FEATURE: Who Do You Think You Are: Spice Girls' Spice at Twenty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Who Do You Think You Are

Spice Girls' Spice at Twenty-Five

___________

I love a good album anniversary…

and, unlike some artists, the Spice Girls are marking twenty-five years of their debut, Spice, with a new release. Released on 4th November, 1996, I think Spice is an underrated album. A great debut from a girl group who, by the time their debut was out, were already huge names. The release of Spice sent them stratospheric! This article explains more about the twenty-fifth anniversary release:

“Spice Girls are celebrating the 25th anniversary of their debut album with a reissue featuring previously unreleased songs, demos and mixes.

Spice 25 is out on October 29, almost exactly 25 years after the release of their debut album on November 4, 1996.

The collection includes the album's original 10 songs, plus previously unreleased demos and mixes, including the 7-inch radio mix of the record's second single Say You'll Be There - released today - where the familiar harmonica solo is replaced by a saxophone.

The expanded edition also includes two previously unheard songs, One Of These Girls and Shall We Say Goodbye Then?.

Spice 25 tracklisting

CD1

1. Wannabe (02:53)

2. Say You’ll Be There (03:56)

3. 2 Become 1 (Single Version) (04:05)

4. Love Thing (03:39)

5. Last Time Lover (04:11)

6. Mama (05:05)

7. Who Do You Think You Are (04:01)

8. Something Kinda Funny (04:05)

9. Naked (04:26)

10. If U Can’t Dance (03:49)

CD2

1. Wannabe (Dave Way Alternative Mix) (03:25)

2. Say You’ll Be There (7-inch Radio Mix) (04:09)

3. 2 Become 1 (Orchestral Version) (04:05)

4. Mama (Biffco Mix) (05:49)

5. Love Thing (12-inch Unlimited Groove Mix) (06:25)

6. Take Me Home (04:07)

7. Last Time Lover (Demo) (04:05)

8. Feed Your Love (04:36)

9. If U Can’t Dance (Demo) (03:36)

10. Who Do You Think You Are (Demo) (03:49)

11. One of These Girls (03:33)

12. Shall We Say Goodbye Then? (00:53)

Spice spent 15 weeks at Number 1 on the UK's Official Albums Chart, across four different spells, and logged more than a year in the Top 40. The record's global sales are reportedly 23 million, over 3 million of which are from the UK.

Emma Bunton said in a statement: "From the first wannabe baby steps to conquering the whole world with a team of Spices, thank you doesn’t seem enough to all of you who have supported us, followed in our footsteps, walked in our great big shoes and who have shared our dreams. It’s been 25 years of pure magic. Spice Girls forever!!!"

Geri Horner added: "To our diehard and loyal fans; without you there is no us – sending endless love and gratitude. Whoever you are, whatever your dreams – live them, be them. The Spice Girls motto is testament to that."

The 2CD release comes in an A5 hardback booklet, with a collection of images plus new messages from the group, and a set of six Spice Girls postcards featuring photographs by Tim Roney, taken in Paris in September 1996. The album will also be released on picture disc, limited edition coloured vinyl and cassettes.

Commenting on the album's milestone anniversary, Melanie C said: "25 years, wow! I have so many wonderful memories of writing, recording, promoting and touring this album and so many people to thank. This is the record that set us off on our incredible journey. A huge thank you to our fans and family all around the World. Thank you for always being there with your unrelenting support and making our dreams come true. My love and gratitude always.”

Melanie B added: "All I ever wanted was to be accepted and to make everyone around me – gay, straight, brown, black, shy or loud like me – to feel they can celebrate who they are and to be free to be themselves. All I hope – 25 years on – is that message has been heard loud and clear. It’s true that in the end love IS all you need so I thank everyone who has ever bought a Spice Girls record or stood in the rain to greet us or got dressed up in pink, in a tracksuit, a ginger wig, a leopard print catsuit or put on Vic’s iconic pout!"

Speaking of which, Victoria Beckham said: "We couldn't let 25 years pass without thanking the fans for their incredible support. There are so many people who have played a part in the success of the Spice Girls throughout the years, you know who you are and we thank you".

I wanted to mark twenty-five years of a wonderful debut. I was big into Pop and R&B in 1996. I knew about the Spice Girls thanks to the success of their debut single, Wannabe. I was more into other bands at the time - though the compelling and catchy nature of their music drew me in. Whilst some might see the group (at the time, Mel C, Mel B, Geri Halliwell (who left the group in 1998 but has since re-joined; Victoria has since left), Victoria Adams and Emma Bunton) as a bit manufactured – and their Girl Power slogan/mantra as empty -, the connection in the group and the upbeat nature of the music is pure. It is why we still hear songs from Spice now. I will bring in a positive review for the debut soon. With the group co-writing all the tracks on Spice, there is that personal relevance. I love the lesser-spun songs like Last Time Lover and Naked. There are so many huge songs on the 1996 debut. Wannabe, Say You’ll Be There and 2 Become 1 must be among the best opening three tracks of any album. Mama and Who Do You Think You Are are also big tracks. Half of the album is pretty well known. The singles are dispersed, so that you do not get a big run of deeper cuts. In terms of quality, Spice is much more than the singles and nothing else.

I think a lot of the negative or mixed reviews was based on the hype and popularity the Spice Girls were receiving. There would have been snobbish attitudes towards girl groups and more manufactured Pop then. Listening to Spice now, it is such a satisfying listen. Maybe there is some nostalgia coming in! This is what AllMusic wrote in their review:

“Spice doesn't need to be original to be entertaining, nor do the Spice Girls need to be good singers. It just has to be executed well, and the innocuous dance-pop of Spice is infectious. None of the Girls have great voices, but they do exude personality and charisma, which is what drives bouncy dance-pop like "Wannabe," with its ridiculous "zig-a-zig-ahhh" hook, into pure pop guilty pleasure. What is surprising is how the sultry soul of "Say You'll Be There" is more than just a guilty pleasure, and how ballads like "2 Become 1" are perfect adult contemporary confections. The rest of the album isn't quite as catchy as those first three singles, but it is still irresistible, immaculately crafted pop that gets by on the skills of the producer and the charisma of the five Spices. Sure, the last half of the album is forgettable, but it sounds good while it's on, which is the key to a good dance-pop record”.

I am going to end with a feature from Albuism , who wrote about the twentieth anniversary of Spice in 2016. Many people might have hated Pop then and been into other scenes. The energy of Baby Spice (Emma), Scary Spice (Mel B), Sporty Spice (Mel C), Posh Spice (Victoria) and Baby Spice (Emma) was infectious:

“Happy 20th Anniversary to Spice Girls’ debut album Spice, originally released in the UK November 4, 1996 and in the US February 4, 1997.

I grew up in the NYC hardcore/punk scene—nothing but depravity, filth, and sometimes songs that were only eighteen seconds long. But when I got a text from the bartender at a local biker bar that read: “Spice World is on the TV. Your first drink is on me,” I immediately threw on the tattered, rotting Spice Girls t-shirt I bought in 2001 and my patched-up leather vest and ran over.

I don’t wear that shirt ironically. I wear it because I think they were a brilliant pop sensation (even if created—like the Monkees or countless other groups whose songs will stick in your head). And, trust me, I fucking hate pop music.

“Spice World opens tomorrow. We’re all going. 10am screening,” a bandmate said to me in 1998. I laughed because I was as drunk as a character in a Joyce novel and it was already 4am. It was possibly one of the greatest theater-going experiences I’ve ever had. Kids were dancing in the aisles, singing every word—and at one point a 9-year-old boy shouted at another child, “If you don’t shut the fuck up so I can watch the movie, I’m gonna pop a cap in your ass!”

Up until this point, my only exposure to pop music had been “Weird Al” Yankovic throughout my childhood. After all, I was raised on Coltrane, Devo, Ravi Shankar, John Lee Hooker, and Zeppelin before I discovered punk. But I couldn’t help but sit back as a musician and tap my feet as I watched the film with half a liter of gin throbbing in the back of my brain on a Friday morning. Sure, it was cheesy, but it was good. Hell, even Black Flag released “TV Party” and that’s the most stupidly fun punk tune you can find (excluding most of NOFX’s catalog).

But I thought, “Jesus. I don’t care how many producers and songwriters it took to build this record... the girls can sing, dance, and these tracks are like a fucking tackle box—nothing but hooks.”

They depth-charge you out of the water with their debut album’s opening track “Wannabe” (which has a brilliant “one-shot” video—I put that in quotes because I’ve spotted two edits), slide into a great disco track (and I hate disco) on “Say You’ll Be There,” and then drift into a smooth R&B jam on track three with “2 Become 1.”

While there may be a few duds on the B-side of Spice, I can only blame the songwriting, not the singing, because these girls were on point. I’ve had to record three-part harmonies by myself and I found it nearly impossible as a singer; I can’t imagine doing a five-part harmony.

Admittedly, it’s a sexually overt (yet not blatantly explicit) album geared towards tweens, what with songs like “Love Thing,” “Last Time Lover,” “Naked,” and the aforementioned “Wannabe” refrain “If you wanna be my lover / you gotta get with my friends.” Obtuse—as an adult, I get it—but as an adult with a few threesomes under his sheets, I take it in a different light. And don’t get me started on the “2 Become 1” lyrics.

But they merged their sexuality with an array of female archetypes, all of which (hopefully) encouraged young girls to embrace “Girl Power.” The sassy redhead, the butch athlete, the strong girl of color, the prissy snob, and the girl who just wants to play. While fulfilling stereotypes rarely does anyone justice, I see them as a pop extension of the Riot Grrrl movement. Your parents might not take you to a Bikini Kill concert, but I’m sure they’ll take you to a Spice Girls concert. And the message is the same: girls can rock just as much as the boys if not more so.

Spice is an outstanding record that combines feminism with funk, hip-hop, and R&B. If you haven’t listened to it in the last 20 years, I highly recommend you do so. An hour was spent dancing in my living room before writing this article, after all, and I listened to it four more times. While I may have to listen to a few Slayer albums now to “cleanse” myself, it’s a killer fucking record and I was glad to listen to it yet again.

I used to ask strangers in bars dumb questions like “Who’s your favorite Beastie Boy?” or “Beatles vs. Stones?” I believe that an answer to either question reveals something about someone’s personality. But, now my question is “Who’s your favorite Spice Girl?”

While once a Posh guy, I can safely say that I am Scary all the way.

Go spice up your life. Buy this album, if you haven’t already”.

It may be a bit previous, but I want to look ahead and wish Spice a happy twenty-fifth anniversary to the on 4th November. It is one of the most important Pop introductions. Still effusive and addictive after all of these years, I know there will be celebration and memories shared across social media in the lead-up to its twenty-fifth. Although the anniversary edition is out next month, I would advise people to…

LISTEN to the original now.

FEATURE: The Magnificent Watching You Without Me: Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Thirty-Six

FEATURE:

 

 

The Magnificent Watching You Without Me

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the cover shoot for Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush 

Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Thirty-Six

___________

AHEAD of the thirty-sixth anniversary…

of Kate Bush Hounds of Love on 16th September, I wanted to do another song-specific piece. I have spotlighted most of the songs from the other. Recently, I looked at a song from the album’s second side, The Ninth Wave, in the form of Jig of Life. Now, I am looking at the tremendous Watching You Without Me. It occurs at a crucial moment on The Ninth Wave. In fact, it comes just before Jig of Life. That song is like an awakening; almost a call from the skies for the heroine – who, in the suite, is stranded at sea and trying to keep afloat/san. Before Watching You Without Me is Waking the Witch. This is a terrifying song where one can sense the protagonist slipping away or letting her nightmares take over. Before the spirited kick of Jig of Life and the rush of that comes a sort of ‘bridge’. Watching You Without Me arrives in the middle of, arguably, two of the most energetic and intense songs on The Ninth Wave. All of the songs on Hounds of Love are great. There is particular respect for The Ninth Wave, as it is such an ingenious and huge series of songs that takes the listener into the record. It still sounds so moving and staggering after all of these years. I will spend some time concentrating on a song that I have not heard played a lot on the radio. And Dream of Sheep gets played now and then - through one does not hear Watching You Without Me much.

I think it is important to get some song information; what motivated Bush to write it. There is something desperately sad about Watching You Without Me. This feeling that the heroine should be at home and people might not know what has become of her. When breaking down The Ninth Wave with Richard Skinner in 1992, Bush explained what the song is about:

“Now, this poor sod [laughs], has been in the water for hours and been witch-hunted and everything. Suddenly, they're kind of at home, in spirit, seeing their loved one sitting there waiting for them to come home. And, you know, watching the clock, and obviously very worried about where they are, maybe making phone calls and things. But there's no way that you can actually communicate, because they can't see you, they can't you. And I find this really horrific, [laughs] these are all like my own personal worst nightmares, I guess, put into song. And when we started putting the track together, I had the idea for these backing vocals, you know, [sings] "you can't hear me". And I thought that maybe to disguise them so that, you know, you couldn't actually hear what the backing vocals were saying. (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992)”.

The thought of a parent or loved one waiting for someone to return, unaware of their situation, is something many have experienced. The way Bush delivers the lyrics adds so much pain and loss: “You watch the clock/Move the slow hand/I should have been home/Hours ago,/But I'm not here/But I'm not here”. It is the lack of musicians on the song that makes it so impactful and emotional. Danny Thompson plays double bass. Stuart Elliott is on percussion. Deceptively beautiful and sensual, Watching You Without Me is sparser than Waking the Witch and Jig of Life. It is like this calm refrain between the songs. She takes us away from the ocean and her varying thoughts to a house. Not as devastating and tear-jerking as And Dream of Sheep, one is still affected and taken aback by the idea of this protagonist as a spirit, almost accepting death; the chance of seeing her loved one slipping away as it goes dark at sea and chances of rescue fading. It is just as well that we get Jig of Life. It is almost like the natural response to someone who is near rock bottom. On every song from Hounds of Love, there are lines that are among Kate Bush’s best. On Watching You Without Me, she sings “You won't hear me leaving” at the end. Before that, she says that they (her family/lover) won’t hear her come in. It adds to that sense of loss and the spiritual. Such a beautiful and image-heavy track that takes the breath!

 PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

I do love the songs on Hounds of Love’s first side. I think there is something special and different about The Ninth Wave. It is such a fascinating story and work that is being poured over thirty-six years after people first heard it. I was keen to dive into Watching You Without Me and spend some time with it. The triumphant and genius throughout The Ninth Wave cemented Bush as one of the greatest artists of her time – and she remains one of the very best. I will end by quoting a passage from a Pitchfork review. They revisited Hounds of Love in 2016:

“As her sailor drifts in and out of consciousness, Bush floats between abstract composition and precise songcraft. Her character’s nebulous condition gives her melodies permission to unmoor from pop’s constrictions; her verses don’t necessarily return to catchy choruses, not until the relative normality of “The Morning Fog,” one of her sweetest songs. Instead, she’s free to exploit her Fairlight’s capacity for musique concrete. Spoken voices, Gregorian chant, Irish jigs, oceanic waves of digitized droning, and the culminating twittering of birds all collide in Bush’s synth-folk symphony. Like most of her lyrics, “The Ninth Wave” isn’t autobiographical, although its sink-or-swim scenario can be read as an extended metaphor for Hounds of Love’s protracted creation: Will she rise to deliver the masterstroke that guaranteed artistic autonomy for the rest of her long career and enabled her to live a happy home life with zero participation in the outside world for years on end, or will she drown under the weight of her colossal ambition?

By the time I became one of the few American journalists to have interviewed her in person in 1985, Bush had clinched her victory. She’d flown to New York to plug Hounds of Love, engaging in the kind of promotion she’d rarely do again. Because she thoroughly rejected the pop treadmill, the media had already begun to marginalize her as a space case, and have since painted her as a tragic, reclusive figure. Yet despite her mystical persona, she was disarmingly down-to-earth: That hammy public Kate was clearly this soft-spoken individual’s invention; an ever-changing role she played like Bowie in an era when even icons like Stevie Nicks and Donna Summer had a Lindsey Buckingham or a Giorgio Moroder calling many of the shots.

It was a response, perhaps, to the age-old quandary of commanding respect as  a woman in an overwhelmingly masculine field. Bush's navigation of this minefield was as natural as it was ingenious: She became the most musically serious and yet outwardly whimsical star of her time. She held onto her bucolic childhood and sustained her family’s support, feeding the wonder that’s never left her. Her subsequent records couldn’t surpass Hounds of Love’s perfect marriage of technique and exploration, but never has she made a false one. She’s like the glissando of “Hello Earth” that rises up and plummets down almost simultaneously: Bush retained the strength to ride fame’s waves because she’s always known exactly what she was—simply, and quite complicatedly, herself”.

I shall leave it there. Ahead of the thirty-sixth anniversary of Hounds of Love on 16th September, I wanted to highlight one of the very best tracks. Watching You Without Me is Kate Bush’s imagined heroine wrestling with the water, fatigue and the possibility that she may not be rescued – although, at the end, she is. It is another magical and unique song, from an artist who…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush performing Watching You Without Me during her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn

HAS no equals.

FEATURE: A Let It Be Holy Trinity: Looking Ahead to a Very Special Documentary, Book and Album Reissue

FEATURE:

 

 

A Let It Be Holy Trinity

PROMOTIONAL PHOTO CREDITS: Apple Corps Ltd./The Beatles 

Looking Ahead to a Very Special Documentary, Book and Album Reissue

___________

THERE were plans…

to mark the fiftieth anniversary of The Beatles’ final album, Let It Be, last year. The Peter Jackson documentary-film was announced for last year, though that has been pushed back. There will be this bonanza where fans get to experience that album and its recording/legacy in three different ways. I will end with a feature regarding the album reissue and the special editions. The documentary, The Beatles: Get Back, will be released as a three-part documentary series on Disney+ on 25th, 26th and 27th November 2021, with each episode being about two hours in length. The book of the same name will be released on 12th October. Three days later, the Let It Be reissues will be out. It is a big October and November for fans! I wonder why all three were not released on the same day. Maybe it was a chance to spread it out and not throw everything out there at once! I am going to bring in articles about all three releases. The documentary has been the longest in the works. We have known about it for quite a while. Of the three projects, I think this is the one that will reveal the most and provide the greatest exposition and revelation. This article from July tells us what we know about Peter Jackson’s documentary so far:

“It was made with the full co-operation of the band

Both Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have sung the film’s praises, while John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono Lennon, and George Harrison’s widow, Olivia Harrison, have also offered their full support of the project.

It will be the ultimate fly-on-the-wall experience

“It’s like a time machine transports us back to 1969, and we get to sit in the studio watching these four friends make great music together,” Peter Jackson has said. The footage used in Get Back was originally shot for Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 documentary, Let It Be, which captured intimate moments in the studio while the band rehearsed and recorded the songs for what would be their final album. The footage, now revisited by Jackson in a new light, is the only material of note that documents The Beatles at work in the studio.

It will feature the famous rooftop performance in its entirety

On January 30, 1969, The Beatles played a surprise performance on the roof of their Savile Row studio. Though footage of the live set has been well documented over the years, it has never been shown in its entirety. Jackson’s film will include the entire 42-minute performance.

Ringo recently shared his recollections of that iconic performance with Variety: “We’d decided to play together, as a live band. And we did think of other venues, and then we thought, ‘Wait, let’s just go up on the roof.’ And Michael shot that stuff on the roof really great, with a lot of cameras.” While the original film showed roughly 20 minutes of the performance, Ringo shared that he was thrilled to see the set in its entirety, adding “it’s great.”

Jackson used digital technology in combination with archival footage

Jackson explained in the same interview that they adopted technology from the film They Shall Not Grow Old to balance the film’s color palette, but little else was changed. It left the director feeling envious of fashion during that era. “All we’ve done is use the technology we developed for the WW I film ‘They Shall Not Grow Old,’ taking all this old First World War footage and restoring it. We haven’t tried to push the primary colors of the clothing up or anything. We’ve done no tricks like that. We’ve just balanced the skin tones, and the colors that you see, I’m assuming, are the colors that were there on the day. I mean, it does make you jealous of the 1960s, because the clothing is so fantastic.”

