Toadies - Backslider

 #Toadies #alternative rock #punk #post-grunge #hard rock #punk metal #indie rock #1990s

25+ years. That’s a long time to maintain relevance, especially in the music community. But that’s exactly what Rubberneck has done. Released during the height of the grunge era, it’s mistakenly labeled a grunge record. But it’s not, not by a long shot. Described as “the Pixies meets Metallica”, the Toadies had their feet firmly ensconced in indie, alternative, punk and (near) metal to forge a sound truly all their own. 11 songs without a wasted stroke, from the first strum of the instrumental “Mexican Hairless” announcing the arrival of Rubberneck to the heavy, near post-punk feel of the closer “I Burn,” the Toadies wasted nary a note, beat or word, 36 minutes of pure original Texas sonic-boogie bliss, this was an album that could only be forged by Texans, attempting to reclaim the rock world from Seattle’s grungy little fist. Not being grunge, punk or metal, Interscope originally went with the latter, placing the Toadies on hair metal showcases and festivals with the likes of Dokken and Great White. Therefore, their eponymous debut album was not met with the overnight success many people might believe. 2 singles and videos (“Mr. Love,” “Backslider”) had already come and gone in the time between late August and Christmas, and it certainly wasn’t a hit. Small tours with Samiam, The Goats, and Big Chief had done little to dent the band in the public eye, all the while turning them into a four-headed rock machine. 4 months of constant touring will do that to an already tight band, and they roared into 1995 as a juggernaut. With only a few thousand copies sold, they had one last chance to impress, and that came in the form of a ghost story centered on a North Texas lake called “Possum Kingdom.” One creepy video and a slot opening for British upstarts Bush later, people were finally taking notice and Rubberneck started picking up steam. Of all places to break first for them, Florida jumped right on board. Subsequent tours with All and a very young Sugar Ray only tightened the band as it headed into summer, with one of the most endearing singles of the year on their hands. “Possum Kingdom” was inescapable during that summer, and neither were the Toadies.   From: https://thetoadies.com/bio/

Firewater - Psychopharmacology

 #Firewater #gypsy punk #world punk #dark cabaret #alternative rock #indie rock #eclectic

New York-based band Firewater incorporated a global range of musical influences into their highly dynamic sound. A loosely knit ensemble centered around the lead vocals of ex-Cop Shoot Cop bass player Tod A. (born: Tod Ashley), Firewater tied together such influences as Klezmer, Indian wedding music, art-punk, and Tom Waits-style cabaret poetry to create their heady, often quite danceable sound. Coupled with Tod A.'s acerbic, post-apocalyptic, and death-obsessed lyrics, Firewater was a band to be reckoned with almost from the beginning.  From: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0F5fXdlx1bKwYFZ70bfuZ9

You ever found yourself looking for something at the bottom of a cupboard and come out with something else covered in dust, long forgotten? Psychopharmacology is covered in lint, dust and shed pubes from the very same cupboard. Full of afterthoughts you'd have if you spent a month of late nights in the company of cheap red wine, even cheaper cigarettes and spiteful company. All this imagery and the sound and songs to back it up. But, I must say, this album is the closest to as "approachable" a Firewater album as the first time listener will probably get. For my money anyway. If you haven't heard of these lot yet and are taking a gamble, this is the place to start. Don't take my word for it, I've been listening since CopShootCop and won't knock too much anything creative Tod A. & co. put out - mainly because this is original music, slightly familiar but in a "can't place the artist," kind of way. You can bandy about Tom Waits for a comparison point, but you'd have to throw in the 'Stones, Beatles and a heady mix of dark, seedy and downright evil turns of carnival/burlesque/gypsy fare. Simply put, it's an intriguing spectacle to behold. Get yourself a nice big ashtray, a half a dozen warm beers and a bearded wench in an over-tight corset to accompany the journey. Highly Recommended. Bearded Wenches & Firewater, of course.  From: https://www.amazon.com/Psychopharmacology-Firewater/product-reviews/B00005BC94/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_show_all_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews 

Shooting Daggers - Manic Pixie Dream Girl

 #Shooting Daggers #hardcore punk #riot grrrl #metalcore #feminist punk #post-hardcore #thrash metal #queercore #European

‘We are queer, and we’re gonna live!’ roars Shooting Daggers’ singer Sal Salgado Pellegrin, on We Will Live, the penultimate call-to-arms on the band’s fearless new EP, Athames. It’s a lyric that sums up the steely eyed attitude behind the band’s brutal, yet triumphant, hardcore punk. Heavy music is a place where people can find a home, when they feel they don’t belong anywhere else. But for a community that prides itself on inclusivity, metal and hardcore can still be unwelcoming spaces for women, the LGBTQ+ community and people of color. It’s those intolerances that the trio - made up of French vocalist and guitarist Sal, Italian bassist Bea Simion and Spanish drummer Raquel J Alves - are determined to eradicate. Inspired by the riot grrrl movement, G.L.O.S.S and Black Flag, alongside queercore peers Sharptooth and Pupil Slicer, they’re fiercely and noisily taking their own space in metal’s traditionally white, cis-het male scene.
“We’re vegan, we’re feminist, we’re women, we’re queer, we’re political, so we’ve got a lot to say,” says Sal. “Our music shares our perspective on our place in the scene, and in the world. I feel like you still have to prove you’re worth something and you’re not a poser when you’re a woman in the scene. Sometimes people come to us, and they say, ‘When I saw you going onstage, I didn’t expect you to be that hardcore, that heavy,’” adds Bea, arching an eyebrow. “And I’m always like, ‘Why wouldn’t you expect us to be heavy?’”
Sal and Bea formed the band in London in 2019, releasing their debut demo EP that October with a different drummer. After a line-up change, Raquel, a long-time London resident and band booker on the local scene, joined the ranks in November. “I’ve noticed people are more open to booking different bands,” says Raquel of the progression she’s noted since she started working at shows 15 years ago. “At least you have some representation on the stage. It’s changing, really slowly, but now there are a lot of bands speaking up with their views. When I was younger, you wouldn’t see a black metal band that was anti-fascist, or a queer doom band like Vile Creature.”
“But even though hardcore is a safe space for us, there is still a lot of work to do,” Bea cuts in. “It’s still very white. It’s still very misogynistic. A lot of girl and queer bands still don’t have a space. You still need to have male respect: when men respect and like you, that’s when other people like you too. Men for sure still own the scene and they decide who is cool and who is not.”   From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/shooting-daggers-the-politically-charged-hardcore-band-who-will-not-be-silenced

