What does it sound like?:

Further to the release of the Space Summit single “I’m Electric” in the summer of 2021, notoriously work-shy* fop Marty Willson-Piper has put the finishing touches to his collaboration with Jed Bonniwell and a cast of his most talented friends and delivered the accompanying album, entitled ‘Life This Way’.

The lead-off track, “I’m Electric” was covered in my last review, and having checked back, nothing has changed my opinion in the interim. It’s a glorious sounding** track, stitched beautifully together so that the joins between recording locales Penzance, Minneapolis, Borneo, Bristol, Lisbon and Stockholm are so invisible that you’d never know unless I’d just pointed them out.

Title track “Life This Way” follows smartly up, and MWP’s fingerprints inevitably become more easily identified over a track which floats somewhere between the more composed moments of mid-period The Church, and the sort of choruses that nu-Marillion write when they’re trying to get radio play. From thence on, it’s a familiar furrow being ploughed – some beautifully phrased guitar parts warmly comforting a series of songs that no fan of the Under the Milky Way hitmakers is going to be taken aback by at any » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

There’s too much music, I know that. Only last night I was being played half a dozen artists I’d never even heard of, and I’m not a civilian when it comes to these matters – all of them beautifully composed, incredibly well performed and transcendentally produced. Matt Deighton and Jerry Jospeh – there’s a couple for you straight off the bat. This afternoon I came home to find a present in my inbox from one Riley Catherall, purveyor of Americana (or, since he’s working out of Melbourne, possibly Victoriana) – singer, writer, guitar player and one of a seemingly endless surfeit of pale young men in battered hats and stylish waistcoats who clog up the pages of RnR Magazine on a monthly basis. The last time I’d seen him was as part of Lachlan Bryan’s band The Wildes at the Maverick Festival during an impromptu set on a stage I was curating and where he stepped forward to deliver a couple of numbers of which I wrote at the time “…whose intimate songs were so precious and fragile under the late-night stars that I almost daren’t turn him up too far lest the magic » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Much like his namesake in Back to The Future, Marty’s made another timely appearance. Investing his lockdown-enforced free time wisely, former The Church and All About Eve fret-botherer Marty Willson-Piper has rounded up the (un)usual suspects from his last endeavour once again and launches this collaboration with very occasional troubler of the scorers Jed Bonniwell (nope, me neither) who writes, sings and co-creates this teaser from the forthcoming full length album by (checks clipboard) Space Summit.

It’s certainly not for the good folk who pine for the twelve string Marty Willson-Jangler of old, bearing a riff that’s not afraid to pump up its guns before Jed slides into the action, not with the wail one might expect given the intro, but more of a Screaming Trees thirty-a-day rasp that – say – Willie Nile might employ if he were fronting Soundgarden. It’s slightly airier and proggier-leaning than its clear grungy antecedents might suggest, but as expected that production (as Gerald the Gorilla might have enthused) is amazing – the behind the desk team of Marty and Dare Mason certainly know the dusty end of the faders from the other end, and the drumming (by » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

It’s possibly the involvement of Marty Willson-Piper, twelve-string botherer of this parish, that will be of most interest to members of The Afterword, but MOAT is no jingle-jangle pony, being a collaboration between ex-The Church Shergoldster and member of – if for not necessarily their best but certainly most interesting album – All About Eve, and Weeping Willows instrumentalist Niko Röhlcke.

Don’t get me wrong, are acoustics aplenty all over this, but there are also horns, strings (principally tastefully deployed by one Olivia Willson-Piper) and the campaign for real drums will celebrate the investment of a portion of the crowdfunded budget in employing one Eddie John (once, briefly of AW-friendly popsters Stackridge) to thump the tubs in a most appropriate manner, all expertly shepherded by co-producer Dare Mason, veteran of knob twiddling for the likes of Soul II Soul, Prince, Elton John and, um, The Triffids.

But what does it sound like, I hear you mither? As I say, it’s not all about the post-Bells of Rhymney acoustic template. Acid Rain kicks off the album in a sprightly fashion before Gone by Noon brings probably the most Churchey course of the night to the » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Venturing out to see the estimable New Jersey stylings of Nicole Atkins this week, I was drawn to the humble and self-effacing opening turn – one Caleb Elliot – whose day job is as cello player in the headliner’s employ. Standard floppy-fringed, roper-heeled, sensitive, acoustic guitar-driven troubadour fare, one might think. Nevertheless I was drawn further into his world the more the set went on and treated myself to the vinly version of his new album (you get a download code too) at the interval. Listening to the full band version of the songs, I couldn’t be more taken with them. The electric versions are a masterpiece of introspection, a symphony of underplayment. The bass on a few tracks (do we say ‘cuts’ these days or are we still waiting for that to come around again?) is so minimalist it’s almost not there until, until…there it is, as perfectly placed as a daub of red in a Turner seascape. For all, or perhaps because of, his gosh-darn charm it’s unlikely that he’ll be taking the alt-Americana scene by the scruff of it’s neck anytime soon, so why not do a brother a favour and » Continue Reading.