Diamanda Galás - Das Fieberspital (The Fever Hospital) / Eyes Without Blood 1984 / The Litanies of Satan 1985

 Diamanda Galás - Das Fieberspital (The Fever Hospital)

 

 Diamanda Galás - Eyes Without Blood 1984

 

 Diamanda Galás - The Litanies of Satan 1985

 

Diamanda Galás’ visceral music has always sought, through her own astonishing voice, to speak for the marginalised and oppressed. This began in the early 1980s with what became known as the Masque Of The Read Death trilogy of albums, a response to the stigmatisation and cruel treatment of the victims of the AIDS crisis, including her own brother, the playwright Philip-Dimitri Galás. Often based around interpretation of music from the blues, jazz, country and Byzantine traditions, her work, utterly sui generis and uncompromising, has gone on to explore the Armenian genocide and the dead of the First World War. As Diamanda Galás prepares to release new album In Concert, she selects and guides Luke Turner through select moments of her musical life in recording, improvisation and performance.

‘Free Among The Dead’, from The Divine Punishment, (1986)

I used Biblical texts because I was interested in the anatomy of a plague mentality. Some were from Leviticus, a book of laws which indicated how to separate the clean from the unclean. I had just seen the first person I’d known to have AIDS die in New York, and when I came back to San Francisco, I started working on the text of Psalm 88. It riveted me and shocked me because it starts out, “O Lord, God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before Thee, let my prayer come before Thee, incline Thine ear unto my prayer.” But then it says, “Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom Thou remembers no more, and they are cut off by Thy hand.” Those verses within the Psalm terrified me. A lot of my work is concerned with the transition between life and death. By this, I do not mean anything spiritual, but the man who’s walking up the stairs to the gallows, this absolute dread – I seem to select works that address that death chamber and that particular fear. I recorded half of The Divine Punishment in San Francisco using ring modulation and other processes on my voice, and played a very large grand piano and synclavier. I recorded ‘Free Among The Dead’ first, and then I went to London to do the second part with Dave Hunt. He’s definitely a person who believes in the first take.

It’s interesting you record in one take, because you’ve released a lot of ‘live’ albums but I feel that there’s not much of a delineation between them and the ‘studio’ records.

I’m very glad to hear that because there was one person who was saying, ‘oh my God, another live album’ and started to complain about all the songs I hadn’t recorded yet.  Why don’t I send you all the songs I’ve performed and I haven’t recorded? How about that? You can be more depressed, you know? It’s just like, fuck off, you imbecile.

‘Blind Man’s Cry’ from Saint Of The Pit (1986)

Before he died, my brother handed me a book of French poets and I selected this one, Tristan Corbière’s ‘Blind Man’s Cry’. When you see the large eyes of someone who is powerless and knows that he can’t escape the cage he’s in… I will never forget that. ‘Blind Man’s Cry’ was especially shocking, because the words are so definitive of what I’m talking about. Corbière was deaf, and there is something interesting about a deaf poet writing ‘Blind Man’s Cry’, because he understands the concept of hopelessness. It is devastating – I say this because I think a poem must be devastating. It must say, ‘Diamanda, wake up. Wake up before it’s too late!’ This is why I do the poems I do, because they are like the dead offering me a hand. I really mean that. It’s why I like to work in the dark at night. I come downstairs in the dark, I have a purple light on and I start working. I find it really annoying to wake up in the morning and open the door and see happy people on the street. I have to slam it right away. It hurts my skin. When I talk to somebody who understands, I become someone different, because I can present myself as extroverted. When I get off the phone, I will go back to that other self. This poem is essentially saying, ‘I am nailed here and there is no sympathy, there is no empathy from anyone’. He’s asking death to hurry up and he’s begging the birds, the crows to come.

You Must Be Certain Of The Devil (1986)

I finished the first part of what became the Masque Of The Read Death trilogy and brought it home. That’s when my brother was very ill. My feelings towards my brother played a huge role in the second part, which ended up being less a book of laws and more of a cry. I chose poems that are incantational, desperate cries – I’m not saying that to be dramatic. I’m saying that because that’s what they are. They’re cries from the hole. I don’t know whether at that juncture I determined there was going to be a third record, but I got the room temperature of the virus in the United States, because in London and Berlin, people would just laugh at me when I told them what I was working on. I generally didn’t discuss it because they would just laugh and laugh – these were straight musicians, it must be said. The reason that I worked with Erasure was because we understood each other politically. I wasn’t speaking to someone who put his hands over his ears and didn’t want to hear [music relating to AIDS], who was nauseated and thought of it as a kind of a faggot special interest group. A lot of these straight guys, they were such a pain in my ass to be around because they were cornier than a motherfucker – and some continue to be. It’s really curious to me how you can write so many songs about teardrops falling from the ceiling – it’s like, hey, buddy, okay, you suffered with this girl. How many songs do you have to fucking write to get over it? I can’t write material like that. I don’t want sympathy from anyone. It doesn’t really affect me, but it made it impossible for me to hang out with a lot of musicians. There are other things that are happening in the world. I’m not saying that one has to write political songs. I don’t even write political songs. They’re more and more psychological to start with and then they become political. When I was in London I saw a particular emotional reaction among many people to the stigma of AIDS, to the idea of something being dangerous. I’m not complaining about it because when you do work that you feel possessed by, you’re not losing time. If you do work that’s for somebody else and you’re mid-range about it, then it could be a waste of time. I have never felt that I had the time to waste. I, like a lot of Greeks, obsess about death every day. It’s in the genes. Death is in the genes.

‘See That My Grave Is Kept Clean’ from The Singer (1992)

My interpretation of ‘See That My Grave Is Kept Clean’ is ‘don’t add anything. Don’t spread rumours about imagined follies of mine or imagined transgressions of mine. Keep it clean, ma’am. Don’t fuck around.’ You don’t think about how to interpret a song like this. You just sit and it comes. I get right down the chord changes and I start. That song came very quickly. It is magnificent and you can see how it can work within an AIDS phenomenology because people die and then suddenly have no control over their legacy. Journals can be opened and I think of all the essays and letters I’ve written on my computer that I’m going to have to delete. And I just say, I don’t want to do it today, but when are you going to have time? There are so many things in my house alone that I’ve collected over many years. I’ve got to get rid of a lot of this stuff. What do I keep? Where do I send it? To the dead person, the most painful thing would be having a relative, a mother for example, read journals that were composed from the bathhouse. Why the fuck would you want your mother to read that? I won’t get personal with it, but there was a time when that was a moment. And so that’s what that poem is about.

Vena Cava (1993)

This concerns a patient who is in hospital with AIDS, and that person has reached a level of depression that is unreadable and can be confused with AIDS dementia. It’s not possible to medically test for that until an autopsy, but doctors would make guesses. If you had something on your chart that said you had dementia, then you had no control. You had no say in those little investigations that doctors will do on a soon-to-be-dead corpse – spinal taps and so many invasive procedures. These can be done while the person is alone, in a delirium and defenseless. That is what this piece is about, because albeit it wasn’t discussed that much, I felt that it was imperative for a person’s friends to say, ‘no, he does not have dementia, he’s very depressed, and why wouldn’t he be?’ The fluorescent lights that never go off, the cold of the hospital, the nurses that keep waking him up and saying stupid things, and visitors that will say the wrong things. Now, about that I would always tell people, ‘go to the hospital. Yes, you may say the wrong thing, but the most important thing is for the person to remember that you were there, and that you love them’. Some people would say ‘hospitals aren’t my thing’. What the fuck are you talking about? You’re an activist, but hospitals aren’t your thing. You just fucking try me with that one. Come on! A lot of my work is about trying to seek a dignity for people in death, with the same voice I say that it is fatiguing to listen to parlour room romance stories. Yeah OK, he left, and he came back, and then he left again? Well that is really so far out. What can I fucking say?

‘Last Man Down’ from This Sporting Life (1994)

I discovered how amazingly John Paul Jones performed the lap steel. And I said, ‘what? You play like that and you haven’t considered playing it for the record? Well, you’re playing it’. That’s it. He just sat down and played the shit out of it and it was so gorgeous – that, for me, is one of the great music pieces on the record. The title is what my gay husband used to say while his friends were dying – ‘I guess I’ll be the last man down’.

‘Burning Hell’ (first version on La Serpenta Canta (2003)

I did this song twice on La Serpenta Canta because every time I’ve performed it, it has been completely different. I do that with a lot of songs. That’s when people say they’re covers, I think who the fuck are you talking to? You’re talking to an improvising musician, just as Ornette [Coleman] would do a version of something completely different every time and it would never be called a cover version, so stop it, don’t even try that one. So I put two versions on  the album and then some guy wrote, ‘it remains to be seen why she would repeat herself on this record’. Yeah, well, it remains to be seen why you can’t even fucking hear the song both times and realise the difference. That was a blues tradition and it’s funny, because people say ‘well, they just wanted to be paid twice’. Right, take it to the bank, you asshole. There are so many ways to do a song – I’ve had to do the same song during two sets in a night and of course, I do the songs differently. Why would I want to do them the same? I’d be bored. ‘Burning Hell’ – the man is just saying ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me, maybe I’m going to burn in hell’. He’s talking about asking the preacher, ‘what can I do?’ or ‘what’s going to happen?’ That preacher doesn’t know. Nobody knows.

Do you think because you released albums on Mute and you were around people who write conventional songs that people when responding to your music were confused?

When I released Divine Punishment, man, some music critics who were pretty big in London just hated it: ‘This isn’t music. I don’t know what the hell this is. It’s not music’. Okay. All right. So then I do the Plague Mass and Masque Of The Red Death, which had established a context for it, and having performed it at St. John the Divine during the height of the AIDS epidemic everyone knew what was going on by then. When that record came out, it was very well respected, but Saint Of The Pit was hard for people to figure out and You Must Be Certain Of The Devil – the reviews on that just make me howl.