Patti Smith - Frederick

 #Patti Smith #art punk #proto-punk #art rock #hard rock #new wave #alternative rock #singer-songwriter #1970s

Punk rock's poet laureate Patti Smith ranks among the most ambitious, unconventional, and challenging rock & rollers of all time. When she emerged in the '70s, Smith's music was hailed as the most exciting fusion of rock and poetry since Bob Dylan's heyday. With her androgynous, visual presentation echoing her unabashedly intellectual and uncompromising songwriting, Smith followed her muse wherever it took her, from structured rock songs to free-form experimentalism. Her most avant-garde outings, such as 1975's Horses and the following year's Radio Ethiopia, borrowed improvisation and interplay from free jazz, but remained firmly rooted in primal three-chord rock & roll. A regular at CBGB's during New York punk's early days, the artiness and the raw musicianship of her work had a major impact on the movement among contemporaries and followers alike. As boundary-pushing as her music could be, Smith nevertheless scored a hit in the Bruce Springsteen collaboration "Because the Night" from 1978's Easter, which, like 1979's Wave, offered a slightly more polished version of her sound. When she returned to music following a lengthy hiatus and the death of her husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith, her work was sometimes subtler and more meditative, as on 1996's Gone Again, but rock was still a fiery, vital part of albums like 2000's Gung Ho and 2012's Banga.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/patti-smith-mn0000747445/biography

By 1979, Patti Smith was in a relationship with Fred “Sonic” Smith of Detroit garage rock legends The MC5, and “Frederick” is one of the most beautifully pure love songs of its era; a sense of euphoric joy leaping from the speakers set to a classic rock melody that clings to the memory magnetically. It’s so vivid, the fact that Smith turned her back on music for a decade afterwards, choosing blissful domesticity and motherhood over life on the road, should have come as no surprise.  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/patti-smith-every-album-ranked-from-worst-to-best  

Queen Adreena - Suck

 #Queen Adrena #Katie Jane Garside #alternative rock #noise rock #indie rock #art rock #punk metal #gothic rock

Queen Adreena’s music is clearly unwholesome and conveys a feeling of gruesome schizophrenia. In my review of their excellent previous album entitled Drink me, I depicted the ex-Daisy Chainsaw’s music as, let me quote myself and have a swollen head, “on the one hand, urgent, noisy, fast and visceral punk songs in which Katie Jane Garside yells, shrieks and gives the impression of scarcely waking up from a terrible nightmare; and on the other hand, slow, poisonous atmospheric songs in which KJG’s unhealthy voice spreads its wings of depression. If you’ve never heard her voice, try to imagine Bjork performing ‘Army of Me’ completely stoned and trying to imitate Lydia Lunch. Add a punctual raucous tone due to helium inhaling and alcohol abuse,and you might have an idea of what her voice sounds like.”
What else other than drug addiction, unstable re-habs, alcohol abuse, and twisted minds can have possibly led Crispin Gray and Katie Jane Garside to play such a dubious music which really epitomize schizophrenia? When she stops yelling, shrieking and venting her rage or madness upon the listener, when she whispers or pants or just sings, KJ Garside’s changing child-like voice offers insane deliveries which, backed up by cryptic lyrics, sound like little girls’ nightmares (‘Pull Me Under’, ‘Join The Dots’, ‘Childproof’). There is certainly a child related theme in the lyrics but I do not dare analyse it, lest I become completely mad.  From: http://onlyangels.free.fr/reviews/q/queen_adreena/the_butcher_and_the_butterfly.htm

The Oil Barons - Hot Cake Big Bad Sound

 #The Oil Barons #stoner rock #doom metal #garage rock #psychedelic rock #desert rock #punk metal #hard rock #power trio #1970s retro #music video

Formed in Los Angeles, CA in early 2016, The Oil Barons are a riff-crazed Heavy Rock power trio that draws from a deep well of influences ranging from Garage Rock to Doom Metal. They like slowing down - they like speedin' up!  They like to shred, Fred. They're the heaviest thing in standard tuning.  From: https://www.theoilbarons.com/

