FEATURE: Ferry Aid 1987: Kate Bush, Speaking Words of Wisdom

FEATURE:

 

 

Ferry Aid 1987

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing her part on Let It Be for Ferry Aid 

Kate Bush, Speaking Words of Wisdom

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ALTHOUGH Ferry Aid…

might seem like a benefit concert for Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry, it was in fact a charity record for a noble cause. I normally wouldn’t mention anything involving The Sun. Although they are a newspaper one should avoid, Kate Bush did have a brief involvement with them in 1987. I am exploring Bush in 1986 and 1987, as they were the years between her bringing out Hounds of Love (1985) and her releasing The Sensual World (1989). The amount of attention that was aimed her way after Hounds of Love must have been similar to the first explosion in 1978. Rather than rush an album out, Bush did select her projects and next moves carefully. The greatest hits collection, The Whole Story, was released in 1986. A year later, she would appear on a song that went to number one (Bush’s only single that has gone to the top spot in the U.K. is her debut, Wuthering Heights). I have been thinking about charity singles. With the turmoil in Afghanistan, the ongoing climate crisis and other tragedies, I wonder when we might get a star-studded charity single. Kate Bush was no stranger to The Beatles! As a big fan, she had already performed cover versions of She’s Leaving Home, Come Together, The Long and Winding Road and Let It Be. After performing Let It Be in Japan in 1978, Bush would sing it as part of an ensemble eight years later.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Dave Hogan/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Maybe many Kate Bush fans do not know about the Ferry Aid single. The Kate Bush Encyclopaedia  provides more details:

“On March 6, 1987, the ferry Herald of Free Enterprise, leaving Zeebrugge port in Belgium, overturned, killing nearly 200 people. Among the passengers were many British people, using a special offer in tabloid newspaper The Sun, allowing them to make the crossing for just one UK pound.

The newspaper soon organised the recording of a single to benefit the Sun's Zeebrugge Disaster Fund, which was set up to raise money for victims of the disaster and relatives of the deceased. The performers of the chosen song, Let it be, were (in order of appearance):

Paul McCartney

Boy George

Keren Woodward

Nick Kamen

Paul King

Mark King (Level 42)

Jaki Graham

Taffy

Mark Knopfler (guitar solo)

Andy Bell

Pepsi & Shirlie

Mel & Kim

Gary Moore (guitar solo)

Kim Wilde

Nik Kershaw

Edwin Starr

Ben Volpierre-Pierrot (Curiosity Killed The Cat)

Ruby Turner

Kate Bush

The closing choruses of the song feature an ensemble choir featuring many of the above performers as well other recording artists. The back-up chorus consisted of: The Alarm, John Altman, Debee Ashby, Al Ashton, Rick Astley, Bananarama, Simon Bates, Alison Bettles, Jenny Blythe, Errol Brown, Miquel Brown, Bucks Fizz, Jay Carly, The Christians, Nick Conway, Linda Davidson, Hazell Dean, Anne Diamond, Difford and Tilbrook, Doctor and the Medics, The Drifters, Drum Theatre, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Roy Gayle, Go West, Carol Hitchcock, Felix Howard, Gloria Hunniford, Imagination, Jenny Jay, Ellie Laine, Annabel Lamb, Stephanie Lawrence, Loose Ends, Linda Lusardi, Ruth Madoc, Bobby McVey, Suzanne Mizzi, The New Seekers, Sadie Nine, The Nolans, Hazel O'Connor, Mike Osman, Su Pollard, Tim Polley, Pamela Power, Maxi Priest, Princess, Jimmy Pursey, Suzi Quatro, Mike Read, Sally Sagoe, Nejdet Salih, Ray Shell, Mandy Smith, Neville Stapleton, Alvin Stardust, Steve Strange, Sylvia Tella, Terraplane, Bonnie Tyler, Maria Whittaker and Working Week.

The recordings took place on March 14, 15 and 16, 1987. Kate Bush appeared on March 16, 1987 to sing her part. There had been some confusion about whether she would be there for the recording or not. When she finally appeared on the Monday, she explained that she had been ill over the weekend. She was the first artist to have the studio cleared, and also the first to refuse all interview requests, saying "It's for the cause - It's not what I've got to say”.

There were a fair few people on that one track! Not that Bush was the biggest name in the cast – one could argue Paul McCartney was the leading light (and he was singing his own song!) -, though she would have been one of the most unexpected names to appear. If Bush’s take on Let It Be in Japan was not especially smooth or memorable, the 1987 version was a little more assured and professional. I would be interested to hear Bush do a solo recording of Let It Be now. It is clear she has an affection and attachment to that particular song (I would have loved the young Bush to have tackled The Beatles’ I Saw Her Standing There). Whilst there is no particular link between the lines of The Beatles’ track (which was Paul recounting a dream where his deceased mother visited him) and the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster, Bush’s involvement is an interesting chapter! Nowadays, bigger tragedies have happened. I doubt few artist would support a musical initiative by The Sun – even if it were for charity.

I have written about Kate Bush involvement with charity before. It is no surprise that she was part of Ferry Aid. Bush lent her song, This Woman’s Work, for the NSPCC’s campaign years ago. She has been part of Comic Relief and has supported charities such as Crisis through the years. Anything she can do to help a cause or charity that she believes in! I can understand why Bush did not want to record her vocals with a bunch of others. Think about Live Ad from 1985 and the Band Aid single, Do They Know It's Christmas?, of 1984. Those experiences would have been more collaborative and closer. Rather than Bush being detached or not wanting to speak with anyone, she wanted some space and did not ant to be crowded out. I forgot to also mention that, in 1987, Bush was part of an Amnesty International event at the London Palladium in March of that year. David Gilmour performed with Bush on her track, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). Maybe the success of Live Aid compelled Bush to become more involved in charity events and the Ferry Aid campaign. Whilst it is a footnote in her career, I am fascinated in the few years following Hounds of Love’s success and what Bush did next. Maybe the popularity of the album provoked Bush to do more; perhaps it was a period of the 1980s when there were a lot of appeals that she could not ignore. Aside from the association with The Sun, Ferry Aid was a great cause for a disaster that would have rocked the nation. Now, as we are seeing unsettling images from Afghanistan, perhaps it is fitting to record a charity single – whilst it does not solve the problem, it could raise funds and provide some humanitarian aid and shelter for those displaced and beleaguered. Although, were there a charity single, Kate Bush is unlikely to be involved, one can…

NEVER bet against it.

FEATURE: Beyoncé at Forty: The Influence and Cultural Impact of a Modern Superstar

FEATURE:

 

 

Beyoncé at Forty

PHOTO CREDIT: Theo Wargo/Getty Images for TIDAL 

The Influence and Cultural Impact of a Modern Superstar

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AS the incredible Beyoncé…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Andrew White/Parkwood Entertainment and Disney+, via Associated Press

turns forty on 4th September, I am putting out a series of features exploring her work and impact. There is no denying that she is a hugely influential artist who has made an impression on so many others. It is not just the music that marks Beyoncé out as a superstar. I am going to source a few articles that highlight why she is such a phenomenon – from her fashion choices to the way she keeps things fresh and brings Black cultural and conversations to the forefront. No doubt, on 4th September, the world will mark the birthday of an artist whose previous album, 2016’s Lemonade, must rank among the best and most important of the past decade. In 2015, the BBC published an article stating why Beyoncé is the voice of a generation. There are a few sections that I want to spotlight:

“The woman that every woman aspires to be.” That’s how one of my university peers describes Beyoncé. And she speaks for many. Few musicians today have inspired a genuine cult of personality. But Beyoncé, the undisputed wearer of pop music’s crown, has done just that. “All hail Queen Bey!” cry her horde of devoted fans, who call themselves the BeyHive, an apt name for the followers of a star who generates such deafening buzz. When she dropped her self-titled album out of the blue in December 2013, I witnessed the spectacle of ‘Beyoncé syndrome’ first hand.

On a tense night during final exams, I watched in awe as my fellow students set aside term papers and study guides to get drunk – ‘drunk in love’, that is. Students swarmed to every computer in the library to watch Beyoncé gyrate across a beach and profess her love for her megastar husband Jay-Z. As an outside observer, I marveled at the new video album’s infectious effect and wondered about its cause. What makes Beyoncé so gripping? Why is her voice – in song, speech, and even silence – so resonant for so many, especially millennials?

Beyoncé is a true Renaissance woman: a musician, a business mogul, a feminist, a mother, and a brand whose cultural gravity seems to emanate not from any one of these talents but from all of them in concert.

The business behind the art

In an American corporate world disproportionately governed by men, Beyoncé distinguishes herself as the founder and CEO of her own record label and production company, Parkwood Entertainment. According to Forbes, her personal earnings more than double those of her husband. He is a shrewd entrepreneur in his own right who famously declared himself “not a businessman but a business, man.” Beyoncé’s self-titled album sold a staggering 617,000 copies in three days following its release, doing Kanye West the poetic justice of swiping an iTunes Store sales week record from Taylor Swift. That number is an almost unfathomable feat for a $16 (£10) record dropped at a time when the digital single is supposed to have supplanted the album in importance.

Beyoncé and Jay-Z have been dubbed the Barack and Michelle Obama of pop culture – but unlike the US president and his wife, they have no limit on their term. The scope of their power and influence was on display in December at the Barclays Center, where Prince William and Kate Middleton came to see the Brooklyn Nets, of which Jay-Z is a partial owner. To the tune of God Save the Queen, the royal couples met courtside.

A new feminist icon

In 2014 Forbes declared Beyoncé to be the world’s most powerful celebrity, and she has leveraged her global brand in support of gender equality through her influential charity, the #BeyGood Project. Her hit single Flawless samples from a TEDx Talk called We Should All Be Feminists by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Beyoncé belts the anthem’s first verse and then cedes the floor to Adichie, who relays the definition of a ‘feminist’ as “the person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes”.

Greater than the sum…

“She’s the fantasy woman for a generation that’s obsessed with having it all,” says Maerz. The central value that Beyoncé represents – across her art, entrepreneurship, activism, and family devotion – is boundless potential, a message particularly appealing to millennials. What can’t she do? Maybe there have been better albums released in recent years, people who have made more money, feminists more ardent and consistent and mothers whose sacrifice was greater. But can anyone else approach Beyoncé’s breadth across all of these realms? She’s the total package, a Renaissance woman with a cult so vast and devout it’s inescapable – but hardly unjustified”.

Some say that Beyoncé’s influence has been overstated. There are many who feel that her cultural significance is overstated. I would argue that. Whilst some of her albums are underrated, her body of work – as a solo artist, with Destiny’s Child and other projects – has been full of hugely moving and incredible work! The next feature that I want to introduce is from The Rider Online. Last year, they explained why Beyoncé’s cultural influence is huge:

“She then kicked off her solo career with her debut album Dangerously In Love, featuring her future spouse Jay-Z. The album featured many genres of music and showed off her musical variety. This debut album broke records and won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary R&B Album and the Soul Train Music Award for Best R&B/Soul Album – Female.

From 1999 to the present, Beyoncé has continued to receive nominations and awards for her performances. Achieving Grammy Awards’ Best Urban Contemporary for Everything Is Love, Lemonade and record and song of the year in Formation. Beyoncé is the most Grammy-nominated female artist in history and has received at least one Grammy nomination every year except 2003 since 1999.

Beyoncé implements messages to the black community through her various works like her release of Formation. Not only did the music video and song cover female empowerment but also covered the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Her release of Lemonade highlighted the personal struggles of the artist herself and black women throughout history.

She then released a documentary named “Homecoming on Netflix,” also with a release of a surprise album with her feature as the first black woman to headline for the Coachella Festival. However, the documentary highlighted much more than the festival. She quoted and used audio from many famous leaders like Malcolm X and famous authors like Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou as a means to empower the black community and provide awareness of their struggle for equality.

“Homecoming’s” real message stood as a celebration of African American culture with education, specifically Historically Black Colleges and Universities. “Homecoming” displayed the beauty of black culture and gave the chance for the black community to celebrate the need for black education in a country where it has not been a focus.

Beyoncé also made her collage “This is Black History ” honoring black icons that don’t receive coverage in media and history for Black History Month. Her reason for the collage was to not only recognize and celebrate black history with famous icons but to also bring up people who are building the future of black history in America. Her message for this piece wasn’t to celebrate the past but to celebrate the future of the black community.

While we know her as an icon for pop and music, Beyoncé is truly an advocate for the advancement of the black community in America. The platform she built with her countless wins and appearances is used rightfully as a way for her to spread her messages of equality and strength. She invests a large majority of money into giving back to her community and the various charities and causes she’s invested in. Beyoncé uses her music to shed light on serious topics, self-empowerment and inspire hope for her fans and community”.

There are a few more articles that I feel will add weight as to why Beyoncé is so significant. Teen Vogue marked her thirty-fifth birthday in 2016. They underlined some reasons as to why Beyoncé is so important. I have selected a couple:

“With Destiny’s Child, she redefined what it meant to spearhead an all-girl pop group.

Destiny’s Child is one of the most memorable girl groups of all time — and Beyoncé is one of the most crucial reasons for their success. When their self-titled debut album was released in 1998, they shifted the meaning of what it means to be modern R&B female artists. Destiny’s Child’s discography was a refreshing mixture of empowering anthems, outspoken affirmations. and the occasional love ode. They also wrote their own songs and video treatments. In terms of aesthetics, Destiny’s Child made their own lane when it came to fashion. They garnered attention for their eclectic outfits, courtesy of Bey’s mother Tina Lawson. (When she accepted the CFDA Fashion Icon Award earlier this year, Beyoncé said it was because “high-end labels didn’t really want to dress four black country curvy girls.”) Even though she inevitably struck out on her own, Destiny’s Child laid the groundwork for the grandiosity with which Beyoncé has become synonymous.

2013’s Beyoncé ignited the release of the surprise album—and changed the way artists share their work.

Beyoncé released her eponymous fifth album without warning. There were no previously announced release dates, no promotional videos or singles, no reports that Beyoncé was even possibly working on an album. In addition, each song on Beyoncé was accompanied by a video, making it her first visual album. Until Adele's 25, it was the fastest selling record in the history of iTunes and incited the trend of artists dropping projects out of the blue. Two of the most prominent examples of this include Drake’s 2015 surprise mixtape If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late and Kendrick Lamar’s untitled unmastered project that came out earlier this year.

Beyoncé is an unapologetic feminist and uses her platform to showcase intersectionality.

Although Bey has always been a feminist, she embraced the title most notably during her 2014 Mrs. Carter World Tour. During a performance of “Flawless” at the 2014 VMAs, the word (which is defined in the song via an iconic quote from author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) served as a larger-than-life flashing backdrop and has become a term that Beyoncé has become very vocal about using. In a recent interview, she proclaimed that “We need men and women to understand the double standards that still exist in this world, and we need to have a real conversation so we can begin to make changes.” As a black woman, Beyoncé refuses to adhere to stereotypes and uses each of her albums as tool for both evolution and reinvention. She owns her sexuality, culture, and heritage —concepts that are explored in depth on Lemonade especially. Not only is the album her magnum opus of sorts, it displays the complexity of black womanhood and it calls out our oppression. In essence, Lemonadeperfectly captures what we love about Beyoncé: her ability to showcase our unmitigated beauty, brilliance, and strength, while changing the game, and our conversations”.

Insider named Beyoncé as one of their artists of the decade in 2019. It is intriguing to read about how they see Beyoncé as having transitioned into a living icon:

“Beyoncé is one of the very few artists who doesn't need to care about sales

While Beyoncé's had fewer top 10 hits this decade than last — she's had six No. 1 singles in her career, but only one of them was released in the past 10 years (and it included Ed Sheeran) — part of that has to do with the fact that she stopped caring about sales.

She made this clear when she rapped on "Nice" from "Everything Is Love," her and husband Jay-Z's collaborative album: "If I gave two f----, two f---- about streaming numbers/ Would have put Lemonade up on Spotify/ F--- you, f--- you, you're cool, f--- you, I'm out (ah!)"

But the other part is that she stopped being her usual palatable, humble self, and leaned into her earned cockiness — unapologetically so.

Beyoncé has always been a talented artist, but over the past decade, she's become an entity, a living icon. Someone who people and other artists have come to both respect and envy. So in terms of accolades and chart-topping, she might not be No. 1, but when it comes to changing the culture and challenging others to catch up to what she's doing rather than keeping pace with everyone else, she reigns supreme. 

Over the past couple of weeks, people on social media have noticed that Beyoncé's been unusually quiet. She released the "Lion King" soundtrack in July and has attended events here and there, but other than that she's been MIA. Judging from her past breaks, that usually means something is in the works. 

And whether it's in the next month or the next year, one thing is for sure: The whole world will be listening when she's ready to make some noise again”.

The fashion side of things is interesting. Even in 2021, Beyoncé is setting fashion trends. Maybe she has not always been a trendsetter and fashion leader. As Allure wrote in 2016, she has definitely brought a number of incredible looks to the mainstream:

“Beyoncé isn't so much a trendsetter as a trend synthesizer. She may not originate, but she brilliantly reinterprets and popularizes—and makes it all look easy and fun. Her taste is impeccable. Case in point: She said in a television interview that the choreography in her most famous video, "Single Ladies," was inspired by an obscure Bob Fosse work called "Mexican Breakfast," performed by Gwen Verdon on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1969. Beyoncé, an accomplished and experienced dancer, selects the perfect moves—the hip popping, hand gestures, and yes, that unmistakable downward-punch strut—that are ripe for translation to a new decade. (Her videos' choreography makes for an enduring favorite at dance-fitness studios for women who want to try to acquire some of Beyoncé's swagger.) And more than 400 million YouTube "Single Ladies" views later, this cross-pollination is a proven recipe for success.

That same kind of alchemy is at work in Beyoncé's fashion and beauty choices. And in that realm, it's easier for legions of women, including some very famous ones, to check Instagram and follow her lead. "Beyoncé borrows from fashion, and then fashion borrows from her," says Joe Zee, the editor in chief of Yahoo Style, who has dressed Beyoncé for magazine covers and ad campaigns. "She picks up an idea and makes it more sexy, more feminine—desirable but also accessible."

Whether the trend is bronzed eyes, naked dresses, Flash Tattoos, or curly bobs, Beyoncé's version always rises to the top. So what gives her this special magic? The first answer, simply, is joy. The world has had its fill of sullen celebrities. Beyoncé doesn't scowl or complain. She smiles. Not just with her mouth but with her eyes—the kind of smile you can't fake. Riding a Jet Ski off of St. Barts, she has the expression of a five-year-old at her birthday party just as she catches a first glimpse of the cake”.

I will end things there. Ahead of Beyoncé’s fortieth birthday, I felt it was worthwhile exploring her cultural impact; how she has influenced the music world and why she is a modern icon. I know there is rumour she is releasing new music and we will not have to wait too long. It will be exciting what does come next and whether a forthcoming album reflects some of the turmoil and change that has occurred in America over the past few years. I hope that my feature has helped to show why Beyoncé is…

A modern great.

FEATURE: New Standards: The Reality for Women in Pop in 2021

FEATURE:

 

 

New Standards

IN THIS PHOTO: Self Esteem (Rebecca Lucy Taylor) 

The Reality for Women in Pop in 2021

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THIS is a rather general feature…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Charli XCX

but I have seen some articles and interviews recently concerning several of the most influential and strongest women in Pop today. Before starting out, I should explain how I do not really love a lot of Pop today. By ‘Pop’, I mean more of a general sound/genre rather than what is deemed popular. Whereas Pop in the 1980s and 1990s (and a few years after) was defined by something warmer with hooks and great choruses, that is not necessarily the case today. There are some great Pop songs, though very little that will be remembered in years to come; nothing that has hooked me, and I need to repeat because it is so satisfying and hook-y. Not to be too down on Pop artists. I feel the lack of genre and the changing scene has led to music that, whilst inventive, personal and powerful is not particularly warming and addictive – the sort of tracks you know that you’ll be playing years on because they are so infectious. Maybe importance, power and something more urgent is preferred over Pop music that is more cliched and about the melody and catchiness as opposed experimentation and more important lyrics. I will save my evaluation of Pop music today versus the past for another day. Although I can sense that there is a world of different between the music decades ago to now, there are greater challenges regarding getting noticed and creating music that is personal and not being guided by the labels.

If past Pop music (or the best music around) was split between men and women, today, I think that women are releasing the strongest work – and has been the case for quite a few years now. I am going to come to another topic/aspect of modern Pop in a minute. I feel, for women in the industry, there are expectations of how they should present themselves and what they should sound like. Whether this is labels dictating that or the wider industry. Not to suggest that modern Pop is dour, angry and lacks requisite memorability. I am a big fan of Róisín Murphy, Jessie Ware and Billie Eilish. They are making incredible music that sticks in the mind. Lizzo is another artist who always delivers something fresh and huge. I will come to an article that discusses women in Pop in 2021. One reason why I am writing this feature is one artist who is intending to release a huge Pop album next year is Charli XCX. She has a new single coming out very soon. Although, as this NME article reports, things have been pretty tough for her during the pandemic, her upcoming album will subvert expectations and take Pop to new place:

“The pop star is currently preparing to release her new single ‘Good Ones’ on September 2, but made the most of her unexpected downtime during the last 18 months to speak to a professional therapist.

“I started therapy at the beginning of the pandemic,” she told Refinery29. “And that was sort of timely and very fortunate that I was able to do that; it’s been really helpful.”

XCX added that she had decided to take the lessons she was learning from therapy “into life when the world goes back to however it’s going to return to”.

“But I already feel it slipping away from me,” she said”.

According to XCX, the new album will be “very contrasting” from ‘how I’m feeling now’, the record that she made in lockdown in 2020. “I’m just very into making ultimate pop music,” she explained.

“I’m exploring what it means to be a pop star on a major label in a not very current way. And that’s really fun to me. There are a couple of songs that have stayed as a part of this new project. And to be honest, the meaning of them hasn’t changed. I mean, they were all kind of about sex. And that’s still been quite constant for me throughout the pandemic”.

Self Esteem (Rebecca Lucy Taylor) is another artist who is producing Pop music that is very different. Perhaps not overly-sweet or catchy, there is a directness and layered sound that is very much her own sound. Women are definitely leading when it comes to the best music – not just in Pop music, but right across the board. Self Esteem’s second studio album, Prioritise Pleasure, is out in October. Like Charli XCX and a lot of women in Pop today (one can apply this to any genre and sound), there is this feeling of being held back in the past. Whether that was because of expectation or the pandemic has changed things, I am not too sure. There are a couple of recent interviews with her that I want to source. I don’t think that male-driven Pop is especially affecting or memorable. Although I have bemoaned the lack of hooks and something akin to the best of the 1980s and 1990s, there is a great deal of authenticity and truth. A lot of the best Pop hides behind masks and is quite indirect. Artists like Charli XCX and Self Esteem are creating this very personal music – which, whilst not always super-fun, is definitely their own voice. Not being told what to write or succumbing to pre-conceived ideas of a woman in music/Pop should sound like. In an interview with The Guardian, Taylor discussed her 2019 debut album, Compliments Please, in addition to why she was keen to address topics such as submissiveness on Prioritise Pleasure:

“In a comedy sketch that was released to promote her 2019 debut Compliments Please, Rebecca Lucy Taylor is grilled about the imagined impact of the album 20 years on (it was so great, it “destroyed music as we know it”). With a transatlantic accent, impeded facial movement and wearing a tiara over a turban , she faces a hostile male interviewer who attempts to sum up her revolutionary sound: it is “melodic complaining”, “poor-me periodcore”, and “menstrual madness set to music”.

 

“That’s what it is!” cackles Taylor, two years on. “Can’t deny it!” It’s true that the 34-year-old – better known by her nom de disque, Self Esteem – makes music packed with warts-and-all honesty and, yes, a certain amount of justified complaining. Topics include toxic relationships and the insidious effects of the patriarchy. But her songs are also maximalist, danceable and infectiously fun – a wholesale rejection of the restrained indie-folk of her previous band Slow Club. “I’m trying to do a Trojan horse thing,” explains Taylor over a cup of coffee in her PR team’s dazzlingly white offices. “You think you’re getting this sugary injection of a pop song but it’s going to leave you with something more.”

