Ruby the Hatchet - Black Tongue

 #Ruby the Hatchet #psychedelic metal #doom metal #psychedelic rock #occult rock #heavy psych #music video

Forming after a series of basement practices in New Jersey circa 2010 before relocating to Philadelphia, psychedelic quintet Ruby the Hatchet brings together doomy, evil hard rock with occult-flavored psychedelia for a witchy brew of dazzled and ominous wild rock sounds. The band features guitarist Johnny Scarps, drummer Owen Stewart, bassist Mike Parise, and keyboard player Sean Hur, and is trademarked by the howling, dynamic vocals of Jillian Taylor. To date the band has released three studio albums among a handful of EPs and have toured throughout North America and Europe.  From: https://riffipedia.fandom.com/wiki/Ruby_The_Hatchet

Ruby The Hatchet have been around since 2011 representing the Doom scene with seductive tones and a mystique. Ruby doesn’t perform the laborious plodding down-tuned dirge but embraces a callback to psychedelic and classic rock. Jillian Taylor, lead vocalist, projects her engaging voice while the band adds the deep rhythms of Owen Stewart (drums) and Lake Muir (bass) and John Scarperia’s chugging riffs. The attraction also emanates from Sean Kan Hur leaning heavy on the Hammond. As the past exhibits, these five create a masterful blend of captivating rock. We can look back to their label debut album, Valley of the Snake, and then their follow up, 2017’s Planetary Space Child. Ruby targeted their brand of mysticism via a space theme (related to astrology) which lends itself just as equally to exploration and isolation. Now, in 2022, they return hypnotizing any audience as a Wizards wicked spell would. Fear Is A Cruel Master is out on Magnetic Eye records October 21st. Ruby defines the Rock ‘n’ Roll ethos. Not just with their sonic declarations, but in addition to being on J Mascis’ (Deep Wound, Dinosaur Jr, Witch, live guest of Negative Approach) prestigious label, Tee Pee, the band has self-released their debut LP, Ouroboros, and two EPs. Independence, rebellion, and defiance are apparent attributes of these five redeemers of the riff.  From: https://newnoisemagazine.com/reviews/album-review-ruby-the-hatchet-fear-is-a-cruel-master/

The Beatles - Revolution

 #The Beatles #John Lennon #Paul McCartney #George Harrison #British invasion #pop rock #psychedelic rock #blues rock #classic rock #British psychedelia #folk rock #1960s #music video

‘Revolution’ was John Lennon’s response to the popular calls for uprising in the US and Europe. It was a revision of a version already recorded for the White Album, and became the b-side of the ‘Hey Jude’ single. Although taped after ‘Revolution 1’, this faster, louder version was the first to be released. The song was written in India while The Beatles were studying meditation in Rishikesh.
John Lennon: “I wanted to put out what I felt about revolution. I thought it was time we fucking spoke about it, the same as I thought it was about time we stopped not answering about the Vietnamese war when we were on tour with Brian Epstein and had to tell him, ‘We’re going to talk about the war this time, and we’re not going to just waffle.’ I wanted to say what I thought about revolution. I had been thinking about it up in the hills in India. I still had this ‘God will save us’ feeling about it, that it’s going to be all right. That’s why I did it: I wanted to talk, I wanted to say my piece about revolution.’”
While ‘Revolution 1’ found Lennon uncertain about whether to join the struggle, on the faster ‘Revolution’ he emphatically demanded to be excluded. The urgency of the new arrangement was a result of Paul McCartney’s resistance to Lennon’s hopes of ‘Revolution 1’ being The Beatles’ next single after ‘Lady Madonna’. With the backing of George Harrison, McCartney argued that the recording was too slow, inspiring Lennon to re-record it in an up-tempo, distorted and spontaneous outburst of anti-revolutionary fervor. After two years lost in an LSD haze, and newly energized in his love for Yoko Ono, Lennon gladly rose to the challenge he perceived.
John: “We recorded the song twice. The Beatles were getting real tense with each other. I did the slow version and I wanted it out as a single: as a statement of The Beatles’ position on Vietnam and The Beatles’ position on revolution. For years, on The Beatles’ tours, Brian Epstein had stopped us from saying anything about Vietnam or the war. And he wouldn’t allow questions about it. But on one of the last tours, I said, ‘I am going to answer about the war. We can’t ignore it.’ I absolutely wanted The Beatles to say something about the war.” ‘Revolution’ featured the most distortion on any Beatles recording, particularly in the twin fuzz-toned guitars plugged directly into the Abbey Road desk and deliberately played loud to overload the meters.
George Martin: “We got into distortion on that, which we had a lot of complaints from the technical people about. But that was the idea: it was John’s song and the idea was to push it right to the limit. Well, we went to the limit and beyond.”  From: https://www.beatlesbible.com/songs/revolution/

Drain S.T.H. - I Don't Mind

 #Drain S.T.H. #heavy metal #grunge #alternative metal #hard rock #nu metal #Swedish #1990s

