Rosie's in Newcastle re-opened last night after a two minute closure for refurbishment. I was there of course. It's my local. I'm pleased to say that it hasn't become a wine bar as was a prevailing rumour. Fortunately it has the same vibe. This went on, from Young Sean, a good friend of mine and former barman at the place. Although living through the Seventies led me to be slightly wary of Wings it sounded great.
A couple of years back, Parsnip, a Melbourne four-piece, first reared their collective heads on here with their debut single which I posted on Christmas Day. Since then, they've returned intermittently with fine, whimsical, songs and EPs as they made their way towards their debut album. Here it is, a great work of pop confection, eleven track When the Tree Bears Fruit, released yesterday.
The question with this outfit was always going to be whether their particular brand of childlike poesy would stretch to merit a thirty minute listening experience. I'm delighted to be able to report that it does. I've just spent the required half hour in its company to check it out and will be back for more. I'm sure of that.
What Parsnip do is soft harmonised kitsch psychedelia of the kind first peddled by The Strawberry Alarm Clock and their sort way back in the day. The other obvious seeds of their inspiration are Flying Nun records of the early to mid Eighties, most particularly The Chills and Look Blue Go Purple. Even occasionally early Orange Juice.
As with many of these three bands best records, When the Tree Bears Fruit is a retreat to the Arcadian idyll of happy childhood. A series of lush, melodic neatly but deliberately loosely constructed tunes that celebrate the moments in life when the universe felt infinite and anything seemed possible.
Discover the record's charms for yourself. It's regressive tendencies remarkably never grate because the intentions are genuinely sincere and wiser than they might appear at first glance. The profundity of the nursery rhyme. Parsnip are much sweeter than their name might suggest and this is one of the rough and ready Rough Trade friendly DIY treats of the year. A record whose appeal I feel sure will endure.
Why do bands call themselves things like Dry Cleaning? It's quite beyond me as I'd have thought the point behind making music in the first place would be to differentiate yourself from the mundane. Oh well. Otherwise this, Sweet Princess, the six track debut EP from the London quartet has much to make it worthy of note. It's Post Punk essentially with restless spoken vocals, buzzing wasp guitars. The underlining mood is disquiet with occasional outbursts of incoherent and irrational anger and the band pull it off well. Shame about the name mind.
A couple of years back Philadelphia's Queen of Jeans came out with their debut LP Dig Yourself and I liked it very much and said so on here. Now they're back with a second album, If you're not afraid, I'm not afraid and listening through to it for the first time it's having the same effect on me. They've cast a new spell.
Inspired, at least partially, by events in lead singer and main songwriter Miri's life, namely the passing of her mother and the 2016 American Election, the record is yet another defiant cultural kickback to prevailing American political winds. It's brave, unapologetic and quite resplendent.
These are anthems, but they're bruised and damaged ones, from the wrong side of the tracks. Picking up the trail from Shangri Las, Patti, Debbie and Kim Deal, the band have a sure melodic touch and can well and truly rock out when required. Each song is a cry from the heart, two handfuls of carefully crafted underground classics that Ezra Furman and Lana del Ray would doubtless doff their caps to.
Given the number of antecedents for what's going on here I've mentioned in the preceding paragraphs it seems that Queen of Jeans are taking a well worn path through the enchanted woods of outsider Rock and Roll. But the quality of the songwriting and the sheer unrestrained feeling they convey and maintain over the course of If you're not afraid, I'm not afraid lead me to recommend the record with only the slightest of caveats.
Perhaps a greater change of pace between songs next time round might be suggested but there's plenty of damaged romantic majesty on show here for fans of the form. Queen of Jeans understand that life offers almost unlimited opportunity for the dramatic gesture. Nothing to be afraid of here and plenty to relish.
For a band who have called their latest record Destroy Nostalgia masked Birmingham duo doesn't half sound like something the MC5 or The Stooges might have served up in Detroit in the late Sixties.
Stir in The Cramps, Rocket from the Tombs, Destroy All Monsters and Jon Spencer and you'd have a pretty good idea of what's going on here. Black Mekon throw plenty of classic Rock & Roll shapes, all black leather and guitar posing. They do it well enough to not turn the whole shebang into cabaret but lack enough tricks of their own to make this something really exceptional.
