Posts Tagged ‘Big Star’

CHRIS BELL (BIG STAR) – ” The Complete Chris Bell ” [Boxed Set]

Posted: November 26, 2017 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Praised as “one of the unsung heroes of American pop music” Despite a life marked by tragedy and a career crippled by commercial indifference, the singer/songwriter’s slim body of recorded work proved massively influential on the generations of indie rockers who emerged in his wake.”

He was one of the pioneers of power pop – and his catalog of proto-alternative rock has inspired the likes of Beck, R.E.M., Teenage Fanclub, Primal Scream, Afghan Whigs, Pete Yorn, Wilco, The Posies, and The Replacements, all of which have covered his music or name-dropped his band, Big Star, in the press. His name was Chris Bell.

Christopher Branford “Chris” Bell (January 12th, 1951 – December 27th, 1978) was born in Memphis, Tennessee to a well-off family. He was a sharp, funny, deeply introverted and sexually confused young man, who dreamed of rock stardom.

Omnivore Record’s Looking Forward: The Roots of Big Star Featuring Chris Bell was the first of several planned releases from the Grammy Award-winning label showcasing the talents of Big Star co-founder Bell, who passed away in 1978. The label recently announced their next two Bell projects: a new expanded edition of the quintessential Bell collection I Am The Cosmos, and a definitive archive of his work as a 6LP box set.

Prior to Rykodisc’s I Am The Cosmos in 1992, only two of the tracks (the title cut and “You and Your Sister”) were released during Bell’s lifetime; both tracks were pressed on a single released shortly before a car crash took the Memphis hero’s life. (Much of it was recorded long before that, after Bell had departed Big Star and decamped to Paris in 1974 and 1975.) In 2009, Rhino Records also issued a double-disc Cosmos set that featured not only alternate versions and mixes of the album’s original tracks but also cuts by Bell’s pre-Big Star bands Icewater and Rock City for context. As those tracks (and more) are now a part of Looking Forward, this new double-disc edition sweetens the deal with another 10 tracks, most previously unreleased. Compilation producer Alec Palao and writer Bob Mehr provide liner notes, and a clear vinyl version of the original album (the first release of this material on the format in years) will ship day and date alongside the 2CD set.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oCxZHzhXlE

The material of Looking Forward and I Am The Cosmos will also be featured on a comprehensive vinyl box set, The Complete Chris Bell, to be released later this fall. That set includes the vinyl premiere of Looking Forward (reconfigured to include only the Icewater and Wallabys tracks, plus Bell’s solo “Psychedelic Stuff”); a separate vinyl debut of the material from Rock City, the I Am The Cosmos vinyl (as well as the material from the bonus disc on two LPs); and, exclusive to this set, a newly-discovered career-spanning interview with Bell, conducted by journalist Barry Ballard in 1975 and sourced from his own personal copy of the conversation.

Palao and Mehr again offer notes for the box (alongside an excerpt from Rich Tupica’s forthcoming biography of Bell), all tracks are remastered by Michael Graves, vinyl was cut at Ardent Studios by Chris Jackson and Adam Hill, and Palao, Hill and Omnivore head Cheryl Pawelski serve as the box set’s producers, with the full cooperation of Bell’s estate (as run by his brother David). I Am The Cosmos is back in print , while The Complete Chris Bell is available November 24th!

In 1964 and 1965, Bell played lead guitar in a British Invasion-influenced group called the Jynx (the name is a takeoff on The Kinks) with local musicians, including lead vocalist Mike Harris, rhythm guitarist David Hoback, drummer DeWitt Shy, and bassist Bill Cunningham, and later, bassist Leo Goff. Other lead vocalists at some of the group’s shows and rehearsals (though not present on their recordings) included local teens Ames Yates, Vance Alexander, and Alex Chilton. Chilton, who attended many Jynx shows and sang lead vocals at a couple of gigs, soon joined the Box Tops with Cunningham, as the Jynx split up in 1966. Here are the Jynx, with Bell on lead guitar, performing Little Girl:

Bell continued to perform and record in Memphis throughout the rest of the decade, including a stint in the heavier psych-rock band Christmas Future. By the late 1960s, after attending UT in Knoxville, he had turned his focus toward writing original songs. The group later known as Big Star stemmed from two Bell band projects that began in the late 1960s, while he recorded and performed live in groups, named Icewater and Rock City. These groups featured a revolving set of musicians including Jody Stephens, Terry Manning, Tom Eubanks, Andy Hummel, Richard Rosebrough, Vance Alexander, and Steve Rhea. Here are Icewater and All I See Is You:

Bell asked Alex Chilton to join several months after the group had started performing. Eventually, during a period of recording demos and tracks for their first album, the group settled on the name “Big Star.” The lineup for Big Star’s first album was composed of Bell (guitars/vocals), Chilton (guitars, vocals), Hummel (bass, vocals), and Stephens (drums, vocals). Bell and Chilton wrote most of the group’s songs, with occasional writing contributions from Hummel and Stephens.

Big Star were, in the words of Robyn Hitchcock, “a letter posted in 1971 that didn’t arrive till 1985.” Crowned the inventors of power pop, they were, over the course of three critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful albums, much more than that. Nobody could turn pain into beauty like Big Star.

In 1971, the 20-year old Alex Chilton has already been a star. He was the front man of The Box Tops, a manufactured rock combo who had one the biggest hits of 1967 with The Letter. His teenage stardom meant that he’d already met Charles Manson, toured with the Beach Boys, and watched Hendrix from the side of the stage before he could legally drink. He was an “art brat” who’d been given peyote as a kid and was already living a remarkable life. But witnessing the guitar shredding, five-part harmonizing experimenters of rock had left him feeling uncomfortable. He was essentially in a boy band. He needed to step up and make his own music. So he quit The Box Tops and after a brief spell in New York, returned to his hometown of Memphis to make music he wanted to listen to.

Just to remind you what a great pop group The Box Tops were, here are a few of ther hits. Their first hit was their biggest, surely one of the classic singles of the 60s (and of all-time). Here’s The Letter, with 16-year-old lead singer Alex Chilton:

Here’s their third single, which was their second-biggest hit, “Cry Like A Baby”:

Chris Bell obsessed with creating perfect, multi-layered pop music. To do this, he had the studios of Ardent Records, run by whizz kid engineer John Fry, who let the local musical kids use it at night for their own sessions. Fry taught Bell how to multi-track. Ardent had become a subsidiary of the legendary Stax Records, taking on some of its recording sessions and, in return, agreeing to be its pop/rock imprint. The studios and – bizarrely -TGI Fridays, were the twin pillars of a raucous Memphis counter-culture scene that was big on drinking, sexual experimentation and drugs, particularly ludes, Mandrax and related pills.

“That pill culture is unique to Memphis”, says director and screenwriter Drew DeNicola. “It’s what killed Elvis and it’s what those Big Star boys were doing too. Everyone knew a crooked doctor. Polite society would go to bed and then, in the margins, the alternative kids could do what they wanted, as long as they made it to Sunday lunch with Momma.”

It was out of this southern stew that Big Star’s first album, #1 Record, came. The band’s name had come out of desperation, taken from a chain of supermarkets, one of which sat across the street from Ardent. Chilton and Bell put their heart and soul into the album, with Jody Stephens and Andy Hummel on drums and bass respectively. It’s an album of perfect pop songs, suffused with pain and melancholy, up-tempo and down-tempo, beautifully layered, subtle and all over the place genre-wise.