The all-female hard rock/heavy metal band Drain S.T.H. was formed in 1993 in Stockholm, Sweden (hence the S.T.H., added to avoid confusion with a similarly named American band), and featured singer Maria Sjöholm, guitarist Flavia Canel, bassist Anna Kjellberg, and drummer/vocalist Martina Axén. Displaying an unabashed worship of Alice in Chains, their independent 1996 debut, Horror Wrestling, was dominated by uncompromising grinds of slow, down-tuned guitars, which were then topped with Sjöholm and Axén's beautifully chilling vocal harmonies. Coupled with the band's impressive live performances and supermodel looks, this soon drew the attention of Mercury Records subsidiary The Enclave, which repackaged and re-released the album worldwide two years later with an additional three tracks. The far more accessible follow-up, 1999's Freaks of Nature, shed much of the band's excessive Alice in Chains influences of old and flirted with traces of programmed percussion and even rap, thereby forging a more distinctive sonic identity. But despite extensive touring both in Europe and America (including a lengthy jaunt with that year's Ozzfest) and attaining decent radio airplay in support, Drain S.T.H. never managed to break out of the metal underground, perhaps because they were simply too drop-dead gorgeous to be taken seriously by the notoriously chauvinistic metal masses.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/drain-sth-mn0000806089/biography

Richard Thompson - Beeswing

 #Richard Thompson #British folk rock #contemporary folk #singer-songwriter #acoustic #ex-Fairport Convention

In 1976, Richard Thompson’s glory days looked long behind him. The guitarist who had electrified folk music with Fairport Convention and then made a series of bleak albums with his wife Linda was living in a tiny cottage in Suffolk with her and their children, selling their chickens’ eggs to the village shop. “This old tramp used to come round every three to six months,” Thompson recalled to me many years later in a London pub, “and he’d stay with us. He was a great old boy. He had amazing stories.”
Ted, the tramp, dreamt of settling down in a caravan and putting down roots; he never did. “But also, in the Sixties, the thing was ‘getting your head together in the country’: there were these mythological women, like [folk singers] Vashti Bunyan or Annie Briggs, who would disappear for years in caravans, go off to Ireland or live on a farm and you’d never see them again.”
Years passed. The Thompsons divorced. Richard returned to music, making a series of solo albums through the 1980s to (slightly) diminishing returns. Then, he drew for inspiration on Ted and on Annie Briggs and that “rural underclass landscape”, and wrote “Beeswing”.
In the summer of love, the song’s narrator comes to Dundee and falls in love with a laundry worker, as “fine as a bee’s wing”. They go on the road, busking and fruit picking and tinkering. He wants to settle down and have a family; she refuses. “As long as there’s no price on love I’ll stay.” After a drunken quarrel she leaves. Now he hears only rumors of her, sleeping rough; once marrying but finding “even a gypsy caravan was too much settling down”. Free-spiritedness shades into solipsism. And yet he remains obsessed.
The song’s parent album, 1994’s Mirror Blue, was not well received, and the delicate “Beeswing” was lost amid its general clatter. But the song persisted. When he played it on tour that year, usually straight after the rambunctious “1952 Vincent Black Lightning”, with Pete Zorn’s pennywhistle solo hinting at the voice of the beloved, audiences hushed. It became one of the highlights of his songbook, and lent the title to his 2021 autobiography. At his 70th birthday concert in 2019, he played it as a duet with Alistair Anderson on squeezebox, the two of them lit as if by moonlight, a moment of stillness in a celebratory night.  From: https://ig.ft.com/life-of-a-song/beeswing.html

Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells a Story

 #Rod Stewart #Faces #hard rock #blue-eyed soul #blues rock #folk rock #1970s

Though it’s a truth that’s now largely forgotten, at least among the young and the terminally hip, Rod Stewart was once a pretty righteous cat — foremost among interpretive singers and endowed with gangbuster rock and roll bonafides primarily, perhaps, from his role as frontman for the Faces, as gloriously disheveled, shambolic, and spirited a rock and roll band as has ever existed. The Faces’ greatness never quite gelled into a straight-up killer LP  -  not unless you care to count their peerless and essential Rhino box from 2004  -  but their ragged spirit, careening from bawdy bar-band rock to nakedly emotional acoustic numbers, made them epochal. That spirit was in large part carried over to Every Picture Tells a Story, the solo album that made Rod Stewart a genuine pop star, but with one key difference: With Every Picture, Stewart actually made a top-to-bottom dynamite LP, as big-hearted and gloriously rough-around-the-edges as any Faces album but more unified, more conceptual, and simply better. Surely its emotional candor — its embrace of earnestness, its absence of affectation — are key to its success. You can hear the album as a celebration of what it is to be a young man, swaggering through the prime of his physical, sexual, and creative life, and there’s plenty of evidence to support such a reading, not least the uproariously crude travelogue of an album opener, where the narrator globe-trots from one romantic and geographic misadventure to the next; of course there’s also the big single, “Maggie May,” that made Rod a star, and remains a richer and more sophisticated song than it’s ever given credit for being, a writerly showcase for Stewart’s pop instincts. Rod and his band pound through a rowdy take on the Elvis Presley gem “That’s All Right,” as well, but the track’s Saturday night revelry gives way to a Sunday morning comedown in the form of a yearning “Amazing Grace,” which is maybe the best tip-off here to the record’s emotional complexity. Indeed, it’s as reflective as often as it is jubilant, on covers as well as originals. In the case of the former, there are no less than two songs that ache over time, distance, separation, and desire: A soulful, rolling “Seems Like a Long Time” and then a definitive reading of Dylan’s “Tomorrow Is Such a Long Time,” which offers proof enough that Rod is the second-best singer of the Dylan songbook, bested only by Bob himself. Tim Hardin’s “Reason to Believe” is present, too, at once big-hearted and emotionally conflicted. It’s the album’s ringing send-off. But its high point is Rod’s own “Mandolin Wind,” an achingly earnest, aww-shucks kind of love song that soars from a tentative whisper to a bold declaration. Throughout the album, Stewart blurs the line separating hard rock and folk music, and seems almost to bend time itself: “That’s All Right” was an oldie even then but it kicks with garage rock immediacy; “Tomorrow Is Such a Long Time” is so earthy and haunted, it sounds like a folk song old as the hills. It’s a celebration of youth, this record, but more than that it’s a celebration of the very art of song — and maybe that’s what makes it ageless.  From: https://inreviewonline.com/2015/01/09/every-picture-tells-a-story/

