It probably hasn’t escaped your attention that there was an election in the USA. Justin Vernon’s home state of Wisconsin is one of those crucial swing states, and he’s heavily involved in an initiative called ‘For Wisconsin’ that’s been persuading people to get out and vote.
For today’s final push, Vernon’s alt project Big Red Machine have released a cover of Aimee Mann’s highly apposite “Wise Up”, fronted by Aaron Dessner and featuring most of the rest of The National, as well as Mina Tindle.
“We recorded this cover of Wise Up, one of my very favourite Aimee Mann songs, for beautiful Wisconsin. Her lyrics keep coming into my brain these days. The stakes couldn’t be any higher in this election and it may come down to a handful of votes. Text 56005 to VOTE. Thanks so much to Ben, Bryan, Bryce, Mina, Jon, Scott and Justin for joining me.” Aaron Dessner
Rob Moose and I made an EP of songs from “Punisher” with just strings and vocals. Our version of “Kyoto” that Rob says should be played at my funeral is out today, the whole thing is out digitally November 20th, and physically November 27th at Rough Trade records.
The new EP featuring reworkings of four songs from this year’s excellent Punisher album, created with in-demand string arranger Rob Moose (Bon Iver, Paul Simon, Alabama Shakes, The National, Vampire Weekend, Moses Sumney et al).
Copycat Killer is out next Friday (November 20) with the limited-edition vinyl
Best Coast have a new live EP from a show we played at World Cafe in Philadelphia in early 2020 before “Always Tomorrow” came out. It was the first time we played new songs for fans and the first time we stepped on stage as a full band in a really long time. 2020 obviously went a lil crazy and we were forced to put everything on pause, but we hope this Live At World Cafe EP will make you feel like you’re hanging with us. We have 500 limited-edition signed, numbered vinyl for sale as well as some leftover tour merch, so after listening to the live EP, don’t forget to stop by the virtual merch table lol. found.ee/BC-WorldCafe
Recorded live in February 2020, the album showcases songs off Always Tomorrow, recorded live for WXPN in Philadelphia. Featuring the single “Everything Has Changed”, the album also highlights other cuts from Always Tomorrow, as well as fan favourites “Feeling OK” and “Heaven Sent”.
Los Angeles-based group The Spyrals are gearing up to release their new album ‘Same Old Line’ on October 30th. Taking cues from The Velvet Underground, 13th Floor Elevators and The Stooges by way of Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Muddy Waters, the record sees the band carve out eight songs of raw, back-to-basics rock’n’roll that marries white-knuckle garage-blues, psychedelic repetition and sun-baked alt-country to create “something new with an old soul”. The record is their fourth full-length to date and their first since signing to London-based label Fuzz Club.
Armed with a guitar, harmonica and fuzz pedal, band-leader Jeff Lewis formed The Spyrals when he was living in San Francisco in the early 2010s. Now, though, he’s based in Los Angeles and finds himself backed by a new line-up of musicians. ‘Same Old Line’ was cooked up in new drummer Dash’s garage and recorded over the course of a few days and nights straight to a Tascam tape machine. Jeff recalls: “This is the first album recorded with a new line-up after I moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles. At the time of recording we werenʼt sure if this would be a Spyrals album or something under a different name. At some point during the mixing process I decided to keep moving on under the Spyrals name, so to me this album is a real turning point in the band’s history.” The result is a record that’s just as rooted in the sounds of Nashville and the Mississippi Delta as it is the band’s West Coast garage-rock forebears.
“Same Old Line is a great addition to the blues canon and sits well up against some of the great records of the genre, both by the past masters and their modern acolytes” – Louder Than War
“The latest offering Same Old Line features influences from The Stooges, The Stones and classic era Creedence all distilled through a haze of Crazy Horse smoke and mirrors.” – Shindig Magazine
Nothing like a bluesy thrasher to lift you up and rock your spirits back to life. … The Spyrals are coming in hot with the thrasher blues tunes, their fresh take on a vintage rock ‘n’ roll sound. “ – Backseat Mafia
20 years ago, Songs: Ohia’s “Ghost Tropic” was released. Here is the original words from Secretly Canadian on the release: The sound movement on Ghost Tropic will seem sudden to some; without warning. To others, it’ll seem a very logical step in a very foreign direction. On its fifth proper full-length, Songs: Ohia has stepped outside the box and has delivered its most subtle record of fantastic depth to date. Indeed this is the most cohesive and “album-like” Songs: Ohia has ever been. The eight songs on the record sprawl out into one another, telling one long sonic tale, allowing very little room for chapter breaks or piss stops. In this regard, Lou Reed’s moody classic Berlin comes to mind as a worthy fore-bearer.
