Rosalie Cunningham - Crossroads Festival 2024

 Rosalie Cunningham - Crossroads Festival 2024 - Part 1

 

 Rosalie Cunningham - Crossroads Festival 2024 - Part 2

 

Rosalie Cunningham opens the third evening of the WDR Rochpalast's 2024 Crossroads Festival at Bonn's Harmonie on Friday with a performance that immediately demonstrates why she is considered one of the most exciting musicians on the current prog rock scene. With a powerful mix of retro aesthetics, psychedelic sounds, and artful songwriting, Cunningham takes the audience on a musical journey that is both captivating and diverse—and features an impressively strong band. 
With her aubergine-colored jumpsuit, flared trousers, and fringes on the arms, she would have been the party queen at any party in the 60s and 70s – even though she later called for: “Dethrone the party queen of yesteryear.” The evening begins with "Start With The Corners," an instrumental that sets the tone for the psychedelic prog rock world of the '70s. Initially quiet and introspective, the song builds to an overwhelming crescendo. The songs on her setlist, including "Ride On My Bike" and the electrifying "Dethroning Of The Party Queen," testify to an artist stylistically deeply rooted in the '60s and '70s without ever seeming antiquated.
The first songs, with their style somewhat stuck in British song tradition, fail to fully win over the audience. Anyone unfamiliar with the 34-year-old artist from Southend-on-Sea in East Anglia will indeed be somewhat lost in this blend of ballads, classic, and progressive rock, which incorporates nuances of 1960s British songwriting.  
And then comes "Donovan Ellington," a multi-part piece that perfectly reflects Cunningham's penchant for intricate compositions and narrative song structures. Here, she effortlessly combines orchestral elements with heavy guitar riffs, jazzy rhythms, and an underlying folk marbling, making the song seem like a mini-opus, vaguely reminiscent of Jethro Tull at times, and vocally also of Chrissie Hynde. The second part, "Donny Pt. Two," takes up the themes of the first but changes the tone, leading the audience through a dark, almost threatening soundscape featuring hypnotic bass lines and reverbed guitar chords. By "Return Of The Ellington," the ice between the band and the audience is finally broken. The song comes across as rockier and overall more straightforward. There is tremendous applause.
The crowd favorite, however, was "Duet," a diverse, nearly ten-minute number full of musical references, including to the Beatles, Blondie, and Jefferson Starship. In the instrumental section, all the band members demonstrate what great musicians they are. This dynamic, with its sparing, well-measured use of bass, drums, and guitars, is exactly what many bands struggle with—but not Rosalie Cunningham, who, at 34, can already draw on an incredible wealth of experience.
Her singing is as diverse as her compositions: sometimes sweet and seductive, then wild and untamed. Her voice is reminiscent of the charming excess of Grace Slick, Siouxsie Sioux, Kate Bush, and Sandy Denny. When asked about her musical role models after the concert, she simply laughed and replied, "Oh, it would take hours to list them all."
In fact, Rosalie Cunningham's style strongly reminds me of Stackridge 's blend of folk, pop, and progressive . At some point, I also think of David Bowie, whose chameleon-like ability to blend genres and constantly redefine them. Perhaps it's this ease with which she switches between styles, sometimes glam rock, sometimes prog, sometimes psychedelic.
Cunningham has a strong charisma and masters the art of sounding both seductive and mystical, while at times being explosive and unashamedly raw. The psychedelic aesthetic of the 1960s, which so strongly influenced her possibly great role model Slick, can also be found in Cunningham's music, be it in the dreamy melodies or the spiritual, often surreal lyrics. These Donovan Ellington songs, in any case, sometimes leave you perplexed when listening. She laughs when I tell her this after the concert. You have to see the character as a metaphor, she says. Her lyrics are often cryptic, yet have a literary quality. This was particularly evident in "Riddles And Games" and "Tristitia Amnesia," in which she dealt with philosophical themes such as identity, transience, and the distorted perception of reality. Her words have a fairytale quality that draws listeners into a world that is as surreal as it is profound.
I have the impression that Syd Barrett, the eccentric founder of Pink Floyd, could also be an influence that shouldn't be underestimated. Cunningham's music, especially in songs like "Rabbit Foot" and "Riddles and Games," carries the fascination with the absurd and the mysterious that pervaded Barrett's work. She has adopted Barrett's mix of psychedelia and surreal lyricism and made it one of her trademarks, challenging the listener with complex and often cryptic lyrics. "Riddles and Games" begins musically with a touch of Slade and remains almost entirely in the realm of classic rock.
Musically and technically, there are clear parallels to progressive greats like King Crimson and Jethro Tull. The complex song structures and distinctive instrumentation that characterize Cunningham's work are reminiscent of the experimental nature of these bands. Like Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, Cunningham utilizes various styles and instruments to give her songs a deeper dimension. The experimental spirit of King Crimson, evident in unconventional song structures and avant-garde elements, also flows into her work, especially in multi-part works like "Donovan Ellington."
Rosalie Cunningham masterfully captures the essence of her musical role models and transforms them in a way that is entirely unique. Her art pays homage to the pioneers of the rock and progressive music scene, yet she never remains stuck in nostalgia. Instead, she brings the legacy of her influences into the present by blending them with her own personal, distinctive style. This makes her an exceptional musician who knows how to combine tradition and innovation in a harmonious symbiosis.
Musically, Cunningham walks a fine line between rock, psychedelic, and progressive rock. Her songs flirt with classical influences, yet are imbued with a modern, idiosyncratic twist. "Chocolate Money," which closed the evening, summed this up perfectly: a playful piece that, on the one hand, is influenced by early 1970s glam rock, yet, at the same time, feels modern and biting thanks to its sophisticated arrangements and ironic lyrics. A truly powerful performance.  From: https://jazzandrock.com/starker-auftritt-von-rosalie-cunningham-mit-band-beim-crossroads-festival-in-der-harmonie-bonn/

 

Vanishing Twin - Magician's Success

Vanishing Twin’s debut album, 2016’s Choose Your Own Adventure, featured the British band’s integration of psychedelic pop à la Broadcast’s first three albums and the instrumental/textural sophistications of mid-career Stereolab, with the majority of tracks occurring as ambitious, albeit frequently imitative, reconfigurations. Their second full-length release, last year’s The Age of Immunology, affirms the band’s ties to the above-mentioned artists as well as the sub-genre of ambient pop—though with significant departures from inherited stylistics. With this project, the band displays a more consummate skill for crafting melodic hooks. Protracted instrumental segments hold the listener’s attention more consistently, the quintet navigating complex rhythms and innovative progressions. In addition, the band references and re-contextualizes 50-plus years of electro-ambience, from the primitive sounds of Kraftwerk to the refined vistas of Suso Sáiz.
“Magician’s Success” contains the project’s most mainstream melody and composition, reminiscent of Camera Obscura’s brand of indie pop, particularly various tracks from Let’s Get Out of This Country (2006) and My Maudlin Career (2009). On one of the album’s more intriguing lyrics, Lucas sings, “The noise of hope / is like a racket in my heart,” her underscoring of the notion that hope is often desire well-masked, simply “attachment” packaged in a less offensive form. These lyrics can’t help but nudge a listener to consider the role of hope in their own life, to ask: what is life without hope? How, without the balm of hope, do we successfully navigate our world, its pressing issues and unique crises? Does the release of hope facilitate a greater level of acceptance and, thereby, open new possibilities for action that may not have been previously entertained?  From: https://brooklynrail.org/2020/03/music/The-Best-Band-You-Never-Heard-Of-Vanishing-Twins-Global-Aesthetic/ 