The Oil Barons debut album ‘The West Is Won’ is inspired by Paul Thomas Anderson’s classic movie ‘There Will Be Blood’. So you have a concept album based within the world of oil production and all the joys and pitfalls that industry brings you. Unless it’s influenced by Dallas and the guys are trying to be all intellectual. I’m kidding. Anyway, this is one album that sounds like it suffers from an identity crisis when you first listen to it. As the band play a heavy mixture of Blues Rock, Classic Rock, Stoner Metal, Doom Metal and even Desert Rock. If you’re a fan of bands such as Black Sabbath and Cutch then these guys should definitely be on your radar. ’The West Is Won’ is a brilliantly entertaining album packed full of thrills and (oil) spills with the band writing some progressive sounding riffs and OTT lyrics to match. The opening songs ‘The Oil Baron’, ‘Drill’ and ‘Snake Oil’ show that The Oil Barons have a deep and rich creative sound and when matched against the superb lyrics then a Stoner Metal/Doom Metal album based on ‘There Will Be Blood’ isn’t so crazy after all. The album has a deceptively old-school feel to it and that allows The Oil Barons to experiment with their sound on the later stages of the album. The vocals from Andrew are influenced by the Americana scene at times but still remaining in the Doom/Stoner Metal world. Jake provides solid back-up vocals along with his highly accurate and precise drumming. The Oil Barons continue playing their heavy Blues Rock inspired Stoner/Desert/Doom hybrid sound for the remainder of the album and they will keep you entertained with other cool songs such as ‘California City’, ‘Fuck The Sun’, ‘Vitch’ and the final epic song ‘Suicide Machine’ which ventures into some pretty dark places which I didn’t expect. The production is handled superbly well and the album sounds fresh and lively from the start. The music is very direct and you become part of the whole environment. Though it may take you a few listens to fully understand and actually enjoy the overall album. After that happens you’ll be amazed at how much of a good time you will have this with album.  From: https://outlawsofthesun.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-oil-barons-west-is-won-album-review.html

Mary's Danish - Beat Me Up

#Mary's Danish #alternative rock #power pop #indie rock #funk rock #pop punk #1980s #1990s

A fine band that never quite delivered on its immense promise, Mary's Danish blended power pop, punk, country, and funk into a sometimes scattershot but always unique sound that at times was among the most exciting sounds in what was then still called alternative music and sometimes sounded like the group was constitutionally incapable of picking a style and sticking with it for longer than a song at a time.
The seeds of the group were planted when college friends Gretchen Seager and Julie Ritter decided to form their own band in the middle of an X concert in their hometown of Los Angeles in late 1985. Seager preferred the band's punk edge, Ritter their country leanings, and both admired the vocal interplay of John Doe and Exene Cervenka, all of which would appear in their own band, which they named Mary's Danish after a line in an early songwriting attempt. Ritter's guitarist boyfriend David King and his bassist friend Chris "Wag" Wagner were drafted into the group at an early stage, but the group wouldn't settle into its permanent lineup until drummer James Bradley Jr., who had previously played with Anita Baker, and second guitarist Louis Gutierrez, formerly of Los Angeles paisley underground legends the Three O'Clock, joined in 1988.
The newly cemented group signed with Chameleon Records in 1989 and released their debut, There Goes the Wondertruck, later that year. Powered by the alternative radio and 120 Minutes favorite "Don't Crash the Car Tonight," the debut and a live follow-up EP, Experience, sold well enough to attract the attention of both superstar manager Peter Asher and Morgan Creek Records, a newly formed label headed by producer David Kershenbaum and spun off from a successful film production company. Eager to score an "alternative" band when that genre was becoming the next big thing, Morgan Creek threw quite a bit of money at Mary's Danish to record and release their second album, Circa, in 1991. Unfortunately, the neophyte label dropped the ball on promotion, and although the singles "Julie's Blanket" and "Foxey Lady" (a winningly sarcastic treatment of the Jimi Hendrix classic) got a lot of MTV airplay, the well-reviewed album didn't sell as well as There Goes the Wondertruck. The label prematurely rushed the group back into the studio to record 1992's American Standard, and the lackluster results showed it. Top management at Morgan Creek apparently had no idea of how to run a record label, and their poor track record caught up to them; after haphazardly burying American Standard through incompetent promotion and distribution, the label self-destructed, leaving Mary's Danish in legal limbo. Fed up, the group called it quits in 1993, with King leaving to form a new band, Rob Rule. Ritter embarked on an alt-country solo career, while Seager and Gutierrez, who had married and were expecting a child, formed the punkier Battery Acid.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/marys-danish-mn0000383632/biography

Danko Jones - King Of Magazines

 #Danko Jones #hard rock #garage rock #garage punk #blues rock #blues punk #Canadian #animated music video #Dave Cooper

We just got word of a new Dave Cooper animated video for Canadian rock band Danko Jones. Nick Cross, an award-winning animator, teamed up with Cooper to make this drum-pounding latex-headed bounce fest sing, oddly perverse and frantic like a Clampett cartoon. We’ve got an interview with Cooper on the project:

How long have you known Danko Jones?

Dave: I’ve been a fan of their music for quite a while. They’re sort of an institution in Canada. Very big in Europe too; just haven’t cracked the US market yet. Anyway, I sent them a fan email a couple of years ago, saying that i wanted to send them all my books. JC, the bassist, got back to me to thank me for all the swag and said that they really loved my work. So I wrote in passing, almost as a joke, “You should get me to do a video for you guys, even though i’ve never done one in my life.” He seemed receptive. The rest is a pretty long story, but basically they offered me the third single off their new album and i wrote up a treatment for a live action video. Big, beautiful models, custom made latex outfits, tons of pretty extras, a custom built rocket car, sets, locations, props, camera men, a producer, etc. etc. Needless to say, the budget was a little steep. so the label put the kibosh on that. I was bummed, but then a few months later, I decided to re-pitch the same treatment but fully animated by one of my favorite animators, Nick Cross - for a third of the budget. In the end, the label, the distributor, and the band themselves all pitched in and got us the budget. Suddenly I was faced with a 6-week turnaround time! Unheard of. So i started making the storyboard sketches. Each day i’d bring the days work over to my animator friend, Nick, and go over them with him, describing how I wanted things to go. He’d get cracking and I’d come over again the next day. After the first week, my part was done and Nick was in for a very long, hard 5 weeks. All this during a time when Nick was putting together his very first TV pilot for Canada’s Teletoon! He was a wreck. Man, animators are hard workers. Make’s me feel like a total slacker!

