FEATURE: The Lockdown Playlist: The Ledge: Lindsey Buckingham’s Best Tracks

FEATURE:

 

The Lockdown Playlist

PHOTO CREDIT: @LBuckingham 

The Ledge: Lindsey Buckingham’s Best Tracks

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I include quite a few birthday-themed…  

IN THIS PHOTO: Lindsey Buckingham (second from the left) alongside his Fleetwood Mac bandmates/PHOTO CREDIT: Fin Costello/Getty Images

Lockdown Playlists, and today (3rd October) is the birthday of Lindsey Buckingham. The former Fleetwood Mac member made a huge impression on the band when he joined with Stevie Nicks on the eponymous 1975 album - and it is a shame that he and the band parted ways. Whether as a member of Fleetwood Mac, working solo or collaborating with former Fleetwood Mac bandmate Christine McVie (like he did in 2017), I think Lindsey Buckingham’s music is incredible and so accomplished. I wanted to nod to a music legend who has helped craft some of the greatest tracks and albums heard – to me, although the Rumours sessions were tense, he was a driving force behind the album. To mark his seventy-first birthday, I have put together a collection of his tracks from Fleetwood Mac and albums away from the band that shows the breadth…

IN THIS PHOTO: Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie/PHOTO CREDIT: John Berry/Courtesy Photo

OF his brilliance.   

FEATURE: One for the Record Collection! Essential October Releases

FEATURE:

 

One for the Record Collection!

IN THIS PHOTO: Adrianne Lenker/PHOTO CREDIT: Shervin Lainez

Essential October Releases

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I usually publish these features…  

IN THIS IMAGE: The cover of Jónsi’s Shiver

before the start of the month but, as there is a batch of new albums due today (2nd October), I think I have snuck in on time! There are quite a few great albums that you will want to snap up this. Starting with albums out today, and Jónsi’s Shiver is one you will want to get hold of! You can find the album here. It has been a decade since he released Go, so there is a lot of anticipation regarding his new release. Here is some information:

“Shiver is the exciting and boundary pushing second record from LA-based Icelandic musician Jónsi, co-produced by A. G. Cook (PC Music, Charlie XCX) and comes a decade after his debut, Go, was released.

The new album features tracks with Liz Fraser (Cocteau Twins) and pop icon Robyn. It will be released on 2nd October 2020 and was recorded in Berlin, Reykjavik, London and Helsinki.

Not too long ago Jónsi was traveling through London, where he met up with iconoclastic producer A.G. Cook, who he admired for his boundary-breaking work with the PC music collective. He had no expectation for the meeting, but the more they talked, the more he realized they might be perfect collaborators. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” Jónsi says. “I get tired of everything really easily. I always want things to be fun and exciting and fresh, and doing another album...I just wanted to have a different approach.”

Jónsi had made a career on sweeping music that plumbed the depths of the human experience and our connection to the natural world. Cook’s production exists at the opposite end of the spectrum: synthetic, sometimes abrasive, and often on the cutting edge of experimentalism. On paper, their collaboration is surprising, but Shiver is a beautiful record that pushes Jónsi’s otherworldly voice into startling new territories”.

One album that I have been especially looking forward to is Róisín Murphy’s Róisín Machine. I would encourage everyone to get the album, as it is full of gems and it will infuse you with energy and motivation on a very windy and wet day! If you need some more information about the new album from one of music’s most amazing and original artists, then Rough Trade can help you out:

“Róisín Murphy releases her fifth album, titled Róisín Machine via Skint and BMG. The album, which was made with Murphy's regular collaborator Crooked Man, AKA DJ Parrot, follows 2015's Hairless Toys (which was nominated for a Mercury Prize) and 2016's Take Her Up To Monto, as well as her four-EP project with Maurice Fulton in 2018. Among its ten tracks are previously released singles like Narcissus and Murphy's Law”.

I think Róisín Machine is Murphy’s finest album to date, and I have been playing it a lot today. It is awash with songs that make the heart skip a beat and get the feet moving! It is an essential purchase that everyone will need to add to their vinyl collection!

There is a nice variety of albums out today, but I would recommend Melanie C’s album, Melanie C. The former Spice Girl (or should that be current?!). Following 2016’s Version of Me, you should check out the bundles available for Melanie C. The album features singles such as Blame It on Me, and Fearless, and I think the critical reviews will be pretty good (I am writing this on 28th September). Things are pretty crazy for Melanie C., but I think her latest solo album is one of her strongest. An artist who I am a big fan of is Ailbhe Reddy. Her album, Personal History, is out today, so make sure that you get a copy. Her music is so gorgeous and memorable, I can guarantee that you’ll be a fan as soon as you hear the album – if you are not one already! Personal History is going to be one of album you will not want to miss out on:

“Dublin alt-folk artist Ailbhe Reddy releases debut album Personal History via Friends of the Family. Three years in the making, her record finds Ailbhe ruminating on the rites of passage in life as a young, emerging, queer artist from Ireland. On Personal History, Ailbhe’s ability to write songs of earnest and honest self-appraisal see her autobiographically navigate through break-ups in the age of social media (Looking Happy), reflect on the duality of loneliness and independence while touring (Time Difference), and open-up about coming out as explained in her newest effort (Between Your Teeth).

“It’s about the frustration of being unable to communicate in a relationship”, detailed the gifted lyricist. “Both people hold things back because they either don’t want, or don’t know, how to express themselves. While travelling alone, I always spent a lot of time thinking too much about past conversations and wondering what words were being held back between another person’s teeth”. Produced by Erland Cooper and Tommy McLaughlin (producer and touring member of Soak)”.

Taking us to 9th October, and there are a couple of releases that are worth some money. I am looking forward to Dizzee Rascal’s seventh studio album, E3 AF. His last album, Raskit, of 2017 was a big return to form, and I think E3 AF will continue that hot streak. You can pre-order the album, and it seems like the man himself is in no short supply of confidence regarding the album’s quality! When he spoke with Dummy in August, Dizzee Rascal explained more about the time and effort he has put into E3 AF:

“Dizzee Rascal has shared news surrounding his upcoming ‘E3 AF’ record, the grime veteran’s seventh studio album to date. Dropping October 9th, the project’s name pays homage to the E3 post code district where he grew up in Bow, East London.

The rapper’s last full-length album ‘Raskit’ was released back in 2017, earning wide-spread critical acclaim with a stripped-back offering that showed off the extent of his lyrical potency.

Announcing the news on Instagram, the London MC seems confident that his latest offering will be a strong return to form.

“I’ve spent the last 3 years losing and finding myself in music and I’ve made something flawless”, Dizzee stated. “I made this album for YOU!

“I want you to play it at home, in your car or wherever you want but I want you to listen to it all the way through and you better have some BASS!! The link-ups are mad and I didn’t come to play! You’re welcome,” he added”.

Changing pace and direction entirely, and another gold record coming out on 9th October is SISTER, from Mina Tindle. I would encourage people to pre-order a simply beautiful album, as Tindle is one of the most original and incredible songwriters around! If you are new to her work and require a bit more information – about her and the album – then here are some details:

“The third full-length from Mina Tindle, SISTER is an album populated by mythic creatures of all kinds: lions on parade, lovers turned to cannibals, kings and Sirens and women with wings. Like any great fabulist, she threads her storytelling with a fragile wisdom, revealing essential truths about all the danger and wildness within the human heart. With each moment elevated by her spellbinding vocal work — a gift she’s shown in recording and touring as a singer for The National — SISTER ultimately makes for a transportive listen, at turns impossibly dreamlike and profoundly illuminating.

Mina Tindle is the project of Parisian singer/songwriter and multiinstrumentalist Pauline De Lassus. Mostly made in New York City with producer Thomas Bartlett (Yoko Ono, Florence + the Machine), the album’s elegant detail balances the odd magic of the songs with a fierce emotional realism. “Give a Little Love,” written and produced by Sufjan Stevens, channels intense longing, its soulful melancholy magnified by Stevens’s warm background vocals. On “Belle Pénitence,” she shares a tender love letter to her husband (The National’s Bryce Dessner), twisting the mood of lovely surrender with some fantastically brutal hunting imagery rendered in her native tongue. And on “Lions,” with its shimmering grooves, De Lassus offers up a bit of soft-hearted encouragement in the face of self-doubt: “If the roads are made for a parade/Go march with the lions.” She adds, “You need to keep going, even if sometimes you feel like you’re just pretending to be brave. It’s all about the march.”

After the gloriously sprawling “Triptyque”— partly written with Dessner — SISTER closes out with a stark rendition of “Is Anything Wrong” by Lhasa De Sela, the late artist whom De Lassus names among her most enduring influences. Mina Tindle’s version originally featured as part of a tribute to the late singer that she conceived and organized in 2019 with another of her longtime heroes Canadian singer Leslie Feist. They would later perform the tribute at London’s Barbican and the Cork Opera House.

De Lassus later appeared as a featured soloist on The National’s 2019 album I Am Easy to Find and toured extensively with the band. During the last few years as she was writing and recording SISTER, De Lassus has also been an integral part of the PEOPLE Festivals at the historic Berlin Funkhaus in 2016 and 2018, where she worked with a vast range of musicians and artists in the community.

SISTER achieves a potent complexity, arriving as her most imaginative selection of songs to date while wholly embracing the sometimespainful truth-telling she’s long treasured in her most beloved artists. “All the people I love the most have this beautiful way of singing their truth, and I hope these songs give that same kind of honesty”.

One great album from 16th October that I would urge people to snap up is Catherine Anne Davies and Bernard Butler’s In Memory of My Feelings. You can pre-order it here, and it is an album that I am very much looking forward to! Piccadilly Records provide more details:

“Needle Mythology, the label founded by music writer, author and broadcaster Pete Paphides, is proud to announce the very first release of brand new music on the label. ‘In Memory Of My Feelings’ is the result of a one-off collaboration between Catherine Anne Davies and Bernard Butler. The album was recorded over writing and recording sessions covering a four year period, but amounting to just fifteen days in total. Prior to the creation of the record, the two had never met. There are ten songs featured in total on ‘In Memory Of My Feelings’.

Key tracks include the unearthly end-of-days address The Breakdown, the triumphant four-to-the-floor excoriations of Sabotage (Looks So Easy) and the luxuriant glam ache of No More Tears To Cry. Work on In Memory Of My Feelings was completed in 2014, but extraneous commitments forced Catherine and Bernard to postpone its release indefinitely. Of the record Butler says: “I’d got used to the idea that the record might never emerge. Occasionally, I’d listen to it on my headphones if I was on the bus, I always had the same thought, “I wish I could go to a record shop and buy this.” Davies adds: “For me, the best thing is that we still don’t know each other that well. The songs were the conversation.” Catherine is best known for her work as The Anchoress. Her debut album Confessions Of A Romance Novelist was released to widespread critical acclaim in 2016 and was named amongst the Guardian critics’ Albums of the Year, earned her the Best Newcomer prize at the PROG Awards and was also named HMV’s Welsh Album of the Year.
Since then she has played in the touring line-ups of Manic Street Preachers and Simple Minds. The second Anchoress album is scheduled for release early next year. Bernard Butler is a founding member of Suede, with whom he co-wrote and performed two era-defining albums. He then went on to enjoy top ten success with McAlmont & Butler and as a solo artist before focusing on writing and production work with artists such as Bert Jansch, The Libertines, Duffy, Teleman and Texas”.

On 23rd October there is not one but two albums from Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker! songs, and instrumentals come as one, but they are two distinct projects. I would encourage people to pre-order, as Lenker is an amazing songwriter and performer.

This Pitchfork article from last month provided details regarding Lenker’s latest release: 

“Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker has announced two new albums: songs and instrumentals are both out on October 23 via 4AD. Listen to the new single “anything” (from songs) below.

The albums were recorded in April after Big Thief’s tour was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. She recorded them entirely analog in a cabin with engineer Philip Weinrobe. “I grew really connected to the space itself,” Lenker said in a statement. “The one room cabin felt like the inside of an acoustic guitar—it was such a joy to hear the notes reverberate in the space.” She continued:

I had a handful of songs that I was planning on recording, but by the time Phil arrived I was on a whole new level of heartsick and the songs were flying through my ears. I was basically lying in the dirt half the time. We went with the flow. A lot of the focus was on getting nourishment from our meals. We cooked directly on the woodstove, and we went on walks to the creek every day to bathe. I’m grateful that this music has come into existence. These songs have helped me heal. I hope that at least in some small way this music can be a friend to you”.

Two more albums to own on 23rd are Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You, and Laura Veirs’ My Echo. The former, from The Boss, is his twentieth studio album, and I always look forward when he has an album out! This GQ article from last month gives some more information:

“The 12-track Letter To You is Springsteen's 20th studio album and was recorded at his home studio in New Jersey. It includes nine recently written Springsteen songs as well as new recordings of three of his legendary, but previously unreleased 1970s compositions, “Janey Needs A Shooter”, “If I Was The Priest” and “Song For Orphans”. Springsteen is joined on Letter To You by Roy Bittan, Nils Lofgren, Patti Scialfa, Garry Tallent, Steven Van Zandt, Max Weinberg, Charlie Giordano and Jake Clemons (so at least there is some saxophone elsewhere on the album). “I love the emotional nature of Letter To You,” says Springsteen. “And I love the sound of the E Street Band playing completely live in the studio, in a way we’ve never done before and with no overdubs. We made the album in only five days and it turned out to be one of the greatest recording experiences I’ve ever had”.

Go and pre-order the album, as Letter to You will be among 2020’s very best and celebrated.

Laura Veirs is another iconic songwriter, and My Echo is an album that you should definitely add to your collection! Rough Trade provide more information about a very special record:

“Laura Veirs releases her eleventh solo album My Echo via Bella Union. The album features guest appearances from Jim James, Bill Frisell, Karl Blau, Matt Ward and others.

“My Echo is my 11th solo album. It’s my ‘my songs knew I was getting divorced before I did’ album. My conscious mind was trying as hard as I could to keep my family together but my subconscious mind was working on the difficult struggles in my marital life. I was part of a “Secret Poetry Group” that met and wrote poems monthly for a year during the writing of this record. Many of my poems turned into songs for this album. By the time the album was being mixed last fall, my ex-husband / producer Tucker Martine and I had decided to go our separate ways. We were a great musical team for many years but we struggled to be compatible in our marriage and family life and that struggle is reflected in this album. In this new batch of songs I imagine escaping from some sort of prison or cage. Advancing age, the confines of domesticity, our oppressive government and the threat of the apocalypse permeate these songs.

In these songs my heart craves certainty and permanence but none is to be found. It’s an album about disintegration. It reveals my artist’s intuition at work. Although these songs were written before quarantine they are strangely relevant to times in which we find ourselves currently. You will find me staring at the walls (Turquoise Walls). You will find me feeling grateful to be alive (Memaloose Island). You will find me accepting the ephemeral nature of life (Vapor Trails and All the Things). You will find me searching for personal freedom while feeling trapped (Freedom Feeling). You will find me trying to accept that sometimes the best thing to do is to sit still and do nothing at all (Another Space and Time). Produced by Tucker Martine in the summer and fall of 2019 in Portland, OR. Includes appearances from Jim James, Bill Frisell, Karl Blau, Matt Ward”.

Two albums out on 30th October that you should pre-order are from two artists whose names begin with e: Elvis Costello, and Eels. Costello’s Hey Clockface is his thirty-first studio album and, even if you are not a huge fan of his, I would encourage people to buy the album, as the songs he has released from it sound incredible. Drift Records have provided some details about the album:

“Hey Clockface was recorded in Helsinki, Paris and New York and mixed by Sebastian Krys in Los Angeles. Following the solo recording of, “No Flag”, “Hetty O’Hara Confidential” and “We Are All Cowards Now” at Suomenlinnan Studio, Helsinki by Eetü Seppälä in February 2020, Costello immediately traveled to Paris for a weekend session at Les Studios Saint Germain. Costello tells us, “I sang live on the studio floor, directing from the vocal booth.