Sopor Aeternus - A Strange Thing to Say

Could you talk about your relation with Poe’s work? Is he the poet that left the most powerful mark on you? I feel that your entire work is touched by the shadow of Poe, and that Poe’s poetry is a way for you to tell the depths of your soul…

Anna-Varney Cantodea: It's funny that you ask - well, maybe not funny, but interesting - because only a few days ago I was reminded of my very first encounter with the works of Poe. It was in third or fourth grade, so I must have been either eight or nine, and we were reading "The tell-tale Heart", in a German translation, of course, or maybe it was read to us, I cannot quite remember, I don't even know if we were actually told the name of the author... well, we probably were, but, if so, that information obviously went straight into one ear and out of the other, because even back then I had no interest in people. However, I only mention this, because, even though I didn't care who the author was, the story itself, or rather, the images that it created in my head left a deep impression on me. I was strangely attracted to the story - I felt there was an enormous power behind it - but, since I was so young, I didn't really understand the connection. I didn't know, why I felt the way I felt. The images, however, that were conjured up that day, they never left me. I still remember them.
So, flash forward a few years... at the age of twelve, when my depression started to become heavier, and I thought of suicide as an option for the first time... I gradually drew the cloak of darkness around me, if you wish, and slowly descended down into the world of shadows, and in the course of that I tried to find solace in the world of classical phantastic literature. You cannot imagine my relief, that sense of destiny, if you wish, when I discovered that someone, I had already encountered, had actually been waiting for me there all the time.

Would Poe be the perfect reflection of your soul?

AVC: You know, this may be an embarrassing thing to admit, but... honestly... you have no idea how right you are. When I began to work on Poetica, I approached the poems from the outside, if you know what I mean. I met them like old friends or acquaintances, ghosts, I had already encountered in the past but when the album was completed and that's actually the embarrassing part... I had completely forgotten that those words had originally been written by a different person. I felt like they were my own, as I had made them my own. In fact, they felt more like Sopor than Sopor did, if that makes any sense to you. I didn't just adapt them to music - I adapted them to 
myself

There is a sound, a sort of funeral whistling, that comes often in your music, especially since "Children of the Corn" (for instance on "Dreamland" or the wonderful "The Haunted Palace")… it makes me think of old horror movies. Are those movies getting a growing influence in your work?

AVC: Umm... I know what you mean. That's the old theremin. The sound is almost synonymous with old black & white science-fiction and horror movies, yes... it's the sort of instrument you literally expect to hear when you think of these films, and I cannot deny that I am actually very fond of it. I have always been. It just suits me perfectly. Aside from the eerie atmosphere it creates, it's also a lovely bridge between the coldness of the synthesizer and the warmth of the violins. It combines, it balances the extremes, and that's what I am all about.

Do you like the movie "The Oblong Box" with Vincent Price and Christopher Lee? That’s the only Poe story that you interpret and which is not a poem but a short story…
 
AVC:To be honest, I cannot remember it. I know that I have watched it, but it obviously didn't leave any impression on me. Otherwise I would remember it. Unlike Roger Corman's adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher, also with a divine Vincent Price... in dark velvet and bleached hair... and generally divine and beautiful... and breath-taking. In fact, I would go so far as to say that this is my favourite Poe adaptation. That one definitely has left a lasting impression on me... until this very day.

Was it hard to choose the poems that you would put to music?
 
AVC: No, and yes and No. Where shall I begin? Hmm, OK... when you listen to "Harvest Moon", which is the last track on Children of the Corn, you can hear that there is a distinct Dead Lovers’ Sarabande vibe in the string section. Well, maybe you cannot hear it, because it's rather short, and there is a lot of other stuff going on, but it IS there... take my word for it. Or, actually, I can play it for you. Wait a second... [plays fabulous music] so, this is the kind of mood I was in when the album closed. When I finished it.
After I had finished Children of the Corn I had this feeling that I really needed to go and clean up my house... as in to revisit old recordings that I had never been happy with, those that still carried an importance, that were still relevant to me, those I still felt a connection with. And, naturally, the first thing that came to mind were the Poe adaptations. Most of all "Alone", from that unlistenable piece of shit Spiral Traveller album. God, I hate that thing, but that's public knowledge.  I'm allowed to say that. I did it.
You see, my initial idea was to do a mere 12" single with "The Sleeper" on side one, maybe, and "Alone" and "Dreamland" on the other. But then suddenly "Alone" had a twin brother, and on top of that my label suggested that I should do at least a 7 track mini-album instead of just a 12" single, so... pfff...  I thought 'what the hell', and re-did all of my Poe tracks.
When you are still in the early stages of an album, things tend to be vague, and you're not always sure, in what direction the albums wants to go. You're not quite certain of its purpose. But as you work on it, things always become clearer, gradually... and so, after a while, I realised that Poetica in fact wanted to be an album, and for this I needed more material. So, initially, on a conscious level, that was the only reason why I was looking for further poems to put to music, but, naturally, I couldn't just pick anything at random. There had to be a connection.
"A Dream within a Dream", of course, was an obvious choice, and the only other two poems I could think of doing were "The Haunted Palace" and "The City in the Sea". The funny thing about "The City in the Sea" was, that I had never really read it before. I mean, yes... I had read it once or twice, but only cursory, and as a consequence, I had never really understood it. Also because, in my memory, it had blended together with Jacques Tourneur's film "The City under the Sea" - also with Vincent Price - which, I guess, is why I always believed that poem describes some sort of ghostly submarine habitat. What a joke.
With "The Haunted Palace" it was similar. Even though it is actually part of my all time favourite Poe story - the masterpiece which is The Fall of the House of Usher - I was never really aware of it. Again, yes, I had read it a few times on it own, but, because of my careless reading, I actually believed that the poem was about a haunted building. I mean, how ridiculous is that?!  Can you believe it?! However, when the album was finished, "The Haunted Palace" turned out to be the one songs that actually makes me shiver - it still does - and when I listen to the album in one sitting, the very moment this song ends and the first notes of the last song begin, I start to cry. Every time. When I began working on Poetica, the poems and I were merely like friends or acquaintances, but when it was finished... we had become one.

From: https://www.soporaeternus.de/Interview_OBSKURE.html

The Jayhawks - Take Me With You When You Go

After two albums released on independent labels, The Jayhawks finally got major label backing when they signed with Rick Rubin’s Def American (now known simply as American Recordings, the label that oversaw Johnny Cash’s late-career renaissance), which was distributed by Warner Music Group. In one of the great music industry stories, the president of Twin/Tone Records (which released their sophomore album, Blue Earth) was on a phone call with Def American A&R man George Drakoulias in 1991. With Blue Earth playing in the background, Drakoulias inquired about the music he was hearing and was so enamored with their sound that he signed them later that year, also becoming their producer. The first fruit of this collaboration was Hollywood Town Hall (1992), which is where I initially discovered The Jayhawks. I loved it from the first time I heard it, and more than two decades later I get just as excited every time I play it. The core band of Olson, Louris and bassist Marc Perlman was joined by new drummer Ken Callahan, who was credited as a band member but apparently only played on two songs, while session pro Charlie Drayton handled drumming duties on the rest of the album. Other notable guests were keyboardists Benmont Tench (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers) and Nicky Hopkins (Rolling Stones), who helped fill in their sound without overpowering it.  From: https://kamertunesblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/09/the-jayhawks-part-2-two-hearts-and-two-angels/ 

