The Black Keys release a special tenth-anniversary edition of their landmark seventh studio.
“El Camino” (10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) will be available in several formats including a Super Deluxe edition of five vinyl LPs or four CDs, featuring a remastered version of the original album, a previously unreleased Live in Portland, ME concert recording, a BBC Radio 1 Zane Lowe session from 2012, a 2011 Electro-Vox session, an extensive photo book, a limited-edition poster and lithograph, and a ‘new car scent’ air freshener. A three-LP edition, which includes the remastered album and the live recording, will also be available. The Super Deluxe version will also be available digitally.
“El Camino” was produced by Danger Mouse and The Black Keys and was recorded in the band’s then-new hometown of Nashville during the spring of 2011. The Black Keys won three awards at the 55th annual GRAMMY Awards for El Camino – Best Rock Performance, Best Rock Song, and Best Rock Album – among other worldwide accolades. In the UK, the band was nominated for a BRIT Award (Best International Group) and an NME Award (Best International Band). The week of release, the band performed on Saturday Night Live, The Colbert Report, and the Late Show with David Letterman, and later that year, went on to perform their first Madison Square Garden show.
Rolling Stone, which featured the band on their cover around the release, hailed El Camino for bringing ‘raw, riffed-out power back to pop’s lexicon,’ and called it ‘the Keys’ grandest pop gesture yet, augmenting dark-hearted fuzz blasts with sleekly sexy choruses and Seventies-glam flair.’ The Guardian said, ‘They sound like a band who think they’ve made the year’s best rock’n’roll album, probably because that’s exactly what they’ve done.’
Tracklisting: 01. Lonely Boy – 00:00 02. Dead And Gone – 03:12 03. Gold On The Ceiling – 06:54 04. Little Black Submarines – 10:39 05. Money Maker – 14:52 06. Run Right Back – 17:47 07. Sister – 21:04 08. Hell Of A Season – 24:29 09. Stop Stop – 28:15 10. Nova Baby – 31:45 11. Mind Eraser – 35:12
11 years after their acrimonious split, Pixies returned for an acclaimed sold-out reunion tour. ‘Live In Brixton’ brings together the complete recordings of all four shows from Pixies’ legendary run at the iconic London venue.
Pixies have announced a new box set capturing their June 2004 reunion concerts at London’s Brixton Academy. Live in Brixton arrives January 28th in vinyl and CD editions. The collection includes live versions of songs from Doolittle and Surfer Rosa, as well as covers of Neil Young’s “Winterlong,” Peter Ivers’ “In Heaven,” the Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Head On,” and more, all newly mastered by Phil Kinrade at Alchemy Mastering.
Pixies’ 2004 reunion shows occurred after the band’s 11-year hiatus. Pixies played four dates in early June at Brixton Academy, all of which sold out. The box set marks the first time recordings from the four shows will be officially available. In addition to the concert recordings, the “Live in Brixton” box set will include a 24-page booklet, which features photographs and new artwork, along with memories and paraphernalia from audience members, and a fold-out poster featuring the box set artwork.
Of the reunion shows, Pixies guitarist Joey Santiago said in press materials: “It was an amazing reception, I guess they had missed us over all those years. I particularly remember getting word that the balcony was swaying, and seeing that the crowd didn’t want to leave long after we had finished the show.”
Drummer Dave Lovering added: Having played there in the past, the Brixton Academy was a familiar venue and the shows were a fantastic experience. When I opened with my Scientific Phenomenalist show, I was a Pixie opening for Pixies. I could do no wrong. But, I did! It was an absolute thrill, though, to present it there. All in all music or magic, the audiences were very kind and receptive and made it a joy to play. Nothing of my experience I would change. Long live the Academy.
CD version: Each show has been newly mastered for this release by Phil Kinrade at Alchemy Mastering at AIR. Includes a 24-page booklet featuring photographs and new artwork, plus memories and paraphernalia from fans who attended the Brixton gigs. Also includes a 68cm x 48cm fold-out poster featuring the new ‘Live In Brixton’ boxset artwork. All housed within a deluxe case bound book with silver foil detailing.
