Black Sabbath - Sabotage - Side 1

01 - Hole in the Sky
02 - Don’t Start (Too Late)
03 - Symptom of the Universe
04 - Megalomania 

Sabotage is definitely a bit of an outlier in Black Sabbath’s catalogue. There’s an impressive commitment to keep pushing at rock’s boundaries, and for the most part it still sounds great. But it’s a much more inward-looking album than its predecessors, the urge to address the world’s ills now diminished by both the circumstances of its creation and the band’s personal demons (fuelled by various drug and alcohol addictions). Instead, we get recurrent themes of mental dissolution, impotent rage and fantasies of escape, slowly going crazy in search of peace of mind. While I’m often wary of placing too much emphasis on an album’s external context – because ultimately, that’s not what I’m listening to – Sabbath were clearly not in the happiest frame of mind when they recorded Sabotage.
For a start, the band had to contend with months of soul-sapping legal proceedings before they even got round to making it, with their original manager Jim Simpson suing them for wrongful dismissal. Not only did this effectively stop them from playing live for eight months, but the court settled in Simpson’s favour, with Sabbath forced to pay compensation to him. On top of this, they discovered that their current manager Patrick Meehan had been funnelling most of their royalties into his own bank account. Geezer Butler has said, “We were literally in the studio, trying to record, and we’d be signing all these affidavits and everything. That’s why it’s called Sabotage – because we felt that the whole process was just being totally sabotaged by all these people ripping us off.” (Another reason for the title was because part of the album had to be recorded again after the master tapes were accidentally wiped.)
It was also almost inevitable that at some point the band would reach a creative crossroads. Iommi wanted to keep experimenting in the studio and investigate new directions, while Ozzy hankered after the early years of knocking it out in a few days and then hitting the road. The spectre of the emerging American FM radio sound also looms over Sabotage as the band’s popularity in the US continued to mushroom (my favourite example of the apparent disconnect between Sabbath’s proto-doom metal and the stadium rock culture they were increasingly living inside is their performance at the California Jam show in 1974 – Ozzy implores the audience, “C’mon, let’s have a party!” while Iommi stands in front of a giant rainbow grinding out the opening chords to ‘Children of the Grave’). All of which makes for an album that’s reaching out to more mainstream rock tastes (without fatally over-balancing yet) while also trying to pull new rabbits out of the hat – the fact that it’s as enjoyable, and at times genre-defining, as it is shows how imaginative and resilient Sabbath were even under considerable duress.  From: https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/at-breaking-point-black-sabbaths-sabotage-revisited/

The Tea Club - Say Yes

The Tea Club is a band about feeling. Their music is earnest and impassioned, combining elements of art-rock, folk, electronica, and romanticism to create a distinctive sound that’s all their own. The band is fronted by the songwriting team of brothers Patrick and Dan McGowan whose unorthodox guitar playing and fervent singing form the core of the group’s unique style. Bassist Jamie Wolff, keyboardist Joe Dorsey, and drummer Dan Monda complete the ensemble.
The band has recorded four albums with renowned producer Tim Gilles at Big Blue Meenie Studios in Jersey City, NJ. They’ve performed hundreds of shows, supported Haken, Bent Knee, and Thank You Scientist, and have done multiple U.S. national tours and parts of Canada.
If/When, their fifth and latest record, is daringly personal, exploring themes of death, failure, new life, and hope. Complex and cerebral, unguarded and intimate, If/When is a thoroughly heart-felt addition to the band’s immersive catalog. Heralded by Prog magazine as “Challenging, modern, and frequently scintillating…” The Tea Club continue to explore new ways of communicating deep feeling through their art.  From: https://www.progstock.com/2021/artists-schedule/2021-artists/the-tea-club/

Sally Rogers - Lady Margaret

Sally Rogers began her career as a full-time touring musician in 1979, after encouragement from Stan Rogers, the legendary Canadian singer-songwriter.  That was followed by an invitation from Garrison Keillor to appear on A Prairie Home Companion.  She appeared more than a dozen times on that show, which launched her performing career.  Her travels have since taken her to Europe, China, Hungary and Poland, England and Scotland, and across the United States. Sally has released thirteen albums, not including several collaborative projects with other artists. Her first album, The Unclaimed Pint, has stood the test of time and continues to be a big seller. Her songs are included in the Unitarian Hymnal, the Quaker songbook, Rise Up Singing, Rise Again and both national music textbook series. Several of her songs are considered to be folk music classics. Although much of Rogers’ time is spent teaching music in the public schools and being an artist-in-residence these days, she continues to perform in concerts as opportunities arise.  Her gorgeous singing voice, boundless energy and good humor are welcomed from coast to coast.  From: https://ctartsalliance.org/2020/03/09/meet-our-members-sally-rogers/

Thumpermonkey - I Don't Know If This Is A Matter For Wardrobe Or Hairdressing

Thumpermonkey Lives! - We Bake Our Bread Beneath Her Holy Fire (Genin/Tooting Bizarre) - In which an unnoticed Sarf London band, twinkling away doing their good and frankly slightly odd stuff down there in the badlands explodes into an outrageous supernova, outshining half the sky. This album, these six epic songs, have ideas way beyond their station: huge depth, big sound, immaculate arrangements, and a big, big voice. It's a lot of things, and greater than the sum of its parts: unashamed proper prog, lifted, by an avant sensibility, out of cheesy traps, yet swapping the harsher elements of experimental and avant rock for something more melodic, for refined guitars and real singing. Main man Michael Woodman's downright classy voice is like a polished Peter Hammill, all power and in tune and spot-on vibrato. That fine voice is delivering twisted, complex melodies and equally twisted, happily ambiguous lyrics, the combination is thrilling. 
There's nothing quite like Thumpermonkey Lives! but I can guess where they're coming from: they're the English Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, a more experimental Van Der Graaf Generator, they've got some of the headbending melodies of Time Of Orchids. They've been threatening this for a while, with a great debut album and much time spent hothousing their talents in their Immersion Composition Society lodge (you what? Go on, Google it, I dare you) - but We Bake Our Bread Beneath Her Holy Fire is still a surprise - a classic, even. Stuffed to the gills with possibly unconscious references to good things - hints of Yes, moments of Cardiacs-like odd sounds, loads of Gentle Giant - crikey. Throw in some Alex Harvey and Bowie and The Associates and Bobby Conn, a touch of Melvins if you like. It's challenging only in that the melodies are thick on the ground and take you off in many directions, but that the complex mathyness underlying much of the songs is made easier on the ear by Woodman's voice and the warm, clarity of the arrangements. I can see both followers of hard-boiled avant-rock and fans of more traditional prog bands like Porcupine Tree getting this, and if Thumpermonkey Lives! ahem, live a bit longer, the big prog festival organisers could well be beating a path to their door.  From: https://thumpermonkey.bandcamp.com/album/we-bake-our-bread-beneath-her-holy-fire 

Royal Thunder - Blue

The almost 10-minute "Blue", which comes with an opening that may remind you of "Cherub Rock", is one of the more impressively vast tracks on Royal Thunder's debut LP, CVI, out now on Relapse. The Atlanta, Ga., band's fronted by Miny Parsonz, a singer and bassist who really sings: the quartet's Southern hard rock riffs are there, as is a deep, doomy atmosphere (they tap into post-punk and schizo psychedelia on this one), but time again she's the one who brings it all together-- and over-the-top-- with her sun-cracked, Robert Plant-style howl.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/13723-royal-thunder-blue/ 

