Cellar Darling - Live at Graspop Metal Meeting 2019

Having released their sophomore album a couple of months ago, Cellar Darling are now embarking on a European headlining tour, with a stop in Helsinki. We had the opportunity to talk with Anna Murphy about the upcoming tour, playing live, and the challenges of playing the hurdy gurdy on the road! Read more to discover why you shouldn’t miss this tour!

Hi Anna! First of all, thanks for the interview. The summer festival season has ended recently. How has your summer been?

Anna: It’s been nice. I was rotating between different things – some shows, some work at the studio, rehearsing… And luckily I had some time to go swimming and hiking too. The end of summer was spent touring in South America, that was great.

You released “The Spell” about half a year ago. How has everything been with Cellar Darling since then?

Anna: Pretty busy! Time has passed so quickly, I don’t really know where to start. The album was received well, I loved reading and hearing the reactions to it. I’m “done” with my work fairly quickly, even before it’s released. What I mean by that is that I put it behind me and move on to something else. Writing an album and the recording and mixing process is always so intense, I’m just relieved when it’s over and I can rearrange my focus. So a lot of energy was put into rehearsing – it was challenging to transform “The Spell” into a live setting. I learned how to play the keyboard and Ivo started singing for it. It’s been quite a journey… right now we’re preparing for the European Tour where we want to add some new songs.

Since we are here to talk a little bit more about the upcoming tour, and you already did lots of interviews about the album, let’s talk a little bit more about some other aspects of “The Spell”. The songs from “The Spell” are very different from the ones on your debut album “This Is The Sound”. How have they been working in a live setting, and how have the fans reacted to the new material?

Anna: There has been quite a development in our live shows during the past couple of months. As I mentioned before I started playing the keyboard and Ivo started singing in order to do backing vocals (which are pretty distinct on “The Spell”). Before we were ready to do this ourselves we had session musicians in our line-up for the UK tour, release shows, festivals & the recent tour with Katatonia – taking care of keys and backing vocals. We’re not huge fans of backing tracks, we want to do as much as is possible live. Even though we’re still nervous, it’s great to challenge yourself and it feels great adding a new instrument or skill to the show.  The fans reactions has been very good so far – especially on our own tours. Whenever we’re supporting it is, naturally, more of a challenge. The new material isn’t exactly accessible and definitely not “mosh” or party music. In the beginning we had to get used to not having an overly crazy audience (like we would have in our previous band), but that lies in the nature of the music. People just stand and listen, there isn’t really much room for more – and honestly that’s what I do when I go to a show.  And it’s nice, because I get the feeling that our fans really understand our music. 

During shows you also get to kind of in a way experiment with the new tracks. What have been your favorites to play on stage? Have there been any songs that didn’t work out the way you wanted to?

Anna: I love “Insomnia” and “Death”. I can really immerse myself in the lyrics and the story – there is a special energy on stage during those songs. What hasn’t really worked so far is “Love PT. II” which is a shame because I love it on the album. I honestly don’t know why, but live it just lacks the energy that it needs… but we’re going to give it another chance in the next couple rehearsals and see if we can maybe rearrange it somehow.

I attended part of your show at Graspop in Belgium (the schedule always overlaps, so couldn’t watch the whole show), but I was happy to catch at least part of it. You were playing in one of the tent stages, I felt that the atmosphere fitted very well with Cellar Darling, do you feel that an atmosphere like that is an important part of playing at festivals? 

Anna: I agree, it fit our show much better than the outside (with the sun and everything ;)) would have. Honestly, I’ve never been a fan of festivals… I never feel comfortable on stage and I feel that I can’t connect with the audience because there is no intimacy. But we’ve played a few shows so far where this hasn’t been the case at all and Graspop was one of them – the problem seems to be me and what I’m portraying it as in my head rather than the festival itself.
 
I also noticed that your setlist at the moment has a good mix of songs from “The Spell” and songs from “This Is The Sound’. How did you decide on the songs you’d play live? And what makes those songs a great fit for your live shows?

Anna: Yeah, I think it’s important not to ignore “This Is The Sound” – we haven’t toured that much and I think the people who already know us want to hear the “old” songs too. There are certain songs of which we know from the beginning that they’re not ideal to play live. So we only really unpack those if we’re bored, in need of a challenge or we notice that they get requested a lot. The more songs you have, the more you can create a “best of” out of those that work best. The problem we had during the touring cycle of our debut album was that we basically had to play all of them, whether they sounded great or less great live.

“The Spell” from a to z is basically a story, have you ever thought about bringing that story live on stage with a dedicated set of just the album? 

Anna: We have thought about it. We might do that someday, but then add more features to the show like actors or dancers… you know, bring the story to life. I can imagine doing that someday.

From: https://tuonelamagazine.com/interview-with-cellar-darling/

Winterpills - Predelugian

On the occasion of Winterpills’ latest album release, I spoke with Philip Price about this musical career that I’ve long and fondly observed from the outside.

Jonathan Lethem: Before I pummel you with softballs, there should be full disclosure to readers: We’ve been friends since college in the ‘80s. Though this conversation started many years ago, I’ll try not to rely on shorthand.
So, let me start by asking why you titled the new album Love Songs. A Google search reveals thousands of releases over the decades with the same title, from the Carpenters to K-Tel – but, so far as I can tell, always compilations.

Philip Price: I won’t pretend there wasn’t at least an attempt at irony, but in doing so I realized that I always write from love — if love means obsessive thoughts, romantic fussiness, melancholia, nostalgia (the Russian ‘toska’ is better), heartache, and, yeah, the generally accepted idea, too. Love isn’t always the subject, but sometimes only the melody.

It seems like the only clear, actual object of your affections here is the British film star Celia Johnson, from David Lean’s Brief Encounter.

It’s one of the more intensely “internal” films I’ve ever seen.

Your songs have always had a cinematic quality.

My dad was a screenwriter. As a family we never missed the Oscars and stayed till the credits rolled on every film. That’s how I try to write songs, too: no real fear of the gap between the trite or the low and high art, I guess, and I always wait until the lights come up.

I recall you wrote bunches of screenplays at one point, and a few comics. But when I first met you at college you were a painter.

I actually started painting again, this past year. It’s amazing how that part of my brain was just sitting there exactly as I left it! Meaning, pretty half-assed but willing.

You studied voice at Bennington, too, didn’t you, with Frank Baker?

Yeah. He was great. But I was singing Schumann’s “Dichterliebe” and other German art songs and then opera, which was all beautiful and fun and challenging to do, but I didn’t really know how to interpret that stuff. Felt forced and artificial. Once I brought in one of my own songs and belted it out a capella to him, and he really did not care for it at all. I was a little crushed, but he didn’t get what I was going for. At least I knew that.

This album seems to draw on the range of all your projects from Feet Wet through the Nick Drake-y sound of early Winterpills, and the Dennis Wilson lushness of the last couple [records].

Probably due to me spending the past few years slowly and painfully remixing all those albums while we were also making this one. But the writing process has never changed much.

It’s omnivorous. Yet there’s a single-cell-organism feel to the songs. They float above influence.

I’ve always felt simply embarrassed by the ambition to be a culture-changing artist, so I never even tried. Probably defeatist of me, but, everything has been done. I’m more interested in the journeyman approach, and the more romantic idea that the audience will find the art. I hope that’s why we’re so annoyingly obscure: my impatience with nation-building.