‘Get Back’ is a celebration

In the introduction to his interview with Peter Jackson in GQ, journalist Dylan Jones outlined how the new film is less of a bummer than the original. “‘The Beatles: Get Back’ is another step on the long and winding road to enhanced immortality, as the films show The Beatles at the very top of their game and not deteriorating, as they appeared to be in Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s ‘Let It Be.’ The Beatles’ very last film was a massive downer when it was released in 1970 and it has remained a downer ever since.” In short, Get Back is a celebration.

The band’s true relationship is revealed

While Lindsay-Hogg’s feature film offered an in-depth look at The Beatles’ sessions, it also revealed some of the tense moments in the studio. In many ways, it documents a band on the verge of a break-up. Get Back, in contrast, looks at the footage as a whole, and paints a very different picture of the band’s time together. In a recent interview on The Howard Stern Show, Paul McCartney said, “We’re obviously having fun together. You can see we respect each other and we’re making music together, and it’s a joy to see it unfold.”

Meanwhile, in a statement, Ringo recalled, “There was hours and hours of us just laughing and playing music… There was a lot of joy, and I think Peter will show that. I think this version will be a lot more peace and loving, like we really were.”

Speaking to Variety, Ringo added that the original film, “focused only on the one down moment…Everybody knows my position. I thought the downer was much bigger than the rest of it (in Let It Be). I was there. There was lots of fun… I said, ‘I know there’s lots of humor there.’”

“The reality is very different to the myth,” Jackson confirmed in a press release. “After reviewing all the footage and audio that Michael Lindsay-Hogg shot 18 months before they broke up, it’s simply an amazing historical treasure-trove. Sure, there’s moments of drama – but none of the discord this project has long been associated with”.

Although the publication date for The Beatles: Get Back has been pushed back from the date announced on The Beatles’ official website, it is available to pre-order now. This is something many fans will want to own on 12th October:

“Callaway Arts & Entertainment and Apple Corps Ltd. are pleased to announce plans for the global publication on August 31, 2021 of THE BEATLES: GET BACK, the first official standalone book to be released by The Beatles since international bestseller The Beatles Anthology. Beautifully designed and produced, the 240-page hardcover tells the story of The Beatles’ creation of their 1970 album, Let It Be, in their own words.

Presenting transcribed conversations drawn from over 120 recorded hours of the band’s studio sessions with hundreds of previously unpublished images, including photos by Ethan A. Russell and Linda McCartney, THE BEATLES: GET BACK also includes a foreword written by Peter Jackson and an introduction by Hanif Kureishi.

The book’s texts are edited by John Harris from original conversations between John, Paul, George and Ringo spanning three weeks of recording, culminating in The Beatles’ historic final rooftop concert. THE BEATLES: GET BACK will be a special and essential companion to director Peter Jackson’s “THE BEATLES: GET BACK” feature documentary film, set for theatrical release on August 27, 2021.

This intimate, riveting book invites us to travel back in time to January 1969, the beginning of The Beatles’ last year as a band. The BEATLES (‘The White Album’) is still at number one in the charts, but the ever-prolific foursome regroup in London for a new project, initially titled Get Back.

 Over 21 days, first at Twickenham Film Studios and then at their own brand-new Apple Studios, with cameras and tape recorders documenting every day’s work, the band rehearse a huge number of songs, new and old, in preparation for what proves to be their final concert, which famously takes place on the rooftop of their own Apple Corps office building, bringing central London to a halt.

Legend now has it that these sessions were a grim time for a band falling apart, but, as acclaimed novelist Hanif Kureishi writes in his introduction to THE BEATLES: GET BACK, “In fact this was a productive time for them, when they created some of their best work. And it is here that we have the privilege of witnessing their early drafts, the mistakes, the drift and digressions, the boredom, the excitement, joyous jamming and sudden breakthroughs that led to the work we now know and admire.”

These sessions, which generated the Let It Be album and film released in May 1970, represent the only time in The Beatles’ career that they were filmed at such length while in the studio creating music. Simultaneously, they were exclusively photographed and their conversations recorded.

THE BEATLES: GET BACK is the band’s own definitive book documenting those sessions. It brings together enthralling transcripts of their candid conversations, edited by leading music writer John Harris, with hundreds of extraordinary images, most of them unpublished. The majority of the photographs are by two photographers who had special access to their sessions—Ethan A. Russell and Linda Eastman (who married Paul McCartney two months later).

Peter Jackson’s documentary film will reexamine the sessions using over 55 hours of unreleased original 16-millimetre footage filmed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg in 1969, now restored, and 120 hours of mostly unheard audio recordings. This sumptuous book also features many unseen high-resolution film frames from the same restored footage”.

A few weeks back, we heard about the reissues of Let It Be. So far, there have been anniversary reissues for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (2017), The Beatles (2018) and Abbey Road (2019), to mark fifty years of these classics. I was not sure whether there would be any for Let It Be. The Beatles’ website explains more:

“London – August 26, 2021 – This fall, The Beatles invite everyone everywhere to get back to the chart-topping 1970 album, Let It Be, with a range of beautifully presented Special Edition packages to be released worldwide on October 15 by Apple Corps Ltd./Capitol/UMe.

Three tracks from the newly remixed and expanded edition make their digital release debuts with today’s preorder launch: “Let It Be” (2021 Stereo Mix), “Don’t Let Me Down” (first rooftop performance), and “For You Blue” (Get Back LP Mix).

Pre-order / Pre-save The Beatles’ Let It Be Special Edition

Stream “Let It Be” (2021 Stereo Mix)

Stream “Don’t Let Me Down” (first rooftop performance)

Stream “For You Blue” (Get Back LP Mix)

The Let It Be album has been newly mixed by producer Giles Martin and engineer Sam Okell in stereo, 5.1 surround DTS, and Dolby Atmos. The album’s sweeping new Special Edition follows the universally acclaimed remixed and expanded anniversary editions of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (2017), The BEATLES (‘White Album’) (2018), and Abbey Road (2019).

All the new Let It Be releases feature the new stereo mix of the album as guided by the original “reproduced for disc” version by Phil Spector and sourced directly from the original session and rooftop performance eight-track tapes. The physical and digital Super Deluxe collections also feature 27 previously unreleased session recordings, a four-track Let It Be EP, and the never before released 14-track Get Back stereo LP mix compiled by engineer Glyn Johns in May 1969.

On January 2, 1969, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr kickstarted the new year together on a cavernous soundstage at Twickenham Film Studios in London. The Beatles jumped into rehearsals for a project envisioned to get them back to where they once belonged: onstage. For 21 days, cameras and tape recorders documented almost every moment: first at Twickenham and then at The Beatles’ own Apple Studio, where Billy Preston joined them on keyboards. Together they rehearsed brand new originals and jammed on older songs, all captured live and unvarnished.

On January 30, the cameras and recorders were rolling as The Beatles, with Preston, staged what was to be their final concert on the chilly rooftop of their Savile Row Apple Corps headquarters before a small assembly of family and friends, and any others who were within wind-carried range of their amps. The midday performance brought London’s West End to a halt as necks craned skyward from the streets and the windows of neighboring buildings were flung open for better vantage. A flurry of noise complaints drew police officers to the rooftop, shutting the concert down after 42 minutes.

 Work to compile an album to be called “Get Back” was carried out in April and May by Glyn Johns, who, for his version, included false starts, banter between songs, early takes rather than later, more polished performances, and even “I’ve Got A Feeling” falling apart with John explaining, “I cocked it up trying to get loud.” The Beatles, however, decided to shelve the project’s copious tapes, film reels, and photos, in order to record and release their LP masterpiece, Abbey Road. Drawn from the tapes made in January 1969, plus some sessions which preceded and followed those recordings, The Beatles’ final album, Let It Be, was eventually issued on May 8, 1970 (May 18 in the U.S.) to accompany the release of the Let It Be film.

The sessions that brought about the Let It Be album and film represent the only time in The Beatles’ career that they were documented at such great length while creating music in the studio. More than 60 hours of unreleased film footage, more than 150 hours of unreleased audio recordings, and hundreds of unpublished photographs have been newly explored and meticulously restored for three complementary and definitive Beatles releases this fall: a feast for the senses spanning the entire archival treasure. The new Let It Be Special Edition is joined by “The Beatles: Get Back”, the hotly-anticipated documentary series directed by three-time Oscar®-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson, and a beautiful new hardcover book also titled The Beatles: Get Back. The raw sources explored for the new projects have revealed that a more joyous, benevolent spirit imbued the sessions than was conveyed in the 1970 Let It Be film’s 80 minutes.

 “I had always thought the original film Let It Be was pretty sad as it dealt with the break-up of our band, but the new film shows the camaraderie and love the four of us had between us,” writes Paul McCartney in his foreword for the Let It Be Special Edition book. “It also shows the wonderful times we had together, and combined with the newly remastered Let It Be album, stands as a powerful reminder of this time. It’s how I want to remember The Beatles.”

Let It Be Special Edition: Super Deluxe Editions

5CD + 1Blu-ray (album’s new stereo mix in hi-res 96kHz/24-bit; new 5.1 surround DTS and Dolby Atmos album mixes) with 105-page hardbound book in a 10” by 12” die-cut slipcase

180-gram, half-speed mastered vinyl 4LP + 45rpm 12-inch vinyl EP with 105-page hardbound book in a 12.5” by 12.5” die-cut slipcase

Digital Audio Collection (stereo + album mixes in hi res 96kHz/24-bit / Dolby Atmos)

• Let It Be (new stereo mix of original album): 12 tracks

• Previously unreleased outtakes, studio jams, rehearsals: 27 tracks

• Previously unreleased 1969 Get Back LP mix by Glyn Johns, newly mastered: 14 tracks

• Let It Be EP: 4 tracks

o Glyn Johns’ unreleased 1970 mixes: “Across The Universe” and “I Me Mine”

o Giles Martin & Sam Okell’s new stereo mixes: “Don’t Let Me Down” & “Let It Be” singles

The Super Deluxe CD and vinyl collections’ beautiful book features Paul McCartney’s foreword; an introduction by Giles Martin; a remembrance by Glyn Johns; insightful chapters and detailed track notes by Beatles historian, author, and radio producer Kevin Howlett; and an essay by journalist and author John Harris exploring the sessions’ myths vs. their reality. The book is illustrated, scrapbook style, with rare and previously unpublished photos by Ethan A. Russell and Linda McCartney, as well as never before published images of handwritten lyrics, session notes, sketches, Beatles correspondence, tape boxes, film frames, and more.

Let It Be Special Edition: Deluxe Edition

2CD in digipak with a 40-page booklet abridged from the Super Deluxe book

• Let It Be (new stereo mix of original album): 12 tracks

• Previously unreleased outtakes, studio jams, rehearsals: 13 tracks

• Previously unreleased 1970 mix for “Across The Universe”

Let It Be Special Edition: Standard

1CD in digipak (new stereo mix of original album)

Digital (album’s new mixes in stereo + hi res 96kHz/24-bit / Dolby Atmos)

180-gram half-speed mastered 1LP vinyl (new stereo mix of original album)

Limited Edition picture disc 1LP vinyl illustrated with the album art (new stereo mix of original album)

Making The Album

When The Beatles arrived at Twickenham in January 1969, their self-titled album (AKA ‘The White Album’) was still topping charts around the world following its November 1968 release. They had an ambitious plan in mind for a project that would include a stage performance for a “TV spectacular” and a live album. Michael Lindsay-Hogg was hired to direct the concert and document the rehearsals with unfettered “fly-on-the-wall” filming and mono audio recording on two camera-linked Nagra reel-to-reel tape machines. Ethan A. Russell was brought in for exclusive all-access photography. Beatles producer George Martin and engineer Glyn Johns supervised the sound. Johns remembers, “Paul told me he had this idea to do a live concert and he wanted me to engineer it, because I had a reasonably good track record of making live albums.” Impressed by the band’s day-to-day progress with their slate of new songs, Martin later recalled, “It was a great idea, which I thought was well worth working on. A live album of new material. Most people who did a live album would be rehashing old stuff.” After 10 days on the soundstage, The Beatles and the film crew later moved to the band’s more intimate and cosy Apple Studio. There, Johns manned the controls of borrowed equipment from The Beatles’ old stomping ground, Abbey Road Studios, to record on eight-track tape. Billy Preston was invited to play keyboards with the band at Apple, lifting the sessions with his boundless talent and buoyant bonhomie.

 In April 1969, The Beatles rush-released their worldwide number one single “Get Back”/“Don’t Let Me Down”. Promoted as “The Beatles as nature intended” and “as live as can be, in this electronic age,” both sides of the disc were credited to “The Beatles with Billy Preston”. “The greatest surprise was when the record came out,” Preston remembered in 2002. “They didn’t tell me they were going to put my name on it! The guys were really kind to me.” The “Let It Be” single produced by George Martin, released March 6, 1970, is different from the album version “reproduced” by Phil Spector. Exemplifying Spector’s signature Wall of Sound production style on the Let It Be album is his orchestral overdub on “The Long and Winding Road”, which became The Beatles’ 20th U.S. number one single.

Directed by Peter Jackson (“The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “They Shall Not Grow Old”), “The Beatles: Get Back” takes audiences back in time to the band’s intimate recording sessions during a pivotal moment in music history. Because of the wealth of tremendous footage Jackson has reviewed, which he has spent the past three years restoring and editing, “The Beatles: Get Back” will be presented as three separate episodes. Each episode is approximately two hours in length, rolling out over three days, November 25, 26 and 27, 2021, exclusively on Disney+.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ethan A. Russell/Apple Corps Ltd. 

The documentary series showcases the warmth, camaraderie and creative genius that defined the legacy of the iconic foursome, compiled from over 60 hours of unseen footage shot in January 1969 (by Michael Lindsay-Hogg) and more than 150 hours of unheard audio, all of which has been brilliantly restored. Jackson is the only person in 50 years to have been given access to these private film archives. “The Beatles: Get Back” is the story of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr as they plan their first live show in over two years, capturing the writing and rehearsing of 14 new songs, originally intended for release on an accompanying live album. The documentary features – for the first time in its entirety – The Beatles’ last live performance as a group, the unforgettable rooftop concert on London’s Savile Row, as well as other songs and classic compositions featured on the band’s final two albums, Abbey Road and Let It Be. The music in the series is also newly mixed by Giles Martin (“Rocketman”) and Sam Okell (“Yesterday”).

Ahead of the series’ debut, Apple Corps Ltd./Callaway Arts & Entertainment will release The Beatles: Get Back book worldwide on October 12. Available in English and nine international language editions, The Beatles: Get Back is the first official standalone book to be released by The Beatles since international bestseller The Beatles Anthology.

IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles in 1969/PHOTO CREDIT: Ethan Russell and Monte Fresco 

Beautifully designed and produced, the 240-page hardcover complements the “Get Back” documentary series and Let It Be Special Edition with transcriptions of many of The Beatles’ recorded conversations from the three weeks of rehearsals and sessions and hundreds of exclusive, never-before-published images, including photos by Ethan A. Russell and Linda McCartney. The Beatles: Get Back begins with a foreword written by Peter Jackson and an introduction by Hanif Kureishi. The book’s texts are edited by John Harris”.

With the book and album reissue out very soon, that is then followed by the long-awaited documentary in November. I feel it will be a chance for people to learn more about an album that is misunderstood. The assumption that The Beatles were fighting and it was an unbearably tense atmosphere during Let It Be/Get Back. There was, in fact, laughter and plenty of good moments. The book will give us an insight into the recording - and we will get to see some great photos. The album reissues will provide some alternate takes and pieces of the puzzle. Let It Be is one of The Beatles’ worst-reviewed albums. Maybe the reissues will allow us to see the album in a new light. Then the documentary will go deep into the recording process and the reality of the band members’ relationships (and Yoko Ono’s role). One of the lesser-loved albums in the cannon of the greatest band ever, I am glad that we will get three exhaustive and passionate projects. It will be a treat for existing fans of The Beatles. Let us hope that it also…

BRINGS new fans in.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Baby Queen

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Meara Kallistafor for NOTION

Baby Queen

___________

BECAUSE she played (slayed?) Reading recently…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Parri Thomas for The Line of Best Fit

I am keen to focus on the tremendous Baby Queen. I have been following Bella Lathum’s music for a long time now. She is one of the most sensational and original Pop artists of her generation – though she might be keen to distance herself from being seen as ‘Pop’. I will bring in some interviews that give us a bigger picture of the London-based, South African-born artist. Last year, The Line of Best Fit spoke with an artist who, even then, was standing out as one of the strongest and most fascinating artists:

“When Bella Latham, aka Baby Queen, moved to west London as a wide-eyed, excitable 18-year-old, she was on a particular mission: to reshape the pop-sphere as we know it. Within a week of living there, she had settled in Fulham with her auntie and uncle, and had enrolled in a music course at a North London college to help kick start her career. So far, so good. But it wasn’t long before she threw herself in at the deep end; alone, she began to traverse the bustling pubs and the clubs of the city in an attempt to meet like-minded musicians and creatives, to little avail.

“I was totally unprepared for a city like London,” admits the 23-year-old singer-songwriter now, speaking over Zoom. “I had bright light syndrome, and I came here with all these ideas. I thought I was gonna arrive off the plane and Universal Records would be waiting on the other side for me with a contract! I came with the shit demo CD and everyone was like, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ My jaw was permanently dropped, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing around me and the people I was meeting – it was total sensory overload.”

The conception of the Baby Queen moniker, then, was key to a process of growth and becoming, and still figuring things out, it provided Latham with the sense of direction she so desperately needed. “One day, I was writing a song about a breakup and I wrote this line that said: ‘I’m your little baby queen’. It was just meant to be in a song,” she laughs. “And then I was like, that’s what I’m going to call myself! I had this moment of realisation where I felt like I was comfortable in my own skin. This name represents who I’ve always wanted to be.”

Baby Queen makes effervescent, high-octane pop full of transformation and discovery, mixing twinkling beats with sugary vocals to create hook-stuffed, earworm choruses, with two releases to her name as proof. For Latham, it’s important to write songs that reflect the world around her, all the while she excavates moments from her past. She details body dysmorphia, terrible breakups, internet culture, and above all else, the stigma of discussing mental health, a weighty subject that is most felt in her latest single, Buzzkill; “What doesn’t kill you makes it wish that it had”, she sings with a laidback drawl over a rough-edged, punchy electro pop arrangement.

But it’s this innate understanding of the virtual realm that makes the escapist aspects of her music so powerful: in both conversation and song, Latham is deeply ruminative, and is adamant that social media has proven indispensable to not only shaping the identity of Baby Queen, but to reaching an ever-burgeoning audience.

“It’s very clear to me that social media is a tool to connect with the people that are listening to music,” she says, earnestly. “And if I can leave somebody feeling less alone, as if their own self has been mirrored through my songs, then I think that’s the whole point of why I do this”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Bella Howard

I will come onto her debut E.P. and her mixtape. Both have been reviewed hugely positively. In another 2020 interview, NME had Baby Queen on their radar. She talked about her relationship with the Internet. We also learn why Baby Queen music is so personal:

“She describes her relationship with the internet as “a constant battle”, but points to her fans making it feel brighter. The Baby Kingdom, as she calls them, regularly make appearances in her Instagram Lives, while she has a group chat with them where they talk about relationships, Taylor Swift, politics and more. “We’ll be on FaceTime for hours and I genuinely have no idea what we’ve been speaking about,” she laughs. “These people that I’ve connected with over the past few months are more similar to me than any of my actual friends that I have in real life.”

One of the hallmarks of Latham’s music as Baby Queen is honesty and she says that is a big part of why she has such a close relationship with her fans. “When you write music that’s so open and so revealing, you’re sending out an invitation for those people to open themselves up to you in the same way,” she says. “It’s very difficult to stand for honesty without being prepared to have a really close and open relationship with these people.”