LP version: Each show is pressed on two heavyweight 180g vinyl and housed in a wide spine sleeve with printed inner bags: 2nd June (translucent red vinyl), 3rd June (translucent orange vinyl), 4th June (translucent green vinyl), 5th June (translucent blue vinyl). Each show has been newly mastered for this release by Phil Kinrade at Alchemy Mastering at AIR. Includes a 24-page booklet featuring photographs and new artwork, plus memories and paraphernalia from fans who attended the Brixton gigs. Also includes a 68cm x 48cm fold-out poster featuring the new ‘Live In Brixton’ boxset artwork.
Indie Exclusive LP version: Special edition version is pressed on clear vinyl with coloured splatters and is exclusive to indie retailers. Each show is pressed on two heavyweight 180g vinyl and housed in a wide spine sleeve with printed inner bags: 2nd June (red splatter vinyl), 3rd June (orange splatter vinyl), 4th June (green splatter vinyl), 5th June (blue splatter vinyl). Each show has been newly mastered for this release by Phil Kinrade at Alchemy Mastering at AIR. Includes a 24-page booklet featuring photographs and new artwork, plus memories and paraphernalia from fans who attended the Brixton gigs. Also includes a 68cm x 48cm fold-out poster featuring the new ‘Live In Brixton’ boxset artwork.
All four shows from the O2 Academy Brixton in June 2004. Available for the very first time on Vinyl and CD.
DINKED EDITION 158: The Reds, Pinks and Purples – ‘Summer at Land’s End’
Prolific songwriter Glenn Donaldson returns with his fourth release as The Reds, Pinks and Purples, with the Dinked Edition featuring a second disc made up of ten extra tracks, an alternate sleeve, and a photo fanzine.
Donaldson has been funnelling the sounds of classic indie pop, C86, and jangle pop into one since 2019, releasing a shop-favourite each year since. ‘Summer at Land’s End’ adds shades of 90s 4AD and moodier song writing to his sunny San Fran pop, and he reckons it’s his best album to date.
“Summer at Land’s End” is not an interlude or tangent for The Reds, Pinks & Purples but rather a perfect fourth movement following the albums “Anxiety Art,” “You Might Be Happy Someday,” and “Uncommon Weather.” As with these self-recorded records (the primary work of songwriter Glenn Donaldson), the songs on “Summer at Land’s End” were crafted slowly and then drawn together to make a unified statement. But here, and more than before, “Summer at Land’s End” combines Donaldson’s rueful pop sensibility with a parallel musical universe, one composed of pictures, dreams, and feelings without words. Even if the underlying theme of this collection is one of conflict or unhappiness, the vision of the music presents an escape to a new world, always fading in and out of sight.
For listeners who may not be familiar with Donaldson’s corner of San Francisco––the Richmond district––or the current wave of hazy, melodic DIY pop groups performing in the city, “Summer at Land’s End” pulls in images and scenes that feel like a collision of the mundane and the sublime of this present landscape. But settings such as these are the backdrop for personal narratives, expressed as a struggle with love, with companionship and the conflicts of home.
If you remember indie pop as it’s supposed to be then you will soon fall in love with The Reds, Pinks and Purples. Bearded leader Glenn Donaldson has a voice so clear that you simply can’t believe he’s singing through a mound of facial hair. He may write the same song over and over again, but it is a good one and is repeated throughout this fourth album of his jangling, spangling beauty. For fans of the sort of people who thought Feverfew were better than Blueboy.
Taken from the album Summer At Land’s End, out 4th February 2022 via Tough Love/Slumberland.
One of the very few cool by products of the pandemic has been watching friends realize that being alone isn’t nearly as bad as they’d feared it would be. There’s always been a certain dread that comes with realizing you’ve got nothing lined up for the weekend on a Friday night, which, I think thanks to having nothing lined up for over a year, many of us have learned to make the most of this time alone, ultimately realizing the vast difference between being alone and being lonely. I really love the energy of this Soot Sprite song which covers this exact lyrical territory—albeit seemingly within the context of a relationship—while the band’s grungy dream pop does little to elicit any unnecessary pity for the narrator, instead bolstering her appeal for independence.