Compliments Please did not have the seismic effect Taylor joked about, but it did establish Self Esteem as an exciting new pop star. Hers is not the kind of ruthlessly commercial pop that is machine-tooled for chart domination. Instead, it’s pop as an aesthetic and a mood – big-chorused but experimental too. “My friend said it’s art-pop,” recalls Taylor. “I was like: ‘Yes!’ It means there’s more layers to it.” One of those layers is camp – Taylor performed at Glastonbury 2019 in a minidress made of Boots Advantage cards – but there is also sincerity. Brilliant recent single I Do This All the Time chronicles the thought process behind not wanting to go to somebody’s birthday drinks in a droll sprechgesang over a hypnotic beat – think Arab Strap’s The First Big Weekend but fuelled by social anxiety instead of youthful hedonism.

That song is taken from Self Esteem’s forthcoming second album, Prioritise Pleasure. On its cover, she poses in a cowboy hat and extremely high-cut leotard. Its title is a rallying cry against a society that has convinced its female population they should put other people’s needs before their own. “We’ve been trained to be submissive and secondary and all I’m doing with this is going, what if we’re not?”.

There is going to be plenty of revelation and boldness through Prioritise Pleasure. Taylor/Self Esteem spoke with NME. Her brand of Pop is slow-burning at times. Whereas women in Pop, years ago, might have needed to sound a particular way or project an unrealistic image of themselves, Taylor is among many women today who are taking control. There is abrasiveness and sharper edges in her music. More width in terms of genres and sound.  Something that is very real and natural to who she is as an artist now:

“Though Self Esteem’s 2019 debut album ‘Compliments Please’ won Taylor plenty of fans with its barbed take on pop music, ‘I Do This All The Time’ represents her breakthrough moment ahead of ‘Prioritise Pleasure’. Her June rendition of the song on Later… with Jools Holland was one of the most powerful television performances of this year; as the lights burst into technicolour, Taylor throws her head back and beams with pure, undiluted glee. Though she initially set out to build a discography rather than one huge moment, she’s grateful for the steam it has gathered all the same.

“Mostly, I’m excited that the song isn’t a poppy sure-fire breakthrough,” she points out. “I still love that song; I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever made in my whole career.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Eva Pentel for NME 

Many of ‘I Do This All The Time’’s lyrics refer to Taylor’s own experiences – the voice creepily calling her a “sturdy girl” is based on a real-life tour manager, while many of the reassurances – “don’t be intimidated by all the babies they have / Don’t be embarrassed that all you’ve had is fun” – answer to the pressures that Taylor still feels.

And, true to its title, ‘Prioritise Pleasure’ as a whole is an album that champions putting yourself first – even if it makes certain people uncomfortable. “I’ve done years of therapy, done plenty of work on myself, and read every fucking book you can fucking read about it, and it comes back down to true self-acceptance and self-love,” Taylor says. “It’s the answer to everything, but it’s still something that you’re meant to not do. I go down this road a lot, and I get quite upset. But then I think, no – just keep in my little part of the world, my group, accepting myself, loving myself, and then make my little silly songs and do my little silly dances. And if someone can learn from that and pass it forward, at least I’m doing something?”

This same boldness is also evident in ‘Prioritise Pleasure’’s sound, which often springs up from a particular kind of steamy, slower-burning pop, and warps it – and for every chipper nu-disco bass-line, there’s a left-field touch of abrasiveness. “Sexting you at the mental health talk feels counter-productive,” Self Esteem belts out on ‘Moody’, her sheer honesty jarring with a snappy alphabet-chant chorus”.

I shall move on and wrap up soon. I wanted to tie together a couple of features regarding two of the most popular women in Pop today. I have mentioned Billie Eilish and Lizzo. Lorde is another artist who has been in the press recently. She was promoting her new album, Solar Power. It has received a lot of positivity, though some have been harsh because they were comparing to her previous album, Melodrama. Perhaps not as upbeat or spirited as Melodrama, some critics have called Solar Power quite flat or boring. Would the same words be levied at a male artist? Is there this perception that female Pop artists have to stay the same or have to conform. Perhaps Pop music has reached a new age. Can we ever go back to the days of Madonna and the type of sound that defined the biggest hits of the day? The pressures of fame, toxicity and social media has made a big impact on some of our greatest female artists – from Charli XCX and Self Esteem to Billie Eilish. One cannot generalise and say that this is the case with all women in Pop. I want to end with an article Laura Snapes wrote for The Guardian.  She asks whether being a female Pop artist in 20121 has become unbearable:    

“The mechanisms of pop stardom have never been subject to as much scrutiny as they are now. Britney Spears’ conservatorship struggle exposed their potential for (alleged) abuse. Raye recently split from her major label, Polydor, after she reached breaking point and shared her frustrations about not being allowed to release her debut album despite signing in 2014 and helming numerous massive hit singles. Former X Factor winner Rebecca Ferguson has called for a parliamentary inquiry into alleged widespread music industry wrongdoing. That labels should root out exploitative and predatory behaviour and protect exposed young stars is a baseline requirement. But increasingly it seems that the existential state of pop stardom – particularly for young women, subject to greater scrutiny than their male peers and often held to contradictory standards – is intolerable beyond any level of protection.

IN THIS PHOTO: Lorde 

Lorde’s third album, Solar Power, released today, lingers on the damage that fame wreaked on the New Zealand star, who broke out at 16 and is still only 24. The lyrics describe her as a “teen millionaire having nightmares from the camera flash” and enduring panic attacks before performances of her “fistful of tunes that it’s painful to play”. She explains that she fled fame, with its “poison arrows aimed directly at my head”, as well as the expectation to be a generational voice, to retreat to her New Zealand home town for a more grounded kind of life.

“Things I once enjoyed just keep me employed now,” Billie Eilish sings on Getting Older, the first song on her recently released second album, Happier Than Ever. Five years younger than Lorde, she has reached the same conclusions one album sooner, forgoing the fantastical horror behind the lyrics of her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, to detail the depressingly humdrum bogeymen that now stalk her life: untrustworthy lovers, deranged obsessives, paparazzi and trolls waiting to pounce on the faintest hint of a wrong move. She can’t post a picture of herself goofing around with the female co-stars of a music video without being accused of queerbaiting, nor wear a tank top without becoming a lightning rod for debate about body image. None of it sounds fun, and not in the Drake “protesting too much” way.

 Creative autonomy and speaking directly to fans via social media mean that Eilish has never had to conceal her antipathy to fame and how it has ruined elements of her life, unlike earlier generations of female pop star who had to sell a whole, shiny, aspirational product. That she doesn’t make her status sound desirable is paradoxically part of her gigantic appeal to authenticity-craving gen Z. And so privacy has become a vanishingly rare commodity, one she flaunts in the lyrics to her new album as if it were a coveted jewel; her current aspirations, she makes clear, are happiness and respect.

Another part of the problem is that Eilish and Lorde modelled a new type of teen pop stardom – songwriters first, extruded teen aesthetic beyond what any marketing exec could ever dream up – that nonetheless emerged into the old models of exposure and scrutiny. Both from evidently loving, artsy families, they arrived at fame via songs that blew up on SoundCloud and a media primed to fetishise anyone that chimes strongly with teenagers. (See, too, early YouTube phenom Clairo, whose recent second album, Sling, decried record industry execs staring down her top and how she warped herself to play the part of willing ingenue; it also paid musical homage to Carole King.)

Eilish and Lorde’s latest releases chime with a moment of societal refusal, firmly stating what they need in order to protect their mental health and mirroring a turn away from hustle culture towards more intimate forms of self-protection and fulfilment. Making lower-key music in the face of rabid expectation feels like applying aloe vera to a burn, and accepting a sales hit a potential way to establish a sustainable path forward long term – Lorde has said she isn’t worried that her environmentally friendly “music box” release, a replacement for the CD, won’t count towards the Billboard charts.

Perhaps we are on the brink of a watershed, definitively ending the 1.0 era of conquering pop behemoths (from Madonna to Katy Perry) that the New York Times tolled the bell for three years ago. But individual solutions can only go so far: labels will simply fill any roles vacated. Obsolescence is built into a system that works against survival”.

I will write a future feature about Pop music today and how the sound has changed – latching onto the feature from The New York Times mentioned in the article from The Guardian. Having read articles about women in Pop today and interviews with a few popular female artists, I have been thinking about how difficult it is and how there is this sense of needing to conform. Lorde, Self Esteem, Charli XCX and Billie Eilish have all recorded (are recording) albums that are very different from their previous work. Bolder, more personal and a reaction to personal and professional struggles. I am especially looking forward to Charli XCX’s single, Good Ones, as she has been posting pictures online that look a bit ‘80s; quite seductive and intriguing. Almost like she has created a new person or character. I can imagine it is harder being a woman in Pop now than at any other time. Once was the time when there was little variation and mainstream Pop especially was quite limited and formulaic. Now, for better or worse, there is a lot more importance of the lyrics and sonic broadness. I think one thing that unites many of the women mentioned in this feature is the taking back of control. A sense of making big changes or becoming more independent and honest to themselves. With album titles that mention pleasure, power, happiness and sunshine, one would assume that the sonics are lighter and warmer. That is not always the case. What we are hearing is new priorities and inspiring mantras. I don’t think things are as gloomy and unbearable as Laura Snapes suggested in her article. If the music is not overtly happy or always optimistic, it is definitely…

MORE personal and empowered.

FEATURE: The August Playlist: Vol. 4: One Night, For You Blue

FEATURE:

 

 

The August Playlist

IN THIS PHOTO: Griff 

Vol. 4: One Night, For You Blue

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THIS week is bursting…

PHOTO CREDIT: Apple Corps Ltd.

with great new tracks from some really big acts. Because Let It Be is being reissued with demos and extras, there is a track from The Beatles. We also have music from Griff, Halsey, Kacey Musgraves, Gorillaz (ft. AJ Tracey), Self Esteem, BANKS, Saint Etienne, Maisie Peters, Chubby and the Gang, and CHVRCHES. There are also cuts from Rina Sawayama, Django Django, CHAI, Poppy, and Sigrid. It is a very eclectic week where there should be something in the mix for everyone! If you need a boost to get you into the weekend, then the tracks below should sort you out. There is so much quality to be found this week. I am sure that the songs will definitely…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kacey Musgraves

GET you moving.   

ALL PHOTOS/IMAGES (unless credited otherwise): Artists

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Griff – One Night

PHOTO CREDIT: Bruce McBroom/Apple Corps Ltd.

The Beatles - For You Blue (1969 Glyn Johns Mix)

Kacey Musgraves – justified

Gorillaz (ft. AJ Tracey) - Jimmy Jimmy

PHOTO CREDIT: Eva Pentel for NME 

Self Esteem - How Can I Help You

BANKS – Skinnydipped

Saint Etienne – Penlop

Maisie Peters – Elvis Song

PHOTO CREDIT: Mike Palmer

Chubby and the Gang – White Rags

Halsey – I am not a woman, I’m a god

CHVRCHES – Final Girl

Rina Swayama - Enter Sandman (from The Metallica Blacklist)

PHOTO CREDIT: Horacio Bolz

Django Django - Under Fire

PHOTO CREDIT: Kodai Ikemitsu

CHAI - miniskirt

Poppy - So Mean

Sigrid - Burning Bridges

PHOTO/COLLAGE CREDIT: Graham Tolbert

Big Red Machine (ft. Taylor Swift) – Birch

Amber Mark - Foreign Things

She Drew the Gun - Behave Myself

Twinnie – Cool

Kim Petras – Future Starts Now

Miles Kane - Don’t Let It Get You Down

Sleigh Bells - Justine Go Genesis

Caribou - You Can Do It

Joy Crookes - When You Were Mine

Glowie – Throwback

RAY BLK – Mine

Orlando Weeks - Deep Down Way Out

Feeder - Torpedo

Rudie Edwards – Worst Ways

RuthAnne – The Way I Love You

Shannon Lay - A Thread to Find

Millie Turner – Luv Luv Luv

PHOTO CREDIT: Jacob Boll

Hand Habits - No Difference

Claudia Valentina – C’est la vie

Ashley Cooke – Gettin’ Somewhere

Jenay Faith – Pull Up

Japanese Breakfast - Glider (from “Sable” Original Video Game Soundtrack)

FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: Fairport Convention ‎- Liege & Lief

FEATURE:

 

 

Vinyl Corner

Fairport Convention ‎- Liege & Lief

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I have not included…

many Folk albums in Vinyl Corner. Today, I am inducting one of the most influential Folk albums ever. Fairport Convention’s Liege & Lief is the fourth album by the British Folk Rock band. It is the third album the group released in the U.K. during 1969. Each album prominently features Sandy Denny as lead female vocalist (she did not appear on the group's 1968 debut album). If you have not got a copy of this classic on vinyl, then go and get one. If some critics in 1969 felt there were few arresting and memorable songs, retrospective reviews have been kinder. Liege & Lief is now viewed as one of the most important British Folk albums. A massively influential album that is hugely strong and rich. I will put in a couple of reviews for the wonderful Liege & Lief. Before then, udiscovermusic. wrote about Fairport Convention’s fourth studio album earlier in the year:

“One of the great bastions of British folk music were in the midst of their pop chart phase in the first month of the 1970s. Fairport Convention had performed — miming, inevitably — on the British TV institution Top Of The Pops in August 1969, and come within one place of the Top 20, with “Si Tu Dois Partir,” their French version of Bob Dylan’s “If You Gotta Go, Go Now.”

That helped the Fairport album it came from, Unhalfbricking, climb to No.12 in the UK. Then, on January 17, 1970, they entered the bestsellers with a follow-up that, like its predecessor, has become a folk music cornerstone, Liege & Lief.

Fairport were in exalted company as they scored the highest new entry of that chart week at No.18. The Beatles were still at No.1 with Abbey Road, as the Motown Chartbusters Vol. 3 compilation climbed 3-2. The Rolling Stones were on the climb, both with Let It Bleed up 4-3 and the Through The Past Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2) collection moving 18-7. The Moody Blues’ To Our Children’s Children’s Children and Led Zeppelin’s second album were both on the way up the top ten, and King Crimson re-entered at No.10 with In The Court Of The Crimson King”.

I am relatively new to the wonders of Fairport Convention. I have been listening to Liege & Lief, and I am working my way through their catalogue. The band are still going to today – albeit with a different line-up to that of 1969. Their twenty-ninth album, Shuffle and Go, was released last year. Many consider Liege & Lief to be the group’s finest hour. In their review, the BBC observed the following:

“After forty years of Fairport Convention, undoubtedly one of the most influential folk collectives to have ever existed, here we have the release of a deluxe version of perhaps their best but certainly their most emotive album to mark the occasion. Liege & Lief is the Fairport album steeped in tragedy – the first trip back to the studio following the deaths of drummer Martin Lamble and Jeannie Franklyn (the girlfriend of Richard Thompson) in a tragic car accident in May 1969, the album has the almost eerie quality of a band struggling to find a means of coping with their obvious anguish; at the same time they are a band desperate to break all social constraints and indulge in the most manic of folk rock which they do so unapologetically in “Matty Groves”.

Pioneers of the 1960s folk rock revolution (the band was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2002), Fairport’s seminal album was voted the 'Most Influential Folk Album Of All Time' in 2006. And quite rightly so – it is the album that saw the band edge closer to its English folk roots, bravely combining folk traditions with electric instruments. The Oxfordshire group, who had always been mistakenly thought of as members of the American west coast folk scene, embraced music in all its raw Englishness becoming exponents of a genre that would not only define a moment in musical history, but which would change the face of folk forever.

It goes without saying that the Liege & Lief reissue is a must for all Fairport fans – the double disc has a collection of John Peel’s Top Gear recordings, the highlight of disc 2 being the unmatchable "Tam Lin" from the September 1967 show.

But while Fairport’s glory days are predominantly behind them, (a studio album Sense Of Occasion was however released in February this year), movements by former members including Richard Thompson whose album Sweet Warrior was released a few months ago, ensure the Fairport ghosts are never allowed to fade away. This important re-release will remind folk followers and music lovers alike why Fairport was one of the most important and pioneering folk collectives of all time”.

I forgot to mention that the BBC were reviewing a reissue. Although many of the eight cuts on Liege & Lief are traditional tracks rearranged by the band, they are wonderfully done. The album spent fifteen weeks in the U.K. album chart, reaching number seventeen.

I am going to round off with a review from AllMusic. In their review, they note how Fairport Convention took a new direction with Liege & Lief. The band took a fascinating look back at England’s musical past:

“In the decades since its original release, more than one writer has declared Fairport Convention's Liege & Lief the definitive British folk-rock album, a distinction it holds at least in part because it grants equal importance to all three parts of that formula. While Fairport had begun dipping their toes into British traditional folk with their stellar version of "A Sailor's Life" on Unhalfbricking, Liege & Lief found them diving head first into the possibilities of England's musical past, with Ashley Hutchings digging through the archives at the Cecil Sharp House in search of musical treasure, and the musicians (in particular vocalist Sandy Denny) eagerly embracing the dark mysteries of this music. (Only two of the album's eight songs were group originals, though "Crazy Man Michael" and "Come All Ye" hardly stand out from their antique counterparts.) Liege & Lief was also recorded after a tour bus crash claimed the lives of original Fairport drummer Martin Lamble and Richard Thompson's girlfriend, Jeannie Franklyn. As the members of the group worked to shake off the tragedy (and break in new drummer Dave Mattacks and full-time fiddler Dave Swarbrick), they became a stronger and more adventurous unit, less interested in the neo-Jefferson Airplane direction of their earlier work and firmly committed to fusing time-worn folk with electric instruments while honoring both. And while Liege & Lief was the most purely folk-oriented Fairport Convention album to date, it also rocked hard in a thoroughly original and uncompromising way; the "Lark in the Morning" medley swings unrelentingly, the group's crashing dynamics wring every last ounce of drama from "Tam Lin" and "Matty Groves," and Thompson and Swarbrick's soloing is dazzling throughout. Liege & Lief introduced a large new audience to the beauty of British folk, but Fairport Convention's interpretations spoke of the present as much as the past, and the result was timeless music in the best sense of the term”.

Many might not have heard of Fairport Convention. If you are a bit new to them, I would recommend you starting with Liege & Lief. It is a beautiful album that will linger long in the mind! Although the band are amazing, I think it is Sandy Denny’s vocals that are the real star. Such an amazing and evocative vocalist! The stunning Liege & Lief is, undoubtedly, one of the most important…

FOLK albums ever.

FEATURE: A Magical Nocturn… Marking Seven Years of Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn

FEATURE:

A Magical Nocturn…

LIVE PHOTO CREDITS: Ken McKay/REX 

Marking Seven Years of Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn

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ON this day…

seven years ago, Kate Bush took to the stage for her first of twenty-two nights in Hammersmith for her Before the Dawn residency. On 26th August, 2014, the iconic artist undertook her most intensive live performances since 1979’s The Tour of Life. Engrossing and enrapturing crowds at the Eventim Apollo, the residency ran until 1st October. I have written quite a few features around Before the Dawn. I have talked about its impact and importance; how it is not available on streaming services, whether Kate Bush will follow it up with another residency or live event in the future, in addition to why one needs to buy it on vinyl. I am going to drop in a review of the live album and an interview Kate Bush conducted when promoting the live album of Before the Dawn – maybe I have sourced these before but, on its seventh anniversary, it is worth returning. As much as anything, it is the sense of wonder and scale that amazes me! Whilst I was not in the audience for any of the twenty-two dates – a fact that still rankles me greatly! -, I get a sense that Before the Dawn was this magical experience. That is what Bush created with her live shows: a sense of wonder and beguilement. Rather than her trotting out the hits – which people will still flock to see in their droves -, she is much more concerned with the experience rather than the brand recognition.

An artist, alongside her team and band, crafting something that is so rich and astonishing. After 1979, of course people always asked whether Bush would return to the stage in any big way. She performed live fairly steadily after that. Mainly for T.V. appearances, I think that her performing And So Is Love (from 1993’s The Red Shoes) on Top of the Pops in 1994 might have been one of the last T.V. slots. The more I think of it, the less likely it is we will see Kate Bush return to the stage. She would do a big production that would take a while to come together. That would take so much energy! I feel, when we do hear from her again, it is much more likely to be an album. Whilst the individual layers and technical aspects of Before the Dawn are amazing, it is the overall spectacle and sensation that made it such a success! This is what The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis noted in his review of Before the Dawn:

“The concert-goer who desires a stripped down rock and roll experience, devoid of theatrical folderol, is thus advised that Before the Dawn is probably not the show for them, but it is perhaps worth noting that even before Bush takes the stage with her dancers and props, a curious sense of unreality hangs over the crowd. It's an atmosphere noticeably different than at any other concert, but then again, this is a gig unlike any other, and not merely because the very idea of Bush returning to live performance was pretty unimaginable 12 months ago.

The staging might look excessive on paper, but onstage it works to astonishing effect, bolstering rather than overwhelming the emotional impact of the songs. The Ninth Wave is disturbing, funny and so immersive that the crowd temporarily forget to applaud everything Bush does. As each scene bleeds into another, they seem genuinely rapt: at the show's interval, people look a little stunned. A Sky of Honey is less obviously dramatic – nothing much happens over the course of its nine tracks – but the live performance underlines how beautiful the actual music is”.

It boggles the mind to think how much time and effort it took, not only to imagine what Before the Dawn would look like, but see it come to life so expertly! The beauty and power of the staging and set must have given Bush energy and this new lease. Bush, to me, has always seemed like an actor. Someone who could have had a parallel life as an actor or director. In some ways, Before the Dawn is a film. If she seemed confident and calm through her residency, perhaps that was not the reality of what she was actually feeling! When she spoke with FADER in 2016, she was asked about that very thing:

“There has always seemed to be such confidence in your performances. Is that true to how you're feeling inside?

Well, thank you! I'm very pleased that it comes across that way, because I don't think I do feel confident all the time. That's obviously how I want it to feel. When you watch a performer you want to feel that it’s comfortable [for them], and you're not seeing any sense of the technique behind it. Hopefully you just feel [the emotion]. It's very important to me to try and get a sense of emotion to come through the performance.

It might be a great compliment for performers to look as if they’re making it up as they go along, whereas as in fact it’s meticulously rehearsed.

I think that's true of great dancers, isn't it? It's the gift where they've trained extensively to get to that point, but what you see is this wonderful fluidity. I'm not saying that that's how it is with myself [laughs], but ideally as a performer, that's what you're trying to achieve. Obviously work has gone into what you're doing, but hopefully it feels very spontaneous.

Who to you is the greatest music performer?

I think probably the best stage entrance I ever saw was Tina Turner. I saw her a long time ago at some open air gig that she was doing. She was just fantastic, the way she burst on stage. She appeared at the top of a flight of stairs, shimmied the whole way down these steps, came straight to the front of stage, and went straight into the song. It was so exciting”.

It is strange to think that, seven years ago today, the first audience were nervously and excitedly waiting for Kate Bush to take to the stage. They had no idea of what to expect and what she would deliver! Unlike some artists, who might preview their show or give extensive details, few would have quite expected what they witnessed! A marvel for all the senses, a very happy seventh anniversary to Before the Dawn! That residency was the last original project Bush has put out. Since, she has released remastered versions of her studio albums - we are not sure whether new material will come in the near-future. Before closing up, I want to highlight Spectrum Culture’s review of the Before the Dawn album. Although it would have been impossible to replicate the live show on the album – there is, maybe, a sensation one can only get from watching the performances -, it is a phenomenal album that gives you tingles! This is what they noted:

“The expansiveness of the live shows makes Concord’s three-CD set an inevitably incomplete document of these shows. Though Bush filmed two shows for a video release, she decided to shelve the tapes indefinitely, meaning that Adrian Noble’s art direction, Jon Driscoll’s 3D projections, as well as a host of dancers, puppeteers and even an illusionist are lost to those of us who couldn’t make it to London. It’s a frustrating development, albeit one that does play into Bush’s long-running prioritization of the music over her carefully parceled-out image. If that was the plan, it worked: by tossing out the chance to see her, Bush forces you to consider her talent beyond whatever pithy or even subconscious judgments may be made about her age. Instead, you only get her voice, which long ago shed the occasionally wayward pitch shifts and wails and instead has developed into the kind of rich, thoroughly controlled instrument that can do whatever Bush wants. Even from the opening number, her voice is so fulsome that it makes one wish she recorded more often, not merely for the chance to hear more of her genius but to simply hear what she can do. No one this side of Bruce Dickinson has had their vocal cords age so majestically.