On its release in June 1972, #1 Record immediately received widespread acclaim, and continued to do so for six months, although an inability by Stax Records to make the album available in stores meant it sold fewer than 10,000 copies. Record World called it “one of the best albums of the year”, and Billboard commented, “Every cut could be a single”. It was described it as one where “everything falls together as a total sound” and one that “should go to the top”. In 2003 it was ranked on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Eight years earlier in 1964, when their home town of Memphis, Tennessee became a tour stop for The Beatles, primary songwriters Alex Chilton and Chris Bell were thirteen years old. They went to the show together – and it made them see the light. Thirteen, a song Chilton wrote nearly six years after he first witnessed that Beatles performance, referred to the event with the line “Rock ‘n’ roll is here to stay”.

Heavily influenced by the UK band, the pair – Bell in particular -wanted to model their songwriting on the Lennon–McCartney partnership, with the result that they credited as many songs as possible on Big Star’s debut album to “Bell/Chilton”. In practice, they developed material incrementally in the studio, each making changes to the other’s recordings. Drummer Jody Stephens recalled, “Alex would come in and put down something rough and edgy and Chris would come in and add some sweet-sounding background vocals to it.” The pair also each contributed songs individually composed before Big Star was formed, Bell bringing Feel, My Life Is Right, and Try Again, and Chilton, The Ballad of El Goodo, In The Street, and Thirteen.

Here’s Feel, the album’s opening track:

… and here’s the song with which Alex “auditioned” for the band: Watch the Sunrise.

The album’s short closing track, ST 100/6, is the only song where Alex Chilton and Chris Bell share lead vocals (lead vocals are divided among them on the rest of the album).

The critics loved the album but the public couldn’t get their hands on it. Press attention focused on former teen star Chilton. Chris Bell, the driving force behind the album, was relegated to the sidelines.  The failure of #1 Record devastated him. He was tormented by his sexuality: he was probably gay but was unable, in Tennessee, to deal with it, and there were rumours in Memphis that he was in love with Chilton and that the latter’s lack of reciprocation hastened his departure from the band, which came not long after #1 Record.

The frustration at #1 Record’s obstructed sales contributed to tension within the band. There was physical fighting between members: Bell, after being punched in the face by Hummel, retaliated by smashing Hummel’s new bass guitar to pieces against the wall. Hummel took revenge at a later date: finding Bell’s acoustic guitar in the latter’s unattended car, he repeatedly punched it with a screwdriver. In November 1972, Bell quit the band. When work continued on songs for a second album, Bell rejoined, but further conflict soon erupted. A master tape of the new songs inexplicably went missing, and Bell, whose heavy drug intake was affecting his judgment, attacked Fry’s parked car. In late 1972, struggling with severe depression, Bell quit the band once more, and by the end of the year Big Star disbanded.

After a few months Chilton, Stephens, and Hummel decided to reform Big Star, and the three resumed work on the second album. The title chosen, Radio City, continued the play on the theme of a big star’s popularity and success, expressing what biographer Robert Gordon calls the band’s “romantic expectation”

Although uncredited, Bell contributed to the writing of some of the album’s songs, including O My Soul and Back of a Car. Shortly before the album’s release, Hummel left the band: judging that it would not last, and in his final year at college, he elected to concentrate on his studies and live a more normal life.

For all the trouble surrounding it, Radio City met with general acclaim. Critics judged the musicianship “superb” It was called “a collection of excellent material”; giving it an “A” rating, Robert Christgau calls the album “Brilliant, addictive”, observing meanwhile that “The harmonies sound like the lead sheets are upside down and backwards, the guitar solos sound like screwball ready made pastiches, and the lyrics sound like love is strange,” concluding his review with, “Can an album be catchy and twisted at the same time?”

However, sales were thwarted (again!) by an inability to make the album available in stores. As a result, the album achieved only minimal sales of around 20,000 copies at the time.

September Gurls is the best track on the album, almost as good as their best track overall, Thirteen.

Before returning to Bell’s solo career, I would be amiss not to present Big Star’s legendary third album known as Third or Sister Lovers. It was recorded in 1974. Though Ardent Studios created test pressings for the record in 1975, a combination of financial issues, the uncommercial sound of the record, and lack of interest from singer Alex Chilton and drummer Jody Stephens in continuing the project prevented the album from ever being properly finished or released at the time of its recording. It was eventually released in 1978 by PVC Records.

After two commercially unsuccessful albums, Third documents the band’s deterioration as well as the declining mental state of singer Alex Chilton. It has since gone on to become one of the most critically acclaimed albums in history and is considered a cult album.

You have to take into account that most of the songs in Third/Sister Lovers are practically demos. I wonder what would be the final form of these songs, had Alex decided to properly complete the album…

Chilton went on to have an interesting solo career, but commercial success always eluded him. In truth, he wasn’t really aiming for it. He also briefly reformed Big Star, as well as regrouped with the original Box Tops for a number of tours. He was taken to the hospital in New Orleans on Wednesday, March 17th, 2010, complaining of health problems, and died the same day of a heart attack. Four months later, Hummel died of cancer.

Back to our man, Chris Bell. After leaving Big Star, Chris would attempt suicide, abuse strong sedatives and use religion to suppress doubts around his sexuality amid an inherently homophobic Deep South.

Vocally, to some, Bell was an icon trapped in the wrong era. “At times Chris could be so punk rock and he’d just make this painful noise from the back of his throat like a Cobain,” beams Adam Hill, an engineer at Ardent, who remastered Bell’s recordings for posthumous collection I Am The Cosmos. “On grungy solo track Better Save Yourself, Bell contorts his voice, sometimes shouting, to bellow: “You should’ve gave your love to Jesus, it couldn’t do you no harm. You better save yourself, if you wanna see his face.” This was songwriting that had little time for affectation. Whereas on a song like Though I Know She Lies you could be listening to Dylan on Lay Lady Lay. He always pushed his vocal cords to their very limit.” On the delicate You And Your Sister, Bell pours his heart out about an unrequited love. When he reflects “Plans fail every day,” to backing vocals by Chilton, who remained an acquaintance, you sense heartbreak of both a romantic and professional nature. And Speed of Sound – with its existential dread of “The plane goes down, it will not land. The pilot’s dead, nowhere to be found”—hits you right in the gut, writing the angsty blueprint Elliott Smith would later follow to a tee.

Seen by friends as an intervention, Bell’s brother David took him across Europe in the mid-70s, armed with these solo demos. Bell, an anglophile who imported copies of NME, would get the chance to work with hero Geoff Emerick—a pivotal engineer on all the best Beatles albums—at the legendary Air Studios. “It was good for him to go to Europe but I sense he was still in a really dark place. He was an impatient artist after Big Star,” says Van Duren, a fellow Memphis musician. With a record deal not forthcoming, Bell accepted he needed a regular 9-to-5 upon his return to Memphis. For a while, he worked for his father’s hamburger chain Danvers—a heartbreaking scene for friends who understood his talent.

While Bell was back home flipping burgers, Big Star were blowing up in the UK, with NME unable to keep up with reader letters requesting copies of their first two albums. In fact, demand for both albums was so high they were eventually reissued in a gatefold release. “I called Chris and it was one of the only times I remember him being really happy, as all those Beatles Parlophone pressings he loved had the same address on the back,” remembers Stephens, noting that the reissue said “Pressed by EMI at Hayes, Middlesex” on the back. However, Bell’s adulation would be short lived.