While some people credit their favourite pop music with changing their lives, Latham doesn’t think she has that power but there’s still an importance to what she does. “The only thing I can do is be honest about my experience so you know you’re not alone,” she says, adding that she “definitely” wants Baby Queen to be a pop star who can support her fans through their struggles.

As any star will tell you, you have to learn to adapt on your way to the top. Her masterplan might need tweaking in the age of coronavirus, but nothing is stopping Latham from continuing her ascent. She’s already planning to spend 2021 working flat out ahead of releasing her debut album in 2022, aiming to graduate from being a buzzy new artist to someone on the cusp of greatness in that 12 months. “I’ll stop working after the second album,” she jokes after running through her game plan. By that point, she should be well on her way to achieving her superstar dreams – and then some”.

The Line of Best Fit reviewed the Medicine E.P. back in November. Delivering such a confident and flawless debut, they were clearly impressed by what they heard:

“As Bella Latham finally unveils her debut EP, Medicine, it's easy to get caught up in the South Africa-born and now London-based singer-songwriter’s upbeat melodies and dazzling pop-hooks. Yet, piercing through all the swirling saccharine is a cutting honesty, laced with satirical quips, that makes her music vital for a disaffected generation.

Opener “Internet Religion” is a stream of consciousness whirlwind of an anthem, exploring the nightmare of a life built online. Deconstructing online personas with snarky remarks, “it's a pity / we can't Facetune personality”, Baby Queen is striding out with her own unique brand of anti-pop and a firm resolution to talk about everything that the pop-industry isn’t.

Open about her struggles with depression and exploring themes of body dysmorphia and online dating, she’s writing music that’s both catchy and frighteningly relatable to anyone growing up in the digital age. “Pretty Girl Lie” tackles the glossy, photoshopped images of women plastered across social media, noting our role in perpetuating the problem as she quips “I’m so obsessed with being you / That I become the problem too”, whilst “Buzzkill” zones in on depression-caused apathy and the fear of becoming a killjoy to those around her.

As EP highlight “Want Me” kicks in, her confessional spoken word story of an imagined unrequited love is self critical in its sincerity. With a bridge in French that opens with “I don’t even really speak French”, her desire for constant self-reflection feels like the antidote to a bubblegum pop world we’ve all become far too complacent with.

With a clever critique of a society that gives kids depression and aims to crush individuality and self-expression, Baby Queen’s Medicine suggests that maybe she’s the type of “pop-princess” this generation really needs”.

I will stick with The Line of Best Fit. They featured Baby Queen in February as one of their rising artists that we need to keep an eye out for:  

“When she was recording “Pretty Girl Lie”, a self-incriminating track about editing your legs “‘til the doorway bends”, and the unspoken truth that “I get more likes when I don’t look like me”, Latham was ready to point the finger at everyone but herself. But her producer, King Ed, helped her to climb down from the soapbox. “I was going to be like, ‘It’s you! It’s you!’ the whole time, but he said, ‘No, let’s go with “I” – because he knows me, that’s the thing,” she laughs. “He knows what I’m like, and I’m a guilty bitch! I think that’s what’s so likeable about the music. It’s about saying, ‘You’re all dicks, but me too’. It’s almost self-deprecating, in the way I spent like 10 hours on my phone per day – it’s horrendous.”

By taking aim at the artificiality of our lives, Latham draws attention to the idea of our ‘frontstage’ and ‘backstage’ personas. “That’s something I’ve struggled with my whole life,” she says. There is a divide between Bella Latham and Baby Queen. She explains, “Baby Queen is a constant show. It came from this belief – which is kind of a narcissistic belief, in a way – that you have to make everyone in the room happy. You have to be the source of laughter, the source of everything. But a lot of what I write is from Bella, when I’m alone. Baby Queen is a really big facet of me, rather than a character – but she’s not everything. I can talk in a million different ways, and Baby Queen is just one of them.

I’m not going to leave the house and speak to people, and be in front of the camera as the depressed version of myself who watches Drag Race upstairs, you know? We’re all so multifaceted. You will never get like the full picture of yourself, ever. We're never going to present all of our shit that goes on behind the scenes.”

It's taking us behind the scenes, though, that has certified Baby Queen as a blue-tick Gen Z voice in an age of ‘authenticity’. The truth, she emphasises, is often ugly, and she’s more than ready to drop the charade. She set a precedent for this with the titular track “Medicine”, a glaringly honest depiction of her life on antidepressants. “I feel like people have touched on it before, but no one has said it quite this way,” she says. “I struggle with emotional blunting. I’ve got to tell you, I haven’t cried in years. Like, no matter what happens in my life, I’ll just be like…” She looks blankly into the camera. “I mean, all of a sudden, you can’t cry; you have zero libido. If someone talks to me about sex, I’m literally like, ‘Cool… I don’t know what to say to you.’ They take a way a lot – they take away your ability to think and feel; they box you in. And I’m desperate to cry. I would love to cry. I would love to literally sit here and weep right now, but I can’t.”

But as much as the song readily shows her struggles, it also acknowledges how important they are in her life. “I know for a fact I wouldn’t be alive without them,” Latham insists. “I would cease to exist. So I have to take them. It’s really important people realise that they saved my life. I don’t want people to not go on the medication, because I’m still on it. If they were that bad, I wouldn’t be taking them. It’s a double-edged sword.”

Latham continues to contend with their effects daily – it’s something in her life for which there is no answer, but she has found a silver lining. “I feel like my genius is in my depression,” she says. “My therapist and I talk about, like, when you’re really depressed, you find these nuggets of gold in the dark spaces you can’t make sense of. All those ideas that you write when you’re in that dark place – you don’t get those when your mood is up here.”

The release of her two latest singles, “Raw Thoughts” and “These Drugs”, follow in the same vein. “I feel like the music coming out this year is more personal in the way that it’s more of a true depiction of stuff that’s actually happened to me, as opposed to being observational. It’s more what I feel as opposed to what I think. I’m actually kind of terrified for other people to hear them, because they’re obviously fiercely honest.” Rather than a new era, the new music is a continuation of these very real, immensely personal stories”.

Before coming to a review of the extraordinary mixtape, The Yearbook, NME chatted with one of their favourite artists to find out more. It is interesting reading what Baby Queen had to say about the mixtape:

“The Yearbook’ shows there’s another side to Baby Queen’s honesty though – one that might not be quite as weighty but is just as important in building a picture of who she is as a person. ‘American Dream’, which features Aussie newcomer MAY-A, is a crush fantasy that boasts the immortal line: “The things I could do in a hotel room all alone with you/ That I can’t say aloud.” The baggy lope of ‘You Shaped Hole’ tackles heartbreak in the most cathartic, jubilant way. “Sometimes being honest is writing some stupid little love song about someone you fancy,” she reasons. “It’s just important to make sure that you’re always speaking your truth.”

Talking so freely about her life in her songs has brought Latham the biggest reward of all – a fanbase, dubbed Baby Kingdom, with whom she has such a unique and strong connection. Before she sits down with NME today, she’s greeted by a stack of letters and presents from her fans, who she writes her own missives to and hosts big Zoom hangouts with. “I’m really grateful for the decision that I made to be as honest as I was in songs like ‘These Drugs’,” she nods, “because that’s where this feeling of connecting to people in such a really intimate way comes from and I don’t think I would have achieved if I had not just let it all out.”

To the musician, ‘The Yearbook’ is a “coming-of-age” project that she describes as a being written during her “most developmental years”. To get to that part of our lives when we figure who we are out, we have to move through a lot of versions of ourselves and that’s reflected in the host of characters that make up the record’s visual identity. The cover features Latham dressed up as a goth, a cheerleader, a prom queen and more. “I wanted to bring the songs and story to life and make everyone listening feel like they could grow up with me and come on that journey,” she explains. While she admits some of the personalities she’s assigned to each track are “a bit of a reach”, she wanted to add that element in to give each song “a human element”.

It’s a moment of creativity that is typical of the world Latham has been building since her debut single ‘Internet Religion’ was released in May 2020. Like most artists who’ve started their careers in the last 18 months, all she’s known so far has been a very online pop star existence. But last month, she finally got to enter the real world, play her first festival shows and meet her fans IRL for the first time.

“I was so depressed before those festivals, I felt really powerless and I had a complete identity crisis,” she says, but those shows were transformative for her. “It reignited this feeling of ‘This is why I’m doing it’. It’s a fucking dream come true – I could never have been prepared for what that feeling is when you come off that stage”.

I will finish with a review of The Yearbook. Indie Is Not a Genre had their say on a fantastic work that strengthened Baby Queen’s position as one of the most important young voices in music:

“The Yearbook consists of 5 pre-released singles and 5 new tracks that seamlessly meld together, stand strong on their own, and perfectly capture Lantham’s Baby Queen persona. It’s honest and critical without being gimmicky or self-serving.

Opener Baby Kingdom is a spoken declaration of unabashed nostalgia for Lantham’s past self set to a dreamy synth beat that perfectly encapsulates the dichotomy of this album. You can easily imagine her leaning against the wall outside her school disco a la Effy Stonem with rips in her tights and a cigarette between her teeth – a drawling, pessimistic monologue layered over a distant bedroom-pop beat.

The first half of the Yearbook sees Baby Queen struggle through a breakup with three absolutely banging tracks dripping in vulnerability and addicting electric pop beats. Raw Thoughts and You Shaped Hole, originally released in January and July of this year respectively, detail Lantham’s hedonistic, self-destructive efforts to move forward – “I kissed all our mates to procrastinate the pain / Then I felt ashamed and kissed them all again” she reflects in You Shaped Hole.

American Dream, featuring MAY-A, is Lantham’s first cultural and political critique on The Yearbook and a true display of her metaphorical and lyrical capabilities. Lantham regards her infatuation and desire for her lover as delusional and inaccessible as the American Dream. An escalating, irresistible beat as enticing as the myth she sings about is the backbone of the track, dropping at all the right moments and leaving nothing to be desired.

If American Dream is a thinly veiled metaphor knocking quietly on the door, Narcissist breaks the hinges off. Narcissist is Lantham’s Gen-Z anthem, an outright f*ck you to older generations and their hypocrisy. Quiet rage undercuts her apathetic tone as she laughs “I find it kinda weird you’d critique your own creation / But you still go online and call me self-obsessed / Wait did you forget? / Who made the internet?” Narcissist’s loud, layered wall of sound expands and cuts off at just the right moments, making it an incredibly satisfying listen.

The Yearbook. Dover Beach, first released this past April, begins quietly, and quickly accelerates into a bouncy, beachy, drum driven track with vocals that display Lantham’s upper register beautifully. Dover Beach Pt. 2 adds further depth to the desperation and loss of identity that too often follow the end of a relationship. “I’d change the shape of my mouth if I thought you’d kiss me” Lantham admits.

Baby Queen follows the thread of vulnerability into These Drugs, a gutsy and direct exploration of her own destructive escapism, and reveals what happens when you believe you deserve to suffer. Ethereal background harmonies give this track a slight hopeless, existential edge that compliments Lantham’s portrait of her downward spiral beautifully.

PHOTO CREDIT: Parri Thomas for The Line of Best Fit

I’ll admit that I’m a sucker for scathing, banging musical critiques of hypocritical American religious culture (ie. Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America), so it’s no surprise that Fake Believe really sold me on this album. Latham’s vocals meld with the beat as she delivers line after line of incredibly satisfying sharp-tongued criticism – “I’m in love with apathy / Nothing on the planet ever gets to me / When I’m living in the world of fake believe.”

The Yearbook culminates with I’m a Mess, an immaculate capstone to Lantham’s debut and encapsulation of her musical and cultural persona. Though by far one of the least complicated tracks, essentially just Lantham crying “I’m a mess” with several spoken interludes, I’m a Mess bleeds emotion and leaves you craving more. The imperfect vocal breaks that define the climax communicate the desperation and self-loathing of The Yearbook, and serve as a masterful conclusion to Baby Queen’s triumphant debut”.

Go and follow Baby Queen and check out her music. I know that we are going to see so much incredible stuff from her. After a wonderful E.P. and mixtape, she will be keen t perform live. After a celebrated performance at Reading, there are some dates coming up. Go and check her out if you can. In Baby Queen, we have an artist…

SITTING commandingly on the Pop throne.

______________

Follow Baby Queen

PHOTO CREDIT: Clark Franklyn 

Official:

https://www.babyqueen.world/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/queenofthebabies/

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9S9t9qA3hf0DqvOd3YdHqQ?view_as=subscriber

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/babyqueen

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4VqlewwKZJoIcA88PYHUDd

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/queenofthebabies

FEATURE: You Ain't the First: Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion I and II at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

You Ain't the First

Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion I and II at Thirty

___________

THIS is a slightly different…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Guns N’ Roses in 1991/PHOTO CREDIT: Herb Ritts

anniversary feature, as two albums from Guns N’ Roses were released on 17th September, 1991. Use Your Illusion I and II were launched into the world. Three years after their underwhelming second studio album, G N' R Lies, the Los Angeles band delivered two incredible albums. To be fair, there is a bit of a discrepancy between the albums. I think that I is a lot stronger than II. Not that the second instalment was full of material not strong enough for the first album. We do not really have that today, where as an artist will release two albums on the same day! Some might say that it was ego from Guns N’ Roses. To mark thirty years of the twin albums, I will quote some reviews. Use Your Illusion I debuted at number two on the Billboard charts, selling 685,000 copies in its first week - behind Use Your Illusion II's first-week sales of 770,000. It is amazing to think that Guns N’ Roses released two hugely impressive albums just a week before Nirvana put out Nevermind. What a fortnight that was for fans of Rock and Grunge! If you are not familiar with both of the Use Your Illusion albums, I will pop them in this feature. The first alum features a cover of Wings’ Live and Let Die, November Rain, Garden of Eden and Coma. The second has Civil War, 14 Years and Knockin' on Heaven's Door. I love how there are two classic cover versions. The band took two very different songs and made them their own!

W. Axl Rose, Izzy Stradlin, Slash, Duff McKagan, Matt Sorum and Dizzy Reed are fantastic through the two albums. Before sourcing two reviews for each of the albums,. Rolling Stone took us inside the making of the albums in 2016 (to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary). I have selected some sections from a hugely interesting and revealing feature:

“In April 1990, the classic lineup of Guns N’ Roses played its final show. The occasion was the nationally televised Farm Aid concert, a disastrous set that included, among several bizarre highlights, Steven Adler drunkenly belly-flopping in the general direction of his drum set only to miss by four feet, and Axl Rose ending the live broadcast with a climactic “Good fuckin’ night.” It was the mark of a band breaking apart.

Amazingly, though, the imploding GN’R were in the midst of an artistic surge. One of the songs played at Farm Aid (in a version hampered by Adler’s inability to learn it) was “Civil War,” a sweeping epic that would eventually open the second disc of the massive 30-song, two-and-a-half-hour opus they were hard at work on throughout 1990 and ’91. Slash would later liken Use Your Illusion I and II to the Beatles’ White Album (though “maybe not as good”), a titanic mix of gritty ragers, passionate rock-opera ballads and decadent screeds – from the failed-relationship triptych of “Don’t Cry,” “November Rain” and “Estranged” to the rock-critic indictment “Get in the Ring” to the misogynistic double-header of “Bad Obsession” and “Back Off Bitch.” “Thirty-five of the most self-indulgent Guns N’ Roses songs,” Slash said. “For most bands, it would take four to six years to come up with this much stuff.” Like the White Album, it was brilliance created amid collapse.

The band began seriously considering a follow-up to Appetite for Destruction in the summer of 1989, during a fruitful writing session that took place in Chicago. Izzy Stradlin, who had recently sobered up and often traveled separately from his bandmates, was especially productive. “Izzy has brought in eight songs – at least,” Rose said in 1990. “Slash has brought in a whole album. I’ve brought in an album. Duff [McKagan] knows everybody’s material backwards. So we’ve got, like, 35 songs we like, and we want to put them all out, and we’re determined to do that.” Discussing his newfound sobriety, Stradlin reflected, “I just reached a point where I said, ‘I’m gonna kill myself. Why die for this shit?’ ”

The Chicago meeting spawned, among other songs, “Estranged” (about Rose’s divorce from Erin Everly, daughter of rock & roller Don Everly), the rocker “Bad Apples” and the bondage jaunt “Pretty Tied Up.” While there, they also fleshed out “Get in the Ring,” the frustration anthem “Dead Horse,” McKagan’s tribute to deceased New York Doll Johnny Thunders “So Fine” and the doomy, 10-minute headbanger “Coma,” notable for Rose’s most dramatic and literal lyric in the GN’R catalogue: “Pleeease understaaand me.”

GN’R began recording in earnest in January 1990, a little over a year after the release of Lies, with an attempt at capturing “Civil War,” a tune they’d sketched out in 1988 and later donated to a compilation benefiting Romanian orphans. Immediately, Adler’s drug problem became an insurmountable obstacle. Addicted to heroin, he began nodding off at his kit. “I said to Slash, ‘Dude, I’m so sick that I can’t do it right now,'” the drummer once recalled. “And he said, ‘We can’t waste the money. We got to do it now.’ ”

After consulting with lawyers, the bandmates put Adler on probation, and within a matter of months, they’d kicked him out altogether. “He was so messed up he couldn’t pull off the drum tracks,” Slash said. “And he would lie to us [about getting clean]. We’d go over to his place and find drugs behind the toilet, under the sink.”

Guns N' Roses, Guns N' Roses Use Your Illusion, Use Your Illusion, Use Your Illusion sessions, Guns N' Roses Rolling Stone

Nevertheless, the band pushed forward. It solved the drummer problem by recruiting Matt Sorum, of hard rockers the Cult – a band whose affinity for Stones-y riffing and trippy lyrics put them in the same league as GN’R at the time. “He was fucking amazing,” Slash wrote in his autobiography, recalling a Cult show he attended in April 1990.

Around the same time, Rose brought in keyboardist Dizzy Reed. Reed had known the group since its earliest days, when a band he was in practiced in a space next to GN’R’s studio. In early 1990, he called Rose in a panic. Reed, who’d previously auditioned for GN’R, told the singer he’d soon be homeless; Rose offered him a job. “They fucking saved my life,” Reed said. Reed would become the only musician other than Rose to stay in the band in the years leading up to its current reunion.

With the new lineup in place, work continued more smoothly. The first tune they recorded with Sorum was a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” for the soundtrack to the 1990 Tom Cruise racing movie, Days of Thunder. “We would get to the studio at noon,” Sorum recalls. “We were serious about the work ethic. We’d cut a song and then take a break at one of our favorite bars for a drink or two and then cut another track or two. We never did a lot of takes of a song. We’d get it in two to three takes.” They also recorded a number of covers during the sessions, some of which showed up on “The Spaghetti Incident?”; among them was a version of Wings’ James Bond anthem “Live and Let Die,” which Rose once called “Welcome to the Jungle 2.”

Digging deep into their history, Guns revived several holdovers from the Appetite for Destruction days, and earlier. Even though Slash would later say the bass-thwacking rocker “You Could Be Mine” was too reminiscent of Appetite to fit the mood of the Illusion albums, it would eventually appear in the 1991 movie Terminator 2 and be released as a single. There was also the punky, two-and-a-half-minute “Perfect Crime,” which Stradlin had brought to their first-ever preproduction session.

“I’m used to doing things in an hour,” Cooper says. “I know Axl likes to take his time, but if you can’t get a vocal like that in an hour, there’s something wrong. So I told him upfront, ‘I have a tee-off time tomorrow at seven. We’re doing this in about an hour.’ I did it in two takes. I don’t know how long it took him to do all of his takes, but it ended up sounding really, really good.”

IN THIS PHOTO: Guns N' Roses performing live at Rock In Rio II on 15th January, 1991/PHOTO CREDIT: Ke.Mazur/WireImage/Getty 

In an omen of the darkness surrounding the band, police discovered a dismembered arm and head in the dumpster behind the studio where GN’R were recording. Stradlin would reference the incident in the sinewy “Double Talkin’ Jive.” “Izzy had gone back to Indiana, and when the police found the body parts, he flew back out and sang the opening line and the final vocal,” Sorum recalls.