From: https://hifructose.com/2008/12/19/new-dave-cooper-animated-video-interview/

Ghostemane - Bonesaw

#Ghostemane #trap metal #hardcore punk #noise #alternative hip hop #black metal #industrial hip hop #animated music video

Eric Whitney, known professionally as Ghostemane or Eric Ghoste, is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. He has released eight solo albums and three collaborative albums under his Ghostemane moniker, primarily merging elements of heavy metal, hip hop and industrial music. Whitney has also released music with a number of additional solo projects, pursuing styles including black metal as Baader-Meinhof, noise music as GASM, and electronic music as Swearr. He began his career in local hardcore punk and doom metal bands around Florida. In 2015, he moved to Los Angeles, starting a career as a rapper, under the moniker Ill Bizz. Around this same time, he was a member of the hip hop collective Schemaposse.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostemane

While eagerly awaiting Ghostemane’s forthcoming album, ANTI-ICON, let’s recap some of the defining points in his discography so far. These are the picks from Ghostemane’s creative timeline that reflect his ability to take the elements from trap, metal and industrial worlds and mix them in genre-defying ways that redefine the framework of trap metal and heavy music in general.

Swan: If you could imagine the spooky synth lead in “Swan” played on a guitar in tremolo picking style, the references coming to mind would be along the lines of early Mayhem or Darkthrone, as this haunting melody mirrors some of the most typical riffs in black-metal classics. So much so that you might expect an outburst of blast beats to eventually break the suspense. But instead, Ghostemane’s agitated flows, deep lo-fi beats and crawling atmospheres culminate with a guitar sample from Black Sabbath’s “Electric Funeral,” making the track anything but predictable.

Elixir: Way before he debuted his black-metal side project, Ghostemane put out Blackmage — a record which continued pushing the limits of the genre that in 2016 was already gaining a cult-like following. In “Elixir,” as soon as you get used to the mashup of distressed rap verses, piano melodies and open hi-hats gliding along the guitar hook from Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the flow gets interrupted by a heavy riff from Pantera’s “Walk.” Its rough, ostensibly random, I-don’t-give-a-fuck placement reflects Ghostemane’s bold and straightforward approach to mashing up references in his Blackmage era.

Rake: In this unruly track from Hexada, Ghostemane’s creative process comes off as that of a painter picking colors for a contrasting yet weirdly harmonious palette. No, wrong metaphor. It’s more like a twisted artistic villain sawing off random body parts from zombified trap, death-metal, nü-metal and industrial-metal archetypes and grinding them up in a superpowered food processor. It takes about one-and-a-half minutes, and that’s all Ghostemane needs to mold this sticky matter into an astonishing trap-metal Frankenstein.

D(R)Ead: If you’ve only heard one song from Ghostemane, chances are it’s this one. If you’ve only seen one music video by Ghostemane, chances are it’s also this one. One year after he debuted the post-industrial/techno side project Swearr, Ghostemane dropped “D(R)Ead,” a single that foretold the dominance of industrial sound on N / O / I / S / E. Chill(y) trap meets glitched noises, and rap verses shift to panicky Slipknot-style vocals as the track, with the help of live drumming by blink-182’s Travis Barker, progresses into a scream-powered industrial-metal explosion—then makes a full circle back to a dark trap ritual.

From: https://www.altpress.com/best-ghostemane-songs/

Sleater-Kinney - Words and Guitar

 #Sleater-Kinney #Carrie Brownstein #indie rock #punk rock #riot grrrl #alternative rock #1990s

Arguably the most important punk band of the 1990s and 2000s, with feminist songwriting matched by taut melodicism and jaw-dropping sonic complexity. Like many a great band, Sleater-Kinney inhabited their time so thoroughly it took an extended hiatus to realize the extent of their legacy. In many respects, they were the defining American indie rock band of the second half of the '90s, the group that harnessed all the upheaval of the alt-rock explosion of the first part of the decade and channeled it into a vigorous mission statement. It was not incidental that Sleater-Kinney were an all-female band - prior to S-K, co-leaders Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein both started playing music in Northern Pacific riot grrrl bands and their feminism and queercore roots were deeply embedded in their rock & roll - but calling them the best female rock band of their generation is too confining. By every measure, Sleater-Kinney were one of the best bands of their time, capturing the tenor of their era and then expanding at a rapid clip, delivering record after record that redefined their music without abandoning their punk rock (or political) ideals.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/sleater-kinney-mn0000026164/biography

Sleater-Kinney [Chainsaw, 1995]
Heavens to Betsy's warbly wailer Corin Tucker joins Excuse 17's solemn screamer Carrie Brownstein for ten songs in twenty-two minutes, and voice-on-voice and guitar-on-guitar they figure out love by learning to hate. Three different lyrics reject the penis soi-même with a fervor that could pass for disgust, and while their same-sex one-on-ones aren't exactly odes to joy, they convey a depth of feeling that could pass for passion. In these times of principled irony and shallowness for its own sake, that's enough to make them heroines and outsiders simultaneously.

