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/

Derek And The Dominos - Anyday

Derek and The Dominos was a very short-lived band that only released one studio album in its entire career span, which only lasted just over a year (1970-1971). That album, "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs," is still heralded as one of the great moments in Eric Clapton's career and classic rock history. The band broke up during the recording sessions that was supposed to become their second album.
The band had an immense amount of talent and inspired decades of bands that would come after them, including Elton John, who wrote about the band in his autobiography, "They were phenomenal. From the side of the stage, I took mental notes of their performance. It was their keyboard player Bobby Whitlock that I watched like a hawk. You watched and you learned from people that had more experience than you." The album even featured lead and slide guitar work from Duane Allman, who passed away shortly after, in 1971.
In a 2017 interview I did with Bobby Whitlock, who co-wrote "Bell Bottom Blues" with Clapton, I asked about the day the Dominos broke up, to which he replied, "Well, Jim [Gordon] and Eric [Clapton] were having kind of a war and we were all doing too much alcohol and drugs. Jim had got a new kit of drums – it had two kick drums, it had like twelve drums in this thing and cymbals all over. We're in a big room at Olympic – the same room I was in when I did the piano part on 'Exile [on Main Street].' Jim had put these drums together and was banging on them for four or five hours. We were all sitting around, waiting on him to get his brand-new drums all tuned up right and everything like that. We're waiting patiently and drinking and smoking and waiting and waiting and waiting… I can still see Eric sitting there on his amp with his leg crossed and his guitar on his lap. So finally, Jim got his drums tuned up the way he wanted them – there were a dozen drums in this thing and each drum he would have tuned to a piano key so I was sitting there playing one note on the piano. Jim is a really musical drummer. But it was getting so monotonous."
"Finally, he got it exactly right and Eric went to tune up his guitar – we didn't have guitar tuners in those days like we have now. He got like two strings tuned up and Jim says, 'Hey man, you want me to tune that thing for you?' I went 'Oh shit'. Me and Carl looked at each other and knew that was the wrong thing to say. Eric got up and slammed his guitar up against the wall and went out the door he said, 'I'll never play with you ever again.' That was it. And he never did play with him again except on my solo record, but Eric had his back to him, and Jim was in the drum booth and never came out. Eric had his back to the drum room the entire time. That was the end of it."
Some songs from the sessions for the second album have been released, some haven't. But the band seemed to be on a trajectory for success in spite of a lukewarm initial critical reception of the album and rampant drug abuse. In 1983, Jim Gordon, who had undiagnosed schizophrenia at the time, killed his mother with a hammer during a psychotic episode. He was confined to a mental institution in 1984, until his death in 2023. Still, the band's "Layla" album remains a classic, and perhaps the band stands as a cautionary tale about the things that can get in the way of functional band dynamics.  From: https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/articles/features/the_day_dominos_fell_the_story_of_how_derek_and_the_dominos_broke_up-158431

Bettie Serveert - Ray Ray Rain

I was halfway through a menthol cigarette (blech!) when I heard the electric guitars of Bettie Serveert’s Peter Visser and lead singer Carol van Dyk through the open doors of Brooklyn’s Southpaw. So I flicked the foul scourge into the street and hurried inside, sickeningly refreshed and buzzed from the nicotine — this would have to do since, as far as I know, pocket lint is not accepted at most establishments as valid beer money. But the need for such mundane trappings dissipated once I feasted my eyes and ears on these Amsterdam-based rockers for the very first time. I was instantly won over. Visser’s indie cowboy-nerd playing counterpart to van Dyk’s sexy dishevelment, adorned with matching silver glitter guitar straps, formed the perfectly disparate sonic canvas for a Stills-Young-style guitar wrangle, but with a softened brashness plucked from any number of post-punk bands. The Pretenders, with their pop take on punk rock, come to mind but so does Lucinda Williams — the latter not only in the country inflections and van Dyk’s delivery (she also heads up a country-rock outfit called Chitlin’ Fooks), but by gum, she could be her younger sister from the looks of her. I am not the first to make these comparisons but they cannot be so easily eschewed. In spite of that, the band’s influences are actually quite sub-textual, appearing more intermittently between the choruses and deep into the jams. Two guitars piled in with Herman Bunskoeke’s bass lines and percussion courtesy of Stoffel Verlackt (their third drummer) collectively create an original sound that is equally as adept at light-hearted pop songs as it is at full-force rock. Pervasive melancholy underpins every one of Bettie Serveert’s songs, folded into layers of jangly guitars and peppy drums that make you feel like swaying from side to side, letting the tears well up as you remember a past love or wallow in the realization that you’re an outsider in a world of insiders. Yet at the same time you feel like bouncing around and waving your pigtails just like van Dyk, who cheerily makes it seem alright to feel down; a trampled heart ends up all the more resilient for its ordeal in “Private Suit”, rendering a palpable picture of this duality. It’s also a testament to the outsider status that van Dyk clearly feels she lays claim to. The ode to aimless losers “Wide Eyed Fools” and the self-doubting “De Diva” explain not only how Carol van Dyk feels about herself but also how the band no doubt feels after being dropped from the Matador label at the end of the ’90s due to bad reviews of their second album Lamprey and waning popularity. They were thrown out on their bums only to get back up, brush themselves off in valiant fashion, and return with a great set of new songs. Matador’s loss indeed. So it’s no surprise that their material directly reflects their own history, although they’ve been employing this happy-sad formula effectively since their 1992 debut Palomine. Bettie Serveert’s hard-working, talented, under-appreciated, puppy dog, rock-band identity might have instilled pangs of guilt in me which, in turn, might have unwittingly forced me to like them simply to spite the record industry and in spite of any real feelings I might have harbored for the music. I would want to hold them up as underdog champs, you know, on principle — yes, rock critics sometimes have hearts and principles too. But all preconceptions escaped my thoughts as I shifted my focus away from the trivia surrounding the group and concentrated on the massive, wailing sounds coming from the little stage. How could anyone feel bad for a band who gleefully rock out in such a glum but fun manner? Van Dyk and Visser are all smiles and seem to genuinely enjoy what they do. For them, the down times, as much as the up times, are all part of the process: material for more songs, character building, and most importantly the freedom to experiment without constraints from their label. Definitely unafraid of the long jam and its many potential repercussions in the ears of the wrong crowd (read: snooty indie rockers), this band makes indie rock for Heads. A recent Rolling Stone referred to the legendary Television as being akin to the Grateful Dead, of all bands, because of their prolonged, lyric-less jams which recall Jimi Hendrix’s delightfully psychedelic excess, but filtered through the urban grime of early ’70s proto-punk. Visser likewise channels the psychedelia of both Hendrix and Neil Young but in an even more rudimentary way — close your eyes and you’re not at an indie rock show in Brooklyn, you’re at Kansas City’s Royal Stadium, 1974, witnessing Neil Young duke it out with Steve Stills for improvisational guitar jam supremacy. At times even the surf rock of the Beach Boys can be heard beneath it all. And just before it becomes a retro rehash, van Dyk will step back into the jam, as unexpectedly as she departed, to resume belting out her raw but tender voice, switching up the focus of the song and easing us back into the present with lyrics about the “pre-fab world” we’re all living in. Style, tempo and mood change from one minute to the next — what seems spontaneous is in fact spontaneous. In a recent interview with Venus magazine van Dyk said “we threw our book of rules out the window,” referring to the making of their newest album, Log 22. While this is true for the album, the spontaneity is best felt at a live show. Over their almost 14-year career Bettie Serveert have survived a brief moment of super exposure and rave reviews, then vicious criticism and artistic slumps and a subsequent breakup with their record label, but they have emerged fresher than ever, with an energy achieved only by throwing caution to the wind. This structure-less approach (I am loath to say “organic” for fear of attracting throngs of jam-band followers) to making music is precisely what needs to infiltrate what Joni Mitchell, another stubborn individualist and record label rebel, dubbed “the star maker machinery behind the popular song.” Bettie Serveert have thankfully returned to assist in that effort.  From: https://www.popmatters.com/bettie-serveert-031008-2496087357.html