Old & In The Way - Midnight Moonlight

When not playing with The Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia liked to dabble in side projects including stints with his own Jerry Garcia Band, The New Riders Of The Purple Sage, gigging with Merle Saunders, recording with John Wales and guesting on albums by the likes of Ornette Coleman, David Bromberg, Brewer And Shipley, Bob Dylan, CSN&Y, Jefferson Airplane and many others. But Garcia was also a member of a bona-fide “supergroup.” When most people hear the term “supergroup,” bands like Cream, Blind Faith, Derek & The Dominos, CSN&Y and The Traveling Wilbury’s come to mind.
Garcia’s supergroup was Old & In The Way, a bluegrass collective of great pedigree featuring Jerry Garcia on banjo and vocals, David Grisman on mandolin, Peter Rowan on guitar, Vassar Clements on fiddle and John Kahn on bass. (John Hartford sat in with the band before Clements came on board.) Rowan and Grisman played together with ex-Byrd Clarence White in the bluegrass group Muleskinner, and also in the group Earth Opera.  Grisman also played with The Even Dozen Jug Band and guested on The Grateful Dead’s American Beauty album. Rowan and Clements were members of Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys, and John Kahn played with Muleskinner, Howard Wales and Garcia.
Garcia formed Old & In The Way in 1973 as a vehicle to play bluegrass banjo. The group grew out of living room jams between Garcia, Grisman and Rowan who all lived near each other in Marin County, California. Together they would gig around locally with John Kahn in tow and John Hartford on fiddle. After Hartford could not commit to a tour, the group called on Vassar Clements to take his place. They were together for a total of nine months, and the Old & In The Way album was recorded in October of 1973 in front of an audience at The Boarding House in San Francisco, where most of the group’s discography was recorded.
Their one-off eponymously titled album was subsequently released on The Grateful Dead’s Round record label in 1975 featuring today’s song of the day, “Midnight Moonlight,” which was penned by Peter Rowan. The album also included their bluegrass cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses,” a version of the Peter Rowan-penned New Riders’ tune “Panama Red,” and traditional tunes like the Delmore Brothers’ “Pig In A Pen” and Carter Stanley’s “White Dove.”
With great harmonies and instrumental interplay, Old & In The Way’s old timey, good-feeling vibe struck a chord with Grateful Dead heads, making it one of the best selling bluegrass albums of all time. And indeed, several songs from the album have gone on to become standards of the Bluegrass repertoire including “Midnight Moonlight,” “Wild Horses” and the album’s title track, “Old & In The Way.”  From: https://internetfm.com/song-of-the-day-midnight-moonlight-by-old-in-the-way/

Raze The Maze - Letters From The Parking Lot

With their second album as Raze The Maze, former MoeTar musical part­ners Moorea Dickason and Tarik Ragab raise their game on all fronts. 7am Dream squeezes 10 songs into 31 minutes. The duo plant their feet in pro­gress­ive pop land; the mood is upbeat, the sound is snappy, yet the catchy hooks are car­ried on odd time sig­na­tures. The pro­duc­tion is a notice­able advance­ment from their self-titled 2019 release, feel­ing warmer and more cohes­ive, with rich multi-layered har­mon­ies. Dickason’s vocal scoops in the title track and By Design recall the style of Kate Bush or XTC’s Andy Part­ridge, while Let­ters From The Park­ing Lot spits out frantic gui­tar licks that sug­gest the influ­ence of Zappa. Per­sist­ence is all tum­bling melodic runs, played by Paul Han­son on bas­soon, and stut­ter­ing syn­co­pated beats from drum­mer Terry Branam that inter­twine to cre­ate a poly­rhythmic puzzle. It’s densely packed stuff, where there’s always a lot hap­pen­ing in the arrange­ments even when Ragab’s melod­ies could fit in a pop song. The brisk run­ning time is decept­ive: 7am Dream is full to the brim with ideas to tickle the cerebrum.  From: https://www.pressreader.com/uk/prog/20221125/283107073013057?srsltid=AfmBOooCpWoWfV1wR00asZlUzbOcQvkhHKr3DuN1WqcpRPfm6ndSHlbe

Nil Lara - How Was I To Know

Nil Lara is a Cuban-American songwriter with Venezuelan roots who has just blown me away. I read about him recently on Matt Nathanson’s celebrity playlist (of all places), sought him out, and immediately loved what I heard. Lara is soulful and passionate and sings like his heart is burning. Add in heavy doses of warm & layered Latin percussion, traditional Cuban and Venezuelan string instruments, and his soaring chants and vocals (in a combination of Spanish and English) – and I was hooked. It’s been named by some “Number 2 on my list of Best Albums By People That 99.5% of the World Has Never Heard Of.” His 1996 self-titled album was critically acclaimed, but never received the popular attention it deserves. I would completely go see him live, and surely dance myself sore, but he seems to be on indefinite hiatus. Download these, and buy the album, though – sheer fabulousness.  From: http://www.fuelfriendsblog.com/2006/07/19/world-music-wednesday-nil-lara/ 

Melissa Auf Der Maur - Followed The Waves

You probably know her as the bassist from Hole and the Smashing Pumpkins, but Melissa Auf der Maur’s career has extended far beyond the rock songs of the 1990s. Luckily, in Courtney Love and Billy Corgan she had two dedicated role models. “Courtney and Billy were both very different,” she told BP. “But I have so much respect for both of them. My time with Hole was more character definition, creating me as a person, and then my crash course in music, one on one, was with the Pumpkins, who refined and defined my musicianship.
“Billy in particular: his level of efficiency and musicianship and his commitment to art was pretty remarkable. He was a real mentor in that way. With Courtney it’s a different female bond, simply because there aren’t that many women in the rock landscape, so we have a real unspoken loyalty to each other based on that fact alone. We’re on a similar mission to put a female perspective out there. With Courtney it enhanced my commitment as a woman to keep on rocking!” Interestingly, Auf der Maur never wrote songs or riffs on the bass. Instead she'd pick up a Gibson SG, run it through a Fender Blues Deluxe, and write using a clean, slightly effected sound. “It's a disgrace to the bass player in me, but it's just hard to write on the bass. Playing power chords on a guitar is much easier.”
Auf der Maur spent five years with Hole, but it wasn't all wild parties and arena tours. In fact, two and a half of those years were spent in the studio, writing and recording the band's swansong; Celebrity Skin. It was a vastly ambitious – and vastly expensive – album. “I was there for every minute of every day. It was a very demanding process. We ended up spending millions of dollars.” The album emerged, eventually, to modest success, and there was the inevitable tour to accompany it. But by that time, it was clear to everyone that the whole thing was running out of steam. “It sort of felt like the time to go. Courtney was getting into films and I didn't really know what the future was gonna be.”
Within a week of leaving Hole Auf der Maur received a phone call from Billy Corgan, telling her that his bassist D'arcy Wretzky had quit the Pumpkins and he needed a replacement. “It was just a very dramatic coincidence. Billy said, ‘You're gonna be in my band!’ And I couldn't say no, because it was a dream come true. It was fulfilling a teenage fantasy, but it was also the best music lesson of my life. I knew it was only for one year, because they told me they were splitting up. And knowing I was going to be taught their back catalogue was incredible.”
When describing her own music, and specifically her use of chorus and reverb effects, Auf der Maur likens it to “a beautiful liquid poured over a thorny, rough-edged base.” She thinks of her bass playing in similarly imaginative terms. The bass, she suggests, is an intrinsically feminine instrument, since it performs a nurturing role at the heart of every band: “I call it the mother of all instruments, because it has to be sensitive to everything else. It has to respond to everything equally – the drums, the vocal melody, the guitar part. It has to be the glue. Females play that role in families, so it's natural for them to do the same in bands. It's about being sensitive, putting your ego aside, and picking up on the subtleties. Women are good at that. Do I play bass better because I'm a woman? No. But I think I honour the role of the bass player more naturally.”  From: https://www.guitarworld.com/features/melissa-auf-der-maur-looks-back-on-a-life-in-rock 

