Ben Folds Five - Army

In this song, Ben Folds is going through a life crisis and is thinking about joining the Army, since nothing else is working out. It is mostly autobiographical: Folds was in a band called Majosha that broke up, with some of the other members forming another band without Ben. He had also been divorced twice by this point ("my ex-wives all despise me"). He took some liberties in the part about dropping out of college after three semesters, blowing $15000 of his dad's money: He left the University of Miami after just one semester, but he was on scholarship. He also never had a mullet, although he later grew a mini mullet because the hair on the top of his head grows slower than the back. He didn't work at Chick-fil-A, but did have a job at a Hardee's in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Folds plays this regularly at concerts. He often gets up from his piano and conducts the crowd for the horn part, having them sing the horn lines for him. Depending on the crowd, it sometimes sounds surprisingly good.  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/ben-folds-five/army

Bonnie Raitt - Live at Sigma Sound, Philadelphia 1972

Bonnie Raitt - Live at Sigma Sound, Philadelphia 1972 - Part 1

 

 

Bonnie Raitt - Live at Sigma Sound, Philadelphia 1972 - Part 2 

01 Mighty Tight Woman
02 Rollin' & Tumblin'
03 Any Day Woman
04 Women Be Wise
05 Thank You
06 Bluebird
07 Finest Lovin' Man
08 Big Road
09 Stayed Too Long At The Fair
10 Under The Falling Sky
11 Walkin' Blues
12 Can't Find My Way Home
13 Richland Woman Blues
14 Blender Blues
15 Since I Fell For You

While attending Radcliffe College in Cambridge in the late 1960s, Raitt’s life changed course when she met Dick Waterman, a blues promoter who worked with legends like Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, and Buddy Guy. Through Waterman, she gained unprecedented access to these towering figures and seized the opportunity to learn directly from the masters. Following her instincts rather than a calculated career plan, she took a semester off from school to travel, listen, and play with the musicians whose records had inspired her.
After Cambridge, Raitt immersed herself in Philadelphia’s vibrant folk and blues scene of the late 1960s. The city’s Philadelphia Folk Festival was at its peak, and venues like the 2nd Fret and the Main Point hosted both local talent and national icons. For a young blues guitarist, there were few better places to develop. Raitt performed in these clubs, often alongside the very bluesmen she had come to admire. Philadelphia wasn’t just a backdrop—it was her proving ground, marking her transition from fan to performer.
Her ties to the city deepened in 1972 when she recorded a live acoustic set at Sigma Sound Studios. Backed by local musicians, the show was broadcast by WMMR, one of Philadelphia’s influential rock stations. Selections from the performance aired regularly, helping build a dedicated regional fan base that has followed her ever since. In a world dominated by male blues musicians, Raitt’s ability to play bottleneck slide guitar with confidence and soul made people take notice. While her gender may have drawn initial curiosity, it was her tone, timing, and touch that earned respect.
She acknowledged that playing “pretty good blues guitar for a girl” helped get her foot in the door—a phrase that speaks volumes about the low expectations she faced. Rather than conform to the industry’s ideas of marketable image or sound, she stayed true to what she loved: traditional blues, folk roots, and heartfelt storytelling. That sincerity resonated, especially with seasoned blues musicians who took her seriously because she took the music seriously. She wasn’t borrowing the blues—she was living it.  From: https://www.knowyourinstrument.com/bonnie-raitt-blues-journey/

 

Cat Stevens - Tea For The Tillerman - Live 1971

This DVD, coinciding with Cat Stevens’ 60th birthday, features a rare and classic performance from 1971 which captures the warmth of his studio recordings but with even more passion and depth. It also includes the delightfully animated short film by Cat Stevens entitled Teaser And The Firecat, with wacky narration by Spike Milligan. His recording career spanned 12 years from October 1966 to November 1978, and he recorded 11 albums in all, but his most creative and interesting period was probably whilst he was recording Tea For The Tillerman and Teaser And The Firecat during 1970 and 1971. With the hit single Wild World entering the US charts in 1971, Cat Stevens flew to America where this intimate concert, which features the best of his repertoire at the time, was recorded. After all these years, it is good to be reminded of Cat Stevens' original and creative talents and the huge contribution he made to the singer/songwriter genre.  From: https://concertsondvd.com/products/cat-stevens-tea-for-tillerman-live-studio-concert-1971-dvd

The New Respects - Trouble

The New Respects is a family affair, made up of three siblings, twins Alexis (bass) and Zandy Fitzgerald (guitar), along with their brother Darius (drums), and cousin Jasmine Mullen (vocals/guitar). The group is heavily influenced by the gospel music they were surrounded by growing up in Nashville, which extends to artists including Aretha Franklin, Alabama Shakes, and John Mayer. The New Respects showcased as an official artist at SXSW 2017 in Austin, TX and are signed to Credential Recordings.  From: https://first-avenue.com/performer/the-new-respects/

Tracy Bonham - Tell It To The Sky

The Burdens of Being Upright is the debut studio album by American singer-songwriter Tracy Bonham, released on March 19, 1996, by Island Records. The Burdens of Being Upright was recorded in the summer of 1995 at Fort Apache Studios in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Referencing this album, in 2015 Bonham said, That whole album was my experiment with getting a guitar. I was rebelling. It was just raw. I was like, ‘Just get out and do it; get behind a microphone and just scream.’ Twenty years ago I had more doubts; I thought, ‘I can’t just stand there and do that’ — which is when I knew I had to do it.
The album cover (a reference to German photographer August Sander's work "The Bricklayer") was photographed by George DuBose, who was the in-house photographer at the hip hop label Cold Chillin' Records.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Burdens_of_Being_Upright

