Glim Spanky - 4-Dimensional Desert

#Glim Spanky #psychedelic rock #garage rock #blues rock #neo-psychedelia #1960s retro #1970s retro #Japanese

Glim Spanky is vocalist/guitarist Remi Matsuo and guitarist Hiroki Kamemoto. Their music has a contemporary vibe that seeps through their otherwise 60s and 70s rock and blues tone.  Originally, they formed in 2007 as a quartet. The group became a duo in February 2010 and have been making waves since. Their name comes from Matsuo’s interest in Celtic culture and fantasy literature; she read a book describing a goblin’s “glim” and added “spank” to describe their aggressive drive towards the music industry. Nevertheless, their music is heavily influenced by the Woodstock generation, as well as American and British acts from the mid-1960s to early 1970s, from The Beatles to Joni Mitchell and the psychedelic allusions of George Harrison.  Central to their sound are the vocals of Remi, whose voice has a rough quality that oozes rock’n’roll. While Hiroki’s guitar melodies flavor the rock sound with psychedelic Eastern flourishes. Not content to simply draw influences from Western rock music culture, they have set about globalizing themselves in a deeper way. In the fall of 2018, they decamped to Los Angeles to record their fourth studio album, Looking For The Magic with producer Kennie Takahashi. Glim Spanky approached Takahashi because of their love for his work with the Ohio band, The Black Keys. Rather than bringing support musicians with them from Japan, they hired two local musicians in Los Angeles: drummer Carla Azar from Jack White’s backing band, and Raconteurs bassist Jack Lawrence. For Glim Spanky, it’s not only about the love of rock but also the culture that surrounds it as well.  From: https://keepingthebluesalive.org/glim-spanky-blues-from-japan/

Laura Nyro - Stoned Soul Picnic

#Laura Nyro #blue-eyed soul #R&B #piano rock #jazz rock #folk rock #alternative pop #singer-songwriter #1960s #1970s

Whatever role Laura Nyro chose to play - earth mother, soul sister, angel of the Bronx subways - she committed to it. With a soaring, open-hearted voice and ingeniously crafted compositions, Nyro transformed a range of influences into her own kind of art song. She made vertiginous shifts from hushed reveries to ecstatic gospel-driven shout-ups with an intensity and a courage that, as Elton John would point out, left its mark on many contemporaries who achieved greater commercial success. As the music of the 1960s reached a climax, no one else merged the new songwriting freedoms pioneered by Bob Dylan with the pop sensibility of the Brill Building tunesmiths to such intriguing effect. As a teenager, she wrote And When I Die and Stoney End, songs that became hits for other artists. Her own enigmatically titled albums - Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, New York Tendaberry, Christmas and the Beads of Sweat - showed a precociously sophisticated sensibility. Later, rejecting commercial pressures, she would help push the boundaries of popular music by writing songs celebrating motherhood, female sexuality and her menstrual cycle. In the hearts of admirers, she kindled a loyalty fierce enough to withstand the semi-obscurity into which she had fallen by the time of her death from ovarian cancer in 1997, at 49. The dimming of her fame had been gradual and, to an extent, self-actuated. If her early songs seemed to give listeners the thrill of overhearing her innermost thoughts, she lived her adult life edging towards the spotlight before withdrawing to cope with personal upheavals, then re-emerging years later with songs that confounded expectations by explicitly affirming new commitments to radical feminism, animal rights and environmental activism.  From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/jul/27/laura-nyro-the-phenomenal-singers-singer-the-60s-overlooked

surrey on

go somewhere, travel (from the ancient song 'surrey down to the stoned soul picnic', written by laura nyro (R.I.P.) and performed by the insipid 5th dimension)

a surrey is a 4-wheeled 2-seated horse-drawn carriage

lets' surrey on down to the bluntsman's and procure some 'goodness'

i'm going to surrey on over to jane's for a 'taste'

From: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=surrey%20on

The Small Faces - Afterglow

 #The Small Faces #Steve Marriott #hard rock #British R&B #British psychedelia #mod #British invasion #1960s #pre-Faces #pre-Humble Pie