Poltergeists is a superb step forward for Soot Sprite, expanding on the charms of Sharp Tongue without ever forgetting what was so exciting about that record in the first place. The record was largely written and recorded during the UK-wide lockdown and finds vocalist Elise Cook questioning relationships, and ultimately herself, as she explains it is ultimately a record about, “being able to accept myself, move on, and celebrate the accomplishments I’d made in my life regardless of others“. The progress in Soot Sprite’s song writing is evident from the moment the opening track Assisted Thrills rolls in, with its loose emo-punk influenced guitars and rolling drums forming a perfect backdrop to Elise’s poised vocal, as she ruminates on an unclear relationship, “I thought this tangle was supposed to be fun, now I’m knotted up with the words you didn’t mean”.
From Soot Sprite’s ‘Poltergeists’ EP out 29th October via Specialist Subject Records
A closer look at the next title in the Esoteric RecordingsBe Bop Deluxe reissue series: Modern Music, 4CD/1DVD Deluxe Boxset Edition, released December 6th! . For an artist registered and branded as one of guitar heroism’s most innovative players, Bill Nelson is not one to be stuck in the past or focused on the present. Always inventing, always evolving, and always looking to the next thing (and the thing after that) the Yorkshire, U.K.-based guitarist and songwriter made himself and his legendary first ensemble Be-Bop Deluxe into an anomaly from their first record. With 1974’s glam-era debut Axe Victim,Be BopDeluxe added a progressive complexity and a daring density to the glittery genre, a dynamic previously unheard within Britpop’s most pomp and circumstantial sound. Nelson’s razor-sharp and soaring eletro-induced solos were a large part of that experimental esprit. Then and now, Nelson’s guitar scrawl sounds like no other. Increasingly catchy and chancy as time went on, 1976’s opulent Sunburst Finish and 1978’s Drastic Plastic are very much at one with their titles.
For all of its studio wizardry (produced by Nelson with John Leckie, eventually known for his work with Magazine and PiL), 1977’s Live! In the Air Age is Be-Bop Deluxe’s art-rock masterpiece: an elegant, sprawling mix of then-new, previously unrecorded and past work splayed across the dirtball nihilism of Brit-punk’s origin story. Recorded live on BBD’s 1977 tour just months before its release, “Live!” is fiery and hot wired for freshness. After they pressed their audacious 1977 concert LP, BBD stuck around for one more album (the aforementioned Drastic Plastic) before disappearing with Nelson moving forward and focusing on Cocteau-inspired solo work, another band (Red Noise), collaborations with fellow travellers in experimental electronic music (Yellow Magic Orchestra, David Sylvian, Roger Eno, Cabaret Voltaire), and an ongoing series of homemade ambient albums, previously unreleased epics, and other sonic explorations—all hung on a moon of fierce independence as an artist and as a releasing agent.
Nelson never looked back, until 2018’s four-album exploration of Sunburst Finish. That recently opened the door, thankfully, to a similarly sized four-LP “Axe Victim”, and now a whopping 15-CD/one DVD expansion of “Live! In the Air Age” to include every gig on that 1977 tour, along with freshly remixed and vividly remastered sound. Though an active blogging presence, Nelson doesn’t do many interviews, so our rare opportunity to speak with him is particularly choice.
Recorded in June and July 1976 at Abbey Road Studio Three, ” Modern Music” was the fourth album by Be Bop Deluxe and the second to feature the line-up of Bill Nelson (vocals, guitars, keyboards), Charles Tumahai (bass, vocals) ,Andy Clark (keyboards) and Simon Fox (drums). Following on from the success and critical praise for the band’s previous album Sunburst Finish, the album was once more co-produced by Bill Nelson and John Leckie.
Much of the material appearing on the album was conceived by Bill Nelson whilst Be Bop Deluxe were undertaking their first tour of the USA in March 1976. The wonderful and expansive Modern Music “suite” which dominated the album was inspired by Bill’s experiences of America, the disillusionment with the US music business and a longing for home. Beside the fine achievement of the suite, MODERN MUSIC also featured other fine songs such as Orphans of Babylon, Kiss of Light, The BirdCharmers Destiny and the epic Down on Terminal Street, all of which ensured that the album was a hit in both the UK and the USA.