Orgone - Don't Push Your Luck

Los Angeles based band Orgone is many souls with a cosmic connection, a natural creative force and musicians who have played together for years. They are self schooled and continue to shape their musical voice as a solid unit of guys who hang, spin records and jam out their shared inspirations. With a rooted sense of funk, soul, afrobeat, deep rhythms and an intimate understanding of dj culture as well as each others' individual talents, Orgone seamlessly slides through multiple styles and dynamic performances. The group continuously injects whatever they play with a heavy brand of raw funk power.
At the core of the band is a rhythm section comprised of close friends who have played together for more than 10 years. Having grown artistically as a unit they function as one organic and intuitive whole. The orginal 5-member band started out by putting their own gritty takes on tunes by the likes of the JBs, the Meters, Booker T. and the MGs, Grant Green and Funkadelic among many others. They quickly gained underground respect and die hard fans. With their searing live sets and original instrumentals, Orgone soon released their debut self titled CD, "Orgone," in 2002. The result was a collection of all original down home, transcendental, tough and gritty funk instrumentals.
The band fast grew to include a powerful three-piece horn section and a fiery soul singer who all shared the same spirit and deep reverence for the music that inspired them. Singer, Fanny Franklin, joined the groups’ recordings after they were floored seeing her perform with Dakah, the 30-piece hip hop orchestra, and asked her to record with them.
Gaining worldwide recognition for their raw studio recordings and exciting live sets led to the release of "The Killion Floor" on Ubiquity records- a full length album of hard hitting afro-soul & funk from the 9 piece band. While enjoying comparisons to classic acts like Rufus, War & Mandrill, or modern funk staples like Sharon Jones or Breakestra, they’re quick to point out that Orgone is unique.
“We draw from a wide musical and production palette … it’s a reflection of the music and production aesthetics that we love.” Orgone backs this up by taking the listener on a musical journey from the sound of Los Angeles to horn and percussion driven Lagos to a New York club and to the raw sounds of New Orleans. The title of the album "The Killion Floor" is derived from the Orgone apartment/studio facility where the majority of the album was recorded.  From: https://www.playradio.one/artists/orgone-1717  

The Beatles - Dear Prudence

Over the end of the Esher demo of “Dear Prudence,” John Lennon can be heard explaining the origin of the song: “No one was to know that sooner or later she was to go completely berserk under the care of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. All the people around her were very worried about the girl because she was going insane. So we sang to her.” The girl in question was Prudence Farrow, the 19-year-old sister of American actress Mia Farrow. During the stay, Prudence had locked herself away in her hut at the ashram in Rishikesh, India, where she and her sister were studying Transcendental Meditation alongside The Beatles, Donovan, The Beach Boys’ Mike Love, and others. She was meditating far longer than anybody else, and the others were beginning to worry about her state of mind.
“Prudence Farrow got an attack of the horrors, paranoia, what you’d call these days an identity crisis, and wouldn’t come out,” Paul McCartney recalled. “We all got a bit worried about her so we went up there and knocked. ‘Hi, Prudence, we all love you. You’re wonderful!’ But nobody could persuade her out. So John wrote ‘Dear Prudence, won’t you come out and play…’”
John told Playboy magazine, “Mia Farrow’s sister, who seemed to go slightly balmy, meditating too long, wouldn’t come out of the little hut we were living in. They selected me and George to try and bring her out because she would trust us. She went completely mental. If she’d been in the West they would have put her away. We got her out of the house. She’d been locked in for three weeks and wouldn’t come out, trying to reach God quicker than anybody else.”
For “Dear Prudence,” John deployed a fingerpicking style he’d learned in India under instruction from Donovan, a skilled folk musician who had studied under the likes of Bert Jansch and Davey Graham. Donovan recalled that John was a diligent student: “It’s a difficult style that requires perseverance. When John had it down he was so pleased to find a whole new way of songwriting emerge. That’s what happens to a natural songwriter when you get a new set of performing skills. He immediately wrote ‘Dear Prudence’ and ‘Julia’.”  From: https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/dear-prudence-story-behind-song-beatles/

Health - Crack Metal

Health started life in 2005, but it may as well have been centuries ago. At the time, the then-four-piece were a traditionally untraditional noise-rock band that made scabrous, abrasive songs that sounded, as vocalist and guitarist Jake Duzsik once described, “like the rock band playing in the shitty club in the movie that was made in the ’90s about the future”. Which is to say that Health have always been both behind and ahead of the times, evolving their sound and process significantly over the years. Not only did they release counterpart remix versions of their albums with the subtitle of Disco, they also began incorporating more electronics into the mix. That started in earnest when they scored the atmospheric soundtrack to the 2012 video game Max Payne 3, which then bled – profusely – into 2015’s third record, Death Magic and 2019’s fourth, Vol. 4: Slaves Of Fear.
“When we did the Max Payne score,” remembers Jake, “we had to generate so much goddamn music that it just forced us to expand our musical palette that, in the process, there’s just an inevitable discovery that points you in other directions for where you want to take your own songs.” That essentially brought the band to where they are today. With Disco 4 Part II, however, the world has – sadly, worryingly, depressingly – pretty much become that previously only-imagined retro-future.
“Since our inception, we’ve always thought of ourselves as like a future primitive soundscape,” Jake says, “like Alien or Terminator after Skynet. It’s like there’s crazy technology. It doesn’t sound anachronistic, but it’s a shitty future. Everything is covered in grime. Everything has gone wrong, but we have made incredible technological advances and maybe one of the things we’ve gotten lucky with, unfortunately, is that now it seems we are arriving at that moment anyway. So the band seems prescient or more fitting or something, I don’t know. Even when we first started, we always thought we were making music for a post-Skynet landscape. That’s what it should sound like. That’s what it feels like. It feels like technology, but technology that’s breaking down, and that just seems to be where the world is at right now.”  From: https://www.kerrang.com/health-interview-disco-part-ii-jake-duzsik-john-famiglietti-bj-miller-cover-story

 

Joe Jackson - Real Men

Joe Jackson was one of MTV’s greatest cynics. He hated music videos. After being forced by his record company to make what he considered a “crappy” video for his song “Breaking Us in Two,” he refused to make any more videos and condemned music videos in the press. Years later, he reflected, “I mean, I’m not such a miserable bastard that I won’t admit that some videos are great fun. But I believed [in 1983] that MTV was beginning to have a negative effect on music.” He added, “I’m well aware that refusing to make videos accomplished nothing whatsoever except—how should I put this?—to make my next record less successful. It damaged my career and it never fully recovered.”
Jackson achieved his initial MTV popularity with three memorable, poignant videos promoting his 1982 Night and Day album. These were elaborate, high-budget (for the time) videos with nuanced storyline and lush photography, filmed on cinematic 35 mm rather than cheap videotape. “Stepping Out” in particular is an essential golden-age video, rich in splendor and luxurious imagery evoking upper-class urban sophistication, yet gazed at from a decidedly working class (hence relatable) perspective. It depicts a maid cleaning up an elegant penthouse apartment. She sees a glamorous dress lying on a bed, picks it up, and fantasizes about wearing it and being part of New York’s elite nightlife. The wealthy residents’ return disrupts her reverie and she politely excuses herself. It’s delightfully voyeuristic and simple. It fits the mood of the song perfectly. It’s a superb video. “Breaking Us in Two” is really not that bad. It is mawkish and sentimental, but has some beautiful cinematography.
I have no memory of seeing the third video from Night and Day, “Real Men,” on MTV. Maybe I did, once or twice, but I have no specific memory of it, unlike his other videos. “Real Men” is the most elaborate of the three videos, very cinematic in its style and execution. “Real Men” depicts a young man struggling with sexual and gender confusion. The video references gay people, issues, and culture in a sympathetic, artful manner. It provides a stinging critique of American masculinity and an insightful meditation on unspoken cultural assumptions about gender in our society. It’s also gut wrenching to watch, almost too intense for MTV.  From: https://videoclosetblog.wordpress.com/joe-jackson-real-men/ 

