October Project - Deep As You Go / Sunday Morning Yellow Sky / Funeral In His Heart / Falling Farther In

October Project's second album, like their first, is dominated by gorgeous harmonies and sweeping string arrangements. But it's also a smidge more lively than their self-titled debut -- David Sabatino's guitars are allowed let loose a little more frequently, and the comparatively energetic percussion incorporates a bit of Latin spice. The first single, "Sunday Morning Yellow Sky," combines a typically intense, soaring chorus with an unusually lighthearted jam featuring harmonica and funky guitar riffs. But the meat and potatoes of October Project are still the achingly poignant melodies, tunes so emotionally stoked one can't help but wish to hear them more clearly, or feel them more fully. That can be a bit exhausting after repeated listens, and the keyboard-heavy arrangements are occasionally overwrought, but in proper doses there is no catharsis like October Project. The band broke up after touring in support of this album. Perhaps the next project for tunesmith Emil Adler and his lyricist/playwright wife, Julie Flanders, should involve musical theater. These larger-than-life ballads (and the big voice of lead singer Mary Fahl) would suit the stage well, and would be considerably more compelling than much of the stuff on Broadway.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/falling-farther-in-mw0000176216#review 

Tera Melos - The Skin Surf

Patagonian Rats marked a pivotal moment for Tera Melos, blending newly embraced pop structures with their signature technical wizardry, and adventurous sound design. It's a wildly dynamic, musician-focused record whose range of moods and influences make it a thrill to experience.
It was only a matter of time before I got around to talking about this one, and seeing how it is the album's 11th anniversary, I figured now was as good a time as any. I remember anticipating this record so much as, for a while, it seemed like the band were on a bit of a hiatus, searching for a drummer who could fill the rather large shoes their previous drummer, Vince Rogers, left. It was during this period where I got really into Tera Melos' work and was just starting to work through the cognitive dissonance that their discography was putting me through. It was jazzy, dynamic, technically astounding, futuristic in its experimentation with effects; these were things I had no frame of reference for, but it was intriguing and it kept me coming back. The anticipation for new music started to really climb and I remember it feeling like forever between when their music finally clicked and when this record came out. Patagonian Rats was eventually released and it was better than expected. It immediately clicked thanks to the use of repetition and more pop song structures, something the band wasn't really known to do. However, it still held on to everything that made the band so special in the first place: the absolute guitar wizardry from Nick Reinhart in both the technical performance and sound design senses, the hyperactive and creative drumming from John Clardy (who filled those shoes rather nicely by the way), and the unlikely, curious basslines from Nathan Latona.
What makes this record so special is the breadth of different sounds and moods it weaves together; sometimes all in the matter of a four minute song. Take one of the album's singles, The Skin Surf. The song begins with a cutesy, nursery rhyme type guitar riff, periodically shifts into a crashing alt-rock passage, and for the finale, the song is unceremoniously abducted to be subjected to unethical lab tests; at least that's what I envision. Trident Tail is a multi-phased epic that begins like an aquatic expedition with some of the watery guitar textures and sonar type embellishments. This song also makes quite a drastic detour around the half way mark into a pretty perplexing and winding prog-rock passage. It emerges from the other side into this tranquil, yet curious last leg that features one of the most tasteful saxophone solos I've ever heard on any rock record. It is so soulful and the melodic lines dance perfectly around Reinhart's odd chord progression. I could go on and on but in an effort not to inundate you or spoil too much, I will just quickly mention the closing track. It opens with a very aggressive hardcore punk section that has a pretty heavy radio band effect applied to it. It quickly becomes derailed going into this mesmerizing passage that features some two-handed tapping and sliding on the guitar and a very unorthodox drum beat from Clardy. It's the very end, though, that puts the final stamp on this incredible journey. The guitar melody is divine, the drum groove is perfect and accented beautifully with some bongos. The phrase repeats numerous times allowing you to just get lost in the joyous feeling it elicits.  From: https://tridenttail.ca/youcanbemywave/reviews/tera-melos-patagonian-rats

Pentangle - A Maid That's Deep in Love

Probably, most people who got into British folk-rock in the 60s heard Fairport Convention, were blown away, and went looking for more. They soon found Steeleye Span, and only later if at all did they find The Incredible String Band and Pentangle. But I had to be different. I found Pentangle first, specifically the album Cruel Sister. The first song on the album is A Maid That’s Deep in Love, so this song was my introduction. At the time, I knew almost nothing about British folk. I don’t even know why I picked up the album. But it soon became a favorite. Pentanlge was the quintet of Jacqui McShee on vocals, John Renbourn and Bert Jansch on vocals, guitars, and diverse insruments, Danny Thompson on stand-up bass, and Terry Cox on drums and percussion. Looking back at it, I can marvel at that lineup, but I didn’t know these names at the time. (I was late to the party, by the way; this would have been in the 1980s.) Pentangle’s sound was mostly acoustic, but there were drums and jazz bass, and was that a sitar? It was. This was a combination of instruments I would never have imagined, but it worked. Today, it sounds as exciting to me as it ever did.
A Maid That’s Deep in Love is a variation on a motif that comes up often in British folk songs: a woman who disguises herself as a man in order to find her lost love. He is often a sailor, as in this song, and she has not heard from him. This motif comes up because the British navy had a practice for too many years of abducting young men and forcing them to join the navy. If you hear the term “press gang” in a British folk song, it refers to the groups that carried out these abductions.  From: https://oliverdiplace.blogspot.com/2011/01/for-song-maid-thats-deep-in-love.html 

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - If 6 Was 9 / Castles Made Of Sand / Bold As Love