Ella Einhorn, formerly of Scotland Yard Gospel re-emerges with an elegiac and plaintive new collaborative project under the banner of Fashion Brigade. Sounding like he's from Glasgow when actually he resides in Brooklyn, the album Fvck the Heartache, features contributions from Exene Cervenka, Frankie Cosmos, Shamir, Phosphorescent and myriad others.
It's poppy and celebratory catty then wistful by turn. Very much a record of 2019, it's a great listen. Somewhere between electro dance, baroque and indie with The Pogues making up the backing band. Taking the best part of ten years to complete, it's been time well spent. Much more cohesive that you'd suspect of an album featuring so many disparate contributors it sounds like the soundtrack to closing time at a New Year's Eve at the bar at the end of the world.
A choice, and a good one, from Colin, one of the regulars, in The Newcastle Arms, my new regular, while the long wait for Rosie's to re-open continues.
Ryan Marquez, also of Apple Orchard and Golden Teardrops is clearly fond of colourful band names. He's also studied the Pete Astor songbook closely but I'm not one to complain about that. Here are a couple of jangling, melodic Indie guitar songs from the recently released, self titled Umbrella Puzzles EP.
Queens, NYC duo release Count Bateman, one of the more interesting albums that's come my way this August. Wistful and poetic and wry by turns it's gently elegiac and full of good songs.
It really hits a winning streak over its last few tracks, which I've posted here. Seeming to take the Neil Young of Everyone Knows This is Nowhere and Elliott Smith as its guiding inspirations it has a slight melancholic edge to it as if something has gone and simply can't be retrieved, but memories are like that.
The songs never outstay their welcome and often leave a considerable imprint, on this listener at least. As Summer makes its inevitable descent towards Autumn here's a record to listen to in order to savour that moment.
Californian band The Black Watch write a lot of songs with the names of famous and notable people in the title. This I know because they've supplied me with five songs in a row in that particular series on my blog over the last few days.
They have at least two other features that are worthy of note. Firstly that they're fantastic and secondly that they're obscure and hence worthy of bringing to other's attention to signal that they're fantastic. This post is all that I can do about that.
The band themselves are quite aware of the fact that they are under recognised. After all they titled their career retrospective, (released this year), 31 Years of Obscurity which tells you all that you need to know except for bout the brilliance of the songs contained therein.
I could have chosen virtually any one of its 22 tracks to post here. They're all great in different ways. Literary, humorous, lush and melodic guitar led songs, reminiscent of The Go Betweens, The Clientele and other fellow travellers. The fact that the face of singer and primary songwriter John Andrew Frederick is on the cover of this indicates that he deserves most credit. That's an enormous amount of credit. I can only suggest you hear the record.
I've always had a lot of time for Ride. They remind me of the time when I had hair. Of my youth.In fact I had a few years on them when they first turned up with that glorious burst of records at the end of the Eighties and turn of the Nineties. Never really a particularly cool name to drop, they were nevertheless excellent at what they did, walking the line between guitar based pop and noise based art, they put out some fine records between 1989 and 1992.
They've been back together for a few years now. They played what was probably one of the finest gigs I've ever seen down the road from me at The Newcastle Carling Academy some time back. The albums they've put out since they're reformation, 2017's Weather Diaries and the recently released This Is Not a Safe Place don't quite do it for me, but this, Repetition from the latter is worthy of note.
It's written by guitarist Andy Bell, who is enormously proud of it, saying it's one of the best things he's ever done. I know what he's talking about. It's concise, melodic and powerful. Lyrically it says more than Ride generally do, using Eno's Oblique Strategiescard method as a metaphor for their mode of creation and career in music, who they were at 18 and who they are now. I think it's great.
The last of five in this mini series within a series from the marvellous Californian band The Black Watch. This one, for Eighteenth Century English poet Christopher Smart, helpfully also providing its subject's dates of birth and death in its title.
A few years back I went to Laugharne Literary and Music Festival in Wales. Irish singer songwriter Fionn Regan played a short set in the local church there. He was an obvious and definite talent, somewhere between Dylan Thomas, (fitting as Laugharne was where Thomas wrote Under Milk Wood), Dylan obviously and Donovan.
All these years down the line Regan hasn't changed much. He still writes the same kind of songs, considered bubbles of observation of the moment. Cala, his sixth album is no masterpiece, but is worth a listen.