We cut nine songs in two days. We spoke very little. Almost everything the musicians played was a spontaneous response to the song I was singing. I’d had a dream of recording in Paris like this, one day.” The assembled album, “Hey Clockface” is “An Elvis Costello & Sebastian Krys Production” following on from their work together on Elvis Costello and The Imposters Grammy-winning album “Look Now.” The motion picture of “We Are All Cowards Now” by Eamon Singer & Arlo Mc Furlow features images of flowers & pistols, smoke & mirrors, tombstones & monuments, courage & cowardice, peace love and misunderstanding”.

Eels’ Earth to Dora is another great October release that you should pre-order, because Mark Oliver Everett always brings something special and enormously interesting to each Eels album! Here are some details from Rough Trade:

“Eels release their highly anticipated new album Earth to Dora via E Works. The album was produced by band leader Mark Oliver Everett a.k.a. E, and performed by E, Koool G Murder, The Chet and P-Boo. Just one song was done in the thick of the early pandemic days, Are We Alright Again, which is kind of a quarantine daydream. It includes the surprise single releases Baby Let’s Make It Real and Who You Say You Are. Earth to Dora marks the 13th full length Eels album, and first since 2018’s The Deconstruction, their first in four years”.

Those are the October albums that I would recommend people buy and, with a few gems out today, spare no time or delay! I think it is a really strong and varied month, and there are some real crackers due. If you need some awesome music to get you through a potentially tough month, then the above albums…

WILL surely not disappoint!   

FEATURE: Everything in Its Right Place: Retrospect and Re-Examination: Radiohead’s Kid A at Twenty

FEATURE:

 

Everything in Its Right Place

Retrospect and Re-Examination: Radiohead’s Kid A at Twenty

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THE first four Radiohead albums…  

are as fascinating and different as any in all of music. Pablo Honey was released in 1993 and, whilst it has some great moments, many people know it for the single, Creep. The Bends of 1995 marked a seismic shift in terms of Radiohead’s clarity and invention; an album that ranks alongside the best of the 1990s. Expanding their guitar sound and providing a wider and bolder sonic and thematic palette for OK Computer in 1997, the band were at the peak of their powers. There was a certain amount of pressure when it came to following such a hugely popular and iconic album. The band were exhausted off the back of touring OK Computer – their lead, Thom Yorke, was especially drained and spent -, so there needed to be some changes. I am amazed that the band managed to release two albums so soon together. Kid A arrived on 2nd October, 2000, whilst Amnesiac followed on 5th June, 2001 – a lot the material for Amnesiac was recorded during the time of Kid A’s sessions. Kid A is an album that completely differed from OK Computer. It shouldn’t have shocked critics that the Oxford band would have wanted to evolve and venture into a new direction after The Bends, and OK Computer. Kid A has some traditional guitar-bass-drums as a foundation, but the band took influence from synthesisers, Electronic music; there are Jazz elements and brass in the mix. More experimental than anything they had released before, Kid A arrived with very little fanfare and promotion – there were no singles released and Radiohead provided no interviews.

This untraditional, low-key approach to releasing an album perhaps explains why Kid A received some mixed and negative reviews. A lot of people in 2000 were expecting Radiohead to release a very similar album to OK Computer but, as I explained when I featured the album in Vinyl Corner, Radiohead wanted to move forward. Maybe Thom Yorke was worried that an album as popular and accessible as OK Computer would create another wave of adulation and touring, which could have finished the band off! Not that Kid A was Radiohead becoming introverted and creating something out-there. Far form it. I think Kid A was Radiohead’s most interesting and nuanced album to that point. Taking inspiration from Talking Heads’ Remain in Light and Björk, Thom Yorke took from Talking Heads’ David Byrne when it came to lyrics for Kid A; often cutting up word and reconstructing them in a random manner. Co-produced by Nigel Godrich and Radiohead, I think Kid A is one of the finest albums Radiohead ever released, and it has gained a lot more positivity and adulation in subsequent years. Kid A did get some positive reviews in 2000, but there were some who felt Radiohead had lost their way. This is what Melody Maker wrote in 2000:

“But d'oh! What are they doing singing something resembling a verse like a bunch of syphilitic corporate whores?!? They are Radiohead band, and Radiohead band knee convention in the nadgers, remember? So come the title track they've locked Thom inside a 10-inch thick Metal Mickey costume and buried it 6ft under Chernobyl, from where we can just about make out his mumbles of "We've got heads on sticks, you've got ventriloquists". Cheers! Jonny Greenwood comes on like a Chinese DJ Shadow, laying down cold and charmless flickerbeats while Robo-Thom, casting himself as a Wonky-Eyed Piper of Grimlin, chokes, "Rats and children follow me out of town", thereby introducing the underlying theme of the album: oh woe upon woe, why must poor Thom be tormented with mass international success, a pile of hard cash the size of Ann Widdecombe, and this damned fanbase that plagues him so? Put another record on, mate.

Quite literally, before they do "The National Anthem". Presumably the National Anthem for some bizarre jazz-loving nation ruled by demented circus folk, it is both "Kid A"'s nadir and its first really important track. For once we're past the lumpen space-funk workout and they let the horn section from Bedlam out of their jaw restraints, it turns into Primal Scream's "Accelerator" as played by 50 crack-crazed clowns on their honky noses and thus utterly redefines the notion of "unlistenability", propels us to a whole new sphere of self-indulgence, invents - if you will - post-bollocks.

You're left dazed, bemused, and musing over the motives of "Kid A". Are Radiohead trying to push the experimental rock envelope, unaware that they're simply ploughing furrows dug by DJ Shadow and Brian Eno before them? Are they having a laugh at the pseuds' expense before they go "not really!" and release the proper album of rollicking great pop songs next spring? Or have they simply made a record not to be listened to but to be placed on a plinth at the head of every dinner party butter?

Ground-breaking? As Thom sang in 1993 on "Pop is Dead", by far Radiohead's most inspired single to date, "The emperor [really] has no clothes on/And all his skin is peeling off." And important? As the great poet, philosopher and anti-globalisation non-robot Jim Royle might have said: "Important, my arse".

There is so much to love when it comes to Kid A. The opener, Everything in Its Right Place, was a breakthrough for the band, and all the rest of the songs followed when they had that lead track cracked. How to Disappear Completely is haunting and hugely evocative, whilst The National Anthem features incredible repetitive bass and Jazz influences. Optimistic, and Morning Bell are two of the best and most accessible songs from Kid A, whilst Motion Picture Soundtrack is a wonderful close. I can appreciate how Kid A was a shock in 2000 but, unbeknownst to many critics, Radiohead were forging a path to the future. This is noted by AllMusic in their review from 2012:

“In the wake of OK Computer, it became taken for granted among serious rock fans of all ages that Radiohead not only saved rock from itself, but paved the way toward the future. High praise, but given the static nature of rock in the last half of the '90s, it was easy to see why fans and critics eagerly harnessed their hopes to the one great rock band that wanted to push the limits of its creativity, without grandstanding or pandering. Daunting expectations for anyone, even for a band eager to meet them, so it's little wonder that Kid A was so difficult to complete. Radiohead’s creative breakthrough arrived when the band embraced electronica -- which was nearly a cliché by the end of the '90s, when everyone from U2 to Rickie Lee Jones dabbled in trip-hop or techno.

The difference is that the wholehearted conversion on Kid A fits, since OK Computer had already flirted with electronica and its chilly feel. Plus, instead of simply adding club beats or sonic collage techniques, Radiohead strove for the unsettling "intelligent techno" sound of Autechre and Aphex Twin, with skittering beats and stylishly dark sonic surfaces. To their immense credit, Radiohead don't sound like carpetbaggers, because they share the same post-post-modern vantage point as their inspirations. As perhaps befitting an album that’s coolly, self-consciously alienating, Kid A takes time to unfold; multiple plays are necessary just to discern the music's form, to get a handle on quiet, drifting, minimally arranged songs with no hooks. This emphasis on texture, this reliance on elliptical songs, means that Kid A is easily the most successful electronica album from a rock band: it doesn't even sound like the work of a rock band, even if it does sound like Radiohead”.

On Tuesday, a new book, This Isn’t Happening: Radiohead’s Kid A and the Beginning of the 21st Century, was released, and it provides wonderful insight into the album’s creation and what was happening with Radiohead prior to the year 2000 – and what impact Kid A has had in the years since. Pitchfork covered the release of the book in an article from 24th September:

“The heady ambition of Radiohead’s work around the turn of the millennium can hardly be considered overlooked. Kid A, which turns 20 next month, has been named the best album of the 2000s by ourselves and some of our peers. This week, when Rolling Stone debuted its revamped 500 Best Albums of All Time list, Kid A leapt straight to No. 20, ahead of any other album of the decade (or by Radiohead). Though the band’s fourth LP initially drew some accusations of pretension, modern critics have fallen over themselves celebrating the infamous hard-left into arty electronics, especially once it turned out to be Radiohead’s semi-permanent direction.

Fittingly, then, Steven Hyden’s new book, This Isn’t Happening: Radiohead’s “Kid A” and the Beginning of the 21st Century, isn’t just another round of gushing praise. Yes, the Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me author and longtime rock critic does argue that “in terms of the culture and mood of the times, Kid A is the most emblematic album of the modern era.” But he’s as interested in the era itself—how the album serves as a kind of time capsule for the early, confusing years of the ’00s. With the conversational irreverence of the guy sitting down the bar, Hyden draws connections to hybrid rock acts like Linkin Park, surreal and misanthropic blockbusters like Fight Club and Vanilla Sky, the internet’s transformation from a utopian dream into a dystopian nightmare, and, as has been noted before, the tragedy on 9/11. For good measure (and fan service), he bookends This Isn’t Happening’s cultural insights with key Radiohead-related events occurring before and after the album”.

“In the future, Thom Yorke will be vindicated. By the end of the aughts, Kid A will be regarded by many as the best album of the 21st century’s first decade. In 2011, the American electronic music producer Derek Vincent Smith, known as Pretty Lights, will create a popular mash-up that melds “Everything in Its Right Place” with Nirvana’s “All Apologies” and Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer,” unofficially confirming Kid A’s status as classic rock for Millennials. Five years after that, “Everything in Its Right Place” will appear in the trailer for a movie in which Ben Affleck stars as an autistic math genius who is also a cold-blooded professional killer, confirming that Radiohead has ascended to “thinking-man’s Smash Mouth” status.

When people hear “Everything in Its Right Place” in the future, it won’t sound alien or cold or difficult; it will evoke glitchy cell reception and patchy Wi-Fi and decontextualized social-media updates and the modern reality of omnipresent technological interconnectivity at the expense of genuine human connection. It will eventually seem logical—even the parts that aren’t supposed to seem logical. It will sound like screaming at your neighbors and never being heard, in an online landscape that is as dark, disorderly, and foreboding as a Stanley Donwood album cover. Or as inescapable as an arena you can’t ever leave. In time, many of us will feel like the singer in the successful rock band—surrounded by every convenience, and yet thoroughly alienated by this supposedly inviting world.

What is that you tried to say? What was that you tried to say...”.

As Kid A turns twenty tomorrow (2nd October), I have been thinking about the reaction the album received in 2000, and how it has been reappraised since then – and the impact and influence it has (Radiohead became one of the first major acts to use the Internet as a promotional tool). Many publications have placed Kid A not only in their list of the best albums of the first decade of the twenty-first century, but of all-time. I think that the towering and wonderful Kid A is…

AMONG Radiohead’s very best albums.  

FEATURE: A Perfect Introduction: Returning to the Bedazzling Wuthering Heights

FEATURE:

 

A Perfect Introduction

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

Returning to the Bedazzling Wuthering Heights

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INSPIRED by a tweet from BBC Radio’s Mark Radcliffe…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in March 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix

recently, I have been thinking about Kate Bush’s debut single, Wuthering Heights. Radcliffe has filmed a piece about that song and Kate Bush, and it will be interesting to see what the film explores. He has visited the Yorkshire moors, and I think he will discuss the song in relation to the landscape, and why the track remains so evocative and wind-swept. Based on the novel, Wuthering Heights – though Bush was inspired by a T.V. adaptation of the novel and caught the last ten minutes -, it is a spooky coincidence that Emily Brontë and Kate Bush have the same birthday (30th July). Achieving a number-one with your debut single is impressive enough, but doing so with a song that remains so singular and unusual is one reason why Wuthering Heights is so adored and studied today. From my favourite album, The Kick Inside, many people might not have been aware of the song prior to the album coming out. Imagine having heard The Man with the Child in His Eyes – the second single taken from the album – and being blown away by that (as that is track five, and Wuthering Heights is track six) and then hearing Wuthering Heights! Not only is it a strong and perfect way to end the album’s first side, but it was brave that the album’s finest song was left so late – many artists would have opened an album with a song like Wuthering Heights! I wrote about Wuthering Heights recently, but I want to expand on that feature.

Before moving on, I want to source from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia, that provides more details about the song, in addition to Kate Bush’s tale of how she wrote one of her most-famed moments:

“The song was recorded with Andrew Powell producing. According to him, the vocal performance was done in one take, "a complete perfomance" with no overdubs. "There was no compiling," engineer Kelly said. “We started the mix at around midnight and Kate was there the whole time, encouraging us… we got on with the job and finished at about five or six that morning." The guitar solo that fades away with the track in the outro was recorded by Edinburgh musician Ian Bairnson, a session guitarist.

Originally, record company EMI's Bob Mercer had chosen another track, James And The Cold Gun as the lead single, but Kate Bush was determined that ‘Wuthering Heights’ would be her first release.  She won out eventually in a surprising show of determination for a young musician against a major record company, and this would not be the only time she took a stand against them to control her career.

The release date for the single was initially scheduled to be 4 November 1977. However, Bush was unhappy with the picture being used for the single's cover and insisted it be replaced. Some copies of the single had already been sent out to radio stations, but EMI relented and put back the single's launch until the New Year. Ultimately, this proved to be a wise choice, as the earlier release would have had to compete with Wings' latest release, ‘Mull of Kintyre’, which became the biggest-selling single in UK history up to this point in December 1977.

‘Wuthering Heights’ was finally released on 20 January 1978, was immediately playlisted by Capital Radio and entered their chart at no. 39 on 27 January. It crept into the national Top 50 in week ending 11 February at No.42. The following week it rose to No.27 and Bush made her first appearance on Top of the Pops ("It was like watching myself die", recalls Bush), The song was finally added to Radio One's playlist the following week and became one of the most played records on radio. When the song reached number 1, it was the first UK number 1 written and performed by a female artist”.

“I wrote in my flat, sitting at the upright piano one night in March at about midnight. There was a full moon and the curtains were open, and every time I looked up for ideas, I looked at the moon. Actually, it came quite easily. I couldn't seem to get out of the chorus - it had a really circular feel to it, which is why it repeats. I had originally written something more complicated, but I couldn't link it up, so I kept the first bit and repeated it. I was really pleased, because it was the first song I had written for a while, as I'd been busy rehearsing with the KT Band.

I felt a particular want to write it, and had wanted to write it for quite a while. I remember my brother John talking about the story, but I couldn't relate to it enough. So I borrowed the book and read a few pages, picking out a few lines. So I actually wrote the song before I had read the book right through. The name Cathy helped, and made it easier to project my own feelings of want for someone so much that you hate them. I could understand how Cathy felt.

It's funny, but I heard a radio programme about a woman who was writing a book in Old English, and she found she was using words she didn't know, but when she looked them up she found they were correct. A similar thing happened with 'Wuthering Heights': I put lines in the song that I found in the book when I read it later.

I've never been to Wuthering Heights, the place, though I would like to, and someone sent me a photo of where it's supposed to be.