Following the life-changing, personal mind explosion that was "Are You Experienced" in mid '67 I simply could not get enough of Hendrix. I was a bug-eyed, slobbering addict. I had a Jones for Jimi. I even let myself be suckered into buying an LP by some unknown named Curtis Knight because the cover said "featuring Jimi Hendrix." It was a blatantly opportunistic scam. While my hero may have been in the backup band, he had about as much to do with the music as the janitor who cleaned up the studio after the session. While that taught me a valuable lesson about the seedy side of capitalism it had no effect on my unquenchable thirst for anything Hendrix so, by the time the stateside version of "Axis: Bold as Love" was released in January '68, I was pacing outside my local record shop like a caged puma when they opened for the day, cash in fist. While it didn't have the drastic, dramatic impact on my consciousness that the debut had (in retrospect, few things in my life did), it met my rock & roll requirements and lofty expectations and I ended up wearing the grooves out of the vinyl nonetheless. To be completely honest, it hasn't held up to scrutiny over the 40+ years since its release even remotely as well as its predecessor has. It's truly yet another case of the sophomore jinx at work. But first I must breach the subject of the Brontosaurus in the room that is the ostentatious and amazingly garish cover art. It stands as the pinnacle of the iniquity that is miscommunication for all eternity to come. I can only imagine the awkward scene that unfolded when Track Records' Boss Hogg confronted the art department's head honcho after the project had long since gone to press.
Fat Cat: "Great Caesar's ghost, what the hell is THIS?" Art guy: "Wha..? You said Jimi had Indian blood in him." Fat Cat: "You lug nut! Does he LOOK like he's from New Delhi?" Art guy: "Oh! You meant THOSE Indians? Ooops. My bad."
Thus this set of songs is branded forevermore with an undeniably colorful, eye-catching veneer that's about as appropriate as a rendering of Jim Morrison sporting the papal tiara while fronting the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Human error on this scale borders on the sublime.
On to the music. You know how you look back on a TV sci-fi program from your youth that you thought was the nazz at the time but now it's just silly? That's the album's opening sequence, "EXP," in a nutshell. Hendrix's short radio play was neat-o to my then 18-year-old, unjaded ears but other than Jimi's wild feedback frenzy (that proved that my record player was, indeed, a stereo device) the whole thing is shamefully dated even if it was, after all, the sixties. "Up From the Skies" follows and to say his legion of fans were collectively caught off-guard is putting it mildly. We were expecting (and wanting) his fiery lightning to strike and burn into our skulls immediately but what we got was a smooth saunter through Jazzville where Hendrix's coy wah-wah guitar and Mitch Mitchell's whispering brush strokes made us reluctantly stop and consider that maybe we'd underestimated the versatility of these dudes.
The aggressive introductory barrage that starts "Spanish Castle Magic" was more in the fashion of what we craved to hear. It has a very odd progression, for sure, but that doesn't necessarily make it good. The song is not melodic at all. It's as if he wrote the guitar parts first and then struggled to devise vocal lines that would fit over them. There's just something essential missing and there lies the rub. Unlike the professional tone they achieved on their debut, this record has all the appearances of being slapped together in a hurry to meet a deadline, much to its detriment. However the next tune, "Wait Until Tomorrow," is as slick and tight a track as they come so go figure. Jimi's slinky guitarisms are on full display as he glides effortlessly over the frets and Mitchell's suitably wicked drum fills are delightful and fun. Hendrix's humorous story about a botched elopement is engaging as he delivers clever lines like "do I see a silhouette/of someone pointing something from a tree?/click, bang!/what a hang/your daddy just shot poor me."
"Ain't No Telling" is a penned-on-the-fly, straight-ahead steamroller that doesn't even pretend to disguise Jimi's James Brown hot soul roots for a solitary second. A few well-placed kicks and accents help keep the song from becoming too predictable. Next up is the impeccable "Little Wing," featuring Hendrix's timeless and brilliantly executed preamble to what may be his most distinctive composition. The unexpected addition of a glockenspiel adds just the right touch of magic to words like "she's walking through the clouds/with a circus mind that's running wild/butterflies and Zebras/moonbeams and fairy tales/that's all she ever thinks about/riding with the wind." For a guy not known for his literary acumen, that's mighty poetic stuff. "If 6 Was 9" stands in sharp contrast to that tune's beauty, with Jimi's muscle-bound Strat throwing jabs to your gut like a heavyweight champ who's got you on the ropes. The complex jazz chords on the chorus are inspired, Noel Redding speed-walks his bass around the lead like a man possessed, Mitch's closed rolls are immaculate and Hendrix's unadorned, bare vocals make it sound like he's standing beside you. Here the creep factor is almost overwhelming as he orates prophetically "I'm the one who's got to die when it's time for me to die/so let me live my life the way I want to." The extended ending is psychedelic and fanciful as all get out with Jimi flailing away on a recorder like a paranoid Toucan tripping on LSD while trying to remember how to fly. It's phenomenally off the rails.  From: https://www.jazzmusicarchives.com/review/axis-bold-as-love-jimi-hendrix-experience/224910

 