Call the Doctor [Chainsaw, 1996]
Like the blues, punk is a template that shapes young misfits' sense of themselves, and like the blues it takes many forms. This is a new one, and it's damn blueslike. Powered by riffs that seem unstoppable even though they're not very fast, riding melodies whose irresistibility renders them barely less harsh, Corin Tucker's enormous voice never struggles more inspirationally against the world outside than when it's facing down the dilemmas of the interpersonal - dilemmas neither eased nor defined by her gender preferences, dilemmas as bound up with family as they are with sex. As partner/rival/Other Carrie Brownstein puts it in an eloquently tongue-tied moment: "It's just my stuff." Few if any have played rock's tension-and-release game for such high stakes - revolution as existentialism, electric roar as acne remedy. They wanna be our Joey Ramone, who can resist that one? But squint at the booklet and you'll see they also want to be our Thurston Moore. They want it both ways, every which way. And most of the time they get it.

Dig Me Out [Kill Rock Stars, 1997]
One reason you know they're young is that they obviously believe they can rock and roll at this pitch forever. Whatever the verbal message of their intricate, deeply uptempo simplicity - less sexual angst, more rock-as-romance - it's overrun by their excited mastery and runaway glee. Like a new good lover the second or third time, they're so confident of their ability to please that they just can't stop. And this confidence is collective: Corin and Carrie chorus-trade like the two-headed girl, dashing and high-stepping around on Janet Weiss's shoulders. What a ride.

From: http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=Sleater-Kinney 

Lithium X-Mas - Hip Death Goddess

 #Lithium X-Mas #psychedelic rock #art rock #indie rock #rock #psychedelic punk #1980s #Ultimate Spinach cover

Psychedelic art-rock pioneering band from Texas, Lithium X-Mas,was formed in Dallas, Texas, in 1985. They emerged from the punk scene that included the likes of Nervebreakers, Butthole Surfers, Vomit Pigs, and Horton Heat. The band played a diverse array of venues, from seedy warehouses to psychedelic theme parties to Dallas' legendary, upscale Starck Club. Lithium's first forte was the excavated cover song, bringing their own twisted spin to tunes such as Nilsson's 'Jump into the Fire,' Lemon Pipers' 'Green Tambourine,' and Ultimate Spinach's 'Hip Death Goddess.' Forward looking, but still informed by deep excavation of eclectic record collections, Lithium's fans included Sonic Youth, with whom they shared bills and who advertised them on their guitars; Nirvana, who were inspired by the name for some of their source material; the Butthole Surfers, whose drummer King Coffey signed them to his record label; and many others.  From: https://www.forcedexposure.com/Artists/LITHIUM.X.MAS.html

Queen Adreena - Year (Of You)

 #Queen Adrena #Katie Jane Garside #alternative rock #noise rock #indie rock #art rock #punk metal #gothic rock

Queen Adreena was an alternative rock band from London, England that formed in 1999. Described at various times as “art, punk, gothic, metal, rock, or alternative”, Queen Adreena's music is difficult to categorize. Formed by singer Katie Jane Garside and guitarist Crispin Gray, they had previously collaborated in the celebrated but short-lived band Daisy Chainsaw. Garside and Gray did not cross paths again until 1999 when they formed Queen Adreena. An album, Taxidermy, soon followed in 2000. Pete Howard, the last drummer to play with The Clash, joined just before the band signed with Rough Trade for their second album, 2002’s Drink Me, featuring the lead single "Pretty Like Drugs." Queen Adreena toured extensively in the UK and Europe.  From: https://www.last.fm/music/Queen+Adreena/+wiki

For those who are not familiar with Queen Adreena (or Queenadreena as they are known now), they are a 4-man rock outfit from London who formed around 1999 with Daisy Chainsaw's former singer Katie Jane Garside and guitarist Crispin Gray. The band released their first record "Taxidermy" back in 2000 and later gained some fame after releasing probably their most critically acclaimed and beloved record "The Butcher and the Butterfly" in 2005.
The noisy punk-ish sound that Daisy Chainsaw had is still present in Queenadreena but you can definitely hear that the band went for a much more "serious" approach to the music this way around. Djin was released in 2008 with fairly no promotion at all which led to many missing out on it. The album's length is consistent with their previous releases and so is Queenadreena's familiar "garage rock" noisy sound complimented with Katie Jane Garside's unique vocals. The album is filled with very catchy punk riffs and noise filled dirty guitar solos and you would not expect any less from Crispin Gray who has firmly established his excellent guitar sound over the years. Pete Howard provides his drumming skills on this album as well, unfortunately right before leaving the band. The drumming in Queenadreena has always been simple but effective which is the case with many bands that have that "garage rock" sound. When it comes to the bass, in a lot of bands it's just something that is in the background; it's important but not vital. That is not the case here where it's present and always solid and in some tracks provides more than the guitar which creates a very good mix between instruments in the songs. Katie's amazing voice is as strong as ever on this album and I would say that it feels like it hasn't aged a day since "The Butcher and the Butterfly". Both the soothing calm singing on softer tracks like "Night Curse" are present and so are the glass shattering high screams on tracks like "Lick". Her vocal range is quite breathtaking at times and that is no different when it comes to this album. Garside's lyrics are also back in Djinn where it's a mix between some really psychedelic and odd elements as well as some lyrics that feel more personal.  From: https://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/44959/QueenAdreena-Djin/

X - See How We Are

 #X #John Doe #Exene Cervenka #alternative rock #punk rock #folk rock #folk punk #Americana #rockabilly #blues rock #1980s #1990s