Like putting a hot pie out on a windowsill to cool off, and —

— and hopefully the neighborhood kid makes off with it.

Tell me about your relationship with the female voice. Since I’ve known you, you’ve always found a way to collaborate with singers of the opposite sex. In Winterpills, obviously you’ve met your match in Flora.

Yes, very true. Part of that is kind of hating my own voice, never feeling like it was ‘enough,’ or kind of too pretty for the hard sound I wanted to make. Wanting to hide it inside the third voice created by male-female harmony. The other was my obsessive listening to X. I became very obsessed with the dynamics of those two voices; John Doe’s pretty classic-rock singing style with Exene’s unusual kind of dissonant, untrained harmony gift.

The punk influence is pretty buried in Winterpills.

Only I know it’s there and it’s more method than sound. But I’ve somehow figured out that Winterpills was a reaction to my (very selective) love of punk and New Wave. I flooded my ears with X, the Minutemen, Talking Heads, Television, and XTC when I was in my 20s, shunning my Beatles/Stones/Cohen/Mitchell/Dylan/prog-rock childhood (eventually all these things just morphed into ‘music’). I realized that a lot of those punk bands weren’t even just punk; they were also all journeyman pop craftspeople coexisting in the punk/noise Zeitgeist, being pushed along in a heady current.

I remember how your music changed after you first heard Elliott Smith.

You played him for me, around 1997! All that punk authenticity I was trying to manufacture for years looked like a sham when I heard Either/Or. “Nobody broke your heart/you broke your own/’Cause you can’t finish what you start.” I saw the future that night. I’ve always felt that what I began after hearing Elliott was figure out how to actually sing, how to hold back, when to blast forth.

You’ve struggled with characters in your songs.

The bar is so high. If you study the Freedy Johnston catechism, as I do, the characters’ voices are so lived-in you don’t even have to know who is talking to feel the weight of their stories on their lives. You can suss it out later. I’ve always strived for a certain storytelling in song that keeps itself hidden, shuns explanation. A kind of literary quality without actual literature. I want the music itself, the sound we make, to control the story. Sometimes it works.

How important is it to you to be part of whatever musical Zeitgeist is flaring up at the moment?

I learned long ago that my eye is very bad for that sort of thing. I’m late to every party and spend most of my time staring in the window from the outside, watching everyone get down. It’s hard enough for me to just figure out how to be coherent, how to get my point across. Often, I don’t even know what the point is until someone tells me what they heard. The other night at a show, someone told me that my music prevented them from killing themselves. I mean, how do you do better than that, just as a human?
I’ve always secretly mocked people who say that they are vessels for some higher power that ‘writes music through them.’ And yet I know exactly how that feels. I’m very superstitious. I really do not know what is happening when I’m writing, except that it feels really really good, and I’m very sad and hungry and thirsty when it stops. Coherency is total gravy. Which is why I’ve always really admired the incredible lucidity of your writing, so perfectly wedded to your internal chaos. Lucid chaos. I’m jealous of that.

I recall telling you I was jealous of how you get to re-inhabit your art live and in the moment, in front of people. To see it hit people in the face. When I’m done writing, the exhilaration is over. Book tour is like playing yourself in an infomercial.

Often I don’t get to see people’s faces, you know, in dark rooms. Or they aren’t even there.

Back to Love Songs. Though there may not be obvious objects in these songs, they are all full of relationships — but through a sort of mythological lens.

All human relationships are mythological. Spun narratives with tenuous connections to the real, often. Narratives with aggrandized, narcissistic, mythic size. Story lines that, if sometimes challenged, must either be rewritten or scrapped altogether. If you’re resilient, you do a lot of rewriting. Myths need to be nimble to stay vital.

There’s a certain sonic scale to this album that seems new.

We finally figured out that we just plain needed more headroom. Justin Pizzoferrato (engineer, co-producer) has been working with the likes of Dinosaur Jr, J. Mascis, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, the Pixies, for years, and recording with his sensibilities and skills gave us permission to get as loud as we needed to with no fear. It opened up something in the band, creatively. But it’s not like we suddenly became a death metal band, we’re still bird’s-nest fragile a lot of the time. We just had more room to pursue the horizon.

You’ve had a lineup change recently.

Yes — our old friend Max Germer, who was with me in the Maggies for nine years, is now on bass with us. A little bittersweet, mostly sweet. He went off and became an even better bass player so we’re really getting Max 2.0. It doesn’t hurt that fellow ‘pills Dennis (Crommett, guitar) and Dave (Hower, drums) both play with him in Spanish for Hitchhiking, so they never seem to stop working.

In spite of the lushness of this album, it starts modestly. The first song, “Incunabula,” sounds like you’ve just woken up.

Almost. I had a cold, that was the very last song we did, because we realized the album needed some acoustic air. A bit rushed, last day. We did it in one take and did not re-track anything. The guitar part was new to my fingers, the guitar I was using was buzzy and rattly, and the Ebow I was playing was brand-new and I’d never used one before.

What inspired the contradictory refrain “It’s so lonely inside love”?

I guess it’s just an admission that love doesn’t solve all human dilemmas, especially for someone who lives pretty far up a lonely dirt road inside his own head.

Where do you go from here?

To quote X, this is the game that moves as you play. My goals have certainly changed. I’m much less anxious about the things I was anxious about before, I see the whole enterprise as a privilege. But that applies to all creative work. My skin is thicker, but the stakes are the same.

From: https://www.vulture.com/2016/04/jonathan-lethem-interviews-winterpills-frontman.html

Mean Mary & The Contrarys - Penelope Rose

Mean Mary James is nothing if not prolific. If you think you’ve just read a review of her latest release, you have: that was ‘Portrait of a Woman’. Barely a month later Mean Mary launches another four part project with ‘Hell & Heroes Vol 1’. In only four tracks she takes her virtuoso banjo picking, guitar playing and fertile imagination off in a more intense, darker direction. ‘Gothic bluegrass’ might sound hyperbolic, but it does describe her haunting, echoing vocals and pulsating electric banjo, all driven furiously by her excellent band the Contrarys, bassist David Larsen and drummer Allen Marshall.
Family has been integral to Mean Mary’s passage from child prodigy through an itinerant life both geographically and creatively. She still writes much of her material with her mother, Jean. Their collective determination enabled her to overcome the trauma of a lethal car accident that very nearly finished such a promising career. Through her sheer willpower and effort she regained her redundant right vocal chord to resume singing. Although some time ago, that same resolve comes across in this new EP.
The opening picking on ‘Penelope Rose’ shakes with the apprehension of the detective newly arrived in town to investigate a string of murders linked to someone, “they call her the woman with the rose tattoo”. Mean Mary’s only solo write, her soaring vocals, relentless banjo runs pushed further by the Contrarys embody the detective’s frustration at his lack of progress, or is he falling in love with his prime suspect?
Crime persists in ‘Fugitive’. An opening line of ‘Johnny loved his daddy’s gun’ warns this is not going to turn out well. And it doesn’t. Harder electric solos add to the drama of how the sheriff’s son met his end.
‘Seven League Shoes’ gives an insight into Mary’s own resolve, “So I’ll run, until I fall/ Then pick myself up again/ l’ll tough it out, that’s all”, could be autobiographical, an unsentimental look at a life on the road. Her blistering banjo solo is all the evidence needed that this is her reward. ‘Sparrow Alone’ pursues this introspection. A gentle banjo line gives space for Mean Mary’s voice to soar above her cares, orchestral thermals propelling her liberty higher still.
Multiple projects can face the obvious pitfall of too many ideas receiving insufficient attention. Mean Mary & The Contrarys do not fall into that trap. ‘Hell & Heroes Vol 1’ is very different to her concurrent ‘Portrait of a Woman’ and both deserve acclaim. We look forward to the second installment.  From: https://americana-uk.com/mean-mary-the-contrarys-hell-heroes-vol-i