Divided into three acts, the show begins with a loose assembly of songs culled from Bush’s career. Opening with “Lily” from The Red Shoes, a prayer morphs into funky keyboard lines and lurching basslines before Bush kicks it all into the stratosphere. She brings the same energy straight through to “Hounds of Love,” which loses the claustrophobic erotic fear of the studio version as Bush’s voice and her rock orchestra bursts out of any containment. “Top of the City,” also off The Red Shoes, squares the circle of that album’s disparate pull between pure pop and obscure experimentation, producing a pop gospel number that threatens to evoke actual soul from this most arch of artists. The best of the first act may be not an extended version of “Running Up that Hill” but a rendition of Aerial cut “King of the Mountain.” Its stuttering guitar line occasionally opens up to bird’s eye views of the globe before divebombing into squealing riffs before floating back up on Bush’s rising vocals.

The subsequent two acts tackle Bush’s side-length suites, Hounds of Love’s “The Ninth Wave” and Aerial’s “A Taste of Honey.” Here is where the limitations of the audio-only format begin to weigh down the album. “The Ninth Wave,” about a drowning woman whose total displacement of space and time renders fear and hope through an almost Joycean fusion of the concrete and symbolic, is tailor-made for the stage. Unfortunately, the only thing that remains on CD is David Mitchell’s howlingly bad dialogue to script scenes of the character’s family back on shore, fretting over their missing wife and mother. Bush’s own son plays the woman’s child, and, whatever charm that would hold to see, hearing his stiff, functional delivery of one-sided telephone calls and too-contained domestic panic has no impact on disc. Thankfully, most of these scenes are divided out into their own tracks and can be helpfully sequenced out of existence.

But the music, oh, the music. For an artist so renowned for her thorough, perfectionist control over her work, Bush admirably hands off a great deal of time and attention to her backing band, which resembles something akin to Van Morrison’s classic Caledonia Soul Orchestra. Like that group, they fuse Celtic flourishes with fuzzy rock and blue-eyed, brassy soul. Anxious strings bring out the despair of “Under Ice,” while “Watching You Without Me” warms chilled bones with a rubbery, lethargic bassline, even as Bush’s voice recedes into the background as her disembodied spirit regards her family back home. “Jig of Life” reaches its fullest potential, the smorgasbord of Celtic folk tunes swirling into a driving push to live. “Hello Earth” retroactively becomes one of the best and most baffling power ballads of the ‘80s with this group, the constant escalations that suddenly, bracingly drop into Gregorian chants.

This esprit de corps carries over into the less dynamic, more elegant “A Taste of Honey.” “Prologue” is mostly just Bush and piano, but the ambient textures around her gain something for their live, not programmed, production. Omar Hakim’s skittering, gently polyrhythmic drumming on “An Architect’s Dream” suffuses jazzy tension into the legato guitar patterns and Bush’s unhurried vocals. The movements of this section are less distinctive, but when placed right after “The Ninth Wave,” the suite’s warmth and contentment gain additional power, clarifying it as a loose bookend for that earlier composition”.

Sven years after the first date of Before the Dawn, and we are still talking about the amazing twenty-two date residency. It is testament to Kate Bush’s enduring popularity and her undeniable gifts as a performer that means Before the Dawn will be dissected and remembered decades from now.

There are many reviews for Before the Dawn. I want, actually, to end with a review that I have sourced before: Pete Paphides’ excellent and deep impressions of a mind-blowing show:

“Few musicians are more adept at conveying a sense that something good is going to happen than Kate Bush. We know what Nocturn sounds like on record, so a certain sense of expectation is unavoidable. On either side of the stage, we see arrows fired from bows into the firmament, where they turn into birds. For reasons I couldn’t honestly fathom, we see the painter’s model sacrificing a seagull to no discernible end. Over a rising funk that defies physical resistance, Bush makes a break for transcendence and effectively brings us with her: “We stand in the Atlantic/We become panoramic,” she sings, with arms aloft. Like the rest of the band, guitarist David Rhodes has donned bird mask. As Bush is presented with vast black wings, she and Rhodes circle elegantly around each other, before finally, briefly, she takes flight.

Just two songs by way of an encore — which, after what has preceded them, seems generous: Among Angels from 2011’s Fifty Words For Snow is performed solo at the piano, before the entire band return for Cloudbusting. Once again, we’re reminded that, almost uniquely among her peers, Kate Bush goes to extraordinary lengths in search of subjects that hold up that magic of living up to the light for just long enough to think that we can reach it. But, like the beaming 56 year-old mother singing, “The sun’s coming out”, that too dissipates into memory. And, after another 19 performances, what will happen? In another 35 years, Kate Bush will be 91. Even if she’s still here, we might not be. Perhaps that’s why tonight, she gave us everything she had. And somehow, either in spite or because of that, we still didn’t want to let her go”.

Whilst it is very unlikely Kate Bush will repeat Before the Dawn, those who were lucky enough to have seen her back in 2014 will never forgot what they saw. Perhaps Before the Dawn is the perfect way to sign off her live career! Whilst I am upset that I did not get to see any of the shows, I love reading about Before the Dawn and hearing from people who were there. They are still buzzing and recalling the highlights…

AFTER seven years!

FEATURE Pagan Poetry: Björk’s Vespertine at Twenty

FEATURE:

 

 

Pagan Poetry

Björk’s Vespertine at Twenty

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IT is a busy time for album anniversaries…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Björk in New York in 2001/PHOTO CREDIT: Joseph Cultice

and I almost overlooked Björk’s Vespertine. Released on 27th August, 2001, it is one of the best of her career. If some place it out of the top three, I think it is as strong as her previous album: 1997’s Homogenic. Maybe not as bombastic and pulsating as earlier albums, there is so much texture and beauty through Vespertine. I am going to bring in a couple of reviews in a minute. Even if you are not au fait with her work, I would urge people to buy Björk’s Vespertine. It is hard to believe that it is twenty tomorrow! I am not going to go into the whole recording process and how it differs from her previous albums. I guess there is a sense of Björk become more introspective and serene. Not that Vespertine lacks punch and songs that have a physicality to them. I suppose the songwriting direction is an evolution. To me, Vespertine is one of Björk’s classics; underrated and deserving of new praise on its twentieth anniversary. In 2001, there was so much terrific Hip-Hop, Pop, R&B and Rock. Vespertine could have got lost or overlooked. As it was, the reviews were tremendous. I will come to a coupe soon. Before then, I want to bring in an article from Classic Album Sundays . Last year, they stated why Vespertine is a forgotten treasure:

 “Despite its lack of high-profile singles, this sleeper hit is perhaps the most carefully considered and cohesive entry in Björk’s discography. It would come to be known as one of her most empowering and subversive albums, created at a point in her career where she found herself at the height of global fame and at odds with the allegedly abusive and controversial director Lars Von Trier, in whose film, Dancer in the Dark, she had recently starred. The experience of shooting this emotionally intense feature with the future Anti-Christ creator had been so traumatic for the singer that she declared her retirement from acting soon after its release. Whilst she fulfilled her duties recording the film’s soundtrack, Selma Songs, Björk worked on her own music to counterbalance the unpleasantries of her day-job. Her previous album, Homogenic, released in 1997, had introduced a bold new-direction to her artistry – a sonic leap of faith that combined lush orchestral string arrangements with electronic beats in a way that felt both refreshing and timely.

Björk enlisted the help of American experimental electronic producers Matmos to add the final polish to her finished songs. The pair used their technical expertise to continue the process of “taking something very tiny and magnifying it up to big”, constructing microcosmic beats made from footsteps in the snow, a deck of playing cards, and intricate glitchy patterns. The result foreshadows the emergence of what is today known as ASMR – Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. This online phenomenon, popularised through websites such as YouTube, uses tactile sound to stimulate a paresthesia response: a tingling of the scalp, neck, and spine, which, for some, can lead to a state of “low-grade euphoria”. Recently, the rise of whisper-pop, spearheaded by teenage icon Billie Eilish, has taken this principle to the heart of mainstream culture with innovative results. The eighteen year-old’s nightmarish ‘Bury A Friend’ sounds like a gothic inversion of the forward-thinking ideas Björk was exploring on Vespertine.

This sensual kaleidoscope is the undercurrent to some of Björk’s most intimate expressions of love and desire. These unapologetically explicit depictions of female sexuality were influenced by her new relationship with the visual artist Matthew Barney, with whom she would later have a daughter. On songs such as ‘Cocoon’ the power of her desire is overwhelming, the lyrics describing sex in a “saintly trance” and with “miraculous sensitivity”, blurring the lines between carnal passion and divine intervention. The song’s minimalist yet strangely enveloping production wraps around her dynamic performance, which, whilst never raising much beyond a whisper, portrays a range of emotion that is as impressive as it is unique to Björk’s vocal register, breaking down into pure exhalation in its most exhilarating moments. Further explored on songs like ‘Sun In My Mouth’, Björk’s emphasis of the feminine sexual perspective on Vespertine marked her disregard for this cultural taboo, exposing its sexist undertones whilst demonstrating the beauty of allowing this viewpoint to flourish in mainstream works of art.

Björk enlisted the help of American experimental electronic producers Matmos to add the final polish to her finished songs. The pair used their technical expertise to continue the process of “taking something very tiny and magnifying it up to big”, constructing microcosmic beats made from footsteps in the snow, a deck of playing cards, and intricate glitchy patterns. The result foreshadows the emergence of what is today known as ASMR – Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. This online phenomenon, popularised through websites such as YouTube, uses tactile sound to stimulate a paresthesia response: a tingling of the scalp, neck, and spine, which, for some, can lead to a state of “low-grade euphoria”. Recently, the rise of whisper-pop, spearheaded by teenage icon Billie Eilish, has taken this principle to the heart of mainstream culture with innovative results. The eighteen year-old’s nightmarish ‘Bury A Friend’ sounds like a gothic inversion of the forward-thinking ideas Björk was exploring on Vespertine.

This sensual kaleidoscope is the undercurrent to some of Björk’s most intimate expressions of love and desire. These unapologetically explicit depictions of female sexuality were influenced by her new relationship with the visual artist Matthew Barney, with whom she would later have a daughter. On songs such as ‘Cocoon’ the power of her desire is overwhelming, the lyrics describing sex in a “saintly trance” and with “miraculous sensitivity”, blurring the lines between carnal passion and divine intervention. The song’s minimalist yet strangely enveloping production wraps around her dynamic performance, which, whilst never raising much beyond a whisper, portrays a range of emotion that is as impressive as it is unique to Björk’s vocal register, breaking down into pure exhalation in its most exhilarating moments. Further explored on songs like ‘Sun In My Mouth’, Björk’s emphasis of the feminine sexual perspective on Vespertine marked her disregard for this cultural taboo, exposing its sexist undertones whilst demonstrating the beauty of allowing this viewpoint to flourish in mainstream works of art”.

Spend some time with the spectacular Vespertine. It is an album one can lose themselves in. I have always been blown away by Björk’s invention and how she constantly moves forward. Recorded across various studios, the album could have been disjointed. As it is, there is this beautiful sense of harmony. Björk wanted to make an album with an intimate, sound, breaking away from the feel of Homogenic (1997). Given the new popularity of Napster and music downloads, she decided to use instruments whose sounds would not be compromised when downloaded and played on a computer, including the harp, the celesta, clavichord, strings, and custom music boxes. The first review that I want to source is from AllMusic. This is their take on Vespertine:

“After cathartic statements like Homogenic, the role of Selma in Dancer in the Dark, and the film's somber companion piece, Selmasongs, it's not surprising that Björk's first album in four years is less emotionally wrenching. But Vespertine isn't so much a departure from her previous work as a culmination of the musical distance she's traveled; within songs like the subtly sensual "Hidden Place" and "Undo" are traces of Debut and Post's gentle loveliness, as well as Homogenic and Selmasongs' reflective, searching moments. Described by Björk as "about being on your own in your house with your laptop and whispering for a year and just writing a very peaceful song that tiptoes," Vespertine's vocals seldom rise above a whisper, the rhythms mimic heartbeats and breathing, and a pristine, music-box delicacy unites the album into a deceptively fragile, hypnotic whole. Even relatively immediate, accessible songs such as "It's Not Up to You," "Pagan Poetry," and "Unison" share a spacious serenity with the album's quietest moments. Indeed, the most intimate songs are among the most varied, from the seductively alien "Cocoon" to the dark, obsessive "An Echo, A Stain" to the fairy tale-like instrumental "Frosti." The beauty of Vespertine's subtlety may be lost on Björk fans demanding another leap like the one she made between Post and Homogenic, but like the rest of the album, its innovations are intimate and intricate. Collaborators like Matmos -- who, along with their own A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure, appear on two of 2001's best works -- contribute appropriately restrained beats crafted from shuffled cards, cracking ice, and the snap-crackle-pop of Rice Krispies; harpist Zeena Parkins' melodic and rhythmic playing adds to the postmodernly angelic air. An album singing the praises of peace and quiet, Vespertine isn't merely lovely; it proves that in Björk's hands, intimacy can be just as compelling as louder emotions”.

For anyone who likes Vespertine, I would suggest further reading and exploration. It is such a brilliant album that proved Björk is in a league of her own. Just before rounding off, it is worth quoting the BBC’s assessment of a classic from 2001:

“No doubt the press flurries accompanying the release of this record will be full of references to 'bonkers Icelandic pixie Björk' or the like, but that would be a severe underestimation of what is after all a singular talent. Vespertine is Björk's most personal record, both in that she's had more to do with the music than ever before, and also that it continues with her apparent desire to write songs as confessionals. Whereas earlier songs like "Human Behaviour" and "Venus as a Boy" were observational, third person affairs, much of her subsequent writing has gravitated towards an intensely intimate self expression. Pretty much everything on Vespertine is written in the first person, to often quietly devastating emotional effect; there are moments that shock in their honesty, and much that would maybe come across as cliché in someone else's hands.

Like her last album, Homogenic, there's nothing much on the record that's immediate (save perhaps "Hidden Place" or "It's Not Up to You", both which have spine-meltingly gorgeous choruses); this is a record that reveals its secrets slowly. It's generally a more stripped down affair than previous records; muted beats like footsteps in the snow, whispers, clicks, and sighs open out occasionally into the widescreen lushness of Post and Homogenic; the songs have a mix of fragility and strength which is totally convincing.

As usual, Björk has chosen her collaborators with much care; UK electronica whiz Herbert, Californian avant laptop duo Matmos, harpist Zeena Parkins, as well as lifting a bit of e.e. cummings' poetry for "Sun in my Mouth". There are glacial, slow moving strings, glitchy electronics, blurry atmospherics and even the odd choir lurking in the background, but it's Björk's singing which steals the show, maybe because it fits so perfectly with the arrangements this time rather than sounding superimposed over them.

Though always an expressive instrument, her voice can still shatter the odd wineglass but here her phrasing seems looser, more plastic, sure enough of itself to sound small and broken at times. The effect throughout is unapologetically beautiful, totally immersive and often crushingly moving. It's difficult to pick out highlights from a record that really demands to be listened to in it's entirety, but "Cocoon" and "Undo" stand out (today, anyway). That Björk ? She's Venus as a Girl…”.

A very happy twentieth anniversary to Björk’s Vespertine. With songs like Pagan Poetry, Cocoon and Hidden Place, there are these amazingly powerful songs that have stood the test of time. There is an agelessness to Björk’s music that other artists do not necessarily possess. On its twentieth anniversary, I wanted to show my love and appreciation of one of Björk’s…

GREATEST releases.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Aaliyah – More Than a Woman

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

Aaliyah – More Than a Woman

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BECAUSE 25th August…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Aaliyah visiting Berlin on 14th May, 2000/PHOTO CREDIT: Mika Väisänen

marked twenty years since we lost Aaliyah, I wanted to include one of her finest songs in Groovelines. It is heartbreaking to think how far she could have gone had she lived – aged twenty-two, she was killed in a plane crash. My favourite song of hers is More Than a Woman. It was a posthumous chart-topper (released on 29th October, 2002) than showcased what could have come from the New York-born star. I am going to bring in an article that collates the critical reception of a magnificent song. Before then, Freaky Trigger dove deep into More Than a Woman back in 2016:

“Implicitly, it’s Static Major we have to thank for the song’s lushness, breaking off from Aaliyah’s two previous Timba-produced tracks, the playful “Try Again”, garlanded with acid squelches, and the bubbling, desperate paranoia of “We Need A Resolution”. Brilliant, but emotionally ugly and self-lacerating, that song had been only a modest hit. After finishing the vampire flick, Aaliyah shot a video in the Bahamas for a more conventional follow-up, gorgeous R&B sex jam “Rock The Boat”. She took a plane back to the States. It crashed on take-off. All nine aboard died.

Posthumous hits by rock stars tend to come under particular scrutiny – listened to a little harder with hindsight, whether for fatal signs (“Love Will Tear Us Apart”) or unbearable, poignant hope (“Just Like Starting Over”). Aaliyah escaped this: she died like Buddy Holly had, in a sudden, stupid accident, and with a similar sense of might-have-been. “Rock The Boat” was a big, deserved hit; there’s no darkness in it, and it can stand as a celebration of a remarkable woman.

But it was “More Than A Woman”, released months after her death, in the chill of winter, that performed better, in the UK at least. And even when you’ve filtered out tragic coincidence and cinematic pantomime, this song does contain a darkness.

It hides in the track’s opulence. While “Rock The Boat” is honestly and happily about the joy of sex, “More Than A Woman” is about its promise. The juddering bassline, the luscious swirl of the string sample, and more of Timbaland’s low-end blurts, make for a heady, overpowering combination even before Aaliyah starts singing. When she does, she adds to the sense of sensual derangement, with multi-tracked vocal lines first overlapping and echoing each other (“Tempt me (tempt me), drive me (drive me)”), then ad libbing around the chorus and pushing it to the background, and finally – after the “Do you wanna” middle eight – being back-masked into a series of spectral gasps which haunt the mix at the back of the final chorus.

This fusion of vocal and production effects isn’t exactly foreign to early 00s pop – it’s similar to what I’ve been praising about Britney Spears tracks. But here it works differently, because Aaliyah is such a poised, controlled singer. She sounds neither incorporated into the production machine (like Britney) or using it to amplify her force (like early Beyonce). Instead – like all their tracks together – she treats Timbaland’s production as a space to play in, curling vocal lines around the hooks and beats. It was a role that could showcase her emotional range without her ever needing to overplay her hand and belt the songs out. On the tracks with more overtly experimental production Aaliyah could work as an anchor, teaching you how to feel about the sound-world unfolding around you. On “More Than A Woman” she gets to be the source of the strangeness herself.

And of the darkness. As the song unfolds, the relationship becomes more clearly an obsessive one, intoxicating but illicit. The markers are there from the start – “morning massages / new bones in your closet”, in the lyric’s best moment – and they only rise. “Chase me, leave me / There’s still no separation” coos Aaliyah – a verse later and she’s comparing them to Bonnie and Clyde. Like the entwining and retwining vocal lines, the lyrics intensify “More Than A Woman”, hint at a core of the uncanny and unhealthy in the song”.

Recently, news emerged that Aaliyah’s albums will be available on Spotify (her debut, Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number, was already there). Her excellent second album, One in a Million, was available from 20th August. As we have just marked twenty years since her death, there is going to be a lot of new interest around her music. I wonder whether there will be reissues of her albums and anything in the way of posthumous inspection. Whilst there were some mixed reviews for More Than a Woman , many were very positive:

“James Poletti from Dotmusic gave the song a mixed review; he praised the song's production by saying it was one of Timbaland's finest productions but he felt that "More Than a Woman" was a lesser song compared to Aaliyah's previously released singles. Overall he felt that the song did justice to Aaliyah's legacy and that "It reminds us that Aaliyah was a truly contemporary soul performer and will be sorely missed". In a review of Aaliyah's eponymous album, Luke McManus from the Irish publication RTE compared "More Than a Woman" to the work of French electronic music duo Daft Punk and praised her voice on the song as well. When reviewing Aaliyah, British publication NME described "More Than a Woman" as being "grandiose".

Brad Cawn from Chicago Tribune felt that Aaliyah had matured content wise and he described the song as being a "Mid-tempo come-on". Sal Cinquemani from Slant Magazine felt that the song would make the perfect theme song for a cartoon. Cinquemani stated, "If the beyond-burgeoning actress was ever approached to play a cartoon superhero, the synth-heavy “More Than a Woman,” with its millennium-ready empowerment and sensitive vocals, would make the perfect theme song for the fictional vixen (“You go, I go/’Cause we share pillows”)". Joshua Clover from Spin praised the song saying, "'More Than a Woman' isn't the Bee Gees song but pushes the jumpy tune until, finally, it meets you in the doorway (or is that the dance floor or the bed room?)". Quentin B. Huff from PopMatters praised the production of the song saying, "The production bumps and jerks, contrasting a smooth groove with the spikes and dips of its loops and cadences". He also felt that "Aaliyah manages to croon over this mechanical bull of a beat, and the lyrics are appropriately terse and frugal, as if she only needs a few key phrases to remind her significant other that she is in fact "more than enough for you”.

I am going to wrap up in a minute. Whilst it is sad Aaliyah is no longer with us, we have her incredible music. More Than a Woman is just one of the many original and timeless songs that will influence artists and listeners years from now. Last year, The Guardian named it as their fifty-sixth-favourite U.K. number one single. It is an amazing and compelling track from an artist who is…

 

VERY much missed.

FEATURE: They Say, "No, No, It Won't Last Forever" Fifty Years of Kate Bush’s The Man with the Child in His Eyes

FEATURE:

 

 

They Say, "No, No, It Won't Last Forever"

Fifty Years of Kate Bush’s The Man with the Child in His Eyes

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I am not sure as to…

the exact date the song was written, but Kate Bush’s The Man with the Child in His Eyes was completed when she was thirteen. As Bush turned sixty-three on 30th July, it allows me the chance to revisit one of her finest songs. Included on her 1978 debut album, The Kick Inside, it was recorded in 1975. Written when she was thirteen and recorded at the age of sixteen, it is scary when you listen to the song. It is such an accomplished and hugely mature thing! It goes to show the incredible writing gift she possessed at such an early stage in life. Fifty years since its creation, we are still listening to this masterful track! The second U.K. single from The Kick Inside, it reached six on the charts. I am going to come on to the inspiration behind the song because, as I have said before, perceived wisdom is incorrect – or I feel there is no specific person Bush was referring to. Before then, I want to bring in a great article from Far Out Magazine. They looked at Bush’s mini-symphony in July:

“When writers circle the adjective pool looking for appropriate words to describe the wonderfully talented Kate Bush, they usually end up labelling her something along the lines of eccentric, unique and dynamic. All of those words are wholly applicable to an artist who has kept the entire public waiting for the next drop of music, rarely to have never toured, and still managed to remain free from a commercial burden on her creativity. But the only word that really suits Bush to a tee is gifted.

Gifted like Picasso, Mozart and Godard are gifted. The kind of talent and prowess that emanates from her every move and has likely shone brightly since birth. Of course, there can be no doubt that Kate Bush worked hard for her success, but there’s a looming sense that no matter the discipline, the singer would have found a way to become the dynamic, unique and eccentric character she is. If you’re looking for proof, we have it in the shape of one of her first songs.

‘The Man With the Child in His Eyes’ was written by Bush when she was only 13-years-old. The singer had been leaning towards making music her life’s passion for some time, but this was the song that not only inwardly sealed her fate but would end up becoming one of the main reasons Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour would back Bush to emerge as a global superstar. However, as with everything she does, the song came straight from Bush’s soul.

“The inspiration for ‘The Man With the Child in His Eyes’ was really just a particular thing that happened when I went to the piano. The piano just started speaking to me,” Bush told an interviewer in 1978. “It was a theory that I had had for a while that I just observed in most of the men that I know: the fact that they just are little boys inside and how wonderful it is that they manage to retain this magic. I, myself, am attracted to older men, I guess, but I think that’s the same with every female. I think it’s a very natural, basic instinct that you look continually for your father for the rest of your life, as do men continually look for their mother in the women that they meet. I don’t think we’re all aware of it, but I think it is basically true. You look for that security that the opposite sex in your parenthood gave you as a child.”

In truth, the song was actually penned for Steve Blacknell, Bush’s older boyfriend at the time. “She had her heart set on becoming a global star, and I was going to be a flash DJ,” Blacknell explained. “One day, I would introduce her on Top Of The Pops. In the summer of 1975, I finally got my break and landed a job as a marketing assistant with Decca Records. It was then that I finally thought I was equipped to hear her music, and it was a day I’ll never forget. I went round to her house, and she led me to the room where the piano was. I thought, ‘Oh my God’. What I heard made my soul stand on end. I realised there and then that I was in love with a genius.”