The Jayhawks - Live on German TV 1995

 Part 1

Part 2

With the roots music explosion of the last decade, it’s past time to reappraise The Jayhawks, one of the pioneer bands of the genre. By reissuing their late career renaissance through the record trilogy of Sound of Lies, Smile, and Rainy Day Music, it once again becomes clear just how influential and genre-bending a group the Jayhawks were in their prime. In the mid-‘90s, co-founder Mark Olson had moved onto a solo career, and so co-founder Gary Louris transformed his group’s musical vision. No longer were the Jayhawks following Olson’s folk/country instincts and the stoic Americana of the Midwest. Louris instead guided his bandmates toward a more experimental kind of music, blending his Brit-Invasion pop-inflected roots with a lusher, psychedelic sound.
If the Jayhawks’ early career peaks, Hollywood Town Hall and Tomorrow the Green Grass, reflect a grainier monochromatic depth, then Sound of Lies embodies Technicolor vision, writ large. It’s still my favorite Jayhawks record, and from its panoramic, opening tone-setter, “The Man Who Loved Life,” to the haunting, weary title cut, the songs spill forth in imaginative textures and glorious melodies.
With sole leadership of the band, Louris blooms, and his songwriting takes on a more dynamic, aggressive approach. Think mid-period Beatles, say Revolver, and a similar spurt of fertile growth echoes through this trilogy. It’s a joy to hear the sheer, crunchy exuberance of “Big Star.” Between Louris’s reinvigorated lead guitar and the fresh harmonies of new members, keyboardist Karen Grotberg and drummer Tim O’Reagan, The Jayhawks reach for and achieve a new career high. Country rock no more–this feels more expansive and charged: electric 12-string heartbreak and harmonies firing on all cylinders.
Smile continues this transformation, but goes even further in its eclectic sound. With its radio-friendly pop sheen produced by Bob Ezrin, it’s ironically the Jayhawks’ most commercial release—and yet at the same time—their most provocative record. The title track is a beaut: day-glo washes of harmony and reverb stacked to the sky–a sunshine anthem shot through with blue blasts of melancholy, Brian Wilson territory. “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” should have been a major contender on radio, its chiming chorus rings out like a lost, vintage power-pop nugget from the ’70s. Mechanized drum loops infiltrate weaker songs like “Somewhere in Ohio,” and you can almost hear hardcore Jayhawk fans gasping in protest at the creeping electronica. Bonus reissue songs, such as “A Part of You” and “Great Garbo,” showcase their abundance of quality songs.
Rainy Day Music closes out this stirring trilogy in spare, rustic tones steeped in brilliant songwriting. Acoustic guitars and gentle CSN-like harmonies dominate deep cuts such as “All the Right Reasons.” Tim O’Reagan still provides a strong counterpoint to Louris here with harmonies and several worthy song contributions such as the hushed, travelogue reverie, “Tampa to Tulsa.”  From: https://americansongwriter.com/jayhawks-sound-lies-smile-rainy-day-music-reissues/

 

Solstice - Sacred Run - Live 2023

English outfit Solstice have made a name for themselves as an act playing melodic progressive rock with strong leanings towards neo progressive in sound, classic 70's symphonic rock in expression - tinged with elements from folk music. Similarities to Camel, Yes and Mostly Autumn have been drawn when describing the band. Formed in 1980, English band Solstice is first and foremost the band project of Andy Glass (guitar), the only musician participating on all the band's productions and the main composer for the band in it's various guises.
Apart from recording the demo cassette "The Peace Tape" Glass and his companions didn't produce any recordings in their first years of existence; concentrating on playing live in these early years. Come 1983 and the band had already seen vocalists Sue Robinson and Shelly Patt come and go, and when they hit the studio it was with a line-up consisting of Glass, Marc Elton (violin, keyboards), Mark Hawkins (bass), Martin Wright (drums) and Sandy Leigh (vocals). The result of the studio time was issued as "Silent Dance" in 1984. The band started breaking apart shortly after this release though, as Leigh and Hawkins left. Barbara Deason (vocals) and Ken Bowley (bass) replaced them, but by 1985 the band effectively broke up, with a one-off comeback for a charity event in 1986 the initial swansong for this outfit.
Six years later a real comeback took place. Glass and Elton were the sole remaining members from the formative years, this time joined by Heidi Kemp (vocals), Craig Sutherland (bass) and Pete Hemsley (drums). 1993 saw this line-up issue a CD aptly named "New Life". More line-up changes followed this release, and the next time the band hit the recording studio Kemp and Hemsley were gone, replaced by Emma Brown (vocals) and Clive Bunker (drums, formerly of Jethro Tull, Pentangle, Gordon Giltrap). The end result this time around was a production named "Circles", issued in 1997. Shortly after this release more line-up changes were afoot however. Sutherland left, and Elton had to give up playing live due to a hearing ailment. New musicians in were Jenny Newman (violin), Steve McDaniels (keyboards) and Rob Phillips (bass).
In 1998 this version of the band hit the Cropredy Festival, and equipment was set up to capture this live show, planned to be released as a live album shortly after. It turned out that the sound quality of these recordings weren't the best though, so the band opted to record a live in the studio version of the concert instead, eventually released as "The Cropredy Set" in 2002. The pause between recordings and release was at least partially the result of the band yet again entering hiatus; and it wasn't until 2007 that Solstice yet again emerged - this time around with only one minor line-up change; former drummer Pete Hemsley taking the place of Clive Bunker. 2007 saw the entire back catalog of Solstice - 4 productions in total - reissued in definitive editions with bonus material added; and a live DVD attached to the 2002 album "The Cropredy Set" arguably the most interesting of those. At the same time Solstice started touring again, and plans for a fifth album are in the making as well.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=937