“When I came back to Memphis we made plans to meet at the studio. However, when I arrived he had already left,” recalls Stephens. Friends and family still don’t know for sure what happened in the early hours of December 27th, 1978, the dark mystique of Bell’s music holding even in death. “What’s weird is I decided to drive back and when I got to the Sears department store, I could see police cars with their lights flashing and there was this car in the middle of the road. A pole had fallen and completely crushed the left side of the roof. I immediately thought ‘I shouldn’t look.’ The next day John [Fry] phoned to say Chris had died in a car accident. I had passed by Chris.” He was 27, that fateful age.

Unreleased for over 15 years, I Am the Cosmos, Bell’s only solo album, is nevertheless an enduring testament to the brilliance of Chris Bell; lyrically poignant and melodically stunning, this lone solo album is proof positive of his underappreciated pop mastery. The title track is a harrowingly schizophrenic tale of romantic despair:

We end this story with the album’s highlight, You and Your Sister – which features backing vocals from none other than Bell’s Big Star mate Alex Chilton – which is simply one of the great unknown love songs in the pop canon, a luminous and fragile ballad almost otherworldly in its beauty.

Thanks to Yianna/John

THIS WEEKS ESSENTIAL NEW RELEASES Friday 16th June

Posted: June 16, 2017 in MUSIC
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Image of Ride - Weather Diaries

Ride  – Weather Diaries

Ride release their first album in over twenty years, ‘Weather Diaries’ on June 16th via Wichita Recordings.

Produced by legendary DJ, producer and remixer Erol Alkan, ‘Weather Diaries’ is packed with all the classic elements that made Ride one of the defining bands of the early ‘90s. Trembling distortion, beautiful harmonies, pounding rhythms, shimmering soundscapes and great songwriting all combine to make an album that’s ambitious in scope, timeless and thoroughly addictive. The album will be released through Wichita Recordings and sees the band reunited with label co-founders Mark Bowen and Dick Green, who worked with Ride during the band’s early years on Creation Records. It also brings the band back together with mixer Alan Moulder (Arctic Monkeys, Smashing Pumpkins, The Killers) who mixed their seminal 1990 album ‘Nowhere’ and produced it’s follow up ‘Going Blank Again’.

The revitalised four piece – comprising of Andy Bell, Mark Gardener, Laurence Colbert, and Steve Queralt – reformed and returned to the live scene in 2014, selling out headline tours around the world to a plethora of critical acclaim, as well as show stopping turns at festivals including Coachella, Primavera and Field Day. More than that though, the British music sphere especially has been littered with bands heavily indebted to Ride and their peers. The likes of The Horrors, School Of Seven Bells and labels such as Sonic Cathedral have ensured that shoegaze is a sound that’s eternally relevant.

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Royal Blood  -How Did We Get So Dark?

After becoming the biggest breaking British rock band with their self-titled 2014 debut album, Royal Blood’s release their eagerly anticipated second album How Did We Get So Dark? released on Warner Bros. Records. The ten tracks that feature on How Did We Get So Dark? were written in instrumental form during sessions in Brighton, Hollywood, Los Angeles and Nashville. Always trying to explore ways of stripping their enormous sound back to give it more space and impact, inspiration for the lyrics came from events in vocalist / bassist Mike Kerr’s life since the band first found huge success. In November 2016. Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher, along with producer Jolyon Thomas, spent six weeks in a studio in Brussels that was decked out like a New York diner and featured a warehouse of antique gear. How Did We Get So Dark? was subsequently completed after a final session in London with their debut album’s co-producer Tom Dalgety. There are times where Royal Blood are more visceral than ever – notably the gargantuan introduction to Hook, Line and Sinker and also the intense denouement that brings Looks Like You Know to a close. While the album finds Royal Blood refining their melodic might, there are other moments that fulfil their aim to create songs that will add new dimensions to their live sets. Adorned with Kerr’s falsetto, Don’t Tell drops the intensity to mesmerising effect, while Where Are You Now? pulsates with a bounding energy that’s quite a step apart from anything else in their catalogue. The Royal Blood palette is also expanded with the complementary addition of piano or keyboards on four tracks, including the foreboding album closer Sleep.

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Fleet Foxes  –  Crack Up 

Crack-Up is Fleet Foxes’ long awaited and highly anticipated third album. It comes six years after the 2011 release of Helplessness Blues and nearly a decade since the band’s 2008 self-titled debut.

All eleven of the songs on Crack-Up were written by Robin Pecknold. The album was co-produced by Pecknold and Skyler Skjelset, his longtime bandmate, collaborator, and childhood friend. Crack-Up was recorded at various locations across the United States between July 2016 and January 2017: at Electric Lady Studios, Sear Sound, The Void, Rare Book Room, Avast, and The Unknown. Phil Ek mixed the album, at Sear Sound, and it was mastered by Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound. Fleet Foxes is Robin Pecknold (vocals, multi-instrumentalist), Skyler Skjelset (multi-instrumentalist, vocals), Casey Wescott (multi-instrumentalist, vocals), Christian Wargo (multi-instrumentalist, vocals), and Morgan Henderson (multi-instrumentalist).

Fleet Foxes’ self-titled debut made a profound impact on the international musical landscape, earning them Uncut’s first ever Music Award Prize, and topping numerous ‘Best of’ lists, including Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Albums of the 2000’s and Pitchfork’s 50 Best Albums of 2008. Fleet Foxes is certified Gold in North America and Platinum in both the UK and Australia. The follow-up album Helplessness Blues was met with the same critical praise as its predecessor;s .

Image of Big Star - The Best Of Big Star

Big Star  –  Best Of Big Star 

Best of Big Star is part of a wide-ranging, year-long initiative celebrating Stax Records’ 60th anniversary. Formed in 1971 by singer/songwriters Alex Chilton (1950-2010) and Chris Bell (1951-1978), drummer Jody Stephens (b. 1952) and bassist Andy Hummel (1951-2010), the Memphis-based group is now considered to be one of the most influential bands in modern music, having inspired some of the biggest alt-rock artists of the ’80s, ’90s and beyond. An underground core of fanatical enthusiasts kept the fire burning. The Replacements famously released “Alex Chilton,” a song that paid tribute to Big Star’s songwriting genius. R.E.M.’s Peter Buck said, “Big Star served as a Rosetta Stone for a whole generation of musicians.”

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Kevin Morby  –  City Music 

City Music is the new album by Kevin Morby. Full of listless wanderlust, it’s a collection inspired by and devoted to the metropolitan experience across America and beyond by a songwriter cast from his own mold. As he puts it: “It is a mix-tape, a fever dream, a love letter dedicated to those cities that I cannot get rid of, to those cities that are all inside of me.”

His fourth album, City Music works as a counterpart to Morby’s acclaimed 2016 release Singing Saw, an autobiographical set that reflected the solitude and landscape in which it was recorded. Saw was imagined as “an old bookshelf with a young Bob and Joni staring back at me, blank and timeless. They live here, in this left side of my brain, smoking cigarettes and playing acoustic guitars while lying on an unmade bed.”