This expanded reissue has been newly re-mastered from the original master tapes and features an additional 55 bonus tracks drawn from a stunning new 5.1 surround sound & stereo mixes from the original multi-track tapes by award winning engineer Stephen W. Tayler, previously unreleased out-takes from the album sessions, a BBC Radio “In Concert” performance from October 1976, along with a bonus CD of a previously unreleased “official bootleg” of a performance at The Riviera Theater in Chicago in March 1976 recorded for FM Radio on Be Bop Deluxe’s first US tour which features a rare jam entitled Bill’s Blues. The set also includes visual material taken from a session for BBC TV’s “Old Grey Whistle Test” show broadcast in November 1976.
Another highlight of this limited-edition boxed set is the lavishly illustrated 68-page book with many previously unseen photographs and an essay of recollections by Bill Nelson. Additionally, the set includes postcards and a replica poster. This special deluxe limited-edition boxed set of MODERN MUSIC is a fitting tribute to a fine band and the creative vision of Bill Nelson.
Re-mastered from the original master tapes with 55 bonus tracks drawn from stunning new 5.1 surround sound & stereo mixes, previously unreleased out-takes, BBC In Concert sessions, live performances & more!
During lockdown last year, J Spaceman would walk through an empty “Roman London” where the world was “full of birdsong and strangeness”, trying to make sense of all the music playing in his head at the time. The mixers and mixes of his new record weren’t working out yet. Spaceman plays 16 different instruments on Everything Was Beautiful which was put down at 11 different studios, as well as at his home. He also employed more than 30 musicians and singers including his daughter Poppy, long-time collaborator and friend John Coxon, string and brass sections, choirs and finger bells and chimes from the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. Eventually the mixes got there and “Everything Was Beautiful” was achieved. The result is some of the most “live” sounding recordings that Spiritualized have released since the Live At The Albert Hall record of 1998, around the time of Ladies & Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space.
Following this year’s acclaimed reissue of their classic first four albums, Spiritualized today announce news of their new studio album, Everything Was Beautiful, released 25th February 2022 via Bella Union Records .
One of the many eye-opening aspects of the pandemic, which we’re still in, has been understanding our relationships with solitude. Some people were comfortable staying inside for months, while others truly lost their shit. I mean, we all kind of lost our shit, and are still losing our shit, but what I’m trying to say is that some people lost their shit less, because they can adapt to isolation well. One of those people who seemed to cope alright was Spiritualized‘s J Spaceman. “I felt like I’d been in training for this my whole life,” Spaceman said in regard to this insane past year and a half years. Today the project has announced its latest album Everything Was Beautiful—seemingly the prequel to 2018’s Slaughterhouse-Five referencing And Nothing Hurt—which was finalized with Spaceman’s “solemn birdsong walks” at the pandemic’s beginning.
To mark the occasion the band have shared a visually striking and timely video for lead track and album opener, “Always Together With You”, directed by J Spaceman – and announced news of an extensive international tour running from March – May 2022 which includes a headline performance at London’s Roundhouse.
Spiritualized (aka Jason Pierce and backing band) released a new album, “Everything Was Beautiful”, via Fat Possum . Now that the album is out, we can share one of its album tracks that we love and wasn’t previously released as a single. We were torn between the album’s last two songs, both epic and long, but went with seven-minute penultimate track “The A Song (Laid In Your Arms)” over 10-minute album closer “I’m Coming Home Again” .
When the new album was announced in November, Spiritualized shared the song “Always Together WithYou,” . Then they shared its second single, “Crazy,” via a video for it. The album’s third single, “The Mainline Song,” was shared via a self-directed video.
“Everything Was Beautiful” has Pierce playing 16 different instruments, with more than 30 musicians and singers backing him up. His daughter, Poppy, is one of those musicians.
Pierce had this to say about the album in a previous press release: “There was so much information on it that the slightest move would unbalance it, but going around in circles is important to me. Not like you’re spiralling out of control but you’re going around and around and on each revolution you hold onto the good each time. Sure, you get mistakes as well, but you hold on to some of those too and that’s how you kind of…achieve. Well, you get there.”