Vibravoid - Wake Up Before You Die

Every single note has the effect of LSD and Vibravoid bring LSD to all their shows – LSD, that’s a Lightshow Society Düsseldorf, who project a unique and mind blowing illumination that gives an enlightening impression of how the 1960s had been.
Once again, a description that makes me grin and which I therefore had to quote... And I realise that I have known Vibravoid's music on record for years, but somehow I haven't managed to see them live yet. Well, that's where I come from with the new CD that I have, which is also available on LP (sometimes as splatter vinyl), in some versions with four live bonus tracks. It is called "Wake Up Before You Die", which could well be relevant to today. On the back cover is "Make Love Not War", a saying that became popular in 1967 during the hippie era as a statement against the Vietnam War and whose message is still relevant today. Maybe even more relevant than ever. When reading/hearing what feels like more and more reports of terror, rampages and other unpeaceful things, combined with hate postings on social networks, sometimes the desire for peace arises, for a harmless, innocent world that is simply colorful and playful. In the 60s, one of the most critical phases of the Cold War, psychedelic rock was one option as an alternative to the fear of a world war caused by the Cuban missile crisis. For a trip back to the 60s, there is Vibravoid, who manage to transport psychedelic sounds from that time into the present. It is retro and modern at the same time, poppy and spacey somehow, contemporary psychedelic rock. In addition to guitar, bass and drums, there is sitar, mellotron and other instruments. On the one hand, the songs seem quite short and snappy, on the other hand, as expected, they contain many crazy parts that seem to come from a crazy wonderland. Exuberantly colorful images play out in your head. Vibravoid distance themselves from washed-out stoner rock; their sounds are clean and clear in places, but there is also distortion and a certain amount of weirdness - this creates a musical journey through a distorted world, often rather floating, but sometimes surprisingly grounded. Some sounds are dreamy and beautiful, and in places dissonances are sprinkled in (apparently intentionally). Anyone who can and/or wants to let go can experience a fascinating trip here, regardless of whether they are looking for it for it’s own sake or as a contrast to the reality of the media and the grayness of everyday life. But not just because of cheap entertainment, "Wake Up Before You Die" asks you to consciously take part. It's a shame that there are no lyrics in the booklet, after the song titles I definitely get the impression that there are statements to be found in them. Without printed lyrics there is room for your own interpretations, inspired by the scraps of words you hear, which is probably what was intended. Of course, you can also simply follow the motto "Just Let Go" and immerse yourself in the music.  Translated from: https://www.rocktimes.info/vibravoid-wake-up-before-you-die-cd-review/

Indigo Girls - Strange Fire - Live on Nightmusic 1989

I'm not aware of Amy Ray ever explaining the meaning of this song, but what I get from it is commentary on being gay and interacting with Christian churches. The phrase "strange fire" comes from a puzzling biblical passage theologians have often struggled to make sense of in a modern context. It describes two sons of Aaron who bring an offering to the altar, and their god not only rejects their offering, but kills them for it:
Leviticus 10:1 reads: And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. So what is this "strange fire"? Modern interpretations say that Nadab and Abihu brought incense that had been lit elsewhere, disobeying a rule that only incense lit at the altar itself could be offered.
Amy connects herself to the incense with "the incense of my soul is burned/by the fire in my blood." What's her offering? Her love. "I make an offering of love/I come to you with strange fire."
Yet, the church rejects it. It tells her she's brought the wrong kind of love. I'm interpreting here, but I think that she's probably referencing her sexuality - she offers up what's in her soul, and she's told it's wrong. She puts herself in the shoes of Nadab and Abihu here.
She goes on to condemn the preachers who've rejected her, with her "mercenaries of the shrine/now who are you to speak from god?" She ends in a place where self-love helps her get over the rejection "when you learn to love yourself/you will disolve all the stones that are cast." There she finds "a peace that will take you higher." And it doesn't come from rejecting her own sexuality, but embracing it. At the end of the song, she's still saying "I come to you with my offering/I bring you strange fire." So she's not adapting to the church's view that her offering, her love, is wrong. She's defiantly embracing it and challenging others to explain how they can possibly speak for god in rejecting it. It's a gorgeous, painful song, and my interpretation of it isn't based on anything I've ever heard Amy say.  From: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858880503/

Tonic - Open Up Your Eyes

“If You Could Only See” was both the song that put Tonic on the map, and the one that put the bullet in their career.  If you’re over a certain age, you remember the powerful and tasteful ballad from when it hit the charts in 1997.  I had the album already.  I bought it when it first came out, after reading a glowing review in the local paper and seeing a used copy pop in at the Record Store.  Finding Jack Joseph Puig’s name in the producer credits got my attention too.
Tonic’s debut Lemon Parade is a great sounding CD, thanks to Puig and the richly arranged guitars of Emerson Hart and Jeff Russo.  When the guitars are center stage, all is well.  The opening duo of “Open Up Your Eyes” and “Casual Affair” have the punch that people don’t always associate with Tonic.  These guys could play.  “Casual Affair” in particular has angst and emotion ripping out of those six-strings.  When they get heavy, like on “Wicked Soldier”, there is always something bright and chiming going on with backing guitars.  Check out “Celtic Aggression” for a fine example of their guitar expertise. Emerson Hart has an emotive voice, whether rocking out or serenading the ballads.
It’s the ballads the people remember, and you have to admit that when you break it down, “If You Could Only See” is a fantastic song.  Layers of chiming, chugging and sliding guitars are right there beneath the core melodies.  On the mandolin-infused “Mountain”, plus “Soldier’s Daughter” and “Lemon Parade”, you can absolutely hear old-tyme southern influences creeping through.  Tonic have traits that sound as if from another era in many ways.  These are actually great songs, largely forgotten because of that one hit.  From: https://mikeladano.com/2017/06/07/review-tonic-lemon-parade-1996/

Odetta Hartman - Goldilocks

Perfection or personality? When it comes to music there's only one option for Odetta Hartman, the ballet of chance will always win out over metronomic precision. For her, the joy of music is found in the creases; in the crisp snapping rouse of a happy accident, in a misread map or in the impromptu sound of a misplaced hand or foot or word. Who needs precision, when you can capture something much more visceral and palpable than machinery.
Hartman's quest for the perfect imperfect includes Icelandic seagulls and kitchen utensils. Why use a drum, when a whisk will do the trick? Hartman is as much an inquisitor as she is a musician. Her songs are her accounts of her explorations. The sounds she collects are snapshots of feelings and textures and rhythms that resonate with her in a way a photograph never could. Here she takes her cues from the great American musicologist, Alan Lomax, but what she collects is very much the world through her own microphone.