One thing that really pleases me is the amount of positive feedback I've had from the song, though I've heard that the Bronte Society think it's a disgrace. A lot of people have read the book because of the song and liked it, which I think is the best thing about it for me. I didn't know the book would be on the GCE syllabus in the year I had the hit, but lots of people have written to say how the song helped them. I'm really happy about that.

There are a couple of synchronicities involved with the song. When Emily Bronte wrote the book she was in the terminal stages of consumption, and I had a bad cold when I wrote the song. Also, when I was in Canada I found out that Lindsay Kemp, my dance teacher, was in town, only ten minutes away by car, so I went to see him. When I came back I had this urge to switch on the TV - it was about one in the morning - because I knew the film of Wuthering Heights would be on. I tuned in to a thirties gangster film, then flicked through the channels, playing channel roulette, until I found it. I came in at the moment Cathy was dying, so that's all I saw of the film. It was an amazing coincidence. Kate Bush Club Newsletter, January 1979”.

It is bittersweet that Wuthering Heights did so well. On the plus side, the song catapulted Bush and brought attention to The Kick Inside – the single and album were released about a month apart. Also, it announced this unique songwriter who instantly captivated millions. The song is one of the most-loved and popular, and chart success did give her some pull and clout – seeing as she knew that the first single had to be Wuthering Heights and was proven right! Bush performed the track several times on Top of the Pops and, as the first appearance was a nightmare – as a solo artist, she was not allowed to play with her band and had to sing to a backing track -, future slots on the show were not particularly comfortable! Also, she was parodied quite a bit by comics of the time, because the video for Wuthering Heights – lots of dramatic movements and wide-eyed looks – casts her as quite kooky and flighty. I love the video and I think Bush’s originality was unusual for people to understand, and she was a real antidote to the more basic music of the time. That sounds reductive, but I think, as Punk was dominant, anything that contrasted that so boldly and obviously was going to find itself mocked. Wuthering Heights has endured longer than most of the Punk songs of the time, and it is a track that is almost impossible to equal.

Every year, as I have said before, there is an event called The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever, where fans around the world don a red dress (that Bush wore in the U.S. version of the song) and celebrate its famous routine. There is so much to unpackage and celebrate when we think about Bush’s Wuthering Heights. As a vocal performance, it is so spectral and striking! I think a lot of critics felt that her voice was hard to appreciate, and others were quite unkind. It was an effect Bush was lending to give the song the drama and power it required, and one feels they are listening to the possessed Catherine Earnshaw (the fact that Brontë’s heroine and Bush were both called Catherine is another great coincidence) calling out to Heathcliff. The video, in spite of some who poke fun at it, is amazingly moving and hypnotic. The video’s routine, choregraphed by Robin Kovac, brings the song to life, and it actually goes a long way to drawing one into the novel itself. The composition is gorgeous and tender, and the opening piano notes alone are enough to cause one to shiver. What remains the most amazing facet of Wuthering Heights is how it connects with the book and the fact that a new, teenage artist would choose a rather rare source of inspiration for her debut single!

In this article from Literary Hub from last year, we learn more about how she took from the text and you get this sort of absorption:

 “But as Bush borrowed from the dialogue, she made a crucial transposition in the point of view. When she sings, “You had a temper, like my jealousy / too hot too greedy,” the my refers to Cathy and the you to Heathcliff, the novel’s brooding protagonist/antagonist/antihero/villain (depending on your point of view). But the novel itself never inhabits Cathy’s consciousness: she is seen and heard, her rages and threats vividly reported, but everything we know about her comes from either Nelly Dean, a longtime housekeeper for the Earnshaw and Linton families, or through Lockwood, a hapless visitor to the Yorkshire moorlands and the principle first-person narrator of the novel (most of the novel consists of Nelly’s quoted speech to Lockwood, who is eager to hear the complete history of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights and its neighboring property, Thrushcross Grange). Although the novel spans decades and multiple generations of Earnshaws and Lintons, Kate Bush’s shift into Cathy’s point of view centers the song entirely on Cathy and Heathcliff—which is fittingly how Cathy, in the novel, views the world. She and Heathcliff share one soul, she claims; everyone else, including her husband Edgar, is little more than scenery.

With this choice, Bush gives voice to a female character who—though an electric presence in the novel—is denied the agency of self-narrating, or even of being narrated through a close third person. Nelly may be presented to us by Lockwood as a simple, transparently objective narrator, but the novel is littered with moments where Nelly complicates the lives of those around her by revealing or concealing what she knows. Bush’s musical interpretation of the novel makes visible the questions that surround point of view: who does the telling? What is their agenda? Who can we really trust?

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush shot 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

By opening up these questions, the song situates itself in the tradition of other so-called “parallel texts” that respond to or reinvent earlier, often canonical works of literature: think Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, or Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation and Albert Camus’s The Stranger. In each pairing of “parallel” and “source” text, the later work privileges characters narrated about, but never before narrated from within”.

It is interesting that there is a further connection between Kate Bush and Brontë in terms of entering and trying to succeed in a very male-dominated landscape. Though they are polls apart in many respects, Bush and Brontë are both groundbreaking and pioneering. The article talks about similarities between author and songwriter:

It was unthinkable at the time that young, unmarried women would circulate their names so freely on books that portrayed the love between a wealthy man and his hired governess, or the flare-ups of passion and cruelty that marked the relationship of Cathy and Heathcliff. The sisters also knew that women authors were routinely dismissed or pilloried by the all-male fraternity of critics, and they hoped that the Bell names would offer protection and a fair shake from reviewers. Still, one early review blasted the incidents in Wuthering Heights for being “too coarse and disagreeable to be attractive,” while even a more positive review called it “a strange book. It is not without evidences of considerable power: but, as a whole, it is wild, confused, disjointed, and improbable.” Two years after Emily’s death in 1848, an edition of Wuthering Heights was published under her own name, with a preface and biographical note by Charlotte defending her sister’s moral character against the aspersions cast on her.

Fast forward to the late 1970’s and Kate Bush finds herself a young female artist in a culture industry still dominated by men. Her record company, EMI, pushed for another song, “James and the Cold Gun,” to be her first single, but Bush insisted that her debut had to be “Wuthering Heights.” After winning that argument, she delayed the release of the single in a dispute over the cover art, and later referred to herself as “the shyest megalomaniac you’ll ever meet.” When the single was finally released in early 1978, it needed only a few weeks and a performance by Bush on Top of the Pops to claim the #1 spot on the UK charts, displacing ABBA’s “Take a Chance on Me.” Only 19, Bush became the first female singer to make it to #1 with a song that she herself had written. At a time when women were viewed primarily as interpreters of others’ lyrics—as instruments rather than creators—Kate Bush upended the narrative with her first piercing notes. She would narrate from within, and in her own words”.

I look forward to seeing what Mark Radcliffe produces for his Kate Bush show, as I think Wuthering Heights as a track is an intriguing, attention-worthy and interesting as any single Kate Bush album. Forty-two years after it was released and climbed to number-one, the song (and video) still sounds like nothing in the world! It is a magnificent and staggering song and, when you think about it, not a bad way…

TO start your career!

FEATURE: Spotlight: A. Swayze & the Ghosts

FEATURE:

 

Spotlight

A. Swayze & the Ghosts

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WHEN looking around for a great new band…  

to cling onto, there are plenty of good choices! I am excited by the variety and quality of bands coming through, and a new discovery of mine is Hobart’s A. Swayze & the Ghosts. Offering a terrific and straight-ahead sound with direct and honest lyrics, they are receiving quite a lot of buzz and attention! I think the last fairly similar band from Australia I featured was Royal Headache a few years back – their album, High, was one of the best of 2015. In this country, we have bands like IDLES who deliver a Post-Punk symphony, and I wonder whether they will get A. Swayze & the Ghosts to support them if they play Australia next year?! Anyway, the Hobart band are brilliant, and their new album, Paid Salvation, is getting some brilliant reviews! If you, like me, are a bit new to the band, then they gave an interview to So Young Magazine last year and talked about their formation – and what they want to achieve in the next year (through to 2020):

“How did you find each other?

Zac (drums) found me at a cafe we worked at by the waterfront of Hobart. I probably looked like shit when he first saw me due to my lifestyle back then. I found our guitarist Hendrik sitting on a vertical bar outside our graphic design class during one of the first weeks of college. We didn’t talk. He was a shy guy and I was boisterous – I think he was scared. I don’t remember finding Ben (bass). Perhaps it was at one of his gigs the night before Zac found me at work looking like shit?

What led you to form a band? A particular happening or mutual love for a record or sound?

I wanted to start a band of my own after both groups I played guitar in split up within a month of each other. I lived with Zac and Hendrik and had written a few songs in my bedroom in our shitty share house. We still play some of those songs today. I coerced the two of them to start a three piece that I would front and we rehearsed in Zac’s few times and then went out and started gigging. It became apparent pretty quickly that we would be far better off writing as a collective as I can be a lazy prick and enjoy intoxication a bit too much. We gained a bit of a reputation for being quite a wild live band and played heaps. Six months had passed and we saved some money and went in to track a record locally. We asked Ben to play some synth over a couple of tracks, though the album was a drug-fuelled mess and we threw it out (but kept Ben). After that episode is when we really became serious about this band and we’ve been slogging it out ever since both in the studio and across Australia.

What can we be excited for (from you) over the next 12 months?

We’ve just finished tracking our debut full length record and it’s going to be fire. We worked with a phenomenal Australian producer named Dean Tuza. The guy understands our direction perfectly and held forth our integrity to make a record that is the perfect reflection of our attitude and opinions, and we are all proud and elated to release it. Otherwise we’re spending most of the year playing shows, including our first trip to the UK this May/June as a part of The Great Escape festival. Bring on the Zingers, Britain”.

Fast-forward to this year and, whilst it has not been an ideal backdrop for a talented young band to flex their muscles, they have released their album…and it is a blinder! I want to bring in a couple of interviews from this year, as it is important to ‘catch up’ with them and see where they are now. I can’t recommend the band highly enough and, in a year when we need truth and direction, A. Swayze & the Ghosts offer this in spades! Their lead, Andrew Swayze, spoke with DIY last month and he talked about his path into music:

 “Hailing from Hobart - the capital of Australia’s island state of Tasmania - Andrew Swayze spent his formative years increasingly feeling like the walls were narrowing in. “[Tasmania] is isolated by physical distance from the mainland and it really felt like that when we were growing up, that we were so separate and always getting things last,” he recalls. “The education rate here is really low, the poverty rate is really high, the obesity rate is one of the highest in the country, the employment rate is low. Things have changed recently, but when I was a kid it was really depressing.”

However, when he stumbled upon Kurt Cobain, vocally exorcising his demons and expressing the same frustration and angst that he was feeling too, the young musician found something that felt like a way out. “That was the turning point where it really became evident that music was this really fucking ravenous thing within me,” he remembers. And from then, first seeking out the small, underground local scene and then, five years ago, stepping out and forming his own group, making music became an absolute necessity. “I always wanted more than just to live on this little island and be depressed, so music was always this avenue to be like, I don’t want to be normal. I want to express myself and be big and loud and not be one of these run of the mill people that I felt like I was surrounded by,” he continues.

“I despise lyricists who just mess with irony. I’ve got a lot to say. I’m a heavily opinionated person,” he confirms. “I hope [the album] pisses the right people off - people who should be pissed off. I spent months and hundred of iterations of these songs getting everything right, so I’m really proud of every track on here - if people love it that’s awesome, but if people hate it I don’t really care because I’m sure I’ve said the things I want to say”.

There is a lot of great music around at the moment, and some of it offer escape and a great deal of fun. When it comes to A. Swayze and the Ghosts, the business plan and main objective is to be direct and highlight themes that are important. Bands like A. Swayze & the Ghosts, IDLES, and The Murder Capital are providing a blend of Punk sounds and affecting lyrics, with some heart thrown into the mix. I wonder what the scene is like in Hobart and whether there are legions of artists like A. Swayze & the Ghosts who are ready to strike. I would encourage the media to further investigate the area, as Australia has always been a fervent and fertile landscape for great and innovative music! In an NME interview, Andrew Swayze discussed his lyrical approach and why the band won’t be selling out their music:

“Music is so influential. I want to talk about important things,” says frontman Andrew Swayze via Zoom. “If you look through history, you’ll see all these cultural changes that have been inspired by art. I know I’ve had my life drastically changed by songs or what an artist has said, so I know the great power that music holds.”

Across ‘Paid Salvation’, A. Swayze & The Ghosts use theirs with great responsibility. But the band haven’t always been this socially conscious and self-aware about using their rapidly growing platform. “We never intended on doing anything ultra important and we definitely had no intentions of touring the world,” says Swayze. The band started in their shared house a few years ago as a way for these wild party boys – Swayze, Hendrik Wipprecht (guitar), Zackary Blain (drums) and Ben Simms (bass) – to pass the time.

A. Swayze won’t let their music soundtrack any old rubbish, though. As more people start paying attention, there are more opportunities for the gang. “We get offered a lot of things and asked if we, for lack of a better phrase, want to sell out,” Swayze tells NME. It doesn’t take the band long to tell these suits exactly where they can fuck off to. “It seems a lot of people would rather take that quick sell than keep their integrity, but you owe it to your listeners to stay true. Your integrity is all you’ve got”.

This sort of takes us to Paid Salvation. You can buy the album now, and I think (the album) is one of the best underground, lesser-known releases of this year so far. The album has been courting affection from Australia and the U.K., and I bet the band are keen to get the songs on the road. The situation regarding COVID-19 is better in Australia than the U.K., so they might be able to tour Australia soon enough. I have my fingers crossed that the group can get over to the U.K. soon, but enjoy their album in the meantime. I want to source from a review in Louder Than War - who were more than blown away by Paid Salvation:

“You’ll get people – young people – young men – jumping around to this record like they jump around to Idles. And that’s all well and fine. So long as they know why. “I especially want young men to hear songs like Suddenly and It’s Not Alright and think about what they’re saying rather than just listening to them and going, ‘Yeah I’m all jacked up on this rock song!’”

Recorded over only a handful of days with producer Dean Tuza in a converted warehouse space in inner-city Melbourne, the aim was to present the band as raw and honestly as possible. No frills. No extra fat. Four guys in a room, plugging in, playing their music, warts and all, hiding behind nothing. If you want guitar solos, forget about it. If you’re looking for string arrangements, you’re in the wrong place

“The thing with Dean is that he’s more than capable of getting a really polished sound going,” Swayze adds. “But he was like, ‘I don’t want it to sound like you have a producer in the room. I don’t want it to sound polished. I want it to sound like you’re a live band’ – and I think we achieved that.”

Within its seemingly straightforward framework of drums, bass and guitar, there are nods to Krautrock (the motorik rhythm that drives the sarcastic Rich), synth-punk (the drum machine in Paid Salvation and Cancer), and classic rock –  and even a hint of disco deep within the bassline of that opener, It’s Alright.

The album includes both singles, 2018’s Suddenly and this year’s Mess Of Me, but sadly nothing from their 2015 debut EP, with its brave but curious choice of debut single – the spacey slow-burning ten-minute jam Reciprocation, with its repetitive groove and spoken lyric.

They seem to have abandoned that side of their music in favour of a more cohesive mood, but it’s one I would certainly like to see them explore further; and the album might have benefited from its change of pace”.

Make sure you are tuned into A. Swayze & the Ghosts, as they are a band that are going to go a long way! With a terrific album out in the world, many more listeners will discover them, and it will be exciting to see the band grow. Check out their socials, listen to the music, buy Paid Salvation, and show some appreciation for…

A blistering band.  