Love - August / I'm With You / Good Times / Nothing

A while ago, I came across a description of the quandary Arthur Lee found himself in after releasing his undisputed masterwork, 1967’s “Forever Changes.” Although I can’t recall the source, it’s since come to stand as my lasting image of the man. In 1968, Lee walked out the door, stepped onto the lawn, and turned to wave goodbye. Many years after shutting the door, we took a peek outside and there he was, still on the lawn, still waving good-bye.
“Forever Changes” is a curious case. Above and beyond the truly remarkable music, it came to represent the dangers inherent in an artist creating a definitive statement. Lee was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he was going to die after he completed the record, so he made sure he said everything he needed to say, and communicated it all with striking urgency. To top it all off, he somehow found a way to sum up everything and its mother with the brilliant closer, “You Set The Scene.”
But Lee didn’t die. (Not for a while, anyway). So, instead, he killed the band, erecting in its place a new version of Love. The new band had more testicles than the older, more classic incarnation, keeping Lee’s unmistakably skewed poetic perversity intact but opting to follow the Cream/Hendrix template (Lee was old buds with Jimi, having been behind the boards the first time he set foot in a recording studio). Gone was the orchestrated, almost show tune-like influence of Bryan Maclean’s songwriting, which leant a mesmerizing tension to the greatness of those first three records. Without Maclean around to keep things freakishly diverse, Love progressively became a progressive concern.
This may be the very reason the Love story with their fan base ended here. Along with the death of the classic line-up came the disappearance from their music of so many of the unique signifiers their fans had come to love. The baroque, jazzy arrangements, delicate Spanish accents, and touches of MOR sensibility that brought out the depth in their approach — all of it, gone. Instead, along with old friends and previous bandmates Jay Donnellan (lead guitar), Frank Fayad (bass), and George Suranovich (drums, with Drachen Theaker guest-whacking on three tracks), the subtlety of their previous sound is smashed to smithereens with a powerhouse, virtuoso approach that greets the idea of space and restraint with utter contempt, cramming solos and drum fills into every last inch of tape. Suranovich, especially, is all over the damn place, sounding every bit like a musician with everything to prove.
So conclusive was “Forever Changes” in the Lee canon that most see it as the last stop on the Love train. That’s simply not the case. Although it is indisputably their best record, and their days as a great band were certainly numbered, the flashes of inspiration to come were enough to see them through to the end of the decade. However, “Four Sail” is the last time it all came together full-throttle for Arthur. This thoroughly overlooked gem stands as their final release before the magic of their early days had been fully shaken off.
After Lee had assembled the new band, they entered a makeshift studio in a Los Angeles warehouse and recorded three LPs worth of material. Elektra Records were owed one more record before the expiration of their contract, and “Four Sail” contains the ten tracks that Elektra hand-picked. (The remainder came out on the Blue Thumb label four months later as the intermittently brilliant double-LP “Out Here.”) The album’s title is a cynical double entendre, referring both to their jumping ship from Elektra and the product-minded mentality of the music industry.
There are many words one could use to describe Lee’s new direction, but “product” definitely isn’t one of them. There isn’t a bad song here. Kicking off the proceedings with sledgehammer ferocity is lead-off track “August,” which in a way is a kitchen-sink template for everything late-era Love had to offer. A mysterious Spanish-style guitar intro leads in to an almost laughably bombastic power-trio assault; delicate, folk-style verses; and a crazy jam-out middle section that features drumming so busily fill-intensive that Neil Peart himself would beg for it to be taken down a notch. “August” is one of Love’s best songs, and proof positive that they hadn’t said it all with “Forever Changes.” If anything, they now had an entirely new vocabulary in which to articulate their life and times and overdriven Marshall stacks were certainly more era-appropriate by this point than flutes, horns, and strings.  From: https://irom.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/on-second-thought-love-four-sail-1969/

Deap Vally - Julian

A rock & roll duo from California, Deap Vally deliver a primal mix of hard rock stomp, glam rock swagger, and greasy blues riffs, like the White Stripes colliding with the Black Keys after time traveling to the 1970s and back. With just guitar, vocals, and drums, the group manage to sound full-bodied while possessing a deadly sense of cool, a healthy degree of sonic punch, and a deadpan sense of humor in their braggadocious lyrics. Deap Vally made a fiery debut with 2013's Sistrionix, upped their game on 2016's Femejism, and after looking for the right label for their music, they returned in 2021 with the polished but muscular Marriage. 
Deap Vally formed in Los Angeles after guitarist/howler Lindsey Troy, who had been performing as a solo singer and songwriter, took a crocheting class taught in a San Fernando shop by drummer Julie Edwards, who had been in a group called the Pity Party. The two swapped CDs from their respective projects and soon decided to jam together, blocking out plans for a heavy rock band with strong rhythmic grooves. They began rehearsing as a three-piece, but when their bassist started spending too much time with her other projects, they decided to try working as a duo.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/deap-vally-mn0002961957#biography 

 

Jumping Jack - All in the Sky

An album like this really puts things in perspective. When listening to mid-late(r) era Metallica, like the black album, it's hard not to hear something targeted for nothing but cheap, mass radio play. Now we have Jumping Jack, who take a lot of aspects from that Metallica period but pair it up with a stoner rock type of sound, and it sounds pretty damn solid.
This isn't a Metallica tribute album or anything, the influences are just quite obvious. Along with that, it takes some more mainstream grunge a la Pearl Jam, and puts it through a Black Label Society type filter. The mix creates this comfortable zone of radio rock with mainstream appeal meets dirty heavy metal. The riffs are equal parts catchy and heavy, while the songs drive hard, yet have an incredibly accessible sound. This is really comparable to Queens Of The Stone Age, certainly not in sound, but in the appeal it has; easily digestible and radio friendly, yet with a good amount of integrity.  From: https://metalstorm.net/pub/review.php?review_id=10521&page=1 