Dead Can Dance - Act II - The Mountain

Today, it’s the resurgence of Dead Can Dance, who has just released it’s latest album Dionysus, which is the duo’s first album in six years and consists of two acts across seven movements that represent the different facets of the Dionysus myth. “The Mountain” is the first movement of the album’s second act, where, explains Perry, “listeners will find themselves visiting Mount Nysa. This mountain was Dyonysus’ place of birth, where he was raised by the centaur Chiron, from whom he learned chants and dances together with Bacchic rites and initiations.”
Formed in Melbourne in 1981 by Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, the style of Dead Can Dance over eight previous studio albums can be described as compelling soundscapes of mesmerizing grandeur and solemn beauty that has incorporated African polyrhythms, Gaelic folk, Gregorian chant, Middle Eastern mantras, and art rock.  From: https://ghettoblastermagazine.com/uncategorized/dead-can-dance-share-new-video-act-ii-mountain/

The amazing musical project Dead Can Dance--Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry formed it in 1980--have just released their first new album in twelve years. Called "Dionysus," it is structured like a classical piece. A suite of seven movements in two acts each portray an aspect of the cult of this ancient Greek god of wine and pleasure.
The album sprang from two different inspirations. Perry had a transcendent experience twenty years ago in which he and his brother traveled to Spain and found themselves visiting during a festival called Rompida de la Hora in which thousands of drummers play for 16 hours, through the night. And being musicians and students of ethnomusicology, they grabbed some drums and joined in, overcome with a kind of Dionysian frenzy. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Perry said, "You just get into a trance after a few hours of playing and you wander around the streets and you meet other drum groups and realize there’s thousands of them playing throughout these little towns, and they’re covered in blood. Our hands split open. We didn’t feel anything. We were completely oblivious to the pain."
Then about two years ago while researching Greek music, Perry fell down a rabbit hole after reading Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth Of Tragedy: Out Of The Spirit Of Music which explores two schools of cultural thinking: Apollonian and Dionysian. In a simplified explanation, the former is about order, control, and logic while the latter is about freedom, chaos, and emotions. But much like our left-brain/right-brain minds, both are needed to create something. Perry responded to this idea and thus "Dionysus" was born.
He wanted to create a piece of music without creating "songs" so the structure assembled itself almost as chapters in an epic myth. And this Dead Can Dance "Dionysus" is indeed epic. Using world instruments such as the zourna from Turkey, the Bulgarian gadulka, the Ancient Greek bowed psaltery, and the gaida (a bagpipe from the Balkans and Southeastern Europe) blended with field recordings of ambient sounds such as Mexican singing birds and goatherds in remote mountain areas of Switzerland, the results are sweeping and cinematic.
Rolling Stone reports on the very special vocals of Perry and Gerrard: To craft the language of Dionysus, he used a computer plug-in of choral libraries that has an engine called a "Syllabuilder." "It’s basically a directory of sung syllables, which you can then put together into phrases and sentences from a directory," he explains. "You can invent your own words and phrases, and then you can play them polyphonically. You can have a whole group singing the same phrase in different harmonies. So I made a combination of that with Lisa’s and my voices to create the ensemble effect."
"I have no idea what language is on the album," Gerrard says. "I think the album is very much about Brendan unlocking his own language. He’s always been a genius and a remarkable composer, but I think that in this album he is coming to something very innocent and brave."  From: https://ohbythewayblog.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-mountain-by-dead-can-dance.html

New Grass Revival - Austin City Limits 1987 / Live in Japan 1984

 New Grass Revival - Austin City Limits 1987

 

New Grass Revival - Live in Japan 1984 - Part 1

 

 New Grass Revival - Live in Japan 1984 - Part 2

 

New Grass Revival, affectionately known to many of their fans as NGR, was a band that formed in 1971 and gave rise to a musical movement known as newgrass. The accent was on taking the older forms of bluegrass and reinterpreting them with a contemporary/progressive sensibility. The group took its cues as much, or more, from rock music as it did from Bill Monroe. Visually, with long hair, beards, and no discernible dress code, they were a sharp contrast to the staid, more traditional bluegrass groups of the day. In a career than spanned nearly twenty years, NGR toured the world, gained a legion of fans, and charted new directions for bluegrass.
New Grass Revival was an offshoot of a Louisville, Kentucky-based group known as the Bluegrass Alliance, whose first version included Dan Crary, Danny Jones, Harry Shelor Jr. (aka Ebo Walker), and Buddy Spurlock. By 1971 band members were Shelor, 19-year old mandolin and fiddle prodigy Sam Bush, Courtney Johnson, and Curtis Burch. Fiddle player Lonnie Peerce was the acknowledged leader of the group. In 1971 Peerce parted ways with the band and took the name with him. Those left behind formed a new group which they called New Grass Revival. Sam Bush explained that the name was coined to convey the band’s intent to build upon bluegrass innovations of groups like the Country Gentlemen, the Osborne Brothers, and the Dillards.
New Grass Revival began to appear regularly on festival stages, notably Carlton Haney’s and Jim Clark’s, where they were an instant hit with younger audiences. In August of 1972 and again in July 1973, they were hired by Bill Monroe’s brother Birch to play at Bill’s Brown County Jamboree Park in Bean Blossom, Indiana, despite Bill’s opposition to their bluegrass/rock fusion.
The group’s self-titled first album was released in early 1973 on the Starday label. Due to the progressive nature of the music, at least one venerable bluegrass mail order outlet refused to review it. But Bill Vernon of Muleskinner News praised the versatility and proficiency of the band, noting that “Sam Bush could ‘jam,’ on mandolin and fiddle, as he does on the seven-minute ‘Lonesome Fiddle Blues,’ for several hours without ever repeating a ‘lick.’”
Bass player Ebo Walker bowed out in 1973 and was replaced by Butch Robins, a Virginia-born musician usually noted for his banjo work. Robins’ stay with the group was brief and the group recruited electric bass guitarist John Cowan to take his place. Cowan didn’t have a bluegrass background and his early indoctrination came from other New Grass Revival members. In short order, Cowan’s vocals became a real asset to the group. Courtney Johnson noted that “John brought a whole new vocal scene to the band. It was weak up until that point, but now the band had a good strong lead singer.” Also impressive were his soaring tenor vocals.
New Grass Revival signed with the independent label Flying Fish and released their first album with them in 1976. Fly Through the Country featured the new line-up, but rank and file bluegrassers still weren’t sold. Bluegrass Unlimited reviewer Dick Spottswood acknowledged that the album was “well produced and the musicianship is fine” but expressed his own bias against the “attempt at integrating pop-rock with bluegrass.”
Throughout the middle and late 1970s, the group played concert clubs and outdoor festivals throughout the nation. They released a string of albums for Flying Fish that included Too Late to Turn Back Now (1977), When the Storm is Over (1977), and Barren County (1979). If their 1978 season was any indication, they were a busy band, logging forty-two weeks of work.
For two years, starting in 1979, the New Grass Revival toured with rocker Leon Russell. Sam Bush looked on the association favorably, noting that they learned valuable lessons in how to relate to their audiences. In 1980, while performing at Perkins Palace in Pasadena, California, New Grass Revival participated in the making of The Live Album with Russell. An overseas tour with Russell included performance dates in Australia and New Zealand.
The group’s final album for Flying Fish came out in 1982. Entitled Commonwealth, it was also the last album to feature the long-time line-up with Curtis Burch and Courtney Johnson. The two were replaced by guitarist/vocalist Pat Flynn and banjoist Béla Fleck. A later newspaper clipping said of this new foursome that “using bluegrass instruments, they play a combination of rock, jazz, country, reggae and bluegrass. Bush plays fiddle and mandolin, the percussive trademark of the group. John Cowan plays bass and sings in a rhythm-and-blues style. Pat Flynn flat picks guitar with a fluid drive and Béla Fleck has turned the banjo into a bona fide jazz instrument.”  From: https://www.bluegrasshall.org/inductees/new-grass-revival/