But it’s the strange ethnic flavour in which Ghost Tropic is steeped that makes it stand apart from its predecessors, albums which were all received as crossing guards for the Great American lost highway. Surely this album will leave those expecting such fare scratching their heads. Blending the electro-acoustic minimalism of the David Bowie and Brian Eno Trilogy with the percussive worldliness of Tom Waits’ Swordfishtrombones, the group seems to hop the globe from a British Isles folk rock influence to an Ennio Morricone-like Spaghetti Western feel to the faintest echoes of the Chinese Classical ringing like a death murmur in the distance. And the songs, they build in a slow, unconscious manner, pulsing with an intensity, but never betraying their most simple core with too much instrumentation or calculated progression. Yea! Ghost Tropic is the first album which reveals Songs: Ohia’s own Tropicalia Blues in full bloom.
But what has brought Songs: Ohia to this critical juncture? Perhaps it is purely circumstance — that four men were brought together to play as bedfellows for a week on the great plains of Nebraska. Acted out and recorded at the Dead Space Recording Studio in the state’s capital of Lincoln, Ghost Tropic was performed by principle Songs: Ohia songwriter, singer and guitarist Jason Molina; Appendix Out principle and Ohia alumnus (having played on The Lioness) Alasdair Roberts of Glasgow, Scotland; Lullaby For The Working Class drummer and new Ohia recruit Shane Aspegren; and engineer Mike Mogis of Lullaby For The Working Class and Bright Eyes.
Ghost Tropic is the fifth regular studio album by Songs: Ohia. It was recorded by Mike Mogis at Dead Space Recording Studio in Lincoln, Nebraska. The album’s name refers to two short instrumentals that are surrounded by six vocal tracks of at least five and up to twelve minutes length. The reviews noted the sombre and dark mood permeating the album. According to Pitchfork Media, “Ghost Tropic” sounds as though it were recorded live in a haunted hut somewhere in an Ecuadorian rainforest. At night.” AllMusic was less sanguine: “Everything moves as slowly as a three-legged dog, and anyone neither patient enough nor attuned to Molina’s style of songcraft might very well be put to sleep.”
The Bats release their 10th full-length album, “Foothills”. Spanning the last 38 years, The Bats have clocked nine incredible albums; each one seeing the band evolve with new material from the prolific songwriting hand of Robert Scott. Add to that tally the extra singles, b-sides, EPs, compilations and tribute songs they’ve recorded, creating a succinct setlist is a nearly impossible task. Foothills was recorded in Spring 2018 at a country retreat pop-up studio. At that time, 15 songs were captured and immortalised in the Canterbury foothills of the Southern Alps, Aotearoa (New Zealand). Only too well, The Bats know the possibilities, potentialities and sonic vistas that arise when one takes the reins for the recording process in a beautiful place that’s on home turf.
The Bats must hold a record in New Zealand (perhaps the whole world, once The Rolling Stones throw in the towel) as a band that has survived with the same line-up for 38 years. No split ups, no reforming for nostalgia’s sake. So far, half the band have spots in The New Zealand Music Hall Of Fame, vocalist/ guitarist Robert Scott (The Clean) and bassist/producer Paul Kean (Toy Love), and it’s only a matter of time before lead guitarist Kaye Woodward and drummer Malcolm Grant find themselves in there too. The four-piece has created twisted wistful folk, psychedelic rock, bouncy twee pop, and everything in between, but whatever the genre, their sound is always distinctively, unmistakably The Bats.
One of the reasons the Drive-By Truckers have matured into one of America’s finest rock & roll bands is ambition; they’re solid players and write great songs, but just as important, they take storytelling seriously, and when they make an album, they strive to do more than just serve up a bunch of new songs. Most DBT releases aren’t specifically concept albums, but nearly all of them have a thematic consistency in which the individual songs cohere into a larger framework. With this in mind, it makes sense that the band would want to do something more elaborate than the run-of-the-mill live disc, and 2015’s “It’s Great to Be Alive!”, recorded during a three-night stand at the the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, California in the fall of 2014, is an oversized (over three hours on three CDs or five LPs) look at the band’s body of work so far, with a set list that reaches back before the beginning (“Runaway Train” was a tune Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley cut for their pre-DBT band Adam’s House Cat) all the way up to “English Oceans”, the album the group released just a few months before these shows.
The Drive-By Truckers have always prided themselves on a butt-kicking live show, so it’s a bit of a surprise that It’s Great to Be Alive! relies so strongly on dynamics, dialing back the tempo and impact of some of the tunes rather than making this set the full-on blowout some fans would expect. It’s Great to Be Alive! focuses less on the sweat and fire of a live gig than on the songs, as Hood and Cooley draw their portraits of folks trying to make the best of life’s situations, which is often a harder and more desperate task than one would imagine. The relatively subdued attack does make more room for Cooley and Hood’s vocals, and both are in strong voice here, and if these performances are often a bit less finely nuanced than the studio originals, nearly everything here sounds more passionate, and the musicianship is excellent, especially Cooley and Hood’s duelling guitar work, Jay Gonzalez’s keyboards, and Brad Morgan’s drumming, which is endlessly implacable and full of lean, thoughtful groove (if this band has a secret weapon, it’s Morgan).