Wednesday - Reality TV Argument Bleeds

I wanna talk about the people who live on the edge. The edge of town, the edge of disaster, the edge of most people's awareness. I'm not talking about some glamorous vampire in a Hollywood art movie. I'm talking about the messed-up homies and the freaks. The football champion who started drinking at the bars that don't card at 16 and didn't make it to 21. The punk pal who always goes too hard in the pit and makes it dangerous. That girl in high school who always went for the really risky losers. The local character who always just seemed kind of wacky until she ended up on a poster stapled to a telephone pole. Your coolest cousin, always there with the hookup, who somehow ended up dealing ketamine out of a motel room at 35.
These aren't super good people; they're not that bad, either. They just went their own slightly twisted way when society told them to straighten up, and then maybe found they couldn't get back to that point where a normal life launches. Or you know what? They don't give a damn. Something might have struck them down at some point, maybe even the hand of a loved one. People probably look right through them now. But see, they have this terrible knowledge that every turn in life carries the seed of something terrible, knotted up with the fun and with the sweetness. It's shut them out of the normie dreams upholding the American grind.
If you ever had a crazy phase or deal with a complicated extended family, you've known people like the ones I've just described. The underdogs I've mentioned are specific, though. They came alive in the mind of Karly Hartzman, the singer and lyricist for the North Carolina band Wednesday, whose sixth album Bleeds — their best yet and a contender for finest rock album of the year — intervenes in the current toxic public conversation by demanding acknowledgment that, for many Americans the line between survival and pratfalling into the abyss has always been vanishingly thin. "I wound up here by holdin' on," Hartzman wails in the feedback-fueled pile-up of a song with that title, set at the funeral of a former high school hero who drowned in a creek, where mourners buy snacks from a vending machine.
That chorus, which cops a line from one of the poet Evan Gray's wryly dark Appalachian laments, locates Hartzman herself within the fatally funny stories of Bleeds. Famously loyal to her home state (she now lives within walking distance of the high school she attended in Greensboro) and the ragtag crew of best friends and neighborhood regulars who populate her narratives, Hartzman is often described as a regional artist; if that designation reduces her in anybody's eyes, Bleeds blasts away any fences around her talent. She's a Southern rocker in the manner of the Drive-By Truckers or the Allman Brothers and a Southern writer evoking Dorothy Allison and Barbara Kingsolver — swamp and holler to the core, but much more than that, and never only that. Local sheds light on the whole damn world. Grounded as a copper wire, Hartzman writes some of the most richly detailed lyrics going these days — you can see the road she biked home on in middle school, drunk on a Four Loko, remembered here in "Phish Pepsi." As she assembles her observations and memories, Hartzman finds ways that her specifics zing outward in myriad directions. Her insights and observations have parallels in every overlooked spot where people stick together throughout their makeshift lives.
This happens in Wednesday's music as well as in Hartzman's lyrics — the sound of Wednesday after five years of hard-earned breakthroughs reflects that electric groundedness, the power to keep expanding from within a solid framework. Punk's noise and country music's tear-stained sweetness blend together to represent the ups and downs of the everyday on Bleeds, but nobody in Wednesday is cosplaying in a cowboy hat. No, this is all Hanes t-shirts and tattoos, bikini tops for when the party moves into the backyard stock tank pool. Get the particulars right, and your stories will land with the heshers in Tacoma and the skaters in Arizona just like they do with your own crew. Hartzman and her band are nailing every one.
Over the course of Wednesday's six albums, Hartzman has cultivated her role as an empathetic witness, never standing above the helter-skelter scenes, but able to preserve enough composure and clarity to track what happened before, during and after everything went to hell. That doesn't mean Hartzman avoids catharsis — throughout Bleeds, which fully secures Wednesday's place next to Creedence, Big Star, The Replacements and the Drive-By Truckers in the pantheon of stereotype-smashing regional rock, she yowls and hiccups and moans with such controlled force that a listener can virtually taste the sweat on her upper lip. But she always remains grounded in her mission: to tell the true story of these fools, who drive her crazy, whom she loves. Her determination is palpable. She held on and wound up here, with them.  From: https://www.npr.org/2025/09/22/nx-s1-5550130/wednesday-bleeds-album-review

Sinoptik - Le Menteur

Ukrainian band Sinoptik released their first album back in 2014. In the same year Russia annexed the Crimea and later Russian-backed militants occupied the Donetsk Oblast administrative building. From here they declared independence from Ukraine. This is the region of the country where Sinoptik were originally based, along with fellow metal band Jinjer. A war followed and Donetsk fell to the insurgents. Those are not the most ideal conditions for a band to grow. But grow they did and 2021 sees the release of their fifth album “The Calling”.
The conflict did not deter them, but they had to leave their homes and ended up in the capital, Kiev. Here they hoped for a better and safer life. However, although they are Ukrainians, they were treated as second-class people. The band were marginalized and oppressed just because of their hometown. They were told that they were different and that the outbreak of war was their fault. Almost daily they were faced with radical social exclusion and inequality, in their own country, by their own compatriots.
The trio quickly learned to adapt to their environment and acquired a strong DIY attitude. The band has already performed countless concerts in their home country and even won the ‘Best Band in the World’ award at the ‘Global Battle of the Bands’ in Berlin in 2016. They are now ready to conquer international territory. If only there wasn’t a pandemic going on.
The longest tracks on the album start and finish proceedings, ensnaring listeners like the jaws of a Venus flytrap. The first of these is the opening number ‘Le Menteur’. There’s plenty of variety in this track with influences old and new. Heavy crunching riffs punctuate mellow serene passages. The album has a concept, but not strictly a story, more like chapters in the life of a man.
It’s possible to pick out styles dating back to the 1970s. Indeed, the band cite some of their influences as Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix, and Pink Floyd. The effect of these and others on the band’s music can be heard in ‘Granny Greta’ and ‘Young and High’. These are followed by a one-minute instrumental interval called ‘Inception’, featuring Dmitriy Afanasiev on acoustic guitar. The band describe ‘Apple Tree’ as an optimistic rock anthem. It doesn’t come across to me like that, as its fairly laid back. However, it livens up later with Hammond organ style keyboards that are reminiscent of Procol Harum or Argent.
“The Calling” was recorded and produced in the band’s own studio by singer / guitarist Dmitriy Afanasiev. In their first single ‘Black Soul Man’, the band deals with the strange paradox of being a stranger in their own country. The song has a classic rock vibe with an anthemic chorus. It tells of the oppression and constant conflicts the band has to deal with every day.
‘Sell God’s Number’ – has an accompanying video that was made at Korostyshev boarding school for children with mental and physical limitations. It is one the heavier numbers on the album and is about choices. The band elaborates thus, “We frequently make choices recklessly and after choosing, go towards the goal just to abandon it as soon as obstacles arise”.
Another short instrumental interlude follows called ‘Absolution’ that sounds suspiciously like ‘Inception’ being played backwards. Then we come to the final track, and I think they have saved the best until last. There are lashings of Pink Floyd influence in the first part of ‘The Call’. This morphs into a sumptuous soaring chorus that is a real earworm. It then becomes an infectious hum-along before returning to that powerful chorus. It finishes its 9:34 minutes in the Floydian style it began in.
As a result of the traumatic times, lyric writing for the band has become emotional and personal. Sinoptik admit they are not trying to re-invent the wheel, just produce a great sounding and technically sophisticated album. In that, I believe they have succeeded. Mixing influences, genres and styles has made for an enjoyable and interesting album. These guys have to be applauded for their bravery and determination in the face of adversity. They’ve been made to feel like the underdogs but have the bark and the bite to come out on top.  From: https://theprogspace.com/sinoptik-the-calling/

