to cover for this year’s festival seasons, it seemed a natural fit. It became one of our favourite parts of our live set, and we thought it would be only right to record it in honour of Sophie Ellis Bextor’s truly perfect pop song.”
Song produced and mixed by Mike O’Malley Performed by Girl Ray released December 2nd, 2021
Montreal born Scottish Grenadian Canadian, Allison Russell, is a mother, a musician, a poet, a writer – a mixed-heritage, queer, black woman. Her winding musical path – from her first work in Canadian roots band, Po’ Girl, to Birds of Chicago, her band with her partner JT Nero to her recent collaborations like Our Native Daughters (Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, and Amythyst Kiah).
Outside Child, says Russell “is about resilience, survival, transcendence, the redemptive power of art, community, connection, and chosen family.” Singing about this on “Nightflyer,” Russell ponders the healing power of motherhood, using the track’s wide-open expanse to convey the strength she didn’t know she had. Here, the line “I am the mother of the evening star / I am the love that conquers all” is “the most defiantly triumphant, hopeful line I’ve ever written…that’s about the birth of my daughter and how that transformed me.” Though they had a fraught relationship, Russell remembers how she’d crawl underneath the piano and listen to her own mother play. “I would hum along with her,” Russell recalls. “She said I was humming before I could talk. I was able to feel some kind of comfort or love or connection in a way that she couldn’t verbally or physically express – but I could feel in her music that there was love in her.”
There are many ways to tell a story: Words are only one. Allison Russell, long a light of the Americana scene, recovers her own saga of abuse, escape and recovery in a song cycle as enriched by its multifaceted musical vocabulary as by her poetic lyrics. “Oh my Montreal, can I dream of you tonight,” she begins in her radiant alto, slipping a French verse into a chanson that begins “Outside Child’s” journey from childhood sexual abuse to a fugitive adolescence to healing in the arms of chosen family and rock and roll. Recorded in community with her Nashville people, including her partner JT Nero, Yola, Erin Rae and the McCrary Sisters, these songs touch down in country, gospel, blues, folk, Caribbean diasporic rhythms and troubadour balladry as she unfolds her story like the squares of a quilt threaded with her tears and her blood. The album ends with another wanderer’s chanson, transformed through Russell’s narrative into the kind of anthem sung around a fire in a city alley: “Where in the world are the joyful motherf******? Show ’em what you got in your heart.
Half Asian / half Latinx. Two sisters, a cousin, and their close friend. The Linda Lindas channel the spirit of original punk, power pop, and new wave through today’s ears, eyes, and minds.
The Linda Lindas caught everyone’s ear this year with the to-the-point track “Racist Sexist Boy” an instant punk classic due to its unfortunate relatability and its punchy energy. The four-piece has opened for both Alice Bagg and Bikini Kill, and has released their self-titled debut EP. Since then, The Linda Lindas haven’t stopped putting out excellent songs. Today, they share the new single “Nino,” which is about a badass cat.
Inspired by band member Bela’s cat, the new single follows their other cat ode, “Monica,” that was written for Bela’s Siamese cat. According to the band, “If you listen carefully there is a real-life, remarkably talented cat named Lil Dude playing piano on it. (We have the footage!)” I wish I had cats worthy of their own songs, or rather a cat in general…
The new single is from their forthcoming 2022 release.
The 16th installment of Saddle Creek’s Document series comes from allie—the mononymous creative moniker of Nashville-based singer/songwriter Allie Cuva (she/they).
After spending time in various musical projects around Nashville, Cuva was recruited as the touring/session drummer for Cavetown—an experience that would prove pivotal. She returned from a lengthy run of shows feeling inspired, restless, and more certain than ever that she had something to express. “I got home and felt very removed and strange, and music was a way to start trying to make sense of it,” Cuva explains. That desire fuelled the writing of allie’s debut EP, 2020’s “Junior Coder’s Experiment“, and its release began to reveal a path not just to catharsis, but also to self-discovery. “Putting the EP out under the Allie moniker ended up really illuminating some of the more subconscious feelings I was having about myself and my gender identity,” Cuva says. “I realized I’d always been trying to get a fuller sense of the picture, but the art really helped me touch on things that I was about to confront in a much more direct way. I started doing research, and seriously considering changing my pronouns, identifying as transgender and nonbinary, and undergoing hormone replacement therapy.”