‘Holokaftoma’ and ‘Hastayim Yasiyorum’ from Defixiones – Last Will And Testament (2003)

‘O Prósfigas’ [on new album In Concert] refers to the refugee, who is on a death march from Turkey into Aleppo, Syria. That’s where during the genocide of 1914 to 1923 they walked the Armenian men, the Greek men, the Assyrian men, the Yazidis, the Azeris – everyone who was not Turkish was walked to their death. On the roads were mountains of skulls in pyramids for them to see so they knew what their death was going to be. The Greek genocide was called the Holokaftoma. It means, ‘burning of the whole.’ ‘Holokaftoma’ is a Greek word that refers exclusively to the Asia Minor Genocides between 1914 and 1923. Last month search engines removed our genocide, and the word is only used to refer to the Jewish Holocaust as a translation. This second genocide took place between 1941 and 1945. The word ‘Holocaust’ comes from our word ‘Holokaftoma’. These are two different genocides! People have to understand that our genocide preceded the Holocaust. The Holokaftoma was the model that Hitler used, which he got from his mentor Kemal Attaturk, who counselled him saying, “Who remembers the Armenians?’ Now this is being erased, if the word ‘Holocaustoma’ refers only to the Holocaust of the Jews and no longer the ‘Holocaustoma’ of all of us between 1914 and 1923. And that is really egregious. I would say that in large part, Erdogan is responsible for that, because he and the EU have a massive press campaign to destroy Greece. Part of that campaign is to say that the Greeks are irresponsible about bringing in the refugees and caring for them, but you’re talking about a country under austerity measures from the EU, who can’t get more than $50 out of the bank at a time, and people who don’t have work anymore, and the payment for work is so low. And then at the same time, they’re trying desperately to take care of the Syrians. There are many Syrian Orthodox who have come in, who have been relieved to be in Greece. The truth is that many of the Syrians have been rerouted over many years by Turkish police boats to the open harbours of Greece, because Erdogan wants to ruin Greece, and he hates the Arabs. He believes in Turkishness. There are institutes for Turkishness where they say the books written by Homer, by Socrates are written by Turkish authors whose real names are ‘Sokrati’, ‘Omeron’, and so forth. They claim that the music is now Turkish music, but it was the mixture of Greek music, Byzantine music and Arabic speakers music, Armenian music, Azeri music. These musics that were made together were hashish music or outlaw music, a place where people would get together and sing dark music, this dark music that spoke of suffering and fear. Erdogan’s threat to Greece is ‘don’t make trouble because any night we can go back to Cyprus (meaning the invasion of Cyprus), and any night we can go back to 1914 or 1922, the burning of Smyrna’.
‘O Prósfigas’ refers to our genocides. I use the Amanés, or Amanéthes, they’re also called. It’s one of many melodies sung by those persons considered to be infidels by the Young Turks. They would get together for improvisational singing that preceded a song. This is a great art form, and I’ve spent many years working on this. You can hear it if you go into Greek Orthodox Church. You’ll see a psalti, who sings the music of the church, and then you’ll see him at night, and he’ll be singing an Amanés/ Amanéthes with people in a bar. It’s because they’re using the same scales, which are the same scales as the scales used in the Turkish mosques – this is what is interesting. A lot of Greeks want to deny it, claiming that they’re completely different. To them I’ll say don’t let your anger get in the way of your hearing. The big paradox is that these musics are all part and parcel of Byzantium. Many Persian scholars will say the roots were originally Greek, and there are different assessments of what the roots were originally, but that doesn’t matter so much to me as it matters that it is not put under the rubric of the Institute for Turkishness, the music of Turkey, because that to me that’s a part of genocide, robbing the culture of its most precious jewels, its most precious blood. That’s what I see is happening to Greece. Greece is being treated like an old man who they’re trying to put in the nursing home – ‘he can’t really do it for himself anymore and we have to put him in the nursing home’. It’s as if they say. ‘We love Greece. It’s the Greek people we don’t like! We need to get rid of the Greeks so we can get back our cradle of civilization’. No fucking Amaneres singers from eastern Greece on the islands considers themselves to be a European. They say ‘it’s not Europe. Greece is not Europe’. I continue to lay my fist down on the table and say that. There may be many Greeks that get angry with me about that, but let’s face it, they’re not being treated like a European country. They’re being treated like an ashtray for the EU, for Britain to a certain degree and Turkey. And that’s it. And the United States as always. I was worried about doing ‘O Prósfigas’ because of the insults the Greeks have taken, because it means the refugee, referring to our own genocide in the refugee status that the Greeks had to take. But I said, ‘no! I’m doing it! And I’m going to tell people why’.

‘O Death’ from All The Way (2017)

Death says, ‘I’m sorry, it’s your time. I’m sorry, but I’m hungry now, and you don’t want me to starve to death, do you?’ People who could understand that humour would be Hank Williams, Johnny Paycheck, those outlaw country singers, musicians who sang with this ‘in your face’ quality. They were not going to be coy about anything. People have very curious perceptions of country music. I’ve heard some in alternative rock try to sing country and I am just laughing on the floor thinking, ‘why haven’t they been shot yet? You can’t do that, man. You just can’t do that.’ I was going out with this guy, a kind of outlaw, an ex-con. He said, ‘you know Diamanda, ‘O Death’ is a cowboy song’. It’s a lonesome song. The cowboy stands up and confides, just sings to the blackness of the sky and howls to the moon. I’d only heard the song in the movies, and I’d never liked any of the interpretations. When he told me that I got right on it. People that say that there’s no blues in country music, there’s no country music in the blues, there’s no gospel in country, or that there’s only black gospel, there’s no white gospel, they’re all full of shit.

‘La Llorona’ from In Concert (2024)

This is a traditional Mexican song that I’ve been singing for years.  I heard Chavela Vargas sing it, but my version is completely different because it takes influence from the Byzantine scales and also the cante jondo of Spain, southern Spain, which is it means deep song, especially Manuel Agujetas – his singing is ferocious. I’ve been influenced by these different traditions, so my version will be different but these musics all connect. I feel this way about ‘O Death’ because I started with a Byzantine incantation, which is not the blues at all, and then I got into ‘O Death’ which I sang very improvised before I got into a more or less blues country song. I feel that it’s counterintuitive not to sing what you hear and if you hear all those things at the same time, you’ve gotta sing them. Otherwise, we return to what the prissy little shit people do when they hear a country song and they want to preserve it. That doesn’t mean anything, it’s a footnote of the song. When a person is beholden to a tradition because they can’t hear outside of it and refuse to mix. People would say to Ornette, ‘how do you become avant-garde?’ And he said, ‘what are you talking about? I play the blues. I play it now. I play it tomorrow and I play it the day after.’ You don’t become avant-garde by trying to be avant-garde. You’ve just evolved the music to a station in the frontlines. It comes to you because you’ve heard so many things – like Charlie Parker used to say, if I hear a car ad on television, it’ll be in my solo the next day if I like it. There would be these improvising groups in the 70s that would say ‘we make sure we don’t listen to any music at all and then we get together at night and we improvise, but we never, never listen to any music’. And I thought, so you’re going to improvise based upon all the stuff that you learned before the moment in which you decided not to be part of a dialectical process. That was so naive.

From: https://thequietus.com/interviews/strange-world-of/the-strange-world-of-diamanda-galas/

 

 

Soft Cell - Sex Dwarf

A huge electronically-manipulated chord growls, a synth wails like a siren and then there's Marc Almond's sinister intonation. His voice is a half-whisper, conspiratorial, that of a man telling terrible secrets in the dark. This is how "Sex Dwarf," the eighties synth duo Soft Cell's most famous single-that-never-was, begins. Now Universal will release the song on pink twelve-inch vinyl for Record Store Day on April 18th, a fitting reminder that this is perhaps one of the greatest prototype punk-techno tracks ever released, a record that paved the way for LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip, Leftfield, Underworld, and other providers of rough-and-tumble maximalist techno thrills.
The track was first released on the band's Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret album in 1981. Never mind that this disk that also spawned transatlantic chart-gobbler "Tainted Love" and the much-loved ballad "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye," "Sex Dwarf" was its dark, grimy heart. It's a song that worked equally well as a picture-postcard of drowsy Soho afternoon dive bars, sex shops and porno cinemas in the eighties as it did an anthem for California industrial art-rockers Nine Inch Nails, or a bosh-bosh-bosh thriller for Scooter.
When I heard about the Record Store Day release I was excited, not just as a lifelong Marc Almond fan, but also a lifelong Soft Cell fan—and those two allegiances are not necessarily concomitant. Almond has moved away from the synths and the drum machines (for the most part) and become variously a torch singer, an interpreter of French chansoniers Jacques Brel and Charles Aznavour, and a purveyor of Russian folk music. The last time he performed "Sex Dwarf" in public was when Soft Cell reformed back in 2002. He has since stated on Twitter that it will never happen again—either another reformation of Soft Cell or live outing for the track. But "Sex Dwarf" lives on, a painting in Marc's attic that gets spikier, more raucous, more imbecilic, more fuck-you every year. And that is why we should celebrate it, even if its author will never sing it again.
Soft Cell have had a curious dual life in the public's consciousness since their drug-fueled implosion in 1984, subsequent to their final album This Last Night in Sodom. Non-fans will bop to "Tainted Love" at their best friend's wedding, may be aware of "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye" and perhaps even "Bedsitter", at a push, and will tend to lump Almond and Dave Ball (his taciturn synth whizz co-founder) with the naff New Romantic likes of Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet.
But those who know, know how Soft Cell basically invented the synth duo template that was later half-inched by everyone from THUMP favourites Pet Shop Boys to Erasure to—God help us—Hurts. How they invented techno with the minimalist Sheffield bleep banger "Memorabilia" (which was featured on Matthew Styles' mix for Crosstown Rebels' Rebel Rave 4). How Almond's lyrics, epistles from the gutters that beatified addicts, strippers, compromised pop stars, desperate housewives, sexual compulsives and dealt with themes of love, murder, ecstasy and insanity blew pretty much all of his contemporaries out of the water bar Morrissey and Nick Cave. How Soft Cell did leather-clad S&M pop way before Essex Clearasil kids Depeche Mode took the template and ran with it, becoming a sort of Torture Garden-friendly U2 in the process. They know all this and more.
With Almond's theatrical use of make-up and leather stage outfits, it was perhaps inevitable that his band would become irretrievably associated with sleaze for some sections of the public in the eighties. Far from being effete, Almond, an eyeliner idol in the time of Thatcher, was as punk as John Lydon or the lads from Suicide (both of whom he has cited as influences), using his outré appearance and sneering performance to piss off an establishment that (as has since became apparent) hid its own guilty secrets behind a hypocritical wall of condemnatory projection. But "Sex Dwarf," a song that, ironically, satirises smutty 80's tabloid sensationalism didn't do the band any favours and arguably imprisoned the duo within a box labelled 'other' for the rest of its natural life.
The track's lyrics, which concern a notional "Sex Dwarf" set on "luring disco dollies to a life of vice," were inspired by a headline that Almond saw in the now-defunct News of the World. It's certainly one of Soft Cell's most bizarre confections, a strange tale of "looking to procure" before "making it with the dumb chauffeur" of a gold Rolls Royce. Ironically, after the band made a spoof video-nasty porno to promote the song which was copied by underhand means and sent out to the media, News of the World—along with every other paper in the country—reported on the story, prompting the police to raid Soft Cell's management's offices and scoop up every last tape.
When I spoke to Marc about the Record Store Day release for this piece he made it clear that he now regards Sex Dwarf as juvenilia "from a very bad time in my life," although he does like the way the new twelve-inch is presented and gives the release his blessing. But for the rest of us, the track is a prototype punk-house gift that keeps giving. Like the track "Martin" from their The Art of Falling Apart album (1983), "Sex Dwarf" is a wide-screen club thumper whose pitch-bending top synth line anticipates the sounds of the first rave records that were to follow a few years later, while its kooky backing vocals (reminiscent of the B-52s) add an anarchic rawness that predates comparable LCD Soundsystem and hip-hop productions. And finally there is Marc's voice, shiny and hard as Yorkshire steel and our ringmaster as the track descending into sleaze-fuelled insanity. Indeed, "Sex Dwarf" is truly the sound of Soft Cell lying in the gutter and looking at the scars; at the same time, it is also a landmark of British electronica that richly deserves its cult status.  From: https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ajkk5/soft-cell-sex-dwarf