Pretenders - Brass In Pocket / Private Life / Lovers Of Today

“I never thought it was that great,” Chrissie Hynde says of The Pretenders’ 1979 single Brass In Pocket. “Was it pop? Motown? Rock? It didn’t seem to know what it was. I used to cringe when I heard my voice on those early Pretenders recordings, and then that fucker went to number one! I remember walking around Oxford Circus hearing it blasting out of people’s radios. I was mortified.”
For all Hynde’s doubts about the song, the public bought The Pretenders’ third single in their droves. Many found Hynde’s sassy, self-aggrandising portrayal of a gal who wasn’t going to take no for an answer irresistible. The first UK No.1 of the new decade, it topped the chart for two weeks in January 1980.
The great irony was that Hynde hadn’t wanted it to be released. “This goes out over my dead body,” she told producer Chris Thomas after she and her fellow Pretenders recorded Brass In Pocket at London’s Wessex Studios late 
in 1979. We can be thankful that Thomas was persuasive enough to convince Hynde of the track’s worth.
Unusually for Hynde at that stage in her career, the song was one that she didn’t write alone. When she heard guitarist James Honeyman-Scott play what would become BIP’s infectious hook, she seized upon it, taking away a recording of the riff so that she could work on it at her leisure. “I’ve learned to collaborate since then”, she says,” but at that point I didn’t really know how to.”
It was later, when The Pretenders played support to then-labelmates Strangeways at a gig in Wakefield, that Hynde chanced upon a title for she and Honeyman-Scott’s ace composition. “We were all having dinner together afterwards, and one of the guy’s in Strangeways had just picked up his trousers from the dry-cleaners,” she remembers. “His bandmate asked him jokingly: ‘Was there any brass in the pockets?’ I suppose I just liked the turn of phrase. Being from the US I hadn’t heard it before.”
Interestingly, the demo of Brass In Pocket that appears on Rhino’s 2007, two-CD re-release of The Pretenders’ self-titled debut album has somewhat different lyrics. Hynde sings: ‘You’re special’, rather than the cockier, much more self-assured ‘I’m special’ on the finished version. It’s a small, if crucial, detail but Hynde maintains that any girl-power the song packs is as much by accident as by design.
“When people say that there’s this strong female persona driving the song, it drives me fucking crazy!” she blasts. “The ‘girl’ thing seems to be real important for other people but I’m mystified by it. For me, Brass In Pocket was supposed to be real traditional, because tradition in rock is what turns me on. We want our rock singers to be confident and cocky, and Brass In Pocket was an act, my attempt to write a song that sounded like that. It’s actually very tongue-in-cheek – that’s why I have that line where I sing: ‘I’m winking at you.’”
Elsewhere, Hynde’s mention of ‘Detroit leaning’ references a style of driving where folks lean way back in the front seat and stick their elbow out of the window; her ‘Got new skank/It’s so reet’ is a little tip of the hat to famed US artist and satirist Robert Crumb. “I was a big fan of his comic books”, she says. “One cartoon of his had this pot gauge; a machine for measuring the quality of marijuana. If it was really, really good stuff they called it ‘reet petite’.”
Even if Hynde hadn’t conceived Brass In Pocket as some kind of feminist anthem, she was frustrated when the accompanying video cast her in a passive role, playing a down-at-heel waitress at a Nowheresville diner – a woman with far less drive and tenacity than the real Chrissie Hynde.
“My idea was that the band would show up on motorbikes,” she says. “I’d cast off my apron and we’d all ride off into the sunset.” Alas the video’s director – missing the fact that Hynde was an alpha female – had a rather different idea. “He had the band showing up with their girlfriends in a Pink Cadillac, and me trying to get their attention and failing. The closing shot shows the band driving off and me looking out of the window, weeping. I wanted to put a bullet to my head.”
When Brass In Pocket went to No.1, no champagne was popped chez Hynde, and not just because of her conflicted feelings about the song. The sad backdrop to The Pretenders’ only chart-topper was the heroin-overdose death of her friend and flatmate Kevin Sparrow. Hynde and the rest of the band attended his funeral while the UK was going Pretenders-mad.
He wouldn’t be the only person lost to drugs in the Pretenders’ circle. Two of the men who played on Brass In Pocket were dead within a few years of its release. Guitarist James Honeyman-Scott died of heart failure due to cocaine intolerance in 1982. A year later, former bassist Pete Farndon drowned in a bathtub after overdosing on heroin.
“In terms of my career, Brass In Pocket was about as big as it got,” the singer says, “but globally-speaking it was more like a B-movie. I don’t remember it having any huge impact in terms of us playing bigger venues. The best thing about the song is that it always reminds me of Jimmy Scott. He was a fantastic guitar player. He was only 25 when we lost him.”  From: https://www.loudersound.com/bands-artists/pretenders-brass-in-pocket-story-behind-the-song

