Thin Lizzy - Live And Dangerous at the Rainbow 1978

 Thin Lizzy - Live And Dangerous at the Rainbow 1978 - Part 1

 

 

Thin Lizzy - Live And Dangerous at the Rainbow 1978 - Part 2

 

One of the '70s’ most energetic and enduring double live albums was released 35 years ago, and from the start, fans knew what they were in store for: The cover photo pulls them out of their seats, over the barricades and face to face with the leather-covered crotch of an instrument-wielding rock star.
Thin Lizzy’s celebrated ‘Live and Dangerous’ vaulted the hard-working, and even harder partying, quartet as close as they’d ever come to mainstream success in their U.K. homeland, making it to No. 2 on the chart.
But the Irish group, which was founded in Dublin back in 1969 by singer and bassist Philip Lynott, drummer Brian Downey and original guitarist Eric Bell, struggled to make themselves heard among the era’s other more popular hard-rock power trios. Their souped-up cover of the traditional Celtic folk song ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ got them noticed, but they were written off as a novelty and had to start at square one again, gradually building a loyal following with Bell’s twin-harmonizing replacements, Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson.
Even with occasional hit singles like ‘Jailbreak’ and ‘The Boys Are Back in Town,’ Thin Lizzy had trouble capturing their dynamic onstage presence in the studio. They even hired producer Tony Visconti, best known for his work with David Bowie and T.Rex, to take 1977’s ‘Bad Reputation’ to the next level. But it was the following year’s concert document, also produced by Visconti, that got them there.
Like Kiss, who faced similar difficulties until ‘Alive!’ turned their fortunes around, Thin Lizzy excelled onstage. So stellar but under-served favorites like ‘Emerald,’ ‘Suicide,’ ‘Johnny the Fox’ and ‘The Rocker’ burst out of ‘Live and Dangerous,’ drawing listeners into the band's take-no-prisoners stage show, with a friendly shove from frontman Lynott.
All in all, fans were given 17 of Thin Lizzy's best songs in what basically amounted to a greatest-hits set -- from the melancholy beauty of ‘Southbound’ and the bloodthirsty battle lust of ‘Massacre’ to the uplifting, saxophone-assisted R&B of ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ and the heart-tearing despair of their signature ballad ‘Still in Love with You.’
Like many concert albums from the era, ‘Live and Dangerous’ received some after-the-fact overdubbing in the studio. But it doesn't take away any of the record's power.  From: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/thin-lizzy-live-and-dangerous/

 

 

 

Health - Crack Metal

Rat Wars is the fifth studio album by American noise rock band Health. The album was conceived after the band put together the second Disco4 album remotely. Vocalist and guitarist Jake Duzsik initially considered naming it Outer Dark, after the novel by Cormac McCarthy, but eventually settled on Rat Wars, the title of a track from their previous album Vol. 4: Slaves of Fear; the band compared the situation to The Doors' Waiting for the Sun.
Rat Wars includes the work of a number of guest artists, including synthwave artist Sierra, electronic producer SWARM, Willie Adler of metal band Lamb of God, and members of Youth Code and Street Sects. It was produced by Stint, though for "Children of Sorrow", band member John Famigletti intentionally used the demo mix as he felt it had "more vibe". "Future of Hell" was derived from a track by electronic artist Nexy that Famigletti heard whilst driving; he asked to work with him on the album, but was declined, leading to the track being sampled instead.
Rat Wars incorporates elements of metal, electronic and industrial genres. It continues in the direction established by Health's previous album Vol. 4: Slaves of Fear, being thematically darker and sonically harsher than the band's previous work.
Duzsik described it as more personal than Health's previous work, being thematically "much more of an ‘I’ record than a ‘we’ record” and influenced by his "disharmonious state". He called the imagery of children in the lyrics "Jungian", being influenced by his own experiences raising his son.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Wars

The Dowling Poole - Be There

Any band who can boast a CV containing stints with The Wildhearts, Honeycrack, The Cardiacs, The Ginger Wildheart Band, Jackdaw4 and The God Damn Whores must be worth sitting up and taking note of. So it proves with The Dowling Poole, a band who came together when Willie Dowling and 'Random' Jon Poole sat and made google eyes with each other during the recording of Ginger Wildheart's 555% album. The result is Bleak Strategies, an album which is a million miles from bleak, instead being one of the most uplifting Power-Pop-Rock highlights 2014 has served up. With both of the mainmen in this band (NOT a project, as we'll find out!) possessing razor sharp wit and a reputation for zaniness of the highest order, Sea of Tranquility's Steven Reid took his life in his hands as he delved deep into the Bleak Strategies of both Willie and 'Random' Jon.


As a pledger for Ginger Wildheart's '555%' album, I had the pleasure of watching your in the studio relationship grow and flourish... was it musical love at first sight?

Willie Dowling : "Not really. He was a grower shall we say. Well, that is until I saw him sit at the piano and start jamming out some fairly serious things with his head turned to the sky like he was having a nap. And then when the red button was pushed and it was his turn to record, this serious, adept competent and considerate musician with supreme powers of concentration suddenly took over the room. That's the Jon Poole I fell in love with.and it helps that he's quite amusing of course."

A: John Poole : "Although there was a distinct lack of eye-candy on offer during that session our beer goggles were very much intact which is ultimately what bought us to your attention."

However I believe that it took the pair of you a little time to pluck up the courage to ask the other to work with them. From the outside the two of you working together seems like such a wonderful fit, why the initial bashfulness?

J: "Despite our rather forward personalities we both have a mammoth-sized fear of getting changed in the changing rooms of swimming baths. Frustratingly, this spills over into our personal life and has a knock on effect on our relationships with people. Had we not touched on this subject one drunken night then I imagine none of what followed '555%' would've taken place."

W: "I think there were a lot of reasons, not least of which the situation that we were both in with our respective bands. But also because I think that it's a bit like asking a girl out for a first date. You're so terrified of rejection it takes a good deal of bravado to pop the question."

You have both had long, winding musical paths leading up to The Dowling Poole. When it came to song writing for the album did you decide to focus on one side of your musical psyche, or did you both just let fly and see what happened?

J: "I should only speak for myself here but when I heard the mischief Willie was up to I recognised a side of my own writing that I felt I couldn't offer to other people I was working with, as it may have steered other people off in a direction they may not have been comfortable with. When I first thought, or wondered about a collaboration with Willie I imagined a multicoloured, psychedelic, summery sounding collection of classic, British pop songs. The first ideas I presented to the table were along these lines. Anything that either of us comes up with gets chopped, changed and added to via the Dowling Poole machine. The great thing is that although I had recognised similarities in what we'd previously done, I feel like we've had a positive effect on each other's writing and constructing."

W: "I think Jon had a pretty good idea of what we were going to do because he kept describing it. At the time I was not long finished with Jackdaw4 so I was still meandering a little and I'd throw songs in randomly until I caught the drift of what he was writing and how it felt, and I then got a little more focussed and started to chip in along the same lines."

Was the initial writing process a collaboration or did you bring completed ideas to the studio to thrash out?

W: "Usually, one or other of us has the bulk of a song to present but it quickly gets thrown into the pool and chopped up, taken away from or added to and enhanced, which generally means that although it is recognisably the original song idea, it has been suitably dressed and styled by a process of collaboration."

I've got all the Jackdwa4 albums, the God Damn Whores releases and the 'Random' Jon Poole solo album. Impressively right across 'Bleak Strategies' it's possible to hear aspects of both of your song writing as the songs unfold. Is that a sign of just how "together" you were on this album?

J: "Yes, I think so. As I say despite being on the same page and having a number of influences in common, somewhere along the line it gets distorted and gets plopped out of The Dowling Poole machine clear as a cloudless, summer's day."