22 Brides - Time Stands Still

Libby and Carrie Johnson started singing together when they were children. They went to the Berklee College of Music in Boston before moving to New York City in 1983. In 1992, the sisters formed the indie folk duo 22 Brides, and in 1993 they put out the self-released eight-song CD Selling Fruit in Cairo. The band name 22 Brides comes from an Indian folk tale they heard when they were younger. After being spotted during one of their monthly gigs at CBGB's Gallery in New York, the duo signed with indie label Zero Hour Records in 1994. On June 22, 1994, they released their self-titled debut, consisting of remixed songs from their self-released effort plus four new songs. 
On the year-long tour for 22 Brides, and in advance of their second album, Beaker, 22 Brides expanded into a four-member band with John Skehan (guitar, bass) and Ned Stroh (drums) joining Libby Johnson (bass, keyboards, vocals) and Carrie Johnson (guitar, vocals). Produced by Adam Lasus, the album had a more highly produced feel than the folk influences of the band's debut. Following a Zero Hour distribution deal with Universal Records, Beaker was released on Zero Hour / Universal. In 1997, Zero Hour released the 22 Brides EP Blazes of Light, which was a sampler of sorts, with songs from their first two albums, "Purified" from their upcoming third album, and a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah".
The band's third LP, Demolition Day, was released in 1998, with a return to the more intimate sound of 22 Brides. In an effort to get back to their folk-pop harmonizing roots, the band worked again with Daniel Wise and recorded their vocal tracks live and switched to a trio formation, with Libby Johnson on bass and vocals, Carrie Johnson on guitar and vocals, and Bill Dobrow on drums. The first single from the album "Another Distant Light" debuted on WNNX (99X) out of Atlanta.  
In 1996, Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti introduced characters based on Libby and Carrie Johnson in their comic book series Ash. They then created a four-book miniseries, 22 Brides, published by Event Comics, revolving around the characters based on the sisters, with the first issue published on February 7, 1996. Palmiotti later created a spinoff series, Painkiller Jane.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libby_Johnson 

Chris Isaak – There She Goes

In last weeks Top Ten list I made the assertion that Chris Isaak’s 1995 album, Forever Blue, is one of the most underrated albums of the 90’s.  Known best for 1989 smash hit “Wicked Games”, Isaak has had a surprisingly enduring career in making quality music, even if he is less and less recognized.  It is certainly time for Chris Isaak to get more recognition of LxL, rather than just a passing reference in a Top Ten list.
I think if one quality could be pinpointed that sets Forever Blue apart from most of the rest of 90’s music is the sheer timelessness of the sound Isaak was able to achieve.  If you just throw on Forever Blue for someone not acquainted with Isaak’s work and ask them what era the album is from, they might answer anywhere from the 50’s to present day.  His electric guitar work hearkens back to many of the country rock noodlers of decades long past, and Forever Blue seems to be the album he attained perfection on in that regard.  The tonal qualities different artists get out of the same instrument is astounding, and Chris Isaak is one of those artists that defies logic when you hear him go to work.  The atmospheric electric work on “Graduation Day” and “There She Goes” are prime examples of this mastery.
Another factor setting Forever Blue apart from the rest of Isaak’s very strong catalog is the thematic cohesiveness of bitterness, lost love and a general attitude of eff you.  When researching this review, I actually came across something interesting I didn’t know before.  In the liner notes for Forever Blue, Isaak included a letter to an anonymous former love interest who apparently left him.  This is not a rare spark for a musician’s best work, but it doesn’t make this experience any less effective in lighting a fire in Isaak.  You can hear the anger in more rambunctious tunes like “Goin’ Nowhere” and “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing”.  But, you can also feel the pain in the quieter moments of songs like “Changed Your Mind”.
Forever Blue is the personification of the five stages of grief, leaving out only “acceptance”.  Isaak does legitimately emote his feeling that he will not be able to let this betrayal go.  In 40 minutes Chris Isaak describes the end of a relationship to perfection.  If you don’t “get” the album now, wait until you go through a rough end to a relationship and you may find a little more appreciation.  I love this album, and hope it finds a new audience someday soon by way of some late-career gem from Isaac.  From: https://littlebylisten.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/retro-review-chris-isaak-forever-blue/

Igorrr - Live BetiZFest 2018

 Igorrr - Live BetiZFest 2018 - Part 1

 

 Igorrr - Live BetiZFest 2018 - Part 2

 

Ben Serna-Grey: You incorporate a lot of different styles into your compositions but your personal sound stays cohesive and authentic. How do you approach your songwriting when it comes to combining all these stylistic elements? 

Gautier Serre: Combining all those elements is natural for me as it is basically the way I want to hear the music. Some styles of music are awesome to combine with their opposite, like for example Baroque and Death Metal, those are very opposite styles and they work together a bit like the Yin and the Yang. One is light and easy and the other one is dark and brutal, they articulate each other very well and can be used together if you find the good balance. Combining genres is not the main goal, combining genres is the result of the main thing, which is to use contrast in music. The contrast in music is very helpful to underline the message, you can contrast a genre of music with its opposite and it will make it feel stronger, like with noise, the noise will never feel so noisy when you contrast it with silence, and on the other way around, the silence will never feel so silent when you contrast it with noise. You can check the track Parpaing on the album Spirituality and Distortion, Parpaing is a very heavy track with no concessions at all. Full brutality. George Fisher delivered extremely brutal and heavy vocals, Sylvain Bouvier did a impressive performance at the drums. It is indisputably loud and powerful. Martyn Clément as well brought a absolute killing guitar riffing on it. Here comes the contrasts to articulate the music.
With Parpaing, and its ridiculously heavy vibes, the perfect contrast that can be given to that is the lightest music possible, a 8-bits Chiptune music, that’s why I set up this track in 3 parts, it starts with simple and almost normal death metal, as heavy as it might be, then I contrast the music with its opposite, the 8-bits Chiptune, and then the death metal comes back, slapping and killing the 8-bits Chiptune music. It has been pretty clear in my mind of how this track should be from the beginning, but one day, I tried, just for fun, to let go another George Fisher verse, not on the death metal this time but on the Chiptune, I felt like this was it, this was the perfect music I was searching for, the perfect link, the absolute combination of sounds. Death metal has no wish to sound like 8-bits Chiptune music at all, and 8-bits Chiptune music has no intention to sound like death metal at all, that’s why each genre has plenty of space to fit with each other.

You also use a lot of micro-rhythmic and microtonal shifting within a line. Is this something you began doing deliberately or did it come more organically for you?

As you said, it’s something which comes like organically, I would even say instinctively. Music is a matter of emotion, when you create music, you express what you feel, or what you want to feel. The best example which comes into my mind now is on Downgrade Desert, at the end of the track, on the last part of it, there is a bend on one note of the guitar floating on the blast beat, a bend from down to up, which passes through all the micro possible tones from one note to another, this makes you feel like your heart is going up and down and your whole body is following it, it’s almost a physical sensation, it’s made in purpose, at some points, those musical effects brings you out of the usual musical rules where all the notes has a precise name and should sounds in tune with the A 440Hz. Microtonal helps to feel a bit out of this for a moment, while micro-rhythmic, specially with the breakcore parts helps to reach a very detailed work and vision on the sound,  so for those who are interested in details in music, there is a insane amount of work on this over all the Igorrr albums. Some things I’m sure to be the only one to hear, but makes me smile.

What are some of your influences—musicians, books, art, etc? 