Swallow - Something Started Happening

The first album from Swallow was produced by Jean Paul Salvatori, who put together the excellent Bootleg Him! double LP of Alexis Korner material this same year, 1972. Jeff "Skunk" Baxter of Ultimate Spinach, later with Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, appears on "Come Home Woman," an original from bassist Vern Miller Jr., who was part of the band who opened for the Beatles in 1966, the legendary Barry & the Remains. Miller's presence adds collectability to this debut. "Come Home Woman" would have been perfect for Alexis Korner, come to think of it, a bluesy lament which begins with Baxter's wonderful guitar work and picks up steam, letting George Leh open up and battle the horns -- the voice and instruments stir things up so fine. 
"Aches and Pains" is one of the four Vern Miller Jr./George Leh co-writes, and it is gospel-tinged blues which spills over onto "Common Man." There's real personality here, music perhaps a little too earthy for the Blood, Sweat & Tears crowd, but authentic to the max. Recorded and mixed where Aerosmith cut "Dream On" and where Jonathan Edwards of Orphan tracked "Sunshine," "Out of the Nest" is post-Bosstown serious singing and playing. When it is all instrumental, as on pianist/tenor saxman David Woodford's "Shuffle," Boston veteran Parker Wheeler gets a chance to give a counterpoint to J. Geils Band harp player Magic Dick. 
The harmonica on "Shuffle" admirably replaces George Leh's distinctive vocal. Leh's got that Nick Gravenites gravel growl on "Something Started Happening," a tune with charging dynamics, perhaps this band's strong suit. Miller's "Brown Eyed Baby Boy" is a plea for love with a solid hook that would work well for the Remains since that group started recording again in the new millennium. The Staple Singers' composition "Why Am I Treated So Bad," also covered by Cannonball Adderley and the Sweet Inspirations, adds another dimension to the mix, the organ of Bob Camacho getting to have its say. Mick Aranda's creative drumming is also worthy of note. Out of the Nest is an excellent document of early-'70s Boston roots rock/blues music with just a touch of jazz.  From: https://rockasteria.blogspot.com/2015/10/swallow-out-of-nest-1972-us-awesome.html

Letters To Cleo - Jennifer / Awake / Little Rosa / He's Got An Answer

Myspace: You released your debut album, Aurora Gory Alice, in 1993, and "Here & Now" became popular really quickly. What do you remember about that rapid ascent? Did it feel like one week you were playing a small local bar, and the next week you were booked on MTV?

Kay Hanley: You know, it’s interesting, because I really just thought that was the way things went. I just thought we were getting a promotion at our job.
We had been in our band forever, playing clubs and steadily going from Monday night at 9pm, to Thursday night at 10pm, and headlining in Boston at the small clubs, and slowly filling up clubs in New York, DC, and Philadelphia, and doing that steadily for a couple of years, so when we signed our deal it was like, oh, alright, now it’s time for the record deal part of our job. Then we got on the radio and on MTV really quickly, so it seemed, at that time, like this is the way it works.
I’ve been in the business for a long time now, and I know that’s absolutely not the way it works. We were insanely lucky, and it was just a lightning in a bottle kind of thing. When our second album failed to catch fire the way the first one did, it was a reality check.

It sounds like you had some youthful naivete. A lot of times that’s a killer, but is there any way in which your youthful naivete played a positive role for you?

Oh sure. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. We were just workhorses. We worked really hard. We all had day jobs. I would work a double shift at my waitressing job on Thursday, so I could hop in the van at midnight and be in New York the next day for the first show of our weekend tour.
Because of this when our second album didn’t do as well, it wasn’t like, oh man, I guess we just hang it up. It was like, alright, let’s get some college gigs and make some money to keep this thing going.

Do you remember how you quit your waitressing job?

You know, I never did.

So they’re still expecting you to come in?

[Laughs]

I think they’ve figured it out.

They would give me more and more time off, so when I would go on the road, even when we were on MTV and had a huge song on the radio, and I was definitely a recognizable person within the 128 belt loop in Massachusetts, I would come back from the road, and we’d have six weeks off, and I’d go back to work at the restaurant, because I didn’t know what else to do. If I showed up for work today, they’d put me to work.

What moment, or event, did you consider to be the pinnacle of fame back then?

There were so many of those along the way. In ‘92, or ’93, we were in the WBCN Rock N Roll Rumble. That was huge, and then maybe hosting 120 Minutes was kind of a big deal.

A VERY big deal.

Yeah ... things that I’d previously fan-girled like crazy for, and then getting to do those things.

What would you say was your biggest fangirl moment?

One time, I think it was in ’96, we were on tour with Sponge and Our Lady Peace. Sponge was booked to play Conan, and it was a song I sang with them every night, it was that song “Molly,” so I came with them to do Conan.
Spalding Gray, an amazing writer and someone of whom I was a major fan, was on the show that night, and we ended up getting our makeup done in the chairs next to each other at the same time, and I was freaking the fuck out.
Finally I got up the courage to say, “Mr. Gray, I’m a very big fan. My name is Kay, I’m singing tonight on the show. It’s very nice to meet you,” and he just kind of sniffed at me and turned away, and I was like nooooo!
I learned a very valuable lesson, if you really are a fan of someone, or something, and you idealize them in a certain way, just keep your distance, let the fantasy live. It turns out he was an incredibly depressed person, he committed suicide about ten years later, but at the time I really took it so personally.