He added: “As things hotted up for her, so our relationship cooled, and we drifted apart. But I’ve been told by those around her that I was indeed ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’, and I know that those words were given to me by someone very special.” It may have meant something to Blacknell, however, the song means a lot more to Bush. It would be the track that gave David Gilmour the impetus to ensure Bush would find herself a proper audience.

Kate Bush was only 16 when her demo was passed on to Gilmour. While there would undoubtedly have been some trepidation from any teen had they known Gilmour, who, at this time, was one of the most well-regarded musicians on earth, was listening to their demo tape. However, it turns out that Bush was relatively unaware of who Gilmour was actually was, outside of a family friend, that is. “I was not really aware of much contemporary rock music at that age,” recalled Bush in 1985. “I had heard of them but hadn’t actually heard their music. It wasn’t until later that I got to hear stuff like Dark Side of the Moon. And I just thought that was superb–I mean, they really did do some pretty profound stuff”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

I do not think that Blacknell was the titular man with the child in his eyes. Even though he was an older man and Bush would have been enamoured of him, I feel the song is more about men in general. Those who have a sense of child-like wonder in their eyes. As this article from the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia explains (via a link to a 1979 interview from Swap Shop), Bush provided some clarity and truth regarding the focal point of The Man with the Child in His Eyes:

“Oh, well it's something that I feel about men generally. [Looks around at cameramen] Sorry about this folks. [Cameramen laugh] That a lot of men have got a child inside them, you know I think they are more or less just grown up kids. And that it's a... [Cameramen laugh] No, no, it's a very good quality, it's really good, because a lot of women go out and get far too responsible. And it's really nice to keep that delight in wonderful things that children have. And that's what I was trying to say. That this man could communicate with a younger girl, because he's on the same level. (Swap Shop, 1979)”.

I wonder if Kate Bush has thought about the song and the fact that it is fifty years old – or very close to it anyway! As a very young teenager, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when inspiration struck and she put pen to paper. It must have been such a magical moment!

I want to finish with a bit on the lyrics and the place the song holds in our hearts. Before then, I want to drop in some information from Dreams of Orgonon. In a feature from 2018, we get to learn more about the making of The Man with the Child in His Eyes. There are some sections that struck me:

“Musically, MWCIHE is Kate’s most significant accomplishment to date. It’s easy to see why Dave Gilmour wanted it released. It’s the first Kate song to really work melodically—it’s cleanly structured, gorgeous, organic, and uncanny. She manages to balance ethereality and hummable melodies while keeping her more experimental drive. She finally develops a memorable hook, an arpeggiated E minor chord (B-G-E-E). The song continues by displaying Kate’s propensity for unorthodox key changes. The first part of the verse (“I hear him before I go to sleep” through “when I turn the light off and turn over”) in E minor with a progression of i-III-VI-III-iv (E minor-G-C-A minor). The second half of the verse moves to E minor’s dominant key, B minor, before shifting to Bb major, doing some things in G, and shifting to a chorus in C. The song is not static—it’s organic, it breathes like a person.

Andrew Powell’s often hit-or-miss production works here. Usually he’s at his best when he takes a hands-off, simple approach, and that’s what he utilizes on this song. He arranges the orchestra himself, and no instruments are heard outside it apart from Kate’s piano, which leads the way (as it does in all her best early songs). For all Kate’s admitted terror at playing with an orchestra, she shines here, sounding perfectly confident and even outshining the gentle ensemble of strings accompanying her song.

It’s rare to find guts like that in a song by an older artist, which is perhaps why this song doesn’t work when sung by older artists. When Hue and Cry sing it, it’s too dour, and even Dusty Springfield doesn’t imbibe it with a new life. Kate sang it for the last time in 1979, when she plays the song for the last time on a BBC Christmas special. It’s a strong performance—Kate’s haunting and soulful voice had significantly evolved across four years, and it lends the song a fitting maturity. There’s a sense that this is the end of its tenure, that this is as far as it can go. It’s hard to imagine a hypothetical 80s Kate Bush concert where “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” would fit in a setlist alongside “Breathing,” “Suspended in Gaffa,” or even “The Big Sky,” which is an older adult’s song about being a child. It belongs to a moment. Kate may have already grown beyond it when it was released as a single after “Wuthering Heights.” It’s a 1975 song that detonated as a 1978 one. “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” is likely the last Cathy song, but maybe also the first Kate Bush song. It dwells in a liminal space on its own. “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” as a popular song was at a distance from its inception where its creation was a relatively distant memory. Art is a snapshot of a moment. Sometimes its creative gestation periods last a while. Kate Bush has mastered the slow burn. She didn’t hastily release this song—she set it free.

Recorded: June 1975 at London AIR Studios. Released on The Kick Inside 17 February 1978, and as a single on 26 May 1978. Personnel: Kate Bush-vocals, piano. Production and arrangement: Andrew Powell. Engineering: Geoff Emerick”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: The Northcliffe Collection

There are a couple of reasons as to why The Man with the Child in His Eyes is a genius song. Bush’s vocal is restrained and mature. In 1978, she was being labelled as a singer with a high voice. There was a degree of mockery and labelling. In reality, she was heightened and shifting her voice to suit the song. As we can hear on The Man with the Child in His Eyes (which she recorded two years before the rest of The Kick Inside), she was perfectly capable of a sensitive, sensual and graceful vocal without acrobatics and histrionics! The lyrics are what really stand out. I know that the original handwritten lyrics were auctioned a while ago. What any Kate Bush fan would do to own such a piece of music history! The song seems like a dream. There are elements of fantasy throughout. This feeling that the man is at sea or lost on some horizon, Bush herself presents a more grounded image of someone who is caring and very real. This balance of the intimate and domestic together with something more poetic and fictionalised, it is such an intriguing song! My favourite lyrics are the following: “Listening to a man I've never known before/Telling me about the sea/All his love, 'til eternity”. Those lines could have been lifted from classic poetry or a novel! Not to hark back to her age, but those are some incredible advanced and sophisticated lines from a thirteen-year-old! There is passion and longing together with regret and hesitation (“And here I am again, my girl/Wondering what on Earth I'm doing here”). Fifty years later, people are discovering this song written by a girl who, a few years later, would record this song at AIR Studios backed by an orchestra! It is a stunning and truly unmatched song that will survive…

FOR all of time.

FEATURE: Diamonds on the Soles of His Shoes: Paul Simon’s Graceland at Thirty-Five

FEATURE:

 

Diamonds on the Soles of His Shoes

Paul Simon’s Graceland at Thirty-Five

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TODAY (25th August)…

IN THIS PHOTO: Paul Simon in 1986/PHOTO CREDIT: Lynn Goldsmith

is the thirty-fifth anniversary of one of my favourite albums ever. Paul Simon’s Graceland was released this day in 1986. It is a masterpiece that marks the peak of one of the finest songwriters who has ever lived. I wonder whether Simon will mark the album’s anniversary or say anything. Certainly, Graceland is seen as one of the most important albums ever. I am going to bring together a couple of reviews for the album, in addition to an article about its legacy/importance. Yesterday, The Independent marked thirty-five years of Graceland and discussed Simon recording In South Africa with musicians from the country at a time when Apartheid was present:

“I’d never heard [the singer’s] name and I was scared,” he recalls. “In the township, when somebody tells you an English name, you know there’s a problem. I’m expecting a South African name calling me for a session, not an English name. My boss says, ‘Relax, he’s a singer from Jamaica’ – he sings ‘Mother and Child Reunion’. And I said, ‘That’s a brilliant song. He’s from Jamaica?’ He says, ‘No, no, Jamaica, Queens, New York’.”

Paul Simon arrived in Johannesburg in February 1985 on a pilgrimage of personal recovery and creative rejuvenation. His marriage to actor Carrie Fisher had collapsed. His turbulent on-off partnership with musical foil Art Garfunkel had hit the rocks once more, following the roaring success of their 1981 reunion concert in Central Park – the largest concert ever held at the time, before a crowd of 500,000 – and a fractious world tour. The comeback album the pair had planned fell foul of their personal differences, and emerged as Simon’s sixth solo record Hearts and Bones in 1983, his first major commercial flop. His label Warner Brothers had lost interest in him; the synthpop masses considered him a Sixties has-been. “I had a personal blow, a career setback, and the combination of the two put me into a tailspin,” he said.

In freefall, though, Simon discovered a weightless freedom. While producing a singer-songwriter called Heidi Berg, she’d handed him a label-less bootleg tape of mbaqanga street music from Soweto, entitled Gumboots: Accordion Jive, Volume Two. Already aware of the South African sounds of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba, he was instantly entranced by this “summer music, happy music” that reminded him of the Atlantic records rhythm and blues hits of his Fifties youth. Scatting his own melodies over the tape while driving, he vowed to track down the artists, initially intending to buy the rights to the track “Gumboots” to write his own song over, as he had with his 1970 Peruvian folk single “El Condor Pasa”. Then, after hearing further tapes from South African producer Hilton Rosenthal, and with Warner paying him little attention as a lost cause, he decided to travel to Johannesburg to record with them in person. The sort of devotional odyssey which, within the confines of America, might usually have been made to Elvis Presley’s Memphis homestead.

The record he began in Johannesburg – 1986’s Graceland, 35 years old tomorrow – would become a 16 million-selling career resurrection for Simon, and a pan-global cultural benchmark. While Talking Heads, The Tom Tom Club, Adam and the Ants, Bow Wow Wow and Peter Gabriel had all explored African rhythms in their music before (the last even launching a festival, Womad, to help popularise global sounds in 1980), Graceland’s success placed South African music centre stage in mainstream western culture for the first time, and widely popularised what would become known as “world music”. It would also land Simon in the eye of a political storm that would result in violence and assassination threats and take the approval of Nelson Mandela himself to shake off.

Though Band Aid and “We Are The World” had turned many western rock superstar’s thoughts towards Africa by 1985, the prospect of one of them recording in South Africa was a moral and political minefield. Having twice turned down million-dollar offers to perform live in Sun City, Simon was well aware of the United Nations cultural boycott in place to protest the apartheid regime entering, under PW Botha, its 37th year of brutally oppressing and segregating the country’s black majority population. Consulting his friend and anti-apartheid activist Harry Belafonte following the recording of the USA For Africa single, he was reportedly advised to discuss his proposed trip with the African National Congress, who had instigated the boycott”.

Following its completion, Simon toured alongside South African musicians, performing their music and songs from Graceland. I am glad that Graceland put Simon back on top after some lukewarm reviews for 1983’s Hearts and Bones. I love the entire album. I think that the title track is one of the greatest compositions ever! From the beauty and giddy delight of the opening track, The Boy in the Bubble, to All Around the World or the Myth of Fingerprints, it is a phenomenal album! I am not going to talk about various controversies that surrounded the album – including Simon working in South Africa, Linda Ronstadt appearing on the album and accusations of plagiarism levied at Simon by Los Lobos. I am keener to focus on the multiple riches and goods of Graceland. Thirty-five years after its release, the album is still being played and celebrated.

There are a couple of reviews that I want to introduce. When reviewing the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Graceland in 2012, this is what Pitchfork had to say:

“The stories Simon tells on Graceland wouldn't have been told without the collaboration of the mostly South African musicians he worked with on the record. Their music sparked Simon's imagination after the commercial disappointment of 1983's Hearts and Bones, and the jam sessions he recorded with them in South Africa gave rise to all but a few of these songs. Simon learned to write differently by homing in on the ways guitarist Chikapa "Ray" Phiri varied his playing from verse to verse, and by grounding his vocal melodies on the basslines of Bagithi Khumalo. Khumalo's playing has such fluency and personality that, at least on the five songs he's a part of, this is nearly as much his record as anyone else's. On the brief disc of outtakes included in this set, there's a version of "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" that's stripped down to just vocals and bass, and his line so completely frames the song (rhythmically, harmonically, and melodically) that the other elements of the album version's arrangement are barely missed.

So we get songs where the groove came first, and the lyrics long after. Simon considered writing political songs about apartheid but quickly concluded that he wasn't very good at it and owed it to the other musicians involved to stick to his strengths. Still, the album's opening song, "The Boy in the Bubble", is a thriller that ties together threads of technological progress, medicine, terrorism, surveillance, pop music, inequality, and superstition with little more than a series of sentence fragments, all tossed off in the same deadpan delivery. The song sets a monumental stage on which the small dramas and comedies of the other songs can play out, and it also establishes the record's unsettled tone-- out of all these songs, only "That Was Your Mother" is sung from a settled place, and even that one is a reminiscence about itinerant life.

To have Simon's songs mingling with mbaqanga, township jive, shangaan music, zydeco and chicano rock, all played by their real practitioners, complemented the themes of dislocation, misplaced identity, and the meeting of worlds. "You Can Call Me Al" traces Simon's own arc on his trip to South Africa, beginning in confusion and ending in ecstatic realization-- he goes from"far away, in my well-lit home" to, "He sees angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity/ He says 'amen' and 'hallelujah.'"

Graceland was the first many of Simon's fans had heard of South Africa's black music. When I saw that this set included a two-hour documentary on the album, I wondered whether it would shy away from the issue of Simon's violation of the cultural boycott on South Africa, but to its credit, it doesn't. In fact, director Joe Berlinger uses a one-on-one conversation between Simon and Dali Tambo, the founder of Artists Against Apartheid and a one-time vocal critic of Simon, as a framing device for his story.

But more than Simon's single-minded devotion to his art and Tambo's ideological politics, the experience surrounding this album is best conveyed by the musicians who made it. They were violating the boycott, too, just by participating in a dialogue with non-South African musicians, and there's a moment where Ray Phiri describes a meeting he was called to in London with African National Congress officials while touring to support the album that speaks volumes. The ANC officials told Phiri that he was violating the boycott and had to go home, and his response was that he was already a victim of apartheid, and to force him to go home would make him a victim twice. In the end, Simon's assertion that Graceland helped put an emotional, human face on black South Africans for millions of people around the world doesn't seem off the mark. This set also comes with a DVD of the concert Simon and these musicians played with South African exiles Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba in Harare, Zimbabwe, in 1987, and the joy visible on stage and in the audience certainly speaks to that.

It's easy to overstate what Graceland was. It wasn't the first world-music album, as some critics claim. But it was unique in its total, and totally natural, synthesis of musical strains that turned out to be not nearly as different from each other as its listeners might have expected, and the result resonated strongly around the world and across generations”.

It is easy enough to see Graceland as a fantastic album without appreciating the musical richness and the importance of what was being recorded. I will come to an article that discusses the legacy of one of the best albums of the 1980s. First, this is what AllMusic wrote in their review for Graceland:

“With Graceland, Paul Simon hit on the idea of combining his always perceptive songwriting with the little-heard mbaqanga music of South Africa, creating a fascinating hybrid that re-enchanted his old audience and earned him a new one. It is true that the South African angle (including its controversial aspect during the apartheid days) was a powerful marketing tool and that the catchy music succeeded in presenting listeners with that magical combination: something they'd never heard before that nevertheless sounded familiar. As eclectic as any record Simon had made, it also delved into zydeco and conjunto-flavored rock & roll while marking a surprising new lyrical approach (presaged on some songs on Hearts and Bones); for the most part, Simon abandoned a linear, narrative approach to his words, instead drawing highly poetic ("Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes"), abstract ("The Boy in the Bubble"), and satiric ("I Know What I Know") portraits of modern life, often charged by striking images and turns of phrase torn from the headlines or overheard in contemporary speech. An enormously successful record, Graceland became the standard against which subsequent musical experiments by major artists were measured”.

Rather than source one article, I am interested in the Wikipedia section for Graceland where we see its legacy. I know that there will be articles published today on its thirty-fifth anniversary that dissect the importance of Graceland:  

“New York Times writer Jon Pareles identified Graceland as an album that had popularized African rock in the west, alongside albums such as Peter Gabriel's So (1986) and Talking Heads' Remain in Light (1980).A 2012 documentary film, Under African Skies, was directed by Joe Berlinger for the album's 25th anniversary, and includes archival footage, interviews, discussion of the controversy, and coverage of an anniversary reunion concert.

Advocates for Graceland feel its music transcends the racial and cultural barriers of its production. "Graceland was never just a collection of songs, after all; it was a bridge between cultures, genres and continents, not to mention a global launching pad for the musicians whose popularity had been suppressed under South Africa's white-run apartheid rule," said Andrew Leahey of American Songwriter. Presenting the album in a modern context, Tris McCall of the Star-Ledger writes that "In a sense, Simon was ahead of his time: The curatorial approach he took to assembling full tracks from scraps of songs and pre-existing recordings is closer in execution to that of Kanye West than it is to any of his contemporaries."

The album has influenced musicians including Regina Spektor, Bombay Bicycle Club, Gabby Young, Casiokids, The Very Best, Givers, Lorde, and Vampire Weekend. The latter faced particular criticism that their 2008 debut album was too similar to Graceland, due to its origins in African music. Simon later defended the band, remarking, "In a way, we were on the same pursuit, but I don't think you're lifting from me, and anyway, you're welcome to it, because everybody's lifting all the time. That's the way music grows and is shaped."

Simon recalled his experiences with the record in 2013:

There was the almost mystical affection and strange familiarity I felt when I first heard South African music. Later, there was the visceral thrill of collaborating with South African musicians onstage. Add to this potent mix the new friendships I made with my band mates, and the experience becomes one of the most vital in my life”.

On its thirty-fifth anniversary, I wanted to celebrate an album that is so important and strong. It is a shame that it garnered controversy and Simon got some criticism for entering South Africa and recording with musicians there. It is the input of South African musicians and vocalists like Ladysmith Black Mambazo that make Graceland so astonishing and different. If you have not listened to Graceland in a while, then today is as good an excuse as any! Put it on and get lost in an album that…

IS an all-time classic.

FEATURE: One for the Record Collection! Essential September Releases

FEATURE:

 

 

One for the Record Collection!

IN THIS PHOTO: Little Simz/PHOTO CREDIT: Ethan Hart for Wonderland.

Essential September Releases

___________

ALTHOUGH there are…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Amyl and The Sniffers/PHOTO CREDIT: Jamie Wdziekonski

quite a few good albums due next month, I am selecting the essential ones that you will want to own. There are two particularly stunning albums out on 3rd September. Wasting no time in getting the month off to a great start, Iron Maiden’s Senjutsu is one that you will want to get! Go and pre-order a copy, as this is primed to be a huge album from the legendary British Metal band! I am looking forward to listening to the album. The group’s first album since 2015’s The Book of Souls, Senjutsu is going to be cracking. On the official Iron Maiden website, we get a sense of what the album is about:

“For Senjutsu – loosely translated as ‘tactics & strategy’, the band once again enlisted the services of Mark Wilkinson to create the spectacular Samurai themed cover artwork, based on an idea by Steve Harris. And with a running time of a little under 82 minutes, Senjutsu, like their previous record The Book Of Souls, will be a double CD album/triple vinyl album.

Steve says "We chose to record at Guillaume Tell Studio in France again as the place has such a relaxed vibe. The setup there is perfect for our needs; the building used to be a cinema and has a really high ceiling so there’s a great acoustic sound. We recorded this album in the same way we did The Book Of Souls in that we’d write a song, rehearse it and then put it down together straight away while it was all fresh in our minds.

There’s some very complex songs on this album which took a lot of hard work to get them exactly as we wanted them to sound, so the process was at times very challenging, but Kevin is great at capturing the essence of the band and I think it was worth the effort! I’m very proud of the result and can’t wait for fans to hear it."

Bruce Dickinson continues, "We’re all really excited about this album. We recorded it back in early 2019 during a break in the Legacy tour so we could maximize our touring yet still have a long set up period before release to prepare great album art and something special as a video. Of course the pandemic delayed things more - so much for the best laid plans – or should that be ‘strategies’!? The songs are very varied, and some of them are quite long. There’s also one or two songs which sound pretty different to our usual style, and I think Maiden fans will be surprised - in a good way, I hope!”.

I know that there will be a lot of love for Senjutsu. A fan has already given a track-by-track review that should get people excited. Do make sure that, even if you are a casual fan of Iron Maiden, you go and pre-order a copy.

A wonderful album slated for 3rd September is Little Simz’s Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. This is an album that you are going to want to pre-order. The follow-up to the hugely acclaimed GREY Area (2019), there is a lot of buzz around the release of the London rapper’s upcoming fourth studio album. This is what Rough Trade say about Sometimes I Might Be Introvert:

“Over the course of her lush, expansive, defiantly sprawling new album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, released on Age 101, the Ivor Novello award-winning, Mercury nominated Little Simz delivers an undeniable modern classic, effortlessly condensing any number of disparate styles and genres into music which thrillingly broaches the gap between urgent modern treatise and hip hop. A bold, quantum leap forward from the critically beloved Grey Area, this is hardly music aiming simply for the pop charts; rather, it is turbo charged with the kind of fury and potency, confusion and anxiety that make up the modern experience of being Black, British and female at this particular point in time. This is no mere philosophical exercise, however - the result is her most ambitious and soaring body of work to date, one which operates at the very heights of what rap can be.

Without wasting any time at all, the album opens with the heart stopping clarion call of “Introvert”, a visceral essay about lives lived in the cross-hairs of society, fuelled by fear, exhaustion, frustration, but also a kind of white hot political awakening. It’s a full-bore, high-stakes, facing up to death riposte, as urgent as it is compelling, complete with a stunning video by Salomon Lightelm which is by turns majestic and terrifying, with a chopped up, collaged structure perfectly mirroring the landscape it maps; a place of beauty and danger, of violence and dogged resistance. The centre, Simz is keen to remind us, will not hold (“man it’s like they can’t sleep until our spirit is crushed”) – and here she is driven to document every unsparing detail.

The ensuing tracks, produced by Inflo in LA and London, run into each other seamlessly and enlist the rapidly emergent likes of Cleo Sol, Obongjayar and even “The Crown” actress Emma Corrin, to create a kind of rangy, nimble storytelling which conjures up the febrile, strident world we live in with an unflinching energy and vividness. These songs are flash-lit Polaroids, ready framed and developing before our very eyes, and their creator is nowhere and everywhere, documenting a new natural history in which moments of tenderness (“Miss Understood”) coexist with shocking violence (“Little Q Pt 2”), and unabashed celebrations of femininity (“Woman”) sit alongside deeply personal glimpses of introspection (“I See You”).

Of the many voices in music today, Simz’ is among the most commanding, writing at a pitch of intensity and urgency that few can match. However, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is no diatribe. Instead, it is an intensely alive hybrid, a work of radical honesty that uses personal history as a means of magnifying and challenging the paradoxes we find ourselves in, both social and personal, macro and micro. Like some of the legendary musicians that came before her, Simz is looking at the chaos and disorder in the world right now with resourceful, refined eyes, and she sees the glorious opportunity and enormous responsibility that affords. This is the end result; listen on in wonder”.

The first album out on 10th September that you will want to grab is Manic Street Preachers’ The Ultra Vivid Lament. The new album from the Welsh legends is going to be another epic! They always produce the most interesting and repeatable albums. Go and pre-order the Manics’ upcoming treasure:

“The Ultra Vivid Lament is the 14th studio album from Manic Street Preachers. It is both reflection and reaction - a record that gazes in isolation across a cluttered room, fogged by often painful memories, to focus on an open window framing a gleaming vista of land melting into sea and endless sky.

Musically The Ultra Vivid Lament is inspired by a formative years record box (ABBA, post-Eno Roxy, the Bunnymen, Fables-era REM, Lodger) though the end result could only be the unique union of James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore, collectively one of the UK’s most consistently brilliant rock’n’roll bands for over three decades”.

We have heard a bit from The Ultra Vivid Lament, and it is sounding like it will be among the best albums from Manic Street Preachers. I have been a fan of the band since childhood, so I am really keen to see what their fourteenth studio album offers up. If you want to get an album that is guaranteed to provide huge satisfaction, then make sure that you pre-order The Ultra Vivid Lament.