I have many musical influences, coming from Bach, Cannibal Corpse, Chopin, Meshuggah, Beethoven, Agustín Barrios Mangoré, Mr.Bungle, Taraf de Haïdouks, Aphex Twin, Sepultura, Mayhem, Domenico Scarlatti or Gabi Lunca, again extremely various and different artists, all beyond amazing, but this is just a very small part of my influences, I’m listening tons of very different music since my childhood so I have a heavy and diverse musical background. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about books, I got a kind of hyper activity disorder, so I’m not able to focus long enough to read a book or at least having enough patience to get into a book, this sucks, because books looks awesome and it’s frustrating not to be able to really read one. 
Except music and video, I’m not really much going further into art, I’m more a nature man, I live in the countryside with my girlfriend and I’m fascinated by wild nature and the Mediterranean fauna and flora, this is what I do during the short moments when I’m out of music, learning the infinite complexity and speechless creativity of nature, which can be seen as the finest Art ever. 

What kind of music did you grow up with? 

I grew up with parents which are listening to a music which I dislike very very much : Chanson Française (French Chanson). I’m not interested in lyrics in music, and Chanson Française is like 90% of lyrics and a musical support just to help the lyrics, plus the music is usually made there  in a manner that I find demagogic and fake. I’m not sure that helped me very much to develop Igorrr, but on my personal parcours, I grew up with Korn, Nirvana, Pantera, Metallica and Morbid Angel for the metal/rock part, also with Apex Twin, Squarepusher, Venetian Snares or Bogdan Raczynski for the electronic part, and Bach, Chopin and Mozart for the classical part, plus some really popular bands which I like pretty much after all like Dire Straits, Jean Michel Jarre or Muse. I didn’t grow up in one single kind of music, I have always been hungry of something else, curious of something else because I always had this feeling that something is missing, something which I’m creating in Igorrr now, like to finally hear the music I’ve always been searching for. 

Is there anyone in particular you’d like to collaborate with that you haven’t yet? 

My personal hero in the death metal world is George Fisher, so the collaboration with him on Spirituality and Distortion feels like a kind of accomplishment already, so I feel pretty much satisfied about collaborations at the moment. They are still many people I would be happy to collaborate with, but Igorrr is not about that, Igorrr is a musical project that I created to express the music which makes sense to me, whatever what people might think or whatever if the label will be able to sell it or not, it’s a honest music, made with no compromise at all, there is no aim to collaborate with this or that person, it’s working on the other way around, if the music needs it, then I’m happy to collaborate, in the case of George Fisher, the music definitely needed him, but I’m not thinking about doing any collaboration since I don’t have the music which really needs it. I would say I’m doing anything in order to serve the music, the rest is out of the process.

From: https://toiletovhell.com/review-and-interview-igorrr-spirituality-and-distortion/ 

 

Ringo Deathstarr - RIP

Vice: I just want to let you guys know how much I enjoyed the new album. When I heard the single, “RIP,” streaming online, I was blown away. Was this a particular song where after you rehearsed it for the first time you were like, “Wow, we really have something here?”

Elliot Frazier [singer/guitarist]: It just sounded way different when we recorded it then the demo, and we were like, “Well, this is cool.” It went in a very unexpected direction with the Heavy Metal-type guitar.

Alex Gehring [singer/bassist]: It started off as a really crappy garage band demo of mine. I didn’t really know how to record anything, so I played my bass acoustically and then layered it with a million vocals and sent it to Elliot just on a whim thinking “Eh, maybe he’ll think this is kinda cool,” and I guess he liked it and wanted to turn it into a song. Now it’s a lot different as far as the guitar goes.

I noticed that “RIP” was the only song, aside from “Brightest Star,” that made use of the tambourine. Do you feel that the tambourine is an underrated instrument?

Elliot: Oh yeah. We had tambourines on most songs on the last album. But live, we don’t really have anyone to play the tambourine, so we’re trying to go for a sound that we can create live on this album where we can use the tambourine successfully. Some songs had to have a tambourine.

Who’s the tambourine player of the band?

Elliot: That’s me. It’s harder to play than it looks [laughs].

I bet it is. Like all instruments, it seems like something you have to fine tune overtime to really perfect. [Not said with a hint of sarcasm at all!—Totally lying].

Elliot: The egg shaker is really hard, too.

I bet.

Elliot: [Laughs] You really have to get your whole body into it.

Exactly. It’s a very physical instrument to play. But did it take a while before you found the singing chemistry that you found with Alex? Were there a lot of people who auditioned/tried out that failed?

Elliot: It wasn’t really auditioning; people were in the band and then they would just quit, and Alex didn’t quit.

Alex: Hooray!

Elliot: [Laughs] And then we went on tour and she still didn’t quit. I told everyone when they joined the band that they could quit when they wanted. But after Alex joined, I definitely felt that the band was serious now. And then Daniel [Coburn, RDS’s drummer] came in—I went to High School with him—and we used to play in bands back in the day. It just felt good because we had played music together in the past. Everyone else who was in the band was just a waste of my time for the past two years. It was really frustrating.

Why were people leaving the band?

Elliot: Most of the time they had other bands they were in simultaneously. With Alex, she had never really been in a serious band before.

Alex: It was right out of high school that I joined. I had been in bands in school before, but never ones that played shows or went on tour.

Elliot: I was trying to find people that were like Alex, who weren’t that experienced, and who weren’t jaded or bitter or lazy.

Yeah, that makes sense. Jaded musicians are no fun to work with. How about noise rock? What was the appeal of playing it?

Elliot: You don’t have to be very skilled to play it. You can kind of get away with not having to know how to play the guitar and not really knowing how to sing very well.

Alex: We can put a lot of reverbs on our vocals to help mask them. We’re not very talented singers.

I’ll have to disagree with that, but in the past you’ve also mentioned that you’re not talented songwriters, either. Is this how you really feel?

Elliot: Yeah, I mean, I feel like a songwriter is someone who sits down and really thinks about a song—like the structure/how to arrange it to make it appeal to people—like my Uncle. He does these songwriting workshops and he’s always trying to get me to go. If I played my songs with an acoustic guitar it really wouldn’t make any sense.

Right.

Elliot: It’s just music that’s fun for us to play. We’re not necessarily worrying about if songs need to have a hook, or if it’s going to be on the radio.

So you’re geared more towards the musical aspect than the lyrical side?

Elliot: Yeah. It’s just an excuse to play shows, for me. I love playing, I love going on tour, and that’s really the most important part.

On your last LP, Colour Trip, critics said that you failed to come up with a new kind of music…

Elliot: Guilty as charged!

…and that you were channeling your influences instead of having an original sound. Can you foresee critics saying the same thing about Mauve?

Elliot: I don’t know. I stopped reading all that stuff a while ago. I’m hoping I can use my mental power to just ignore what they think.

I think not giving a fuck is the best mentality to have.

Elliot: It’s like we should start saying that stuff to other bands: “Oh! The new Ty Segal album! He failed to make himself sound exactly like The Rolling Stones.” [Laughs]

I can imagine that reading anything negative about your band is annoying. Is it equally as annoying as being asked about The Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine as influences? Does it make you want to kill the people who ask that question?

Elliot: We’re just tired of hearing the word ‘’Shoegaze.”  I mean, we’re not gazing at our shoes, and we’re not playing all these delayed guitars. I think that’s the only term that they always consistently think of calling us.

It’s just critics clumping you into a category that’s fairly trendy.

Elliot: We meet a lot of bands who are considered “Shoegaze” bands; it’s such a stupid word and latched onto bands who play mellow, dreamy music. We just tend to be more aggressive; we have more of an angry sound than a laid-back one.

