Frequent collaborators Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O’Rourke performed their first concerts outside of Japan during a 2023 European tour. Pareidolia is derived from those shows, but it isn’t a straightforward live recording, documenting a real-time event. Instead, it’s pieced together in the studio like a collage, splicing elements from different dates and locations. Both artists prepare for performances separately, then improvise on-stage. This album finds synergies within different performances, and constructs a more fleshed-out, finalized version of their live sets. The continuously flowing pieces find their own rhythms, as the musicians’ laptop signals follow currents to and from each other, throughout time and space. “Par” is a bit heavier on fluttering flutes…
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On 4 December 2023, many illustrious names from the world of rock music gathered together to perform a concert to remember the legendary Gary Brooker, acclaimed front man of Procol Harum and solo artist. Gary sadly passed away in February 2022 and left an incredible musical legacy. His many musical friends and admirers came together to stage this concert to celebrate Gary’s wonderful music and life and also to feature some of the music which he enjoyed.
A stellar gathering of musicians including Roger Taylor (Queen), Mike Rutherford (Genesis, Mike & the Mechanics), Paul Carrack (Mike & the Mechanics, Ace), Andy Fairweather Low, John Illsley (Dire Straits), Mike Sanchez, Gary’s band mates from Procol Harum and many more…
Funkadelic‘s self-titled 1970 debut is one of the group’s best early- to mid-’70s albums. Not only is it laden with great songs – “I’ll Bet You” and “I Got a Thing…” are obvious highlights – but it retains perhaps a greater sense of classic ’60s soul and R&B than any successive George Clinton-affiliated album. Recording for the Detroit-based Westbound label, at the time Funkadelic were in the same boat as psychedelic soul groups such as the Temptations, who had just recorded their landmark Cloud Nine album across town at Motown, and other similar groups. Yet no group had managed to effectively balance big, gnarly rock guitars with crooning, heartfelt soul at this point in time quite like Funkadelic. Clinton’s songs are essentially conventional soul songs in the spirit…
Modern Nature’s songs exist within a sunny fog, all soft contours and elliptical inference. Wistful choruses drift by, occasionally bolstered by shadowy CSNY-style harmonies, as phrases emerge and recede, widely separated by pauses. It’s all very languid and impressionistic on the surface, but carefully structured underneath. The crisp minimalism of drum and bass pushes forward but quietly, like a krautrock rhythm section swathed in batting. Two guitars play at each other with lucid precision, not in sync, not even really in conversation, but approaching the same problem from different directions.
The Heat Warps is Jack Cooper’s sixth album as Modern Nature, following stints in similarly serene but prickly outfits Ultimate Painting and Mazes.
Hangover Terrace is the 18th album of pure beauty from Canadian Ron Sexsmith. For those unfamiliar with Sexsmith, he is surely one of Canada’s most accomplished singer-songwriters, and Canada is a country that gave us Neil Young, Rufus Wainwright and Joni Mitchel. He has performed with the likes of Chris Martin, been heralded by Elton John and Elvis Costello and had his songs covered by the likes of Rod Stewart, Michael Bublé, K.D. Lang, Emmylou Harris and Feist. How he has eluded huge commercial success is one of the vagaries of the music business, but thankfully for us he hasn’t given up.
Talking about Hangover Terrace, Sexsmith says “One day my band and I were travelling to the London Palladium and we passed…
Eric Gales rounds up big-time talent for this significant tribute to his late brother Little Jimmy King (Manuel Gales) on his new album A Tribute to LJK. Buddy Guy, Christone Kingfish Ingram, Joe Bonamassa, Roosevelt Collier and Josh Smith all join Gales in a meaningful and rollicking collection of blues and blues rock. Expect some thrilling guitar playing on this album, along with powerful, emotional vocals. Eric Gales takes a deep dive into his brother’s blues.