Soft Cell singer Marc Almond has been discussing the infamous video for the duo’s song ‘Sex Dwarf’, which is still banned from being shown on UK television 38 years after it was filmed in 1981. Directed by Tim Pope, the video features Soho brothel workers wielding chainsaws, a dwarf wearing a fetish outfit and piles of raw meat as Almond performs the song in a tiny codpiece. It also sees Almond and keyboardist Dave Ball react in horror after Pope unexpectedly threw live maggots at them during shooting. The uncensored video can be seen on YouTube.
Almond has been discussing the video’s effects, telling Yahoo: “The video for ‘Sex Dwarf’ was ahead of its time, in the way we were using transgender people, or we would use people who were prostitutes that we found around Soho, people that were working in clubs. And then here was the dwarf himself, which really went against what you were supposed to do!” Almond admits that he likes the fact the video remains banned, saying: “I’ve never wanted to release it publicly, officially, because it became such a legendary thing. We like the fact some people have seen it and created this urban myth about it. We like that it’s bootlegged and slightly seedy.”
In a separate interview, Almond told Classic Pop last year that he was unable to play ‘Sex Dwarf’ live for many years, saying: “I’d gone off ‘Sex Dwarf’ because that song caused Soft Cell such a lot of trouble. The video and everything around it caused us a lot of pain, and singing it live would bring back all the memories of that time.” However, the song was performed live when Soft Cell played live at London’s O2 in 2018 when Almond and Ball performed live together for the first time since 2004 in a show billed as their farewell performance.  From: https://www.nme.com/news/music/heres-why-soft-cells-38-year-old-video-is-still-banned-as-marc-almond-discusses-shocking-sex-dwarf-2450261

Sinéad O'Connor - No Man's Woman - Live 2000

Little ever seems easy for Sinéad O’Connor. There she was back in spring 2012, enjoying the plaudits for her first album in five years, nestling in the UK Top 40 again after an absence of a good decade or so, when suddenly – or so it seemed – she was forced to call off an extensive European tour, one that was already underway. In her typically candid fashion, she made no secret as to why this had happened, publishing an open letter of explanation on her website. She’d been prescribed medicine that potentially worsened her bipolar disorder, she explained, and her manager had set up a punishing schedule for her about which she was “only consulted approximately 8% of the time”. With her health worsening – and another suicide attempt only recently behind her – cancellation, she made it painfully clear, was the only option. But she’s back now: fit, happy and healthy, she says. She’s been out on the road playing shows, has a new single out, and her regular, somewhat stream-of-consciousness tour diaries prove that her sense of humour hasn’t suffered one bit. (“Have shaved head this morning so am gorgeous. Did the legs too - not that any man is ever coming near me - but if I should get hit by an elephant or something, I won’t be like wolf woman lying in the hospital.”)
She’s had a rough ride since the start, of course. Her life story reads like the script of a-rags-to-riches TV series, except that every time it looks like a happy ending is on the horizon she’s confronted by yet another drama. Ratings have gone up, ratings have gone down, but still she pulls in the viewers, and given the plot twists so far it’s not entirely surprising. She suffered physical abuse as a child at the hand of her mother – who died in a car accident in 1985 – and survived relocation to a Catholic correctional facility before selling two and a half million copies of her extraordinary debut album, 1987’s The Lion And The Cobra. But by 1990, the year of her biggest hit – a cover of Prince’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ – Frank Sinatra had threatened to “kick her ass” after she refused to countenance having the American national anthem performed before her shows.
She followed ‘Nothing Compares…’ seven million-selling parent album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, by tearing apart a picture of Pope John Paul II on American TV’s Saturday Night Live, an action which inspired Joe Pesci to do the same to a photo of her the following week and led to condemnation from an arguably rather hypocritical Madonna. (The act remains so controversial in American TV history that O’Connor’s picture was again torn up during an episode of 30 Rock last year.) In a further unexpected twist, given her ongoing outspoken views about the Catholic Church, only a few years later she was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest.
Additionally, she stated in 2000 that she’s a lesbian, though she later recanted and declared herself three quarters hetero, one quarter gay – “I lean a bit more towards the hairier blokes,” she added – and has been married four times. The last of these, she divulged, lasted only seventeen days, though she and her husband subsequently reunited a week later, O’Connor announcing the news with a tweet that claimed “yay!!! me husband is a big hairy cave man an came to claim me with his club.” She’s also pursued an unlikely musical path, releasing an album of jazz standards (1992’s Am I Not Your Girl), one of traditional Irish folk songs (2002’s Sean-Nós Nua) and another of roots reggae covers (2005’s Throw Down Your Arms). Her most recent release, however, sees her back in more traditional territory, and features some of her strongest material in years, not least the joyful jig of ‘4th And Vine’, the subdued fury of ‘Take Off Your Shoes’ (which finds her in as good a voice as she’s ever sounded) and the lyrically confrontational and musically vulnerable ‘V.I.P.’ On the eve of the release of a new single, ‘Old Lady’, the Irish singer took time to look back at her work and beliefs, as well as reiterating the crucial question that makes up the title of her ninth and latest album, How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?

I hope this doesn’t embarrass you, but the first thing I want to say is that your music has often been a great comfort to me, and I don’t think I’d be alone in saying that. But try as I might to talk only about your music, it seems to speak much about you as a person, especially in conjunction with the stories that have been written about things you’ve said and done. Do you think your work, and some of the difficulties you have faced, will all have been worthwhile so long as others hear your message?

Sinéad O’Connor: For people like yourself who are saying that my music was quite helpful to them, I think the thing is, you and I are the same, and the only reason my music exists is because I needed that comfort. And I gave myself comfort with that music, so the messages were to myself, actually. And then I think that translated because people could identify with it, because perhaps they were suffering similar things, or had been through similar things. In particular, I was a survivor of very severe child abuse, for example. I was born and grew up in a time where there was no therapy. There was no place for people like me to put emotions, you know, so that music was the thing that saved us. And perhaps I was dealing with subjects that other people had not found a way to express their feelings about. And I think perhaps there was a message there that wasn’t intended for anyone but me, but because there were so many people like me it translated to some people, you know?
There was a guy in Ireland doing a piece, and he told me that his supervisor had told him to find out who the people I’m talking to are, and I couldn’t think who they were. But I said, "I bet if you could be bothered investigating my fans, you would probably find the majority of them had upbringings similar to mine, or are people who, for some reason, felt they had difficulty in being themselves. I think they’re interested in me because they see me as being myself, no matter what. And that’s encouraging, in the same way that, say, when I was young, I was very inspired by gay people when I came to England. Particularly, I was very inspired by the more queen-y, effeminate kind of gay people, guys that would go around dressed up in dresses. And I thought that was so brave, that these people could be themselves in a time when they were getting beaten up for being themselves. In my own country, a man couldn’t go down the road holding the hand of another man, so I found these people very inspiring, that they were being themselves and therefore I could be myself. And maybe that’s the audience that I have, if you like. There’s some message there, but it’s not necessarily intended.

And yet we all seem so cheerful when we go to see you play!

SO’C: Well, we are. That’s the thing. We are cheerful people, but we have to carry emotions and painful things that are sometimes difficult to find words for, and thank God we have music. And I think that’s why music is so popular, because all human beings have suffering as well as joy.

Do you think one reason that people think you’re a tough person is because of the shaven head?