From: https://www.seaoftranquility.org/article.php?sid=2812

The Stone Poneys - Different Drum

If you’re a singer or part of a musical ensemble that doesn’t have all of the required parts in it, then you’re going to want to have the best session musicians available to you to join you on your journey. It’s quite understandable why someone like Linda Ronstadt would want to be particular about this sort of thing.
In her career as a solo artist, she was constantly reliant on the talents of those around her to provide a suitable and prominent backing to her vocals, and by the mid-1970s, she had elevated herself to star status, known around the world for hits like ‘You’re No Good’ and ‘When Will I Be Loved’.
For the most part, she was blessed with excellent players, and this became especially apparent the more notable she became for her work. Of course, it would become easier for her to court the best in the business when she herself was at the top of her game, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that those at the bottom of the ladder can’t acquire the services of those who are established performers themselves.
However, she wasn’t always firing on all cylinders, and it took a lot of hard work for her to get herself to this position in the first place, having been active in the music industry for almost a decade by the time that she was topping the charts for the first time in 1975.
Her first project, Stone Poneys, is one that she doesn’t really look back on fondly these days, due to it not having the exact creative direction she had always wished to take, and many of the comments she has made about the band’s material border on disparaging and dismissive. However, her experiences of working with one of the most illustrious groups of musicians during this period came as something of a shock to her system, and she found it impossible to work with them, as she explained during a 2013 interview with Rock Cellar.
“We used some players from the Wrecking Crew on that,” she said, referring to her band’s minor 1967 hit, ‘Different Drum’. “Don Randi was on harpsichord and Jimmy Gordon on drums. When you had expensive musicians on the clock, you didn’t keep them long. Those players in the Wrecking Crew were so good you could book half a session, and that would be enough time to get what you wanted recorded properly.” 
Despite having two prominent figures who had played on the hits of acts like The Beach Boys and The Monkees, not to mention that the recording also featured Eagles’ Bernie Leadon and was written by The Monkees’ Mike Nesmith, Ronstadt insists that they were only picked because they were the first available people.
“I didn’t know that world at all,” she continued. “I’d just come from Tucson, and I had no clue. I’d just played music with the people that I knew; I didn’t know there were other people you could hire. I was worried about it. It’s not that they weren’t good players – my God, they were vastly better players than we were, but they hadn’t evolved along our same path.”
It’s perhaps a case of her own inexperience showing, but it’s almost certainly also a valuable one to have had so early on, so she would know exactly what to do later on when she found herself surrounded by some of the biggest names in the industry and on the cusp of international success.  From: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/band-who-ruined-linda-ronstadt-1967-breakthrough/

Uni and The Urchins - Simulator

Uni and The Urchins describe their sound as neuro-divergent pop, and while that may simply be a flippant means of eliding further characterization, it’s a fair self-assessment. Industrial, prog rock, androgynous glam and grunge all jostle for supremacy on the group’s debut album Simulator. The album was reportedly due pre-Covid, but all that time spent inside recording (and a lineup change) likely made this a stronger album than it otherwise might have been, shot through with anxiety, dread and sometimes even gleeful acceptance of our technologically dystopian future.
Made up of Jack James Busa, Charlotte Kemp Muhl and David Strange, Uni sound like they’re beaming in from another planet, where everything is darker, dirtier, slicker and weirder. Kemp Muhl is the primary songwriter, but Busa is out front as the lead vocalist on most of the tracks. He has a slinky, self-assured voice that makes itself the center of attention over the orchestral glam rock of “Subhuman Suburbia.” The chorus arrives on a wave of string synths, with Busa throwing in some “My Generation”-style stuttering: “This little black hole town/ Is b-b-bringing me down/ I guess there’s no more room/ For one more crying clown/ But there’s no way out.”
Muhl, who previously played in Ghost of a Sabre Tooth Tiger with Sean Lennon, sings lead on “Covid's Metamorphoses,” and she has a great voice, too. Her wry delivery over the grungy guitars here sounds effortlessly cool. There’s an unfortunate “Elon, can you take us to Mars” lyric that perhaps hasn’t aged well, but “Versailles, rabbi, the Fourth of July/ Tongue tied, hentai/ An eye for an iPad was the battle cry” is undeniably creative. Muhl is also the mixer/master/engineer of the album, which seems like a lot of work for someone who’s also playing bass and singing!
“Popstar Supernova” is dancey and catchy, with a drum machine beat and computer-beeping synths giving it the “lost in outer space” feel as Busa sings that he’ll be “Forever be your white trash Casanova/ Lost in outer space, makeup on my face/ I’ll never be a popstar supernova.”
Someone must have told Uni: “’Doll Parts’” but make it Nine Inch Nails.” Uni takes on the Hole song with an industrial beat and menacing synths that sound straight out of the early Reznor catalogue. Busa singing “I want to be the girl with the most cake” gives it a novel queer twist.
“Clean” and “Dorian Gray” are both standout tracks – glam rockers that give early Roxy Music a run for their money, with all the synths, grandiosity and crooning that entails. The guitars on “Simulator” are dark and grinding, almost heavy metal, over Depeche Mode-style keyboards. “If we sever our heads we could last forever, livestream in between/ Till digital death,” Busa sings, and it could be a promise or a threat, or a little of both.
Uni puts its own bizarre spin on “Amazing Grace,” turning it into a love song by changing the first line to “Amazing face, how sweet you frown” and accompanying the lyrics with industrial synths. The result is unsettling and effective, much like when Marilyn Manson covered The Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams.”
The only place the album really falters is on “Life In The Middle Class,” the tale of an unnamed suburban man who has a “picture of his second wife/ While the African wars fight, the dentist can make your teeth white/ His glasses only see the past and shadows that he did not cast.” Busa has a Bowie-esque delivery that’s impressive but dunking on generic suburban dudes is low hanging fruit. In an era of a shrinking middle class in America, the disdain seems wholly misplaced. There are worse crimes than “eating marshmallow pie with the Catcher in The Rye.”
The album ends on “In The Waiting Room,” a languid tune full of cello and chime sounds with lyrics that sound like lost verses from Beck’s “Sexx Laws”: “The dentist grins with his laughing gas/ Receptionists in Venetian masks/ Skeletons from this afternoon/ Read last year’s magazines in the waiting room.” The drums and guitar don’t kick in until the song gets two thirds of the way through, and by then you’re not sure if the gruesome waiting room Busa’s describing is supposed to be purgatory or hell.
Sometimes the lyrics here are clever and witty (“We’ll call you a prophet if you profiteer”), and sometimes they sound a little like a Stefon bit; as in, this place has everything: “Lizards in powdered wigs/ Eating Cheetos on Mars/ Spiders in garter belts.” Uni and the Urchins is a highly visual group – they made a corresponding video for every song on the album, but only check that out if you’re comfortable with body horror. Sometimes Uni seems like it’s all over the place, grabbing from genres like glam and industrial and sticking them all in a blender, but the music is always note-perfect, like it was built in a lab. It’s a little airless, but with a name like Simulator and the robot/alien themes, that was likely the vibe they were going for.  From: https://spectrumculture.com/2023/02/15/uni-and-the-urchins-simulator-review/