 

 

Alexander Noice - Black Darwin

I wonder what the music business people and fans in general in search of an instant genre label will try to call the music presented on Noice, the new album by Los Angeles, composer, guitarist, producer, and bandleader Alexander Noice? Disco prog (the opener ‘Affectation’)? Operatic modern classical with Balkan female vocals (‘Black Darwin’)? Dance ambient jazz (‘Ambit’)? I could go on like that through all eight tracks on the album…
Hard to slap a label on something that does its best (and succeeds) to be inventive and defy genres, isn’t it? And that is exactly what Noice does here, somehow spiritually following in the footsteps of some of the Eighties ZE Records luminaries and even more so the first legendary Was (Not Was) album. Oh, and a few other things in between, from Derek Bailey to Laurie Anderson and what not…
Part of the inventiveness lies in the fact that Noice used a combination of live instruments and tailor made-samples – Ethiopian vocal recordings, 808 drum samples, and recordings of children with stuttering speech syndrome, among many others. Such an approach is no surprise when you take into consideration that Noice played with jazz experimentalists from Charlie Haden to Wadada Leo Smith, Vincent Gallo, Art Ensembles of Chicago’s Famoudou Don Moye, and saxophonist Vinny Golia. Or try for size his initial release Music Made With Voices in which he uses a single note sung by eight different people as the sole source material to create eight elaborate, fragmented sonic portraits that reflect our modern relationships seen through a digitized prism.
And all that (and more) you can find on Noice (pun intended, for sure), which can be characterized as anything even mutant rock (I think that genre already exists), as on ‘Fly Inside The Wall’ and ‘Never Thought I Would’ but (useless) noise. Maybe just inventive new music will suffice.  From: https://echoesanddust.com/2019/08/alexander-noice-noice/

Beth Orton - Someone's Daughter

"Looking back, I was quite a force to be reckoned with, there’s no denying it, and I’m not being arrogant saying that, but I was a character. I was really motivated, because I’d lost everything, I had no family left. I was 19, left on my own in a house in Dalston, my brothers would go to work and I’d just sit there. One day I went up and down Upper Street and found myself a job, and the first day I was there a girl said ‘Oh you want to act don’t you?’ I said yes and she said ‘Phone this number.’ I went for an audition that afternoon and I got in the play, and I started working for them for no money. We were supposed to go to Russia, but that fell through, so I started phoning around all the councils, the British Council, and then I organised it so we got to go. I wouldn’t stop, I wanted to create and I wanted to explore. I was incredibly excited about life and enthusiastic about life. I think when people met me they got a bit of that.
"One night I was going home on the tube with one of the actresses and she said ‘Come to this party on Saturday night.’ I went in a Chelsea Girl stretched brown skirt, a leotard, and a pair of tights and a pair of shoes. I had this old beautiful leather jacket that I’d got from one of those old emporiums on the Kings Road. I’d sewed it up. I went to this party and I didn’t know what to expect, it was William Orbit’s party and I didn’t know anyone there. I was at the bar and I’d had a vodka and I was waiting for another one and there was a bloke standing next to me and I said ‘Have you got a cigarette?’, and he said ‘No but I’ll find you one.’ And he went off to find me a cigarette and that was William. And that’s all I said to him. I went home with some dancer and did fucking whatever on his roof in Berwick Street.
"The next Monday when I got into the theatre this girl said ‘What did you do to William Orbit, he won’t stop talking about you. He’s obsessed and he’s coming to see the play.’ So he came to see the play, and he invited me to this Madonna Vogue party. He wanted me to be all like part of his world and we started going out together and he wanted me to sing. I was like ‘Fuck off, I’m not going to be some bloke’s bird who sings but can’t even sing, but because they’re going out together he gets her to sing on his record’. I was really indignant about it. I remember I was really drunk and on ecstasy – I used to make him do loads of ecstasy, he never went out or did anything – and then all of a sudden I was popping pills in his gob and we were lying under a mixing desk being all mental. And I sang ‘Cry Me A River’ as a joke, and ‘Catch A Falling Star’ by Francoise Hardy. And then he made a little demo of it.
"I went off to Thailand for three months and he came and got me because he was sick of me being out there. We weren’t together by that point but he came and got me and did all these field recordings of Thai monks because I was living in a monastery. So I came back and he was saying ‘Listen, you’re a singer, I’ve played this to people and they think you’re a singer too.’ I started working with him on projects, just helping him. I’d come in and listen to mixes of Madonna and go ‘Ah, I think you should bring this up or put that down’, how funny is that? ‘Justify My Love’ it was. I love that song and every time I hear it, it takes me back to that time. It was a strange time because my mum had just died and I was putting her clothes in black bin liners and then going round to William’s and listening to ‘Justify My Love’ and having opinions on it.
"He had these guitars around, and I did play guitar and I loved to play piano, so i just started to write songs. He said just write all your thoughts down, write everything, because I was in this state of grief I suppose. I went into his studio for two years and went through this grieving process, just sat there watching films, reading books, playing guitars and just keeping him company into the small hours. Then we started to make a record together but I had no confidence. And in the end I had to break away from William because it was too much. I’d written all these songs and William wasn’t really into them but my new boyfriend said they were amazing. He was very encouraging though he was horrible himself. So anyway a lot of these songs were the Trailer Park songs, like ‘Sugar Boy’, ‘Someone’s Daughter’. And I thought well if I really am a singer I must get my own band together and create my own sound. I must create my own thing and do it, only then will I prove it. But even today I’m still proving it to myself. I thought I’ll make one record, and then I’ll prove it to myself, but I had to make another and a third and a fourth and sixth. I’ve never told anyone all this stuff. Not that honestly.  From: https://thequietus.com/interviews/beth-orton-on-william-orbit-and-the-birth-of-trailer-park/

Foo Fighters - My Hero

“My Hero” was first released on Foo Fighters’ career-defining The Colour and the Shape album in 1997. There is a slew of opinions about for whom Dave Grohl wrote the anthemic pounder. Was it about Kurt Cobain, his mother, another unsung icon? Even after the song became a worldwide hit, Grohl remained vague about the song’s inspiration. 
The writer would address the subject with quiet politeness until a column for The Atlantic. In that piece, he explained that it examines what integrity and fatherhood mean to him. Perhaps, with distance, Grohl discovered he was investigating something he didn’t see at the time. Or, like many artists, he felt revealing too much might impede the way “My Hero” developed meaning for listeners.  From: https://articles.roland.com/behind-the-beat-my-hero-by-foo-fighters/

 

