Brighton's Hollow Hand sound like a strange and inspired fusion of Dexys Midnight Runners and Dire Straits. Dire Midnight Runners? Dexys Straits. Alan McGee would have signed this band to his record label back in the day ! New album Wish Road South has that odd Seventies twang that's half way between Peckham High Street and the America of its dreams. Ther eare hints of The Kinks and The Beatles. It's really rather gentle, rather English and rather lovely !
Cindy from San Francisco. They're playing songs from The Velvet Underground Songbook, Their latest album Another Country. As I rise and pack and prepare for a train journey South to be with my elderly parents.
Now I'm down South in my family's bosom with all the madness that entails. I have Another Country on again and actually it feels rather like Christmas. Perfect soundtrack. Mum is downstairs preparing tea. All is right in the World. Frankly, if this is Another Country, I'd like to go there immediately.
We must live in the moment and appreciate our good fortune. I appreciate mine. Cindy make me appreciate it more. They don't veer from a well established formula that has kept me happy for my adult life and will do so as long as I'm on this earth. Until it ends with a tombstone as the blog I write's title implies.
I've been listening to Kate Aerial all day. I increasingly like to do that with albums. Get their measure. Find myself overcome. Carried aborne. Kate is good for that and so is Aerial. All life is here. A mother's love for her children. The sacred quality of the daily chores. The sublime. The playing sometimes feels slightly worthy. The spirit is profound and the execution divine.
There have been innumerous responses to the current incumbernt and imperial regime of the White House . The one thing the current global climate is surely good for is in terms of generating cultural responses. Protomartyr's seventh album Hotel Usona is probably as good as it gets.
Horror, disgust, dread, disdain, poetry and an almost tangible glee are all stirred into the mix. The resulting album is furiously entertaining and relentless. It's all incredibly ambitious and builds an extraordinary tension. Musically the band cast their net further than they have done previously. This is racheted up to a glorious and sustained degree. A masterful record.
