FEATURE: Reborn in a Storm: Why the Announcement of a Raintown Fortieth Anniversary Tour from Deacon Blue Is Especially Exciting to Me

FEATURE:

 

 

Reborn in a Storm

Why the Announcement of a Raintown Fortieth Anniversary Tour from Deacon Blue Is Especially Exciting to Me

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IT is quite common…

for artists to announce a tour when an album of theirs celebrates a big anniversary. There are few that interest me enough to book tickets. However, on 18th September (this coming Friday), Deacon Blue will release tickets for the fortieth anniversary tour of Raintown next year. Playing fifteen cities across fifteen dates, this is an amazing opportunity for fans young and older to witness this incredibleand must-see thing! Released on 26th May, 1987, this is an album that I first heard when I was young. I am actually not 100% sure of the exact release date, as I have seen 26th May, 1st May and 22nd June, 1987 listed as release dates. The latter is listed on Deacon Blue’s YouTube account, so is that the correct one?! What I know for sure is that is definitely turns forty next summer! Deacon Blue were quite a big part of my childhood. Hearing their songs around the house and out and about. I vividly remembering hearing Twist and Shout (from 1991’s Fellow Hoodlums) as our family left the London Planetarium when I was very small. The band is fronted by the incredible Ricky Ross. He is their lead songwriter. The line-up has changed for its original incarnation. The husband-and-wife core of Ross and the amazing Lorraine McIntosh remain. I feel she is a major reason why Deacon Blue’s songs are so enduring and memorable. That incredible voice, and how she as this obvious and great chemistry with Ross and the rest of the band. On Raintown, Ross, McIntosh, the late James Prime and Graeme Kelling, Ewen Vernal and Dougie Vipond are credited. It is a shame that two vital members of the original line-up are no longer with us. I wonder if Ewan Vernal will reunite with the band for the show or the current line-up, which includes Vipond, Gregor Philp, Lewis Gordon and Brian McAlpine, will play. That core trio of Ross, McIntosh and Vipond give us that direct link to this amazing 1987 debut.

Raintown, I feel is underrated, but it is one of the best and most important debut albums of the 1980s. Even though Raintown was recorded at AIR Studios in London, it seems to be this concept of the struggles of urban life in the inner-city. That city being their hometown, Glasgow. The album is brilliantly sequenced. The singles and hits sit in the middle. So we have Loaded, When Will You (Make My Telephone Ring), Chocolate Girl, and Dignity. The latter being their best-loved song. It is a song again that I vividly recall from childhood. These songs that are so accessible and instantly memorable. Ricky Ross penned most of the songs, though he co-wrote with Kelling and Prime. Those much-missed members of the band helped create this timeless album. The songs still widely played on radio. Born in a Storm and Raintown the two opening numbers. Quite epic and emotional, the mood changed and lifts in the middle-third. Though people might disagree with my assessment. It is a toss-up between this and Raintown’s follow-up, 1991’s When the World Knows Your Name, in terms of my favourite album of theirs. Their second album has classics Real Gone Kid, Wages Day, and Fergus Sings the Blues. Ricky Ross one of the most brilliant and accomplished songwriters. How he could write these indelible choruses but also these poetic, deep and extraordinary verses. Even if Raintown did not crack the top ten upon its release, it is seen as a near-masterpiece. Here are details of a tour that will please fans like me. I have never seen Deacon Blue, so this is a perfect time to hear them perform an album that is dear to me:

“Deacon Blue will revisit the album that established their sound and identity with a major UK and Ireland tour in October 2027, celebrating the 40th anniversary of their debut, Raintown.

Across 15 dates, the Scottish band will perform the 1987 album in full during the first half of each show. A second set will move through their wider catalogue, connecting four decades of songwriting with the live production of their current era.

Ricky Ross says:

When we made our first record none of us imagined there would be an audience still wanting to hear it played live forty years on. To recreate the songs and the atmosphere of that debut album will be a great joy for us.

Although each night will feature Raintown as the first part of the concert, the second act will include songs from all our albums and we aim to make each night a unique experience. We are thrilled you are all still there to be part of another adventure and we are excited about coming to a city near you in 2027.

Released in 1987, Raintown introduced songs including Dignity, When Will You (Make My Telephone Ring), Chocolate Girl and Loaded. The album was later certified Platinum, as were its two successors.

The anniversary arrives while Deacon Blue remain commercially active rather than operating solely through nostalgia. Their latest album, The Great Western Road, reached Number Three on the UK Albums Chart, extending a catalogue that has generated more than seven million record sales, 12 UK Top 40 singles and two Number One albums.

By rebuilding Raintown as a complete live experience—and pairing it with material spanning the albums that followed—Deacon Blue are treating the anniversary as more than a retrospective. It becomes a live bridge between the record’s original atmosphere and the band they have continued to develop into.

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Raintown 40th Anniversary Tour Dates

• 6 October — Belfast, O2 Arena

• 7 October — Dublin, 3Arena

• 9 October — Liverpool, M&S Bank Arena

• 10 October — Leeds, First Direct Arena

• 12 October — Hull, Connexin Live

• 13 October — Nottingham, Motorpoint Arena

• 14 October — Newcastle, Utilita Arena

• 16 October — Cardiff, Utilita Arena

• 17 October — Brighton, Brighton Centre

• 19 October — Bournemouth, Bournemouth International Centre

• 20 October — Birmingham, Utilita Arena

• 22 October — Manchester, Co-op Live

• 25 October — London, Eventim Apollo

• 27 October — Aberdeen, P&J Live

• 29 October — Glasgow, OVO Hydro

Tickets go on sale at 9am BST on 18 September 2026 via Live Nation”.

The band’s latest album, 2025’s The Great Western Road, is extraordinary. I hope the second half of the shows feature Wages Day, Queen of the New Year, Real Gone Kid, Twist and Shout, and Cover from the Sky. I love this song as it is Lorraine McIntosh on lead vocals. One of the finest vocals on any Deacon Blue record! I recall Raintown being played at home when I was young, but this is an album I come back to now. I am forty-three, and it still hits me hard. I want to finish with a feature from 2017 that was published by The Courier. Marking thirty years of Raintown, Deacon Blue: 30 Years of Raintown, was broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland and BBC Radio 2. I wonder if the band will reissue the album next year. Though the tour is going to be the big attraction. The song still sound so fresh and important. They have not aged at all:

“Fife-raised internationally renowned author Ian Rankin remembers 1987 well – it was the year his well-loved creation Detective Inspector John Rebus first made his appearance in print.

But it’s also significant for another reason.

It’s the year that while living in London, he came across the “marvellous” debut album Raintown which had just been released by Scottish band Deacon Blue, fronted by Dundee’s Ricky Ross.

Now the novelist will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of the landmark record when he presents the story of how they became one of Scotland’s most popular bands in Deacon Blue: 30 Years of Raintown, which airs on BBC Radio Scotland on Monday.

The album, released on May 1, 1987, spent 77 weeks in the UK charts where it peaked at 14 and became one of the most popular records of the 1980s.

Rankin said: “Living in London as I was in 1987 when Raintown came out, it was a breath of fresh Scottish air with a little bit of rain thrown in.

“Everything from the cover, of the photograph showing a slightly rainy Glasgow to the songs inside just spoke to me of home.

“A place that could be yes, wet and cold – could be atmospheric. But it was also a place with an awful lot of soul.

“And that took me right back to the music of my youth, to the country I grew up in – a place of industry and hope.”

Lead singer and former school teacher Ricky Ross, 57, who grew up in Dundee’s Downie Park area, just across the Kingsway south of Caird Park golf course, is interviewed in the documentary alongside his wife and fellow original band member Lorraine McIntosh, drummer turned sports presenter Dougie Vipond and keyboardist Jim Prime, as well as input from the record’s producer Jon Kelly.

The album, which referenced the Glasgow roots of the band and the struggles of urban inner city life, featured famous images by photographer Oscar Marzaroli on the cover – the view of a rainy day over Glasgow’s West End (with the Finnieston Crane featuring prominently) and, on the rear, a long-exposure capture of the Kingston Bridge blasting through the city centre at night.

However, it was the quality and desperate energy of songs such as Dignity, Loaded and Chocolate Girl which catapulted the band to fame – and the distinctive production values made possible by Kelly’s insistence that the record be recorded at George Martin’s famous Air Studios in London.

Ricky said: “Raintown was the song that we cut first. I remember it being played back on the big speakers and Peter Felstead our manager coming in. It did sound great. Dougie (Vipond) had this amazing classical percussion stuff that he’d got and there’s this amazing kind of drum that comes in. “It’s this brilliant kind of orchestral bass drum, and all these little things that were suddenly in the mix – the live energy that was on it. That was the song that changed everything.”

The first DJ to play the title track was Johnnie Walker on BBC Radio One.

He said: “Lorraine’s vocals towards the end of that song are just fantastic.

“I mean she’s kind of soaring like a seagull in the sky.

“It reminds me of that amazing singer who sung on Dark Side of the Moon – that sort of vocal fly really. She did a beautiful job on that. The production is really good. It’s very fresh. It’s very vibrant.

“But I think it’s the strength of the songs and the vocals from Ricky and Lorraine and the confidence they had which just comes over plus the fact it just has a magnificent theme.”

Raintown was set against the industrial decline and seemingly permanent rain of Thatcher’s Scotland. But times were changing and the gloom was dispelling. The hope and enthusiasm emerging from these times was increasingly being reflected in joyous celebratory music.

Dignity, for example, is about a man at the bottom rung of the labour market who saves up to buy a boat to enjoy the freedom of the Scottish Highlands and Islands – and the hope of a brighter future is reflected by an utterly uplifting chorus.

With other Scottish bands including Hue and Cry and Aztec Camera releasing material at the time,  there was a renewed emphasis on intelligent song writing, laced with a hint of Celtic passion.

Amongst them was Dundee band Danny Wilson who had just released their debut album Meet Danny Wilson a fortnight earlier.

Song writer and singer Gary Clark: “Scotland in the 80s musically was a really interesting place. It was quite eclectic. There was Deacon Blue, Hue and Cry. Before that there was Orange Juice, there was The Associates.

“But none of the bands really sounded like each other. Deacon Blue have got a really unique Deacon Blue sound. And that’s the thing about that album Raintown was that they had that sound right from the beginning.”

Deacon Blue also reflect on the loss of original guitarist Graeme Kelling – the “hipster” in the band – who died from pancreatic cancer in 2004, and whose multi-functional guitar sound played such an important role on the album.

“He was a pop star waiting for a band to happen,” added Ricky.

“It’s still a struggle Graeme not being around”.

It is tragic that Graeme Kelling and James Prime died. It would have been amazing having all the original line-up perform next year. Though I am sure that Deacon Blue will honour them at the shows. As I write this (Sunday, 13th September, 2026), Deacon Blue have just played a set at Radio 2 in the Park in Stirling, Scotland. If you are a Deacon Blue fan, on Friday (18th September), you can grab tickets here. Forty years of an iconic album. Raintown in full, together with a selection of songs from their other albums. It will be a truly monumental tour. If you are lucky enough to get tickets, you will be in for a treat. As I fondly recall hearing Raintown’s songs decades ago, I am excited at the possibility of hearing them next year. Raintown is an album that is…

SO dear to me.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Zoe Ball

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Greatest Hits Radio 

Zoe Ball

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I have said before…

PHOTO CREDIT: Rachel Joseph/Comic Relief via Getty Images

how, when it comes to artists, how the media say they are ‘returning’, when they leave a slight gap between albums and singles. The fact is they have not gone away to return, but it is this assumption that, unless you are pumping out material constantly, you are seen as inactive. Perhaps not something that applies as much to broadcasters, but there was this sense that Zoe Ball has ‘returned’ to radio when she started her Greatest Hits Radio slot recently. Even if she briefly stepped away from radio to spend time with her family, I don’t think of this as a return. She, instead, has started a new phase of her career with one of the biggest radio stations in the U.K. I have been a huge fan of hers since the 1990s. One of our very best broadcasters, I did want to feature her in this Modern-Day Queens. I could not find too many interviews recently specifically about Greatest Hits Radio, though there is one I will drop in, as it is great to hear from her in this form. Of course, most of you will know who Zoe Ball is. She has been a queen of the broadcasting world for decades. I love her podcast with fellow broadcaster Jo Whiley, Dig It. Ball started her regency at Greatest Hits Radio on 7th September. Tomorrow is the start of her second week. She has shared her excitement of working as the same station as fellow erstwhile BBC Radio 2 broadcaster, Ken Bruce. On weekdays from 1 p.m., you can find out more here. The first song Ball played was The Kiki Dee Band’s I've Got the Music in Me.

I will come to some reviews of her Greatest Hits Radio start. This beloved broadcaster sounding very much at home. I don’t think Greatest Hits Radio is where she will end her career. I can see her going to another station in years to come. She has this curiosity and passion, though she may well decide that, among friends and former colleagues, Ken Bruce and Simon Mayo, this is where she belongs. After some turbulence, loss and tragedy, it is wonderful that Zoe Ball has this incredible slot on a hugely popular radio station! I want to come to Metro and their recent interview with Zoe Ball. Someone who has been part of our lives for over three decades, everyone hopes that the coming years are filled with success, happiness and stability. It is the very least that she deserves:

“‘I’ve been very blessed in my career,’ Zoe Ball, 55, tells us while heading home from a day on site at Reading Festival.

The broadcaster and first female host of both BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 2 breakfast shows is a pioneer to say the least.

Zoe stepped down from her Radio 2 show back in December 2025, with Emma Willis stepping in to take over. Months later the TV star said she experienced ‘grief and rejection’ after missing out on landing the job of Strictly Come Dancing host.

‘Emma’s amazing, we’ve known each other for years. It’s what happens,’ she tells Metro.

‘People do shows for a while, and then someone else does a show for a while. If Claudia Winkleman hadn’t stepped aside on It Takes Two, I’d never have got to do it. If Emma Forbes hadn’t left Live & Kicking, I would never have got to do it. So, it’s just a natural progression in radio and television. It’s what happens. It’s wonderful. And you need that evolution in telly.’

Now working on Greatest Hits Radio, Zoe tells us she feels ‘really lucky’ to have sat down with some of the biggest names in the business over the last 30 years.

‘Occasionally you get people who are a bit monosyllabic or not in the mood for a chat. More of the nightmares are technical, like when the tape wasn’t running and you’ve done a really good interview and you’ve done your best work, but on the whole, I’ve talked to all sorts of amazing people that I’m proud of,’ Zoe says.

‘I suppose Madonna was quite tricky because it was a bit scary and intimidating. Some of my favourites, particularly, are Barbara Streisand, Dame Julie Andrews, and Dame Judi Dench. I call them my Holy Trinity. I love speaking to Sir Paul McCartney. He always has stories to tell and he’s really generous with his time.’

But one interview in particular is brought up time and time again. Her 1994 chat with Noel and Liam Gallagher for the BBC music show The O-Zone shortly after the release of their debut album Definitely Maybe.

‘People take the mickey out of me for that interview everywhere I go,’ she laughs.

‘And my kids always ask “Mum, what are you wearing?” I was wearing a Kangol hat and a tracksuit top!’

Reminiscing on the interview she says: ‘But they were so charismatic, both Noel and Liam. I just remember being so in awe of them. There is something about them. I haven’t interviewed them together in a long time, but whenever either of them would come on my radio show, you just knew you were going to have so much fun.

‘They’re really open and honest, brutally so sometimes. But they are great lads and I’m a huge fan. It was amazing to go and see them live last year, it was an emotional night. I’m going to a screening of the documentary soon and can’t wait. I really do adore them.’

Known for her love of music, Zoe is still a festival lover and has clearly passed that down to her two children; son Woody, 25, and daughter Nelly, 16.

‘My daughter, is going to Reading Festival for the first time this year. She’s 16 and you can’t help but worry. She’s probably bored of me telling her to hydrate and have a nap. I’ve told her it’s okay to step back from the crowd if you get a bit overwhelmed,’ she says.

‘Woody loves festivals and we’ve watched him work really hard over the last few years. He drives all over the country and does six or seven gigs in a weekend. It’s kind of in his blood. He grew up seeing how much we loved going to Glastonbury and came with us when he was very young.

‘These days I like to go to bed quite early, though, have a cheese toasty and be in bed by midnight’”.

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Prior to some positive reviews for her amazing Greatest Hits Radio afternoon show, this article from The Times highlights why Ball left BBC Radio 2. I do find it unnecessary and a bit gross they mentioned her salary, as that seems irrelevant and unnecessary. However, it is never about the money for Zoe Ball. She is one of the best broadcasters in the world, and she belongs on radio. It does seem like this new position at Greatest Hits Radio offers a better work-life balance, and the opportunity to spend more time with family:

“Zoe Ball has said she is returning to the airwaves in an afternoon slot for a commercial broadcaster because it gives her the flexibility to “be a mum”.

The 55-year-old presenter announced this week that she was to present a weekday 1pm-4pm show for Bauer’s Greatest Hits Radio from September.

She quit the BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show, for which she was paid up to £955,000, in December 2024 to allow her to focus on her family, including her 16-year-old daughter Nelly, after the death of her mother. Now that her daughter had finished her GCSE exams, Ball said that she felt ready to return to radio.

“I lost Mum and I wanted to take some time and be there for my girl because I’ve always worked. I’ve never been around. But now she is loving her freedom and is [asking] ‘Mum, why are you still here?’,” Ball said on the Dig It podcast she hosts with Jo Whiley, who hosts an evening show on Radio 2.

“I’m going to be doing an afternoon show which is a lovely shift because it means I get to be mum in the morning and mum in the evening if I need to. I can be around if she needs me.”

Ball added that her failed “long shot” attempt to present Strictly Come Dancing had also contributed to her decision. “When the dancing thing didn’t happen I was a bit like,‘What am I going to do?’,” she said. “I still need to work — I need to go back to work.”

Last month Ball admitted that she had worked through “grief and rejection” after being overlooked for the BBC1 dance show in favour of Emma Willis, Josh Widdicombe and Johannes Radebe.

She announced her decision to join Greatest Hits Radio in a The Traitors-style parody video, alongside its other presenters Simon Mayo and Ken Bruce, who both moved from Radio 2.

Mayo told his colleague in the post: “Well Ken, I never thought we’d get anyone else from the old place.”

Matt Deegan, the founder of Folder Media, a radio consultancy firm, and the host of The Media Club podcast, said that Ball was another valuable signing for Greatest Hits Radio after Bruce joined in 2023.

“Ken had a huge impact on listening figures but they have drifted a little since. Targeting more Radio 2 listeners by signing Zoe is a good way to attract more listeners in again,” Deegan said.

“Radio 2 is in a bit of flux at the moment. Sara Cox is taking over the Breakfast Show from Scott Mills and her replacement on the Drivetime show is yet to be announced. Plus, Trevor Nelson is off due to ill health.

“Whenever there is uncertainty it prompts people to switch around so it’s a good time for Greatest Hits to be doing something like this.”

Greatest Hits Radio network attracted a weekly audience of almost seven million weekly listeners, according to the latest data from radio measurement body, Rajar.

BBC Radio 2 remains the most popular station with about 12.5 million listeners over the first three months of the year. This was down by about one million people from when Ball left the Breakfast Show at the end of 2024”.

There was so much anticipation around her Greatest Hits Radio start. How she would settle and what her show would be like. This review from i News is illuminating, as they write how Zoe Ball sounds completely at ease. Far from being nervous or feeling like she can be her true self at this station, she has naturally settled in right away. Given her talent and experience, that was always been the case. Everyone so relieved and happy that she has this comfort and welcoming, loving radio home:

“Greatest Hits Radio makes no secret of the fact that a central pillar of its identity is in plundering BBC Radio 2 of its presenters – and its listeners.

Perhaps, years ago, there was a little bit of cursory evasion, about it being a place for a certain demographic who liked a certain type of music. But since Ken Bruce’s defection in 2023, a tectonic plate shift that shook the foundations of New Broadcasting House and ignited talk of “crises” and “brain drains” and ravens in towers, the station stopped bothering to pretend it was doing something radical or different and just let its success speak for itself, as with increasing inevitability more Beeb-weary DJs and more evangelistic listeners left “the other station” and never looked back.

Which is how we find Zoe Ball’s new afternoon show promoted with the distinctly un-BBC tag line: “They might have Cox, but we’ve got Ball”. It sounds both like vindication and a threat.

The announcement that Ball was to join Greatest Hits in July – the same week Sara Cox made her energising debut in Ball’s former Radio 2 breakfast slot – did not come as much of a surprise. She had left her Saturday afternoon Radio 2 show in December, had struggled balancing her family commitments with the demands of the Breakfast Show in the months before she left that in 2024, and she had spoken on her podcast with Jo Whiley earlier this year – with her usual candour and vulnerability – about the “seven stages of grief and rejection” she experienced after not getting the job hosting Strictly Come Dancing.

She has of course been nothing but gracious about the BBC and her former station (for all her “ladette” history, she has always been an effusive personality), but there had just been the air of a rut about her – the suggestion that she felt overdue some kind of change. “I’ve tidied out the loft, I’d done all my runs to the tip. The garden is OK and I am slightly going a little bit mad,” she told The Times this weekend.

Greatest Hits, for the listener at least, is the opposite of change. Ball’s show comes after Bruce’s – “I’m so thrilled to be his radio neighbour once again” – and before Simon Mayo’s; it is punctuated with trailers for programmes from people like Paul Gambaccini, and one caller phoned in to point out that its title, Zoe Ball in the Afternoon, must be an homage to the late Steve Wright who was “always there, and I’m sure you’re going to carry that enthusiasm on”. Greatest Hits, in other words, is what Radio 2 sounded like until about five years ago.

And so Ball sounds exactly as you expect her to: maternal, relatable, reassuring, relentlessly positive and totally at ease around an A-list guest, the first of whom was Hugh Jackman. She was inundated with well-wishing, conspiratorial callers delighted that she has at last joined their club, which must have calmed her nerves (when 4pm rolled around she said she was a “bit sweaty”, and that she might actually sleep that night) and seemed to marvel at the playlist – which is good enough to offset any irritation from adverts, which I stopped noticing after a while.

After her opening track, Kiki Dee’s “I’ve Got the Music in Me”, she said with some relief “they really do play the best tunes around here,” and given Abba, Fleetwood Mac, Blondie, America, Bryan Ferry and Everything But the Girl followed, it was impossible to argue.

Relief, I imagine, is what most ex-Radio 2 presenters probably feel once they get behind the Greatest Hits decks. Cox sounded invigorated and in command when she launched her Radio 2 Breakfast Show this summer, and she had to: the stakes were high, as the BBC fights to prevent its listeners from fleeing to commercial stations. But no such pressure hangs over the DJs on Greatest Hits, who I understand are very well remunerated (though Ball had been the BBC’s second-highest earner) and do not bear the responsibility of preserving the future of the BBC or fulfilling its charter or representing its values or proving they are worth the licence fee.

They don’t have to move with the times. They don’t have to innovate. They don’t have to appeal to new generations. They don’t even have to play any new music. Not doing that, in fact, is exactly what has made the station so formidable.

Ball doesn’t sound like a woman unleashed on Greatest Hits – she sounds at ease. It’s familiar, it’s comfortable, it is another reminder that a “home” and community is still there for listeners who feel that endless change and schedule shake-ups and retirements and deaths and defections have left Radio 2 a strange and different place. I’m afraid the BBC probably should be worried”.

I will end with this Observer review from Miranda Sawyer. The reception on social media has been glowing. Zoe Ball has this sort of widespread admiration reserved for a special few. Even though the playlists at Greatest Hits Radio can be challenging in terms of sharp swerves and energies between songs – going between genres and extremes lacks consistency and balance -, that is a minor flaw in an otherwise triumphant show:

“Gen X treasure Zoe Ball started her new show on Greatest Hits Radio last week, sandwiched snug as a bug between fellow former Radio 2-ers Ken Bruce and Simon Mayo in the 1pm to 4pm slot. Afternoon is a good fit for Ball. Her upbeat warmth is perfect for daytime listening, and there’s less of the jagged adrenaline rush of breakfast, which occasionally made her sound frenetic in her previous show. Here she’s like the nice art teacher who stops you from getting sleepy after lunch with her bright T-shirts and silly jokes. You hope her innate quirkiness will be allowed to flourish. Commercial radio can be bland as well as cheery.

Opening with Kiki Dee’s I’ve Got the Music in Me on Monday, Ball seemed a teeny bit nervous, though by the end of the show sounded far more relaxed. On Tuesday, she got straight into things – “Let’s have some fun with some lunchtime anthems, gang!” – and banged on Rock the Casbah. That’s more like it! Her listener topic for the day, inspired by the art thieves who dropped a couple of Renoirs on their way out, was the seemingly simple “What have you dropped?” It worked excellently: listeners telling tales of dropping frozen Christmas turkeys on their toes, precious teapots on concrete floors, three-tier wedding cakes down the stairs and, more than once, their own small children.

Not everything is rosy: Greatest Hits Radio’s music policy can lead to weird emotional whiplash. Van Morrison’s Moondance, followed by DeBarge’s Rhythm of the Night and then EMF’s Unbelievable is a seasick-inducing ride, though Ball surfed it like the pro she is. Chatting to Mayo at the end of her show, she joked that there was still time for the station’s bosses to change their minds about her new job. As I Say a Little Prayer came up on the faders, we could hear Mayo commenting mildly: “Oh, I think we all know this is a very good booking.” It is”.

The brilliant Zoe Ball is one of my absolute favourite broadcasters. Her new home is at Greatest Hits Radio, and you can tell how important it is to her. Sharing the same building as Ken Bruce, there is this old friendship reignited. I can see her being at Greatest Hits Radio for many years to come. Whether there is another radio chapter after this has yet to be seen, though Ball will be in no hurry to even consider it. After some hard years and turbulent moments, let’s hope this is the start of a golden and happy phase for Zoe Ball! Her radio fans and family wish her…

ALL the very best.

FEATURE: Snowed in At Wheeler Street: Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow at Fifteen

FEATURE:

 

 

Snowed in At Wheeler Street

Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow at Fifteen

_________

AT the time…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in promotional shot for 2011’s 50 Words for Snow

of writing this feature (13th September, 2026), 50 Words for Snow is Kate Bush’s most recent studio album. She has not announced anything to follow it. That came out on 21st November, 2011. I am looking to its fifteenth anniversary. I am going to end with a few features where Bush’s albums are ranked. I feel 50 Words for Snow is underrated. Maybe not in her top five, I feel it does get placed too low. Whereas others from her have had more and shorter songs, 50 Words for Snow has seven longer tracks. People not as willing to invest time in songs that ask for more time to unfold and unfurl. More akin to Classical or Jazz pieces, I do think that there is something epic and immersive to be discovered. Even if a couple of the tracks did not get a load of critical love – such as Snowed in At Wheeler Street and 50 Words for Snow -, I do think that the album is magnificent. I am going to come to some interviews before getting to some reviews. The first of two interviews from 2011 I want to cover off is for the U.S. publication, HuffPost:

“Mike Ragogna: Kate Bush, wow. How are you?

Kate Bush: I'm doing great, Mike. Thanks for having me.

MR: I already said, "Wow," right? Okay, getting to your new album 50 Words For Snow, can you tell us a little bit about what inspired it?

KB: Well, I guess originally, I thought I would try to make a kind of wintry album, then it quickly became all about snow as I began writing.

MR: And lyrically, it's like the songs emulate the complexity and uniqueness of each snowflake.

KB: Yeah. It's so fascinating to think about how each snowflake is completely individual -- there are millions and millions of them but each one is so unique. I think snow is so evocative and has such a powerful atmosphere. Here in the UK, we don't really get much snow, and I suppose that's why it's such a precious thing to us. What I was trying to do is create an atmosphere that was run throughout the album that somehow felt like there was a kind of snowy landscape, you know?

MR: Absolutely, especially with songs like "Lake Tahoe."

KB: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't think that that one is specifically all about snow, but I like to think that the atmosphere is still running from that first track.

MR: Could you go into some background on "Misty"?

KB: The thing about that song, aside from having sort of unusual subject matter, is that it's a very long song -- it's the longest song on the album. I think it runs about 14 minutes. It wasn't even that I set out to write a song that long, but I was trying to explore the idea of working with longer song structures and moving away from the more traditional form. I wanted to be able to tell the story through a much longer piece of time and so I was able to go through various elements of the story and, hopefully, make the song build. The subject matter is sort of just about a girl who builds a snowman, and later the snowman comes to visit her in her bedroom.

MR: As snowmen often do.

KB: Well, I don't know about that unless people just keep quiet about it. (laughs)

MR: Would you say that this album is maybe a continuation of the approaches you began with the albums Red Shoes and Sensual World?

KB: Yeah, I guess so. For me, each album is a sort of an evolving process; it's quite a natural progression to move from one album to the next. So, yes, there are a lot of connections with all of the albums. I guess the main thing is that I've started exploring much longer song structures on this album. I would say that that's what makes this one a little different than previous albums.

MR: Kate, you now have so much experience through your music and working in the industry, is there any advice that you'd like to pass on to new artists?

KB: Well, I think it's a really tough world for new artists. If you believe in what you do and you really want to be in music, just stick at it. It's always a learning process. Enjoy it because I think making music is a privilege, really. In an ideal world, it should also always be fun. As much as possible, make it fun.

MR: Speaking of beautiful voices, the album includes a track called "Snowed In At Wheeler Street" with Sir Elton John, right? What was it like working with him?

KB: It was fantastic. He is one of my great musical heroes, and when I wrote the song, I very much had him in mind and hoped that he would be interested enough to come and sing on the song. At the risk of sounding corny, it was like a dream come true having him come into the studio and sing so beautifully. I think his performance on the song is so fantastic; it's so emotive. I love him singing in that lower key. I really couldn't have been happier with what he brought to the track.

MR: It really is fantastic. His Elton John album is one of my favorites.

KB: I guess I love that album, but my very favorite album of his was Madman Across The Water. But I love everything Elton does”.

I do want to bring in an interview I have included in other features. John Doran chatted with Kate Bush for The Quietus to discuss the wonderful 50 Words for Snow. They republished the interview in 2014 to coincide with Kate Bush’s residency, Before the Dawn, coming to the Eventim Apollo in London. I do think that 50 Words for Snow is a lot finer and applaud-worthy than it is given credit for:

“What are your memories of snow like from childhood? Was playing in the snow something you really looked forward to?

KB: Well… yeah. Do you know any children who don’t look forward to playing in the snow?

I know what you’re saying but there are some who like it more than others…

KB: …

Er…

KB: … Are you knackered?

Yeah.

KB: Have you been up all night?

Yeah, I have.

KB: [laughs uproariously and good naturedly] Well John do you like snow? Don’t you think snow is a thing of wonder and beauty?

I think that if I lived outside of London, maybe in the countryside where it doesn’t turn to a mixture of slush and hazardous black ice, I might like it more. Also, I’m very tall and for whatever reason I just fall over when it’s icy, I always have done. It’s very dangerous I think.

So Aerial is full of images of clear skies, still water, warm days and it’s full of the bustle of family life and an easy domesticity. 50 Words For Snow is a similarly beautiful album but there is a chill to it – it lacks the warmth of its predecessor. I wondered if it represented another switch from an autobiographical to a narrative song writing approach?

KB: Yeah, I think it’s much more a kind of narrative story-telling piece. I think one of the things I was playing with on the first three tracks was trying to allow the song structure to evolve the story telling process itself; so that it’s not just squashed into three or four minutes, so I could just let the story unfold.

Had you always wanted to do 50 Words For Snow or were you just on a roll after Director’s Cut?

KB: No, they were both records that I’d wanted to do for some time. But obviously I had to get Director’s Cut done before I could start this one… Well, I guess I could have waited until next year but this record had to come out at this time of year, it isn’t the sort of thing I could have put it out in the summer obviously.

Did the snow theme come from an epiphany or a particular grain or idea? Was there one particular day when you happened to be in the snow…

KB: No. I don’t think there was much snow going on through the writing of this… it was more to do with my memories of snow I suppose and the exploration of the images that come with it.

The song ‘Lake Tahoe’ has the feel of Michael Nyman about it to me, now I don’t know if that’s the fact it has the choirboys Stefan Roberts and Michael Wood, and maybe it’s reminding me of ‘Miserere’ from The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover or not… But anyway, why Lake Tahoe?

KB: It was because a friend told me about the story that goes with Lake Tahoe so it had to be set there. Apparently people occasionally see a woman who fell into the lake in the Victorian era who rises up and then disappears again. It is an incredibly cold lake so the idea, as I understand it, is that she fell in and is still kind of preserved. Do you know what I mean?

I love the way out of the fifty words that you come up with for snow, without a bit of digging round I wouldn’t have been able to tell you which words were real, which were made up, which were partially true and which were obscure, archaic or foreign. I know that the whole idea of Eskimos having 50 words for snow is false but at the same time I do know that the Sami people of Lapland do actually have hundreds of words for snow. But from your point of view where did the idea for such a beautiful and weird song come from?

KB: Well, I’m really pleased you like it. Years ago I think I must have heard this idea that there were 50 words for snow in this, ah, Eskimo Land! And I just thought it was such a great idea to have so many words about one thing. It is a myth – although, as you say it may hold true in a different language – but it was just a play on the idea, that if they had that many words for snow, did we? If you start actually thinking about snow in all of its forms you can imagine that there are an awful lot of words about it. Just in our immediate language we have words like hail, slush, sleet, settling… So this was a way to try and take it into a more imaginative world. And I really wanted Stephen to read this because I wanted to have someone who had an incredibly beautiful voice but also someone with a real sense of authority when he said things. So the idea was that the words would get progressively more silly really but even when they were silly there was this idea that they would have been important, to still carry weight. And I really, really wanted him to do it and it was fantastic that he could do it”.

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

A couple of reviews to cover off for 50 Words for Snow. Beats Per Minute provided plenty of depth and admiration for the wonderous 50 Words for Snow. Fifteen years after its release and I am still fascinated by it. Kate Bush released Director’s Cut in May 2011 and then this new album several months later. Director’s Cut was her re-recording songs from The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes (1993). Two very different projects with different dynamics and musicians, it would have been a task balancing the two:

“Kate Bush’s greatest gift has always been her ability to balance high-concept storytelling with songwriting virtuosity deftly enough that each is compelling completely independent of the other. Her 30-plus-year career boasts a signature hit based on an Emily Bronte novel, a side-long song cycle about drowning, songs from the vantage points of a fetus and of Harry Houdini’s wife, and a disc-long meditation on sunset s —but you don’t need to know any of that for Bush’s music to be affecting. Her music augments her theatrical conceits but is utterly unencumbered by them.

If this were anyone else, the revelation that the British singer’s tenth studio album, 50 Words for Snow contains a 13-minute erotic ode to a snowman would be the indulgence to end all indulgences. But if there’s one thing Kate Bush isn’t, it’s ordinary. There isn’t another singer on the planet that could sell “Misty.” But as she’s aged, her voice has acquired a warmth and depth that makes lines like “His snowy white arms surround me, so cold next to me / I can feel him melting in my hand” not only palatable, but elegant.