Are there other bands, aside from the ones that you’re constantly compared to, that you would like to be compared to more often, or is that a thing, too? Would you just not rather be compared to anyone?

Alex: I feel like it’s almost inevitable; everyone is constantly compared to some bands. But it would be nice if people were to take us as an original, unique sound.

Elliot: For me, the best thing would be for people to just say, “Yeah, I want to go watch and see this show because it sounds cool.” It’s all about what’s happening right now. I’m sure we sound like some bands from the past, but you can’t go see those bands, and we never could go see those bands. We just want to do it right now. Maybe we’ll sound like what a new Black Flag would equal. That band was definitely a huge influence, too.

From: https://www.vice.com/en/article/we-interviewed-ringo-deathstarr/ 

Spirit - I Got A Line On You

Based out of LA, Spirit were a psychedelic band of the 60s, 70s and 80s, with a modestly sized but very enthusiastic international following. Their name came from a book popular in the late 60s: ‘Spirits Rebellious’ by New York-based Lebanese poet Kahlil Gilbran. (A good book but with Gilbran, start with his utterly beautiful masterpiece, ‘The Prophet’.) For a few weeks, they were indeed Spirits Rebellious – such a great name - then shortened their name simply to Spirit. 
Their lead guitarist, Randy California - real name, Randolph Wolfe - received his stage name from a young Jimi Hendrix. That’s already a pretty big claim to fame. The 15-year old guitar prodigy Wolfe, born in LA, played in Hendrix’s band - James and the Blue Flames - before Hendrix left NYC for London. There was another Randy in the band, so Hendrix chose a name to distinguish which Randy had arrived from California. 
Spirit’s drummer - Ed Cassidy - was California‘s stepdad. This is the only father-son relationship I’ve heard of in a significant rock band. Cassidy, also known as Mr. Skin due to his completely shaved head, had previously played with Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder. His drumming style was jazzy/spontaneous and showed great feel for the music. His drum kit setup was unique, with two huge angled toms on stands either side of the kit. 
Cassidy and California were to become the longest serving members of Spirit. They were joined by three friends who’d met each other at university, UCLA. On keyboards was John Locke, who later joined Scottish hard rock outfit Nazareth. A key part of the songwriting team, Locke was a highly talented musician, as was Spirit’s bassist Mark Andes. Completing the five-piece Spirit with cool looks, vocals and moves, was singer and songwriter Jay Ferguson. 
Their debut album, the eponymously titled ‘Spirit’, did well in the charts, hitting no. 31 in the US Billboard in 1968. It contains excellent, innovative songs such as ‘Fresh Garbage’ and ‘Elijah’. Touring the album in the US, Spirit were supported by the newly formed Led Zeppelin. After opening the show, Zeppelin would join the audience to watch the main act. Years later, Zeppelin were sued for - it was alleged - lifting a chord sequence from Spirit’s song ‘Taurus’ (from the first album) and placing it into ‘Stairway to Heaven’. Listen out for it yourself. There is a passing similarity for a couple of seconds… but the judge didn’t hear it this way, and in court Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were able to successfully defend the song that is so much a part of who Zeppelin are. 
Back to the late 60s: At this point, Spirit were living together in a West Coast commune with friends and a cat, in a house overlooking the Topanga Canyon in the Santa Monica hills. This time is captured in their dreamy song ‘Topanga Window’, from their first album. Spirit scored a hit single with the catchy ‘I Got a Line on You’, taken from their second album. The single reached no. 25 in the US charts, their only Top 30 hit. Their album - The Family That Plays Together - did even better, peaking at 22 in the US. Personally I prefer their first album, although many fans like the second. 
The album’s title expresses how the group saw itself: a family, living as a small commune (part of the West Coast late 60s zeitgeist), which happened to play as a band. But as in many families, there was friction between the members. Reading between the lines, this was probably about personality, power and ego. Randy California, the baby of the group, had joined Spirit in 1967 at the age of just 17. At this point songwriting was mainly handled by the others, and vocal duties went to Jay Ferguson. California rapidly found his stride, established his presence, wrote more, was often the singer and frontman: witness the video of I Got a Line on You, where he is looning with a fishing rod on a steam train, while the rest of the band are nowhere in sight. California’s dynamism and desire to take centre stage must have grated on Ferguson, Andes and Locke, while I guess Cassidy was a little more indulgent towards his stepson.  From: https://www.reddit.com/r/psychedelicrock/comments/pdt43z/spirit_a_journey_through_a_psychedelic_band_short/ 

The Mamas & The Papas - I Saw Her Again

A decade before Fleetwood Mac’s critically wounded marital relationships spilled blood on the tracks of the classic Rumours album, The Mamas And The Papas similarly spun gold from domestic strife. John Phillips’ “Go Where You Wanna Go” and Lindsey Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way” are like two sides of the same coin lyrically, as well as the work of two songwriters brave enough to let the world sing along to their State Of The Marriage addresses. But “I Saw Her Again” is where things really get twisted.
As a piece of pop music “I Saw Her Again” is pure brilliance. John Phillips was one of very few who could rival what Brian Wilson did in terms of layering vocal parts. Even if you’ve heard this song a thousand times, a fresh listen with special attention to the complexity of the vocal arrangement can be a revelation. Also, as was the case with much 60’s pop, some cool stereo panning effects were used. If you’re able to listen to the song through only the left speaker, then a second time using only the right, you’ll have two totally different listening experiences.
As for the twisted part, the song arose from an affair between Phillips’ wife (and bandmate) Michelle and Denny Doherty, the lead singer of the song–an affair which caused such tensions within the group it even led to Michelle’s temporary expulsion from it. Although Doherty has a co-writing credit on the song, the extent of his input is unclear and may have only been on the musical side. Essentially the song was John’s retribution against Doherty for the affair. One might imagine a tense vibe in the room when the song was recorded, to say nothing of Michelle and Denny’s discomfort at having to sing the song in public every night. It seems John Phillips’s creativity wasn’t limited to the recording studio. “I Saw Her Again” is the best case on record of songwriting as revenge.
Of additional interest is Doherty’s famous false entrance on the last chorus of the song. If you listen just after the 2:14 mark you’ll hear him come in prematurely with the words “I Saw Her…”. Producer Lou Adler, on hearing the playback, loved the way the mistake sounded and left it in. The side-to-side stereo panning of the first and second “I Saw Her” helped make it sound more like an intentional part of the song’s arrangement (more studio genius). But to one discerning listener named Paul McCartney the lyric’s accidental nature was obvious. “No one is that clever”, he’s reported to have said.  From: https://edcyphers.com/2012/02/19/songs-with-stories-1/

 

Ouzo Bazooka - Clouds of Sorrow

Ouzo Bazooka are an Israeli band whose colorful synthesis of psychedelia, surf, and garage rock is made even more distinctive by the heavy Middle Eastern influences they employ. Overtly retro and with a penchant for mysticism and wild, energetic live shows, they are led by singer/guitarist Uri Brauner Kinrot, who formed the band in the mid-2010s. Following the 2014 release of their self-titled debut, Ouzo Bazooka have consistently increased their international presence, especially in the European psych rock scene. The group's early output was released on the Bristol-based Stolen Body label, after which they signed to the more globally oriented Batov Records for 2021's Dalya. Their sixth album, 2025's Kapaim, bore a more spacious, instrumentally focused sound. 
Multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter Uri Brauner Kinrot is a well-established figure in the Tel Aviv indie scene and first rose to international attention with his Mediterranean surf rock band Boom Pam while also collaborating with acts like Balkan Beat Box and Firewater. After forming Ouzo Bazooka as a solo studio project, it evolved into a full-on rock band with the 2014 release of their self-titled debut. With their global fusion of psych rock and Middle Eastern melodies, the band earned critical acclaim and began playing European festivals and widening their profile. Follow-up albums like 2016's Simoom and 2019's Transporter were similarly well-received, earning Ouzo Bazooka a more widespread fan base. They eventually switched from Bristol, U.K.-based label Stolen Body to London's more eclectic and internationally focused Batov Records which released their fifth album, 2021's Dalya. Kapaim, released in 2025, steered more directly into expansive, groove-based tracks and was a largely instrumental album.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/ouzo-bazooka-mn0003423396#biography 

Mates of State - Get Better

PopMatters: So how did the drums/organ set-up come about? 

