What does it sound like?:

Deer Tick lean heavily on the talents of their frontman and songwriter, John J. McCauley. In his heart, he is a barstool balladeer but, after a few drinks, the band easily lead him astray into boozy, rowdy garage, out-ramshackling Pavement. A few more drinks later and he’s back on the barstool, swaying with Dylan Thomas maudlin.

Mayonnaise is their third compilation in less than two years (Deer Tick Vol. 1 is the better of 2017’s pair). It focusses on rarities, alternate versions and covers. They choose delicate flowers such George Harrison’s troubled Run Of The Mill and The Velvet Underground’s barely breathing Pale Blue Eyes to showcase their sensitive side. Ben Vaughan’s Too Sensitive For This World is, perhaps, taking it a step too far. The Pogues White City, on the other hand, is more wild and ragged. The one new original song, Hey! Yeah! falls somewhere between the two stools. Nevertheless, the thirteen tracks are a fun if schizophrenic listen, exactly as you would imagine Deer Tick’s world to be.

However, three compilations in such a short time is somewhat strange. The last album, their fifth, Negativity, was released in 2013. Have » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Katie Doherty and Mara Simpson have a lot more in common than just the rich, creamy texture of their voices. They both have their second album released today; gentle, intimate, personal, beautifully recorded albums in the ‘contemporary folk’ idiom. They both have been formally trained. Katie obtained a degree in Folk at Newcastle University back in 2006. Mara is classically trained in composition, piano and guitar. They both rely on a small number of musicians to embellish their songs with subtle sophistication and a dependable strength. Katie has her Navigators, Dave Gray and Shona Mooney, and Mara’s band consists of Fiddes Smith, Jools Owen and Jamie Patterson, plus Poppy Ackroyd provides orchestration to some songs. Finally, they both have a passion for story telling through music.

Katie comes across as more shy than Mara. Her first album was issued in 2007. In the interim, she’s lived the life of a farmer’s wife, bringing up family and keeping her musical muscles twitching as musical director for The Royal Shakespeare Company’s As You Like It and in her native Gateshead Theatre. There is a purity about her singing and her songs, more authentically Folk than Mara. » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Wes Bayliss and Jason ‘Rowdy’ Cope bonded over a mutual love of fishing and Southern Rock. It wasn’t too long before they were writing songs together. They both rock hard on guitar but Rowdy causes most sparks to fly. Wes’s voice has a characteristic Tennessee mournful twang but can also scream itself as hoarse as Robert Plant. Jay Tooke and Johnny Stanton complete the four piece.

Old News is their second album, fifteen tracks, of which six are covers, including all of the last four when they let their hair down as though encoring after a triumphant gig. Finishing the album with songs by Wayne Mills, Merle Haggard, Greg Allman and Tom Petty tell you pretty much all you need to know about the band. They may be following in the footsteps of Lynyrd Skynyrd and, even, Kings Of Leon but, like Jason Isbell and The Drive-By Truckers, they still retain a strong Country element in their style.

Their own songs use the grammar of Rock to speak the language of Country, sensitive lyrics set to a pounding kick drum and storming riffs. That doesn’t mean they are adverse to an acoustic, forlorn » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

House represents the democratisation of Disco. We have to thank The Roland Corporation, a Japanese electronics company, whose relatively inexpensive equipment, the TR-808 drum machine, the TB-303 bass synthesiser and the JX-3P synthesiser provide its signature sound. A relentless 4/4 rhythm, with an off-beat electronic hi-hat, is embellished by deep bass and keyboard textures. Vocals aren’t essential but can easily be patched on from samples. Any DJ worth their salt could make records very cheaply and very quickly in their own homes (hence the term ‘House’).

This isn’t music for selling records or sounding good on the radio. Its purpose is to get the dance floor moving, each DJ having their own unique repertoire of tracks, a repertoire that changed every week. House is disposable and without any subtlety or artifice. It stimulates the communal activity of throwing your limbs about, without embarrassment, in a seething cauldron of a mass of likeminded souls as the bass thumps through your chest. Under those circumstances, House Music can be euphoric, especially when fuelled by the scene’s favoured drug, ecstasy.

The last thing you should do is sit down and listen to a 36 track 3CD » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Paul McCartney was sore and licking wounds when he made these two records in 1971 and 1973 respectively. The film, Let It Be, had shown him in a poor light, his promotional material for his first solo album provoked the headline, “Paul Breaks Up The Beatles” and it was his lawsuit, launched as he recorded Ram, that finally dissolved The Beatles partnership. He was seen as the bad guy and the critics hated his music, comparing it unfavourably to John’s and George’s early solo output. No wonder he ran off to Scotland and indulged himself in a prodigious pot habit.