As the album’s title would suggest, the rest of its songs keep with the winter theme, but not all of them are that idiosyncratic, at least content-wise. Out of Bush’s catalog, 50 Words for Snow is the album least beholden to traditional song structures. Its seven tracks are lengthy — the shortest clocks in at just under seven minutes — and she takes her time unfolding them. Many of these songs scarcely feature more than Bush and her piano. Her 12-year-old son, Bertie, the subject of a painfully mawkish tribute on her 2005 album Aerial, takes center stage on 50 Words’ opener, “Snowflake,” handling most of the vocals in a boyish soprano. The song is reflective of how most of the album is constructed. Bush’s songs here aren’t built around hooks, but around space and escalating tension. It isn’t until halfway through the eleven-minute runtime of “Lake Tahoe” that drummer Steve Gadd shows himself for the first time on the album

50 Words for Snow’s centerpiece is “Snowed in at Wheeler Street,” an unlikely duet with Elton John. It’s a story of doomed lovers spread over many decades, and it plays out seemingly in real time, losing and regaining touch from the fall of Rome to 9/11 over a creeping, glacial synth backdrop. Bush and John have a natural chemistry, like two actors in an epic romance film. Both have voices that sound both lived-in and grown-into, far removed from their younger theatrics but no less dramatically alluring.

Most of 50 Words is an evolution of the understated, graceful aesthetic Bush introduced on Aerial, her first album after a 12-year layoff. But there are moments here in which the manic art-rock siren from the 1980s bubbles to the surface. “Wild Man,” the closest thing to a pop song on the album, features some rare rock muscle and the demented, double-tracked vocals that defined albums like The Dreaming and Hounds of Love. The title track, a blizzard of percolating percussion and synth, is built around guest Stephen Fry reciting, yes, fifty words for snow (highlights: “deamondi-pavlova,” “sorbetdeluge,” “bad for trains”), with Bush counting off. But when she occasionally interrupts to egg him on (“Come on, man, just 22 to go”), her voice reaches the demonic heights she occupied in a past life.

While Bush has been more prolific lately than she’s been since the mid-‘80s (50 Words for Snow is her second album of 2011, following Director’s Cut, a set of new reworkings of tracks from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes), her work is no less painstakingly constructed. These tracks are sparse but airtight, haunting but unrelentingly gorgeous, both logical successors to the stunning second half of Aerial and completely unlike anything she’s done. In other words, business as usual for one of the most singularly captivating and influential talents in rock history”.

I wanted to get to Pitchfork and what they had to say about 50 Words for Snow. There are going to be people who are fans of Kate Bush but might not have heard about this album. Or they feel it is not for them. It is one of her most rewarding releases. Everyone needs to hear this album in full:

“50 Words for Snow is teeming with classic Bush-ian characterizations and stories-- fantasies, personifications, ghosts, mysteries, angels, immortals. As quoted in Graeme Thomson's thorough, thoughtful recent biography Under the Ivy, she explained her attraction to such songwriting: "[Songs] are just like a little story: you are in a situation, you are this character. This is what happens. End. That's what human beings want desperately. We all love being read stories, and none of us get it anymore." She's onto something; in our postmodern era, the idea of a tale can seem quaint and simple.

But Bush continues to infuse her narratives with a beguiling complexity while retaining some old-school directness. Because while most of this album's songs can be easily summarized-- "Snowflake" chronicles the journey of a piece of snow falling to the ground; "Lake Tahoe" tells of a watery spirit searching for her dog; "Misty" is the one about the woman who sleeps with a lusty snowman (!)-- they contain wondrous multitudes thanks to the singer's still-expressive voice and knack for uncanny arrangements. And mood. There's an appealing creepiness that runs through this album, one that recalls the atmospheric and conceptual back half of her 1985 masterpiece Hounds of Love. Indeed, when considering this singular artist in 2011, it's difficult to think of worthy points of reference aside from Bush herself; her onetime art-rock compatriots David Bowie and Peter Gabriel are currently MIA and in rehash mode, respectively. And while current acts including Florence and the Machine are heavily inspired by Bush's early career and spiritual preoccupations, none are quite able to match their idol's particular brand of heart-on-sleeve mysticism. In an interview earlier this year, the 53-year-old Bush told me she doesn't listen to much new music, and after listening to the stunningly subtle and understated sounds on Snow, it's easy to believe her.

The album's shortest song, the gorgeous closing piano ballad "Among Angels", clocks in at almost seven minutes. "Misty" rolls out its brilliant, funny, and bizarrely touching tale across nearly a quarter of an hour. It's not one second too long. During the 12-year gap between 1993's The Red Shoes and 2005's Aerial when she was raising her son Bertie, Bush gained a new level of compositional patience. She's now allowing her songs to breathe more than ever-- a fact reinforced by this year's Director's Cut, which found her classing-up and often stretching out songs from 1989's The Sensual World and The Red Shoes via re-recordings. So while "Misty" is an eyebrow-raiser about getting very intimate with a cold and white being with a "crooked mouth full of dead leaves," it hardly calls attention to its own eccentricities. Propelled by Bush's languid piano and the jazzy, pitter-pattering drums of veteran stick man (but relatively new Bush recruit) Steve Gadd, the song is about as appealingly grown-up as a song about having sex with a snowman can possibly be. In her early career, Bush sometimes let her zaniness get the better of her, highlighting her tales of sexual taboo and bizarre yarns with look-at-me musical accompaniment and videos. Those days are long gone. And her heightened sophistication works wonders here. So when the song's titular being is nowhere to be found the following morning-- "the sheets are soaking," she sings-- there is nothing gimmicky about her desperation: "Oh please, can you help me?/ He must be somewhere."

While much of 50 Words for Snow conjures a whited-out, dream-like state of disbelief, it's important to note that Bush does everything in her power to make all the shadowy phantoms here feel real. Her best music, this album included, has the effect of putting one in the kind of treasured, child-like space-- not so much innocent as open to imagination-- that never gets old. "I have a theory that there are parts of our mental worlds that are still based around the age between five and eight, and we just kind of pretend to be grown-up," she recently told The Independent. "Our essence is there in a much more powerful way when we're children, and if you're lucky enough to... hang onto who you are, you do have that at your core for the rest of your life." Snow isn't a blissful retreat to simpler times, though. It's fraught with endings, loss, quiet-- adult things. This is more than pure fantasy. When faced with her unlikely guest on "Misty", Bush pinches herself: "Should be a dream, but I'm not sleepy”.

On 21st November, it will be fifteen years since Kate Bush released an album. The longest gap between albums. I feel, unless she has announced once between the time I am writing this and sharing it, we will get one next year. I cannot imagine she will leave too much time after that before gracing us with new material. Until that amazing day comes, go and experience the grandeur and brilliance of 50 Words for Snow.

I am ending with a few words from people who rank her albums. Why they place 50 Words for Snow where they do. This is what Classic Rock wrote last year when reviewing of all of her albums: “This was universally hailed as another masterpiece. However, her 10th album’s long songs seem to have a lack of focus and a jazzy tendency to take forever to make their points. The atmosphere is wintry, gothic and achingly melancholy. There are few frills on the sparse, sad ballads, but the duet with an incongruous, trying-too-hard Elton John on Snowed In At Wheeler Street rewrites Top Of The City from The Red Shoes winningly. Then there’s Stephen Fry reciting the titular list of synonyms for snow on the centrepiece. Most positively, 2011 saw her back, still uncategorisable, still way out there”. Also last year, Classic Pop assessed each of her albums. This is what they wrote about 50 Words for Snow: “The unthinkable happened in November 2011 when, after waiting six years to release her previous album, Kate emerged as one of the year’s most prolific artists and unleashed a second LP, proving herself anything but predictable. Her first all-new material since 2005’s Aerial, the resulting 50 Words For Snow sees Bush adopt a similar approach to that album. While Aerial throbbed with birdsong and hazy summer vibes, its frosty counterpart’s wintry soundscapes conjure up as unorthodox a festive album as you’re likely to hear. The theme of snow is explored via narratives that draw from a wide range of subject matter – a ghostly figure that appears at night calling for her dog, Snowflake (Lake Tahoe), sex with a snowman (Misty) and time-travelling lovers ripped apart and reunited (Snowed In At Wheeler Street). The latter is a duet with Elton John, who joins Kate’s son Bertie, classical singers Stefan Roberts and Michael Wood and Stephen Fry as guest performers on the album...

Fry’s contribution, a recital of different words for snow on the title track is a pretentious misfire that is bordering on parody. The record was released to widespread acclaim and entered the UK’s album chart at No.5 in November 2011 and later saw Kate beat competition from Adele and PJ Harvey to win the Best Pop Album category at the South Bank Sky Arts Awards”. Looking to this 2013 article from Stereogum, they placed 50 Words for Snow fifth (out of ten): “Bush's 10th LP opens with "Snowflake," an evocative drift of nothingness. "The world is so loud," Bush sings — almost whispers — over a sparse, hollow bed of tom-toms and grand piano. It's the story of a snowflake's birth and descent to Earth, and the cascading arrangement brings that story to life. The rest of 50 Words for Snow follows a similar trajectory: Bush explores seven wintry themes (two eternally separated lovers in "Snowed in at Wheeler Street," the sad myth of the Yeti in "Wild Man"), as her band skitters quietly beneath — or drops out entirely, leaving only Bush's husky alto and keys in the foreground. There's no "Running Up That Hill" to reward your attentiveness — only more layers of snowy atmosphere”. Ending with MOJO and their ranking from earlier this year. They put 50 Words for Snow in ninth: “Re-energised by Director’s Cut, Bush worked furiously on her first LP of new songs since 2005’s Ariel, taking as its central motif the magic, beauty and danger of snow. But a Christmas album it was not, as lengthy, often sombre mediations spread out like black ice, with frost-bitten Elton John duet Snowed In At Wheeler Street a highlight. 15 years later, we’re still waiting for a follow-up”. A range of thoughts on Kate Bush’s most recent album. I think that it is a masterpiece, though perhaps not as esteemed as Hounds of Love, The Dreaming or Aerial. As its fifteenth anniversary is approaching, I urge everyone to…

LISTEN to this phenomenal album.

FEATURE: Let the Weirdness Out: Why That Word Does Kate Bush a Disservice

FEATURE:

 

 

Let the Weirdness Out

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in Abbey Road’s Studio 2 in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Rapport

Why That Word Does Kate Bush a Disservice

_________

I have been thinking again…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Alamy

of Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside. I am already excited about its fiftieth anniversary. That is on 17th February, 2028. More than a year away, there is going to be a lot of new attention coming its way. However, I have been considering how the album has been getting some new focus. A few months or so back, Billie Eilish said she was appreciative of Kate Bush’s earlier albums. Like her debut, The Kick Inside. How she like the ‘weirder’ Kate Bush. Fiona Apple is a fan of the album and she would frequently sit at her piano to play and sing along to tracks such as Feel It, Moving, and Wuthering Heights. In recent months and years, there have been artists shining a light on Kate Bush’s earliest work. Bush herself said that she went a bit mad on her 1982 album, The Dreaming. On one of its tracks, Leave It Open, she sings “We let the weirdness in”. Maybe some see it is a compliment to call her earlier work weird. That word gets applied to The Kick Inside. How it is perhaps not quite as commercial or grounded as some of her other albums. They may be picking up on her vocal gymnastics and subject matter. That would continue through Lionheart (1978) and Never for Ever (1980). The Dreaming is an album where Bush produced solo. On all of these albums, she is distinctly herself and like nobody else. I have been struggling with words such as odd and weird. That would suggest her work is inaccessible or outcast. It was singular and magnificent. When her debut came out, Punk had been around for a year or two. In the Pop mainstream, there were few artists doing anything radical or too inventive. Bush did not really have any female peers writing like she did. If the likes of Carole King and Joni Mitchell, who she was often lumped in with, were writing more confessional and personal albums, Bush was going beyond that. She was not submissive or heartbroken.

The idea that her tracks were somehow impenetrable or strange. ‘Weird’ is what we would say to someone or something that we do not understand or is out of the ordinary. Kate Bush’s music was not ordinary, though I don’t think it is fitting or respectful to see it as weird. Almost fifty years since her debut album was released, it is picking up new recognition and love. Perhaps making it seem less fringe or unusual, I feel we need to reframe things. Cliches still swirl around Kate Bush. That she is this recluse or some odd figure who does not go out. When articles come out, she is often labelled as reclusive or weird. I feel this kind of sexism is applied to women in music whose music goes beyond the banal and routine. Today, there are some great Pop artists around. Though there are few who stand out in terms of their originality. Songs that do not make you think as much as listening to Kate Bush. Today, we have Pop artists who blend genres and are very much doing something exciting. COBRAH and Slayyyter are among those who are blending different genres to make something unique. You might find their music darker or heavier than most Pop. It is deep and inventive, though we would not – or should not – label them as weird. FKA twigs is a fan of Kate Bush and she goes beyond the ordinary. It would be sexist to label these women as odd or weird. Even if we apply those words to Kate Bush affectionately, I still think that it is alienating and unintentionally reductive. That she was niche and albums such as The Kick Inside are for a certain group of people. When it came out in 1978, it had layers that were not seen in Punk. More emotive and substantial, I do worry that younger listeners might be put off if they think that her music is somehow weird or outsider.

Billie Eilish is a major artist and respects her music. Though if we use words like ‘weird’ or ‘eccentric’, you paint Kate Bush as this strange myth of an artist. Or that her music is for certain people. Albums such as The Kick Inside and The Dreaming are definitely unconventional, though there is nothing in these albums that will repel or is for those who prefer experimental or freakier music. Kate Bush’s individuality should be championed and given greater weight. Rather than see her earlier work as weird, it needs to be discussed in different terms and tones. I did want to bring in this article that does address some eccentricity and strangeness in her music. Though we can only see that as a negative from the industry’s viewpoint. How women who were distinct and refused to be pigeonholed were insulted and mispresented. “Bush refused to make sense in the ways the industry wanted her to. Too strange, too theatrical, too literary, too female in the wrong ways — she became a problem that brilliance often becomes when it wears a woman’s face”. I think this is why a lot of younger artists are coming to albums like The Kick Inside, The Dreaming and the pre-Hounds of Love (1985) work:

“In the lexicon of feminist theory, Kate Bush is an aberration of the symbolic order. Her voice — that wraithlike soprano, sharp as glass, elastic as breath — does not obey grammar or gender. Julia Kristeva wrote of the semiotic chora, that primal rhythm of language before it becomes law; Bush sings from there. Each shriek, whisper, or howl is a refusal of linguistic domestication. The body leaks into the song — uncontainable, holy, strange.

To listen to her 1982 masterpiece, The Dreaming, is to watch an artist shatter every polite convention of pop. It is postmodern chaos rendered divine: voices stacked like broken mirrors, rhythms dissolving, accents mutating, machines sighing with human ache. She produced it herself — the first woman in British pop to do so — and in that act, Bush entered the masculine sanctum of authorship, claiming the studio as a body of her own. What the critics of the time heard as hysteria or excess was, in truth, a rebellion against patriarchal syntax. “Every old structure,” she seemed to say, “is a cage.”

And yet, she never needed to declare this politics outright. It was written into the architecture of her sound. Her eccentricity was her feminism — not as banner or doctrine, but as a refusal to simplify the self.

To call this concept “ambitious” is an insult; ambition is what men are praised for when they try to build worlds. What Bush built was a mythic interior — a female odyssey through fear, faith, and the thresholds of the self.

What makes Kate Bush so radical is not her eccentricity alone, but her commitment to the odd as sacred practice. Every culture has its oracles — those who speak truth through strangeness. Bush’s oddity is not a costume; it is her method. Through it, she dismantles the binaries of intellect and intuition, male and female, art and artifice.

To trace Kate Bush’s albums is to follow a spiritual cartography of womanhood — from the mythic girl to the sovereign creator, from body to cosmos. She did not rise through the male canon; she built a different one, full of wind and ghosts and the laughter of things unseen.

In her strangeness, she offered women a new way to exist: not as symbol or saint, but as process. The Dreaming, The Drowning, The Dancing, The Singing — each phase a form of becoming. The industry called her eccentric, witch, recluse — the usual names for women who do not explain themselves. But perhaps Toni Morrison said it best in another tongue: “If you surrender to the air, you can ride it.”

Kate Bush has been riding the air for forty years now. And somewhere between myth and motherhood, madness and divinity, she became what the world could not name — a woman entirely her own invention”.

Few artists in history have had the same impact as Kate Bush. Whilst some still label her as weird, we could say the same about David Bowie and his earlier incarnations. He is not so easily dismissed or marginalised. He is seen as a pioneer and visionary. This is what we need to say instead of Kate Bush. Drop tired and inaccurate labels. Although you can say Joni Mitchell is a one-off, Kate Bush’s uniqueness is nothing like that. I feel she is a much more fascinating and compelling artist. Classic Rock ran a feature earlier in the year that celebrated the fact that Bush is one of the most influential artists of the past fifty years:

“Kate Bush is now established as both a national treasure and an enduring enigma. In a career in which she has usually done the opposite of the rational thing, she has maintained stellar status as a much-loved musical pioneer, transcending her initial pigeonhole as a kooky hippie girl with a high-pitched voice. An imperishable influence on subsequent female artists, sure, and then some, yet Bush has primarily been significant beyond gender, her art and attitude a nudge to all idiosyncratic creative types who don’t follow formulae.

She remains her own entity, and we grant her the awe – and occasionally forgiveness – afforded to the truly unique. She has even survived describing then-Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May as “wonderful”. The rules, and common sense, go out of the window in Kate Bush World. How did she pull this off?

Kate Bush was always something of a prodigy. Forty years ago this January, Wuthering Heights, the first ever British No.1 self-written by a female singer, brought a fresh and candid voice to music. Her debut album The Kick Inside followed a few weeks later. She had written most of the songs on it in her mid-teens. They were rich with pretentious references (in this case a good thing), mentioning Brontë and Gurdjieff with that manner of unselfconscious earnestness exhibited by young people who haven’t read many books but have therefore reacted really intensely to the ones that they have. Which is how most of us reacted to Bush’s music.

There was, at the time, a striking novelty to her upfront expressions of lust and eroticism through the female gaze. You can sweat the details, cite Bessie Smith and Joni Mitchell, but it wasn’t yet the norm. And in an era when punk was on the rise, she was – at least technically – its very antithesis. Her moods, chords and theatricality (mentored by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour) had more in common with prog. Her songs swooned and sighed with romance and yearning – not a current hot ticket. What she did share with punk was a free spirit, a doing-her-own-thing drive – the same young generation who queued to get gobbed on at Damned gigs embraced her.

Gilmour was thrilled by his young protégé’s success. “Kate is a complete one-off,” he said. “I can’t think of anyone like her. Joni Mitchell was also a one-off, an original, but Kate is nothing like that.”

That debut was averse to self-editing; it was both unfettered and rhapsodic. Urges, fevers, visions, unfiltered. She somehow transcended the mundane categories of the here and now. She was atypical, not topical. Pansexual. We all know what an impressive musical career she’s gone on to have, keeping that differentness, that individualism. Along the way she’s evolved from TV light-entertainment regular and accidental sex symbol to arguably the most enigmatic recluse in the business, one who marches to her own eccentric drum beat.

“Every female you see at a piano is either Lynsey de Paul or Carole King,” Bush told Melody Maker in 1977. “And most male music – not all of it, but the good stuff – really lays it on you. It really puts you against the wall. And that’s what I like to do. I’d like my music to intrude. Not many females succeed with that.”

Her ‘intrusions’ are often Trojan horses, dark themes hosted by sweet melodies, a charm of charisma. She has become one of the most invaluable figures in British music, and has done so chiefly by being herself. Or, in earlier years, by being herself while inhabiting various characters. Then hiding herself away and letting us project on to the indelible impression she had made already. Bowie, to name the most blatant example, used a similar sleight of image, but it’s a tightrope act, this blend of striking personae and blank canvas”.

As we get closer to the fiftieth anniversary of The Kick Inside, I think we need to shift and evolve the lexicon. When artists discover that album and other earlier albums, they need instead to describe it in more passionate and respectful tones. Not to say ‘weird’ is a bad thing, though it does somewhat paint Kate Bush as an oddness. Someone whose records you need to be in a certain mood for. That is unfair to a genius and groundbreaking marvel. Someone who has inspired artists who have a legion of fans. What their music does is speak to those who seek something more meaningful. The incredible Kate Bush is someone whose work is…

ANYTHING but weird.

FEATURE: The Sound of the Crowd: The Human League’s Dare at Forty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

The Sound of the Crowd

The Human League’s Dare at Forty-Five

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THE third studio album…

 IN THIS PHOTO: The Human League in August 1981 in Sheffield/PHOTO CREDIT: Jill Furmanovsky

from The Human League, Dare, turns forty-five on 16th October. To mark that anniversary, I am featuring some articles written about the album. One of the very best from the 1980s, Dare was a more Pop-friendly move from their previous album, 1980’s Travelogue. Not that the Sheffield band compromised anything. The album reached number one in the U.K. Dare is credited with kickstarting the Second British Invasion. This was the name given to a movement that saw the popularity of British Synth-Pop in the U.S. I did want to start out with Louder Than War and their 2012 feature about Dare. The making of this classic album. Neil Mason with the key players involved with Dare. “Studios with leaking roofs, trips to new romantic clubs in a little Hillman Imp, and a heavy metal single recorded between sessions. They’re all part of the behind-the-scenes story of the 1980s synthpop masterpiece that is THE HUMAN LEAGUE’s Dare album”:

“I’d had arguments internally, admits Draper. ‘Because of the recession in the early 80s, we knew we had to cut back and Nik Powell [co-founder of Virgin Records] wanted me to drop The Human League. Richard [Branson] backed me when I refused and fortunately I was vindicated quite quickly.

‘We couldn’t have got through all this and ended up with Dare without someone at the record company who carried a lot of weight, believes Last. ‘Simon Draper had complete faith from day one. Would I have blamed him for dropping us? It would have been a perfectly reasonable position. His faith was crucial.

Phil Oakey once claimed of The Human League Mk1 that ‘only lads in long coats liked usâ€. It was clear, to him at least, that they needed to broaden their appeal. How he did that is not only one of pop folklore’s most famous tales, it was a masterstoke of a decision. No matter how good their songs were, how great their records sounded, it wouldn’t have mattered a jot if the League had been fronted by boys.

‘When Phil called me up and said he’d got these girls, I was… less than convinced, says Bob Last of Oakey’s trip to a Sheffield nightclub, where he found teenagers Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley and asked them to join the group on the spot. ‘I don’t recall what I said. I think there was probably an interesting silence.

What The Human League were doing musically was dramatically different, radical even, but on its most basic level, Dare tapped into the cultural climate perfectly. It would be embraced by the high street, in particular by girls in slingbacks going to town on a Saturday night a factor that proved pivotal to their success.

The Oakey/Wright-penned Mk2 debut Boys And Girls failed to dent the Top 40 on its release in February 1981. In order to sustain interest, the band needed to re-establish themselves. And quick. But Virgin’s verdict on the demo of the song that the band wanted as their next single was inauspicious.

‘When Sound Of The Crowd was delivered, it just didn’t sound good enough, says Simon Draper. ‘It just seemed to me they had to make a more credible musical record and Phil suggested Martin Rushent would be the prefect producer. Based on what? I don’t know. It didn’t seem all that likely to me.

Martin Rushent had made his name as a producer working with the likes of The Stranglers, The Buzzcocks, Dr Feelgood and Generation X. He’d also produced 999’s Seperates album in 1978. More new wave than punk, 999 sounded properly tight: the drums were crisp and sharp, the bass deep and full. It turned out Oakey was a bit of fan. Asked who he’d like to work with, Rushent was top of his list.

Martin Rushent, meanwhile, had been busy setting up Genetic Studios at his newly acquired Wood Cottage home in Streatley. He loaned Midge Ure and Rusty Eagan the fledgling studio to record the first Visage album. When Virgin called up to see if he would drop in for a chat, he’d already soaked up the lessons learned from watching Visage work and arrived clutching a record he’d made with Buzzcocks frontman Pete Shelley, who was about to return to the fray as solo artist with his electronic based debut, Homosapien.

‘Martin said you must come to my studio, says Dave Allen, who engineered Dare and who first met Rushent when he produced Allen’s band, Pinpoint. ‘We arrived expecting this amazing country studio, and it was a building site. The original studio was in this ramshackle bungalow down the hill from where the main studio was being built.

Allen’s band didn’t work out but, getting along well with Rushent, he found himself hired as an extra pair of hands in the studio, taking on everything from programming to heating up meals for the bands. Yes, along with the famous imported Linn Drum, Genetic also had one of the UK’s first microwave ovens.

Work on Dare started in Sheffield, with Phil Oakey and Adrian Wright joined by Ian Burden and Jo Callis. Burden came via Graph, a Sheffield band who had appeared on a Fast Product compilation. Callis was from Edinburgh and was a former member of The Rezillos, who had been managed by Bob Last.

‘It was this derelict building that at some point had been a veterinary surgery, says Jo Callis of the League’s optimistically named Monumental Studio in Sheffield that they shared with Heaven 17.

‘It was mostly falling down and used to leak constantly, confirms Last. ‘I still have a recurring nightmare about trying to fix the roof of that studio.

Callis was hired for his songwriting expertise, but he was essentially a punk guitarist masquerading as a glam rocker, and his knowledge of keyboards was patchy at best. But when he first arrived in Sheffield, the new boy was helped out by an unlikely ally.

‘Martin Ware of Heaven 17 actually showed me round, says Jo. ‘He showed me the basics of how a synth worked, how to programme it, how to get different sounds out of it.

Once they had a few songs demo-ed, the band would decamp from Monumental to Genetic, where Martin Rushent and Dave Allen set about meticulously recreating the tracks. The first fruit of the sessions was a new version of The Sound Of The Crowd that peaked at Number 12. With Rushent and the girls on board, The Human League finally had pop potency. Rushent’s PA, Carri Mallard, remembers the band’s regular trips to Genetic.

‘I used to pick Susan and Joanne up from the train station, says Mallard. ‘They’d be sat in the back of my little red Hillman Imp, all northern accents. They were wonderfully down to earth and excited about the whole thing. We’d go off round the clubs in the area, the new romantic nights. They wouldn’t have been able to do that a few months later.

‘I still feel the girls weren’t appreciated enough for the sort of spirit and the input they provided, offers Jo Callis. ‘It was just as important as anything anyone else did.

‘The band used to stay in a pub called the Miller Of Mansfield in Goring, just across the river from Genetic, says Mallard. ‘Philip would wander round the village with his asymmetrical hairstyle, no shirt, tight black drainpipe jeans, high-heeled women’s shoes and red lipstick. You can imagine. Philip was the most charming guy, but to the little old ladies in this sleepy village it was like, ‘Who is this person?’.

The last piece in the Dare jigsaw, the very final decision, revolves around a song that, if it hadn’t been written, may have left the album flat on its face and the League’s career looking similarly deflated. As a single, it would be Number One on both sides of the Atlantic and a Top 10 hit in a dozen more countries, selling over 2.5 million copies.

‘It wasn’t like there was this big pool of material waiting to be recorded, recalls Callis. ‘We were almost recording as we went. Adrian had this little book of instructions about how to turn all the equipment on and how to work the studio. So we’d get the studio working and kind of potter about. Don’t You Want Me came from such pottering. I was thinking along the lines of Coati Mundi and Kid Creole & The Coconuts, strangely enough, and then Phil had the idea of the Pygmalion lyric and it all developed organically from there.

‘Phil was quite visionary in his own way, says Dave Allen. ‘When we were doing Don’t You Want Me, we didn’t have a chorus, so we had to wait two or three days for Phil to knock one up, which is small beer in my subsequent experience. Eventually Phil came in and said, ‘I’ve got the chorus, I’ve got the chorus ‘Don’t you want me baby, don’t you want me, oh-oh-oh/Don’t you want me baby, don’t you want me, oh-oh-oh-oh…â€.’ Me and Martin both looked round and went, ‘You’re having a fucking laugh… fuck off’. And Phil was like, ‘No, no, no, it’ll be great’”.

This article from last year took us inside Dare and its legacy. It turned The Human League into a globe-conquering Synth-Pop act. They redefined Pop music for sure. Such is the importance of this amazing record.

“You could dance to it”

The fractious splintering of the original Human League line-up into the Phil Oakey-led collective and Heaven 17 was a difficult hangover the group had yet to recover from.

The Travelogue and Reproduction albums had started to build some momentum for the band, but the subsequent messy split and Oakey’s seemingly left-field decision to recruit two inexperienced teenage girls to bolster the lineup surprised critics and threatened to derail the League’s credibility.

But new sessions with producer Martin Rushent suggested there was a method to the apparent madness. 1981’s “Boys And Girls” hinted at a sound that fused contemporary dance appeal with the fresh New Romantic movement, and this standalone single finally helped the band crack the UK Top 50. With their record label intrigued enough to allow further sessions to continue, “The Sound Of The Crowd” was the first big Human League success and set the template for Dare. “When we first heard it, it was just thump-crash-thump-crash,” said recent band recruit Suzanne Sully. “But we knew it was a definite hit. You could dance to it.”

High-street glamour and kitchen-sink creativity

Follow-up “Love Action (I Believe In Love)” intensified the dance dynamic still further and made it all the way to the UK Top 3 in the summer of 1981, with The Human League finding themselves Top Of The Pops regulars. It was perfect timing – the UK music scene was in a freshly confident mood. Magazines like Smash Hits and The Face were helping telegraph a soap-opera narrative of high-street glamour and kitchen-sink creativity, also shaped by the growing reliance on pop promos to help sell a song. The Human League had a strong look that played perfectly into that.

With “Open Your Heart,” released that October, the band perfected its sharpest image to date in a striking video, which dovetailed with the launch of Dare, on October 16. This was perhaps the first time a video had ever so explicitly launched the visual identity of an album, but the work of designer Ken Ansell also echoed some classic covers of fashion bible Vogue.

Across Dare’s ten tracks, you find those effervescent pop singles but also a starker, colder set of songs far removed from the mid-market gloss of the contemporary teen scene. “Seconds” is a brutal narrative of assassination (then largely assumed to reference the recent death of John Lennon, but actually written about John F. Kennedy’s murder in 1963), while “Darkness” offers some melodic uplifts but is a brooding epic about the terrors of the night. “I Am The Law” is a stark, synth chiller taking its inspiration from the 2000 AD comic character Judge Dredd… It’s about as far removed as you can imagine from the fluffy pop compositions being created for chart contemporaries like Shakin’ Stevens.

“Do Or Die” is a hypnotic, dance-focused cut that lifts the mood midway, but, to be clear, it would be wrong to say that Dare is a gloomy listen. The lighter touches come fast and furious, and, in essence, the album is almost a perfect exercise in how to balance a pop record.

The greatest party record of all time

But Dare is also an album forever overwhelmed by those magnificent singles, which briefly threatened to turn The Human League into the biggest band in the world. Over the festive holidays that year, “Don’t You Want Me” sat at No. 1 for five weeks (helped by the innovative Steve Barron video) and the Dare album inevitably topped the UK charts, staying on the listings for more than 70 weeks. International success soon followed, with “Don’t You Want Me” reaching the top of the US charts the following summer, and Love And Dancing – an early example of the remix album, featuring new versions of some Dare highlights – hitting the shops at the same time.

Almost four decades on, it’s a little easier to unpick the winning formula here: the sharply-crafted pop singles that built momentum; glossy, evergreen production magic from Martin Rushent (he would go on to many other great things but did he ever really surpass this?); slick visuals; a near-perfect band line-up (with ex-Rezillo Jo Callis on synths, adding so much musical ballast); and that song. A cut that will outlive an album even as classic as this, “Don’t You Want Me” arguably remains the greatest party record of all time.

Even if you don’t agree with that entirely, it will see you on the dancefloor again very soon…”.

In 2021, when Dare turned forty, Albumism provided a retrospective. In terms of its legacy, it is pretty sizeable: “Dare has appeared on several lists of the greatest albums of all time. Sounds magazine ranked it the 81st-best album of all time in 1986 and the 44th-best album of the 1980s three years later. In 1990, Dare was listed by Rolling Stone as the 78th-best album of the previous decade. Q placed the record at number 69 on its 2000 list of the "100 Greatest British Albums Ever"; the same magazine, in 2006, ranked Dare the 19th-best album of the 1980s”:

“On Dare, Oakey's gloomy baritone punches through sawing synth lines and grounds each song in real human emotion and the desire for connection. This is present on album opener "The Things That Dreams Are Made Of" and against the shunting drum pattern of "Open Your Heart," where Oakey's vocals strain with an aching for more over a melody run that rivals the catchiness of melodic maestros ABBA.

With a stalking euphoria, "The Sound of the Crowd" builds to a climax that gives birth to the sound of synthpop, and best reflects the burgeoning (albeit short-lived) New Romantic era. It's an uplifting track that, despite its sparseness, feels plush and full. Such an approach would be a mainstay of Dare—creating a sense of warmth and fullness in a bleak and sparse setting.

Dare's decidedly gloomy mid-point still offers little glints of sheen in the moody paranoia of "Darkness," the frantic rhythms of "Do or Die" and the eerie, nightmare-inducing reworking of the film score "Get Carter" twisted into an airy, high pitch call out that would feel right at home in today's Squid Game landscape.

The oppressive fog of "I Am The Law" settles around you as cascading synths trickle down and Oakey's authoritarian narrative plays out. It's a beautiful moment of dread and allows Oakey's limited vocal range to come into its own.

An unexpected highlight of the album is "Seconds," with its recounting of the Kennedy assassination with a commentary on Lee Harvey Oswald. Against a pulsing countdown beat and histrionic synths, the track is totally captivating and powerfully expressive. As a kid, I used to listen to this track over and over, drawn in by the visual picture it painted. It is Dare's crowning achievement in terms of production and its most stacked and layered. Purely magnetic.

Out of the darkness comes two of Dare's most pop-focused tracks, including the dance-inspired "Love Action (I Believe in Love)" with its fluttering main riff and shape-shifting soundscapes capped off by a rousing spoken word middle eight.

The other track is, of course, the track for which The Human League is best known for, the obsessive tail of rejection "Don't You Want Me." With its A Star Is Born narrative of a spurned Svengali, "Don't You Want Me" is instantly iconic. The ticking sequencing, the heavy bass melody, the catchy as hell singalong chorus, and the at-odds duet between Oakley and Sulley. Despite initial misgivings over its strength as a single, "Don't You Want Me" became the cornerstone for Dare's success and influence as it topped charts worldwide.

The beauty of Dare is that it sounded unlike anything else on the radio, and to this day, has its own unique sound and place in music history. It created the space through which music from that point on would filter through, with an increased incorporation of synths into pop and rock’s landscape and a shift toward more drum machine-driven grooves. The sounds created on Dare continue to reverberate through pop and hip-hop. It is detached and distinctly cool.  And despite being 40 years old, Dare still feels like a message from the future”.

The mighty Dare turns forty-five on 16th October. One of the most influential albums ever released, I am not sure if there will be new retrospectives or a new release of the album. It still sounds fresh to this day. The hypnotic and utterly wonderful Dare remains…

A timeless classic.

FEATURE: Groovelines: D’Angelo and The Vanguard - Really Love

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

PHOTO CREDIT: Gregory Harris

D’Angelo and The Vanguard - Really Love

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ONE reason for…

focusing on this song is because D’Angelo died on 14th October last year. Marking a year since his untimely death, I did want to spend some time with one of the standout songs from his 2014 album, Black Messiah. I understand he was working on a new album when he died. Perhaps we will get a posthumous album. Really Love is one of the best songs from his catalogue. It features a truly sublime introduction. Really Love as the first single from Black Messiah. That album is credited to D’Angelo and The Vanguard. It came out on 15th December, 2014, the same day as the album. I want to start with an interview with Gina Figueroa. As Remezcla say: “She’s not only the woman behind the spoken word introduction that opens the honey-sweet ballad, she also both inspired and co-wrote the song”. This interview was published in 2016. That year, Really Love won the GRAMMY for Best R&B Song. Figueroa discussed “for the first time the explosive history of her relationship with D’Angelo, her collaboration on the song, and her attempt to be credited as an official songwriter”:

“Figueroa reveals that there’s something else to the introduction, found in an inaudible, hushed murmur between the song’s beginning syllables. “I’m telling him, ‘What are you doing with that cigarette, my love?’ Mi vida. One of my biggest battles with him was to quit smoking. It was the thorn in my side.”