If you’ve never heard of Little Jimmie King, he was considered blues lightening — fiery, unforgettable, and gone too soon. He died suddenly in 2002 at the age of 37. A left-handed guitarist who strung his instrument upside down like his brother Eric and the great Jimi Hendrix, King carried…
Unique among the 1960s pop landscape, and facilitated by his own home studio set-up, Joe Meek pursued and expressed a passion for his countless hobbies through his hit records and studio productions. From the legendary ‘I Hear A New World’ sonic landscapes and the Tornados’ global hit ‘Telstar!’ to several successful horror-themed records with Screaming Lord Sutch and his smash hit laments to both Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran, Meek’s fascinations were never far from his thoughts, often resulting in wildly imaginative and way ahead of their time recordings.
Laden with sound effects, experimental electronics, eccentric lyrics and themes that often stretched the boundaries of what pop music could be in the early 1960s, A Curious Mind showcases…
The album features the film’s original songs by the post-punk band Idles, as well as the movie’s original score composed by Rob Simonsen (Deadpool & Wolverine, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, The Way Back, It Ends with Us, The Age of Adaline, (500) Days of Summer, Nerve, Foxcatcher) and performed by Idles. The soundtrack will released digitally by Pertoza/Partisan Records. As previously reported, a first song (Rabbit Run) has already been released as a digital single last month.
Aronofsky enlisted Idles to capture the energy of the 1990s New York punk scene that colors Caught Stealing. “I built Caught Stealing to be a roller coaster of fun and wanted to supercharge the film by main lining a punk sensibility,” the director said in a press statement.
With ‘Take a Sexy Picture of Me’, a sparkling, razor-sharp soul anthem about body shaming, CMAT delivered one of the best tracks of the year.
Thankfully, Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson’s third album reveals there’s plenty more where that came from.
‘While a Good Man Cries’ and the barn dance-storming ‘Tree Soix Foive’ are rooted in the country pop the 29-year-old broke through with, Thompson is operating on a much broader and bigger scale here.
Not least with ‘Jamie Oliver Petrol Station’: an unexpected krautrock-driven thumper about being irritated by the TV chef while on tour. “I don’t know anyone that’s making anything that’s like my music,” she told MOJO’s Victoria Segal recently.
With Ride Into the Sun, pianist/composer Brad Mehldau returns to themes he introduced in the wake of his rumination on the COVID phenomenon, Suite: April 2020. That very same year’s revisitation of influence from the Beatles, Your Mother Should Know, presaged a rediscovery of his roots in progressive rock titled Jacob’s Ladder.
The latter two works set the stage for this recognition of Brad’s rapport-by-proxy with the late Elliott Smith. However, it’s not really necessary to be familiar with the source works to come away impressed by the ingenuity on display here: that surplus of inspiration lends itself to enough solo piano from Mehldau to anchor the narrative and remind us why he is so worth listening to in the first place.
Anna Tivel has always maintained a singular presence in the burgeoning modern folk scene, but that has not stopped the singer-songwriter from landing in the blinding light of critics’ and fans’ attention. Since her 2014 debut, and especially since her output has reached a prolific level since 2019, Tivel has been thrust into the center of this folk movement, being heralded as one of the more innovative voices in the parade of new folk musicians seeking to capitalize on twangy trends. Folk traditions and honoring Americana legends, though, are not fads for Tivel; her artistry simply won’t let her fall victim to the sugar-coated tropes that plague the genre today. Tivel forces experimentation, yet makes it feel natural, and she is expanding on this sentiment…
It’s a testament to Marshall Crenshaw’s songwriting and performance that even his castaways make for a compelling record. Recorded across two decades starting in 1990, From the Hellhole is a 14-track collection of remixed and remastered songs culled from a series of EPs and several rare deep cuts, that were mostly recorded in Crenshaw’s home studio (dubbed The Hellhole).