Broadcast - Papercuts

The official music video for Papercuts by Broadcast, features a reference to Brion Gysin’s Dreamachine. Everything in Broadcast’s world is approachable, maybe even just this side of familiar. But it’s all wrapped in a curious, hallucinatory gauze, leading the listener down all manner of tunnels, vortices and funhouse mirrors. Keenan, by contrast, opts for a more direct approach in her lyrics, focusing on more emotional, human concerns… There’s at once something unsettling about Broadcast’s music, and yet there’s an innocence and weirdly nostalgic quality that lends it a certain warmth only afforded to albums most of us have lived with for years. It’s like a hallucination, in a way, but one that takes us somewhere familiar, for reasons that aren’t always easy to parse out.  From: https://www.statelessstudios.com/papercuts

The Hanging Stars - Sister of the Sun

‘Sister of the Sun’, the recent single from The Hanging Stars, is the stuff of ethereal dreams, floating up into the musical cosmos on the twinkling stardust of Patrick Ralla’s keys and echoing guitar. Paulie Cobra’s percussion and Paul Milne’s woozy bassline are hypnotic, pulling us into the band’s shimmering sounds, which are matched by this sun-bleached video, drowning in yellow bursts of light. Most striking are the four-part harmonies and soaring backing that elevate Richard Olson’s soothing, smooth voice; it’s a joyous vocal performance that reaches back into the music of decades past.
The sixth album from The Hanging Stars is due out on Loose Music in the first half of 2026. ‘Sister of the Sun’ is an early taste of what’s to come from their collaboration with producer and longtime friend Gerry Love (Teenage Fanclub/Lightships) alongside regular collaborator Sean Read. Following the success of 2024’s critically acclaimed “On a Golden Shore” and subsequent tours, the band headed north to work on the new record at Edwyn Collins’ Clashnarrow Studios in Helmsdale, Scotland. The result is absorbing cosmic folk, timeless and brilliantly crafted.  From: https://americana-uk.com/video-the-hanging-stars-sister-of-the-sun

Belly - Feed The Tree

Belly leader Tanya Donnely, who had played with her stepsister Kristin Hersh in Throwing Muses (the short-lived Rhode Island invasion of the '90s) and in The Breeders, was quoted in The Illinois Entertainer as saying this song was about commitment and respect. The metaphor is the tree that would be planted on large farms as a point of reference to getting around (the only tree sometimes). Because nothing would grow under the large tree, the family would be buried under it. Hence: "Take your hat off, boy when you're talking to me and be there when I feed the tree."
Written by Tanya Donnelly during a transitional moment in her career, "Feed The Tree" started off as a contender for a second Breeders album, but when Kim Deal committed to a long Pixies tour, Donnelly didn't want to wait around. She headed back to Rhode Island to form Belly, bringing bassist Fred Abong along with the understanding they'd just make one record. Spoiler: they made a few more.
In an interview with Uncut magazine, Donnelly revealed the song's quirky origin story. She'd been singing along to "Carolyn's Fingers" by the Cocteau Twins, but like many listeners, couldn't quite make out what Elizabeth Fraser was actually saying, so she improvised. Her made-up lyrics became the chorus to "Feed the Tree."
As for the meaning? Donnelly said the song is "about death," and that the title is literal - as in, you can literally be buried beneath a tree. "I think that's what I'm going to do," she said. The imagery is filled with bits of personal history too: riding a bike down stairs, silver teeth, and the "old man" as a symbol of the life cycle - possibly reincarnation. The lyric "take your hat off" is about respect, but the kind that has to be earned.
Guitarist Tom Gorman added another layer: "I think Tanya had this idea that in farms they would plant a tree to use as a reference point for ploughing," he said. "As they couldn't plant crops under the tree they'd put a graveyard there."
Paul McCartney - yes, that Paul McCartney - sent Donnelly a personal note congratulating her on the song. "Isn't that the sweetest?" she told Uncut. "I danced around my kitchen with delight. What a gentleman. I lost my mind."
The video for "Feed the Tree" was directed by Melodie McDaniel and leans hard into the song's earthy, mystical vibe. We see Tanya Donelly, singing with her signature mix of strength and vulnerability, while the rest of Belly perform in a small clearing in the woods. There's no heavy-handed narrative here, but McDaniel weaves in evocative close-ups, such as letters tacked to tree trunks, that give the video a slightly storybook feel.  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/belly-us/feed-the-tree

The John Renbourn Group - Live in America - Full album

 The John Renbourn Group - Live in America - Full album - Part 1

 The John Renbourn Group - Live in America - Full album - Part 2

 

01. Lindsay
02. Ye Mariners All
03. English Dance
04. The Cruel Mother
05. Breton Dances
06. The Trees They Grow High
07. Farewell Nancy
08. Van Dieman's Land
09. High Germany
10. Sidi Brahim
11. The Month of May is Past / Night Orgies
12. John Dory
13. So Early in the Spring
14. Fair Flower
15. John Barleycorn is Dead

 

It had been eight years since the breakup of the original Pentangle (which featured the equally gifted British folk artist Bert Jansch)) when John Renbourn released this album featuring original Pentangle vocalist Jacqui McShee. This was the John Renbourn Group's second album with this lineup (the other being the lovely A Maid In Bedlam) and it contains many of the elements of the Pentangle sound. The music is firmly rooted in the English folk tradition, yet it also incorporates elements of jazz, blues and classical music.
Each member of the group is an accomplished musician. "The Month of May Is Past/Night Orgies" features a dulcimer solo (provided by John Molineaux) enlisting the use of a phase shifter. McShee adds her clear-as-a-bell vocals to "The Cruel Mother" and the drinking song "Ye Mariners All." The 11-minute instrumental "Sidi Brahim" showcases the group's jazzier side with solos from Renbourn (guitar), Molineaux (dulcimer) Tony Roberts (flute) and Keshlav Sathe (tabla, an intrument which adds an Indian influence on many of the tracks). My favorite track, however, is "John Barleycorn Is Dead." And, of course, Renbourn's playing throughout illustrates why he is regarded as one of the best fingerstyle guitarists today. This album was recorded live in April of 1981 at San Francisco's The Great American Music Hall.  From: https://www.amazon.com/Live-America-John-Renbourn-Group/dp/B000000MF0

 

Chicago - Live Lenox, MA 1970

 Chicago - Live Lenox, MA 1970 - Part 1

 

Chicago - Live Lenox, MA 1970 - Part 2

 