____________________

Follow A. Swayze & the Ghosts

Official:

https://www.aswayzeandtheghosts.com/

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/A.SwayzeandtheGhosts/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/aswayzetas

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/a.swayzeandtheghosts/

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTn0-aCdDuvzxGN09vBRjAQ

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6rbA09kzdZICoLg7sWbkGd

FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: Kim Wilde – Kim Wilde

FEATURE:

Vinyl Corner

Kim Wilde – Kim Wilde

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ON this occasion…  

PHOTO CREDIT: Ullstein Bild/Getty Images

I am including Kim Wilde’s eponymous album in Vinyl Corner. I like the cover of the album, as it sort of has a Blondie vibe – there is a bit of Debbie Harry in Wilde, and there are some similarities (the cover was shot by the legendary British photographer, Gered Mankowitz - who photographed everyone from The Rolling Stones to Kate Bush). Whilst Kim Wilde and Blondie are different artists, I guess there are moments when various songs can be compared. Released on 29th June, 1981, Kim Wilde is a remarkable debut from one of the most popular artists of the 1980s. All of the songs from Wilde’s debut album were written by her father, Marty Wilde (who was a successful artist of the 1950s) and her brother, Marty. I have not heard of too many other albums where things are so in the family, as it were! Ricky Wilde produced the album, and I guess Kim Wilde would have had that trust that her brother and dad would take care of her music - and I can imagine the recording was a very smooth process. Alongside her band - Steve Stewart – guitars, engineer, Francis Lickerish – guitars, Robert John Godfrey – keyboards, Martin Russell – bass and Chris North – drums –, Wilde delivered a fresh and unique album that combines New Wave, Rock and Pop. I do love the blend of Rock and New Wave, and you get something accessible and radio-friendly with plenty of energy and punch.

In terms of themes covered on the album, there is a mix of love songs but tracks also address themes such as the depletion of cities (Our Town), and tinnitus (Water on Glass) – showing that Wilde was a very different and more original proposition than a lot of her peers! Kim Wilde reached as high as number-three in the U.K., and we all know the first single, Kids in America, that was released in February 1981 – it remains her best-known hit. Go and buy Kim Wilde on vinyl if you can, as it is an incredible album that is much more than Kids in America and a feel other tracks. In their review, this is what AllMusic had to say:

“Kim Wilde's debut album is seemingly dwarfed by her first hit single, "Kids in America." Merging punk attitude with gleaming synths, the power pop anthem is a galvanizing call to arms delivered in breathless style by Wilde and one of the defining songs of the new wave era. It's wrong to dismiss the rest of the record, though, because it's one of the strongest, most entertaining new wave albums of the early '80s. More cohesive than a Blondie album and nearly as peppy as the Go-Go's debut, Kim Wilde is filled with fist-pumping rockers ("Chequered Love," "Our Town"), energetic reggae knock-offs ("2-6-5-8-0"), epically melancholy ballads ("You'll Never Be So Wrong"), and whip-smart modern pop songs ("Water on Glass," "Falling Out") that zoom by in a rush of hairspray, cheesy synths, and background chants.

Wilde's vocals are the star; she delivers exactly what each song needs, whether it's blasé detachment ("Tuning In, Tuning Out"), delicate crooning ("Everything We Know"), or rousing joyfulness ("Kids in America"). The record is a Wilde family production with her '50s pop-star dad Marty on lyrics and her glam rock brother Ricky providing the music and sounds. He balances things nicely between artful, punky noise and factory-fresh synths, getting a punchy, light, and fun sound that's built to blare out of radios as loudly as possible. Kim Wilde is new wave at the genre's absolute finest; it's fun, it's a little weird, and it's anchored by songs that nod to the past while blasting headlong into the future. Dismiss Kim Wilde as a one-hit wonder or sleep on Kim Wilde at your own risk -- you just might miss out on some of the best tunes of the early '80s if you do”.

Many will be aware of Kim Wilde and were around when her debut came out, but there are many who do not know her, and they might take a look at the album and decide to pass it by. I think Kim Wilde warrants some time and consideration, as it is such a broad and consistently excellent album. When Wilde’s first three albums were released earlier this year, Louder Than War reviewed the trio. This is what they said about the eponymous debut:

 “The self titled debut plater was a winning collection of late-period new wave pop, coupled with a heavy dose of synth action. The sleeve does owe a large visual debt to the first Blondie album, with Kim obviously the focal point while her group, including ex-Chelsea guitarist James Stevenson, skulk a bit further back. I suppose it works in making it appear more of a band thing, even if the music and singing was again almost all done by the siblings (with assistance from prog behemoths the Enid).

Listening back to the album in the present day, the first thing that struck me is the gutsy guitar sound – yes these songs are pure early 80s new wave, but they’re despatched with real hammer and energy and then-fashionable synths are sprinkled about liberally too. With such a lot going on instrumentally, it would have been easy for a singer to be overwhelmed, but credit to Kim as the force of her personality wins through, despite the odd rocky moment vocally.

The singles are the highpoints, with the steady, “Stepping Stone” riffing of Water On Glass a particular treat, but the punky Young Heroes and closing track Tuning In Turning On also impress, the later has a hint of Magazine circa Secondhand Daylight about it. A couple of reggae-tinged efforts 2-6-5-8-0 and Everything We Know vary the formula a bit, giving the record a little more depth. All things considered, Kim Wilde the album has an irrepressible gusto which sees it through the trickery moments. The bonus track here round up the various single versions not featured on the LP proper, with the 60s influence of Boys being the standout for me”.

One can trace a lot of modern artists to the likes of Kim Wilde, and her debut still sounds exciting; the production is not so polished that the songs fade in quality or depth the more you listen. Wilde’s latest album, 2018’s curiously-titled Here Come the Aliens, received some good feedback, but my favourite album of hers will always be that amazing introduction. Playing the album today, and it is impossible not to be hooked in and…

LIFTED by the music.   

FEATURE: The Lockdown Playlist: Wonderful Autumnal Tracks

FEATURE:

 

The Lockdown Playlist

PHOTO CREDIT: @alexgeerts/Unsplash

Wonderful Autumnal Tracks

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BECAUSE summer is over…  

PHOTO CREDIT: @jeremythomasphoto/Unsplash

and things are definitely chillier than they were a few weeks ago, many of us are fishing out our autumn clothes! The days are getting shorter and, whilst it is a shame the hottest weather has passed, there is something about autumn that is peaceful and welcoming. Because of that, I have put together some autumn-themed and autumnal songs that should keep you comforted and calm the spirits - there is a bit of wind and breeze in the mix. It has been a stressful week for many people, so I think music is a great way of providing some form of contemplation and stillness. In this autumn playlist are some terrific songs that will definitely help soothe the spirits and…

PHOTO CREDIT: @baitman/Unsplash

MAKE a big difference.   

FEATURE: I've Been Dazed: What Next for the Mercury-Winning Michael Kiwanuka?

FEATURE:

 

I've Been Dazed

What Next for the Mercury-Winning Michael Kiwanuka?

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ON Thursday (24th)…

PHOTO CREDIT: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for Hyundai Mercury Prize

Michael Kiwanuka won this year’s Mercury Prize. It was a real competitive and exceptional shortlist this year, and the fact Kiwanuka won with his album, KIWANUKA, proves what a wonderful album it is. The actual ‘ceremony’ was very different this year. Annie Mac announced Kiwanuka as the winner on The One Show, and there was so much love and respect for him when the news was announced. The man himself seemed genuinely shocked and humbled, and the fact Kiwanuka is such a modest artist made his win so deserved. It is a bit of an odd time to win the award, but the album will go on to reach new people. I would encourage everyone to buy the album, as it is truly remarkable, and it follows 2012’s Home Again, and 2016’s Love & Hate – both of which were nominated for the Mercury Prize. On his finest album to date, Kiwanuka really struck a chord and produced an album that will resonate and reverberate for years. Here is what AllMusic wrote when they reviewed KIWANUKA:

“Singer and songwriter Michael Kiwanuka is beloved by progressive music fans in his native U.K. He's been nominated for the Mercury Prize for his previous albums (Home Again and Love & Hate) and also received a Brit Prize nom for the latter. Further, his song "Cold Little Heart" became a kind of international indie hit after it was chosen as the theme song for HBO's star-studded series Big Little Lies. Born to Ugandan parents who fled during Idi Amin's reign of terror and settled in Muswell Hill, Kiwanuka has had to fight to keep his identity at the forefront of the culture; numerous record execs tried to get him to dump his birth name for one easier to market, resulting in such a crisis of self-confidence that he shelved an earlier album called Night Songs, recorded as the initial follow-up to Home Again, so he could decide if he even wanted to continue pursuing a musical vocation.

This third album wears its self-titling as a badge of honor, a statement of who Michael Kiwanuka as artist and individual is. Once more produced by Danger Mouse and Inflo, this 13-song set is a brave, colorful collection that provides an exceptionally well-rounded aural portrait of Kiwanuka’s massive and diverse talent. If one had to choose a genre umbrella for this release, the term “21st century psychedelic soul” would fit better than anything else. The opening tune here, “You Ain’t the Problem,” carries the inspiration of Curtis Mayfield in its rave-up chorus, while “Rolling” melds sweeping soul and the reverbed guitar psychedelia of Arthur Lee and Love. “Hero,” at least initially, is a haunted, acoustically driven folk ballad: “I won’t change my name/No matter what they call me.”

It transforms from a first-person manifesto into a trippy yet direct folk-rock homage to Fred Hampton, late president of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party, who was gunned down by city police as he slept. “This Kind of Love” is perhaps the first tune to ever meld Bill Withers’ folksy, funky soul to Terry Callier’s singular, jazzed-up take on the genre. “Hard to Say Goodbye” is a weave of exotica-tinged, pillowy strings; Pink Floyd-esque guitar and effects atmospherics; and the sophisticated soul of Stevie Wonder circa Talking Book. Lyrically, the album reveals Kiwanuka at his most vulnerable and strident (no mean feat). The dramatic nature of his songwriting is gifted to listeners in catchy earworms, adventurous textural interludes, provocative lyrics, and through an ambitious melodic palette. As fine as Love & Hate was – worthy of all its accolades – Kiwanuka stands head and shoulders above it as a complex, communicative, poetic, and sometimes even profound collection that wears its heart on its sleeve and its sophistication in its grooves”.

I am so pleased for Michael Kiwanuka, and this is a moment where he can capitalise on his success and adulation and see where he heads next. Ordinarily, he might be in the studio or touring, but as we are still locked down to an extent, it will be interesting to see what Michael Kiwanuka does next. After such a terrific third album, I don’t think there will be a lot of instant pressure and expectations for a follow-up. I think, given that 2020 has seen a lot of division and racial tensions, that is going to be on Kiwanuka’s mind; the way the world has changed since COVID-19 will play a part, and I would be interesting to see how Kiwanuka spends the £25,000 prize money. This is a question every Mercury winner is asked, but it is a big sum, and previous winners have used the money to record another album or use it to tour internationally. I think Kiwanuka will put some of the money into a new album, but he was interviewed by NME after his win; he explained how the honour has helped him dream big:

“Your album was a powerful statement of intent about celebrating your identity and heritage in the face of adversity. Do you think this win will help inspire others?

“I hope it’s something that people can hear and be inspired by. I hope it inspires people who maybe have a similar story to mine or people who, in other ways, maybe feel like they’re going into something that is maybe outside of their comfort zone or not usually the path they would be expected to take. I’d hope it inspires them just to keep going and to keep being true to themselves, to keep going but not to compromise. That’s something I really believe in and I hope that is something can garner from my music and especially the songs on this album.” 

PHOTO CREDIT: Olivia Rose Courtesy of Polydor Records

Has lockdown given you any time to start work on a new album?

“I’m always writing songs and having ideas. I don’t know if [what I’ve done yet] will be for another record necessarily. I need to find out what sound I’m going to go to. But yeah, definitely at the beginning of lockdown I couldn’t stop writing. I chilled out a bit after that and now I’m writing a bit more now. Like everyone else, I’ve got a little home set-up and studio and just done demos. So I’ve been doing that but I’ve also been taking it easy as well and just enjoying listening to records. I’ve kind of just been going back to the roots of it all and just playing my acoustic guitar and just seeing what comes out. I don’t know what sound or what direction the next album will go in yet but we’ll see!”

Have you any plans yet for what you’re going to do with the prize money?

“I do you know! I really want to set up a good studio and I think I’m going to use some of this money to help get that going; I want to find a good space where I can be creative anytime of the day or night and also I want it to be a space that can be used by others and the community as well.

“I think people forget how exciting and powerful playing music is, especially young people. With the news about kids not enjoying school, if they can find music and a place to do that and play loudly or just learn instruments, I think there’s so much they can gain from that. Music saved my life so I’d love to have a space where people could be able to do that. So hopefully some of this money can go towards starting something like that”.

Look at the sheer growth and rate of progress between albums. 2012’s Home Again was a great album, but there was a bit of debt owed to classic Soul singers. Love & Hate arrived four years later, and it marked a big leap for Kiwanuka in terms of individuality and confidence. I would think he wants to perform songs from KIWANUKA next year before committing to a new album, but I think each release gets stronger and stronger! I wanted to react to his win (albeit a bit late!) and look ahead to a career that is going to get bigger and richer. I think Michael Kiwanuka will get major headline sets (when festivals resume) and he will continue to release some of the best albums you’ll ever hear! Match his incredibly powerful and beautiful voice with songs that not only get into the heart but make you think more deeply about the world, and we have a modern artist who has the potential to be a legend. If you have not investigated the world of Michael Kiwanuka and heard his Mercury-winning album, then do so now, as it is an album that you will not be able to shake and forget when you hear it. I just want to end by adding my congratulations to the…

WONDERFUL Michael Kiwanuka.

FEATURE: Them Heavy People: Kate Bush and Early Critical Perception

FEATURE:

 

Them Heavy People

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush captured in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

Kate Bush and Early Critical Perception

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AS the fortieth anniversary…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: David Redfern/Redferns/Getty Images

of Kate Bush’s single, Army Dreamers (the third and final release from her third album, Never for Ever), occurred on Tuesday (22nd), I was looking around for reviews and bits regarding the song and how it was reviewed at the time. I have seen that Kate Bush News has updated the HomeGround Audio Archive: clips and segments collating interviews and audio reviews of Bush’s work. You can check it out, and it makes for interesting listening! I was listening through the audio interviews and clips from 1980, and there is a Radio Lux review of Army Dreamers, in addition to a BBC Roundtable review. Whilst Bush received some praise for her Christmas single, December Will Be Magic Again, in 1980, hearing reviews of Army Dreamers sort of set me back! Whilst there were a few kind words, a lot of people were quite dismissive and cruel. Now, there is this enormous squadron of fans who love what Kate Bush’s earliest work, but I think there was a lot of hesitancy and snobby attitudes, certainly prior to 1982’s The Dreaming. Maybe Bush was not as political as other acts in music when she put out songs like Army Dreamers, and Breathing, but I think so many people were pretty short and underwhelmed. Wow was reviewed in 1979, and the third track (and second single) from Lionheart got mixed reception on BBC Radio 1’s Roundtable.

Maybe it was a case of people not being able to appreciate an artist who was very different to everyone around, but it does shock me that there were so many reductive and negative comments. I have covered this area before but, when Bush arrived in 1978 and delivered Wuthering Heights to a world that had seen nothing like it – and a music scene that was very different-sounding -, I think there was this perception that she was lightweight and too arty. This article from The Guardian of 2014 explored this – and looks at a few choice singles where Bush developed and proved she was a truly diverse songwriters:

“This was partly a matter of timing. After a year of being developed by EMI, (who funded her while she "grew up", expanding her horizons and honing her craft) Bush emerged into a British music scene transformed by punk. Both her sound and her look seemed conventionally feminine when juxtaposed with ferociously confrontational performers such as Siouxsie Sioux and Poly Styrene, who shredded expectations of how the female voice should sound and who shattered taboos with their lyrical content and appearance. Bush's fantastical lyrics, influenced by children's literature, esoteric mystical knowledge, daydreams and the lore and legends of old Albion, seemed irrelevant, and deficient in street-cred at a time of tower-block social realism and agit-prop. Her odd combo of artiness and artlessness, and the way she came across in interviews – at once guileless and guarded – made her a target for music-press mockery. Her music was often dismissed as a middlebrow soft option, easy listening with literary affectations.