There was no shortage of good psychedelic albums emerging from England in 1967-1968, but Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake is special even within their ranks. The Small Faces had already shown a surprising adaptability to psychedelia with the single "Itchycoo Park" and much of their other 1967 output, but Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake pretty much ripped the envelope. British bands had an unusual approach to psychedelia from the get-go, often preferring to assume different musical "personae" on their albums, either feigning actual "roles" in the context of a variety show (as on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album), or simply as storytellers in the manner of the Pretty Things on S.F. Sorrow, or actor/performers as on the Who's Tommy. The Small Faces tried a little bit of all of these approaches on Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake, but they never softened their sound. Side one's material, in particular, would not have been out of place on any other Small Faces release - "Afterglow (Of Your Love)" and "Rene" both have a pounding beat from Kenny Jones, and Ian McLagan's surging organ drives the former while his economical piano accompaniment embellishes the latter; and Steve Marriott's crunching guitar highlights "Song of a Baker." Marriott singing has him assuming two distinct "roles," neither unfamiliar - the Cockney upstart on "Rene" and "Lazy Sunday," and the diminutive soul shouter on "Afterglow (Of Your Love)" and "Song of a Baker." Some of side two's production is more elaborate, with overdubbed harps and light orchestration here and there, and an array of more ambitious songs, all linked by a narration by comic dialect expert Stanley Unwin, about a character called "Happiness Stan." The core of the sound, however, is found in the pounding "Rollin' Over," which became a highlight of the group's stage act during its final days - the song seems lean and mean with a mix in which Ronnie Lane's bass is louder than the overdubbed horns. Even "Mad John," which derives from folk influences, has a refreshingly muscular sound on its acoustic instruments. Overall, this was the ballsiest-sounding piece of full-length psychedelia to come out of England, and it rode the number one spot on the U.K. charts for six weeks in 1968, though not without some controversy surrounding advertisements by Immediate Records that parodied the Lord's Prayer. Still, Ogdens' was the group's crowning achievement - it had even been Marriott's hope to do a stage presentation of Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake, though a television special might've been more in order.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/ogdens-nut-gone-flake-mw0000587922

Emiliana Torrini - White Rabbit

 #Emiliana Torrini #alternative rock #trip-hop #electronica #dream pop #singer-songwriter #Icelandic #Jefferson Airplane cover

An Icelandic singer/songwriter whose music embraces elements of folk, electronica, pop/rock, and trip-hop, Emilíana Torrini has earned favorable comparisons to such vocally gifted artists as Beth Hirsch, Kirsty Hawkshaw, and Bjork. Torrini was raised in Kópavogur, where she worked at her father's Italian restaurant and attended opera school as a teenager. After releasing three albums in her native Iceland (Spoon, Crouçie D'où Là, and Merman), she joined forces with Tears For Fears’ Roland Orzabal to produce her first widely released effort, 1999's Love in the Time of Science. The famed Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson heard her cool, otherworldly croon and approved Torrini to voice the finale music for 2002's The Two Towers, a job that Bjork had previously accepted before backing out due to pregnancy.  From: https://open.spotify.com/artist/08j69Ndyx1P7RLO3Janb5P

Pond - Man It Feels Like Space Again

#Pond #psychedelic rock #neo-psychedelia #glam rock #garage rock #space rock #funk #Australian #music video #puppets

It’s inevitable that Tame Impala comes to mind when thinking about the Australian psychedelic rock band Pond. Both projects hail from the same rock scene in Perth, Australia. Frontman Nick Allbrook and multi-instrumentalist Jay Watson are the most prominent songwriters of the group. Both have either spent time in or currently tour with Tame Impala. It’s been a two-way street as well, with Tame’s Kevin Parker contributing drums and production on a number of their releases. But let’s be clear on one thing, this band is neither a side project nor an afterthought. Sonically, Pond blends elements of pop, rock, and folk into a melange of peppy psychedelia, although their arrangements aren’t as kaleidoscopic or vibe-soaked as some of the band’s contemporaries. Pond’s vivid soundscapes have just the right amount of pop sensibility and spirited, left-of-center hooks that appeal to both altered-state listening, and road trip singalongs. They’ve never taken any dramatic, genre-bending left turns or enormous stylistic leaps. By the same token, they’ve also never face-planted or even put out a remotely disappointing record.  From: https://thirdcoastreview.com/2022/12/08/review-pond-brought-their-soaring-psychedelia-to-the-metro/

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

Strawbs - The Hangman and the Papist

 #Strawbs #Dave Cousins #Rick Wakeman #progressive rock #folk rock #progressive folk #British folk rock #symphonic prog #1970s