Cuva describes this decision as a choice to begin a lifelong journey, but it would start with the closing of a different chapter. “My long time partner and I were no longer compatible,” Cuva says. “We didn’t want to separate—it wasn’t a matter of lack of love—but we realized that was the right thing for us as individuals.” The end of the relationship led Cuva to throw herself into writing, resulting in her debut album “Maybe Next Time“, which was released in August of 2021.
While “Maybe Next Time” might be considered a breakup album, on “cast iron // infinite jesters” Allie explores other complex corners of relationships and human connection. On a-side “cast iron” Allie explores her interpretations of the philosophical language and sentiments of certain people in her life. The repeated phrase “I know what you really mean” is not intended to be patronizing, but rather is meant to illuminate the fact that we as humans are often confused/misled about why we think, speak, believe, and act the way we do. As Cuva describes it, “Oftentimes, there are clearer, more sober ways to represent ourselves, and I’m interested in that journey.”
B-side “infinite jesters” is a consideration of the impact of a new, quickly-developing intimate relationship. “Though my favourite relationships have been fortified over many years,” Cuva explains, “I further realized in writing this song that some relationships can be particularly impactful from their near inception. In other words, a lot of good can happen quickly if we’re open to it.”
Releases January 14th, 2022 on Saddle Creek Records
If one album summed up the mood of 1971 in 45 minutes, it was Sly & the Family Stone‘s There’s a Riot Goin’ On. Dark, druggy and depressing as hell, the fifth album by the San Francisco group led by multi-instrumentalist Sly Stone was the recorded equivalent of a gut punch to a nation already knocked senseless by war overseas and social unrest at home. Almost exactly a year before “There’s a Riot Goin’ On‘s” release in November 1971, Sly & the Family Stone put out their massively popular “Greatest Hits” record, which collected singles and deep cuts from 1968 and 1969. The dozen tracks wrapped up the brief history of one of R&B’s best crossover bands, chronicling a dizzying couple of years that yielded some of the era’s most enduring songs. But anyone expecting a second sunshine-kissed greatest-hits volume in a few years was most likely side-lined by the despairing tones crawling throughout “There’s a Riot Goin’ On“. Originally titled “Africa Talks to You“, and recorded partly in response to Marvin Gaye‘s sociopolitical “What’s Going On” (another era-defining album released in 1971), the album was a moody, murky indictment of the United States at the turn of the decade.
“There’s a Riot Goin’ On” is a striking example of a pathfinder taking a road, both musically and personally, that tests every relationship to the brink and beyond to a place and time where tumult is inevitable and damage is dealt harshest of all to the protagonist at the centre of it.
The cover art, featuring an American flag with suns replacing the familiar stars, says it all: Blood-red stripes offset the remaining black and white. It wasn’t an easy record to listen to then, and it’s still tough to get through at times now. But Sly & the Family Stone never made a more significant album. It’s their masterpiece, but it’s also one of music’s most harrowing and desolate works, and one that reflected the turmoil going on within Sly Stone. After Sly & the Family Stone’s rousing Woodstock performance, their leader became unreliable. He missed shows. He missed album deadlines (prompting the release of “Greatest Hits“). He became more and more paranoid. He moved to Los Angeles. He joined the Black Panthers, who urged him to drop the white members of his multi-racial group. And he started to take more and more drugs, which clouded his mind and, to an extent, his creativity. When he was able to get it together, he didn’t like what he saw, particularly the end of civil-rights activism and the dark pall cast on the final years of the ’60s. So he made an album about it, replacing his band’s usual psychedelic pop and funk with a deeper, sleepier version muddled with gut-churning bass rumbles, mumbled lyrics and a sense that there was a violent revolution brewing, but only if its leader didn’t nod off first.
But the groundwork for this new blueprint of soul and funk lies in its predecessor “Stand” and, more importantly perhaps, the success it brought with it. Released in 1969 after three solid, if unspectacularly performing albums, it reached #12 Top 200, whereas none of the previous three albums had broken the top 100. Part of its success can be attributed to a moment that goes down as one of the most important in 20th Century musical history: the Woodstock Festival.