Vodun - Mawu

 #Vodun #heavy metal #hard rock #psychedelic metal #stoner metal #ritualistic doom metal #occult rock #traditional West African music #afrobeat #music video

Amidst the rushing screams of Mother Earth; the pounding drums of Ouidah; the markets of Lomé and the open heart of Erzulie, there exists Vodun. Born of only three comes the embodiment of crushing noise intertwined with enrapturing harmonies... heavy, weird, soulful... yes, we are expectant of the abnormal and so should you be.  From: https://vodun.bandcamp.com/

From Kiss’s hard rock kabuki to Slipknot’s masks, metal has always loved a gimmick. Factor in bands like Alestrom (pirates), Battlelore (Hobbits) and Gwar (hell knows) and it can often feel as if no schtick has been left unexplored. In 2016, the latest band to go high concept is Vôdûn. A UK-based trio who play lucid thrash spiked with tribal drums while daubed in warpaint, they’re primarily inspired by west African vodou.
“It’s about taking on the spirits we embody, that warrior element, and helping us to be truly in the moment,” explains frontwoman Chantal Brown, formerly of cowl-sporting arkestra Chrome Hoof and, before that, oddball nine-piece Do Me Bad Things. “It’s about entertainment value, too, but our interest in vodou runs deeper than that.”
Brown discovered the religion through fellow Hoof singer Lola Olafisoye. “She’s a spiritual practitioner, and she’d share all these books she had on west African history,” says Brown. It proved a powerful inspiration to a group wanting to write heavy music steeped in spirituality and feminism. “It had feminist undertones: a lot of the gods and priests were female,” Brown continues. “People have tried to demonize it for centuries. It was the culture of a people who have been oppressed, killed off and enslaved. There’s more to it than sticking pins in dolls.”
Vôdûn’s aesthetic could easily be seen as contrived but it undeniably sets Vôdûn apart from other heavy British bands. Musically, they cut through the current trend for floppy-fringed emo-metal in the vein of Bring Me The Horizon. By contrast, Vôdûn’s debut album, Possession, sounds like Slayer doing Black Box’s Ride On Time and their shows are more like acid raves than metal gigs. A similarly rave-y sense of abandon is key to their music, and Brown sees links with her own musical heritage: “I come from a gospel background; being possessed is like catching the holy ghost, or speaking in tongues.”  From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jul/15/west-african-vodou-meets-hard-rock-in-metal-trio-vodun

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Third Stone From The Sun

 #The Jimi Hendrix Experience #hard rock #psychedelic rock #blues rock #R&B #heavy metal #British psychedelia #acid rock #1960s #power trio #Mitch Mitchell #Noel Redding

Strange beautiful grass of green
With your majestic silver seas
Your mysterious mountains I'd wish to see closer
May I land my kinky machine?

Although your world wonders me
With your majestic and superior cackling hen
Your people I do not understand
So to you I shall put an end
Then you'll never hear surf music again

Little Feat - Rock and Roll Doctor

 #Little Feat #Lowell George #blues rock #country rock #Southern rock #roots rock #1970s