There are quite a few other albums from 10th September that should be on the must-buy list. Amyl and The Sniffers’ second studio album, Comfort to Me, is going to be one of the best of the year! Do make sure that you pre-order an album that is going to massive, raw and utterly compelling:

“Already renowned for a ball-tearing live show, The Sniffers made their international debut as one of the hottest tipped acts at The Great Escape in 2018. Soon afterwards, they signed deals with both Rough Trade Records and ATO Records, made a massively hyped appearance at SXSW, and finally released their self-titled debut album in 2019, landing them an ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) Award for Best Rock Album, capping off a wild year for the lunatic, likeable punks.

Late in 2020, Amyl and The Sniffers went into the studio with producer Dan Luscombe to record their sophomore album, Comfort To Me. Written over a long year of lockdown, the album was influenced by and expanded on a heavier pool of references - old-school rock’n’roll (AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, Motörhead and Wendy O Williams), modern hardcore (Warthog and Power Trip) and the steady homeland heroes (Coloured Balls and Cosmic Psychos). Lyrically, the album was influenced by Taylor’s rap idols and countless garage bands and in her words ‘I had all this energy inside of me and nowhere to put it, because I couldn’t perform, and it had a hectic effect on my brain. My brain evolved and warped and my way of thinking about the world completely changed.’

Seventeen songs were recorded in the Comfort to Me sessions and the top 13 made the cut. They were mixed long-distance by Nick Launay (Nick Cave, IDLES, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and mastered by Bernie Grundman (Michael Jackson, Prince, Dr Dre).

Comfort To Me demonstrates the same irrepressible smarts, integrity and fearless candour as their debut but as you’d expect of any young band five years on, their sound has evolved, in Amy’s words it’s ‘raw self expression, defiant energy and unapologetic vulnerability’”.

You can also check out the Melbourne Punk/Pub Rock band’s official website for more details. After the success of their eponymous debut, there will be a lot of eyes their way on 10th September.

There are a couple of solid albums from 10th September I will pass by, as I am trying to narrow down to the very best. One that is worth investigation is Diana Ross’ Thank You. She is such a legend, one cannot ignore anything she put out. The fact that the album is going to promote something positive and inclusive means you will certainly want to pre-order it:

“Diana Ross sings “Thank You” to the world. “This collection of songs is my gift to you with appreciation and love. I am eternally grateful that I had the opportunity to record this glorious music at this time,” said Ms. Ross. Her new album, Thank You is released through Decca Records / Universal Music Group.

Recorded in her home studio, Thank You offers a powerful, inclusive musical message of love and togetherness. With its songs of happiness, appreciation and joy, it wholeheartedly acknowledges that we are in this all together. Her family, friends and loyal and loving audiences all around the globe have been an integral part of her wonderful life’s story. In this special moment, it is time to step into the light.

Ms. Ross co-wrote and collaborated on the 13 songs along with award-winning songwriters and producers including: Jack Antonoff, Troy Miller, Triangle Park, Spike Stent, Prince Charlez, Amy Wadge, Neff-U, Freddie Wexler, Jimmy Napes, Tayla Parx, Fred White, and Nathanial Ledgewick”.

There are four more albums from 10th September that you will want to get – I told you that it was a busy week! Matthew E. White’s K Bay is one I am looking forward to. The follow-up to 2015’s Fresh Blood, K Bay is going to be a gold album from the Virginia songwriter. Go and pre-order your copy:

“New, long-awaited solo album, K Bay, via Domino. It features Spacebomb’s trusted house band (bassist Cameron Ralston, drummer Pinson Chanselle, and orchestral arranger Trey Pollard), along with multi-instrumentalist Alan Parker, keyboardists Devonne Harris and Daniel Clarke, and engineer / mixer Adrian Olsen. The LP was produced by White and recorded between his beloved Kensington Avenue home studio (and album namesake) K Bay, Richmond’s Montrose Recording and his own local institution, Spacebomb Studio. K Bay finds the singer / songwriter, bandleader, and musical polymath expanding every facet of his creative process and harnessing the full power of his community, culminating in the best record of his career.

K Bay, White’s first solo album in six years, is the astounding record he has forever aspired to make. A bold reclamation of independence and identity, K Bay establishes White as one of his era’s most imaginative artists. These 11 pieces are retro-futurist magic tricks that feel instantly classic and contemporary, the product of a musical mind that has internalized the lessons of his idols and used them to build a brilliant world of his own.

A decade ago, Matthew E. White made a classic beauty no one expected; on K Bay, he has made a masterpiece by harnessing what he’s learned from that community and life itself in entirely unexpected, electrifying, and reaffirming ways”.

The upcoming tenth studio album from the brilliant Saint Etienne is one to pre-order. I’ve Been Trying To Tell You is looking like it will be among their best:

“Saint Etienne return with their 10th album and prove they are still utterly essential. Saint Etienne have always understood that pop music is the nearest thing we have to time travel, the closest we can get to breathing the air of a different time. On this album, they take that theory to its logical conclusion. I’ve Been Trying To Tell You uses sounds and samples from 1997 to 2001, evoking the folk memory of the period by using and twisting recordings from the time, re-working them into new songs. “They're all by people you'd have heard on daytime Radio 1 or 2 at the time,” Bob clarifies, “not Boards of Canada or anything.” Opening track “Music Again”, for example, begins with some gorgeously poignant electric harpsichord from a long-forgotten R&B hit.

For the first time, Saint Etienne didn't record together in a studio. The album was completed remotely, in Hove (Pete), Oxford (Sarah) and Bradford (Bob, in collaboration with film and TV composer Gus Bousfield, who contributes to a number of tracks). Communication was handled via Zoom meetings and emails.

I’ve Been Trying To Tell You has an internal unity, its heartbeat always at the low end of mid-tempo/high end of downtempo, landing at the approximate pace of Tricky's Pre-Millennium Tension (an album released on the very cusp of the era in question). This helps sustain the dream-state.

PHOTO CREDIT: Rob Baker Ashton 

That hypnagogic sensation is enhanced here and there by the eerie sound of seagulls and garden birds. It's like falling asleep listening to Minnie Riperton's “Lovin' You” and coming a-dreamwake in Kew. This, it turns out, is another turn-of-the-millennium reference. “In the early series of Big Brother,” Bob explains, “when Channel 4 used to broadcast live from the house in the daytime, they'd dip out the sound whenever the housemates talked about real life people, or swore or whatever, and they'd replace the sound with quite avant-sounding field recordings of birdsong.”

The lyrics, too, obey the fractured logic of dreams. Sarah Cracknell sings in short phrases - “here it comes again”, “never had a way to go”, “ruby dust”, “a love like this again” - looped and repeated, rather than a traditional verse-chorus-verse structure. “They are all snatched phrases that could have been used at the time,” Bob explains, “from news items, or songs, or magazines.” The album's centrepiece is arguably “Little K”, the fourth track of eight, a six-minute oneiric ocean which ends with the sound of lazily lapping waves. The words that filter through the haze are ones which define the album: “No reason to pretend. In my reverie, the mind will carry me...”

The reverie has interludes with no words at all, at least not sung. “Blue Kite”, made from backwards strings and synths and bassy beats from the room next door, is entirely instrumental, as is “I Remember It Well” apart from snatches of mysterious voices which evoke childhood holidays. Some tracks, like some dreams, are simply too strange for analysis: the inscrutably-titled “Penlop” (a Tibetan term which translates loosely as 'governor') has a refrain which appears to run “I don't really know you/But I'd like to show you/Chester town/We went all around...”

Low are a band who always produce exceptional albums. Following the amazing Double Negative of 2018, HEY WHAT is going to be another stunner from the Minnesota group. Even if you have never heard of Low, I guarantee that you will appreciate HEY WHAT. Low’s music is so accessible and memorable. You should pre-order HEY WHAT and discover a musical treat:

“Focusing on their craft, staying out of the fray, and holding fast their faith to find new ways to express the discord and delight of being alive, to turn the duality of existence into hymns we can share, Low present Hey What. These ten pieces—each built around their own instantaneous, undeniable hook—are turbocharged by the vivid textures that surround them. The ineffable, familiar harmonies of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker break through the chaos like a life raft. Layers of distorted sound accrete with each new verse - building, breaking, colossal then restrained, a solemn vow only whispered. There will be time to unravel and attribute meaning to the music and art of these times, but the creative moment looks Forward, with teeth”.

I am going to move to a different week soon enough. It is amazing how many great albums are out in September. 10th September is looking especially packed for albums that you will want to add to your collection!

The last album due on 10th September I will recommend comes in the form of The Stranglers’ Dark Matters. Following the sad death of their keyboard player Dave Greenfield last year, it is a combination of songs recorded with him and bits without. The iconic band have a load of fans who will want to pre-order their upcoming album. This is from the Rough Trade site:  

“The Stranglers release the long-awaited new album Dark Matters. Surviving Stranglers band members, JJ Burnel, Baz Warne, and newest member Jim Macaulay completed Dark Matters remotely during lockdowns, making it their first album since 2012. The album features the single 'And If You Should See Dave...', an honest tribute to their much-missed keyboard player Dave Greenfield who tragically passed away a year ago from Covid-19.

“A year ago, on May 3rd my great friend and colleague of 45 years, Dave Greenfield, passed away, another victim of the pandemic.” says JJ Burnel. “We had already recorded most of the album with him and during the lockdowns our only wish was to complete it as a fitting tribute to his life and work. I consider this to be one of our finest recordings.”

Greenfield himself features on 8 of the 11 tracks, which were made over the course of two years at the band’s studios in the rural idylls of Somerset, and in Southern France, produced by long-time collaborator Louie Nicastro”.

There are two albums from 17th September that are worth checking out. Lindsey Buckingham, the eponymous album from the former Fleetwood Mac lead, is one to pre-order. Buckingham was fired from Fleetwood Mac back in 2018. As we discover in a recent interview from Uncut, that forms some of the inspiration behind his eponymous album:

“In fact, the subject of Buckingham’s departure from the group in 2018 – after he requested a delay to their upcoming tour so he could release his own album – comes up early in our conversation, after Buckingham himself raises it. It is, he explains, inexorably tied in with the origins of this new album.

“Once I’d been ousted from the band – which in itself was just so absurd after all the troubles we’d been through and managed to overcome for 40-plus years – I was poised to put the album out. Then I ended up having a bypass operation, so we had to kick it down the road a little further. And then the pandemic hit. So it’s been a sort of running gag, to have so many false starts.”

Here at last, post-Macxit, the Lindsey Buckingham album has many highlights – including the chiming, propulsive I Don’t Mind and the striking and experimental Power Down – that bring into focus Buckingham’s melodic gifts as well as his hunger for unconventional thinking”.

Before moving along, I want to direct people to José González’s Local Valley. His songwriting is among the most affecting and moving of any artist out there! Pre-order this beautiful album from González:

“Few people have managed to become quite so celebrated worldwide, quite as quietly as Jose Gonzalez has. Local Valley, his long awaited fourth album, serves as a relieving reminder that you don’t have to be loud to be heard.

Since his debut single ‘Crosses’ back in 2003, both he and his music have remained dependably quiet and unassuming. Local Valley calmly exhibits his singular ability to communicate with such modesty and power.

Beginning with the sun-dappled ‘El Invento’, the first song he’s recorded in Spanish (the native tongue of his Argentinian heritage), and ending with the intimate yet rhapsodic ‘Honey Honey’. Along the way it engages in his signature melodic and metrical hypnotism, showcasing his remarkable fingerpicking skills, while there’s further evidence of his love for music from around the world (he references an inspiring jam session in Gothenburg with Niger artist Bombino) and for the first time, the introduction of a drum machine on a few songs, further widening José´s musical spectrum.

The record, full of his trademark bittersweet pastoralism, includes what Gonzalez considers “my most accomplished songs to date”. While continuing his tradition of reinterpreting songs by other artists, with ‘Line Of Fire' he picks one written for Junip, the band he formed with friends in 1998. That the original version has now been streamed some 60 million times suggest it, like other songs he’s covered, is now part of the songwriting canon”.

Moving onto the albums due on 24th September. You might have to look around or go local to get a copy of Brittany Howard’s Jaime Reimagined. I have heard a couple of the songs from the album. It sounds incredible! It has already been released digitally. I feel a vinyl copy is the way to go with this album. This is what Pitchfork wrote back in June:

“Brittany Howard has announced Jaime Reimagined, a record featuring new versions of songs from her solo debut Jaime. The album includes previously shared remixes from Bon Iver, Michael Kiwanuka, Fred again..,and EarthGang. Reimagined also features Childish Gambino’s interpretation of “Stay High,” as well as new guest contributions from Common, Emily King, and the Internet’s Syd. Below, hear Little Dragon’s remix of “Presence” and BadBadNotGood’s remix of “Tomorrow.”

“Making Jaime was so much fun for me because I was able to explore so many different genres of music,” Brittany Howard said in a statement. “There were no rules. This reimagination project has been no different. I have been honored to have so many incredible artists from all musical worlds interpret my songs in such interesting and different ways”.

I love the idea of reworking a studio album and having remixes, reversions and other artists interpreting its tracks. I feel this is something that we will see a lot more of in years to come. The wonderful Brittany Howard is someone who so many people want to work with and pay their respect to.

There are four more albums from 24th September that you will want to pre-order. One comes in the form of Nao’s And Then Life Was Beautiful. Go and pre-order this album now. The London Soul/R&B artist is one of our finest young talents. This is what we can expect from her new album:

“After her most recent hit Messy Love, which received huge praise from tastemakers, NAO finally releases her highly anticipated, third studio album And Then Life Was Beautiful, the follow-up from her critically acclaimed, Mercury Prize and Grammy-nominated album Saturn. While her previous project propelled the singer-songwriter into a new stratosphere with its cosmic, coming-of-age themes, the songstress is now entering a brand new chapter with And Then Life Was Beautiful - where ‘Saturn’ untangled the knots of late twenties soul-searching, And Then Life Was Beautiful goes a step further by setting out a clarified sense of purpose.

Now a mother of a young daughter, NAO is more confident in herself and her voice than ever. A pandemic album, written and recorded throughout never-ending lockdowns, the project celebrates life’s ups and downs, reaching out a hand to guide listeners through what hurdles may confront them next. It includes previously released tracks Antidode, featuring Nigerian superstar Adekunle Gold, Woman, featuring Lianne La Havas, which she recorded with her new-born daughter strapped lovingly to her chest, as well as Messy Love, a stunning offering loaded with strummed guitar grooves and drum rhythms rooted in 90s R&B.

Other notable stand-out tracks include Wait, a stripped-back track which takes an intimate look at how you make mistakes to develop a relationship, and ‘Postcards’, highlighting a gorgeous vocal interplay of NAO and serpentwithfeet, who features alongside her on the track. For Good Luck, R&B crooner Lucky Daye jumped on board.

She says: “Life isn’t perfect; we still go through ups and downs, but it can be beautiful as a whole. I do think it’s a hopeful album, in an honest way – it’s not shiny or all ‘isn’t this great!’ and ‘party party party.’ But it’s hopeful in that through every rough patch, every dark patch or struggle we always come out again. That’s what life is. You keep going. But most of all you try and step into a place of gratitude so that you can see life in all of its beauty”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Frank W Ockenfels III for The Forty-Five

Poppy’s Flux is an album to pre-order when you can. Following her third studio album, I Disagree (2020), this is going to be another huge and impressive release. I am keen to bring in part of an interview that she was part of for The Forty-Five for their July edition:

“It has always been hard to tell where the persona of Poppy stops, and the thoughts of her creator, Moriah Rose Pereira, begin. In her earliest appearances, Poppy was undoubtedly an artistic creation – her soft, high-pitched voice sounded like a soothing and slightly unsettling ASMR video distilled into a vial of sleeping potion, and her music both celebrated and satirised pop music. When interviewers asked personal questions, Poppy skillfully dodged them – whenever she was asked where she grew up, she would reply: “the internet”. Looking back, the whole thing felt like a pointed comment on both privacy, and the parts of us we choose not to share.

This act has gradually softened over the years, but still, following Poppy’s every move, you’ll find swathes of listeners speculating about whether the musician is still in character. When she answers the phone today with a hint of Tennessee twang, she certainly doesn’t seem to be – there’s no hint of the hypnotic voice present in the star’s early YouTube videos, which showed her holding court with a basil plant and satirising predictable interviewers in saccharine monotone. “The hint of my accent hasn’t subsided entirely,” she quips, describing her memories of growing up in Nashville. We speak about Poppy’s family, her childhood passion for dance and roller-skating, and the video games she’s been playing with her fiance Eric – who makes music as Ghostemane – during lockdown. Her openness catches me off guard. Has the real Poppy finally come to the phone?

“I never really think of it as a persona,” Poppy shrugs, reflecting on her past iterations. “People are wearing a mask no matter what.”

Persona or not, we’re certainly in a very different era of Poppy these days –  last month saw the release of a grunge-flecked new single. While previous releases toyed playfully with rock influences and set them against crisp, glimmering pop melodies, ‘Her’ goes full pelt, and wouldn’t sound out of place on a Hole record. Produced by Justin Meldal-Johnsen – known for his work with Paramore, Wolf Alice and Nine Inch Nails, among others – the spiky comeback moment is accompanied by a dystopian stop-motion video in which robotic singers are cranked out of a production line and forced to perform. It’s the first glimpse of a forthcoming new album which takes influence from the heavier end of the sonic spectrum, and explores the idea of “accepting uncertainty in your life and not being afraid of the unknown.” Though there are no featured collaborations “there are people who have lent their skills to making some of the album,” Poppy hints cryptically.

For her next record, Poppy has also recruited a live band – who she’ll also be taking out on tour – and in comparison to her robotic beginnings, it’s set to be an album centred around “real humans playing human music”.

“It was Justin’s idea to have the band all record together in a room,” she says. “I was driving in my car with my cat around LA, and he called me and was like: ‘What do you think about this idea?’. It had this warmth and togetherness and live element,” she enthuses. “It was a pretty wonderful feeling to be by the mixing board with Justin and Mike, the engineer, and hear it happening. I was getting chills, this is exciting”.

I want to recommend people pre-order Natalie Imbruglia’s Firebird. The legendary Australian artist is someone I have been a fan of ever since the 1990s. Her music has evolved since then, though she remains an artist both celebrated and underrated. Firebird is one that I am definitely going to check out. Imbruglia is a remarkable artist who has this power and passion that draws you in! I am pleased that she has another album coming out. Every release offers something special and interesting. This is what Rough Trade say about Firebird:

“Natalie Imbruglia returns with her brand new album Firebird which marks the first new music from Natalie in almost a decade after choosing to remain out of the limelight following her monumental success in the nineties and early noughties. The new album was written and recorded between the UK, the US and her homeland of Australia, co-written with the likes of Albert Hammond Jr of The Strokes, Romeo Stodart of The Magic Numbers, KT Tunstall, Eg White (Adele, Dua Lipa, Sam Smith), Luke Fitton (Little Mix, Girls Aloud), Fiona Bevan (One Direction, Ed Sheeran), Rachel Furner (Little Mix, Jason Derulo, Craig David) and more, and produced by Natalie and My Riot with additional production from Albert Hammond Jr, Gus Oberg and Romeo Stodart”.

The final album out next month (on 24th September) you will want to add to your collection is Public Service Broadcasting’s Bright Magic. Ensure that you pre-order the album if you are a fan of the band. It is an album that moves their sound forward:

“Public Service Broadcasting release their fourth album, Bright Magic, via Play It Again Sam. An album in three parts (Building A City / Building A Myth / Bright Magic), it is their most ambitious undertaking yet, bringing you to Europe’s heart and de facto capital, the cultural and political metropolis that is the ‘Haupstadt’ of the Federal Republic of Germany – Berlin.

Though PSB’s use of electronics and surging guitar rock remain familiar, Bright Magic uses samples, and the English language, sparingly. It differs from their previous albums in other ways: less linear and narrative, instead it’s an impressionistic portrait of a city from the ground up. A Eureka moment of sorts came in November 2018 when Willgoose heard Walter Ruttman’s radical Berlin tape-artwork Wochenende (or Weekend), which is sampled on three of Bright Magic’s tracks. Created in 1928, the piece collaged speech, field recordings and music into a sonic evocation of the city. Resolving to integrate these long-gone fragments with new manipulated sound sources, he set about making his own Wochenende, a narrative drama for the ears which decodes and realises the dreams of Berlin he’d constructed in his mind. J.Willgoose, Esq moved to Berlin from April 2019 to January 2020. Combining sound archaeology and the flâneuring of the psychogeographer, one street-level pursuit of the city’s energy involved Willgoose walking the Leipzigerstrasse, site of the city’s first electric streetlight, using a wide-band electromagnetic receiver from Moscow’s Soma Laboratories.

He wrote and recorded in Kreuzberg’s famous Hansa Tonstudio recording complex. This brought closer several inescapable musical touchstones: Depeche Mode’s classic eighties triumvirate, U2’s Achtung Baby and, crucially, Bowie’s Heroes and Low. Indeed, the Warszawa-evoking “The Visitor” – whose designated colour is the particular Orange of that album’s sleeve – was initially intended to feature a sample of Bowie reflecting. As well as EERA, the album’s other guest voices include Blixa Bargeld, veteran of The Bad Seeds and Einstürzende Neubauten, who becomes the voice of Berlin’s industry on the robo-teknik “Der Rhythmus der Maschinen”. Andreya Casablanca of Berlin garageistes Gurr stands in for Marlene Dietrich in “My Blue Heaven”, an anthem of proud self-determination. A very pro-European record, Bright Magic is ultimately not just about one city, but all centres of human interaction and community which allow the free exchange and cross-pollination of ideas”.

Those are the treats due next month. Of course, like I say with every one of these features: new albums might come out of nowhere, and the ones I have listed above might get pushed back. We are still in the midst of the pandemic, so one can never predict how that will affect album release schedules and getting vinyl out there. September is gearing up to be a busy and great one for new albums! The ones I have recommended above are my suggestions. There are others that you might want to investigate. I hope that there are a couple of albums above that…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Matthew E. White

STRIKE a chord.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Maisie Peters

FEATURE:

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Lillie Eiger 

Maisie Peters

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EVEN though…

I have included Maisie Peters’ music in various playlists, I have yet to spotlight her in any big way. I feel that, as she has had a busy 2021, that I should do that now. Her amazing debut album, You Signed Up for This, is out on Friday (27th August). It looks like she is playing Manchester’s Gorilla tonight. Make sure that you grab a copy.  Released on the Gingerbread Man label (Ed Sheeran’s label), it is one of the best debut albums of this year. I think that Peters is going to be a major artist very soon! Her music is so original and memorable. I say that about many artists, though it is especially true of the Brighton-born artist. I feel it is important to source a few interviews so that one can learn more about the amazing Maisie Peters. At twenty-one, we are going to see music come from Peters for many years. For someone so young, she sounds so accomplished and confident! In 2017, Peters released her debut single, Place We Were Made (August 2017) and Birthday (November 2017). She started to gain traction and attention the following year. Her loyal fanbase - ‘Daisies’ as they are called – are excited to receive You Signed Up for This. It is an album that will get a lot of positive reaction!

The first of four interviews that I will bring in is for Why Now. Peters spoke with them earlier in the year about her music and upcoming debut album:

“The Brighton-born musician has a very intimate relationship with her fans. A relationship which feels very generation Z, cultivated during an age of social media and instant communication. Peters regularly retweets memes from fans desperate for her first album, has hopped on Zoom calls with devotees, and set up a lockdown book club.

She first created her YouTube channel in 2015 at the age 15, and has grown up with an ever increasing legion of loyal followers. “One messaged me the other day and said ‘Your lyrics still mean as much to me as they did when I was in school.  I feel like I’ve grown up with you.’ It blew my mind because I’m only 20. But I’ve been on the internet making music for the past five, six years now.”

Her songs have amassed a quarter of a billion global streams and she has delighted fans (and critics) with two EPs ‘Dressed Too Nice For A Jacket’ in 2018 and ‘It’s Your Bed Babe, It’s Your Funeral’ in 2019. Taylor Swift is also a fan, commenting on a recent video: “My ears have been blessed”.

I ask whether she channeled any lockdown melancholy into the album. She said: “There are not any songs explicitly about the pandemic in the album. But I think music has definitely shifted tone.” She does make one promise: “There will be no pandemic pop!”

With vaccine passports being debated, and the prospect of outdoor music gigs on the horizon, Peters is already planning her first night out after lockdown.

“I would metaphorically run out and play a show. But logistically speaking, you can’t just run out and play a show,” she said. “So what will actually happen is on that day, I will go to the pub and stay there for about three days. And then come home, make some more music and stay in my bedroom.”