And now follows City Music, the yang to its yin, the heads to its tails. It is a collection crafted using the other side of its creator’s brain, the jumping off point perhaps best once again encapsulated by an image. “Here, Lou Reed and Patti Smith stare out at the listener,” explains Morby. “Stretched out on a living room floor they are somewhere in mid-70s Manhattan, also smoking cigarettes.” It finds Morby exploring similar themes of solitude, but this time framed by a window of an uptown apartment that looks down upon an international urban landscape “exposed like a giant bleeding wound.”

Image of Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit - The Nashville Sound

Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit –The Nashville Sound 

The Nashville Sound was recorded at Nashville’s legendary RCA Studio A and produced by Grammy Award-winner Dave Cobb, who produced ‘Something More Than Free’ and Isbell’s celebrated 2013 breakthrough album ‘Southeastern’.

‘The Nashville Sound’ features 10 new songs that address a range of subjects that include, politics and cultural privilege (“White Man’s World”) longing nostalgia (“The Last Of My Kind”), love and mortality (“If We Were Vampires”), the toxic effect of today’s pressures (“Anxiety”), the remnants of a break up (“Chaos and Clothes”) and finding hope (“Something To Love”). Songs such as “Cumberland Gap” and “Hope The Highroad” find Jason and his bandmates going back to their rock roots full force.

Big Machine

It’s difficult for any band or artist to sound enthused after decades of making music. Automatic pilot and rock ‘n’ roll root rot can easily set in. There are some exceptions: Paul McCartney has had some late-career gems; same goes for David Bowie . You can add Cheap Trick to that list. They sound positively vibrant and genuinely excited on We’re All Alright! . 

Unlike many of their contemporaries, Cheap Trick have never broken up, stopped touring or quit making new music. They have also never stopped putting everything they have into what they do either. Coming hot on the heels of last year’s excellent Bang Zoom Crazy Hello , We’re All Alright!  follows in the footsteps of its predecessor while adding a couple of new twists to the mix.

Guitarist Rick Nielsen welds together riffs borrowed from the Kinks and the Who for the album’s first single, “Long Time Coming,” while “Nowhere” takes on a Ramones -like charge in its speed attack. Other songs follow a similar path, with no track clocking in at more than four minutes. This pace gives the album a whiplash flow that recalls some of their earliest records.

A few of the songs actually date back several years. “Radio Lover” was put on the shelf in the ’90s, and it’s rescued from oblivion here as an amphetamine-fueled hard rocker. “Lolita” slaps keyboard sequencers on top of glam-rock boogie. And “She’s Alright” features some Dylan styled phrasing from singer Robin Zander.

Cheap Trick also dip into the past by covering Roy Wood again. As they’ve done in the past with “California Man,” “Brontosaurus” and “Rock and Roll Tonight,” they take the Move’s 1968 song “Blackberry Way” and spin it in their direction..

The band pushes itself on We’re All Alright!, turning in enthusiastic and engaging performances throughout. They still sound like a bunch of guys half their age. “Who knows what forever is about?” Zander asks on “The Rest of My Life.” He doesn’t pretend to know the answer.

Cheap Trick sound like they still have something to prove, and perhaps they do. After a couple of trying and triumphant years — there was a legal hassle involving former drummer Bun E. Carlos, and they were finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 2016 — they sound ready for their next chapter.

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Sun Kil Moon – Common As Light And Love Are Red Valleys Of Blood

“‘Common As Light And Love Are Red Valleys Of Blood’, for the most part, captures events from January to August of this year and how I processed it all while traveling. “[…] I’m blessed to have met the very talented Justin Broadrick and to have made these beautiful albums with him. “These two new albums capture more than my reactions to mass murders or the passing of beloved heroes like David Bowie or Muhammad Ali. The Sun Kil Moon and Jesu / Sun Kil Moon albums are also full of love, humour, and my gratitude for the gift of life.” – Mark Kozelek, Sun Kil Moon.

4LP – Limited Four LP Set. Limited to 2000 Copies.

Andy warhols dream trevor sensor

Trevor Sensor  –  Andy Warhol’s Dream

It’s Trevor Sensor’s voice you notice first. A deep bubbling black tar pit of a sound, it’s a voice whose unique timbre resonates far beyond the constraints of the songwriting format. It demands the listener reaches for a new vocabulary. The 23 year old’s debut album Andy Warhol’s Dream is part of a literate folk lineage that runs from Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan through Tom Waits and onto the likes of Bon Iver, Bright Eyes and Sufjan Stevens today. It’s an unflinching honest album, transcendent in its exploration of self and sonically a collision between the classic and the forward-thinking. Sensor’s debut EP for the label, Texas Girls and Jesus Christ, was written on a borrowed acoustic guitar and took him out into the world. 2016 saw him tour Europe before hitting the road in the US for tours with Foy Vance and The Staves. Andy Warhol’s Dream was recorded to tape at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio and produced by both Jonathan Rado of Foxygen (The Lemon Twigs, Whitney) and songwriter/producer Richard Swift (Damien Jurado, Foxygen). His backing band featured members of Whitney. On these 11 songs Sensor doesn’t so much wear his heart on his sleeve as flings it out in the darkness of the front rows that sit beyond the glare of the single blinding spotlight. This is the sound of one man’s soul laid bare, facing life head on.

Image of The Drums - Abysmal Thoughts

The Drums –  Abysmal Thoughts

With The Drums’ new Abysmal Thoughts, band founder Jonny Pierce is making the exact album he’s always held in his heart. Of course, this is The Drums, so that heart is broken—but there’s beauty and even bliss in this kind of heartbreak, as well as that special kind of glorious delirium that comes from taking everything life can throw at you and still walking away triumphant. Here Pierce is back in full control of The Drums, not just writing all the songs himself but playing every instrument and bringing his exact personal vision to life. Not coincidentally, it’s some of the most revelatory work he’s ever done. If Abysmal Thoughts doesn’t sound at all abysmal—really, Pierce has rarely been this irresistibly pop—that’s because this is a story about how to figure out what happiness means once the worst has already happened: “If there’s one thing I can rely on it’s the healing power of being an artist,” he says. “I’m falling back in love with music.”

“There’s no question that The Drums have mastered the synthpop game” – Consequence of Sound.
For fans of The Smiths, Morrissey, New Order and The Cramps.

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Echo and The Bunnymen – It’s All Live Now

Each LP is individually numbered and strictly limited. 180 Gram, black vinyl pressed at Record Industry comes in a single sleeve aqueous-gloss, old school tip-on Stoughton sleeve with brand new artwork and hard stock insert. Never before seen photos of the band. Liner notes by guitarist Will Sergeant. One of the most acclaimed British rockers from the 1980’s, this legendary band formed in Liverpool in 1978 and were forefathers of the neo-psychedelic movement. This brand new collection of their legendary live material recorded in Sweden in 1985 includes classic Rock- N-Roll covers of legendary tunes by the Doors, Rolling Stones, Velvet Underground, Television and more available on vinyl for the first time. Many of the tracks from Sweden were recorded live for Swedish National Radio at the Karen Club. Also included here is a legendary extended version of Do It Clean recorded live in concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1983.