The stories behind Chicago’s vaunted appearance at Tanglewood is almost (but not quite) as fascinating as the performance itself. The original headliner for this date of the late Bill Graham’s Fillmore At Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts was purportedly Joe Cocker, but neither he nor alternate choice Jimi Hendrix was unable to make the date. Now, it’s not a given the latter’s refusal of the booking led to Chicago’s, but it is known the guitar icon admired the guitar work of the late Terry Kath, so…
Adding further mystique to this piece of rock and roll history is its ready availability via the web: even though it’s never been formally sanctioned for release by Chicago itself, perhaps due to licensing issues with the estate of the aforementioned rock impresario. Such minutiae, however, turn trivial in the context of the group’s stellar performance this July night at the summer home of the Boston Symphony: even with the band on the cusp of widespread fame, based on singles culled from their sophomore album released earlier in the year, members of their burgeoning fanbase probably couldn’t expect anything so visceral or complex.
This venue’s flat sight-lines notwithstanding, as the ninety-minutes plus show progressed, the audience inside the open-air shed, as well as those further populating the lawn, no doubt found it increasingly riveting. Before too long, virtually all the attendees knew they were watching and listening to a band that was not only firing in all cylinders but also well aware of the elevated level of its musicianship. July 21, 1970, was one of those transcendent experiences music-loving concertgoers dream of.
Spurred on by Kath (who would die in 1978 in a tragic firearms accident), Chicago was equally tight and versatile as they traversed material from their debut album, Chicago Transit Authority, as well as Chicago II. And while “Make Me Smile” and “Colour My World” had not yet fully catapulted the band into the mainstream, the group’s dawning realization of their combined power and its effect on the attendees only added atmosphere to the event.
Chicago ran the gamut of composition and style during the course of this comfortably warm, crystal-clear night. Near-perpetual touring since the release of their debut album the previous spring had honed the ensemble’s musicianship, without leaving it rote or mechanical, so the dynamic shifts taking place in this single extended set ran the gamut: from near fifteen minutes of “It Better End Soon” to the comparatively short but sweet “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?,” hard-driving horns of “25 or 6 to 4” gave way to “Free Form Piano” and only then did the septet transition smoothly into the rousing suite titled  “Ballet For A Girl In Buchanan.” including the aforementioned future hits.
The unified power in the playing had its corollary in the personal camaraderie among the band members. Taking the form of verbal acclamation of each other as well as regular rounds of delighted smiles, Chicago may have been surprising itself with the splendor of its playing here in the Berkshires, but that only heightened its infectious impact on the attendees and to a great degree helped elicit (and no doubt increase the volume of) the thunderous ovation(s) and call(s) for encore(s). Judging by the wan sound of promoter Graham’s farewell to the audience (readily available to hear on the various aforementioned internet versions, there’s little doubt everyone present was fully satiated and thoroughly drained by the time this evening concluded.  From: https://glidemagazine.com/213279/i-was-there-when-chicago-drives-home-transcendent-musical-experience-at-tanglewood-7-21-70/

 

Malinky - Billy Taylor

For the last 20 years Scottish folk band, Malinky, has made a name for itself as one of the great champions of traditional Scots song.  As the band prepares to launch its 20th anniversary album, Handsel, I caught up with two of its founder members, Steve Byrne and Mark Dunlop.  They start by telling me a bit about the early days - the line-up back then consisted of Steve, Mark, Karine Polwart and Kit Patterson.  Mark begins: “As I recall, the scene at the time comprised either instrumental bands who did the odd song (e.g. Deaf Shepherd), or purely instrumental acts."
“I agree,” Steve continues.  “We were definitely in a period where the sound of the classic instrumental bands was starting to come back into vogue, and I’d felt personally the need for a mainly song-based band to counter that to an extent. I’d been in Edinburgh studying at the School of Scottish Studies for about two years when I met Karine at sessions and I think our first kind of ‘arrangement’ together was a version of The Bonnie Lass O’ Fyvie downstairs in the Oak. Karine got a floor spot at Edinburgh Folk Club in the autumn of 1998 and she was keen to do it with a band, so called on a few people like me who she had encountered in sessions, we met for rehearsal and whoosh, we had a gig 10 days later supporting Robin Williamson. At that time, we were all otherwise engaged – Mark as a town planner, I think Karine was still working with Women’s Aid, I was a student and Kit was a computer programmer.” 
“Initially, I think expectations were limited to auditioning for the newly-announced Danny Awards at Celtic Connections, in memory of Danny Kyle,” says Mark.  “The fact that we won a ‘Danny’ within three months of getting together meant things gathered momentum quicker than they would have otherwise done.  There’s no denying that Karine’s voice was what made us stand out – that, and being a young band pushing a song-based sound. I think it’s fair to say we were rather unique at that time, so the scene seemed keen to hear us and give us a fair crack of the whip. There was a certain element of being swept up in the first year - winning the Danny, getting bookings including Lorient, getting a deal with Greentrax, and planning and recording the first CD, getting to know Davy Steele, releasing Last Leaves.  It all just fell into place, really.  I’ve always felt grateful that the first band I played with worked out so well – that’s been down to the people who’ve been in the band.  We’re at a stage now where we’ve gelled in terms of personalities and we don’t have to get to know one another because we’ve been all over the world together, slept in dodgy accommodation together, seen the best and worst of each other...”
“That’s right,” says Steve. “I guess I’ve always been an admirer of the longevity of certain bands and acts. I’ll be honest, there have been a few times where I’ve wondered about the sense in continuing the band, as the scene has changed and we’ve hit a few hurdles on the way. But by doing a few simple things like learning (although it may have taken a while) that it’s nice to be nice, to follow up with people and organisers later on, to take some elements of direct control, and also trying to get some of the organising right, like maintaining a good mailing list and fan base. Some of those basics can make a huge difference in your ability to sustain a band for a good while.” 
Mark continues: “By the time we hit the first big bump in the road, which was Karine and Leo (McCann – who joined the band in 2001 for a few years) leaving, the remainder of us believed in the band enough to keep on doing it.  Eventually the band had enough presence and creative momentum to keep sustaining itself.”
Over the years there have been several changes in personnel, but the current line-up of Steve, Mark, Fiona Hunter and Mile Vass seems fairly stable, with the four having worked together for a long time, and having a fairly distinctive Malinky sound.  From: https://www.livingtradition.co.uk/articles/malinky 

God Alone - The Beep Test

When ETC came out in 2022, I immediately jumped on it because of how much it didn’t sound like anything else out there.  “Risky” was the word I used, if I recall correctly, but without risk there is no reward, and for God Alone, the reward was great.  County Cork’s native sons blew up into the spotlight, and for good reason.  Their dizzying repertoire of high-minded philosophy and genre-blending musical prowess put them firmly on my radar, and I am delighted to be able to review the much-anticipated follow up in The Beep Test.
“We’ve been a band since we were really young, and the genre-bending aspect has come a long way,” muses frontman Jake O’Driscoll. “In the past, it sort of resembled slapping random elements together.  It’s more cohesive now.”  While this “random slapping” has served the band well in differentiating them from the pack, it is very true that The Beep Test is a much more streamlined and honed version of the math rock/hardcore/indie/electronica/who-even-knows-what-else fusion they have perfected at this point.  The songwriting ethos this time aims to capture the feeling of a God Alone live show, an area the band feels quite at home with.  “We’re most comfortable when we play live,” says O’Driscoll.  “So, we tried to make the album as live-sounding as possible.  The dynamics of our live show are definitely present.” 
I will attest that this is immediately apparent on listening to The Beep Test.  God Alone has never been a band that sounds “over-produced” but on this, their third full-length release, they manage to nail a sound that feels more intimate and personal that a band signed to a major label usually does.  This could be because, except for the drums, everything else was recorded at the members’ homes, which afforded them the time and patience it takes to get the perfect sound without someone hovering over you or rushing you into finishing the project.
The Beep Test kicks off with a bang more than a beep, with the title track lurching in on the back of a grinding, off-kilter bassline before the rest of the band jumps in with a thrashy, punky groove that careens headlong into some blessed aggressive territory.  It does a great job of setting the tone for the rest of the album, because two things are true about The Beep Test: it is downright heavy when it needs to be, and it also grooves.  I feel like the danceability of God Alone’s music has been dialed up, beyond even what it was on ETC.  “Pink Himalayan” is a good example of this type of funky, post-punk inspired boogie they have been doing a number on, and if you want further proof, check out the awesome music video that utilizes a tracking shot to emphasize the flash-mob dance that happens in the foreground while God Alone showcases their live energy in the back of the pub.  Closer “Yupasaid” also does a great job of blending the two halves of their music, with a four-on-the-floor beat transitioning into a grungy lumber.  As far as the heaviness goes, I feel like The Beep Test is also heavier than ETC; if Talking Heads was the biggest influence on ETC, then The Beep Test is definitely giving Refused vibes in spades.  Tracks like the hilariously named “Tony Gawk” bring the mathy, Dillinger Escape Plan-esque influences to the forefront, while “Rubber Hands” falls apart at the seams at the end in a crescendo of wailing and droning feedback.  If anything, I do find myself missing some of the weirder, more avant-garde and high-falutin moments that made ETC so wacky, but the converse of that is that The Beep Test is sure to be a lot less polarizing.  From: https://ninecircles.co/2025/10/10/album-review-god-alone-the-beep-test/