During all your time on the road, what’s the closest you’ve come to getting arrested without actually getting arrested?

Oh I’ve been arrested.

What did you get arrested for?

Assault and battery on a police officer. It wasn’t actually on the road, but it was after a show.
It was the night of our record release party for Aurora Gory Alice, the CherryDisc version (it was later re-released by Giant Records), at T.T. the Bear’s, which is kind of like our home base.
Next door to T.T.’s is a place called Middle East, which also has bands playing until last call. Invariably, both clubs let out at the same time, and all the bands load their gear out on Brookline Ave.
On this particular night, the Cambridge police decided that was not the way shit was gonna go down, and they started giving all the bands a hard time. One thing led to another, I thought I would be a hero and explain to the police, “We do this all the time. I’ve been doing this since I was 17 years old. It’s fine, we’re gonna be right out.” They were just like, bitch, no. The next thing you know I was face down on the hood of a cruiser in handcuffs.
The beautiful part of the story, aside from the story itself, is that Bonney and Jeanne, the owner and manager of T.T.’s, after everybody went away, they went back to T.T.’s, cleaned out the till and came and bailed me out in cash, which was amazing.

How did it go from “We do this all the time” to you being in handcuffs? Did you get a little acerbic?

Probably. I have a big mouth. Stacy, our drummer, I remember him trying to pull me away from the situation, being like, “Kay, it’s time to shut the fuck up, let’s just go.” He had my hands behind my back, trying to pull me away, and the cop was yelling at me, and he had his hand in my face, so I kind of felt like a caged animal. When I finally got free, my arms swung around and MAY have landed on the police officer.

So physics is to blame?

Right. I never would have attributed it to physics, but now that you have I would like to co-opt that language in the future.

Feel free! Moving to your current work, you recently released a new EP thanks to a PledgeMusic campaign. I noticed A LOT of memorabilia was offered up. Was there anything that was especially hard to part with?

We’ve had the same manager since the beginning, so his attic was filled to the gills with Cleo stuff. We were just like, “Let’s just get rid of it all.” Then stuff started coming up, like old Boston Music Awards, and the original handwritten lyrics for “Here and Now,” and I was just like, “Aw man, I don’t know how I feel about that,” so we ended up not putting those handwritten lyrics up, and a couple of other things, like a Boston Music Award, or two. 

From: https://myspace.com/article/2016/10/20/letters-to-cleo-throwback-thursday-interview 

Mott the Hoople - All the Way from Memphis

“All the Way from Memphis” first appeared on Mott the Hoople’s 1973 LP Mott. Despite the album’s popularity, the song never charted in the US. The song describes the unglamorous side of rock stardom. Written by singer Ian Hunter, “All the Way from Memphis” is the tale of a guitar lost in transit and what seemed like a paltry concert audience.
The band’s 1972 tour of the US was scheduled to end in Memphis. Guitarist Mick Ralphs and keyboardist Verden Allen decided to drive while the rest of the band — along with the group’s equipment — traveled by air. Ralph’s guitar ended up on a train headed to Oriole, KY. It took a month for Ralphs to recover the guitar. Compounding the problem were reports of dismal ticket sales for the Memphis, TN show.
“I’d written ’Memphis’ and it was complete, and the band had recorded it but there were still no words, no words whatsoever,” Hunter told Songwriting magazine. “I was there for weeks, the old cassette player by the bed and I couldn’t find a thing, and eventually I hit on a gig we’d done in Memphis where they rang us up and said, ‘Nobody’s going to the gig.’
“What had happened was the turnstiles had broken down and there were 3,000 people trying to get in and they couldn’t get in. All in all, it was Christmas too, and it was a magical night, it really was. So I managed to get the song out of that. But it just shows they don’t always come, the words and music together — sometimes you get stuck with either the words or the music.”  From: https://medium.com/the-riff/mott-the-hooples-all-the-way-from-memphis-explained-e844ed8e4923

Sinead O'Connor - Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home

TSuccess Has Made A Failure Of Our Home is about a couple who were doing just fine until the guy found fame and fortune. Now he pays little attention to his girl, leaving her alone most nights and never holding her like he used to. The conclusion: Success has made a failure of our home.
One of Loretta Lynn's early songs, "Success" was her first Top 10 hit on the Country chart, rising to #6. By the end of the 1960s, she was one of the biggest stars in country music. She heeded this song's message and stayed remarkably grounded, keeping her friends and family as priorities. She stayed with her husband Doolittle until his death in 1996.
"Success" was written by Johnny Mullins, who also wrote another song Lynn recorded, "Blue Kentucky Girl." It was produced by Owen Bradley, who also worked with Brenda Lee and Patsy Cline.
Sinéad O'Connor covered this song in 1992 under the title "Success Has Made a Failure of Our Home." She was drawn to the song after landing a massive hit in 1990 with "Nothing Compares 2 U" from her second album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got. An unwitting celebrity, she soon realized that fame and the burdens that come with it were ruining her life. She responded by making her next album, Am I Not Your Girl?, a collection of cover songs with standards like "Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered" mixed with more obscure songs like "Scarlet Ribbons." "Success Has Made a Failure of Our Home" was released as the first single and was only a minor hit, as per her plan.  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/loretta-lynn/success