By 1974, when Little Feat’s Feats Don’t Fail Me Now was released, tensions within the band were starting to surface. The band’s leader Lowell George had begun collaborating with non-band member Martin Kibbee (credited as Fred Martin) and the pair penned the album’s lead cut, “Rock And Roll Doctor.” George and Kibbee, who had attended Hollywood High School in Los Angeles together, had also co-written “Dixie Chicken” for Little Feat’s 1973 album of the same name. After high school, they formed a garage-punk outfit called The Factory, penning goofy songs like “Lightning Rod Man,” equal parts zany-Zappa and fast-and-loose Stones. On “Rock And Roll Doctor,” George and Kibbee employ a similar technique as the trucker anthem “Willin’,” name-dropping cities like Mobile, Moline, Nagodoches and New Orleans in the song’s verse. As to the musical side of the song, in an interview last year with American Songwriter at MerleFest, Little Feat member Paul Barrere discussed how George often used tape splicing in the studio as a compositional tool, a trick he learned from Frank Zappa. “Lowell used to do this thing with cassette tapes where he would take the tape and cut and splice it together, not knowing what was going to happen,” recalled Barrere. “[On ‘Rock And Roll Doctor’] there was like a couple of measures that were 3 1/2 beats instead of 4 beats and he would hand the tape to [keyboardist] Billy [Payne] and say, ‘Normalize this.’ I think within the framework of the verse there’s a 6/4 measure, which is probably why we didn’t get a whole lot of airplay on jukeboxes. If people try to dance to it, it’s like they’re on the wrong foot!” Sadly, arguments over the direction of Little Feat eventually led to the band’s demise in 1978, and George died in 1979. “He was fantastic, an incredible songwriter. A wonderful singer, great player. And, just an enigma of a man,” recalled Barrere. “It was always this sort of love-hate relationship going on, mood swings that I attribute to the times, and what we were doing in those times.”  From: https://americansongwriter.com/little-feat-rock-and-roll-doctor/

Though they had all the trappings of a Southern-fried blues band, Little Feat were hardly conventional. Led by songwriter/guitarist Lowell George, Little Feat were a wildly eclectic band, bringing together strains of blues, R&B, country, and rock & roll. The band members were exceptionally gifted technically and their polished professionalism sat well with the slick sounds coming out of Southern California during the '70s. However, Little Feat were hardly slick - they had a surreal sensibility, as evidenced by George's idiosyncratic songwriting, which helped them earn a cult following among critics and musicians. Though the band earned some success on album-oriented radio, the group was derailed after George's death in 1979. Little Feat re-formed in the late '80s, and while they were playing as well as ever, they lacked the skewed sensibility that made them cult favorites. Nevertheless, their albums and tours were successful, especially among American blues-rock fans.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/little-feat-mn0000313284/biography

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Mellowship Slinky in B Major

 #Red Hot Chili Peppers #alternative rock #funk rock #funk metal #hard rock #nu metal #rap rock #1990s

The Riverside Ballroom, Green Bay, Wisconsin. November 26, 1989: the Red Hot Chili Peppers stroll quietly into the ballroom and sneak a look around. The crowd is fairly small, strangely restless, buzzing and hurting for relief from the sexual frustrations of a Midwestern farm town winter. Perfect. For the first time on the Mother’s Milk tour, the Chilis decide to give them the sock. Backstage, tour manager Mark Johnson produces a fresh pack of white tube socks. The Chilis rush from the cold dressing room into the friendly, swarming heat of the auditorium wearing tennis shoes, hats and the socks stretched over their cocks - a costume they save these days for stifled places like Green Bay. The Chilis rear back and launch into “Out in L.A,” the traditional show-opener of a band thick with rituals. The crowd erupts in an ass-grabbing frenzy. Too-sexy, 19-year-old guitarist John Frusciante lays back, stretching his washboard stomach, his shoulders hunched, the Jimmy Page smirk on his lips. Singer Anthony Kiedis and bassist Flea are simply a blur, a pair of martial arts contenders gone mad, Flea’s eyes glowing green and his tightly-wrapped skull shining. Given the intensity of the onstage fray, the Chili Peppers are only tempting fate. Eventually, one of those socks has to fly off. Well into the set, jazz horn virtuoso and childhood homeboy Keith Chapman Barry - known only as Tree - joins the Peppers onstage. During his sax solo Tree’s sock almost immediately falls off - but, a true Chili, he “rocks out with his cock out” and finishes the song. There is no way to salvage the crowd. Boys are doffing their shirts. Virgins are crying. Guitar roadie and backup singer Robbie Allen darts onstage and “does a helicopter with his dick” right in the spotlight. We have, indeed, come a long way since Jim Morrison.  From: https://www.spin.com/featured/red-hot-chili-peppers-mothers-milk-1990-cover-story-physical-graffiti/

Rush - Xanadu

 #Rush #progressive rock #hard rock #heavy metal #art rock #blues rock #progressive metal #1970s