The Hangman and the Papist by Strawbs - a track from their album From the Witchwood, released in 1971. From an article I dedicated to Rick Wakeman's recording sessions between 1969 and 1971: As a full member, Wakeman played with the Strawbs on one studio album only, From the Witchwood, recorded early in 1971 and released in July that year. While the album has lovely acoustic interludes in the best tradition of the Strawbs, it is markedly more rock-oriented than anything the band attempted beforehand, and Rick Wakeman’s contributions give it that symphonic layer that made the album a favorite with progressive rock fans. A good example is The Shepherd’s Song, a great combination of acoustic guitars with virtuosic piano runs and Mellotron textures. Cousins: “The instrumental sections over Mellotron strings were inspired by the mariachi trumpets on Love’s Alone Again Or, and were played by Rick on a prototype Moog synthesizer that was kept in the studio. It was one of the first times that a Moog was used for this purpose on a record, and it encouraged Rick towards his multi-keyboard setup.” As progressive as the album was compared to the band’s previous records, Wakeman was already in a much more ambitious musical mind set than the rest of the band. Cousins: “He was great fun on stage and not at all difficult to control. He was more difficult in the studio when he didn’t like particular songs. It was also difficult to incorporate his own material into our own as it had so many chords – especially for me!” The crowning achievement of the album is The Hangman and the Papist. Dave Cousins: “The most important song on the album is The Hangman and the Papist. It’s written about two brothers who grew up on opposite sides of the religious fence, and it related to the outbreak of the troubles in Northern Ireland. One of  the brothers grows up as a Catholic and the other as a Protestant, which is an exact parallel of my own life: I’m a Catholic and my brother’s a Protestant, due to the fact that my mother married again after my dad died when I was  eight months old. We were booked to play the song on the first album spot on Top of the Pops, and it undoubtedly exposed the band to a much bigger audience. The only negative was that Rick was spotted playing the organ with a paint roller, but that’s our Rick!”  From: https://www.facebook.com/musicaficionadoblog/posts/2589036991241623/?paipv=0&eav=AfZWW_At8o26LUelPzH1L59UcRWoJZAEDXLVrbwAIdk5_CN_zg9Zwe6VL9HwISMtdjc&_rdr

Moon Honey - Self-Portrait Beneath Woman's Mask

 #Moon Honey #psychedelic rock #alternative rock #indie rock #experimental #neo-psychedelia 

It wouldn’t be surprising to find Moon Honey’s Jess Joy [vocals] and Andrew Martin [guitar] adorning the cards of a Tarot Deck. A wild red-headed musical enchantress and multi-faceted artist from the bayou of Baton Rouge, Jess’ je ne sais quoi extends beyond her primal vocal conjurings to handmade mysticism - from personally directing D.I.Y. stop-motion music videos and assembling surreal collages to building paper mache stage production and sewing period-correct costume pieces. Born in the Big Easy and raised on the Cayman Islands as an anachronistic disciple of Jimi Hendrix and Mark Bolan, Andrew speaks through six-strings often while decked out in mod velvet threads. The union of these two dissonantly kindred spirits yields a totemic pastiche of psychedelia, rock, soul, performance art and good old-fashioned voodoo. While on tour in 2013 (a month after becoming Moon Honey), the duo released their independent debut Hand-Painted Dream Photographs. It quietly sent shockwaves throughout the underground, bubbling up with praise courtesy of The New York Times, Noisey, NPR and more. Logging countless gigs including a fiery SXSW showcase, the West Coast called to Jess and Andrew. They settled in an Echo Park treehouse before finding a haunt nestled in the Silverlake hills. Immersed in the city’s arts scene, this aural universe unfolds further by their singular touch.  From: https://bigdealmusic.com/artists/moon-honey/

Yes - I've Seen All Good People

 #Yes #Jon Anderson #Steve Howe #Bill Bruford #progressive rock #art rock #symphonic prog #hard rock #1970s #Beat-Club

You can’t go wrong unearthing old prog videos, but The Lost Broadcasts
 DVD from Yes is a real gem. From 1969, we get Tony Kaye leaning far into his organ and drummer Bill Bruford mugging through the group’s version of Ritchie
Havens’ “No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed.” From this black and white Beat Club performance, we also get the previously unseen “Looking Around” and “Survival,” both from the first Yes album. The latter definitely was nodding to the future band we know and love. We jump to a 1970 lip-synched clip of “Time And A Word” with Peter Banks still on guitar. Though the band is obviously having a great time miming this semi-hit, Banks would be fired two months after this taping. We’re back to the Beat Club for the last four numbers. It was April 1971 when the band, now with new guitarist Steve Howe, laid down a blistering “Yours Is No Disgrace,” along with “All Good People.” For various reasons, the show needed these clips re-shot (we even hear someone tell bassist Chris Squire he was too far away from the microphone after one take), so we are treated to a trio of live rundowns.  From: https://vintagerock.com/yes-the-lost-broadcasts-dvd-review/

Labelle - Lady Marmalade

 #Labelle #Patti LaBelle #R&B #soul #funk #funk rock #glam rock #deep soul #pop rock #1970s