Then, one midnight hour in mid-December, Black Messiah arrived at last. It was only then that Gina found out her intro was part of the finished version of “Really Love.” Upon listening to it for the first time, she remembers, “It was utterly bittersweet. It was painful as hell. Very painful. But very emotional, very beautiful, and I loved it.” Critics agreed; “Really Love” was hailed as a standout album cut, offering up the unbridled vulnerability and gut-wrenching intimacy D’Angelo embraced in his previous works, all over a lilting, virtuosic jazz-funk groove.

But what these reviews left out was any textual analysis of Gina’s spoken introduction. Enter Remezcla. In January of 2015, our Managing Editor Andrea Gompf published a piece engaging with Gina’s contribution to the song, and chronicling her attempt to track Figueroa – who is credited in the album’s liner notes simply as “Spoken Vocal: Gina” – down. “I wrote the article partly out of frustration that all the other reviews of ‘Really Love’ I’d seen completely glanced over this important introduction,” Gompf says. “I thought it was lazy journalism that no one engaged with the intro just because it was in another language – and if you take the time to listen to what [Gina] says, it gives the song a totally different reading. This is why music outlets need diverse editorial staffs – if you don’t have someone on your team who can speak Spanish in 2016, you’re losing.”

Gompf’s article eventually made its way to Gina, and helped prompt her to seek out a proper songwriting credit. As D’Angelo set out on the Second Coming Tour, the two agreed to collaborate on getting Gina credited as a co-writer, which entitles Figueroa to claim status as a nominee for Best Record of the Year and Best R&B Song at the 2016 Grammys. According to National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) policy, in order to submit a correction and claim status as a nominee, “an executive (CEO, president, EVP, SVP A&R, or GM—only) at the nominated recording’s label [must] submit the correction, specifically detailing what was inaccurately submitted or omitted, along with an explanation as to why the error took place and what steps are being taken by the company to correct the mistake.”

The process was laborious, but in collaboration with several members of D’Angelo’s management and legal team, Figueroa and her lawyer submitted her claim. The strict deadline means that Gina’s name will not be read at the telecast tonight, and per NARAS’ restrictive policy, “all official changes to be made will be done after the awards telecast.”

“I’m very thankful to D’Angelo. He creates this incredible musical environment that was able to uplift me.”

Trade publications and official metadata files must recognize her as a co-writer after the correction is made. Though her name will not be read at the ceremony, Figueroa is grateful for the opportunity she had to make her mark on the album, and for D’Angelo’s artistry. “It’s very bizarre and surreal. Very surreal, and I’m very thankful to D’Angelo. He creates this incredible musical environment that was able to uplift me.”

Over a year after its release, and on the eve of its reckoning at the Grammys, Black Messiah remains a timeless and swirling exercise in political and romantic introspection. Perhaps “Really Love” should be read as the pièce-de-résistance of this triumphant romp in jittery folk-blues and jangly R&B. At a moment when the politics of black self-love (see: the black feminine gospel of Beyoncé’s “Formation,” or the manic cockiness of Kanye West) seem poised to muddle 2016’s pop cultural conversation with half-baked hot takes, “Really Love” rears its head again, almost begging us to remember the deceptive simplicity of love. As Gina intimates when our conversation comes to a close, the story behind “Really Love” is quite pure, despite the song’s searing intro. “There’s that thing of the heart – when hearts love each other, there’s no ocean that could separate them”.

I want to move to some reviews for Really Love. The Mix Review had their say about one of D’Angelo’s greatest tracks. If some see it as quite slight or not to his golden standard, others see it as a work of wonder. I do think that it is one of D’Angelo’s best moments:

“As a mix engineer, most of the time you’re endeavouring to deliver a product that’ll work well at a wide variety of listening levels. It’s not uncommon, however, for mainstream pop mixes in particular to be mixed specifically for lower-volume playback, pushing the lead-vocal/hook levels, mix compression, and general brightness to ensure maximum brand-recognition even for listeners hoovering an Afghan hound — the penalty being a blisteringly fatiguing listen at anything like party-grade volumes. This D’Angelo song, however, is the polar opposite, a mix that only really offers up its riches once your windows are beginning to rattle, and which’ll blow out your subwoofer long before it ever gets abrasive.

And once you do crank the dial there’s so much to enjoy — not just great basic sounds for the intimate chamber-music strings, improvisatory spanish guitar, and gossamer harp glissandi, but also tons of lovely background details which give a sense of fresh discovery with each new playback: the subliminal tremolo guitar at 1:34; the french-horn and clarinet licks at 2:22-2:38; the damped snare flam at 2:59; the electric-piano fill at 3:11; and the mad string slides at 4:01. It may demand concerted listening, but there’s no question that it rewards your efforts handsomely”.

I will come to The Delete Bin and their analysis of the stunning Really Love. It is sad that D’Angelo is not around to see the impact his song made. He would have been aware in the aftermath of the release of Black Messiah. Though I feel it has gained new light and legacy:

“This song “Really Love” is a sublime and impressionist neo-soul concoction, full of warm upright bass undercurrents, a smattering of richly arranged strings, snippets of spoken word, flamenco-style guitar, and D’Angelo’s densely (that word again) multitracked vocals that play with the threads of a melody and of words rather than outline them in sharp relief. Somehow too, despite the density that’s gone into the production, there is still a sense of airiness, of space. This song on this album provides a sense of balance, as other tracks pull the listener further in to its center where there is far less space, where those same stylistic textures represent colors, tones, and textures that makes this one of those albums that delivers rewards on repeated listens as well as initial ones. This is too big a landscape to explore all at once. No wonder it took so long to create.

For all of the meticulous attention to detail that went into the making of the record, and the personal upheavals he went through while realizing it, it was the external political climate that made D’Angelo affect a shorter timeline as far as the release. Originally, it was intended to be launched in 2015. But, it was pushed out in December of 2014 as the Ferguson riots and the murder of Eric Garner were inflaming public discourse about institutionalized racism, the worth of black lives, and the nature of black identity in a culture that doesn’t always welcome it. Several of the songs touch on political themes like this, albeit often in an impressionistic, and experimental space. But, often not as well.

Yet, even if it was current events that sparked the expedient release of this long-awaited record, the sad fact is that these issues seem to be the same as they’ve been for decades. They are at least as current as the many strains of classic American music referenced on this song, and on the rest of the album. Even if the release of this record, or any record, doesn’t solve the problems that those specific events of 2014 have made more visible for so many, what it does do is frame the artistry of those coming out of various black communities all over the United States, where lives seem so cheap and insignificant to so many who hold positions of power. In many instances, songs on the record evoke soundbites that communicate an important sense of rage around all of this, designed to help continue vital conversations happening in disenfranchised black communities all over the nation.

In addition to the social discontent reflected in the lyrics on many songs on the record, even the musical references on “Really Love”, a radio-friendly love song rooted in classic traditions, remind us that some of the greatest artists and cultural icons America has ever produced, many of whom can be thanked for a rich global cultural legacy that we all enjoy, would be subject to the same suspicion, discrimination, and violence that Michael Brown and Eric Garner were subject to, were they caught in the wrong place at the wrong time in America today”.

I will finish off with two articles. The Guardian collated D’Angelo’s best ten tracks last year following D’Angelo’s death. Really Love was in there. If you have not heard Black Messiah, then you do need to check it out, as it is one of the best albums ever:

“He’ll always be a lover and a fighter. Black Messiah’s grand romance track, Really Love, wears its cinematic ambitions on its sleeves with spoken word opening verses delivered in Spanish by Boricua artist Gina Figueroa. Cue the swirling strings and let Figueroa do her thing with a short, biting monologue (“Yeah, you love me? I love you very much … I did not want to fight you. I only wanted to love you. But you are very jealous”). The greatest falsetto singer of his generation is all about the determined serenade here, taking the playful sensual route to win this woman back into his arms with Latin guitar licks creating a delicate tapestry for our suitor. With dashes of melodrama and romcom energy, Really Love conjures the spirit of Prince on any one of his please baby, baby, please, you’re-so-hard-to-get anthems, delighting in the act of supplication; D’Angelo, like his idol, knows how to turn tender passivity into blue flirtation”.

In another feature, Rolling Stone Australia - https://au.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/dangelo-12-essential-songs-list-85710/really-love-85722/ - put together their thoughts on the twelve essential D’Angelo songs. I do hope that there are other reviews and takes on Really Love soon. As we mark a year since the passing of D’Angelo:

“The sweet and gentle “Really Love” was one of the first songs D’Angelo wrote for Black Messiah, and eventually it became its first single. Above a lush string arrangement, guest Gina Figueroa speaks in Spanish, chastising a possessive lover. But as the slow-burner opens up, D’Angelo tells a different tale: He’s mesmerized by how deep his love is for his partner, intoxicated by their connection on every level. His soft falsetto declares “I’m in really love with you” on the chorus. D’Angelo wrote the song as early as 2007, when Questlove leaked some demo snippets to Australian radio. The single would go on to be nominated for Record of the Year at the 2016 Grammy Awards, and it took home Best R&B Song. – Brittany Spanos”.

A romantic, towering and incredible song from Black Messiah, I feel Really Love is a track that showcases D’Angelo’s gifts as a singer and writer. I feel it is up there with his very best songs. You listen to Really Love and are transported. It is a wonderful work of brilliance that will…

STAY in the heart.

FEATURE: The Beatles’ Abbey Road at Fifty-Seven: Inside the Greatest Album Cover Ever

FEATURE:

 

 

The Beatles’ Abbey Road at Fifty-Seven

ALL PHOTOS: Iain Macmillan 

Inside the Greatest Album Cover Ever

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I will come to a feature…

that explores the iconic album cover of The Beatles’ final album, Abbey Road. It was released on 26th September, 1969. As it turns fifty-seven soon, rather than explore the songs, I did want to look at its cover. I feel it is the best album cover ever. Although Let It Be was released after Abbey Road, the latter was recorded last. Its cover has not been equalled in terms of how striking it is. So many people trying to replicate it. Before getting to that feature, below is a fascinating article published last year that underlines why Abbey Road was streets ahead of its time:

“Prior to September 26, 1969, most people in the world were blissfully unaware that Abbey Road was the location of EMI’s London recording studios. Some keen fans may have spotted the name in news reports of The Beatles’ activities, but this was a time when it was of little importance to most fans where something was recorded. Ironically, given the album’s title, not all of Abbey Road was recorded at Abbey Road, and, in truth, the title is as much about the street and the zebra crossing outside as it is about the studio itself.

But when all is said and done, the album is for many, including this writer, the absolute pinnacle of the band’s achievements. All this, despite having been recorded as the band was breaking up amid internal strife and bitterness.

Short-sighted reception

Abbey Road was The Beatles’ 11th studio album and the very last to be recorded (their 12th – and last-released – studio album, Let It Be, was mostly recorded prior to this record). Rolling Stone magazine called it “complicated instead of complex”, while Nik Cohn, writing in The New York Times, suggested that “individually” the songs are “nothing special”, The Guardian called the album “a slight matter”, and the Detroit Free Press suggested, “We expected inventiveness. We got a good LP.”

However, Chris Welch, writing in Melody Maker, felt just the opposite: “The truth is, their latest LP is just a natural born gas, entirely free of pretension, deep meanings or symbolism.” Similarly enthusiastic, The Record Mirror said that Abbey Road was “every bit as good as the last three” albums by the group. History, too, has been much kinder, with many now citing this as their favorite Beatles album.

What makes Abbey Road a masterpiece?

What is it that makes Abbey Road a masterpiece? Well, the breadth of the musical vision, the sheer scale of the band’s collective musical imagination, and the audacity of it all, at a time when The Beatles were coming to the end of their time together.

And then there are the two George Harrison masterpieces, “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something”; both rank alongside the best songs the band ever recorded. Of the former, uDiscover’s Martin Chilton, writing in the Daily Telegraph, says “it’s almost impossible not to sing along to” – and he’s right.

“Something” is sublime, the perfect love song, and John Lennon’s favorite track on the album. Often prior to performing it in concert, Frank Sinatra would describe it as “the greatest love song ever written” (while also erroneously saying it was his favorite “Lennon and McCartney composition”)

Side Two’s 15-minute “medley” begins with “You Never Give Me Your Money,” a Paul McCartney song. It transitions beautifully into “Sun King,” which was written by John and features John, Paul, and George’s impeccable harmonies. From there the medley runs into two more Lennon songs, “Mean Mr Mustard” and “Polythene Pam” (both written in India). Then it’s a quadruple shot from McCartney: “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window,” the beautiful “Golden Slumbers” and “Carry That Weight” (which includes elements from “You Never Give Me Your Money”), before the medley closes with “The End.”

Opinion is divided among some fans and critics about some of the remaining tracks. However, there is no disputing the power, no denying the magnificence, of two of John Lennon’s compositions. “Come Together” is one of the great opening tracks on any album. Likewise, “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” just takes the band to a place they had never been before… towering.

The songs not entirely recorded at Abbey Road were “Something,” which features some overdubs recorded at Olympic Studios in Barnes, West London. For “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” the band recorded the rhythm track in February 1969, at Trident Studios in Soho’s Wardour Street, where a composite of the song was then assembled. Work continued on the song until August (including a session on August 8, when the album’s cover shoot also took place), as recordings were added to the original Trident tape; the finished song, completed at Abbey Road, was another composite made from two versions of the song. Meanwhile, “You Never Give Me Your Money” was started at Olympic in May 1969, and then finished at Abbey Road over a number of sessions in July and August.

Abbey Road is far greater than the sum of its parts, a record that, more than any other Beatles album, stands the test of time when played as a whole. It is not an album to cherry-pick tracks on random play – this is one to put on, to luxuriate in “Come Together,” and to finish with a smile on your face as Paul sings about Her Majesty being “a pretty nice girl” on the closing, “hidden” track.

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Abbey Road

1

George Harrison was sitting in the garden of Eric Clapton’s country house when he began writing “Here Comes The Sun.”

2

All four Beatles were together in the recording studio for the last time on August 20, 1969, when they finalized a mix of Abbey Road.

3

According to George Harrison, the guitar parts on “Sun King” were inspired by the sound of Fleetwood Mac’s big hit single, “Albatross.”

4

The word “pataphysical,” as heard in “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” came from the French avant-garde writer Alfred Jarry, who died in 1907. Paul became interested in his writing and discovered “pataphysics” (defined by Jarry as the “science of imaginary solutions”) in one of the writer’s later works.

5

“Come Together” was banned by the BBC in 1969 because it mentions Coca-Cola and the company had a policy against product placement in songs broadcast on the radio.

6

“Octopus’s Garden,” written by Ringo Starr, was inspired while he was on board Peter Sellers’ yacht in the Mediterranean. The boat’s captain told Ringo how octopuses gather stones and shiny objects from the sea bed to build gardens.

7

According to John Lennon, he asked Yoko Ono to play the chords to Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” backward to create “Because.” This is not entirely accurate, but it is very close to the overall sound of The Beatles’ song.

8

As Ringo explained, the idea of the Side Two medley was born out of necessity: “John and Paul had various bits, and so we recorded them and put them together. A lot of work went into it. That last section is, for me, one of the finest pieces we put together.” Paul embraced the idea enthusiastically. “It gave the second side a sort of operatic structure, which was quite nice because it got rid of all these songs in a good way.”

9

“She Came In Through the Bathroom Window” was inspired by an incident when one of the Apple Scruffs (the girls who hung about outside The Beatles’ office) climbed in to McCartney’s house via the bathroom window. She then let in some of the other girls, who stole photos and clothes.

10

Some of the lyrics for “Golden Slumbers” are based on “Cradle Song,” a poem and lullaby from Thomas Dekker’s 1603 comedy, Patient Grissel. McCartney saw the sheet music, left by his stepsister Ruth, on the piano at his father’s home in Liverpool”.

The cover of Abbey Road was shot by the late Iain Macmillan. Let’s get a little background of the Abbey Road shoot. In 2019, marking fifty years since that unforgettable image was taken, Abbey Road provided some history. If I could travel back in time and space, I think the place I would be is outside the studios when The Beatles were preparing to go over the zebra crossing. In the process, creating a slice of music history:

“A brief history:

All four Beatles gathered at EMI Studios on the morning of Friday 8 August 1969 for one of the most famous photo shoots of their career. Photographer Iain Macmillan took the iconic image that adorned their last-recorded album, Abbey Road. Iain Macmillan was a freelance photographer and a friend to John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

A policeman held up the traffic as Macmillan, from a stepladder positioned in the middle of the road, took six shots as the group walked across the zebra crossing just outside the studio.

The original idea:

The original working title for Abbey Road was Everest, and the legendary cover was never in the plan at all. Engineer Geoff Emerick was smoking Everest cigarettes in the studio, and the band eventually took a liking to the stark image of their silhouettes against a white mountain. Everest became the working title of their then-unnamed eleventh album.

However, the Everest plan didn't last. Once the group decided that Nepal was out of the question, Paul McCartney then came up with the idea to take a photograph outside of EMI Studios on a break from recording. Pictured below is an original sketch from Paul depicting his ideas for what he wanted the album cover to resemble, to which Iain Macmillan added a more detailed illustration in the top right.

Shortly after the shoot, McCartney studied the transparencies and chose the only one where all four Beatles were walking in time. It also satisfied The Beatles' desire for the world to see them walking away from the studios they had spent so much of the last seven years inside.

I am going to end with The Guardian and their 1989 interview with the man who took the Abbey Road cover. He died in 2006 at the age of sixty-seven. Though he has a broad and wide portfolio, he must surely have placed his work with The Beatles in 1969 at the top. When I think of what the perfect album cover is, Abbey Road leaps to mind:

“It was 20 years ago yesterday that photographer Iain Macmillan climbed up a ladder set in the middle of Abbey Road and changed the face of a north-west London street for decades to come. On August 8, 1969, from a perch about 10 feet above the road, Macmillan snapped six shots of the Beatles as they traversed the zebra crossing near the EMI Studios where the group did their recordings. One of the six shots became famous as the cover of the Beatles ' Abbey Road LP.

There were certainly more momentous events that summer - the moon walk, the Manson murders, the entry of British troops into Northern Ireland. But somehow, the image Macmillan captured that sunny August morning has survived. To this day, the image of the Beatles walking in step across Abbey Road remains one of popular music's best known and most widely imitated photographs.

Perhaps a bit too widely imitated. Arne, a Swedish newspaperman on holiday in London, is gesturing his four companions into position, squinting into his camera as he back-pedals into the busy intersection of Abbey Road and Grove End Road. Arne is so intent on getting his four friends into proper Beatle formation that he fails to notice more important things, such as the motorcycle coming up fast behind him. A squeal of rubber, a bleat of the horn, and Arne narrowly avoids giving his life for his favourite group.

The scene has been repeated nearly every day for the past 20 years: a Beatle fan makes the pilgrimage to the zebra crossing and nearly gets snuffed trying to re-enact the Abbey Road album cover. It could be worse, of course. Think of the carnage if they had named their album Oxford Street or M4. But what most Abbey Road pilgrims don't realise is that the Beatles had the traffic problem all figured out when they did their photo session.

'I remember we hired a policeman to hold up traffic while I was up on the ladder taking the pictures,' recalls Macmillan, who is still a photographer, currently working on a project in Scotland. 'The whole idea, I must say, was Paul McCartney's. A few days before the shoot, he drew a sketch of how he imagined the cover, which we executed almost exactly that day.

'I took a couple of shots of the Beatles crossing Abbey Road one way. We let some of the traffic go by and then they walked across the road the other way, and I took a few more shots. The one eventually chosen for the cover was number five of six. It was the only one that had their legs in a perfect 'V' formation, which is what I wanted stylistically.'

Almost everything captured in Macmillan's shutter that day was transformed into an icon, something larger than life. The Volkswagen in the background of the photo, for instance, became famous largely because its number plate, LMW 281F, was widely regarded as a 'clue' in the strange 'Paul is dead' rumour making the rounds at the time. (The plate was taken to read as '28 IF,' a clue that McCartney would have been 28 IF he had lived. The fact that McCartney was 27 when Abbey Road was released barely dented the rumour.)

Years later, Paul isn't dead and John is, but the Beatle Beetle in the Abbey Road photograph still holds a place in some fans' hearts. The 1968 Volkswagen was sold at a Sotheby's auction three years ago to an American collector for £2,530. They say it even runs.

Similarly, the street signs on Abbey Road have long been a target for relic hunters. Dozens of signs have been nicked over the years, to the point where the signs are only sporadically replaced. The street sign closest to the famous zebra crossing has been missing for some time now, the empty iron frame standing as a mute testament to Fab Four fanaticism.

Across the road, a squat, securely bolted 'Abbey Road NW8' street sign sports graffiti from dozens of Beatle pilgrims: Long live the Beatles. John, Paul, George and Ringo will never be forgotten. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Luis et Nathan, Paris, Janvier '89. They came, they saw, they walked across the road and had their picture taken.

'That photo's been called an icon of the 1960s,' says Macmillan. 'I suppose it is. I think the reason it became so popular is its simplicity. It's a very simple, stylised shot. Also it's a shot people can relate to. It's a place where people can still walk.' And walk they do. It was only 10 minutes out of the Beatles ' and Iain Macmillan's lives, but it's become the world's longest photo session, 20 years running, and still going strong.

Charlotte, a 15-year-old Beatle fan from Denmark, is the latest pilgrim to stand at the zebra crossing and ponder its significance. 'It's just like I imagined it,' she says, tossing her head back in delighted wonder. Then, donning her John Lennon sunglasses, she has her picture taken walking across Abbey Road, her legs, for an instant, making that perfect inverted 'V'”.

Even though the album itself turns fifty-seven on 26th September, the cover obviously has already celebrated that anniversary. Though I did want to discuss it, as I think that The Beatles went out on a high. A perfect cover and a faultless album, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison in that hallowed studio space for the final time. I absolutely love the Abbey Road cover and think that it is the most striking and unsurpassable shot…

IN music history.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Whole Story: A Wonderful Kate Bush Club Article, Issue 17 (About Hounds of Love and Interview)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Whole Story

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in November 1985 performing The Big Sky on the German T.V. show, Peter's Pop Show/PHOTO CREDIT: ZIK Images/United Archives via Getty Images

A Wonderful Kate Bush Club Article, Issue 17 (About Hounds of Love and Interview)

_________

I did think I was done…

with this invaluable and fascinating archive. Many fans do not know about the Kate Bush Club and how she used to contribute to it. I have highlighted perry music every issue. We have seen short stories and interviews. This one, for Issue 17, is around Hound of Love. There is a really interesting interview. Hounds of Love turned forty-one on 16th September, but I did want to pay one more visit to the album before the year is through. I am going to comment on various parts of the feature, as it does provoke some discussion:

“This album all started last summer in my music room at home, with an eight-track Soundcraft desk and tape machine, my piano and the Fairlight.

The first song I wrote started with a musical riff and Del programming a Linn pattern. From that moment, the album "process" has steadily rolled, and Del has been there from beginning to end.

The album has been treated as two halves: the "A" and "B" sides. The "A" side is five songs, the "B" side has a theme linking several. When most of the songs were in some form, we moved from the home studio to the "big" studio, and continued to demo the rest of the songs.

It reached a stage where it was ready for drums, so I rang Paul Hardiman to come and engineer, and Stuart Elliott to play on drums.

Paul is great to work with, a very good engineer: quick, and with a natural feel for sounds. Stuart's drumming is the most emotional I know. He's always interested in the songs and the lyrics, and has a way of creating the right mood for the track. The most difficult thing was working out the compromises between the Linn drum already there as the demo, and Stuart working with it, or indeed, as in some cases, taking over completely but working to the Linn”.

I did not quite know how Hounds of Love started, in terms of the recording. I do think of the album as being one where friends and family were very important. Del Palmer especially key. They were in a relationship and he played on Hounds of Love and engineered it. They were especially close and had to be, though there would have been the odd battle and disagreement, as Bush was producing and she was the boss. That idea of working on songs in the house and then bringing them to the bespoke studio that was built at East Wickham Farm. In addition to there being a lot of musicians on the album, there were quite a few engineers. Though Del Palmer, I feel, was the one Bush trusted most.

“In some cases we keyed Stuart's sound off the Linn, it was the only way to really make it sit. It some cases, we kept the Linn patterns and Stu worked in some delicate toms around them. He broke plates and saucers for one track, and became an army of military snares in another, sprinkling fairy dust hither and thither.

The next stage was recording all the pianos. The home piano on the demos was an "upright", and not good enough quality for professional recording, and so had to be replaced by a grand piano. Some of these tracks would be taken to Ireland to do some work on.

We wanted a very delicate piano sound, these tracks being very empty and sad. Paul went for a very live sound--reminiscent of Erik Satie, Chopin: the empty ballroom after the party when everyone has gone home.

The next stage was some Fairlight, and concentration on the tracks that would possibly go to Ireland within a few weeks' time. Rough B.V.s and lead vocals were put down on these tracks, and copies of the twenty-four-track masters were made by our maintenance man and cavalry in sticky situations: Jim Jones--and a very nice chappy he is, too.

During the trip to Ireland, I hoped to write the lyrics for as many of the songs as possible, a lot of it being little odds and ends, which are the hardest to get, I suppose because you're so limited fitting in a couple of lines within a context, rather than creating it from scratch”.

I don’t think people realise that so much of Hounds of Love was written in Ireland. This was the country Bush’s mother was born in. So dear and special to her, I can imagine the scenery, the warmth of the people and the fact that Ireland, as much as England, was in her blood, did meant that she was inspired. There is a feature to be written about Irish recordings and musicians in Kate Bush’s work. I have written about it before but will revisit at some point.

“However, the main reason for going was to work in Windmill Lane with Bill Whelan. We met in London, and I played Bill the demos, and he started thinking about ideas.

We agreed that we'd need a couple of weeks up front to go through all the arrangements and sort out the musicians and studio time. Not only was Bill a dream to work with, but he made us feel very at home, and we got to see Ireland in a really fun way. We worked with Liam O'Flynn, a beautiful musician and person, and Donal Lunny, whose spontaneity and ideas filled us all with awe.

Bill introduced us to John Sheahan, the fiddle player and multi-talented musician from The Dubliners, who was like Santa Claus. He played a piece that Bill had written, and it was so moving and he played so emotively that I started to cry and felt silly, but what a nice experience. I highly recommend it!

One of the tracks we worked on was inspired by a discovery that Paddy had made of a fascinating Greek ceremony that he managed to get on tape. He knew it would get in to the inspiration centre, and that's what it did. We played the tape to Bill, Liam, John and Donal; and Paddy, who was on his way to the West Coast of Ireland to visit the Lakes, stayed with us in Dublin and joined in the general fun, and as a non-stop shift of Irish musicians put the magic of their race onto the songs, we danced and whooped in the control room.

We consumed the information from Pad's tape as much as we could. I'd only finished writing the song the day before on Bill's piano while his wife brought me cups of tea and biscuits (thank you, Mrs. Whelan). We used Bill Somerville-Large as the engineer. He worked on the Irish sessions on the last album. He has a way of bringing out the natural beauty of acoustic instruments, and it's rare to find an engineer with perfect pitch! And we worked with a nice man called "Pearce" as our assistant”.

Those Irish sessions sound magnificent and such fun. I don’t think that too many people also know about Bush’s time recording there. I am trying to work out when this article was written and whether it was before Hounds of Love came out, or right at the end of 1985. Having been immersed in recording her masterpiece for quite a while, it must have been strange writing about it and her experiences. It is great insights for fans, beyond the interviews that we have from that time. Bush a bit more relaxed and free to explain and explore the recording of Hounds of Love.

“Windmill Lane is a great studio, very efficient; and they are all lovely people. We all felt relaxed and happy, which is definitely the only way to feel when recording and creating.

This track was built around John Sheahan. Bill conducted him, I played chords on the piano and Donal played bodhran (a small Irish drum). We did this in one studio, baffled off from each other. We got a good take quickly, and John overdubbed fiddle. Then Donal overdubbed more drum and bouzouki; and then, John playing whistle and Liam playing pipes, they jammed together on the jig that Bill had written for the end of the track. Bill is very talented, as they all are, and I think his arrangements and ideas are fantastic. It really is fun working over there.

On returning to England we started again with Stuart to work on the tracks from Ireland. Unfortunately we only had a limited time with Paul, as he was committed for another album, but we had four clear weeks.

We started on some B.V.s, and did bits of Fairlight, and Paul's ideas for sounds were invaluable not only then, but later on when Del came to work on my vocals.

The next stage was bass guitars. Del played beautiful bass on some of the tracks, knowing them as well as myself--I always find Del's ideas are so in tune with the songs. And I asked Danny Thompson to play on one track and Eberhard Weber to play on two of the songs. There are a few songs with no bass guitar at all.

With Danny we used a quite live sound--you can hear him plucking and pulling the strings in the ambient room, which we found attractive. Paul got a great sound and balance between the sound of the bass and the ambience of the room, and Danny got a fabulous feel for the track -- like a jungle cat, and very moody. Danny is a very sensitive player, and again, he loves to know what the track's about, and who or what he's meant to be; he has a real "feel".

I do like that nod to Del Palmer. He is sadly no longer with us, but his musicianship and talent was a big part of what makes Hounds of Love such a great work. Obviously, there were a lot of people involved, but he did provide incredible moments to the songs. It may sound a bit dry to some people, but Kate Bush discussing the recording, schedule and who she was working with gives us more insight into the album. We get a bigger and deeper picture of Hounds of Love.

“Eberhard Weber came over to England for two days. I am a big fan of Eberhard's, and it was really a pleasure to be working with him again. I'd sent him a cassette up front, with lyrics and notes on the "vibes" of the tracks, and he came prepared with manuscripts and ideas. One of the tracks was demanding, as it required so much space: he used beautiful bowed notes that sound like a plane, and in the other track he soars and dips like a stalking panther...oooh, it's lovely.

Next came Paddy's bag of delights; the dijeridu, given to Pad by Rolf, was captured, and joined the track that he'd originally sparked, so Australia joined hand in hand with Greece, Ireland and England.

Next he played shimmering mandolins that waxed and waned. He sang, he dijeridued, as ever waving the magic wand that only Pad can wave.

The next musician was John Williams. There was one track in particular which I hoped he would play on. He was lovely to work with, and full of enthusiasm and interesting stories, and it took very little time to get what he wanted. [Typo? She probably means "we".] (I've always dreamed of working with him.) John played to a rhythm machine, which is not always easy when the track is delicate and needs to sound light, but for him it proved no problem at all. Paul got a beautiful sound in quite a live room and close-miked John's guitar, using the ever favourite Neumann U87 microphone.

Unfortunately, Paul's time was running out, and his commitment with another album was due. It was an interesting situation. I had not really approached any engineers, as we'd reached a stage where I needed to work on ideas and just listen to the tracks and what we'd done up to that point.

There were still Fairlight ideas to put down, a couple of tracks”.

Aside from the unfortunate mention of Rolf Harris, it is worth saluting Paddy Bush and what Kate’s older brother brought to Hounds of Love. In terms of the breadth of musical instruments and cultures. Giving the album a richness and unique edge. Kate Bush very affectionate in her praise of Paddy. So many different musicians coming in and out of East Wickham. Those Irish sessions. It must have been dizzying for Kate Bush to keep track of it all!

“We were at a stage where I wanted to start on the vocals, to try and get as many as possible done before I'd call in another engineer. The one outstanding thing was a track that needed strings -- real strings. Admiring James Guthrie's work on The Wall, I asked him if he'd engineer the session for us.

Luckily, he had a free day during a busy schedule, and I rang Dave Lawson to confirm the date. (Dave arranged the strings on Houdini on the last album.) I had written this song with Fairlight strings, and they need transcribing and writing out for strings rather than a synthesiser. Dave suggested the "Medicci" players,* and obviously I was into that. He thought a great deal about the arrangement and "construction" of the sextet, and he decided on two violins, two violas, two 'cellos, and was also present on the day to help out with any changes in the scripts or any problems that might arise.

It was a big day for us, and it is always exciting working with strings, and especially when they are such respected musicians.

It was an extremely hot, humid day, and between takes everyone would rush outside to breath in the slightly less hot humid air before returning inside to continue the recording.

We got a very warm, close sound, which was appropriate for the weather, and James remained cool and calm, and the strings grew and grew, and everyone was smiling. And I got an autographed "Medicci" album--it was great. James is an extremely positive, talented engineer, and it was a pleasure to work with him.

[*--"Medicci" players: I have checked all the UK musicians' union records and found no listing for a "Medicci" group, but Kate's great respect for the group makes it seem likely that she's talking about the Medici String Quartet. The misspelling would not be the only one in the liner notes of Kate's albums, as many fans have discovered... Working against this theory, however, is the fact that Kate's part was arranged for sextet; but since the six-part arrangement was apparently developed by Lawson independent of the Medici players' own configuration, and since Kate describes how "the strings grew and grew", it seems pretty clear that overdubs were used. This problem can best be resolved by the players themselves, of course.]”.

I do like how she writes about working with the Medici String Quartet. The heat of the summer and how challenging it would have been. I do think that there should be a documentary about Hounds of Love. One where many of those who played on it share their memories. I don’t think there are many photos and no video. A shame we did not get too much in that respect, though Kate Bush would wanted to have kept everything private.

“The next layer was voices. Del and I had been working a lot on voices on the demo/masters (which were now really masters). Some of the voice sounds were demanding, and some of the performances (especially from an emotional aspect) were quite difficult. I really enjoy working with Del, I think especially on the voices. I always feel very relaxed and uninhibited, which gives me a head start compared to normal studio situations, where I'm fighting my nerves until I can settle down.

We really did have a lot of work to cover, and in some cases I had to put down the ideas and leave them for a few days in order to know what I really thought about them. Coming back to them, I might want to play with them a little--liking the basic idea, but needing to change it somehow.

The majority of the vocals were recorded using an 87 Neumann mike. Del has a natural feel for the sounds I like, and has really good ideas, so he would get the sound quickly, and the time would go on me getting the performances and us experimenting with ideas.

In a couple of cases the B.V.s on the demos had just the right sound and atmosphere, so we kept these and maybe added to them. Often "demos" create problems like this, and that's why we decided to make the demos the basis of the masters, keeping the feel, the speed, and keeping as many of the Linn drums, Fairlights and voices as we could.

When we had covered a fair amount of ground, I contacted Haydn Bendall (who, again, worked on the last album), and he came in to engineer. Haydn is a very gentle, lovely person and we've been friends for years. Again the atmosphere was relaxed, and Haydn set about cleaning up. We had lots of voices to bounce (which means, for instance, taking four tracks of vocals and recording all four of them onto another two tracks. Then we wipe the original four tracks, leaving us with more to record on, and making the voices easier to handle in the mix.) We also worked on some more Fairlight, keeping most of the original demo Fairlights where the quality was good enough. Haydn is very excited by the Fairlight and works with it a lot. This was nice for me, as it does take me a while to work out the Fairlight arrangements sometimes, but Haydn is very patient and enthusiastic, and it's just what I need in that situation”.

“We always have the Fairlight going through some effect or other, even if it's just a bit of equalization and a nice echo, but it seems to need it, and it always compliments the effect you want.

There were still a couple of tracks that needed drums to be sorted out, and Charlie Morgan was the man for the job. I last worked with him on the Lionheart album, and it was very exciting to work with him again. He is very open-minded and is well up to date on all the latest drum-sampling equipment, etc., and also happens to be a great drummer.