Violence seemed to follow Guns N’ Roses out of the studio, too, as they toured while still working on the records. Rose’s wife Erin divorced him in the middle of recording Use Your Illusion, accusing him of assault, and the band toured frequently between sessions, occasionally inciting riots by walking offstage as Rose had done in St. Louis after a fight with a fan. “We all gathered in the dressing room … we’d open a door and there was yelling, we’d open another and see people on stretchers, cops with blood all over them, gurneys everywhere and pandemonium,” Slash recalled.

“After we left the stage, the crowd turned into an angry mob,” Sorum recalls. “Our crew was defending our gear through flying chairs and debris as riot squads arrived with tear gas. We tried to go back onstage but ended up in a van and drove to Chicago, still in our stage clothes, not really sure of the outcome of what had transpired. It was a ride I’ll never forget. Only when I turned on the news the following day to see the damage and destruction did I realize what had happened and the frenzy that had injured many of our fans.”

When they were released in September 1991 – a week before Nirvana’s game-changing LP Nevermind – the Use Your Illusion albums were immediate hits, selling more than 14 million copies combined. “There’s a ton of material we want to get out, and the problem is, how does one release all of it?” Slash said of the unusual twin-disc offering. “You don’t make some kid go out and buy a record for $70 if it’s your second record.”

The gambit made history: No other artist had put out two records on the same day and claimed the top two spots on the Billboard album chart before. “We poured everything into those albums,” Sorum says of their creation. “The music was all that mattered”.

I love 1991 for music. Amazing that two huge bands released such important albums a week apart. If Nirvana’s Nevermind is the more celebrated and popular, Use Your Illusion I and II are not to be overlooked. There is, inevitably, some weak material on each album. That said, when you have classics like November Rain in the pack, one cannot be too critical! They are among the best albums of the 1990s, that is for sure. I know lots of Guns N’ Roses fans around the world will mark thirty years of Use Your Illusion I and II.

It is time for a couple of reviews for each album. Let’s start with Use Your Illusion I. This is what AllMusic wrote in their review of the unexpected first Use Your Illusion.

“The "difficult second album" is one of the perennial rock & roll clichés, but few second albums ever were as difficult as Use Your Illusion. Not really conceived as a double album but impossible to separate as individual works, Use Your Illusion is a shining example of a suddenly successful band getting it all wrong and letting its ambitions run wild. Taking nearly three years to complete, the recording of the album was clearly difficult, and tensions between Slash, Izzy Stradlin, and Axl Rose are evident from the start. The two guitarists, particularly Stradlin, are trying to keep the group closer to its hard rock roots, but Rose has pretensions of being Queen and Elton John, which is particularly odd for a notoriously homophobic Midwestern boy. Conceivably, the two aspirations could have been divided between the two records, but instead they are just thrown into the blender -- it's just a coincidence that Use Your Illusion I is a harder-rocking record than II. Stradlin has a stronger presence on I, contributing three of the best songs -- "Dust n' Bones," "You Ain't the First," and "Double Talkin' Jive" -- which help keep the album in Stonesy Aerosmith territory. On the whole, the album is stronger than II, even though there's a fair amount of filler, including a dippy psychedelic collaboration with Alice Cooper and a song that takes its title from the Osmonds' biggest hit. But it also has two ambitious set pieces, "November Rain" and "Coma," which find Rose fulfilling his ambitions, as well as the ferocious, metallic "Perfect Crime" and the original version of the power ballad "Don't Cry." Still, it can be a chore to find the highlights on the record amid the overblown production and endless amounts of filler”.

I want to bring in a different perspective. The reviews for Use Your Illusion I were largely positive. Despite a couple of weaker tracks on the album, this was a band regaining the sort of form we saw on their 1987 debut, Appetite for Destruction. This is Rolling Stone’s take on the band’s 1991 ‘revival’:

“If it was just down to riffs, hooks and body-slam sonics, loving Use Your Illusion I (by itself the equivalent of a double LP) would be no problem. Imagine Exile on Main Street‘s epic grunge, the shotgun eclecticism of the Beatles’ White Album and the lunatic pagan sport of Alice Cooper’s Love It to Death and Killer albums (Alice himself pops up on one track), all whipped together with the junkyard grace of Rocks-era Aerosmith. That breathless Exile feeling is especially ripe on rockers like “Right Next Door to Hell” and “Perfect Crime,” in which you can barely make sense of Rose’s rapid-fire yelp over the molten guitar soup of Slash and Stradlin. “Dust n’ Bones,” sung by Stradlin, is grim n’ greasy, feral guitars and funeral-parlor keys echoing Izzy’s shorthand yarn of sex and psychosis out on Highway 666.

There are backfires. The ballad “Don’t Cry,” a relic of the Gunners’ L.A. club days, is too sweet and pleading; Rose is more convincing busting chops. Slash’s classical-guitar break at the end of “Double Talkin’ Jive” comes out of nowhere and should have stayed there. But “November Rain,” overlong at almost nine minutes and overrich with electro-orchestration, has a cool, “Layla”-like coda with sublime high-wire guitar by Slash. In “Dead Horse,” Rose’s desultory acoustic complaint bookends a stunning, volcanic outburst of electric Aero-Stones slammin’.

On the other hand, it’s not enough to simply be indignant about Illusion I‘s verbal rancor. You ought to be scared for the future. Get past the “parental advisory” buzzwords and you hear a declaration of insolence fueled by self-righteous anger and fearful confusion. Guns n’ Roses’ rock & roll niggers-with-attitude act, however indefensible at times, is emblematic of a greater adolescent cancer: an almost total loss of hope compounded by blind, impotent rage and the perverted Reagan-Bush morality in which the actual cloth of the Stars and Stripes is deemed more holy than the freedom and humanity for which it stands.

It’s all there in “Don’t Damn Me,” the best song on the record and a striking crystallization of Rose’s — and his generation’s — dilemma. “So I stepped into your world/I kicked you in the mind,” Rose declares in a proud full-moon howl against fierce staccato guitars and a galloping rhythm section. “But look at what we’ve done/To the innocent and young/Whoa listen to who’s talking/’Cause we’re not the only ones/The trash collected by the eyes/And dumped into the brain/Said it tears into our conscious thoughts/You tell me who’s to blame.” Empowered by celebrity and his own rock & roll might, even Rose feels dazed and helpless, violently seesawing between “Don’t damn me!” and “Don’t hail me!” as the band explodes behind him in one last orgasmic, twin-guitar rush.

Was Use Your Illusion I worth the wait, the traumas and the onstage tantrums? Yes, if only for “Don’t Damn Me” and the album’s ten-minute closer, “Coma,” a locomotive parable about suicide dreams and troubled resurrection. A few tracks (“Live and Let Die,” the weird art-metal nightmare “The Garden”) could have stayed on the outtakes shelf and no one would have minded. But the Gunners’ anything-worth-doing-is-worth-overdoing spirit is a bracing slap at the reigning fascism of studio perfection.

For better and worse, Illusion I also mirrors the turmoil in Teenage Wasteland, one nation under a grudge. “Not bad kids, just stupid ones,” Rose snaps in “Right Next Door to Hell.” “Yeah, thought we’d own the world.” This is the sound of that dream all shot to hell”.

Let’s finish with a couple of reviews for Use Your Illusion II. It was an expensive (yet exciting) day for Guns N’ Roses fans on 17th September, 1991! They had two quality albums to get their teeth into! I will start with Rolling Stone, as I like their perspectives on the Use Your Illusion albums. This is what they had to say about the counterpart:

“During the fifty-three and a half minutes of Appetite, the guitars antagonized, the drums slammed, and Axl howled about their savage lifestyle, the perils of drugs, the glory of booze, dreaming of Eden, wide-eyed romantic love, their oppressors and sex. Old-fashioned rock & roll stuff, it proved they were hard; it proved they were bad; it proved that metal could rise again; it sold 14 million copies and remained on the charts for three years. During the seventy-five and a half minutes of Use Your Illusion II, the guitars antagonize, though now with more dexterity, varying in tempo and mood; the drums slam, though now at the hands of new band member Matt Sorum; and Axl of course howls, but he also whispers, croons, talk-sings and plays piano like he did back in Indiana, up in his room, idolizing Elton John. In the four years that have passed since Guns n’ Roses first combined opposing symbols and upset the apple cart with willful disregard for rock & roll legend, interest in the band hasn’t waned: 18,000 people will actually wait for them to come out onstage two hours late; the single “You Could Be Mine,” off II and featured in Terminator 2, has sold nearly 2 million copies; and the band’s slightest misstep becomes controversy and turns established magazines and newspapers into veritable Guns n’ Roses fanzines. No wonder they take themselves so seriously.

 With Use Your Illusion II, the band rewards the loyal legions – with fourteen songs, which range from ballad to battle, pretty to vulgar, worldly to incredibly naive. The seven-minute power ballad “Civil War,” which opens the album (and which previously appeared on the Romanian orphan-relief album Nobody’s Child), begins with fingers studiously squeaking on acoustic-guitar strings and a few lines of dialogue from Cool Hand Luke, then drops the band’s characteristic patriotism for amplified rage and a sober look at political deceit: “So I never fell for Vietnam/We got the wall of D.C. to remind us all/That you can’t trust freedom when it’s not in your hands.” Because the band is reaching beyond its own experience on this song, Axl’s question “What’s so civil ’bout war, anyway?” – backed by thunderclaps and rainfall – is almost excusable. The outstanding cover of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” is epic, beautiful and heartfelt, with little flourishes like guns cocking behind the obvious verse (“Mama put my guns in the ground/I can’t shoot them anymore”) and Axl wailing as only Axl does, through his discolored teeth, turning vowels into primitive cries of pain or resolve.

Quite a few songs mine the territory of love gone awry: the spiteful “14 Years,” the disillusioned “Locomotive,” the lonely (and very long) “Estranged” and the bittersweet “Don’t Cry” (a different version from the one that appears on I), which is chapter 2 of “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” the song that, at least in the summer of ’88, bridged the distance between rural route and urban drawing room. The clunkers on II are “Shotgun Blues,” a sonic assault with surprisingly little impact, and “Get in the Ring,” which challenges the band’s detractors by name but basically hits below the belt. On Appetite it was “Feel my serpentine”; on Illusion II it’s “Suck my fuckin’ dick” – meant in a different spirit, yes, but it’s beneath them just the same.

Axl Rose has stopped teasing his hair, taken a few of the chains off his cowboy boots, left the pink lipstick to Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach and gotten a bit of perspective. So he shouldn’t be bothered by his critics, because even with years of practice, no one has come close to that snaky dance of his, that dance that whips victimization, menace and struggle into one fluid, triumphant motion”.

Just before rounding up, there is one other review for Use Your Illusion II that is worth seeing. This is what Sleaze Roxx had to write about Use Your Illusion II on its twenty-fifth anniversary:

“Gone were the raunchy, sleazy, drug and alcohol fueled songs from Appetite For Destruction and in were a more polished, mature band complete with a full-time keyboardist. In addition, gone was the rather loose playing drummer Steven Adler who was replaced by a more formidable and technically sound drummer Matt Sorum. Just like Appetite For Destruction, there were many songs on the album but the big difference was that this time around, Guns N’ Roses had released two albums so a total of 30 songs! Let’s face it, no band can release 30 songs at one time and expect all of them to be good ones. It’s hard enough to come up with one to three stellar songs, yet ten strong ones on an album, and simply impossible to muster 30 great or even good songs in one shot. Not surprisingly, this is where Guns N’ Roses faltered. Granted, you’d never guess from the album sales with both Use Your Illusion albums occupying the #1 and 2 spots on the Billboard chart the week after their release and with the two records selling over 35 million copies worldwide combined.

Nevertheless, the reality is that having 14 songs on one album (Use Your Illusion II) and 16 on the other (Use Your Illusion) will result in some rather poor songs making the cut. Given that I first listened to Use Your Illusion II and since I have always preferred that album over Use Your Illusion I, it’s only fitting that I review the former first. Use Your Illusion II started off with the now “famous” intro for “Civil War” in “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate…” The song “Civll War” was the perfect showcase for the new Guns N’ Roses‘ approach on the Use Your Illusion albums — serious and lengthier more epic like tracks with varying tempos and a lot more instruments. On Use Your Illusion II alone, the instruments listed included piano, keyboards, a banjo, a sitar, an organ and even a drum machine. It felt like Guns N’ Roses had matured very much like The Beatles expanding their wings with more complex arrangements and more instrumentation. And for a good portion of Use Your Illusion II, the results were/are fantastic. The first three tracks “Civil War,” “14 Years” and “Yesterdays” were slowed down quite a bit compared to what could be found on Appetite For Destruction but they worked brilliantly and are the type of songs that you can listen to many times over discovering something new. Guns N’ Roses‘ cover of Bob Dylan‘s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” has never been a favorite of mine but was a logical inclusion considering that it was already in the band’s live setlist a number of years beforehand.

“Get In The Ring” was probably my favorite track (aside from “You Could Be Mine”) early on when I got the Use Your Illusion albums given that it had the attitude from the Appetite For Destruction days with the charged up lyrics. While it seemed so cool for Axl Rose to take a shot at various publications such as Kerrang, Circus and even single out Hit Parader‘s editor Andy Secher, my enthusiasm has subsided considerably given my new role as Sleaze Roxx editor! Looking back now, “Get In The Ring” is the first taste on Use Your Illusion II that the quality of the songs might have been compromised a little bit by including too many songs. I have to think that “Get In The Ring” and “Shotgun Blues” — while decent songs — would not have made the cut on Appetite For Destruction. “Breakdown” is a quality track once again encompassing the new songs’ direction with a lot more keyboards and piano incorporated. “Pretty Tied Up” had a cool arabic feel to it and again showcased the more mature Guns N’ Roses. The lengthy “Locomotive” and the Duff McKagan sung “So Fine” were decent rockers but again would have probably not have made the cut on Appetite For Destruction.

“Estranged” was Use Your Illusion II‘s answer to “November Rain” on Use Your Illusion I. It was (and still is) an epic track that took the listener on a great journey and still reminds me a lot of what Alice Cooper would have come up with in his heyday with all the nuances and varying tempos. It’s definitely one of the most mature, brilliant and underrated tracks in Guns N’ Roses‘ repertoire. It’s kind of odd to find “You Could Be Mine” buried as the twelfth track on Use Your Illusion II considering that it was the showcase advance single. Funny enough, “You Could Be Mine” was really not representative of what the rest of the songs turned out to sound like on both Use Your Illusion albums. It’s almost like it was a remnant of the Appetite For Destruction days that was dusted off just in time for the release of the Use Your Illusion records. I am not sure why Guns N’ Roses would think we needed an alternate lyric version of “Don’t Cry” but it was included in any case on Use Your lllusion II. Perhaps Axl just could not decide on which lyrics he liked better… Sadly, a great album ended on a terrible note with the industrial tinged “My World” which was apparently recorded in a mere three hours. Clearly, this type of filler material should not have been concluding an otherwise very fine album”.

A very happy thirtieth anniversary to two different but equally important albums. Use Your Illusion I and II are considered to be among the best Guns N’ Roses albums. One week before the genius Nevermind, we got this treat from Axl Rose and co. Whilst I think their greatest album is Appetite for Destruction, the Use Your Illusion albums are hugely ambitious, varied and incredibly consistent! I am surprised there hasn’t been a thirtieth anniversary reissue with extras and demo versions. That said, I am sure there will be celebration on 17th September. People will be playing two classic albums. If you have not investigated them for a while, go and spend some time with Use Your Illusion I and II. Thirty years later, the third and fourth albums from Gun N’ Roses (if you see G N' R Lies as an album rather than a long-E.P.) are…

SIMPLY stunning.

FEATURE: The Lockdown Playlist: The Best of Fiona Apple

FEATURE:

 

 

The Lockdown Playlist

The Best of Fiona Apple

___________

I have covered Fiona Apple…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times

a fair few times on my blog. I wanted to put together a selection of her greatest tracks, as she celebrates her birthday on 13th September. I am a massive fan of Apple’s work. Her most-recent album, 2020’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters is, perhaps, her best ever. It is a phenomenal thing to listen to! Before coming to a playlist at the end, I am going to source a biography from AllMusic. This mean I can drop in some of her incredible music videos:

“Fiona Apple never quite belonged to a specific scene. The closest she came was at the dawn of her career, when her debut album Tidal arrived as the alternative rock wave reached its crest in 1996. Apple spent her time in MTV's Buzzbin and on tour with Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair revue, earning a hit single ("Criminal") and platinum certification along the way, but she wasn't a folkie or a punk rocker. Her roots lay in jazz, show tunes, and classic '70s singer/songwriters, an idiosyncratic blend that came into sharper focus on her second album, When the Pawn. Upon its release in 1999, When the Pawn drew attention for its emotional intensity, unconventional arrangements, and eccentric flair, elements that were central to her appeal in the next decades when she worked steadily and rigorously. As her output slowed -- it took her six years to deliver her third album, Extraordinary Machine, and another seven for its sequel, The Idler Wheel, to appear -- her reputation as a daring artist grew. The Idler Wheel and its 2020 successor Fetch the Bolt Cutters confirmed Apple took aural risks without abandoning her strengths as a singer/songwriter, a combination that helped her maintain a devoted cult following.

Born to singer Diane McAfee and actor Brandon Maggart in 1977, Fiona Apple started playing and writing songs at the age of 12 in an effort to work out a traumatic childhood that included rape at the age of 11. Apple continued to write, leaving high school for Los Angeles at the age of 16. She cut a demo tape that eventually earned her a contract with Sony Music in 1995. Teamed with producer Andrew Slater, she cut her debut, Tidal, releasing the album in the summer of 1996.

Tidal was a slow build, earning critical acclaim and a cult that exploded when the controversial video for "Criminal" turned the single and album into a hit. Mark Romanek's seedy, suggestive clip was overtly sexual -- a path Apple notably avoided afterward -- but it did the trick, helping the album reach the Top Ten and earning Apple a Grammy. Despite this titillation, Tidal appealed to middle of the road listeners, a path Apple definitively rejected with her next album, 1999's When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King.... The entire title was a 90-word poem, a fair indication of the artistic ambition that lay within. Produced by Jon Brion, the album was dense, literate, and melodic, not matching the commercial success of the debut but deepening her cult. Despite a romance with director Paul Thomas Anderson -- she contributed to the soundtrack of his 1999 magnum opus Magnolia -- Apple retreated from the spotlight, fostering an element of mystery that only grew when her next album experienced a series of delays.

By 2003, the lack of a sequel became a sensation among some music message boards, where rumors swirled that Sony rejected her newest music for being uncommercial. Within the next year, unfinished mixes leaked onto the Internet and the saga of the album spilled over into the mainstream, earning ink in The New York Times. All this helped usher the album to completion in the fall of 2005, when the original Brion productions were tweaked and expanded with producer Mike Elizondo, who helped Extraordinary Machine reach its final shape. The album was greeted by generally positive reviews -- some compared it not entirely favorably to the leaked album -- and the record received healthy sales. In its wake, Apple maintained a moderate presence, touring with Nickel Creek in 2007 and appearing with the Watkins Family at times during their residency at the Largo in Los Angeles. In 2012, Apple previewed three songs from her fourth studio album (which boasted a typically enigmatic title in The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do) to a wildly enthusiastic audience at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas. Produced by Apple with her touring drummer, Charley Drayton, the album earned excellent reviews upon release in June 2012.

Apple spent the next few years contributing songs to movies and television shows, including writing "Container," which was the theme to the Showtime series The Affair. In 2015, she contributed to Watkins Family Hour, the first album by Sean and Sara Watkins' Los Angeles-based collective, and the following year she appeared on Andrew Bird's Are You Serious album. Apple released her fifth solo album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, in April 2020”.