Labelle was an American girl group who were a popular vocal group of the 1960s and 1970s. The group was formed after the disbanding of two rival girl groups in the area around Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, and Trenton, in New Jersey: the Ordettes and the Del-Capris, forming as a new version of the former group, then later changing their name to the Blue Belles. The founding members were Patti LaBelle (formerly Patricia Holte), Cindy Birdsong, Nona Hendryx, and Sarah Dash. As the Bluebelles, and later Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles, the group found success with ballads in the doo-wop genre: "Down the Aisle (The Wedding Song)", "You'll Never Walk Alone", and "Over the Rainbow". After Birdsong departed to join The Supremes in 1967, the band, following the advice of Ready Steady Go! producer Vicki Wickham, changed its look, musical direction, and style to reform as Labelle in 1971. Their funk rock recordings of that period became cult favorites for their brash interpretation of rock and roll and for dealing with subjects and matters that were not typically touched by female black groups. Finally, after adapting glam rock and wearing outlandish space-age and glam costumes, the band found success with the proto-disco smash hit "Lady Marmalade" in 1974, leading to their album Nightbirds, which achieved gold success. They were the first contemporary pop group and first black pop band to perform at the Metropolitan Opera House. They were also the first black vocal group to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labelle

The Dukes Of Stratosphear - Vanishing Girl

 #The Dukes Of Stratosphear #XTC spinoff #1960s retro #psychedelic rock #neo-psychedelia #psychedelic pop #60s psych rock homage

XTC alter-egos, the Dukes of Stratosphear, may have begun as a joke, but this joke band's records rank with their creators' best work. It all started after XTC's Andy Partridge and producer John Leckie (Stone Roses) got tossed off a producer gig for Mary Margaret O'Hara's Miss America record for reasons that may involve strangeness on O'Hara's part, or religious differences, or the fact that Partridge told the band they needed a click track. As Chris Twomey's XTC biography Chalkhills and Children recounts, Leckie wanted to get something back for the time he'd lost waiting for the O'Hara gig. Partridge mentioned that he and bandmate Colin Moulding had written a bunch of psychedelic songs that were too out-there for XTC; Leckie pitched it to Virgin, asking them for £5,000 to cut a record. When they were done, they returned £1,000 of it.
The first EP, 25 O'Clock, shipped on April Fools' Day 1985, and it was rumored at the time (and official not long after) that the Dukes of Stratosphear were really XTC - with Partridge and Moulding as Sir John Johns and the Red Curtain, third member David Gregory taking the nom de hoax Lord Cornelius Plum, and David's brother Ian, E.I.E.I. Owen - on drums. But some people believed the band was real, and that the records really had been dredged out of a warehouse after decades of neglect. Why not? Not only did the Dukes stick to period instruments and effects, not only did they wear paisley shirts and floppy felt hats to the studio, and not only were all the silly lyrics and psychedelic excesses forgivable, but the band is fantastically, blindly in love with its material. And the songwriting kills. The Dukes began as a joke, but this joke band's two albums rank with XTC's best.
Quoting Partridge from definitive source Chalkhills.org: "The Dukes were the band we all wanted to be in when we were at school: Purple, giggling, fuzztone, liquid, and arriving. If you want to know where those cheap charlatans 'The Beatles', 'Pink Floyd', 'The Byrds', 'The Hollies', and 'The Beach Boys' stole their ideas from, well just listen to this and weep." But even though the homages are front and center, picking out influences is one of the dullest ways to dig these records; hearing these guys bathe in their boyhood record collections is the chief hook, followed by way they let their eyes bug out a little farther than on their "proper" albums of the time. XTC's Big Express and Skylarking came from a working band with adult problems and a grown-up's nostalgia; the Dukes have been like way out of it since high school.
Still, picking out the influences on the two Dukes of Stratosphear records is a good music nut's game. Some are obvious: compared to Pink Floyd's subtler "Arnold Layne", Partridge's "Have You Seen Jackie?" throws a victory parade with acid-laced confetti for its crossdressing hero(ine); "Pale and Precious" apes Beach Boys harmonies years before everyone in Brooklyn was doing it. Other references are subtler or better mashed-up, but rarely is the source of the song the point. You don't have to know the Hollies to adore how perfectly Moulding crafted the melody of "Vanishing Girl", or the way he bites off the high notes on the chorus.
And don't let the bits of gibberish and fluff - like young Lily Fraser "narrating" Psionic Sunspot - distract from the inspired arrangements on each song, like the backwards autoharp on "Have You Seen Jackie?" Or the "banana fingers piano" on "Braniac's Daughter", or the didg's and fuzz pedals and sick guitars and harpsichords and drawkcab loops and sped-up singing, and at the end of "Mole from the Ministry" a backward voice actually says, "you can fuck your atom bomb." Hey, it was the times.
Although I've been mixing up both of the albums in this review, there are marked differences between the debut EP and the career-ending LP. 25 O'Clock is more fun and more loyal to its sources; Psonic Psunspot has stronger songs, especially on the front half, but they're also not far removed from proper XTC material. 25 O'Clock is quick and sneaky; Psonic is wilder, but "The Affiliated" wanders, with the Latin section arguably the weirdest thing on the whole set.
The Dukes never gave a big, dramatic reason for breaking up. (Neither did XTC). They just hung up their axes after Psonic Psunspot, shelving a concept for a rock opera called The Great Royal Jelly Scandal. But they did get in one reunion: the reissue of 25 O'Clock includes their 2003 charity recording "Open a Can (of Human Beans)", which pays tribute to nothing more obviously than 90s-era XTC. And it sounds oh so unfortunately grown-up.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12893-25-oclock-psonic-psunspot/