The Monkees - The Door Into Summer / Words / Pleasant Valley Sunday

“What’s my idea of an awesome song? Simple. A truly awesome song is one that I could listen to with a smile in my heart every single day for the rest of my life without growing sick of it.”
I’m not sure anyone could write a more pure distillation of why some rock songs are simply awesome than that. And that’s how I feel when I listen to much of The Monkees’ music – I don’t care who wrote it, I don’t care who played the instruments, and I sure as hell don’t care if that is really Peter Tork playing the tambourine. The fact of the matter, and the only fact that matters, is that I could listen to the best of their songs “with a smile in my heart every single day for the rest of my life”. And there are a ton of the best of their songs on Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd, which is our topic of discussion today, and a recent request I’ve been meaning to get around to.
Take “What Am I Doin’ Hangin’ Round?” What a fantastic slice of ‘60s big, catchy chorus pop. I tell you, more than any other decade, songwriters in the 60s knew how to write a big, catchy chorus. By the ‘70s Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd had largely dispensed with choruses, and the prog rockers never had any use for ‘em. But the ‘60s were the decade of Big Catchy Choruses, and this song has an excellent example of one, it lodges in your brain and refuses to come out for the rest of the day. Clever story too – a “loud mouth Yankee” goes to Mexico for a week and takes “advantage of a girl who loved me so”. But there’s a twist at the end – after the week is over he has fallen in love with her, and a year later still can’t get her off his mind and wants to get enough money to go back and see her. I love a catchy song, and I love a song with a great story – but what I really love is a catchy song with a great story, and this one ticks both of those boxes.
There’s also a twist to “Love is Only Sleeping” – some guy’s girlfriend goes all cold on him, and he tells her “sometimes love is only sleeping”, and he sticks it out and by the end of the song she’s warmed up to him again. Great song, but it’s kind of lousy relationship advice – if she isn’t into you anymore, just accept it and get on with your life, too many people spend too much time hoping that a sleeping love will wake up when it never does. There are plenty of fish in the sea buddy, go find another one. Anyway, it’s another song with a phenomenal chorus, and I love the moody vibe of the whole thing. That’s the thing about The Monkees – the Pre-Fab Four moniker wasn’t inaccurate (and it’s actually pretty funny when you think about it), but their albums were always more than just bubble gum. Don Kirshner and Co. probably overestimated the taste of the music-buying twelve year old, they probably didn’t need to get the top-notch songwriters they did for The Monkees to have hit albums. Geez, even having just one high quality song on every album would have been more than they really had to do to sell records, the TV show was popular enough to sell records all on its own without great songs. Every pre-fab TV group since The Monkees has learned this lesson and not bothered with paying for the best songwriters money can buy, they know they don’t need to. The Disney Channel has become expert at making massive amounts of money selling subpar music through pre-fab TV bands and stars. Lucky for us, the first TV rock band was sailing in uncharted waters, and so just to be safe the producers put up the cash to get first-rate material. “Love is Only Sleeping” is pretty first rate if you ask me.
Of course, the song from the album everyone has heard is “Pleasant Valley Sunday”, and it was a pretty obvious choice as a single. A groovy guitar figure kicks it off, it’s got another of those 60’s catchy choruses, and it subtly taps into the typical suburban teenagers’ vague recognition that something feels a little off in their world. Yeah, there’s charcoal burnin’ everywhere, and the local squire is mowing his lawn, and Mrs. Gray’s blooming roses really are impressive, but underneath the surface of this “status symbol land” there’s a stifling conformity, a bland sameness, and underneath that there’s Roger-Waters-stealing-from-Henry-David-Thoreau’s “quiet desperation” from a sense that there’s more to life and all the suburbians are missing out on it. “Creature comfort goals they only numb my soul/And make it hard for me to see/My thoughts all seem to stray to places far away/I need a change of scenery”. That says it all. Not only is the song something you want to sing along to, but it also taps into that mid-60s spirit of questioning everything the 50s had been striving for in terms of uniformity and convention. But it’s a soft touch, it’s not in-your-face enough to be threatening to the parents of those twelve year olds who bought the records. Thank heavens Gerry Goffin and Carole King moved to the suburbs and consequently felt compelled to write about how they really felt about it – they were master songwriters anyway, but their experience in suburbia allowed them to really tap into something when writing this song. This wasn’t just a great pop song – it was a gentle expression of what many young people were feeling at the time (many of whom eventually gave in to convention and went on to live lives of quiet desperation in the suburbs themselves – most people feel the allure of the unconventional, few people have the strength to actually follow it themselves). It’s the rare song you can rock out to, but if you take a little time to listen while you’re rocking, you might get something to think about too.
“The Door Into Summer” is another surprisingly deep slice of social commentary. When I first saw the title I was expecting a sun, fun, sand and girls type of summer song à la The Beach Boys, but what I got was a meditation on how the corporate ladder leads nowhere and climbing it as fast as you can gets you nothing but regret. There’s a somewhat veiled shot at the Vietnam War in the first two lines, but it’s mostly the story of a man who learned too late that for all the time he neglected family and friends to chase success in the corporate world “…he pays for it with years he cannot buy back with his tears/As he finds out there’s been no one keeping score”. This is a song with exceptional lyrics, a resonant message, and a fantabulous melody to boot – I’d rate it as one of The Monkees’ very best.  From: https://brutallyhonestrockalbumreviews.wordpress.com/2022/08/09/album-review-the-monkees-pisces-aquarius-capricorn-jones-ltd/