When Sly and the Family Stone took the stage at 3.30am on Sunday August 17th, 1969, their lives and careers changed forever. Almost knee deep in mud and worn low by the ravages of a weekend of intoxicating substances and little sleep, the crowd was revitalized by the surging, infectious performance the band gave—a lengthy, exultant “I Want To Take You Higher” lit the touch paper and the band never looked back. In fact, it was a palpable moment of realization for those involved, as well as those in the crowd. Larry Graham, the slap bass innovator, recounted in later years the fact that the band fully grasped their potential and realized what the awesome power of the fully operational group could attain.
But the savage irony of that realization is that the seeds were sown at that moment for the gradual dissolution of the group. For with success, came money and, somewhat inevitably, distractions. It may be a tale oft-told but it remains true—no one prepares you for success and all the trappings it brings. The distractions that afflicted Sly Stone in particular are well documented—for him it was cocaine and PCP that were his escape. Scanning through the interviews he gave to journalists in the early 1970s (which were few and far between), each and every single one of them makes mention of his cocaine habit.
Sly Stone missed 26 of the 80 planned shows, but things may not have been quite so straightforward. For all that the drugs would inevitably contribute to the problem, there was the idea that some form of scam was being run by those around the group. If Stone was waylaid by someone, resulting in a missed show, it was alleged that that person got a split of the resulting financial payoff Stone was obliged to produce. When he was interviewed by David Letterman in 1983, he addressed the issue head on: “There’s no way to make three gigs in one night, if you only know about one.”
Stone used The Plant Studios in Sausalito and the loft of his Bel-Air mansion but with one added curiosity. Sly also owned a Winnebago that was fitted out (somewhat chaotically) with recording equipment that added to the places Stone could hide himself away and create what would become Riot. It was a solitary endeavor for the most part though, something that was made possible by the advent of the most basic of drum machines.
The Maestro Rhythm King MRK2 had preset patterns that he would use in a new, exciting way as GregErrico (a real human drummer!) grudgingly testifies in Kaliss’ book: “The machine. . . was a lounge instrument that the guy at the bar at the Holiday Inn might have used.
Stone worked on the album, mostly by himself, throughout 1970 and 1971. Many of his vocals were recorded in his bedroom, with a drum machine driving the beat. The other members of the group later overdubbed their parts. And Stone himself overdubbed even more on top of that. The result was a mix so thick and muddy that it perfectly suited the album’s themes of disillusionment and despair.
There were the internal band tensions that had been present since almost day one. Larry Graham and Sly tussled numerous times as the former challenged Stone’s authority. There were also rumours of Graham having affairs with Rose (Sly’s sister) and Sharon (Sly’s brother Freddie’s wife)—hardly a cocktail for healthy relationships and dynamic musical brotherhood. The upshot of all that was that Graham barely appeared on “There’s a Riot Goin’ On“, instead bass parts were played by either Stone himself or Rustee Alan who was more in line with James Jamerson’s luxuriously smooth bass playing than Graham’s newly minted slap bass techniques that had contributed so memorably to “Stand’s”success. From the opening “Luv n’ Haight” — one of the few songs here that doesn’t sound like a 45 played at 33 1/3 — to the closing “Thank You for Talkin’to Me Africa,” a gloomy, seven-minute reworking of Sly & the FamilyStone’s 1969 No. 1 hit “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),”There’s a Riot Goin’ On plays out like a drug-induced nightmare that’s a simultaneous end to the ’60s and the start of an equally tumultuous decade. The title track, which closes out Side One, runs 0:00, erasing all time and space from the record.
It’s a fitting summation of the album, because nothing else sounded like it at the time. All these years later, it remains one of the most distinctive records ever made. It confused a lot of people then, and it still does. But the success of the single “Family Affair,” which hit No. 1, drove the LP to the top of the album chart. It would be the group’s last No. 1s, though they did manage to make one more great album, 1973’s Fresh, before Stone couldn’t keep it together anymore. There’s a Riot Goin’ On touched just about everyone who heard it. Jazz got darker and funkier, funk got darker and deeper, R&B got weirder and druggier and rock ‘n’ roll got more adventurous and complicated (the Rolling Stones, for one, were influenced by the murky production enough to bury Exile on Main St. in a similar mix).