The Joy Formidable - The Wrong Side

A major-label deal may no longer be a prerequisite for breaking into the mainstream, but they still do come in handy if you want to stay there. When you think of the biggest rock bands of the past 20 years—Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, Muse, the Black Keys—they all ascended to the top line of the festival poster, in part, due to the largesse of a deep-pocketed corporate imprint. And from day one, Welsh power trio and Atlantic Records hopefuls the Joy Formidable seemed poised to join them in the 50-point-font club, with their atomic fusion of Britpop-scaled anthemery and post-shoegaze overdrive. When firing on all cylinders, they could be the heaviest rock band that you would never think of classifying as metal, or the most pop-friendly act to drop the occasional blast beat.
So when the Joy Formidable split from Atlantic after two respectably charting albums, there was a more profound sense of unfinished business than with your typical major-to-indie reversion. Initially, the change in circumstance was noticeable only if you scoured their Spotify page for the label metadata fine print: the band’s 2016 album, Hitch, was streamlined and stage-ready almost to a fault. But where that album saw the band overcome an internal crisis—i.e., the end of singer/guitarist Ritzy Bryan and bassist’s Rhydian Dafydd romantic relationship—their fourth record was nearly aborted by an existential one.
And so, with AAARTH, the Joy Formidable have embraced independence not just as a business-survival strategy, but as a creative-liberation philosophy, too. They still sound very much like a rock band striving for the “Top of the Pops”; only now, they want to be the strangest one on there, too. The sense of playful abandon is right there in the album’s name: the Welsh term for bear (albeit with a few extra A’s for guttural emphasis), AAARTH is the sort of title that would make major-label marketing departments wince, while requiring radio announcers to activate the phlegmiest reaches of their larynx.
Ironically, now that the Joy Formidable have resettled in the Southwest U.S., they seem more eager to assert their Welshness. AAARTH opens with a rare display of their native tongue, “Y Bluen Eira,” but the language isn’t the only thing the average Anglophone listener will find inscrutable. It’s less a song than a statement of purpose—a funhouse-mirrored portal into an album that isn’t as eager to make friends as its predecessors.
AAARTH is hardly lacking in towering rock songs, but the band builds them on wobblier foundations for the sheer thrill of trying to make them topple. The staccato-riffed standout “The Wrong Side” comes on like the introductory lurch to Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up” spun off into even more over-the-top anthem: What begins as an earnest, reach-across-the-aisle plea for kindness in post-Trump America gets gradually sucked into a swirl of squirrelly guitar lines and player-piano frivolity. And while “The Better Me” could be the most fetching pure pop song this band has ever produced, it too builds into a whirling dervish of booming drum breaks, short-circuiting synths, and noisy spasms that gurgle and wheeze like gastro-intestinal indigestion.
Not every song here aspires to the same degree of inspired irreverence. While the album introduces some intriguing new looks—like the Eastern-psych strut of “Cicada (Land on Your Back)”—the Joy Formidable still have a tendency to pummel their tunes into a modern-rock mush. AAARTH sags under the weight of its less melodic, more melodramatic moments, like the nu-goth pummel of “Dance of the Lotus” or the muscular but meandering grunge-funk workout “Caught on a Breeze.” They’re the sort of songs that immediately show their hand on an album that otherwise excels at slow reveals and sonic Easter eggs. AAARTH’s most arresting moment comes in the form of “All in All,” a gentle glockenspieled ballad that gradually floats skyward until it burns up and explodes into the stratosphere. Of course, by this point, such nuclear-grade eruptions are to be expected from even the Joy Formidable’s most subdued songs. But here, we at least get a clearer view of the artfully arranged debris swirling inside the tornado.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-joy-formidable-aaarth/

The Spencer Davis Group - Gimme Some Lovin' / Keep On Running

 The Spencer Davis Group - Gimme Some Lovin'

 

 The Spencer Davis Group - Keep On Running

 

They say the greatest songs almost write themselves. Roy Orbison claimed Oh, Pretty Woman took him half an hour. Tony Iommi came up with the riff to Paranoid while the rest of Black Sabbath were at lunch. Keith Richards supposedly dreamt (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction in a Florida hotel room. 
The Spencer Davis Group’s classic Gimme Some Lovin’, covered by everyone from The Blues Brothers to The Grateful Dead and Thunder, came together in less than an hour. 
“The classic ‘wrote it on the back of a fag packet’ story was often true,” recalls Muff Winwood, then the band’s bassist. “Sometimes there’s that little bit of magic that you can’t put your finger on, but it happens and it just works. Gimme Some Lovin’ came really fast.”  So fast, in fact, that Island Records boss Chris Blackwell was convinced the band were wasting his time. 
“We’d been rehearsing at the Marquee,” Muff laughs, “and he came down at midday but we weren’t there. We were down the road in a café in Wardour Street, and Chris found us in there. He went berserk: ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing with your careers? You’ve got work to do and you’re lazing around here!’ So we said: ‘Just wait until we’re finished, then come back and listen to what we’ve done.’ 
“We’d done Gimme Some Lovin’ in ten minutes and couldn’t believe how good it was. So we’d packed up and gone for lunch. Of course, when Chris came back and heard it his jaw just dropped. It just sounded like an instant hit.”  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-story-behind-gimme-some-lovin-by-the-spencer-davis-group

Island Records impresario Chris Blackwell had brought his Jamaican Ska artist Wilfred "Jackie" Edwards over to England and introduced him to the Spencer Davis Group. Blackwell asked him if he had anything suitable for them to record. He played them a Ska record he had written, "Keep On Running," which Steve Winwood reworked to a more rock sound on the piano. Following Keith Richards' lead-in "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," the band's bass guitarist Muff Winwood used a fuzz guitar.
Spencer Davis: "No one had seen a picture of the group in America and in 1966, the radio was split into black and white stations. 'Keep On Running' was played on black stations in the States and when they saw a picture of these four shining white boys, the record was dropped from the playlists so the momentum was lost."  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/the-spencer-davis-group/keep-on-running 

 

Tori Amos - Cornflake Girl (UK Version)

Cornflake Girl is based on a book by Alice Walker called Possessing The Secret Of Joy, which details the practice of female genital mutilation in areas of Africa. In an interview with NME Classic Songs, Tori recalled discussing the issue with a friend: 
"We were talking about the fact that the women are betrayed, by a grandmother, a mother, or an older sister - that the women you trust the most are taking you into this butchery. And we had a term for those people, those girls that would turn on you, that wouldn't be there for you, that would maybe expose something you trusted them with, and really let you down - a complete wreckage. So those girls were called Cornflake Girls."
The cereal bowl is used as a metaphor for divisions among women. The "Cornflake Girls" are close-minded while the "Raisin Girls" are open to new ideas.
Before she became famous, Tori appeared in a commercial for Kellogg's "Just Right" cereal, beating out Sarah Jessica Parker, who was also unknown at the time, for the part. Tori played piano in the ad. Kellogg's also makes Corn Flakes.
Tori's record company released a series of Corn Flakes boxes with her picture on them to promote this song to record companies. They are now collector's items. 
Who's the Rabbit in the song? Tori told NME: "Rabbit is someone that I knew, a fantastic, magical creature that would live in the woods, that would work maybe six months of the year with her partner, who was Fox; they were Rabbit and Fox. They would live in the woods of Oregon - I'm talking about the great woods, not just a park - and they would live out in the wilds. So Rabbit living in the wilds with Fox, I thought that was romantic."
Two music videos were made. Andy Delaney and Monty Whitebloom, known as Big TV!, directed the UK version, which is a twisted take on the Wizard of Oz. Tori directed the US version herself, along with Nancy Bennett, which follows the singer tooling around the desert with a truckload of girls.
Tori fought hard for the whistling that comes in over her piano at the beginning of the song. Everyone else - including her then-boyfriend/producer Eric Rosse - was in favor of a mandolin line that guitarist Steve Caton came up with. "Everybody really liked that," she told The Baltimore Sun in 1994. "And even in the mix studio, I was screaming at the top of my lungs that it had to be a whistle. I want the cowboys coming over the hill. Eric was laughing his head off, and the mixer, Kevin Killen, said to me, 'This whistle is naff, Tori.' And I said, 'Well, guess what, Kevin. When you make your own song, you can put your own mandolin on it. This is a whistle. F--king put it in. Put the sample in.' So I got my whistle, and I'm happy as a clam to this day."
While most of the album was written and recorded in New Mexico, this track evolved out of a piano riff Tori came up with while living across from a reggae hangout in London. On an unseasonably warm day, she heard a faraway groove coming through her open window and started jamming to it. "Within pretty much a day's time I had a piano riff for what would become 'Cornflake Girl,'" she explained in the liner notes to her 2006 compilation, A Piano. "I was just playing along, and then, when the music stopped, I found myself still playing that riff."
But the song was far from being complete. It needed help from other musicians, and even an entirely different climate, to bring it to fruition. She recalled: "About a year later, when I took the song into the studio for recording, other musicians came on and the original bass riff started to become something else. The legendary George Porter, Jr., brought his own variation of New Orleans voodoo, having been an instrumental part of The Meters. Eric had developed a loop that he said he was inspired to create after hearing me play my original riff for hours and hours. It's an interesting progression to note that 'Cornflake Girl' was inspired by a groove-loop kind of percussive rhythm. Then I wrote the piano part, and to the piano part yet another percussive part was written. Then to that new and improved loop Paulinho Da Costa came and layered the track with even yet another syncopated, percussive part that included big sleigh bells and all kinds of things. 
So despite 'Cornflake''s initial quick and spontaneous creation, all the mini sections and compositional details took over a year to resolve. Sometimes you get a real burst of inspiration, and then all you have is a riff. You don't really have a completed thought. It took me going very far away from where it had started to really finish it. Taking it from the city of London to the desert of New Mexico so that it could find its own character."  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/tori-amos/cornflake-girl