Among the tracks here is a solid cover of The Carpenters’ “(They Long To Be) Close to You.” With close to a dozen cover versions of this sappy pop classic out in the world, it should be pointed out that his version – originally released on an EP in 2013 – is arguably among the best thanks to his earnest delivery. Other covers songs here include a previously unreleased take…
Past the pain and grandeur that accompany growth can sometimes come the realization that you might end up exactly where you started. The Auckland, New Zealand-based four piece The Beths reckon with this conundrum on their fourth studio album, Straight Line Was a Lie, which adds a more introspective tone to the adrenaline-packed indie rock they’ve always done well.
The Beths debuted in 2018 with the catchy, self-aware Future Me Hates Me. Straight Line Was a Lie is a baby step away from their previous LPs, slowing things down a bit for a strummier, reflective sound that balances ennui with that tongue-in-cheek angst. Vocalist and songwriter Elizabeth Stokes understands the meaning of “Wherever you go, there you are,” as she delicately…
“Somebody just died / Nobody you’d know,” Darren Hayman intones in the opening line of his latest album, Amazing Things. Not being formally acquainted with Hayman’s deceased friend, for whom these songs have been written and were inspired by, does not compromise one’s experience with this heartfelt album. Grief is felt differently by everyone, but there’s a universal language of loss understood by anyone who’s experienced such pain, whether they can translate those emotions into words or not. Little things like keeping someone’s phone number in your list of contacts even though you can no longer traditionally reach them, drinking stronger beers to soften sadness, or remembering promises you made and the reality of upholding that responsibility…
Billie Eilish’s third album opens with a track called Skinny. It features a hushed electric guitar figure supporting a lyric filled with very Billie Eilish topics: bitter recriminations about a failed relationship, body dysmorphia, depression and the pressures of finding vast global fame while barely out of your teens. The latter was a theme that preoccupied Eilish’s last album, 2021’s Happier Than Ever, a grimly believable depiction of adolescent stardom in a world of constant online commentary and confected controversy.
With its marked shift in image and sound, it succeeded in creating yet more commentary and controversy. That album’s reception is another topic that seems to haunt ‘Skinny’. “Am I acting my age now?” she wonders aloud. “Am I already…
Originally developed during an Australian Art Orchestra residency in remote Tasmania, the Hand to Earth ensemble creatively established itself in 2021 with their glorious self-titled debut album, followed up in 2023 by the equally impressive Mokuy. Founded by trumpeter-producer and ex-AAO musical director Peter Knight, the progressive multicultural quintet also features Indigenous Arnhem Land songman Daniel Wilfred, his yidaki (didgeridoo)-playing brother David, contemporary South Korean vocalist Sunny Kim and Australian woodwind virtuoso Aviva Endean.
As the evolution of this unique collaboration continues, their third album is perhaps more ambient-electronic in nature, but no less grounded in the timeless Aboriginal manikay…
An unadulterated opening statement intoned by Saul Williams three times, as he joins Carlos Niño & Friends in sound ceremony underneath oak and black walnut trees in Coldwater Canyon Park, Los Angeles, on December 18, 2024.
The performance, which was organized by Noah Klein of Living Earth on the grounds of longstanding conservationist organization TreePeople, was the first of its kind for longtime friends and collaborators Williams and Niño. The two have been in contact since 1997 and have worked on a variety of projects together, but had never been moved to present in this way. For the occasion, Niño assembled and directed an ensemble of frequent collaborators including Nate Mercereau (guitar synthesizer,…
Rescued after 40 years, Húsker Dú’s near-mythical homecoming set at Minneapolis’s First Avenue club (where much of Purple Rain was filmed) has been properly mixed and mastered at last.
At one stage, this performance was expected to emerge. The band had recorded the set to 24-track tape at the time, expecting to release it as a live album later in the year. But their star rose rapidly and priorities shifted – the tapes were shelved, pending a further look, and in 2011 when a house fire destroyed a huge portion of the Hüsker Dü archive, it was assumed to have burned. Thankfully the tapes have been saved and restored completely by Electrical Audio, so we can finally get to hear how the band were shaping up before ‘New Day Rising’ and ‘Flip Your Wig’…