X was an American band whose tales of urban decay, corruption, and sleaze, delivered with skilled musicianship and unique vocal harmonies, marked them as important contributors to the punk movement. The original members were singer Exene Cervenka, bassist and singer John Doe, guitarist Billy Zoom, and drummer D.J. Bonebrake. Later members included Dave Alvin and Tony Gilkyson. Formed in 1977, X released Los Angeles in 1980. That effort and the follow-up albums Wild Gift (1981) and Under the Big Black Sun (1982) drew critical raves, as X broadened punk’s do-it-yourself ethos with excellent musicianship (Zoom, who had once played with rock-and-roll pioneer Gene Vincent, blazed through country, rockabilly, heavy metal, and punk licks with dispassionate aplomb, while Bonebrake added a background in jazz), the unusual harmonies and sophisticated songwriting of onetime husband and wife Doe and Cervenka (the latter an active poet), and careful production by Ray Manzarek, formerly of the Doors. In the process, X became prime movers of the Los Angeles punk scene chronicled in the documentary The Decline of Western Civilization (1981). Capable of matching the fury of other punk bands, X excelled at melancholy ballads and flirted with pop music throughout its career, though its efforts to reach a broader audience on a major label were largely unsuccessful. The band toured and recorded sporadically throughout the 1980s and ’90s, but members were increasingly occupied by side projects and solo efforts. Doe, Cervenka, Alvin, and Bonebrake formed the Knitters in 1985. Intended as a one-time project, the Knitters performed a selection of folk and country tunes, along with acoustic versions of songs from the X catalog. Cervenka dedicated much of her time to poetry, publishing numerous collections and recording a series of solo albums. Doe turned to Hollywood, scoring small parts in films such as Road House (1989) and Boogie Nights (1997) and landing a recurring role in the supernatural television series Roswell (1999–2002).  From: https://www.britannica.com/topic/X-American-rock-band

Bridge City Sinners - Unholy Hymns

#Bridge City Sinners #alternative folk #jazz rock #folk rock #dark folk #Appalachian folk #folk-punk #death folk #retro jazz rock #Americana #music video

This is not your Grandparents’ folk music. The Bridge City Sinners take folk songs in the direction of a punk rocker. A rowdy folksy mosaic of banjo, violin, guitar, mandolin, upright bass, and ukulele. The Sinners started their journey as a rotating cast of friends in 2016 who just wanted to play music on the streets “busk” in Portland, Oregon. They have transitioned into a powerful force playing festivals such as Vans Warped Tour, NW String Summit, The Fest, and The Seattle Folklife Festival. Before the Bridge City Sinners, lead singer Libby Lux and upright bass player Scott Michaud infrequently started playing music together on the streets of Portland, Oregon over eight years ago. Without rehearsal, nor a plan, a few times a year they would meet up with other various street musicians to sing and yell at passers-by. Years before that, on their separate journeys, they traveled, hitch-hiked, and howled at the moon across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. In hobo fashion, they earned what they’d eat and roofs over their heads by the papers and coins tossed into their hat. Through their years of wandering, they were able to pick up a rich catalog of songs passed through the traveling/busking community. In 2012, their mutual best friend and lead singer of folk-punk band Profane Sass, passed away when he fell off a train in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In a way the Bridge City Sinners are a homage to keep his spirit alive and continue passing along the music they all sang together on the streets, hidden in trains, and in living rooms across the continent. They formed the Bridge City Sinners in the Winter of 2016.  From: https://www.cactusclubmilwaukee.com/artists/bridge-city-sinners/

Butthole Surfers - Tongue

 #Butthole Surfers #experimental rock #alternative rock #punk rock #psychedelic rock #noise rock #psychedelic punk #1980s #1990s

Butthole Surfers is a Noise Rock band formed in San Antonio, Texas in 1981, well known for it's bizarre and often disturbing lyrics, heavy synthesizing, and macabre live shows. They also use a lot of Black Comedy in their lyrics. The Surfers began in 1980, when lead singer Gibby Haynes met guitarist Paul Leary while going to college in Texas, where they became friends due to their shared overall weirdness and interest in strange music. They published a magazine, Strange V.D., with a lot of pictures of strange diseases and illnesses, long before they actually started playing in 1981. Throughout The '80s, they built up a cult following in the college rock world through their melding of Punk Rock and Psychedelic Rock, plus a multi-media stage show (including a naked female dancer and grotesque film clips projected on a giant screen) that was an assault on the senses, all capped off with a twisted sense of humor. Their mainstream commercial breakthrough finally came in The 1990s, when big labels were scrambling to sign Alternative Rock acts in the wake of Nirvana's success. After a decade of releasing their music on small indie labels such as Alternative Tentacles and Touch and Go, the Buttholes signed with Capitol Records; their second Capitol album, 1996’s Electriclarryland, contained their first big hit "Pepper.” Afterwards, they became featured on many movie soundtracks, such as William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and John Carpenter's Escape from L.A.  From: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/ButtholeSurfers

Amanda Palmer - Leeds United

 #Amanda Palmer #ex-The Dresden Dolls #alternative rock #dark cabaret #dark folk #punk cabaret #singer-songwriter 

According to Palmer, this song was inspired by a real-life incident. “I had been dating this guy from Leeds, Ricky Wilson from the Kaiser Chiefs, and we had a totally brief flash-in-the-pan fling. We had a really great time together. I really liked him, and I went up to his house in Leeds for a week. He gave me this great Leeds United jersey, which I prized. And then when I got back on tour a couple of days later I wore it on stage. I had a bra underneath, so I took off the jersey and finished the encore all sweaty and stuff. I went back to look for it, the stage was being cleaned, and it was like, ‘Fuck! Where’s my shirt!?’ I had that shirt for all of about 5 days. I’d already gotten all excited and sentimental about it, and then it vanished.”  From: https://genius.com/Amanda-palmer-leeds-united-lyrics

Tone Deaf:  You had your new album come out last year — how has the response been since it’s came out? You also had 15,000 supporters for it. It must have been amazing to have so many people put their faith, their money, and their trust in you for a record.