Knifeworld - Clairvoyant Fortnight

Releasing records via frontman Kavus Torabi’s own label Believers Roast since 2009 – a single, debut album Buried Alone: Tales Of Crushing Defeat and two EPs – Knifeworld were snapped up by InsideOut for last year’s Prog Award-nominated The Unravelling. Torabi now finds himself a chap very much in demand, featuring in both Guapo and Gong, and partnering best pal Steve Davies every Monday night for an Interesting Alternative radio show. With their next record looming on the horizon, this is good time to clear the decks and get the elusive, out-of-print stuff in one handsome triptych package: “The album that should have been,” Torabi says. Abandoning chronology, he’s opted to open with 2011’s Dear Pilot, the familiar keystones of Mel Woods’ soft, agile vocals, Chloe Herrington’s magisterial bassoon and sax, and Emmett Elvin’s bright key flourishes illuminating some barrelling, no-nonsense baroque agit-punk, with the XTC-psychedelic, shanty-swinging Dear Lord, No Deal bringing up the rear (admiral). Clairvoyant Fortnight’s poppy, soothsayer-sceptical vitriol skips past In A Foreign Way, another woozy, oceanic track that then retreats for debut single B-side Happy Half Life, Dear Friend. Shadowy and lulling, this is a gothic connector to The Unravelling’s unsettling score, backed up by the nervy, percussive avant-prog of multi‑part highlight The Prime Of Our Decline. But a savvy Torabi leaves the best till last as HMS Washout chucks us back out to sea again over 14 minutes of jazzy tumult and bubbling RIO exposition. Mostly we’re waving, not drowning – no life jacket required.  From: https://www.loudersound.com/reviews/knifeworld-home-of-the-newly-departed

 

Luminous Orange - Braque's Bird

Not so much a band as the musical project of Yokohama-based musician Takeuchi Rie, Luminous Orange have been through more than 30 members and support members since being formed in 1992, including Nakau Kentarou and Inazawa Ahito from indie punk band Number Girl and Ian Masters of the Pale Saints. The influence of 1980s American alternative rock bands such as Sonic Youth and the Pixies, and particularly British shoegazer bands such as My Bloody Valentine, is a constant throughout Luminous Orange's career, although early releases tended toward a more melodic, less distorted guitar sound reminiscent of Teenage Fanclub or early Primal Scream, a sound clearly evident on their first full album, 1996's Vivid Short Trip. Released in 1997, Waiting for the Summer saw Luminous Orange edging toward a more effects-based guitar sound as well as more eclectic songwriting, influenced by Tokyo's "Shibuya-kei" sound, which came to the fore more strongly in the following year's Puppy Dog Mail EP, released on Ian Masters' Friendly Science label. Issued in 1998, Sugarcoated, the group's first true shoegazer album, made its sonic intentions clear with a cover version of Ride's "Chelsea Girl," and featured a greater reliance on distortion and a more layered sound. Luminousorangesuperplastic pushed further in this direction in 1999, and after a brief flirtation with Cornelius' Trattoria label, the band produced the well-received Drop You Vivid Colours, featuring the richest, most multi-layered musical textures and melodies yet, as well as some of the most sonically abrasive sounds. In 2004 Cream Cone Records put out a heavily augmented re-release of Luminous Orange's debut under the title Vivid Short Trip (7 Stops Farther), but apart from that, the band released no new output until the 2007 mini-album Sakura Swirl on U.S. label Music Related, although ever-shifting lineups of the band continued to tour intermittently throughout this period, playing the CMJ Music Marathon in 2004 and South by Southwest in 2006 and 2007.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/luminous-orange-mn0000470488#biography 

Otis Redding - My Girl / Shake / I've Been Loving You Too Long - Live 1967

The first thing that stands out in the first segment of Otis Redding: Respect Live 1967 is Redding’s sheer size. At 6’1”, he seems to tower over Booker T & the MG’s guitarist Steve Cropper and bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn on the tiny Oslo stage. No matter that Redding and Cropper are actually the same height, Redding looks a clear half foot taller.
It may seem an odd first reaction, but it’s an indication of the amazing physicality of Redding’s performances. On record, it’s fairly apparent Redding is a muscular vocalist; if Sam Cooke’s style is defined by a sort of grace and smoothness, Redding’s feels more like that of a great force held in check, and even on ballads, Redding’s voice threatens to break loose. In performance, that restraint is thrown aside, perfect pitch sacrificed in service of an all-out frenzy.
The DVD contains footage of two shows: one from the Stax-Volt tour of Europe in the Spring of 1967 and the other from the Monterey Pop Festival that same year; both were shot by DA Pennebacker within the last year of Redding’s life. Pennebacker’s ability to get astoundingly close to his subjects without attracting their attention, evidenced in Don’t Look Back and Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, is on display here as well. The footage has an intimacy that concert films like Scorcese’s recent Shine a Light could only dream of: the viewer has the feeling not so much of being in the audience as being virtually inside the bass drum.
The Stax-Volt footage, shot in crisp black and white, is the lesser-seen of the two performances. After watching Booker T & the MG’s define cool with their performance of “Green Onions”, followed by two Sam & Dave songs that showcase the duo’s playfulness and deftness in interacting with both the band (while a perspiration-drenched Sam Moore lays down the verse for “When Something is Wrong with My Baby”, Dave Prater, with his back to the audience, is getting laughs out of Donald “Duck” Dunn) and the audience, feeding off one another, Redding’s performance of “Satisfaction” comes on like a juggernaut.
Stamping his feet like a man possessed, Redding urges the band to a breakneck speed, locked down by Al Jackson’s drumming, with the pure insistence of his voice. The follow up of “Try a Little Tenderness” begins as a sweet ballad only to speed into the same level of panic, bringing the audience surging to the stage as Redding makes his exit.
After a photo montage set to “Sittin’ On the Dock of a Bay,” we’re treated to Redding’s storied performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, just six months before his death. Again, the intimacy of the shooting is amazing: chills come as much from Redding’s performance as the condensation of his breath caught in the stage lights. The intensity of the lights gives Redding’s bright green suit a brilliant shine and the camera gives enough time to the backing band to remind the viewer that, along with Motown’s Funk Brothers and Mussel Shoals’ Swampers, Booker T & the MG’s are some of the most important players in the history of American pop music.  From: https://www.popmatters.com/69630-otis-redding-respect-live-1967-2496067813.html