 

The Youngbloods - S/T - Full album

01 - Grizzly Bear
02 - All Over The World (La-La)
03 - Statesboro Blues
04 - Get Together
05 - One Note Man
06 - The Other Side of This Life
07 - Tears Are Falling
08 - Four in the Morning
09 - Foolin' Around (The Waltz)
10 - Ain't That Lovin' You, Baby
11 - C.C. Rider

By 1965, bassist and vocalist Jesse Colin Young was twenty-four and had already enjoyed a degree of success as a folk singer. He had already released two albums The Soul Of A City Boy in 1964, and Young Blood in 1965. However, Jesse Colin Young’s solo career was in the past. 
Things changed when Jesse met twenty-two year old guitarist Jerry Corbitt, a former bluegrass musician. The pair decided to form a band, which they named the Youngbloods. Initially, the Youngbloods was a duo, with Jesse Colin Young playing bass and Jerry Corbitt switching between piano, harmonica and lead guitar. This initial lineup of The Youngbloods made their debut on the Canadian circuit. However, before long, Jerry Corbitt introduced Jesse Colin Young to Banana.
This was none other than Lowell Levinger, a bluegrass musicians who was born Lowell Levinger III. However, the nineteen year old multi-instrumentalist was known within the music community as Banana. Jerry Corbitt thought that Banana could flesh out The Youngbloods’ sound. Especially since Banana could play banjo, bass, guitar, mandola, mandolin and piano. Once Jesse Colin Young met Banana, he became the third and final member of the band. 
After that, things happened quickly for the Youngbloods. Having made their live debut at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village, within a short time The Youngbloods were the house band at the prestigious Cafe au Go Go. By then, the Youngbloods had already signed their first recording contract.
Having signed to RCA Records, the Youngbloods discovered that the record label were unsure how to market the band. At one point, RCA Records tried to market The Youngbloods as a bubblegum pop act. However, in 1966, the Youngbloods released their debut single, Rider, which failed to chart. The followup was Grizzly Bear, which reached fifty-two in the US Billboard 100. Both of these singles featured on the Youngbloods’ eponymous debut album.
Work began on the Youngbloods’ eponymous debut at RCA Victor’s Studio B in New York in late 1966. This was the start of a new chapter in their career. By then, founder member Jesse Colin Young was regarded as the focal point of the band. He was the band’s lead singer, and later, would become the band’s songwriter-in-chief. 
For The Youngbloods album, Jesse Colin Young only penned two songs; Tears Are Falling and Foolin’ Around (The Waltz). Jerry Corbitt contributed just the one song, All Over The World. The remainder of the songs were covers of old blues and folk songs. This included Blind Willie McTell’s Statesboro Blues, Jimmy Reed’s Ain’t That Lovin’ You Baby, Mississippi John Hurt’s C.C. Rider, Fred Neil’s The Other Side of This Life and Chet Powers’ Get Together. These songs were recorded at RCA Victor’s Studio B, with producer Felix Pappalardi.
Once the album was recorded, The Youngbloods was scheduled for release in January 1967. When critics heard The Youngbloods, they lavished praise and plaudits on what was primarily an album of folk rock, with excursions into blues and pop. Ballads and rockers sat cheek by jowl on the album, which allowed the band to showcase their talent and versatility. Critics forecasted a bright future for the Youngbloods.  From: https://dereksmusicblog.com/2019/03/16/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-youngbloods/

Snowgoose - The Making Of You

Scottish indie mainstays Snowgoose are known for their emotional warmth, their songs representing an exploration of folky, 60s-style nostalgia with a little psychedelia along the way. New album ‘The Making Of You’, their second full-length, has drawn them the vibrant backing of novelist Ian Rankin, who’s a huge fan, and also saw the band backed – more literally, on several tracks – by much of the Scottish indie community.
The duo’s core – although there are many others regularly on stage – are former Soup Dragons guitarist Jim McCulloch and vocalist Anna Sheard, though members of Scottish indie royalty Belle and Sebastian and Teenage Fanclub are amongst those that appear on the new record alongside the songwriting pair.
“There’s a mutual respect in the music community that’s built around trust and integrity,” McCulloch says of the depth of collaboration. “Then all it takes is a phone call or email to see if and when someone is available to record. I’m not saying that it works for everyone and every time, but if your pals are the best at what they do then why the hell not ask them?”
Unlike their debut record, vocalist Sheard is heavily involved in the writing of this record, and that has contributed to the way it’s performed, and indeed its very feel, alongside all those big names. “In much of the new material, Anna isn’t having to sing words where she is second-guessing motivation or whatever,” McCulloch says of the change. “There is a much deeper connectivity with the material there, and she is much less the auteur or interpreter and more the artist… I feel this is a much more satisfying approach, both as a musician and writer.”
“From my perspective,” Sheard adds “‘The Making of You’ feels a cohesive progression toward the subtly sinister, where the recognizably hopeful spirit of Snowgoose shines amongst the eeriness. For me personally, it has been a very transformational time between records, both in becoming a mother and returning to my roots in Somerset. These experiences have been hugely grounding and inspirational, allowing me to find my confidence as a songwriter with greater focus and less fear.”  From: https://www.hendicottwriting.com/2020/08/snowgoose-the-making-of-you-feels-a-cohesive-progression-towards-the-subtly-sinister/ 