Half Past Four - Cool Water

Back in 2010 I received a CD by a new Canadian band called Half Past Four to review on my website, Progshine. The album was their debut and it was called Rabbit In The Vestibule (2008).
Aside from the uncommon name of the band, their music caught my attention right in the beginning. It was an open window inside a closed Prog Rock room. So much variety, so much theater inside their music. It was love at first hearing and their album didn't leave my MP3 player for a long, long time. Half Past Four is an Art Rock band in the pure sense of the word, their music combines other fields of arts such as, poetry or theatre.
5 years after the release of their debut album and after a change in their line up here they are again, with their second album, Good Things (2013). Now the band is formed by Kyree Vibrant (vocals), Constantin Necrasov (guitars), Dmitry Lesov (bass and Chapman stick), Igor Kurtzman (keyboards) and Marcello Ciurleo (drums). Good Things (2013) was partially funded by an Indie GoGo campaign which the band did back in September 2011 and which raised over $2.200. Not the total they needed to fully cover their expenses of the recordings, but still a remarkable amount of money as for a new and fairly unknown band. This shows how powerful the band can be in the next years, they're building a strong fan base.
Like with their first album I've also received a promo copy of the new album, but this time 1 month before the official release and I could say one thing right after the first chords, the band stays on the good side of music. Everything they had learned in Rabbit In The Vestibule (2008) they applied very skillfully in Good Things (2013).
The absolutely great vocals of Kyree Vibrant still there, stealing the show in many occasions and better than before, tracks like 'Landmines' proves that. We have guitars lines that are dense like in the opening track 'It Strikes You' or 'All Day And All Night'. And it's clear that Igor Kurtzman's keyboards this time are more present and very well into place like in 'Rise' (that also rock the place out with a Rock n' Roll feeling). New drummer Marcello Ciurleo added a new dimension to the band and this time the basses are a little more 'into the face'. Both Dmitry Lesov's playing and the low tones in general. That was the one thing I didn't like on the first album, too much high frequencies, this time they're right on spot!
'Spin The Girl' is one of the most interesting tracks. Full of theatrical moments, great guitars and weird time signatures and vocals. The band has everything! Cabaret feeling on 'Fate', Space Rock in 'I Am Lion', humor in 'Wolf' and the weird tempo closing track, and personal favorite, 'The Earth' (Kyree strikes again here). Like I said they have everything. Half Past Four is a real proof that Progressive Rock still can have high quality and not just regurgitate old clichés.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=3929

The Grateful Dead - New Speedway Boogie / Dire Wolf / Cumberland Blues / Easy Wind

Looking at the sepia tone album cover of the Workingman’s Dead 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition, I give away my age when I say I remember my older brother having the original on 8-Track tape back when it came out in 1970. I remember my seven-year-old brain being somewhat mortified of it because the men pictured on the cover looked like zombies to me ( which I attribute to the old-timey feel of the photo and the post – Night of the Living Dead mania of the day).
My fear didn’t last long, however. It subsided one day when my brother was not at home and I put the tape in his trusty Pioneer player and listened to the eight songs on the album.
I remember thinking during that clandestine listening session that the band sounded a lot like some of the other bands that my older sibling listened to like CCR or CSNY. What set them apart, however, was that unlike a lot of the other bands of the day, they sounded like they were actually having fun playing their instruments and singing. That impression has never left me.
Fifty years later as I listen to the same songs and pick up on some of the weighty themes of the record – the working life, the nature of existence, maintaining hope amidst despair, and staring down death, I still hear an exuberant undercurrent of love and compassion coming from the Grateful Dead’s music that continually sets them apart for me in the world of rock and roll bands. 
I still hear their love for music for music’s sake, but now I also additionally hear an affection for their musical forefathers and influences, for life itself, and for their fans. It is a love that literally pours out of the speakers when their songs are playing and is a love that helps explain the existence of an unprecedented and unmatched fanatical fanbase decades later.
The eight songs on Workingman’s Dead features the band displaying their amazing ability to synthesize elements from Bluegrass, Folk, Country, Blues, Jazz, Dylan’s early electric songs, and sixties rock and roll to masterfully forge a distinctly original sound of their own. That all of these songs still sound fresh and lively now after a half-century has passed is a testament to the prodigious individual and collective talents of the band.  From: https://americanahighways.org/2020/07/14/review-the-grateful-deads-workingmans-dead-is-still-quintessential-listening-50-years-later/

 

Lisa Loeb - Snow Day / Taffy / Do You Sleep / Waiting For Wednesday

If someone brings up Lisa Loeb, you will likely bring up her 1994 smash “Stay (I Missed You).” She seemingly came out of nowhere, with no record label to her name, to have a hit song off of the Reality Bites soundtrack. Many probably don’t know that Loeb had been working tirelessly to craft her skills in the industry and shape a sound all her own. In a time period of rising female singer/songwriters like Ani Difranco and Sarah McLachlan, Lisa wanted to stand out.
“I didn’t want to be too reactive after the success of ‘Stay,’ but I also didn’t just want to be pushed into the ‘acoustic’ corner. I didn’t want to be seen as a folk artist at all. My music sounded like a band and I felt like the lead singer of my band; just like some of my favorite male music artists like David Bowie or Elvis Costello. However, during that period, if a female artist went by just her name, most people assumed you were a folk artist. That’s why I wanted to make sure my band name was included on everything and why I wanted to be seen and heard playing guitar. I realized early on that if you want people to know something about you, you have to show them.” While promoting her single “Stay,” she would join Juan Patino in the studio to record new songs along with staples from her Liz and Lisa and Purple Tape days. What came out of the process would be a joyous blend of pensive indie-rock and a sweetness that only Loeb can provide. It’s a subtle sweetness, never overpowering but welcoming. First, let’s discuss the re-recordings of older songs in Loeb’s catalog.