The Breeders - Cannonball

Before “Cannonball,” The Breeders were known as Kim Deal’s side project, overshadowed by her first band, Pixies. However, by 1993, Pixies singer/songwriter Black Francis had broken up the band by fax, so The Breeders were no longer a side project. Deal was in San Francisco recording Last Splash when her twin sister Kelley told her the Pixies had broken up. Pixies were responsible for alt-rock’s biggest bands, and The Breeders enjoyed the commercial fruits of that labor.
Many musicians work hard to be cool, but Dayton, Ohio’s Kim Deal is carelessly cool. Her indie-aloofness inspired The Dandy Warhols to write a song about her in which singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor pleaded for a girl as “Cool as Kim Deal.” Moreover, the combination of “whatever” and meticulousness makes Last Splash imperishably special. But, on “Cannonball,” what are the Deal twins singing about?
In 1996, Deal told Phoenix New Times that Marquis de Sade inspired “Cannonball.” Said Deal, “The message of the song as a whole was making fun of Sade and his libertarian views that if he was better off than someone, then they were just fodder for him. Playthings. It was saying, ‘Come on, life’s not a contest.’”
The intro voices (“Ah-hoo-oh”) are the Deals’ nod to the Oompa Loompa song from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. And “Cannonball” was originally called “Grunggae” because of its mixture of ’90s alt-rock and island sounds. (The “Grunggae” demo appeared on the 20th-anniversary edition of Last Splash.)
Deal opens the song, checking a distorted harmonica microphone as it squeals before the song breaks for its iconic bassline. However, the memorable bass part was the result of a mistake. A timid entrance that’s one fret off the correct note is repeated twice before the band begins and the right note is played.
Kim Gordon and Spike Jonze directed the music video for “Cannonball.” The Breeders perform the song in a garage, and the video cuts to scenes of Deal singing underwater. Throughout the video, a cannonball rolls down the streets of Los Angeles.
In 1990, Deal formed The Breeders with Tanya Donelly from Throwing Muses. Pixies had opened for Throwing Muses in the ’80s, and Deal and Donelly were hanging out in Boston while both bands were on a break.
Ivo Watts-Russell, co-founder of 4AD, signed The Breeders and released their debut Pod in 1990. (4AD was also home to Pixies and Throwing Muses).
Deal told Marc Maron the name “Breeders” came from a slur that some LGBTQ+ people used against heterosexuals. She also said the 1979 horror film The Brood inspired the name.
Producer Steve Albini recorded Pod, which also featured drummer Britt Walford (from Slint) and British musician Josephine Wiggs (from The Perfect Disaster), who plays bass on “Cannonball.” Kelley Deal joined the band on the Safari EP (1992), and Donelly eventually left the group to form Belly.
Producer Gary Smith said about the Pixies’ legacy, “I’ve heard it said about The Velvet Underground that while not a lot of people bought their albums, everyone who did started a band. I think this is largely true about the Pixies as well. Charles’ [Black Francis] secret weapon turned out to be not so secret, and, sooner or later, all sorts of bands were exploiting the same strategy of wide dynamics.”
He continued, “It became a kind of new pop formula and, within a short while, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was charging up the charts, and even the members of Nirvana said later that it sounded for all the world like a Pixies song.”  From: https://americansongwriter.com/the-meaning-behind-cannonball-by-the-breeders-and-the-french-libertine-who-inspired-it/

XTC - Senses Working Overtime

Released in 1982 as the lead single from their album English Settlement, "Senses Working Overtime" was XTC's highest charting song in the UK. In the US, the video for "Senses" was regularly played on the fledgling MTV cable channel.
The song incorporates a catchy melody, intricate harmonies, and a complex arrangement with a hook inspired by Manfred Mann's "5-4-3-2-1."
"It's like a little prog operetta," frontman Andy Partridge told Prog. "The verses sound like medieval reggae, before it opens up like The Who and the chorus is almost The Strawbs-meets-Manfred Mann. Then it goes sideways into something else for the middle section. I'm notorious for sticking bits together. You can only be the f---ing sum total of how you mash up all your influences. There's no such thing as originality."
"Senses Working Overtime" paints a sonic kaleidoscope of vision, hearing, taste, touch and smell pushing themselves to the limit. This sensory overload mirrors the internal struggle – the fight between good and bad. 
"I worked on this kind of stomping, idiot pattern, thinking about the five senses," Partridge recalled to Todd Bernhardt. "Then I thought, 'Well, everyone has five senses, what's great about that? Well, they're not just working, they're going crazy! They're working overtime! They're taking all of life in, and it's too much!' Because life is just too much. It's amazing, you know."
The song's music video, filmed at double speed and then slowed down, adds to the song's quirky and surreal atmosphere. Director Brian Grant shot it in Shepperton Studios while XTC were rehearsing for the English Settlement tour.
XTC's playful antics before their Top Of The Pops performance ruffled feathers in the BBC, ultimately leading to a ban from the iconic music show. 
"We were rehearsing 'Senses Working Overtime' on Top of the Pops and the cameramen were just not getting their camera angles correct – you know a shaved chimp could do it," Andy Partridge recalled to Uncut magazine. "We were getting bored running through this song dozens of times, so as young fellas do when they are bored, we started mucking about to entertain ourselves, avoiding the microphone and miming badly. Suddenly I heard this door slamming up on the gantry, and bang, bang, bang coming down this metal stairway. This cameraman said, 'Oh, you're for it now – it's the producer, and I think he's been for a relaxing lunch.' 
An extremely red-faced man appeared: 'you punkers are all the same! I'm sick of it, dicking about, f---ing ruining everything, you f---ing punkers! Right, we're going to get this done, and then I'm gonna personally make sure you never come on this show ever again.' He really did make sure we were never invited on again. People would see me in the pub, you've got a new single out, Andy, why is it not on Top of the Pops? I'd explain and they'd think I was pulling their leg."  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/xtc/senses-working-overtime

Throwing Muses - Live Bizarre Festival 1991

This isn't what I expected. I'd come over to Providence with Tanya Donelly, Kristin's half-sister and former guitarist with Throwing Muses, searching for the story behind her (and bassist Fred Abong's) recent departure from the band she's played with for pretty much all her adult life and I'm greeted with stories of jacked-off ostriches, the latest grisly murders, "lobster boils," and how David nearly got brainwashed on a recent trip to New York. No recriminations, no harsh words whatsoever.
It almost seems as though the split (which occurred just before February's "The Real Ramona" album and tour, but was kept quiet on both sides, so as not to affect sales) was completely amicable, and this fact-finding trip is a waste of time: as far as meeting three such delightful, talented folk could ever be considered a waste of time.
The last ever Tanya Donelly / Throwing Muses interview takes place in a fish restaurant 10 minutes drive from Kristin's house. They aren't upset or maudlin or sentimental. They're precisely the opposite, in fact, excited at seeing one another again.

Does it feel weird without Tanya in the Muses anymore?

"Nothing feels weird about the Muses anymore," Kristin replies. "Throwing Muses seems to be a name for music now, instead of a name for a number of people. So much horrible stuff has happened to us, that none of us wanted to be in this band anymore. We all wanted to start afresh, but to give up the name Throwing Muses had earned for itself seemed almost self-indulgent."