We worked with Charlie for two full days, and had him pop in for half days to do some more overdubs at a later stage.

We then got into a pattern of where I would work with just Del for two or three days a week, and Haydn would work the rest of the week compiling and bouncing the ideas we'd worked on in the earlier part of the week. This worked very well, as I was uninhibited at trying out the ideas with Del, and Haydn could come in objectively to them. Quite often I was very nicely surprised when things I felt might be a little too obvious, perhaps, were nicely disguised. It is impossible to remain totally objective, especially when the ideas need to be subtle--you mustn't make them too subtle or no one will hear them!

We continued to work this way for quite a long time, and then reached the point where Haydn was again working full weeks.

Paddy came in again and did some vocal overdubs. At the end of the tracks on the "theme" side, Paddy did some beautiful harmonic singing. This is something you have to see to believe. Just hearing it might not convince some people that it's just Pad! they'd swear that there was a synthesiser in there whizzing through the harmonics, but it really is just Paddy's voice, and it's quite celestial--I can't wait 'til you hear it, so you can hear how lovely it is.

The tracks were still growing, though retaining their "space", and two tracks cried out for guitar. Alan Murphy, as I'm sure you all know, has played some wonderful guitar on the albums, and this was no exception. We worked one long day, and it was very exciting to hear how the tracks blossomed with every overdub. There is a good musical communication between the two of us, and I find that inspiring.

We wanted a very "heavey"- sounding guitar, so we used Al's amp in a very live room and miked up the amp. Haydn got a frighteningly raunchy guitar sound, and Al did the rest.

Sound effects, little pieces here and there. Lose this, lose that, create a little space here, a little something there to help the crescendo and all the recording is at last finished. I thoroughly enjoy working with people, especially when they are musicians, engineers and friends of a calibre that I am honoured to be with.

A big thank you to all of them, a special thanks to Haydn for all his work and feedback, and a Happy Christmas to all of you. And a big thanks to you for your communication and support--I'd be lost without it.

Lots of Love

Kate xxx”.

It seems like this was a winter edition of the Kate Bush Club. Bush looking back at finishing Hounds of Love. We get a wonderful window into what it was like assembling Hounds of Love. All the layers and players who were responsible! What resulted remains of the greatest albums ever released. I am going to drop in the accompanying interview without comment.

“Interview

Do you compose your music with traditional written notation, or do you rely entirely on demo tapes? And has your process of composing melodies and harmonies, etc., changed since The Kick Inside and Lionheart? Are you, for example, more specific in writing out a bass line now than in 1978, or do you give more leeway to the other musicians during rehearsals than you used to? [I wrote this question.]

"My notation is very basic. I just write out the chords and lyrics, and I rely mainly on my memory. This does make it a bit difficult when I try to come back to a song after a few years, but I can listen to tapes and bash around on the piano, rediscovering the past. Before the first album it was easy: I used to practice all my songs every day in rotation, and kept them totally in my head. But I just don't have the time any more, so I do rely on the records and tapes to refer to chords--for live performances, for instance.

I think the process of recording has changed very much since the first album, perhaps the biggest change being my involvement with the production. The demos on the first album were just piano and vocal; the demos for the second and third albums were a very big influence on the master recordings; the fourth album was completely influenced by the demos; and the current album is the demos. When working with musicians, I find that it depends totally on the individual, and the communication between the two of us. I will normally guide the direction to start with, but it's up to the musicians to make it really happen."

Have you ever thought of releasing a live L.P.?

"Yes."

How did the session for the film The Magician of Lublin come about? Did you help Maurice Jarre write the song or its lyrics?

"Maurice Jarre asked me to sing the song, which he had already written. The whole thing was a most enjoyable experience."

What is sung at the end of Symphony in Blue? Is it: "No wonder that I blew it"?

"Yes, but you've spelt it wrong: it's 'blue it.'"

I am fascinated by Symphony in Blue, and wonder if I am right in thinking that the musical inspiration was supplied not by Gershwin, as the title implies, but rather by Erik Satie, and in particular the beautiful Gymnopedies.

"Yes, it was inspired by Erik Satie's Gymnopedies (II). [Sic-- number two (of the three) is not the one that the KT Band played in concert and on the Kate special, but all three are very similar.]

Why didn't the single December Will Be Magic Again appear on the Single File video? Did you make a jingle for radio stations the Christmas before last?

"There was no video made for December Will Be Magic Again. Yes, I did make a Christmas jingle for Capital Radio and Radio 1, but I never heard it played and would love to know if any of you did."

Do you enjoy modern art? And if so, who is your favourite artist?

"Salvador Dali."

Do you drive?

"Yes."

How often do you get your hair cut, and do you go to a special hairdresser for famous people? I think your hair always looks fantastic, and often wonder whether you suffer from split ends, etc., like the rest of us.

"I get my hair cut about every six weeks by Anthony Jacomine. I am really pleased that you think my hair looks good, as it's still recovering from all the heated curlers and tongs it was blasted with on various photo sessions."

Is it true that some of the singles in the Single File boxed set have been re-mixed? And if so, which ones?

"None of the singles have been re-mixed, but Sat In Your Lap and The Breathing are the album mixes, and not as on the original singles."

What is sung during Delius, after the bit where Delius is dictating to Fenby?

"Can't you tell?"

Your lyrics have always fascinated me, but none more so than those of The Man With the Child in His Eyes. I have often wondered whether you found inspiration for this from Emily Bronte's poetry. It is her constant references to eternity which make me wonder: for example, "The Sea of Death's Eternity" parallelled with your "Telling me about the sea/All his love, till eternity."

"I find your parallel interesting, but unfortunately the only Bronte work I have ever read is Wuthering Heights."

What is your feeling about the Church and religion?

"It is a very powerful, widely influential force that has extreme good and bad effects on people."

What kind of make-up do you use? [Well, you can't fault these questions for lack of variety!]

"I don't bother any more, I use Latex!"

The song style on The Dreaming appears to be more rhythmic in nature than your earlier, more melodic material. Is this a deliberate change in musical direction?

"Since drum machines entered my life on the third album, it's never been the same."

Why is The Kick Inside the only available L.P. on compact disk? What do you think of the quality of CDs, and would you like to see KBV released on this system?

"Maybe you should ask EMI why only The Kick Inside is available on CD. I would like KBV to be out on this system so that I can tell you what the quality is like, 'cause I haven't heard. yet!" [This interview dates from December 1984 or earlier.]

Is the Hammersmith-Odeon video any different from the version shown on TV? How much other footage is not on these versions, and why were the other bits excluded?

"The version shown on TV is the Hammersmith-Odeon video, unless it's been edited to fit time slots. There are about another one-and- a-half hours that were shot that night. The video version was edited from the complete show, which ran for about two-and-a-half hours, and we had to make it a standard length to fit TV slots."

When you decide to tour again, will it be video-ed? Do you think the Hammersmith-Odeon video gives a true vision of the stage show for those who weren't there?

"I dare say it would be video-ed if we did tour. I don't think the video was a true vision at all. You had to be there to see it all. In fact, most of it was missing. You couldn't even smell the heather in Wuthering Heights! But for a video to do that, smellivision is yet to be invented."

Who entertained the audience while you changed costumes on your 1979 Tour? I heard that it was a magician. Is this true? It is impossible to tell from the video.

"There was a fantastic magician in show--Simon Drake. He made things float, glide and fly, not to mention disappear. However, most costume changes were done very quickly over extended fade-outs and extended intros. into the songs."

As many of the press and album reviewers considered The Dreaming to be "weird" and "over-produced", etc., do you mind if the press label the new album "even weirder"?

"I don't mind 'even weirder', but I don't like 'over-produced'.

Who are your favourite band at the moment, and what has been your favourite album and single of 1984?

"Favourite band: Killing Joke. Favourite single: 80s by Killing Joke. I can't give you my favourite album, as I haven't really had time to listen to any this year."

Do the birthday and Christmas cards and presents you are sent actually reach you?

"All the ones I've received have reached me."

If you had to live in another country, where would you choose?

"If I had to, I think it would be Ireland."

Which is your favourite cover version of one of your songs?

"Poor Old Flea by Madame Maria Nanky."

Any New Year's resolutions?

"To try and go on holiday”.

This is my final visit (for real this time!) to the Kate Bush Club and her amazing writing for them. From the short stories, interviews, article and everything else, it would have been a huge treat for fans to read Bush’s words. Many especially excited for Hounds of Love. Having bought Bush’s fifth studio album and adored it, there was curiosity about how it was made. Behind the scenes. And we get that here. Such great and image-painting words from…

A living legend.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Die Spitz

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

PHOTO CREDIT: Emilio Herce

Die Spitz

__________

HERE is a wonderful American group…

who I spotlighted last year. I wanted to revisit them, as quite a bit has happened since then. They have a string of tour dates taking them into next year. In April, they will be heading to London to play the O2. There are some interviews from this year I want to bring in, as Die Spitz - Ava Schrobilgen, Chloe De St. Aubin, Eleanor Livingston, and Kate Halter – have been really busy. I will get to them soon, but first want to bring in biography from their official website:

“When the Venn diagram of passion, friendship, identity, and artistry collide, it can feel as if fighting words are spitting from your veins. And as postmodern society crumbles, Die Spitz giddily bounce between a dozen different ways to push back. If the world of rock music were an ice cream shop, the Austin quartet have sampled each flavor, flipped the freezer over, and started dancing with the employees they helped unionize. On their debut album, Something to Consume (Released Sept 12 via Third Man Records), Ava Schrobilgen, Chloe De St. Aubin, Eleanor Livingston, and Kate Halter fight against the inescapable consumption that surrounds life. “There’s a political side to it, but addiction and love can also be all-consuming,” Livingston says. And as the foursome trade off instruments, swapping songwriting and vocal duties, and generating powerful songwriting in concussive bursts, Die Spitz have created their own little pocket of the world where we can all stand on the edge together.

That unity comes in part from the deep bonds between the 22-year-olds. All four are Austin natives, with Schrobilgen and Livingston having met in preschool, befriending Halter in middle school, and immediately bringing De St. Aubin into their inner circle when they formed the band in 2022. Though they’ve only been playing together a few years (not to mention Halter only learning to play bass to start the band), Something to Consume shows a maturity and technical prowess always wielded in service of their profound friendship.

The group settled on the name Die Spitz over a “brown bag of Fireball”, opting for the feminine German definite article in place of the English. “It reminds me of the Grim Reaper spitting,” Livingston jokes. At their first live shows, they paired originals with covers from some of their inspirations: Black Sabbath, Pixies, Mudhoney, PJ Harvey, and Nirvana. The beguiling "Pop Punk Anthem" somehow encapsulates elements throughout that large musical swath, building from roiling verses to a growled chorus. “It may sound like a love song at first, but when the beat kicks in it’s the obsession that takes over,” Schrobilgen says. “The words ‘you’re a part of me’ sound loving but it can be an insane emotion and privilege over someone else’s life.”

As if their closeness as a band weren’t enough, the members of Die Spitz have also intermittently been roommates and still live near each other. “We call it sitcom life,” Livingston laughs. That said, the Die Spitz TV show would have a significantly different soundtrack to your usual sitcom fare. The Austinites express their ideas through a blend of classic punk, hardcore, metal, alt rock and more. The group have become known for their riotous live shows, where dueling cartwheels, Halter playing bass mid-crowdsurf, Schrobilgen unleashing a growling bark, and Livingston posing with the microphone on top of the venue’s bar or climbing into the rafters could happen at any moment. Pairing their mind-melting gigs with even more impressive songs has led to stints opening for (and rivaling the energy of) bands like OFF!, Amyl and the Sniffers, Viagra Boys, and Sleater-Kinney.

That shapeshifting strength comes into full view on the explosive “Throw Yourself to the Sword”, a song that raises a righteous fist of empowerment over thrash guitar. “Throw yourself/ To the sword,” the start-stop chorus begins, before taking a more modern turn. “What’s it like knowing/ None of you bitches can compete?” Livingston sees the song as an important reminder to let go of insecurities and embrace the power you have over yourself—something that unifies the Die Spitz catalog. “Be the bad bitch you are amongst the mundane and use your voice as a young person,” she says. “Don’t let these old fools tell you you can’t do anything”.

Whether on the punk chug of "RIDING WITH MY GIRLS" or the syrupy grunge of "Go Get Dressed", Something to Consume moves with rapturous conviction thanks in part to the deft production hand of Studio 4’s Will Yip. Though only recently in their 20s, Die Spitz’s impressive musicianship ties them clearly to a long lineage of frustrated people hoping to inspire change. Some people aren’t interested in being political activists via music, but it weighs on me heavily and I feel misaligned with my calling if I don’t,” De St. Aubin says. “The four of us are free spirits with multiple interests, and there’s no limit or power dynamic that can derail us.”

The thrumming “Voir Dire” embodies that expressive strength, an acoustic-driven jam that airs frustrations with American globalism. “Unless we’re part of the few in power, we’ll someday be victimized and regret that we didn’t act now,” De St. Aubin adds. “America brings war on marginalized people in our own country and other lands, and being complacent will not be comfortable forever.” Elsewhere, the grimy and pained “Punishers” explores the frustration and ache of a relationship that just won’t work despite best intentions—two people punishing each other instead of just letting go. But even when they’re tackling these sort of impactful themes, Die Spitz infuse the proceedings with a golden warmth. These aren’t songs of vicious mockery, but charged rallying calls—which in turn ties back to the band’s origin story. “It was a joke that went too far,” Halter smirks. “We never thought it was going to be a real thing.”

Across 11 tracks, Something to Consume contains multitudes and yet feels of a singular piece, an expansive and expressive set unified in its camaraderie and freedom. “We depend on our freedom—freedom to do what we want, present the ideas we want, make the music we want,” Livingston says. “Whether it’s based in metal or something soft, no matter which of us wrote the song, we all contribute and work together. As a person, I don’t have a strong ego or voice, but within this band each one of us is capable of so much more”.

As it is paywalled, people might not be able to read this interview from Rolling Stone. They interviewed Die Spitz. In their sub-header, they note how “Straight out of Austin, Texas, this punk band is playing loud, winning fans, and opening for Foo Fighters this summer”. If you have not listened to Die Spitz yet, then do make sure that you connect with them:

“When the e-mail came in from their management last year telling them they were opening for the Foo Fighters, Die Spitz drummer Chloe de St. Aubin started screaming. She was seated next to her bandmate,  guitarist Eleanor Livingston, trying to focus on homework for their online college courses, but the punk quartet they’d formed in high school just a few years earlier was occupying both their minds. Their absurdly high-energy live show and debut LP, Something To Consume, had won them a cult following, and they were both quite ready to take the next step.

“We were spiraling,” says de St. Aubin. “I was like, ‘We’re not doing anything. What are we going to do?’ And then I checked my phone.” They had secured that gig opening for the Foos at the 61,000-seat Anfield Stadium in Liverpool on June 27, 2026. It will be their biggest show ever, by quite an order of magnitude. “We eventually just started laughing,” says de St. Aubin. “And then we both forgot about what we were studying.”

The road to this moment of triumph — one of many they’ll have this year, since they’re also playing Coachella, Outside Lands, and Lollapalooza — began back in 2022, when Livingston, bassist Kate Halter, and guitarist Ava Schrobilgen were all attending the same high school in Austin, Texas. “We were super into rock bands, we smoked a bunch of weed, and liked to party,” says Livingston. “So we were like, ‘We should start a band.'”

In the original telling of this story, the epiphany came after watching the Mötley Crüe biopic The Dirt on Netflix. But they’ve erased this from their official bio. “Redacted,” says Livingston, shuddering at the thought of being associated with a group she now sees as hopelessly sleazy and misogynistic. “We were 18 and, not gonna lie, on that wavelength of, ‘We’ll get a bunch of girls and drink a bunch of beer!'”

They rounded out their lineup by recruiting St. Aubin from a nearby high school and writing songs that were the antihesis of “Girls, Girls, Girls,” even if they took a lot of woodshedding to get right. “We would practice in my parents’ garage,” says Livingston. “And we were so bad. Oh my God, we were so bad. And it was awesome. We just kept playing because it was super fun.”

They started booking gigs around Austin and developed a ritual where they’d swap instruments every few songs and take Iggy Pop-like stage dives into the audience. They recorded their debut EP, Revenge of Evangeline, in a single day in 2022, and the next year they found themselves opening for the Aussie punk crew Amyl and the Sniffers on a nationwide tour. “I think we aged ourselves seven years on that tour,” says Livingston. “I don’t know how we survived. We were doing 17-hour drives, unloading everything, selling our merch, playing the show, and still getting drunk all throughout that.”

Some nights all four of them crammed into one hotel room, and other nights they’d simply drive until they couldn’t make it any further, and then pull off into a rest stop. “We’d feel like we were going to die, because that’s where a lot of murders happen,” says Livingston. “But it was also the best time of my life.”

A big advantage of living in Austin was its easy access to South by Southwest. They got signed to Jack White’s Third Man Records in 2025 after playing a showcase gig at the yearly festival. “I had the flu and was so ill,” Livingston recalls. I wasn’t even singing for half the set. I was like, ‘Did I just die?’ And they were like, ‘Y’all were awesome!'”

Third Man teamed them with producer Will Yip, who helped them “trim the fat” off songs like “Pop Punk Anthem (Sorry for the Delay),” “Go Get Dressed,” and “American Porn.” The latter is a direct shot at sexist record industry insiders, and some older dudes who come to their shows just to leer at them. Some, they say, have even taken photos of their feet and posted them online. “It’s a very angry song,” says Livingston. “And I want the people that come to our shows just because we’re pretty women or they want to sexualize or objectify us to listen to that song and tell us if they’re still a fan.”

Thankfully, the creepy foot-fetish guys are fewer in numbers these days. “It’s now a bunch of girls and gays and people that we want to appeal to,” says Livingston. “They’re saying, ‘I like hard music, but there’s not a lot of it made by women or people who are queer.’ I want to continue making our shows a safe space for them.”

The four members of the band now tour with a road manager and a technician, and a merch manager is about to join the troupe as well. Better bookings means they can often afford two hotel rooms. “We’re moving up,” says de St. Aubin. “We might even get our own beds.”

Until recently, many of them made ends meet with retail or service industry jobs between tours, and they took online courses while barreling down the highway in the van. De St. Aubin is continuing to study psychology and business, and Livingston is majoring in business and minoring in biology, but they left their day jobs to focus as much energy as possible on Die Spitz.

“I think I got fired,” says de St. Aubin. “They were like, ‘You’re never here. We can’t keep putting you on a schedule.’ I was like, ‘That’s fair.'”

The Foo Fighters gig weighs on their minds (“I don’t know if people will show up early enough for us. I’m a little worried it might be scattered,” de St. Aubin says), but they don’t even care they’re listed on the very last line of the Coachella poster in tiny font. They’re still going to be there, playing the same day as Justin Bieber, facing an audience of thousands.

“The beauty of playing for so many people is an energy that not many people experience,” says Livingston, “especially when they know your lyrics and whatnot. It’s like you climbed to the top of a mountain. It’s freakin’ better than sex. It’s a crazy feeling”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Emilio Herce

One thing that is clear when it comes to Die Spitz is that their friendship is at the heart of everything they do. It is what makes their music and live performances so memorable and electric. There is so much love between them, you know they will be playing for decades to come. In June, Stereogum spent time with Die Spitz. We get an insight into their close-knit bond:

“The legends are true. Die Spitz became a band just so that they'd have an excuse to hang out with each other more often. Three of the four members had never even been in a band before forming Die Spitz. They were just buddies in Austin. Schrobilgen and singer/guitarist Eleanor Livingston have been friends since preschool, and they met Halter in middle school. Chloe de St. Aubin is the outlier, since she didn't really know them until relatively recently and wasn't a full member when they played their first show.

Back then, Ava Schrobilgen played drums (and still sometimes does), but she wanted to get out front, so Die Spitz needed another drummer. It was January 2022, and the other three didn't really know how to be in a band yet. Their first gig was at the Hole In The Wall, an accurately named Austin institution that holds a few hundred people. Today, they all laugh that they "played so terribly" that night.

"We didn't know anything about how anything during a show works, so we brought three separate cars," Halter remembers "We brought a PA. We brought monitors. We brought our own microphones and mic stands."

"I think it's just the 19-year-old mindset where you drink a bunch of alcohol and you're like, 'I'm gonna do whatever I want!,'" says Livingston.

"I only played a few songs of the set with them," de St. Aubin remembers. "They'd bring me onstage halfway through, and I was randomly in the crowd."

"We told her to open up the pit, mosh-instigate," Halter laughs.

De St. Aubin did her best. "I tried to instigate stuff, but at the time, I was really reclusive, so it was a very stressful task for me, to be like, 'Get into it, guys! But I'm also scared!'"

Backstage in Salt Lake City, all four members of Die Spitz are a little quieter than you might expect, but they really come alive when they're telling that story. They grin at each other. They giggle at each other's additions to the story. They talk over each other. You can see it radiate off them: They love being in this band.

When Die Spitz take the stage at Kilby, you can see that love in action before they even play a note. Kate Halter handstand-walks across the entire stage before she picks up her bass while Kesha's "Blow" blares over the speakers. After a few songs, Ava Schrobilgen jumps behind the drums, while Chloe de St. Aubin picks up a guitar and sings, the first of many instrument-switches. Eleanor Livingston holds a mic stand aloft and pumps her fist, her flaming red hair flying in all directions. The pit opens up. The members of Die Spitz never stop smiling. They might be having more fun than anyone in the crowd, and the people in the crowd are having a lot of fun.

As soon as they get off the stage, all four Die Spitz members jet over to the other side of the festival grounds to catch a furious Show Me The Body set. Later on, when I say that Die Spitz might be the heaviest band on the bill, Schrobilgen is quick to correct me, claiming that it's really SMTB. I get what she means, but Show Me The Body are weird-heavy. Die Spitz are heavy in the classic sense of the word — Sabbath-style riff-churn, gargle-roar vocals, lyrics about throwing yourself to the metaphorical or literal sword. They're a proudly horns-up old school beast of a band, and that makes them an anomaly at an indie-leaning fest like Kilby, just as it inevitably will when they join Olivia Rodrigo's tour.

There are subcultures where this kind of grit and grime thrives, but Die Spitz aren't really creatures of the doom metal or heavy psych undergrounds. Instead, they're a product of Austin's historically boundaryless music scene — a place where hardcore bands like Iron Age had their own takes on the warrior-metal spirit, where festivals like Levitation thrive, and where you can still see Frank Kozik posters from the '90s on venue walls. In their first year as a band, Die Spitz played high-profile sets at SXSW and Levitation. In their second year, they released their ultra-nasty EP Teeth and hit the road, first with OFF!, then with Amyl And The Sniffers. Things escalated quickly.

Die Spitz have been working fast, hitting career benchmarks at record speed, and all of it still feels new. When I ask them how many festivals they've played before Kilby, they're not quite sure. Fewer than 10, probably. But they love festivals. At Kilby, they run around to catch as many sets as their day will allow. In order to talk to me, they have to miss Snail Mail, which is not ideal.

To hear them tell it, Die Spitz can't stand to be apart even when they're not touring. Schrobilgen says, "We'll be at home, and we'll spend maybe a week, probably less, hanging out with our partners or our other friends, just chilling. And then I seriously start to feel, like, ill! And so sad! And when I see them again, I'm like, 'Oh my god, I'm OK! We're all OK!”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pooneh Ghana

Kerrang! published a feature/interview in July and provided ten years why we need Die Spitz in your life. I am looking forward to them coming to the U.K. next year. I wonder if they will be booked for Glastonbury in the summer. They would be incredible. Rather than drop in all ten reasons, I have selected a few to look at:

“They’re a tight-knit gang

Eleanor, Ava and Kate have known each other for years, but when Chloe came into the picture, they realised they had the potential to go the distance as a band...

Eleanor: “We met Chloe right before we played our first show. We had some disputes over the years from just being friends for that long, and I feel like Chloe came in and was the missing puzzle piece. We had all this energy, and we needed someone like Chloe to finish the puzzle.”
Ava: “We actually bonded because we’re all vampires…”
Kate: “It’s all the blood banks that we’ve been robbing!”

They refuse to be easily labelled

Is it rock? Is it metal? Die Spitz are asking, ‘Why does that even matter, though?’

Kate: “I feel like it was intentional [to resist categorisation], but it’s also something that happened very naturally.”
Chloe: “We listen to all kinds of music, and we listen to all kinds of stuff together. I think it’s really easy to sometimes box women into a genre, so I think we realised that we had all these other interests and simultaneously didn’t want to be labelled as just one thing.”

They’ve got capitalism and consumerism in their crosshairs...

Though it’s not their entire identity, Die Spitz make their political views unambiguous, knowing there’s a mission to fulfil that’s bigger than just their band...

Chloe: “I think the U.S. has always had deep issues that have been taking a new, evil form. Every generation has their fight with authority, and this is it for me. There’s everything going on with Palestine and our ties to that, the way that our country works in terms of economics, the way that they’re happy to sell you a bunch of shit you don’t need, but won’t give you healthcare and privatise everything. It’s bullshit.”
Ava: “I also think, ‘How could you not write about it?’ It blows me away that there’s people who don’t talk about it and who don’t care and just live their lives every single day like nothing’s happening. I’m kind of jealous of them. Honestly, I feel like they are happier than we are most days. We have so much privilege, not only being white Americans, but also now having a platform. I think it’s our responsibility to continue to talk about these things and educate other people on it and fight the good fight in every little way that we can.”

They want the band to embody the representation they wish they’d had growing up

Die Spitz grew up watching men dominate stages, but now the tide’s turning, and they want to be a part of the shift towards a more feminist future...

Eleanor: “I feel like I almost had internalised misogyny growing up. I don’t think that there was enough access to – or maybe I wasn’t in the right spaces for – seeing woman rage. I had to outgrow what was being put in front of me as a teenager and a young adult. I’m really grateful to hopefully beable to do that now for other people, especially here in Texas.”
Ava: “Something that keeps us going is knowing that we are the women onstage that we wish that we saw as kids. Getting the chance to see that would have helped us accept ourselves and feel proud of ourselves. The main thing that keeps me doing this, even though I do have a lot of struggles with the little bit of fame that we have, is seeing parents bring their little kids up to me, and you can tell that that little kid is [like us]. They’ll be so happy and have stars in their eyes. It’s so sweet”.

I think I will end there. Things have grown and expanded in Die Spitz’s world since I spotlighted them last year. A lot of tour dates and people giving a lot of love to Something to Consume. I feel that the coming year or two will be even bigger. Another album, headline sets and lots of honours. Go and follow and listen to this magnificent band. It is true that they definitely need to be…

IN your life.

___________

Follow Die Spitz

Official:

https://www.diespitz.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/diespitz/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@diespitz

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/diespitz/

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@diespitzz

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0zfZmpHTu0MlkkNr5KHeXE?si=QgCUa5aaRmGyCPaHnJRj5g

FEATURE: Room for the Love: Why Kate Bush’s Detachment from The Kick Inside Should Be Reconsidered

FEATURE:

 

 

Room for the Love

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing Wuthering Heights at the BBC in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Don Smith

Why Kate Bush’s Detachment from The Kick Inside Should Be Reconsidered

__________

I am putting out…

Kate Bush features that take us to her earliest career days. Around 1978 and before. I am re-reading Graeme Thomson's fantastic and essential book, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. If you read the first few chapters, you get a good impression of who Kate Bush was when she was at school. We learn about her earliest relationships, taking danced classes and becoming infatuated with movement and mime, in addition to the earliest recordings. It is my favourite period of her career. In terms of the albums she is proud of and how she views her first few – 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart; 1980’s Never for Ever -, I feel there is a sense of detachment and Bush not really happy. She started to feel in control and content when it came to 1982’s The Dreaming. She produced that album solo. When it comes to her debut, The Kick Inside, Graeme Thomnson writes how it is unique. None of her peers were recording and writing in that way. In terms of how she addressed love and desire. The characters she brought in. So unconventional and original, this is an album that still sounds daring and hugely accomplished today. No doubt a genius, I feel the teenage Kate Bush was not ceded much control. Producer Andrew Powell assembled the band and was directing. Bush could suggest ideas, though perhaps she felt more of a bystander and not the architecture. These were her songs, so I am not sure whether she would do something different with production. Even if there would have been discussion whether she could produce, as a young artist on her debut, it would have been a huge gamble. She distanced herself from The Kick Inside pretty much as soon as it came out (February 1978). Even that early on, she wanted her music to be raw and real. The album was performed by excellent and experienced musicians. The recording period was a very happy one.

That said, Bush did want that masculine energy that we hear on later albums like The Dreaming. One of the quotes that stands out is when she said she did not want to be airy-fairy and light. “I’m not happy with being associated with such soft, romantic vibes”. That’s what she said to Kerrang! in 1984. She wanted to get heavier in the sound sense. More guts., punch, bites and masculinity. EMI would definitely not have thought that hearing her demos and her earliest recordings. With Lionheart, there was a bit of a move to something heavier. Songs like Hammer Horror and Wow a bit punchier. It seems like The Kick Inside was a compromise or disappointment, though these were her songs and she would have been able to have some call and vote. Though it seems some of the demos changed radically before they got onto the album. Whether Andrew Powell heard a heavier and bolder Coffee Homeground or Wow and then softened it. That feeling that a young female singer should be more romantic and lighter. You could say a masterpiece like Hounds of Love is so revered is because it has this hunting instinct. Big drums and big production. It is epic and masculine. By 1989, when The Sensual World came out, Bush did move to something more female. That desire to explore sounds and themes with a more feminine lens. From Never for Ever to Hounds of Love, there was this increasing push towards music that was gutsier and bolder. You can understand why she a little disappointed that her 1978 debut was a bit soft. That is not what I think, though you feel Kate Bush was a little disenchanted. I think she was wrong to distance herself. Maybe she does not feel that way today. You can hear elements of 2005’s Aerial and 2011’s 50 Words for Snow and nods back to The Kick Inside. More piano-based and with this more romantic element, I do feel things came full circle. A lot of reviews paint The Kick Inside as being a bit soft and airy-fairy. If once was the case that artists name-checked Kate Bush based on Hounds of Love, I feel more and more are invested in The Kick Inside. You can hear direct connections to artists such as Billie Eilish.

This somewhat stranger Kate Bush is intriguing and very attractive to a wave of younger songwriters. Never seeing The Kick Inside as this over-romantic and somewhat sickly album, there is this unconventional approach. Bush’s vocals always exciting and unique. It is not like The Kick Inside is full of ballads and the tracks are traditional. Although several of the tracks document love and desire, she was writing in a way that was not soft or commercial. I feel some of Kate Bush’s regret was mirroring what critics said. How they feel The Kick Inside is airy-fairy. Basically agreeing with them. This is not doing justice to an album that is bold and brave. She talks about menstruation and period pain. Suicide, incest and ghosts. You cannot define The Kick Inside as being romantic and light. Yes, there are songs that talk about passion. Though the lyrics are unusual and poetic. Think about The Man with the Child in His Eyes. How can anyone who writes a song like this not want to be associated with it?! Both Beth Orton and Fiona Apple have said how The Kick Inside is among their favourite albums. The latter grew up playing and singing songs from it. You can feel that D.N.A. in Apple’s music. How she writes about love and sex. Some songs that discuss abuse or are very open and shocking. This bravery and rawness is something that might have in part have been influenced by The Kick Inside. How fearless and open Kate Bush is on her debut. You could never listen to its thirteen tracks and think that it is soft or lacking in bite.

If she was thinking this in 1984, that would be when Hounds of Love was taking shape. I would like to think that, if asked now, she would acknowledge how incredible The Kick Inside is. I do want to bring in a case for the defence. Laura Snapes’s review of The Kick Inside for Pitchfork. I have sourced this before, but her words and descriptions highlight how The Kick Inside was anything but too soft and romantic. Even when Bush was writing about romance, you could find something cheeky, explicit, tantalising and risk-taking. Not like this teenage artist was being submissive, doe-eyed and this awe-struck woman who was writing these sappy and sickly-sweet love songs. I don’t think there is anything on The Kick Inside that tallies with Kate Bush’s disassociation. What compelled her to say this?! Her words might not have been right. Feeling that The Kick Inside was lacking in production and instrumental punch. In terms of her lyrics and singing, you can feel this electric charge and sweat. In its own way, it has quite a lot of bite and body. Even Feel It, which might be one of the most romantic or conventional, features these lines: “Feel your warm hand walking around/I won't pull away, my passion always wins”. This curiosity and passion from a young woman. She is not writing romantic and slushy songs like many of her peers. There is this physicality and risqué element. I guess Them Heavy People could be seen as a little hippy-dippy or airy-fairy. Though it is a song that is captivating and compelling. Laura Snapes’s words about The Kick Inside highlights how she was definitely not writing in a soft and overly-feminine way. Never submissive or soft, even moments that don’t gel and could be better are still so different to anything that was around in 1978:

“Besides, Bush had always felt that she had male musical urges, drawing distinctions between herself and the female songwriters of the 1960s. “That sort of stuff is sweet and lyrical,” Bush said of Carole King and co. in 1978, “but it doesn’t push it on you, and most male music—not all of it, but the good stuff—really lays it on you. It’s like an interrogation. It really puts you against the wall and that’s what I’d like my music to do. I’d like my music to intrude.” (Evidently, she had not been listening to enough Laura Nyro.) That reasoning underpinned Bush’s first battle with EMI, who wanted to release the romp “James and the Cold Gun” as her first single. Bush knew it had to be the randy metaphysical torch song “Wuthering Heights,” and she was right: It knocked ABBA off the UK No. 1 spot. She soon intruded on British life to the degree that she was subject to unkind TV parodies.

The louche “L’Amour Looks Something Like You” treads similarly brazen territory though lands less soundly. She fantasizes about “that feeling of sticky love inside” as if anticipating a treacle pudding, and there is an unctuous gloop to the arrangement that makes it one of the album’s least distinctive songs. More complex desires tended to elicit her more inherently sensual and accomplished writing. “Moving,” her tribute to dance teacher Lindsay Kemp, is so absurdly elegant and lavish that its beauty seems to move Bush to laughter: There is deep respect in her admiration for him, in concert with piercing operatic notes and impish backing vocal harmonies that sound like they should have been handled by a chorus of Jim Henson creations. “You crush the lily in my soul” as an awed metaphor for the timidity of girlhood gone away is unimpeachable.

What made Bush’s writing truly radical was the angles she could take on female desire without ever resorting to submissiveness. “Wuthering Heights” is menacing melodrama and ectoplasmic empowerment; “The Saxophone Song”—one of two recordings made when she was 15—finds her fantasizing about sitting in a Berlin bar, enjoying a saxophonist’s playing and the effect it has on her. But she is hardly there to praise him: “Of all the stars I’ve seen that shine so brightly/I’ve never known or felt in myself so rightly,” she sings of her reverie, with deep seriousness. We hear his playing, and it isn’t conventionally romantic but stuttering, coarse, telling us something about the unconventional spirits that stir her.

And if there is trepidation in the arrangement of “The Man With the Child in His Eyes,” it reflects other people’s anxieties about its depicted relationship with an older man: Will he take advantage, let her down? This is the other teenage recording, her voice a little higher, less powerfully exuberant, but disarmingly confident. Her serene, steady note in the chorus—“Oooooh, he’s here again”—lays waste to the faithless. And whether he is real, and whether he loves her, is immaterial: “I just took a trip on my love for him,” she sings, empowered, again, by her desire. There’s not a fearful note on The Kick Inside, and yet there is still room for childish wonder: Just because Bush appeared emotionally and musically sophisticated beyond her years didn’t mean denying them.