<<GP>> The album features field recordings of seagulls in Iceland and construction workers in Mexico. You could've recorded seagulls or construction workers anywhere, what was it about those circumstances that made you think these seagulls, these labourers?

No matter where I go, I've gotten into the habit of recording snippets of soundscapes as a way to preserve memories of places & moments - sonic souvenirs, if you will. On this current Euro Tour, I've captured the sounds of a creaking swing next to the graffiti-ed remnants of the Berlin Wall, a group sing-a-long at a silent disco in Utrecht, and giggles in the back of the sprinter van with our tour mates. It has almost turned into a game, a treasure hunt of sorts.

<<GP>> Did your love of field recordings stem from your studies of Alan Lomax for your thesis or did your thesis on Alan Lomax stem from your love of field recordings?

My love of field recordings was definitely activated while working on my thesis & studying the Lomax archives - but it was my love for Jack Inslee, my partner & producer, that inspired the incorporation of field recordings into the album. His background is in digital production & our mutual obsession with field recordings linked his modernist tendencies with my old-timey interests.

<<GP>> Field recording have come a long way from a Presto to a Zoom H4N. Do you think Lomax would approve of what we've decided to record for posterity?

Lomax would likely be tickled by the ease with which anyone can record these days, whether on a zoom or even an iPhone - but I think what sets his legacy apart from those of other musicologists was his ability to hone in & highlight authentic, honest expression. Modern culture is over-saturated with content, so now we are faced with the greater curatorial challenge of parsing through the excess to find the truly unique gems.

<<GP>> The beats on your latest album were recorded in the kitchen, often utilising improvised instruments to get the sounds you wanted. Why did the kitchen become the rhythmic heartbeat of the album?

Old Rockhounds was recorded in our home studio & I literally wrote a bunch of the songs while Jack was cooking dinner. Our house provided a canvas and raw materials, which is why I think the album inherently has such an intimate vibe.

<<GP>> What types of objects did you use to create these beats and why did you opt to use these over conventional percussion instruments?

Our percussive experiments were born out of necessity for lack of having a drummer with us in the studio (except for "Freedom" which was morphed from a recording we made of my band mate Alex Friedman, playing kitchen bowls!)
The sonic vernacular that Jack & I developed was intent on maintaining organic sounds, even in a digital realm, which forced us to get creative with our sampling. Pepper grinders, scissors, steel mixing bowls, keys, metal scraps, de-tuned violins, bowed banjos & street sounds all played a part in creating the worlds for the songs.

<<GP>> It would be easy for a project that relies so heavily on melding the old and the new and the forgotten and the found to crumble in the rigid pursuit of perfection. How important are the imperfections and accidents, both good and bad, in giving the record a sense of substance?

Perfect is the enemy of good - and though we definitely slaved away on certain tracks (Sweet Teeth), a handful of songs from the album were actually one-take demos (Old Rockhounds & Honey). Determined to stay true to our authentic selves, Jack & I always preferred to run with raw takes over polished attempts at perfection. Mistakes are essential to my songwriting process: a wrong chord can lead to a new perspective and often inspires surprisingly new directions in a composition.

<<GP>> What are your favourite imperfect moments on the record?

Widow's Peak remains my favourite song from the record, thanks to a happy accident that triggered 40 violin tracks at once. The cacophony created a wall of sound that still stirs my heart every time I perform the tune.

<<GP>> The unconventional alignment of sounds allows you to tackle a large range of genres without jarring the listener's ear. You You and Smoke Break for instance could easily be R'n'B songs, what's your favourite curveball to date?

As an audiophile, I find inspiration in so many places, genres, histories... Smoke Break was casually recorded on the couch, jokingly singing my middle school principle's catchphrases over a beat Jack was working on. I love the song because it feels so free & fun!

<<GP>>  Moving away from the accidental stardust that permeates your work, the workhorse instrument throughout is the violin. What first attracted you to the violin and why did you decide to make it the linchpin of your creative process?

I started playing classical violin at age 4, inspired by my big brother's Suzuki studies & orchestra concerts. While I've been playing the violin almost as long as I've been walking, it wasn't until I started to collaborate with Jack (5 years ago) that I began to utilize it as a songwriting tool. Experimenting with digital multi-tracking liberated me from only being able to accompany myself on guitar/banjo/mandolin/ukulele etc and it has been so exhilarating to incorporate my most fluent instrument alongside my voice.

<<GP>> The violin is of course the main instrument in traditional Irish music. Do you have an affinity for the way Ireland has utilised the instrument? And are there any pieces or players in particular that resonate with you?

Absolutely! We spent our childhood summers at violin camp in Virginia, primarily focusing on classical music. However, the camp offered an elective of Irish Fiddling which was our favourite class - my brother, sister & I still bust out classics like The Irish Washerwoman & Lisdoonvarna at family gatherings. There is a direct connection between Celtic & Appalachian music and that shared lineage has heavily influenced my songs that have a more traditional bent.

<<GP>> What should Irish fans expect from your show?

After almost 6 weeks on the road with percussionist Alex Friedman, we'll be closing out our tour in Dublin! The show will likely surge with extra energy & excitement as it will be our grand finale. One can expect murder ballads, spell-casting sing-a-longs, banjo jokes, nerding out & stories from our travels - though we've been known to surprise everyone, even ourselves!

<<GP>> Will you be looking for found sounds in Ireland?

Definitely! We can't wait to explore Dublin & record snippets of the incredible local musicians as well as ambient city sounds. Feel free to share some adventurous recommendations!

