Fever Ray - Live In Berlin 2018

As Fever Ray and in The Knife, Karin Dreijer has embodied many characters, but she’s never looked like she’s had this much fun doing it. When Fever Ray’s Plunge crash-landed last year, its gleefully shocking antics left us gasping for air. A world away from the steely presence of her Fever Ray debut, a series of videos saw Dreijer inhabit a wide-eyed, genderless body to flesh out the album’s anarcho-queer vision, and employed a cast of characters to toy with its BDSM basement aesthetics. These characters appeared again in the visuals for the Plunge tour, introduced to us in a series of Top Trump cards, looking like Mortal Kombat fighters from an alien planet ruled by women.
These characters comprise Fever Ray’s band, and they appear tonight at the sold out Berlin show. Seems like someone’s been watching Glow – a purple hue descends on the stage and the band members arrive one by one with all the camp ferocity of a wrestler entering the ring. As they stomp to the front of the stage they each work a kind of Street Fighter goes to Berghain look: sporting whips, lycra, body paint, head-to-toe PVC and – a personal favourite – a body builder muscle suit, bright orange and cinched at the waist by pink glitter pants. Karin Dreijer follows, sporting the demonic baby look from her videos, the light reflecting off her bald head and Vaseline-smeared make-up. Her t-shirt, which says ‘I love Swedish Girls’ (with ‘Swedish’ crossed out in black tape), is a not-so-subtle reminder of the themes fizzing through the album.
Indeed, the whole show drips with lust. While The Knife’s farewell tour had an element of stage school theatrics, tonight is pure joy. The women take their places – two on percussion, one on synths and two singers joining Dreijer at the front – as they rattle into new material, embellishing tracks like An Itch and A Part of Us with earthy live percussion, thick bass and choreographed dance moves. In between bounding round the stage, the three singers move in unison, with armpit whiffs, finger sniffs, and fists up for This Country’s rally cry: “This country makes it hard to fuck”. This biggest reaction of the night is, unsurprisingly, to their quite literal illustration of the album’s lyrical trigger switch: “I want to run my fingers up your pussy”. It’s a punishing -10 degrees outside tonight but it’s pretty steamy in here. One demonstration of Plunge’s carnal pulse sees the three act out a ménage à trois, taking it in turns to sub and dom – hair is pulled, legs are hoisted over bodies, faces pushed toward the floor.
These intoxicating moments are harshly contrasted with material from Fever Ray. Pivoting between extroversion and introversion, the suffocating domesticity of the debut is reflected in stark, low-lit performances. The singers huddle motionless in a corner of the stage, singing about TV and concrete walls. For Red Trails, one singer twirls with silver wings billowing around her, like a phoenix rising from an oil spill, and we are brought back up to the heavens again. The pink and purple haze of the strip lights turns into rainbows for the encore of If I Had a Heart and Mama’s Hand – one song about lovelessness and one about longing – before the band gather at the front, resembling a depraved Spice Girls. In a show packed with joy and strength and pride, their collective presence feels truly nourishing. More than anything, tonight traced the scale of Fever Ray’s journey – stepping out from claustrophobia into the wild unknown; from domesticity to a new kind of family.  From: https://crackmagazine.net/article/live-reviews/fever-rays-lust-fuelled-live-show-brings-plunge-to-shocking-vivid-life/

Galley Beggar - Live at the Moira Furnace Folk Festival 2011

Galley Beggar are part of a new wave of British acid folk bands alongside Trembling Bells etc, and although they have had several releases before their new album, Silence and Tears is their first on Rise Above, hence their inclusion on the bill tonight. I have been looking forward to seeing them play live after playing their album to death over the previous weeks. Their melodies are beautiful and somewhat melancholic (reminding me in mood of the two COB albums), and they set a different tone to the evening.
It’s one where darkened trees hang heavy in autumnal skies, and crows gather on freshly harvested fields. Maria O’Donnell’s vocals are beautiful and have a sense of wild wood magic as she sings songs like “Empty Sky” and “Geordie” in a crisp, clear tone that clings to winter trees. Celine Marshall’s violin adds an extra element of sadness to the some of the songs, while David Ellis and Mat Fowler’s guitars have a touch of Richard Thompson’s psychedelic folk style about them. The worst thing is that their set seems painfully short as it would have been fantastic to bask in their song’s atmospheres for a while longer.  From: https://freq.org.uk/reviews/lucifer-galley-beggar-saturn-live-at-the-borderline/ 

The Moody Blues - Nights in White Satin / Tuesday Afternoon - Bouton Rouge 1968

 The Moody Blues - Nights in White Satin - Bouton Rouge 1968

 

 

The Moody Blues - Tuesday Afternoon - Bouton Rouge 1968

 

The Moody Blues secured their place in prog history as Days of Future Passed shot up the U.K. rock charts. But the project, released on Nov. 10, 1967, was fraught with deep uncertainty, weird happenstance and then – at least in the U.S. – initial lack of interest.
The Moody Blues had started out as a rootsy band, as far removed from symphonic rock as they could be. "We were originally a rhythm-and-blues band, wearing blue suits and singing about people and problems in the Deep South," frontman Justin Hayward told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. "It was okay, but it was incongruous, getting us nowhere, and in the end we had no money, no nothing."
Then came what Hayward says was "a series of wonderful accidents." Their label, Decca Records, was looking to recoup money it had advanced the Moody Blues, while promoting then-new stereo recording equipment that produced the so-called Deramic Sound. Already a hit with classical listeners, Decca was hoping stereo would take off with the rock crowd, as well.
"Up until that time, most albums, of course, were only in glorious mono," bassist John Lodge told the St. Petersburg Times in 2000. "Later, we had to actually go back into the studio and remix it into mono, because so many people wanted it in mono. They didn't have stereo players." Decca suggested blending classical and rock ideas, in the hopes of speaking to both audiences.
"They wanted us, as a way to pay off that debt, to do a demonstration record of a rock version of Dvorak with [conductor] Peter Knight playing the real Dvorak between our pieces and an engineer mixing them together so people would say, 'Oh, that sounds wonderful in stereo,'" Hayward noted on the Moody Blues' official site in 2012. Producer “Michael Barclay, whose project it was to get these demonstration records together, suggested we do it the other way around: We do our songs and then Peter Knight would orchestrate pieces in between our songs, and so that's what we did."
It was a stroke of genius – or, more correctly, a stroke of accidental genius. Through sheer force of will, the Moody Blues created the perfect vehicle for a groundbreaking combination. "We said, yeah, sure we'd do it," Hayward told the Los Angeles Times, "and then, after we said yes, we went down to the pub and decided to do our own songs instead."
The Moody Blues had been developing an album-length theme that used the elements of a passing day as a metaphor for phases of life. They'd build off a track already written by keyboardist John Pinder titled "Dawn of a Feeling," leveraging the entire project – eventually, that is – on "Nights in White Satin."
Hayward used the song to explore the ending of one love affair and the beginning of another, keying on the image of a set of new sheets he'd just been given. "I just sat down at the edge of the bed with my big 12-string and wrote the song in like four minutes," Hayward told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1999. "I think there's a lot of truth in it."
He took the same 12-string into rehearsal the next day to play "Nights in White Satin" for his bandmates. "They sort of went 'Oh, yeah, it's alright,'" Hayward added, laughing. But then Pinder said, "Play it again, Justin," and began to add Mellotron accompaniment. Once he created the now-familiar harmony line on the keyboard, they knew they'd hit upon something magical. "Fairy dust. The invisible, unknowable thing," drummer Graeme Edge told the Naples Daily News in 2012. "It's just one of those songs where everything came together correctly."
That was true for the entire project, as these new tracks alternated with interludes from the London Festival Orchestra. The two groups' peak collaboration arrived during the soaring conclusion of "Nights in White Satin."
"It took us five days to finish, and, after each day we'd send them down to Peter Knight, and he'd write these orchestral arrangements," Hayward told the Los Angeles Times. "We'd edited all the tapes to be the right length, and [the orchestra] just played live in the gaps."
By the end, they'd taken the then-nascent idea of rock concept albums to an entirely new level. "It was revolutionary," Lodge told the St. Petersburg Times. "Usually an album was six hit singles and six B-sides of songs that people didn't particularly want to listen to. We put it together as an album, 40 minutes of real music. That's why there's no stops, no scrolls, in Days of Future Passed. One song goes into the next song. It goes through as a complete work of art."
Thing is, Decca didn't know about any of it. The Moody Blues didn't present Days of Future Passed until the entire recording was complete. "It was a conspiracy among all us musicians who were present," Hayward admitted in his talk with the Los Angeles Times.
The label executives were, by and large, nonplussed. "When we played the finished product to all these old directors at Decca – which is a fine, upstanding old English music firm – they said, 'This isn't Dvorak,'" Hayward added, "and we said, 'No, but this is what it is.'"
In another happy twist, it turned out that the Moody Blues had a lone ally. "Fortunately, a guy from the States was there, called Walt Maguire," flautist Ray Thomas told the Hit Channel in 2016. "He was the head of London Records, which was Decca America, and he said, 'If they don’t want it, I certainly do. This is going to blow up our sales in the States.' So, that’s how it got released."  From: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/moody-blues-days-of-future-passed-album/