“That’s gonna be the irony. I’ll probably still spend loads of time in my bedroom”.

Peters chatted with NOTION when promoting the single, John Hughes Movie. She was also asked about the album and what she wants her legacy to be:

“You pull on your personal experiences and stories from your circle for inspiration, so I wonder how the past year has been for you? How has it impacted you creatively?

I think it’s changed for everybody the way they create. For me, I actually found it mostly really great creatively because it made me a lot more self-sufficient. I just wrote heaps more on my own, returning to the way I started making music, just alone in my bedroom. In terms of inspiration, I’ve always been someone that’s able to be really inspired by many things. In a way, this has been really interesting to me because suddenly everything is about words now that you can’t see anybody anymore. Words – written, spoken, telephone and video chatted. For me, words are the most important thing. I’ve written countless… so many songs the past year, I haven’t found a lack of inspiration at all. I’ve been very inspired, which has been great.

Your debut album is expected later this year. What can you tell us about it?

Well, I mean, I can’t tell you much. As much as I would like to, my manager will kill me [laughs]. I like to think it’s going to be what everybody came for when they signed up for me. But it’s also what they didn’t know they came for, but will also enjoy. I think it’s a good mix of that and the music I’ve made so far. The person that’s made those songs is the same person that made this album and the same person that wrote “John Hughes” and the same person that had a YouTube channel when she was 14. Like, it’s all the same people. But it’s also me at my current creative peak. But I guess, you know, with all the culmination of years of experience, in music, and in life, I think it’s kind of a combination of both.

You’re very active on social media. How do you navigate the blurred lines between keeping certain stuff in your private life and what you put out in the public sphere as an artist?

I think, personally, I just decided very early on that there were some things that I would talk about, and some things that I wouldn’t. I would say I do I share a lot of my life, but I’m also very stubborn about what I won’t share. I think that’s important. Having basically grown up on the internet, and having been a person who shared her life since I was a teenager, I’m really grateful that past me decided to do that. Social media is a mind chasm of good and bad. It’s definitely been hard because being an artist this year, more than ever, there’s a huge, like pressure to be on social media as much as possible, but also you’re not doing anything, you’re just in your bedroom all the time. You’re trying to be entertaining, and you’re trying to keep people interested and invested, but obviously, everyone’s been struggling the past year. It’s been very tricky mentally, so yeah, it’s definitely been complicated. But I would say that I have the best fans and the nicest social media; it’s such a wonderful place. So I’ve been lucky.

Looking back, how do you think you’ve grown personally and musically since your first release back in 2017? Are there any words you’d use to describe yourself then versus now?

I guess back then I was a lot more naive. But I think in a really amazing way. I love all the music I made back then. There’s a real sound of purity. I just have no idea what I’m doing and I think that’s amazing. You can never go back again. There’s like a wide-eyed romanticism of making music and being a songwriter. And now, I think there’s been growth. I’ve grown up as a person and musically I’ve grown. Obviously, I love the music I make nowadays but I’ll probably never make better music. *Pauses* I don’t know, that’s not true. But there’s a level of that, where it’s like, you’ll never make better music than the music you made when you didn’t have anyone to make it for. And I think that that’s always true to some level. But I love past me, I love now me, and I’m excited for future me.

And then lastly, what do you want your legacy to be? If you had to capture the thing that you want to be remembered by?

Ha, I feel like 20 is quite young to make a legacy plan [laughs]. I hope I’m making music for all of my life, so in 10 years time, ask me the same question again and I’ll give you an answer”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Lillie Eiger 

Around the same time, Peters was featured by LOCK. I have selected this interview, as it is interesting hearing Peters discuss being back at her childhood home in East Sussex – and what being back there did for her creativity:

“If you could be any character from a ‘John Hughes Movie’ who would you be and why?

I think I’d love to be Sloane Peterson , Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend because he is the dream man. Also I would like to be Ferris Bueller’s sister because she kisses Charlie Sheen at the end, and that’s really iconic. One of the two.

Has being back in your Sussex family home over lockdown inspired your work at all?

Definitely. Going back for lockdown at the start of 2020, was amazing in terms of creativity. I was back in my childhood bedroom, which made me begin writing songs, the way I used to when I was a 14-year-old. It was just me on my own with my guitar, with my parents bedroom right next door and them saying, “Shh, Maisie it’s 10-o-Clock, go to sleep.” So I would creep down to the living room with my guitar and laptop and sit on the other end of the room, in the hope I wouldn’t disturb them. It was very cool to go back to being in that space, I don’t know when else you would get the chance to do that in life. Being back in my bedroom, with the knowledge I have now, as a 20-year-old, was amazing.

Your songwriting has also led you to be the only british artist to have a song featured on the Birds Of Prey film, with your song, ‘Smile’. Obviously that’s a massive achievement, how did you end up being a part of that film?

I had a friend who works in Atlantic Records for America and he was involved in creating a Birds Of Prey soundtrack, so he just sent me the brief. Think empowering, Cardi B vibes. He basically said, if you want to have a go, then run with it. It probably got sent to hundreds of writers. Me and my friend Ben who goes by the name Two Inch Punch, he is a producer and we just spent the day writing this crazy Cardi B-esc pop song. We were obsessed with it by the end of the day, we actually listened to Cher, when she’s in a sound clip saying, “My mum says I need to marry a rich man, and I say mum I am a rich man” we had that looping the whole day in the studio. It miraculously got to the guy’s who were making the sound track and they miraculously liked it. The whole time I kept expecting somebody to say, “Ok but it’s not actually in the film.” But that day never came, they really liked it and it ended up in the film. I actually went to see the film two or three times, it’s actually a really good film too, and not just because my songs in it.

You try to step away from this pop-star image and you’re known for being very down to earth with your fans. Why is this so important to you?

I would say that I think it’s important to convey something that’s real to people. Now more than ever it is so easy to compare ourselves, it’s easy to look at someone else’s life and feel like you can’t ever achieve what I have, which you absolutely can. However you decide to present yourself on social media is entirely your own business, but for me it’s important to show everyone that I am in fact just a real person. I’m in many ways the same as all of my fans. I have good days and bad days. Sometimes I look great, sometimes I don’t. Being real is very important in a world where lots of things aren’t”.

Do make sure that you order a copy of You Signed Up for This. I can see Maisie Peters creating beautiful, uplifting and hugely affecting music for decades more. She is someone who will also have an interesting acting career. She strikes me as someone who will be in great films and T.V. series. Whether that has entered her mind I am not too sure. RIFF magazine spoke with Peters earlier this month. Now based in London, I wonder whether Peters will be playing a lot of the city’s venues to promote her album (she has a few dates already booked):

“It took three tries, but Maisie Peters finally got her drivers license, using her parents’ car, naturally. However, soon after that, the singer-songwriter moved back to London, where she hasn’t needed a car. In fact, she hasn’t driven a car—not even once—since passing that third driving test.

Instead, the 21-year-old ferocious songwriter has accelerated her career even further. Just in the past year she’s signed to Ed Sheeran’s label (Gingerbread Man Records), written and curated the soundtrack to Apple TV+ show “Trying,” and is now about to release her full-length debut album, You Signed Up For This. Of course, she’s already got enough material for another album and she’s currently working on more and more.

She’s also found time to take up bicycling as a hobby with her London roommates, riding through Victoria Park or London Fields using the city’s app-based bikeshare.

PHOTO CREDIT: Atlantic Records 

“I’m not a great cyclist, but there’s something so fun about hopping on a bike, weaving through London and trying not to die,” she said, laughing. “Maybe I’ll get a real bike. We’ll see. … My driving skills, probably, are a little bit ropey right now, but technically I can drive. Legally, I can drive.

Peters video-called from a scenic recording studio in Suffolk, where she was visiting friends and filming for a project, to talk about the new album, the “Trying” soundtrack, and what she’s learned from Ed Sheeran, now a good friend.

RIFF: How does your single “Psycho” compare to the rest of your album; thematically or musically?

Maisie Peters: I think, sonically it’s pretty different. It was the last song we wrote for the album, so it was me trying to—in that day, one of the last sessions of the album—do something I hadn’t done. … Your album’s basically finished and you’re thinking, “What can I add? What can I write right now that will make the album [stand out]?” [With] “Psycho” … I really, really wanted to do something that felt fun and big, and we could dance to it, and we could have a good time. I think that a lot of my album maybe isn’t so much of those vibes, and that’s fine. There’s a breadth to the album, which is great. But this song; I really just wanted to go full Carly Rae Jepsen, Girls Aloud, Abba. I wanted to make a song that I could play this summer—I’m playing festivals—and feel good. … The past few years [there’s] been a lot of anxiety and sadness and various feelings of various natures. I really wanted to start this summer and start this phase, [with] a real song of solidarity and dance and joy and sort of humor and good times”.

What can listeners expect from the rest of the album?

Maisie Peters: I think people can expect songs that they’ll love and songs that they’ll recognize as being a continuation of music that I’ve already made. “Psycho” was pretty unexpected, and there are definitely other songs on the record that won’t be what anyone’s expecting, necessarily, so I like to think that’s a good amount of both.

How’d you end up with Ed Sheeran on his label, Gingerbread Man?

Maisie Peters: We both have lots of mutual friends and mutual collaborators [like] Joe Rubel, Fred Gibson; writers and producers that we both work with intensely. Really, he reached out about writing together. I went up to Suffolk to where he lives, and we wrote for a few days, and actually those songs ended up on the record, and the first two we did. We really just clicked and connected as friends and collaborators, and he’s so humble and so down to earth and so friendly and easy to love. Musically and as artists, we work in very similar ways and write in very similar ways, so it really just felt like an obvious thing to do to continue working together and building that relationship.

From the time you first started writing music, it’s taken you nine years to release an album. How long will the second one take?

Maisie Peters: I guess we’ll see. I write a lot and I’ve already been working on the next album and the next bunch of songs. I was talking about it with my band this morning, and we were talking about the idea of putting out mixtapes while you’re on tour and just constantly releasing, which I’m really excited about. I’d definitely say for sure, prepare yourself for more music next year. I think it would be pretty unlikely that I wouldn’t release anything. I’m really excited to work on the next batch of stuff, and I’m really excited for this album to come out, and I just think it’s gonna be a really fun few years”.

Go and follow the incredible Maisie Peters. Following her on social media, I can tell how thrilled she is that her debut album, You Signed Up for This, is mere days away. It has been a while in the making, so she is going to be thrilled to see it out in the world1 I love her music and know that she has a very busy and productive career ahead – and, as I say, we will see her on the screen before too long. Go and show one of our best young artists…

PLENTY of love

____________

Follow Maisie Peters

PHOTO CREDIT: Lillie Eiger  

Official:

https://www.maisiepeters.co.uk/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/maisiehpeters/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/maisiehpeters

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2RVvqRBon9NgaGXKfywDSs

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/maisiepetersmusic/

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJvnOmwPOgeLczo7zLzb5Xg

FEATURE: Ten at Thirty: Revisiting Pearl Jam's Extraordinary Debut Album

FEATURE:

 

 

Ten at Thirty

Revisiting Pearl Jam's Extraordinary Debut Album

___________

WHEN one celebrates the thirtieth anniversary…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Pearl Jam in 1991/PHOTO CREDIT: Lance Mercer

of an album that they loved as a child, they know they are getting old! That is the case with Pearl Jam’s Epic (it was released on that label and, coincidentally, is epic!) debut, Ten. Released on 27th August, 1991, it came out at a time when Grunge was huge. The album was seen as Grunge - though it is more Classic Rock. It is not as instantly intense and grimy  as a Grunge record. I can’t believe that we are days from celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Seattle band’s amazing debut! Unlike many of their contemporaries from that time, Pearl Jam are still together. Their latest album, Gigaton, was released last year. I wonder whether the band will get involved with the anniversary celebrations. Although Ten was not an immediate and obvious success upon its release in August 1991, it is credited as popularising Classic Rock through the 1990s. The three singles, Alive, Even Flow, and Jeremy are classics. Jeremy became one of Pearl Jam's best-loved songs; it received nominations for Best Rock Song and Best Hard Rock Performance at the 35th Grammy Awards. If you have not got the album, then go and buy a copy.  On 24th March, 2009, Ten was reissued in four editions (Legacy, Deluxe, Vinyl and Super Deluxe). It was the first reissue in a planned re-release of Pearl Jam's entire catalogue that led up to the band's twentieth anniversary in 2011. Ten years later and we have a new milestone to celebrate!

I want to bring in a few articles ahead of Ten’s thirtieth anniversary. I have seen a couple of articles marking thirty years of Ten. There will be many more in the days leading up to the anniversary. Last year, Loudwire marked twenty-nine years of Ten and provided some backstory regarding one of the 1990s’ most important debuts:

“Who knew? After toiling for several years in Seattle bands like Green River and Mother Love Bone, bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Stone Gossard could have taken a step back from playing after the death of Mother Love Bone vocalist Andrew Wood in 1990, but instead the pair were invited by Soundgarden's Chris Cornell to pay homage to Wood in a project called Temple of the Dog. And also during this period, they gathered their bearings and decided to push on by forming a new band, one that would eventually become Pearl Jam.

Rounding out this new group were guitarist Mike McCready, drummer Dave Krusen and a singer named Eddie Vedder from San Diego who was given a Stone Gossard demo tape by former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons and decided he liked what he heard and felt like writing some lyrics and singing over the track. Included on the demo tape was a song called "Dollar Short" that fans would eventually come to know as "Alive." Vedder had the idea that three of the songs told a story like a mini rock opera that could be tied together. He told Rolling Stone, "[It's] based on things that had happened, and some I imagined."

Of those instrumentals, the first would become "Alive," a track penned by Vedder loosely based on the fact that he learned the man who was his stepfather wasn't his real father and that his biological father had passed on. "Everybody writes about it like it's a life-affirmation thing -- I'm really glad about that," said Vedder with a laugh. "It's a great interpretation. But 'Alive' is … it's torture, which is why it's f---ed up for me. Why I should probably learn how to sing another way. It would be easier. It's too much."

The other two songs in the mini-opera derived from Gossard's demos were "Once," a track detailing how the son couldn't deal with the betrayal and became a serial killer, and "Footsteps," a track about his eventual execution. "It's a modern way of dealing with a bad life," Vedder told Rolling Stone, before smiling and adding, "I'm just glad I became a songwriter."

Not long after Vedder wrote the songs and recorded over the demo, the tape made its way back to Gossard and Ament, who were blown away by what they heard. Vedder was invited to Seattle and by the time he arrived in town, he also had the song "Black" that would become a future Pearl Jam favorite, as well. Within a week, the fivesome of Vedder, Gossard, Ament, McCready and Krusen were fully clicking.

The songs were flowing and shortly after Vedder's arrival in Seattle, the band signed a record deal with Epic and entered London Bridge Studio to record their debut disc with producer Rick Parasher. Even before they hit the studio, a majority of the record was already written. Only "Porch," "Deep," "Why Go" and "Garden" were penned during their monthlong stay at London Bridge.

Reflecting on that period, McCready told Spin, "Ten was mostly Stone and Jeff. Me and Eddie were along for the ride at that time." But there was little doubt that Vedder's songwriting expertise helped bring the Gossard and Ament songs to life. "All I really believe in is this f---in' moment, like right now," Vedder stated of his songwriting approach. "And that, actually is what the whole album talks about."

Though the album was good to go, there was still one more obstacle to address before they went on to monster success. Drummer Dave Krusen entered rehab shortly after recording was complete, revealing that liquor had gotten the better of him. In an interview with Punk Globe, Krusen would reflect, "It was a great experience. I felt from the beginning of that band that it was something special … They had to let me go. I couldn't stop drinking, and it was causing problems. They gave me many chances, but I couldn't get it together." With Krusen exiting, the band briefly filled the void with Matt Chamberlain, but he had other obligations and recommended Dave Abruzzese, who sat behind the kit for a majority of the Ten album touring.

On Aug. 27, 1991, Epic released the Ten album, making "Alive" the lead single. The track dropped a few weeks prior to the album release and enjoyed a slow climb. With a familiar almost siren-like guitar opening, listeners began to take notice. And while Vedder had stated that the song was somewhat torture to him, fans interpreted it a different way, taking it as an anthem for self-empowerment. Vedder would later reveal on the band's VH1 Storytellers episode that thanks to the fans, he was later able to view the song differently. "They lifted the curse," said the singer. "The audience changed the meaning for me." As for THAT guitar solo, you know the one that typically gets fans going, Mike McCready revealed in Guitar School that he was inspired by Ace Frehley's work on "She" and The Doors' "Five to One" when coming up with the licks. As an intro to the band, "Alive" would climb to No. 16 on the Mainstream Rock Chart and No. 18 Modern Rock, but would become a classic despite its modest radio play”.

Although some were not completely sold by Ten upon its release, most others were full of praise. Looking back at Ten thirty years later, one can see how it influenced the scene and the role Pearl Jam played. With stunning production from Rick Parashar and Pearl Jam, coupled with stunning tracks brilliantly played by the band (Stone Gossard – rhythm guitar, Jeff Ament – bass guitar, Mike McCready – lead guitar, Eddie Vedder – vocals and Dave Krusen – drums, timpani), it is a masterpiece! Mental Floss provided ten facts one might not known about Ten to mark its twenty-fifth anniversary in 2016. I have selected a few:

“The band began recording Ten with producer Rick Parashar on March 11, 1991 at Seattle's London Bridge Studios, and completed the album within a month. But it wasn't all smooth sailing for the musicians. "Even Flow," in particular, proved to be a tough song to record.

"I don't know why," Dave Krusen said. "Not sure why we didn't use that one from the demo as well, but I know it felt better." McCready estimated that they recorded the song 50 to 70 times. "I swear to God it was a nightmare," he said. "We played that thing over and over until we hated each other."

Vedder successfully protested against Epic Records' insistence that "Black" should get a music video. As bassist Jeff Ament told Rolling Stone, Mark Eitzel—lead singer of the San Francisco-based band American Music Club—told Ament he thought the "Jeremy" video "sucked" because it ruined his vision of the song. Ament admitted that the comment stung, and he told Vedder that, "Ten years from now, I don't want people to remember our songs as videos."

Up until they were recording the album at London Bridge Studios, Pearl Jam was known as Mookie Blaylock, as in the professional basketball player. Since calling themselves Mookie Blaylock would have possibly led to legal problems, they decided to just pay tribute to the point guard by calling their debut album Ten, his jersey number.

"I'd love to remix Ten," Ament told Spin in 2001. "Ed, for sure, would agree with me. Three, four years ago, I picked out a cassette, and it had the rough mixes of 'Garden' and 'Once,' and it sounded great. It wouldn't be like changing performances; just pull some of the reverb off it."

In 2009, Ament said that—unlike their other albums—Ten had a "little bit more of an '80s production." When Gossard was promoting the 2009 reissue of the album, featuring a remix of the original songs, he said that, "I think Ten's still good, but I don't put it on".

I listen to Ten now and it still impacts me greatly. I was eight when Ten arrived - so it had a different effect on me then. I was just becoming aware of Pop music and other genres. I am not sure whether I was too conscious of Grunge and Rock back then. Pearl Jam resonated because their Classic Rock sound was more similar to some of my parents’ records. I could identify with some of the songs and sounds more easily than Grunge artists. Now, I listen to Ten and it stands as a phenomenal album. It has not dated or lost any of its power!

I want to end by sourcing one review for the album. As you can imagine, there is no shortage of love when it comes to Ten! This is what AllMusic said in their review:

“Nirvana's Nevermind may have been the album that broke grunge and alternative rock into the mainstream, but there's no overestimating the role that Pearl Jam's Ten played in keeping them there. Nirvana's appeal may have been huge, but it wasn't universal; rock radio still viewed them as too raw and punky, and some hard rock fans dismissed them as weird misfits. In retrospect, it's easy to see why Pearl Jam clicked with a mass audience -- they weren't as metallic as Alice in Chains or Soundgarden, and of Seattle's Big Four, their sound owed the greatest debt to classic rock. With its intricately arranged guitar textures and expansive harmonic vocabulary, Ten especially recalled Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. But those touchstones might not have been immediately apparent, since -- aside from Mike McCready's Clapton/Hendrix-style leads -- every trace of blues influence has been completely stripped from the band's sound. Though they rock hard, Pearl Jam is too anti-star to swagger, too self-aware to puncture the album's air of gravity. Pearl Jam tackles weighty topics -- abortion, homelessness, childhood traumas, gun violence, rigorous introspection -- with an earnest zeal unmatched since mid-'80s U2, whose anthemic sound they frequently strive for.

Similarly, Eddie Vedder's impressionistic lyrics often make their greatest impact through the passionate commitment of his delivery rather than concrete meaning. His voice had a highly distinctive timbre that perfectly fit the album's warm, rich sound, and that's part of the key -- no matter how cathartic Ten's tersely titled songs got, they were never abrasive enough to affect the album's accessibility. Ten also benefited from a long gestation period, during which the band honed the material into this tightly focused form; the result is a flawlessly crafted hard rock masterpiece”.

A happy thirtieth anniversary to Pearl Jam’s Ten on 27th August. Those who loved the album in 1991 will share their memories. There are younger music fans who may not be aware of the album and how important it is. Ten is one of the 1990s’ greatest album…and, surely, one of the best debuts ever. Happy thirtieth anniversary to an album that still sounds amazing to this day! If you have a copy of Ten, go and get it out and…

PLAY it loud!

FEATURE: Produced By… Shola Aleje

FEATURE:

 

 

Produced By…

Shola Aleje

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SIMILAR to albums…

where we recognise the artist and maybe consider the producer(s) less, do many people listen to their favourite radio shows and think about the producers behind them!? Although she has a dream job (it is one many of us would love), Shola Aleje is a superb audio producer who deserves big credit. Working as a podcast producer and delivering her must-hear Moods for Moderns monthly show on Totally Wired Radio (which I hope returns at some point), here is someone who has a huge love for music and radio! Radio/audio production is a job that requires a huge degree of knowledge, organisation, concentration, focus and patience. Many people assume that the broadcaster/D.J. do most of the work and the show sort of puts itself together! One of my all-time favourite broadcasters, Aleje is Assistant Producer for Lauren Laverne’s breakfast show on BBC Radio 6 Music. I am sure Laverne would be one of the first to say how integral Aleje is to her show – as an award-winning broadcaster, the breakfast show host knows how important and hard-working producers are in terms of ensuring the shows run smoothly! In future features, I will spotlight other audio producers behind some of the best radio shows. There is no doubting the fact Lauren Laverne’s weekday BBC Radio 6 Music show is the best way to wake up. Beside the eclectic music and infectiousness of our host, make sure you tune in. Aleje is sometimes name-checked on the show – whether because she has put together a great feature or selected a fantastic tune, there is a real bond and respect between the broadcaster on the microphone and the producer who is such an important support.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Aleje with fellow producers Lucy Madge and Mark Higgins alongside Lauren Laverne on her first breakfast show in January 2019/PHOTO CREDIT: BBC

I can only imagine how difficult it is – even with years of experience – to keep a fast-paced radio show going without error! It is testament to producers like Shola Aleje that we cannot hear any cracks or blips (not many anyway – they are human after all!). Not only is the technical skill impressive. I feel a lot of the hottest and most memorable music that is played on the BBC Radio 6 Music breakfast show is because of Aleje – whether that is a hot-off-the-press cut or an old gem that has not been played in a while or languished as a deep cut for all of these years! I know she has given advice to potential producers and those hoping to follow in their footsteps before. I would love to hear a video interview where we get more insight into the daily role. Perhaps (when most of the pandemic restrictions have lifted) we cab get a look inside the breakfast show studio at Wogan House, London. Listening during the week, one can feel and detect Aleje’s presence; though I know there is this interaction during the show that we might not be aware of – a literal window into what happens during the breakfast broadcast. Of course, the BBC Radio 6 Music show is not the only feather in Aleje’s cap! If she had more time on her hands, I am sure she would love to put together a documentary or take on other projects.

Before I move on, I want to bring in a 2019 Fred Perry article where Aleje discussed some of her favourite music. Not only is the first song she played on-repeat one of my firsts – as I am a child of the '90s-; she cites David Bowie’s Station to Station as one of her favourite albums. I adore that album and would love to hear songs like TVC15 (my favourite cut from the record) played more:

“What do you do?

Radio Producer at BBC 6 Music, also produce the odd Podcast here and there and present a monthly show called ‘Moods for Moderns’ on Totally Wired Radio.