Tranquebar - Tigers in Spain

Sometimes it can be better to accept and not examine things too deeply. Let it flow and enjoy it. Take Tranquebar’s music. In many ways, what the Danish band creates shouldn’t work. The mix of banjo, voice, accordion, and percussion is beautifully ramshackle (at least on the surface). Yet it succeeds, and it does it in a fashion that’s quite mesmerizing. Ø is actually a collection of four EPs, each recorded on a different Danish island (hence the title, as Ø means island). And each island exerts a subtle influence on the shading of the music. The first cuts, from Sejerø, are the most nautical, with a hearty shanty rhythm that percolates underneath, and reaches the surface on “Joy.”
Here, and with every track on the album, the band show the magic they have and how they knock it all into shape: not only can they write a good tune that takes unexpected turns but they create the kind of chorus that sticks in the brain (at its core, this is essentially acoustic, folky pop music of a very twisted sort), and they can also arrange with wonderful imagination. Layers of vocals on “Tigers In Spain,” for instance, or using dobro and percussive cast iron stove for the rhythm behind a track.
The three tracks made on Endelave have a different mood, with a brooding darkness that works well as part of their style, like French chanson dragged through a few of Dante’s circles of hell and documented by Leonard Cohen. The standout, and one of the best tracks on the whole disc, is “Contender,” insistent and nagging, opening up into a chorus that’s even more shadowed than the verse, with backing vocals from a chorus of galley slaves.
Moving on to the recordings from Fejø, and singer Grit Jansen starts channelling Patti Smith on “Birdmaster,” where wooden flute and bird feet percussion (yes, really) let the singer fly – it’s all very disturbing in a low-key way that stays in the mind long after the song is done. Quoth the raven, plenty more.
Ø is a cornucopia of curious joys – bizarre as it seems, “Angels Share” manages to sound like a New Orleans brass band cast adrift and heading round the Skaggerak into the Baltic Sea and still makes perfect sense. However, not everything works so completely. A little judicious pruning and a shorter running time would have increased the impact of this CD. That said, even the average tracks here are stranger and outmuscle so much of what’s released today that Tranquebar definitely stand above the herd. Even when they aspire to soft and straightforward, as they do on the closer, “The Shed,” with just voice and concertina recorded in a single take, there’s still something sweetly off-kilter in the performance.
What they’ve created is utterly original, insidious, subversive – and yes, highly addictive. It shouldn’t work, yet it does. If you’re not convinced yet, consider this: where else will you find a Masai cow horn imitating a herd of elephants?  From: https://www.rootsworld.com/reviews/tranquebar-20.shtml

XTC - Wake Up / Reign Of Blows / Train Running Low On Soul Coal

XTC in 1984 were not the chart-busting force they had been from 1978-1982 when their brand of angular but highly infectious pop regularly graced the charts. What many critics consider their finest album, the excellent English Settlement, had been released two years previously but since then there had been a few changes.
They no longer played live, the punishing schedule they’d endured for years had led to Andy Partridge suffering a stress related illness and taking the brave but creditable decision to quit touring for self-preservation. In a separate development, powerhouse drummer Terry Chambers had quit to start a new life in Australia, which left Partridge, Colin Moulding and Dave Gregory to operate a guerrilla rearguard in defence of musical innovation from their Swindon hide-out. This they have managed to do successfully into 21st Century, producing along the way rare album gems such as 1986’s Skylarking and 1999’s Apple Venus (which I think Andy Partridge would nominate as their best) and successfully going ‘on strike’ against their Virgin label.
A year earlier in 1983 XTC had released the pastorally triumphant Mummer, an album that still serves as the perfect foil to The Big Express, Venus to Mars in the Solar System of the XTC catalogue. Drums have always been so essential to the XTC sound and Pete Phipps had stepped in for Mummer and kept the stool for The Big Express, and what a performance he turned in. There is a distinct hammering beat throughout the album, with the drums seemingly higher in the mix as the sounds conjure pictures of this great steam engine powering through the mid-80s landscape. This image is reinforced by the cover shots of the band dressed as engine drivers and a wheel-shaped sleeve design that I misguidedly thought at the time would be rare.
Like all good train journeys, The Big Express begins in early morning with one of only two Moulding contributions, Wake Up. This is not one to ease yourself into the day with as the bleary-eyed commuter is smacked between the eyes with the sentiment, “Who cares, you might be dead”, as the realisation dawns with the day that you’re ultimately alone in a harsh world. Trademark Partridge guitar riffs clash with Dave Gregory’s piano to create a suitably unsettling opener which ends with the gentle choral encouragement to rouse oneself.
Reign of Blows (Vote No Violence) takes us deep into the reality of a world where super powers still fought each other, but just used other countries to do it in. “And iron maidens will slam, and by the half-light of burning republics, Joe Stalin looks just like Uncle Sam” captures the era perfectly and with a screaming guitar and thumping drums, you almost feel as if your pleasant train journey through the shires has suddenly taken a nasty diversion through the US invasion of Grenada.
Like all journeys, this one must come to an end but sadly there won’t be a happy ending. In fact, we’re heading for disaster, both mentally and physically as the thumping and creaking start of Train Running Low On Soul Coal soon gives way to the realisation that this train is out of control. In an instant, the concerns Andy Partridge feels about record company pressures, being seen as ‘old’ in the music business and the fate of the Swindon Works collide as he sings “I’m a thirty year old puppy doing what I’m told and I’m told there’s no more coal for the older engines”. This is a track of immense power and Dave Gregory later described the middle eight as the best thing the band had written up to that point and it is a thing of dark beauty as once again, the band create a vivid image with music that actually places you in the careering carriage as the “Hammer goes down, brakes all scream, me and a couple of empty carriages slide downhill, still, next stop bad dreams ville”.  From: https://louderthanwar.com/the-big-express-by-xtc-a-thirtieth-anniversary-celebration/