Spiritualized are an English space rock band formed in 1990 in Rugby, Warwickshire by Jason Pierce (who often goes by the alias J. Spaceman) after the demise of his previous outfit, space-rockers Spacemen 3. The membership of Spiritualized has changed from album to album, with Pierce — who writes, composes and sings all of the band’s material — being the only constant member
Black Country, New Road only just released their debut album “For the First Time”earlier this year, and they’re not wasting any time with its follow-up, scheduling their sophomore LP for release early next year. It’s called “Ants From Up There”, and they’ve already shared the lead single, “Chaos Space Marine.” The experimental seven-piece have returned today with a simmering, guitar-based second track called “Bread Song,” which boasts a couple near-climaxes throughout its compelling six minutes. “We wanted to do the first chorus with no time signature,” vocalist Isaac Wood revealed in a statement. “I went to see Steve Reich do Music for 18 Musicians and there’s a piece where a bar length is determined by the breath of the clarinet player, they just play until they run out of breath. I wanted to try that with the whole band, where we don’t look at each other, we don’t make too many cues, we just try and play without time—but together.”
Isaac Wood (vocalist): “We wanted to do the first chorus with no time signature. I went to see Steve Reich do ‘Music For 18 Musicians’ and there’s a piece where a bar length is determined by the breath of the clarinet player, they just play until they run out of breath. I wanted to try that with the whole band, where we don’t look at each other, we don’t make too many cues, we just try and play without time, but together.”
Another notable performance from the most fascinating new band of 2021. Wood’s feverish and woeful vox leads a sort of slow-moving death march growing in tenseness along the way before just fading out. Magnetic stuff!
Experimental 7-piece from London producing a hypnotic mix of prog and math rock, jazz, post-psych-punk, and other musical roads.
In February of this year, they impressed big time with their debut full length For The First Time entering indie land by the big gates. New album: ANTS FROM UP THERE. Out: 22nd February 2022
Taken from the album ‘Ants From Up There’, released 04th February 2022 on Ninja Tune Records:
Los Angeles singer-songwriter Christian Lee Hutson has shared his first new music of the year with a new track called “Strawberry Lemonade” with a lovely Waley Wang–directed video that takes place in Washington Square Park in NYC. The track was produced with Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst, featuring vocals from the latter and Sharon Silva. Hand Habits’ Meg Duffy also added electric guitar, and Bright Eyes’ Nate Walcott plays some piano and trumpet. It’s quite a nice family affair!
One of Hutson’s most brilliant tracks to date, the single follows his 2020 album “Beginners”. It starts with him detailing a dream. “A series of vignettes about memory, letting go and holding on,” he explained in a press release. “I remember talking to a friend, around the time that I wrote it, about the relentless repackaging of 1960s culture; so some of that ended up in there. The laugh at the beginning of the song is my friend Harry who plays bass on the song.” After all the compelling imagery, Hutson slips in unforgettable sage words. My favourite: “Pain is a way you can move through time / And visit people who are gone in your mind.”
“I want people to feel like it’s okay: we’re all here fucking up all the time; we’re all just learning and living, and it’s going to be all right,” Hutson added. “I don’t even know if I fully believe that, but it’s the voice I always wished I had in my life.”
On his major label debut, Hutson is anything but a beginner. His intricate guitar work, evocative sense of melody and harmony, along with production by Phoebe Bridgers brings about a first record that exceeds expectations. Three traces have led me here. First, Nathaniel Walcott, who wrote the awesome string arrangements for five of the tracks. He is the keyboardist in the band “Bright Eyes”, led by Conor Oberst. Second, the backing vocals sung by Phoebe Bridgers, who is co-founder of a duo named “Better Oblivion Community Center” – with Conor Oberst. Third, who contributed the harmonica? Well, Conor Oberst. So on the bottom line.
All songs written by Christian Lee Hutson except “Single For The Summer” written by Christian Lee Hutson and SharonSilva.
While the Lily’s haven’t released a new record in over a decade formed in Washington, D.C in 1988., bandleader Kurt Heasley has reignited the flame in recent years, reissuing their first two albums and putting together a new line-up of the group for live shows. There is more archive digging on the way: earlier this month, they announced that Lilys’ great, ’60s pop-inspired 1999 album, “The 3-Way”, would be getting its first-ever vinyl pressing via Sundazed Records.