(The horrible stuff Kristin's referring to is both business and personal: their old manager, her "bi-polarity," a former lover who was suing her for both money and custody of their son, and so on. Tanya also split from a long-term boyfriend earlier this year.)

Did you feel that the Donelly incarnation of the Muses had naturally run its course?

"Mmm," replies Tanya affirmatively.

"Yeah," reply David and Kristin simultaneously.

"It's not even musical differences," explains Tanya. "It's not even that dramatic. It's more like, direction. I want to do my own songs, but Throwing Muses is Kristin's band. In the beginning, that wasn't a problem. I'd write four songs a year as opposed to Kristin's 28, but now she's come down in quantity and I've gone up a little, so we're kinda equal."

What made you decide to finally leave, Tanya? Did you wake up one morning and think, "That's it. I'm no longer a Muse?" Did Kristin's solo dates (towards the end of last year) have anything to do with your decision?

"No," she replies. "It had been coming for a while. The decision was made before 'Ramona,' but I love that record and didn't want to sabotage it in any way. It was the kind of thing where you can't figure out what's wrong and then you realize it's because you want to do your own stuff."

And The Breeders is Kim Deal's thing, right?

"Yeah," the guitarist replies. "I always end up getting involved with strong women, and of course people like that are attracted to each other. But then it turns into a mini-struggle, and it's too bad it happens, but it's unavoidable really."

Was Kristin expecting it?

"I think so," Tanya replies, "She was great. Of everybody, she was the most understanding. Me and Kristin grew up together, we've been through familial upheavals that are far worse than this. My friendship with her and my sisterhood with her are far more important than this. We were fine about it; it was everybody else who got all emotional."

Does it feel strange, no longer being a Muse?

"No," she says. "If I'd quit at the end of the tour, then it might have done, because it would have been such an amputated experience. This way, we all had time to get over it. And the tour was amazing, because we knew it was our swan-song, and it was fun because it was our secret."

What was the high point of the Muses for you all?

"Probably the final year," Tanya replies. "It was so chaotic and so emotionally-charged, but it was also the most fun I had in the band. I'm a complete believer in change now, so much that I could see myself going overboard in that respect. There's something that's so freeing about it, and I've always been a person petrified of it."

Do you feel "Ramona" was your best album?

"No," replies Kristin. "It's very realized, and that's a great thing. But I really like 'House Tornado' for that reason too: it had very appropriate production, the songs are very realized and stylistically, they're very intricate."

From: https://eyesore.no/tfdi/tm/mm1191.html 

If - Waterfall - Side 1

01. Waterfall
02. The Light Still Shines
03. Sector 17

Unlike the band's first three albums, "If 4" was not released in North America, reportedly due to management and contractual issues. Later the same year though (1972), "Waterfall" appeared in its place in those territories. As can be seen from the track listing, no less than four of the tracks on this album also appeared on "If 4" with two ("You in your small corner" and "Svenska Soma") being replaced by "Paint your pictures" and "Cast no shadows". The track order too is completely different, with "Sector 17", which seems to have been pruned back a bit, losing its headline spot to this album's title song. The two new tracks were recorded by a a slightly different line up with a new rhythm section and without John Mealing.
The re-ordering of the tracks means that the album gets off to a much more satisfactory start, with two in your face slices of jazz rock ("Waterfall" and "The light still shines") providing a tight, brass fuelled, attention grabbing first 10 minutes or so. "Sector 17" retains the extended guitar noodling of "If 4", but the sax excesses are kept in check.
"Paint your pictures" is one of the two tracks unique to this album. The song leans on the blues side of the band, the simple backing rhythm supporting an extended lead guitar break and some fine brass. From the keyboards work, it sound like John Mealing may in fact still have been around for this recording. "Cast No Shadows" has a distinctly The Who feel to it in the Roger Daltrey like vocals. The track otherwise has more in common with Chicago than BS&T, being reminiscent of "Does anybody really know what time it is" (to these ears at least!). The album closes with "Throw Myself to the Wind", a straightforward jazz rock number with a toe-tapping rhythm.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=15873

Sterbus - Alfriston Two Four Five

Black And Gold is the latest album from Sterbus, an Italian band based around multi-instrumentalists and singers Emanuele Sterbini and Dominique D'Avanzo along with associated guests who are used on different tracks depending on the need. The last album I reviewed by these guys was 'Real Estate/Fake Inferno' which was their homage to Cardiacs, and this is very different indeed. If I was to try and describe it then I would guess it would be psychedelia mixed with art rock and 'Sgt Pepper'-era Beatles, and that nothing on the album was written or recorded after 1972.
Okay, so that is obviously not right, but that is exactly how the music makes me feel. Strangely, this album also deals with mental illness, the second time I have reviewed a concept album with that topic this week, but whereas The Reticent are dealing with depression from a very personal viewpoint, here we are looking at the story of Virginia Wolfe who suffered from the time she was a teenager (today's experts believe she had bipolar disorder). This feels much lighter in its approach, at times drifting happily into folk prog, and at others into crossover, with melody and thoughtfulness at the heart of the story. There is a great deal of space here, and the pace can be quite languid as we drift along with none of the urgency and desperation prevalent in 'Please'.
Consequently this is actually a much easier album to listen to and enjoy. The lyrics are important to the story, and I am glad the decision was made to perform in English as it allows for a much wider appreciation of the work. It feels like a very mature album, and although it was somewhat unexpected given how different this to the other release of theirs I have heard, it is incredibly enjoyable. There is a lot to take in, and the more it is played the more there is to be discovered, yet it is also immediate, and it scream "class" from beginning to end.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=11432

Molassess - Through The Hollow

In 2006, siblings Selim and Farida Lemouchi started a psychedelic occult rock band called The Devil’s Blood. In 2013, it collapsed. During its existence, the band drew a loyal following in underground music. Its music balanced retro occult and innovative psych rock. Selim, guitar player and spiritual heart of the band, was uncompromising in his vision, resulting in shows that were as much Satanic rituals as they were concerts, including buckets of pig blood and candles all over the place. In 2014, after struggling with depression for much of his existence, Selim requested permission to die from his mother and sister shortly before taking his own life. 5 years later, Roadburn overlord Walter Hoeijmakers asked the former members of The Devil’s Blood whether they would be interested in creating a commissioned piece of music. Molassess was born.
And I was there for that first performance at Roadburn, though at the time I was unaware of the story behind the band or its previous incarnation. Nonetheless, I highly enjoyed the show, and with good reason. Molassess have a sound difficult to compare to anything else. It’s psychedelic rock at its core, that much is clear. The compositions feel organic, the guitars and bass loose and jangly as if the strings barely remain attached to the instruments. It sounds organic, too, owing to the fantastic production job, with its warm and vital master and balanced mix. The bass has a playful punch and the drums are the definition of unhurried; you won’t find a double bass kick here, and the pacing rarely creeps above leisurely, with only “Death Is” and “Get Out From Under” pushing the tempo, at which point an almost jazzy quality overtakes the drums, a not unwelcome bit of variation that keeps the music feeling lively.
At the center of it all, Farida Lemouchi pours her heart into the vocals, and the emotion cuts like a knife. Her wavery mid-range, wide vibrato and huskily aged timbre will not be everyone’s cup of tea; certainly, from a technical standpoint, she is often too unsteady and cannot sustain her notes accurately for long. From a performative perspective, however, she is a force to be reckoned with. Though the music is far from light despite its relaxed nature, Farida turns it into a pitch black soundscape. The jangling riffs, courtesy of Death Alley frontman Oeds Beydals, come to life like skeletons under her necromancing spells. There’s a haunting despair underlying such tracks as the evocatively titled “I Am No Longer” or long-winded closer “The Devil Lives,” of which the latter feels the most like a direct tribute to Selim. But the strongest track on Through the Hollow is “Get Out From Under.” Farida is evocative like a maddened oracle, particularly in the serrated chorus; the drums rise and crash; and the main riff, which is held through much of the song, is instantly memorable and wonderfully dark.  From: https://www.angrymetalguy.com/molassess-through-the-hollow-review/