Plainsong - Call The Tune

Plainsong was originally a British country rock/folk rock band, formed in early 1972 by Iain Matthews, formerly of Fairport Convention and Matthews Southern Comfort, and Andy Roberts, previously a member of The Liverpool Scene and Everyone. Plainsong's line-up consisted of Matthews, Roberts, piano and bass player David Richards who had played with Roberts in the band Everyone, and American guitarist and bass player Bobby Ronga, who Matthews and Roberts had first met in the summer of 1971 when they toured the US and Canada as an acoustic trio with former Fairport guitarist Richard Thompson. 
Managed by record producer Sandy Roberton, Plainsong released just one album during their original existence, In Search of Amelia Earhart in October 1972, before splitting up at the end of December that year in somewhat acrimonious circumstances. A second studio album Now We Are 3 was recorded before the split but remained unreleased until 2005. 
Matthews and Roberts have revived Plainsong several times since the early 1990s, firstly as a quartet in 1992 with two new band members: Mark Griffiths, Matthews' former colleague in Matthews Southern Comfort, and British singer-songwriter Julian Dawson, recording a new album Dark Side Of The Room in 1992 and then going out on tour in August 1993 for the first time in 20 years. Two more albums followed - Voices Electric in 1994 and Sister Flute in 1996 - before Clive Gregson replaced Dawson in the band in 1996, touring Europe in 1997 and recording another new album New Place Now in 1999. Dawson rejoined Plainsong in 2003 for their next album Pangolins. 
Ian (later Iain) Matthews had been a member of Fairport Convention between 1967 and 1969, sharing vocals on the band's first two albums, the self-titled Fairport Convention and What We Did On Our Holidays, singing with Judy Dyble initially and then later Sandy Denny. By the time of the recording of band's third album Unhalfbricking, Fairport, under Denny's influence, had largely abandoned their original American singer-songwriter material and were moving towards what would become known as English folk rock. The genre was somewhat alien to Matthews' tastes at the time, leading to a discontent within Fairport that saw him essentially fired from the band after a meeting with producer Joe Boyd in February 1969.
He then left to work solo, soon afterwards forming his own band, Matthews Southern Comfort whose greatest success was topping the UK Singles Chart with their version of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" in late October 1970. After that band split up, he recorded two solo albums in 1971 for the Vertigo label, If You Saw Thro' My Eyes and Tigers Will Survive, on both of which Andy Roberts had played guitar. 
The beginnings of Plainsong stemmed from Iain Matthews' tour of the US in the summer of 1971 to promote his If You Saw Thro' My Eyes album released at the beginning of May that year. Matthews visited the US in June 1971 to meet with record industry contacts and to promote the album through a series of press conferences for Mercury Records, the distributor of the Vertigo label in America. That trip took in several US cities and laid the groundwork for a return at the end of July as an acoustic trio - joining him on the tour were Andy Roberts and his former colleague Richard Thompson, who by that time had recently left Fairport Convention. The tour would see them play residencies at The Bitter End in New York, the Poison Apple in Detroit and the legendary Troubador nightclub in Los Angeles. Their driver for the tour was New Yorker Bobby Ronga, who also happened to play bass and piano. Ronga was invited by Matthews to join them on bass during their mid-August Bitter End residency, where they were booked as the support act to the singer Dion (DiMucci), who at that time was reinventing himself as a folk singer some ten years after coming to fame with chart hits such as "Runaround Sue" and "Teenager In Love". 
Following that tour, Andy Roberts was booked as the support act on an upcoming Steeleye Span tour and needed a bass player. His Everyone bandmate David Richards was his immediate choice but was unavailable as he was already out on tour with Sandy Denny. Roberts had liked Bobby Ronga's bass playing style on that summer tour and invited him to fill the vacant slot. Ronga duly moved to the UK for the tour, and also ended up playing piano alongside Roberts’ guitar work on the recording sessions for Matthews' second Vertigo album Tigers Will Survive. 
Throughout that period, Matthews and Roberts frequently discussed the idea of playing together on a more formal basis. It came to fruition in late December 1971 after a meeting at Matthews' Highgate flat, where with Richards and Ronga they tried out the Tandyn Almer song "Along Comes Mary" and agreed that if it worked satisfactorily they would go ahead and form a band. The band's name was picked on a whim when later that evening they randomly opened a copy of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music to find Plainsong at pages 450-451.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plainsong_(band)

Offa Rex - Sheepcrook and Black Dog

As band-building chat-up lines go, “We’ll be your Albion Dance Band” is certainly niche. Still, it worked when US indie-rockers the Decemberists approached Olivia Chaney to form Offa Rex. They were long-term lovers of folk-rock; Chaney was a well-known collaborator but relative newcomer (her 2015 debut album, The Longest River, nevertheless gained her support slots with Robert Plant and Shirley Collins).
She has a magical voice, full of heft, soul and sunlight, reminiscent of Sandy Denny and Maddy Prior, while feeling refreshingly heartfelt and true. Add Colin Meloy’s brilliant band, and this collection of traditional songs sounds stirringly new. Take the well-known Willie O’Winsbury, or The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face: guitars, harmonium drones and Chaney’s control lift them to different places. Surprises lurk too. Lal Waterson’s To Make You Stay becomes an iridescent, piano-drizzled duet, while Sheepcrook (the Steeleye Span staple) gains brilliantly filthy, Black Sabbath rock edges. Everything works, though, loudly and proudly.  From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jul/13/offa-rex-queen-of-hearts-review-folk-rock-thats-full-of-heart-soul-and-sunlight

JEFFREY BROWN:

At this summer's Newport Folk Festival, an early English ballad called "The Queen of Hearts." It dates back in various forms to at least the 1700s. In the 1960s, it was taken by the likes of Joan Baez and the influential English folk singer, Martin Carthy. Now, looking back once again comes a group called Offa Rex, a transatlantic collaboration of the English singer Olivia Chaney and the American indie rock band The Decemberists led by Colin Meloy.

COLIN MELOY, Musician:

The first thing is my love of old folk songs, and particularly narrative songs, the melodies, the focus on the voice and the story, that really simple approach, sort of like really rudimentary rock ideas being brought into these centuries-old songs.

JEFFREY BROWN:

The Decemberists formed in Portland, Oregon, in 2000, and have put out seven albums to date. Olivia Chaney is a classically trained singer who plays several instruments. She first received wide notice on this side of the Atlantic with her 2015 debut album, "The Longest River."

OLIVIA CHANEY, Musician:

We kind of figured it out as we went along, and sometimes we didn't agree on things. And we would say, well, I want to do this song or I want to do it this way. And we — I think that was the beauty of the project, is we came from different cultures and different relationships to the history of the music.

JEFFREY BROWN:

On this project, the two are consciously picking up on the 1970s electric folk revival of traditional music by bands like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, from whom Meloy says he learned the "Blackleg Miner."

COLIN MELOY:

And I selfishly wanted, I was like, if only I could have a time machine.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Nostalgia for a revival of a revival of a revival. The music goes back centuries. But you're talking about something that goes back 50 years.

COLIN MELOY:

A nostalgia for a time, you know, mostly I wasn't even alive during, but that itself was recreating or reviving old music by injecting something new. It is a sort of love letter to that era.

JEFFREY BROWN:

Chaney says she first listened to '60s and '70s folk revival music as a young girl with her dad. She never saw herself as part of a pure folk scene, but was eager to arrange anew several of these traditional songs, including "Willie O Winsbury."

OLIVIA CHANEY:

When I sit down and try to arrange a song as I did for this project, I'm never trying to sound like any of those singers. I have learned from them, absolutely, but when I arrange something, I am really trying to get to the essence of that song. But also, I think I am trying to make them a bit more contemporary. You know, the paradox of you tying to protect something or preserve it, and then it dies because you're trying to protect it, I wouldn't want to be guilty of that. I hope not.

From: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/offa-rex-revives-centuries-old-folk-songs-new-sound

