Cherry Red, longtime home for Howard Jones’ catalogue, release an unheard set from the beginning of his career.
Live at the Marquee, finds the inimitable singer-songwriter-keyboardist wowing a crowd at the late London venue just before his commercial breakthrough in 1983.
The wholly unreleased show, was unearthed from master tapes when the label began compiling bonus material for reissues of his former Warner catalogue in 2018, and remixed by Jones himself for this release. (It appears from the metadata that three of these Marquee tracks were originally released as B-sides to early singles.) The packaging includes rare and unreleased photos of Jones from the period.
When the then-28-year-old Jones took the stage…
Category: pop
There’s a live recording on this boxset that seems to perfectly embody the challenges faced by Paul Weller after he split up The Jam. He and his new band, The Style Council, are playing the Goldiggers in Chippenham, Wiltshire, in March 1984, showcasing tracks from the upcoming Cafe Bleu album to an increasingly restless audience.
“I need absolute quiet for this number,” Weller insists, before a bossa nova called “The Whole Point of No Return”. The crowd start wolf-whistling as Dee C Lee comes out to sing “Paris Match” and, as the band perform low-key acoustic songs inspired, variously, by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Michel Legrand and Erik Satie, you can hear sections of the audience lustily chanting a line from the film Quadrophenia: “We are the Mods,…
Marta Del Grandi is in a liminal space between the past she always has one eye on and a future she consistently encourages herself to move towards. Her third album, Dream Life, feels like grappling with a reality check where you’ve put in the work but things don’t look the way you expected and there are untold peripheral problems beyond your control.
In the great indie pop tradition, Dream Life masks melancholia with whimsy, whether it’s fantasy land synths, syncopated programmed beats, or slide guitar. The dreamy, brooding, and vaguely foreboding synth arrangement of ‘20 Days of Summer’ touches broadly on a feeling of not being able to laugh at the chaos, as Del Grandi reminds herself “to keep going / try to breathe”.
While it’s almost six years since arch Parisien hipster and former Eurovision performer Sébastien Tellier released his last album, he can hardly be described as a slacker. In the interim, there’s been three film soundtracks, two EPs and he performed at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games – not to mention having to deal with an irritating case of identity theft.
However, the untamed dandy has now donned his wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses once more and ventured into the recording studio to create Kiss the Beast, a diverse rainbow of electronica sounds that covers ground as varied as spaced-out ballads, rump-shaking electro-pop, electro-orchestral cinematic sounds and mellow folktronica without sounding disjointed or forced.
There’s something about trees and storms in Iti Eta No. Heimat’s third album is an exploration of collage and landscape – not just the physical landscape of the French countryside where Olivier Demeaux (Cheveu, Accident du Travail) and Armelle Oberlé (The Dreams, Badaboum) moved after lockdown, but it’s visceral, emotional imprint. A violent storm left trees scattered across the road, and that image inspired the atmosphere of Iti Eta No. Heimat’s early records were a deliberate exploration of ‘Eastern’ tonalities, but Iti Eta No sees the group moving away from that kind of orientalist imagery. It feels more refined, like deviant pop made dance-floor accessible thanks to Krikor Kouchian’s (L.I.E.S, I’m a Cliche) mastering. There is a distinct sense of…
There is a certain freshness about the sound of New York-based singer-songwriter Jake Winstrom’s third album, RAZZMATAZZ!, his follow-up to 2020’s Circles. The former frontman of Tennessee band Tenderhooks has opted for a more spacious sound for this set, with the stripped-back structures allowing ten tightly written songs to shine.
This is nicely illustrated on the fingerstyle guitar fronted ‘This Blue Note’. A relatively new skill for this musician, Jake’s acoustic picking is neatly restrained here, with the notes sparse enough to frame a lovely little rueful number that is further enhanced by subtle keys and a minor-key second guitar part.
‘Don’t Make the Rules’ is more stadium pop, with strummed electric guitar introducing…
House, techno, and garage were respectively invented in Chicago, Detroit, and New York, but the U.K. embraced them and took underground club sounds into the pop charts during the 1980s and ’90s. Burn It Up: The Rise of British Dance Music 1986-1991 explores some of the many developments that took place during the era, from the U.K.’s first attempts at acid house to early rave anthems. Like other Cherry Red anthologies, this one casts a wide net and tries to tell a comprehensive history of its subject, making room for established classics as well as rarities, curiosities, and inclusions that might be kind of a stretch, but hear them out anyway.