The Nields - This Town is Wrong

 #The Nields #Katryna & Nerissa Nields #folk rock #contemporary folk #alternative rock #indie rock #Americana #1990s

The first incarnation of what would later become the Nields came together in 1987 in McLean, Virginia, when Nerissa Nields met David Jones, and started a band with Nerissa's sister Katryna. In 1991, Katryna had graduated from Trinity College in Connecticut, and Nerissa had graduated from Yale University. Nerissa married David, who was now known as David Nields, having taken her surname. By now, the threesome was performing together as the Nields, with Katryna as the lead singer, Nerissa playing rhythm guitar and singing harmony, and David Nields on lead guitar. In 1992, the three of them moved to Connecticut, where David had accepted a job at the Loomis Chaffee School, and the band recorded its first album, the self-released 66 Hoxsey Street, named for a house in Williamstown where they had lived. The band began to tour New England in earnest, earning a reputation in the regional folk music scene. In 1993, they released a live album titled Live at the Iron Horse Music Hall, recorded at the popular folk club in Northampton, Massachusetts.
In 1994 the band grew from a three-piece folk group to a five-piece rock band. The new members were Dave Chalfant (bass), whom Katryna had met in college, and Dave Hower (drums), a friend of Chalfant's. Chalfant also produced the band's album released that year, Bob on the Ceiling. This album featured a mix of the acoustic material that the Nields had previously specialized in and a more rock-oriented sound that would become their trademark. With their new sound, the Nields received critical acclaim, and quit their day jobs to become full-time musicians. Their 1995 EP Abigail, named for Katryna and Nerissa's sister, was self-released, followed by Gotta Get Over Greta in 1996 on the independent Razor & Tie record label. The album was re-released in 1997 with three bonus tracks on Guardian, a division of Elektra Records.
Unfortunately, the group suffered a number of setbacks the next year. Guardian folded, leaving them without a record label, and their tour van was growing increasingly unreliable. The band self-released an album called Mousse (the nickname for Dave Chalfant's sister Andromache) and held a special fundraising concert entitled "Jam for the Van." As a result, the Nields were able to purchase a new van, and were also able to secure a new label, Zoë, a division of Rounder Records. Over the next three years, the Nields released two more records (Play and If You Lived Here You'd Be Home Now), and in 1999 Katryna Nields and Dave Chalfant got married.
Although the band enjoyed a moderate degree of success, they ceased touring as a five-piece in 2001. Their final recording with David Nields was a two-disc album titled Live From Northampton. Like their 1993 album, it was recorded at the Iron Horse Music Hall, and was self-released by the band. In 2002, David and Nerissa Nields were divorced.
In 1998, Katryna and Nerissa were invited to play Lilith Fair as a duo. The performances were successful, and the two sisters performed several more shows together in areas where the full band had not previously been able to tour. By 2001, shows by the full band were increasingly rare, as Katryna and Nerissa toured mostly by themselves. In mid-2001, Katryna took some time off to have a baby, Amelia. Afterwards, she and Nerissa recorded their first album as a duo, titled Love and China, followed by an EP of children's songs, Songs for Amelia. In 2004, they released their second full album, This Town is Wrong. In 2005, Nerissa's young adult novel, Plastic Angel, was published by Scholastic Books. This Town Is Wrong was intended as a soundtrack to the novel, which came packaged with a CD containing the songs "This Town Is Wrong" and "Glow-In-The-Dark Plastic Angel" from the album.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nields