 

Holly Herndon - Eternal

How you would describe what you do?

I'm a computer musician.

What does that mean?

Well, that's always what comes next. I am a composer, and I'm a performer. My primary instrument is the computer.

What were the formative experiences in becoming the musician you are today?

Well, my introduction to musical performance was through choirs, often in a liturgical setting – in church, in this emotional ecstasy that one has in the religious singing experience. Another introduction would be coming to Berlin as a teenager and hearing Eurodance in the supermarket; also the crazy, synthetic pop music that was popular here. It's like a geographical point. Another one would be moving to Oakland, going to Mills [College], and starting to use a computer in a way that I had more control over. That's the trajectory.

What led you to Mills?

I was already writing music. I went to some master classes here [in Berlin]. I took some free improvisation with [vocalist] Lauren Newton. I was trying to teach my way through some things. I had downloaded SuperCollider [a real-time audio synthesis programming language] and was trying to figure it out without any community. That is hard to do if you are coming at it blind, without any reference point. There was already a deep interest, and I was trying to figure things out myself. I figured that if I wanted to take things to the next level technically, I needed to retool. So, I decided to go to Mills.

SuperCollider was the first music-making software you interfaced with?

It was, and it wasn't what I ended up using. I ended up using Max [Max/MSP/Jitter; a visual programming language for music]. It's random. At Mills, one semester they would teach Max, and one semester they would teach SuperCollider. I happened to start on the semester they were teaching Max. That's the only reason. It's actually probably better that way, because it's visual. Actually, I was in the beta testing of Max for [Ableton] Live at the time, when I was first getting started.

Around what years?

I was at Mills from 2008 to 2010. This always happens to people when they first start to use Max: I was building this complicated, insane, disgusting patch that I'd never use again. But that's part of doing it; to learn how it works. I was building this stupid performance system that was super complicated. I spent forever on it, and then the Max for [Ableton] Live beta came out and answered everything. All of a sudden it was so much easier to do all the things I wanted to do, because I could just put individual Max patches on individual audio tracks - things that were difficult to code if you were just starting with an empty Max patch. That was a massive self-own; but it was also good, because I had to learn how to do all that. Now I have the stability of this DAW [Ableton Live] but with the flexibility of all this weirdness I want to do [Max For Live]. That then became a powerful performance tool.

Do you have separate phases for writing and composing, and then taking those ideas in to record, or is the process fluid?

That would be the smart way to do it. My methodology is not always that perfect. I would write something, like a simple score, and then we would have regular rehearsals once a week, or every other week. The members would perform them, and I would record that. I'd then go back into the studio and work with it. Then I'd iterate on that and change the score; or I'd have them emulate a process that I applied to the score. Once it was at a certain point, I would go into the studio to record them, but I would still end up changing it and remixing it into its final iteration.

For the score, do you use traditional notation for the ensemble to read?

Yeah. Or sometimes I record a process and have them emulate a digital process. Then it, of course, becomes something entirely new when they're interpreting it.

What is the environment or studio that you work in like?

We had a very unusual setup in our old place. We just moved a couple months ago. We used to live in Kreuzberg [in Berlin], and we had a more industrial loft space with a large, open room where we could have rehearsals. I had a little studio room, where I could shut the door that was sound-treated and had a nice speaker setup. I could do single recordings in there. We would also rent a recording studio to do a proper final run of recordings. I would record our rehearsals in the main room and then iterate on them in my studio. Once we got it to a point where we were rehearsed, we would take that to a recording studio. We'd further rehearse there and get real-time feedback and try it with different approaches. "Okay, let's try it this time staccato" or, "legato" or, "add a glissando to these parts." Just workshopping.

When you're recording the vocal ensemble at your house, do you have a particular way that you like to capture that audio? Any certain mic'ing techniques or mics that you like to use?

It depends on what we're recording. Usually I was just recording as a reference, but we ended up using some of that. I probably should have paid a bit more attention. I find the Sony PCM [handheld recorder] to be quite good at recording. The fidelity is good enough. I did a piece called "Body Sound" years ago with a dancer, and that was all recorded with the PCM. I was just holding it to his feet as he was dancing and recording his foot sounds. It's actually really crisp and clear. But there were a couple times that I rented microphones and set them up in our space for a couple of sessions when I knew that I didn't need to rent the studio. It's expensive to do that. There were a couple of background parts I wanted to record where I would set up some microphones. I can't remember the microphones that I ended up using. There's this place here called Echoschall. I would rent a nicer microphone when I would record soloists in my studio.