AP: It’s been amazing. It’s actually less hectic than having major label. You know, with your creativity and your soul and time and own vice-grip, I think it’s a lot easier, but then again I’ve played on both sides of that field and it’s a cost benefit in both departments. Being crowd funded by 15,000 people has its own set of tasks, responsibilities, drawbacks, but I would choose every single one of them one hundred times over the drawbacks of being at the mercy of profit driven major labels.

Tone Deaf: When you do release an album in that sense, is it hard to gauge how successful it’s been?

AP: That’s a really good and complicated question. What I have found is that it’s hard to gauge success, period. Even in the heyday of the Dresden Dolls, success was so slippery and impossible to define. The label defined it one way, we defined it a completely different way. If 20 years of releasing music and touring has taught me anything, it’s that I have to creatively manufacture my own definition of success. It’s definitely not streaming number. It’s definitely not money. It definitely isn’t whether or not magazine X gave me a five-star review, because all of those things have and haven’t been true in certain parts of my career, and have actually no bearing on whether or not a project was successful. I have to say that my ultimate definition of success has a lot more to do with the concrete emotional impact I can see the work having on people when I tour it and when I put it out than it does with whether or not the media weighs in or whether or not something is in the charts.

Tone Deaf: If you look at chart positions, there’s so many variations between so many artists. But then when you see you play live, your fans are so dedicated, and clearly that’s a good gauge of success if it resonates with the people, and you see that they’re enjoying it.

AP: Well that in itself is a slippery slope, because how many people need to be in that room for you to be able to call it successful? I mean, I have gotten to the point as an artist where I think I’ve fine-tuned my ability to the point to where I could bust out that ukulele, and I could play a song for you that would move you, and that’s the only thing I did this year, and I could still call it a successful endeavour, because I connected with, and affected somebody. I think we’ve just been fed the Kool-Aid for so long that scale is everything and blockbuster hits are everything, and success is upsized that we forget as artists that our role doesn’t have to do with size and scale. And we need to start flushing that Kool-Aid out of our system.

From: https://tonedeaf.thebrag.com/amanda-palmer-interview-2020/list/check-out-amanda-palmers-do-it-with-a-rockstar/

Amanda MacKinnon Gaiman Palmer (also known as Amanda Fucking Palmer, born April 30, 1976) is an American singer, songwriter, pianist, storyteller, writer and ukulele player. She's most famous for her work as part of the Brechtian punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls, along with drummer Brian Viglione. They released three studio albums and toured as openers for Panic! at the Disco, until they went on hiatus in 2008. Although Viglione and her have done shows together since then, the band has officially broken up, even though Palmer has announced plans for them to produce music again.
In 2012, Palmer famously released an album with her at-the-time band The Grand Theft Orchestra called Theatre is Evil, which was funded entirely over Kickstarter - a groundbreaking artistic decision at the time, which was worth it, as the Kickstarter far overpassed its goal. She released the album for free through her website, and then debuted on the Billboard top 100 Album list at number 10 due to the immense number of Kickstarter pre-orders.
Her songs vary wildly in style and topics, with many featuring dark humor and subject material. She's fond of recontextualizing children's songs in a more mature, adult way, and of making puns. Amanda's also known for performing covers of whatever she feels like, ranging from an entire EP of Radiohead covers on the ukulele, to classic musicals, to Black Sabbath, to Britney Spears, to a reimagining of Rebecca Black's song "Friday" from the perspective of a truck-stop prostitute.
In 2019, seven years after her last studio record, Palmer released There Will Be No Intermission, a far more serious, stripped-down album mostly just featuring her on a piano. It tackles subjects like abortion, death, depression, loss, and the climate crisis, and was released to massive critical acclaim. The world tour accompanying it featured only her at a piano, telling the most intimate and human stories of her life. Concerts often went for up to four hours.  From: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/AmandaPalmer

PJ Harvey - Wang Dang Doodle

 #PJ Harvey #Polly Jean Harvey #alternative rock #art rock #indie rock #hard rock #punk blues #folk rock #avant-rock #lo-fi #singer-songwriter #1990s

PJ Harvey, in full Polly Jean Harvey, is a British singer-songwriter and guitarist whose mythically pitched, fanatically intense recordings and concerts set new standards for women in rock. Harvey, born to countercultural parents in rural England, seems to have grown up with a sense of rock as simply another elemental force within the landscape. “Sheela-na-gig,” for instance, a single from her first album, Dry (1992), took as its central image the female exhibitionist carvings with gaping genitals found throughout Ireland and the United Kingdom, whose origins are the subject of debate. The song, like many others by Harvey, treats female sexuality as a ravaging, haunted force, but, instead of acting the victim, she theatrically embodies her obsessions, equates them with the alluring menace of rock and the blues, and builds herself into an archetype.  From: https://www.britannica.com/biography/PJ-Harvey

