Thursday, February 8, 2024
Song(s) of the Day # 3,642 Abbie Finn Trio
Every second Tuesday evening I pop round the corner from my flat on Clayton Street West in the heart of Newcastle. I'm off in search of some good Jazz and good company. Invariably I find both. In the Newcastle Arts Centre on Westgate Road they hold a free Jam Session attracting many of the finest local players and singers and a healthy and appreciative crowd invariably gather with their pints in the large basement area. Sometimes the music is just mindblowing. Considering this remains a free event, it's great credit to all concerned.
These occasions to me feel like more than a relaxing evening out with a set of people I've known liked and respected for many years. It nurtures the best local traditions and principles which I've been so happy to witness and be a part of since I came to Newcastle. That was in 2008 when I used to hang out at Keith Crombie's Jazz Cafe most weekends and made some of the best friendships I've made in my 15 years in Newcastle. The quality of the playing and the good vibes generated over the course of the evening on one of these jam evenings can be so powerful frankly that the end result feels as much a source of epiphany and revelation as simply a night out listening to music.
The jam is chiefly organised and maintained by Paul Grainger a mainstay of the local scene. A double bassist, and general all round good guy. Paul also moonlights with the Abbie Finn Trio who can be caught live, or else sampled on their recently released debut album Stotties for Three.
The other two players on this altogether excellent product that consciously foregrounds local culture, character, grittiness and pride are Abbie Finn herself who drums composes and arranges, and Harry Keeble providing melodic drection on Tenor Sax.
I took a fifty seven minute break from work on Wednesday lunchtime to take the record in and it was time very well spent. All three are fine players and they combine wonderfully here.. It's a record that's thick with endeavour, wisdom, invention and wonder.
Other reviews can be found here and on the band's Spotify homepage..
Wednesday, February 7, 2024
1984 Singles # 14 Sister Sledge
I couldn't claim in 1984 to have wildly diverse and eclectic tastes. I liked pale anaemic white boys who plucked fenders or rickenbackers and then retreated to their garrets to collapse on a chaise longe with a Penguin paperback and a glass of absinthe.
That didn't mean I didn't like Chic or Sister Sledge records. What do you take me for. A madman? This was one of the best. It's up there with anything on Marquee Moon or Remain In Light in terms of its astonishing ease and liquid grace.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,641 Vera Sola
Vera Sola self consciously ticks all the classy bird, boxes you possibly might have. Latest album Peacemaker, (and that's a funny name for a record like this) flounces out of the traps with its stiletto heels clicking and frilly dress flashing. A knife between its teeth.
This is a record of a certain sort and not one you haven't heard before. Anna Calvi, PJ, Nadine Shah, Mattiel and all those other dames have been throwing these kinds of shapes for many years.
It's all wonderfully entertaining anyhow. Melodic, dramatic and up for a fight. Cast in her Spotify bio as 'the lost love child of Leonard Cohen and Nancy Sinatra' , Vera is a record company ad man's dream realised in silk and chiffon.
Peacemaker, is a devilishly accomplished record. I'm far too old to pretend it hasn't all been done before, but still young enough to be perfectly happy to experience it all once more for the road.
Tuesday, February 6, 2024
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 471 The dBs - Stands For Decibels
From 1983 to 1987 I did what R.E.M. told me to do, This generally meant following trails, buying records and getting to know artists that they brought up in their interviews. This led me to dBs, the Power Pop pioneers who had formed in New York City in 1978.
It took me a while to really process dBs. They were sweeter and poppier than early R.E.M. who had more of a Bohemian Rock edge. I've definitely come round to their cause over the years. This is a rather spectacular listen nowadays. A glorious skewed Pop Record.
1984 Singles # 15 Propaganda
People made a big fuss about Frankie Goes to Hollywood in 1984 but they never did much for me. I was never much one for brash sloganeering or loud marketing, and the music, apart perhaps from The Power of Love, left me cold.
Propaganda, the other jewel in ZZT's crown though were something else. I thought and still think that they were completely fantastic.
A ride into everything that is wonderful, albeit slightly sinister and scary about the Teutonic. Deutsche Frauen.A silent pair of large shouldered men with dead eyes behind banks of keyboards. Expressionist Cinema. The machine as the motor. In Die Zukunft. Sell them your Soul. Never look back! Hervorragend.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,640 Adventureland
' I wanna be in a Punk Rock band. I wanna hold your hand.'