BraAgas - Vargtimmen

 #BraAgas #Balkan folk #medieval #Scandinavian folk #world music #Sephardic folk #traditional #ethno #period instruments #Czech Republic #live music video

BraAgas is an all female quartet created in 2007 after the split-up of the band Psalteria. The first two albums were hard to define genre-wise. “The first album called No.1 was a mix of everything – medieval and folk songs as well,” says Katka Göttlich. The four members of BraAgas have been playing for a long time. In addition to the previously mentioned Psalteria, the musicians played in other bands. “Our experiences from other bands have merged here – for me and Karla it was the Psalteria band, for Beta it was Gothart. Michaela had been sometimes the guest in different groups (e.g. Krless) before BraAgas originated,” says Göttlich. The four musicians play mostly ethnic instruments and historical replicas. Many guests helped them at the studio and there were also some electronic elements. Thanks to the electronics, a new modern sound was developed for Tapas, which was produced by David Göttlich and Petr Koláček. Tapas includes songs from various parts of Europe, including Spanish, Balkan, Nordic and Italian sources, originally dating back to anywhere within a thousand years time span, interpreted in a very modern way.  Current members include: Katerina Göttlichova on lead vocal, cittern, guitar, bagpipes, shawms; Alzbeta Josefy on vocal, davul, darbuka, duf, riq; Karla Braunova on vocal, flutes, recorders, clarinet, shawms, chalumeaux, and bagpipes; and Michala Hrbkova on vocal, fiddle, cittern.  From: https://worldmusiccentral.org/2017/01/09/artist-profiles-braagas/

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/

The Yardbirds - Turn Into Earth

 #The Yardbirds #Eric Clapton #Jeff Beck #Jimmy Page #blues rock #psychedelic rock #British R&B #British blues revival #1960s

The Yardbirds put out their strongest album ever in 1966 as well as their only album of all original material. It originally had an eponymous title but has come to be known as Roger the Engineer because of the sketch (drawn by guitarist Chris Dreja) on the album’s cover of Roger Cameron, the album’s engineer at Advision Studios in London. The album was co-produced by bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, who left the band shortly after and was replaced by Jimmy Page, who filled in on bass until Dreja mastered the instrument and Page returned to his primary instrument, the electric guitar. But the central influence that shaped the sound of this album was the innovation and experimentation of lead guitarist Jeff Beck. His heavy blues and guitar distortion is considered by many to be the earliest precursor to heavy metal. Beck joined the Yardbirds in May 1965 after founding guitarist Eric Clapton decided to leave the band. With Beck, the group began to expand their heavy blues base into different sects of rock and roll including unexplored areas of psychedelia, middle-aged chants, and Indian-influenced music. Primarily a singles-oriented band, each 7-inch release by The Yardbirds added new dimensions to the band’s sound or expanded on the ideas of the previous single. With Beck’s first full album with the group and the band’s first attempt at an album of all-original material, the band brought this experimentation to a new level, while still holding on to the core of blues roots.  From: https://www.classicrockreview.com/2011/10/1966-the-yardbirds/

Lola Colt - Vacant Hearts

 #Lola Colt #hard rock #art rock #alternative rock #post-punk #indie rock #garage rock

Lola Colt are a London-based six-piece spinning hypnotic heartache and art-rocking film noir. Comprised of Gun Overbye, Matt Loft, Margin Scott, James Hurst, Kitty Austen and Sinah Blohberger, they’ve been throwing psych-tinged shapes for the last five years, picking up their fair share of plaudits along the way. Frontwoman Gun adds a spiritual dimension to proceedings, with fierce vocals sitting halfway between The Kills’ Alison Mosshart and Wildbirds and Peacedrums’ Mariam Wallentin.

We first started making music because:
Its creation is somehow therapeutic, and we were young and had issues to deal with.

Our music is:
A way for us to understand the world, take it in, filter it down through our past experiences, dreams, feelings and regurgitate it back out into the world as some new beast, better understood.

From: https://www.prsformusic.com/m-magazine/new-music/30-seconds-interview-lola-colt