If It’s Great to Be Alive! doesn’t rock with the usual fury of a Drive-By Truckers live set, the band knows when and where to kick out the jams (especially on the three uptempo Southern Rock Opera numbers on disc three), and this 198-minute marathon leaves no doubt that this constantly evolving band is still growing and shifting and putting new perspectives on its music. It’s Great to Be Alive! is a bit less than the definitive document of the live DBT experience, but if you want to know why this is a great band and how good it can be on-stage, this set will tell you just about everything you need to know.
Beginning with John Mayall and his epochal Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton Grapefruit‘s roughly-chronological collection illustrates how the blues and its variants permeated the late 60s British music scene, happily highlighting the key players – often in more obscure settings – while providing examples of the lesser known, and near-forgotten, equally inspired by Mayall’s example.
The Fleetwood Mac clan are here in force; ‘Love That Burns’ from Mr. Wonderful; Peter Green guesting on Brunning Sunflower Blues Band’s ‘Ride With Your Daddy Tonight’; Jeremy Spencer’s ‘Mean Blues’ from his eponymous (and whacky) solo album; and The Christine Perfect Band’s out-take ‘It’s You I Miss’. Likewise Zeppelin; Page in ‘67 on a live Yardbirds ‘I’m A Man’; John Paul Jones guesting on ‘You Shook Me’ from Jeff Beck’s Truth; and RobertPlant in a short-lived trio with Alexis Korner.
Quiet Melon – whose ‘Diamond Joe’ is a revelation – turn out to be Art Wood plus a proto-Faces. The much-refried ‘Bring It On Home’ and ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ are made fresh in versions from Bakerloo and Jasper. Siren’s ‘Gardener Man’, Steamhammer’s ‘Passing Through’, and Edgar Broughton’s ‘Old Gopher’ might have been equally at home on an I’m A Freak Baby collection, but sit happy here; like many of the later selections, of the blues but reaching beyond.
While there have been many British blues anthologies, the vast majority tend to be single-label projects rather than scene-wide curatorial efforts. This three-disc, 56-track box is the first attempt at a comprehensive overview. On disc one, the Bluesbreakers are represented by Willie Dixon’s and Otis Rush’s steamy, raw, “All Your Love.” The previously unissued title track is offered by with sass and verve by then-new and always unheralded Zany Woodruff Organization (who later hosted guitarist Allan Holdsworth). Tracks by Bond, Jeff Beck, Love Sculpture, and early Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After, and the Deviants round it out. But there are surprises: Duster Bennett’s demo for “Jumping at Shadows,” made immortal by Fleetwood Mac, and the Bonzo Dog Doo DahBand delivering a scorching, humorous, barroom strutter called “Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?” There is a smouldering Korner jam here too, titled “Operator,” with a very young Robert Plant on vocals.
Disc two contains a smoking acoustic version of “Death Letter Blues” by Mike Cooper, as well as “It’s You I Miss,” by the Christine Perfect Band (aka Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie), the swampy, modal blues-rock of Levee Camp Moan on “I Just Can’t Keep from Crying,” Taste’s “Blister on the Moon,” revealing Rory Gallagher’s early guitar genius, and tracks by Blodwyn Pig and Chicken Shack, as well as a host of obscurities including Quiet Melon’s rarity “Diamond Joe,” featuring the pre-Faces Ronnie Wood, Kenny Jones, Rod Stewart, Ian McLagan, and Ronnie Lane. The final disc includes a scorching, live, “A Hard Way to Go” by Savoy Brown (with Chris Youlden), Stone the Crows’ “Raining in Your Heart,” the Edgar Broughton Band’s “Old Gopher,”Skid Row’s “The Man Who Never Was,” an early example of dual-lead proto-metal blues with guitarist Gary Moore (Phil Lynott was their original vocalist, but not here), and Status Quo’s early boogie exercise “Railroad,” with obscure numbers by Linda Hoyle (a rousing “Mr. Backlash”), a ragged “Road Runner” by Stack Waddy, and a rare live take of “I’m a Man,” by the pre-pop Yardbirds.
The set is adorned with copious, authoritative liner notes by compilation producer David Wells, and contains wonderful photos and brilliant sound. Crawling Up a Hill is essentially the definitive British blues compilation. Its amazing cross-licensing and skillful presentation leave very little out, yet covers all major and most minor artists on the scene with careful attention paid to stylistic variation.