The collection starts with Coldcut’s “Beats + Pieces (Mo Bass Remix),” representing…
What is a watch bird? In Jane Weaver’s telling, it’s a remarkable creature that can travel long distances, seek out the lost, and weather great storms. This album, too, is of sweeping scope: it dances through eras and splashes through genres with abandon. Fifteen years on from its first release, and now in an expanded edition, The Fallen By Watch Bird remains as chimerical as it ever was.
Inspired by the nightmares for children that 1970s popular culture enjoyed churning out, The Fallen By Watch Bird recreates the sensation of ancient fables told through a flickering cathode ray. Weaver’s previous albums had been folk-oriented, and this influence is still palpable, but now she merges these impulses with spacerock, prog and psychedelia. Never quite analogue,…
‘The Power Station DLX’ includes the remastered album alongside three discs of bonus material, including unreleased “raw instrumental” versions, single mixes and live material, including the band’s performances from the charity concert Live Aid and an unissued full set from nearly a month later at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.
…The Power Station (a supergroup of sorts) came about during Duran Duran’s hiatus (which also saw Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and Roger Taylor form Arcadia) and featured Robert Palmer, Tony Thompson (from Chic) and Duran members John Taylor and Andy Taylor. Bernard Edwards produced the album (with “informal assistance” from Nile Rodgers) which features the hit singles “Some Like It Hot” and a cover of T. Rex’s…
The warm sounds of folk guitar provide the roots of Tessa Rose Jackson’s first album under her own name, time-travelling from Bert Jansch to R.E.M. to Sharon Van Etten in every strum and squeak. The Dutch-British musician previously recorded as Someone, creating three albums in dream-pop shades, but her fourth – a rawer, richer affair, made alone in rural France – digs into ancestry, mortality and memory.
The Lighthouse begins with its title track. Strums of perfect fifths, low moans of woodwind and thundering rumbles of percussion frame a journey towards a beacon at “high tide on a lonesome wind”. The death of one of Jackson’s two mothers when she was a teenager informs her lyrics here and elsewhere: in ‘The Bricks…
The Necessaries came together in 1978 and in the too-brief lifespan of the band counted among their members, Ed Tomney (Rage to Live, Luka Bloom), Jesse Chamberlain (Red Crayola), Ernie Brooks (Modern Lovers), Arthur Russell (The Flying Hearts), Randy Gun (Love of Life Orchestra).
First championed by John Cale on the strength of Tomney’s songs, Cale produced their first single for Spy Records (under the I.R.S. umbrella) which was released in 1979. With the forward momentum brought about by the single, the band set about tracking demos intended for Warner Bros., but The Necessaries ultimately would sign to Seymour Stein’s Sire Records. These rough demo basic tracks lacked overdubs, mixes and any finishing touches that would have made them…
British duo Insides made their debut with 1993’s Euphoria, a sensual set of ambient pop songs filled with airy guitars, intricately crafted beats, and provocative lyrics about intimate relationships and emotional tension. The distinctive album was praised by critics and remains a favorite of dream pop aficionados, and the duo have sporadically released new recordings, including the 2021 full-length Soft Bonds.
Insides’ elusive and icy electronic pop explores the darkest, seamiest corners of love and sex – their songs capture the emptiness and hostility that surface when the afterglow fades, ugly scenes punctuated by eruptions of violence, waves of self-loathing and caresses that are cold to the touch. Singer/bassist Kirsty Yates’ vocals…
Panic! At the Disco is celebrating two decades of their career by giving fans A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out (20th Anniversary Deluxe). The 20th Anniversary Deluxe will feature remastered versions of iconic tracks like “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” and “Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off,” along with unreleased demos and live recordings.
Discovered by Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz when the band members were still in their teens, Panic! At The Disco exploded onto the musical landscape with the release of A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out in the fall of 2005, which reached the upper echelons of the Billboard 200 and garnered multi-platinum success. The release’s breakout single, “I Write Sins Not Tragedies,” would become…
There are possibly two key reasons why musicians take on other professional tasks – they need a number of personal channels to express their talents and ideas or, they simply need more money. Or both. Whatever is the case with Max Alper, who as a musician goes under Peretsky, he tries to express himself as a composer (and performer), as well as an educator (there he is La Meme Young), and technologist.