From: https://www.goldenplec.com/featured/odetta-hartman-interview/

Gary Wright - Love Is Alive - Midnight Special 1976

Keyboardist Gary Wright was best known as leader of the U.K.-based band Spooky Tooth and the back-to-back 1976 solo hits “Dream Weaver” and “Love is Alive.” He also helped to popularize the synthesizer in the mid-1970s. Wright was born in the New York City suburb of Cresskill, N.J., on April 26, 1943. He worked as a child actor on Broadway and attended several U.S. universities when he decided to try his luck with rock in London. He joined an existing band that changed its name to Spooky Tooth and signed with Island Records, which released the band’s debut album, It’s All About, in 1968.
Spooky Two followed in 1969 (released on A&M in the United States), which marked the end of the original lineup. Wright’s last LP with the band was Ceremony, a 1969 collaboration with electronic composer Pierre Henry, and their billing subsequently changed to Spooky Tooth featuring Mike Harrison. Wright had already established a solo career concurrent with his involvement with Spooky Tooth, and released solo albums for A&M Records including 1970’s Extraction, with musicians that included bassist Klaus Voormann and drummer Alan White (later of Yes).
Voormann introduced Wright to George Harrison, who was about to record his debut solo album, All Things Must Pass. The two 27-year-olds hit it off and Wright subsequently played piano on much of the triple-LP opus, alongside the members of Derek and the Dominos (Eric Clapton, Carl Radle, Jim Gordon and fellow keyboardist Bobby Whitlock), and dozens of other top-notch musicians.
The relationship with Harrison blossomed and Wright continued to perform on the former Beatle’s solo albums. Wright also played piano on many other classic rock hits, including Harry Nilsson’s #1 single, “Without You,” and Ringo Starr’s “It Don’t Come Easy” and “Back Off Boogaloo.” (Years later, he became a member of Ringo’s All-Starr Band.)
Wright’s own planned follow-up solo album, Ring of Changes, was cut with his band Wonderwheel, which also featured future Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones. Harrison makes a guest appearance on slide guitar. The album was produced by Wright and was one of the first albums to be recorded at the newly opened Apple Studios on Savile Row. But it went unreleased.
“I hadn’t listened to it in 40 years, but when I put it on, I thought to myself, ‘I can’t believe this was never released,'” said Wright in 2016, when Ring of Changes was finally issued. “It was more of a rock album than what I had done, but I think it stands up alongside anything that you might hear being played on classic rock radio around the world. I hope that people will be surprised by the material. I’m proud of it and I’m glad it’s finally coming out so everyone can hear what we did all those years ago.”
Following a brief Spooky Tooth reunion from 1972-74 with Mike Harrison, Wright signed a solo deal with Warner Bros. and returned to the U.S. The result was 1975’s The Dream Weaver, featuring what Wright describes as “the first-ever all keyboard/synthesizer band.” (The only guitar on the album is by Ronnie Montrose, on one song.)
The album was issued on June 15, 1975, and, as BCB reader “Big Mark” notes, its first single, “Love is Alive,” flopped initially. The spiritual follow-up, “Dream Weaver,” became an enormous hit, reaching #2 on the Hot 100 in 1976. “Love is Alive” was reissued and also reached #2, paving the way for The Dream Weaver to reach #7 on the sales chart, and helping to lead the way to popularize the synthesizer.  From: https://bestclassicbands.com/gary-wright-dream-weaver-4-26-18/

The Lucy Nation - Alright

An enigma of late-'90s major label meddling and ultimate inaction, this difficult to find album is unfortunately not all on par with its one terrific song, 'Alright'. Featured on the Austin Powers: Spy Who Shagged Me soundtrack, that tune is undoubtedly the only track most anyone will have heard by this duo, which consists of All About Eve's bassist and his partnership with vocalist Anna Nyström. In fact, it seems this album never officially "came out", existing only in its promo format and (more commonly) making the rounds as a bootleg download.
“On” was apparently first recorded in a very different format than what emerged from the board. The label brought in an outside producer to remix the album in accordance with a trip-hop aesthetic that they thought would sell better; the result is an album that is well-produced, perhaps even over-done, but is saved by some good songwriting and above all Nyström's pure, enchanting voice. Of course, for all that, the label sat on the release and only filtered the one song to the supremely spotty Austin Powers soundtrack, where it sits unassumingly near the end of the set.
For my money, this group's better than anything by All About Eve, in terms of synthesized dark 'n dreamy girl-pop. It was smart to place 'Alright' as the lead-off track, and granted the record loses a lot of steam afterwards. But lo and behold (lest you be tempted to tune out midway through) -- it picks back up later on and closes out with three great songs.  From: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/the_lucy_nation/on/

The Bombay Royale - Mauja

The Bombay Royale are an Australian 11-piece musical powerhouse who have taken the themes and soundtracks from Bollywood films and have infused them with all the colour, production and energy one would expect from a four-plus hour Bollywood movie. The Bombay Royale had first set down to do strictly covers from the gilded ‘60s era of Bollywood, but soon evolved into writing their own material. Their debut album, You Me Bullets Love, was released just last month – and it is a corker.
Parvyn Singh, one of the two singers in this bombastic Bollywood/surf/psychedelic band, was on hand recently to speak with us about the band, the album and the awe-inspiring madness of Bollywood films in general. But first, we must learn how to do the Bollywood dance.
“People say, ‘Oh, I don’t know how to do the Bollywood dance,’” Singh laughs, “but it’s very easy! You put your hands in the air and pretend you’re screwing in a light bulb! That’s what it’s about!”
The Bombay Royale was founded by Andy Williamson, a saxophonist and Bollywood aficionado who was driven by the fact that no one in Melbourne seemed to be performing that type of music live. “Williamson’s always had a great interest in that style of music,” Singh reveals. “He sat down and scored some great cover tunes from the ‘60s era, and got some great people together – it started as an instrumental thing, but when it was coming together, they put the feelers out for a singer, and then my name came up, cause I’ve been performing with my dad since I was really young.
“I went down and saw these guys, there were in a tiny studio in the Hope Street Warehouse in Brunswick where we did our initial rehearsals. So there I was in this tiny room with all these white guys, and they were doing all these songs from my childhood, like I grew up with all this stuff!” Singh laughs loudly at the recollection. “I started singing and we found Shourov [Bhattacharya, the male singer] later and it all came together and – voila! – here we are!”
One aspect of The Bombay Royale one may notice right off the bat – besides the fact that there are 11 of them onstage – is that they don’t just play music. Hell, these cats are so much more than that – they put on a full-blown stage production, complete with intensely intricate orchestrations, secret agents, plot twists and bandit masks. How the hell, I ask, do they keep things so organised? The secret, Singh tells me, is everyone knowing his or her place in the band. “We’ve got all the characters that really help us maintain that personae as a full group, so with the band you have The Skipper, who’s Andy, the leader of ‘the bad guys;’ he’s the leader of this big gang of thugs, which is all the musicians, and so we have The Jewel Thief [Josh Bennett, guitar and sitar] and The Railway Mogul [Tom Martin, guitar] and The Kung-Fu Dentist [Ros Jones, trombones] – and so he’s in charge of them!” she gushes.
“Shourov and I are the secret agents – we’ve got this whole backstory that we present onstage, and so throughout our performance and throughout our songs there’s always the characters in the back of our minds. It really helps create tension and the right vibe, and the orchestration is really rehearsed, and we make sure we know who’s meant to be doing what when!” What’s important to Singh and the band is showcasing brilliant music from incredible musicians. “[The musicians] feel it really well. At the moment, what we’re doing is we’re able to see the individual talent of all the musicians who are in the band; it’s slowly coming out and every once in a while you will get a great keyboard solo or guitar solo or horn solo. As we go along, I think the story’s developing, and the characters will have leading roles to play. So it’s really like this never-ending movie that we’re creating within the band!”
Which prompts this scribe’s next question – are they planning on creating their very own Bollywood movie? “That’s definitely something we would love to do!” she exclaims. “Obviously we need the budget and the right people who would get behind it. There’s some talk about a film director in the UK who would love to work with us, and a couple members of the band are really into script-writing, so there’s so much possibility with the band, which is exciting! But slow and steady I think!
Now that You Me Bullets Love has been released to glowing reviews, it’s high time for The Bombay Royale to celebrate its release with an album launch at The Hi-Fi. What can the punters expect? Singh promises that it’s going to be huge. “It’s a cinematic experience, so we’ve got two big screens on the side of the stage, and we’ve got a film guy who’d going to do some video footage of Bollywood movie scenes, superimposing Bombay Royale footage into it and doing all this really cool video art as well; it’s going to be an overload in every sense possible!” Hell, just listening to her describe it makes me excited. “I’m getting more and more excited the more I think about it, too!” she laughs.  From: https://beat.com.au/the-bombay-royale-2/