Ram had been recorded with the help of a couple of guitarists and Denny Seiwell on drums. He decided he needed to be in a band again, bringing Denny Laine from The Moody Blues as permanent guitarist. Thus, with the addition of his ever present, adoring wife, Wings was formed.

Under his cloud of pot, Paul continued to write prolifically, usually strumming his acoustic guitar as his family sang along and played around him. He still had a winning way with a tune but his lyrics almost completely dried up. Detached as he » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Anthony Tombling, independent film director, is CUTS. He hails from Bristol and began his career as a singer for a band called Dragons. They released one album. He hasn’t given up singing altogether, guesting for Timo Maas, but his music-making is mainly shaping Electronica to accompany visual images. One of his pieces was used in the Ex Machina soundtrack and another in the Persons Of Interest TV show. Mainly, he composes music for his own films and this is his second release of 2018, the Exist 1 & 2 EPs being issued in April, the soundtrack to an experimental film about sleep paralysis.

A Gradual Decline has a terrible beauty. Tombling travelled to Iceland to record ice breaking from the glaciers and take advantage of Reykjavik’s perfect ambience for electronica, the land of ice and fire where two continental plates crack asunder. He uses those recordings in the manner of William Babinski’s Disintegration Loops where the sound declines as it repeatedly passes through the machines. He adds nagging beats, splintered noises and fragile, wispy melodies. Even at its most serene, the music creeps towards the edge. A synthesiser groans and creeks, a metronome ticks » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

In the year 2000, David Bowie headlined Glastonbury and played 21 of his best known songs to a crowd of at least 250,000 people. So many entered the site without a ticket, the following year’s festival was cancelled because of safety fears and by 2002 they built a fence. Those that were there described the performance as bliss. No less an authority than Emily Eavis rates it as the finest Glastonbury set in the festival’s history. It is regarded as a triumphant return by an artist whose album sales had diminished during the nineties and hadn’t played a greatest hits package for well over a decade. This release consists of two CDs, a DVD of the entire performance, nicely wrapped up in a Jonathan Barnbrook cover and notes written by Caitlin Moran, who was at the concert.

The band oozes class. Mike Garson is, by some distance, the best Bowie pianist (Rick Wakeman’s contribution to Hunky Dory was as a session musician). Earl Slick vies with Mick Ronson for the number one axeman slot. Gail Ann Dorsey and Sterling Campbell are an excellent rhythm section, second only in the Bowie parthenon to George Murray » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Everyone loves a garage band. How about one from Perpignan that sings in English, French or Italian, following a line of heritage from The Velvet Underground and The Stooges, through Jesus And The Mary Chain and The White Stripes to The Fall, a husband and wife duo who love to make a racket, literally, recording in their own garage, a husband and wife who dropped out of the rat race in 2009 to be as noisy as ? And The Mysterians and The Kingsmen?

Maria Limiñanas is as primitive as Mo Tucker or Meg White but when she sets off on her rhythm (she only really has one rhythm), she is steady and reliable and can keep thrumming for an age, a garage Jaki Liebezeit without any fancy paradiddles or cymbal work. Lionel lacks the pizzazz of, say, Jack White but he more than makes up for it with his enthusiasm and his willingness to turn his hand to anything, particularly a fuzzy organ and a variety of wind instruments. Over the years, their refreshing, honest approach has attracted a number of collaborators, including Pascal Camelade, Peter Hook and Brian Jonestown’s Massacre’s Anton » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

It’s coming up to Christmas, so it’s only natural that the hardest working man in Yuletide Show Business has a new album, this time collaborating with Marc Almond. It is, after all, his duty to provide a stocking filler for dads and grandads across the land. However, the pairing might raise an eyebrow, crossing camp Goth with boogie-woogie for 14 tracks of mostly covers with a few originals thrown in and the obligatory Tainted Love.

It actually works better than it sounds. They are very energetic for a pair of sixty year olds and are still totally in love with music and performing. Plus, they know each other well, their on/off relationship dating back to Almond’s recovery from a coma after a motorbike accident in 2004.

Marc never had the best voice but he brings a colourful theatricality and a winking sense of cabaret. Jools uses the opportunity to move towards proper big band music. He plays less boogie-woogie and more swing, controlling his restless left hand and allowing his right to flourish. At some points, somewhat unbelievably, he plays fewer notes than he could and allows the horn section to hog the » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Having endured their annus horribilis in 1967, The Rolling Stones consolidated in 1968, regrouped and hit on the formula that would fuel their imperial phase and provide them with the style and attitude that keeps them as a major draw as a live act fifty years later. Beggars Banquet and its single, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, define the rock phenomenon that is The Rolling Stones.