Kori Gardner: It just came about by chance. We were playing in a guitar band at the time. We had rented practice space and that band wasn’t practicing. We left our drum set and my organ that I bought two years prior to that up there. We just sat behind the instruments and played and it grew into something that we liked.

Jason Hammel: We didn’t even think about writing songs. We just started fiddling about. Maybe that’s a song? And then one song turned into seven songs.

KG: We’ve been in tons of bands before, and [in those bands] it’s always been a conscious effort. Let’s write this song, let’s have it be this long, it’ll have this many parts in it.

JH: We’ll have this many songs, we’ll have a set.

KG: Yeah, and with this band [Mates of State] it was never like that. I think that’s why we both feel a little more laid-back about the songwriting process with this band. I think it’s just because of the way we look at music, and I don’t mean to sound pretentious at all, I think we just go about it and whatever sounds good to us is what we play.

JH: We see the value in all of the music we like, but we certainly don’t want to set up to rip somebody off.

KG: You can’t help not to be influenced by bands. Everybody is. But the difference with us is that we don’t set out to sound like anything. We just go to practice and if we like a part, I don’t know what it sounds like, it just sounds good to us. I hope we can always stick by that. I like it that way.

PM: So what does influence you?

KG: It’s not just music that influences us, it’s film, it’s books, it’s friends, it’s things that happen in our lives. It’s stories that people tell us. Music is the peak of it all because those are people being influenced by stories and books and all that too. I can’t imagine a band that’s only influenced by music. Maybe they just say that, but there are many other experiences in my life hopefully . . .

JH: That you think about, or can express through music. 

PM: Musicians often seem reluctant to discuss non-musical influences, scared even. 

KG: We went to this independent documentary festival in San Francisco was going on a couple of weeks ago and I’m still talking about that, it was so much fun. We saw this one called Spellbound about following these kids around in the national spelling bee. The fact that I’ve been talking about it constantly — it was just a great idea. Anything that is really human, and you see true emotion in this documentary.

JH: Being in California too, there is such a wide variety of people. It seems like every day we meet somebody and we can’t believe their story. A couple of weeks ago we went out to see a concert and I started talking to this guy about a book and the next thing I know I’m talking to the leader of the Satanic church in Berkeley. The book was about 19th century Satanism and I was talking about the book, wondering if it was still going on in the Bay Area, or whatever. And the next thing I know he’s like “One of the guys you need to talk to is here.”

KG: Next thing we know there’s like 15 people in the place who are satanic worshippers! 

The band seems to have shaken off this element of the local crowd. At the Great American Music Hall there are no pentagrams or sacrificial lambs, just a packed audience eager for fun. Mates of State give a glimpse of this newly discovered local color in one of the new songs they play, which has a refrain that sounds like its built around an old haunted house at an amusement fair. The song is not trying to be scary and it does not come across as cheesy. That Mates of State can test such new material out a live audience and make it work shows how several months of touring behind their latest album Our Constant Concern has only perfected the band. They are confident and capable, the songs given life by the band’s performance. If the songs sound great on record, they shine when played live, positively brimming with life. The simple drums and organ arrangement is devastatingly effective, sounding rich and full. Over the next hour, Mates of State play a triumphant set. It’s their biggest headline show yet in their adopted home town of San Francisco (the duo met while at studying in Lawrence, Kansas, and moved out west soon after graduating) and they band are cheered and applauded like they’ve been given the keys to the city. The atmosphere is one of such jubilation it feels as if we’re watching the band through a ticker-tape parade, confetti raining from the skies and ribbons streaming down the lampposts. With such a deceptively simple framework, it is tempting to draw comparisons to other rock ‘n’ roll duos. It might seem particularly lazy to make comparisons to that other couple on the alternative scene, but the White Stripes serve as a good counterpoint to Mates of State. While the White Stripes present a risqué sexual chemistry, an illicit thrill, Mates of State are the exact opposite, being open and honest. Watching Mates of State perform doesn’t feel like voyeurism but like a celebration. 

From: https://www.popmatters.com/mates-of-state-020530-2496083511.html 

At The Drive-In - Invalid Litter Dept

This song is about women in Mexico who take jobs at factories known as maquiladoras. They work almost for free, and then they disappear, later to be found dead. This song is about how this happens in Juarez, Mexico. 
Maquiladoras are assembly plants located in Mexico, which are owned and operated by some of the wealthiest corporations in the world. These plants employ more than one million Mexican workers, who assemble parts (computer parts, toy parts, etc.) to be exported to the United States. More than 60% of these workers are women and girls, many of them as young as 13. Though they are paid as little as 50 cents an hour for a standard 10-hour-a-day six-day week, as a means of income they have little other choice.
Juarez lies just south of the Texas border, and is notorious as a place that draws tens of thousands of these young women from small, poor towns, looking for assembly-line jobs. And they are being murdered. By 2005, more than 300 women had been murdered in Ciudad Juarez. Bodies found in desert graves by city roadsides in 1993 were the first discovery of the killings. Since then, scores of other young women and girls - many of them sexually assaulted - have been found murdered, their bodies littering the dry desert sand.
The workers' mode of transportation to their jobs at the maquiladoras are the factory buses that collect them from a dusty roadside before the sun has even lighted the sky. They are driven back to the same area, in the same fashion, well after dark, and then face the long walk home in the ink blackness of night. Many of them vanish, with no witnesses to tell the story. The city of Juarez, Mexico's fourth-largest city, is now notoriously referred to as "the capital of the murdered women." Arrests have been made, and human rights groups are keeping attention focused on the killings in hopes of putting a stop to the murder. But the killings continue.  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/at-the-drive-in/invalid-litter-dept

Hooverphonic - Mad About You

Throughout their 17 year history, the need to constantly evolve as a band has made Hooverphonic impossible to place into a particular musical genre. Their first album, “A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular,” had a definite trip hop sound to it, but soon they began adding strings for a more lush, organic sound. They’ve continued to surprise listeners over the years, as they did on “The President of the LSD Golf Club” in 2007, where they shifted to a stripped-down, more psychedelic rock-oriented style. Hooverphonic is the type of band you should never write off if you’re not happy with a change in style–chances are that next time around they’ll sound a bit different again. The core of Hooverphonic over the years has been Alex Callier and Raymond Geerts. They’ve gone through several lead singers, with Noémie Wolfs currently on vocals. Hooverphonic’s 2010 album “The Night Before” has FINALLY been released in the US; in a Skype interview, Callier discussed the release, the band’s history, creative process, and more.