Despite being as young or younger than, say, the Slits, Bush seemed Old Wave: she belonged with the generation of musicians who had emerged during the 1960s ("boring old farts", as the punk press called them). Some of these BOFs were indeed her mentors, friends, and collaborators: David Gilmour, Peter Gabriel and Roy Harper. Growing up, her sensibility was shaped by her older brothers, in particular the musical tastes and spiritual interests of Jay, 13 years her senior and a true 60s cat.

Punk often sneered at "art" as airy-fairy, bourgeois self-indulgence, but its ranks were full of art-school graduates and this artiness blossomed with the sound, design and stage presentation of bands such as Wire and Talking Heads. Yet Bush's music seemed the wrong kind of "arty": ornate rather than angular, overly decorative and decorous. It was the sort of musically accomplished, well-arranged, album-oriented art-pop that EMI had been comfortable with since the Beatles and had pursued with Pink Floyd, Cockney Rebel and Queen. They signed Bush expressly as the first major British female exponent of this genteel genre.

1978: Wuthering Heights. Gothic romance distilled into four-and-a-half minutes of gaseous rhapsody, this was released as her first single at Bush's insistence in the face of opposition from seasoned and cautious EMI executives; wilfulness vindicated by the month it spent at the top of the charts.

1979: Them Heavy People (the radio cut from the On Stage EP), which namedropped the Russian mystic Gurdjieff and Sufi whirling dervishes, a celebration of being intellectually-emotionally expanded: "it's nearly killing me … what a lovely feeling".

1980: Breathing, a chillingly claustrophobic sound-picture of slow death through radiation sickness after the bomb drops: "Chips of plutonium/are twinkling in every lung." Swiftly followed by Army Dreamers: perhaps the best, certainly the most subtle of anti-war songs, inventing and rendering obsolete Let England Shake a couple of decades ahead of schedule.

1981: Sat in Your Lap. Avant-pop stampede of pounding percussion and deranged shrieks, a sister-song to Public Image Ltd's Flowers of Romance, but lyrically about the quest for knowledge: "I want to be a scholar!"

Not only was Bush facing a lot of resistance and scepticism from critics in her early years, there was a lot of people merely painting her a sex symbol and wanting to know about her private life. Even in 1983, broadcasters wanted to know about gossip and who Bush was dating, and very few were taking her seriously. What was behind a lot of the pushback and those who wrote Bush off? It would be easy enough to say that she was unconventional and many were expecting a traditional Pop artist or something more Punk-based. By the arrival of Hounds of Love in 1985, few could refute her brilliance and musical quality; an album that is strange and contains many moods, but perhaps it is more restrained – in terms of the vocal and pitch – and accessible than Bush’s first four albums (The Kick Inside – 1978/Lionheart – 1978/Never for Ever – 1980/The Dreaming – 1982).

The fact Bush is still recording and is more popular than ever shows that her music has endured and those who were imperious towards her between 1978-1982, hopefully, changed their tune when they heard her later work. I expect there was a degree of expectation in the late-1970s regarding female artists. Away from Punk artists and female-fronted Punk bands, Bush was neither Punk nor similar to her female contemporaries. Louder Sound talked about this in an article from 2018:

 “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.

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.”

But almost everything about Kate Bush defies conventional reason. Those who routinely ridicule artiness and pretension make an exception for her. She’s very British, yet the British tick of sneering at the ‘different’ and their hifalutin ideas is set aside for her. People who profess to hate prog clasp their hands to their ears in denial if you point out how closely related her music and ideas, even her imagery, are to significant phases of Genesis and Floyd.

Her influence on other singers, musicians and performers who have surfed her slipstream during four decades is immense. Again, it’s not just the overt – Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, avowed fan St Vincent. It’s foolishly reductive to list just female artists as her legacy, her debtors, when there are as many men who, emboldened by her footprints, desire and require autonomy to function best. Kate Bush’s genre is, essentially, Kate Bush”.

Looking at all the artists Bush has touched and how she is perceived now is wonderful, but I still get irked by a lot of the reactions her image and music were afforded in those earliest years! I am going to write a few features regarding songs and events from Bush’s early career, as it is a period that really fascinates me. If some were not warm and open-minded to Kate Bush’s music when she came through, there is no denying that, today, there are very few who…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix

HAVE a bad word to offer.

FEATURE: Fade to Grey: A Wish for the Return of the New Romantic Movement

FEATURE:

 

Fade to Grey

IN THIS PHOTO: Duran Duran

A Wish for the Return of the New Romantic Movement

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I can’t recall whether I have covered this before…

IN THIS PHOTO: Adam and the Ants

but I am a fan of New Romantic music, and I wonder whether it is one of those genres that was sort of left in the 1980s and it was evolved into something else. There are bygone movements like Glam and Disco that have been filtered into other sounds, even if the original genre is not intact as it was back then. I can’t bring to mind any modern acts that are inspired heavily by artists like Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Culture Club, and Johnny Hates Jazz. Of course, not everything about the genre was great! There was a lot of rather average New Romantic stuff that was put out, but I really have a soft spot for the classics. The New Romantic movement began in the U.K. during the late-1970s. The scene grew from nightclubs and it was defined by rather lavish and bold fashion. There was this influence of David Bowie and Marc Bolan of T. Rex, combined with images and ideals of the early Romantic period of the 18th and 19th centuries. I was born in 1983, and I think there was some New Romantic music around that time. Spandau Ballet were still going strong, but things started to fade away by 1981. Many of the artists abandoned the clothing and fashion – although Boy George of Culture Club still retained a lot of that look -, and I think there was a brief attempt to bring back New Romantic music and fashion in the 1990s.

In 2009, David Johnson wrote in The Guardian, and he explained how Spandau Ballet were the band who sort of defined the movement early on:

“One band defined a new direction for music and shifted its driving rhythm from the guitar to the bass and drum. They also made it hip to play pop. They were Spandau Ballet, who within three years went from leaders of a cult to one of four British groups (with Duran Duran, Culture Club and Wham!) who led dozens of stylish young clubland acts into the charts. They spread the new sounds and styles of London around the globe so that designers of its street fashion, too, became the toast of world capitals. And all because, unknown to a backward record business, a vast dance underground was gagging for a revolution in club culture.

Every Tuesday for a year, Strange had been declaring a "private party" in the shabby Blitz wine bar off Covent Garden. Outrage secured entry. Inside, precocious 19-year-olds presented an eye-stopping collage, posing away in wondrous ensembles, emphatic make-up and in-flight haircuts that made you feel normality was a sin. Hammer Horror met Rank starlet. Here was Lady Ample Eyefull, there Sir Gesting Sharpfellow, lads in breeches and frilly shirts, white stockings and ballet pumps, girls as Left Bank whores or stiletto-heeled vamps dressed for cocktails in a Berlin cabaret, wicked witches, kohl-eyed ghouls, futuristic man machines. 

IN THIS PHOTO: Spandau Ballet

In response to that, try this bold claim. When Spandau Ballet emerged, their strategy was to enlist their entourage of creative night owls not only to stage-manage the fastest launch yet of a new band but also to redefine youth culture in the working-class terms prescribed by the late George Melly, author of the essential paperback Revolt Into Style (1970). He claimed the first duty of pop is to "trap the present" and express the aspirations of society "as it is", not as others would wish. The Durannies, on the other hand, had nakedly commercial ambitions.

Spandau placed fresh emphasis on clothes and presentation, on self-respect conveyed both by the voice of Tony Hadley, and by dislocated lyrics underpinned with streetwise conviction. Spandau Ballet defined the new direction of pop by opening a debate about the credibility of "pure pop" as a celebration of the sexiness of youth, then claiming to have relegated "rock" to the album charts for good. Today in the eyes of their schoolmate turned manager, Steve Dagger, that makes them "the bravest band – we put up a flag musically and culturally".

On 1st October, a new book by Dylan Jones, Sweet Dreams: From Club Culture to Style Culture, the Story of the New Romantics, is out, and it is a book that will prove fascinating and insightful to those who were around at the birth of the New Romantic movement, but it will be illuminating for a lot of people who are less familiar. I would encourage people to buy the book. Alexis Petridis wrote a review for The Guardian. A few passages caught my eye:

“This wasn’t the only way in which the New Romantics, as they became known, presaged the world in which we live now, which is one of the arguments of Dylan Jones’s book. He was there at the time (his first job was with i-D, one of the new-fangled “style” magazines that sprang up to document the movement; he has long been editor of British GQ). And he evidently feels he has something to prove, a historical wrong to right. For all their commercial success, the New Romantics attracted much derision: in some quarters, they still do.

They were held responsible for ending the politically charged era of pop embodied by Two Tone and the Jam’s “Eton Rifles” and refocusing music on more frivolous matters: Billy Bragg was apparently so horrified by the sight of Spandau Ballet that he felt impelled to start his own solo career.

Sweet Dreams loses focus when the New Romantic bands become huge in the US. As Jones notes, their biggest successes came because they pursued the mainstream, rather than vice-versa. The shock of the new that accompanied the first wave of synthesiser-driven hits dissipates: none of the music sounds as groundbreaking or extraordinary as Boy George looks. Meanwhile, rather than engender flamboyant individualism, the style magazines start doing the opposite: reflecting a new conformity, a codified notion of sophistication involving mass consumption of “designer” goods. Jones seems to lose interest, pursuing other pop-cultural threads that don’t quite tie together, from Madonna and Prince to the launch of the Groucho Club, and Sweet Dreams starts feeling not unlike falling down an internet rabbit hole. You find yourself reading about Hall And Oates, a US pop-soul duo who have about as much to do with the New Romantics as the cast of Dad’s Army, thinking: how did I get here?”.

This all sort of takes me to 2020. It is a confusing and strange year, but I think there is a chance and need to bring about these new movements that take influence from the past. Disco is being funnelled through Pop and other genres by artists like Dua Lipa and Róisín Murphy.

Maybe Glam, sadly, is not as common and heard as it should be, but I would love to see a fresh wave of New Romantic music and fashion – would it be the New New Romantics?! There is a lot of anger and political tension right now and, if New Romantic artists inspired some rebellion and pushback from artists in the 1980s and earlier, I think New Romantic music would balance that out now - but it could also be political. It would be a more colourful and flamboyant form of political movement and, rather than being a lazy throwback, I think a revised and renewed New Romantic scene could tackle sexuality, political, society, race and gender roles; the music could combine the original sounds of the 1970s and 1980s, together with other genres. I think it would be slightly odd or inauthentic if a 2020 New Romantic movement was to come about that was a photocopy of the first wave, but there is something missing from the modern scene. To finish, I am going to end with a playlist – as I do with a lot of features – that combines some of the best New Romantic music. It not only shows how strong the movement was, but how we could easily regenerate it and get a modern equivalent working. Although I was not born when the New Romantic artists came through, I heard a lot of the music when I was growing up and really love it still. Although 2020 is a pretty grey and bleak year I think, with some planning, modifications and small steps, there could be a new injection of… 

NEW Romantic gold.

FEATURE: Grow Old with Me: Remembering John Lennon at Eighty

FEATURE:

 

Grow Old with Me

PHOTO CREDIT: Jane Bown 

Remembering John Lennon at Eighty

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ON 8th December…  

it will be forty years to the day since John Lennon was assassinated. Before then, we remember his eightieth birthday on 9th October, and it is a chance for fans around the world to mark a musical genius that is desperately missed. From The Beatles to his work with Yoko Ono (in The Plastic Ono Band) and everything else, Lennon was one of the most influential and amazing songwriters the world has ever seen. A complex man and near-peerless songwriter, I grew up listening to his music with The Beatles as a child, and I became more aware of his solo work a little later. A new Beatles auction has been announced, and there will be some Lennon memorabilia to snap up – including a pair of his glasses that have an extremely high estimate! On his birthday, there is a new Lennon compilation, GIMME SOME TRUTH, that unites some of his best solo tracks. This article explains more:

“Capitol/UMe will mark what would have been John Lennon’s 80th birthday, and celebrate his life and work, with a suite of collections titled GIMME SOME TRUTH. The Ultimate Mixes, out on October 9.

The retrospective is named after Lennon’s biting rebuke of deceptive politicians, hypocrisy and war that was part of 1971’s Imagine album. The new compilations gather together some of the best-loved songs from his solo years, remixed from scratch. They have been executive produced by Yoko Ono Lennon and produced by Sean Ono Lennon.

Ultimate listening experience

The 36 songs are thus radically upgraded in sonic quality and are presented as an ultimate listening experience, mixed and engineered by multiple Grammy Award-winning engineer Paul Hicks. He also helmed the mixes for 2018’s universally-acclaimed Imagine – The Ultimate Collection series. Assistance is again provided by engineer Sam Gannon, who also worked on that release.

The new mixes use brand new transfers of the original multi-tracks, cleaned up to the highest possible sonic quality. Following weeks of painstaking preparation, the final mixes and effects were completed using only vintage analog equipment and effects at Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles. They were then mastered in analog at Abbey Road Studios in London by Alex Wharton”.

There will be a lot of events held around the world to celebrate the birthday of a musical giant. Although he has been gone for forty years, his spirit and influence can be heard and seen far and wide! I wonder what his Beatles bandmates, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, will do to mark Lennon’s eightieth birthday, and whether there might some special performances. It is clear that Lennon’s departure left a huge void in the world, and there has not been a songwriter like him since. I will end with a playlist of John Lennon’s best Beatles and solo tracks, but I want to introduce a couple of articles before then. In this article from The Express, we learn that there is a Lennon photo exhibition happening next month:

“Next month marks what would have been John Lennon’s 80th birthday. And to celebrate, Morrison Hotel Gallery is opening a free virtual exhibition to celebrate The Beatles legend’s life. Titled, In His Life, the event opens on Thursday October 1, 2020. And the works of the likes of  Bob Gruen, Ethan Russell, Astrid Kirchherr, and Allan Tannenbaum will be on digital display for fans to enjoy.

IN THIS PHOTO: John Lennon in New York in 1973/PHOTO CREDIT: Vinnie Zuffante/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

From a rock star, husband and father to being a New Yorker and peace activist.

And aside from the fine art music photography at the virtual exhibition, the centrepiece are four of Lennon’s original handwritten lyric sheets.

These include Yer Blues, I’m So Tired, Dear Prudence and Watching the Wheels.

The sheets have made available in limited edition fine art prints by the John Lennon Estate on behalf of Yoko Ono.

John Lennon “In His Life” virtual exhibition launches on October 1, 2020 here.

Next month also sees a free streamed John Lennon tribute concert.

The line up includes KT Tunstall, John Illsley of Dire Straits, Richard Curtis, Laura Jean Anderson, Blurred Vision and many more”.

I will end things soon, but there is a lot happening next month, and I think we all need to come together and celebrate one of music’s absolute legends. We have all been touched by Lennon’s music and brilliance. His quest for peace and togetherness never seemed cynical to me, and he definitely affected culture and the world in a very meaningful and profound way. I wonder what Lennon would be doing if he were still with us. Would he be making records like Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, or would he be retired or producing more experimental works? Actually, before I get there, we there is a two-part anniversary show on BBC Radio 2 from Sean Lennon, where he remembers his father. As the BBC report, there is a long-awaited treat that we will get:

“For the first time, Sean Ono Lennon has interviewed Sir Paul McCartney about his relationship with his father, John.

"I look back on it now like a fan," says Sir Paul of meeting Lennon.

IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles at the West London home of their manager, Brian Epstein, on 19th May, 1967/PHOTO CREDIT: John Pratt/Keystone/Getty

"How lucky was I to meet this strange Teddy Boy off the bus, who played music like I did and we get together and boy, we complemented each other!"