The SteelDrivers - Midnight Train to Memphis

As The SteelDrivers prepare for their highly anticipated performance at Newberry Opera House on Saturday, October 14, let’s take a closer look at their remarkable career and their continued impact on the music scene. The SteelDrivers were formed in Nashville, Tennessee by a group of seasoned musicians who shared a deep love for traditional Bluegrass music. The original lineup included Chris Stapleton (vocals and guitar), Mike Henderson (mandolin), Tammy Rogers (fiddle), Richard Bailey (banjo), and Mike Fleming (bass). Their self-titled debut album, released in 2008, quickly gained critical acclaim and introduced the band’s unique sound to a wider audience.
“Mike Henderson, our original mandolin player, is really the guy responsible for getting the band together,” says Tammy Rogers. “He is the one who knew everyone and made the calls to get everybody together at his house for an informal night of playing some Bluegrass tunes! I had no idea at the time that he and Chris Stapleton, our original lead singer, and guitarist had been writing together for four to five years at that point and had already amassed an incredible catalog of great songs.”
According to Rogers, all the individual elements from each band member along with the songs that Henderson and Stapelton had been writing created the sound and direction of The SteelDrivers. Tammy states, “We all just played the way we played and sang the way we sang! It’s a unique sound because no one was trying to copy any other players or singers.”
Drawing from their collective experiences and influences, the band members fuse intricate melodies and poignant lyrics into a harmonious whole. Their approach often begins with a spark of inspiration, whether it’s a personal story, a shared emotion, or a vivid image.
“I usually just try to sit down and write the best song I can write with my co-writer, and then I see if it’s something the band would be interested in performing,” Tammy Rogers explains. “I really value their opinion and that way they have a vested interest in what we do as a group. In the case of “I Choose You,” I was definitely thinking of my husband when I wrote that song but also of other long-term couples and how they stay together.”
Guided by their mutual respect for tradition and innovation, they combine their instrumental skills with storytelling, allowing their songs to unfold naturally. Each member contributes a unique perspective, lending depth and richness to the narrative. Through jam sessions and heartfelt discussions, The SteelDrivers’ songwriting process evolves, resulting in compositions that resonate with audiences by capturing both the essence of Bluegrass roots and the contemporary spirit of musical exploration.  From: https://www.newberryoperahouse.com/from-nashville-to-fame-the-steeldrivers-rise-in-bluegrass-music/

Rickie Lee Jones - Pirates (So Long Lonely Avenue)

The pirates first announced themselves to Rickie Lee Jones in New Orleans, in the fall of 1979, with a delivery of mysterious gifts. "I checked into my hotel and there was a dress hanging there, and a gift. I opened it up and it was a diamond necklace, an ostentatious diamond necklace," she recalled. "And they sent drugs to all the guys. All the band was very high. And I said, I can't take these gifts ... it was like a dove with three diamonds in it. I would never wear a diamond back then."
Jones was traveling in support of her self-titled debut for Warner Bros., the slinky, imaginative sui generis blend of pop, soul and jazz that had already hit No. 3 on the Billboard 200, landed her on her first Rolling Stone cover, and associated her forever with the beret. In a couple of months, she would win the Grammy for best new artist. She was almost 25.
The pirates, who were actually local marijuana smugglers, came to her concert and introduced themselves, and although she was nonplussed by their extravagant gesture, they eventually became friends. In fact, when she took an apartment on the seedier downtown edge of the French Quarter in the early 1980s — inspired partly by Dr. John, whom she'd met back in Los Angeles — she split the rent with one of them.
"It was the combination of them and Sal Bernardi's crew in San Francisco that inspired the concept of Pirates," she explained. Some of the pirates went to prison and got out. One moved to Costa Rica. One still lives in New Orleans and now, 36 years after the release of Pirates, her second album, so does Jones, although not in the Quarter: Her neighborhood is leafy and quiet, near a park where she can walk her dog and ride her bike, her freshly purple-dyed hair tucked under a helmet.
"To be really clear, I was a drug addict when I lived here," she said. "It's not possible to walk in the footsteps I walked then. I woke up late in the afternoon, and I lived at night." It was a funny thing, really, to take off to the bottom of the U.S. at what seemed like the top of a career and hang around with dope smugglers, aging artists and weird characters — she was there at Professor Longhair's last recording session, she said, and befriended the one-eyed junkie piano genius James Booker, who'd die in 1983, at age 43 — but it felt right to her, "like a refuge," she said. "For me, it was part of feeding who I was. I felt that if I stopped living that way, whatever it was that I really was would stop being authentic," she said.
New Orleans and its characters helped inspire the cinematic storybook of hip that is Pirates, with its evocative imagery — the '57 Lincolns, the slow trains to Peking, the Lolitas playing dominoes and poker behind their daddy's shacks — as did Olympia, Wash., where she started writing it in 1979, New York City, where she was also paying rent, and L.A., where it was recorded. Close to forty years later, she still plays those songs onstage. Some feel different than others — for example, "We Belong Together," the ecstatic, dreamy stream of consciousness that opens Pirates, inspired by her famous romance and breakup with Tom Waits.
"When I sing that song, to me anyway, it doesn't have anything to do with me. It's like a house I built. When I go in, I say, 'I love this room. I'm gonna sit in this room.' It's a structure of its own and I get to experience the ride when I play it. But it's not about Tom and me. It has a life of its own." "There are only a couple of songs that haven't achieved autonomy," she said. "And when I sing them, I feel like, 'I don't wear my dress that short anymore."
But 36 years later, Pirates is a dress that's not out of style, a house that still welcomes new residents. It's canon, classic, a still-startlingly singular look at America both in style — the way it seamlessly weaves threads of beatnik jazz, fluid soul and aching, theatrical balladry — and in substance, as it captures perfect images of American romance and cool like so many Polaroid snapshots. Few pop artists have ever been as effortlessly cool; still fewer have managed to create a piece of art that sounds like it could have been crafted thirty years before it was, or thirty years after. Pirates has been influential, but rarely imitated.  From: https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/07/26/539509195/rickie-lee-jones-on-the-pirates-who-inspired-pirates-and-returning-to-new-orlean