Strangely, after a couple of bumper months there have been few new albums released thus far in August that have really grabbed my attention. That's fine, there have been plenty of good songs. One of the more interesting LPs is the new Hold Steady record, Thrashing Thru the Passion released yesterday.
It's perfectly clear what you're going to get with the Hold Steady. They haven't really changed the formula since their first record. Anthems of the existence of the commonplace guy. Blue collar anthems about what makes the ordinary extraordinary. Full throttle but smart and nuanced Rock and Roll with tumbling urban musical frameworks set to American street poetry.
They do this all very well on Thrashing Thru the Passion. Anyone who has appreciated any of their stuff will find plenty to enjoy here. Hardly claiming new territory but certainly settling into middle age with assured bruised dignity.
Another fine song from the Black Watch to keep this particular series ticking over. This one mentions the highly distinguished but also highly eccentric American poet Theodore Roethke. One of his peccadilloes was claiming to be a highly ranking tennis player, hence the song title.
This is perky. First song from North Londoner Marek Kubala. Streamlined, melodic, leftfield New Wave indebted indie guitar that might remind you of things but is distinctly individual and promising.
Quite gorgeous amalgam of an Elliott Smith somehow maintaining an upbeat perspective and Teenage Fanclub at their hazy, mellow, golden peak. From Manchester band Butcher the Bar who have been around for years and remain something of an insider's secret. This, Haunts, something of an instant classic is from their album III which came out a couple of months ago and is also well worth a listen.
Following Iggy yesterday, here's something new from another one of the grandees of all Rock and Roll. Pixies with a song called Catfish Kate ahead of a new album. Deeply familiar, essentially it could easily have been on Doolittle or Bossanova, when first I heard it I thought it was a bit limp. Since then I've listened to it continually, each time finding its familiarity progressively more moving. The way Pixies can make chord changes so effectively, impacting on the emotional mood of the listener. the way Charles Thompson's lyrical world is so refined and specifically his. The way they're middle aged but still just so damned good! Not conquering new territory, just reclaiming theirs. Somehow no-one can do what they do. They know it.
Belated acknowledgement that 6th August would have been Elliott Smith's 50th birthday. In honour of this a tribute was held in New York with the wonderful Joanna Sternberg headlining.
Iggy Pop is back. With an album coming in September and this goes before it. This made me smile on a Monday morning. With a sound like a 2019 update of the sensibility that Iggy and Bowie fashioned back in '77 with The Idiot and Lust For Life. He's definitely not the first and he's still got the second. We're lucky to have him! This will stick in your head on the first play and would sound great on the catwalk.
I haven't really gone for Haim's stuff previously, but this, their latest Summer Girl is something and knows it is. It takes it's juice from elsewhere, Walk on the Wild Side, and Can I Kick It as well as Sheryl Crow, strangely. It sounds like something Luscious Jackson might have done back in the day. With a Paul Thomas Anderson video to boot. It struts.
They were dressed for success. But success it never came. Possibly because they were wearing spacesuits. San Jose. California trio, Duster released their first album Stratosphere in 1998, something of a 'space' concept and it's pretty much the indie hep cat's dream cult record although it's only really come to inhabit that status given the passage of time, being barely noticed except by proper devotees at the time.
Locating the tender spot between Slint and Pavement, if Stratosphere hadn't actually been recorded and put out there it would probably have had to be invented. It really doesn't do anything that those two bands didn't do themselves comprehensively over the years, which is probably why they are so much more generally revered and remembered, but it's a fine album nonetheless.
There's an understated minimalist grace to proceedings throughout. The album cover describes the record it houses well. You suspect the band spent a fair bit of time staring at their shoes and effects pedals onstage.Sometimes there are vocals, sometimes there aren't. It doesn't really seem to matter much either way. Duster maintain their poise.
Other names could be thrown in as potential influences. Wire's Pink Flag is probably the year zero as far as this particular musical sub-genre is concerned. Pere Ubu and Mission of Burma are somewhere in Stratosphere's DNA too. But really it's a definitively Nineties American Indie record, intent on maintaining a defeatist shrug, all the while sending Mayday signals to an oblivious Ground Control before drifting out of range once and for all. The rest is static...
Hey Ya was always ripe for a makeover by an indie band at some point and here are Surfer Blood doing just that. They play it pretty straight although you don't get the 'shake it like a polaroid picture' bit.