From: https://tapeop.com/interviews/132/holly-herndon

Haken - Invasion

Haken is a British Progressive Rock/Metal band formed in London in 2007 by To-Mera guitarist and keyboardist Richard Henshall and two of his school friends, Ross Jennings and Matthew Marshall. The band's albums have been met with critical acclaim, and they've achieved a high level of popularity within the Prog community.
A lot of their songs feature an intense level of instrumental and vocal virtuosity, philosophical lyrics, longer song lengths, and a generally quirky attitude. They gathered some attention to themselves with the help of their video for "Cockroach King", which features a muppet-themed parody of Bohemian Rhapsody's famous music video. They've garnered the respect of a few of the larger names in the Prog community, including Jordan Rudess and Mike Portnoy, who have both praised their music. The orchestral tribute group Symphonic Theater of Dreams is also currently making a symphonic tribute album to the band. In 2014, the band released an EP titled Restoration containing updates of a select few songs from their demo, Enter the Fifth Dimension. Their seventh studio album, Fauna, was released on March 3rd, 2023.  From: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/Haken

 

Goat - Hide from the Sun

I couldn’t be happier that Sweden’s Goat got to be such a big deal so quickly, as I just absolutely loved them from the word “go.” Their union of acid-fried psych guitars, surreal Krautrock dreaminess, Afrobeat’s funk rhythms, and the otherworldly unison-chanted vocals of the band’s two female singers goes beyond just organic—this music is practically elemental.
Their debut, titled World Music, and packaged in a stunning die-cut cover, was by a long shot one of the best (and best-reviewed) albums of 2012, a fantastic year for new releases, so their triumph wasn’t merely by default. The LP yielded the heavy single “Goatman,” the catchy as all hell “Run to Your Mama,” which was the subject/object of two amazing remix records, and the big mindscramble of “Goathead,” an acid-prog blowout which seemed to endeavor to strand their fellow heavy-psych Swedes Dungen in Fela Kuti’s compound. Right before the big raid.
Their live shows, too, attracted near-unanimous acclaim. The band takes the stage in identity-obscuring costumes that draw inspiration from the tribal garb of indigenous peoples all across the globe, with specific references to Islam (their bassist has appeared wearing a niqab), Africa, and the pre-Columbian Americas. When combined in concert, the colorful apparel, the dancing of the singers, and the volume and vehemence of the music are all quite intense. 
Late last month, Goat released World Music‘s follow up, Commune. While World Music wanted to dance, chant, and fuck in the primordial ooze from which all life emerged, Commune aims to touch the transcendent. (The obvious question: is “commune” a noun or a verb here? An imperative?) While the winning formula is unchanged—Afropop beats, check; fuzz-blitz guitar solos you want to bring along with you when you die, check; ESL hippie lyrics rendered in soaring, unison wail, check—this record’s sounds are leavened with a cathedral’s worth of reverb, and its grooves are as often meditative as booty-shaking. But the trancey atmospherics here are genuinely absorbing, and while it’s not as immediately gripping as the debut, Commune could prove itself as a more accessible entryway for Goat initiates. It opens with slow-building chimes, like Black Sabbath’s “Black Sabbath” and AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells,” which build into the plaintive and distant “Talk to God.” Subtle, right? See also “The Light Within,” “To Travel the Path Unknown”—there’s plainly a mystic’s agenda at work here. The band are at their robust best on “Goatslaves,” album closer “Gathering of Ancient Tribes,” (cough cough G.O.A.T.) and the lovely, raga-drenched single “Hide From the Sun.”  From: https://dangerousminds.net/comments/hide_from_the_sun_the_new_video_from_swedens_psychedelic_shamans_goat/ 

Frantic Chant - Fiberglass Spiderlegs

 Where did the name Frantic Chant come from?

Col “Stazy was in a bookshop and saw a board full of magnetic words all jumbled up. In the centre was frantic and chant, he just thought they looked good together and suited the music we were making. I might have got this totally wrong, but that’s how I remember it.”

Your latest album is 21 songs and almost two hours long, what made you decide to put out a double album?

Nick “We had so many songs to get out our system. We had lots of time in the studio to muck about and de-fragment. And also TRUMPETS!”

Stazy “We’re not a band that says ‘Let’s leave that one for the next album’. If a song’s done or nearly done, get it finished and get it on. There’s not one note that’s gone to waste on this album. The running order wasn’t a problem as the songs go as a narrative.

Col “It wasn’t intentional to record so many songs but having an extremely patient producer in Elle Durnan meant we could experiment and record new ideas on the spot. A couple of the songs came while 2 or 3 of us were waiting in the studio for the others to arrive and we’d been playing another wee batch of songs live for a while too.”

What was the inspiration behind the video for ‘Fiberglass Spiderlegs’?

Col “We can’t claim any credit for the video, it was done by Hugo, who is also known as Psyche Coaster. He asked to use the song on a compilation album he was putting together for the Psychedelic Underground Generation blog/label and the next thing we knew he’d posted the amazing video on his YouTube channel.”

Where did the title Glass Factory come from?


Col “There is a sample we used on a song, Mushroom Jim & the Planet of the Funky Apes that was taken from an old UK kids TV program called Jackanory. The sample is from a story called The Glass Factory and the voice is the legendary British actor, Bernard Cribbins. The title just seemed to tie in with the loose concept the album had so we stole it.”

The album covers many musical styles, did you have any ideas on the musical direction if the album as you were writing it?


Stazy “The only style we never mentioned was Psychedelic, but that seems to be what a lot of listeners hear judging by the videos we’ve had made for the tunes and also by the genre of blogs, pages and playlists that support the cause. We’re always trying to move forward with new styles and methods for recording. Luckily we have the luxury of spending time in the studio to play around a lot. We’d get bored if all our songs sounded and felt the same as the next one.”


Darren “Not really, most of the tracks started off from riffs or chord patterns on acoustics, previously it’s all been jams in the practice room. There was an effort to be a bit more musically wanky (you might want to change the adjectives there) – less major chords, avoiding verse, chorus, verse. So we just picked up on things as the songs came together, nothing really thought about in advance. (There was also the mind blowing musical invention from the bass player which transcends all previous bassery, ever)

Col “The only pre planned direction was that we wanted a loose, laid back style on about 4 or 5 songs so the first instrument we recorded for those was an acoustic guitar. Once everything else was added they still seemed to keep the sitting round the campfire vibe we wanted. It was open season on all the other songs and all sorts of things influenced where they ended up. Nick and me travelled to the studio together most days and would listen to different music every time and little things would creep in from that. Stuff like guitar sounds from the likes of Dinosaur Jr and New Order songs that are not too obvious as they’re maybe only one of ten, or more, guitar tracks in the mix.

From: https://tomatrax.wordpress.com/2017/11/29/interview-with-frantic-chant/

Bettie Serveert - Tom Boy

 For over 20 years now, Carol van Dijk and her compatriots in Bettie Serveert have been releasing slightly askew, Velvet Underground (formally) and Neil Young (literally) influenced albums, some of them pretty great, some of them not. My favorite is probably 2003’s Log 22, which features some great psychedelicized jams, but it was their early-to-mid 90s records that made what little splash they ever made. And if that splash hit you, it was probably made by this song, “Tom Boy,” one of the most delightfully low-key anthems of the 1990s. Like most of Bettie Serveert’s songs, “Tom Boy” unfolds at its own pace, pretty much sneaking in and out if its chorus:

You call me a tom boy
And I love it
Because only a tom boy could stand above it
And simply change it.

There is so much going on here that I love, I’m not even sure I can do it justice. What kills me about how the just let the chorus kind of happen is that it allows her to makes “love it” and “above it” seem like an internal rhyme, punctuated by how the “change it” at the end of the chorus then rhymes with the “rearrange it” at the end of the verse which preceeded it. Not to mention what feels like a feminist “fuck you, I will let your insults pass right through me” underdog attitude that goes along perfectly with big guitar chords and quiet interludes that dominate “Tom Boy.”