Satin Nickel - The Shadow of Doubt

Satin Nickel is a band from New York that began as a collaboration between Samantha Aneson (vocals, guitar, banjo) and Morgan Hollingsworth (guitar, vocals, mandolin), who explored it as an intersection of Americana and folk. You can hear the Americana and folk influences on their new album Shadow of Doubt, but there are many more layers than just those two.
It doesn’t take long to figure out that this is a band that won’t allow itself to be pinned down to any particular style. The album contains subtle elements of bluegrass with the cello, mandolin and banjo. The band marries that with a healthy dose of rock – especially in the guitar. However, even the guitar tone varies from something like a Drive-By Truckers song (“Train Song”) to a spacey tone (“Good Love”) that you heard from a lot of moody bands in the 80s.
The band members do a great job of creating an atmosphere in these songs. In fact, this band is so good at creating atmosphere that each song sounds like a short-film script set to music. The impressive thing is that the band creates the feel of a song in a variety of ways. At some times, they accomplish this by featuring just guitar and vocals. At other times, like in “Last Night”, the mood is set by the spacey guitar sound and the cello. Throughout the album, the cello adds some dimension of mood to a song. In “Just Keep Running”, the fiddle adds some tension with sounds that would fit right into the soundtrack of a movie thriller.  
If you want a snapshot of this band, “The Ballad of Yankee Jim” is a good example. In less than seven minutes, the band tells the rambling story of the last man who was hung in San Diego. This is a song that blends not only Americana and folk, but also rock (just listen to the guitar in the instrumental break) and even gospel. The gospel influence can be heard mostly in the chorus that features mostly vocals and claps.  From: https://glidemagazine.com/242366/satin-nickel-marry-americana-folk-and-rock-on-shadow-of-doubt-album-review/

Richard & Linda Thompson - Sisters

1978's First Light marked Richard & Linda Thompson's first time in a recording studio after three years away from music, and it suggested they were still getting warmed up as performers; a year later, Sunnyvista found them in much stronger form and a significantly more upbeat frame of mind. Sunnyvista is the wittiest and most joyous album Richard & Linda made together; while several of Richard Thompson's trademark meditations on romance at it's least successful are on hand, "Why Do You Turn Your Back" manages to generate an unusually soulful groove, "Lonely Hearts" captures the melancholy country feel that First Light never quite caught, and "Traces of My Love" finds a winning warmth in its sadness. Richard Thompson's satirical eye gets an airing on the darkly witty title cut, and he displays his rarely aired politically conscious streak on the rabble-rousing "Borrowed Time" and "Justice in the Streets." Linda Thompson's vocals are in superb form on "Sisters," a lovely duet with Anna McGarrigle. And you'd have to go back to Hokey Pokey to hear the Thompsons having as much fun as they do on the rollicking "Saturday Rolling Around" and the wildly passionate "You're Going to Need Somebody." With a big band of Fairport Convention and Albion Band associates and top UK session players on board, and Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Gerry Rafferty, and Glenn Tilbrook contributing vocals, Sunnyvista boasts the stylistic eclecticism of the Thompsons' best work, with a healthy dose of added enthusiasm. Anyone who thinks Richard & Linda Thompson's records are always depressing have obviously never heard Sunnyvista; if it isn't quite as resonant as I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight and Pour Down Like Silver, it still boasts great songs, great singing, and you can play it at a party.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/richard-linda-thompsons-sunnyvista-mw0000192175#review

Hypnos 69 - An Aerial Architect

How could I have missed out on a band from my own country that lists Anekdoten and Motorpsycho amongst their favorite current bands? With a sound that brings the spirit of early Floyd, Sabbath and Crimson back to life, this album has simply been written just for me. I don't know if there's a recipe to make the glory of the early 70s come alive again, but getting the sound right is sure one of the main ingredients. And that is exactly what Hypnos 69 achieved here. Just like Diagonal and Astra, the band combines psych-progressive songwriting with a vintage 70s sound that is natural, dynamic, rocking and that respects the true sound of all instruments. No studio tricks, no proTools cut-and paste, no synthetics, no plastic, no fake. The list of instruments is impressive: an array of drum and percussion, bass, guitars, effects, organs, mellotron, saxophone, Hammond,... Luckily not all at once but spread nicely over the plus 72 minute album length.
Another secret to make 'retro' work is to avoid being the umpteenth Genesis or Yes clone. A better approach is to combine different styles into a new mix that - even if derivative - still has a personality of its own. Some of the influences on Legacy are 1970-era Crimson, early 70s hard rock, jazz-rock, Ozzy-vocals, some Floyd, Yes and even some BJH alike vocal harmonies. Hypnos 69 have a history as a stoner band and there are still traces of that in the sound, but the songwriting has become fully Prog, offering long composed suites with spacey instrumental breaks and concise improvisations. It is fun spotting the occasional musical quotes from other bands, from King Crimson for instance (there's an echo of Indoor Games on An Aerial Architect) and from Yes (melodies from The Fish at 3.18 into The Empty Hourglass). My symphonic knowledge is limited to the mainstream bands so there may be more.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=29944