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Game Theory -2 Steps From The Middle Ages

Their final studio album ” remastered and expanded. Following up 1987s Lolita Nation (whose reissue appeared on numerous year-end best of lists for 2016) would be no easy task for Game Theory. But, Scott Miller and company were certainly up for the task. Re-teaming with producer Mitch Easter (R.E.M., Marshall Crenshaw, Velvet Crush), 2 Steps From The Middle Ages was released in 1988, and showed the band had no shortage of energy, experimentation, and excellent material. This reissue contains the original 13 songs supplemented with a whopping 11 bonus tracks ” demos, live performances and covers ” all previously unissued. The translucent orange, first pressing of the LP (on vinyl for the first time since its initial release), contains a download card for the entire CD/Digital program. Packaging includes rare and previously unseen photos from the bands photographer, Robert Toren, as well as essays from Easter, Ken Stringfellow (The Posies, Big Star), and Franklin Bruno (The Village Voice, Salon.com). The bands drummer, Gil Ray, who was involved in all aspects with the Game Theory reissue series including this title, sadly passed away earlier this year. This reissue is lovingly dedicated to him.

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Nikki Sudden and his Jacobites – Chelsea

Limited edition 350 copies only on Transparent Green vinyl 7” single. Both tracks feature vocals by Max ‘Lizard’ Edie ( Waterboys ) and also Mike Scott ( Waterboys) features on Chelsea Embankment. Chelsea springtime single edit has remained unreleased since 1992.

BIG STAR – ” The Best Of Big Star “

Posted: May 27, 2017 in MUSIC
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Beloved power pop group Big Star will release a new greatest hits collection featuring rare single versions of six of the band’s tracks.

The Best of Big Star culls its 16 songs from the late Alex Chilton and company’s three studio LPs – 1972’s #1 Record, 1973’s Radio City and 1978’s Third/Sister Lovers along with the single versions of tracks like “In the Street,” “September Gurls” and “O My Soul.”

The compilation includes liner notes penned by Robert Gorden, who previously won a Grammy for his liner notes in the 2009 Big Star box set “Keep an Eye on the Sky”, plus an introduction from drummer Jody Stephens, the band’s lone surviving member.

The Best of Big Star is due out June 16th on CD and vinyl. Check out the single mix for “In the Street” and the compilation’s track list below.

BIG STAR THIRD – ” Live On KEXP “

Posted: March 4, 2017 in MUSIC
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The classic lineup of Big Star only existed between 1971 and 1974 (though a version of the band reformed in 1993), but in that short time, with three albums that ranged from euphoric power pop to despairing ballads, the Memphis band created a musical legacy that has spawned generations of fans.

One of the most passionate of those fans is R.E.M’s Mike Mills,  While recording at Memphis Ardent Studios with REM in the 80s, he met and befriended Big Star’s drummer Jody Stephens. When Stephens became the only surviving member of the band after frontman Alex Chilton died of a heart attack in 2010, he invited Mills to join an all-star tribute band, called Big Star Third after their darkest and most revered album.

On Wednesday at the Concord in LA, the band – which also includes Jeff Tweedy and Pat Sansone from Wilco, Robyn Hitchcock, Dan Wilson of Semisonic, Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo, Jon Auer of the Posies, Benmont Tench from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – will play the Third album in its entirety, along with other Big Star classics. They’ll be accompanied by a chamber orchestra led by the Kronos Quartet, and the show will be released as a film and record next year. Meanwhile, a Big Star live album, a radio session recorded for WLIR in 1974, has just been re-released.

Big Star’s Third performing live from the Bumbershoot Music Lounge. Recorded August 31, 2014.

Songs:
For You
Take Care
Nightime
Give Me Another Chance
Thirteen
Blue Moon
I Am The Cosmos
In The Street

THIS WEEKS ESSENTIAL NEW RELEASES – 21st October 2016

Posted: December 16, 2016 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Pretenders – Alone

Chrissie Hynde returns with the first Pretenders album in eight years. Alone was recorded with the Black Keys‘ Dan Auerbach at his Easy Eye Studio in Nashville, and features Hynde on vocals and guitar joined by bassist Dave Roe (Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn), pedal steel guitarist Russ Pahl (Blake Shelton), guitarist Kenny Vaughan (Lana Del Rey), keyboardist Leon Michels, and drummer Richard Swift.

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Hooton Tennis Club release their second album, Big Box Of Chocolates produced by Edwyn Collins at his Clashnarrow Studios in Helmsdale, Scotland. If their debut album, Highest Point In Cliff Town, released in August last year, was the band’s sprightly statement of intent, Big Box of Chocolates may well be their coming-of-age: a record that retains all the colour and invention of their debut, while being elevated by richer instrumentation and lyrics that hint at slightly heavier themes: love and loss, nihilism and the ‘non-spaces’ of Northern England, all delivered in the band’s typically laconic, bittersweet style, like a Mersey Beat Murakami. The dozen tracks continue the band’s knack of combining catchy off-kilter riffs with droll storytelling; album narrators – vocalists and guitarists Ryan Murphy and James Madden – seem to straddle optimism and uncertainty with their lyrics, whether singing about their internal worlds or commenting on a motley cast of characters (Bootcut Jimmy, BBC 6Music presenter Lauren Laverne, Lazers Linda…) who turn up across the album’s 41 minutes to amuse, tempt or torment them. Whether fictional (the awkward genius Jimmy ‘looking shifty in his new shoes’) or real (Ryan’s ex-housemate immortalised in first single Katy-Anne Bellis), each character shares an equal platform, all revered in Hooton’s own low-key way. Recorded over three weeks in Helmsdale, during which time they all grew beards, drank copious amounts of tea, became birdwatchers and whiskey tipplers, the album reflects the band’s relaxed approach to songwriting ; they tend not to labour over recording demos or strumming and beating the life out of songs in the practice room -instead, ideas are allowed to form spontaneously: melodies are hummed into phones or computers, lyrics batted back and forth between Murphy and Madden, songs worked out alone in the bedroom, or layered up from scratch together in the studio.

LP – Yellow Vinyl with Download.

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Big Star – Complete Third

The small but rabid cult of Big Star, composed initially of rock critics and hometown Memphis hipsters, coalesced around 1972’s ‘No#1 Record’, which supercharged the legacy of the Beatles and Byrds, and 1974’s ‘Radio City’, which brought additional attitude and poignancy to the recipe. The shimmering brilliance of Big Star’s sound and songs on those two LPs, along with its underdog allure, would have been sufficient to perpetuate the band’s legend. But there was a third album, and that strange beast of a record made all the difference for subsequent generations of fans – many of whom formed bands of their own – who turned each other on to this music as if it were a secret religion or a trippy new drug. After more than a decade of looking for additional music beyond the original album that is Big Star’s Third, the search is now over. While some demos and alternate versions of songs have dribbled out over the years across various compilations, all extant recordings made for the album are presented here for the first time in ‘Complete Third’. The collection boasts 69 total tracks, 28 of which are previously unheard session recordings, demos and alternate mixes made by producer Jim Dickinson and engineer John Fry. The set allows the listener to track the creation of the album from the original demos, through sessions to rough mixes made by Dickinson and Fry, to the final masters of each song. Besides the contextualizing main essay from writer / A&R man, Bud Scoppa, extensive notes from original participants and artists influenced by Big Star are also included: Mary Lindsay Dickinson, Mitch Easter, Adam Hill, Elizabeth A. Hoehn, Susanna Hoffs, Peter Holsapple, Gary Louris, Mike Mills, Cheryl Pawelski, Debbi Peterson, Pat Rainer, Danny Graflund, Jeff Rougvie, Pat Sansone, Chris Stamey, Jody Stephens, John Stirratt, Ken Stringfellow and Steve Wynn. Initially, the collection will be released in a 3-CD boxed set and with three separate double LPs to follow, each vinyl volume representing a CD in the boxed set.