It seems almost beyond comprehension that the group’s biggest song would come from this album, but “Family Affair” hit #1 on the charts and stayed there for three weeks. Recorded with Billy Preston on electric piano and Bobby Womack on rhythm guitar, it buried Sly’s guitar in the mix and featured his singing in an entirely different register. Gone were the urgent gospel-like vocals of previous years and in its place came a guttural, underplayed vocal that mirrored the gloomy approach to recording and the overall feel of the album.
The other singles released from the album were “Runnin’ Away” and “(You Caught Me) Smilin’” both of which did pretty well
The music on “Riot” is funky, very funky, but it is of a totally different ilk to the funk others offered. Take James Brown’s work of the time with his new line-up that included Bootsy and Catfish Collins. Their brand of funk was expansive, punchy and dancing to it meant the chance to use huge movements—spins, pirouettes and leaping splits; arms and legs flung as extensively as possible. But it is hard to imagine those same movements in response to the deep, gloopy funk of “Riot“. Here the funk is wearing a strait jacket—the movements it provokes are limited in scope and scale, instead the neck bears the brunt of the groove.
“I’m kind of back,”said Rufus Wainwright, He could have been talking about any number of things — his return to the stage, post-pandemic; or his new album, “Rufus Wainwright and Amsterdam Sinfonietta Live“, But he was referring to his hometown. On the phone from his place in L.A., the beloved Montreal singer-songwriter spoke fondly of his recent return to our city, where he jumped on stage with sister Martha during her performance at the Outremont Theatre, and where he decided it was time to once again have a pied-à-terre. “I just got a little room in an apartment on Esplanade, and was setting it up,” Wainwright said. “I feel a need to be close to Montreal. I hadn’t seen my family in about three years. Over the pandemic, I definitely experienced a lot of yearning for Montreal — not to return there permanently, but to develop more of a foothold in that part of the world.
Wainwright is renting a room in an apartment belonging to some friends. And while he won’t be getting up here all the time, we should be seeing more of him. Perhaps he was inspired by Martha who has been living in L.A these last few years, even opening her own Mile End café and music venue, Ursa, where Rufus has participated in a few hot-ticket fundraising concerts.
Speaking of concerts, his new album was inspired by a 2017 mini-tour of the Netherlands with string ensemble the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. The shows found Wainwright revisiting his own repertoire and some of his favourite songs from across the musical spectrum. The collaboration came about serendipitously. “I had this amazing agent for years, David Chumbley, who was my first European agent,” Wainwright said. “Sadly, he passed from cancer (later in 2017). He always got me really interesting shows, and I have to say, he was a bit of a mobster as well — he could be really tough and scary, which is appreciated in an agent.
“At one point an offer came in to work with an orchestra, the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. I had never heard of them, but I trusted my agent and went in and we put together a set. I let them do all the arrangements. It was a real leap of faith. When I arrived and we started running through the songs with the orchestra, I was dumbstruck by how great the whole situation was — the musicians and the arrangements.”
Critics and audiences of the ten concerts were enraptured by the intimacy and intensity of the program curated by Wainwright. The concerts reflected the immense bandwidth of Wainwright’s musical influences and interests from Verdi Arias to Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, from Rameau pieces to the American songbook and French chanson and from Wainwright’s beloved Berlioz to his family’s and his own songs, some of them written for this program. Emotional centre piece of the album is Wainwright’s almost 9 minute version of late Canadian singer songwriter Lhasa de Sela’s harrowing “I’m Going In”, a song she wrote about her own death from cancer at the age of 37. All arrangements were created specifically for the Amsterdam Sinfonietta and around Wainwright’s voice that is truly at the peak of its power. The artistic kinship between Wainwright and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta lead by CandidaThompson is astounding and make these live recordings into something utterly unique and breathtaking.
“Rufus Wainwright and Amsterdam Sinfonietta Live” is the document of that meeting, providing fresh perspective on the singer-songwriter’s broad musical range, as he covers everyone from Irving Berlin to Leonard Cohen, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Hector Berlioz, Joni Mitchell and Lhasa de Sela, interspersed with an array of his own tunes.
“It’s a real potpourri of material,” Wainwright said. “I just felt this need to (showcase) the wide variety of material I’ve covered over the years, and have it all on record, all framed in a similar wood, shall we say, with a string section.
“I think — look, I wouldn’t say it’s a genius move, but in retrospect it’s a very solid proposition.”