A very happy Fiona Apple for 13th of this month. I hope that she has a great day. As one of the greatest songwriters and artists of her generation, I hope that we see more albums her. She is a remarkable talent and inspiration for so many. I am ending up with a playlist that contains some of the best tracks from…

AN absolute legend.

FEATURE: Inspired By... Part Twenty-Nine: CHIC

FEATURE:

 

 

Inspired By...

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

Part Twenty-Nine: CHIC

___________

AS I am in a Disco mindframe at the moment…

I thought that I would include CHIC in this Inspired By… Perhaps the most important and influential Disco group ever, one can definitely trace their music to other artists. So many have been compelled by CHIC’s brilliance and how incredible their music is. I am going to finish with a playlist of songs from artists who one can compare with CHIC - or who have said that they are influenced by them. Before that, and as I normally do, AllMusic provide some biography:

“There is no doubt that Chic was disco's greatest band. Working in a heavily producer-dominated field, they were most definitely a band. By the time Chic appeared in the late '70s, disco was already heading toward mainstream saturation and an inevitable downfall. Chic bucked the trend by stripping disco's sound down to its basic elements. Specializing in stylish grooves with a uniquely organic sense of interplay, Chic's sound was anchored by the scratchy "chucking"-style rhythm guitar of Nile Rodgers, the indelible, widely imitated, and sometimes outright stolen basslines of Bernard Edwards, and the powerhouse drumming of Tony Thompson. As producers, Rodgers and Edwards used keyboard and string embellishments economically, which kept the emphasis on rhythm. Chic's distinctive approach not only resulted in some of the era's finest singles, including the number one hits "Le Freak" and "Good Times" -- only two of several classics off the platinum albums C'est Chic (1978) and Risqué (1979) -- but also helped create a template for funk, dance-pop, and hip-hop in the post-disco era. Not coincidentally, Rodgers and Edwards wound up as two of the most successful pop producers, and the sound they developed and perfected remained relevant for decades, acknowledged most notably with the duo's induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Through the 2010s, Rodgers continued to lead Chic as a major live draw and took the act back to the studio for It's About Time (2018).

Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards met in 1970, when both were jazz-trained musicians fresh out of high school. Edwards had attended New York's High School for the Performing Arts and was working in a Bronx post office at the time, while Rodgers' early career also included stints in the folk group New World Rising and the Apollo Theater house orchestra. Around 1972, Rodgers and Edwards formed a jazz-rock fusion group called the Big Apple Band. This outfit moonlighted as a backup band, touring behind smooth soul vocal group New York City in the wake of their 1973 hit "I'm Doin' Fine Now." After New York City broke up, the Big Apple Band hit the road with Carol Douglas for a few months, and Rodgers and Edwards decided to make a go of it on their own toward the end of 1976. At first they switched their aspirations from fusion to new wave, briefly performing as Allah & the Knife Wielding Punks, but quickly settled into dance music. They enlisted onetime LaBelle drummer Tony Thompson and vocalists Norma Jean Wright and Alfa Anderson, and changed their name to Chic in summer 1977 so as to avoid confusion with Walter Murphy & the Big Apple Band (who'd just hit big with "A Fifth of Beethoven").

Augmented in the studio by keyboardists Raymond Jones and Rob Sabino, Chic recorded the demo single "Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)" and shopped it around to several major record companies, all of which declined it. The small Buddah label finally released it as a 12" in late 1977, and as its club popularity exploded, Atlantic stepped in, signed the group, and re-released the single on a wider basis. "Dance, Dance, Dance" hit the Top Ten, peaking at number six, and made Chic one of the hottest new groups in disco. The band scrambled to put their self-titled first album together, and it spawned a minor follow-up hit, "Everybody Dance," in early 1978. At this point, Wright left to try her hand at a solo career (with assistance from Rodgers and Edwards), and was replaced by Luci Martin. It was a good time to come onboard; "Le Freak," the first single from sophomore album C'est Chic, was an out-of-the-box smash, spending five weeks on top of the charts toward the end of 1978 and selling over four-million copies (which made it the biggest-selling single in Atlantic's history). Follow-up "I Want Your Love" reached number seven, cementing the group's new star status, and C'est Chic became one of the rare disco albums to go platinum.

1979's Risqué was another solidly constructed LP that also went platinum, partly on the strength of Chic's second number one pop hit, "Good Times." "Good Times" may not have equaled the blockbuster sales figures of "Le Freak," but it was the band's most imitated track: Queen's number one hit "Another One Bites the Dust" was a clear rewrite, and the Sugarhill Gang lifted the instrumental backing track wholesale for the first commercial rap single, "Rapper's Delight," marking the first of many times that Chic grooves would be recycled into hip-hop records. Also in 1979, Rodgers and Edwards took on their first major outside production assignment, producing and writing the Sister Sledge smashes "We Are Family" and the oft-sampled "He's the Greatest Dancer." This success, in turn, landed them the chance to work with Diana Ross on 1980's Diana album, and they wrote and produced "Upside Down," her first number one hit in years, as well as "I'm Coming Out."

The disco fad was fading rapidly by that point, however, and 1980's Real People failed to go gold despite another solid performance by the band. Changing tastes put an end to Chic's heyday, as Rodgers and Edwards' outside production work soon grew far more lucrative, even despite aborted projects with Aretha Franklin and Johnny Mathis. Several more Chic LPs followed in the early '80s, with diminishing creative and commercial returns, and Rodgers and Edwards disbanded the group after completing Believer in 1983.

Later that year, both recorded solo LPs. Hungry for respect in the rock mainstream (especially after accusations that they had ripped off Queen instead of the other way around), both Rodgers and Edwards sought out high-profile production and session work over the rest of the decade. Rodgers produced blockbuster albums like David Bowie's Let's Dance, Madonna's Like a Virgin, and Mick Jagger's She's the Boss. Edwards wasn't as prolific as a producer, but did join the one-off supergroup the Power Station along with Tony Thompson as well as Robert Palmer and members of avowed Chic fans Duran Duran; he later produced Palmer's commercial breakthrough, Riptide. Edwards also worked with Rod Stewart (Out of Order), Jody Watley, and Tina Turner, while Rodgers' other credits include the Thompson Twins, the Vaughan Brothers, INXS, and the B-52's' comeback Cosmic Thing.

Rodgers and Edwards re-formed Chic in 1992 with new vocalists Sylver Logan Sharp and Jenn Thomas, and an assortment of session drummers in Thompson's place; they toured and released a new album, Chic-ism. In 1996, the reconstituted Chic embarked on a tour of Japan; sadly, on April 18, Edwards passed away in his Tokyo hotel room due to a severe bout of pneumonia. Rodgers continued to tour occasionally with a version of Chic. In 1999, his Sumthing Else label issued a recording of Edwards' final performance with the band, Live at the Budokan. More importantly, Rodgers compiled The Chic Organization Box Set, Vol. 1: Savoir Faire, a four-disc anthology released in 2010. Rodgers' career was boosted once more, through a string of collaborations with Duran Duran and Daft Punk, among others. He published a memoir, beat cancer, and kept the Chic name alive, primarily as a touring group. In 2018, two years after Rodgers and Edwards were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Rodgers completed and released a long-in-the-works Chic album, It's About Time”.

To show how CHIC have inspired other artists and made a real mark, the playlist below contains songs from those who are definitely indebted, in some way, to a group who turn fifty next year (though they are now called Nile Rodgers & Chic). Here are tracks from those who certainly are affected and influenced…

BY the sensational CHIC.

FEATURE: A Buyer’s Guide: Part Seventy-One: Elbow

FEATURE:

 

 

A Buyer’s Guide

Part Seventy-One: Elbow

___________

ONE band that I have overlooked until now…

are the tremendous Elbow. The Bury-formed band are legends who have released so many great albums. I am going to select their essential albums, an underrated gem and their latest studio album. There is also an Elbow-related book that is worth getting. This is quite timely, as the band announced the forthcoming album, Flying Dream 1. Before then, I want to bring in some biography from AllMusic:

“Cinematic British rock quintet Elbow rose to public consciousness with their acclaimed 2001 debut, Asleep in the Back. Boasting an orchestral sound, Elbow injected a wider range of emotions into their music than most of their guitar-based British peers at the time. While their first three outings established them as significant players on the U.K. scene, it was their sprawling fourth LP, The Seldom Seen Kid, that cemented their status, winning the 2008 Mercury Prize and setting a precedent within the band for self-production. It would inform their approach on subsequent albums, like 2011's Build a Rocket Boys! and 2014's The Take Off and Landing of Everything, the latter of which became their first U.K. chart-topper. Along the way, Elbow collected Brit and Ivor Novello awards, and their music was featured heavily in the 2012 London Olympic Games, where they performed during the closing ceremony. Released in 2017, their seventh album, Little Fictions, also reached number one in the U.K.

Vocalist Guy Garvey, drummer Richard Jupp, organist Craig Potter, guitarist Mark Potter, and bassist Pete Turner all met during the early '90s while attending college in Bury. After moving several miles south to Manchester proper, the band went through a couple of developmental stages before attracting the interest of Island Records, which signed the group in 1998. Island was bought out by Universal several months later, though, and Elbow found themselves dropped from the label as a result. After a partnership with EMI also dissolved, the guys linked up with local independent label Uglyman and released two EPs, Newborn and Any Day Now. The acclaimed EPs gained the band a contract with V2, which released 2001's equally tipped Asleep in the Back. The record was short-listed as a nominee for 2001's Mercury Prize and was issued in the States in early 2002.

Cast of Thousands, which appeared in 2004, proved to be a strong, critically acclaimed follow-up. Leaders of the Free World, inspired by political events and behavior in the media, was released in fall 2005, with The Seldom Seen Kid following in 2008. Although all three of Elbow's prior albums had enjoyed significant popularity in the U.K., The Seldom Seen Kid was the band's first album to go multi-platinum, eventually selling over one million copies and winning the 2008 Mercury Prize. Writing sessions for another album began in 2010, and Build a Rocket Boys! was released one year later, followed in 2012 by Dead in the Boot, a collection of B-sides and non-album cuts.

That summer, not only did the group's ambitious, specially written track "First Steps" serve as the theme to the BBC's coverage of the London Olympics, but Elbow also played two songs at the closing ceremony of the games, which helped to further bolster sales of their back catalog. Recording sessions for a sixth studio album -- eventually titled The Take Off and Landing of Everything -- took place at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in Wiltshire in late 2012 and were completed in their own Salford studio the next year. Following the January release of the single "New York Morning," the album appeared to strong reviews in March 2014 and became their first to debut at the top of the U.K. charts; it also became their highest-charting album in the U.S., peaking at 83.

Elbow released an EP called Lost Worker Bee in July 2015, after which the group took a brief hiatus. During this time off, Guy Garvey released a solo album entitled Courting the Squall in the autumn of 2015, and drummer Richard Jupp left the group in March of 2016. Elbow returned to action in February 2017 with the British chart-topping Little Fictions, which was, like every album since The Seldom Seen Kid, produced by Craig Potter. Two years later, the band returned with their eighth long-player, Giants of All Sizes, which featured guest appearences by Jesca Hoop, the Plumedores, and Chilli Chilton. The album debuted at number one on the U.K. charts”.

If you need a guide to the incredible Elbow, then the suggestions below should point you in the right direction. I have been a fan of the band for years. With every release, they offer something new. If you need suggestions as to which Elbow albums you should own, then I hope that the information below…

IS of use.

____________

The Four Essential Albums

 

Asleep in the Back

Release Date: 7th May, 2001

Label: V2

Producer: Steve Osborne/Ben Hillier/Danny Evans, Elbow

Standout Tracks: Red/Powder Blue/Coming Second

Buy: https://shop.elbow.co.uk/*/Vinyl/Asleep-In-The-Back-Vinyl-Reissue/6TJX13UA000

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/3T49xNB5QF2hZOCCGQ3Mra?si=IHMBZIaJShqJl909EhBMdQ&dl_branch=1

Review:

“Inaccurately belittled elsewhere as a prog group, Elbow have instead done what so many groups struggle to achieve. They’ve made an album that works as one solid body. From the murmured Nowheresville desperation of 'Any Day Now' and its hypnotic organ grind through to the piano-rich nostalgia of the final 'Scattered Black And Whites', Elbow create an atmosphere of universal intensity.

To do this they use a lot of different techniques and a lot of different sounds, but this doesn’t make them prog. It’s simply that rarest of gifts: originality. You can hear this creativity at work as 'Bitten By The Tailfly'’s soft-focus atmospherics are blown apart by guitarist Mark Potter’s scratchy new wave hook. Or when singer Guy Garvey hails the gift of life on 'Presuming Ed (Rest Easy)' over the most regal and dreamlike of keyboard riffs, or when a saxophone suddenly joins 'Powder Blue'’s mournful procession of melody towards the song’s climax.

But if Elbow’s music soars in many directions to reach its conclusions, Garvey’s lyrics remain grounded. These are not songs that try to disguise their meaning with imagery. Every word is relayed plainly by Garvey’s monochrome delivery, each one an integral player in its own gritty drama: there are songs about watching someone being swallowed by substance abuse ('Red'); about the fear of love growing old ('New Born'); about drunken mating rituals ('Bitten By The Tailfly'); about the rage of the spurned ('Coming Second'); and about ambition and self-loathing ('Don’t Mix Your Drinks').

This may make ‘Asleep In The Back’ sound an overly melancholic and heavy album, but one leaves its company feeling strangely enriched – a sensation familiar from another source. Seems that after all the pale imitators, Radiohead finally have a competitor worthy of healthy comparison” – NME

Choice Cut: Newborn

Cast of Thousands

Release Date: 18th August, 2003

Label: V2

Producers: Ben Hillier/Elbow

Standout Tracks: Fugitive Motel/Not a Job/Grace Under Pressure

Buy: https://shop.elbow.co.uk/*/Vinyl/Cast-Of-Thousands-Vinyl-Reissue/6MSW13UA000

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/46C5u3MKZ7aZPyhFIuPQP4?si=JGYdJUseQ0CkppA7ojzGEw&dl_branch=1

Review:

“There doesn't appear to be an Elbow consensus: they are their own band; they are the Coldplay it's OK to like; they are the Talk Talk for people who've never heard Talk Talk (or Catherine Wheel); they are somewhere between Supertramp and Superchunk; they are part of a succession of over-introspective, twaddle-peddling British rock bands. They are most of these things -- the positive things, at least -- at various points. On Cast of Thousands, Elbow's second album, the group does deserve to take its rightful place as one of the most respectable rock bands going. What separates this album from the debut isn't all that apparent on the surface. Downcast songs about relationships remain the stock in trade, but the sound has made natural advancements and the quality control is less prone to malfunctioning. In other words, they have followed through on whatever promise Asleep in the Back held; you could sense this would happen, just as you could sense that, after Lazer Guided Melodies, Spiritualized would make an even better record the next time out. However predictable, the minor differences add up to a lot. More so than ever, Elbow's greatest asset is that the band is capable of making big sounds without being bombastic or flashy. And they've tempered the characteristics that got them tagged as sad sacks, although that fact is mostly apparent in the lyrics ("place" rhymes with "virgin mother what's-her-face"; the payoff line in opener "Ribcage" goes "I wanted to explode, to pull my ribs apart and let the sun inside"). The only setback? Gospel choirs. Hopefully, at some point before they make their next album, they'll realize that their songs don't need background vocals from an entire congregation in order to feel redemptive -- or powerful. [V2 issued the album in the U.S. five months after the original U.K. release” – AllMusic

Choice Cut: Fallen Angel

The Seldom Seen Kid

Release Date: 17th March, 2008

Labels: Fiction/Polydor/Geffen

Producers: Craig Potter/Elbow

Standout Tracks: Starlings/Grounds for Divorce/One Day Like This

Buy: https://shop.elbow.co.uk/*/Vinyl/The-Seldom-Seen-Kid-LP/0KZ713UA000

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/25KJ3Be6nm3mvFOOKZU2TE?si=RopxGxpVTzKbD9xSVqbuag&dl_branch=1

Review:

“Bury quintet Elbow seemed symbolic of the general fatigue. The name oozed drabness. So did the photos. They looked unprepossessing even by the standards of an era when Badly Drawn Boy was held to be suitable rock star material, despite having turned up dressed as Benny from Crossroads. Prog rock was mentioned in their interviews. Eight years on, Elbow embody almost every characteristic of the middle-ranking, makeweight alt-rock band: the albums that stall outside the Top 10, singer Guy Garvey's parallel career as a radio DJ (part of BBC 6Music's apparently inexhaustible supply of bluff north-western presenters). Incredibly, given the current climate, they've survived as a major label act for almost a decade: formerly of V2, they're now on Polydor's Fiction imprint. Perhaps the home of Snow Patrol found something comfortingly familiar about the adjectives frequently attached to Elbow - epic, melancholy - and think they can sell them to the Tesco Clubcard massive.

If so, it's tempting to wonder what the target market will make of their fourth album's opening track. Starlings is certainly epic and melancholy, but also wildly off-message. It seems rooted in the dreamy exotica of Martin Denny - the backing sounds like shimmering steel drums, there's a woozy, wordless vocal chorus - disrupted by startling blasts of brass. For anyone who's spent the past eight years studiously avoiding Elbow, perhaps fearing the band's dowdiness was contagious, Starlings offers another surprise: it's an unequivocally fantastic song. Its melody dances around the hypnotic, horizontal backing; Garvey's voice is exquisitely careworn, the opening line seems to wittily acknowledge Elbow's nearly-men status: "How dare the premier ignore my invitations?"

Those who have studiously avoided Elbow - a group that, eagle-eyed readers may have noticed, includes the present writer - should be further surprised to discover that the rest of The Seldom Seen Kid shares Starlings' virtues, if not its sound. You could argue that the Led Zepish single Grounds for Divorce aside, it all moves along at roughly the same pace, and that said pace is just shy of an articulated lorry on a fuel protest. But it finds diversity elsewhere. An Audience With the Pope is audibly under the sway of John Barry's 1960s soundtracks. The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver sweeps along, episodic and majestic. A duet with Richard Hawley called The Fix sounds like the final stages of a competition to find Britain's most charming northern singer. You keep expecting Stuart Maconie to pop up and call it a tie: racing pigeons are mentioned at one juncture, which is perhaps laying on the aye-up a bit thick, but the song is utterly enchanting regardless. Meanwhile, the melody of Weather to Fly is so indelible that, were it equipped with the requisite surging chorus, it might provide Elbow with a hit; displaying a certain winning cussedness, it is equipped instead with a brass band.

Only once do they set their sights firmly on the stadiums. One Day Like This comes complete with singalong coda and lyrics about it looking like a beautiful day, but the grand gesture doesn't really suit them. Elbow excel at fixing on small, telling details, as demonstrated by Friend of Ours, a tribute to the late Manchester musician Bryan Glancy. In nine lines, it manages to perfectly conjure up both the kind of omnipresent, luckless but beloved figure that every local music scene boasts and the halting gruffness of men expressing emotions. "So - gentle shoulder charge - love you, mate," sings Garvey. Guitars echo and strings swell behind him. As they do, Elbow sound beautifully understated rather than underwhelming, less underachieving than desperately undervalued” – The Guardian

Choice Cut: The Fix (ft. Richard Hawley)

build a rocket boys!

Release Date: 4th March, 2011

Labels: Fiction/Polydor

Producers: Craig Potter/Elbow

Standout Tracks: neat little rows/open arms/dear friends

Buy: https://shop.elbow.co.uk/*/Vinyl/Build-a-Rocket-Boys-Limited-Edition-LP/3IHU13UA000

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/7f2e28BTOg0IQiwUG6trp6?si=3KsujbleQhu6hrFP2q-PbQ&dl_branch=1

Review:

“Build A Rocket Boys! takes most of the misery out of the Elbow equation, which singer Guy Garvey explained had something to do with the band’s success—a Mercury Prize, a platinum record, etc. It’s a strange admission to make, but a refreshing one: Life’s been good, so the songs have cheered up. Strangely, though, Rocket doesn’t embrace the band’s poppier side. Instead, it stretches out further into more spacious arrangements and experimentation, starting with the eight-minute “The Birds,” which somehow touches on both Brit-pop and prog. (Yes, that means it owes something to Radiohead.)