K.D. Lang - So It Shall Be

Back in 1992, singer k.d. lang released a record unlike any other. Ingénue slithered against the popular music grain with songs that drew slow, deep breaths and sighed seductively. It had an alluringly divergent sound that landed somewhere in a blurry nexus of pop, country and global folk, with accordions, clarinets and Eastern European flourishes. And lang's monumental voice, both powerful and restrained, was simply unforgettable as she sang languorous songs of love and desire.
Ingénue became a monstrous, multi-platinum hit for lang, but it was also a milestone in the '90s LGBT rights movement. Against her label's wishes, lang came out in a cover story for The Advocate three months after the album was released. Her decision helped spark a shift in the national conversation about what it meant to be gay and made Ingénue one of the first in a series of important cultural moments that pushed LGBT issues into the mainstream conversation. (Others from that period included the film Philadelphia and the Broadway play Angels In America and, later in the same decade, the television sitcom Will And Grace).
To celebrate Ingénue's 25th anniversary, Nonesuch Records is releasing a remastered version of the album on July 14, along with some previously unreleased live recordings. Last year lang recorded an album with Neko Case and Laura Veirs called case/lang/veirs. They toured together and became friends. So we asked Laura Veirs to talk with k.d. lang about Ingénue and how the album still resonates today.

k.d. lang on writing and recording an album with a sound that wasn't particularly popular at the time:

"When Ben Mink and I made Ingénue, we were consciously aware of the fact that no one was making this kind of Eastern-European dirge. ... The tempo of the record was nerve-wracking. I thought that I would just get killed for being so slow. And I did. There was a lot of criticism on the record when it first came out. But I purposely wanted to sing unornamented because ornamentation was really starting to take off in pop music. I feel like truth is centered ... it's still and it's very plain. So I really consciously went against the grain with this record. And [playing it live] we have to sit down and go, 'OK, this has to be played with absolute restraint and precision,' almost like classical music because so much about Ingénue I think is this space."

On the challenges of writing intimate and personal lyrics:

"When I worked with Ben Mink or when I work with most collaborators, we come up with the music first, which is very easy. But then that puts me as a lyricist in a very difficult spot because then I had to write lyrics that conveyed my emotion but also fit into the music and sang well, which is a lot of parameters for writing lyrics. And the lyrics were a struggle. It took me six or seven months to get the lyrics for this."

On not liking or understanding "Constant Craving," the album's final track and biggest hit, until just recently:

"I felt like it was incongruent to the rest of the record. And it's funny because yesterday in rehearsals of Ingénue, for the first time, I felt what the song's purpose was and why we put it on as the last song on the record. It's an acquiescence. It's a summation of human desire. It's like yes, OK, we all are heartbroken. We're all nervous. We're all vulnerable. We're all hopeful, but at the end of the day, constant craving has always been. And it really, emotionally, just surfaced for me, the purpose of that song. But we're doing the record in sequence on tour in Australia next week, so to have 'Constant Craving' come to the end of this very insular, quiet performance is fascinating."

From: https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2017/07/13/536522399/k-d-lang-reflects-on-25-years-of-ing-nue

Capillary Action - Gambit

Capillary Action's debut album, Fragments, was an instrumental guitar showcase brimming with virtuosity and violent rhythmic shifts. I think I could be forgiven for expecting more of the same from So Embarrassing, but holy confounded expectations, is this ever a different album from its predecessor. Are there still wicked rhythmic turns, hints of jazz, and mind-bending guitar runs? Sure, but this time they're all subordinated to songs-- the first thing you hear on this album is guitarist Jonathan Pfeffer's voice, singing over a breakneck but fairly straightforward rock beat.
Pfeffer is now clearly playing with the tension between straight-ahead indie rock and spastic, mathy composition. Opener "Gambit" has those basic verses, but breaks them up with ragged odd-metered riffs, alternating in a way that makes each new 4/4 verse sound even more propulsive. A similar approach guides the album's best song, "Elevator Fuck". The band uses a string synth and what I think is a real trombone to inject sweetly melodic but rhythmically strange phrases between verse lines that seem as though they should disrupt the flow of the song but don't.
Whereas the band's first album reserved the middle for its most introspective moments, this one gives us the aggressive experiment "Badlands", which features the sounds of Pfeffer's breathing cut up and made into a brutal rhythm. It's one of several tracks to use extreme dynamic range to great effect. "Pocket Protection Is Essential", for instance, sets quietly melodic sections against the heaviest, loudest bits on the album-- it's genuinely startling the first time the shouted vocals and pounding drums crash in, and not much less startling each time after that. Closer "Self-Released" uses all these techniques to create a collage of a song that has the pacing of a brawl, with quiet moments to catch your breath followed by furious passages of pounding rhythm and dissonant swells.
The album as a whole extends the collage feel, with each track flowing easily into the next to make a kind of suite. The songs aren't inseparable from each other, though; quite a few of them work well on their own, and this owes much to the band's overall stylistic re-orientation. Pfeffer's even, baritone vocals add a strong melodic center for the listener and put the instrumental freakouts in context. So Embarrassing is a bold change in direction for Capillary Action, but one that pays off as well as one could hope.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11266-so-embarrassing/