“Go-Go Boots” is the ninth studio album by American rock band Drive-By Truckers, first released February 14, 2011, on Play It Again Sam Records. It was produced by record producer David Barbe and recorded during 2009 to 2010, concurrently with sessions for the band’s previous album The Big To-Do (2010). The Drive-By Truckers are a band that likes to do things the old-fashioned way. They proudly proclaim that they record their music “on glorious two-inch analogue tape,” they still think in terms of albums with two (or four) sides, and their sound is firmly rooted in the traditions of Southern rock and the blues. They also hark back to a time when rock bands made an album every year followed by a tour, and if the DBTs haven’t quite held firm to that schedule, since they broke through with Southern Rock Opera in 2001, they’ve managed to release six studio albums, a live CD/DVD, another DVD-only live set, and a collection of rarities and unreleased tracks, all while keeping up a demanding touring schedule.
Any band that busy is likely to believe it deserves a rest every once in a while, and in a sense, 2011’s “Go-Go Boots” feels a little bit like a working vacation. The album is notably short on full-blown rockers and sounds scaled back from the three-guitar attack that’s been their hallmark, often dominated by acoustic guitars and the muffled but determined report of Brad Morgan’s drums. The songs also find the band going back to the well on themes it has visited before — the man of the Lord with a broad but carefully hidden streak of corruption in The Big To-Do’s“The Wig He Made Her Wear” foreshadowed not one but two songs here, “The Fireplace Poker” and the title track, and the damaged ex-cop of “Used to Be a Cop” feels like a cousin to the haunted war veteran of Brighter Than Creation’s Dark’s “That Man I Shot.” But none of this adds up to an album that’s at all lazy. The craft of Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley’s song writing is as strong as ever, drawing believable characters and giving them lives that make dramatic sense, and Shonna Tucker just keeps getting better with the graceful and hard-edged “Dancin’ Ricky.” And if the music on Go-Go Boots is less physical than what the Drive-By Truckers typically deliver, it’s emphatic and passionate, with an impressive sense of dynamics and as much soul as these folks have ever summoned in the studio — they’ve rocked a lot harder, but they’ve never cut a more natural and telling groove.
There are moments where Go-Go Boots recalls Exile on Main St., another album that makes much out of feel and the way musicians play off one another, and if this isn’t as likely to be regarded as a masterpiece, it’s also less self-obsessive, and reveals some sides of the Drive-By Truckers the band hasn’t captured in the studio before. After ten years of hard work, the DBTs are still learning, still growing, and still feeling out new ideas, and on Go-Go Boots they show that even when they’re relaxed, they’re still one of America’s best bands.
The Reverberation Appreciation Society is proud to launch a brand new live series, “Live at Levitation”. Recorded over the history of the world renowned event, professionally mixed and mastered, this series captures key moments in modern rock and roll history, and live music in Austin, Texas. The artists and sets showcased here are the apex of modern psychedelia, performing for a crowd of their peers and fans who gather at Levitation Festival annually from all over the world.
The first LP in this series features Japanese psych heavyweights Kikagaku Moyo. This particular record is as strong as it is meaningful in the band’s story. It showcases one of the bands very first US show in 2014 on the A-side and their triumphant return in 2019 on the B-side with them firing on all cylinders amid a sold out US tour.
Kikagaku Moyo have come a long way –both literally and metaphorically– since their humble beginnings busking on the streets of Tokyo back in 2012. A tight-knit group of five friends who bonded over the desire to play freely, and explore music associated with space and psychedelica, their initial ambitions were modest semi-regular slots in the cramped clubs of the city’s insular music scene. Yet the band’s progressive, folk-influenced take on psychedelica marked them out from their peers and re-started Japan’s psych rock scene, and soon brought them international acclaim. Fast forward a few years, and you find the band crushing headline sets at festivals, embarking on sprawling international tours, and a dedicated fanbase for their music and record label Guruguru Brain – all while steadfastly maintaining their creative freedom and DIY allure.
Kikagaku Moyo are the real deal: masterful musicians, a powerful creative force, and one of key bands in the psychedelic rock movement and we are thrilled to have them kick off the LIve at Levitation series with this incredible record.
Formed in Japan in 2013 with Tomo Katsurada and Go Kurosawa at the helm, Kikagaku Moyo quickly and confidently hurtled to the forefront of the psychedelic scene upon the arrival of their debut full-length. Riding high on a broad spectrum of influences, Kikagaku Moyo were naturals at integrating these many elements into their own voice, from Indian traditionals to krautrock to jazz to chamber folk to riff-heavy acid freak-outs. It’s all in there, but it’s 100% a singular sound they’ve finessed with every new record and every tour.
Their live show is not to be missed and an essential experience for any psych fan or active listener. If you’ve indeed never witnessed a happening of this calibre, The ‘buy’ link takes you to LEVITATION where two gorgeous variants await you, the ‘Dripping Sun’ version and ‘Exploding Star’ colorway limited to 500 copies each.