For the case in hand, his most recent album It Doesn’t Get Cold in October Anymore (and he’s got over 30 of those), he maybe can stick to music, as the one he makes works on a number of levels. While previously he spread his musical palette from noise, sound art, and free improvisation, this time around he decided to work…
Streetlife Serenade may be one of the more unusual – and perhaps overlooked – albums in Joel’s celebrated catalogue. His third album (and second for longtime home base Columbia Records), it followed the modest breakthrough of 1973’s Piano Man with a similar formula to its predecessor. Working again with producer Michael Stewart and a team of Los Angeles session musicians, Joel later admitted the difficulty of recording a follow-up album with an admittedly thinner notebook of songs, so occupied had he been touring in support of Piano Man – at one point opening for The Beach Boys. Consequently, the album boasts not one but two instrumentals: the dexterous “Root Beer Rag” and the offbeat closer “The Mexican Connection.” The remaining songs furthered Joel’s…
The Midnight Ache is John Blek’s follow-up to last year’s rawly honest Cheer Up. It seems the more albums he releases, the musically mellower he gets. His tenth studio album is a lo-fi, laid-back affair adorned with cello (Moritz Brümmer), viola (Filip Sommer) and piano (Brian Casey), evoking the likes of Beck (circa Sea Change), Ron Sexsmith and Elliot Smith. The songs are rooted in themes of home, as reflected in the album cover featuring pressed flowers from his garden, and were mostly self-produced in a studio Blek built with his own hands. While not wholly a dark night of the soul implied in the title (the name he gave those sleepless insomniac hours lying in bed, overwhelmed by everything that was going on), those shadows do hover.
In 2022, alternative pop singer Alice Merton delivered S.I.D.E.S., a sophomore LP recorded with “Koz” Kozmeniuk (Kendrick Lamar, Dua Lipa) that charted in the Top 30 in her native Germany. It was released on her own Paper Plane Records in conjunction with Mom + Pop Music. Recorded at Flóki Studios in Iceland, the follow-up, Visions, was co-produced instead with Jennifer Decilveo (FLETCHER, SASAMI) and is her first album to be released fully independently.
In line with this signal of self-reliance, while Merton’s music has always been confident and anthemic in nature, she sounds more self-assured than ever here. A song like “Mirage” lands on its soaring chorus within 30 seconds, amid lyrics about being in love with the dream, even…
…The Australian singer-songwriter Georgia Knight‘s debut record, Beanpole, is a dark, introspective meditation on desire — the Lacanian kind: desire rooted in the Other. Always is, isn’t? In some sense, we’re actors waiting to be seen and chosen, as if by a film director (where are you, Antonioni? Dead. Oh.). You won’t be hearing Knight drawing these conclusions — as the narrator, in the throes of an all-consuming desire, can barely think, let alone think critically.
Desire is about escaping yourself; this is why, on Beanpole, you will hear of a character wanting to be a “rockerbilly”, and, although it might seem silly, transcendence is at the heart of desire and, thus, the record.
Recorded between Knight and Andrew “Idge”…
1. Pullman – Kabul
2. Melody’s Echo Chamber – The House That…
3. Dry Cleaning – Let Me Grow and You’ll See…
4. Courtney Marie Andrews – Little Picture of …
5. Imarhan – Azaman Amoutay
6. Daniel Knox – Middle Names
7. Juliana Hatfield – My House Is Not My…
8. Wednesday Knudsen – Paillettes
9. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Joy (Live)
10. Langhorne Slim – On Fire
11. Sleaford Mods – The Good Life
12. The Damned – See Emily Play
13. Jana Horn – All In Bet
14. Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore – Melted…
15. Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble – Summertime
Listening to Excess of Loss, the new album from Xol Meissner, one can’t help but be transported to a different time and place, where the haunting baritone vocals recall Scott Walker, Nick Cave, and Jacques Brel, and the instrumental accompaniment consists of a hammered lap steel. The combination invokes a dream-like state that is dark and mysterious but oddly intoxicating. Excess of Loss draws inspiration from many places, but still sounds like absolutely nothing else.
Xol Meissner is the alias of New York City-based composer Mauro Hertig. Classically trained and the 2019 Laureate of the Voix-Nouvelles Académie in France, Hertig had regularly used text in scored works prior to writing songs full-time. His unique style of lap steel was previously…