From: https://medialoper.com/certain-songs-bettie-serveert-tom-boy/

Famous Groupies - One Need Leads

I'm new to this band, which, at least per their webpage, appears to be the work of a Scottish singer/songwriter named Kirkcaldy McKenzie and various friends & family members, performing songs ostensibly written decades ago by McKenzie's grandfather. Hard to say how much of the bio is just tongue-in-cheek, but regardless, the music is pretty damn delightful, and they've instantly become a favorite of mine.
The band name presumably derives from the Paul McCartney & Wings song, and it pretty much gives up the game--their 4 albums, and this one in particular, are pure McCartney homage/pastiche. It's endearing 70s-styled pop, ridiculously tuneful and lighthearted, unpretentious piano and guitar-driven baroque pop, dripping with charm. The songs conjure not just Sir Paul, but other like-minded artists ranging from Emitt Rhodes to Beagle Hat to the Dukes of Stratosphear. Some of the hooks are pulled straight out of the McCartney catalog: opener "One Trick Pony" recalls "Getting Closer," "Bombs Away" cribs from "Mrs. Vanderbilt," "Big Bam Wigwam" borrows the "Helen Wheels" riff, and so on. So, yeah, you can have a lot of fun just playing spot-the-influence; but the album is great fun even if you're less intimately familiar with every Wings deep cut.  From: https://www.jitterywhiteguymusic.com/2022/04/famous-groupies-furry-white-album-2020.html

Belly - Seal My Fate / Super Connected

 Belly - Seal My Fate

 

 Belly - Super Connected

 

Belly’s debut album, Star, released in 1993, was an unqualified crossover success. The Rhode Island-based dream pop band, fronted by Tanya Donelly, who had spent time in both the Breeders and Throwing Muses, broke through in a big way. Belly‘s dreamy alternative rock connected with audiences in the United States and the United Kingdom, driven by the success of the single “Feed the Tree” featured in the coveted MTV Buzz Bin.
Star sold around 800,000 copies in the United States, hitting #2 on the UK albums chart. Belly were nominated for two Grammys–Best New Artist and Best Alternative Music Performance. They were on top of the world, touring with new bassist Gail Greenwood. Expectations were high for the follow-up.
Two years later, Belly released the follow-up, King, and while most critics were kind, it simply didn’t sell as well as Star. By then, alternative radio was dominated by more aggressive guitars, and the singles were largely ignored. In addition, the band had largely dispensed with their debut’s dreamy, gauzy sounds in favor of louder guitars.
However, the more rock-centered King, produced by Glyn Johns, wasn’t heavy enough to get radio play but was probably too electric guitar-centered for many fans drawn in by Star‘s dreamy quality. Reportedly, the group weren’t too surprised that King underperformed. They have shared in interviews since that recording it was not a fun experience.
Thirty years on, King deserves reconsideration. It is an unfairly forgotten, solid follow-up that shouldn’t have been so quickly relegated to the cut-out bin. Its sales of over 350,000 probably don’t sound too much like a disaster for a rising band today. While King is not giving more of the same in terms of songwriting, it is the sound of a road-tested group circumventing expectations a little and still writing several memorable tracks. If listened to without the weight of expectation, this is a solid 1990s alternative rock record with several winning songs. It’s odd to say, but this record might have done better if a different band made it, one not carrying the weight of expectation Belly were laboring under.
Belly moved toward louder guitars when they hit the road to support Star. When original bassist Fred Abong quit just after it was released, Gail Greenwood replaced him just in time for the tour, and her metal past influenced the group to emphasize more electric guitar on stage. That influence certainly carried over into the songs on King.  From: https://www.popmatters.com/belly-king-atr-30 

 

Beausoleil - Austin City Limits 1990

At a time when the word “Cajun” was unknown or disrespected by many Americans, Louisiana native Michael Doucet began to collect and preserve traditional Cajun music. The word “Cajun” (a corruption of “Acadian”) refers to the French settlers of Acadie (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island in Canada) who migrated to southern Louisiana after the Great Expulsion of 1755.
Doucet grew up surrounded by Cajun music. “I don’t think I know a French family that doesn’t have a musician in the family,” he told Sing Out’s Mark Greenberg. His four aunts were singers; one of them was married to a fiddle player who taught the young Doucet traditional songs. He learned French from his grandmother and parents, who still spoke the language.
Music was a part of family life. “Next door to us was accordion player Don Montoucet,” Doucet told Greenberg, “and we’d always go to his garage on Saturdays to hear music.” Radio also influenced Doucet, as did a local television show called Passe Partout that was dedicated to Cajun music. As he grew, Doucet learned to play the trumpet and guitar; years later he rescued his uncle’s fiddle, the instrument he became best known for playing. Doucet’s interest in traditional Cajun music was sparked when he heard “Cajun Woman” by Fairport Convention. He formed a band with few of his friends, and together they played the old songs at local hot spots.
In 1974 a French promoter spotted them during a performance at a local bar/service station and invited them to a folk festival in France. “So we went to France,” Doucet told Greenberg. “Wow! They knew about this music…. It was like speaking to people of our great-grandfathers’ era who were our age. It was the turning point of my life…. I really got to see firsthand the inescapable correlation between old French songs of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and our music here.” After a long stay in France, Doucet returned to the United States and, with the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, began to collect the traditional music of southern Louisiana.
During this time, Doucet and five others performed as Coteau, a band known as the “Cajun Grateful Dead” for its mix of rock ‘n’ roll and Cajun music. When the group disbanded after about two and a half years, Doucet formed Beausoleil with some of the best Cajun musicians available, including Dewey and Will Balfa, Varise Connor, Canray Fontenot, Bessyl Duhon, and the noted fiddler Dennis McGee. Their name was taken from an Acadian settlement in Nova Scotia whose name meant “good sun.” Their first record was cut and released only in France, but in 1977 their American debut album, The Spirit of Cajun Music, was released by Swallow. The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll described the album as “an eclectic mix of blues, ballads, standards, and traditional music.” But “there was no work here at the end of the ‘70s,” Doucet explained to Sing Out’s Greenberg. “There was not one dance hall here in Lafayette.”
Despite the weak demand for Cajun music, Beausoleil continued to play, releasing record after record in the early 1980s, including the albums Parlez Nous a Boire, Louisiana Cajun Music, Zydeco Gris Gris, and Allons a Lafayette. When the Cajun music craze erupted, fueled by soundtracks from The Big Easy and Belizaire the Cajun (both of which included music from Beausoleil), interest in the band’s music increased exponentially.  From: https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/beausoleil