Meat Puppets - Violet Eyes

Meat Puppets may be a band that you’ve never heard of, but the stalwart Arizona rockers got what was arguably their biggest break thanks to a band whose name will certainly ring a bell. In 1993, Nirvana covered the Meat Puppet’s ‘Lake Of Fire’ as part of their now legendary acoustic MTV Unplugged performance.
The result was that experimental indie rock outfit Meat Puppets, who had already existed as a group for over a decade, suddenly reached a whole new level of mainstream exposure. Their 1994 album Too High To Die, their eighth studio LP, subsequently became their most commercially successful record. Too High To Die takes the band’s eclectic tastes and shapes them around 14 tracks united by a 90s grunge rock aesthetic. Twenty years on, it is still the Meat Puppets’ most accessible and most critically acclaimed record.
This ‘overnight fame’ could well have been the source of chagrin to a band who had already established themselves over the ten years prior as a cult favourite, thanks to an eccentric back catalogue that traverses hardcore punk rock, alt country, folk rock, and indie psychedelia. But according to guitarist/vocalist Curt Kirkwood – who comprised one third of the band’s original lineup along with brother and bass player Cris Kirkwood and drummer Derrick Bostrom – whether the Meat Puppet’s success is seen as a direct product of that fateful Nirvana cover is neither here nor there.
“I take it all with a grain of salt,” says Kirkwood when asked whether he thinks Meat Puppets deserve more recognition in their own right. “I enjoy whatever attention we get, however we come across it,” he adds frankly. This forthright outlook is also reflected in the band’s ethos regarding the hype that surrounded Too High To Die. For a group that in 1994 had been around for over ten years, it might have been fair to assume that the Meat Puppets had all but given up on achieving fame and fortune. But as Kirkwood reveals, mass commercial appeal was never the band’s foremost ambition.
“We never spent much time with the idea of mainstream success from the get-go. We always thought it was a stupid motivation,” the frontman states. Though Kirkwood asserts that mainstream success “wasn’t that important”, he does concede that “it was fun though, in some ways.”
“It was a fun time,” he continues. “I met a lot of new folks as the punk rock came out of the sewers into the limelight and we were having a blast purveying our crap to the mainstream.” He may refer to it as “our crap”, but unlike many other artists who come to resent or revile their most popular works, it is clear that Too High To Die remains an album of which Kirkwood is still extremely proud.
“My favourite things about (the album) are the production and the diversity of the material…there’s lots of fun stuff to play from that record and the mixes sound pretty unique,” he says. “I wouldn’t change a thing…I think it’s as good as it could be,” the singer goes on to declare.
And does Kirkwood feel that the album measures up against the many other records that were released in 1994 and are now regarded as ‘classic’ albums? “I think it holds its own and stands shoulder to shoulder with most stuff from that year,” he says.
It’s a bold proclamation, but one that is not without merit. Too High To Die is liberally scattered with diamond-in-the-rough tracks, least of all the single ‘Backwater’, an upbeat, fuzzy anthem resplendent with Kirkwood’s squalling riffs, which reached the #2 spot on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. Fans may be surprised though to learn that the hit track didn’t initially take the form of a grunge rock staple. “I think ‘Backwater’ was a hit because it’s really a simple gospel-like song at its core…at least that’s how I wrote it,” Kirkwood reveals. “The demo was a lot slower and organ based.”  From: https://tonedeaf.thebrag.com/20-years-on-meat-puppets-too-high-to-die/

Jockstrap - Debra

The obsessed performing arts student is one of Hollywood’s favorite clichés. Movies like Whiplash, The Perfection, and Nocturne verge on melodrama, detailing the oppressive confines of classical training to varying degrees of absurdity. Their tortured protagonists meet one of two fates: triumph or crack-up. UK duo Jockstrap sound like they are flailing toward both. Graduates of London’s prestigious Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye have made a career of tearing down the academy walls. Their early revolt was scrappy and hardheaded; 2020’s Wicked City EP sounded like two star pupils lashing out, constructing jagged sculptures of string instruments and synthesizers. On their long-awaited debut album, I Love You Jennifer B, they refine their plan of attack. With the help of an 18-piece orchestra, Jockstrap stage elaborate, theatrical scenes atop the conservatory rubble.
Jockstrap’s earliest music was clever but disjointed. Ellery, who studied jazz violin at Guildhall, is the duo’s principal songwriter, and since the release of their first EP, 2018’s Love Is the Key to the City, it’s been clear that she has an advanced ear for pop structure of a certain vintage. In the opening minutes of “Joy,” she invoked the orchestral balladry of Van Dyke Parks and Harry Nilsson before Skye hijacked the song. He stripped it down to a few programmed bleeps and pitched up Ellery’s voice until she wheezed like a helium huffer: “Kiss me, fuck me, make much of me!” On Wicked City, Jockstrap plunged deeper into identity crisis; the songs were more intricate, lurching from gnarly EDM beats to impressionist piano sketches.
The band is still rummaging through a trunk of masks, but the characters in I Love You Jennifer B’s vaudevillian drama have better lines. Ellery stands downstage, discreetly changing costumes as a backdrop rolls in for the next scene. On the medieval dirge “Lancaster Court,” she plays the chamber-bound maiden plotting her escape. Plasticky rattles and whomped war drums jostle a plucked guitar phrase, as Ellery tiptoes from whisper to chapel soprano. On highlight “Greatest Hits,” she reigns as Disco Queen, dripping in sequins and rotating on a motorized bed. As Ellery does Donna Summer-at-La Scala, Skye slips in raygun synths, salt-shaker snares, and piano pulses straight from Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You.” It’s a pop soap opera shot with a smear of Vaseline on the lens.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jockstrap-i-love-you-jennifer-b/  

 

U2 - A Sort of Homecoming

 

“A Sort of Homecoming” is a strange song in the U2 canon. It was not a hit, it is rarely played live (more on that, later), but it has long been one of my favorites—and in researching this piece, I found that there are many U2 fans who really love the song. As most of us know, U2 burst upon the scene with their remarkable debut, Boy, in 1980. I remember hearing it and playing it on WPRB, and being struck by the uniqueness of their sound, their earnestness, and their confidence, despite the fact that they were so young. The next album, October, was a minor stumble—not terrible, but somehow not fully realized. Their third album, War, was, start to finish, a great album, filled with anthems and love songs, delivered with passion, bravado, and musical talent. I saw them on that tour, at the Pier in New York, and was blown away. The album was a huge hit, and the album spawned hit singles—it was U2’s breakthrough into mass popularity.
When the band prepared to record its follow up, though, they wanted to move in a different direction, with less bombast and sloganeering. They wanted to work with Brian Eno, who initially was unimpressed by the band, and was planning to fob them off on his engineer, Daniel Lanois. Ultimately, though, Eno was convinced, and he agreed to work with U2 (along with Lanois), and try to create a more mature sound for the band. Not surprisingly, considering the production team, the collaboration resulted in The Unforgettable Fire, which was a more atmospheric and subtle album, but without losing the power of War. The two records are probably my favorite U2 albums (most critics probably go with The Joshua Tree or Achtung, Baby!, and I like them, too, but not as much).
“A Sort of Homecoming” is named after a line by poet Paul Celan, who Bono had been reading, in a speech he delivered on October 20, 1960, about five months after Bono was born, when Celan was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize. In that speech, Ceran discussed Büchner’s work, art, and poetry, and in his view, the circularity of poetry. He went on to say (in German, but I found a translation):
Is it on such paths that poems take us when we think of them? And are these paths only detours, detours from you to you? But they are, among how many others, the paths on which language becomes voice. They are encounters, paths from a voice to a listening You, natural paths, outlines for existence, perhaps, for projecting ourselves into the search for ourselves. . .  A kind of homecoming. 
I’ll bet you never thought that we’d be discussing German literature when you started reading this music blog post, did you? But critics note that this song, and the whole Unforgettable Fire album, show a more Celan-like spiritual doubt as compared to the more certain religious themes of their prior work.
Although I've never read Celan (but have read a little Büchner), what grabbed me about the song was the sense of yearning, both lyrically and musically, that is palpable from its quiet, polyrhythmic opening, to its more intense end. Note that the song is not called just “Homecoming,” it is “A Sort of Homecoming,” so it is fitting that lyrically it works on so many levels—as a personal homecoming to Bono’s native Ireland, as the “homecoming” of his late mother, as a return from war (possibly the violence that was engulfing Ireland at the time), and as a spiritual renewal. 
U2 played the song pretty regularly from 1984-1987, as they toured in support of The Unforgettable Fire and its follow-up, The Joshua Tree. There’s an excellent, if more triumphant and less atmospheric, live version from 1984, released on 1985’s EP Wide Awake In America (which is an odd title, because the song was actually recorded at a soundcheck before a show in London, with the crowd noises dubbed in later).  From: https://sixsongs.blogspot.com/2018/10/homecoming-sort-of-homecoming.html