The Kick Inside was Bush’s first, the sound of a young woman getting what she wants. Despite her links to the 1970s’ ancien régime, she recognized the potential to pounce on synapses shocked into action by punk, and eschewed its nihilism to begin building something longer lasting. It is ornate music made in austere times, but unlike the pop sybarites to follow in the next decade, flaunting their wealth while Britain crumbled, Bush spun hers not from material trappings but the infinitely renewable resources of intellect and instinct: Her joyous debut measures the fullness of a woman’s life by what’s in her head”.

It did sort of bug me that Bush said in an interview that she did not want to be associated with soft and romantic sounds. That is how she saw her debut. The Kick Inside dismissed. Alongside fearlessness is this child-like wonder. You can think about modern artists like Chappell Roan very much latching onto The Kick Inside and being drawn to that. Olivia Rodrigo too. The Kick Inside was groundbreaking. Listen to Wild Beasts and their acrobatic, unusual, swooping and sweeping songs of lust and desire and you can feel that link to The Kick Inside. There is plenty of teeth and guts on the 1978 debut, though the production is not as impactful and bold as it would become when Kate Bush was producing. That does not mean that The Kick Inside is soft and romantic. As The Kick Inside turns fifty in 2028, I will be dissecting it and writing about it a lot. The Kick Inside is an album that Kate Bush should be…

VERY proud of.

FEATURE: One for the Record Collection! Essential October Releases

FEATURE:

 

 

One for the Record Collection!

IN THIS PHOTO: Victoria Monét

Essential October Releases

__________

NEXT month…

IN THIS PHOTO: Rachel Chinouriri

sees the release of a fair few big albums from major artists. I am recommending the albums you will want to pre-order. You can see a list here. I am starting out with albums due on 4th October. Four that you will want to keep an eye out for. Fat Dog’s Cancel Me (I’m Tired) is an album you can pre-order here. They are one of our best young bands, so it will be exciting when they release their latest album:

“The second album by South London seven-piece Fat Dog is titled Cancel Me (I’m Tired). After releasing their debut album WOOF. in 2024 and becoming one of the UK’s most exciting breakthrough bands in the process, they have a good reason to be tired. They’ve spent the period since WOOF.’s release spreading their raucous, infectious and irresistible bark around the world. The reason that they want you to cancel them is that they’ve been around the world and they’re tired. But if Fat Dog - Joe Love, Chris Hughes, Morgan Wallace, Ellis Dickson, Michael Dunlop, Dillon Harrison and Jed Bevington - are tired with the world, the world is not tired of them. In fact, the world can’t get enough of them.

With follow up Cancel Me (I’m Tired), Fat Dog have created an exhilarating, swaggering, panoramic, inventive, re-inventive, re-re-inventive electro-punk-art-pop-rock’n’roll-space-country triumph that deserves all the adjectives. Over ten mind-bending and melodic tracks, it blends electro-pop anthems, cascading rave bangers, cowboy-tinged pitstops and swirling psychedelia. Into its lyrical orbit, the record pulls mentions of addiction, family ties, love, AI, ancestry, extra-terrestrials, Chris Tarrant, S&M, B&M, H&M and M&Ms. Cancel Me (I’m Tired) possesses all the rabid frenzy and electrifying excitement of their debut but now delivered on a grand and glorious scale. Big, big things are ahead. Fat Dog are only just getting going”.

It is always brilliant when Johnny Marr releases an album. The Age of Everything is out on 4th October. You can pre-order a copy here. I am turning to Rough Trade and their words about The Age of Everything. Well, technically, they are Johnny Marr’s words. There will definitely be a lot of interest and love around this album. Judging by what has been released from The Age of Everything so far, it is going to be up there with Marr’s very best solo work:

“The Age of Everything is Johnny Marr's fifth full-length studio record. Written in London, developed live on the road across the East Coast of North America and recorded in Manchester, The Age of Everything captures the energy and tensions of the city. Sharp, fast and dynamic, filled with ideas and possibilities. “This is the record that’s been the most cathartic. The title came to me early in the process and became an inescapable idea. It seemed to sum up the way I think a lot of people are feeling. It’s all encompassing, but it's not necessarily a negative statement. There’s a sense of overwhelm in the culture brought about by technology, but looking at it with a different light, there could also be a sense of possibility.” – Johnny Marr”.

The penultimate album from 4th October I want to cover is Phoebe Green’s Premature Nostalgia. This might be an artist that you are new to or do not know much about. I would urge everyone to check out her music and pre-order Premature Nostalgia. Green is a fabulous artist who I have been following for a while now. Everything she touches is golden:

“Written and produced alongside her sister Lucy Green between Phoebe's flat in Manchester and their parents' home in the coastal town of Lytham St Annes, Premature Nostalgia finds Phoebe Green at her most psychologically unguarded - documenting the impulse to grieve moments before they've even disappeared, turning spiralling inner monologues, warped electronics and metallic textures into fractured, emotionally combustible alt-pop.

A darker and more enigmatic companion to 2025 EP The Container and her acclaimed debut album Lucky Me , Premature Nostalgia draws inspiration from artists such as Imogen Heap, Oklou, Jockstrap, James Blake, FKA twigs and Sega Bodega - embracing warped electronics, fragmented structures and more experimental forms of pop songwriting. The album also features collaborations with Picture Parlour's Katherine Parlour and incorporates field recordings and metallic textures pulled directly from Manchester's industrial landscape and club culture.

At its core, however, the album remains rooted in the bond between Phoebe and Lucy - sisters, collaborators and proud adopted Mancunians navigating the realities of independent artistry together”.

Prior to getting to five albums from 11th October that are well worth pre-ordering, I would recommend people check out Victoria Monét’s Frequency of Love. There is not a huge amount of detail out there concerning the album, but Rough Trade provide some information. Another album that you should consider pre-ordering. October shaping up to be one of the best months for new albums. Some wonderful releases are due:

“Victoria Monét opens a fresh chapter with Frequency of Love, a record that feels timeless, elevated, and fully in command. Blending R&B with the romance of classic cinema and the pull of the dance floor, it plays like a rich, sensory listen shaped by love, vibration, and the full scope of her artistry.

A multi-hyphenate superstar and 3x Grammy Award winner, Victoria Monét made her debut album JAGUAR II one of the most celebrated releases of its moment. It earned seven Grammy nominations and landed on Best of 2023 lists from Barack Obama, Jay-Z, Rolling Stone, TIME, and Vogue.

The praise around Victoria Monét has come from every corner, including Beyoncé, Janet Jackson, and Bruno Mars. Frequency of Love builds on that foundation with style, confidence, and serious presence”.

Shifting now to 9th October and some tremendous albums. I’ll start off this week with Dawn Richard’s Creole Culture. This is an artist that I have a lot of respect for. I love her music, so I am looking forward to hearing what is on offer through Creole Culture. You can pre-order it here. An album I predict will get a lot of positive reviews when it comes out:

“Dawn Richard returns to her King Creole era with Creole Culture, a bold, future-facing love letter to New Orleans. Drawing on her Black and Native American heritage, it completes the arc begun with New Breed and Second Line, this time telling the city’s story through her own eyes.

Following her avant-garde R&B collaborations with Spencer Zahn, including 2024’s Quiet in a World Full of Noise, this record softens the brass-heavy swagger without losing its power. It moves through triumph, grief, desire and reflection, blending R&B, soul, hip-hop, pop and jazz with real care.

Guests including Big Freedia, Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph, Tarriona “Tank” Ball and Durand Bernarr help build the atmosphere. From enough to fiesta, Creole Culture is expansive, deeply personal and one of Dawn Richard’s most striking records yet”.

Moving from Dawn Richards to Jamie T and Ghosts (100 Days of Morning). His latest album follows 2022’s The Theory of Whatever. This is an artist whose music I have listened to for years. So this is another album that I am going to explore when it comes out. You can pre-order it here. To think, it has almost been twenty years since he released his debut album, Panic Prevention (2007):

“Jamie T returns with Ghosts (100 Days of Morning), an 11-track collection shaped during a difficult period and filled with old ghosts brought back into focus. It looks at growing up, leaving youth behind, love, loss and the brittle nostalgia of halcyon indie-era nights.

There is a real sense of release here too. Ghosts (100 Days of Morning) feels just as much about letting go as it does reclaiming identity, with 3310, the introspective closer Tallahassee and Cocktail, a collaboration with Damon Albarn, all standing out.

The album is produced in part by Jamie T, James Dring of Loyle Carner and Blur, and Hugo White of The Maccabees”.

Three more from 9th October that I want to cover off. Jess Williamson’s A Mile South of Heaven is an album you can pre-order here. Again, this may be an artist who is new to you. Though I do feel that she is someone that you should invest in. Her sixth studio album follows 2023’s Time Ain't Accidental. A prolific and extraordinary artist, here are some details about her upcoming album:

“Jess Williamson has built one of the most distinctive voices in American music — crystalline, acrobatic, and unmistakably her own. The Texas-born, Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist has spent the better part of a decade carving out her own lane at the intersection of indie folk, alt-country, and a deeply personal confessional tradition. Now, on her seventh studio album, she steps into new creative territory.

Produced by Shooter Jennings, the album finds Williamson's artistry meeting its ideal counterpart. Jennings brings a deep-roots sensibility and studio instinct honed across decades, and together they've crafted twelve songs that honor the grit and sweep of classic country while remaining unmistakably contemporary. Williamson's voice remains the central instrument: front and center, emotionally unguarded, carrying the kind of weight that demands a room go quiet. But with Jennings at the helm, the sonic canvas is richer and more expansive than anything in her catalog to date — full of texture, warmth, and that ineffable Nashville-meets-Laurel-Canyon atmosphere that lives somewhere between Linda Ronstadt and Waylon Jennings”.

Remi Wolf’s Mud is due on 9th October. You can pre-order the album here. There is not a lot of information on this one either, but I hope that the below does provide some intrigue. Wolf is an artist who always delivers incredible music, so I feel that Mud is going to be an album you cannot afford to miss out on. I am definitely going to listen to it when it comes out:

“If Remi Wolf’s first two albums, Juno from 2021 and Big Ideas from 2024, lived in technicolor, her third LP Mud feels more earthy, grounded and close to the soil. The colour is still there, but it comes from a more rooted place.

That directness runs through the whole record. Written with real rawness, Mud strips away synths and programmed drums to leave Remi Wolf at her most lyrically and sonically vulnerable. These songs carry the feeling of singing around a campfire with friends and a couple of guitars, because that is how making the album felt to Wolf.

To reach that clearing in the forest, she had to carve out a new trail first”.

Prior to getting to 16th October and a few albums from that week you’ll want to pre-order, the final one from 9th October is Sheryl Crow’s Pick You Up. You can pre-order the album on Galaxy Blue vinyl. One of the most striking album covers of this year too from the iconic and legendary American artist. Someone I have been following since her debut in the 1990s:

“These songs arrive as a heartfelt reflection on being human and wanting connection. Born from life in this exact moment, they reckon with the chaos and constant noise around us, while holding tight to hope, love, and the beauty that still surrounds us.

There is a real sense here of songwriting as a way through: making sense of what is going on inside and all around, and turning that into something shared. The hope is simple and generous: that whoever hears these songs feels less alone.

Think of them as a soothing moisturiser for chapped hearts. When being awake can feel like trudging through a burning desert, these songs offer a reminder that this is only of a moment, and that life remains a beautiful gift worth sharing”.

Four from 16th October that you will want to pre-order. The first is Florrie’s Magic for a While. You can pre-order the album here. If you have not heard of Florrie, I would thoroughly recommend that you listen to her music. She was formerly an in-house drummer for the production house Xenomania, where she played on major Girls Aloud hits like the 2008 single, The Promise. I loved her 2024 debut album, The Lost Ones, so I am very interested in what she will offer with her second album. A remarkable and singular songwriter. In June, The Line of Best Fit shared news of Florrie’s forthcoming album:

“Magic For a While started to take shape in early 2025 while Florrie - a drummer, singer-songwriter, and model from Bristol - was living alone in Los Angeles. Recording live drum loops, she brought the raw sketches into rehearsal rooms to build tracks through instinctive jam sessions.

“I wanted the record to feel live,” she explains. “I wanted energy in it. I wanted things to feel human.” Higgins, a co-writer and producer on much of the LP, helped shape those live impulses into sleek, expansive pop productions.

Florrie first built a cult reputation in the early 2010s through a string of self-released singles and EPs with Xenomania, while her drumming anchored hits like Girls Aloud’s “The Promise” and her songwriting credits extended to artists including Kylie, MNEK, and Tove Lo. More recently, she has played London’s O2 Arena supporting Girls Aloud and toured the US with G Flip, moving her beyond an internet-pop underground to a new audience.

Magic For a While is the follow-up to Florrie's debut solo album, The Lost Ones, which was released in 2024”.

A few more albums from 16th October that you will want to pre-order. Fontaines D.C.’s Dopamine Chamber is among the most anticipated albums of this year. The Irish band are in their prime right now, in the sense they are being talked about as potential Glastonbury headliners. They have risen to that stage in their career. You can pre-order their album here:

“Fontaines D.C. release their fifth studio album, Dopamine Chamber, released via XL Recordings. Produced by James Ford, it is the follow-up to 2024’s UK platinum-certified Romance – and the sound of a band moving decisively away from the guitar language of their early records into something colder, stranger and more synthetic.

Dopamine Chamber arrives like a constellation behind undulating sighs of smog: potent balladry, anthemic melodies glinting through the murk. In a world tipping towards collapse, it asks how pleasure mutates amid peril—and what our pursuit of it reveals about us. Across the album, Fontaines D.C. – Grian Chatten, Carlos O’Connell, Conor Curley, Conor Deegan and Tom Coll – move between gratification and dread until the two meld together, reflecting the overwhelm of artificial intelligence, environmental collapse and political violence all riding the same algorithms as memes, jokes and celebrity culture. “The album itself is a dopamine chamber,” says Chatten. “You step inside and we test these different mind- or mood-altering pieces of music on you.”

Where Romance held its tension in balance, this record tips it. “I think Romance was maybe 60 per cent human and 40 per cent corrupted by automation, and a loss of feeling,” says Chatten, who spent time among the faded grandeur of Venice, Vienna and Sicily in search of lyrical inspiration. “This one feels more like 60 per cent corrupted — the mask is wearing the face a little more.” He resisted any pull towards easy optimism: “I felt it would be more powerful to leave the hope out and reflect the ugliness honestly. This one needed to feel more like a catastrophic warning.”

“Our albums have always questioned a sense of place,” says bassist Conor Deegan. “First Dublin, then being away from Dublin, and then trying to find the romance elsewhere. On this record, the question became: where do you escape to?” Into the self, perhaps – or hedonism, fantasy, cosmetic perfection, eternal youth or the endless refresh of a screen.

Fontaines D.C. have spent five albums refusing to repeat themselves – from Dogrel (2019) through A Hero’s Death (2020), the No. 1 Skinty Fia (2022) and the anarchic, kaleidoscopic Romance (2024). Dopamine Chamber is their most radical turn yet: cold synthesiser tones, marching drums, samples and triggers, several songs with no guitars at all, and the swooning strings of 1960s Italian pop pulled into something synthetic. For guitarist Conor Curley, the aim was to break from the band’s own reference points: “I was trying to find stuff that pointed into the future.” It was made with James Ford between London, the English countryside and Palermo, where Chatten recorded vocals in a makeshift booth built from mattresses and cushions.

“There’s a poignant sense of us being on the brink of some other kind of form of humanity, or non-humanity,” says Chatten. For their fifth album, Fontaines D.C. have built the chamber. What happens to the listener inside it will be the experiment”.

Prior to wrapping things up with three albums from 30th October for you to pre-order, there is one more from 16th October (none from 23rd October I am highlighting). Rachel Chinouriri’s I think I spoke too soon is the next album I am recommending. This is an artist that I really love. You can pre-order it here. Here are some details about an album that you will definitely want to get a copy of:

“Two-time Brit Award nominee and winner of the 2026 Silver Clef Best New Artist award, Rachel Chinouriri steps into a new chapter with I think I spoke too soon.

Threading dancefloor synth-pop through her tender indie songwriting, the record leans into the pull between polished glamour and creeping self-doubt. It follows her acclaimed 2024 debut, What A Devastating Turn of Events, while pushing her sound into sharper, bolder territory.

At its core, this is a deeply autobiographical release, with Chinouriri exploring sobriety, femininity, and identity through the blurred emotions of her early-to-mid twenties, all shaped by one question: “If I continue down this path, will I like who I’ll become?”.

The Avalanches’ No Bad Memories is an album you should pre-order. I was not aware that The Avalanches had a new album coming out, so it took me by surprise somewhat. Over twenty-five years since their debut, Since I Left You, we are still getting incredible music from the Australian group (they currently consist of Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi, along with multi-instrumentalist Andy Szekeres):

“The Avalanches return with their fourth album No Bad Memories, a new album inspired by the simultaneously magical and unsettling ways advertising, technology and pop culture become woven into the fabric of our memories. No Bad Memories is an ambivalent love letter to the nostalgic pull of commercial jingles, start-up chimes and forgotten audio logos. Featuring collaborators including Karen O, Jamie XX, Portraits of Tracy and many more.

CD TRACKLIST
01. Bd-R 
02. Together (feat. Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza & Prentiss)  
03. Xerox Altalink B8055 (feat. Ryoji Ikeda) 
04. I Give Everything I Have 2 U (feat. Loaded Honey) 
05. Every Single Weekend (feat. Jamie xx)  
06. Friends Forever 
07. Blue Shadows (feat. Karen O)  
08. Logoland   
09. Like Clockwork / Hit By Traffic (feat. Khadija Al Hanafi) 
10. All The Time In The World (feat. Rivers Cuomo, Vegyn & Baby Marlboro)  
11. 3D Glasses Not Included 
12. Vida (feat. Erick the Architect) 
13. Paradise Island (feat. Khadija Al Hanafi & Mike Patton) 
14. Unicorn Quest™ (feat. Ryoji Ikeda) 
15. Far Away (feat. John Glacier & Khadija Al Hanafi)  
 16. Our Love Is Alive (feat. Suzanne Ciani & Barry Can't Swim) 
17. Evergreen Altar (feat. Vegyn) * EXCLUSIVE TO VINYL, CD, CASSETTE
18. Can't Get Over Losing You (feat. Portraits of Tracy) 
19. Watch Out! It's Cloudy (feat. Khadija Al Hanafi) 
20. Highfield (feat. Panda Bear) 
21. Under Yr Power 
22. SUV Heaven (feat. Khadija Al Hanafi) 
23. One More Fantasy (feat. Carly Simon) 
24. Break Out Corporate Tag (feat. Ryoji Ikeda & Portraits Of Tracy) 
25. Magic Wand (feat. Barry Can't Swim) 
26. Superfun!™ TV Spot (feat. Mike Patton) 
27. No Bad Memories  
28. The Pavements Light (feat. Haruomi Hosono) 

VINYL TRACKLIST
SIDE A:
01. Bd-R 
02. Together (feat. Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza & Prentiss)  
03. Xerox Altalink B8055 (feat. Ryoji Ikeda) 
04. I Give Everything I Have 2 U (feat. Loaded Honey) 
05. Every Single Weekend (feat. Jamie xx)  
06. Friends Forever 
07. Blue Shadows (feat. Karen O)  
08. Logoland  

SIDE B:  
09. Like Clockwork / Hit By Traffic (feat. Khadija Al Hanafi) 
10. All The Time In The World (feat. Rivers Cuomo, Vegyn & Baby Marlboro)  
11. 3D Glasses Not Included 
12. Vida (feat. Erick the Architect) 
13. Paradise Island (feat. Khadija Al Hanafi & Mike Patton) 
14. Unicorn Quest™ (feat. Ryoji Ikeda) 
15. Far Away (feat. John Glacier & Khadija Al Hanafi)  

SIDE C:
16. Our Love Is Alive (feat. Suzanne Ciani & Barry Can't Swim) 
17. Evergreen Altar (feat. Vegyn) * EXCLUSIVE TO VINYL, CD, CASSETTE
18. Can't Get Over Losing You (feat. Portraits of Tracy) 
19. Watch Out! It's Cloudy (feat. Khadija Al Hanafi) 
20. Highfield (feat. Panda Bear) 

SIDE D:
21. Under Yr Power 
22. SUV Heaven (feat. Khadija Al Hanafi) 
23. One More Fantasy (feat. Carly Simon) 
24. Break Out Corporate Tag (feat. Ryoji Ikeda & Portraits Of Tracy) 
25. Magic Wand (feat. Barry Can't Swim) 
26. Superfun!™ TV Spot (feat. Mike Patton) 
27. No Bad Memories  
28. The Pavements Light (feat. Haruomi Hosono)”.

Moving into 30th October, that brings me to Caroline Rose’s Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall. The Long Island-born artist is so prolific. Last year, she released Year of the Slug. You can pre-order Caroline Rose’s forthcoming album here. I am really looking forward to this. Below is a brief bit of detail that gives you a glimpse inside an album that you will want to pre-order for sure:

“Caroline Rose returns with Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall, the first release on their newly launched independent label, Suck records. Produced by John Congleton, it feels expansive, unguarded, and full of sharp, clear-eyed songwriting.

Across Gentling the Horse at the Walt Whitman Mall, Caroline Rose follows the strange overlap of humor and grief that runs through modern American life. The record balances pointed observations about crumbling capitalist structures with a deeply human hope for connection.

There is beauty and absurdity here in equal measure, with wildness, tenderness, and satire all sharing the same space. Led by Yip Yip Yow, a longtime fan favorite performed live for nearly a decade before its official release, this album opens an exciting new era for Caroline Rose”.

The penultimate album I am recommending is Jordan Rakei’s A Safe Place to Be Wild. Not too much detail about this album available, but you can pre-order it here. Jordan Rakei is a tremendous artist whose debut, Cloak, came out in 2016. The New Zealand-Australian musician is one of the very best in the world, so A Safe Place to Be Wild is going to be among this year’s best albums:

“A Safe Place To Be Wild is the seventh LP from Jordan Rakei, arriving after more than a decade of pushing the boundaries of soul, jazz and alternative R&B. Fearless, intimate and emotionally direct, the album finds Jordan embracing uninhibited self-expression and placing vulnerability at the centre of his songwriting. Stripping everything back to raw feeling and unfiltered moments, A Safe Place To Be Wild captures an artist fully stepping into himself, confronting the fear of exposing his inner world and finding power in doing so”.

The final album I am spotlighting for this feature is The Big Moon’s Forever. This is a band who I am a fan of. You will want to pre-order this incredible album. The Big Moon are such an amazing band, so there will be a lot of eyes on Forever. A lot has changed for the band since their previous album, Here Is Everything:

“What happens after happily ever after? And how do you make forever count? These are the preoccupations at the heart of The Big Moon’s buoyant yet beautifully bittersweet fourth album, Forever.

Four years on from last LP Here Is Everything – and a further eight since frontwoman Juliette Jackson first laid the foundations for the band – the London-formed four-piece find themselves in a very different, if similarly challenging, headspace. Where that record was conceived in the context of COVID and found Jackson processing the life-altering experience of new motherhood, Forever examines what’s left when you’ve already checked off many of the major milestones, and is tempered by a first-hand understanding of life’s fragility.

The truth is, the past couple of years have been a big readjustment for Jackson. In 2024, she was diagnosed with a cholesteatoma – a benign but destructive cyst inside the eardrum which has to be removed with surgery. Jackson explains, “I permanently lost most of the hearing on one side, which was pretty much existential, because writing songs is my job and my identity.” Stoic by nature, Jackson forged forward with songwriting regardless but found herself faltering. “I couldn't hear properly, everything sounded out of tune and I was just struggling to find a point at all, just writing these miserable songs I couldn't really hear.”

The answer was to shift her outlook completely, manifesting “a happy ending that didn’t exist yet.” “I just decided to write songs for this imaginary time, one or two years in the future, when I would be all healed and happy again. I didn’t know if I would ever get to that point but, by projecting and almost tricking myself into it, it actually became a really nice way of writing.” It proved an extremely fruitful approach, producing some of the brightest songs of The Big Moon’s career to date. Recorded over three weeks at Norfolk’s Bam Bam Studios, with Kevin Morby-collaborator Sam Cohen co-producing alongside the band, Forever is brimming with hook-heavy alt-pop gems, not least because Jackson had fallen out of love with writing verses.

“Over the years I've got more impatient with music,” Jackson explains with a grin. “I just like getting straight to the point.” As bandmate Celia Archer explains, they hope the album proves uplifting. “They're not trivial songs lyrically or thematically or musically, but Jules has shown us you can face all this stuff and choose to be hopeful and find power from it. Hopefully other people can apply that to their own lives”.

October is a busy and varied month for albums. From Sheryl Crow and Johnny Marr through to Remi Wolf, Fontaines D.C. and Caroline Rose, there is something in there for pretty much all musical tastes. I hope that my recommendations have given you some options if you are looking for albums to pre-order. It does go to show that October is indeed…

AN exciting month.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Quiet Light

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Grace Alexander

Quiet Light

__________

I am going to come to…

PHOTO CREDIT: Sophia Liv Maguire for NME

a review of Quiet Light’s Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2 mixtape, that was released earlier in the year. Many people know about Quiet Light, though I am relatively fresh to her work. If you are also new to her, then I hope that this feature provides some necessary information and substance. There are some interviews that I am covering off. Let’s start off with The Line of Best Fit and their interview from July. They write how this Texas-born artist brings emotion and accessibility to Ambient music. “Riya Mahesh didn’t get into Juilliard’s vocal performance program, she thought her career in music had come to an anticlimactic end”. When The Line of Best Fit spoke with Quiet Light, she was back home after taking leave from medical school to complete her latest album:

“Her first release with True Panther Records — the label behind Oklou, Grace Ives, Model/Actriz, and Frost Children — the album has quickly become one of the year’s critical darlings and made Mahesh herself one of the buzziest indie up-and-comers.

Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2 is one of those records that feels like a turning point — both for an artist and a scene. It positions itself in electronica, ambient, and even occasionally hyperpop-leaning production while managing to find an extremely grounding emotional core in lyrics that feel like pages from a long-lost Richard Linklater screenplay and an addictive edge the hookiness of a Swedish pop song. Along with her True Panther labelmates and others like Chanel Beads, she’s pushing forward the style of yearning, intelligent indietronica that’s slowly coalescing in the scene. It’s perhaps the modern version of the Imogen Heap sound, updated for a generation that puts glitch rappers and Elliott Smith on the same playlist.

“I wanted to make an ambient record where you could show it to your random co-worker who doesn’t know anything about ambient music and they love the songs,” Mahesh says of her sonic mission for the album. “I wanted to make something that was experimental but still traditionally pretty.”

Mahesh is no stranger to a busy schedule. While working in a hospital and studying for her medical board exams — which, mind you, she’s now completed — she also managed to release five albums — including the first Blue Angel Sparkling Silver — along with scores of other singles and EPs.  “What would happen is the previous album would enter the mixing stage, and then I would start the next one,” she explains. “It was definitely, like, compulsive music making.” Sure, it was, as she describes it, a bit of a Hannah Montana double life, but she also wouldn’t trade it. In fact, she feels it made her better. What she calls the “militaristic” discipline of medical care turned into a hyper-diligent approach to perfecting her craft. “No matter what, you need to get up every day at a very early hour and go to the hospital and help people,” she says on her med school mindset. “That mentality really carried over into music, because there were periods where I was going to give up on this whole thing, like no one was listening, it’s a lot of work, I was spending a lot of money getting it mastered.

All of Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2 was self-produced, a point she takes particular pride in. There’s a special sort of pleasure, she tells me, in correcting someone who assumes she had nothing to do with the production of her record. Women, as she rightly points out, are astoundingly underrepresented in producing circles, particularly in the ambient-electronic scene she calls home”.

It is interesting that here is an artist who is not rushing things. There is so much emphasis on content and artists putting out as much music as possible. Though Quiet Light hopes to release another record, she is going to pursue other interests. Music is very dear to her, yet she is not going to leap straight to another album. Artists can take a few years and then put out music. No real sense that Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2 requires a quick follow-up. FADER interviewed Quiet Light in April. I am picking up various sections of the interview. It is interesting learning about her background, and especially how important the piano is to her:

“Mahesh grew up playing classical piano in Dallas and like many who learned an instrument young, she initially felt burdened by the classes her mother enrolled her in. That later changed when she realized that piano could be a “vessel” for everything she’d been feeling. As she got older, she found new meaning and connection in classical music. She found joy in developing her skills as a vocalist, training in opera for 10 years. But she still made time to listen to Disney Channel stars and country music. “Throughout my whole life, [music has] been the thing that gets me through the day,” she says.

She knew she wanted to make a sequel to 2023’s Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 1 because that record was “the truest version of myself,” she adds. “This whole concept of free-form ambient music that isn’t really ambient [but] has a lot of pop elements.”

I ask her how she feels now that her music has officially transformed from a private exploration into a wider career. “[Thinking] my music is so personal and so pure that I can’t share it with other people [is a] pessimistic take,” she says. “At the end of the day we all go through breakups, we all move, we all go through traumatic life events, [we all experience] happiness as well as love.”

She plans to release another record and then continue pursuing other interests for a period. She’ll still make music, as always, but the career machinations may pause. Music isn’t an all–or-nothing endeavor for her, but a part of life regardless of the show bookings or contracts.

“People like Lorde who are huge massive mega-stars take like four years where no one hears anything from them,” she says. “It’s important for me to be able to keep music as sacred as it possibly can be”.

The final interview I am getting to is from NME. They recently spoke to Quiet Light’s Riya Mahesh, among other things, taking part in Olivia Rodrigo's all-female festival, Daisy Chain Fields. You can read her diary here. It is incredible that we have artists like Quiet Light. Though she might not release another mixtape or album for a while, it is clear that she has already made a huge impact:

“Instead of one viral spike, Quiet Light and her fanbase have grown “organically” as more people find the music and come to shows every year. Mahesh, who will tour Europe and the UK later this year, counts herself lucky. “I’m not The Dare, which is freeing in a way,” she says. “I really didn’t think the music would mean anything to anyone except me, so it feels really special.”

“I never had that self-belief most artists have at a young age, that they’re destined for greatness,” she continues. “I’ve always been doubtful of my own musical talent. Anytime anything good happens, I’m just shocked.” When a song from her first ‘Blue Angel’ record appeared on a Spotify editorial playlist, her first reaction was pure panic: “I remember thinking, ‘What? People know about this?!’”

Signing to True Panther earlier this year took things to a new level. Six years of doing everything alone had made her a true “auteur”, taking the time to hone and execute her exact vision of Quiet Light. But self-sufficiency was reaching its natural ceiling: “I had ideas that were bigger than what I could do with my MacBook Pro.” Self-releasing music was also lonelier than she expected. “I’d put out a song, people would listen for a day or two, and everyone would forget about it.” Having a team now has been “really good for my mental health”, she shares. “It’s nice to have people with you to share in your success or failure.”

It’s partially changed how she sees the industry, too. Once a pessimist who used to resent the heavy emphasis on music marketing and pressure on artists to “really sell the product”, she now points to the likes of PinkPantheress “building a whole brand around plaid”, or Charli XCX’s immersive swerve from ‘Brat’ to ‘Music, Fashion, Film’, as proof that reinvention and creative direction can present real opportunity. “It’s actually a really amazing time to be an artist,” she says. “A couple of years ago, I would not have said that.”

Quiet Light will be the first artist in the line-up to perform at Daisy Chain Fields, which takes place in Irvine, California this Saturday (August 29). Quiet Light shows have historically been solo or minimalist affairs, but this weekend she’ll perform with a full band for the first time. “I’m all about a challenge,” she says, brightening also at the news that her Austin friends, and past NME Cover stars, Die Spitz are also on the bill. “It feels like a homecoming.”

The all-women, Lilith Fair-inspired bill – from Rodrigo, Chappell Roan and Doechii to Garbage, The Breeders and Bikini Kill – is performing for free, raising money for charities supporting women and girls, especially reproductive health. As a healthcare worker and “Texas girl at heart”, Mahesh feels the connection personally. “Things involving women’s bodies are really going to shit in Texas,” she says. “It really feels like we’re going backwards as a society. I’ve been trying to adopt a more hopeful mindset and work to make things better in my own way”.

I am going to wrap things up with a review for Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2. The Quietus provided their assessment of a mixtape that has Pop precision running right through it. I am not sure whether she is playing dates in the U.K. in the future. I feel there are a lot of people here that would really want to come and see her play. Bringing this sensational new mixtape to the stage:

“Quiet Light’s music is best listened to during the in-between parts of life, where change is most felt. Fittingly, her mixtape Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2 throws the listener into the middle of this moving sound, with ‘Star100’ beginning like a half-heard conversation. Layering delicate harmonies, gliding synths and soft drum patterns, the song spirals through accelerated changes in tempo and pitch until reaching a climax, after which details melt away to leave the bare essentials, concluding with a sampled conversation asking why no one’s midlife crisis ever involves Bagel Bites.

The opening track reworks 2024’s ‘Love90’, a standout from the self-produced projects of Texas-raised artist and medical student Riya Mahesh, released ahead of signing to True Panther, home to Oklou and Jawnino. Her debut with the label is a companion to 2023’s independent Blue Angel Sparkling Silver. It’s a seamless evolution rather than a hard reset, aligning with a prolific set of releases that establish a coherent voice and visual identity.

The listener is lulled into a meditative state by the sitar drones of ‘New Dream’, whilst the scattered voicenotes and warped sounds of ‘You Say I Love You’ evoke Madonna’s ‘What It Feels Like For A Girl’ and Oneohtrix Point Never’s ‘Still Life’. Quiet Light successfully toes a line many struggle with; this is music rooted in the present, echoing Addison Rae or Dean Blunt, while carrying the timelessness of artists like Mazzy Star.

While Mahesh’s previous work was at its best when constructing impressionistic vignettes, here we see her refined precision as a pop songwriter. Standouts include the pitched-up hooks in ‘Postinternetfame’, as she laments a broken relationship, “singing Jeff Buckley in the car, saying things I know you don’t mean.” On lead single ‘Berlin’, the chorus is reminiscent of Avril Lavigne’s ‘Complicated’, where a deceptively effortless melody opens into a cathartic sing-along. Her skill lies in finding depth in the everyday, shaping simple observations into heartfelt stories.

Moments of intersection are the most central element to the mixtape. A peripheral voice in ‘Self Tape’ declares it “cusp season”– a term describing transitions between zodiac signs and relationships–before abruptly cutting to ‘Postinternetfame’. This flux is underscored by the placement of ‘The Sound Of You Leaving’ as track two. Sparser by design and laced with harmonic ambiguity, it captures the hollow sense of someone walking out of your life. While its position disrupts the mixtape’s flow, its intent feels unmistakable.

There’s a striking coherence to the Quiet Light project, underpinned by a lingering sense of longing. With a discography already defined by depth and conceptual clarity, Mahesh’s latest mixtape demands recognition to match her soft ambition”.

Go and follow Quiet Light. She is an artist that I can see enduring for years. Although there is no rush and she will take time to put out more music, it is exciting to see where she heads next. Finishing medical school and looking at other projects in the meantime. I really love Quiet Light and will look out for her music. Go and follow her on social media. Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2 is the latest release from…

AN enormous talent.