SO’C: I think it started with that. I was perceived as a controversial, challenging woman because the haircut was perceived as something aggressive, which it really wasn’t. I think the haircut was one reason, and the boots of course, and then there was the fact that I was Irish and therefore mouthy, and that I don’t have a filter between thinking something and saying it. Someone described it very nicely writing an article on the twentieth anniversary of ripping up the Pope’s picture, that all the stars in showbiz were very frightened of me because – it’s a great way of putting it – an artist without a sense of self-preservation is a very dangerous thing. And I think that’s true. I wasn’t in the business for any other reason than to express myself. I didn’t give a shit about making money, or getting my records played, or having a good name, or have people talk nicely about you. It hurt me that there was such a lot of shit dumped. But at the same time I wasn’t going to let it stop me being myself. But that was challenging, because, without meaning to, you’re accidentally holding up to people how much they’re cock-sucking. I didn’t mean to do that. I was just being me. But that pushed a lot of buttons for people, you know?

Do you think this latest record defines you better than any you’ve done, hence its title?

SO’C: Erm, possibly. Though I think you could possibly include the first and second record. In some sense you have to say that all of a person’s records would, but it’s the most well thought out and emotionally very mature. That’s not to discredit the others, because what was good about the others was that I was young, and I was very angry writing them at the age of fifteen and sixteen.

You mentioned self-preservation earlier, but you don’t seem to exercise a great deal of self-censorship. Is that a fair comment?

SO’C: I think that’s what the music is for. The thing is I always joke, but I’m not joking when I say that the music business was created for people who weren’t quite criminal enough to go to jail, and weren’t quite mental enough that they’re nut-heads, but at the same time weren’t able to function within a ‘normal’ society, so that they had to create the music business for us so that we could contribute usefully. And I’ve forgotten your question. For some reason I feel like that’s a logical answer.

It was about self-censorship.

SO’C: Yeah, you’ve got to be yourself, that’s the thing exactly. That’s what music is. It’s a place where you can really 100% be yourself. And that’s what I learned from artists like John Lennon and the Sex Pistols and the whole punk era. Brian May did a brilliant interview for The History Of Rock & Roll. He said that the thing is, when you get into rock & roll it’s because you’re a rebel and you want control of your own life. The irony is that the more successful you become, the less control you have, because everyone wants a piece of you. And that is the truth. And so when somebody like me comes along and starts kicking against all of that, it causes trouble for a whole lot of other people who are trying to make a living out of you.

Do you feel you were forced to compromise a lot in your career?

SO’C: No, but what I do feel is that the abuse that I got, I think 90% of it was because I was not seen as a conformist/cocksucker. I wasn’t fitting into the behaviour and cocksuck-ery that a pop star was supposed to fit into. It was really weird that suddenly I was a pop star, because it’s not my nature, and then because I had this number one record I was expected to behave like a pop star i.e. be a cocksucker. "Don’t cause trouble, don’t put your head above the parapet, don’t challenge anything, agree with everybody, smile nicely, be a good girl." I wasn’t trying consciously not to do that, but I think that it upset everyone because a lot of people around me had a vested interest in me being what they wanted me to be rather than anything I wanted to be. And I was too young to have even decided what I wanted to be. I just wanted to make records and sing. I wasn’t really thinking any further than that. Really I wanted to stay alive!

Did you imagine you’d be doing this twenty five years after The Lion & The Cobra came out?

SO’C: Yeah, and I’ll still be doing it when I’m 94. Definitely.

I saw you play a day or two before you took time off last year because you were sick, and I didn’t notice any signs at all that you were struggling. Given that you tweeted soon afterwards that you were "Asking about jobs as music biz is very bad for Sinéad. Any one have a job for a very clever woman with massive heart and courage, who adores people and has to escape music business as is very bad for her?", I’m wondering what’s brought you back to wanting to perform live again?

SO’C: I love performing live, and always have, and the only reason I ever make records is so that I can perform live, and that’s what I have in mind when I’m writing songs. That’s my number one love. It’s just that I wasn’t well then, and things had been scheduled in a manner that was impossible for me to manage, and there wasn’t time for me to get well. But it’s interesting, because you said to me, did I ever imagine I’d be doing this, but I actually feel like I’m just beginning. I actually feel like I’m at spot number one now, starting, if you like; to me it’s all been practice and training up to this point for the career that I intend to have, which is based on live work. And I think that’s going quite well, and I’m managing to build a good live reputation, and everyone knows that if they go to one of my shows they’re going to get 1000% off me, whether I’m dying or not. But that gig you saw I’m sure was a good gig, but if you had any idea how sick I was you’d be astonished I was able to do such a good gig. So you can imagine the kind of gig I can do when I’m well!

I want to talk about some of the songs on the recent album. There’s empathy on things like ‘Reason For Me’, but it’s not judgemental, and it’s not patronising either. How real are these songs?

SO’C: Yeah, well, really that’s based on a kind of conglomerate of people I’ve met over the years, and also on aspects of myself, I suppose. But that’s I suppose what I mean when I say it’s a mature record. There are some romantic songs and then there are what I call character songs like ‘Reason With Me’ or ‘Back Where You Belong’ or ‘Take Off Your Shoes’, where there’s actually another character, if you like. But in all of those characters, obviously, like any other actor, there are aspects of my own personality, I suppose.

Do you ever worry about patronising people when you discuss these more difficult issues?

SO’C: How do you mean?

Well, when writing a song about a drug addict (‘Reason With Me’), it might be very easy to intend to come across as sympathetic, but actually end up appearing high and mighty, as it you’re saying, ‘Actually this is the way you should be behaving…’

SO’C: No, because I think within that song that’s just a character. It’s a very introspective song. It’s a character really risking coming and telling the truth to you of who he is, and saying, ‘I stole all your shit, and can you help me out?’ And I like that about it. It’s not judgemental of anybody on either side, and the character has great faith in the person that he’s stolen these things from. He believes that this very person can help him out. There’s something very hopeful about the song, too, that the person is at a particular point in their life where they’re actually feeling an awful lot of hope. And often when you hear songs about drugs, there’s hopelessness in it, and this character is very much on his knees, but particularly he’s appealing to the very person that he’s wounded, you know? And I think there’s something very nice about that. I like that, that he imagines that this person could love him back. It’s quite an amazing thing.

In contrast, on ‘4th & Vine’ and ‘VIP’, for instance, there’s a lot of humour. Do you think people overlook that in your work?

SO’C: I think you have to see me live to get it. It’s a bit like when you send someone a text: it’s flat reading, so it can come across without the emotions or the humour. It can sometimes be a bit the same with records, that you’d have to have see the person singing it live with a smirk on their face to realise that it’s funny, you know?

Am I being dirty-minded when I think the “buggy ride” in ‘4th and Vine’ is an innuendo? (‘So warm inside / When he takes me for a buggy ride.’)

SO’C: No, no, it is an innuendo, of course, directly stolen from Bessie Smith, and it’s a song called ‘When You Take Me For A Buggy Ride’, and it’s all about sex, obviously, yeah.

I just thought I was being a pervert.

SO’C: No, no, you must check the Bessie Smith song it’s ripped off from. It’s a beautiful song from 1910, 1920 kind of thing. A bunch of people did it, but she did the definitive version. It’s a very funny song.

You covered John Grant’s ‘Queen Of Denmark’ very soon after the original was released. Did it make you nervous that people would compare the two?

SO’C: No! No, I never even thought about it, to be honest. I just immediately identified with the song and loved it. John’s one of my best friends on earth now. I’ve done the backing vocals on his new album. We joke that we’re the male and female versions of each other. John is a genius of humour: he can take it to a very emotional, painful place, and then a moment later just be so funny. And that’s what I like about that song. No, I wasn’t really worried. I think I might be worried if I was a man, but being a woman made it a little bit easier. A man putting it out might have run the risk of what you’re talking of, but John’s new album has so many songs on it that all the women singers are going to be bitch slapping each other to get at. He’s got one song on it called ‘It Doesn’t Matter To Him’ that – I’m telling you! – every woman on earth is going to be beating each other up to get. He writes great love songs from a man’s perspective to a man, but for women to sing them is incredible. Wait ‘til you hear the new album. You’re gonna drop dead. It’s incredible.

I assume he’s a fan of your cover, then?

SO’C: Oh, yeah, very much so. Although apparently I got one lyric wrong somewhere.

On ‘Take Off Your Shoes’ you describe yourself as ‘the Holy Spirit with an AK rifle on a train on the way to the Vatican’.

SO’C: Well, it’s not myself. It’s a character, in the same way as ‘Back Where You Belong’ is a character of a dead father talking to his son, and ‘Reason With Me’ is a junkie talking. The character in ‘Take Off Your Shoes’ is supposed to be the Holy Spirit. It’s not me; it’s the Holy Spirit.

How to you balance your disdain for those who claim to represent God and your own belief in a God for whom they claim to speak?

SO’C: Well, I believe in what I prefer to call the Holy Spirit, because I don’t know what to call it, but I don’t think it really matters if you call it Fred or Davey. I don’t just believe in it, but I know of it. But I don’t believe in prosyletising on either side. What I don’t like is being misrepresented. Also, it concerns me that anybody running a church has so little belief in God that they could stand in the presence of the Holy Spirit and lie about such important things as the rape of little boys or little girls. It concerns me that the church is being run by people who don’t actually believe that God is watching, do you know what I mean? I think we deserve, and I think the Holy Spirit deserves, churches run by people who actually respect it.

It seems to me that the two themes that drive your lyrics the most are injustice and hypocrisy. Do you think that’s true? Are these closest to your heart?

SO’C: Yeah, there are some running themes. I’ve always been a bit of a God person, a spiritualized person, so there’s that theme running all the way through. And yeah, I suppose there’s a concern with spiritual hypocrisy, particularly. I don’t get involved in politics. I don’t give a shit about politics. I suppose where I’ve been concerned about hypocrisy it would be of a spiritual nature, as in ‘Take Off Your Shoes’ or ‘VIP’.