The Bombay Royale - Live Music at RN 2014 / Millennium Stage 2014

 The Bombay Royale - Live Music at RN 2014

 

 The Bombay Royale - Millennium Stage 2014 - Part 1

 

 The Bombay Royale - Millennium Stage 2014 - Part 2

 

The Bombay Royale has been impressing festival goers in Europe over the summer with their extravagant show. After a triumphant set at Glastonbury last month, Stage 2 at the 49th Cambridge Folk Festival became home for the Spaghetti-Bollywood disco dancers. I sat down with three members of the Australian 11-piece to find out their past, present, and future. So, without further ado: Under the costumes with Parvyn Kaur Singh, Andy Williamson, and Shourov Bhattacharya.

Music Review Database: So first I want to know who came up with the name The Bombay Royale?

Andy: I did.

MRD: What does it represent?

Andy: I was playing around with names and initially I was going to call it The Mumbai Royale or something, but pretty quickly actually found out half of India still calls it Bombay. But more than that, it was actually that music we were kind of inspired by and the music we were playing was all definitely from Bombay. It was from the 70s and 60s and that period. The royale part, perhaps it was from Casino Royale, well every second street in India has a royale, between all of that it just seemed like a, you know.

MRD: We think you sound like Kill Bill meets The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, is that a good representation of your music?

Andy: Tarantino is awesome, but he's fairly derivative I guess, he's taking those styles and all those old films and kind of having a play with them, which is sort of what we're doing as well. If you listen to the old Bollywood films, watch and listen to old stuff from India in the 60s and 70s, there’s that sound that he really loved, Ennio Morricone, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and they dug all that kind of stuff but then they also fused it with their own folk music and classical music and came out with something different, so it’s definitely not a style we've made up, dreamt up all by ourselves.

MRD: Is Ennio Morricone one of your musical influences?

Andy: Yes, definitely yeah, but it was also the influence that he had on Indian cinema too. Like the Indian film writers in the 60s and 70s. They loved surf guitar and they loved those kind of Sergio Leone type westerns. You watch half the movies, those films, half of them have cowboy type characters, gunfights on trains and galloping horses all that kind of stuff.

Shourov: Gunfights on trains are very common, it's a real staple. There’s a bunch of influences we have, that’s one of them. The directors themselves in India that time are household names. People like R.D. Burman, everyone in India knows those musical directors because they created so much great music, and so the songs and the sounds we started with was from those guys, that was a starting point, so there an inspiration too.

MRD: Has blending rock and Bollywood been hard? You have an 11-piece band, has it been hard merging it all together as one sound?

Andy: The hard thing was to make it that small. Taking something like a film score, it was not typically music that was ever performed live. It was done by studio orchestras, so they have string sections and brass sections. The hardest job for me originally when I put the band together was trying to figure out how I could even do half the justice to that sound.

MRD: Do you get a better reception in Australia or in Europe? Is this your first European tour?

Shourov: Yeah it is.

Andy: We've had a really good reception here; we've had a really good reception in Australia too. I think we’ve got novelty value on our side here a bit more. The same as you would if the same came back in the other direction, that thing where it's not from home.

Andy: It's probably been quicker [in Europe] because we’ve came straight into good festivals and all that kind of thing, whereas at  home we've had to work from the ground up doing clubs and building up an audience, so it's a different relationship you have. We have a lot more loyal fans [in Australia] that come to lots of gigs that are really solid, whereas here you just suddenly get the festival line-up and the day before you’ve played half the people here wouldn’t have known who you were and then hopefully you’ve hit them and you win people over. They might not get to see us play for another year or two, whereas our fans back home would come and see us a few times a year in Melbourne.

MRD: So what was it like playing Glastonbury?

Shourov: It was pretty epic yeah, it was huge. It was one of the biggest crowds we’ve played.

MRD: What's your biggest crowd?

Parvyn: We played at a show called White Night Melbourne, and I think there was about 30, 40 thousand people that time.

Shourov: It was a big stage in the middle of the city.

Parvyn: Yeah, on the streets of the steps of Flinders Street Station, which is the main train station in Melbourne. And then we have Federation Square and the Yarra river, so that whole area.

Shourov: So there was just a river of people up all the streets. If you look on our Facebook page about three months ago, you’ll find this pretty amazing photograph of the stage and the crowd; that was a buzz.

MRD: What are your plans for the future?

Shourov: World domination?

Andy: Private island.

Shourov: Private island yeah, or at least a private jet.

Parvyn: Yeah, the skipper wants a yacht.

MRD: Private island and a yacht would go well together yeah.

Shourov: We've got another album in the works, we're always writing and yeah, excited about that.