___________

Follow Quiet Light

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/quietlight_forever

Twitter:

https://x.com/quietlight4ever

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6Uy2IwBjxdF0MxQVIN18n9?si=8FlaURQASQ6CC_aqUxfjMQ

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@quietlight_forever

FEATURE: Spotlight: Haute & Freddy

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Haute & Freddy

__________

THIS is a duo that…

I am new to. I was reading some recent interviews with Haute & Freddy, and it piqued my interest. They released their debut album, Big Disgrace, in March. I will end with a review of that album. Prior to getting there, I wanted to bring together some interviews from this year. At the moment, Haute & Freddy are on tour. They head to the U.K. in November. Four interviews to get to. I am starting out with Cosmopolitan and their chat from August. They spoke with Haute & Freddy following their amazing Lollapalooza set:

“Michelle Buzz and Lance Shipp are not your typical pop stars. After cranking out hits and landing songwriting credits for artists like Britney Spears, Katy Perry, and Kylie Minogue, the pressure forced the duo and creative partners to nearly give up on their dreams of releasing their own music. That is, until they found a release from writing songs for the sake of playful creation. They found insatiable joy in their new songs; thus, their onstage Renaissance-era circus-runaway personas, Haute & Freddy, were born.

In an industry plagued by up-and-comers who feel they must evoke a certain gravitas to move up in the machine, it’s incredibly refreshing to see two artistes, at their core, bring a necessary whimsy back to the pop landscape. After years of melancholy piano ballads—which will always have a place in this writer’s heart—Haute & Freddy’s sonic universe isn’t afraid to be too loud or take up space.

Your Lollapalooza set was so electric, and I was incredibly impressed by you coming up with songs on the fly. How does it feel to bring Big Disgrace to bigger stages?

Haute: It feels right, because it’s a big disgrace, baby! But it’s intimidating because we have to fill the emptiness on these big stages, space-wise. I really love having the painted cart facade because we want to take attention away from LED screens and bring that old theater vibe back. But I’m running around, and I can’t stop it. I always tell Lance (Freddy) I’m going to move less or I’m going to pass out. On those bigger stages, it’s constant because I want it to feel like a small theater so bad.

Freddy: We have a lot more space to run around. There’s a song after “Symphony for a Queen” where we do this theatrical heavy breathing, and that’s campy, but it’s also needed in the moment.

Haute: My body’s like, “Oh, you’re finally breathing right. Thanks!”

I’m curious, because your personas are circus runaways who escaped to do things on their terms, and that seems like a beautiful allegory for how you both found this version of yourselves as artists. As Haute & Freddy evolves, how do you make sure you’re still giving yourselves the freedom to surprise yourselves?

Haute: I know myself better at this stage in life, and I know what keeps me playful or when things are getting too busy. I’ll take a day off, drive two hours to a smaller town, and look around an antique shop or go to the art supply store and buy brushes, even if I don’t know what I’m going to paint. I need those kinds of things that don’t have a mission for my creativity to stay happy and healthy or else it will feel like I have to instantly please people.

Freddy: Listening to each other and continuing to be open. I find the most surprises in trying things we don’t know will work, but we do it anyway. There’s a lot of beauty behind the “I don’t know”.

I want to head back to April and an interview from DORK. There is a lot of love for this Los Angeles duo in the U.K. They have this growing fanbase. It will be exciting when they come over here and play some dates soon. An act that definitely needs to be on your radar. Big Disgrace is definitely among the best debut albums of 2026:

“While a lot of Haute & Freddy is about embracing ridiculousness and over-the-top exuberance, it's also about something fundamentally important: community and connection. An implacable bond between the artist and the fans. "I think it's what we were craving," says Buzz. "I was craving community. The music heals me, too, and reminds me of my happy places."

The community bond is most clearly visible in the way that the Royal Court play along and match the band with their own creativity. They come to shows with their own distinct looks and styles. "Oh, man, I think we were in Chicago, and this person came in with an all-tuxedo where they affixed flowers to their shoulders, it was almost like two hoops that went all the way up to their ears, and it was just this arch of pink flowers," gushes Lance as he recalls one of the most memorable fan looks. "Our fans now come up to us, and they're like, please let us know what the dress code is. We need some lead time because it takes us a while to make these outfits," laughs Buzz.

The circus theme does actually take on a wider, deeper resonance for the duo. "Circus came from this emotional place of me truly climbing out of a long depression," reflects Buzz. "Literally just me and the universe, vibing on this fantasy of life as this circus, and the fairy tale that is Haute & Freddy. It just gave me this playground out of depression, and it still makes me feel like things make sense. It wasn't that long ago that Lance was like, yeah, I think the circus was a literal metaphor for our careers. I never put that together, but it does feel like you want to be an artist amongst these artists, but your skill set isn't the tightrope, and it's not juggling. These things that other people are really good at, I didn't feel like I was good at. The circus story is from a true emotional journey."

The album 'Big Disgrace' is the endpoint of that journey, but it's also just the beginning of a world that Haute & Freddy are building for themselves and for their community. The album's opening track, 'Symphony For A Queen', encapsulates that. "It's the show tune of the album," says Buzz proudly. "It's very much about getting the look you want and embodying if no one understands me or if society is pushing against what makes me true and beautiful, then I'm going to do that for myself. That stage is metaphorical, but it's an emotional, imaginary place of going and feeling like you're cheering yourself on. I'm beautiful and perfect here." In pop music in 2026, there are few things more beautiful and perfect than Haute & Freddy. Lose yourselves in the madness”.

It is interested how a lot of former songwriters who were frustrated at not getting credit or being in the shadows are not up front and have their own careers. It takes me to NME and their July interview. One of my favourite sections of the interview is this: “My whole life feels like ’80s Kate Bush,” Buzz says. “There’s no Haute without Kate”. If you have not heard Haute & Freddy, then do make sure that you check out their music:

“Haute & Freddy have come to realise they share a lot of common ground – so much, in fact, that Buzz says they felt “friend embarrassment” for failing to exchange demos sooner. Both grew up making music in church, which provided a solid grounding in live performance, and both loved choral music and Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals. (“I am still absolutely spellbound by the synth sounds in his Cats score,” Buzz says today.) The duo’s musical theatre side emerges on ‘Symphony For A Queen’, the baroque opening song from ‘Big Disgrace’. It begins with Buzz singing a crystalline melody over pizzicato strings before the entire song morphs from Broadway ballad into a spangly toe-tapper. Lord Lloyd-Webber would surely approve.

Finding a like-minded partner-in-crime proved invigorating for the duo. “We were just so tired of having to be in a box when we were writing songs,” Shipp says. “So we basically said: ‘Let’s make music without really having a goal. Let’s just play.’ And that gave us the freedom to make whatever we wanted.” As they let their musical imaginations run wild, they also invented the characters of Haute & Freddy and concocted an outlandish backstory. The seed was an old-timey font they were drawn to – “it was very circus flier,” Buzz says – but the idea grew roots when they dropped their debut single, ‘Scantily Clad’, at the end of 2024.

Songs like ‘Dance The Pain Away’ and ‘Shy Girl’ hit so hard because they pulse with palpable emotion. “I have struggled with self-hate for the majority of my life. So many times, I’ve thought it was finally over and then it’ll smack me again: this little tug of depression,” Buzz says. She and Shipp wrote ‘Shy Girl’ as a way of excavating her pain after ‘Scantily Clad’ began to gain traction and Buzz wondered whether being an artist could actually become a viable career. “That song is such a lantern,” she adds. “It’s me saying: ‘Go out there and have fun. Don’t steal your own joy.’”

Perhaps because they combine high-camp visuals with high-impact hooks, Haute & Freddy have already built a fervent queer fanbase. ”With me being queer, I’m not surprised, but I just didn’t know whether that would happen,” Buzz says. “To be honest, I felt like in my [songwriting] career, a lot of my music didn’t resonate with anybody.”

For this reason, their main goal is to keep serving the Royal Court. “It’s crazy having people tell us ‘this song is changing lives’ or ‘the world needs you right now,’” Shipp says, which prompts an “oh my gosh, yes!” from Buzz. ”It still doesn’t feel real that we’re writing songs that people connect to,” she adds. “This whole project has been a huge gift to my life”.

The final interview is from Metal Magazine. Even if I am a new convert to the wonderful world of Haute & Freddy, I can tell that they are going to be making music for so long to come. Big Disgrace got such positive reception. You know there is appetite for more music from them. I will try and see if I can catch them when they play London in November. I really love what they are putting out into the world. Such a compelling and interesting duo:

“Every publication has tagged them as one of the best newcomers and emerging talents of the year, but Michelle Buzz and Lance Shipp have been creating music for a long time now (they have written and co-produced music for the likes of Katy Perry, Kylie Minogue, Britney Spears and Calvin Harris). Both had established careers as songwriters before meeting in Los Angeles, and began writing together simply for fun, without expectations or rules. They soon created the characters of Haute and Freddy, using them as vessels for real-life emotions and a more uninhibited approach to creativity. Their debut single, Scantily Clad, became a viral success on TikTok, followed by tracks including Anti-Superstar, Dance the Pain Away and Shy Girl, which attracted millions of streams and attention from outlets including Rolling Stone, People and SPIN, among others.

Their music combines infectious melodies, bold vocals, ’80s-inspired synths and playful irreverence, something they make sure to translate into their live shows. From the dream of becoming a Showgirl at Heart to the defiant declaration of I Like My People Weird, Haute & Freddy encourage listeners to resist the pressure to fit in and make space for their most authentic selves. At its core, the project is an invitation to embrace difference, have fun and let the inner freak take centre stage. “I don’t know if it’s more about the empowerment of intimacy or the simplicity of letting community soothe the insanity of life right now, but regardless, it’s shamelessly dramatic”, they say of Touch Touch. It comes with a new video directed by Amalia Irons, enriching their already fabulous visual world that feels like life in another time; another possibility.

We spoke to the band a few days before they kicked off the next leg of their sold-out Big Disgrace World Tour, and discussed the freedom they discovered in making Big Disgrace, the ’80s pop and art that shaped their sound, their influences, and the importance of creating spaces where weirdness, self-expression and difference can be celebrated.

Big Disgrace isn’t just an album title: it’s almost a manifesto about embracing what makes you different. Throughout the record you balance escapism with real emotional struggles, and we can identify moments reflecting depression, burnout, longing, identity. You mentioned that you started creating music as Haute & Freddy for fun, but the outcome is impressive beyond the music itself: there’s so much love in it. Did creating the whole record teach you something important about yourselves that you didn’t know before?

Michelle: Creating Big Disgrace definitely taught me to follow the fun and trust myself. I had dealt with the fallout of my previous artist project completely flopping, a songwriting career with ageing credits that weren’t keeping me afloat financially, trying to stay in LA surrounded by colleagues who had hit their stride — I was truly under the impression that a successful career in music was not coming for me. Getting to that point where I made peace with not ‘making it’ in music, I was able to start valuing my own happiness. Haute & Freddy was my version of a giant miniature Lego city in a basement; this hobby fantasy world I couldn’t stop building while I got ready to have a job outside of music. Big Disgrace taught me that magical things happen when you express yourself without thinking about the next step.
Lance: Making Big Disgrace was my confirmation that the universe will reward you for being yourself at all times.

Freaks encapsulates something really interesting: traditionally, marginalised people have reclaimed some of the insults they have historically received and turned them into statements of pride. This song owns the word, and it’s brilliantly brought to life visually in its music video. You worked with Amalia Irons on it (and others), and it reminds me of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. How did the song and the video come about?

Michelle: I love that it’s also a circus term that can now be rebranded instead of being used as an insult. We love taking that kind of terminology – same with “oh, what a big disgrace” – and making it something proud and unashamed. We wrote it in Topanga with Askjell (same collaborator as Sophie, Fields of Versailles, Sweet Surrender) and it was an explosive day. I feel like us and The Rocky Horror Picture Show share a similar approach to poking at conservative hang-ups, so I wanted to honour that through the video as much as possible.

Your album is a balm for the queer community and anyone who feels like they don’t belong. Now that you’re travelling the world, how do you see things in terms of equality? There’s a scary feeling that we’re going backwards and that there is more and more racism and hate present in our daily lives.

Michelle: I feel this a lot; it’s impossible not to. But I will say, going on tour this year to so many different places we had never been before, seeing the big variety of ages in the Royal Court, feeling the kindness in that room, the respect people are having for each other, the joy and self-expression – I don’t know if it’s naive, but it makes me feel like maybe the majority of people in this country really do want things to evolve and make sense.
Lance: I see the world the same way as I always have. Every person is equal. To me, it’s so simple: we all deserve the same opportunity to live freely and not feel like our life is in danger because of the colour of our skin, who we love or how we want to express ourselves. At our shows, that’s the space we want to create, where everyone can feel loved for who they are.

You have written songs for major artists like Katy Perry, Britney Spears, and Kylie Minogue, among many others. And recently Lady Gaga shared your music on her social media. Are there any other artists you’d like to collaborate with?

Gaga would be at the top of our list, we’d love to make a big musical number with her. We’d also love to collaborate with The Last Dinner Party, maybe do a little verse or something”.

Ending with DORK and their five-star review of Big Disgrace. For anyone who has not listened to this album, I would urge you to hear it now. You can feel touches of Lady Gaga, Kate Bush, Tori Amos and others in their work. Though what we get from Haute & Freddy is distinctly theirs. They have this sound and chemistry that is so incredible to behold:

“There was a time when pop stars stalked the pages of the world's greatest music weekly with vamp, vogue and vigour. Haute & Freddy understand that era in their very bones, to the extent that it wouldn't take too much convincing to believe they'd been created by a third wish on an issue of 80s Smash Hits. On 'Big Disgrace' they drag that old glamour into present tense with songs so immediate they can trap the algorithm in amber.

This is theatrical pop with precision and purpose. Not simple dress-up or retro karaoke, and certainly not a stack of dog-eared references hoping to pass for a personality. Haute & Freddy know exactly why 80s pop still works when it works. It is not all shoulder pads and eyeliner, though both are more than fun enough to drag out of the closet. It's because the hooks are headlines and the attitude is doctrine. Style and substance as a manifesto for mischief.

The album moves with the confidence of artists who can frame the canvas as well as paint it. From the first run of songs, it's clear. 'Scantily Clad', 'Shy Girl', 'Anti-Superstar', 'Sophie' and 'Dance The Pain Away' all point to the same core instinct to make pop that performs at full speed without ever losing composure. Each track understands both entry and payoff. There is no meandering between ideas, no apologising for demanding to be massive.

What is striking is how cleanly they manage tone. Camp is all over this record, but handled with utter discipline. The jokes land because the writing is sharp. They flawlessly commit to character and emotion without any sense of irony. That is hard to do. Plenty of artists can be funny. Plenty can be sincere. Very few can be both, fewer still through the lens of massive, honking electropop.

The production is knowingly period-aware, but never a museum exhibit relic. While the lineage is obvious, 'Big Disgrace' isn't ever just played for pure nostalgia. It's a record that studies the greats, then rewrites the blueprints with signature flair. The result is fresh in the only way that matters.

There's a proper narrative arc here that gives the record weight beyond just surface thrill. There's bags of posture, yes, but also a method, too. The temptation with maximalist pop is to keep adding until Marie Kondo is called round to sort out the clutter; Haute & Freddy dodge that trap because they understand subtraction and division, too. They know when to let the drama flow or when a chorus is already doing enough; they know when to leave a song before familiarity turns to exhaustion. Every moment feels deliberate rather than under- or overcooked.

If there is a criticism to make, it is a flattering one. A couple of tracks are so strong that they have their own sense of repeat-play gravity, but that is hardly failure. Momentum stays high, and by the end, the album has the satisfying shape of a debut that already knows what it is.

'Big Disgrace' does not sound like promising first steps; it sounds like a final arrival announced on the ballroom floor. Haute & Freddy have made a record that understands pop as theatre and craft - it preens, struts, poses and leaves enough earworms behind to have Prince Charming stalking the neighbourhood for months. For a record so invested in pose and posture, the real triumph is the simplest trick of all. The songs are undeniable”.

I am going to finish off there. Big Disgrace is one of the albums of this year. From the phenomenal Haute & Freddy, you cannot afford to overlook this U.S. duo. Taking their wonderful music around the world right now, when touring is done, I guess they will be thinking of more new music. Whatever comes next, it is going to be sensational. Go and show your love for…

THIS tremendous Los Angeles duo.

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Follow Haute & Freddy

PHOTO CREDIT: Joseph Wasilewski

Official:

https://www.hauteandfreddy.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/hauteandfreddy

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@hauteandfreddy

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/66T34XqGkEWbzKWALSBDuR?si=plt2jsksScGl9fNINRVv9Q

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FEATURE: Almost Like Being There… Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn Live Album at Ten

FEATURE:

 

 

Almost Like Being There…

Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn Live Album at Ten

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NOVEMBER is a month…

PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/Rex Features

where we mark a fair few Kate Bush album anniversaries. One this year involves the live album for 2014’s Before the Dawn. That residency took place at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith. The album came out on 25th November. I am going to bring in a couple of reviews for the album. There is this regret that I, and so many others, were not there is 2014 to see Before the Dawn. There has been discussion for years about how good it was. Like it was this life-changing experience! I can believe that. Not that we can go back in time and correct things. There was talk a DVD would come out, though this is not going to happen. Kate Bush not convinced by the sound quality or not wanting it to be released. I am not sure the official reason, but you feel like it was not to her standard. It is a shame, as many would love to see the production. However, the live album does give you a sense of what it was like. The atmosphere in the room. It is wonderfully mixed and produced. One of the best live albums ever. You can sort of project yourself into the album, like you are watching this show happen. Even if it is not quite the same thing as being in the venue, I did get a little bit of the energy and aura of that residency. Before the Dawn is an amazing live album. Upon its release, Before the Dawn reached number four in the U.K. I do want to look in the archives and bring in some stuff I have used in other features. There was a bit of promotion around the live album. FADER spoke with Kate Bush in 2016 around the release of the album:

“You really dug into the archives for your 2014 live shows. How has your relationship with your older material evolved?

Well, part of the decision to do the live shows was because it was such an interesting challenge to work with the two narrative pieces [“The Ninth Wave” and “A Sky of Honey”], rather than just doing a bunch of single tracks.

It was within such a specific context, because [the setlist] was very much put together for a live event. Through that process, the songs naturally evolved because I was working with a band, a lot of whom I never worked with before. I just chose tracks that I wanted to do, that really worked with the band, and to keep it really focused in a rhythmic way.

Although the music was always kept as the lead, I didn't want the visuals to feel separate. What I had hoped was that what had been created was an integrated piece of theater that worked with the music — that it wasn't just music that had theatrics added to it — that there was a real sense of it being something that worked as a whole.

As a performer, do you you get lost in the moment or do you focus on the technical intricacies?

I had to stay really focused as a performer because I'm quite nervous, and I wanted to make sure I was really present when I was performing so that I could try and deliver the character of the song. And actually, the first set was the most difficult part to perform for me, because almost each song is from a completely different place.

Before the 2014 shows you hadn’t toured since 1979. When your return to the stage was so well-received, did you wish you’d done it sooner?

I don't know really. The original show was of the first two albums that I’d made, and I had hoped that to do another show after I had another of two albums’ worth of material. And as I started getting much more involved in the recording process, it took me off into a different path where it was all about trying to make a good album. It became very time-consuming, so I moved into being more of a recording artist. And every time you finish an album, there's the opportunity to make visuals to go with some of the tracks. So I became very involved in that, as well”.

I think that Before the Dawn is one of the best live albums ever. In terms of what was performed, the biggest takeaway was the two suites that she brought together. The Ninth Wave from 1985’s Hounds of Love and A Sky of Honey from 2005’s Aerial. Around these suites, Bush performed other songs from Hounds of Love, in addition to a sprinkling of some from other albums. One of the best inclusions was Among Angels from 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. It was a triumphant stage production. One that has echoed through the years. Kate Bush herself so grateful to everyone who came and showed such warmth. This is what she wrote in the linear notes for Before the Dawn:

“It was an extraordinary experience putting the show together. It was a huge amount of work, a lot of fun and an enormous privilege to work with such an incredibly talented team. This is the audio document. I hope that this can stand alone as a piece of music in its own right and that it can be enjoyed by people who knew nothing about the shows as well as those who were there.
I never expected the overwhelming response of the audiences, every night filling the show with life and excitement. They are there in every beat of the recorded music. Even when you can’t hear them, you can feel them. Nothing at all has been re-recorded or overdubbed on this live album, just two or three sound FX added to help with the atmosphere.
On the first disc the track, Never Be Mine, is the only take that exists, and was recorded when the show was being filmed without an audience. It was cut because the show was too long but is now back in its original position. Everything else runs as was, with only a few edits to help the flow of the music.
On stage, the main feature of The Ninth Wave was a woman lost at sea, floating in the water, projected onto a large oval screen – the idea being that this pre-recorded film was reality. The lead vocals for these sequences were sung live at the time of filming in a deep water tank at Pinewood. A lot of research went into how to mic this vocal. As far as we know it had never been done before. I hoped that the vocals would sound more realistic and emotive by being sung in this difficult environment. (You can see the boom mic in the photo on the back of the booklet. This had to be painted out of every shot in post-production although very little of the boom mic recording was used. The main mic was on the life jacket disguised as an inflator tube!) The rest of the lead vocals on this disc were sung live on stage as part of the dream sequences. The only way to make this story work as an audio piece was to present it more like a radio play and subdue the applause until the last track when the story is over and we are all back in the theatre again with the audience response.
Unlike The Ninth Wave which was about the struggle to stay alive in a dark, terrifying ocean, A Sky Of Honey is about the passing of a summer’s day. The original idea behind this piece was to explore the connection between birdsong and light, and why the light triggers the birds to sing. It begins with a lovely afternoon in golden sunlight, surrounded by birdsong. As night falls, the music slowly builds until the break of dawn.
This show was one of the most exciting things I’ve ever been involved in. Thank you to everyone who made it happen and who embraced the process of allowing it to continually evolve”.

I am going to finish up with a couple of reviews for Before the Dawn. I have looked at this album before and discussed its brilliance. It turns ten on 25th November, so it is a big anniversary. It is worth noting how, as UNCUT write in their review, that Before the Dawn is not one single performance captured. It comprises of recordings from throughout the twenty-two dates of the run:

“This allows for the inclusion of a wonderful rehearsal version of “Never Be Mine”, a piece of pastoral ECM restored to the running order after being dropped at the eleventh hour. It appears during Act One, the part of Before The Dawn which most resembles a conventional concert. This is the opening seven-song sequence where Bush ticks off some hits and performs them straight.

The rolling rhythm and quicksilver synthetic pulse of “Running Up That Hill” is beautifully realised, while a rapturous “Hounds Of Love” locates the taut, wolverine snap of the original. She toys with the chorus melody, throwing in a Turner-esque entreaty to “tie me to the mast”, a measured tinkering in keeping with the prevailing musical sensibility. Bush, the ultimate studio artist, opts for faithful reproductions of her oeuvre with just a few twists. Nothing has been re-recorded or overdubbed; presumably there was no need. The band of stellar sessionmen are supple, empathetic and meticulous, as is the Chorus of supporting actors and singers recruited mainly from musical theatre. Among their ranks young Bertie, only 16 at the time, does a remarkably proficient job.

Bush’s voice remains a wonder. These days it’s deeper and huskier, cross-hatched with bluesy ululations and soulful stylings. On the opening “Lily”, she sings like a lioness, drawing sparks from the words “fire” and “darkness” over a thick, plush groove. During a terrifically showbizzy “Top Of The City”, she rises from a serene whisper to a banshee howl. Riding the chimeric reggae of “King Of The Mountain” she transitions from sensuous earth mother to lowering Prospero, summoning the tempest during the tumultuous, drum-heavy, propulsive climax.

This is a key moment in Before The Dawn, a hinge between the straight gig and the theatrics which follow. From now on, listening to the album is sometimes akin to hearing the soundtrack to a film being screened in another room. Act Two, The Ninth Wave, is particularly tricky in this regard. The conceptual suite about a woman lost at sea after a ship sinks lends itself to a sustained visual experience, but has to work harder on record. At Hammersmith, “Hello Earth” was staggeringly operatic, as dramatic and contemporary as any modern staging of The Ring or Parsifal. Here, it is merely – *merely* – a magnificent piece of music.

Similarly, onstage, “Astronomer’s Call”, co-written with novelist David Mitchell and voiced by Kevin Doyle, aka Molesley in Downton Abbey, was a technical necessity, a chance to lay out some slightly clumsy exposition while the stage was being re-set. Arguably, there is no virtue in its being included here aside from historical accuracy. The same is true of a sub-Outnumbered, hammy am-dram domestic skit – “shitty shitty bang bang”, “jellyvision” and all – featuring Bertie McIntosh and Bob Harms. It has been shortened, but should probably have been removed entirely.

At times like these, Before The Dawn is unsure whether it’s a cast recording of a West End musical or a live album. The music, however, is uniformly wonderful. On “Under Ice” the band lock into the song’s oppressive, jagged rhythm, perfectly articulating its chilly claustrophobia. “Waking The Witch” becomes a frantic six-minute soul-funk work-out, stabs of organ and distorted guitar merging over the screams of the Witchmaster, played with terrifying plausibility by Jo Servi. “Jig Of Life” is all flinty Celtic rhythm, with Kevin McAlea – the sole remaining member from Bush’s Tour Of Life band – excelling on the uilleann pipes. After the dark drama of “Hello Earth”, “Morning Fog” arrives like light flooding the room. It’s easeful and organic, burnished with acoustic guitar and accordion. Saved from the sea, Bush has slipped out of character and is restored to herself, murmuring like a newly woken lover. When she softly sings “You know what, I love you better”, the crowd embrace it as an affirmation of their enduring loyalty and cheer wildly. It’s a lovely moment.

The meditative feel holds for the opening part of Act Three, A Sky Of Honey. It’s a more unified piece than The Ninth Wave, the songs eliding seamlessly, allowing for full immersion. The mood is slow, stoned, dream-like. “Prologue”, a ten-minute tour de force dominated by Bush’s rippling piano and John Giblin’s lyrical bass, is lifted by a new, jubilant coda. “Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong/Bring it on, break it down… summer!” Bush sings, harmonising with the peal of distant bells. “An Architect’s Dream” and “Somewhere In Between” are spotlit as slinky, sensuous explorations of the creative connections which occur in the liminal spaces. The sultry “Sunset” climbs towards a rattling flamenco climax, Mino Cinélu’s percussive power pushing the song “all the way up to the top of the night”. As Bush sings in her most headily perfumed purr, the thought occurs that her voice has never sounded better. Her maverick instincts, too, remain on point. On “Aerial Tal” she mimics the song of the blackbird over a new-agey wash of synths.

It all leads to the rising, rhythmic 20-minute climax of “Nocturn” and “Aerial”. Amid bells and birdsong, a new tension informs the music. Over an angry squall of guitar and a heavy artillery of bass and drums, Bush wails about her “beautiful wings” – shades of PJ Harvey here – as the music pushes up and up. It ends with frenzied chanting and what sounds like an explosion. Listeners may imagine Bush disappearing in a puff of smoke; in fact, she was hoisted into the air, black wings and all, airborne at last.

The encores wheel back to the show’s no-concept beginnings. She sings “Among Angels” alone at the piano. Almost unspeakably intimate, it’s a timely reminder that, for all the theatrics, if Bush were ‘just’ a singer she would still be utterly remarkable. This is followed by a celebratory “Cloudbusting” – another of her classics which you suddenly realise you’ve never heard performed live, whether by Bush or anybody else – which sounds like the best kind of circus music. Long and loose, it’s a musical smile, “like the sun coming out”. And then it’s over.

At the start of Before The Dawn, after the rousing crowd response to “Lily”, Bush chirps, “Oh thank you, what a lovely welcome!” She says little else until the end of “Cloudbusting” when, clearly moved, she exclaims, “Oh my God! What a beautiful sight! Look at you all, I will always remember this.” Above all else, the album seems to seek to honour that sentiment, a physical testament to an extraordinary shared moment between artist and audience.

There may be an argument for excising the dramatic interludes, and perhaps even a handful of songs, in favour of something leaner and more sculpted. But that would be to bind Bush to the conventions she has spent an entire career challenging, and to misunderstand the ambition and intention behind Before The Dawn. What we have instead is an exhaustive audio souvenir of a momentous event, simply to remind us – and perhaps Bush, too – that it really did happen after all”.

Let’s finish things with a review from Pitchfork. Laura Snapes provided her take on Before the Dawn. Some might feel that the album is a little polished or not raw enough. In terms of the song selections, some people felt there were omissions. However, the overall feeling is that that residency was stunning. Everyone who was there experienced something that will stay with them forever. I do think that the live album is remarkable. Something that every Kate Bush fan should add to their collection:

“Live albums are meant to capture performers at their rawest and least inhibited, which doesn’t really apply to Before the Dawn. Bush is a noted perfectionist best known for her synthesizer experiments and love of obscure Bulgarian choirs, but her recent work has skewed towards traditional setups that reunite her with the prog community that fostered her early career. With marks to hit and tableaux to paint, the 2014 shows were more War of the Worlds (or an extension of 2011’s Director’s Cut) than Live at Leeds. But never mind balls-out revamps of Bush’s best known songs; with the exception of tracks from Hounds of Love, none of the rest of the setlist had ever been done live—not even on TV, which became Bush’s primary stage after she initially retired from touring. These songs weren’t written to be performed, but internalized. Occupying Bush’s imagination for an hour, and letting it fuse with your own, formed the entirety of the experience. Hearing this aspic-preserved material come to life feels like going to sleep and waking up decades later to see how the world has changed.

“Jig of Life” is the midpoint of Before the Dawn, and its crux. It forms the part in “The Ninth Wave” where Bush’s character is exhausted of fighting against drowning, and decides to succumb to death. A vision of her future self appears, and convinces her to stay alive. “Now is the place where the crossroads meet,” she chants, just as her (then) 56-year-old voice channels her 27-year-old one. Despite her alleged taste for burning one, Bush’s voice has gained in power rather than faded with age. It’s deeper now, and some of the songs’ keys shift to match, but it’s alive and incalculably moving, still capable of agile whoops and tender eroticism, and possesses a newfound authority. When she roars lustily through opener “Lily” and its declaration that “life has blown a great big hole through me,” she sets up the stakes of Before the Dawn’s quest for peace. In Act One, she’s running from the prospect of love on “Hounds of Love” and “Never Be Mine,” and from fame on “King of the Mountain,” where she searches for Elvis with sensual anticipation. She asks for Joan of Arc’s protection on “Joanni,” matching the French visionary’s fearlessness with her own funky diva roar, and sounds as if she could raze the world as she looks down from “Top of the City.”

Rather than deliver a copper-bottomed greatest hits set, Bush reckons with her legacy through what might initially seem like an obscure choice of material. Both Acts Two and Three take place in transcendent thresholds: “The Ninth Wave”’s drowning woman is beset by anxiety and untold pressures, with no idea of where to turn, mirroring the limbo that Bush experienced after 1982’s The Dreaming. That suite’s last song, the cheery “The Morning Fog,” transitions into Aerial’s “Prelude,” all beatific bird call and dawn-light piano. The euphoric, tender “A Sky of Honey” is meant to represent a perfect day from start to finish, filled with family and beautiful imperfections. “Somewhere in Between” finds them atop “the highest hill,” looking out onto a stilling view, and Bush’s eerie jazz ensemble anticipates the liminal peace of Bowie’s Blackstar. “Not one of us would dare to break the silence,” she sings. “Oh how we have longed for something that would make us feel so… somewhere in between.”

Purgatory has become heaven, and in the narrative Bush constructs through her setlist, “A Sky of Honey” represents the grown-up, domestic happiness that staves off the youthful fears explored on Hounds of Love. For her final song, she closes with a rendition of “Cloudbusting,” a song about living with the memory of a forbidden love, which is even more glorious for all the hope that it’s accumulated in the past 30-odd years. Bush’s recent life as a “reclusive” mother is often used to undermine her, to “prove” she was the kook that sexist critics had pegged her as all along. These performances and this record are a generous reveal of why she’s chosen to retreat, where Bush shows she won’t disturb her hard-won peace to sustain the myth of the troubled artistic genius. Between the dangerous waters of “The Ninth Wave” and the celestial heavens of “A Sky of Honey,” Before the Dawn demystifies what we’ve fetishized in her absence. Without draining her magic, it lets Bush exist back down on Earth”.

I am going to leave things there. The wonderful Before the Dawn turns ten on 25th November. Such a tremendous album that I love listening to, I wonder how Kate Bush reflects on the 2014 residency. What her feelings are now. Whether we will ever see her on the stage again. It would be something if she did do something else live. If that is a one-off or a few dates. Perhaps you had to be there to get a true sense of how transformative and effecting Before the Dawn was. Though, listening to the album, you can get a what it was like being…

IN the Eventim Apollo.

FEATURE: Easy Street: Songs for the Deaf: Why ‘Controversial’ Men in Music and Their Past Should Not Be Ignored

FEATURE:

 

 

Easy Street

IN THIS PHOTO: Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme

Songs for the Deaf: Why ‘Controversial’ Men in Music and Their Past Should Not Be Ignored

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THERE are articles…

PHOTO CREDIT: Viktoria Slowikowska/Pexels

that you read and they sort of pass you by. Either they are quite light or you don’t really connect with what is being said. There are others that impact you and stay in your minds. The latter was the case when I read a recent article in The Guardian by Laura Snapes. It concerned men in music whose abusive and dark pasts have not only resulted in little or no punishment and reciprocations. In fact, they are allowed to continue their careers and fans seem to have forgotten, or seem not to care, about their abusiveness and celebrate them. Queens of the Stone Age’s lead, Josh Homme, is the latest case. Someone who assaulted a female photographer at a gig, allegedly abused his ex-wife, Brody Dalle, and has had more than a bit of controversial surrounding him through his career. If it was a woman in music in that position, they would have been cancelled. There would be criticism and ongoing ramifications. For decades, men in music have been called out for appalling and reprehensible behaviour and abuses, yet their careers continue and nothing happens. The #MeToo movement started in 2006, though it was reignited in reached Hollywood in October 2017, triggered by investigative reports into producer Harvey Weinstein. He was eventually brought to justice and imprisoned, though it took multiple brave women and a long wait for them to see a monster behind bars. In terms of music, from Chris Brown and Josh Homme to so other men in the music industry, this movement has not come for them. In fact, #MeToo did not really infiltrate and influence music in the same way it did in Hollywood. Though you can say that it needs to be reignited for Hollywood too, as there are abusive men who continue to act and earn millions. What Laura Snapes wrote about Josh Homme was eye-opening and powerful:

“As part of the promo for Queens of the Stone Age’s new album Perfecth, the band has set up a novelty complaints hotline for fans to call. “No bitching too big, no whiny too tiny,” it promises. I’ll bite: how about the fact that frontman Josh Homme’s ex-wife Brody Dalle testified in court that he head-butted her so hard that she “saw stars” and said he had fantasised about killing her? Or that he kicked a female photographer in the face? It’s certainly not what anyone’s talking about as part of Homme’s friendly neighbourhood rock star image rehabilitation: duetting on Shania Twain’s new album, taking the couch on Celebrity Gogglebox, teatime BBC 6 Music interviews.

Homme and Dalle clearly had a complicated relationship: he allegedly tried to throw her boyfriend off a balcony; he claims that she was violent towards him; both have taken out restraining orders against one another; Homme has full custody of their kids after Dalle’s boyfriend was found to have forged her signature on an application for a restraining order. Homme has recently talked about coming through a dark period, including successful treatment for cancer, and getting a handle on his vices. Nevertheless, there is clear footage of him brutally kicking the camera of photographer Chelsea Lauren back into her face, which he acknowledged in an apology video, and court testimony from Dalle alleging that a drunk Homme told her “I want to fucking strangle you right now” on one occasion, and head-butted her on another.