An ever-morphing vehicle for songwriter and sole consistent member Kurt Heasley, Lilys have swung wildly between genre and sound in different phases of their career. Moving rapidly through bandmembers, home bases, and musical fixations, Heasley took the Lilys through adventurously overdriven shoegaze on their 1992 debut “In the Presence of Nothing” before taking a sharp turn toward Kinks-indebted mod pop on 1996’s “Better Can’t Make Your Life Better”. Later releases like 2006’s “Everything Wrong IsImaginary” forged new ground while calling on shoegaze elements from the band’s early days.
And now comes word that their 1994 EP, “A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns”, is also being reissued, this one by FrontierRecords who also reissued The Lilys’ “Escame the Photon Band” and “In the Presence of Nothing” a few years ago.
Lilys’ etheric second full-length album, “Eccsame The Photon Band“, has become a shoegaze collector’s favourite. Out of print for twenty years, the highly sought-after, rare first-edition vinyl is nearly impossible to come by. This 21st anniversary re-release includes original artwork and has an enhanced dynamic range with the re-ordering of songs. “The Hermit Crab” has been moved and now begins side two, allowing for a deeper cut of side one and therefore increased audio fidelity, creating a more exciting listening experience than previously available. “Eccsame The Photon Band” has been described as “one of the Lilys‘ best,” “a hallucinatory revelation” and “a masterpiece of mood, atmosphere and production.” Originally released 1994.
The Lilys are a very underrated band that sit right next to MBV in shoegaze conversations. Their second album is near perfect and a great follow-up to their excellent debut.
Heasley relocated to Boston and Lilys took their first dramatic turn with Better Can’t Make Your Life Better. The album completely abandoned the dreamy shoegaze sounds the band had just a few years earlier, opting instead for songs strongly influenced by the Kinks, the Small Faces, and other British mod pop bands from the mid-’60s. This phase of the band’s style took them through the next few years and resulted in two EPs and their 1999 album “The 3 Way“, which received critical praise and was their sole release on major-label Sire.
“Amazing Letdowns” contains one of their best-known songs, “Ginger” (which appeared in a ’90s CK One commercial and a ’00s Cadillac ad), It was among the list of Best Shoegaze EPs of the Early ’90s, and has been woefully out of print pretty much since it was released, and hasn’t been on streaming services either. This new reissue will be out February 12th and comes in expanded form, taking five of the six songs from the original EP and replaces the sixth track (which was “Glosseder” on the vinyl and “Evel Knievel” on the CD) with previously unreleased song “G. Cobalt Franklin.” Additionally, the reissue adds four songs (recorded in 1994) that were on their 2000 split EP with Aspera Ad Astra.
These will not be the last Lilys reissues we’re likely to see, either. Three more albums — 1996’s “Better Can’t Make Your LifeBetter” (which contains their UK Top 20 hit “A Nanny in Manhattan”), 2003’s “Precollection” and 2006’s “Everything WrongIs Imaginary” — have yet to get the reissue treatment, and there are dozens of unreleased (in some cases, unfinished) tracks from the last 12 years that have yet to see the light of day, too. One of those unfinished tracks ended up being completed and realeased as “Unheard Of Curiosities” for the “Lodge 49” soundtrack, and was the first new Lilys song in ages.
Kurt talk’s about the reissues, “Lodge 49“, getting songs placed in TV commercials, playing Top of the Pops, the possibilities of future tours once COVID is out of the way, and a whole lot more. A hyper-intelligent, hyper-literate and very funny person, Healy talks at lightning speed, free-associating and swerving through tangents.
Lilys have been reissuing much of their ’90s catalogue on vinyl. We got “In The Presence Of Nothing” and “Eccsame the PhotonBand” a few years ago, and this year saw “A Brief History Of Amazing Letdowns” and “The 3-Way” get repressed. To complete the collection,1996’s “Better Can’t Make Your Life Better“, is also getting a vinyl reissue via Sundazed Records.
Trailer for the as-yet-unreleased documentary film on Heasley and his remarkable music. Kurt was asked about this film in an online interview and this is what was said: Q-Do you know if the film about Lilys, “Everything Wrong is Imaginary”, will be released? It seems pretty fascinating from the trailer.