Describe your style in three words:

Changes daily depending on what I'm listening to, watching or reading. A bit mod, bit '60s/'70s, a bit del boy when it comes to jewellery, definitely obsessed with anything that is well cut and sits nicely above the ankle. So, in three words, hmm - a slightly ‘Androgynous Mary Quant’?

Which music defines the teenage you?

The Clash were a huge influence on me, they knocked me for six when I first heard London Calling, I related to them so much, especially the crossover in genres and the fact that they were friends with people of different races - I remember that being a huge deal for me.
When I think of artists and moments that single-handedly changed the course of my listening habits, I’ll never forget the moment I first saw Captain Beefheart performing late night on TV when I was a teenager - I didn’t know music like this existed.

What was the first song you played on repeat?

The Cranberries - 'Linger'.
I used to listen to this song several times a day at one point, I don't know what it was about this song, but I remember feeling absolutely heartbroken listening to it like I had experienced some kind of heartbreak personally... I hadn’t - I was bloody 14! I also remember listening to Roxy Music - 'Both Ends Burning' on repeat around that time too.

A song you wish you’d written?

The Specials - 'Do Nothing' as the lyrics showed a real social snapshot of Britain in the late '70s and Dusty Springfield - 'All Cried Out'. I just love how this track is so unashamedly about heartache, proper heartache, which we all know is absolutely horrific when it happens to you!

Best song to bring people together?

Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - 'Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)' or Madness - 'It Must Be Love'.

PHOTO CREDIT: Shola Aleje

Is there a song you like that people wouldn’t expect?

I’m a mixed bag when it comes to the music I listen to, but I've been listening to a lot of Ludovico Einaudi, John Barry and Ennio Morricone to calm me down recently! Also enjoyed the new Harry Styles album.

A song from your favourite album?

David Bowie - 'Stay' from the album 'Station to Station' - it’s the perfect track to get you dancing, and an album track I've been listening to on repeat recently is Paul McCartney - 'Monkberry Moon Delight.

What new music/bands are you listening to?

Really loving Confidence Man and Klaus Blatter at the moment, I love the latest Michael Kiwanuka album, and I’ve also gone back deep into Richard Russell’s 'Everything is Recorded' record”.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Shola Aleje (@donvanvliet)

One of my favourite shows to listen to is her Mood for Moderns on Totally Wired Radio (“Moods for Moderns is a monthly show hosted by Shola Aleje which takes you on a themed musical journey. From the early days of Krautrock to the sounds of The Haçienda, the mix will also include a scattering of archive clips and interviews. Shola will also be playing an eclectic mix of her current favourite earworms each month”). There are not many producers who work on the other side of the microphone! The passion Aleje has for music means that we get to hear her as a world-class audio producer and a host in her own right. I feel that, as the years go by, she will inspire many others to go into radio production (I hope that she stays on Lauren Laverne’s show for a very long time, mind). There is also this other career as a broadcaster/presenter. I think she could have their own permanent show on a station like BBC Radio 6 Music or Soho Radio – as her musical selections and commentary is infectious and hugely warming and interesting. I like Aleje has an appetite and love for Captain Beefheart in the same way as I do for Kate Bush (Beefheart was a definite influence on her music). You can follow Shola Aleje on Instagram and Twitter.

I cannot embed everything that Aleje has been involved with. Listen to the Get It Off Your Breasts podcast series that she produced which ran between 2017 and 2019. Aleje is really inspiring to listen to! I can relate to a lot of what she says during the Freelance Pod talk from 2018. She also produced for The Hotbed podcast (I have missed out some of her work, though one can check her LinkedIn profile). I hope, too, that Aleje is offered new interviews and podcasts. She has been the producer for an award-winning breakfast show and helped it to bring in hordes of admiring listeners – one mustn’t undervalue the sheer brilliance of Lauren Laverne though, with audio producers like Aleje on her team, here is a show that can go from strength to strength for many years to come! I am not certain whether, time-permitting, she will adopt any more projects. As a producer and host, Aleje is awe-inspiring and so inspiring. I use that i-word a lot, I know – though that is the best way to describe her. From her excellent Totally Wired Radio shows to the fact that, one suspects, a lot of her downtime away from work is spent diving into vinyl crates, assembling playlists and hunting for the best new music…here is someone who has a very long career ahead of her! It would be cool for BBC Radio 6 Music to run new interviews and bits for their YouTube channel, where they talk to those behind the scenes who are so invaluable. Whilst not heard, audio producers are as important as broadcaster regarding radio shows!

I am going to finish off in a second. I may well feature other producers from BBC Radio 6 Music. I wanted to kick off the mini-series with Shola Aleje to run alongside my Station to Station feature (I started that series with Lauren Laverne and I have extolled her virtues many times). Hearing Aleje mentioned by Lauren Laverne a lot on her show (or ‘producer Shols’, as she is called!) because of a great musical moment, a seamless and wonderful series – such as her curation for 6 Music Salutes or The People’s Playlist – or a terrific discovery, it is obvious how much affection there is for her on the show and on BBC Radio 6 Music as a whole! For me, she has compelled me to get more into radio; to, at some point, get round to producing a podcast about my all-time favourite artist. I know there are so many people out there who have been impacted by Shola Aleje and have pursued a career in broadcasting and radio because of her. Not only does she have impeccable music taste and an unquenchable thirst for great new music; here is an audio producer who is among the very best in the game. I am trying to cover everything off here, and I hope that I have not missed anything out! As my blog approaches its tenth anniversary (in November), I still think I have stuff to learn; ways I can improve and expand. Shola Aleje has been a broadcaster for years though, as with every avenue of the creative industry, she will keep on learning and developing. It will be utterly fascinating to see how her career evolves and what challenges she takes on – though, as I pleaded before, we have to keep that sisterly bond between Laverne and her strong for as long as possible! A salute to a phenomenal producer who, in addition, is an exceptional broadcaster, music fan, mentor, inspiring figure and all-round legend. There is no doubt that Shola Aleje is someone that many people…

LOOK up to and admire.

FEATURE: The Kate Bush Interview Archive: Kris Needs: ZigZag (1980)

FEATURE:

 

 

The Kate Bush Interview Archive

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

Kris Needs: ZigZag (1980)

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I am really interested in…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at the 1980 British Rock and Pop Awards/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix/Getty Images

the print inter views Kate Bush has conducted through the years. It gives us an illustration and snapshot of various stages of her career and where she was as an artist. I have been thinking about 1980 and Never for Ever. Coming off of The Tour of Life the previous year, this album was a chance to start a new chapter. As I have said before, perhaps she wasn’t as happy with her first two albums – 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart – as she could have been. Maybe she was too much of a participant in the album rather than someone having bigger creative control. Never for Ever saw her co-produce with Jon Kelly. It is  a more experimental album where she made leaps and bounds. Perhaps the energy and scope of The Tour of Life opened her imagination as a songwriter; she was determined to produce an album that was more reflective of who she was. Because of this, I have goner back and looked at the interviews from the time. Thanks to this Reaching Out for leading me to this ZigZag interview of 1980. Kris Needs’ conversation with Bush is engrossing and respectful. I am not going to put it all in this feature. I have chosen some portions of the interview that I find particularly relevant and illuminating:

“What's Kate Bush doing in ZigZag? It's a fair chance that's the thought flitting through your noggin as you espy our rather tasteful cover. Well, I thought it would be interesting, a laugh and definitely on for you lot to get a peek at the lady without all the 'Oo's yer boyfriend, then?' or 'Drop 'em!' techniques so favoured when she's in the media's sights. Also, because she seems to get roundly slagged, piss-taken or sycophated over every time she pops up in the Music Weeklies. These sort of injustices and the prejudices they foster could've kept you from giving Kate Bush a fair listen

 Kate's been boxed and packaged in shiny paper with little ribbons on top, it seems. Safe, but 'odd' enough to let the purchaser feel outrageous displaying it on the coffee table.

Well, let's see. If you profess to like Modern music which is breaking down fences and capturing true emotion, Kate Bush has just as much right to be there with A Teardrop Explodes, Bowie or whoever you care to name. A different field, yeah, but she's capable of moments of heart-stopping passion, breath-taking drama and beauty. She's also very honest. The characters might be put on, but that's it.

Kate Bush has just done the Daily Express. Now it's me...But no way does she just press her nose and gush out the conveyor-belt niceties. We talk for over 90 minutes, touching all manner of subjects in an enthusiastic flow. Quite deep at times--"It's like two psychiatrists talking," she said after. I left impressed with her honesty and sense of awe, which, in the wrong hands, could be the reasons detractors have a field day. She don't deserve it, even if you can't stick her music. And I'm warning you, don't just take my word on Kate Bush, then say I wasted your fiver -- it is down to taste, but if you've got any feelings, or just like music, have a go. It's about the only music I like that I can't dance to.

So, Kate, do you think your audience is restricted by these prejudices against you?

"Yeah, I think I'm conscious of people doing that in certain areas, because of the way they've seen me, and I think that's inevitable. I don't blame them. It's really good for me to speak to other magazines."

It'd be good if people could see that you're doing stuff that's pretty new, too. You could never mistake Kate Bush for anyone else.

"Oh, great. I'd like to think that, but it's not for me to say. When you first come out, people say you're the new thing. then when you've been around for two or three years you become old hat, and they want to sweep you under the carpet as being MOR, which I don't feel I am from the artistic point of view. It doesn't feel like MOR to me at all, although I wouldn't call it Punk! Sometimes it's not even rock...I don't know, I think it's wrong to put labels on music. Even Punk, that's really just a label for convenience--it covers so many areas. I think sometimes it can actually kill people, being put under labels. I think it's something that shouldn't be encouraged. If people could just accept music as music and people as people, without having to compare them to other things...which is something we instinctively try to do."

The way you're presented in the press could alienate some people, I s'pose.

"Don't you think any form of publicity alienates the person who is not involved in it? I think that's part of the whole process. That's why I feel that the good thing about albums and gigs and even radio is that you are directly communicating with your audience, but with papers and appearances on TV you're not really relating directly."

Does the bad criticism hurt you?

"No, I don't get hurt. I've read a few reviews of the album, an some of them really couldn't stand me, probably much more than the album. In fact, one guy didn't like me so much, he had to write four columns of 'I can't stand Bush!' That's cool. Sometimes I find it funny. I think a bad review is a good omen in some papers."

The next single is Army Dreamers, which sounds like a wistful little waltz-time ditty on first hearing, though a bit sombre. Kate adopts a lilting Irish accent--all very nice. But listen to the words and she's mourning her dead son, killed in the army. I thought Kate was singing about Northern Ireland, but not necessarily...

"It's not actually directed at Ireland. It's included, but it's much more embracing the whole European thing. That's why it says BFPO in the first chorus, to try and broaden it away from Ireland."

What about the Irish accent?

"The Irish accent was important because the treatment of the song is very traditional, and the Irish would always use their songs to tell stories, it's the traditional way. There's something about an Irish accent that's very vulnerable, very poetic, and so by singing it in an Irish accent it comes across in a different way. But the song was meant to cover areas like Germany, especially with the kids that get killed in manoeuvres, not even in action. It doesn't get brought out much, but it happens a lot. I'm not slagging off the Army, it's just so sad that there are kids who have no O-levels and nothing to do but become soldiers, and it's not really what they want. That's what frightens me."

She's well into the individual "stating your presence," citing Punk as an example. But everyone's got the same insecurities and fears.

"It's so bloody easy to be forgotten. It's so easy to go under unless you fight. Everyone has to fight, and there are different ways of fighting.

"I'm definitely trying to state my presence, I must be. It's important for me to do things on a one-man basis. I seem to work, produce, create, better as one entity, and then I involve others for feedback. That seems to be the ideal way for me to work. You see, musically, too, I feel I've only just begun. I'm not doing what I want to do musically, yet. I'm getting there, but it's nowhere near to what I actually want. I'd love to play you some of the new stuff I'm doing."

So what are the new songs like, then?

"They're much more up. I'm getting to work much more easily with rhythm boxes and synthesizers at home, and I've got some time. That's what I need, and this year is the first I've really had any time to breathe. I'm experimenting all the time and finding new things. It's great, all the toys that are around to play with--digital delay, chorus pedal, you could write a sound purely round the sound."

The NME review said the album was all glossy dressing and little else.

"Well, the other two albums were what I would call glossy, and I could understand them saying that. I feel this one is the rawest it's been, it's raw in its own context. I feel perhaps the guy just wouldn't let me in, and that was the problem. He saw me as this chocolate-box-sweetie little thing who has no reality in there, no meaning of life. That's cool, I really understand that, but I like to think that people will let me in, and I'm lucky to have so many who do.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with fans in Newcastle in 1980

"I think it's good for you to read reviews like that about yourself, because they don't matter, and although people are going to read them, it's good for you to realise in some ways that people can say anything they want about you. It shouldn't matter what they say. I think the public are starting to realise the hype in the media manipulation, the propaganda. I pick up papers and read something about someone, and I start believing it, and then I realise, 'God, I'm doing just what other people are doing to me!' I think journalism could be such an art, and some people treat it as such. Others use it as an extension of their egos. You get nothing out of reading it, other than this thick blanket of: 'Me-e-e-e!'"

It's good that you've got a big following among very young kids and are doing this, cos they'll have to know more than just Janet and John books and Tiswas soon... [Tiswas was a British television programme which was ostensibly made for children, but which eventually attracted a large adult audience, as well.]

"So many of them knew, you know. They hear a lot more than the media generally give them. They really understand the song, and I don't think it frightens them, but it really upsets a lot of them. That's good--it's not nice but it's good that that actually ot through to them.

"When I wrote the song, it was from such a personal viewpoint. It was just through having heard a thing for years without it ever having got through to me. 'Til the moment it hit me, I hadn't really been moved. Then I suddenly realised the whole devastation and disgusting arrogance of it all. Trying to destroy something that we've not created--the earth. The only thing we are is a breathing mechanism: everything is breathing. Without it we're just nothing. All we've got is our lives, and I was worried that when people heard it they were going to think, 'She's exploiting commercially this terribly real thing.' I was very worried that people weren't going to take me from my emotional standpoint rather than the commercial one. But they did, which is great. I was worried that people wouldn't want to worry about it because it's so real. I was also worried that it was too negative, but I do feel that there is hope in the whole thing, just for the fact that it's a message from the future. It's not from now, it's from a spirit that may exist in the future, a non-existant spiritual embryo who sees all and who's been round time and time again so they know what the world's all about. This time they don't want to come out, because they know they're not going to live. It's almost like the mother's stomach is a big window that's like a cinema screen, and they're seeing all this terrible chaos”.

I really like the ZigZag interview. Whilst some from that time (I think the interview is from 1980; it could have been late-1979) are a little too personal or shambolic (on the part of the interviewer), this one is really solid and balanced. We get insight into the songs on Never for Ever, in addition to a little bit about Kate Bush as the woman behind the music. I will continue the interview series for a bit, as there are some great examples many Kate Bush fans are not aware of. 1980 was a year where Bush had a few albums and a big tour under her belt. Her career would enter a new phase. Her sound and image were changing. The media perceived her, in the first couple of years, as quite hippie-dippy and almost a novelty. Albums like Never for Ever showed there was more to her than that – though I completely disagree with critical perception of Bush before then. 1982’s The Dreaming was the next album…taking the experimentation up a notch and seeing Bush alone in the producer’s chair for the first time. 1980 is a year where Bush was clearly looking to be more independent as a creator. One can feel that urge on Never for Ever. Interviews like the one with ZigZag are portraits of an ambitious and true artist who was…

BOUND for greatness.

FEATURE: It (Almost) Started with a Bang: Blur’s Leisure at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

It (Almost) Started with a Bang

Blur’s Leisure at Thirty

___________

PERHAPS Damon Albarn…

might not mark the anniversary of Blur’s debut album, Leisure, fondly - but I think a lot of fans will! Released on 26th August, 1991, we are coming up to the thirtieth anniversary of a great debut. Whilst the band would go on to do better albums that gained more positive reviews, Leisure’s upcoming thirtieth warrants attention! Maybe their lead felt that Leisure was a bit patchy and contained little of the genius Blur would be known for. Some might say that Damon Albarn, Dave Rowntree, Alex James and Graham Coxon were very young and they were finding their feet. I actually really like Leisure and feel that it is an album that is very underrated – I have written a feature specifically on that theme before. Rather than repeat my fairly recent piece about Leisure, I want to mention a few features about the album. Of course, we associate Leisure with the two big singles: She’s So High and There’s No Other Way (the third single, Bang, was released in July 1991). Both are classics in the Blur cannon. They are baggy and catchy; not quite as clever and layered as later Blur work, though pretty decent for early singles! In October 1990, the album’s opening track, She’s So High, was released as a single. It is weird that it only got to number forty-eight in the U.K. Maybe competition was stiff that month, though one feels that the song is good enough to crack the top twenty! Listening to it now and I feel it holds up. One of those songs from the early-1990s that remains fresh and important.

Leisure’s second single, Bang, is an excellent follow-up to She’s So High. The other single, There’s No Other Way, is my favourite track on the album. Released in April 1991, it got to eight in the U.K. and snuck into the US Billboard Hot 100. I guess Blur were slightly better-known by 1991 and had greater commercial appeal – or There’s No Other Way hit people harder and is catchier. At twelve tracks, maybe Leisure could have been trimmed slightly. There are some terrific deep cuts that one does not hear much about. Repetition and High Cool are gems. I like the entire album and think that it is the sign of an exciting band who would very soon be among the most popular in the U.K. One cannot easily compare the Britpop albums Blur produced that competed with Oasis between 1994 and, say, 1997. Although Oasis started out stronger with 1994’s Definitely Maybe, Blur were definitely a better and more popular back by 1997 – they released their eponymous album whereas Oasis released the overblown and over-long Be Here Now. Five years ago, Albuism revisited Leisure. They remark how solid it is. Whilst not classic Blur, one can hear a band finding their way with excellent results:

“Blur, Oasis, Pulp and Suede. These are arguably the most successful bands to emerge from England’s Britpop movement of the early to mid 1990s. A subgenre of alternative/pop rock that placed heavy emphasis on infusing “Britishness” within the music, Britpop was born out of the ashes of the Manchester scene and represented the antithesis of the emerging American grunge scene that was slowly making its way into the UK.

Formed in London in 1988, Blur—comprised of Damon Albarn (vocals), Graham Coxon (guitar), Alex James (bass), and Dave Rowntree (drums)—toured Britain with American punk/rockabilly legends the Cramps two years later in 1990, testing out material that would eventually appear on their debut album Leisure. After the tour was over, between October 1990 and July 1991, Blur released three singles. The first single, the trippy, quasi-psychedelic “She’s So High,” only managed to reach number 48 on the UK Singles Chart.

After adding producer Stephen Street to the mix, their second single “There’s No Other Way” became a big hit in the UK, peaking at number 8. Although the third single “Bang” did not fare as well, the band became bona fide pop stars in the UK and, according to NME, “the acceptable pretty face of a whole clump of bands that have emerged since the whole Manchester thing started to run out of steam." The band would later find out that being touted as the next big thing is not necessarily the most desirable tag for a new band with aspirations of career longevity.

Leisure peaked at number 7 on the UK Album Charts. Despite their newfound stardom, the LP received mixed reviews from the British press and was largely ignored in the States. The early release of the three singles had, in effect, rendered the album’s eventual release anti-climactic. One of the album’s chief detractors is Albarn himself, who described Leisure as “awful” back in 2007.

I could not disagree more. Heavily influenced by The Charlatans (UK) and The Stone Roses, Leisure is a great snapshot of a band trying mightily to find its voice. It does not deserve the Cousin Oliver (google it) status that has been placed upon it. What the critics—and perhaps even the band themselves—had no way of knowing at the time was that Leisure was a stepping stone for Blur. Indeed, on the strength of their subsequent releases, the foursome transformed into one of Britain’s most beloved acts of the past 25 years, while they still enjoy a very loyal, somewhat cult-like following here in the US.

Even though Leisure is very much a product of its time, it still holds up as a rather solid debut album. In the early ‘90s, the music scenes here in the states and abroad were struggling to find a definitive sound. In hindsight, Britpop was the ‘90s version of American New Wave. It was a marketing tool devised to categorize a sound derived from a genre that was either losing steam or simply not accessible to the masses. In America, it was the commercialization of punk. Record execs removed the safety pins and the gobbing, replacing them with catchy hooks and camera friendly lead singers. In England, it was much more complex. The Manchester scene had simply died out with nothing to replace it. Blur just happened to be caught in the middle of this transition.

While there are admittedly weaker, un-Blur-like tracks such as “Birthday” and “Wear Me Down,” Leisure was intriguing enough to make you wonder, at the time, what the band would do next. I had a similar feeling when I first heard U2’s debut Boy. You just knew they could do even more. You knew something special was coming down the road. You just needed to be patient. There’s something quite special about discovering a band at its genesis”.

Although some feel Leisure is a product of the early-1990s, there are songs that are relevant now. Even so, this once-young album turning thirty is very strange to me! I was at secondary school when Leisure came out. I was kind of aware of Blur in 1991, though I got a better understanding of them by the time of 1994’s Parklife.

In 2019, Classic Pop looked back at the Blur catalogue. Few articles are entirely glowing about Leisure. That said, most people have something constructive and positive to say. This is what Classic Pop observed:

“But while Damon Albarn’s versatility as a songwriter over the past three decades has often been viewed as dilettantism – he can flit effortlessly between pure pop to punk, music hall to cultured balladeering – the quality of his work has been astonishing. When the public sat up and took notice of There’s No Other Way, firing the band into the Top 10, Blur were seen as yet another addition to the current roster of dance-rock bands. But they were so much more than Mondays wannabes and head and shoulders above the likes of The Farm, Flowered Up, Inspiral Carpets and The Mock Turtles.

Leisure has at least two trump cards; Albarn’s singular ability as a songwriter and the immense talent of guitarist Graham Coxon – along with The Stone Roses’ John Squire and The Verve’s Nick McCabe, he’s the pre-eminent six-string technician of his era.

Despite four producers having a hand in Leisure, it still feels coherent; no doubt down to Albarn and Coxon’s assured hands on the sonic tiller.

The woozy psychedelia of opener She’s So High impresses and the funky Bang finds Coxon and drummer Dave Rowntree locking down a spectacular spiralling groove. Alongside classic single There’s No Other Way, Sing hinted that this quartet were capable of something rather special, head and shoulders above knocking out indie disco baggy floorfillers; the dark piano-led epic boasted an ambition that far exceeded the material around it.

There’s instrumental grit behind parts of Slow Down as Coxon cranks up the overdrive settings on his amp; Albarn’s innate melodic tendencies given a striking counterpoint with the guitarist’s predilection for throwing My Bloody Valentine-style distorted guitars into the mix – at the time Coxon would check out Syndrome, the Oxford Street basement club favoured by Creation and 4AD bands. Meanwhile, Bad Day is another blatant attempt to write in a baggy style, and Rowntree recycles a similar beat on High Cool. But Albarn’s flair for melancholy is exploited on Birthday; a gentle sting in the album’s tail”.

There is one review I want to bring in for Leisure before rounding up. In 2012, Drowned in Sound reviewed the Blur 21 edition of Leisure (as it came with bonus material):

“While the three singles off Leisure attained varying degrees of success. 'She's So High', possibly the missing link between the psychedelic haze of shoegaze and baggy's post-rave comedown, may have only hit the modest heights of number 48 on release but follow-up 'There's No Other Way' scored Blur their first top ten hit, providing the band with what remained their signature tune until the hedonistic 'Girls & Boys' arrived some three years later. 'Bang', the third and final single off Leisure could quite easily be filed under the title 'Blur's great lost 45' were it not for 1992's 'Popscene' pipping it to the post nine months on. Again, not a million miles apart from a lot of the indie/dance crossover acts of the day except for its lyrical savvy ("Bang goes another day, where it went I could not say, now I'll have to wait another week") and incessant pop hook, it's become something of a classic over the years, significantly improving with age.