From: https://thequietus.com/interviews/sinead-o-connor-interview/

Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend

The ‘sophomore slump’. The ‘difficult third album’. There’s no shortage of handy clichés rolled out to characterise the supposed challenges an artist after that first flush of success, but Matthew Sweet didn’t even get to that first base in the first place. Sweet, Nebraska-born but also a college years scenester in Athens, Georgia (in the REM era) was sipping from a half-empty glass in the last chance saloon when he made his third album Girlfriend. After a few years in various non-start band projects, his first two solo albums had resolutely bombed. There was no doubt of his songwriting talent on his debut Inside (1986), but it was hamstrung by sounding sooo 80s. It didn’t help his debut that Columbia Records managed to get 10 different producers to work on it at 10 different studios. Despite the calibre of desk-masters Scott Litt (REM) and Ron Saint Germain (Sonic Youth, Bad Brains), perhaps it was Stephen Hague (Pet Shop Boys) that was the most notable: the album was submerged in a gloop of 80s synths that didn’t suit Sweet at all. Columbia then had the nerve to drop him.
1989’s Earth was better, with Inside producers Litt and Fred Maher retained. Crucially, the latter even got Robert Quine (veteran of Richard Hell and Lou Reed’s bands) and Richard Lloyd (Television) in on additional guitars, but this time the songs were kind of forgettable. It was for A&M Records this time, but they soon binned Sweet, too. Hitless. Label-less. Could things get any worse? Well, how about wifeless? Married at 19, Sweet and his wife had been together six years and were by 1989 living in a Princeton, New Jersey house, but she eventually tired and moved back to NYC. The only upside? It left Sweet more space in which to demo a make-or-break third album…
Third time lucky or ‘three is a magic number’ are clichés that better suit Sweet. With seemingly nothing left to lose he stripped things back to a minimum in 1990. Co-producer and friend Fred Maher still had faith in him, so did occasional collaborator Lloyd Cole. Quine and Richard Lloyd were still delighted to splatter deranged lead guitar over Sweet’s pristine songs. Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever became something of a benchmark, as it saw Petty dump the 80s production of ex-Eurythmic Dave Stewart (albeit for the polished Beatleisms of Jeff Lynne). But there were bigger classics that inspired him. “The White Album (The Beatles)was very much a sonic model for Girlfriend; Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk is another,” Sweet said.
The multi-instrumentalist Sweet later recalled, “I set up drums in the main living room, and I started playing them on my demos. I sent those to (manager) Russell Carter, and he said, ‘It reminds me of Crazy Horse and Neil Young.’ And I said, ‘I know, my voice is really high and weird.’ And he’s like, ‘No, the vibe of it.’ He sent me a bunch of Crazy Horse stuff, and I was like, ‘Fuck, now I understand what he’s saying.’” “Organic” was another watchword for Girlfriend but in its sometimes raw and rough performances, don’t think that Sweet, co-producer Maher and engineer Jim Rondinelli were naive enough to say: ‘let’s play it all live, like a gig.’ “Trying to record live in the studio just sucks up energy,” Rondinelli told the Chicago Reader, “and stuff that seems endearing in a real live performance just doesn’t keep well.”
But they still wanted plenty of ‘performance’ aspects though, so the idea was, in its own way, quite radical. There was very little editing of basic backing, no ‘punching in’ of crisper-played chords in any particular verse, and whatever the musicians played would be showcased as performances – the songs were largely constructed from full, song-length recordings of the different instruments. Drum track; a few takes, use the best one in full. Super-crisp rhythm guitars and bass (the latter all by Sweet); the same. The lead guitar/solos were somewhat different (be it by Quine or Lloyd, they never both play on the same track), particularly with Robert Quine. The late New Yorker was such an unpredictable soloist he never played the same thing twice, so his explosions were inevitable ‘comps’ from his four or five goes and that makes them sound like some of the craziest solos ever. But it makes for a vivid, pseudo-live recording. To these ears, you can actually hear Ric Menck’s ‘Ringo’ drums slow down in the latter parts of Looking At The Sun. It all sounds wonderfully ‘real’. Divine Intervention fades out and then fades back in due to a late call that Richard’s Lloyd’s falling-off-a-cliff one-take solo simply deserved full airing. Another big-finger to 80s production? No reverb was used. Cavernous, crashing drums and echoey solos were definitely out. Instead, Sweet and his production team used loads of compression. The result is that every instrument kind of sounds equally loud. And it was loud. It’s a triumph of crafted spontaneity, if that makes sense.
One of the great things about Girlfriend is Sweet’s own songs. Despite his divorce, you don’t quite know if the love songs are about a happier time before, a happier time now, or even if he’s the lyrical protagonist. The miserable ones, though, we probably guess are very much a Sweet perspective in 1990. He originally wanted to call the album Nothing Lasts, tellingly. “At the time, I tried to explain that none of it was exactly autobiographical,” Sweet later reflected. “That everything could be looked at in a couple different ways. You Don’t Love Me might be a song my wife was singing to me – you know what I mean? But I felt those feelings, and so I was working that out in a song. Whereas something like I’ve Been Waiting was really like a brand-new, untouched fantasy of how it could be great to fall in love or whatever.” Sweet also originally wanted to record it all at home in New Jersey. Until he got worried he’d really upset his neighbours. Co-producer Maher booked Axis Studios in Upper Manhattan again, where parts of Earth were cut: “as cramped and difficult a place to make a rock record as his small house.” Despite Axis being owned by French producer and Kraftwerk sidekick François Kevorkian, Sweet baulked at most of the digital tech on hand. Maher recalls, “It was all 24-track tape. Parts were mercilessly bounced together, with no way back.” The guitars and amps on Girlfriend were predictably classicist. Being a Beatles nut, Sweet inevitably likes Epiphone Casinos and his Gibson Hummingbird acoustics, plus his Gretsch electrics. He also used Fender Jazzmasters (these days, he’s a big fan of arch offset reinventor Dannis Fano’s Novo guitars). Both Lloyd and Quine relied on their Fender Strats and the amps were by Vox, a SansAmp (for Quine), and various other vintage Fender valve amps. Mic’ing was predominantly via Shure SM57s.
Of course, by the time of Girlfriend’s release, Sweet’s nods to The Byrds, Big Star, Crazy Horse, and The Beatles melded by warped power pop were hardly de rigueur. It emerged in all its tuneful retro finery in the grunge era. But Girlfriend finally kickstarted Sweet’s career – cannily new label Zoo Entertainment/BMG marketed the album as if it were a debut. It was neither a flop, nor a huge hit: it made it to No. 100 on the US album chart (that was good for someone who’d previously not even grazed the Top 200), but mostly by word of mouth it eventually went Platinum. Not a bad showing for an LP released just a month after Nevermind. It laid the groundwork for his equally strong Altered Beast (1993) and 100% Fun (1995). Sweet was not hard rock, but he rocked hard. And with the occasional weeping ballad such as Winona or You Don’t Love Me (powered by Greg Leisz’s masterful pedal steel) he could do ‘sensitive’ without sounding like he was simply moaning. Though perhaps grunge helped Sweet more than at first apparent: engineer Jim Rondinelli remembered how, post Nevermind, “people were scrambling to find music that was guitar-driven, loud and edgy.” Karen Glauber of Hits magazine, a longtime Sweet-a-holic, reckoned that “Girlfriend is a perfect album. The songwriting and musicianship is unparalleled.” All Music rated it 5/5, Q and Rolling Stone gave it 4, while for Spin it was a 9/10. For Sweet, its final long-road to successville was a relief - at least he didn’t get dropped. “To tell you the truth, I was mostly concerned that it would be my last album. I thought that if this just got left on the shelf, they wouldn’t let me make any more records.  From: https://guitar.com/reviews/album/the-genius-of-girlfriend-by-matthew-sweet/

Patty Gurdy - Over the Hills and Far Away

Patty Gurdy is an artist from Düsseldorf who fell in love with music at a young age. She describes her music as celtic folk pop and is always joined on stage by her trustful instrument – the hurdy gurdy. Her love of Eurovision is deep, and the Eurovision community quickly became familiar with her when she posted the music video for her song “Melodies of Hope” back in November. And now – she’s in contention to represent her country in Liverpool!

It’s time for another interview ahead of Unser Lied für Liverpool, and today I’m joined by hurdy-gurdy musician Patty Gurdy! How are you doing today?

Thank you, I am very well and totally excited!

We have to talk about your promotional campaign to get into the national selection, as you posted your entry “Melodies of Hope” on Youtube and declared your desire to represent Germany back in November. How does it feel to officially be a finalist for Unser Leid?

I am very proud to represent my country. Especially in these times of crisis, to be able to sing a song about hope and rebirth. It’s such a great opportunity to reach many people and give them something they can use to get through tough times.

Has participating in the German national selection been a long-term dream for you, or was this a more recent goal?

Ever since the ESC took place in my hometown Düsseldorf back in 2011, I have followed it and always wished, like every artist, to be nominated and to be able to present my music on the world’s biggest music stage!

For some of our readers this might be their first encounter with the hurdy-gurdy instrument. What is it about this instrument that resonates so much with you as an artist, and how did you first encounter your love for it?

The hurdy-gurdy became my instrument when I had it on my lap for the first time and noticed how, when I cranked it, the sound developed in such a way that the whole instrument vibrated on my lap. I immediately had the association: Woah, it’s alive. I had never felt that with any other instrument. And the hurdy-gurdy has a super wide spectrum of sounds and is actually a small orchestra to which you can also sing and move. It was the all-round solution for me and that’s why I think the instrument is so cool and would like to make it better known.

Alright here’s a fun question for you – if you were going to produce a Eurovision cover album, what songs would you put on the track list and why?

Actually I just made a Eurovision Medley, check it out, this should answer your question, haha

What was the songwriting process like for you and Johannes Braun to write “Melodies of Hope”, and what message do you hope it will send to the viewing audience?