"Xanadu" is a song by the Canadian progressive rock band Rush from their 1977 album A Farewell to Kings. It is approximately eleven minutes long, beginning with a five-minute-long instrumental section before transitioning to a narrative written by Neil Peart, which in turn was inspired by the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem Kubla Khan. In Peart's lyrics, the narrator describes searching for a place called "Xanadu" that will grant him immortality. After succeeding in this quest, a thousand years pass, and the narrator is left "waiting for the world to end", describing himself as "a mad immortal man". The song is based on the poem Kubla Khan written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Although the song does not explicitly state where "Xanadu" is, references to Kubla Khan imply that it is a mythical place based on Shangdu, the historical summer capital of the Mongol Empire.
"Xanadu" is the first Rush song in which synthesizers play an integral part. Unlike the previous albums, 2112 and Caress of Steel, "Xanadu" uses both guitar and synthesizer effects. "Xanadu" requires each band member to utilize an array of instruments to affect the performance. Alex Lifeson used a double-necked Gibson electric guitar (one twelve-string, the other six-string) as well as synthesizer pedals; Geddy Lee made use of a double-necked Rickenbacker 4080/12 guitar (bass and twelve-string guitar), as well as extensive synthesizer arrangements (through both pedals and keyboards) in addition to singing; and Peart took on various percussion instruments (temple blocks, tubular bells, bell tree, glockenspiel, and wind chimes) in addition to his drum kit.
Despite its complexity and length, Xanadu is a rare "one take wonder" song. Guitarist Alex Lifeson said, "Xanadu was well rehearsed before going to Rockfield (Studios), I remember that. On the day we recorded it, Pat Moran, the resident engineer, set all the mics up and we ran the song down, partially to get balances and tones. Because it was a long song, we didn't need to complete that test run. "We then played it a second time from top to bottom and that's what you hear on the album. Needless to say, Pat was shocked that we ran an 11-minute song down in one complete take. Practice doesn't always make perfect, but it sure helps!"  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanadu_(Rush_song)

The New Respects - Trigger

 #The New Respects #alternative rock #indie rock #blues rock #soul #R&B #funk #folk rock

The New Respects are a high-energy throwback rock and soul quartet comprising siblings Alexandria, Alexis, and Darius Fitzgerald, and their cousin Jasmine Mullen. The children of a Nashville preacher, twins Alexandria (guitar) and Alexis (bass) and their brother Darius (drums) grew up on gospel music, and while Mullen (vocals) heard a wider range of influences in the house, her parents were both songwriters in the Christian music industry, with her mom, Nicole C. Mullen, having established herself as a prominent recording artist in the early 2000s. Forming in high school as the John Hancock Band, the quartet was initially based around more of an indie folk sound. As they became more established, the influences of early rock, R&B, blues, and soul began to inform their sound, and their music became more dynamic. By 2016, they'd signed with Capitol CMG and changed their name to the New Respects. Following a pair of singles later that year, they made their debut in early 2017 with the Here Comes Trouble EP.  From: https://www.isrbx.me/3137661009-the-new-respects-before-the-sun-goes-down-2018.html

Richard & Linda Thompson - Hokey Pokey

#Richard & Linda Thompson #folk rock #British folk rock #contemporary folk #singer-songwriter #ex-Fairport Convention #1970s

From 1973 to 1982, British folk legend Richard Thompson (having quit Fairport Convention in 1971) recorded as a duo with his wife Linda Thompson. This period saw a great amount of critical praise for Richard’s songwriting and Linda’s voice, though not much popular success. Following their divorce, both pursued solo careers.
The Thompsons recorded three albums: I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (1974), Hokey Pokey (1975) and Pour Down Like Silver (1975) before they decided to leave the music business and moved to a Sufi commune in East Anglia. Songwriting was by Richard throughout, lead vocals generally by Linda, and backing by a consistent core band of English folk-rock stalwarts
I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight showed a clear development from Richard Thompson’s first solo effort Henry The Human Fly with Linda’s vocals adding grace, as well as the opportunity for Richard to write from a female perspective. Although Thompson’s trademark gloom is already evident, the lightness and beauty of the arrangements counterbalances this to produce moments of great beauty. The use of brass, from the renowned CWS silver band in particular takes forward Thompson’s continuing crusade to find a more contemporary and ordinary expression of Englishness in music (as opposed to, say, the forays into the Morris form of his Fairport contemporary Ashley Hutchings; solo and with The Albion Band). The next year’s release, Hokey Pokey, to some extent repeats the formula, although it is improved in production values, and is stylistically more adventurous still. A Heart Needs a Home is a minor miracle of songwriting, expressing the longing for love without cynicism and has a standout multi-tracked vocal from Linda.  From: https://thevogue.com/artists/richard-linda-thompson/#bio

Beth Orton - She Cries Your Name

 #Beth Orton #folktronica #folk rock #trip-hop #contemporary folk rock #electronica #singer-songwriter

Beth Orton is the rare vocalist who exists between disparate worlds; she is a singer with a folkie soul who is as comfortable accompanied by an acoustic guitar as by electronic rhythms. Indeed, most people first heard her on William Orbit's Hinterland album and on the Chemical Brothers' Exit Planet Dust. Likewise, her slightly askance vocal style seems to betray naiveté, while lyrically there is a world-weary depth that the latest spate of tough-talking Lolitas cannot muster. Each song's closely observed details create small ripples that grow to substantial emotional waves by album's end; this very promising debut (Trailer Park) should be the harbinger of great things to come from Orton, with or without the help of a Lilith Fair or anything beyond the integrity of her songs and the wise lilt of her voice.  From: https://www.amazon.com/Trailer-Park-Beth-Orton/dp/B000003RSF