From: https://www.discoveryrecords.co.uk/2013/07/interview-bombay-royale.html

 

 

Galley Beggar - Moon & Tide

“We’ve always been compared to folk rock bands, but we haven’t always fitted into the genre exactly,” says Galley Beggar vocalist Maria O’Donnell. “We’ve gone to folk festivals, but because we’re electric we don’t fit in there. People like to put us in boxes, and I suppose folk rock is the closest thing. We’re quite happy being different!”
To reduce Galley Beggar’s allure down to a simple matter of folk rock revivalism would be foolish. With a sound that incorporates all manner of unexpected elements while always celebrating the mischievous spirit of folk music across the centuries, these Kentish chameleons have been steadily earning a formidable reputation since forming back in 2009. Over the course of three acclaimed albums – Reformation House (2010), Galley Beggar (2012) and Silence & Tears (2014), the band’s first for Rise Above Records – Galley Beggar have pulled off the neat trick of simultaneously honouring and upgrading the psychedelic folk rock template, both reveling in the simple magic of acoustic instrumentation and joyfully harnessing the lysergic power of the electric too. And now they are poised to release their fourth and finest album, Heathen Hymns. A dizzying blend of the traditional and the untried, it’s a record full of absorbing musical stories that showcase a newfound lust for experimentation.
“Silence & Tears was quite a laid back and chilled out album for the most part, and although it wasn’t deliberate, this album just feels a little bit heavier and more proggy,” Maria explains. “It’s still got some acoustic tracks on there, of course. There’s at least one song with just a guitar, a sitar and a cello! But overall it just feels a lot darker than the previous album and more adventurous, too. When we wrote Silence & Tears, and it was the first album we’d done with a label, and we worked with [producer] Liam Watson and he taught us a new way of thinking about and looking at things, about giving things space and trying different ideas. When we were writing Heathen Hymns, we just naturally wanted to try new things.”
For all its many detours down psychedelic rabbit warrens and shadowy, fog-shrouded footpaths, Heathen Hymns is still an album with melody and humanity at its core. Fresh originals like the hypnotic Four Birds and the woozy raga rock of Moon & Tide wield an insidious charisma, but it’s the way Galley Beggar’s collective ingenuity collides with the sacrosanct likes of traditional standards Let No Man Steal Your Thyme [here featuring a guest vocal from Celia Drummond of UK acid folk legends Trees] and The Girl I Left Behind Me that confirms this album as both an unequivocal triumph for creativity and a platinum-plated treasure trove for aficionados everywhere.  From: https://riseaboverecords.com/artists/riseaboveartists/galley-beggar/

 

Tyrannosaurus Rex - Elemental Child

Tyrannosaurus Rex's fourth album, A Beard of Stars, was the turning point where Marc Bolan began evolving from an unrepentant hippie into the full-on swaggering rock star he would be within a couple of years, though for those not familiar with his previous work, it still sounds like the work of a man with his mind plugged into the age of lysergic enchantment. "A Daye Laye," "Pavilions of Sun," and the title tune sure sound like the writings of an agreeably addled flower child, and Bolan's vocals are playfully mannered in a manner that suits his loopy poetry. However, after shunning the corrupting influences of electric guitars on Tyrannosaurus Rex's early recordings, A Beard of Stars finds Bolan plugging in as he turns on, and he sounds like he's clearly enjoying it; the wah-wah solo that closes "Pavilions of Sun" demonstrates how just a little electricity gave this music a new lease on life, as do the guitar and bass overdubs on "Fist Heart Mighty Dawn Dart," and the lo-fi raunch that dominates "Elemental Child" was the first manifestation of the amped-up proto-boogie that defined Electric Warrior and The Slider. A Beard of Stars was also the first Tyrannosaurus Rex album after Mickey Finn took over as percussionist from Steve Peregrine-Took, and his more straightforward approach (as well as his occasional basslines) gave this music a far more solid foundation than Peregrine-Took's expressive but frequently unpredictable rhythms, further setting the stage for the group's Grand Transformation. A Beard of Stars holds on to the charm of Tyrannosaurus Rex's early work while letting Bolan's natural charisma and rock moves finally take hold, and it's a unique and very pleasing entry in their catalog.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/a-beard-of-stars-mw0000471037#review 

Dust Moth - Lift

It wouldn’t feel quite right to call Dust Moth’s new full length, Scale, heavy. Heaviness often implies weight, or a sense of the music bearing down on its listener. There’s an emphasis on the music being tactile, physical and molded into a solid object. You can even see it in the names of genres: rock, metal, sludge, etc. Scale, as loud and aggressive as it occasionally is, doesn’t really fit that description. Instead, it feels like an incredibly dense gas, impossible to hold, but heavy enough to crush their air out of your lungs nonetheless.
Much like guitarist Ryan Frederiksen’s previous band, These Arms Are Snakes, listening to Dust Moth can evoke the sight of a never-ending guitar pedalboard. Frederiksen, bassist Steve Becker, and keyboardist Irene Barber all disguise their instruments behind a fog of delay, reverb, and phasers. Instead of muddling up their sound, this approach only gives them more flexibility. Melodies can come from anywhere at anytime in any form. The quivering synth that leads the outro of “A Veil In Between” feels just as natural for the band as the mournful clean guitars at the start of “Night Wave.”
Of course, Dust Moth can get right and heavy when they want to (“Lift” is the banger of the bunch) but their real strength is how even those more physical moments still work in service to Barber’s vocals. Imagine a less phoned-in Chino Moreno on the last few Deftones records and you’ll have a rough idea of how Barber interacts with the rest of the band. Barber feels simultaneously part of the smoke and mirrors surrounding her and like a lantern guiding the listener through to the other side.  From: https://www.invisibleoranges.com/dust-moth-scale-album-premier/