Betty Davis - Talkin' Trash

The sexual revolution of the 1960s grew louder in the next decade. Pop culture in the 1970s became sexier, signified by one of the biggest songs of 1973 being Marvin Gaye’s timeless ode to procreation ‘Let’s Get It On’. And that very same year saw the release of the brilliant self-titled debut album by raunchy funk-queen Betty Davis. While the stigma around sex appeared to be in decline, the burial of Davis’ album showed that some expressions of sexual desire weren’t welcome, especially those as revolutionary as hers. Like many celebrity women of the ’70s, Davis was dismissed by men. Born Betty Mabry, Davis is mostly known for her short-lived marriage to jazz legend Miles Davis. She introduced him to new fashions and new sounds, inspiring the 1970 album that revived his waning career, Bitches Brew (the title was her idea).
Unfortunately, their relationship was plagued by Miles’ jealousy and violent temper, culminating in him divorcing her after a year of marriage. She barely registered in Davis’ 1990 autobiography, praising her as “a free spirit” and “talented as a motherfucker”, but dismissed her as a “high-class groupie”. Upon escaping Miles’ tyranny, she explored her sexuality and created her own unique sound.
Betty Davis’ self-titled debut is a colossal slab of erotically-charged funk. Her vocals are passionate, raw and untamed, and they practically overpower professional backing-singers and future stars The Pointer Sisters and Sylvester on ‘Game Is My Middle Name’. But her lyrics reveal progressive insights into sexuality and male-and-female relations that, at the time, shocked listeners.
While songs like ‘Let’s Get It On’ express the virtues of free love, the male-dominated point-of-view of the time expected women to be faithful while men continued their sexual conquests. When women did this, they were accused of cruelty and reducing their significant-other to tears, as Gaye did in ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’. Davis explored this double-standard on ‘Your Man My Man’, where rather than confronting a romantic rival she suggests they share this lothario and use him like the sexual object like he does to them. After all, as she sings, “It’s all the same”.
Through her lyrics, Davis strongly asserts her sexuality and fights against objectification. As she sings on ‘If I’m In Luck I Might Get Picked Up’, even though she’s “wiggling my fanny” it doesn’t give anyone the right to harass her. “This is my night out,” she defiantly sings, “So all you lady haters don’t be cruel to me”; significantly contrasting her lyrics to hits like ‘He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)’ by The Crystals. Her strongest ‘no-means-no’ statement is ‘Anti Love Song’, where she tells a past lover, “No, I don’t want to love you because I know how you are,” revealing a toxicity in the relationship. “I know how you like to be in charge, but with me you know you couldn’t control me,” she later sings, her old flame unable to cope with her boldness. It’s one of the few songs she refrains from screaming, instead calmly purring and displaying complete control over the situation.
Betty Davis was well-aware of how much society feared a strong black woman, paying tribute to one on ‘Steppin’ In Her I. Miller Shoes’, dedicated to the late Devon Wilson. Wilson was Hendrix’ girlfriend and muse, inspiring songs “some sad, some sweet, some said were very mean”. Unfortunately, as Davis recounts in the song, “she was used and abused by many men”. It was a fate Davis suffered through her own career. Radio stations that played her sexually explicit music were picketed by religious groups, with one receiving a bomb threat. Patrons walked out of her raucous live shows; they were so famously wild that Kiss reneged her support slot, fearing she’d steal the show. “I’m very aggressive on stage, and men usually don’t like aggressive women,” she told Jet Magazine. “They usually like submissive women, or women who pretend to be submissive.”
The one that hurt most was the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), who suggested she was a disgrace to her race for ingraining prejudices about ‘loose black women’; “I’m coloured and they’re trying to stop my advancement,” she retorted.
Despite the backlash, Davis continued recording and performing, including releasing a third on major label Island Records. After that album’s failure, Island demanded she cover her skin and relinquish control to other producers and writers. Dismayed, she walked away and disappeared, refusing to perform again. In her absence, Davis has inspired the next generation. Reissues of her albums and documentaries have seen her reappraised. Artists like Peaches and Joi have praised Davis’ influence, and Prince said of her music, “This is what we aim for”. Betty Davis’ sexual politics were too much for the ’70s, but the world has finally caught up.  From: https://tonedeaf.thebrag.com/betty-davis-sexual-revolution/

  

Van Halen - In A Simple Rhyme - Warner Demo Reel 1977

At the height of his fame in Kiss, Gene Simmons offered to help Van Halen find a record deal, a process that included making a new demo. Four of the 10 songs that have leaked from the sessions wound up on the band's first six studio albums: "On Fire," "Runnin' With the Devil," "Somebody Get Me a Doctor" and "House of Pain"; "She's the Woman," "Let's Get Rockin'," "Big Trouble" and "Put Out the Lights" were reworked decades later for inclusion on A Different Kind of Truth. A pair of others have never seen proper release, including "Woman in Love," which has no musical relation to Van Halen II's similarly titled "Women in Love.”
Unable to find a record deal for Van Halen, and reportedly under pressure from his Kiss bandmates to focus on his own group, Simmons bowed out of the picture by tearing up the management contract between the two parties. Not too long after, Van Morrison and Doobie Brothers producer Ted Templeman was tipped off to the band, went to see them perform and instantly set about getting them a deal at Warner Bros. He cut a 25-song demo with the group that included new versions of every track they had recorded with Simmons, except for "Woman in Love." Most of the songs eventually found their way onto Van Halen albums, including the four tracks reworked for A Different Kind of Truth. But "We Die Bold," "I Wanna Be Your Lover," "Piece of Mind" and "Light in the Sky" (not to be confused with Van Halen II's "Light Up the Sky") remain unreleased. So does the band's version of the Kim Fowley and Steven Tetsch-penned "Young and Wild," which was later recorded by Cherie Currie. It took a couple of minor modifications for "Bring on the Girls" to become Van Halen II's "Beautiful Girls.” Three other tracks from the Templeman sessions seem at least partially familiar to fans but have varying degrees of differences: "Get the Show on the Road" features half of "Romeo Delight"'s chorus; "Voodoo Queen" shares its main riff - but not much else - with "Mean Street," and also features the coda eventually used on "Hot for Teacher"; and "Last Night" is a nearly complete version of Diver Down's "Hang 'Em High" but with a different chorus and lyrics. Anthony and Roth also recorded a short, druggy parody of Nicolette Larson's "Lotta Love" as an inside joke for Templeman.  From: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/unreleased-van-halen-songs/