The discussion will be part of a special two-part Radio 2 programme, John Lennon at 80, marking what would have been the late Beatle's birthday.

During the chat, Sir Paul also plays one of the first ever Lennon-McCartney songs, Just Fun.

Written as the teenagers played truant from school, it has never been officially recorded - although a snippet was previously heard in the Beatles' Let It Be movie.

Speaking to Sean, Sir Paul admitted his first attempts at writing with John "weren't very good".

"Eventually, we started to write slightly better songs and then enjoyed the process of learning together so much that it really took off."

The documentary will also feature interviews with Sean's half-brother, Julian, and his godfather Sir Elton John.

Radio 2 boss Helen Thomas said: "John Lennon is one of the Radio 2 audience's most popular and best-loved musicians, so we're thrilled and honoured that Sean's first ever radio programme in which he talks at length about his father, alongside his brother Julian, Paul McCartney and Elton John, will be broadcast on our network."

The programmes will be available on 3 and 4 October, ahead of Lennon's birthday on 9 October.

The star was shot dead outside his New York apartment in 1980. Earlier this week, it emerged that his killer, Mark Chapman, had apologised to Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, at a parole hearing in August.

"I just want to reiterate that I'm sorry for my crime," Chapman told the parole board at the Wende Correctional Facility in New York.

"It was an extremely selfish act. I'm sorry for the pain that I caused to her [Ono]. I think about it all of the time".

Returning back to the question regarding John Lennon and what his legacy is. Many people have had their opinion, and there are so many different angles one can approach that question. This interesting article from The Social Man a few years back discussed John Lennon’s legacy:

“The iconic John Lennon reflected a new age ideology shared by men everywhere – a new persona defined by an internal conflict spurned by international awareness.

And Lennon was international, his words against a world wrapped in conflict would ignite the passions of an entire movement of rebellion towards archaic politics at large.

At the time, breakthrough anthems such as “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” would unite the young and restless against the Vietnam War.

To this day, the sounds of “Give Peace a Chance” and “Imagine” continue to heal where violence ignites. Without the influence of Lennon, even the shape of cinema would not be the same.

The Beatles would influence monumental works such as Hard Days Night and Across the Universe ensured the survival of Lennon and the legacy he would leave society at large.

John Lennon forever will the man who defined the modern man, defined culture, and society”.

To honour the great John Lennon and look ahead to his eightieth birthday, I have compiled a playlist containing some of his best tracks – from the earliest days of The Beatles through to his final studio album, Double Fantasy, of 1980 (a posthumous album, Milk and Honey, was released in 1984). Next month, some truly great and fascinating releases and events will take place to mark the eightieth birthday of a true genius. Now, more than ever, we need Lennon’s wisdom, spirit and extraordinary music…

IN the world.   

FEATURE: What’s Going On: Rolling Stones Revised 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time: Which Would Be in Your Top-Five?

FEATURE:

What’s Going On

PHOTO CREDIT: @thevoncomplex/Unsplash 

Rolling Stones Revised 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time: Which Would Be in Your Top-Five?

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I do love a good albums ranking list…  

and the best one out there, I think, is Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ever list. They have revised it now so that Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On is at the top. I guess, after such a political year which has seen Black Lives Matter pushed into everyone’s consciousness, the album of 1971 resonates hard today. This new list, whilst it will stir some debate, I think it is not only a fascinating look at some great albums many of us might forgotten about, but it has got people talking about their favourite albums and whether Rolling Stone’s top-ten is right or not. The Times reported the news that has got many music fans debating:

“In what amounts to an act of public penance America’s most celebrated rock music publication has proclaimed that the greatest album ever made was actually a soul record.

A comprehensively revised edition of Rolling Stone’s popular 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list has a new number one: Marvin Gaye’s plaintive 1971 protest album What’s Going On.

It replaces Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles, which topped the original list selected in 2003 and the slightly tweaked and updated version in 2012, but has been relegated to the lowly status of the 24th best album in history. It is now only the third best Beatles record, behind Abbey Road at 5 and Revolver at 11.

The revamped list was created after Rolling Stone asked for input from more than 300 producers, critics, industry executives and musicians, including Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish, half of U2, Raekwon of the Wu-Tang Clan, Gene Simmons, and Stevie Nicks.

IN THIS PHOTO: Billie Eilish/PHOTO CREDIT: Austin Hargrave

The result is a list that is far more diverse, both musically and in terms of the musicians, than before, with 154 new entries, 86 albums from this century and a much greater representation of women and non-white artists. The online music magazine Consequence of Sound called it “a long overdue overhaul that better reflects who we are and who we want to be as a society”.

Rolling Stone was started in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner, a university drop-out aged 21, and within a short time came to be regarded by many Americans as an essential tool for understanding modern life. That legacy meant Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time acquired pantheon status for readers after it wasfirst published.

The overwhelming dominance of rock albums made by white, typically male, performers, also gave it an increasingly dated appearance set against today’s kaleidoscopic music environment

Rolling Stone said that “tastes change, new genres emerge, the history of music keeps being rewritten”. It added: “The classics are still the classics, but the canon keeps getting bigger and better.”

There was just one album by a female artist in the top 30 in 2003: Joni Mitchell’s Blue. Now, with more than 300 journalists, industry figures and artists voting, including Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, who may have helped vote their own albums into the top 500, there are five.

IN THIS IMAGE: The cover for Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 album, To Pimp a Butterfly

The Beatles, for the last five decades the undisputed gods of best album lists, have only one, Abbey Road, in the top ten. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, formerly Rolling Stone’s greatest album ever, has slipped to a shocking number 29.

Hip-hop, now the world’s most popular genre, features heavily, with Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 state-of-the-nation epic To Pimp A Butterfly at 19.

No list is definitive, and the canon of classic albums will always change with the times, which is why a lot of progressive rock fans will be dismayed to discover that Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon did not even make the top 50.

“One distinction from the old list is that there’s not one objective history of popular music,” Rolling Stone’s reviews editor Jon Dolan said.

Sometimes, however, you do wonder if the rock’n’roll baby was thrown out with the bathwater. 1967’s psychedelic rock masterpiece Forever Changes by Love was listed as the 40th best album of all time in 2003. Now is the 180th. Has it really got worse with age?”.

I am glad Joni Mitchell’s Blue made it to number-three, and Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life is at number-four. It is great that there is a female artist in the top-five, and I am surprised there are not more women in the top-twenty - Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is one of only a few. That album actually beat out The Beatles’ Revolver, and the band only got as high as number-five with Abbey Road.

I do like how some more contemporary albums have overtaken classics, and Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly of 2015 is at number-nineteen. Whilst articles like Rolling Stone’s are good clean fun, it does actually raise a point as to how some albums gain new relevance over time and how others can age badly. The fact some of The Beatles’ very best did not crack the top-five is not a reflection of its value in 2020, but more the fact that other albums speak more loudly and have acquired new nuance. A lot of conversation took place after Rolling Stone published their revised feature, and it made me think what people’s top-five albums would be – I am not sure I would even have a top-five-hundred! Like the new list, I think a couple of albums in my top-five are there because they have grown stronger through the years and, in a year when nostalgia is as important as political activation and awareness in terms of many people’s musical lures, a couple of albums would be higher. Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside will always be top, and I have written about that a lot. I would keep Paul Simon’s Graceland at number-two, as it is an album I listened to a lot when I was young, but the songcraft and beauty of the album is as strong now as it was back in 1986! Whilst Jeff Buckley’s Grace, and Radiohead’s The Bends would have been in my top-five, I think they have moved just out. Oddly, I would put the Traveling Wilburys’ Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 in the top-five.

That album was released in 1988, and they were a supergroup consisting of George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, and Tom Petty. Their fantastic debut sound so gentle and uplifting; the songs are simple, yet they stick in your head and lift the heart. Madonna’s Ray of Light has always been in my top-twenty, but I would move it as high as a top-five place, not only as she is directing her own biopic soon; I have also been revisiting her albums a lot. I love her 1983 eponymous debut, but Ray of Light of 1998 was a high school favourite that saw Madonna embark on one of her biggest musical transformations. The songs are phenomenal, and William Orbit coming in as a producer adds something new to Madonna’s palette. The order of albums might change, and I am sure that, as time goes by, other albums will come into the top-five. I would also include Steely Dan’s Pretzel Logic in the mix. I was also considering Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique as it is an album that I adore. I have included Steely Dan so high up because, again, this is a childhood album but one where the sheer quality of songs stands up today. It is strange how we can have a favourite album that will never always remain so, but then the rest of the top-five or ten alters as we get older. It would be interesting to see what other people think and whether their favourite albums selections have changed much this year. I am fascinated by Rolling Stone’s new rankings, as it opens up questions and makes me think about albums becoming more popular or meaningful based on the passing of time and how various years shape up. This year has been a trough one, but I have taken great comfort in albums that mean a lot to me. Some have grown in estimation and wonder and, all things considered, I really…

CAN’T explain why.  

FEATURE: Too Good to Be Forgotten: Songs That Are Much More Than a Guilty Pleasure: Snow - Informer

FEATURE:

 

Too Good to Be Forgotten: Songs That Are Much More Than a Guilty Pleasure

Snow - Informer

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THIS feature will focus on an artist…

and song that has divided people for years. Snow’s album, 12 Inches of Snow, was released in January 1993, and it was produced not long before Snow was imprisoned for a year for assault. The hit song, Informer, was released after his release – and it is has become one of the most-successful Reggae songs of all-time. Snow is a rapper from Canada, and many people were surprised when listening to Informer that it was performed by a white Canadian – not a big demographic that fitted seamlessly into Reggae! One reason why people were shock is because Snow is delivered in a Jamaican patois. When I was at school, many of my friends and I could not understand the words! Informer spent seven consecutive weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, and it reached number-two in the U.K. Informer is a song that splits people! VH1 ranked it as one of the best songs of the 1990s back in 2007, but many others have derided the song for its un unintelligible lyrics and inauthenticity. Snow became hooked on Reggae when Jamaicans moved into his Toronto neighbourhood – before then, Rock music was prevalent in his life. Whilst Informer has MC Shan (who co-produced 12 Inches for Snow) offering some great rapping, Snow’s contributions are hard to decipher! I love the song and I will explain more…

It is amazing to think that Informer was inspired by Snow being charged with two counts of attempted murder! Snow was eventually acquitted, but one can understand why he was angry and a lot of that energy went into the song. Whilst critics have lumped Informer in with other songs/artists who provided a more watered-down Reggae sound in the 1990s – including Shaggy, and Ini Kamoze -, I think the song is a lot more credible than many give it credit for. Informer does nothing to try and convince people it is genuine Reggae or that it can rank alongside the very best of the genre. Snow had his own style and slant and, even though the lyrics are hard to pick out, the song itself is catchy and stands up. Beyond being a one-hit wonder and an artist prime for parody, I think Informer is a great track that was among the best of the ‘90s. In future features, I am going to look at other songs from the 1990s, but I first came across the track on the radio - and it was very different to anything I had been listening to. I would not say Informer introduced me to Reggae, but it was one of the first times that I had heard a Reggae song chart so high and become so successful. I was listening to artists like Bob Marley as a child, and this was certainly a different take. I listen to Informer now and it is a shame that Snow did not have more success or was able to shake off that one-hit wonder tag! Informer is a terrific track from the, to be fair, 12 Inches of Snow, yet I am uplifted and transported when I hear the track. Like all the tracks in Too Good to Be Forgotten, I would encourage people to check out a song that is much more than a guilty pleasure. For me, Informer is one of the standout tracks from…

A great decade of music.

FEATURE: “I Press Execute” Kate Bush’s Deeper Understanding

FEATURE:

 

“I Press Execute”

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush captured in 1989 by Guido Harari

Kate Bush’s Deeper Understanding

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I have been focusing on album anniversaries…

for the past few weeks, so I am changing tact and I am writing about one of Kate Bush’s best-loved songs – and one I have not really talked about over the years! When it comes to Bush’s albums, I am well-versed in her earlier stuff, but there are gaps in my knowledge when we talk about albums like The Sensual World. I am listening to The Sensual World a lot more now, but it is still an album that is a little fresh in some places, in so much as I have not heard the songs for a while. Deeper Understanding is a song that has quite a long and interesting history. The song originally appeared on The Sensual World in 1989, and it was reworked in 2011 for Director’s Cut. One reason why Deeper Understanding is so interesting is that, back in 1989, the song discussed how technology was playing a huge role and how it was sort of taking over in terms of communication. Kate Bush herself discussed the roots of the song:

“This is about people... well, about the modern situation, where more and more people are having less contact with human beings. We spend all day with machines; all night with machines. You know, all day, you're on the phone, all night you're watching telly. Press a button, this happens. You can get your shopping from the Ceefax! It's like this long chain of machines that actually stop you going out into the world. It's like more and more humans are becoming isolated and contained in their homes.

And this is the idea of someone who spends all their time with their computer and, like a lot of people, they spend an obsessive amount of time with their computer. People really build up heavy relationships with their computers! And this person sees an ad in a magazine for a new program: a special program that's for lonely people, lost people. So this buff sends off for it, gets it, puts it in their computer and then like , it turns into this big voice that's saying to them, "Look, I know that you're not very happy, and I can offer you love: I'm her to love you. I love you!" And it's the idea of a divine energy coming through the least expected thing. For me, when I think of computers, it's such a cold contact and yet, at the same time, I really believe that computers could be a tremendous way for us to look at ourselves in a very spiritual way because I think computers could teach us more about ourselves than we've been able to look at, so far. I think there's a large part of us that is like a computer. I think in some ways, there's a lot of natural processes that are like programs... do you know what I mean? And I think that, more and more, the more we get into computers and science like that, the more we're going to open up our spirituality.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in the studio in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush (from the book, Kate: Inside the Rainbow)

And it was the idea of this that this... the last place you would expect to find love, you know, real love, is from a computer and, you know, this is almost like the voice of angels speaking to this person, saying they've come to save them: "Look, we're here, we love you, we're here to love you!" And it's just too much, really, because this is just a mere human being and they're being sucked into the machine and they have to be rescurom it. And all they want is that, because this is "real" contact. (Roger Scott, BBC Radio 1 interview, 14 October 1989)”.

There are these artists, like David Bowie and Kate Bush, who seem to predict the future and really had their finger on the pulse! Bowie was on Newsnight in 1999 and he told Jeremy Paxman how the Internet was going to be more powerful than we could ever imagine, and it was going to revolutionise the way people communicate. Paxman sort of scoffed and thought he was a bit crazy, but Bowie was right! Even back in 1999, there were signs that the Internet was a huge thing, but I was not aware then that it would take over. A decade before Bowie’s prediction, Bush would have been aware of the importance of computers and, whilst they were pretty basic and clunky, she knew that something was happening and that humans were turning to machines for things that they could not have foreseen or imagined years before!

In a feature from 2015, The A.V. Club talked about how Kate Bush, in a way, foresaw the Internet’s arrival and impact:

“Al Gore gets a lot of flack for saying he invented the internet, because everybody knows it was actually Kate Bush. (To be fair, Gore never made that exact claim to begin with—just something close—but that’s beside the point.) First released on her 1989 album The Sensual World, “Deeper Understanding” tells the story of a lonely person‘s love affair with their computer, which they use as a substitute for the family to whom they no longer feel connected. “As the people here grow colder / I turn to my computer / And spend my evenings with it / Like a friend,” Bush sings, a sentiment that should ring true with anyone who’s spent a lonesome, possibly intoxicated evening watching other people’s engagements and birthday parties tick by on Facebook. (So, everyone.)“.

I think Deeper Understanding sounds great on The Sensual World. Kate Bush was producing her own albums, and I think The Sensual World was the last album for a while where the sound is amazing and you pick up a lot of emotion and natural strength from the songs. The Red Shoes in 1993 is a slightly more artificial and compressed sound, and Bush would take songs from both albums – including Deeper Understanding – and redo them on Director’s Cut.