As if being the poster girl for a convoluted sub-genre like folktronica weren’t bad enough, Beth Orton of Norfolk, England has also tried to live down (so far unsuccessfully) a phenomenal debut that was evidently a case of sheer timing — and quite possibly a baldfaced fluke. Her world-weary yet somehow still ingenuous voice — a seamless patchwork of the best Carole King and Rickie Lee Jones have to offer — has continued to be a pleasure.
Orton entered the scene through the agency of artist-producer William Orbit, a man able to make even Madonna sound cool. Calling themselves Spill, the duo put out a single in ’92 (a cover of cult guitarist John Martyn’s “Don’t Wanna Know ‘Bout Evil”), with plans for a full-length album that evolved into Beth’s SuperPinkyMandy. A limited release for the Japanese market, the album collects ten Orbit-influenced soundscapes, including the Spill single and the first version of Orton’s signature tune, “She Cries Your Name” (which would resurface in different form on Orbit’s Strange Cargo series). After Spill was spent, she continued working with Orbit, and added memorably to tracks by the Chemical Brothers and Red Snapper, undertakings that made her something of a traveling big beat/acid jazz diva.
In ’96 she slowed down her guest-spot rotations to put out the introductory She Cries Your Name EP (re-released the following year with different songs) and the remarkable Trailer Park. Despite the sun-drenched cover shot, this is music for cloudy days. A unifying tone — as strong as any concept album around — makes even pretty ear candy like “Don’t Need a Reason” and “Sugar Boy” sound as perfectly sad as the mandolin-trimmed “Whenever” and the simple retelling of the Ronettes’ “I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine.” For those in line for the trip-hop Beth’s known for, you’ll have some time to kill: producer/DJ Andrew Weatherall (Primal Scream, the Orb) steps in for three tracks of lingering beats (“Galaxy of Emptiness” being the best), but it’s delicate pop like “Someone’s Daughter” that fills the gaps. A new take on “She Cries Your Name” is the album’s apex, a faultless blend of acoustic picking, lush strings and Red Snapper’s Ali Friend on double bass.
From: https://trouserpress.com/reviews/beth-orton/

Jefferson Starship - I Want To See Another World

 #Jefferson Starship #Grace Slick #Paul Kantner #Marty Balin #folk rock #hard rock #psychedelic rock #progressive rock #album rock #1970s #ex-Jefferson Airplane

Spawned from the dissolution of Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship became one of the more successful arena rock draws of the 1970s and early '80s and enjoyed more commercial viability than its predecessor in large part due to the greater pop sensibilities of the new incarnation. Jefferson Airplane, a seminal psychedelic rock band popular for songs like "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit", began to fragment when lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady delved further into their side project Hot Tuna, while the other creative half of the band, rhythm guitarist and singer Paul Kantner and singer Grace Slick became more isolated as a romantic couple who had their own musical interests and desires. In addition, Marty Balin, who originally founded the band, grew fed up with conflict and quit the band in 1970. With Airplane's breakup inevitable, Kantner focused his efforts on his solo concept album Blows Against the Empire, a record that saw the first use of the Jefferson Starship moniker, although the band that would later take on the name had yet to take a definable shape. Blows saw contributions from members of the Grateful Dead, Crosby, Stills, & Nash, as well as Grace Slick and Quicksilver Messenger Service's David Freiberg, both of whom would be fixtures of the Jefferson Starship's official formation. When it was clear to Kantner that Kaukonen and Casady were in no mood to continue on with Jefferson Airplane, he decided to create a permanent touring band that would become Jefferson Starship. Along with Kantner, Slick, and Freiberg the Starship lineup included Papa John Creach on violin, Kaukonen's brother Peter on bass, John Barbata on drums, and Craig Chaquico on lead guitar.  From: https://www.wolfgangs.com/jefferson-starship/

Sleater-Kinney - Words and Guitar

 #Sleater-Kinney #Carrie Brownstein #indie rock #punk rock #riot grrrl #alternative rock #1990s

Arguably the most important punk band of the 1990s and 2000s, with feminist songwriting matched by taut melodicism and jaw-dropping sonic complexity. Like many a great band, Sleater-Kinney inhabited their time so thoroughly it took an extended hiatus to realize the extent of their legacy. In many respects, they were the defining American indie rock band of the second half of the '90s, the group that harnessed all the upheaval of the alt-rock explosion of the first part of the decade and channeled it into a vigorous mission statement. It was not incidental that Sleater-Kinney were an all-female band - prior to S-K, co-leaders Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein both started playing music in Northern Pacific riot grrrl bands and their feminism and queercore roots were deeply embedded in their rock & roll - but calling them the best female rock band of their generation is too confining. By every measure, Sleater-Kinney were one of the best bands of their time, capturing the tenor of their era and then expanding at a rapid clip, delivering record after record that redefined their music without abandoning their punk rock (or political) ideals.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/sleater-kinney-mn0000026164/biography

Sleater-Kinney [Chainsaw, 1995]
Heavens to Betsy's warbly wailer Corin Tucker joins Excuse 17's solemn screamer Carrie Brownstein for ten songs in twenty-two minutes, and voice-on-voice and guitar-on-guitar they figure out love by learning to hate. Three different lyrics reject the penis soi-même with a fervor that could pass for disgust, and while their same-sex one-on-ones aren't exactly odes to joy, they convey a depth of feeling that could pass for passion. In these times of principled irony and shallowness for its own sake, that's enough to make them heroines and outsiders simultaneously.