Almost a decade after the mainstream #MeToo movement, it’s clear that audiences’ nostalgia for artists who made art that meant something to them at a formative age overrides the inconvenience of violence against women. Couple that fondness with an expensive publicity campaign and the counternarrative never stands a chance, easily dismissed as the shrill cries of cranks. I believe firmly in rehabilitation and second chances, but haven’t been able to shake a sense of horror that millions of people can apparently look past allegations and evidence of violence against women when engaging in supposedly feelgood pop culture.

The notion of so-called rock’n’roll behaviour, many have theorised, was partly why music never had much of a “#MeToo moment”, that hopeless relic of a phrase. When bad behaviour isn’t just accepted but venerated, real wrongdoing can be brushed under the same whisky-stained rug. Blind eyes are turned, offenders are remade as outlaws, myths are upheld, party lines toed: “It’s so safe to play along / Little soldiers in a row,” as Homme sang in Go With the Flow. The jokey complaints hotline might be the most honest part of QOTSA’s return: a grim reflection of the fact that nobody is taking this shit seriously any more”.

It is disheartening and disgusting that he is played on stations like BBC Radio 6 Music and interviewed. The station is not the only one who plays Queens of the Stone Age’s music. Though the fact that he is allowed air time and is talked about in adoring tones is tone-deaf and inexcusable. So far, Homme has not faced any significant punishment. He continues to record music and tour. He is played on the radio and there has not been any real issues for him. Now more than ever, the music industry needs its #MeToo movement. If men like R. Kelly and Diddy are imprisoned for their abuses and crimes, they are in the minority. It also took a very long time for them to be brought to justice and, in the case of Diddy, his prison sentence of fifty months is incredibly lenient. Although some blame should be on fans who continue to support these abusive artists and stations who play their music, the industry in general needs to do more. In 2026, we are in a position where high-profile figures like Josh Homme or Chris Brown (his 2009 felony assault of then-girlfriend Rihanna, subsequent domestic abuse allegations, and a recent 2026 guilty plea for an attack in London, have not resulted in imprisonment (bar a two-month prison sentence in 2014, after being kicked out of a court-ordered rehab facility, which violated his probation from his 2009 assault case regarding Rihanna) or cancellation continue to carry on like nothing has happened. Why do fans overlook these men and seemingly forgive what they have done or show no concern for the women who have been affected?! That article in The Guardian is from a female journalist who is asking why a cosy makeover for these men who have done atrocious things but are admired and thrive. There seems to be little disgust and protest from men in the music industry. Very few (if any) who speak out against those who should have faced imprisonment and retribution. In the case of Josh Homme, the likes of Celebrity Gogglebox and BBC Radio 6 Music need to ask themselves some questions. Why allow someone who has this documented history of abuse air and screen time?! The optics are that they either choose to ignore what has come before, or they feel like men of his popularity and status should slide. More than that, you wonder whether they are concerned about the women who have been affected and traumatised.

Josh Homme is not the only culpable male, though he is a prime example of how needed a new #MeToo movement is. For artists like Shania Twain, they really do need to answer criticism and backlash when they record and perform with people like Homme. From the outside, you see these men slide and face very little in the way of torment – some half-assed apologies or regret is simply not good enough! –, and other feel they can slide. That they can commit abuses and violence and get away with it. There is this moment in music where there needs to be protest and unify to ensure that these men are not allowed to thrive and not face any substantial punishment. I did not even really consider how appalling and unjust it is until I read the article. Is it futile holding out hope that those in power in music will do something?! That radio and T.V. stations blacklist and ban those who are accused or abuse and violence?! At the moment, if men have enough power and popularity behind them, they are allowed leniency. This undeserved tolerance and rehabilitation will continue to go on and on. I do think that there needs to action. The issue extends beyond male musicians. At major festivals, there are scores of sexual harassment and assault cases that have an appalling conviction rate. Women in music and D.J.s discussing harassment and abuse. There calls for stronger protections to tackle misogyny in music. Has anything improved or changed in reality?! Such is the width and depth of abuse, misogyny and sexism across music, what is to be done?! You think about the women who are impacted and how they feel. Those who see these high-profile artists spotlighted and treated as though nothing has happened. The anger and disgust they must feel! That Laura Snapes article writes how men with a “chequered history” – we need to call it ‘abuse’ and ‘criminal’, as words like ‘troubled’, ‘controversial’ and ‘chequered’ seem very pale and semi-forgiving – keep their adoring fanbase. How, “Almost a decade post-#MeToo, audiences no longer seem to care”. It is harrowing, angering and enraging that this happens! But if fans and radio stations and the industry seem not to care, what hope is there?! They will continue to celebrate and play these artists. Queens of the Stone Age’s recent single, Easy Street, is, according to Josh Homme, “about understanding the imperfection of your life. The song, like your life, is in the mistakes. Its imperfections are unbeatable”. He seems almost to be making light of allegations against him and the fact that his ‘imperfections’ have caused huge damage. Far from facing backlash and any damage to their careers and earnings, artists like Chris Brown and Josh Homme continue to stroll…

DOWN easy street.

FEATURE: Can I Have It All Now? Kate Bush’s Suspended in Gaffa at Forty-Four

FEATURE:

 

 

Can I Have It All Now?

Kate Bush’s Suspended in Gaffa at Forty-Four

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I do like to mark…

album and single anniversaries each year when it comes to Kate Bush. Despite the fact that I have written about this song before and am going to repeat myself, I did want to discuss Suspended in Gaffa, as it turns forty-four on 2nd November. Whilst the inferior There Goes a Tenner was released in the U.K, Suspended in Gaffa was released in Australia and Europe. It doesn’t happen now, as we don’t have physical singles, but you would get artists who released different singles in different territories. The Dreaming did not have much in the way of ready-made singles. Kate Bush’s 1982 album was a commercial success, though not as high-selling as her earlier work. Suspended in Gaffa is a terrific single and one of Kate Bush’s best songs. It did not really do much when it was released. There are various reasons to love this song. The musicians on it. Including her brother Paddy on mandolin and strings and her then-boyfriend Del Palmer on bass, it is this glorious song whose video features a cameo from Hannah Bush. Kate’s beloved mother, I will come to articles around this song. There is a lot to discuss with Suspended in Gaffa. The Dreaming is full of gems, but I especially love Suspended in Gaffa. In terms of its lyrics and what the song is about. There are interviews where Kate Bush talked about the inspiration behind Suspended in Gaffa:

“‘Suspended In Gaffa’ is, I suppose, similar in some ways to ‘Sat In Your Lap’ – the idea of someone seeking something, wanting something. I was brought up as a Roman Catholic and had the imagery of purgatory and of the idea that when you were taken there that you would be given a glimpse of God and then you wouldn’t see him again until you were let into heaven. And we were told that in Hell it was even worse because you got to see God but then you knew that you would never see him again. And it’s sorta using that as the parallel. And the idea of seeing something incredibly beautiful, having a religious experience as such, but not being able to get back there. And it was playing musically with the idea of the verses being sorta real time and someone happily jumping through life [Makes happy motion with head] and then you hit the chorus and it like everything sorta goes into slow mo and they’re reaching [Makes slow reaching motion with arm] for that thing that they want and they can’t get there. [Laughs]

Interview for MTV, November 1985”.

Kate Bush Encyclopedia also contains a section about the video. This is something I have included before, but it is really great to read what Bush said about it and working with her mother. How charming and loved she was on the set:

“The video did remain uncomplicated – just a few effects and just one extra: but a very special. one. There is one section where a child’s voice says, ‘Mother, where are the angels? I’m scared of the changes.’ And there was only one person that could be addressed to – my mother. When I asked her to appear in the section, contrary to my concern about her nerves, she was more than obliging and said, ‘Yes’. She was definitely the star of the day, and waited patiently hour after hour as we slowly moved through the bulk of the shooting to eventually reach her debut. I was amazed at her grace and stamina: as all of us began to wane and wilt, my mother continued to blossom and glow, and her only worries were getting back home in time to get dinner and hoping she would not succumb to an attack of giggles during the vital moments of being on screen. She needn’t have worried, for she is a natural professional, a real star and my favourite mum”.

The video is one of the best from Kate Bush. Brian Wiseman directed it. The singles from The Dreaming had these videos that were quite cinematic. Compared to her very earliest videos, there was this growing ambition. Or the videos were becoming more cinematic in my view. Hounds of Love (1985) took another step. The videos from that album are iconic. I do want to get to a couple of articles about Suspended in Gaffa. I think this is a hidden gem. Even so, it has been covered quite a bit, though I have never heard it on the radio. Or not for a long time.

Before getting to a Dreams of Orgonon, there is a recent article from Paste that ranked the best one-hundred songs of the 1980s. Suspended in Gaffa came tenth. This was the highest-ranking track from Bush in that list. People might think Hounds of Love, Cloudbusting, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), Babooshka or The Sensual World would come higher, though it is this pearl from The Dreaming that got the honours:

“No other album captures the ambition to “have it all”—namely as a woman artist—in all its grotesque glory like Kate Bush’s The Dreaming does, as it remains not only a witches’ brew of sweat, blood and the desire to consume any oncoming obstacle whole, but an unfiltered testament to the wrath of her artistic vision. Even in a decade containing most of her career highlights, Bush would never swing quite this big again, something she clearly already knew while writing the record’s rickety waltz, “Suspended in Gaffa.” Even while shrouded in biblical metaphor, Bush’s line of questioning is clear: Is it possible to reach new creative heights in an industry that often casts people like her aside? Is it possible to see god (of any strain) again once you’ve glimpsed him already? Is it possible to “have it all”—create challenging work, be taken seriously, and escape with your sanity to tell the tale? By this point in her story, Bush had already broken records and made history as a woman “having it all” on the charts, but “Suspended in Gaffa” marks another milestone of Kate Bush discovering what she was meant to sound like: brilliant, unwieldy, and never replicated”.

Even if Suspended in Gaffa is a bit of an underrated track, there have been lists and polls where it has been placed quite high. MOJO published an article in July ranking Bush’s fifty-best songs. At twelve is Suspended in Gaffa: “Bush once suggested Suspended In Gaffa was a hangover from her Roman Catholic upbringing. The wonky time signature, oom-pah-pah piano intro and breathlessly delivered lyrics (“Can I have it all?”) complement the idea that it’s about briefly glimpsing the divine. Yet it also evokes that dreamlike state where you can only move in infuriating slow motion and everything is tantalisingly out of reach”. In 2024, Autostraddle published a fascinating article about Kate Bush and her music. This is what they said about a song I am keen for people to investigate: “Suspended in Gaffa” similarly puts piano and percussion in the forefront together with an uptempo buoyancy that makes the track feel almost hypnotic. Bush’s vocals stress certain syllables of the words throughout to connect the composition with the spiritual conundrum the speaker is having in the lyrics. The cinematic lyrics describe the feeling of wanting something desperately but not being able to reach it without putting in the work it takes to get it. There’s a raised-in-Catholic-household angst permeating the song that feels especially cathartic for me”.

I am ending with an article I have sourced before. Dreams of Orgonon wrote such insightful and detailed articles about Kate Bush’s songs, and this article about Suspended in Gaffa is tremendous. I did want to source a bit of it, as I feel a lot of people are not aware of this song or have not heard The Dreaming. Ahead of its forty-fourth anniversary, I was keen to spotlight one of her greatest moments. And that incredible video where she got to embrace her mum:

“Public response was ambiguous. In the years since its release, The Dreaming has gained a reputation as Bush’s most underrated album. This is a slight exaggeration, if a basically understandable one. The Dreaming peaked at #3 in the UK, but it domestically sold a relative paucity of 60,000 units (to compare, Never for Ever sold 100,000 UK units, and even Lionheart hit 300,000). It wasn’t close to a commercial failure by any means, but it was decidedly less popular than Bush’s prior work. This can be explained by a number of factors, from the obvious aesthetic ones (The Dreaming’s maximalism was viewed by some as a bridge too far for Bush), to timing (“Sat In Your Lap” predated the album’s release by over a year), and EMI’s timid promotional campaign. Reviews were mixed, if better than they’re sometimes declared in retrospect. The indelibly truculent Robert Christgau offered The Dreaming a conditionally approbatory review (“the most impressive Fripp/Gabriel-style art-rock album of the postpunk [sic] refulgence makes lines like ‘I love life’ and ‘some say knowledge is something that you never have’ say something”). Melody Maker’s Colin Irwin effused about Bush’s “fearsome twisted voice” for “put[ting] the fear of God in me,” while future Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant observed Bush’s efforts to “become less commercial.” Record Mirror’s Daniella Soave curtly acknowledged Bush’s ambitions while saying “until I’ve heard it another 50 times I haven’t a clue.” What stands out in the majority of reviews is their areas of accord: everyone agreed that The Dreaming was defined by multiplicity, weirdness, a distinct non-commercialism, and a willingness to try everything. Even if listeners couldn’t agree on whether The Dreaming worked, everyone had a grasp on what it was.

This degree of unified disagreement speaks volumes on the nature of The Dreaming. For a pointedly (and willfully) unkempt LP, its nucleus of formal ambition and complex emotional catharsis is remarkably consistent. The album boils down to an exploration of fairly close-knit concepts: the liberatory effects of madness in women, the untethering of the subconscious, the symbiosis of body and mind, and the aching voice of repressed people. Its ethos is a cathartic one, about freeing one’s emotions from self-imposed bondage. The resulting emotions can be scary, but The Dreaming treats that as neither positive nor negative, merely a fact of having emotions.

One perspective that appears throughout The Dreaming is that of childhood and play — it treats the untethering of the subconscious as revealing a small, confused child. From one perspective of maturity, people can be viewed as complex adult emotions and cynicism burying a repressed inner child. “Suspended in Gaffa” certainly lends itself to this reading. Panto-like in its musical qualities (and certainly in its music video, which we’ll get back to shortly), it’s a waltz in C major, playful and initially parsimonious. Par for the course in The Dreaming, the verse’s chord progressions follow the rhythm in shape, particularly with its descending patterns of two major chords followed by minor chords (V-IV-ii, then V-IV-vi-iii), with a result of nearly staccato chipperness and a less cheerful supertonic or submediant. Its buoyancy is something of a ploy though — Bush’s vocal, while acrobatic in its emphatic lunges towards certain syllables (“OUT/in the GARden/there’s HALF of a HEAVen”), maintains a certain reservation often running lyrics together (“Whenever I’ve sung this song I’ve hoped that my breath would hold out for the first few phrases, as there is no gap to breathe in,” Bush wrote later), as Bush sings primarily from the back of her throat with results that sound like she’s gulping the lyrics, likely a frustrating move to listeners with less patience for Bush’s sometimes unintelligible lyrics. “FEET Of MUD” and “IT ALL GOES SLO-MO” are certainly B.V.s for the ages.

Yet at the core of this excess, there’s a simplicity to “Suspended in Gaffa.” It has the same expansive and consumptive obsessions as its sister songs — youthful aporia, an obsession with an unreachable god, a desire to unite with the subconscious. Yet it filters this through a childlike, somewhat Carrollian filter, with a surfeit of internal rhymes, abstract nouns, and ambiguous pronouns like “out in the garden/there’s half of a heaven/and we’re only bluffing,” “I try to get nearer/but as it gets clearer/there’s something appears in the way,” “I pull out the plank and say/thankee for yanking me back/to the fact that there’s always something to distract.”

The lyric is an endless series of prevarications, often relating to knowledge, or the unattainability of it (see “Sat in Your Lap”). The refrain’s “not till I’m ready for you,” “can I have it all now?/we can’t have it all,” “but they’ve told us/unless we can prove that we’re doing it/we can’t have it all” speak to an “all or nothing” approach, not identifying exactly what’s at stake so much as its urgency. Desire gets codified as an end in itself, often for a god (“I caught a glimpse of a god/all shining and bright”) — “until I’m ready for you” gives away the game (constructive spiritual union with a deity is impossible if one is unready to consent). “The idea of the song is that of being given a glimpse of ‘God’ — something that we dearly want — but being told that unless we work for it, we will never see it again, and even then, we might not be worthy of it,” Bush explained to her fan club. Tapping into the subconscious is a difficulty — when one has a glimpse of something wondrous, there’s a desperation to retrieve the feelings associated with it. “Everything or nothing” can be a neurodivergent impulse, but it’s also how a taste of the sublime works.

The nature of aporia in “Suspended in Gaffa” is cinematic. There’s the title, obviously, referring to the line “am I suspended in gaffa?,” itself a reference to gaffer (or “gaffa”) tape, which is commonly used in film and stage productions. The laboriousness of cinema is inferred a few times (“it all goes slo-mo”), as reflections and manipulation, staples of cinema, get pulled into the mix. Bush even goes quasi-Lacanian at one point; nudging herself with “that girl in the mirror/between you and me/she don’t stand a chance of getting anywhere at all,” a moment of amusing self-deprecation”.

I will end here. A divine moment from the wonderful Kate Bush, Suspended in Gaffa is a song that I will always admire. It has got a bit of acclaim in years since it release, though not as much as it deserves. It is the most-streamed song on The Dreaming, so there is awareness of it. Its video viewed two million times on YouTube. The lyrics are incredible. This is my favourite section: “With a camel/Who's trying to get through it/Am I doing it?/Can I have it all now?/I pull out the plank and say/"Thank you for yanking me back to the fact that there's always something to distract...". Forty-four years after it was released in a single, Suspended in Gaffa is one of the greatest things…

KATE Bush has recorded.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: HAIM

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

PHOTO CREDIT: Robbie Lawrence for The New Yorker

HAIM

__________

THIS time out…

for The Great American Songbook, I am focusing on a tremendous Californian trio who I am a big fan of. HAIM are sisters Este, Danielle and Alana Haim. Their debut album, Days Are Gone, came out in 2013. I think they are really underrated. Their albums have won acclaimed, though not quite as much positivity as they warrant. I am going to finish this feature with a twenty-song mix featuring their best tracks. Before getting to that mixtape, I am bringing in some biography from AllMusic:

“As HAIM, Este, Danielle, and Alana Haim let the influences of 1970s rock, '80s synth pop, and R&B from the '90s flow onward through their music like Ventura Boulevard winding through their hometown of Los Angeles. The sisters were veteran multi-instrumentalists when they released their certified gold 2013 debut album, Days Are Gone, which featured the platinum-selling single "The Wire." That polish -- and their knack for hooks -- led to critical acclaim and their first Grammy nomination. HAIM leaned into harmony-laden, sophisticated pop on 2017's gold-certified Something to Tell You and emphasized their relatable songwriting on 2020's widely acclaimed Women in Music Pt. III, which made them the first all-female rock group nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy Award. On 2025's I Quit, the wit, vulnerability, and musical prowess that took HAIM to the upper reaches of the charts and electrified audiences were distinctive as ever.

Este, Danielle, and Alana Haim were born and raised in California's San Fernando Valley. Their parents were musical (their dad, Moti, played drums; their mother, Donna, sang) and encouraged the sisters to play instruments at an early age. While the sisters were still kids, the family formed the band Rockinhaim, which played sets of classic rock covers at charity shows. In 2005, Este and Danielle became members of the pop group the Valli Girls, whose songs appeared on the soundtracks to the film The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and the 2005 Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards.

The three sisters formed HAIM in 2007, with Danielle on guitar and lead vocals, Este on guitar and bass, and Alana on guitar and keyboard. Though they played occasional gigs, the band took a back seat to their other interests. Este completed her degree in Ethnomusicology at UCLA in two years instead of the usual five. Meanwhile, Danielle Haim became a touring musician after being discovered at a Laurel Canyon jam session by Jenny Lewis. She first joined Lewis' band, then played guitar and percussion for the Strokes' Julian Casablancas, and was a member of CeeLo Green's backing band for a brief stint.

Touring so much made Danielle miss playing music with her sisters, and HAIM became their main focus in 2012. The trio honed a sound inspired by the music they grew up with -- Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, Santana, Motown -- as well as contemporary R&B. In February, they released the EP Forever as a free download on their website. After playing South by Southwest, they landed a deal with Polydor in the U.K. and a management deal with Jay-Z's Roc Nation later in the year. Tours of the U.K. and Ireland with Mumford & Sons and Florence + the Machine, as well as the single "Don't Save Me," raised HAIM's profile, and at the end of 2012 they became the first female group to win the influential BBC Sound of 2013 award.

Early in 2013, Danielle Haim contributed to Major Lazer's album Free the Universe, while the entire band appeared on Kid Cudi's album Indicud. During this time, HAIM worked on their debut long-player with producers Ariel Rechtshaid and James Ford, adding more drum machines and synths to their sound for a polished, poppy feel. Following sold-out headlining concerts and a festival appearance on Glastonbury's main stage, their debut album, Days Are Gone, arrived in September 2013. The record topped the charts in the U.K., reached number six on the Billboard 200 Albums chart, and spawned the hit singles "The Wire" and "Forever." In the wake of its release, HAIM's widespread acclaim included a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist.

Capitalizing on Days Are Gone's success, HAIM spent the better part of two years touring on their own and in support of Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and Florence + the Machine. They also collaborated with Stevie Nicks on a version of Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon"; sang on Calvin Harris' fourth album, Motion; and contributed to The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 and The Divergent Series: Insurgent soundtracks. HAIM returned in July 2017 with Something to Tell You, which featured production by Rechtshaid, Dev Hynes, and Rostam, and boasted a smoother sound than their debut. The LP peaked at number two on the U.K. Albums Chart and hit number seven on the Billboard 200, while the single "Want You Back" reached number ten on Billboard's Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. A deluxe version of the album appeared in December 2017. As with Days Are Gone, HAIM toured extensively in support of Something to Tell You, sharing the stage with artists ranging from Ringo Starr to Robyn and playing at 2018's Coachella festival. Along with their busy tour schedule, in 2018 they were featured on Twin Shadow's single "Saturdays" and Dirty Projectors' "That's a Lifestyle."

HAIM started 2019 with a pair of collaborations. Danielle Haim contributed vocals to several tracks on Vampire Weekend's fourth album, Father of the Bride, which was released that May. That month, the band appeared in the Lonely Island's Netflix special The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience alongside Maya Rudolph on the track "IHOP Parking Lot." Later that year, HAIM released several singles, including October's "Now I'm in It," which peaked at number nine on Billboard's Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. In June 2020, HAIM issued Women in Music Pt. III, an album that confronted issues the sisters were dealing with (the death of Alana's best friend, Este's Type 1 diabetes, Danielle's post-tour depression, and her partner Rechtshaid's cancer diagnosis). Co-produced by Danielle Haim, Rechtshaid, and Rostam, the album balanced its heavy themes with lighter sounds that borrowed from styles ranging from U.K. garage to classic rock. Along with snagging a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year at the 63rd Grammy Awards (making them the first all-female rock band to do so) and a nomination for "The Steps" for Best Rock Performance, Women in Music Pt. III topped the U.K. Albums Chart and reached number 13 on the U.S. 200 Albums Chart. HAIM also appeared on Taylor Swift's album Evermore.

In 2021, Alana Haim made her film debut, starring in Paul Thomas Anderson's Licorice Pizza; Este and Danielle played smaller roles in the film. That year, HAIM contributed "Cherry Flavored Stomach Ache" to the soundtrack for the British romantic drama The Last Letter from Your Lover and issued a remix of "Gasoline" that featured Swift. In turn, the band appeared in the video for Swift's Midnights single "Bejeweled" and performed on several dates of her 2023 Eras tour. While working on their fourth album, HAIM issued the single "Home" as part of the soundtrack to the movie Barbie in July. A few months later, the trio commemorated the tenth anniversary of Days Are Gone with a deluxe edition of the album bundled with demos and remixes. In March 2025, HAIM delivered "Relationships," the hip-hop-tinged, Rostam-produced lead single from their fourth album. Arriving that June, I Quit offered post-breakup soul-searching that touched on disco, shoegaze, and country as well as the band's genre-defying signature sound. Along with Rostam, HAIM's collaborators included Tobias Jesso, Jr., Justin Vernon, David Fridmann, and Cass McCombs”.

I really love HAIM. They are a tremendous trio who I hope we get many more albums from. Their most recent, last year’s i quit, is incredible. Maybe you are unfamiliar with them. I hope this mixtape draws you to their music. I have been following them since their debut album, and I have loved everything they have put out. The wonderful HAIM are incredible songwriters. This stunning trio are…

SIMPLY brilliant.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Sofie Royer

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Jasmin Baumgartner

Sofie Royer

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I did want to spend some time…

with the brilliant Sofie Royer. She is a Californian-born, Austrian-Iranian multi-instrumentalist and producer who I am new to. Her new album, before/after, came out on 4th September. There were some new interviews published around that release which I want to get to. I am starting out with DORK and their conversation. This interview actually is from June:

“A conservatory-trained violinist who grew up in Vienna, she later moved to California, helped build Boiler Room's LA presence and worked at Stones Throw before launching a solo career that has steadily developed across 2020's 'Cult Survivor', 2022's 'Harlequin' and 2024's 'Young-Girl Forever'. Along the way, she's built a catalogue that pulls from high and low culture in equal measure, pairing sharp observations with references to everyone from Rainer Werner Fassbinder to Falco.

That background helps explain why Royer is difficult to pin down. On new album 'before/after', due in September, she turns her attention inward, examining the patterns, contradictions and recurring cycles that shape her own life. It's a record concerned with time, identity and the habit of measuring ourselves against imagined versions of who we once were and who we might become.

"I was in a little bit of a limbo last year," she says of the period that informed the record. "I was all over the place geographically (my year began with shooting a movie on the Czech border) before being in Los Angeles and then New York for the better part of the year when I wasn't touring. Perhaps that's evident on the record”.

Royer remains sceptical of how cultural industries handle artists who resist easy categorisation. "I think regardless of category, it has to be marketable, the art has to easily provide multiples," she says. "I just crave something unimaginable sometimes."

The refusal to fit neatly into a box has coincided with increasing recognition. Royer has opened for artists including Lana Del Rey and Belle & Sebastian and worked with producers whose credits include Charli xcx, Sabrina Carpenter, SZA and BLACKPINK. Yet she doesn't see external milestones as a reliable source of confidence.

"I'm happy and grateful about all the opportunities I've had, and they've been really exciting," she says. "This February, when playing shows back to back opening for Belle & Sebastian, who'd been one of those bands that I've listened to for so long since I was a pre-teen – that's always thrilling!"

Still, she adds, "real security in identity (whether as an artist or otherwise) fluctuates and remains removed from what can be identified as a milestone or whatever. There's confidence in knowing oneself that allows you to seize opportunities with certainty and not anxiety. There are far more annoying internal factors that end up making me question my existence/identity".

I am moving to The Line of Best Fit and their interview from this month. If you have not heard before/after, then do go and listen. The new single from the album, Actress, is fantastic. The Line of Best Fit note how Sofie Royer “confronts the all-too-familiar ways we can become our own biggest obstacle; while finding humour in the endless pursuit of artistic success”:

“Rather than adapting its characters, Royer draws on the theatrics around performing and the ways it can shift identity. Her mysterious constructed character, named Angel Jane in the song, commands the microphone before something begins to feel off: the faces staring back are suddenly unfamiliar and, soon, she’s stranded in the spotlight, looking to the “stage cues” to tell her what she’s meant to be. The accompanying video extends that fascination with inhabiting different roles. Inspired by a photograph Jim Jarmusch posted of an abandoned box of shoes, it sees Royer trying on different pairs before taking the stage in angel wings. Trying on somebody else’s shoes becomes a literal expression of the different roles we inhabit.

For Royer, that visual extension is inseparable from the fun of making records. “In an ideal world, every single song would just have a music video, but there’s no money for that,” she laughs. Visuals, she says, offer “a really fun and special way to be able to visually communicate what your songs are about, which I think is sometimes easier than talking about it.” When I bring up her tongue-in-cheek description of being caught between pop, indie and the art world, as referenced in “Sold out the jazz club” she quickly zooms outward from her own career. “We live in postmodernity,” she argues. “Everyone’s cross-referencing, everyone has this wealth of references to draw upon,” she adds, before wondering aloud what innovation even looks like under those circumstances.

An example she cites is a track by Shoreline Mafia’s Phoenix Flexin, “Rubberz,” which had recently caught her attention. Delving into ’80s disco-style with a voice and sound that did not resemble Flexin’s previous hip hop sound, prompted online speculation about generative AI, which the artist vehemently denied, and, of course, generated further discourse about artists using AI in this way to boost publicity for their tracks. Royer doesn’t express much interest in litigating whether the song actually used AI, but rather what the conversation says about originality. It leaves Royer deliberately unresolved: “I get nervous because I’m hesitant to say, ‘Oh, there’s absolutely no innovation right now, and everything’s just post-postmodern,’ because it makes me sound jaded and cynical, when I’m actually not,” she says.

Royer doesn’t shy away from the ways she is similarly suspicious of easy answers on before/after. Even recognising our tendency to measure the present against what comes before or after doesn’t necessarily release us from it. “It’s like, ‘Hey, great. Like, I realise that I’m not in the moment, but what now?’” Royer says. “The whole way that society operates and is structured is set up to be anticipatory. We’re always in anticipation of the next day.” Contentment, she suggests, is hardly profitable: “If everybody’s content and happy and able to exist on very maybe simpler terms, capitalism wouldn’t really work”.

The final interview I am bringing in is from The Guardian. Sofie Royer is a truly unique artist. Someone who you cannot compare with anyone else out there. The Guardian state, in their headline/sub-header how “writing some of today’s wittiest music – though she’s ‘too pop for the art world, too indie-darling for the mainstream’”. On 17th September, Sofie Royer plays London’s Rough Trade East:

“Her debut album, Cult Survivor, was released in 2020, but performing it live “was like reopening an old wound”, so she started broadening her writing. She dressed up as a pierrot character for 2022’s Harlequin, “a different persona to help me get over the fear of being perceived as a singer on stage, maybe”, and based 2024’s Young-Girl Forever on a French philosophical tract about culture’s obsession with young women. “The beauty of age is that you care less and less about it. You couldn’t pay me to go back to my 20s.” She reconsiders. “I mean, you could pay me, because I’m self-employed, so I’m down for money.”

She is much admired by her peers, with Lana Del Rey, Air and LCD Soundsystem all getting her to support them on tour, but she’s not headlining the same venues. She addresses that relative lack of financial success and fame uproariously on the new album. “Always a nominee, never a winner / The longer I keep this up the less I can afford dinner,” she sings on Sold Out the Jazz Club, just one of many references across the album to how Royer is, as that song’s chorus has it, “too pop for the art world, too indie-darling for the mainstream”.

“Very few professions are as measured in metrics as people working in the arts,” she says, “specifically music, and these metrics are publicly available” – Spotify listeners, tickets sold. “And not only that, then you’re being interviewed: ‘Where do you see yourself in five years? What does success mean to you?’ That’s what I wanted to perhaps release when it came to these songs.”

She has also released herself from therapy, singing “I spent five years on that couch, and I’m not ever going back again” on another new song, C’est la D. “I was actually in therapy for longer than five years, but it just sounded so cool to sing five instead of seven,” she deadpans.

She says she certainly needed therapy to begin with, but when she reached the cap to her free hours from the Austrian state, her therapist said she could continue, but he didn’t think she needed it any more. She agreed with him: “We as humans have a certain semblance of resilience, but there’s a lot of financial value placed in today’s market of psychoanalysis. In a lot of other cultures, that maybe aren’t as socialist as the one I currently enjoy living in, there’s more value in keeping somebody unhappy and dependent on therapy for the rest of their life.”

I cannot any reviews for before/after. It is a brilliant album from an artist that you should know about. I am already a fan of her and her work. She is so utterly fascinating. In terms of her background and sound. I am really interested to see where she goes next. Go and follow Sofie Royer. A wonderful artist who I think we are going to hear about for years to come, it has been great finding out more about her. She is definitely one of the finest artists out there. Someone who you…

NEED to know.

___________

Follow Sofie Royer

Official:

https://sofie.info/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/sofieroyer

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@sofieroyer

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@sofieroyer

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2P2BXSc0Wxpf10Fpno38rl?si=c9thfwa6SjG8DQmAIM4EyQ

FEATURE: Love Is a Losing Game: Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black at Twenty

FEATURE:

 

 

Love Is a Losing Game

Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black at Twenty

__________

IT is rather unfortunate…

IN THIS PHOTO: Amy Winehouse in 2006/PHOTO CREDIT: Broomberg & Chanarin

that one of the greatest albums of the 2000s has a lead single that seems inappropriate or tragic, given the artist’s premature death. Amy Winehouse’s Rehab was released on 23rd October, 2006. I will not mark that song, as I feel it is somewhat awkward doing so. Winehouse died at the age of twenty-seven in 2011 of alcohol poisoning. It was one of the moist heart-aching losses in music history. However, her second and final studio album, Back to Black, turns twenty on 27th October. It is being reissued for its anniversary. Rolling Stone UK provide details of a release all Amy Winehouse fans will want to get:

“The 20th anniversary of Amy Winehouse‘s seminal second album Back to Black will be celebrated with a deluxe reissue.

The late singer’s career-defining second album arrived on October 27, 2006 and went on to sell over 25 million copies globally, as well as netting Winehouse five Grammy Awards including Record of the Year and Song of the Year.

To mark that milestone, the album will now be reissued in a series of formats which will take in unreleased demos, rare B-Sides and a live recording of Winehouse’s 2007 show at Amsterdam’s Paradiso venue. 

Also included in the new formats is previously unseen photos by the record’s original photographers Alex Lake and Mischa Richter, as well as as well as new liner notes from producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi.

It will be released in a special 3LP clear vinyl and multiple limited-edition 1LP variations, including a Chalkboard Marble colour vinyl. There will also be a webstore-exclusive 1LP Zoetrope vinyl featuring moving footage of Winehouse.

The reissue will be released on October 27, and is available to pre-order here.

Check out the tracklisting in full below.