Like many of your recent albums, there was quite a delay between the original and US release of “The Night Before”–why?

Alex Callier: “For us, what changed in the last 17 years is that back in the early days, you just released an album worldwide. Sony would just put it out worldwide. Now, we really want to find the right label in every country–a label that is really convinced and enthusiastic. So it took us about a year and a half to find one that was really enthusiastic and said ‘we really really want to do this.’ And that’s why we said ‘ok, if you really want to do it, then we’ll go for it.’ In every country we do that, because we want to work with people who really are not just doing their job. We want to work with people who are really believing in what we do. So that’s why it took so long.”

Are you worried that this will lead to piracy, with fans in different countries who don’t want to wait?

Alex Callier: “Well yes, sure, but that’s the world we’re living in. We don’t care too much. It took us a couple of years to get used to the idea, but it is what it is. We still believe that real fans buy our music, people who really love what we do will buy it. And if they don’t buy our album, they will come to see our shows. It’s true that over the last 17 years, our income kind of went from selling records to more of the live side. We sell a lot of tickets here in Europe, and don’t have any financial problems, so for us it’s ok. Of course in the beginning, when the internet just started being very popular, it was a shock. But after a while you adapt. We just try to see everything positive–positive energy is the best thing. It’s like when singers leave the band, we try to see things positively and say ‘well let’s look for another one, an even better one.’ The reason why Raymond and I have been doing this so long is because we’re very positive and enthusiastic about everything we do.

You have worked with a few different vocalists. When looking for a new singer, do you focus on finding one who will bring something new to the sound, or making sure they can sing the existing material well?

Alex Callier: “It’s a balance. We’re looking for someone who can bring something new to the band, but at the same time….when we first started looking for a new singer, we worked with a few people on new material and it was really fantastic. And they we said ‘well let’s do 2Wicky and Mad About You and Eden,’ tracks we have to play live. Then we’d find ‘oh no, this isn’t working.’ The next step was that whenever we contacted a new singer, we did it the other way around. We started first with the old material and if that worked out, we started working on some new material. It took us two years I think before we finally found someone in our back garden. That’s the funny bit, we got more than a thousand applications from girls all over the world; Americans, English, even Russian, Polish, Italian, whatever. And finally we ended up with a singer from Belgium, which was something we didn’t expect, actually. It was quite funny. For us, finding someone who can re-interpret our old stuff, really give it a new life, that was really important of course.”

When you are writing and working in the studio, are you thinking about how your music will be presented live?

Alex Callier: “No we don’t. In the studio we’re like ‘ok, now we need an orchestra, a 40 piece orchestra!’ and then live we’d go ‘ok, how are we going to play this live? I don’t know, maybe we should downsize it.’ Most of the time we see the live concert as completely different than an album. And also, when I go to concerts by other bands, I don’t like them to copy their albums live. Why bother? I want to see people reinterpret their work. We sometimes do a tour without strings. This time we have a 12 piece string orchestra, last time we were touring with a 40 piece orchestra. With ‘President of the LSD Golf Club’ it was just mellotrons and keyboards. So when we’re recording a track, we don’t really think about it. But, I have to admit that through the years, we’ve noticed that whenever we have strings with us on the road, the crowds go ballistic. So the strings are really important. Since last year, we’ve been been constantly touring with strings, whether it’s 12 or 40 piece, we need strings. I think we’re always going to need them from now on.”

Are there particular tracks that changed considerably from their studio to live versions?

Alex Callier: “Oh yeah, ‘Mad About You’ we did a new version of. ‘Eden’ we played for years in a different version but for the past year have been playing the original. We tend to change things. ‘2Wicky’ is quite close to the original, while for years we played it in more of a bluesy way. So yeah, every tour we try to take a couple of tracks back to the original way, and a couple of other tracks we kind of completely rearrange. Like ‘Renaissance Affair,’ which was on the 2nd album, we made a completely new version on this last tour. Every tour needs to be different, every time people come to see us, they need to be amazed and surprised. It’s like going to the same restaurant every week and if it’s every week exactly the same, after a while you’re fed up with it. So we just need to evolve constantly, I think. With everything in life, not just music, everything needs to evolve.”

From: https://chaoscontrol.com/hooverphonic/

Ben Folds Five - One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces

Lugging a baby grand piano onto a punk club stage in the ’90s was about conspicuous as bringing a baby elephant—and twice as inconvenient. But any patrons who feared that they were about to endure a Gershwin recital were soon set straight by Ben Folds, frontman and primary songwriter of Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s Ben Folds Five. 
Flanked by an explosive rhythm section in the form of stickman Darren Jessee and bassist Robert Sledge, Folds earned a reputation as the Jimi Hendrix of the piano—a violent virtuoso who punished all 88 keys like they stole his girlfriend and his favorite black t-shirt. After unleashing an onslaught of energetically-uptempo-yet-unerringly-tuneful numbers, he’d throw in a tricky riff from “Rhapsody in Blue” just to show you that he could. 
Folds, with a mix of trademark self-deprecation and accuracy, later dubbed the act “punk rock for sissies,” yet the melodies were far more sophisticated, the harmonies tighter, and the wise-ass lyrics way more cutting than your average three-chord jam. Ben Folds Five’s 1995 self-titled debut allowed them to broaden their sonic range, but their follow up, 1997’s Whatever and Ever Amen, would be their breakthrough. 
Ironically, the song that took them out of the clubs and into the global charts was not one of their hard driving, ivory bashing anthems or skewered caricatures of whatever sap managed to get on Folds’ bad side. Instead it was “Brick,” a mournful, deeply personal ballad stemming from his experience accompanying a high school girlfriend to have an abortion. Hinting at Folds’ vulnerability, the song resonated with millions and became a Top 20 hit around the world. 
The reputation of “Brick” ran the risk of overshadowing the rest of the songs on the exceedingly strong album, which threw in unusual jazz time signatures, heavy metal distortion, vocal arrangements worthy of Brian Wilson, and a rowdy eastern European Klezmer section—and make it look easy. Even 20 years later, it represents pop music craftsmanship at its finest. 
Folds, a passionate photographer—he recently served as a guest editor for National Geographic‘s Your Shots web community—is similarly adept with his lyrics, creating portraits of friends (and enemies), and evocative scenes drawn from his life, the lives of others, or his imagination. In honor of Whatever and Ever Amen‘s 20th anniversary, the maestro offered People verbal snapshots detailing the production of each track on Ben Folds Five’s beloved classic. 

1. “One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces” 
“I had a scenario in mind, and the scenario was a guy had made a shit-ton of money, become famous and successful in some way, and used that to summon all of his enemies to his basement. He’s got his enemies in the basement and he’s going past them one at a time. I imagined him sort of pacing and they’re all tied up like a gimp. 
That’s what I had in mind, and I realized how ambitious that was. I had only written a couple hundred songs in my life at that point and was still trying to rein in certain things. I remember playing it for a friend and my friend saying, ‘You told me that song was this, and I don’t get that from what you’re saying.’ I remember the frustration of that and I worked on it ‘til I got closer.” 

From: https://people.com/music/ben-folds-five-whatever-and-ever-amen-20th-anniversary-track-commentary/