Call the Doctor [Chainsaw, 1996]
Like the blues, punk is a template that shapes young misfits' sense of themselves, and like the blues it takes many forms. This is a new one, and it's damn blueslike. Powered by riffs that seem unstoppable even though they're not very fast, riding melodies whose irresistibility renders them barely less harsh, Corin Tucker's enormous voice never struggles more inspirationally against the world outside than when it's facing down the dilemmas of the interpersonal - dilemmas neither eased nor defined by her gender preferences, dilemmas as bound up with family as they are with sex. As partner/rival/Other Carrie Brownstein puts it in an eloquently tongue-tied moment: "It's just my stuff." Few if any have played rock's tension-and-release game for such high stakes - revolution as existentialism, electric roar as acne remedy. They wanna be our Joey Ramone, who can resist that one? But squint at the booklet and you'll see they also want to be our Thurston Moore. They want it both ways, every which way. And most of the time they get it.

Dig Me Out [Kill Rock Stars, 1997]
One reason you know they're young is that they obviously believe they can rock and roll at this pitch forever. Whatever the verbal message of their intricate, deeply uptempo simplicity - less sexual angst, more rock-as-romance - it's overrun by their excited mastery and runaway glee. Like a new good lover the second or third time, they're so confident of their ability to please that they just can't stop. And this confidence is collective: Corin and Carrie chorus-trade like the two-headed girl, dashing and high-stepping around on Janet Weiss's shoulders. What a ride.

From: http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=Sleater-Kinney 

Fotheringay - Nothing More

 #Fotheringay #Sandy Denny #Trevor Lucas #folk rock #British folk rock #singer-songwriter #ex-Fairport Convention #1970s

Fotheringay was formed in 1970 by singer Sandy Denny upon her departure from Fairport Convention, together with her future husband, Australian singer-songwriter Trevor Lucas and Gerry Conway, both from the band Eclection, and two former members of Poet and the One Man band, Jerry Donahue and Pat Donaldson. Fotheringay played folk-rock similar to Fairport Convention, introducing Jazz elements like The Pentangle. The band drew it's name from Fotheringay Castle, where Mary Queen Of Scots was imprisoned in England; a name that Denny had already used for one of her finest compositions on the second Fairport Convention release What Did We Do On Our Holidays (1969). In 1970 the band recorded their lone self-titled album with producer Joe Boyd. The record mixed Rock, Folk and Jazz-elements and sounded similar to Fairport Convention with a less rockier side; Trevor Lucas’ rhythm guitar work giving the record an overall lighter feeling. The record contains two traditional songs, among them the outstanding "Banks Of The Nile", a Gordon Lighfoot composition "The Way I Feel", a Dylan cover "Too Much Of Nothing" and original songs by Denny, (among them "Nothing More" and "The Sea"), Lucas and Dave Cousins of Strawbs. Although the album and the group was well received, the band broke up in 1971. Sandy Denny embarked on a solo career (some songs for a projected second Fotheringay record surfaced on Denny's first solo album "The Northstar Grassman and The Ravens"), Donaldson and Conway began session work, while Lucas and Donahue rejoined Fairport Convention.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=2384

The Tea Party - Inanna

 #The Tea Party #hard rock #progressive rock #experimental rock #middle eastern music #blues rock #psychedelic rock #1990s #Canadian 

The Tea Party is a Canadian rock band with industrial rock, blues, progressive rock, and Middle Eastern music influences, dubbed "Moroccan roll" by the media. Active throughout the 1990s and up until 2005. The band re-formed in 2011. The Tea Party was formed in 1990 by Jeff Martin, Stuart Chatwood and Jeff Burrows after a marathon jam session at the Cherry Beach Rehearsal Studios in Toronto. Each member had previously played together during their teenage years in a number of different bands in Windsor, Ontario, where they were originally from. They had decided to name their new group The Tea Party after the infamous hash sessions of famous Beat generation poets Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. The Tea Party released their eponymous debut album in 1991, distributing it through their own label Eternal Discs. The album drew influences from psychedelic rock and blues, and was produced by Martin; album production was something Martin would continue with for all of The Tea Party's albums, as a way of giving the band complete artistic control. In 1993 The Tea Party signed to EMI Music Canada and released their first major label recording, Splendor Solis. The band employed open tunings and goblet drums (Dumbek) to create Indian-style sounds, something they continued to employ throughout their career, while continuing in a blues influenced style.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tea_Party

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Guinnevere

 #Crosby, Stills & Nash #David Crosby #Stephen Stills #Graham Nash #folk rock #country rock #hard rock #acoustic #ex-The Byrds #ex-Buffalo Springfield #ex-The Hollies #1960s