Uniting the various styles is Wainwright’s distinct voice, remarkable for its range, power and technical prowess, yet altogether unconventional. As a singer, he makes himself at home wherever he goes, without ever losing the idiosyncratic qualities that make him Rufus.
“If anything, (this album) proves my voice has a strange, multi-faceted ability where it can morph into all these different areas but maintain its identity,” Wainwright said. “When I sing classical, I still sing like Rufus Wainwright. And the same with jazz or my own material; though I’m respectful of genre — I’m not tossing it off. I’m deeply embedded in the material. It’s a balance between keeping my personality and serving the music.”
And so a solemn rendition of Cohen’s “Who By Fire” is followed by a whirlwind version of Mitchell’s “All IWant“; while a heart-wrenching, nine-minute take on Lhasa de Sela’s death-acceptance ode I’m Going In gives way to a spirited tackling of Berlioz’s L’Île inconnue.
The Lhasa piece, which Wainwright calls “the one I’m most proud of,” holds special meaning for him, as singer died just weeks before his mother, Kate McGarrigle, in 2010.
“That song became a real anthem for me at that time,” he said. “It helped my understanding of what my mother was facing, without her having to tell it to me.” Over his two-decade-plus career, Wainwright has recorded pop albums, a Judy Garland tribute, an album of Shakespeare sonnets set to music, and he has composed a couple of operas. Thought it’s far from a compendium of all that activity, the new album is emblematic of it. “I don’t believe there should be any boundaries between music,” Wainwright said. “I very much believe in the autonomy of types of music, but they should all be scalable mountains for everyone.”
“Rufus Wainwright and Amsterdam Sinfonietta Live” came out Friday.
Asia were an English rock supergroup formed in London in 1981. The most commercially successful line-up was its original, which consisted of four members of different prog-rock bands that had enjoyed great success in the 1970s: lead vocalist and bassist John Wetton from King Crimson and U.K, guitarist Steve Howe of Yes, keyboardist Geoff Downes also of Yes and Buggles, plus drummer Carl Palmer of ELP. Their debut album “Asia“, released in 1982, remains their best selling album and went to number one in several countries. The well known single “Heat of the Moment” from the album, remains their top charting and best-known song.
The band underwent multiple line-up changes before the original four members reunited in 2006. In 2013, the original line-up was broken once again when Howe retired from the band and was replaced by guitarist Sam Coulson. After a few years of inactivity, Billy Sherwood (of Yes, World Trade) replaced an ailing Wetton (who died shortly thereafter).
“The Official Bootlegs, Vol 1” is a 10CD Asia box set that features live performances from across the world between 1982 – 2010. We are promised “high quality original soundboard audio sources” for the performances, all of which are unheard. This comes as five two-CD sets in an outer slipcase with a 12-page booklet.
ASIA are a multi-platinum selling, global superstar English rock band formed in London 1981 and celebrate their 40th anniversary this year. The Official Bootlegs, Volume One 10 CD box set contains some of the rawest and most intimate of ASIA’s live shows from across the world from 1982 – 2010.
Including shows from Buffalo, USA, 1982; Worcester, USA, 1983; Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2007; Tokyo, Japan, 2008 and London, UK 2010.
These incredible live performances are housed within an open ended slipcase, with beautifully designed original artwork from the fantastic painter and artist Roger Dean. Audio for all 5 shows previously unheard, high quality, original concert soundboard audio sources for all performances.
Inside the box set there is also a 12-page booklet with rare band photos as well as liner notes from ASIA expert Dave Gallant.
When he’s not focused on his on-line tuition, or stuck in the back of his brothers van mixing his latest compositions, Gargalo (Bruno G. Roth) is to be found in and amongst the sound mirrors of Greatstone in Kent. The shoot for his latest video, to accompany his last single – “Out Of Sync“, took Spanish-Canadian Bruno to Romney Marsh and Dungeness in the Sam Kinsella directed film. The isolation that is inherent in Roth’s song is born out across the coastal landscape just a stone’s throw from the nuclear power station. The artist, now based in London, has been involved in numerous bands before (King Korea/WelcomeDynasty) but this is his first solo project and he can’t wait for you to hear his debut solo EP.
“King Of Dark Waters“, which contains both “Out Of Sync” and “Monroes”, will be released on November 26th via Frances House Records.