'Formed in 2017, Adventureland is Little Rock's premiere maker of good-natured indie rock.' That's more than good enough to give these three and their latest record Eternal Lightweight thirty five minutes of my time.
It seems listening to this that their singer has had his heart broken at some point down the line. Maybe more than once. But he's put it all to good use an the band come together in support to make this an altogether rather lovely ride.
Give them your ears. They're the kind of band you catch by chance on a small stage wanering roun a festival and are sufficuently impressed an charmed to change your plans and hang on until the end of the set.I was reminded of how much I loved Buffalp Tom back in the day.
Monday, February 5, 2024
1984 Singles # 16 Felt
'You're reading from The Book of the Dead. But you don't know what it;s about...;
Looking back 1984 musically felt like you found yourself at a set of crossroads needing to decide where you were going to go next. Of course it didn't necessarily feel like that at the time.
I was at a good moment in life.I had a great set of friends. I took my A Levels and did ok. Then I set off on my gap year and began applying to university, got into one and on a course that was far too good for me looking back. One of my luckiest breaks. Then set off to Switzerland for a job in a hotel as 1985 began. The world was at my feet and I didn't even realise it. Youth is Wasted on the Young as someone far wiser than me once said.
Felt were not making the net of the grown up charts bulge with any regularity. That's putting it mildly. Peel disliked them. They never had a proper hit or even got played on daytime radio at all during the Eighties. Except perhaps with their stellar moment Primitive Painters, Lawrence duet with Liz Fraser which personally I never much cared for. It always made me feel slightly sick. Sorry. Cocteau Twins and I became increasingly allergic to one another. Like a girl you'd had a drunken snog with at a party and both parties decide it best never so much as to acknowledge each other's presence when you met in a high school corridor from that point on.
This was much more down my street and of course sunk like a stone with an anchor attached commercially. It should have gone Top Five but good things were largely not going Top Five for a while. In the grand scheme of things of course this matters not one whit. It's just great this exists.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,639 Topographies
It's only with time that you realise quite how far beyond the word influential Robert Smith and The Cure are . Goth Uncles. Godheads.
'Ooh Mummy. I'm lost in a Forest. All alone...' They intoned. Or words to that effect. In 1979. The world changed In a small but tangible way.
According to their Spotify bio San Francisco's band Topographies 'meshes 90s shoegaze with the urgency and mechanical rhythms of Post Punk'
Sunday, February 4, 2024
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 473 Godflesh - Streetcleaner
Industrial Noise for those who seek out dark thrills. Not something I've ever been prone to. With a vocalist who seems to be gargling gravel and regurgitating violently as a direct response to such foolhardy behaviour and what sounds like a band of unpleasant Orcs beating the crap out of their instruments in support. I'm sorry. I don't like to be judgemental and unkind but can I just say it's awful and quite godforsaken, (meant in an uncomplimenrtary way an leave it at that. When the first two tracks are called Like Rats and Christbait Rising I suspected we would not be in each other's company long. This proved to be the case.
1984 Singles # 17 Pale Fountains
Mick Head seems to be working his way slowly but steadily to Legend status. A ledge if your preference is for that brevity thing. That might not have seemed inevitable really when he wasn't particularly even getting notice much during his early days.
Pale Fountains, the band he fronted put out their first album Pacific Street in 1984. I bought it, but I was the kind who would. Not many others did ,and the music press said it was alright and no more. This was probably a fair assessment. Ir was not the classic it perhaps thought it was and they were probably capable of though it showed excellent promise.
Unless should have been a hit single but stalled at ... erm #115 in the UK singles chart. It made the right sounds mind. Horns, artistic ennui, clear reverence for classy orchestral 60s Pop. Baccharach Scott Walker, Forever Changes. Perhaps slightly shrill at points but still a tune and band that would grace Top of the Pops. An indicator of what a talent the man was.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,638 Flight Mode
I'd like to travel more from now. There are places I'd like to go. I'd like to go to Oslo for example. I hear it has lots of wonderful parks, I visited briefly on a holiday when I was a teenager and would like to go again and have another look roun now I'm definitely not one of those,
Flight Mode are from Oslo. They have a vaguely generic, mundane name and a guitar sound that seems distantly related to Nineties strummers like Bettie Serveert and Daryl Anne. Lyrical inclinations that suggest everything will be OK after a spell of moping around and not speaking to ine another.