King Black Acid - Tomorrow Never Knows (Beatles cover) - Live

Daniel John Riddle is an American musician best known by his pseudonym King Black Acid. Riddle began recording music under the name King Black Acid as a high school student in the late 1980s while also bassist for Portland industrial rock band Hitting Birth. Since then Riddle has worked with an ever-changing collective of musicians, referred to as the Electric Chair Band (1993), the Womb Star Orchestra (1993-1997), the Starseed Transmission (1997-2001), the 144,000 Piece Acid Army (2002-2003), and the Sacred Heart (2006-2009). All King Black Acid material is written and produced by Riddle, who sings and plays guitar during live shows, and who plays a variety of other instruments in the recording studio. Riddle also operates a recording studio, Mazinga Studio, where he produces records under the name King Black Acid. In addition to several studio releases, King Black Acid has recorded music for several film and TV soundtracks.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Black_Acid

Erutan - Tarts

My mother was a private Classical violin teacher and taught lessons in our home. There was never a moment where I wasn't listening to the music of her students or vinyl records of classical, ancient/medieval, world, and many other types of music on our old turntable.   
I was presented with and started playing my first violin at age one and a half. It was a 1/32 size, which is the smallest practical size of violin available. I broke it within the day, ha, but that was to be expected. What was not expected was my taking to the instrument for real, and learning very fast. I mimicked my mother's students and learned the pieces that they played while still in diapers. We have a few precious videos of this, which I will have to bring out one day to share.  
Though my childhood and teen years I practiced a lot - often 5 or 6 hours daily. This sounds excessive, but in the world of competitive classical violin, it is absolutely necessary. I went on to win several competitions, played solos in front of several orchestras, and gave many performances. Between practice sessions, I loved everything about being outside. The plants, the dirt, and the animals. Even though we lived in a small apartment in the city, I was still able to find small pockets of nature to explore and experience.  Even though there are no forests near my home, and most of the fields have been developed, I still try to indulge my love of the natural world by growing pot herbs and keeping the local birds fed.  
When I was 15, I started playing Celtic and medieval music with a small group called the Donnybrook Legacy/Sonus. I joined them when they were winding down from major label recording and were doing more laid back local performances. I learned so so much from these 4 amazing musicians. The music I was exposed to during the four years I worked with them created a love for celtic and ancient music that you can plainly see in my own music style today. From there, I started to pick up many new instruments to learn.  
Around the same time I joined them, I began composing music, being very inspired by the beautiful soundtracks of rpg video games like Final Fantasy and Chrono Cross/Trigger. I wrote hundreds of little melodies during this time, with the chief intention of someday becoming a composer of video game scores. I also started writing lyrics, and with the support and urging of those around me, I began to sing.  From: https://www.erutanmusic.com/drinks  


Alcest - L'Envol

Noisey: How did they convince you to do that whole record in its entirety?


Neige: For every band that played the festival they asked them to do a special show—either a full record, acoustic, or with some special musicians. For us we didn’t really have the time to do a full acoustic thing so we decided to play this record. It sounded like a good idea and it was a good location to try these songs.

It’s been awhile since you’ve played those songs; how hard was it to prepare for this?


Neige: It’s been six years! We had to practice and rehearse a lot to find the guitar parts again, so it was a bit of work, but I think the show was good.

Winterhalter: The cave is amazing; when you’re on stage and you see all these people in a cave, it’s very strange actually.

Neige: And it actually fits with the theme of the album, because it’s actually about the abyss, and the ocean, and the depths of the ocean, and it was almost like being inside a cave in the ocean. It was cool. On the new record, the drums were recorded in a big mansion; we’re rehearsing there in the attic, and it’s huge—it’s like three hundred square meters, and we used natural reverb because it has a very deep sound.

How are you going to get that big sound when you play those songs live?


Winterhalter: [Laughs] We really don’t know. It’ll be kind of a challenge, but we’re confident!

This record is different conceptually, too—it still follows the Alcest tradition of channeling otherwordly spirits, but this time, it’s got a pronounced Japanese influence. Where did that come from?


Neige: It’s an album about the confrontation of the natural world and the human world. The concept of the album came after I watched Hayao Miyazaki’s anime film Princess Mononoke; in the film it’s exactly that idea, of the two different worlds that try to live together. They struggle, and I think we are really busy taking care of our little programs that we forget there is another world around us that is being neglected. Nature always inspires us, and also it has kind of an urban side because I’m living in the city; it’s like a mix of very mortal things and very spiritual things.

What made you want to go back to this heavier sound? You guys veered into more melodic prog over the last couple of records but this one sounds like it’ll be a bit darker, a bit closer to your roots. Why now?


Neige: I think we couldn’t have gone even softer then we went, because Shelter was the softest record we have done. We wanted to go back to something a bit more punchy, because at the time we felt this need, in a very natural way, because after such a mellow record, you want to make something a bit more punchy.

It’s going to be interesting seeing the reaction to this record, because when your first few records came out, nobody really sounded like you, and now at this point so many bands have ripped you off, or been inspired by you.