The diversification and therefore the evolution of modern music can almost be described as fractal in nature. These are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop, driven by recursion, fractals are images of dynamic systems – the pictures of chaos, and just like the best music which itself is built on repetition and structure. The exponential growth magnifies each change or nuance without breaking totally from the original blueprint. This has resulted in a plethora of musical genres that all allow fresh ideas to blossom without the heavy shadow of plagiarism coming into play. Lola Colt are a six piece ensemble from London who seem to be an amalgam of many sub-genre’s and appeared at the Bodega club in Nottingham on Friday, the 27th of February, touring to promote their debut album, Away From the Water. Cinematic is the all-encompassing description that seems to suit them best, which is enforced by them taking their name from a 1967 Spaghetti Western film directed by Siro Marcellini.
The versatility which this music allows was highlighted by the stage dynamic of Lola Colt, which included frequent instrument interchanges between members almost akin to a gothic version of Arcade Fire, which resulted in a vibrant and aesthetically diverse performance. Lyrically, though the cinematic tends to veer towards the elements (sky, science, elements), but Lola Colt, similarly with probably the best band to come out of Nottingham, the Tindersticks, dealt in the darker side of love and human relationships. During the track “Vacant Heart”, the vision that the blood was already dripping from the walls akin to the scene in the film Angel Heart, formed as Gun Overbye the Danish female vocalist pierced the night with “You tore it all / Thoughts still seeping in my head dripping in my bed,” which was as sexual as it was overtly mysterious. The beauty and originality that Lola Colt possess created a vivid visual canvas, but left enough space for one’s own imagination to take flight. The possibilities for them are endless and just the same as the fractal: very exciting.

From: https://www.qromag.com/lola-colt/  

Chris Isaak - Wicked Game

 #Chris Isaak #rock & roll #rockabilly #Americana #roots rock #singer-songwriter #1980s #1990s

Chris Isaak fashioned himself as a throwback to the early days of rock & roll, devising a fusion between Elvis Presley's rockabilly croon and Roy Orbison's moody, melancholy balladeering. Unlike his roots rock peers of the 1980s, Isaak didn't care for the earthier elements of rock & roll. He offered a stylized, picturesque spin on the spare, echoey sound of pre-Beatles rock, creating an atmosphere that was equally sweet and sensuous. Certainly, "Wicked Game," the sultry single that became a career-defining hit in 1989, captured his seductive side, a trait that would re-surface on the subsequent "Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing," a darkly lit rockabilly tune from 1995 that was later included in Stanley Kubrick's 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut. Those two songs crystallize the shadowy sexiness lurking within Isaak's music, but much of his body of work found him exploring the lighter side of the first wave of rock & roll with a knowing yet loving playfulness. This sense of understated showmanship helped Isaak ease into side careers as an actor and television host, plus it was central to the live shows that kept him on the road in between a steady stream of records.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/chris-isaak-mn0000775323/biography

Arrowhead - Coven of the Snake

 #Arrowhead #stoner rock #alternative rock #post-grunge #hard rock #doom metal #Australian #music video

Australian stoner rockers Arrowhead offer a unique blend of fuzz rock, with '70s infused grooves and thick doses of down-tuned doom to take you on a psychedelic trip. Playing around Australia since 2008, Arrowhead stand out amongst the crowd with songs full of infectious grooves, catchy riffs, hard hitting drums, thunderous bass lines, and brutally raw and passionate vocal delivery.  From: https://arrowheadrock.bandcamp.com/album/coven-of-the-snake

Rising from the underground of Sydney’s stoner rock scene, the Arrowhead brotherhood fire an explosive, all killer/no filler triptych of volume, attitude and down-tuned grooves. Hitting you harder than a Frank Frazetta-airbrushed panel van travelling at 100mph, Arrowhead is very much a band defined by the riffs that raised them. Fronted by guitar player, vocalist and chief songwriter Brett Pearl, Brett was brought up on a staple diet of classic rock with Hendrix, Zeppelin, Floyd and Sabbath rarely leaving the turntable. Joined by fellow purveyor of low-end grind is bass player/Viking Arron Fletcher, guitarist Raff Iacurto and living backbone of the band, Matt Cramp on drums. With each member feeding into the Arrowhead-approved vision of hard rock reverie via Hollywood monsters and science fiction cinema, having paid their dues as a band since late 2009, following on from 2010’s Atomsmasher EP, their self-titled debut and 2016’s Desert Cult Ritual, the latest addition to the quartet’s quiver is new album, Coven of the Snake. An album that is equal parts venom and mysticism, and 100% blood-bound to steal your soul in the name of rock and roll.  From: https://maximumvolumemusic.com/band-of-the-day-arrowhead/

Varttina - Karuliinan Kangaspuut

 #Varttina #Scandinavian folk #worldbeat #Finnish folk #world fusion #traditional #folk rock #contemporary folk #Finland