A fantastic evolution comes from “Snow Day.” Lisa opts for a finger-style guitar intro that completely evokes the falling of snow. The electric guitars add brightness and warmth to the song. Lisa dives into the themes of loneliness and depression on the track. She continually calls back to someone being her medicine to this solemn mood. The depths of this sadness are fully displayed in the lines, “It’s a sinking feeling/ Pulls me through the seat of chairs/ When will you come rescue me/ Find solace, and then take me there?” There is an interesting juxtaposition of the upbeat sound of the music against the soft sadness of her lines. Because of this, the song feels like a mantra to keep moving forward as some days it's just “It’s a long ride.”

“Do You Sleep?” keeps the absolutely beautiful fade in guitar loop at the song's beginning. It maintains this dream-like feeling as you open up into this indie rock-driven world. The themes of love lost continue through Loeb’s questioning of how he’s managing since she’s gone, “Do you eat sleep do you breathe me anymore?/ Do you sleep do you count sheep anymore?/ Do you sleep anymore?/ Do you take plight on my tongue like lead?/ Do you fall gracefully into bed anymore?” Lisa is at her breaking point. She’s more than ready to cut ties and end this with this closed-off man. The song ends how it opens, now fading out on the loop. It’s like waking from this dream.

One of the best indie rock tracks on the album is the complete earworm “Taffy.” The punchiest track on the album, Loeb’s electric guitar-filled ditty swells you forward as it kicks off. The title is a nod to stretching the truth like candy machines stretch out taffy. Each verse sees Lisa bumping her friend til they bruise from all the tall tales this person is apt to tell. To match the slightly light yet charged tone, Loeb treats the chorus like busting someone’s chops than chastising, “Actually, bottom line/ You tell the truth sometimes/ Sometimes you tell the truth/ Like you’re pulling taffy.” It’s one of the best upbeat tracks on the record.

The album's second, more indie rock-forward song is “Waiting for Wednesday.” The title alludes to the day she’s waiting on to see if she gets her period. She goes through all the emotions of worrying about this pregnancy scare and wondering if her boyfriend will stay or run from her. She weaves back and forth between wanting to confront him on her cowardice and being petrified about the notion of his reaction. She ends this out readying her mind to tell him, “Now I’m waiting for Wednesday/ You’re back from out of town/ The West is dry/ Your mind is clear/ And I don’t want to be here.” I find this to be a very eye-opening take on the woman’s perspective on these scenarios, something that wasn’t as openly talked about in the early 90s.

From: https://medium.com/the-riff/tails-by-lisa-loeb-album-review-d07c3318acd5

Ghosts of Jupiter - The Undertaking

Ghosts of Jupiter is a psychedelic rock band based out of the Boston area, previously known as the Nate Wilson Group. Led by former Percy Hill keyboardist Nate Wilson (currently touring with moe.), the band features a loud, riff-heavy sound inspired by classic rock groups such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Cream. GOJ also features Guitarist Adam Terrell (Assembly of Dust), bassist Tommy Lada and drummer Tom Arey (Peter Wolf / J. Geils Band).
Since forming in 2011, Ghosts of Jupiter have released 3 full-length albums and an EP, in addition to an earlier album, Unbound, which was released under Nate Wilson Group in 2008. Ghosts of Jupiter’s 2011 self-titled album featured blues-inspired, heavy guitar riffs, showcasing the bands psych-era rock sound, reminiscent of the late 60’s and 70’s. The album was followed up in 2016 with the critically acclaimed release of The Great Bright Horses.
Ghosts of Jupiter’s 3rd and latest album Keepers of the Newborn Green demonstrates a sharply honed expansion of their varied sound, running the musical gamut between pastoral acid-tinged folk, mellotron and flute-laden prog explorations. The album features ethereal vocal melodies, steeped in lyrical mysticism, combined with a menacing dose of “Saucerful of Secrets” era Pink Floyd.
The ten songs featured on Keepers of the Newborn Green were mixed and engineered by bassist Tommy Lada, utilizing the band’s mobile and home recording equipment during 2020’s pandemic. Drummer Tom Arey supplied the basic tracks at the band’s studio in Allston MA, and all other elements were compiled remotely. Guitarist Adam Terrell recorded most of his parts from his home studio in VA, while Wilson worked on vocals, keyboards, guitar and flute tracks at his home in Worcester, MA.
Thematically the album reflects some of the unavoidable political upheaval of the past few years, in particular the 2nd track “Villians” juxtaposes earthy medieval folk sounds with a critique of the toxic segmented realities created by modern media. Other songs on the album, in particular “Imperium Waves,” and “On Bending Tides,” reflect the emotionally cathartic side effects that were born of the interruptions of our daily lives caused by the events of 2020. Track 7 “Sea of Madness” examines the influence of conspiracy theories, misinformation and anti-science sentiment that has made its way to the forefront of modern culture in recent years.  From: https://adkmusicfest.com/project/ghosts-of-jupiter/

Eva Quartet - Yova

Its origins, vocal techniques and raison d’être are in Bulgaria’s villages, but the thrilling Bulgarian female vocal ensemble sound had already been through an organizing, arranging and conducting process when it became famous via the Bulgarian Radio choir, which gained the title Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares from the releases by Swiss musician and record label owner Marcel Cellier (who, incidentally, also brought the wonderful early, pre-kitsch recordings of Romanian panpipes virtuoso George Zamfir to the wider world).
The members of Eva Quartet, formed in 1995, were all members of that choir, but they came together through their mutual involvement in the Orthodox Church, and in their quartet eschewed the traditional folk costumes for black-dressed elegance and a presentation that moved them into a more classical context, while keeping the traditional-rooted uniqueness.
Minka is their first release since 2012’s The Arch, a collaboration recorded with the late and very much lamented Hector Zazou just before his untimely death in 2008. A couple of the songs are group arrangements, and the striking up-tempo "Yova" was composed by the group’s soprano Gergana Dimitrova. The rest of the fourteen pieces are arranged by others, including four by Dimitar Hristov, current director of the National Radio Folk Orchestra, and two, of beautiful Rhodope mountains material, by kaval master Kostadin Genchev. For all the tracks they have a conductor too.
This is clever, meticulously made music, as is that of a classical vocal ensemble, but the voices yearn, surge, linger, interlock, drone and counterpoint, and on the up-tempo pieces fizz and chatter, in ways that no Western-classical ensembles, even the progressive ones, match in style or sound. They choose to use vocal sounds that are more cultivated and largely not as edgy as those of the village singers, nor of most of the legendary Mystère singers of the past (who were recruited from the villages, and brought the material with them), but they still have that extraordinary and moving Bulgarian polyphonic sound.  From: https://www.rootsworld.com/reviews/minka-21.shtml

Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath / A National Acrobat / Killing Yourself to Live / Looking for Today