Neige: That’s true; when we started there were not many bands doing this thing, and now, for me the first band that I really liked in this genre was Deafheaven, because I think they made it really good—this black metal shoegaze thing— but lots of bands are not so good at it. There’s effects and things, but a good song is not based on guitar pedals—it’s all about how to build a song, and how to make catchy melodies and stuff.

Is that a title that makes sense to you? Blackgaze?


We had all kinds of names; it’s labels that people try to give to this music, but if they choose blackgaze, it’s okay. I guess they have to find a name for this genre. In the beginning, we were labeled as “gay,” because the melodies are very fragile and the imagery we have is very different from metal imagery; we stand behind this, though, it’s a part of our universe. In the beginning, when people tried to ask me what was the link between Alcest and black metal, I would say that we share the same taste for spirituality because I think black metal is a very spiritual music, but Alcest is on the bright side—it’s very uplifting, and black metal is darker, but actually we share the same taste for things that are beyond this world.

Are you spiritual people?


Neige: Me, yes, I think Winterhalter, too; we have a strong connection with nature.

How does that translate into the Japanese spirits that you’re talking about on this record?


Neige: First, I love Japanese culture; I’ve loved everything about Japan since I was a little kid, because in France, we’ve got a lot of Japanese animation and we grew up with that, so in a way, it left something with people in my generation, like a kind of connection. When we came to Japan to play, it was really something special; we did acoustic shows in temples. So this and the fact that I think that some of the Asian countries—especially Japan—they keep a very strong connection to spirituality, and it’s quite interesting to see how they mix their modern life with the traditional and the spiritual, as opposed to what we see in Christian countries. I don’t like that type of spirituality; I feel more of a connection to the Asian culture. For me, it’s more true and normal than Europe. I don’t think a lot of people in France have a strong connection with nature. But the album is not really about nature, it’s about this feeling that I’ve had and been trying to express in the lyrics where I feel like I don’t belong to this place—the feeling of being a stranger. There is a song called “Je Suis D’Ailleurs” which means “I’m from somewhere else,” and a lot of lyrics on there are about this, where I feel like I’m here but I don’t feel like home here, I have my home somewhere else.

Does creating this music make you feel like you’re getting closer to finding that home?


Neige: Yeah, sure, that’s the main goal. It’s what I’m doing since I’m fourteen. In the beginning, I was alone, then Winterhalter joined me, and that’s the whole concept of the band—this idea that this is not the only place for us. The point with nature and why we spoke about nature is that when you’re in nature, you kind of have to find a connection with this alien side; I’m sure a lot of people are very old souls and when you are in nature, it helps you connect with part of your soul that you don’t necessarily know or feel very close to in an urban context.

Winterhalter: It’s also about the fact that, okay, I’m talking about nature, but do I do the right things for nature? I’m just like everyone, so it’s also speaking about our weaknesses and how it’s hard to act.


Neige: It’s funny, because if I spend too much time in the city, I’m a little bit crazy and I want to be in nature, and if I spend too much time in nature I miss the city, so that is the duality, these two worlds that you try to live in together and it’s very hard. That’s the connection where Princess Mononoke came in. [Neither of the characters ] is the evil one, they both have flaws; it’s just trying to live together.

From: https://www.vice.com/en/article/alcest-kodama-interview-premiere/

Death Valley Girls - Abre Camino

Interview with Death Valley Girls’ Bonnie Bloomgarden

What initially drew you to the world of rock music and how did those early influences inspired your sound?

When I was five, I heard Billie Holiday singing, and it blew my mind. I didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl; I just thought it was so cool that someone sang like that, and everyone loved it. I became obsessed with her, and that was the beginning. They told me she was an alcoholic who had to sing to live, to earn money for alcohol, and I thought that sounded so romantic—just having to sing every day to live your life. I was obsessed with it.

Can you recall the defining moment that solidified your decision to form Death Valley Girls?

I was in a very low place, I had just moved across the country, and I had given up music. There was just a huge hole in my life. I didn’t know that it was music, I just felt so empty and lonely. Then once I started playing, I realized that I need music, I need to be part of it, I need to be obsessed, surrounded by all these things to fill the hole. I realized why I needed it after I came back to it.

How did growing up in Los Angeles influence the band’s formation and the creative direction?

Los Angeles is huge and filled with tiny mysteries and magical places, but you almost have to be shown them. It’s exciting with so many little areas and pockets. There’s a million worlds here, and you can pop from one to the other. It’s very artistic—everyone is trying to make art in their own way, even if it seems silly, like working out or whatever. Everyone here is on a mission, and it’s a neat energy to be around.

What were some of the challenges you faced while recording your debut album, Street Venom?

We couldn’t get any shows. No one would let us play any shows for like a year. So we decided that the only way we could get shows is if we had a record. So we made that as fast as possible. We just played for a year, just trying to get shows and then made a record as fast as possible. And it actually did work. It’s very helpful to be able to send people music, rather than an email, just explaining why you want to play their concert hall.

The lineup has changed over the years. How have these changes influenced your creative dynamic?

That’s super interesting. We see this as a spiritual journey and the music as spiritual, like a religion and a healing journey. As we go from record to record, we capture the growth we’ve had. Each new person who joins either teaches us a lesson or brings us sounds we didn’t know existed. It’s cool to be in a band focused on evolving and growing spiritually rather than just knocking out hits.

From: https://retrofuturista.com/death-valley-girls-interview/