Tracklist: 3LP
LP1 – Side 1: Back to Black
1 ‘Rehab’
2 ‘You Know I’m No Good’
3 ‘Me & Mr Jones’
4 ‘Just Friends’
5 ‘Back to Black’
6 ‘Love Is a Losing Game’

LP1 – Side 2
1 ‘Tears Dry on Their Own’
2 ‘Wake Up Alone’
3 ‘Some Unholy War’
4 ‘He Can Only Hold Her’
5 ‘Addicted’

LP2 – Side 3–B-Sides & Demos
1 ‘Valerie’ (Live at BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge)
2 ‘Monkey Man’
3 ‘Hey Little Rich Girl’
4 ‘You’re Wondering Now’
5 ‘Do Me Good’
6 ‘Close to the Front’

LP2 – Side 4
1 ‘I’m No Good’ (‘You Know I’m No Good ‘- Original Demo)
2 ‘Fuckery’ (‘Me & Mr Jones’ –Original Demo)
3 ‘I’ve Been Drinkin’’ (‘Just Friends’ –Alternative Version)
4 ‘Back to Black’ (Original Demo)
5 ‘Love Is a Losing Game’ (Original Demo)
6 ‘Tears Dry’ (Alternative Demo)

LP3 – Side 5 – Live From Paradiso Amsterdam / February 8th, 2007
1 ‘Addicted’
2 ‘Just Friends’
3 ‘Tears Dry on Their Own’
4 ‘He Can Only Hold Her / Doo Wop (That Thing)’
5 ‘Wake Up Alone’
6 ‘Back to Black’

LP3 – Side 6
1 ‘You Know I’m No Good’
2 ‘Me & Mr Jones’
3 ‘Rehab’
4 ‘Love Is a Losing Game’
5 ‘Valerie’

Tracklist: 3CD, Digital

Disc 1– Back to Black
1 ‘Rehab’
2 ‘You Know I’m No Good’
3 ‘Me & Mr Jones’
4 ‘Just Friends’
5 ‘Back to Black’
6 ‘Love Is a Losing Game’
7 ‘Tears Dry On Their Own’
8 ‘Wake Up Alone’
9 ‘Some Unholy War’
10 ‘He Can Only Hold Her’
11 ‘Addicted

Disc 2–B Sides, Bonus Tracks & Demos
1 ‘Valerie’ (Live at BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge)
2 ‘Cupid’
3 ‘Monkey Man’
4 ‘Hey Little Rich Girl’
5 ‘You’re Wondering Now’
6 ‘To Know Him Is to Love Him’
7 ‘You Know I’m No Good’ (feat. Ghostface Killah)
8 ‘Do Me Good’
9 ‘Close to the Front’
10 ‘Rehab’ (Demo Version)
11 ‘I’m No Good’ (‘You Know I’m No Good’ – Original Demo)
12 ‘Fuckery’ (‘Me & Mr Jones’ –Original Demo)
13 ‘I’ve Been Drinkin’’ (‘Just Friends’ –Alternative Version)
14 ‘Back to Black’ (Original Demo)
15 ‘Love Is a Losing Game’ (Original Demo)
12 ‘Tears Dry’ (Alternative Demo)
17 ‘Some Unholy War’ (Down Tempo)

Disc 3 –Live From Paradiso Amsterdam / February 8th, 2007
1 ‘Addicted’
2 ‘Just Friends’
3 ‘Tears Dry On Their Own’
4 Cherry’
5 ‘Fuck Me Pumps’
6 ‘He Can Only Hold Her / Doo Wop (That Thing)’
7 ‘I Heard Love Is Blind’
8 ‘Wake Up Alone’
9 ‘Back To Black’
10 ‘You Know I’m No Good’
11 ‘Me & Mr Jones’
12 ‘Rehab’
13 ‘Love Is A Losing Game’
14 ‘Valerie’

Tracklist: 1LP Colour / 1LP Zoetrope
Side 1
1 ‘Rehab’
2 ‘You Know I’m No Good’
3 ‘Me & Mr Jones’
4 ‘Just Friends’
5 ‘Back To Black’
6 ‘Love Is A Losing Game’

Side 2
1 ‘Tears Dry On Their Own’
2 ‘Wake Up Alone’
3 ‘Some Unholy War’
4 ‘He Can Only Hold Her’
5 ‘Addicted’

Tracklist: 1CD Amazon Exclusive
1 ‘Rehab’
2 ‘You Know I’m No Good’
3 ‘Me & Mr Jones’
4 ‘Just Friends’
5 ‘Back to Black’
6 ‘Love Is a Losing Game’
7 ‘Tears Dry On Their Own’
8 ‘Wake Up Alone’
9 ‘Some Unholy War’
10 ‘He Can Only Hold Her’
11 ‘Addicted’”.

There are a couple of interviews from 2006 with Amy Winehouse I want to bring in before getting to features and reviews. After the minor success of her 2003 debut album, Frank, Back to Black was this multi-award-winning masterpiece. It is gut-wrenching to think what she could have achieved on her third album without press harassment and if she was able to overcome her addictions. It is almost unavoidable bringing ion interview achieve without mention of alcohol. The Irish Times interviewed Winehouse late in 2006. I did want to highlight this interview, as it was published after the release of Back to Black. However, its opening paragraph observes how Winehouse walked into a bar for the interview and was not sober. I did not want to include that section, as it seems insensitive:

“Winehouse has kept the drama for her record. Back to Black is a belter, an album more bewitched, bothered and bewildered than pop ever gets to be these days. Split right down the middle with heartbreakers and soul shakers, it has Winehouse swapping the jazz lounge she frequented for her Frank debut for a basement where '50s and '60s girl groups hang out comparing their men and their hair-dos.

The new company suits Amy. Once you hear her magnificent defiance on the brassy and bold Rehab ("they tried to make me go to rehab," she sneers. "I said no, no, no"), you'll be hooked. As confessional, troubled, humorous and honest as songs get about a woman falling in and out of love with men, drink, weed and the gym, Back to Black is rousing and brave on every level. It's the sassiest, sharpest Motown album imaginable.

Winehouse talks fondly of the girl groups who inspired her, who provided a soundtrack for her musings, when she began writing songs for the new record. "The Shangri-Las, very dramatic and atmospheric. The Ronettes, very stylish. The Shirelles, they had coolness and attitude, they had vulnerability."

Vulnerability

Winehouse became fascinated with how those singers projected and protected their vulnerability. After all, some of them had desperate, depressing back-stories but were cooing like angels. "I loved those heartbreak songs they used to do, especially the way the girls sounded so heavenly. Yet they were also singing about the kind of heartbreak you would find at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey. They knew all about sorrow."

When it came to Back to Black, Winehouse was more than ready to be heartbroken. While Frank had been a big old hit (250,000 sales, glowing critical reviews, an Ivor Novello award and a Mercury Music Prize nomination), Winehouse's personal demons were having a field day at her expense. Her relationship at the time was falling apart, leaving her to find solace in weed and booze. Something had to go. Scratch that; lots of things had to go.

"I don't smoke weed anymore so I'm not so defensive as I was back then," she says. "I'm not as insecure as I was either. I go to the gym, I run loads and I'm much healthier than I was.

"When I did my first album, I was smoking too much weed. I mean, I was really proud of that album at the time and I still think the songs are up to scratch. But you have to remember I had never made an album before. When you have a producer with you who is far more experienced, you do tend to become a bit 'yeah, that's cool' in the studio and go with the flow. And when you're smoking weed, you just don't care about anything except who has the next joint."

Relationship change

Another change has been in the relationship with her record label. After Frank was released in 2004, she slammed what she saw as their inefficiencies. "The marketing was fucked, the promotion was terrible, everything was a shambles," she railed in one memorable interview at the time.

Now? "It was my first album and I didn't know what I was doing so I was learning as I went along. I don't think the label had a clue what to do with it either, so it was a learning curve for them as well - and they had to deal with me mouthing off all over the place! This time, I know what is going on so I'm better prepared. And the label know how to deal with me as well."

The next heave-ho was her management. When Winehouse first emerged, all queries were directed to pop svengali Simon Fuller.

"It was never right," is how the singer now considers this dalliance with the man behind The Spice Girls and Pop Idol. "My manager on paper was not the person doing the day-to-day stuff. He was a lovely fellow but he didn't care about music. He was definitely one of those people who left their work in the office. I needed someone else, I needed someone who really cared."

More karma

You also no longer find Winehouse being so lippy to her fellow pop stars. This means less entertaining quotes for the masses (Katie Melua was once summed up as someone "singing shit songs that her manager writes for her"). But Winehouse thinks about this change in more karmic terms. "I have stopped slagging people off as much as I did. Not because I think it will sell more records or it looks bad for me, but because I don't wish anything bad against anyone. Everyone has a job to do."

Winehouse takes another sip from a glass of red wine. Of course, one vice remains. "I do drink a lot, and I'm a bad drunk, a very violent drunk," she says. "It's only since I started going out with my boyfriend Alex that I have realised what a horrible drunk I am.

"My ex-boyfriend would be saying things like 'stop doing that, you're an idiot' and rowing with me when I was drunk, which just made me worse. With Alex, he will bring it up the following day when I've sobered up. It really embarrasses me to hear I've punched him in the face six times. Again."

Winehouse winces. "Of course, it does make me want to cut down on the booze. I really do try not to drink, but I'm a very self-destructive person."

There's a soft smile on her face now. "I keep saying to my boyfriend that he can take it. I'm a little girl, he's a big guy."

Still, no matter how much of a "bad drunk" she is, we won't likely see Winehouse joining the boozy and stoned celebs shoring up a rehab clinic in the near future.

"Do you really think I could be pushed into doing anything I didn't want to do like that?" There was one attempt at rehab and that didn't get very far. "It was my old management's idea. I literally walked in and walked out. I knew it wasn't for me.

"Some people go to rehab and treat it like Butlins. Some people go because they think it will really sort them out and it does. But me, I'm from the school which believes that you can only sort yourself out, you can't rely on other people to sort out your problems."

Ronson alliance
Winehouse says she sorted out her problems by working so intensely on the new record. She's proud as punch with the results, and with her new alliance with producer Mark Ronson, the young New York producer who put a summertime bounce into Lily Allen's album.

"I have the same publishing company as Mark and they wanted us to meet for a while. I wasn't really interested at first. I thought he was just some big hip-hop beats geezer and I have Salaam Remi as my hip-hop guy, he has always been there for me. When we did finally meet up, I played him what I was writing and what I was listening to. You could see a lightbulb going on in his head. We just clicked right away personally too."

However, Winehouse didn't want to make the same mistakes she felt she had made with Frank, so she still kept a close eye on proceedings. "I was really geeky about it. I scrutinised everything that was going on, I was really paying attention to what Mark was doing. I trusted him, but I still watched what he was doing."

She doesn't know if Ronson will be around for her next record, but she has a good idea what kind of songs she wants to write. "I want to do an album of winsome, pining songs. I like that idea. I don't want to do another record of 'screw you' songs.

"Yeah, it will be a romantic record. I am a very romantic person. I don't mean romantic in a flowers and chocolates kind of way. It's more like if it's raining, I'll go up to the window and press my nose against the glass and sigh at how beautiful it all looks”.

A very different kind of interview, The Guardian chatted with Amy Winehouse shortly before Back to Black came out. It is interesting, as she talks about her relationship with men. She reveals how “Men are far more straightforward. They don't dwell on things and play psychological games”. It is a fascinating chat with someone on the precrisis of global stardom:

“I've never been a boyfriend kind of girl. I'm too selfish. A couple of years ago I would have said that I would end up as one of those women who lives with 20 cats and 40 piles of newspapers, but I'm thinking a bit more optimistically now because I've met someone I really like. I've been with Alex for six months and he moved in about a month after we met - it felt natural, and not at all scary. He's like my best mate, which probably sounds really sad. Actually, there is something inside me that is a proper little housewife. I love cooking for him, even though he's a chef and knows much more about cooking than I do! I constantly want to look after people, but I've only met a couple of men in my life who deserved or appreciated it. My first proper long-term boyfriend Chris (he's the fella that I wrote my first album about) was lovely, but he didn't really appreciate it. It was my second boyfriend, Blake, who kick-started my domestic instinct. I immediately saw he was someone who hadn't been treated right, so I practically put him in my bag and said, 'Right, you're coming with me!'

I wouldn't say I'm a feminist, but I don't like girls pretending to be stupid because it's easier. I would say that there is still more pressure put on women to look good, but I have some very vain male friends. The papers go on about how I lost weight, but I didn't even notice myself losing it. I used to smoke £200 worth of weed a week, that's two ounces, which is disgusting, and it made me eat crap food on impulse. I lost the weight when I stopped smoking weed and got into the gym instead. I like my gym because there are all these sweaty men around to gear me up and get my adrenaline going. You want to sweat and look good. When I'm in a women's gym and they see me in my standard make-up (it's my war-paint, I wear it all the time), the women look at you as if to say, 'Who are you trying to impress?' At the men's gym it's like, 'Run girl, run!' I don't mind being looked at by men, I'm competitive - anyway, every girl likes being looked at by men.

If I'm checking out a man I'll usually go for someone who is at least five nine, with dark hair, dark eyes and loads of tattoos (that was Blake). But, saying that, my current boyfriend is the most beautiful man I've ever seen in my life, and he's blond, so I guess it doesn't matter that much. I just like a man who I can muck about with, and who can take a joke. I admire men who don't take anything seriously, like Dean Martin, who had this amazing ability to distance people from himself. He never talked about troubles with his marriage and would have a line for everything. Also Sammy Davis Jr, who treated all that racism like water off a duck's back. He was like, 'Fuck it, I've got music.' That's how I feel”.

Let’s get to the album itself. Why is Back to Black so revered and has endured two decades later? How did it change Pop music forever? GRAMMY provided their analysis and showed love for Back to Black in 2024. It is definitely one of the most influential albums of the past couple of decades. I remember the awe and sense of wonder around the music press in October 2006:

“When Amy Winehouse released Back To Black in October 2006, it was a sonic revelation. The beehive-wearing singer’s second full-length blended modern themes with the Shangri-Las sound, crafting something that seemed at once both effortlessly timeless and perfectly timed.

Kicking off with smash single "Rehab" before blasting into swinging bangers like "Me & Mr. Jones," "Love Is A Losing Game," and "You Know I’m No Good," Black To Black has sold over 16 million copies worldwide to date and is the 12th best-selling record of all time in the United Kingdom. It was nominated for six GRAMMY Awards and won five: Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year, Best New Artist, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and Best Pop Vocal Album.

Winehouse accepted her golden gramophones via remote link from London due to visa problems. At the time, Winehouse set the record for the most GRAMMYs won by a female British artist in a single year, though that record has since been broken by Adele, who won six in 2011.

Written in the wake of a break-up with on-again, off-again flame Blake Fielder-Civil, Black To Black explores heartbreak, grief, and infidelity, as well as substance abuse, isolation, and various traumas. Following her death in 2011, Back To Black became Winehouse’s most enduring legacy. It remains a revealingly soulful message in a bottle, floating forever on the waves.

With the May 17 release of Sam Taylor-Johnson’s new (and questionably crafted) Winehouse biopic, also titled Back To Black, it's the perfect time to reflect on the album that not only charmed listeners but changed the state of a lot of popular music over the course of just 11 songs. Here are five ways that Back To Black influenced music today.

She Heralded The Arrival Of The Alt Pop Star

When Amy Winehouse hit the stage, people remarked on her big voice. She had classic, old-time torch singer pipes, like Sarah Vaughn or Etta Jones, capable of belting out odes to lost love, unrequited dreams, and crushing breakups. And while those types of singers had been around before Winehouse, they didn’t always get the chance — or grace required — to make their kind of music, with labels and producers often seeking work that was more poppy, hook-packed, or modern.

The success of Back To Black changed that, with artists like Duffy, Adele, and even Lady Gaga drawing more eyes in the wake of Winehouse’s overwhelming success. Both Duffy and Adele released their debut projects in 2007, the year after Back To Black, bringing their big, British sound to the masses. Amy Winehouse's look and sound showed other aspiring singers that they could be different and transgressive without losing appeal.

Before she signed to Interscope in 2007, "nobody knew who I was and I had no fans, no record label," Gaga told Rolling Stone in 2011. "Everybody, when they met me, said I wasn’t pretty enough or that my voice was too low or strange. They had nowhere to put me. And then I saw [Amy Winehouse] in Rolling Stone and I saw her live. I just remember thinking ‘well, they found somewhere to put Amy…’"

If an artist like Winehouse — who was making records and rocking styles that seemed far outside the norm — could break through, then who’s to say someone else as bold or brassy wouldn’t do just as well?”.

Amy Exposed The Darker Side Of Overwhelming Success

Four years after Winehouse died, a documentary about her life was released. Asif Kapadia’s Amy became an instant rock-doc classic, detailing not only Winehouse’s upbringing, but also her struggles with fame and addiction. It won 30 awards after release, including Best Documentary Feature at the 88th Academy Awards and Best Music Film at the 58th GRAMMY Awards.

It also made a lot of people angry — not for how it portrayed Winehouse, but for how she was made to feel, whether by the British press or by people she considered close. The film documented Winehouse’s struggles with bulimia, self-harm, and depression, and left fans and artists alike feeling heartbroken all over again about the singer’s passing.

The documentary also let fans in on what life was really like for Winehouse, and potentially for other artists in the public eye. British rapper Stormzy summed it up well in 2016 when he told i-D, "I saw the [documentary, Amy] – it got me flipping angry... [Amy’s story] struck a chord with me in the sense that, as a creative, it looks like on the outside, that it’s very ‘go studio, make a hit, go and perform it around the world, champagne in the club, loads of girls’. But the graft and the emotional strain of being a musician is very hard. No one ever sees that part."

These days, perhaps because of Winehouse’s plight or documentaries like Amy, the music-loving population seems far more inclined to give their favorite singers a little grace, whether it’s advocating for the end of Britney Spears’ conservatorship or sympathizing with Demi Lovato’s personal struggles. Even the biggest pop stars are still people, and Amy really drove that point home”.

In terms of leaps in production, songwriting quality and singing, although Frank is phenomenal, few people could predict what Amy Winehouse would produce as its follow-up. I really love her debut, but nobody can deny that Back to Black is her greatest work. In 2019, The Guardian explained why Back to Black is the greatest album of this century. Some might argue artists like Fiona Apple have topped it but, think about its impact, influence and genius, I am not sure any album since 2006 has surpassed Amy Winehouse’s final studio album

“Certainly, it could not prepare the listener for Back to Black: nothing about Frank suggested that its creator was going to make a genuinely epochal masterpiece. Something had happened to Amy Winehouse in the three years that separated her second album from her debut: skinny, covered in tattoos, dressed like a cartoon of a 60s girl-group member – complete with a vertiginous beehive modelled on that of the Ronettes’ Ronnie Spector – she was almost unrecognisable. The lyrics of its lead single suggested that whatever had happened wasn’t good – no one pleads with you to go to rehab if your life is in perfect shape – but the music was so ebullient you could easily overlook that.

Her sound had changed as dramatically as her appearance: with Frank’s producer Salaam Remi joined by Mark Ronson, then a virtual unknown, Back to Black offered an update of 60s soul and girl-group pop. Characteristically self-effacing, Ronson has suggested that his primary contribution to the album was keeping Winehouse out of the pub, but in reality his decision to relocate the recording sessions to Brooklyn’s analogue Daptone studios and employ its house band, the Dap-Kings, was a masterstroke.

The Dap-Kings had already spent a decade honing their retro soul style, first backing obscure deep funk singer Lee Fields, then Fields’s former backing vocalist Sharon Jones. They gave the album’s sound a toughness and grit that is usually missing when contemporary producers ape the 60s output of Muscle Shoals and Hitsville USA. The sound chafed against the lyrics’ plethora of 21st-century references and hip-hop-influenced intonation (“I’ll check him at the door / Make sure he got green / I’m tighter than airport security teama”), and against Winehouse’s Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday-influenced vocals.

The tension between musical styles was infinitely more gripping than Frank’s clumsy attempts to highlight Winehouse’s jazz chops through scat singing and decorating tracks with samples of crackling vinyl. Moreover, it didn’t sound like a knowing pastiche, largely because Winehouse had dispensed with the hired songwriting help and written a set of songs that were strong enough to bear comparison to those she had been influenced by. You could tell how good they were by the artists they attracted: within months of Back to Black’s release, Prince had taken to covering Love Is a Losing Game on stage. As if to underline the qualitative similarity of Winehouse’s songs and the music that inspired them, Ronnie Spector began performing the title track live amid the Ronettes’ hits.

Understandably, everyone went on about Winehouse’s voice. It was a snappy, ragged, extraordinarily expressive contralto that still carried something of the nasal north London drawl of her speaking voice, perfect for conveying both heartbreak and sass. It dispensed with the usual firework-display theatrics of the modern soul diva in favour of an idiosyncratic, apparently untutored approach to phrasing that lent everything she sang a directness and immediacy. Set against the contemporary backdrop of melismatic oversinging and arch indie rock, Back to Black offered a reminder of what it sounded like to really mean it.

A rare instance of critical acclaim chiming with public taste, it sold millions. It may well be the most influential album of the last 20 years. The immediate effect of its success was a wave of artists obviously working in her image. Female vocalists made retro soul-influenced music, replacing Winehouse’s troubled unpredictability with something less volatile and more marketable: earthy everyman good humour or cute kookiness. Adele was by far the most successful, but at one point there seemed to be dozens of them, all filling the void created by the fact that Winehouse was increasingly unable to play live, let alone complete another record (as the posthumous Lioness compilation revealed, she recorded virtually nothing in the final years of her life, taping only two songs for a projected follow-up). Winehouse’s vocal style became a kind of all-purpose pop template, its idiosyncrasies reduced to a series of slurred, prematurely aged tics intended to signify emotional authenticity. Nearly 15 years on, you still can’t move for twentysomething men who sound like ravaged blues shouters and twentysomething women trying their best to channel Billie Holiday.

And Back to Black ushered in a new vogue for soul-baring albums rooted in the artist’s lives: an updated version of the early 70s trend for confessional singer-songwriters, rebooted for the age of social media, with its oversharing late-night posts and belief that rock and pop artists should be #relatable (Facebook opened to everyone over 13 with a valid email address four weeks before Back to Black’s release; Twitter’s tipping point came five months later). For better or worse, we currently live in a pop world that Back to Black unintentionally helped to create, where writing frankly about your personal experience is the most noble occupation a pop star can pursue; where artists are queuing up to tell the world about the neuroses and trauma that inspired their latest work; where everyone from Drake to Taylor Swift to Beyoncé has their songs pored over for IRL references.

Whether that is a positive state of affairs is moot: the quality of Back to Black isn’t. Untangle it from its legacy and the appalling backstory of its songs, and you are left with an astonishing album – an unexpected, unprecedented burst of creativity and talent that still hits home emotionally, no matter how many times you hear it. It feels impermeable, the kind of album people will still be listening to and talking about for decades to come: the 21st century’s most obvious candidate to join the pantheon of all-time classics”.

I will end it there. On 27th October, 2006, Back to Black was released. It reached number one in the U.K. and two in the U.S. It has been certified fifteen-times Platinum here. Frequently mentioned in polls of the greatest albums ever, Florence And The Machine, Sam Smith, Jorja Smith and so many other artists have been impacted and influenced by Amy Winehouse and Back to Black. The album won five GRAMMY Awards, three of which were for Rehab. But, as I say, I do feel uncomfortable discussing a song where Winehouse refuses to go to rehab. It has this sour taste now. Though I am including the song in this feature, as it is part of the album and was a single. At the 2008 GRAMMYs, Amy Winehouse won Best New Artists. Back to Black awarded Best Pop Vocal Album. In a way, a lot of that fame and attention was a curse as much as a blessing. I do wonder what Winehouse would think of this album still inspiring people, two decades after its release. Camden’s proud daughter released an album that will be discussed and adored for decade. When you think about that, Back to Black has…

AN immense legacy.

FEATURE: Don’t Fight It, Feel It: Primal Scream’s Screamadelica at Thirty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Don’t Fight It, Feel It

Primal Scream’s Screamadelica at Thirty-Five

__________

NOBODY can deny…

the genius and legacy of Primal Scream’s Screamadelica. Their third studio album was released on 23rd September, 1991. This was a week in music that saw timeless albums come out. In the U.S., A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory and Nirvana’s Nevermind came out on 24th September. I wanted to mark thirty-five years of Screamadelica. I hate to not include the whole feature, but there are sections from The Quietus and their feature from 2021. They celebrated thirty years of Screamadelica. “Two themes are routinely described as transformative for Primal Scream’s celebrated 1991 recording: acid house and Andrew Weatherall. But, as Ben Gilbert outlines, other factors led to an album that was both era-defining and defined by the era in which it was made”. It is a fascinating piece:

“Understandably, given the acclaim Screamadelica has generated in the three decades since coming out, this period has been well documented. Two key themes are routinely described as transformative for Primal Scream: acid house and producer Andrew Weatherall. But, while both had an obvious impact, there are other factors that led to an album that was era-defining but also defined by an era where studio technologies allowed a band interminably drenched in their own influences to dive into them like a bath full of ecstasy.


As Gillespie freely admits, the group certainly lifted, if not thieved, a vast number of other people’s ideas to fully realise the fabric of his mind for Screamadelica. “Everything was up for grabs, because of the technology and the way people could sample in the way they couldn’t before. Rap and hip hop records were doing it, house, dance records,” explained Gillespie, perhaps in reference to albums like Paul’s Boutique and 3 Feet High And Rising, both released in 1989, which redrew the art of music production.

“It was like the wild west. No copyright laws,” he said, making comparisons to William Burroughs’ cut-up method. “It was what everybody was doing. It was a culture,” said Gillespie. Of course, the dominant British culture in this period was acid house, a scene that his band initially felt was so acutely anathema to their leather-clad rock & roll dreadnought that guitarist Robert ‘Throb’ Young reportedly threatened to excommunicate McGee from the Scream Team after he was spotted wearing “a baggy T-shirt”.

Improbably comic parties began to shape the future narrative. “There was always the Scream at one end, and Alan championing house music and playing it to them. Then Bobby would put on Goats Head Soup and all the Scream would go mad. Then Alan would take it off and put some more house on. This was going on all the time”, Lawrence from Felt told Cavanagh. Innes has rather more unifying memories of the period, explaining: “We took to the acid house clubs like ducks to water,” he said in Jockey Slut’s tribute to Andrew Weatherall. “The girls were incredible looking, the atmosphere was brilliant, there was no violence and the music was great. Better than some indie club playing the Wedding Present.”

Gillespie had previously dismissed modernising the Primal Scream sound. Quoted in Cavanagh’s book, he insisted: “We’re not that stupid.” But the singer went along with a proposal from either Innes or Jeff Barrett, founder of Heavenly Recordings and former PR at Creation, that Weatherall should remix/“fucking destroy” ‘I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have’. Weatherall, whose only previous studio experience apparently involved watching Paul Oakenfold overhaul ‘Hallelujah’ by Happy Mondays, was perhaps the only music journalist on Earth to enjoy the Primal Scream album, writing effusive reviews about its ballads for the Boy’s Own fanzine.


“The thing about Andrew was that he was a non-musician,” said Gillespie, who first met Weatherall in the summer of 1989 at a rave in a field in the Brighton countryside. “Because he wasn’t aware of the rules, he broke them. He wasn’t trying to make hit records. That never entered his mind. He just wanted to make interesting tracks that worked on the dancefloor.” Reflecting on Weatherall’s 2020 death in The Observer, Gillespie celebrated his friend’s ability to divine the “ecstatic blues”: “No one else would have thought of constructing tracks like he did, arranging our melodies and music into abstract pop songs.”

Alongside Weatherall, engineer Hugo Nicolson’s influence on these sessions cannot be diminished. Witness their collaborative process on a second mix of ‘Don’t Fight It, Feel It’: “I gated the drums and keyed them off a cowbell which I programmed to do a rhythm I’d heard on a Jungle Brothers record. Then I grabbed a bit of bass fill from halfway through the song, turned it backwards and used that as the bass,” he told Sound On Sound. On Weatherall’s instruction, he also located a pivotal component: “I found a crappy whistle sound on the Korg M1 and played what turned out to be the main hook of the song.”

Gillespie has compared the band’s spirit and approach on Screamadelica to that of Parliament-Funkadelic. With ‘Higher Than The Sun’, The Orb’s Alex Paterson become part of this loose collective, contributing one of two titanic versions. His ‘Higher Than The Orb’ mix contains another percussive fill, from ‘Wah Wah Man’ recorded in 1971 by Young-Holt Unlimited, and a more amorphous spirit described by Gillespie as “Starsailor music”, in reference to Tim Buckley’s disorientating and light years from home 1970 album of the same name”.

There are a couple of other thirtieth anniversary features I want to include. I guess there will be thirty-fifth anniversary features shared very soon. The Skinny wrote how Screamadelica is still influential today. I don’t think that it has lost any of its power and brilliance. That is in part thanks to the genius production of Andrew Weatherall. I think I first heard this album not long after it came out in 1991:

“The album opens with Movin' On Up – unashamedly cribbing from The Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil – which provides one of the few links to past and future Primal Scream with the searing hard-rock guitars, but the prominence of gospel singers, the electronic production and Gillespie's light touch vocals are the first signs that this is a different beast. The psychedelia is immediately dialled up on the cover of Slip Inside This House, with whirling sitars sitting next to a syrupy Amen break. And then Don't Fight It, Feel It runs dangerously close to the vapid dance music of the era that paired interchangeable soul singers with pseudo-transcendent electronics, but is saved by Weatherall's Midas touch and the thrilling Italo-house piano that enters midway through. These three songs are very different, but they represent the album perfectly in their marriages of dance and rock, along with so much more.

Gillespie is a less prominent vocal presence throughout the album (sometimes not appearing at all), frequently ceding the floor to the many experimental flourishes; the pitched-down orchestra plus haunted yodelling of Inner Flight; the shrill, overbearing saxophone of I'm Comin' Down; the corny/cosmic psychedelia of Come Together (which gestates for almost five minutes before the uplifting chorus comes in); the spooky accordion of Shine Like Stars. It gives the album an inclusive, cohesive feel, ideal for the sense of collective hedonism and creative freedom that permeates and defines Screamadelica.

By the time Screamadelica won the inaugural Mercury Prize in 1992, the burgeoning movement was over, the dance elements to be subsumed into the harder rave scene of the 90s and the rock elements to provide the seeds that Britpop would soon take up and ride to chart domination for the rest of the decade. Tellingly, the band never attempted another album that sounds like this one, perhaps appreciating the unique, lightning-in-a-bottle magic at play here.

But its influence has been strongly felt both at home and abroad; Scottish indie was brilliant in the 80s (Orange Juice, The Associates, Aztec Camera etc), but the parameters were fairly narrow until Primal Scream opened the door to funk, house, electronic etc. This openness continued in great 00s bands like Life Without Buildings and Franz Ferdinand and is still felt today in Django Django and even Young Fathers.

Outside Scotland, Daft Punk have praised Screamadelica's brilliance and Mark Ronson cites the album as the one that got him into indie, informing his production style to this day. Solar Power, the first single from Lorde's most recent album, is clearly indebted to Loaded, so much so that she contacted Gillespie to get his approval. Lorde claims she'd never even heard of Primal Scream, all the more evidence that the band's influence has seeped into international musical culture, though perhaps lacking the recognition.

For a brief moment, rock, acid-house, psychedelia and more congealed into a gleeful genre-less gloop that focused more on vibes than posturing, an unabashed desire for joy that wouldn't be seen again until the internet started to break down genre borders in the late 00s. It couldn't happen again, and it would be foolish to attempt, but Screamadelica is the culmination of that moment and a potent gateway drug to experience those feelings again”.

I will end with Classic Rock and their 2021 feature. I can appreciate that there may be fewer thirty-fifth anniversary features, as a lot has been said already and people might not be able to add to that. However, Screamadelica still resonates and is being discovered by a new generation. Classic Rock say this in their sub-header: “how self-belief, speed, dance music and the best producer the Stones ever had combined to make Primal Scream’s truly progressive and psychedelic masterpiece”.

“They were certainly living the life. Screamadelica was a filthy party animal of a record. It was a place where the tribal edicts of rock’n’roll were played out amid the glowstick rallies of rave. The album’s unbowed hedonism was typified by songs like Higher Than The Sun, Gillespie intoning to some imaginary Golden God: ‘I live just for today/Don’t care about tomorrow.’

“That’s exactly how I felt,” Gillespie says today. “I didn’t care if I died. I know that sounds dramatic, but it’s all there in the lyrics. We were out there taking ecstasy and speed. Speed was our main drug of choice, then people got more money and got into cocaine, then they got into heroin and it kind of fucked everything up. But I can’t really include heroin here, because while we were making the record it’d be speed and ecstasy. We’d never record on it though; you can’t play rock’n’roll on ecstasy.

“Acid house was similar to the LSD explosion of the sixties. The music was different, but I think it released a similar amount of energy and creativity in people who maybe hadn’t realised they had that inside them before. The energy in the clubs was intense. It reminded me of early rock’n’roll and punk. And that energy was extremely seductive. So we were up for days, living what it says in the songs. Being up for days meant we were exposed to a lot of great scenes and wild, strange, dangerous people. And fucking weird scenes with weird women. But we were a serious band when it came to recording and gigs. We may have partied at the weekends, but every week we were in the studio writing. At that point in your life you’re really out to prove to the world what you can do.

“We had a fucking great time, and that found its way into the music and the songs. I think it’s a very euphoric record. To me it’s ecstatic rock’n’roll. It’s what rock’n’roll should be: joyous and celebratory.”

Amid the mixes by Weatherall, Hypnotone and The Orb – who took Higher Than The Sun into the freakoid realm of cosmic dub – Screamadelica was notable for a more obvious Primal Scream influence. Jimmy Miller was the producer behind The Rolling Stones’ killer streak of albums from 1968’s Beggars Banquet through to Goats Head Soup in ’73.

When engineer Colin Leggett quit three days into the sessions for Movin’ On Up, Gillespie knew just who to call to finish what was already an ultra-Stonesy track: “The one guy in the world I wanted to mix us was Jimmy Miller. But he was hard to find, because within the music industry he was seen as a burn-out. But I went up to Eden Studios and he mixed Movin’ On Up for us there. And it was incredible. Then he did Damaged with Andrew Innes. We were blown away. He was really into groove and rhythm. On Movin’ On Up there’s this mad percussion thing going on, and it’s Jimmy playing two Coca-Cola bottles.”

So was Screamadelica ultimately a balancing act between guest producers and the Primals’ own artistic vision?

“With Andy Weatherall, I think we were both coming from the same place,” Gillespie offers. “I think we married a rock’n’roll attitude and sensibility and songwriting instinct to Andy’s knowledge of the dancefloor and contemporary rhythms. Also, Andy was a bit of a punk. He wasn’t a musician, but what he had was ideas in abundance. I think the best records are not just made by people with loads of technique, it’s about attitude and imagination.

"And between Andy and us – and The Orb and Jimmy Miller – we made a fantastic record. I’ve got to give those guys credit, but then they did what producers are supposed to do. Producers are supposed to enhance your songs and suggest things. For example, I know the Stones struggled with the rhythm of Honky Tonk Women, then Jimmy Miller came up with the cowbell intro. Charlie Watts said that it was Jimmy’s riff. And that’s one of the most famous intros in the whole of rock’n’roll.”

True to their own wilful nature, Primal Scream refused to repeat Screamadelica. Give Out But Don’t Give Up, in ’94, was instead a return to the visceral charge of time-worn rock’n’roll. The music press largely bemoaned the fact that this was no Son Of Screamadelica, and duly waded in. True, the album may have been uneven, but there were more than a few choice moments.

“Even if we’d wanted to we couldn’t have made another Screamadelica,” reasons Gillespie. “We were in a different place, and so was Andy Weatherall. I know that he didn’t – and we didn’t – expect that success. And then we went away and toured the world. Some of the band got into heroin. My take on it is that the creativity seized up a little. It was a really strange period, then out of that came the …Don’t Give Up album. We could have made a better record than that, but maybe that record was as good as it could be. There are two songs from that that we play live every night: Rocks and Jailbird. At the time, the music press in Britain slagged it. But when we play Rocks at our gigs these days, younger and younger generations just love it and the place goes fucking nuts. To me it’s like School’s Out by Alice Cooper.”

Primal Scream have made some striking albums since – chiefly Vanishing Point (’97) and Riot City Blues (’06) – but none more memorable than 2000’s XTRMNTR. Coming at the opposite end of the decade, it can almost be seen as the sinister flip-side to Screamadelica. It’s a dense, punishing listen, shot through with abrasive riffs, hard-nosed electronica and a misanthropic world-view. It’s like that second Summer of Love never happened at all.

“Screamadelica is an emotionally warm record,” Gillespie agrees, “whereas XTRMNTR is the other end of the scale – angry, paranoid, vitriolic, scathing. But then that’s part of my character and part of the character of the band. When he heard XTRMNTR, Alan McGee said to me: ‘That’s the record you’ve wanted to make all your life.’ And I went: ‘Yeah, you’re right’”.

I do feel, at such a hard and dark time, Screamadelica is a record to embrace and escape in. It is euphoric and warm. It has this energy that can lift the heart and mood. I was only eight when the album came out, so it was not until I was an adult I properly dived in and listened. I would urge everyone to play and immerse yourself in Screamadelica, as it is one of the greatest albums…

EVER released.