Garvey remains as clever as ever within this expansive new sonic palate, offering lyrics both witty (“You’re not the man who fell to earth / You’re the man of La Mancha”) and touching. (“Did you trust your noble dreams and gentle expectations to the mercy of the night? / The night will always win.”) There’s aren’t many huge hooks or clap-along BPMs—only “High Ideals” really bumps along—but Elbow more than compensates with ballads dense with sounds and inventive tinkerings. In other words, it isn’t the type of album that will easily find its way into the hearts of those in need of a quicker, simpler fix. But a bit of patience—especially from those with a propensity for grand Brits—will be handsomely rewarded” – The A.V. Club

Choice Cut: lippy kids

The Underrated Gem

 

Leaders of the Free World

Release Date: 12th September, 2005

Label: V2

Producers: Elbow

Standout Tracks: Picky Bugger/Forgot Myself/Mexican Standoff

Buy: https://shop.elbow.co.uk/*/Vinyl/Leaders-Of-The-Free-World-Vinyl-Reissue/6TJZ13UA000

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/7o4viKB5Rqod8h2xcE60Tw?si=a8lTuTnNQGK3oiXBfmQywg&dl_branch=1

Review:

“When Doves headed to the studio for the recording of their third album, 2005's Some Cities, they returned home to Manchester. With that kind of scenic inspiration and emotional attachment, Some Cities resulted in Doves' best of their career at that moment. It is mere coincidence that their musical mates, Elbow, have done the same for their third album, Leaders of the Free World. Such a coincidence is a bit comforting in the respect that Elbow do not stray from what they have previously done. Despite being cast as a gloomy bunch on their first two albums -- 2001's Asleep in the Back and 2004's Cast of Thousands -- Elbow trudge on as an emotional band. Singer/songwriter Guy Garvey doesn't wallow in failed relationships as much as he enjoys being cynical and playful about the world around him. Sure, Elbow's more melodic, pensive moments such as "The Stops" and "The Everthere" are classic heartbreakers, with piano-driven melodies lush in melancholic acoustic guitars and Garvey's somber disposition. Leaders of the Free World really comes to life when Elbow give in, allowing these songs to grow into something glorious. Album opener "Station Approach" and "Forget Myself" are brilliant examples of this. "Forget Myself" metaphorically points fingers at a media-obsessed culture that is equally blasé about its own issues. Garvey throws his hands in the air, sighing to himself to "look for a plot where I can bury my broken heart." The album's title track also criticizes a very questionable political system, demanding, "I need to see the Commander in Chief and remind what was passed on to me" as a storm of electric guitars mirrors an anxious, waxing delivery by the band itself -- "Passing the gun from father to feckless son, we're climbing a landslide where only the good die young." Elbow are a great band regardless of what it takes for them to find their footing. Leaders of the Free World is a bit more rock & roll than not, with guts and heart, because Elbow have finally embraced their powerful, surrounding space this time out. [The U.S. version includes a limited-edition DVD of videos for each song on Leaders of the Free World.]” – AllMusic

Choice Cut: Leaders of the Free World

The Latest Album

 

Giants of All Sizes

Release Date: 11th October, 2019

Label: Polydor

Producer: Craig Potter

Standout Tracks: Empires/White Noise White Heat/Weightless

Buy: https://shop.elbow.co.uk/*/Vinyl/Giants-Of-All-Sizes-Limited-Heavyweight-Clear-Vinyl-Store-Exclusive/67W413UA000

Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/4EqYFNisfHX1IPA0IoaKI2?si=2DYCIS2yRWOxdxd-Xv8cBQ&dl_branch=1

Review:

“You can hear the influence in the complex but tightly woven mesh of instruments on Empires and the opener Dexter & Sinister, which starts out driven by a distorted bass riff not a million miles removed from that on The Seldom Seen Kid’s Grounds for Divorce, but seems to turn into a different song entirely midway through. Moreover, if it never lacks melodies – Seven Veils and My Trouble are particularly lovely – Giants of All Sizes digs into prog’s more disruptive side, the wilful awkwardness expressed by its jarring time signatures, unpredictable shifts and knotty cramp-inducing riffs.

The result is what you might call a dislocated Elbow, noticeably light on songs that might cause festival crowds to hug each other and raise plastic pint pots aloft, big on taking their signature motifs and upending them. “All together now,” offers Garvey midway through Dexter & Sinister. What follows isn’t a singalong chorus, but a rambling piano solo. Guitar solos you expect to be soaring inducements to punch the air never quite achieve lift-off: they rasp too harshly, come sprinkled with moments of squeaky discord or are possessed of an ungainly, staggering gait. When the strings arrive on The Delayed 3:15, they don’t provide the usual stirring, epic swell: they follow a twitchy, scattered pattern played on a clarinet. The net result is as agitated and troubled as the song’s narrator, who’s watching the body of a suicide being extracted from beneath a train by “pale-faced kids in rubber gloves, dressed as cops”. Doldrums, meanwhile, features a very Elbow-ish lyrical sentiment – “all of this stuff in our veins is the same” – but it’s depicted as a sentiment only “desperate men” would suggest. The song’s climax repeats the line over and over again, but defies you to join in. One voice distractedly mutters it, another wheezes and pants the line between gulps of breath.

It’s debatable whether Elbow’s patent brand of warmth and optimism really is redundant in the current climate. One of the striking things about Nick Cave’s rapturously received Ghosteen was how empathetic and hopeful its songs sounded, potentiated by the fact that empathy and hope are two things in short supply at the moment. But the galvanising effect on Elbow’s sound isn’t really up for question. Musically, Giants of All Sizes is richer and stranger than anything they’ve released since their commercial breakthrough. Even when it finally settles back into more comfortable lyrical terrain – My Trouble’s hymning of cosy domesticity, On Deronda Street’s paean to parenthood – the music strays beyond their usual comfort zone: ragged and underpinned by glitchy electronic beats. It suits them out there” – The Guardian

Choice Cut: Dexter & Sinister

The Elbow Book

 

Reluctant Heroes: The Story of Elbow

Author: Mark Middles

Publication Date: 30th September, 2009

Publisher: Omnibus Press

Synopsis:

“When Elbow won the Mercury Prize in 2008 for their fourth studio album - "The Seldom Seen Kid" - the accolade followed a 17 year long career marked by four classic albums and a cult following that cast them in the role of Manchester's best kept music secret. Elbow started out at a time when great songs and evocative lyrics were not generally recognised. Their music transcended genre, age and image, eventually finding it's own distinctive global audience as Guy Garvey evolved into one of the most brilliant and intriguing lyricists of recent times. This book charts Elbow's long journey from humble roots through modest success to international recognition. It features interviews with the band and those close to them to form the most complete band history to date” – Amazon.co.uk

Order: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reluctant-Heroes-Story-Mick-Middles/dp/184772860X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=elbow&qid=1630305776&s=books&sr=1-1

FEATURE: Madness, Mystery and Magic: Kate Bush’s The Dreaming: One of Her Most Extraordinary and Influential Albums

FEATURE:

 

 

Madness, Mystery and Magic

Kate Bush’s The Dreaming: One of Her Most Extraordinary and Influential Albums

___________

THERE are new reasons…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at a record signing for The Dreaming at Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street, London on 14th September, 1982

why I am spending a little time with Kate Bush’s fourth studio album, The Dreaming. It was released on 13th September, 1982. Ahead of its thirty-ninth anniversary, I wanted to look back at one of my favourite albums. A new article has been published about the album that really fascinated me. In 2021, The Dreaming still remains fairly underrated. I do feel there has been a shift in perception since its release in 1982. Then, there was a degree of bafflement and dismissal from critics. The album got to three in the U.K. In the U.S., it barely made an impression at all on the charts. Perhaps many were not ready for something as experimental and textured. Preferring, perhaps, something more accessible and Pop-based, The Dreaming is an album that has been re-examined and won new ears. Songwriters and fans have discovered it and spread the word. Even though not many songs from The Dreaming are played on the radio (aside from the first single, Sat in Your Lap), this is an album that one needs to listen to in full! The songs are so interesting and nuanced. Bush’s production and songwriting is mind-blowing! Before coming onto a review and the article I mentioned, the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia talked about its release and Bush’s impressions of the record:

“Upon its release, 'The Dreaming' met with a mixed critical reception. Many were baffled by the dense soundscapes Bush had created. Record Mirror wrote: "Quaint, admirable, unclassified, Kate Bush goes her own sweet way... production hard to fault... ranges from the ethereal to the frankly unlistenable." Sounds added: "I'm drowning in a sea of vocal overdubs". Melody Maker said in a favourable review that the album was indeed baffling but also interesting, labelling 'Suspended in Gaffa' the only "vaguely conventional track", adding: "It's the sort of album that makes me want to kidnap the artist and demand the explanation behind each track".

Kate about 'The Dreaming'

After the last album, 'Never For Ever', I started writing some new songs. They were very different from anything I'd ever written before - they were much more rhythmic, and in a way, a completely new side to my music. I was using different instruments, and everything was changing; and I felt that really the best thing to do would be to make this album a real departure - make it completely different. And the only way to achieve this was to sever all the links I had had with the older stuff. The main link was engineer Jon Kelly. Everytime I was in the studio Jon was there helping me, so I felt that in order to make the stuff different enough I would have to stop working with Jon. He really wanted to keep working with me, but we discussed it and realised that it was for the best. ('The Dreaming'. Poppix (UK), Summer 1982)

Yes, it's very important for me to change. In fact, as soon as the songs began to be written, I knew that the album was going to be quite different. I'd hate it, especially now, if my albums became similar, because so much happens to me between each album - my views change quite drastically. What's nice about this album is that it's what I've always wanted to do. For instance, the Australian thing: well, I wanted to do that on the last album, but there was no time. There are quite a few ideas and things that I've had whizzing around in my head that just haven't been put down. I've always wanted to use more traditional influences and instruments, especially the Irish ones. I suppose subconsciously I've wanted to do all this for quite some time, but I've never really had the time until now. ('The Dreaming'. Poppix (UK), Summer 1982)”.

The Dreaming is such a fascinating record! One can pull apart the lyrics and stories of each track. Then there are the compositions and the production. So layered and stunning…I am glad that there is some sense of reinterpretation and respect for a 1982 masterpiece. Before coming to the new article, I want to source from The Quietus’ compelling and deep study of The Dreaming in 2012 (on its thirtieth anniversary):

“The album was not without its obstacles. She talked of a terrible case of writer’s block. Initially she recruited Hugh Padgham, due to the Gabriel/Collins connection. While she praised the engineer, he seemed both unsympathetic to her madcap approach (and allegedly her then fondness for pot, according to Graeme Thomson’s excellent bio, Under the Ivy). Either way he was committed to working for The Police & recommended his assistant Nick Launay. The pair, bonded by their experimental curiosity and youth, proved to have a more productive simpatico. They mic’d up corrugated iron tunnels around drum kits in an attempt to mimic ‘canons’. The Dreaming melts the gap between pre- and post- punk, Launay having worked with both PiL and Phil Collins, shared Bush’s disregard for the old/wave divide. As early as 1980, Kris Needs noted her ability "to break down musical barriers and capture true emotion". On The Dreaming, proggy shifting time signatures and textures vie with a wild energy and the kind of poly-rhythms deployed on another Launay job, PIL’s Flowers Of Romance (1981). Another engineer, Paul Hardiman, had worked with both Rick Wakeman and on Wire’s seminal first three albums.

The Dreaming was the real game-changer. Back in 1982, it was regarded as a jarring rupture. "Very weird. She’s obviously trying to become less commercial," wrote Neil Tennant, the future Pet Shop Boy, still a scribe for Smash Hits. He echoed the sentiments of the record-buying public. Even though the album made it to number three, the singles, apart from 'Sat In Your Lap', which got to 11 a year before, tanked. The title track limped to number 48 while 'There Goes A Tenner' failed to chart at all. It was purportedly the closest her record label, EMI had come to returning an artist’s recording. Speaking in hindsight, Bush observed how this was her "she’s gone mad" album. But The Dreaming represents not just a major advance for Bush but art-rock in general. Its sonic assault contains a surfeit of musical ideas, all chiselled into a taut economy.

Bush had pirouetted into public consciousness to such an extent that in May 1981, she was asked to play the wicked witch in Wurzel Gummidge. Campy light entertainment was still knocking at the door, still smitten with her theatrical excesses. However, the following month, 'Sat In Your Lap' unveiled Bush’s new aesthetic. Inspired by attending a Stevie Wonder concert, it’s a violent assertion of creative control, a final nail in the coffin of the so-called elfin pop princess. Pounding pianos and tribal drums dominate, frazzled synth brass puffs steam as Bush’s vocals veer from clipped restraint to harnessed histrionics, at times rushing by with Doppler effect. The lyrics scratch their head in search of epistemological nirvana, a pursuit akin to the arduous process of making the album. "The fool on the hill, the king in his castle" goes searching for all human knowledge and the more he discovers, he realizes the less he knows.

The Dreaming’s disparate narratives frequently seem to be tropes for Bush’s quest for artistic autonomy and the anxieties that accompany it; the bungled heist in There Goes A Tenner, the ‘glimpse of God’ in 'Suspended In Gaffa', even the Vietnamese soldier pursuing his American prey for days in 'Pull Out The Pin'. "Sometimes it’s hard to know if I’m doing it right, can I have it all?" she sings in 'Suspended In Gaffa', a Gilbert and Sullivan-esque romp in 6/8, as reimagined by Luis Bunuel. (She was also asked during the album’s recording to appear in a production of The Pirates Of Penzance). A peculiar mix of self-doubt and pole-vaulting ambition characterizes many of the songs here.

Another serpentine shape-shifter, 'Night Of The Swallow' deals with flight and imprisonment, a pilot begs his lover to "let me go" on a journey carrying potentially dangerous cargo (terrorists?). The lexicon of The Dreaming is rife with a similar tension: "wings beat and bleed" at windows, protaganists lock up their bodies like houses and then "face the wind" or recall "rich, windy weather" when incarcerated. Escapoligists perish "bound and drowned". An interpretive stretch perhaps but woven into the lyrics is the thrill and the threat of change: a move away from the prison house of public perception that had plagued Bush in a lot of ways or confronting her own limitations. It could even be wrestling with the surrender to the discipline of rhythm. Its presence ebbs and flows, a rigid backbone that frequently crumbles, giving way to more free-flowing musical passages.

The proviso Bush had for The Dreaming was that everything was to "be cinematic and experimental". Movies inform The Dreaming as much as any musical influences. When describing 'Pull Out The Pin', she synaesthetically blurs the vocabulary of music with that of film, referring to wide shots and "trying to focus on the pictures" between the speakers. The song’s evocation of the Vietnam forest, "humid... and pulsating with life" is astonishing; all queasy protruding Danny Thompson double bass lines, musique concrete, Chinese drums and a distorted guitar sounding like a US soldier’s scratchy transistor. Much of these sounds were collated by drummer Preston Heyman in Bali. With its foliage of samples and cultures converging it nods to My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, the landmark Byrne/Eno collaboration recorded in 79 but released in 81.

It remains a terribly sad record. A treatise on "how cruel people can be to one another, and the amount of loneliness people expose themselves to". Perhaps John Lennon’s murder and the dog-eat-dog ethos of Thatcherism had cast their shadow here. While the record was being made, the Falklands crisis escalated and unemployment rose. Many of The Dreaming’s characters seem to be caught in the vice grip of western ‘civilization’; the hapless robber in 'There Goes A Tenner', the aboriginal way of life on the brink of erosion on the title track, the Vietnamese soldier meeting his American nemesis on 'Pull Out The Pin'. They may symbolize the tightrope walk Bush felt she was embarking on with the record. But this dense and allusive stuff with twists and turns requiring as many footnotes as TS Eliot’s The Waste Land, shares that poem’s occidental disenchantment.

And like that modernist masterpiece, The Dreaming glimpses at a very metropolitan melancholy. Bush would never make an album in London again, a city she felt had an air of dread hanging over it’. 'All The Love', a forlorn musical sigh, features percussive sticks imitating Venetian blinds turning shut. It climaxes with messages from Bush’s actual malfunctioning answerphone: all very modern alienating devices, straight from the same world of Bowie’s 'Sound & Vision'. This was after all, the year Time magazine voted the computer as person of the year. Palmer’s ECM-like drowsy bass almost sobs with regret.

Throughout The Dreaming, sound speaks. 'All The Love' is subdued relief. But its constituent parts hover desolately in the mix, pitching a ‘lack of love’ song with a choirboy, somewhere between Joni Mitchell’s road trip jazz on 'Hejira' and the void of Nico’s 'The End'. Full of space & loneliness.

At the centre of this creative storm is Bush. The vocal performances are a multi-faceted assault on the singer’s sometimes squeaky, whimsical past. There are guttural, larynx-shredding exclamations juxtaposed with whispers, sometimes on even the softer songs. A master of counterpoint and vocal embroidery, which Bush attributed to her mother’s Irish ancestry, the singer layers the songs with kaleidoscopic variety. Even the mellifluous 'Suspended In Gaffa' has shrieking incisions. Her voice is largely deeper and thicker than before, the unbridled emotionalism now more potent, due to its stringent control. On 'Houdini', a pint of milk and two chocolate bars were consumed to give her voice the required "spit and gravel" ('Night Of The Swallow' and 'Pull Of The Pin' also have phlegmatic operatics)”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Clive Arrowsmith 

Next year is the fortieth anniversary of The Dreaming. I feel there should be huge celebration then. Maybe we might get a reissue? Although Bush has dabbled in retrospection and reissues (she put out her albums in 2018 remastered), we have not seen extras and demos of the studio albums. I can only imagine what is in the vaults; the material Bush recorded for The Dreaming that was not used. Although Hounds of Love (the 1985 follow-up) is her most-acclaimed work, The Dreaming, to me, is as astonishing and accomplished. It is an album that means so much to different people. Ann Powers wrote a very personal and moving piece for NPR last month. I would encourage people to read the whole thing. I have selected some extracts that moved me:

“There are so many ways that women in particular are made into monsters. As girls, they bleed too soon, or grow too fat, or remain too boyish. They have the wrong color skin in societies that have turned lies about race into law. Becoming pregnant, they cannot contain themselves, losing the baby, or losing their firm bodies after the birth. Failing to become pregnant, they find themselves marked as barren, bony, half. Women may be called monstrous simply for keeping to themselves, unkempt and unbeautiful, especially as they age. Or for the opposite — claiming space with too large a footprint. Women are identified as monsters for being, speaking, changing, being alive. Some are punished openly for these violations. Most carry the judgement within.

Occasionally, a woman – usually an artist — will make it her mission to speak as the monster others fear her to be. Living through abnormality, she sees something else in it. Potential to claim the ugliness, to refine it like blood turning into energy inside her body, until it lends strength. Shape-shifting can become shame-shifting. The voice of the monster says, I am here, mine enemies, I feel with every fiber of my being, I am wholly myself and have the right to be alive.

My Kate fandom grew rapidly and in isolation, like oleander in a terrarium. My roommates thought she was weird, removing her records from the shared stereo in our dingy living room to put on The Cure. The ode to her greatness I wrote for the balding, leather-jacketed editor who'd given me my first byline got killed. Too florid, he said. I piled up lines in my journals using green and purple ink. "I am Athena — I am Diana — I am my own answer," I wrote, quoting a Kate song about childbearing in the same paragraph. "There's 'Room For the Life' in my womb and in my soul. I am a mysterious and beautiful creature, glorying in the independent realization of my essence."

Throughout The Dreaming, a young woman expresses the pain and explores the potential of monstrous transformation. "With my ego in my gut, my babbling mouth would wash it up," Bush sings in the album's centerpiece, the drum-struck "Leave It Open." Her mouth issues moans and screams, sounds less and more than human. "Harm is in us, the power to arm," the backing vocalists, her consorts and twins, chant as she wails like a wind spirit. She will wrestle with unnamed forces within and without. By the end of the song she has found her statement of purpose, rendered in a complex layer of manipulated lines and backward tracks. "We let the weirdness in," she sings. She ingests the poison of others' perceptions and her own fears and transfigures.