Alunah - Psychedelic Expressway

Birmingham UK’s Alunah have followed a slow and steady ascension to the vanguard of the UK doom scene since their debut Call Of Avernusback in 2010. Alunah have since built a steady fanbase over the course of five albums, featuring heavy, doomy riffs, a solid low end, and, since their inception, they’ve featured female vocals, first co-founder Sophie Day, and since 2018 her replacement Siân Greenaway, something not very prevalent in the stoner/doom universe. I had heard of, and about Alunah for a few years, and they were a band that has been on my never-ending, always-expanding ‘list’ of bands/records I need to listen to, so, when the promo became available for their new record Strange Machine, I took the opportunity to finally check them out.
From the opening title track Stange Machine a few things are evident: these guys sound like veterans of this genre, and Siân Greenaway’s epic, soaring vocals are going to take center stage, I mean the woman can SING. Strange Machine rolls along with a heavy, yet catchy riff, courtesy of new guitarist Matt Noble and a rock-steady tempo, from founding drummer, and last original member Jake Mason. A hint of classic rock can be heard as well, but it’s Greenaway whose presence is most felt, as she immediately shows off her vocal dynamics and range, displaying it all through the verse and the ascending chorus. Stange Machine is a great album opener and serves as an emphatic mission statement for the record.
Greenaway‘s range and dynamics are displayed all over Stange Machine, with the charge and thrust of riff-rockers Over The Hills and Silver as both illustrate her powerful delivery, able to more than hold her own over Noble’s riffery along with Mason and bassist Dan Burchmore low end. As well, the doomy, chugging The Earth Spins, she’s able to effortlessly float back and forth between her forceful delivery in the verse and the more ethereal chorus. Burchmore’s rumbling bass and Noble’s bluesy guitar licks introduce the slow build of Teaching Carnal Sins, a fist-pumping, back-of-the-album rocker that Greenaway belts out with authority, while the band drop into some fairly crushing riffery before rolling back around to the catchy, bouncy verses.
But it’s the two slower, trippy-er songs Fade Into Fantasy and Psychedelic Expressway that are the album highlights for me, with Fade Into Fantasy being my favorite song on the album. The band lock into a slow, trippy groove as Greenaway floats above them, her voice intertwining perfectly with the band. By the time the song builds to its climax Greenaway moans and wails over the band displaying her massive range, as the song rolls to its epic conclusion.
Meanwhile, Psychedelic Expressway features some cool 60s-style, garage rock strumming from Noble, a trippy chorus from Greenaway, and a fucking flute. I’ve encountered this before; in fact, this is now my third Sleeping Shaman review that I unknowingly stumbled into an album featuring a flute. As I said before, if a band has the stones to pull out the flute, more power to them, but I’m sort of hoping this doesn’t become a trend in the genre. I’d personally leave the flutes to Ian Anderson. Nonetheless, my eye-roll at another record featuring a flute doesn’t diminish the fact this is a great, psychedelic song, and the flute only accentuates it.
Stange Machine closes with the riffy stomper Dead Woman Walking, giving the listener another chance to hear Greenaway do her thing with her band in full rock mode behind her. Stange Machine sounds good as well. It’s a well-produced, big, clear-sounding record, that highlights the skills of the individual band members, to say nothing of Greenaway’s voice.
I enjoyed Stange Machine, it’s a well-executed heavy, mildly psychedelic record featuring a band of rock-solid musicians, and a vocalist with some extremely impressive pipes, capable of carrying any of these songs, as well as accenting them with the variations in her delivery, going from full-on rock to ghost-like ethereal cry effortlessly. Alunah show they are worthy, modern successors to the genre-creating legends that came before them in their hometown of Birmingham, and you thought I’d make it through this review without mentioning Black Sabbath, and Judas Priest.  From: https://www.thesleepingshaman.com/reviews/a/alunah-strange-machine/