Deeper Understanding opens the second side of The Sensual World, and it is the side that would work its way to This Woman’s Work – perhaps the best-known and adored track from the whole album. Bush shows her constant diversity and flexibility in terms of song inspiration and themes, and I am not sure that Deeper Understanding translated too well to Director’s Cut. Given that, in 2011, social media and the Internet was universal and dominant, the song did not carry as much weight as it did back in 1989! I like the effects and vocals on the original. The 2011 re-record has a more robotic and machine-like ghostliness (voiced by her young son, Bertie), and it is definitely heavier on Director’s Cut compared to The Sensual World. Regarding the rebooted Deeper Understanding, Michael Cragg wrote in The Guardian (in 2011):

"The 2011 retwizzle is two minutes longer, seems to have a new vocal and, naturally for the music climate of today, a lot of vocal processing and vocoder. The chorus is much more explicitly meant to be a conversation between human and computer: "I bring you love and deeper understanding" croons the machine like a malfunctioning ZX Spectrum. It's not a disaster, in fact once you get used to the vocals it's still a great Kate Bush track, but if revisiting songs is going to mean adding an extra minute and a half of harmonica solos to each one then we may have problems." The New Yorker added: "Where the original chattered and cracked, this version susurrates and warps, a bit more like life online".

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush captured in 1989 by Guido Harari

I do like that Director’s Cut exists, as it allowed Bush the chance to rework songs that she felt lacked something on the original albums. Even though she produced the albums she is slightly unhappy with, there might have been suggestions from the record company regarding sound and recording, or Bush might have felt rushed or that, in hindsight, she could have done things differently. I think only Top of the City (originally on The Red Shoes) sounds better in its new form. The remainder of the album is interesting, but Deeper Understanding was always going to be a challenge in terms of its impact and importance today. As we are more immersed in technology now than in 1989, I guess the prophecy of the lyrics is less eye-opening, and some of the computer sounds are pre-broadband and have quite an aged and nostalgic feel – whether that was the vibe Bush was going for?! On Deeper Understanding – The Sensual World version -, there is a definite warmth and beauty, but the lyrics point at something quite sad and dark. One can almost hear Bush fading away and grasping for some real connection, as she herself is slipping into the machine. As a producer who had a love of experimentation and was used to using an array of technologies in the studio, she herself must have been conscious of her own reliance on computers and, ironically, she may have felt that the 1989 version sounded a bit unnatural or overly-worked – keen to strip it down and let it breathe in 2011!

I want to end with an interesting feature from 2010 that discussed Deeper Understanding’s lyrical meanings:

“Reducing any Kate Bush song to a descriptor as simple as “bleak” is, of course, kind of dumb. Bush has always packed dizzying dimensions of nuance and emotion—and sometimes a subtle irony—into her songs. All of these qualities intertwine complexly throughout “Deeper Understanding.” Over a mechanistic, precisely calibrated opening, Bush whispers as if in the throes of infatuation: “As the people here grow colder, I turn to my computer / And spend my evenings with it like a friend / I was loading a new program I had ordered from a magazine / ‘Are you lonely, are you lost? This voice console is a must.’ / I press ’execute.’”

The levels of loss and meaning she sinks into the one word, “execute,” the terrifying yet exhilarating finality of it, is just one of many moments of the song’s hushed genius. And the irony Bush employs is far beyond satire or social commentary. Dwelling magically within, around, and above her dual subjects—that is, a girl and her desktop—she sings, “Well I’ve never felt such pleasure / Nothing else seemed to matter / I neglected my bodily needs / I did not eat, I did not sleep / The intensity increasing / ‘Til my family found me and intervened.” Bush’s character-in-songs bears her inhuman romantic interface with a detachment that underscores her paradoxical reality: Only an inanimate object can move her.

As poignant and breathtaking as “Deeper Understanding” was when it was released, it’s taken on a slightly different tone now that the Internet has become, quite literally, many people’s best friend—a place we comb daily for truth, companionship, and insight, all the while acutely aware that staring at a screen for hours on end is a pretty perverse way to go about it. Funny enough, Bush did revisit the themes of “Deeper Understanding” during the nascent Internet Age. But she didn’t do it alone. She contributed backing vocals to Prince’s 1996 song “My Computer,” a song whose melancholy if playful scenario (“I scan my computer, looking for a site / Somebody to talk to, funny and bright”) echoes Bush’s own apprehension and wonder—a paralyzing awe in the face of this brave new world in which we all, quite literally, withdraw in order to connect”.

Through investigating Deeper Understanding, I have spent more time connecting with The Sensual World and other songs on the album. In the coming weeks, I will spotlight one or two other songs from the record – including This Woman’s Work, and Love and Anger -, and, in the process, turn people onto an album that they might not have been aware of. It is spooky to think how forward-thinking and aware Kate Bush was in 1989! Even she could not have envisaged how computers changed the world in future years. Every line and lyric of Deeper Understanding strikes a chord, but I think the opening lines are particularly stirring and true today: “As the people here grow colder/I turn to my computer/And spend my evenings with it/Like a friend”. Those words might have seemed like slight exaggeration in 1989 but, in 2020, we can all see just…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush (from the book, Kate: Inside the Rainbow)

HOW right she was!

FEATURE: The September Playlist: Vol. 4: War and Magic

FEATURE:

The September Playlist

IN THIS PHOTO: Bree Runway

Vol. 4: War and Magic

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IN a year of big weeks for music…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kylie Minogue/PHOTO CREDIT: Darenote Ltd.

here is another one of varied and sensational music! There are new tracks from Kylie Minogue, IDLES, Pillow Queens, Tim Burgess, Deftones, Bruce Springsteen, Royal Blood, and Public Enemy (ft. Mike D, Ad-Rock, Run DMC). Also in the mix are Sylvan Esso, Fleet Foxes, Smashing Pumpkins, Bree Runway, Tune-Yards, Hayden Thorpe, and Sufjan Stevens. If you need some great music to get your weekend going, then this week’s Playlist should do the job. It is another strong and busy week for music that should blow away the cobwebs. Settle back, turn up the volume and enjoy some awesome tunes that are guaranteed to provide…

IN THIS PHOTO: Sylvan Esso

ENERGY and motivation.

ALL PHOTOS/IMAGES (unless credited otherwise): Artists

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Kylie Minogue – Magic

PHOTO CREDIT: @tomhaaam

IDLES – War

Tim Burgess – Yours. To Be

PHOTO CREDIT: Faolán Carey

Pillow Queens – Liffey

Bruce Springsteen – Ghosts

Fleet Foxes – Can I Believe You

Deftones – The Spell of Mathematics

PHOTO CREDIT: Kyle Simmons

Royal Blood – Trouble’s Coming

Sufjan Stevens - Die Happy

PHOTO CREDIT: Marisa Kula-Mercer

The Shins – The Great Divide

PHOTO CREDIT: Press

Public Enemy (ft. Mike D, Ad-Rock, Run DMC) - Public Enemy Number Won

PHOTO CREDIT: Travis Shinn

Pixies – Hear Me Out

PHOTO CREDIT: Matthew Tyler Priestley

Sylvan Esso – Free

PHOTO CREDIT: Laura Lewis

Luke Abbott – Earthship

Bastille - survivin'

Sia – Courage to Change

Tune-Yards - nowhere, man

Bree Runway – Little Nokia

The Smashing Pumpkins – Wrath

Thurston Moore – Dreamers Work

Wyvern Lingo – Things Fall Apart

Machine Gun Kelly (ft. Halsey) - forget me too

Will Butler – Hard Times

PHOTO CREDIT: Phil Smithies

Hayden Thorpe - Blue Crow

PHOTO CREDIT: Sophia Burnell

Ward Thomas – Someday

Maude Latour – Block Your Number

Will Joseph Cook – 10X MORE FUN

Connie Constance – Costa del Margate

Landshapes – Rosemary

Molly Payton – How to Have Fun

Kylie Frey – I Do Thing

Holy Motors – Trouble

PHOTO CREDIT: Parri Thomas

Michelle O Faith - Black Lolita

PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Weintrob

Katie Pruitt – Look the Other Way

FEATURE: A Buyer’s Guide: Part Twenty-Two: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

FEATURE:

 

A Buyer’s Guide

Part Twenty-Two: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

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FOR this edition of A Buyer’s Guide…  

it is going to be very hard to whittle down the very best albums of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, as they have been so consistent through their career! I would urge you to check out all their albums, but there are a few that really stand out. I will also recommend one that is underrated, and a Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds-related book that is worth getting. If you are new to the band, then I hope this guide assists and you get a better understanding of their work. With the Melbourne band’s album, Ghosteen, of last year still ringing and resonating in the mind, I wonder where they will head next. Here is a list of the essential albums from one of music’s…

ABSOLUTE best.   

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The Four Essential Albums

Your Funeral... My Trial

Release Date: 3rd November, 1986

Label: Mute

Producers: Flood/Tony Cohen

Standout Tracks: Your Funeral My Trial/Hard on for Love/She Fell Away

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Nick-Cave-The-Bad-Seeds-Your-Funeral--My-Trial/master/17242

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/2tCVmRY54oIgYASh50Ra4Q

Review:

“Reduced to a quartet for the most part, with Barry Adamson joining Nick Cave, Blixa Bargeld, Mick Harvey and Thomas Wydler on only a couple of tracks, the Bad Seeds turn from the interpretive triumph of Kicking Against the Pricks to another strong high, the mostly-original Your Funeral...My Trial. The one cover is a sharp, unsurprisingly dramatic version of Tim Rose's "Long Time Man." As for the rest of the album, Trial shows the Seeds working as, again, a remarkably accomplished and varied act, ever available and ready to explore a wide range of musics distilled into Cave's often dark, always passionate vision. Arguably Cave and company have by now so clearly established their overall style that Your Funeral...My Trial is much more a refinement of the past than anything else, but so good is their work that resistance is near impossible. If anything, the brooding power of the Seeds is more restrained than ever, suggesting destructive endings and overwhelming love without directly playing it. Songs like "Jacks Shadow" and the gentler but still melancholy moods of "Sad Waters," detailing a riverside scene between a couple, are simply grand. The opening title track sets the mood well, Cave handling not merely vocals but Hammond organ, adding a strangely sweet air to the late-night atmosphere of the piece. "The Carny" is a definite highlight, the cracked music-box/carnival accompaniment courtesy of Harvey utterly appropriate for Cave's tale of a circus gone horribly wrong in ways Edward Gorey would appreciate. "Hard On for Love," as the title pretty clearly gives away, is at once sensual and blunt right down to the lyrics, Biblical references and all, as the feverish music rises in a tide of emotion” – AllMusic

Choice Cut: The Carny

Murder Ballads

Release Date: 5th February, 1996 (U.K.)

Label: Mute Records

Producers: Victor Van Vugt/Tony Cohen/The Bad Seeds

Standout Tracks: Stagger Lee/Henry Lee (ft. PJ Harvey)/The Kindness of Strangers

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Nick-Cave-And-The-Bad-Seeds-Murder-Ballads/master/18354

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/4EMI48u2Fn6srocaXjuAcJ

Review:

“In some ways, Murder Ballads is the record Nick Cave was waiting to make his entire career. Death and violence have always haunted his music, even when he wasn't explicitly singing about the subject. On Murder Ballads, he sings about nothing but death in the most gruesome, shocking fashion. Divided between originals and covers, the record is awash in both morbid humor and sobering horror, as the Bad Seeds provide an appropriate backdrop for the carnage, alternating between blues, country, and lounge-jazz. Opening the affair is "Song for Joy," a tale from a father who has witnessed his family's death at the hands of serial killer. It is the most disturbing number on the record, lacking any of the gallows humor that balances out the other songs. Cave's duets with Kylie Minogue ("Where the Wild Roses Grow") and PJ Harvey ("Henry Lee") are intriguing, but the true tours de force of the album are "Stagger Lee" and "O'Malley's Bar." Working from an obscure, vulgar variation on "Stagger Lee," Cave increases the sordidness of the song, making Stagger an utterly irredeemable character. The original "O'Malley's Bar" is even stronger, as he spins a bizarrely funny epic of one man's slaughter of an entire bar. During "O'Malley's Bar," Cave and the Bad Seeds are at the height of their powers and the performances rank among the best they have ever recorded” – AllMusic

Choice Cut: Where the Wild Roses Grow (ft. Kylie Minogue)

The Boatman's Call

Release Date: 3rd March, 1997

Labels: Mute/Reprise

Producers: Flood/Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Standout Tracks: People Ain't No Good/(Are You) The One That I've Been Waiting For?/Idiot Prayer

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Nick-Cave-The-Bad-Seeds-The-Boatmans-Call/master/18393

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/44R7BgUO8sNIXTD7X9HYwZ

Review:

“The Boatman's Call is Cave's plea for redemption, an album every bit as dignified as its predecessor is deranged. After spending much of his career spinning yarns out of other people's misery, Cave-- emerging from a divorce and a highly publicized but short-lived affair with PJ Harvey-- comes clean about his own. On the stirring piano-based hymns "Into My Arms" and "There Is a Kingdom", he looks to religion less as a convenient dramatic device and more as the genuine refuge for the lonely soul. Cave had flirted with tender balladry many times before, but whereas previous turns like "Straight to You" and "The Ship Song" were shot through the Bad Seeds' widescreen lens, here, the atmosphere is so spare and intimate, you feel like you're curled up inside Cave's piano. More than any other album in this batch of reissues, The Boatman's Call is greatly enriched by a remaster that amplifies the magnitude of Cave's loneliness, from the burning-ember ambience of "Lime Tree Arbour" to Ellis' trembling violin lines on the absolutely devastating "Far From Me". But even though The Boatman's Call is Cave's most confessional, open-hearted album, its sense of sorrow and catharsis transcends a strictly personal interpretation. It speak volumes about the album's universality that its songs have soundtracked everything from Michael Hutchence's funeral to Shrek 2” – Pitchfork

Choice Cut: Into My Arms

Skeleton Tree

Release Date: 9th September, 2016

Label: Bad Seed Ltd.

Producers: Nick Cave/Warren Ellis

Standout Tracks: Girl in Amber/I Need You/Skeleton Tree

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Nick-Cave-The-Bad-Seeds-Skeleton-Tree/master/1054118

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/34xaLN7rDecGEK5UGIVbeJ

Review:

“Anthrocene has echoes of the Doors’ Horse Latitude – it’s an angry collage of sound whipped into a frenzy by an unforgiving, raging vocal – but some of the album’s best moments tap into the almost transcendently eerie calm that follows grief. I Need You is astonishingly gorgeous: a song from a numb void where emotion has been drained but love flickers like a faraway spark. In the duet Distant Sky, Else Torp offers a fleeting solace in heightened senses and the new joys of the world around, before Cave shatters the peace with furious devastation: “They told us our gods would outlive us, but they lied.” Some moments – the singer’s cry over the sea in the title track, to be met by an empty echo – are almost too personal to bear, and it’s hard to know who exactly he addresses in the album’s final line, “And it’s all right now.”