I can still remember lowering the needle onto the vinyl in that junk-furnished living room, laying on the floor right beneath the turntable, turning up the volume until the speakers shook. The drums on The Dreaming announced it as something new. I knew next to nothing about African music at 18, but I could recognize syncopation, which brought the noise to Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" (my verging-on-ex boyfriend, a classical cellist, had turned me on to that) and the swagger to the artist who ruled the speakers at arty kids' parties that year — Prince. "Sat in Your Lap," The Dreaming's first track, hit with a huge bass drum intermingled with something else. What was it? My ears tried to grab the song's moving parts. Kate screaming: "I must admit, just when I think I'm king, I just begin!" Bang, bang! Kate's brother Paddy huffing and ho-ho-hoing in the background, the keyboard bouncing like wheels on cobblestone, a child's shout surfacing deep in the mix. And her dragon call, bold, then beaten back, then hoisting itself up again.

The songs about Bush's own struggles were the ones that struck me the hardest. At their heart was a clanging rage, partly stemming from Bush's impatience with being objectified as either a nut case or a sex symbol. I felt trapped like that, for other reasons. Just starting to find my feet as a writer, covering the all-ages beat for Seattle's favorite rock rag, I felt like a lumpy alien among the sarcastic men and too-cool women who hung out in the office located over the Rendezvous bar. I'd dash in and out of my editor's office, hoping no one would try to talk to me. At school I was in over my head, trying to understand Joyce's Ulysses as taught by a Great Scholar who never addressed me beyond an occasional curt correction. Most of my brain space remained fixated on the two subjects I'd brought with me from Catholic high school: God, whom I was trying desperately to reinvent to accommodate my loosened morals, and boys, the main impetus for the loosening. "I don't understand why I, who am a decent, kind, and religious person, keep getting cheated out of happy romance by falling for jerks," I wrote in my journal. "I ought to go to a therapist."

I did not go to a therapist. Instead, I sank my whole monstrous body into The Dreaming and imagined myself shape shifting as Kate could. What made it seem possible was the struggle I could hear in every track. She was teaching herself how to be a new kind of musician; I needed to be a new kind of me. The fight inside me pitted my longing to become shameless — to own that punk attitude the prettier, thinner girls around me seemed to effortlessly adopt — against the shame I felt inside. Shame about being too fat, too loud, not the kind of girl the rock boys I wanted wanted back. Shame because I slept with those guys anyway and then they turned away from me. Shame because my mother still thought I was a virgin. Shame when I spoke too much in class and the male professors raised their eyebrows. Shame when I didn't speak up, standing in the kitchen at punk parties dominated by playful fistfights between the boys while the girls slinked off to smoke menthols on the porch. Shame because, since the day my seventh-grade classmates had scorned me for leaving period blood in a lavatory toilet, I'd known I was hideous”.

I have always been baffled how The Dreaming never got the respect it deserved. Bush threw herself into the album fully. Even if the material is not that commercial, it is so awe-inspiring and important! Bands and other artists who were producing similarly experimental music in the 1982 were not getting the same sort of dismissal. As I say, The Dreaming has found new love; people judging it as a whole, rather than on the singles – apart from Sat in Your Lap, it was not a great showing in terms of chart positions! After thirty-nine years, it remains this mind-bending and wonderous album from a musical genius. Every time I listen to it, The Dreaming elicits…

SO many moods and reactions.

FEATURE: (What's the Story) Morning Glory? The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2

FEATURE:

 

 

(What's the Story) Morning Glory?

IMAGE CREDIT: BBC 

The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2

___________

I have a bit of a quandary…

 PHOTO CREDIT: BBC/PA

when I listen to the radio weekday mornings! I am a massive fan of Lauren Laverne and always tune into her BBC Radio 6 Music breakfast show at 7:30 (although there is a schedule change from next month that will change the show time). Starting an hour earlier is Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2. I have been listening to Ball for years. When she used to present children’s T.V. back in the day, I was a devoted viewer. She is a legend who is a phenomenal broadcaster! There is no anniversary or real significant reason for posting this feature. I have been writing a lot about BBC Radio 6 Music and how essential the station has been through such a hard past year or two. I have been listening to Zoe Ball a lot more (switching between her and Lauren Laverne) because she is this very warm and embracing person. Not insulting to say a mother-type figure, the combination of great music and the affection she has for her listeners and team – including Richie Anderson and newsreader Clare Runacres – has won me and millions of others. I don’t think that it is an age thing (I am thirty-eight). Many people my age listen to BBC Radio 2, so I think that radio in general has converted a lot of people. I have written about Lauren Laverne quite a bit, and my affection for her is limitless – she is someone who I have to listen to. Zoe Ball is an iconic broadcaster who delivers such essential listening weekday breakfasts.

She is a joyous voice that spins darn good tunes, plus she brings the listeners in and has a real rapport with everyone. This is a love letter I guess. I can only imagine how great it must be to work on the team and arrive at Wogan House, London to work alongside Ball – the getting up at silly-o-clock every weekday loses some of its sting! Although I listen to Laverne the most, I listen back to Zoe Ball’s breakfast shows on BBC Sounds a bit later sometimes. Although the format of the show has changed - so that guests and live performances are conducted remotely -, the show has lost none of its magic and energy! I know Ball will be looking forward to the day when she can see guests in the studio. If you are someone who feels that listening to BBC Radio 2 is for certain people/age groups, check out The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show. Since 14th January, 2019, Ball has been at the helm of one of the most prestigious shows on radio. I have dived into BBC Radio 2 more during the pandemic. I love listening to Sara Cox, Claudia Winkleman and Jo Whiley. Of course, Ken Bruce has been part of my radio listening life for years! I would love to work at the station one day, as you have all these fantastic broadcasters who have so much respect for one another – I like to think that they all used to hang out outside of work and will do so again when things improve!

I will finish up with an interview from back in June. Ball has not long celebrated five-hundred breakfast shows. At fifty, she has been in radio and broadcasting for a long time now. Even so, she still seems genuinely stunned by having this dream job and having listeners call up and interact. Someone who never takes her position for granted. The Guardian chatted with Zoe Ball about an incredible career that includes the phenomenal breakfast show:

“Her job at Radio 2 took on particular significance during the worst of the pandemic, when her listeners, often key workers, contacted the show. She remembers “someone who was sat outside the hospital, about to go in for another shift. They were exhausted and they just sat for a minute to listen to the radio and fill themselves up with the strength to face it. So it was good to get those messages – but they had us in tears.”

She adds that, “The voice on the radio is a friend and is company,” and insists she needed it too, listening to her favourites Liza Tarbuck and Jo Whiley, and as much news as she could handle, which wasn’t much. “Bit of Emma Barnett, Adrian Chiles on Five Live, a bit of Evan [Davis] at PM. Just to hear some calm news, rather than the hysterical. And we had new listeners coming across from the current affairs space going, ‘Actually that’s quite harrowing, I just want to hear some Cher.’”

PHOTO CREDIT: Sophia Spring/The Observer 

As for the show, she and her team had just been getting into the swing of it before the pandemic altered what they could do. (The recording studio at Wogan House became skeletally staffed.) They were determined to turn around the reports saying that they had lost a million listeners since Chris Evans left, and the columnists crowing that Zoe wasn’t worth the money. Given what many people think about six-figure salaries, especially in relation to a public body, I wonder if Ball has ever felt able to thoroughly celebrate, to admit she’s smashed it.

“Er, no. I never think I’ve smashed it,” she says. “I don’t think you ever take any of it for granted at all. Erm, you know, honestly, I’ve never done what I do because of the money. I have worked for the BBC for a lot of my career and I kind of always did it for the love. People always go, ‘Oooh, well that’s nonsense,’ but it isn’t, I love my job, I love what I do. It’s great fun to try to entertain.”

I tell her that she will always be the woman who broke the BBC’s glass ceiling, that it’s a historic position to be in. “Well,” she says, slowly and carefully. “It did feel like a good, positive moment, that there was a big corporation willing to pay a woman about the same as what they had paid a man.” She relaxes a bit and lets out a laugh. “Sadly, for some, that story didn’t really seem to be that… And then suddenly you’ve got other headlines.”

 She is doing this interview because she has just done her 500th breakfast show on Radio 2, though on the day itself, when listeners phone in to congratulate, she says she can’t quite believe she’s still allowed to be in the job, and jokes that perhaps nobody has noticed. I do think she lives with the anxiety that it could all end. She says her dad taught her to go with the fear of live broadcasting and channel the anxiety into adrenalin, but she also clearly loves it. Really, truly loves it.

“I think there’s something quite lovely about coming to this sort of age and thinking, yeah! Do you know what? I mean, 30 years of working in telly and radio. I’ve had it pretty good”.

I will leave it there. I have always had the utmost love and respect for Zoe Ball! Like so many during the pandemic, her show has become even more important. There are moments of emotion and ‘reality’, though one also gets a lot of joy and laughter. It is a perfect mixture. As we head into the autumn, the weather will get worse and the days shorter. Having Zoe Ball and her team there from 6:30 of a morning definitely gives the day the kick and sunshine that one needs! I hope that Ball remains at BBC Radio 2 for many years to come. She has a family and lot of love there. That is extended by the loyal listeners that she has attracted. In terms of broadcasters, Zoe Ball is…

 PHOTO CREDIT: BBC

ONE of the all-time greats.

FEATURE: We’ve Only Just Begun… The Final Shaun Keaveny BBC Radio 6 Music Show

FEATURE:

 

 

We’ve Only Just Begun…

PHOTO CREDIT: Sean Adams

The Final Shaun Keaveny BBC Radio 6 Music Show

___________

THIS will be a fairly long review/tribute…

PHOTO CREDIT: Charlotte Bond

but, as the irreplaceable and hugely loved Shaun Keaveny bade farewell to his loyal and passionate listening family yesterday on BBC Radio 6 Music, I wanted to reflect on the final show after fourteen years at the station. I also wanted to pay tribute to – not for the last time, I can assure you! – a broadcasting legend. I know Shaun looks up to the late broadcast master, Sir Terry Wogan. The love he has for the much-missed icon has been clear. Modestly, Shaun says that he can not measure up to Terry’s genius and legacy. I think, if you listened back to the show yesterday (it was between 1 and 4 p.m.), many would strongly disagree! In the weeks leading up to the final broadcast, Shaun ran a feature: Shaun’s Show Stopper. It was for a listener to guess which song would end the final show. I guess it would be ABBA’s Thank You for the Music (which was played yesterday). As it was, it was the Carpenters’ We’ve Only Just Begun. Listeners (incorrectly) guessed songs that it could be. Shaun kicked himself because he felt their ideas were better and made more sense. I don’t think he could have been further from the truth! The pitch and timing of such a memorable song was perfect. It was an emotional hit and a gentle song that we needed – if he went out on a big and loud track, then it would not have resonated as much.

The lyrics are especially relevant and true. Consider the lines “Before the risin' sun, we fly/So many roads to choose/We'll start out walkin' and learn to run/(And yes, we've just begun)”. Shaun has so many options ahead of him! Broadcasting companies and pretty much everyone will be bidding for his services. His adoring listeners and those who have supported him through the years will follow him with love wherever he goes. I am so sad that he is no longer at BBC Radio 6 Music – though I know that, very soon, we will hear him broadcasting again. I keep joking that he should get a BBC Radio 2 show, as he seems pretty comfortable on the station – though, as it also broadcasts out of Wogan House, London, it is sort of like returning to his old job but not (though many of us would kill to keep him in that building where he belongs!). I will round up by talking about his supporters and the people who turned out to celebrate his final show. The music chosen for the last show was wonderful. The first full-length song was Simple Minds’ Don't You (Forget About Me). There was a theme running in terms of titles – as we heard The Beatles’ Hello, Goodbye and The Sundays’ Here’s Where the Story Ends soon after. The tracks were so good and well-chosen. A mix of genres and time periods, it was almost a shame that he had to play songs from the BBC Radio 6 Music playlist and could not select a few more personal favourites – maybe some of The Wedding Present in the mix?

last time. Warning: EXTREME CLOSE UP! pic.twitter.com/DhqynQJ22M

— Shaun Keaveny 💙 (@shaunwkeaveny) September 10, 2021

That is the thing with Shaun. Such a professional to the end. Dedicated to the listeners and the station, his last show featured some awesome music. Not only did him playing ABBA’s Thank You for the Music set most people off; by the time Crowded House’s Don't Dream It's Over was played near the end (the antepenultimate song), I think everyone listening was a mess! There were some special contributors on the show. Al Murray was on the line and read a beautiful poem about Shaun. Simon Pegg was also on hand (from the motorway!), where the two old friends shared some memories and had a great talk. It was emotional but not too sentimental. What shone from them as well as everyone who texted and emailed was the respect there is for Shaun! A broadcaster who, for years, has made us smile, laugh and feel like we have someone in our corner and taking care of us, that void will be felt far and wide! That is one of the saddest things about Shaun going. It is not that we cling to the routine and hate change even though it needs to happen sometimes. It is the presence and importance of that person that leaves. Even if it is a radio show, it means so much to so many people. To take that away after so many years is gutting. One of the main reasons why I have been tuning into BBC Radio 6 Music for so many years is because of Shaun. The cornerstone of the station, he is a broadcaster who brings humour, warmth and a unique style.

 IMAGE CREDIT: Gus Hoyt (a.k.a. Gus from Bristol)

He is almost a classic type of broadcaster that does not exist anymore. Not that the station lacks great broadcasters…but Shaun is unmatched and an enormously popular figure. I hope that there is a way to preserve the last show Shaun delivered, as it is such an astonishingly powerful and beautiful three hours of radio! The playlist was wonderful and stirred so many emotions. He was his usual blend of funny, cheeky, witty and, well…Shaun Keaveny. The final link (the last couple of minutes) was tear-jerking, heart-breaking and shocking. Shaun paid tribute to everyone who has been there through the years. From, perhaps, one of his best friend, Matt Everitt (who was in the studio during the show, and you know the two will work together again soon) to producers Phil and Zhara (apologies if I have misspelled her name!), through to his wife and former colleagues. A beautifully-written and poetic farewell, those who were fortunate enough to work with Shaun and call him a friend should count themselves very lucky! Shaun said, in his speech, how radio is not ephemeral. It is so much more than that: it is a community. Shaun talked about (the show) this garden being sown and blossoming. The listeners who have supported him and listened through the years helped it come together and flourish. They were such beautiful and honest words! Radio, especially during the past eighteen months, has been so much more than something temporary. It has been a lifeline and a sanctuary. A comfort and safety. Having Shaun keep us lifted and loved was so appreciated and invaluable – and we all will miss that so much!

Me too… https://t.co/4nA6zAj3DB

— Marc Riley ⚽️🍺🐳 (@marcrileydj) September 10, 2021

One of the revelations of his speech was the fact that he was told his show would not continue. We all felt that he made the decision himself and wanted to move on. Knowing this was not the case provoked anger on social media. It is so painful to know that he did not want to go (not now at least). I cannot understand the logic and rationale behind pushing aside someone who helped make the station what it is! Shaun was among the most vocal people to protest when BBC Radio 6 Music was threatened with closure years ago. He has stuck with them ever since and made us all so proud! Even after telling his listeners such a shocking fact, Shaun was pragmatic, dignified and strong. He did not accuse or swear. He did not get angry. Instead, he bravely explained how this (his departure) was part of the ebb and flow. Although we may never hear him back on BBC Radio 6 Music, he is always in our heart – and, as he said, the listeners will always be in his! The phenomenal love that was shown for him through his fourteen years goes to show what a human he is. Of course, there were so many tributes and tweets posted on his final day. Even today, ‘the morning after’ as it were, there are heartfelt posts and so much affection.

Massive love and respect and thanks to you always @shaunwkeaveny Thank you for bringing the daft when we needed it most, thank you for your vast heart and passion. You’re one in a billion. You mean the absolute world to so many of us. Cheers! Kiss you on both cheeks #onions ❤️ pic.twitter.com/qe16RCzHMH

— Nadine Shah (@nadineshah) September 10, 2021

The legendary Craig Charles takes over the afternoon slot. He will do a sterling job, though it will be so strange not to hear Shaun on that slot. We will miss his impressions and his features. The way he leaves some dead air and then goes “Ha!”! – almost like a father putting his hands over his eyes and then going “Bo!” to make his baby laugh and know that he has not disappeared (or something more elegant!). I saw Shaun outside of BBC Broadcasting House a few times through the years before his shows. Even though we never met or spoke – but I was there at Maida Vale when he presented his last breakfast show in 2018 -, I felt like I did know him. Here is someone who delivered incredible radio year in year out. We will miss that. Not hearing him and Matt Everitt (who presents the music news) on the same show. Him and Georgie Rogers (who also presents the music news) in the studio together. Such losses! From producer Phil to Small Claims Court, to the always-incredible selection of tracks he plays and the way he supported so many upcoming artists (Self Esteem and Penelope Isles), Shaun’s departure will reverberate for a long time. Loved by musicians, actors, creatives and pretty much everyone from all walks of life, he built a community; a beautiful garden and verdant Paradise that we all felt connected in. It is such a shame that we no longer get to experience that. Shaun will continue and keep himself busy. I know that everyone who listened to him on BBC Radio 6 Music will follow with interest. He is on Twitter, so we cannot get rid of him that easily!

#shaunkeaveny #onions https://t.co/2SKXgFjqjy pic.twitter.com/1aLbm1975x

— Vinette Robinson 💙 (@_vinette) September 10, 2021

It was especially touching yesterday hearing how many of his listeners travelled down to London to toast him and get together. At a pub around the corner from Wogan House – not sure if it was The Stags Head? -, regular listeners and contributors including Charlotte (from Bristol), Matt from Consett and Beth were there. I was lucky myself, as I was working yesterday from Cleveland Street – it is mere metres from Wogan House, so I could have nipped for a drink without too much of a commute! The fact that his loving listeners made those journeys and came so far to lift a pint (or two!) was one of the most emotional moments of his final show. Shaun got to speak to them in The Open Arms (a fictional pub where he speaks with listeners and the caller gets to choose a drink and have something played on the jukebox). I know that Shaun got to drink with them after the show (as one of the first photos in this feature documents!) – going to prove how in touch he is with his fans and being so ego-less and brilliant. I am going to end (I hope he doesn’t mind) with a video from Matt from Consett that captures Shaun, Matt and producer Phil being carted/taxied down the street waving and looking pretty merry!