Free - Fire and Water - Side 1

01 - Fire And Water
02 - Oh I Wept
03 - Remember
04 - Heavy Load 

When Free entered the studio to work on their third record, everyone knew it was a real make-or-break moment. Despite the immense, raw talents of singer Paul Rodgers and guitarist Paul Kossoff, their first two albums had hardly made a dent either in America or in their native Great Britain.
The common perception was that they had potential, but they were just too green. Everything changed when Free dropped Fire and Water on June 26, 1970. The lead single “All Right Now” eventually made it all the way into the Top 5 on the charts. The spirit of the track, written by Rodgers and bassist Andy Fraser, actually came from another song by bluesman Freddie King titled “The Hunter” that Free included on their debut record Tons of Sobs in 1969.
“We wanted our entire set to be original music. This was how we'd become regarded as a serious band," Rodgers later told the Huffington Post. "But 'The Hunter' was a song we could never lose, because it had the right mood. 'They call me the hunter, a pretty young girl like you is my only game.' So light and easy.
"So, okay, we can't drop that song," he added, "but what we can also do is write one that's inspired by that song. With the same lightness of touch, lyrically. You know, 'pulling chicks, and yay! everything's cool.' And that's where 'All Right Now' was born out of, really."
But the album wasn't simply a vehicle for that hit song. Fire and Water is a tight, eclectic record filled with balls-out rockers like the title track, funky blues pieces like “Mr. Big,” as well as sultry ballads like “Don’t Say You Love Me” and “Oh I Wept.”
The rhythm section, with Fraser on bass and Simon Kirke on drums, are as tight as can be, but it's the vocal flourishes of Rodgers – along with the Kossoff’s signature guitar vibrato – that really set the music apart from what anyone else was doing at the time.
In keeping, Fire and Water became their highest-charting record in both the U.K. and America. Free suddenly found itself standing near the top of the rock 'n' roll universe. A star-making turn in front of 600,000 people just a few months later at the Isle of Wight Festival all but cemented that position.
Just about a year after releasing Fire and Water, however, Free decided to call it a day. Their follow-up record Highway and the single “The Stealer” performed disappointingly, and Kossoff’s addiction made it difficult for the band to carry on.
"That was a monster hit for us, and it was a bit of a double-edged sword, really," Kirke later said of Fire and Water. "We became our own worst enemies, I believe. We sort of crumbled under the pressure. There was no letup from that crazy merry-go-round."  From: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/free-fire-and-water/

Giants In The Trees - Feel You Now

Famed bassist Krist Novoselić loves music. Whether it’s an accordion strapped to his shoulders or the bass he’s become world famous for playing, he loves finding new melodies and playing in front of dancing audiences. The man who rose to the top of the pop culture pinnacle with his band, Nirvana, is now grinding and building with a new project, one born out of the rural Southwest Washington Wahkiakum County. Novoselić’s new group, Giants in the Trees, has been turning heads and working its way up to the Pacific Northwest ladder, first selling out their Seattle album release show at Ballard’s Sunset Tavern and, later this summer, the four-piece will play coveted sets at both Sasquatch! and the Upstream Music Festival. We wanted to catch up with the great northwest musician and ask him about how his new band started, what its goals are for next year, and what Novoselić has learned about the music business over the past year. 

KEXP: You’ve said Giants in the Trees formed after the four members were the only ones to respond to a call for an open jam. Is that really how the group started?

Krist Novoselić: Yes. It was at the Grange Hall (in Wahkiakum County, where the band members live). It was really casual; we knew each other already from a Grange meeting earlier that week. It was on a Saturday and we just plugged in and started jamming and we didn’t look back. We started writing songs right away. The first one we wrote was “Sasquatch.” It just seemed like we all could communicate musically very well. 

The band’s songs often incorporate themes of nature. Why are these ideas important to the group?

You write about what you know. We live out in Wahkiakum County so we’re, like, rural dwellers. And [lead singer] Jillian [Raye] -- who writes the lyrics -- she just seems inspired by living out in the sticks in the Willapa Hills in Southwest Washington, in the small county here, which is home to about 4,000 people. 

How does the group write?

We throw ideas around. Last night, we wrote a couple songs but you just have to write a lot. There’s a filtering process to see what works. You have to ask yourself, “Does this sound good?” You work ideas out and see what flies and what doesn’t fly. As a band, we like melody. We’re in some ways a traditional pop band like a group from the early 70s, how they did pop music. We go for melody and find hooks. There’s also a lot of playing going on -- like Ray [Prestagard] is a multi-instrumentalist. He plays slide guitar and box guitar and all these different string instruments. He’ll play a Telecaster and Jillian will play a 12-string guitar or a 6-string banjo. I’ll play bass or accordion. We’re just trying to find different sounds but also trying to play the instruments well and bring the voice of the instrument into the sound of the band. 

What’s been a favorite moment for you -- on stage, recording or rehearsing -- while playing with the group?

I actually really like playing accordion. Playing bass for me is second nature; I’ve been doing it so long. But I learned to play accordion really young and I stuck with it my whole life. I learned the language of it before I even reached puberty. There’s, like, this window for learning when you’re young and if you could learn a language or an instrument before you hit puberty you remember it your whole life. But when you transition into adolescence, that window closes. I was lucky enough to where I had this past time playing accordion and I never forgot how. But it is also a very demanding instrument. I haven’t by any means mastered it, but I think I can play it just enough for a rock band. 

From: https://www.kexp.org/read/2018/4/20/kexp-exclusive-interview-krist-novoselic-climbs-again-with-giants-in-the-trees/

 

Facing Forever - Show Me The Door

Facing Forever is a Progressive Metal band from southwest Oklahoma. The band was formed by Sommer and David Condren initially as an acoustic cover duo. But, they also had the idea to start writing originals in the mode of their influences. Hoping for a unique sound, the influences combined emotional & epic hard rock, in the vein of Evanescence with the technical chops of bands like Dream Theater and Rush. With a conscious effort made to keep the writing focused on the melody, the duo quickly came up with 12 originals. Sommer and David contacted Ryan Joyce to take on drum duties. After tossing some names around, the trio decided to give Donnie Berry a shot. David and Donnie had a strong history of playing together. And in the first jam with the band, the decision was easily made. Donnie fit perfectly and comfortably with everyone musically and most importantly personally. Facing Forever recorded their 12 song debut and released it in early 2014. In trying to take the Facing Forever show on the road, the band found that scheduling shows became too difficult with Ryan in the band. So, Ryan and Facing Forever amicably parted ways. In searching for the new drummer the band was quickly led to Rich Waldron. Rich, having many years experience playing in a band with David and being life long friends, was the perfect fit for Facing Forever. Shortly after Rich joined the band, they have had a full calendar of booking shows and are about to begin work on new material. Rich has added a tightness and the work ethic that the band has been has risen to the challenge of.  From: https://www.reverbnation.com/facingforever 

Endless Valley - Opportunistic

Endless Valley is a Brisbane-based band known for their unique blend of progressive rock, world music, and psychedelic sounds. The band consists of five members—Luna on vocals and percussion, Cavell Schipp on rhythm guitar and vocals, Seb Ward on lead guitar, Brad Schipp on bass, and Nicole Perry on drums. Together, they create a rich, immersive experience through their music. The band’s name reflects the idea of endless connections across the globe, symbolizing the unity of diverse musical influences while its female lead gives them some distinction from their contemporaries. Kaskashir, the second album by Endless Valley, is a sonic exploration of mystical and ancient landscapes. It is characterized by a blend of traditional and modern elements, combining intricate rhythms and melodies with a powerful vocal presence. The album offers a journey through various moods and atmospheres, inviting listeners into a space where earthly concerns merge with transcendent visions. Kaskashir excels in everything one could want from a great psych record—big, sprawling song structures, a strong vocal presence that can cover the listener with intensity, and seamless stylistic transitions both in tempo and instrumentation.  From: https://thefirenote.com/reviews/endless-valley-kaskashir-album-review/ 