Their album The Three Times appears to be their first. It runs on tracks that are determined early on. You know what the record is going to sound like afyer a couple of tracks and nothing that happens thereafter will surprise you much.There are some nicely crafted tracks here though which mark them out as ones to watch
Saturday, February 3, 2024
1984 Singles # 18 The Jesus & Mary Chain
If The Loft were Creation Record's 'most likely to' for a couple of seasons that changed forever as soon as The Jesus & Mary Chain played the Living Room in a gig that instantly became LEGENDARY and Alan McGee and Bobby Gillespie's wildest dreams started instantly to actualise.
It became one of those gigs where probably myth made the experience itself irrelevant. Jesus & Mary Chain were clearly the next big thing and haircuts and complections which probably would have benefitted from TLC and upgrading ruled the roost for the next 18 months.
The band did not die in a plane crash as they threatened to do in interviews, Eventually they became rather ordinary. But hey we've all got to pay the rent. William and Jim Reid turned out to be very fine songwriters in the classic Brill Building mould.. That was actually clear right from the off. Scrape away the veneer of feedback and the quality of the songs is clear as day. They were traditionalist soppies as it eventualised. But talented boys.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,637 True Green
Rising late on Saturay morning, it's nice to chance upon an unusual looking and sounding record to soundtrack my drawn out leisurely breakfast. It's why I do this and I'm glad and grateful that it continues to reap unexpected catches for me. Like a net bulging with glittering school of silver fish.
Today's prize a record with a classic DIY cover of front door keys and unappealing insect life. Minneapolis songwriter Dan Hornsby is at the heart of the True Green experience. My Lost Decade is their first album.
It's a slightly queasily recorded record focusing on lived experience. Reflecting on things that have happened as we look back on them. Hornsby has a style that serves reminders of Stephen Malkmus. My Peccadiloes conciously takes the rhyming slang of Squeeze's Up The Junction as its template. I've listende to it five times already this morning The result is one of the best songs I've heard this year. It's so good I think I'll listen to it again now.
Elsehwhere True Green take a generally wistful approach to things and consierable beauty is unmasked. This is a pretty wonderful record. Time for my morning bath.
Friday, February 2, 2024
1984 Singles # 19 The Loft
'Why when the suns starts to rise. Do people wait. And catch the morning train...'
Creation's promising guitar Turks The Loft. Their promise was short lived as it proved. But for a brief while in 1984, NME readers and devotees of The Byrds, The Velvet Underground, Television, A Level Romantic Poetry and Soul Music hoped there might be something good on Top of the Pops on Thursday night for a change.
It wasn't to be. By 1985 The Loft were gone. After an acrimonious band split onstage in a support slot for Colourfield at the Hammersmith Odeon. They left behind a couple of fine jingling jangling 45's and some great radio sessions. And a question mark. What might they have been capable of had ego not intervened and they'd sat down instead and talked through their issues,
Such is youth. And life often. Pete Astor combed back his quiff. Packed his Telecaster, his leather trousers and polkadot shirts and started afresh with The Weather Prophets. Anyhow the Byrds, The Velvet Underground, Television, A Level Romantic Poetry and Soul Music were actually destined to make it onto Top of the Pops in 1984 after all. In the shape of Lloyd Cole & the Commotions. Coming up on here in a week or so.
500 Greatest Albums of the 1980s ... Ranked! # 475 Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Kick Against The Pricks
Sulky Nick and his Bad Seeds have a shot at a set of childhood radio and record player favourites in between hits and shots of a different kind
Song(s) of the Day # 3,636 J Mascis
' I feel the pain of everyone. Then I feel nothing...'
It's comforting to say goodbye to January. Hello to February. Onwards to Spring. And to be able to do so to the sound of a new J Mascis record. Everything is changing and at the same time. nothing is. Sun comes up. It's Friday morning.
Mascis is a comforting figure. Almost a biblical one. Standing at the crossroads. Guitar in hand, Distinctive guitar solo incoming. End of the world is nigh but he'll stand his ground. What Do We Do Now his new record offers nothing new but that hasn't been what we look to him for really. Not for a while.
There are a couple of stunned looking animated otters on the front of the record sleeve floating in what seems to be the great virtual pond of life. Meanwhile J's voice drones on in the comforting way it does. It all seems apt.
Let's face it we know what he does by now. The eternal troubled teen. Neil Young's confused but talented nephew. Still just as troubled. Even as he plods towards sixty. Enjoy. Make a cup of tea. Put this record on. I'm glad he's here. We all should be.
Thursday, February 1, 2024
The Umbrellas - Fairweather Friends
San Francisco's finest C-86 copycats are on their way to Newcastle soon. If I'm still here I'll go out and see them. I'm not sure of my immediate plans. But what they do , although it is bizarre in some respects, appeals to me and I'm happy to endorse their narrative.