It's on the less immediate parts of Leisure that a selection of real hidden gems lie in wait. 'Slow Down' takes the fast/slow/quiet/loud formula employed by Dinosaur Jr (later to be tourmates alongside The Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine in 1992) et al for a Home Counties makeover, its riff re-appearing a couple of years later on Modern Life Is Rubbish-45 'Chemical World'. Meanwhile 'Repetition' is arguably the first composition to bear the hallmarks of Graham Coxon's soon-to-become customary guitar sound. The maudlin 'Birthday' and three-songs-in-one 'Come Together' also pour short shrift over those still dismissive of Blur's first long player, 'Fool' too demonstrating Damon Albarn's knack for being able to write a hefty chorus, even back then. Leisure's real highlight comes at its exact midpoint in the shape of 'Sing'. Perhaps best remembered for its inclusion in the soundtrack to Irvine Welsh's 'Trainspotting' and originally only a b-side on the 'She's So High' twelve-inch, even now those simple piano notes causing hairs to stand upright for the song's entire six-minute duration”.

A happy thirtieth anniversary to the underrated Leisure! The start of one of music’s greatest careers, look ahead and all the brilliance Blur delivered! Leisure is definitely not an album one can overlook or write off. Its two big/best-known singles are not the only worthy songs. There are some real diamonds in the pack. If you have not heard Leisure in a while (or at all), then do yourself a favour and spin Blur’s…

INCREDIBLE 1991 debut.

FEATURE: The Lockdown Playlist: Keith Moon at Seventy-Five: His Greatest Drumming Performances

FEATURE:

 

 

The Lockdown Playlist

PHOTO CREDIT: LFI/Photoshot 

Keith Moon at Seventy-Five: His Greatest Drumming Performances

___________

IF one had to think about…

 IN THIS PHOTO: The Who in 1965

the greatest drummers ever, they might put Ringo Starr, John Bonham or Ginger Baker at the top of their list. Maybe Mitch Mitchell, Neil Peart or Steve Gadd. Many would put Keith Moon atop their list. The legendary drummer for The Who, he died at the age of thirty-two in 1978. As his seventy-fifth birthday would have been on 23rd August, I have put together a playlist with some of Moon’s greatest drumming performances. Before then, I want to drop in some biography from AllMusic:

“Keith Moon was best known as a member of the Who, but he was far more than that, even within the context of his role within the group. Moon, with his manic, lunatic side, and his life of excessive drinking, partying, and other indulgences, probably represented the youthful, zany side of rock & roll, as well as its self-destructive side, better than anyone else on the planet. In that sense, he was the soul of the Who, as much as Pete Townshend was its brain and Roger Daltrey was its heart; and, along with John Entwistle, Moon was at the core of its sound, and not just for his drumming per se. He played the skins with the kind of wild abandon that most trained musicians before him, not knowing any better, would have described as lunatic, in the worst sense of the word, and he lived his life with just about that same degree of intensity (even once running himself over with his own car). But more than the drumming itself, it was the lunacy that he brought to the personality mix of the four members that kept their music and their playing, not to mention their image, on the cutting edge of youth, even as they all moved into their thirties and tried to get more serious about music.

Moon's musical importance was similar to that of Brian Jones in the Rolling Stones. In much the same way that Jones, through his talent (and his abuse of it) helped lift the Stones above the level of every other blues-based band going, and made their image distinct, Moon did the same thing for the Who. When Jones left the Stones, to die just a few weeks later, they became more professional musically; they settled down with a true and admirable virtuoso in the guise of Mick Taylor, and their sound tightened up, but the youthful edge, the teenage lust was gone, not only from their sound but from their playing. When Keith Moon died, the Who carried on and were far more competent and reliable musically, but that wasn't what sold rock records.

Moon occasionally played on other peoples' records, but he only finished and released one solo album of his own, Two Sides of the Moon (though another may have been planned in 1975). Not taken seriously at the time, this record now appears to have captured the essence of Moon's nature. Recorded in a series of marathon sessions that were as notable for their huge bills for alcohol as the studio time involved, it is a strange, haunting mix of innocent '50s/early-'60s rock & roll and leering, joyful lust, and a savage sense of wit directed at the music business and played out both between and in the songs themselves”.

Here is a Lockdown Playlist that marks the upcoming seventy-fifth birthday of the legend that was Keith Moon. Surely one of the finest drummers the world will ever hear, one can enjoy his tremendous performances on The Who’s albums. This is an assortment of memorable songs where Keith Moon...

REALLY shines.

FEATURE: Inspired By… Part Twenty-Six: Radiohead

FEATURE:

 

 

Inspired By…

PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Lake 

Part Twenty-Six: Radiohead

___________

FOR this edition of Inspired By…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Radiohead in 1996/PHOTO CREDIT: Pat Pope/REX/Shutterstock

I am focusing on one of my favourite bands ever. The legendary Radiohead have inspired so many other artists. I am ending this feature with a playlist of songs from artists who either follow Radiohead or have cited themselves as influences. Before getting to that, AllMusic have provided some biography of the Oxford band:

“At some point in the early 21st century, Radiohead became something more than a band: they became a touchstone for everything that is fearless and adventurous in rock, inheriting the throne from David Bowie, Pink Floyd, and the Talking Heads. The latter group gave the band its name -- it's an album track on 1986's True Stories -- but Radiohead never sounded much like the Heads, nor did they take much from Bowie, apart from their willingness to experiment. Instead, they spliced Floyd's spaciness with U2's messianic arena rock heft, bridging the gap with guitar skronk borrowed from the '80s American underground. Jonny Greenwood's jagged, brutal interjections on "Creep," the band's 1993 breakthrough hit, recalled the ugly noise of the Pixies and Nirvana, a sound that translated over the expanse of an ocean, but in the throes of the alternative rock explosion of the mid-'90s, Radiohead were the odd band out. America remained besotted with their homegrown sensations, so "Creep" was treated as a one-hit wonder, and at home in England, they were seen as dour art-rock students lacking the glamour of neo-glam sensations Suede, and deliberately dodging the beery singalongs of Oasis. During the peak of Brit-pop in 1995, Radiohead released The Bends, a significant leap forward from their 1993 debut, Pablo Honey, and while that gained them some traction, it was 1997's OK Computer that broke down all the doors for the band and changed alternative rock in the process.

Expanding their sound with electronica and unapologetic prog rock suites, Radiohead turned into a different band with OK Computer, and the world followed suit. Soon, whenever rock bands dabbled in electronics, it was derived not from tightly sequenced rhythms, but rather, from glassy textures and introspection, a sensibility pioneered by the quintet. Radiohead doubled down on this aesthetic on 2000's Kid A, a record that traded concise hooks for minimal arrangements and jazz, providing a dividing line between an audience that once loved the group for their guitars and those listeners attracted to the band's aspirations. From this point on, Radiohead would occasionally flirt with concise song structures but were drawn toward unusual paths in both their music and business. Once their contract with EMI expired, they remained an independent band, pioneering different avenues of digital releases. They issued 2007's In Rainbows with little warning, letting listeners pay whatever they'd like for the record -- cementing Radiohead's reputation as a band compelled to look forward, not back.

Every member of Radiohead was a pupil at Oxfordshire's Abingdon School. Ed O'Brien (guitar) and Phil Selway (drums) were the eldest, followed by a year by Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, piano) and Colin Greenwood (bass). These four musicians began playing in 1985, dubbing themselves On a Friday, and before long they added Colin's younger brother Jonny, who'd previously played in Illiterate Hands with Yorke's brother Andy and Nigel Powell. Jonny started on keyboards but moved to guitar, yet this incarnation proved short-lived. By 1987, everyone but Jonny left for university, where many members pursued music, but it wasn't until 1991 that the quintet regrouped and started gigging regularly in Oxford. Eventually, they came to the attention of Chris Hufford -- then best-known as the producer of shoegaze stars Slowdive -- who offered the group the chance to record a demo along with his partner Bryce Edge; the two soon became the band's managers.

EMI bit at the group's demo, signing them in 1991 and suggesting they change their name. On a Friday became Radiohead and they recorded their debut EP, Drill, with Hufford and Edge, releasing the record in May 1992. Next, the group entered the studio with producers Paul Kolderie and Sean Slade to record their full-length debut. The first fruit from these sessions was "Creep," a single released in the U.K. in September of 1992. "Creep" didn't go anywhere at first. The British music weeklies slagged it, radio didn't play it, and it limped to number 78 on the charts. Pablo Honey, the band's full-length debut, appeared in February 1993, supported by the single "Anyone Can Play Guitar," but neither release gained much traction in their native U.K. and that May's non-LP single, "Pop Is Dead," didn't help matters much, either. By that point, however, "Creep" started to gain attention in other territories. First, the song became a hit in Israel, but the bigger waves came from the United States, which was in the throes of the alternative rock revolution. Influential San Francisco radio station KITS added "Creep" to their playlist and it spread along the west coast and onto MTV as it became a genuine hit, nearly topping Billboard's Modern Rock chart and reaching 34 on the Hot 100, a big achievement for a British guitar band. A re-released "Creep" turned into a British Top Ten hit, peaking at number seven in the autumn of 1993. The band who'd had no success suddenly had more than it could handle.

Radiohead kept touring Pablo Honey into 1994, but no subsequent hits were forthcoming, raising the specter of the band as a possible one-hit wonder -- a criticism that weighed heavily on the group, who were anxious to record their new songs. They received the opportunity early in 1994, entering the studio to work with producer John Leckie -- then best-known for his work with the Stone Roses -- with My Iron Lung, an EP released in late 1994, being the first music released from the sessions. Muscular and ambitious, the EP provided a good indication of what would come on 1995's The Bends. Released in March 1995, The Bends not only found Radiohead growing musically -- it was dense and expansive, without skimping on songs -- but also in reputation, as critics in the U.K. embraced the band with the audience eventually following: none of the first three singles ("High and Dry," "Fake Plastic Trees," "Just") rose above 17 on the U.K. charts but the final single, "Street Spirit (Fade Out)," wound up reaching five in early 1996. Radiohead's rise may have been assisted by the mania cultivated by Brit-pop, a term that didn't quite suit the band -- they were far artier and rock-oriented -- but nevertheless stoked interest in indie guitar bands, which the quintet certainly was. Over in the U.S., The Bends stalled out at 88 on the Billboard charts but the record gained a cult following among listeners and the band never stopped touring, taking North American opening slots for R.E.M. in 1995 and Alanis Morissette in 1996.

During 1995 and 1996, the group recorded new material with Nigel Godrich -- an engineer on The Bends sessions who was now the band's producer -- with songs slowly creeping out during the course of the year. "Lucky" showed up on War Child's 1995 charity LP The Help Album, "Talk Show Host" appeared on a B-side, and "Exit Music (For a Film)" showed up on the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann's Romeo & Juliet. The latter showed up on OK Computer, the June 1997 album that proved pivotal in Radiohead's career. "Paranoid Android," a twitchy suite released as a single in May of that year, suggested the ambition of OK Computer -- and by reaching number three, it was the band's biggest hit to date in the U.K., placing them on the cusp of a breakthrough.

A breakthrough is precisely what OK Computer turned out to be, a record that proved pivotal not just for Radiohead but for the direction of '90s rock. Greeted with enthusiastic reviews and corresponding strong sales, OK Computer closed the doors on the hedonism of Brit-pop and the dour after-effects of grunge while opening a new path to sober, adventurous art-rock where electronics co-existed with guitars. Over the next few years, the band's influence would become readily apparent, but the album made a sizable impact upon its release, too, debuting at number one in the U.K. and earning a Grammy for Best Alternative Album. Radiohead supported it with an international tour, documented in Meeting People Is Easy.

By the time Meeting People Is Easy showed up in theaters, the group began work on their fourth album, once again reuniting with producer Godrich. The resulting Kid A doubled down on the experimentalism of OK Computer, embracing electronics and threading in jazz. Appearing in October in 2000, Kid A was one of the first major albums to be pirated through file-sharing services, but this bootlegging had no apparent effect on the sales of the record: it debuted at number one in the U.K. and the U.S., becoming their first American chart-topper. Once again, the album took home the prize for Best Alternative Album at the Grammys and although it didn't produce any hit singles -- indeed, no singles were released from the record -- it was certified platinum in several territories. Amnesiac, a collection of new material initiated during the Kid A sessions, appeared in June of 2001, topping the U.K. charts and reaching two in the U.S. Two singles were pulled from the album -- "Pyramid Song" and "Knives Out" -- a signal that the album was more commercially accessible than its predecessor. At the end of the year, the band issued I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, and by the summer of 2002, they turned their attention to recording a new album with Godrich. The resulting Hail to the Thief appeared in June of 2003, once again debuting in the upper reaches of the international charts -- number one in the U.K. and number three in the U.S. -- and the group supported the album with live dates culminating in a headlining appearance at the 2004 Coachella Festival that coincided with the release of the B-sides and remix collection COM LAG, a record that helped close out their contract with EMI.

Over the next couple of years, Radiohead entered a hiatus as individual members pursued solo projects. Yorke released the heavily electronic solo collection The Eraser in 2006, and Jonny Greenwood embarked on a side career as a composer, beginning with 2004's Bodysong and then striking a fruitful collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson for 2007's There Will Be Blood; Greenwood would also work on Anderson's subsequent films The Master and Inherent Vice. During all this, the group tentatively chipped away at their first post-EMI album. Some unsuccessful sessions with Spike Stent led the band back to Godrich by the end of 2006, and the group completed recording in June of 2007. Still without a record label, they decided to release the album digitally through their official website, letting users pay whatever they wanted for a download of the album. This novel strategy acted as the album's own promotion -- most of the articles about the release claimed it was revolutionary -- and In Rainbows allegedly moved over a million downloads on the first day of its release in October 2007. In December, the album received a physical release in the U.K., followed by a January 2008 physical release in the U.S.; the record sold well, debuting at number one in the U.K., and it earned Grammys for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package.

Radiohead toured in support of In Rainbows into 2009, during which time EMI released Radiohead: The Best Of in June of 2008. The band took time off in 2010, which allowed Yorke to form a band called Atoms for Peace with producer Godrich and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. During this time, drummer Phil Selway released his debut solo album, Familial. By early 2011, the group finished a new album and, like In Rainbows before it, Radiohead initially released The King of Limbs digitally through their website. The downloads appeared in February, with the physical copies appearing in March; the album reportedly shifted upwards of 400,000 digital copies upon its release. That autumn brought the release of the remix album TKOL RMX 1234567, and the band continued to tour The King of Limbs material into 2012. Once the tour wrapped up, the group took some quiet time as a new round of solo projects appeared. Atoms for Peace released Amok in February 2013 and Yorke put out Tomorrow's Modern Boxes in September 2014, just a month before Selway issued his second album, Weatherhouse. In the autumn of 2014, the band began work on a new album and continued to record throughout 2015, releasing only "Spectre" -- a proposed James Bond theme rejected by the filmmakers -- that year. The ninth Radiohead album, A Moon Shaped Pool, appeared on May 8, 2016, preceded earlier in the week by the singles "Burn the Witch" and "Daydreaming." Radiohead supported A Moon Shaped Pool with an international tour, and in June of 2017 they celebrated the 20th anniversary of OK Computer with a double-disc reissue dubbed OKNOTOK. Featuring a host of bonus cuts and previously unreleased material, its number two showing on the U.K. charts was bolstered by a major televised live performance at Glastonbury. Over the next year, Selway, Yorke, and Greenwood each issued film soundtracks with the latter earning an Oscar nomination for his score to Phantom Thread”.

To mark the huge influence of one of the greatest bands ever, my ending playlist is comprised of artists who have elements of Radiohead in their bones. I am not sure whether the band’s are following up 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool anytime soon. I know that, whenever a new album comes, it will be…

SIMPLY amazing.

FEATURE: Second Spin: Iron Maiden - Brave New World

FEATURE:

 

 

Second Spin

Iron Maiden - Brave New World

___________

THERE are distinct stages…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Iron Maiden circa 2000

of Iron Maiden’s career. There is that phenomenal run of wonderful albums from their debut, Iron Maiden (1980), to their seventh album, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. That was released in 1988. Hugely prolific and extraordinary, it was only during the 1990s when some cracks and weaknesses began to show. The band regained focus and quality by the 2000s. They are preparing to release their seventeenth studio album, Senjutsu, in September. Consisting Bruce Dickinson – vocals, Dave Murray – guitars, Janick Gers – guitars, Adrian Smith – guitars, Steve Harris – bass, keyboards, Nicko McBrain – drums, Senjutsu follows the excellent The Book of Souls of 2015. The legendary London Metal band show no sign or slowing or calling time. I love how they have released so many fantastic albums through the years! There are a few of their albums that are quite poor and some that are underrated. I feel 2000’s Brave New World falls into the latter camp. Although the album was generally well-received and peaked at seven on the U.K. chart, there have been some reviews that are not so kind. I do not hear many songs from Brave New World played on the radio or compared to Iron Maiden’s classics. It was their first studio release since the return of their long-time lead singer Bruce Dickinson (he left the band in 1993). Playing as a six-piece for the first time, I think there are a lot of great songs through Brave New World.  Brave New World and The Wicker Man are two clear highlights, though each of the ten tracks are really solid.

I am going to bring in a couple of the slightly less positive reviews for Brave New World. As I mentioned, it got mostly good press. It is a shame that some were not as enamoured and sold. This is what AllMusic wrote in their review:

“The return of Iron Maiden's "classic" Dickinson/Harris/Murray/Smith/McBrain lineup (plus third guitarist Janick Gers) in 1999 led to an incredibly successful world tour that saw the New Wave of British Heavy Metal legends commanding stages with the same unmitigated power and authority as they had during their mid-'80s heyday. But the question remained as to whether the reconstituted group would be able to carry this momentum into a studio setting and recapture the songwriting chops of its glory years. This question made Brave New World one of the most highly anticipated metal releases of 2000, and thankfully, the eventual answer to that question was a resounding "YES!" In fact, the album pretty much picked up right where the "classic" lineup had left off on 1988's Seventh Son of a Seventh Son: with a faithful rediscovery of Iron Maiden's best-loved sonic aesthetic and compositional quirks, updated only insofar as was necessary to measure up to new-millennium recording standards. In every other respect (and much like Seventh Son of a Seventh Son), Brave New World's meticulously orchestrated three-guitar attack still allowed for a greater sense of space than early Maiden albums (as well as the use of subtle keyboard textures in a supporting role), while boasting a beefier, in-your-face mix à la Piece of Mind or Powerslave. The remarkable pipes of singer Bruce Dickinson actually seemed to have benefited from a less grueling touring schedule over the previous decade, and his renewed songwriting partnership with bassist Steve Harris (and other assorted bandmembers) yielded several new Maiden live standards such as punchy first single, "The Wicker Man," and the positively anthemic title track. Also worthy of special mention were Harris' emotional solo copyright, "Blood Brothers," Adrian Smith's distinctive solo licks throughout "The Fallen Angel," and six-string stalwart Dave Murray's Arabian-flavored contributions to "The Nomad." These highlights notwithstanding, a more lucid appraisal revealed that Brave New World was no Number of the Beast, once the initial euphoria died down. But as comeback albums go, its excellence was undeniable, and announced not only Iron Maiden's triumphant return, but an important turning point in heavy metal's long, arduous climb back to respectability after years of critical abuse”.

Another review that caught my eye is from NME . They were a little less convinced by Brave New Wold when they reviewed it in 2005:

 “Fashion was never a consideration. Metal always existed outside the realms of time anyway, and Iron Maiden were its prime old-skool sorcery’n’riffs exponents. They survived everything the ’80s threw at them, but now, with sports metal prowling, this is no time to go soft.

For the most part they haven’t. With longest-enduring singer [a]Bruce Dickinson[/a] back in their number, they still want to rattle your grey matter. Accordingly there are no hip-hop beats, no rapped choruses, just reassuring masturbatory solos and the high camp of men obsessed with monsters and goblins. It makes ‘The Wicker Man’ a rough-house tumble of operatic silliness, while ‘The Mercenary’ unleashes the dogs of war in guitar form.

But there’s a problem – that very dismissal of the outside world, which kept them safe all those years, now leaves them looking rather obsolete. It’s not just their ongoing fondness for cap-sleeve denim jackets and mullets, nor the risible face of skeleton mascot Eddie staring from the cover. Iron Maiden were always prone to [I]Dungeons & Dragons[/I] hilarity and pretension (the tradition kept up by the dire orchestral portent of ‘Blood Brothers’ and ‘Dream Of Mirrors’), but in the face of Korn and Slipknot offering more authentic rage and violence, they’re no longer the high priests of the black arts, and seem almost innocent by comparison. And that, surely, is as far from the point as it’s possible to get”.

I would advise people to read this Kerrang! review, as they were a lot more positive. I think that Iron Maiden were at their peak in the 1980s, though their last few albums have been tremendous. The 1990s and early-2000s were not the greatest for the band in terms of quality. There are definitely some Iron Maiden albums that have not won complete love that we need to reinspect. Brave New World is a great example. If you are a casual Iron Maiden fan or a diehard who has set Brave New World aside, then make sure that you revisit…

THIS great record.

FEATURE: Beyoncé at Forty: Imagining an ‘Ultimate Queen’ Vinyl Series

FEATURE:

 

 

Beyoncé at Forty

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images 

Imagining an ‘Ultimate Queen’ Vinyl Series

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BECAUSE the modern icon…

that is Beyoncé turns forty on 4th September, I am doing a series of varied features. I will look deeply at one or two of her studio albums, how I discovered her music when she was part of Destiny’s Child, where she could head from here and what the future holds. We do know that new music is not too far away. I will explore this more in a feature where I look ahead. FADER were among the many who reported some good news:

“If anyone was going to spend the pandemic doing something productive, it would be Beyoncé. True to form, the singer-songwriter and entrepreneur has been keeping herself busy for the last 18 months, revealing in her new Harper's Bazaar cover story that she's been in the studio working on new music. No release date is revealed, only that "the music is coming."

With all the isolation and injustice over the past year, I think we are all ready to escape, travel, love, and laugh again. I feel a renaissance emerging, and I want to be part of nurturing that escape in any way possible. I’ve been in the studio for a year and a half. Sometimes it takes a year for me to personally search through thousands of sounds to find just the right kick or snare. One chorus can have up to 200 stacked harmonies. Still, there’s nothing like the amount of love, passion, and healing that I feel in the recording studio. After 31 years, it feels just as exciting as it did when I was nine years old. Yes, the music is coming!

Lemonade, Beyoncé's last solo album, was released in 2016. In 2019 she released Homecoming, a live album documenting her instant-classic performance at Coachella, as well as her soundtrack for The Lion King”.

Alongside her six solo studio albums is the soundtrack for The Lion King, in addition to her Coachella performance and her albums with Destiny’s Child. There is also her album with JAY-Z as part of The Carters, EVERYTHING IS LOVE. There is a lot of her work out there! I know that there are only a couple of her studio albums easily available on vinyl. You can get them on C.D., though the vinyl is not as readily available. After Beyoncé has turned forty, I guess she will enter a new phase both personally and musically. It would be a good idea to have all of her albums in a collection. Maybe it will be two boxsets: the solo studio albums and the other albums. I know you can get her HΘMΣCΘMING: THE LIVE ALBUM on vinyl, so maybe that does not need to be included. As, to the best of my knowledge, there have not been a greatest hits collection. Perhaps that is something that is being planned. There are a few live albums of hers available. Having a live boxset, a solo studio albums set and then an assortment of Destiny’s Child, The Carters and a greatest hits compilation. With each set, one could have booklets or words about what they represent – how great she is as a studio musician, a collaborator and a live act. Perhaps an ‘Ultimate Queen’ series, it would not merely be a chance to cash-in ahead of new music. Having the albums readily available on vinyl would offer fans a chance to own something they can keep for years.

It would bring new people to Beyoncé’s music. She is one of these artists whose albums and career has been so important. As great as it is to access her music on streaming services, there is nothing that can beat the feel and sound of vinyl! I am not a massive fan, though I have been following her since the 1990s and really respect her as an artist and person. She is a definite icon who has produced some sensational music. Preserving this or providing a vinyl set (or series of) would be awesome. So many other artists have reissued albums on vinyl and put out boxsets. It is strange that all of her work is not on new vinyl (you can probably get most of her stuff second-hand). On 4th September, the world will salute one of the modern times’ most influential artists. It is exciting to learn that new music is brewing. It seems like the perfect time to look back in the catalogue and release the studio and live albums on vinyl. I guess, with every studio album, there would have been demos and outtakes. As one of my favourite albums of hers, B'Day, is fifteen on 1st September, it got me wondering about an anniversary edition. This is just me thinking out loud – though there would be demand for Beyoncé vinyl! It only leaves me, ahead of 4th September, to wish her…

A very happy birthday.