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Kevin Devine – Instigator

Produced by John Agnello (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr.), Instigator is Kevin Devine’s ninth full-length album and comes on the heels of a busy few years: In addition to recording two albums with Bad Books (the indie-rock supergroup he formed with members of Manchester Orchestra), he released the Kickstarter-funded double-album collection Bubblegum and Bulldozer in 2013 along with the wildly ambitious 2015 Devinyl Splits 7” series with the likes of Brand New’s Jesse Lacey, Perfect Pussy’s Meredith Graves and Nada Surf’s Matthew Caws. Devine is a master storyteller, and he imbues Instigator – from the biting power-pop of Both Ways to the angular Guard Your Gates and gorgeously finger-picked No One Says You Have To – with intricate details and often-uncomfortable truths. Their meanings are personal, but their themes are universal. It’s a skill that makes both his albums and his live show so alluring: Even when Devine’s writing about the world at large, he’s pointing a mirror back at himself. When Devine’s past lives meet his present-day self on the career- defining I Was Alive Back Then, the beautiful duality of his art takes center stage: Life is never all peril or perfection, a country ripped apart by war and social injustice or the joy of holding your child for the first time. The extremes might be easier to define, but it’s in the middle where life really happens.

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Agnes Obel  –  Citizen of Glass

Highly anticipated stunning third album from Danish born singer- songwriter Agnes Obel, the follow up to her UK breakthrough record Aventine. Recorded, mixed and produced by Obel in Berlin, where she currently resides, Citizen Of Glass is a work of haunting beauty and an expansion of Obel’s mesmerising world. The title surfaced in Obel’s mind while touring Aventine and, inspired by modern composers, the album conceptually and thematically revolves around the leitmotif of transparency. On this record Obel experiments with her vocals in inventive new ways, in order to manipulate them into alternative versions of her own voice, as can be heard on first single Familiar. Obel also incorporates a number of different instruments, such as the Trautonium (an extremely rare instrument that possesses a glistening, glass-like sound), alongside vibraphone, cembalo, cellos and more.

Crocodiles  –  Dreamless

Comprised of best friends Brandon Welchez and Charles Rowell, Crocodiles have earned their place as one of the United States’ most engaging, hardworking and consistent rock and roll bands of the past few years. Dreamless is the pair’s sixth LP, their most exploratory and focused release. Crocodiles’ first two albums made their home within a stew of fuzzed-out psychedelia, and the following three albums explored pop sensibilities placed against whirring guitars and barbed production, but on this latest album the duo’s artistic departure places their guitars in the backseat in favor of a more spacious, synthesizer and piano-driven sound. The title of the album works levels: “I suffered insomnia throughout the whole session. I was literally dreamless,” explains Welchez. “The past two years had been fraught with difficulty for us—relationship troubles, career woes, financial catastrophe, health issues,” he continues. “It was easy to feel as if the dream was over.” Recorded in Mexico City once again by friend and occasional bandmate Martin Thulin (Exploded View), Dreamless keeps the exemplary production on Crocodiles’ previous releases and reconciles their realigned focus on keys by pairing down the instrumentation to allow lyrical sentiments and themes to cut through.

THIS WEEKS ESSENTIAL NEW RELEASES Friday 14th October

Posted: October 14, 2016 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC, THIS WEEKS ESSENTIAL PURCHASES
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Kings Of Leon  – Walls

Multi-platinum selling rock band Kings of Leon return with their hugely anticipated seventh studio album Walls. The Grammy Award winning group decided to return to their recording roots in Los Angeles and worked with famed producer Markus Dravs (Arcade Fire, Coldplay, Florence and the Machine). Lyrically, the album touches on band members’ personal stories.

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Public Access TV –  Rebounder EP

The debut four track EP from New York’s most hyped and most loved band Public Access TV. Limited to just 500 copies and exclusive from Rough Trade Shops. Stand out track is ‘Middle Child’ which opens with a drum beat which cheekily apes The Stone Roses’ ‘I Am The Resurrection’ before settling in a noisy garage punk groove with a pop edge. In under three minutes Public Access TV prove they are a band waiting to cross into the mainstream.

Crocodiles  –  Dreamless

Moving both geographically (from San Diego to Mexico City in the case of vocalist Brandon Welchez) and stylistically (eschewing the more post-punk tinged origins of yore for a broader sweep of sound) the electronically-augmented sound of this sixth album may still be rooted in the ’80s, but it’s more akin to New Order in its melancholia and bold primary colours. Nonetheless he glam-tinged exuberance of this duo may still be present even if the Bunnymen-esque raincoat-brigade guitars aren’t. Ironically enough given it was an album inspired by insomnia, ‘Dreamless’ sounds for all the world like a bold new dawn for the band.

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Jagwar Ma –  Every Now and Then

Since the release of 2013’s ‘Howlin’ Jagwar Ma have played sold out shows across the world and supported the likes of Tame Impala, The xx and Foals, filling festival tents and clubs alike with their explosive, hypnotic live performances, not to mention legendary DJ sets – most recently illustrated through their televised Park Stage performance at Glastonbury, and a raucous closing DJ set at the Crows Nest the same weekend. Now the song-writing duo of multi-instrumentalist and producer Jono Ma, singer and guitarist Gabriel Winterfield return with their second album ‘Every Now and Then’. The new record returns to the melody soaked nods to club culture and instantaneous vocal hooks they’ve become well known for, but has also seen them employ their passion for the Beastie Boys, citing this eclectic album as their ‘Paul’s Boutique’. Overall this stunning record encapsulates the band at their most entrancing and anthemic – a wig out of oscillating acid bassline, ricocheting dub-fused guitars and heady pop psychedelia bathed in strobe-lit sonics. It was self-produced and recorded in the United Kingdom, Australia and France, then tweaked and mixed with the assistance of some of their brightest contemporaries, James Ford (Florence and The Machine, Arctic Monkeys), Blue May (Kwes, Kindness), Ewan Pearson (LCD Soundsystem, Chemical Brothers) and David Wrench (Caribou, FKA Twigs, Glass Animals).

Big Star –  Complete Third

Omnivore does an in-depth vault dive into the creation of Big Star’s Third for a new 3-CD box set.  Complete Third includes every demo, rough mix, outtake, alternate take and final master from the Third sessions known to exist. The 69 tracks on this set represent the culmination of a decade-long search to assemble all extant recordings for the album originally released in 1978.  Some alternates and demos have appeared on various compilations over the years, but this first-of-its-kind collection presents every track in context – including 29 never-before-released tracks captured by producer Jim Dickinson and engineer John Fry.

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The Growlers – City Club

The Growlers are an American band formed in Southern California who’s sound has been described as a trademark style of music, effortlessly managing to combine eclectic elements of country, lo-fi punk, surf/psych/garage rock, Tex-Mex, and slacker/stoner/skate culture into something that is uniquely their own. Known for their relentless touring schedule and DIY work ethic, the band is one of the most exciting independent success stories of recent years. The band has toured with The Black Keyes, Dr. Dogg, Devendra Banhart, and Jonathan Richman, among others. The album is produced by Julian Casablancas the first he has produced).