The idea for the song came to me in the shower: I was just on a holiday in Edinburgh in Scotland and was taking a shower. And as it always happens in these funny moments, the idea came and I had nothing to write it down. So I kept singing in the shower until I could sing it into my phone. I went to Hannes with it, he immediately worked on it and we recorded the song within a day. We want to spread the message that nobody is alone. We can make it through difficult times together and always support each other.

If I asked you to describe your staging plans for Unser Lied in just three words, what would you give me?

Wind machine, story and magical

Of course you know that the winner of Unser Lied will represent Germany at Eurovision 2023 this May. How closely do you follow the contest, and what might it mean for you to be able to be part of this experience yourself?

For me, it will definitely be an unforgettable experience. But right now, I’m concentrating on the most important decisions and wish every artist all the best.

From: https://www.escunited.com/%F0%9F%87%A9%F0%9F%87%AA-patty-gurdy-interview-the-hurdy-gurdy-has-a-super-wide-spectrum-of-sounds-and-is-actually-a-small-orchestra/

Leon Russell - Roll Away The Stone

In the late 1960s, Leon Russell teamed up with guitarist Marc Benno to form The Asylum Choir. The two went on to record a pair of albums that, while never commercial successes, became critical darlings and blueprints for the kind of musical trailblazer Leon would become over the course of his career. Rolling Stone magazine called the duo's debut album, "Vital, Freaky, and Exciting," and went on to name the album one of its 20 Albums Rolling Stone Loved in the Sixties That You've Never Heard
After their 1968 initial release on Smash records, the two would go their separate ways, with Leon going on to pursue solo work and Benno adding to his resume as a session guitarist with performances on The Doors "L.A. Woman" album. Their second recording was released in 1972, a few years after their disbanding. Leon released it on his own label, Shelter Records, and it went on to peak at #70 on the Billboard 200, in large part due to the success that Leon had found in his solo career.

By 1969, Leon was poised to make the jump to a solo career. He had established his prowess as a songwriter and as one of the most sought after studio musicians, and had built up a repertoire of material that he was ready to record for himself. He ended up playing a few of his new songs for former Island Records producer, Denny Cordell, who had found success producing records for The Moody Blues (The Magnificent Moodies), as well as hit singles like "A Whiter Shade of Pale" for Procol Harum and "A Little Help From My Friends" for Joe Cocker. Cordell became enamored with Leon and his new material, but even more so with the personality that Leon exuded, which was so hidden when he was in the background.
The two decided to start their own record company, which they named Shelter Records, with their first release being Leon's eponymous 1970 album. The album reached #60 on the Billboard 200, and featured some now classic numbers including "A Song for You," "Delta Lady," "Hummingbird," and "Roll Away the Stone." Shelter Records would go on to release Leon's next 8 albums, which were all co-produced by Leon and Cordell.
Shelter's headquarters was split between Los Angeles and Tulsa, and operated its recording at two historic studios: Sound City in the Van Nuys area of Los Angeles, and The Church Studio in Tulsa's Pearl District, a now National Historic Landmark which was an Episcopal Church purchased and converted to a recording studio by Leon in 1972.
Shelter was not only a vehicle through which Leon released his own recordings, but also operated as a workshop for developing artists, and became a launching pad for some of the hottest young talent in music. Shelter released records by JJ Cale, Etta James, Freddie King, Phoebe Snow, Dwight Twilley, and many others. It also was the first home of two of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Tom Petty and Heartbreakers released their first two albums under the Shelter Records label, and Shelter would also release Bob Marley's first single, "Duppy Conquerer."
After a falling out with Cordell, Leon left Shelter in 1976 to follow other pursuits. Denny Cordell operated Shelter Records himself for another 5 years, until the label ultimately folded at the conclusion of its distribution deal with Arista.

In the late 1960s, there were few rockstars bigger than Joe Cocker. After massive success with The Grease Band and hit records like "Marjorine," and a cover of The Beatles' "With A Little Help From My Friends," topped off by a legendary performance at Woodstock, Cocker's career was ripe to take off. His management had organized a tour of the U.S. for him, and days before, he was left without a band. His producer at A&M records was Denny Cordell, who happened to simultaneously be opening his own label with Leon Russell. Cordell and Cocker approached Leon about assisting them in assembling a band for the tour, and Leon agreed only if they could do it like no one had done before.
Through his litany of connections to musicians through The Wrecking Crew, Leon was quickly able to gather together an ensemble of over 20 musicians, including three drummers, a backing choir, and Leon as the lead guitarist, pianist, and musical director. Leon also insisted that a camera crew follow the tour, resulting in the Mad Dogs and Englishmen documentary film, which would become one of the essential rock n roll films in depicting what that era of music was really like.
The tour would become legendary, and the ensuing live album would reach #2 on the U.S. Billboard Top 200. Performances of The Band's "The Weight," Traffic's "Feelin' Alright," and The Box Tops' "The Letter" highlighted the setlist that was capped off by a wild and rousing rendition of Leon's own "Delta Lady." Rita Coolidge would take center stage and sing Leon and Bonnie Bramlett's "Superstar," and Leon and Joe would duet on their version of Bob Dylan's "Girl from the North Country."
The tour served as an opportunity for Leon to showcase his own material, as he would be given stage time to perform "Hummingbird" and "Dixie Lullaby," which were both to be released on his debut album. Mad Dogs and Englishmen introduced Leon to the world, and proved that he was a musical force to be reckoned with. While the tour catapulted both Leon and Cocker into the pinnacles of rock n roll stature, the magnitude served as a rift between the two of them, and they would choose to pursue their careers separately from that point forward. To this day, however, the two will be forever connected as having orchestrated one of the great happenings in the history of rock music.  From: https://www.leonrussell.com/about

Mary In The Junkyard - Goop

Mary in the Junkyard are an exciting experimental rock trio, composed of guitarist and vocalist Clari Freeman-Taylor, bassist and viola player Saya Barbaglia, and drummer David Addison. With only two singles under their belt, mary in the junkyard are not only well known for their mesmerising sound but for their dynamic performances at venues like Windmill Brixton and festivals like Green Man, the Great Escape and End of the Road.
Earlier this month, the “angry, weepy chaos rock” trio released their highly anticipated second single “Ghosts”, and we caught up with the group to discuss their earliest music memories, love languages and their craziest recurring dreams.

How would you describe your music?

Mary in the Junkyard: Sparse rock, like rock but balding.

What’s the last text you sent?

Saya: ‘I am no longer early, but I won’t be late.’
David: ‘I am similar.’
Clari: ‘Do you still want to go away on the 16th? I really want to go. I’m sick of London.’

What’s your weirdest internet obsession?

Mary in the Junkyard: Google mapping random locations and seeing how long it takes to get from A to B, then I’m like, ‘If it was at 3 o’clock, how long would it take?’ then, ‘If it was midnight, how long would it take’ and then I check how long it would take if I were walking or running, or if there were no trains.

Any recurring dreams?

Saya: I have recurring dreams of this big wave, and I’m constantly surfing or drowning and discovering.
Clari: New universes under the waves. Every night, there’s water.
David: I once dreamt of living in a pine wood tree, with a small train to get into the city.

What’s your love language?

Mary in the Junkyard: Surprising and unique compliments. Going on adventures.

What would be your funeral song?

Mary in the Junkyard: ‘Mr Tambourine Man.’

Who is your nemesis?

Mary in the Junkyard: I am my own worst enemy... but also an industry man we used to know took our bass away backstage at Bluedot Festival; it was a nice bass we liked to call Caspian and technically, we didn’t own it but loved it like a child.

What do you put on your rider?

Mary in the Junkyard: Babaganoush, fruit bowl, ice bath, miso soup, heap of soft earth, bed and electric blanket, ramen, yoga mat, cheeses, Richard Russell’s steam room, Monopoly Deal, root ginger, Kinder Bueno.

What is your earliest music memory?

Clari: Playing with the cow box, which moos when you turn it upside down.
David: Scissor Sisters ‘I Don’t Feel Like Dancing’ in my mum’s car.
Saya: Pretending everything in the kitchen was an instrument.

What fictional character do you most relate to and why?

Mary in the Junkyard: Fagin’s gang from Oliver Twist – we are artful and sneaky.

You encounter a hostile alien race, and sound is their only mechanism for communication. What song would you play to them to inspire them to spare you and the rest of the human race?

Mary in the Junkyard: They probably would not share our human view of tonality and rhythm, so maybe something by Aphex Twin. Or they might like something with an easy groove, in which case ‘What’s Going On’ by Marvin Gaye may be appropriate and very descriptive – What IS going on? Alternatively, we would try our best to write a song halfway between Marvin Gaye and Aphex Twin and hope the aliens like it.

From: https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/62022/1/meet-mary-in-the-junkyard-the-band-making-angry-weepy-chaos-rock

Steve Hackett - Narnia

In October 1977, news of Steve Hackett's departure from the progressive rock band Genesis was made public. After the band's 1977 tour in support of their eighth studio album Wind & Wuthering (1976) and their first EP, Spot the Pigeon (1977), Hackett informed his band mates of his decision to leave during the mixing of the live album Seconds Out (1977). Hackett had previously released his debut solo album Voyage of the Acolyte (1975), but he grew increasingly frustrated by the collaborative process of Genesis which left many of his song ideas unreleased. At the time, Hackett was signed to Charisma Records in the UK but to Chrysalis Records in the US. He recalled that both labels had a different idea on what direction they wanted him to take and he later said, "Their opposing viewpoints coloured the album to some degree, although I think the 'European' styled tracks came more naturally to me."
Hackett based the material on Please Don't Touch! on images that had conjured in his mind, and made a conscious effort to capture many different styles of music, including a crossover of white and black music. He wanted to incorporate various strange sounds on the songs for added atmosphere, and visited a Victorian shop named Jack Donovan's that sold old toys. A fairground organ at the pier in Santa Monica, California and a puppet named Bimbo were also recorded.
When the time arrived to record, he decided to record with various guest American musicians and travelled to Los Angeles. He arranged for singers Randy Crawford, Richie Havens, and Steve Walsh to sing on the album, plus bassist Tom Fowler, drummers Phil Ehart and Chester Thompson, with Van der Graaf Generator violinist Graham Smith. He believed America produced "by far the best vocalists" due to their more "street corner heritage". After recording the album, Hackett felt a great amount of pressure off his shoulders. The album's cover was completed by Kim Poor, Hackett's girlfriend of three years and his future wife. It depicts a Victorian couple being attacked by automata in a toy shop.