Tamburlaine - The Flame of Thoriman

This collection of both Tamburlaine soft-rock/folk-rock albums dates from the time of flares, aviator shades, lyrics like “a whiter shade of pale” (yes, they appropriate that here) and when a woman was “a lady”. Strange days? Indeed. This period – the early Seventies – saw the flourishing of post-Crosby Still and Nash acoustic bands and artists which were long on earnestness and sensitive lyrics, and sometimes hugely popular.
Tamburlaine – the trio of Simon Morris, Steve Robinson and Denis Leong for their debut album Say No More – followed no carved path but rather drew from a few styles: the CSN harmonies (they cover solo Stills' Do for the Others), the romantic folk-medieval narrative tradition which harked back to Anglofolk (Morris' serious The Raven and the Nightingale which heads into bluegrass hoedown territory with cheery fiddle and mandolin), Morris' Saffron Lady (there are lot of “lady” figures here) is pure CSN but has a real sense of tension, and piano, violin and flute colour Leong's quietly delightful Rainy City Memories.
The interesting vagary in all this is the 10 minute-plus prog-folk, quasi-mystical The Flame of Thoriman at the end which pointed in a psychedelic folk direction. It might not have aged well in its lyrical content (although to be fair a lot of people are obsessed by that Tolkien guy, right? *) but is a fine piece of musical muscle-stretching which manages to be pop and rock without compromising their folk ethos. And really soars in its closing overs.  From: https://www.elsewhere.co.nz/music/8841/tamburlaine-say-no-more-rebirth-kiwi-pacific/ 

Jonatha Brooke - Secrets And Lies / Ten Cent Wings / The Choice

This first solo album is a departure from the sound of her albums with The Story and as Jonatha Brooke & The Story. I know I'm in the minority here, but I prefer these studio recordings of these songs to the ones that appeared on the live album that followed. Her complex melodies and unusual chords work better in pop songs than in folk music. It's easy to see why long time fans from her folk audience shook their heads when this album came out ("Do I hear an electric piano? A synth? An electronic beat?"), but for me this is where Jonatha Brooke's career really took off.
The pop production style hides the unusual chords and makes the melodies sound more easy. This was released by a major label. If enough people had heard this album Jonatha Brooke could have easily become as big as Shawn Colvin. "Secrets and lies", "Because I told you so" and "Last innocent year" should have been big hits. But unfortunately MCA didn't promote the album and with her folk audience being disappointed as well the album sank without a trace.
But for the more open minded listener who likes more than just folk and who doesn't mind a bit of modern production techniques this is an excellent collection. Jonatha Brooke writes lovely, catchy melodies with good lyrics and the songs are well produced. There's the aforementioned pop songs, acoustic folk given a pop sound on "Because I told you so" and "Blood from a stone", the more experimental "Glass half empty" is a fine tribute to the late Kevin Gilbert, the title track is a great piano ballad, "Annie" ends the album with acoustic folk. Even when the songwriting lets her down on songs such as "The choice" and "Shame on us" her lovely voice is there to keep things interesting. 
If only more people would have heard of this amazing artist. Intelligent pop music like this with such lovely melodies, influences from a lot of different styles sung by a female vocalist of course leads to comparisons with the late great Kirsty MacColl. I know there will never be another Kirsty MacColl, but if there's somebody in the world who comes close it's Jonatha Brooke.  From: https://rateyourmusic.com/music-review/mdekoning/jonatha-brooke/10c-wings/2087624 

Silly Wizard - The Queen of Argyll / The Ramblin' Rover / The Blackbird / Donald McGillavry

When friends, acquaintances or even perfect strangers ask my advice on starting a Celtic CD collection, there is invariably one album I will recommend buying first: Silly Wizard's Live Wizardry.
A decade since its release and nearly a decade since I first heard it, Live Wizardry remains on the pinnacle of traditional Celtic releases. Originally issued as two live albums, Live in America and Golden, Golden, in 1985, Live Wizardry was released by Green Linnet Records in 1988 as a compilation of the two. The musicians, the tunes and the energy combine to make it an album which should hold a favored place in every music collection. The album features the sonorous tenor vocals of Andy M. Stewart, the blistering fiddle work of
Johnny Cunningham and the amazing Phil Cunningham on accordion, whistles, mandola and keyboards. With Gordon Jones on guitar and bodhran and Martin Hadden on bass and guitar rounding out the band, it's about as good a set as you're ever going to find.
Add to that the energy of a live performance in front of an enthusiastic audience in Cambridge, Mass., and you have an album which cannot be beat. Silly Wizard, from Scotland, put out several excellent albums during their all-too-brief tenure together, but none has this kind of staying power ... likely because any good Celtic band feeds on the excitement of a live performance and grows stronger because of it.
On it, you'll find a host of instant classics, tunes which today are Celtic folk standards but got their start right here on the Sanders Theatre stage. How often have you heard a lusty rendition of "Ramblin' Rover" at a packed pub or Renaissance faire? It's a Silly Wizard original. So, too, is "The Queen of Argyll," still one of the best songs of unrequited, but still cheerful, love. Prefer your love requited? Another of Stewart's songs, "Golden, Golden," is a soothing, flowing anthem to romance.
Mix these and other originals with a solid core of traditionals arranged by these musical Wizards and you'll have an album worth playing 'til the laser burns through the disc and you have to buy another one. (I'm pretty sure that's what happened to my first copy.) Traditional tunes include the lively and silly "The Parish of Dunkeld," the melancholy "The Banks of the Lee," the martial "Donald McGillavry" and the sizzling set led off by "The Humors of Tulla" and "Toss the Feathers."
Stewart fronts the band with strong vocals, at times soulful and at times bursting with humor. Behind him, the band mixes up skillful harmonies and arrangements which accent, but never overshadow, the songs. Then turn the band loose on an instrumental number like "Scarce o' Tatties," "The Curlew," "Saint Anne's Reel" or "Jean's Reel" -- all cunningly blended into some very lively sets -- and step back and be amazed. The Cunningham brothers in particular put out some dazzling sounds, especially in "The Humors of Tulla" set, that must be heard to be believed.  From: https://www.rambles.net/silly_wizard_live.html

Pool Kids - Conscious Uncoupling

-Yuuki Takita: We are a media outlet that values artists’ roots, the background behind their music, and the music, culture, and art that influenced them. Since this is our first interview together, let me start by asking about the band’s formation. You’re a four-piece band from Tallahassee, Florida, right? How did these four members meet and come to form the band?

Christine :Yes, we are a four-piece band and we claim Tallahassee as our hometown as that is where we formed and first started playing shows. We were all raised in different parts of Florida: I (Christine) am from Tampa, Nicolette is from Gainesville, Caden is from Vero Beach, and Andy is from Miami. Caden, Nicolette, and myself all moved to Tallahassee for college, and met through the music scene there.
The band started out with just Caden and I as a two-piece, and I would book us shows in my backyard with touring DIY bands that were passing through. We wanted to eventually find a permanent bassist and second guitarist, but took our time finding the right people. I eventually met Nicolette through the college radio station that we both DJ’ed at, WVFS Tallahassee, and asked her to be in the band after she had played a few good shows filling in for my other band at the time Cough Drop, and Caden’s other band at the time Faking Jazz. Andy came along after we had been struggling to find a guitarist that was able to tour as frequently as we wanted to. We knew of him from his involvement with so many other Florida bands over the years, but didn’t think to ask if he’d be interested in playing with us until two of our mutual friends suggested it. Lon Beshiri, who recorded our debut LP, and my now boyfriend Nick Nottebaum, were both good friends with Andy dating back to high school, so when they told us that he might be interested, we asked right away. It’s been just the four of us ever since!