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Gurr  –  In My Head

When two best friends start a band, songs get filled with inside jokes. In My Head takes the listener on a journey of Andreya Casablanca and Laura Lee’s friendship, their life, and a step further into the world of GURR. Having met in an American Studies class in Berlin, and after spending time in the US together, the US West coast sound was an obvious influence on their music, but Andreya and Laura draw from a wide set of pop culture references and personal experiences for their debut album. First Wave Gurrlcore they call their own genre, always with a slight and acknowledging nod to riot girl culture and yet stressing that they want to invent their own style – they pair straightforward garage rock tunes with more psychedelic and wave elements on their debut album. “We didn’t start making music because of Kathleen Hanna,” explains singer Andreya Casablanca. “Musically we were more influenced by bands like Gun Club, Echo & the Bunnymen, the B52s or classics like the Ramones and Beatles.”

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La Femme – Mystere

Direct from the Parisian overground, French pop connoisseurs La Femme will release their second album Mystère this week. La Femme have made a huge mark on modern Paris’s cultural landscape, by engraining in their music the two sides of the city : the glamour and the grit. Returning with a more psychedelic sound and numerous female guest vocalists that slice through the starkest of electro beats, La Femme celebrates their wonderful city and tackles the enigmatic questioning of falling in and out of love. Mystère is indeed a compendium of short stories describing loves and losses and each song breaks down language barriers through an inventive and astute knack for melody. The band’s chic retro-futurist surf-pop sound possesses the same dose of glamorous punk stomp as before, but this time around it’s layered with an elegant fusion of influences from Ennio Morricone, Marie Et Les Garcons’s disco-rock touch and the lysergic romanticism of The Velvet Underground. Through increased use of strings and further exploration of sound, Mystère also incorporates the band’s new love of oriental sounds, Turkish disco, Tuareg blues, medieval psychedelia to mainstays Brian Eno and Pink Floyd.

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Las Kellies  –  Friends And Lovers

Following the release of ‘Total Exposure’ the fiery Argentinian Riot grrl group Las Kellies return with new album ‘Friends & Lovers’. Inflected new wave post-punk blends garage-psych with infectiously deft dance beats and melodic pop. ‘Friends & Lovers’ fuzzed-up gems sees them move away from the heavier dub sounds of their last record instead sinking their teeth into a groove like Thee Oh Sees with the spirit of ESG and Delta 5. Rupturing with dance floor classics like ‘Sugar Beat’ and ‘I Don’t Care’, they effortlessly move into sun-soaked psych-pop tunes (‘Summer Breeze’, ‘Sun Goes Down’) with slow grooving honeyed tones, shimmering guitars and propulsive percussion. Produced by Iván Diaz Mathé (credits include Lee “Scratch” Perry & Mad Professor), who’s worked on their previous records.

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Josefin Ohrn + The Liberation –  Mirage

Having already been nominated for a Swedish Grammy with their debut EP, Diamond Waves, their full-length 2015 debut on Rocket Recordings, Horse Dance, marked out a territory in which beguiling repetition could sashay with sweet pop suss, melodic flourishes with experimental intensity, and it was summarily rapturously received on arrival, making new fans and earning them appearances at Roskilde Festival and Eindhoven Psych Lab. Their second effort Mirage, which follows a mere year after its predecessor, sees the band sculpting sprawling, hypnotic jams into elegant nocturnal serenades. “We agree on not remembering very much about how these tracks came about, that all of them were written on the road and that most of them came fully formed” note the band. “Most were really long to begin with, but we found it relieving to break away a bit from the mandatory psych jams a little bit. We also just realised that none of them were written in daylight, which might be why memory is so elusive.” Indeed, this hypnagogic approach seems to fit well with the primary inspiration for the five-piece, which centred on ‘the state where dreams, visions and the present are entwined’ .Mirage sees the band taking a chic tradition of avant-pop that extends all the way from Serge Gainsbourg and Françoise Hardy to Broadcast and Saint Etienne, and warping it mercilessly to their own darker ends. Whilst the brooding yet sultry ‘Sister Green Eyes’ is no less than a sharp slice of velveteen motorik-pop and ‘Looking For You’ reinvents three-chord garage-rock attack with mighty finesse, The Liberation are just as comfortable dealing out the heavy-lidded and electronically-driven ‘In Madrid’ or the dive in the hallucinatory deep end of ‘Circular Motion’, on which they’re aided and abetted by Lay Llamas’ Nicola Guinta. The seductive splendour of these ten songs åmake manifest a parallel world of disorientation and deliverance in which one would be a fool not to want to languish adrift . Fresh excitement for the band lies in wait, courtesy of a UK tour with Goat and an appearance at Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia. Limited holographic mirrorboard sleeves.

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Thurston Moore  -Chelsea’s Kiss

Cassette Store Day 2016 Release. 2 Tracks / 16 Minutes. Double sided printed extended j card.
Edition of 1000. Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Brooklyn-based drummer Ryan Sawyer along with UK-based members of Thurston Moore Group: bass player Deb Googe (also of My Bloody Valentine) and guitarist James Sedwards (also of Nøught) met up in the studio to record these songs offered here to support the campaign to Free Chelsea Manning. Partial proceeds of the sales of this cassette will support the Chelsea Manning Support Network (chelseamanning.org), and will be earmarked for the defence of Army Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. Former Private Manning was sentenced to thirty years in military prison for sharing the video of a US helicopter attack that killed a dozen Iraqis, exposing US State Dept. cables, the “Iraq War Logs”, and the “Afghan War Diaries” with the WikiLeaks website.

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Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker – Overnight

British Folk duo Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker have risen to star status lately on the English acoustic scene, earning last year’s Best Duo award from the BBC Folk Awards and across-the- board praise for two self-released albums, most recently ‘Nothing Can Bring Back The Hour’, with its lush single ‘Silverline’. While The Guardian anointed them “chamber folk” (they certainly cut their teeth in that thriving part of the UK music scene), Clarke is an unusually compelling singer, sharing more in common with Sandy Denny, Gillian Welch, or even Nina Nastasia and Laura Marling, than your usual staid folk artist. Walker is a prodigiously talented guitarist and arranger and the two of them are engaging and often funny in a live setting where, in addition to their own songs, they choose covers brilliantly, from Denny, to Jackson C Frank, to Nina Simone, to death-obsessed traditional ballads. Clarke and Walker Rough Trade debut album brings bigger, more modern arrangements and production to their beautifully-wrought songs and Clarke’s tremendous voice.

BIG STAR – ” Complete Third ” Reissue

Posted: August 15, 2016 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Big Star

Big Star’s classic record Third wasn’t released until 1978, four years after it was recorded and four years after Big Star had broken up. The chaotic recording sessions will be released as part of a huge 69-track reissue called “Complete Third”, charting the album’s genesis from demos to completed LP. The reissue is due October 14th on Omnivore Recordings.

‘Volume One’ includes Chilton’s demos alongside vocals and rough mixes. ‘Volume Two: Roughs to Mixes’ boasts producers Jim Dickinson and John Fry’s early mixes for the Third tracks, including unreleased takes of Lesa Aldredge, Chilton’s girlfriend at the time and background singer on Third, covering Velvet Underground’s “After Hours.” ‘Volume Three: Final Masters,’ contains the 20 completed tracks.
Regardless of track order, the album was named to Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time despite its tumultuous journey. “Ask any of the original participants who made the record, and none of them would say they expected this album to even see a real release, much less end up on Rolling Stone’s list,” Ardent Studios’ Adam Hill writes of the album in the reissue’s liner notes.
“It’s a great testament to Third that an album that almost nobody was interested in at the time of its pressing, is now loved and sought out by an ever growing legion of fans. I guess that’s called ‘ahead of its time,'” he said.
The reissue also features unseen photos and essays penned by a diverse group of people either involved in the making of or influenced by Third, such as R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, Wilco’s John Stirratt and Pat Sansone, the Jayhawks’ Gary Louris, the Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs and Debbi Peterson, post-reunion Big Star member Ken Stringfellow and the band’s drummer Jody Stephens.