Maria McKee - I'm Not Listening

To my ears and soul, Life Is Sweet is not just one of the greatest lost albums of all time, but one of the greatest, period. It’s glam. It’s rock. It’s operatic. It’s art. The story behind it: While touring in support of her country-rock classic You Gotta Sin to Get Saved in 1993, one of the members of Maria’s band is said to have given her a mixtape of classic glam and glitter tunes. Maria listened. Loved. Obsessed. And then wrote and recorded a set of songs, released in 1996, that blended those glittery hues of yore with dramatic colors of her own design.
“Scarlover,” the opening track, is a great example. It’s rough, ragged and refined all at the same time, with guitars giving way to strings that give way to guitars, set to Maria’s seemingly stream-of-conscious admission that “ugly inside of me taught me of beauty/I wouldn’t trade that work of art.” As a whole, the album explores self-doubt, self-loathing and, ultimately, self-acceptance. At times, yes, it’s stasis in darkness (aka Sylvia Plath set to song). More than that, however, it’s Maria McKee unshorn, seemingly exploring her rapid-cycle bipolar disorder in ways that both replicate it and make it relatable. It’s the Bowie homage “Absolutely Barking Stars” with lyrics that delve into yin-yang duality and the dramatic “I’m Not Listening,” in which she attempts to ignore the voices inside her head that are taunting and haunting her. 
The utterly catchy “Everybody” explores celebrity and Andy Warhol’s infamous “15 minutes of fame” maxim: “We’ve all been flirting/with the perfect day/when they think we’re perfect/Yeah, but who are they?” There’s also a flat-out incendiary guitar break. “Carried” is another highlight and, of course, there’s the title track, which may well be the greatest song she’s yet written or recorded. 
Geffen, her record label, hated the album. AAA radio stations like WXPN, which embraced and promoted the hell out of You Gotta Sin, refused to play it. Some critics slammed it. Some fans did, too. Artistic growth often comes at a price, and in this case the cost was Maria’s major-label career. Life Is Sweet failed to sell, and she left Geffen not long thereafter. The album also fell out of print, and has never been reissued, even digitally. (A true crime against art.) Twenty-plus years since its release, however, and it sounds as fresh and hauntingly familiar as it did upon first listen.  From: https://oldgreycat.blog/2018/06/23/the-essentials-maria-mckees-life-is-sweet/

Melody Fields - Rain Man

  

The fact that this Melody Fields album has come out on the ever excellent Kommun2 label is already a tick in the positive column for me, and tells me that the musicians behind this album are most likely to be Swedish, and so it proved. Even more exciting is the fact that it was recorded at Parkeringshuset Studio where the likes of Goat and Hills have also recorded. Like these other bands there is a nice blend of Swedish and other musical sounds to create something different, which I think is where my appreciation for this album is taking root.
The album opens with ‘Morning Sun’ which immediately establishes the band’s credentials as putting out music that is upbeat and, well, sunny. There are some lovely melodies here and in some senses you could be sitting on the West Coast of the USA looking out to the Pacific. By the same token you could also be looking out onto the Kattegatt from the West Coast of Sweden with the track’s folk underpinning reminiscent of Träd Gräs och Stenar. Then the sax kicks in and just takes you off into the sunlit uplands… lovely!
If that puts you in a right good mood then you’re going to be positively beaming when ‘Liberty’ kicks in with its smooth edges and lysergic tone. This is just so laid back, but not in any passive or banal way… there’s just something about it that feels very spiritual and deep. Melody Fields have influences, but they are not copyists. After that ‘Run’ steps things up with the guitar coming to the fore more and in between some more chilled out vocal which retains that ray-soaked atmosphere, even though the lyric talks of ‘summer rain’… this is one of a few albums that are bubbling up that I can see are going to be my soundtrack for the summer this year.
‘Rain Man’ keeps us guessing for a few seconds with it’s low key jangly intro before that multi-part harmony drops in and takes us off into a heavenly realm of pastoral melodies, I can already imagine me staring out at the same Kattegatt on my holidays in Denmark later this year… I’m sure the ‘Rain Man’ will make an appearance at some point, but with this on I won’t care.  From: https://fragmentedflaneur.com/2018/03/27/album-review-melody-fields-by-melody-fields/

PJ Harvey - Hair

Straight out of England’s rural Southwest, Polly Jean Harvey always had a spiritual connection with the American South – the birthplace of backwoods-gothic sin and redemption – and of the blues, which she discovered through her first musical hero, Howlin’ Wolf. With that lineage, it was no surprise that the debut album by this young Englishwoman was unlike anything else that appeared in 1992. Almost three decades later, it’s no stretch to say that it’s still startling. Albums like Dry are so way-out-there that they don’t belong to a decade or scene.
The feral blues-rock underpinning Harvey’s volcanic presence on the record raises the hair on the back of your neck. More than that: hearing Dry‘s gnarled guitar/bass/drums attack is like being in the same room as something disquieting and eternal. Though Harvey’s sonic armory later included a bit of goth, a little electronica, some plain old rock, and something approaching pop, it was the blues that unlocked her storytelling abilities.
The other remarkable thing is that despite being only 22, PJ Harvey was already fully-formed as a singer and songwriter. This “guitar-toting succubus,” in Rolling Stone’s description, had an emotional spectrum that skewed toward drama, and she had no filter. But she wasn’t out of control – as some contemporary reviewers speculated – she was just conveying her truth, figuratively ripping away Band-Aids to show some wounds, while leaving others safely covered. One 1992 rave review – that didn’t quite grasp her – contended that Dry was an “honest irrational outpouring.” (The reviewer also claimed she’d reinvented “post-rockist guitar.”) In fact, the album was only irrational in the sense that human feelings are irrational. Honest, though, it certainly was. While Polly Jean later rebutted the assumption that her songs were autobiographical, Dry was undeniably influenced by her own life.
She and her band (Rob Ellis, drums; Stephen Vaughan, bass) had moved from her home village of Corscombe, Dorset (population 445), to London in 1991, and it was a wrench. While the move was musically productive – they signed to indie label Too Pure and were championed by influential Radio 1 presenter John Peel – Harvey was deeply unhappy. Her first real relationship had just ended, she was renting a damp flat in North London, and the city felt overwhelming.
Thus, the songs that ended up on Dry have a definite narrative arc. Over 11 tracks, the mood gradually shifts from heartbroken pleading to a thirst for revenge. Aptly, it kicks off with a discordant clang – that’s Harvey’s guitar, welcoming you to the opening “Oh My Lover.” Dark and bass-heavy, it grimly gives her boyfriend permission to see another woman while still involved with Polly.
On “Dress” and “Sheela-Na-Gig” (the first and second singles), Harvey first adopts a teenage whine, begging the guy to look at her in the dress he bought her; in the second song, she offers him her “childbearing hips…ruby-red ruby lips,” only to be rebuffed by his brutal retort, “You exhibitionist…Wash your breasts, I don’t want to be unclean.” All of this, including the furious payback tracks “Joe” and “Hair,” is thrust along by Harvey’s caustic guitar-playing and the cavernous noise kicked up by drums and bass. In the latter song she’s Delilah, cutting off Samson’s crowning glory as he screams, “Wait!” an image that any wronged lover will relish.  From: https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/pj-harvey-dry/