Skeleton Tree will take its place in the racks alongside Justin Bieber or whoever, where it will sit like a gaping open wound. It will prove scant consolation to the singer that the worst kind of trauma has produced a piece of art that will surely prove unforgettable to all who hear it” – The Guardian

Choice Cut: Jesus Alone

The Underrated Gem

Nocturama 

Release Date: 3rd February, 2003

Labels: Muse/ANTI-

Producers: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds/Nick Launay

Standout Tracks: Wonderful Life/Bring It On/Rock of Gibraltar

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Nick-Cave-And-The-Bad-Seeds-Nocturama/master/23089

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/3FgAZqG6AJyYxpLQkHckxS

Review:

“Forget the fangless, dumbed-down profile of goth-pop, with its fishnets and black nail polish. For Nick Cave, unrepentantly churning out his twelfth album of literary, theatrical love songs, the interior world of darkness has nothing to do with exterior trappings. On Nocturama, the Australian singer-pianist-songwriter negotiates the slippery slopes of romance and fate with piano ballads (“Still in Love,” “Right Out of Your Hand”) and muscular thrash (the rousing “Bring It On” and the fierce “Dead Man in My Bed”) that hearken back to his days with proto-goth ghoulfathers the Birthday Party. The songs are rousing and poetic, with a deep bottom and gorgeous piano lines vying like the forces of darkness and light” – BLENDER

Choice Cut: Babe, I'm on Fire

The Latest Album

Ghosteen

Release Date: 4th October, 2019

Labels: Ghosteen/Bad Seed

Producers: Nick Cave/Warren Ellis

Standout Tracks: Spinning Song/Waiting for You/Galleon Ship

Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Nick-Cave-And-The-Bad-Seeds-Ghosteen/release/14345514

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0zKVAWaIr8KEibn310KCpN

Review:

“According to a statement by Cave, the songs on the first disc are the children, the songs on the second are their parents, and Ghosteen is “a migrating spirit”. You could also take the whole thing as an attempt to express and understand difficult feelings through fantastical allegories, the meanings of which may not be clear even to Cave. The album opens with Spinning Song, which imagines Elvis and Priscilla Presley as a fairytale king and queen planting a tree in their garden; when Elvis dies a feather from a bird nesting in the tree spins into the room of someone listening to the radio. Cave professes his everlasting love before announcing that peace will come in time. All of this is set to a seesawing church organ against which Cave the singer is more impassioned and mournful than ever.

It sets the tone for an album that combines stately music from the Bad Seeds — rich with floating harmonies, restrained piano lines and gliding strings — with ecstatic flights of the imagination. On Bright Horses Cave envisions a pack of wild horses with manes of fire, concluding that there is nothing beyond life as we see it: “There ain’t no Lord . . . there’s no shortage of tyrants and no shortage of fools.” Sun Forest imagines a spiral of children climbing up to the sun, waving goodbye to the old world in heavenly rapture. Wheezing harmoniums, ominous backing vocals and an arrangement somewhere between lush easy listening and atonal experimentalism add to a mood of poetic seriousness that’s worthy of Leonard Cohen or Scott Walker” – The Times

Choice Cut: Ghosteen Speaks

The Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Book

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Murder Ballads - 33 1/3

Author: Santi Elijah Holley

Publication Date: 22nd October, 2020

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Synopsis:

“In a bar called The Bucket of Blood, a man shoots the bartender four times in the head. In the small town of Millhaven, a teenage girl secretly and gleefully murders her neighbors. A serial killer travels from home to home, quoting John Milton in his victims' blood. Murder Ballads, the ninth studio album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, is a gruesome, blood-splattered reimagining of English ballads, American folk and blues music, and classic literature. Most of the stories told on Murder Ballads have been interpreted many times, but never before had they been so graphic or profane. Though earning the band their first Parental Advisory warning label, Murder Ballads, released in 1996, brought Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds their biggest critical and commercial success, thanks in part to the award-winning single, "Where the Wild Roses Grow," an unlikely duet with Australian pop singer, Kylie Minogue. Closely examining each of the ten songs on the album, Santi Elijah Holley investigates the stories behind the songs, and the numerous ways these ballads have been interpreted through the years. Murder Ballads is a tour through the evolution of folk music, and a journey into the dark secrets of American history” – Waterstones

Order: https://www.waterstones.com/book/nick-cave-and-the-bad-seeds-murder-ballads/santi-elijah-holley//9781501355141

FEATURE: The Lockdown Playlist: Bryan Ferry at Seventy-Five: His Essential Cuts

FEATURE:

 

The Lockdown Playlist

Bryan Ferry at Seventy-Five: His Essential Cuts

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FOR this Lockdown Playlist…

IN THIS PHOTO: Roxy Music in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Cooke/Redferns/Getty Images

I am marking the birthday of the legendary Bryan Ferry. He is seventy-five today (26th September), so I have collected his very best tracks together. The Roxy Music lead has been delighting fans for decades, and his last solo studio album, Bitter-Sweet (the album contains remakes of older songs by Ferry and Roxy Music), was released in 2018. The 1972 Roxy Music debut (the eponymous album) is a bit of a classic, and the band released some equally powerful albums through the 1970s. To mark the seventy-fifth birthday of a true original and a musical legend, I wanted to put out this playlist containing the best solo and group songs - and some great cover versions. If you are not a fan, I would advise you to investigate, as the music of Ferry/Roxy Music is easy to love and understand. On his birthday, I am sending warmest wishes to the fantastic…

IN THIS PHOTO: Bryan Ferry in 1975/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Putland/Getty Images

BRYAN ferry.

FEATURE: Second Spin: Rihanna - Rated R

FEATURE:

Second Spin

Rihanna - Rated R

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FOR this round of Second Spin…

I am focusing on Rihanna’s sixth studio album, Rated R. I cannot count myself as a big Rihanna fan, but I have always respected her music. Whilst many of her albums have not scored big with the critics – in contrast to the commercial success and her huge fanbase -, I think there are albums in her catalogue that warrant greater investigation and approval. One such album is Rated R. Released on 20th November, 2009 by Def Jam Recordings and SRP Records, it contains some of her best songs in Rude Boy, and Russian Roulette.  For those who are new to Rihanna or do not consider themselves fans, I think Rated R is a good entry point, and I think it is one of her most consistent and eclectic albums. Although Rihanna worked alongside various record producers, including Chase & Status, StarGate, The-Dream, Ne-Yo, and Brian Kennedy, I don’t think she is pushed and pulled in too many directions. Rihanna (Robyn Fenty) co-writes several tracks on the album – including Rude Boy -, and I think the fact there are some excellent collaborators on the album – Slash played guitar on Rockstar 101. Rated R was a departure for Rihanna in terms of music and lyrics. Good Girl Gone Bad, her previous album of 2007, was more upbeat, but Rated R came out around the time she was assaulted by her then-boyfriend Chris Brown. Because of that, there is something darker in Rated R, but there is plenty of life and musical diversity – including the Latin tones of Te Amo.

Although Rated R has received some of the best reviews of Rihanna’s career, I still think some critics were harsh, and many others dismissed the albums. As a body of work, this is a polished and layered album that has some great guitar hooks and some of Rihanna’s most engaging and emotionally-affecting vocals. Wait Your Turn is one of the strongest cuts from album, and I do like the Dubstep elements and flavours. The insatiable energy and kick of Rude Boy meant that it went to number-one in the U.S., and the album entered the top-ten in many countries. It is clear that Rated R is a hugely important and transformative album for Rihanna. I want to bring in an article that talks about the time around Rated R’s release, and how Rihanna put her all into the album:

“As pictures of Rihanna’s injured face leaked to the press, the singer endured criticisms and rumours about how she handled the situation, prompting her to take a break, both musically and from public appearances. After her appearance in Kanye’s video, however, she returned to the studio. Singing on a triumphant hook from Jay Z and Ye’s ‘Run This Town’, Rihanna made it clear: she was ready to take over the world once again.

Released on 23 November 2009, Rated R plays out like a classic horror film. A narrator opens the album with an ominous introduction: “Ladies and gentlemen/To those among you who are easily frightened/We suggest you turn away now/To those of you who think they can take it/We say: welcome to the Mad House!”

But ‘Russian Roulette’ was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to the kind of emotional excavation she would perform on the album. Full of gut-wrenching ballads, Rated R sees Rihanna trying to separate her real self from tabloid narratives and a packaged persona. Even with a team of top pop producers at her disposal, she was heavily involved with the songwriting process, co-writing nine of the album’s 13 tracks and receiving an executive producer credit.

Rated R is, for the most part, a solo affair with few guests or features, one of the exceptions being a spot from Black Eyed Peas frontman and producer will.i.am, who wrote and features on ‘Photographs’. Originally intended for his group’s The END album, Rihanna fell in love with the track and used it for her own project, where it remains a sleeper hit in her catalogue.

Meanwhile, on the Top 10 hit ‘Hard’, Rihanna does her best hip-hop posturing over aggressive synths and pounding piano notes, enlisting rapper Young Jeezy for a Dirty South co-sign. From the jump, Rihanna lets you know that nothing (and no one) is going to slow her down: “No pain is forever/Yup, you know this,” she spits.

After putting herself through the ringer, Rihanna finally finds closure on the aptly titled ‘The Last Song’. With shimmering guitars and moody feedback, it’s the emotional climax of Rated R: a last reflection on the person she once was and the artist she was destined to become”.

It is a shame that Rated R has not received all the love it deserves. There have been some positive reviews, but many have been half-hearted – and people do not talk much about Rated R as much as you would imagine. To give you an example of some who were a little mixed on the album, this is what Pitchfork wrote:

“Talking about Rated R in a promo interview, Rihanna said, "Anybody can make a hit, but I wanted a real album." Such is the flawed logic of a newly legal drinker who has known only skyrocketing commercial success. While the singer is trying to accentuate her individuality and independence with this album, the "dark" and/or "mature" LP is nothing new-- from Janet Jackson's The Velvet Rope to Christina Aguilera's Stripped to Kelly Clarkson's My December, the rebel record is now a de rigeur coming-of-age maneuver. Based on Rated R, Rihanna's artistic aspirations are currently loftier than her abilities. Then again, her tenacity in the face of the unimaginable public humiliation this year is beyond brave. For a while, Rihanna lacked a compelling narrative but couldn't yawn without hitting the Top 10. Now her story is overflowing, but her songs aren't sticking as they once did. Not just anybody can make a hit, and no one can make hits all the time”.

I want to bring in a review from AllMusic, as they were a lot kinder to the album, and they seem to understand what Rihanna was trying to say:

“The closest the set gets to upbeat pop is “Rude Boy,” and by any standard it is stern; needless to say, there is quite a difference between “Can you get it up?” and “You can stand under my umbrella.” Much of this daring album is absolutely over the top, bleak and sleek both lyrically and sonically, but it’s compelling, filled with as many memorably belligerent lines -- two of which, “I pitch with a grenade/Swing away if ya feeling brave” and “I’m such a fuckin’ lady,” set the tone early on -- as a rap album made ripe for dissection. “G4L,” over a low-slung and sleek production, is the most fantastical of all, in which Rihanna leads a band of homicidal women, opening with “I lick the gun when I’m done ‘cause I know that revenge is sweet” and “Any mothaf*cka wanna disrespect/Playin’ with fire finna get you wet.” The breakup song, “Fire Bomb,” even though it is also metaphorical, is a close second in terms of lyrical extremity: “I just wanna set you on fire so I won’t have to burn alone.” Some of the breathers -- the songs that are less intense -- hold the album back since Rihanna sounds detached from them. The one exception is the wistful, bittersweet “Photographs,” a rare instance of the singer dropping her guard, but it really sticks out since it is surrounded by material that has her taking the variably authentic roles of abused lover, dominatrix, and murderer. Whether the album seems ridiculous or spectacular (or both), Rihanna's complete immersion in the majority of the songs cannot be disputed. That is the one thing that is not up for debate”.

I would encourage people to go and check out Rated R, as it is a great album and one that has a lot of range and standout moments. Maybe Rihanna would soar higher on other albums, but few (in her catalogue) are as effecting, honest and striking….

THAN Rated R.

FEATURE: Exodus: One-Third of British Musicians Are Considering Quitting the Industry

FEATURE:

Exodus

PHOTO CREDIT: @sohcahjoah/Unsplash

One-Third of British Musicians Are Considering Quitting the Industry

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AS new measurements have been…  

PHOTO CREDIT: @timmossholder/Unsplash

put in place by the British government, it means that the future for music venues is very unsure. Many have planned gigs and events for early next year. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that new restrictions may last for six months, so I wonder whether music venues will be able to reopen in full until after then. It not only means that bands and traditional artists are struggling and will see their livelihoods affected, but there are a lot of professional musicians who cannot play and survive because they cannot get work; venues cannot operate at capacity and so many others are going to struggle to survive. This article from The Guardian explains more:

“One-third of professional British musicians are considering giving up their careers amid the coronavirus pandemic.

A survey of 2,000 members of the Musicians’ Union found that 34% “are considering abandoning the industry completely”, because of the financial difficulties they face during the pandemic, as performance opportunities are severely curtailed.

Almost half have already found work outside their industry, and 70% are unable to do more than a quarter of their usual work. Eighty-seven per cent of musicians covered by furlough and self-employment support schemes say they will face financial hardship when the schemes are due to end in October.

“Musicians are working in supermarkets, being Deliveroo drivers, going back to things they trained for early in life,” Horace Trubridge, the union’s general secretary, told the Guardian. “Anything but music – that’s the problem.

PHOTO CREDIT: @tenguyen/Unsplash

“We’re going into an autumn and winter with months of no work, and no financial support from the government at all apart from universal credit – which is appalling for an industry that’s worth £5.2bn.”

The survey follows another last month by musician booking service Encore, who found that 64% of 560 musicians they surveyed were thinking of leaving the profession. 41% reported having no bookings for the remainder of the year.

Concert venues have been allowed to reopen with social distancing, but there are scarcely any concerts taking place compared with the start of 2020. Weddings, conferences and other live events, where professional musicians often make a portion of their income, have dropped in number, as has the amount of music teaching.

The Musicians’ Union is proposing a “2-for-1” scheme similar to the government’s eat out to help out scheme, in which the government would underwrite the cost of a second seat at a concert – effectively allowing those seats to be removed or blocked to ensure social distancing. But as the UK anticipates more stringent measures to contain the virus, Trubridge says: “It’s all looking extremely bleak again. We’d love to have a date we can move to stage five of the roadmap, where indoor music can occur without social distancing, but that seems a long way off with the current state of the pandemic”.

It is hard for everyone right now, but there needs to be more money from the Government injected to the arts. From sustaining venues and supporting musicians who are self-employed to making certain that there is advice and support available to them, it is a crucial moment where so many musicians might leave music and never come back.

PHOTO CREDIT: @byfoul/Unsplash

Not only does this have dire ramifications for the music industry, but it will obviously mean fewer bookings for venues – who will want as many bookings and gigs next year when things start to stabilise. It is heart-aching to think that so many passionate musicians have no option but to find work elsewhere, and it will be hard to recover from the sort of loss. At a time when it will be hard to educate, train and foster new musicians and encourage them into the industry, we need to preserve and sustain the industry so that as many musicians as possible keep going. With the future looking uncertain and ever-changing, it is imperative that the Government offers emergency funds and some sort of foundation to the music industry – beyond what it has done so already. There is going to be little incentive for many musicians to keep playing and recording if they cannot perform or they feel like 2021 will be a very quiet year. I have hopes that things will work out and there will be some sort of funds allocated to support musicians. It is a desperate time, and the loss the music industry has incurred so far is immense. Let’s hope that we can keep as many musicians as possible playing and performing as we…

PHOTO CREDIT: @ebuenclemente205/Unsplash

NEED them more than ever.   

FEATURE: The Lockdown Playlist: Some Ambient Chill

FEATURE:

 

The Lockdown Playlist

PHOTO CREDIT: @haleyephelps/Unsplash

Some Ambient Chill

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I am returning back to the idea…  

PHOTO CREDIT: @j_erhunse/Unsplash

of chilled out songs, as the weather is alright, but you can definitely feel autumn coming in! I think we all need some calm at the moment so, with that in mind, I have put together a playlist with some great Ambient music. As parts of the U.K. are in lockdown, we are all looking to the future and when things can start to get back to normal. That may be a while off yet, but little steps are being made, and we are all hopeful that things will move in the right direction. If you need some distraction and great tunes, then have a listen to some chilled vibes, that should make your day a lot cosier and more rested! Sit back and enjoy some songs that will let your mind and body…

PHOTO CREDIT: @sgabriel/Unsplash

DRIFT away.