The Albion Country Band - New St. George / La Rotta

The New St. George is a song by Richard Thompson from the period of Albion IV which was sung by Martin Carthy in 1973. Because the band broke up shortly after, the album was shelved and only issued in 1976 as Battle of the Field. The track was closed by the tune La Rotta. It was included in the folk anthologies The Electric Muse and The New Electric Muse. A BBC recording of The New St. George from the Bob Harris Show on 9 May 1973 was included in 1998 on the Albion Band’s album The BBC Sessions and in 2001 on the anthology The Carthy Chronicles.
Karl Dallas wrote in the Electric Muse notes: If Britain ever shakes off its malaise, it could well be with this song by Richard Thompson as its anthem. This again is by Albion IV, vocal by Martin Carthy, and has never been issued before. It makes an interesting comparison with Richard’s own version. The play-out instrumental is La Rotta, an Italian dance tune which Pentangle recorded on Sweet Child, and takes its name from the instrument on which it was meant to be played, the harp-like rotta, chrotta, crot, cruit or crwth, sometimes bowed, sometimes plucked, the ancient ancestor of the fiddle (which a violin becomes immediately it gets into the hands of a folk musician), the instrument of the angels and the Celts, supplying an appropriate note on which to end. Richard Thompson’s own version is on his 1972 record Henry the Human Fly!  From: https://mainlynorfolk.info/richard.thompson/songs/thenewstgeorge.html

Sally Rogers & Claudia Schmidt - Are You Tired Of Me, My Darling / Be Gone Dull Care

In 1934 Benjamin Britten wrote a series of 12 songs for the school in Wales where his brother was a teacher. These songs, called Friday Afternoons (that was when pupils had their singing practice), started a long process of writing music for schools and Britten’s lifelong interest in music for young people and in music education. Britten set to music text by many different poets and authors. The music always illustrates beautifully the mood of the text. All the songs are accompanied by the piano.
Begone, dull care! is one of the Friday Afternoons songs. The text was written by an
anonymous artist in the 17th century, and was published in a book called English Lyrical Verse (The King’s Treasuries).
In the 1920s and early 30s, children sang mostly nursery rhymes and playground chants, and folk songs with simple accompaniments. When Britten composed these songs, they would have felt very contemporary to the children, just as it does when we sing the latest pop songs at school today.
From: https://fridayafternoons.charanga.com/pdfs/Planning%20-%20Flexible%20Pathway/Listen%20And%20Appraise/FA-Unit6-Listen-And-Appraise-Begone-dull-care-by-Benjamin-Britten.pdf 

 

Kaddisfly - Primera Natural Disaster

It's not quite emo, it's not quite prog-rock, it's not quite alt-rock -- it's an amalgam of all those things, but there's still more. There's some space rock, new wave, and some hard rock leanings on Buy Our Intention; We'll Buy You A Unicorn, Kaddisfly's second and first album released nationally through Hopeless Records.
While combining vastly different styles isn't exactly a new thing, especially in the day and age where bands are reaching for anything from the closet to combine with their neo-teenage angst and call it art, Kaddisfly does it a tad bit differently. They put a lot of thought into their songs, whereas most of their competition just kind of throw a bunch of genres together and hope it makes some sort of impact. The band most often visits a spacey kind of emo rock, not too far off from Codeseven at times, but not too close to them either. They also tend to sound like a less-pretentious Brazil, but again, not really -- there's so many bands that Kaddisfly seem to pull from that it's become such a new thing that it's actually hard to identify what sources the sounds originally came from.
The album is really just something you'll have to hear to understand, and you'll need some time before you can really form an opinion. You might hate it at first because it sounds like everything at once, but if you give it a chance, it just might win you over and completely envelop your life. You might even like it a lot at first -- it just depends. Regardless of how you come around, you'll notice how clear this album's production is right off the bat. There's so much attention given to each instrument, and it's rare that an album on an indie label gets as much of a treatment as this one does. Make sure you check out "La Primera Natural Disaster," for it's one of the hardest-hitting tracks on the album, and the delightful "The Calm of Calamity."  From: https://www.punknews.org/review/3944/kaddisfly-buy-our-intention-well-buy-you-a-unicornKaddisfly 

Joan Osborne - Pensacola / Crazy Baby / Spider Web

 

On her studio debut, Relish, released on 21 March 1995, Joan Osborne was part of but apart from a burgeoning crowd of popular singer-songwriters. The version of this story that most remember is that Osborne‘s career began and ended with her hit single “One of Us”. However, the album that spawned it highlights her vocal talent and stylistic range more than that ubiquitous song ever could have.
Relish went on to sell three million copies in the US in about a year and landed multiple Grammy award nominations for Osborne, but to the dismay of many, the rest of the record sounds nothing like the hit that drew them to it. More informed by R&B, blues, rock, and South Asian Qawwali music than acoustic guitar or piano-based confessional songwriting, Osborne could belt out vocals like no one else in the scene of the time.
Today, Osborne stands among the most underrated singer-songwriters of her time because most people don’t know how well she can sing or write. “One of Us” is a great, controversial, and transformative song, but in addition to not showing off her vocal chops, it was written by someone else: her guitarist, Eric Bazilian.
In addition, in 1997, Joan Osborne appeared on the first Lilith Fair tour of female artists–an exceptionally significant moment, but one that helped freeze her image as a more pop- and folk-informed artist than she actually was, alongside festival founder Sarah McLachlan, the Indigo Girls, and Paula Cole. All are fabulous artists, but after I first heard Relish, Osborne always struck me as a musical outsider to that scene with her more eclectic influences.
As a kid in the 1990s, I grew up listening to classic rock and oldies radio, and Relish was the first rock album of the decade that I obsessed over. I quickly found that many don’t know that she can really sing because her one hit doesn’t show off her voice–at all.
Osborne symbolized 1990s alternative culture, even as “One of Us” strikes some, including PopMatters’ Chris Gerard, as more pop than alternative rock. She was a proud feminist with a nose ring, then a novelty, and shirts promoting causes like abortion rights.
Amidst its cultural and musical milieu, a few prominent themes emerge from the album that make it stand out. One is its musical eclecticism. Osborne’s aforementioned range of influences was front and center on Relish, and were it not for the overshadowing success of “One of Us”, her musical (and vocal) range might have garnered more attention, even if the album hadn’t sold well.
Another theme is the mixing of the sacred and the profane. Especially on “St. Teresa“, “Lumina“, and, of course, “One of Us”, Osborne blends imagery from both sides of that artificial binary. She sings of sex, romance, drugs, God, biblical figures (Adam and Eve), and that great alchemist of blending the sexual and the spiritual: Ray Charles.
Related to both themes, the most notable aspect of the album is her vocal acumen. The singing on “Ladder“, my favorite song on the LP, echoes the shallow tones of “One of Us”, but with more vibrato and far more intensity. Osborne sings about an emotionally unavailable lover with a passion that echoes gospel and soul singers like Aretha Franklin, like a 1990s alternative rock update of her classic “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)“.
“Ladder” stuns me every time I hear it, especially in live clips, with its raw sexuality and spiritually impassioned vocals. As on “One of Us”, “Ladder”, which samples T. Rex’s “Mambo Sun,” shows Osborne freely mixing elements of the sacred with the profane and the personal with the political, revealing their false separation. However, those elements are more musical than lyrical this time, pointing to currents at the heart of American music, from gospel to rock ‘n’ roll to hip-hop and beyond.
In “One of Us”, her vocals are less full-throated and more ambivalent–less convincing than on other songs on the album–which I suspect is part of the song’s ironic point. A friend suspects the song was added because the record company (Blue Gorilla/Mercury) wanted a hit. I love the song, but it arguably detracted from what many people thought Joan Osborne was capable of as an artist.
Other factors make the record veer sharply from her one hit. Relish centers on sex and sexuality in its concerns, whether on the grungy “Let’s Just Get Naked” or the swampy slow-burner “Dracula Moon“, among others. The one song credited solely to Osborne as a writer, “Crazy Baby“, like a number of the album’s tracks, is haunting and moody, and a couple of tracks (“St. Teresa” and “Right Hand Man“) have unusual time signatures and/or shifts in rhythm and meter. Clearly, most of this record was not what top 40 fans expected.
In its time, Relish received a positive critical response. I couldn’t find it online, but I believe Entertainment Weekly called Relish the best album of 1995 and, later, one of the top ten albums of the decade. In NPR’s 2018 readers poll on the 150 greatest albums by women, Relish was voted #109. Many critics didn’t rate it quite so highly, but they appreciated her stylistic range and distinctive vocals. 
Indeed, her vocal versatility is yet more impressive than her voice: Osborne aches, struts, coos, insinuates, yodels, wails, moans, and belts out songs skillfully and passionately enough that AllMusic once called her “the most gifted vocalist of her generation”.  From: https://www.popmatters.com/joan-osborne-relish-atr30