Plainsong - I'll Fly Away

This, the latest in the series of Elektra reissues from Man In The Moon Records, is quite a strange album in that from the title you’d expect a concept album built around the legend of Amelia Earhart, but it only accounts for a couple of songs herein.  Plainsong were a band born with great expectations. It was formed by Ian* Matthews (guitar, vocals) and Andy Roberts (guitar, vocals) with the lesser known Dave Richards (keyboards) and Bob Ronga (bass). The album artwork doesn’t actually credit them.
I say there were great expectations. A guy I knew at school (who was a fan of all things Fairport) thought they could be the new Beatles (perhaps I exaggerate a bit there). But they were pretty good but didn’t stick around to live up to the early promise.
It’s a real mixed bag. Opening track For The Second Time is gorgeous and heart-breaking. It’s a Matthews’ song and utterly poignant. Every-time I hear him sing “For the second time in year I was broken” I feel my throat tighten. Maybe that’s because I can directly relate to it, but that aside it’s a really beautiful and moving song. The mood is immediately shattered by the next song Yo-Yo Man. It’s an upbeat country song, and in its own way perfectly fine. You could argue it is a fine example of the band’s versatility, but I find the contrast with the opening song jarring.
So what of Amelia Earhart, who is the heroine of the piece, you ask. There’s a trilogy of songs here: Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight and The True Story Of Amelia Earhart’s Last Night linked by I’ll Fly Away (the same song that appears on the O, Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack performed by Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch). What the two songs about Earhart do is present competing narratives; the first is the story about her taking off from New Guinea, with Captain Frederick Noonan, as part of her attempt to circumnavigate the globe flying West to East and disappearing without trace. It’s the story I knew. The second suggests they landed somewhere and were captured, imprisoned and presumably died at the hands of the Japanese, the two pilots being spotted as prisoners by a stevedore in Saipan.
Last flight… was written by a songwriter named David McEnery who put it out in the late 1930s. It’s a strange song, because you’d expect it to be a lament but it’s a jaunty number that you could almost expect to be performed at a square dance:
“Happy landings Amelia Earhart/Farewell first lady of the air”
The linking song I’ll Fly Away is a simple arrangement of mandolin, handclaps and voices but while it is much the same interpretation as the Krauss/Welch version it sounds really strange to hear male voices singing it. Once I got over the disconsternation of this it works really well.
The True Story… initially seems too wordy but it really worked some magic on me because after a few listens I came to really like it. Its feel is much sadder, recognising that it is about two people who died, and a complete contrast to Last flight… musically as well in the narrative. Even The Guiding Light follows Earhart and is really intriguing. It appears to be a farewell to Fairport Convention, but one tinged with bitterness and regret.
“I went up on the ledge/And didn’t find a soul around…”
For those unfamiliar with Fairport Meet On The Ledge has become their anthem and closes the Cropredy Festival each year.
The chorus goes:
Meet on the ledge, we’re gonna meet on the ledge/When my time is up I’m gonna see all my friends
On the original version Matthews shared the vocals with Sandy Denny. Here he sings:
“Now we’re falling over all these chiefs/And running out of braves”
and later in the song:
“Send me home with a country song/And leave it ringing round”. Yet while this suggests that the parting was less than sweet sorrow, time has healed the wounds and they’ve played together in various groups and Matthews has appeared at Cropredy. But clearly the country direction that Matthews followed with Southern Comfort and later on with this record shows he was very much at odds with the direction Fairport went in. The song is the rockiest on the album and finishes with an excellent guitar solo, I assume played by Andy Roberts.
It’s followed by another gorgeous Matthews composition Side Roads. Another melancholic song but again simply beautiful. Possibly addressed to the same lover that For The Second Time is about, it again features some lovely guitar from Andy Roberts and is probably my favourite song on the album.
The album ends with a song by Jerry Yester and Judy Henske titled Raider. This is taken from one of the notable reissues of 2016, their album Farewell Aldebaran. It got high praise in the reissue thread elsewhere on this site. This is a driving, menacing version completely at odds with the original. An excellent album closer. Earlier in the album there’s another Matthews’ composition Call The Tune which could also be a Fairport farewell, but less obviously. Again it demonstrates Matthews’ songwriting capability with a strong melody and literate lyrics.
The remaining two songs are Diesel On My Tail and Louise. Diesel could be a Merle Haggard song (though it is credited to someone just given as J. Fagan). It seems to me to be the inspiration for Steven Spielberg’s first film Duel. It was the title track for a Bluegrass album by a couple of guys called Jim and Jesse, released in 1967. It’s about a guy in a car being chased by a diesel truck:
“While I’m trembling a’shaking he’s blowin’ on the horn/So close I could steal his licence plate”
The Plainsong version is less bluegrass and more a straight country rock version. Louise is a song I know sung by Bonnie Raitt, and the arrangement here is the same as hers, though tougher sounding with the male vocals.
Lastly I’d like to mention the cover art. At first glance it’s somewhat unprepossessing, but then I started noticing some of the details, the lettering, the borders and it’s a fine art-deco pastiche, with a design echoing the Japanese Rising Sun flag and is all in all is rather excellent. It’s credited to Seabrook/Graves/Aslett – names that mean nothing to me. So what we have is a mixed bag. The strange thing is that the strongest songs are the Ian Matthews compositions, but only five of the eleven are his. The sad aspect is that the band didn’t last. No doubt at the time they felt (may have been pressured into) getting the album out and getting on the road. In 1972 the turnover of album releases was at a far higher rate than today. A gap of two years between releases was almost unheard of.  From: https://theafterword.co.uk/plainsong-in-search-of-amelia-earhart/

Suddenly, Tammy! - Live at Rafters, West Chester, PA 1993

Suddenly, Tammy! was formed by siblings Jay and Beth Sorrentino and friend Ken Heitmueller in Lancaster in the early ’90s. By 1992, the band had gained national attention. It later signed to Warner Brothers and opened for acts such as The Cranberries and Jeff Buckley. But after the deal with Warner Brothers went south, the band decided to take a break.
It ended up being a pretty long break — 23 years, to be exact. That hiatus will come to an end Friday night, when all three original members take the stage at the Chameleon Club during Lancaster Roots & Blues. These days, band members are spread out throughout the country. Beth lives in Los Angeles, Jay is in Austin, Texas, and Ken is in New York City.
The Sorrentinos grew up together in Mountville. Jay, the elder sibling, started playing drums before he reached double digits. When Beth started playing piano, they naturally started playing together. “We were kind of playing in a band together all of our lives without even knowing it,” Beth says. “It was kind of forming all along.” When they got older, they initially played in separate bands. But after Jay heard Beth play with Ken, he got involved in their project, too. Ken worked as the sound engineer at the Chameleon Club, often pulling double duty by working the sound board at the band’s shows.
The band’s earnest music blended pop and rock with upbeat enthusiasm. Beth’s sweet vocals deepened the charm. Suddenly, Tammy! embraced the DIY ethos of the time, making their own T-shirts, copying their own tapes, and hand-coloring the artwork on their cassettes. They gained a following locally in Lancaster, but also in Philadelphia (thanks to radio station WXPN), and later in New York City.
The Sorrentino siblings both point to the same moment when trying to pinpoint when they made it big. One day in 1992, Jay received a call from Karl Heitmueller, Ken’s brother who managed BBC Records in downtown Lancaster. He just received a fresh copy of College Music Journal. “He called me and he was like, ‘You’re not even going to believe it. You’re on the cover of CMJ,’ ” Jay says. Jay’s response? “Shut up.” It was a big deal. The magazine was a trusted resource for college radio stations and music junkies alike. “People followed that magazine like gospel,” Beth says.
The Sorrentinos had put the number for their family’s landline on their cassettes. After their CMJ cover debuted, the phone started ringing “off the hook,” Beth says. More success followed. They earned gigs as the opening band for major national acts. At a New York City show opening for The Cranberries, famed producer and industry executive Lenny Waronker of Warner Brothers records showed up to scope out the band — a rare occurrence for an executive of his stature. They signed with the label, which released the band’s 1995 sophomore album “We Get There When We Do.” It later self-released its third album. Suddenly, Tammy! played its last show before hiatus at the Tin Angel in Philadelphia. Beth and Ken moved to New York City, and Jay opened a recording studio in a Gothic revival church in downtown Columbia in 1999.
Beth has played separately with Jay and Ken as duos on occasion since the Tin Angel performance. But the trio hasn’t performed together since. The band was encouraged to reunite at Lancaster Roots and Blues after festival founder Rich Ruoff ran into Ken at an event last year. All three members had been hoping for a reunion for some time, it turns out. “I thought, you know what, this might not be such a bad time,” Beth says. “None of us are getting any younger.” Suddenly, Tammy! will include songs from each album in its setlist. The band plans to present the music chronologically, too. “Plant Me,” “Hard Lessons” and “Rushmore” are among the songs Jay is most looking forward to playing. They’ve been practicing solo in their respective cities and will have one day to rehearse in the Sorrentinos’ father’s basement before the show — a fitting location, Beth says. “That’s where we all started,” Beth says. “We all started in that basement.” They’re excited to see family, friends and fans at the Chameleon Club. But most of all, they’re just excited to be making music in unison again. “It really is magical when the three of us play together,” Beth says.  From: https://lancasteronline.com/features/suddenly-tammy-reflects-on-career-before-reunion-show-at-roots-blues/article_ee0d9a70-353d-11e9-86e1-939f470ed30a.html