Second album Fairweather Friends continues pretty much from where their eponymous debut left off. Sure it's 2024 out there. But in The Umbrellas heads it's forever 1986, Creation Records are on the rise. We're in Dingwall's in Camden. Ooh look, there's Bobby Gillespie plotting in the corner with Alan MacGee as usual and Umbrellas are about to shuffle onstage to a nonchalant response from the too cool for school original Indie kids. Fourth on the bill to Felt.
What a day for a daydream. One thing you have to say for Umbrellas is they've done their homework. This is a an immaculate replication of a long gone scene and sensibility. They're note perfect replications of The Pastels, 14 Iced Bears, Razorcuts and that whole sensibility.
It's all something of a wonder to behold. There's not a hair grip, ankle sick or skirt pleat out of place. Edwyn passes the baton to Morrissey on the bend and Steven sprints off towards the tape. They don't miss a beat or a trick for ten songs and coming on to 35 minutes. I find myself wondering why perhaps but you can't fault their intent or application.
1984 Singles # 20 Associates
I'm living a life that runs on smooth repetitive pathways these days dictated by routine. Waking early, listening to a record, writing about it, having a leisurely breakfast heading to the fiitness centre. Finding myself in the sauna. Alternating between that and the plunge pool for half an hour. Showering in between. Then heading back home to complete my breakfast and begin my day in earnest. It's paying dividends and my mental and physical health is improving incrementally.
'Alright you self-regarding dullard', I hear you cry. 'That's all very well and we're very pleased for you. But what's all that got to do with Associates? That's why we're here.' OK. No need to snap at me. Don't bite my head off. I was getting to that. A crucial part of this process of my early morning regime is the chats that I have with regulars and Hotel Guests of The Royal Station Hotel . This morning I met a very nice bloke in the sauna and had a conversation that is pertinent to the post I'm writing. Here we go.
This fellow was about the same age as me and told me he was staying in the hotel for a few days work related purposes. He was a risk assessment manager for property related issues for Lloyd Bank and he came from and lived in Dundee. 'Ah' I' said 'Associates. Billy Mackenzie' and expressed my incredible admiration for both. 'Yes I knew Billy' he replied. 'He was some figure. Sad story. He had substance issues. Sad end.'
This is where many of us are with Billy and Associates these days. Alan Rankine his partner in crime, who also gave of an incredible, physical poise, grace and beauty passed last year, and it seemed like sad closure to one of the most arresting stories in Rock & Roll history.
Mackensie and Rankine and the Associates limo they drove was a sleek vehicle indeed. Sulk and the three magnificent hit singles they released in 1982 were something to behold and cherish, something that many who experienced their Top of the Pops performances and witnessed the way they handled their fame with such luxuriant excess will never quite forget. We'll never see their like again.
Such moments are probably inevitably not built to last . This one wasn't. Rankine and McKenzie went their separate ways before the en of the year. Reasons and rumours are legion. Billy's refusal to submit to excessive tour schedules are probably among the most credible. Associates never had another Top Forty hit.
This was not because they didn't make good records. They made excellent ones. Waiting For The Love Boat was better than almost all of the fifty two singles which were above it in the year it hit its chart peak. The likes of Simon Bates would never understand. But Bily needed Alan as Alan needed Billy for the flame to truly ignite. Sometimes that's just the way it is.
Song(s) of the Day # 3,635 Large Brush Collection
Choosing your band name carefully is prudent I'd say when getting together and heading onstage and eventually hitting the road. It's like christening your first born. In music terms it's also worth remembering you're asking the general public to part with hard earned cash generally. Bum Gravy was never the best idea really.
Neither is Large Brush Collection I reckon. But persist because the band , out of hereAustin Texas, have a lovely sound. Purity. Debut album Off Center captures the awestruck Baroque wonder of Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left, gives it a gentle feminine twist. I was reminded of Alison Statton of Young Marble Giants and Naralie Merchant or Hope Sandoval. Interesting mix. It takes those magical ingredients wind's them up and St's them in motion like a set of spinning tops.
That's it essentially. That's what LBC do. Sometimes you need to have a great simple template, set it in motion with minimal fuss and play minor variations on it across the length of a Long Player to cast an effective spell. That's what happens here and frankly it's all rather wonderful. I wonder whether they've actually got a Large Brush Collection too. Perhaps that's just too much to ask for.
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
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