“At the time of the recording, everyone’s emotions were forefront … is uncertainty an emotion? We were responding to Alex’s mood both in song and conversation,” Stephens writes. “All my time spent in the studio for Third was in the company of John (Fry) and Jim (Dickinson) as well as Alex. I heard stories of maudlin scenes that happened after hours but never really witnessed them. But I did witness Alex, Jim, and John, and the sometimes easy and sometimes uneasy interaction among us all. Through it all, Jim and John were brilliant and reassuring.”
Complete Third will initially be released as a 3-CD set, with a vinyl pressing of all three volumes as standalone 2-LPs also planned.
Complete Third Track List
Volume 1: Demos to Sessions to Roughs
1. “Like St. Joan (Kanga Roo)” * (Demo)
2. “Lovely Day” (Demo)
3. “Downs” (Demo)
4. “Femme Fatale” (Demo)
5. “Thank You Friends” (Demo)
6. “Holocaust” (Demo)
7. “Jesus Christ” (Demo)
8. “Blue Moon” (Demo)
9. “Nightime” (Demo)
10. “Take Care” (Demo)
11. “Big Black Car” (Demo #2/Acoustic Take 1)
12. “Don’t Worry Baby”
13. “I’m In Love With A Girl” *
14. “Big Black Car” (Demo #3/Acoustic Take 2)
15. “I’m So Tired” * – Alex & Lesa
16. “That’s All It Took” * – Alex & Lesa
17. “Pre-Downs” *
18. “Baby Strange” *
19. “Big Black Car” (Demo #1/Band)
20. “Kizza Me” * (Dickinson Rough Mix/Alex Guide Vocal)
21. “Till the End Of the Day” * (Dickinson Rough Mix/Alex Guide Vocal, Kept As Final Vocal)
22. “Thank You Friends” * (Dickinson Rough Mix/Alex Guide Vocal)
23. “O, Dana” * (Dickinson Rough Mix)
24. “Dream Lover” * (Dickinson Rough Mix)
Vol. 2: Roughs to Mixes
1. “Big Black Car” * (Dickinson Rough Mix/Alex Guide Vocal)
2. “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” * (Dickinson Rough Mix)
3. “Take Care” * (Dickinson Rough Mix)
4. “Holocaust” * (Dickinson Rough Mix)
5. “Nightime” * (Dickinson Rough Mix)
6. “Thank You Friends” * (Dickinson Rough Mix)
7. “Nature Boy” * (Dickinson Rough Mix)
8. “After Hours” * – Lesa
9. “Stroke It Noel” (Backwards Intro)
10. “Lovely Day” * (Fry Rough Mix)
11. “Nightime” * (Fry Rough Mix)
12. “Blue Moon” * (Fry Rough Mix)
13. “Till The End Of The Day” (Alternate Mix #1)
14. “Big Black Car” (Fry Rough Mix)
15. “Holocaust” (Fry Alternate/Rough Mix)
16. “Downs” * (Fry Rough Mix)
17. “Kanga Roo” (Fry Rough Mix)
18. “Femme Fatale” * (Fry Rough Mix)
19. “For You” * (Alternate Version/Alex Vocal)
20. “Thank You Friends” * (Fry Rough Mix)
21. “Take Care” * (Alternate Version/Alex Vocal)
22. “Kizza Me” * (Fry Rough Mix)
23. “Till the End Of the Day” (FRY Rough Mix #2) – Lesa
24. “Nature Boy” (Fry Rough Mix)
25. “Mañana”
Vol. 3: Final Masters
1. “Stroke It Noel”
2. “Downs”
3. “Femme Fatale”
4. “Thank You Friends”
5. “Holocaust”
6. “Jesus Christ”
7. “Blue Moon”
8. “Kizza Me”
9. “For You”
10. “O, Dana”
11. “Nightime”
12. “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On”
13. “Kanga Roo”
14. “Take Care”
15. “Big Black Car”
16. “Dream Lover”
17. “You Can’t Have Me”
18. “Till the End Of the Day”
19. “Lovely Day”
20. “Nature Boy”
* previously unreleased

THOSE PRETTY WRONGS – ” Ordinary “

Posted: February 23, 2016 in MUSIC
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Big Star's Jody Stephens Starts New Band Those Pretty Wrongs, Shares

Original Big Star drummer Jody Stephens has a new single and a new band called Those Pretty Wrongs.

It’s a duo Jody Stephens and Luther Russell of the Freewheelers. To be released on May 13th, they’ll release their debut and self titled album via Ardent/Burger Records. Listen to the album’s opening track “Ordinary” above.

Those Pretty Wrongs was recorded to 2″ tape at Ardent Recording Studios in Memphis. They recorded using some of Big Star’s old gear (including Stephens’ drum kit and the late Chris Bell’s guitars). The album also  features the previous single  “Lucky Guy,” which was released as a single last year.

Lead single from Those Pretty Wrongs debut album, out May 13th on Ardent Music

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BIG STAR – ” Nothing Can Hurt Me “

Posted: February 18, 2015 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Big Star Movie Comes To DVD and Blu-Ray

 

The hugely influential 1970s melodic rock band Big Star will have the feature length documentary about their life and times, ‘Nothing Can Hurt Me,’ released by USM on DVD and Blu-Ray next month. The group’s many admirers will also be excited to learn that a deluxe package will be available that adds the first two of the three albums they released in their initial incarnation.

Their debut LP was ‘No#1 Record,’ first released on the Ardent label via Stax in 1972, and this will be in the package along with the 1974 follow-up ‘Radio City.’ The band released ‘Third’ in 1978 before their split, and were then “discovered” by the next generation of rock fans after being cited as an influence by the likes of R.E.M., the Replacements and later favourites such as Flaming Lips. ‘Third’ was reissued as ‘Sister Lovers’ in 1992 and the band reformed for a fourth and final new studio record, ‘In Space,’ in 2005.

‘Nothing Can Hurt Me,’ a feature length documentary about Big Star, was first shown in cinemas last summer, and its new DVD and Blu-Ray release will be on March 2nd. Alex Chilton, who had been the original band’s frontman and co-songwriter with Chris Bell, died in 2010.

The POSIES – ” Failure ” Reissue

Posted: December 21, 2014 in MUSIC
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Originally released in 1988 on cassette, the debut album by Seattle power-poppers The Posies represents an important part of the Pacific Northwest music scene that wasn’t Sub-Pop or Grunge. “Failure” was a young sounding, yet very strong set of uber melodic pop songs that spiritually connected fans of Big Star, early R.E.M., The Replacements, Velvet Crush, and the Hollies. The band’s principals – Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow – went on to become members of Big Star – and while fans would make the case that The Posies’ major labels were better albums than “Failure”, it’s inspiring to hear the pop bliss of a band struggling to find their voices, as The Posies certainly did.

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