Country Joe & The Fish - Sing, Sing, Sing / Mara / The Return of Sweet Lorraine

I would love it if we can talk about the material featured on the first album. Was there a certain concept to it?

Joe McDonald: Sam Charters picked the songs and we just recorded them. He picked the order for the album. I did ask him to run all the songs together to make it a real concept like an opera thing but he did not do that.

Did psychoactive substances play a large role in your songwriting, performance or even maybe recording processes?

Hallucinogenic substances did not play a role in my writing, but did give me subject matter. Like the song ‘Porpoise Mouth’ is about my first LSD trip.

It’s amazing that your LP was recorded live in the studio with the exception of vocals, which were dubbed on afterward. Did you rehearse a lot? Cohen told me that you were playing in a place called Barn in Santa Cruz, where you used to rehearse and play at night…

It was a venue that had shows and it was called The Barn. John Francis Gunning was not the drummer and our new drummer Chicken Hirsh needed to be taught the material and we needed to get it all together for the upcoming recording of our first album so that is why we went to The Barn to rehearse.

Debut album was quite successful and you managed to get concerts everywhere, even in Europe.

Well we did enjoy going to new places and found the audiences receptive to our new kind of rock ‘n’ roll.

How do you feel about the fact that you recorded one of the most original psychedelic rock albums?

Well, thank you for the compliment and I agree with you. But it just turned out that way. Our music and my songs were not really mainstream, so our success was somewhat limited compared to the other groups who had a sound that was more like pop music and way more accessible for the public.

What psychedelic bands did you personally enjoy back then?

I liked to watch Jerry Garcia play. But I thought really that our psych music was the best and that was all I needed.

‘I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die’ followed. Around this time you had some crossfire in the band and you decided to quit the band for a while. But later you came back and you started recording ‘Together,’ and Bruce Barthol was replaced by Mark Ryan on bass.

Of course the invention of ‘The “Fish” Cheer’ led to “the fuck cheer” which was the first time people heard fuck being used on stage. It was hard to continue because we had a contract of 12 albums one every six months so the second album was using up all my material and with travel and recording we all started to get very tired and unhappy.

After you came back from Europe, you recorded ‘Here We Are Again’ with another lineup. What was happening?

We were more successful, but tired and crabby and not having fun any more.

You dedicated a lot of time to recording your solo albums. ‘Thinking of Woody Guthrie’ was released in 1969, followed by ‘Tonight I’m Singing Just for You’ and many others, including your work on the soundtrack for ‘Quiet Days in Clichy’. What would you say is the main difference between working on solo albums and being in a band?

Well I did not have to fight with other people about what I wanted to do. But they never would have joined me with my ideas so it was impossible. There is a special chemistry in working as a band, but by that time the original members were gone and the chemistry was gone, I had to pay the bills and the only way to do that was to continue to make records and tour. I do enjoy doing that and think that quite a few of the solo albums were very good.

Any comments on Monterey Pop Festival or Woodstock Festival?

Well, I enjoy playing and performing in open air events. I always like to hear the other bands playing as I learn new things from them. I saw lots of the acts at Monterey and Woodstock and enjoyed myself very much.

From: https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2015/02/country-joe-and-fish-interview-with-joe.html 

Bird in the Belly - Give Me Back My Heart Again

Folk music, the gathering threads of tradition, is forever being renewed – it needs reshaping as much as reverence if it’s to be inculcated into new generations of singers and musicians. And at any one time there are two or three strong exponents of the music that set the new normal for how folk is meant to sound. Bird in the Belly came together at Cecil Sharp House through a celebration of Young Folk organised by Sam Lee’s Nest Collective. And thank goodness they did because this combination of avant-garde singer Jinwoo, traditional duo Hickory Signals (Laura Ward and Adam Ronchetti), multi-instrumentalist Tom Pryor and musician Epha Roe is one of those magical combinations that might never have happened without a nudge here and there. Bird in the Belly take old songs and reshape them – at times sounding ultra-traditional, at times modern and experimental.
Jinwoo has a raw, cracked vocal forever sounding as if it’s trying to escape from him, but in combination with Laura Ward’s incredibly strong timbre and unadorned delivery it makes for an unexpectedly perfect vocal blend – the songs come to life under their combined vocal touches. Not that the rest of the band are just bystanders – there’s a breadth of instrumentation, elegiac fiddle, strong rhythm acoustic guitar, flutes and more. In it’s breadth the music on ‘The Crowing’ is reminiscent of the late sixties folk band explosion. Opener ‘Give me back my Heart again’ is a perfect exemplar of what Bid in the Belly are about – starting with just Laura Ward’s voice, then after a verse Jinwoo blends in. And having been once through the song the tempo increases, the band kick-in and we’ve shifted from an beautifully melancholic unaccompanied ballad to something more akin to a medieval dance tune.  From: https://americana-uk.com/bird-in-the-belly-the-crowing-gfm-records-2018