Side one
"Narnia" is a song about childhood, and is based on the children's fantasy novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Hackett wrote it with "a picture of kids skipping around and having fun" in his mind, and wanted Walsh on vocals and Ehart on drums after he liked the a capella vocals on the 1976 Kansas song "Carry on Wayward Son". A version with John Perry on vocals was also recorded. A version of "Narnia" with Walsh on vocals was considered as a potential single for the album, but management at Charisma rejected the idea because they were afraid listeners might be confused and think it was Kansas. The alternate version with Perry on vocals was deemed strong enough as a single, and was released as a bonus track on the 2005 remaster of Please Don't Touch!.
"Carry on Up the Vicarage" is a musical tribute to Agatha Christie. It features vocals from Hackett himself. The vocals during most of the song consist of a double line of an artificially high pitched voice and a low pitched one. Hackett has often used similar distorting effects on his vocals in his solo career. The liner notes indicate that the pipe organ that can be heard on the song is the "Robert Morton pipe organ, since destroyed by fire at the Record Plant". Parts of Please Don't Touch were recorded at the Record Plant's location in Los Angeles; it is known that the location's Studio C was destroyed by fire in early 1978. No information about this organ appears to be available; it is not listed in Robert Morton's opus list.
"Racing in A" also features Steve Walsh on vocals. The song is electric for most of its duration but the last 1:15 is a classical guitar piece, which decreases in pace throughout, finishing on a relaxing note.
"Kim" is named after Poor, who designed many of Hackett's album covers, including Please Don't Touch!. The track features Hackett playing a classical guitar with his brother John Hackett on flute, and was largely inspired by "Gymnopédie No 1" by Erik Satie. When writing it, Hackett had "a quiet lily pond, quiet peaceful day summer feeling".
"How Can I?" is a slow song with Richie Havens on vocals. The members of Genesis were fans of Havens, and the singer agreed to open for them for their series of concerts at Earls Court, London in 1977. Hackett invited him to dinner at his home, during which he requested Havens to feature on a song of his.

Side two
Side two consists of a suite of songs which flow into each other. It begins with "Hoping Love Will Last" with American singer Randy Crawford on vocals. It has a heavy R&B/soul influence but with some classical style guitar parts as well as atmospheric sections featuring synthesisers. Hackett recalled his Genesis band mates being particularly fond of the song.
"Land of a Thousand Autumns" is an atmospheric instrumental track which contains references to the main theme of the title track. A sudden drum fill leads into the next track.
"Please Don't Touch" is an instrumental track with many time signature changes that features prominent use of the Roland GR-500 guitar synthesiser. Hackett originally pitched the song for Genesis to rehearse during the Wind & Wuthering sessions, but the song was rejected. It was written as a variation on the main theme of the Wind & Wuthering track "Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers...". This theme was also eventually incorporated into the song "Hackett to Bits" on the 1985 album by GTR, a band featuring Hackett and Yes guitarist Steve Howe.
"The Voice of Necam" features references to the "Please Don't Touch" theme before transitioning to an ambient piece of voice drones. NECAM was one of the first mixing console automation systems, developed by the mixing console's manufacturer, AMS Neve; the acronym stood for "Neve Computer Assisted Mixdown". To produce the vocal chords, Hackett sang different notes onto tracks of a multitrack tape, and then made a loop of the tape in a technique similar to that used by 10cc in the song "I'm Not in Love". Each track was fed back to a separate input on the mixing console, and the NECAM system was programmed to "play" chords and melodies by moving the console faders. Hackett later had his vocal tape loops made into a custom Mellotron tape set for use by his live keyboard player Nick Magnus.
"Icarus Ascending" is also sung by Richie Havens. The lyrics are about the Greek myth of Icarus who escaped from the maze of the Minotaur with artificial wings. He came too close to the sun, though, and the wax in his wings melted so that he fell to his death.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Please_Don%27t_Touch!

Thank You Scientist - Son of a Serpent

Thank You Scientist is a 7 member Crossover Prog band from New Jersey founded in 2009. They have released an EP and 3 full length albums during their time together. "Terraformer" is the 3rd full length album and was released in June of 2019. The line up consists of Salvatore Marrano on vocals, Tom Monda on guitars, Ben Karas on violin, Joe Gullace on trumpet, Sam Greenfield on sax, Cody McCorry on bass and Joe Fadem on drums. Though the line up has changed through the years, the core duo of Marrano and Monda has been constant, and the members have always been at least 7. Two of the current members were also present on the previous album; both Cody McCorry and Ben Karas. This album has 13 tracks and a long run time of over 82 minutes. Seven of those tracks are over the 7 minute mark.
"Wrinkle" starts things off as an introductory track. Nice chiming guitars and a fast and progressive sax/violin duo, both instruments playing impressively together note for note as in some Zappa works, definitely give an impressive beginning to everything. "FXMLDR" continues with the heavy prog sound, then the vocals start up. Salvatore's vocals are in a higher register that sounds like a cross between Michael Jackson, Scritti Politti's Green Gartside and The Mars Volta's Cedric Bixler-Zavala (maybe even some Claudio Sanchez from Coheed and Cambria thrown in). The music is complex, and on this album, very jazzy sounding, with heavy edges around the music. The sax solo in this one is amazing. "Swarm" continues with a fast paced progressive sound, again complex, this time throwing the melodic trumpet in there to anchor the otherwise complexity of the music. There are sudden bouts of dissonance put in there to keep things interesting. The interplay between the guitar and sax during one of the longer instrumental breaks is awesome and, as much of the music here, technically difficult.
The overall sound is softened a bit more for "Son of a Serpent" with more emphasis on the brass, but also sudden bursts of guitar energy come along at times. The violin gets to shine in some complex passages too. Even with a softer sound, the music continues to be full of tricky meters, constant tempo and timing changes. There is still time for an exciting guitar solo that gets you floating along at first and then suddenly sweeps you away on heaviness before returning to the more brass and violin led sound. Layered vocal chorus is a nice touch towards the end. "Birdwatching" gives you a 3 minute break from the epic tracks. The feeling of this one is smoother, with nice soft vocals and a certain lushness to the synths and supporting instruments. Later, the percussion and effects get a bit crazier.
After a smooth beginning, the song suddenly veers off into Kayo Dot territory with heavy guitars and synths with sax, violin and trumpet swirling around in a improvised fashion, then the violin leads the charge as it takes on a catchy feel and capturing the other instruments into the whirlwind of sound, and then the vocals start up and the band's unique jazzy complexity continues. As is the case with most complex music like this, it is impossible to describe the many changes in the music, but what is great about this album is that the complexities aren't buried into layers of heavy music as was the case with some of The Mars Volta's more complex albums, but it is all out there where you can hear it. This track is followed by another epic track called "Chromology". This one is instrumental, and again driven more by the brass and sound very much like a Steely Dan style track, but Steely Dan on Steroids, with some of the vintage sound of Chicago thrown in, I'm talking about the good earlier Chicago, not the commercial "poor excuse for a band" Chicago. There is even a big band section in there, just before the guitar takes us back to the present. Then there is that screaming violin that kicks in during the last few minutes, Wow! Excellent track! My favorite of the album. You know the track from Rush "La Villa Strangiato"? Think along those lines, except the lead instruments are the brass and violin. Love it!
"Geronimo" takes us back down to Earth, with a more laid-back sound. After the first verse, there is a nice short trumpet solo. The song continues with a more lyric-laden structure, but the overall sound is a bit more accessible and melodic, yet still interesting enough to make you keep listening, because, you never know when a heavy guitar will come in there and take you somewhere else before landing you back on your feet again. "Life of Vermin" continues in the same style as the previous track, but tends towards a tension building atmosphere. Brass and violin are strong again, but the guitar has more of a larger role in this one. There is a reprieve from the building tension towards the middle as things mellow out a bit, then a raucous trumpet solo comes in building it all back up again, followed by violin and then heavy guitar. It all eventually comes to a swirling and climactic end.
There is a short, jazzy track that follows, "Shatner's Lament" which features a muted trumpet backed up by brushed percussion and what sounds like a bass clarinet. It's a nice break from the complexity. "Anchor" is another epic 10 minute track which starts off softly with guitar and violin supporting the vocals. Things get more intense as it continues, but everything stays somewhat controlled. More heaviness and emotion comes in later as it continues to build, playing off of a riff from the guitar and violin. The tempo increases, and the instrumental section gets more complex, then it suddenly breaks into a great guitar/violin solo section as the backing instruments take on a symphonic atmosphere and builds to a excellent climax before breaking down into the vocals again. Things build again rather quickly a few more times generating more emotional passages. Another major highlight track on this album that is full of highlights.
Another short intermediate track follows with "New Moon". It is a softer track with vocals and an atmospheric guitar that sounds almost like a slide guitar and some nice symphonic sounding synths. A lovely little tidbit. This is followed by the title track "Terraformer", the last track on this album. The previous track flows into it and it suddenly gets heavy with complex guitar and violin riffage going on. This track is a bit heavier than the previous tracks, relying more on the interplay between the violin and guitar, but with rapid fire guitar notes and fast, tech style drumming at times, but it is still just as great.
An album of this length might be tough for many listeners, especially with the complexity of the music. But, as is the case with most of the best progressive albums, with repeated listenings and as you grow more familiar with the songs, things get better and it no longer seems like so much of an assault on your senses. Even with the lighter, jazzier sound on this album, it can seem like too much on the first few listens. But time and practice will increase your love and appreciation for this amazing album. No doubt that this is a front runner for one of the best prog albums of the year. The music is complex, yes, the album is also very long, and usually that combination can result in exhausting a listener's head, but this album is put together quite well with the track sequence working for it when you first hear it, and later, as your familiarity with the music grows, it doesn't come across as so much of a sonic assault. This album has a lot of balance for being such a complex monster, but it is a friendly monster and it does a great job of delivering it's complexities by giving you time to catch up, yet not ever getting boring either. Every track on here is great, nothing feels like filler at all, but it definitely shows off the abilities of the musicians involved. The fact that there is a more jazz style involved here, with pretty much all of the instruments getting a fair amount of play time, the music is easier to wrap your head around the complexities and keeps you wanting to come back to the album for more. This is definitely a five star album that needs to get more attention as I consider it one of the best so far this year.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=61954