Arguably Black Sabbath’s greatest album cover, let alone album, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is a tour-de-force of a record that features more intricate arrangements than previously, enlisting the services of keyboards and orchestral dynamics. The band’s fifth opus is a self-produced affair, although considering the inner friction, fatigue and illegal substances I’m wondering how it was recorded at all. Even so, this eight-track platter saw the band accepted into the mainstream with several huge concerts.
Despite its overtly occult album cover, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, for me anyway, lacks the murky gloom of previous records; only the chugging mid-section of the title track nods to cocaine-induced doom. Mind you, the title track is one of the band’s finest ever moments; Ozzy Osbourne’s vocals this time around are more tortured scream than sorrowful moan. Also, as expected, Bill Ward, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler are on fine form despite rumours that the guys were literally drying up.
Clearly the band were keener to experiment, enlisting the talents of keyboard magician Rick Wakeman (Yes) whose tinkering added more cosmic atmospheres to proceedings. The gothic strains of ‘A National Acrobat’ are bereft of any truly occult stuffiness; instead the band seem to have adopted a fresher sound with the guitars taking on a crisper approach.
Black Sabbath truly became masters of progressive rock and flirting with all manner of ludicrous dynamics to create instrumental wonders such as ‘Fluff’ and the truly monstrous ‘Killing Yourself To Live’. The latter cemented its place in metal history as one of the greatest songs ever written; it’s more a case of doomy rock ’n’ roll rather than out-and-out coffin dragger. There’s certainly something mystical about this spooky affair as Ward’s battering ram drums contradict the lavish presentation elsewhere as Iommi’s solos spiral off into the ether.
It would be unfair to deem Black Sabbath’s fifth opus as their lightest, but the intricacies displayed suggest a band moving away from the grit and grot of Birmingham’s smog-choked backstreets. ‘Sabbra Cadabra’ showcases more of the band’s boozy, bluesy melody as the synths drive hard in the distance, while Wakeman’s lush arrangements pepper the slow-motion dirge that is ‘Who Are You?’; Sabbath opting for more mellow passages of time although the world view is still weak, bleak and weary.
‘Looking For Today’ is more sprightly, holding hands with ‘Paranoid’ as a cool piece of polished rock, but the inclusion of flute and pensive acoustics puts pay to any chart success.
The album ends with the melancholic strains of ‘Spiral Architect’, which wafts on the breeze as an acoustic flutter before taking flight as a stirring masterpiece of a tune awash with synths and less threatening guitar chug. It’s a track that sums up Sabbath circa 1973 – the band more Bleary-Eyed Sabbath rather than Black Sabbath – but it’s an album that also proves there is more to this beast than meets the eye.  From: https://www.metalforcesmagazine.com/site/album-review-black-sabbath-sabbath-bloody-sabbath/

Richard & Linda Thompson - Smiffy's Glass Eye / Georgie On A Spree / Mole In A Hole

It’s probably going too far to say that Hokey Pokey is an overlooked gem in the Richard Thompson catalog. But this, the second of six studio albums released by Richard and Linda Thompson between 1974 and 1982, generally doesn’t receive the accolades reserved for their first and last. The first, I Want to See The Bright Lights Tonight and the last, Shoot Out The Lights deservedly are considered classics. More than classics, defining moments in British popular music of the era.
Hokey Pokey, by contrast, seems like the endearing younger sibling of Bright Lights, particularly when considered on the merits of it's title song. It’s a seemingly lightweight and upbeat number built around Thompson’s memories of the Italian ice cream vendors on the streets of suburban London in the fairly grim postwar years when he was growing up. Sung by Linda with Richard on backing vocals, it is laden with double entendres, driven by Timi Donald’s drums and Pat Donaldson’s propulsive bass guitar and punctuated by Richard’s slashing, pointilist guitar work.
The album, as David Suff’s liner notes on this 2004 remastered edition say, was Richard’s attempt at making a slightly lighter statement than the so-called doom and gloom he was already becoming known for. Thus “Hokey Pokey,” the jaunty “Smiffy’s Glass Eye” and “Georgie On A Spree,” and the closing track, a cover of Mike Waterson’s folksy satire of evangelical Christianity, “Mole In A Hole.”
But the illusion of Hokey Pokey as a change in tone is revealed as just that, an illusion, upon closer examination of even these upbeat-sounding songs. “Hokey Pokey” starts with an innocent picture of kids playing in the street, but soon devolves into convicts in prison and transvestites in the alley. “Smiffy” portrays the cruelty of children to one of their own who has a disability. The female protagonist of “Georgie” is left waiting by the phone for a lover who has probably abandoned her. And the good Christian fellow in “Mole” is called home much too early by his Lord.  From: https://agreenmanreview.com/music-2/richard-linda-thompsons-hokey-pokey/

10,000 Maniacs - These Are Days / Eden / Few And Far Between

10,000 Maniacs always excelled at cerebral folk-pop arrangements, gracefully blending stringed instruments, brass and percussion with lead singer Natalie Merchant’s rich, supple voice. But it wasn’t until a decade into their career together that the band created its masterpiece. Each of the tracks on 10,000 Maniacs’s swan song, Our Time in Eden, is like a miniature parable on the state of America, past and present. The album’s opening track, “Noah’s Dove,” is told from the perspective of someone still inside the garden, looking out—perhaps enviously—at a fallen angel: “You were the chosen one, the pure eyes of Noah’s Dove/Choir boys and angels stole your lips and your halo.” The allegory continues on the richly poetic “Eden,” in which Merchant recognizes mortal imperfection (read: “original sin”) and, having presumably eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, realizes that time is slowly devouring her time in the garden.
The bibilical imagery isn’t always as overt, though. Merchant is a gifted lyricist and her greatest work can be found among Eden’s 13 tracks. She’s concerned with both the present (her Utopian ideal) and the past (her idealized memory): “These Are Days,” “Few & Far Between” and “If You Intend” all deal with seizing the moment, acknowledging and making peace with the past and making the choice to simply live, respectively, while tracks like “How You’ve Grown” and “Stockton Gala Days” nostalgically and reluctantly address the singer’s past. Merchant can conjure a place and time with ease; she seemingly picks her words carefully but they fall from her mouth as if by chance, like they suddenly came to her as she stood there in front of the microphone in the recording booth: “That summer fields grew high with foxglove stalks and ivy…Emerald green like none I have seen apart from dreams that escape me.”
One of Eden’s most striking moments is the lush “Circle,” in which Merchant twists the traditional meaning of the titular symbol, envisioning it as a womb, a maze (“A terrible spiral to be lost in”) and the face of a temptress. There are a few obligatory tales of morality, including “Tolerance,” “Candy Everybody Wants,” in which Merchant’s cynicism is juxtaposed with crisp guitars, shiny horns and bright melodies, and “I’m Not the Man,” which finds Merchant narrating as a black man falsely accused of murder and sentenced to death. Ominous bassoons give the song its foreboding sense of helplessness and despair, and Merchant aptly ends the album with the rhetorical question: “Who struck this devil’s deal?” It’s a fitting close to an album that takes its listeners on a journey from the exile of Eden to a frontier-era America (“Gold Rush Brides”) and back again, never once doubting that it is indeed possible to return to the garden.  From: https://www.slantmagazine.com/music/10000-maniacs-our-time-in-eden/

The Eyes of Mind - Dream Life / She Only Knows

Another dose of giddy psychedelic revivalism from Greg Shaw’s LA stable. Produced by Mark Wirtz (whose credits in the genre’s original era include Keith West’s Tomorrow, a legendary British psych band), the quartet takes the Edwardian flower power route path down the paisley road. Guitarist Jamie Phelan has a pleasant, fragile voice; the Eyes avoid slavish re-creation in favor of a subtler melodic evocation of the innocence and positivity of ’60s pop.  From: https://trouserpress.com/reviews/eyes-of-mind/