"Wang Dang Doodle" is a blues song written by Willie Dixon. Music critic Mike Rowe calls it a party song in an urban style with its massive, rolling, exciting beat. It was first recorded by Howlin' Wolf in 1960 and released by Chess Records in 1961. In 1965, Dixon and Leonard Chess persuaded Koko Taylor to record it for Checker Records, a Chess subsidiary. Taylor's rendition became a hit and "Wang Dang Doodle" became a blues standard and has been recorded by various artists.
"Wang Dang Doodle" was composed by Willie Dixon during the second part of his songwriting career, from 1959 to 1964. During this period, he wrote many of his best-known songs, including "Back Door Man", "Spoonful", "The Red Rooster" (better-known as "Little Red Rooster"), "I Ain't Superstitious", "You Shook Me", "You Need Love" (adapted by Led Zeppelin for "Whole Lotta Love"), and "You Can't Judge a Book by the Cover". In his autobiography, Dixon explained that the phrase "wang dang doodle" "meant a good time, especially if the guy came in from the South. A wang dang meant having a ball and a lot of dancing, they called it a rocking style so that's what it meant to wang dang doodle". Mike Rowe claimed that Dixon's song is based on "an old lesbian song" – "The Bull Daggers Ball" – with "its catalogue of low-life characters only marginally less colorful that the original". Dixon claimed that he wrote it when he first heard Howlin' Wolf in 1951 or 1952 but that it was "too far in advance" for him and he saved it for later. However, Howlin' Wolf supposedly hated the song and commented, "Man, that's too old-timey, sounds like some old levee camp number":

    Tell automatic slim, to tell razor totin' Jim
    To tell butcher knife totin' Annie, to tell fast talkin' Fannie
    We gonna pitch a wang dang doodle all night long

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Dang_Doodle

PJ Harvey - Sheela-Na-Gig

 #PJ Harvey #Polly Jean Harvey #alternative rock #art rock #indie rock #hard rock #art rock #punk blues #folk rock #avant-rock #lo-fi #anti-pop #singer-songwriter #1990s

A sheela-na-gig is a carving of a naked woman holding her vagina open. They are to be found carved on old churches (yes, really!) in Great Britain and Ireland. So the lyric, "He said, 'Sheela-na-gig, sheela-na-gig, you exhibitionist!'" is exceedingly graphic. "The song's a collection of different moments between lovers," Harvey told Melody Maker in 1992. "I suppose it's about being able to laugh at yourself in relationships. There's some anger there but, for me, it's a funny song. I wasn't intending it to be a feminist song or anything. I wanted it to have several sides." When asked about the significance of the carving, Harvey said: "It was just the inspiration for the song, so it isn't a song about a stone carving, but when I wrote it, what I liked about the carving was that she was laughing, and ripping herself apart. You have humour and horrificness. It's the same with horror films – are they funny or just horrific? It's something that I really want to explore." The repeated lyric, "Gonna wash that man right out of my hair," was taken from the song title "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair" from the 1949 Broadway musical South Pacific. "I heard that and it had the humorous feel I wanted, so I put it in. I was trying to wash somebody out of my hair at the time, too," Harvey explained. The lyric, "Please take those dirty pillows away from me," is a reference to Stephen King's first novel, Carrie (and the 1976 film adaptation). Religious zealot Margaret White refers to her daughter's breasts as "dirty pillows."
Harvey was blasted by the British press when she posed nude (with her bare back facing the camera, showing just a hint of one breast) for the cover of NME in 1992. She was accused of feeding into the notion that women couldn't get ahead in the industry without taking off their clothes and was further called irresponsible when she refused to explain herself. When asked about the controversy, she said, "That cover was saying a lot of things. In 'Sheela-Na-Gig,' the man says, 'you exhibitionist,' as if, the female can be powerful and beautiful, but you can't show it."  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/pj-harvey/sheela-na-gig

To me this is a song about the Christian perversion of sex - turning it from a natural celebration into something dirty and repulsive. Sheela Na Gig is an uninhibited pagan fertility Goddess. She is depicted as sitting spread eagle, using her hands to pull her vaginal lips apart; a welcoming enticement into carnal pleasure and the miraculous creation of life that results. It's not easy being a pagan fertility goddess in a culture of Puritan repression. It's pathetic that too many men have been taught to find such open sexuality as filthy and wrong. The song triumphantly declares she will not hide or conform - she will not let derision crush her spirit. She will boldly move on until she finds men who appreciate her.  From: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/40525

I’ve been trying to show you over and over
Look at these my child-bearing hips
Look at these my ruby red ruby lips
Look at these my work strong arms and
You've got to see my bottle full of charm
I lay it all at your feet
You turn around and say back to me
He said
Sheela-na-gig, sheela-na-gig
You exhibitionist
Gonna wash that man right out of my hair
Just like the first time he said he didn't care
Gonna wash that man right out of my hair
Heard it before, no more
Gonna wash that man right out of my hair
Turn the corner another one there
Gonna wash that man right out of my hair
Heard it before
He said
Sheela-na-gig, sheela-na-gig
You exhibitionist
Put money in your idle hole
He said 'wash your breasts, I don't want to be unclean'
He said 'please take those dirty pillows away from me'

PJ Harvey, in full Polly Jean Harvey, is a British singer-songwriter and guitarist whose mythically pitched, fanatically intense recordings and concerts set new standards for women in rock. Harvey, born to countercultural parents in rural England, seems to have grown up with a sense of rock as simply another elemental force within the landscape. “Sheela-na-gig,” for instance, a single from her first album, Dry (1992), took as its central image the female exhibitionist carvings with gaping genitals found throughout Ireland and the United Kingdom, whose origins are the subject of debate. The song, like many others by Harvey, treats female sexuality as a ravaging, haunted force, but, instead of acting the victim, she theatrically embodies her obsessions, equates them with the alluring menace of rock and the blues, and builds herself into an archetype.  From: https://www.britannica.com/biography/PJ-Harvey