This remaster, by Bob Ludwig, the only extra being a mono Sympathy For The Devil, improves on the previous marginally. However, its release is an ideal opportunity to re-evaluate an iconic Rock album.

The album is beautifully recorded. Most of the credit should go to their regular engineer, Glyn Johns, but they’d also found a producer who could bring out their best. Andrew ‘Loog’ Oldham had deserted them in their hour of need, running away to America when Jagger and Richards were arrested on drug charges. Jimmy Miller became their comrade in arms as opposed to their organiser.

Keith Richards was revitalised. He ‘discovered’ 5 string open tuning and was inspired. He also started messing around with the latest technology, cassette recorders, using them as a pick » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

I have to declare an interest. Electric Ladyland is one of my favourite albums of all time. I love every single moment of its sprawling four sides of vinyl. As far as I’m concerned, it is a pinnacle of artistic achievement, a joyful celebration of music by one of the most naturally gifted musicians that has ever lived. In it, Jimi displays an effortless mastery of many different musical styles and, sonically, it is sumptuous and brilliantly recorded using the latest technology of the time, produced by Jimi himself. It sounds like the future even today.

The sound of the album is achieved by the liberal use of flanging, echo, backmasking and chorus effect. These techniques bring together similar sounds, or replicates them or turns them backwards to create a rich, shimmering texture with sweeping flourishes. Jimi wasn’t an innovator with them but an early adopter. However, he deployed them brilliantly on Electric Ladyland. There is no other album on which Jimi’s guitar sounds so good. The first track, ….And The Gods Made Love, introduces us to the collage of sound he’d use in the rest of the album.

On track two, Have You » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

The Beatles probably proposed the title A Doll’s House for their White Album because it conjures an image of multiple rooms packed with intricacies and trinkets, reflecting an album of thirty songs spread across four sides of vinyl, a cornucopia of different moods and musical styles. Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, is full of secrets, lies, blackmail, sickness, death and disordered relationships, ending in divorce. Just over a year later, after The Beatles broke up, the themes of Ibsen’s play seemed more apt. Besides the turmoil within The Beatles themselves, the unrest in the outside world of 1968 seeped through Abbey Road’s sound-proofed walls adding to the distress in its grooves. The album is an unnerving listen. Even the prettiest songs have bite.

Following Sgt. Pepper proved to be quite a problem for The Beatles. They didn’t have enough songs for a full Magical Mystery Tour album, a made for TV film broadcast at Christmas that was greeted with bewilderment, and the ones they had were Sgt. Pepper-lite. They decided to refresh their creative juices by travelling to Rishikesh in India to learn Transcendental Meditation at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram. The drug-free environment certainly » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

Anne Marie Almedal lives in Norway with her composer husband, making a living teaching. Those long Winter nights prey on the human mind. Light Shadow is born from an innate desire to create and is flush with a characteristic Nordic cool. It sounds as though she has dedicated a lot of time writing the songs and making sure every musical moment really tells.

Light Shadow is immaculate. Anne Marie Almedal’s voice is diaphanous and translucent. When set against warm synthetic strings and gentle beats, it can melt hearts. She hits high notes with a satisfying accuracy, can ride a sinewy melody effortlessly and harmonises with herself to perfection. An echoey piano hints at past sorrow and a nagging guitar provides the whisper of an edge. The purity of her voice, the delicacy of the tunes and the comfort blanket sound disguise the fact that these songs are packed with emotional turmoil. This is an album coming to terms fear, loathing and mental fragility and trying to build a sense of hope out of trying circumstances. It captures the vulnerability of the human existence in a nutshell of ten, neatly constructed, professionally performed songs. » Continue Reading.

What does it sound like?:

The outlaw, the lonesome cowboy, the wandering vagabond or the migrant workers of the 1930s, outsiders to society, are deeply embedded in the American psyche, an integral part of their history, their literature, their culture and their politics. In Country music there are entire sub-genres celebrating these solitary travellers: Outlaw, Cowboy, Hillbilly and Honky Tonk. The instruments are simple: acoustic guitar, banjo, peddle steel, fiddle, stand up bass and piano. Lyrics tend to focus on working-class life, with frequently tragic themes of lost love, adultery, loneliness, alcoholism, and self-pity. The rhythms reflect the gait of a cow pony: walk, trot and lope.

Joshua Pless Harris is the genuine article, an exponent of the dark arts of Outlaw Country. He uses primitive instruments, like the clawhammer banjo, and his voice is as rough and wild as his beard. He is the antithesis of the slick production line that is Nashville in the 21st Century. His songs are a frank expression of his life. Born in Alabama, he left home aged 14, hitch-hiking and jumping freight trains in search of work, turning his hand at sheet metal scrapping, labouring, logging, farming and carpentry. He wound up » Continue Reading.