They are one of Finland's biggest musical exports but they could hardly be described as typically Finnish. They are, simply, Värttinä: musicians with a unique sound, with their feet firmly rooted in Finnish ground, in its language, culture and history, yet with the courage to develop over nearly two decades, something no-one else in the world has been able to copy.
Värttinä’s devoted and loyal fans all over the world may not all be Finnish speakers but they are intoxicated by the voices of Susan, Mari and Johanna, singers with the stage presence of a Wagnerian soprano, acting out roles from fishwives to lovers, while the guys lure the listeners with beguiling bouzouki, sax, accordion playing to die for, searing drums, guitar and bass.
Driving all this forward is the Finnish language itself, with its unique rhymes and rhythms, and spitting throaty sounds; words that launch themselves into the atmosphere and return several syllables later. Think of the pumping rhythms of Longfellow’s Hiawatha and you’re half way there.
For Värttinä it all began in the Finnish village of Rääkkylä in 1983 when a few mothers and grandmothers encouraged the children to sing and play some of the old songs from the Karelian region. Ancient stories once told with a simple accompaniment on the kantele (the Finnish zither-like instrument) suddenly woke up to find saxes, fiddles and guitars in their midst. This wasn’t important just for the birth of Värttinä but for the revival of Finnish folk music in general.
What emerged though wasn’t a folk band but, eventually, a ten-piece pop/rock style ensemble which established the formula of female voices at the front, boys at the back. Blessed by the no-nonsense and sometimes shocking lyrics of the ancient traditional sagas of blood, sweat and a lot of tears, the confrontational style of singing and song-writing won the music world over until the band was propelled into Finnish stardom in 1991.  From: https://realworldrecords.com/artists/varttina/ 

Frente! - Sit on My Hands

 #Frente! #indie rock #alternative rock #pop rock #folk-pop #Australian #1990s

Frente! were an Australian folk-pop and indie pop group which originally formed in 1989. The original line-up consisted of Simon Austin on guitar and backing vocals, Angie Hart on lead vocals, Tim O'Connor on bass guitar, and Mark Picton on drums. The Australian rock music historian Ian McFarlane felt that the group's "quirky, irreverent, acoustic-based sound was at odds with the usual guitar-heavy, grunge trends of the day. The band's presentation had a tweeness about it that could have been off-putting if not for its genuine freshness and honesty”. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frente!

Frente!'s second album really seemed to be a difficult second album. The music aboard Shape is fine. By 'difficult' I'm referring more to difficulties the band appeared to have had with line up changes and perhaps with the 'difficult' dynamic that must have been the at times fractious Hart-Austin relationship. Foundation members Tim O'Connor and Mark Picton had departed by Shape and it seemed previously that nobody gave proper kudos to their songwriting finesse; previous releases had shone brightly with their stellar contributions. Thus one imagines Shape could have been a struggle without them. The strain upon Hart and Austin, having dissolved their personal relationship just as Frente! got 'famous' but then having to press on with the band's newly found success, well, it must have been hard, too. From within this context it's no surprise that second album Shape was also their last.
Plenty of lilt, plenty of charm, and no shortage of Hart's sweet vocal sounds. For me there was always an intriguing contradiction in her vocal tones: sweet, young and innocent girl tones that emanated a rather sarcastic, world weary experience via the words and themes. I was slow to grab a copy of Shape, by the time I did Frente! had already flamed out. It took a friend and mutual Frente! fan to chide me "it's good, get it!" So I did. I think back and perhaps it was "Sit on my Hands" at track one that had made me baulk, seemed a little too different to my past Frente! experience (reality check: it's not).
Maybe I could make a successful argument that the lack of O'Connor's and Picton's quirky and zippy contributions shifted the Frente! sound back a few gears into a more predictable rhythm. Hart appears to have taken over the principal songwriting (with Austin also prominent) on almost every song. New members, bassist McDonald and drummer Barden, are really not involved much at that level. And an almost exclusively acoustic band like Frente! really stands on its songwriting.
The album Shape was recorded in Spain for whatever reason. Escape perhaps? The angst and tensions surrounding this band at that time may well have contributed to the pith of the songs presented here. Hart's turn of melody entwines with Austin's acoustic fingerpicking to constitute the bulk of the songs. Where Frente! departs from this we get a whole new bunch of tones starting to emerge, even if they may sound unusually underconfident in taking these bold strides. That the mixdown took place 'everywhere' suggests to me the prodding and pushing of a record company, possibly even overtaking the band on certain production issues. It seems either to provide 'variety' or to disrupt continuity, depending on your own particular take.
Overall, Shape was an interesting album taking Frente! into new territory. But without the band being able to find their own way I can possibly see how it may have gone pearshaped. The middle order of songs feature some classic Angie Hart, while a few other songs here - "Sit on my Hands", "Horrible", "What's Come Over Me", for example - see them starting to crank up amps and possibly evolving into a different sort of band. It's a shame then that this was the last Frente! album. A good one to go out on.
From: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/frente/shape/