Galaxy Juice - How Wide is the Sun

Galaxy Juice is a psychedelic indie band based in the sandy and sunny Gulf nation of Kuwait. The Khaleej (Arab Gulf) nations aren't exactly the first to be associated with psychedelia, though a landscape defined by stark and sweeping deserts punctuated by spires of palm and glossy skyscrapers, sands that blend seamlessly into crystal blue water concealing pearl lined floors, and human culture dating back to antiquity could in fact epitomize the surreal. Kuwait is a nation with deep musical roots, based largely on the seafaring heritage of the nation, characterized by unique rhythms and influence from the Swahili coast and South Asia. One example of Kuwaiti music is fidjeri, the songs sung by pearl divers backed by clapping and drums. This unique flavor of rhythm and song, a direct human interpretation of that liminal landscape between earth and sky, is what drew psychedelic indie band Galaxy Juice out of space to settle in Kuwait. They were gracious to fill us in on their history, what drives them musically, and their plan to save the human race.

What is it like in space?

Space is very wide with infinite possibilities just like our music. We are always from one place to another in terms of styles and sound and we are always trying to discover ourselves on different planets.

Where in space are you from, and why did you choose Kuwait?

We came from the Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51a, about 23.16 million light years away from Earth. We chose Kuwait because of its obscurity in terms of music, and we wanted learn the rhythmic percussions of the desert and sea.

How did you all get your names?

We got our names from the families we adopted ourselves into, and our nicknames we gave to ourselves.

How did you guys get together?

We met way back in high school. We used to play in two rival rock bands that eventually became Galaxy Juice around 2013, almost 10 years later.

In "Let's Hide in the Dust (Of Our Own Town)" the Khaleeji influence is obvious, with the Kuwaiti clapping and rhythm. Is traditional music generally an influence? 

This track is an all-time favorite in our country. Yes traditional music is one of our main influences as we try to infuse that with elements of electronic and rock.

What is behind the choice to write lyrics in English as opposed to Arabic?

We are reaching the whole world with our music and we think English is understood by more people in the world, but that doesn't mean that we will never use Arabic in our songs - anything is possible.

What is the music scene like in Kuwait?

The music scene in Kuwait is in constant growth. When we first started in 2013 there were hardly any bands or shows but nowadays there are almost two shows happening every week, from all styles of music like jazz, rock, acoustic and such. We are glad to be part of this growth period.

Tell us a bit about the video for "Awaken the Sunshine." Where was it filmed?

Shooting this video was quite a trip. It was in Jal Al Zour desert in the middle of nowhere. It was directed by our friend Minature, and it was very tiring but was worth it in the end.

What are the main inspirations behind your music and aesthetic? 

We are inspired by '80s sci-fi as this was the period we were all born into. Also surrealism like Salvador Dali and Alejandro Jodorowsky. We are very interested in film and art and we like to experiment with those fields as well.

Have you guys toured internationally?

Yes, we played in a few counties outside of Kuwait like Bahrain, UAE and Thailand.

Any music coming out soon?

We are currently working on our third album and working on a new live music and visual experience. We will announce all that soon.

Any plans to come to Egypt?

Yes we would love to play in Egypt and would love to see the Pyramids of Giza and Wadi El Hitan.

How do you plan to save the human race?

We will save humanity with the power of love and music. A lot of people underestimate the power of music and how it can change a person, so we are hoping that our music can change and influence people to be better versions of themselves. and that will help the world become a better place.

From: https://scenenoise.com/Interviews/galaxy-juice-from-space-to-kuwait

Linda Thompson - Mudlark

Linda Thompson is best known as a singer and interpreter of someone else’s songs. A specific someone else: Richard Thompson, her ex-husband, with whom she made a few of the greatest British folk-rock albums ever as a duo in the 1970s and early ’80s, lending dignified poise to his tales of suffering and strife. Linda made one album after they broke up, then began struggling with a condition called spasmodic dysphonia, which causes involuntary contractions of the larynx that can make it difficult to sing or speak. She focused on family life and released no new music until the early 2000s, when treatment with Botox relaxed her vocal cords enough for her to make a careful comeback. The three albums she’s released since then are remarkable not only for the renewed power of her voice, but also for her emergence as a songwriter, a craft she honed when it seemed like she might never sing again.
Thompson’s dysphonia has since worsened. Proxy Music, as its title cheekily suggests, is a collection of songs she wrote for other people to sing, inverting the composer-performer dynamic of her best-known work. With a few exceptions, the music, largely co-written with her and Richard’s son Teddy Thompson, could fit onto any of those classic ’70s records, with stately acoustic instrumentation and melodies that wind patiently without flashy pop hooks. Her sensibility as a lyricist is informed by the folk tradition, and she writes often about the sort of heartbreak and regret that also characterized her songs with Richard.
But she’s also funny—sharper and daffier than she ever got to be as her ex’s melancholy mouthpiece. In “Or Nothing at All,” a piano ballad about unrequited affection performed tenderly by Martha Wainwright, Thompson describes true love’s deliverance not in terms of high passion, but absurd clinical precision: “A hundred men in their white coats/Would check you with their stethoscopes/And hand you straight to me.” “Shores of America,” sung by Dori Freeman from the perspective of a pioneer woman leaving a lousy partner behind in the old world, contains a zinger so good it’s hard to believe no one’s gotten to it before: “And if it’s true/That only the good die young/Lucky old you/’Cause you’ll be around until kingdom come.”
Perhaps inspired by the unusual rotating-singer format or her years spent inflecting someone else’s words and melodies with her own personality, Thompson is playful and probing with notions of authorship and authenticity of voice that many other songwriters take for granted. She is especially attuned to the gradations of difference in perspective between a song’s writer, its singer, and the constructed character of its narrator. Proxy Music opens with “The Solitary Traveler,” an emotionally complex waltz whose lyrics, about a “wicked” woman who has lost her voice and the love of her child’s father, seem drawn from Thompson’s biography. But they also gesture in the direction of a folk-song stock role she was occasionally asked to play earlier in her career: the fallen woman, undone by her own bad choices, an object of both pity and scorn. By the end of the song, Thompson has turned this misogynistic archetype on its head. “I’m alone now, you’d think I’d be sad,” sings Kami Thompson, Linda and Richard’s daughter, brassy and assured. “No voice, no son, no man to be had/You’re wrong as can be boys, I’m solvent and free boys/All my troubles are gone.”
“John Grant,” delivered by former Czars frontman John Grant, has a narrator whose heart has been stolen by a man named John Grant. It is both a Being John Malkovich-style metafictional hall of mirrors and a sweet portrait of the mutual quirks that develop in long relationships. “A moment on the lips/A lifetime on the hips” is how Thompson recounts the couple’s shared love of sweets. Later, we learn that they’re tree-huggers, an identity they take literally. “It chafes the arms a bit,” Grant sings with a sort of auditory suppressed smile, “And we don’t know if they’re into it.” He also contributes some pleasantly noodly electronic keyboard lines, sounding a bit like Jerry Garcia when he used MIDI to turn his guitar into a synth in the late ’80s and ’90s. It’s a strange incursion on an album otherwise committed to rustic instrumental textures, but a welcome one, heightening the uncanny aspect of the song’s premise.
Proxy Music’s other experiments with relatively contemporary accents aren’t always as successful. The reverb-enhanced stomps, shouts, and claps of “That’s the Way the Polka Goes” serve to make its asymmetrical rhythm seem much more generic than it actually is, bringing an otherwise fine song dangerously close to Lumineers territory. “Three Shaky Ships” also has too much reverb, its cathedral-sized echoes and Rachel Unthank’s quietly portentous delivery evoking another mid-2010s musical cliche: It sounds like one of those spooky covers of famous pop songs you used to hear all the time in trailers for blockbuster movies.
The album’s stunning closer is “Those Damn Roches,” a tribute to the titular singing sisters and various other famous musical clans, with lead vocals from Teddy Thompson. The delicate arcs of lead guitar sound a lot like Richard’s own, which may not be coincidental. The guitarist is Zak Hobbs, Richard and Linda’s grandson, son of their eldest daughter, Muna. Richard himself, who has contributed in various ways to all but one of Linda’s post-comeback albums, sings backup. (He also plays guitar on “I Used to Be So Pretty” and co-wrote “Three Shaky Ships.”) Inevitably, the subject turns to their own family in the final verse. “Faraway Thompsons tug at my heart/Can’t get along ’cept when we’re apart,” Teddy sings. “Is it life, or is it art?/One and the same.”
Life and art have long been entwined with unusual intensity for Thompson. Shoot Out the Lights, her final album as a duo with Richard, was filled with songs about bitterly dissolving relationships, many of them apparently written while things were still happy between them, and released just as their real-life breakup was bringing their collaboration to an end. Proxy Music entwines them again. Turning Linda’s absence as a singer into a flickering subject of the music, rather than just an unfortunate circumstance of its creation, it is a strange and sometimes brilliant album—one that only Linda Thompson could have made, whether or not you can hear her singing.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/linda-thompson-proxy-music/