The television series “Lodge 49” used some of our songs, and awoke the current incarnation of Warner Music. [Both Better Can’tMake Your Life Better and The 3-Way came out via Warner imprints/subsidiaries Che/Sire, respectively.] This was the third Warner Bros. Records owner since ’99. Like the guy who owned Warner Bros sold it to Edgar Bronfman Jr a couple of years after we were done on the label. Then Len Blavatnik bought it from Bronfman, Jr. And when you have that level of top down reorganizing, there’s nothing organizationally left. So I basically flew out to LA and I was like, “Hey, I don’t mean to be a total douche, but that Kurt Heasley, that’s me. I’m Kurt, that guy from this television show,” They realized after six months of not taking any payment, “Oh wait, this is one of ours.” And a couple of days after Business Affairs got wind that Che/Sire was “one of theirs,” they took the check. A few days after that, [those albums] went up on iTunes.
We’ve just been in contact like, “Okay. Hi, like I said, I’m Kurt.” And so basically all year was attempting to discover our current relationship — Lilys current relationship — with the Warner Bros. products. That’s what I have to refer to them as, they’re no longer records. They’re these things in a database, in a filing system probably in Ohio. Something really just dark. Not Ohio. Ohio’s great. I’m talking about Warner Bros’ filing cabinets. As we were leaving LA, Sundazed reached out to Rhino Records’ Jason Jones who said, “Oh, this is amazing. Sundazed wants to do a [reissue].” I was like, “Wow, that’s really incredible.
My first Beau Brummels record was a Sundazed pressing. So I’m like, “Okay well, there we go.” Beau Brummels were so hot back in ’91, you had to buy a reissue. [laughs] Introducing the Beau Brummels, listen to that shit. That is Love Rock 101. I’m like, “Oh, it’s true, man. Wait a minute. Did Sly Stone produce this? What the fuck was going on in San Francisco?” [Laughs] .
“Better Can’t Make Your Life Better” was originally released via Elektra Records subsidiary Primary Recordings and found The Lilys shifting from the sludgy/shoegazy sound of their indie label albums into more of a jangly ’60s psych-pop / British Invasion vibe akin to The Kinks, The Monkees and The Creation. The album also gave Lilys a belated UK Top 20 hit with “Nanny in Manhattan,” after the song was used in a Roman Coppola-directed Levis ad in 1998. More recently, a couple of the album’s songs made it onto the soundtrack of AMC series Lodge 49.
2012 saw The Lily’s re-imerge with the Bowie-flavoured song “Well Travelled Is Protest” on a split-7″ with Big Troubles. By the 2020s, the band’s earliest albums had become increasingly rare collectors’ items, and various reissue campaigns were launched.
This is the first vinyl pressing of the album since its initial release, and has been remastered for vinyl by Joe Lizzi and cut and pressed at Third Man in Detroit. It also features restored artwork. You can preorder Better Can’t Make Your Life Better in the BV shop, and listen to the album –watch the “Nanny in Manhattan” video .If you haven’t heard the “Eccsame the Photon Band” album, give it a listen.
Heasley has collaborated with other acts such as Nobody, appearing on the band’s 2005 single “Fancy”, a cover of the Kinks song, and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, singing “Tschuss” on their 2003 album “And This Is Our Music”. He also contributed “effects” to Poole’s “Snowcicle” on the band’s Alaska Days album, and performed on Apples In Stereo’s 1995 album “Fun Trick Noisemaker“, and with Neko Case’s 2009 album Middle Cyclone.
Albums:
In the Presence of Nothing (1992),
A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns (1994) (10″ mini album),
Eccsame the Photon Band (1994), SpinART, reissued in (2015),
Better Can’t Make Your Life Better (1996),
The 3 Way (1999),
Zero Population Growth: Bliss Out Volume 15 (1999),
Precollection (2003), Manifesto, reissued in Europe with 3 bonus tracks as The Lilys (2004), Rainbow Quartz
Everything Wrong Is Imaginary (2006),
He has also produced recordings by other artists including The Asteroid#4 (Apple Street: A Classic Tale Of Love And Hate, King Richard’s Collectibles), The Ladybug Transistor,