In a Rolling Stone interview, Crosby remarked: "That is a very unusual song, it's in a very strange tuning (EBDGAD) with strange time signatures. It's about three women that I loved. One of whom was Christine Hinton - the girl who got killed who was my girlfriend - and one of whom was Joni Mitchell, and the other one is somebody that I can't tell. It might be my best song." According to Robert Christgau, the song was based on a three-note motif from the 1960 Miles Davis album Sketches of Spain. The album CSN (box set) contains a demo version of the song played by Crosby on guitar, Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane on bass, and Cyrus Faryar of Modern Folk Quartet on bouzouki. In the liner notes, Crosby says of the song: "When all my friends were listening to Elvis and 1950s rock 'n' roll, I was listening to Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan and West Coast jazz. Later I got involved with the folk music scene. After getting kicked out of the Byrds I didn't have a plan, but I went back to my roots, and "Guinnevere" is a combination of these two influences." The song also deals with the importance of freedom. It may have been written about Queen Guinevere from the perspective of a man addressing a woman; it has been speculated that Crosby wrote about her from the perspective of Sir Lancelot of ancient Welsh lore. "Guinnevere" could also be referring to Nancy Ross, who lived with David Crosby and (according to author David McGowan) drew pentagrams on the wall. She would leave Crosby in 1966 for Gram Parsons, the grandson of a citrus fruit magnate. These facts correlate to the "Nancy Ross" theory: in the song, Crosby sings that Guinnevere "drew pentagrams," and that "peacocks wandered aimlessly underneath an orange tree.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinnevere

The Smile - Thin Thing

 #The Smile #Thom Yorke #Johnny Greenwood #alternative rock #art rock #post-punk #experimental #progressive rock Radiohead spinoff #animated music video

When Thom Yorke introduced his new band at their first gig a year ago, he took a moment to explain their name. “Not the Smile as in ha ha ha,” he said, his faux laugh echoing eerily, “more the Smile of the guy who lies to you every day.” Of course, no one figured that the most uncannily accurate doomsayer of the modern age was taking a sharp left to clown town with his latest project, but the Smile are not just aimed at shifty politicians, either. Their pearly grins are myriad, taking inspiration from smiles of love and deceit, bloody smiles and blissful ones, smiles that mend and smiles that destroy. At 53, Yorke has seen them all. And once again, he’s battling the absurdity of existence the only way he knows how: by offering a salve for his anxieties without letting anyone off the hook for turning everything we hold dear into one big joke.
This bid for transcendence amid chaos isn’t the only thing that’s familiar about the Smile. The trio also includes Yorke’s main songwriting partner in Radiohead, Jonny Greenwood, along with drummer Tom Skinner, whose eclectic resume includes work with jazz-funk explorers Sons of Kemet, electronic fusionist Floating Points, and UK rapper Kano. It’s the first time Yorke and Greenwood have collaborated on a major project outside of their main gig, and, not coincidentally, A Light for Attracting Attention sounds more like a proper Radiohead album than any of the numerous side projects the band’s members have done on their own.
We’ve got Greenwood’s lattice-like fingerpicking and saintly electric guitar tone. There’s Yorke’s voice, still in pristine form, wailing like an angel in limbo and gnashing like a punk who woke up on the wrong side of the gutter. There are synths and Greenwood’s sidelong orchestral flourishes signaling end times. Longtime producer Nigel Godrich is in the control room, giving each sound an immense and terrifying and beautiful glow. How about some wonky rhythms that keep your mind from slipping into passive mode? Yep, lots of those too. All due respect to the guys from Radiohead who are not in the Smile, but if A Light for Attracting Attention were presented as the triumphant follow-up to the group’s last album, 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool, I’d bet that most people would have happily been fooled.
From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-smile-a-light-for-attracting-attention/

The Smile are an English rock band comprising the Radiohead members Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, bass, keys) and Jonny Greenwood (guitar, bass, keys) with the drummer Tom Skinner. They are produced by Nigel Godrich, Radiohead's longtime producer. They incorporate elements of post-punk, progressive rock, Afrobeat and electronic music. The Smile worked during the COVID-19 lockdowns and made their surprise debut in a performance streamed by Glastonbury Festival in May 2021. In early 2022, they released six singles and performed to an audience for the first time at three shows in London, which were livestreamed. In May, the Smile released their debut album, A Light for Attracting Attention, and began an international tour.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smile_(band)

Lithium X-Mas - Hip Death Goddess

 #Lithium X-Mas #psychedelic rock #art rock #indie rock #rock #psychedelic punk #1980s #Ultimate Spinach cover

Psychedelic art-rock pioneering band from Texas, Lithium X-Mas,was formed in Dallas, Texas, in 1985. They emerged from the punk scene that included the likes of Nervebreakers, Butthole Surfers, Vomit Pigs, and Horton Heat. The band played a diverse array of venues, from seedy warehouses to psychedelic theme parties to Dallas' legendary, upscale Starck Club. Lithium's first forte was the excavated cover song, bringing their own twisted spin to tunes such as Nilsson's 'Jump into the Fire,' Lemon Pipers' 'Green Tambourine,' and Ultimate Spinach's 'Hip Death Goddess.' Forward looking, but still informed by deep excavation of eclectic record collections, Lithium's fans included Sonic Youth, with whom they shared bills and who advertised them on their guitars; Nirvana, who were inspired by the name for some of their source material; the Butthole Surfers, whose drummer King Coffey signed them to his record label; and many others.  From: https://www.forcedexposure.com/Artists/LITHIUM.X.MAS.html