-Yuuki Takita: What was the band’s initial direction or what kind of music did you want to make when you first formed?

When Caden and I first started writing our debut record, I was very inspired by the local Tallahassee bands that were playing in the house show scene at the time, particularly the band (now inactive) Echo Base. More than anything, I loved the energy in their crowds and I loved their interesting guitar parts, so I really wanted to make something similar. Writing songs with interesting guitar parts and vocal parts that I could picture people singing along to at house shows was my main goal with that record. Now, we are a fully formed band and have grown into something very different, but that was the band’s “initial” direction.
Band Attitude and Influence

-Yuuki Takita: In materials introducing you, it mentions that you promote messages like “anyone can do what Pool Kids does,” “anyone can start a band,” “anyone can make an album,” and “everyone has the right to chase their dreams.” Could you tell me more about this? I’d like to know specifically what feelings drive you to convey these messages and what motivates your activities.

I’ve been playing guitar since the day I turned 10, but it never once occurred to me that I could start a band myself until I was about 21 years old and saw other women doing it around me. I don’t know why representation works that way, but sometimes you really do just need to see someone that reminds you of yourself doing the thing you want in order for it to feel attainable. I really wish someone had shaken me years earlier and said “you should start a band!”, so we try to be that push for other people. Sometimes we say it at our shows, and women will come up to us afterwards telling us how that was the one thing they needed to hear before doing it.. so it must be working!

-Yuuki Takita: I understand that this album contains many descriptions of Florida landscapes and very specific scenes you witnessed during tours. So I’m curious—what kind of place is Florida from your perspective? I’m interested in the environment, people, and music scene.

I mean, more than anything, Florida just feels like home. It’s a very hot, sticky, humid place infested with roaches and mosquitoes, but the sun is literally always shining so bright and I’ve come to really appreciate that after touring so much of the rest of the world and seeing how rare that is. The political landscape is nightmare-ish, but there are still good people here that stick together. The music scene is very different in every city, but I do feel like there is a strong sense of community across the entire state. Bands from Florida really support each other.

-Yuuki Takita: You’ve also shared the stage with bands like The Mountain Goats, PUP, Beach Bunny, La Dispute, and Sunny Day Real Estate. How were those collaborations? I’d like to know your impressions and if you received any inspiration from them.

Every single one of those tours were a wonderful experience for us. We have been so, so lucky with the bands that have taken us on tour. Each and every one of them was inspiring in a different way, but we always leave tours feeling in some way inspired or motivated by whoever we were opening for.
Origin of Band Name

-Yuuki Takita: Please also tell me about your band name. Why did you choose the name “Pool Kids”? Could you also explain the meaning behind the band name “Pool Kids”?

There isn’t really a deeper meaning behind the name Pool Kids. Caden and I had been practicing for months with no band name when we started back in 2017, and we finally had our first show coming up so we NEEDED to decide on a name to add it to the flyer. I posted on facebook asking for people to send me their notes app lists of band name ideas. They were all horrible suggestions, but Pool Kids seemed the least egregious of the suggestions, so that’s what we’ve been rolling with. To this day I am still not crazy about it.

-Yuuki Takita: Hayley Williams from Paramore has publicly stated she’s a fan of yours. Could you tell me about three albums that influenced your music? Also, please explain what aspects influenced you and any related episodes for each album. If that’s difficult, please share each member’s favorite music album and related episodes.

Great Grandpa – Four of Arrows
This record is a favorite amongst the band, and is ultimately what inspired us to work with Mike Vernon Davis, who produced both our self-titled record as well as ‘Easier Said Than Done’.

Andy Shauf – The Neon Skyline
The songwriting on this album inspired me because even though it feels so specific and personal to someone else’s life, it was still able to get an emotional reaction out of me and felt addicting. It made me less afraid to get really specific and personal with my lyrics.

Charli XCX – how i’m feeling now
This feels like the gateway album that got me fully into pop music. Ever since then I have really prioritized making things “catchy”, trying to write hooks, and playing with rhythm and melody in a way that is pleasing to the ear rather than just impressive to other musicians, etc.

From: https://a-indie.com/pool-kids-interview/ 

The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love 1

Alright, I’ve been putting this off long enough. The Hazards of Love is easily the most formidable recording in The Decemberists‘ discography, and to be truthful, it’s not one that I expected to like nearly as much as I did when I revisited their first five albums during my 2000s binge last year. Framed as a continuous story that plays out over the course of 17 tracks and just shy of an hour, with several voices acting as distinct characters in the tale being woven, this album is The Decemberists at their most ambitious, their most melodramatic, and at times, their most macabre. The Crane Wife in 2006 is regarded by many (myself included) as the band’s magnum opus, but it took real gusto to even attempt to follow it up with something more complex than what was already a fairly progressive song cycle with a satisfying block of hook-driven singles in its center. On Hazards, it’s debatable at times whether there are even distinct songs, considering how seamlessly almost every track segues into the next, with the divisions between them (no doubt made for the sake of listeners’ convenience so that we didn’t end up in a Jethro Tull sort of situation) often seeming a bit arbitrary. This is a formidable record to approach, let alone to write about. But since I updated my “Best of the Ought Nots” list at the beginning of 2021, and over the course of the year, I set about filling in the gaps where I hadn’t yet reviewed some of the new entries yet, eventually I was gonna have to get to this one, even if in all honesty I was kind of scared to do it. It’s October, and Halloween is right around the corner, so I can’t think of a better time to recap such a fantastical and nightmarish story, and to stare my fear right in the eye.
The backstory on this album is basically that lead singer Colin Meloy, who is a fan of folk singer Anne Briggs, heard her 1963 EP The Hazards of Love and thought “Hey, isn’t it weird that she didn’t actually put a song with that title on the EP?” So he set about writing a song with that title, and pretty soon it became like 4 songs with that title, and eventually the whole thing snowballed into a series of songs all haphazardly (see what I did there?) crashing into one another in the process of circling back to that central theme. I guess it’s a good thing that his bandmates were on board back when he decided to lead off their very first album with “Lesley Anne Levine”, a song written from the point of view of a stillborn infant, or when they put together the sickening yet perversely satisfying “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” to serve as the apex of their third album Picaresque, featuring a young man so hell-bent on getting payback that he’ll follow the guy he intends to torture to death into the belly of a freaking whale. Imagine a band without that history looking at some of the dark lyrics Meloy came up with for Hazards – they probably would have doubted his mental stability. Meloy’s tendency to pull fascinating bits of characterization out of the most macabre of premises, while I found it rather distasteful when I was first exposed to the band, is something I’ve grown to respect them for over the years. With that said, the results can still be downright disturbing if you’re not in the right mood, and there’s a specific character on this album who is directly responsible for a few of those stomach-turning moments. That’s part of the reason it took me so long to get back around to Hazards, even after declaring it one of my favorite records of the decade it came out. It’s a record that I always find fascinating when I pull it out after having left it alone for a while, but I can only handle so many listens in rapid succession before I need to put it away again. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – if this thing was a movie, I’m not sure I’d be able to watch it all the way through. But I’d probably still respect it for how effectively and viscerally it evokes feelings of sympathy for its heroes, and pure hatred for its villains.  From: https://murlough23.wordpress.com/2021/10/30/the-decemberists-the-hazards-of-love-tis-better-to-have-loved-and-lost/