Deep Purple - Fireball / The Mule / Fools

Deep Purple consolidated their standing as one of the planet's fastest rising hard-rock propositions with the July 9, 1971 release of Fireball. The album followed the previous year's watershed In Rock in redefining the group's heavier musical direction, to great commercial success.
Prior to these two, now widely deemed classic albums, a slightly different lineup of Deep Purple featuring guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, organist Jon Lord, drummer Ian Paice, vocalist Rod Evans and bassist Nick Simper had already recorded all of three late-'60s LPs that were marked by inconsistent songcraft and quite a bit of experimenting, The departure of Evans and Simper (replaced by Ian Gillan and Roger Glover, respectively) fixed the songwriting issues on In Rock, and latter quality made something of a comeback on the quintet's fifth album.
Fireball’s eclecticism may boil down to its lengthy recording process over nine months, with frequent interruptions for lucrative touring runs, as Deep Purple’s star rose like a comet. Sessions first began in September 1970, but the only track completed was the very funny “Anyone’s Daughter,” which was inspired both by Blackmore’s favorite country music pickers and the Ten Years After guitar god Alvin Lee.
Then, following a series of commitments that took them to Germany, Scotland and elsewhere, the band reconvened in London long enough to complete one more song, the catchy “Strange Kind of Woman,” which was promptly released as a single (backed with "I’m Alone”) in February and rose to No. 8 in the U.K. charts, whetting appetites for a new Purple album which, as only those close to the band knew, was nowhere near finished.
But thankfully, after a 19-date British tour, an eight-day odyssey to Australia and a quick trip to Iceland, Deep Purple's management finally carved out some studio time for the band to finish Fireball. Their main motivation for finishing was that they were getting increased pressure from Purple’s U.S. label, Warner Bros., which was demanding a new album ahead of Purple's already booked July American tour.
Out of these final sessions in the spring of 1971 came the album's irrepressible title track (its opening swoosh obtained, according to Gillan’s autobiography, from the studio’s heating system), the rather repetitive but effective "No No No" and the hypnotic "Demon's Eye," which replaced "Strange Kind of Woman" on the album's British pressing.
Other new songs completed for Fireball's second side were "The Mule" (a popular instrumental, later stretched to epic lengths on stage), the musically and lyrically venomous (if slightly overlong) "Fools," and an absolute scorcher in the LP-closing “No One Came," which, as Gillan described in his bio, reflected his lingering insecurity about the band’s meteoric rise and, he feared, potential fall.  From: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/deep-purple-fireball/

The Bangles - Hero Takes a Fall / Restless / He's Got a Secret

In December 1980, dual advertisements appeared in the Recycler—a popular classifieds weekly in Los Angeles, California—each seeking members for an all-female band. One had been placed by vocalist/guitarist Susanna Hoffs, the other by Lynn Elkind, roommate to vocalist/guitarist Vicki Peterson. In true serendipitous fashion, Hoffs and Peterson would intersect. Their shared love for 1960s band oriented pop-rock led to the creation of The Colours in 1981, an embryonic form of what was to become the Bangles and whose line-up included Hoffs, Annette Zilinskas (bass, harmonica), Peterson and her sister Debbi (drums).
Assuredly indebted to the pioneering efforts of The Runaways and the Go-Go’s, The Bangs—the group’s second working title—were more closely aligned in sound to the Paisley Underground scene that had taken hold in the City of Angels. A vibrantly esoteric movement, it embraced the aural principles of Love, The Byrds, and The Mamas and the Papas among others from that epoch in popular music. So, for the quartet with an abiding affection for this era and all its trappings, it was an ideal breeding ground for them to sharpen their vintage-contemporary garage rock approach.
By 1983, the foursome had not only become darlings of the Paisley Underground, they’d also cut a single, secured a manager, drafted an EP and undergone one final line-up switch and band name change. Zilinskas’ departure to explore other career pursuits saw her void quickly filled by former Runaways bassist Michael Steele which cemented the classic roster of the Bangles. Assistance from I.R.S Records founder—and their manager—Miles Copeland got the four young women their first, non-independent recording contract. In just three years, the Bangles had gone from concept to Columbia Records signees. 
Despite the breakneck pace of their journey, the Bangles never lost sight of translating their distinctive sound to their inaugural effort; the writing and recording for All Over the Place was soon underway. Excluding their excellent covers of The Merry-Go Round’s “Live” and Katrina and the Waves “Going Down to Liverpool,” the remainder of All Over the Place finds its Venusian fueled content scripted wholly by the Peterson sisters and Hoffs. The uniform excellence of the songwriting was due to the cohesive nature of the working relationship between the Bangles and their knowledge of each other’s strengths comes through vividly in the music too. 
For example, the variegated tempos heard throughout All Over the Place—from the punky “All About You” to the airy funk of “Going Down to Liverpool”—evince Debbi Peterson’s percussive abilities aren’t restricted to just one mode of operation. Debbi’s pacing sets the tone for how her bandmate Steele seamlessly partners her textured bass playing to any of the songs present on the LP. Subsequently, Hoffs and Vicki Peterson employ their spangled guitar lines in cooperation with Debbi and Steele’s rhythmic work to aid in granting further dimension to “Hero Takes a Fall,” “Live” and “James”—a gorgeous three-song opening salvo for All Over the Place, establishing a fetchingly tough, but melodic energy as their staple mark.
Equally as important as their crackerjack musicianship is the singular singing style the Bangles possess, both collectively and individually. Whether it is Hoffs using her sweet and spicy phrasing on “Hero Takes a Fall” or the emotive, dusky tones of Vicki and Debbi on the string laden closer “More Than Meets the Eye,” each of them shines. And while Steele does not take any specific vocal or songwriting leads for herself here, she more than comes into her own space as singer-songwriter on the other Bangles LPs to follow All Over the Place. However, Steele is accounted for within the pristine harmony matrix the Bangles form to support whomever does take lead duty. 
With these striking ingredients in action on All Over the Place, producer David Kahne brings it all together succinctly behind the boards, wisely keeping the production uncluttered and focused. The resulting package is an album that announced the foursome as an exciting new act in the girl group oeuvre and beyond.  From: https://albumism.com/features/the-bangles-debut-album-all-over-the-place-album-anniversary

The Dodos - Pale Horizon

The Dodos’ music moves in lean, agile sweeps, like a conversation between two friends who know each other well enough to develop their own shorthand. Whether on stage or on record, singer and guitarist Meric Long and drummer Logan Kroeber appear equally relaxed in their brisk exchanges, matching each other’s stoicism to the point that it’s easy to overlook the speed, stamina, and sharpness of their dialogue. There’s a lot of movement between them, little of it wasted, much of it flying under the radar. These qualities also apply to the path of the band itself. Over their 15 years together, and especially since the indie-folk duo’s beloved sophomore LP, Visiter, their consistency has been easy to take for granted.
This history comes into focus on Grizzly Peak, the band’s warm and vaguely elegiac eighth album, which could also be their last one. As Long recently revealed in an NPR story by Pitchfork contributor Grayson Haver Currin, he’s been afflicted by rheumatoid arthritis, perhaps exacerbated over the years by his athletic playing style. Though its lyrics don’t explicitly point to finality, Grizzly Peak sounds like a concerted burst of creative energy on approach to a resting point. The stakes are high, but the mood is anything but tense: Similar to the last album by the Walkmen, another remarkably consistent band with whom the Dodos once shared stages, there’s a hint of celebration within the big-hearted charge, manifested in some of the most plainly pretty songs the band has ever made.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-dodos-grizzly-peak/