@shaunwkeaveny the best thing that's ever happened to me today is meeting this lovely bunch!! @Big_Jim_Norwich @mattfromconsett @Fineshiz @CrystalHenley @Jon_T_R @Dante_Banks pic.twitter.com/1jG99KJCB7

— Charlotte Bond (@lottiebirkin) September 10, 2021

After the tears and cheers, there will be some sore heads today! His fan club, the Keavenettes (courtesy of Charlotte Bond) were there to salute a hero of theirs. I am not sure what direction the evening took, but I know there would have been so many people wanting to buy Shaun a pint and wishing him well. He was one of the people. He was one of us! I, personally, wanted to thank him for all the joy he has given me through the years (I hope our paths cross at some point down the line). BBC Radio 6 Music were so lucky to have Shaun Keaveny. He is a major reason as to why the station is so popular and must-hear. Even though the end of a fourteen-year run at BBC Radio 6 Music is so sad, the Leigh-born legend will be starting a new chapter today (make sure you subscribe to his new podcast, The Line-Up with Shaun Keaveny). To paraphrase the Carpenters’ song…

What a day! After boshing too much over priced export strength lager, this is the best tribute I can muster to three titans of radio xx

⁦@shaunwkeaveny⁩ ⁦@matteveritt⁩ ⁦@BBC6Music⁩ #shaunkeaveny pic.twitter.com/pC782RnJYL

— Matt from Consett (@mattfromconsett) September 10, 2021

HE’S only just begun.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Samantha Crain

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Lainey Conant 

Samantha Crain

___________

ONE of the most interesting artists…

on the scene today is Samantha Crain. She is a Choctaw songwriter, musician, producer, and singer from Shawnee, Oklahoma. I have not heard too many Choctaw artists. It is fascinating learning more about Crain’s heritage and hearing her sing in Choctaw. Crain  won 2 NAMMYs (Native American Music Awards) in 2009 for Folk Album of the Year and Songwriter of the Year. She also won the Indigenous Music Award for Best Rock Album in 2019. I am going to focus on her most-recent album, 2020’s A Small Death. In mid-2017, Crain was involved in three car accidents within three months. It left her in physical and mental pain and without use of her hands. Unable to write or play, she dictated voice memos to her phone. It is an amazing and harrowing story that led to one of the most memorable albums of last year! I can only imagine she must have been going through after her third car accident. Such a traumatic and terrible time where she might have wondered whether she would write and perform again! Although there is rumination, pain and sorrow through A Small Death, there is light and beauty. It is a naked and honest album that will blow you away. A Small Death is Crain’s sixth full-length release. I would advise everyone to check out her previous work. I am going to start by bringing in an interview from Secret Meeting. They spoke to her last year about A Smell Death and where the title came from:

“The album title itself poses a curious sentiment. The image of a small death becomes almost oxymoronic – the idea of everything ending completely, but only by a fraction. ‘Through that traumatic moment in my life where I had lost feeling in my hands, and was really grappling with my identity as a person outside of being a musician, it occurred to me that everything is sort of always starting over again at various points in our life,’ Crain explains on the album title. ‘It’s just trying to convey those points in your life where you are hitting the restart button.’ The title is taken from Joey, a song literally centered within the tracklisting, allowing Crain to almost hit this restart button again and again through the record’s lifespan.

In the height of the trauma, Crain has been living through her difficulties, both mental and physical, which left her unable to write music. Her relationship to music, from how she plays guitar to what she searches for through her lyrics, has had to evolve, to adapt from this period of emotional and physical upheaval forced upon her. ‘I feel like this particular time in my life forced a new way into writing,’ she tells us. ‘Since I was shutting down, and becoming a forced convalescence, I was keeping audio diaries, more as a therapy tool; I never thought they would become songs.’ An introspective therapy tool, these audio diaries informed the lyrics on the record. This period of inertia has also played a dictating role in the ways Crain can play music. Eventually regaining the strength in her hands to pick up her guitar, she has had to make concessions in musical complexity, for the sake of being able to make music. ‘I’ve had to veer more into open-tunings, because I still struggle with my hands,’ she explains. It is an interesting move away from how I would traditionally write songs.’ This change against the tide of tradition has not hampered the record though. Rather, the lyrical depth is thrust to the front, confronting the listener as intently as Crain confronts herself.

 ‘This record was really cathartic for me,’ she later explains. ‘I think different people create for different reasons. Some people create to process things while they’re happening, and some people create to move on from something after they’ve spent time processing it.’ Likening her cause to create to the latter, she seems grounded and reflective; ‘I’ve spent all this time processing these traumas, but now that I can create this record, I can move on from it.’ Developing these songs unknowingly, without the context of a record in the initial stages, has allowed Crain to beckon this sense of catharsis. ‘It freed me up to exist outside the normal context of what I would be comfortable including in songs in the past,’ she says. ‘It has let me dive into those deeper layers of the autobiographical, self-confessional aspects. I have always considered myself to write close to the heart, but because I didn’t have this [self-built] construct of how songs should be or how they have been in the past, it has lent itself to something that hits a little bit deeper.’

Not only is this depth of her self-confessional nuance present through her lyricism, it informs the record’s soundscape too, in its slow-moving climbs and sombre tones, at points creating a feeling akin to waking from slumber. Self-producing the record has allowed Crain to ensure this feeling is preserved throughout, likening it to the sense of being in a fever dream. ‘[It’s] like that feeling where you remember something, not innately, but you remember the memory of it. Like whenever there’s a story that’s been told in your family, for years and years, and it becomes part of the canon of your reality,’ she explains. ‘The reason why that was the feel I was trying to convey in the production of this record is because that’s how I feel about these two years in my life. I know I was the person who went through this heightened emotional and physical stress, but I don’t remember that innately, it feels very dream-like.’ This feeling is most clearly addressed on Pastime – created through a textured background vocals of chanting aums, creating for Crain the effect of this ‘trance-like, meditative feeling, where you can’t tell if you’ve been listening to a song for 30-seconds or 30-minutes. So that was the experiment – to bring that feeling into the record.’

The penultimate track on the record sees Crain singing in Choctaw – her ancestral language. Written in the mode of protest song, We Shall Overcome, When We Remain bears great significance to Crain, from rewriting stolen tradition, to cultivating and celebrating her heritage. ‘Writing in the Choctaw language, over the last few years, is something that has become really important to me,’ she says. ‘Mainly because I believe it is the one way, the most important way to hold on to the survival for those indigenous cultures and tribes.’ Continuing, Crain explains the importance of surviving indigenous languages in light of responses she has had to previous records – highlighting a widespread ignorance towards indigenous peoples. ‘I even ran into [this ignorance] reading reviews of my record, where it mentions my heritage isn’t apparent in my music, which just is not true,’ she tells us. ‘What that is doing is playing into the stereotype of what little knowledge people actually have of Native Americans; of what they do and how they live. It makes me think if I’m not playing a hand-drum or a flute, then I’m not making indigenous art. Which is really belittling. I think it’s really important that people understand that if I make anything, if I make a little drawing right now on a piece of paper, if I write a poem, if I cook a meal, those are Choctaw because I am Choctaw.’ A tool for rebuilding indigenous identity and culture that has been wrecked by land removal and genocide, Crain further highlights the importance of continuing these languages through contemporary music. ‘I think it is a really useful tool to say, “It’s not possible for me to learn the songs of my ancestors, because I can’t find them anymore. They were taken from us. But I can write my own new songs in our language, and those can be new traditions to us.” That’s why it is so important to me. It can be quite a powerful thing to get young, indigenous people in the mindset of creating new traditions’”.

A new Samantha Crain song, Pick Apart, arrived a couple of weeks ago. I will include that at the end of this feature. I am excited to see whether we might get another album from the amazing songwriter soon. Last year, Americana Highways spoke with Crain and asked her about the importance of singing in Choctaw:

“Americana Highways: A number of the songs (“Reunion,” “Pastime,” “Joey”) on your new album seem to have you looking back at your past and assessing how it’s affected your present. After a half-dozen albums, what led to such intense self-reflection?

Samantha Crain: I couldn’t use my hands. I think any sort of check in with mortality will cause self-reflection. As I was in a time of reconstruction following these traumas in my life, I began to search for and learn about who I was as a person outside of my self-appointment and identification as the musician, Samantha Crain. Without the physical ability to play instruments at the time, I spent time talk-writing poetry into a voice recorder, reading, walking, talking to people, living a quiet life. I felt like I was getting to know myself from scratch, peeling off a costume that I was put in as a child and allowing myself, for the first time, to dress myself and fully lean into my curiosities and sensitivities.

AH: “When We Remain” is written and sung in Choctaw. How important is it to you to be able to sing a song of such perseverance in the language of your ancestors?

SC: For many indigenous Americans, the traditions and connections to our ancestors were stripped from us, generations of abuse and genocide and dislocation created a huge chasm for us to truely know the ways of our passed elders. Therefore, it is imperative that we as indigenous Americans can create our own traditions and become empowered in the fact that “if I make something–if i write a song, if i write a poem, if i paint a picture, if i cook a meal–it is Choctaw, because I am Choctaw…no matter if it matches the colonial idea and stereotype of what would be considered indigenous art or creation.” The language remembers, the language connects us over that chasm that was forced.

AH: Before recording A Small Death, you suffered through some pretty significant physical ailments, You weren’t able to play music, which you’ve described as a sort of loss of identity. Now, with not being able to tour or play shows due to COVID-19, are you experiencing anything similar, or is this different?

SC: It is very different. It wasn’t the loss of being able to tour or play shows that distressed me, it was the inability to have use of my hands, for basic things too, not just for playing music. That is a very different circumstance. As an artist, I am used to pivoting, I’m used to feast and famine, I’m used to having to get creative in order to pay my bills….the pandemic is uncomfortable and hard, yes, but it isn’t a loss of identity.

AH: Your previous albums, for the most part, seem to have been more singer-songwriter-ish – that is, a little quieter, with simpler arrangements, etc. A Small Death has, overall, a bigger, more expansive sound. Was it a change that you had in mind while writing the songs, or did it develop more in the studio?

SC: I never think about a project I’m working on in reference to another one of my records while I’m making it. All production and arrangement are simply in service to the song and I try to follow that gut feeling. Looking back, I actually feel like A Small Death is quite reserved in its production and arrangements compared to some of my other records. So I just feel like we’re on different pages on how we view these albums.  I feel like my last album You Had Me At Goodbye was a very expansive and out there record and then my first record Songs In the Night was a full rock band on every song. So it’s possible you’re referring to one particular album that is quieter but I’m not sure which one you’re referring to, probably Kid Face or Under Branch and Thorn and Tree”.

I am going to round up soon. The reviews for A Small Death were pretty impressive. It is an album that people responded to. In their review, this is what American Songwriter had to offer:

“Acclaimed singer/songwriter Samantha Crain has released her first album in three years. It’s the first since recovering from a debilitating illness which created such severe physical pain she was bedridden and couldn’t play or perform. This disc’s title, her sixth, implies the issues she persevered over to craft these eleven tracks.

Opening “The Echo” with lyrics “But then became the summer when my hands appeared so useless/I felt like a little baby and my pride evaporated like the water in a skillet…” just scratches the surface of the intense feelings stirred up in these often harrowing but passionately played and sung pieces.

Musically, it’s not all gloomy. Crain takes over the producer’s chair from veteran John Vanderslice (who successfully helmed her previous three releases) bringing in such unlikely instruments as pedal steel, trumpet, clarinet, accordion and saxophone, all infusing subtle textures to songs that might otherwise buckle under their lyrical weight. “When We Remain”’s lyrics of “When we remain, we will be the flowers and the trees and the vines that overcome the forgotten city,” is sung in both Choctaw and English (Crain is of Native American descent).

There are more moments like those in the stark, slow, melancholy “High Horse” where she says “I know the shape of a great heartache/I know the weight of a big mistake/I know the sound of a warm crescendo falling away,” than there are somewhat lighter passages such as “Pastime”’s yearning “And it feels like… you were always there.”

Crain’s striking vocals wrap around her indie folk/rockers with requisite sensitivity and intensity. She sounds appropriately dreamy on “Holding to the Edge of Night” then shifts into a thrilling higher register on the chorus of “And it is so good around you” in “Garden Dove.” She delves into this often wincingly personal material with a passion and honesty that can only emerge from deep within. There are times when it seems like you’re spying on the artist as she sings her penetratingly intimate lyrics.  Tunes like “Tough for You” recount a story that is likely ripped from her past. Its words of “I bit through my top lip when I was a kid and a ball of scar’s still there/And I remember so clearly the blood everywhere/A quivering chin and a single tear” reflect that often dark approach.

Listening closely to A Small Death (pre-order/pre-save) all the way through is like watching a melodramatic foreign movie; spellbinding and deliberately paced with an ambiance that leaves you reflective but anticipating better times are (hopefully) ahead”.

Samantha Crain is a terrific artist who is one you should know about! Even though she has been releasing music for years now, there are people who might not know about. Go and check her out. I know that we are going to see even more outstanding music from the Shawnee-born artist. In Samantha Crain, we have a marvellous songwriter…

WITH few equals.

______________

Follow Samantha Crain

PHOTO CREDIT: Lainey Conant  

Official:

https://www.samanthacrain.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/sjcrain/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/sjcrain

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Samanthacrainmusic/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5dpLK5cD7FwWyDKv4qbodS?si=WrkWAA1AQUOB263PjzQv8Q&nd=1

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKXDlZVY24P1q7EIKXLVI2g

FEATURE: Second Spin: N.E.R.D - Fly or Die

FEATURE:

 

 

Second Spin

N.E.R.D - Fly or Die

___________

IT is hard to beat…

a debut album as flawless as In Search of... N.E.R.D Pharrell Williams, Chad Hugo and Shay Haley delivered a Hip-Hop masterclass in 2001. My favourite track from that, Rockstar, is one that I spin all of the time! Marrying great rapping and lines together with Rock guitars and big beats, it is both smooth and physically edgy. The album was released in Europe in 2001. On 12th March, 2002, In Search of... was released worldwide. The band recorded the second album, Fly or Die, during 2003. N.E.R.D taught themselves to play the instruments needed to perform the tunes live. It meant that they were more than singers, songwriters and producers – if that was not enough! Some feel that Fly or Die is a weak or less inspired version of the debut. Produced by The Neptunes (Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo), there are some really strong songs on Fly or Die. The singles, She Wants to Move and Maybe are incredible! The album starts properly intently with Don’t Worry About It! The title track is awesome, whilst Drill Sergeant/Preservation is a fantastic way to end the album. Despite the odd weak track and nothing quite as electrifying as Rockstar, I think people should listen to Fly or Die. This was during a period where Alternative Rock and Rap Rock was, perhaps, not at its strongest and most prolific. They are genres that I associate with bands like Rage Against the Machine. Perhaps the last really suggest of great acts in these genres was when In Search of... was re-released in 2002.

2004 was an incredible year for albums. Alongside The Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come for Free and Kanye West’s The College Dropout, we had Green Day’s American Idiot and Eminem’s Encore. Perhaps Rap was a more prevalent and popular commodity - though Usher’s Confessions was an incredible R&B album. It is a shame that there were some mixed reviews for N.E.R.D’s Fly or Die. I will end with a positive review. This is what AllMusic noted in their assessment:

“Unlike In Search Of..., originally made primarily on N.E.R.D.'s various machines and then reconfigured with assistance from funk-rock band Spymob, Fly or Die is kept almost entirely in-house. The ridiculous cover, along with first single "She Wants to Move" -- and its accompanying video, including a literal translation of the line "Her ass is a spaceship I want to ride" -- thankfully provide little indication of the album's true makeup. And the moments where the Star Trak hand sign gets flipped to a set of devil horns are mercifully fleeting, though "Backseat Love" is undoubtedly problematic -- it plays Dumberer to "She Wants to Move"'s Dumber. ("Lapdance" was Dumb.) The rest of the album isn't just noteworthy for subject matter that skips through child-parent relationship sketches, ecological reveries, and protest songs; the bright, bold Neptunes glaze that normally coats their chart-aimed singles of all stripes is applied to material that will leave many people baffled. The album sees N.E.R.D. rummaging through parts of their record collection that don't normally bubble to the surface in their production work.

Most disarming of all is "Wonderful Place," a seven-minute trip divided into halves. The first shows a chipper Pharrell striding through a sunny meadow, marveling at the natural wonders of the planet in spite of its troubles; with a horn-punched chorus ("My soul's in my smile/Don't frown, just get up get up") and other subtle splashes of Baroque pop elements, it owes equally to Burt Bacharach and the Left Banke. This dissolves into a fading whistle, only to give rise to a dramatic, synthetically orchestral and acoustic-folk tale about a near-fatal family fishing trip. Any parent of the past, present, or near future will be stirred, especially once Pharrell goes falsetto to emphasize the relief of the nearly drowned baby being rescued by his mother. Instead of pausing for effect, the album goosesteps into "Drill Sergeant," yet another two-parter. Half power pop bounce and half tumbling, doomsday pummel, the song pulls no punches with antiwar sentiments that target the government and media, and when a teeth-clenched Pharrell talks about his fear of blowing up, you know he's not talking about fame. Despite the heavy subject matter in a third of the songs, the album nonetheless carries a lighthearted, fun-loving lilt. At face value, Fly or Die is a rather straightforward rock record. To N.E.R.D.'s credit, no one else could've made this particular rock record. Ideas come by the bushel, hooks arrive when least expected, embedded jokes get discovered like Easter eggs. Nobody can tie all of these things together and make them glow quite like this. Apart from a ploy to get some rotation at your local mall's Hot Topic (Good Charlotte's Madden brothers make an appearance), they didn't appear to make this record for anyone but themselves. So while Fly or Die is one of the most creative and ambitious moments of the Neptunes' career, it might also be their least understood”.

 On Metacritic, Fly or Die holds a score of 68. There are some really positive reviews for the album, though some were on the fence. Wikipedia highlights a few reviews:

“Rolling Stone (4/15/04, p. 147) - 3 stars out of 5 - "It's fascinating to hear these rap geniuses go undercover as a bar band you might hear rocking Journey covers in a bowling alley."

Entertainment Weekly (4/2/04, p. 62) - "Fly or Die is craftier and more multilayered than its predecessor....[A] set of clever, complex, studio-crafted pop--complete with musicianly, smooth-jazz licks--that doesn't owe allegiance to any one genre." - Rating: A-

Uncut (p. 91) - 5 stars out of 5 - "N*E*R*D can replicate machine hypersyncopation at the drop of a hi-hat. Prog-pop album of year."

Uncut (p. 74) - Ranked #18 in Uncut's "Best Albums of 2004" - "[A]n object lesson in eclectic art-rock....[T]his prog-pop classic reveal further depths of detail with every repeated play."

Mojo (p. 106) - 4 stars out of 5 - "This is an enthusiastic hymn to the terminally uncool, an un-ironic celebration of nerd-culture....They make a party you want to be invited to".

Perhaps people were expecting an album similar to N.E.R.D.’s debut on the follow-up. I cannot really point to many faults at all. Fly or Die is a really solid album that is packed with terrific music and reliably solid production from The Neptunes!

I will end with NME’s. They were a lot more positive and jazzed than many critics with regards N.E.R.D’s Fly or Die:

“When Pharrell Williams once sang, "you can't be me, I'm a rock star" he seemed to be debunking the inherent ridiculousness and monomania that pop stardom brings, as much as he was celebrating it. Well, make no mistake about it - Pharrell is a capital-letters neon-lights Rock Star, quite possibly the finest, brashest, most balls-bared rock star we have at our disposal, and 'Fly Or Die' sees him trying on the title for size and finding that it fits just dandy.

This is still, more or less, a hip-hop record: the nuts and bolts are there, the hefty bass, the beats that thunder like rutting mastodons. But over and above the jeep beats, there is Williams and his wonderful world of whims and why-not?s, painting almost every track in glorious technicolour. He has clearly approached 'Fly Or Die' as the kind of project where the central aim is to show us all how clever he is, and as he flits from musical style to style like a hungry pop bee, you're pounded into submission because HE IS JUST SO GODDAMN GOOD AT EVERYTHING.

It starts as it means to go on - gigantically. 'Don't Worry About It' is truly awesome, a gigantic hard rock classic overladen with Williams' hysterical shrill funk vocals. Just as it reaches a full head of steam, it suddenly explodes into a rapturous, harmony-saturated break that Prince at his most Paisley Park would struggle to best.

‘Fly Or Die' is even more Big Rock, with the chaps slipping in sinuous G-funk breaks for good measure, but the fun really starts when 'Backseat Love' thunders into view. One part 'All Right Now' by Free, one part LL Cool J at his most swollen-bollocked, it is the best, by which we mean nastiest, slice of old skool lasciviousness allowable by law, and makes Har Mar Superstar sound like Cliff Richard. In fact, if Sir Cliff were ever to hear it, he'd cast off the V plates and fuck till his pods dried up. Allegedly.

The most amazing track on the album, though, is 'Drill Sergeant', for no other reason than that it is an absolutely fantastic guitar pop record. In fact, it sounds just like - I shit you not - the N.E.R.D at their most sunshined-up and effervescent and it WILL be a Number One. By way of a contrast, we then get the bludgeoning guitars of 'Preservation', the closest thing on here to 'Rock Star' with its monstrous slabs of fuzz and lyrical belligerence. Said guitar licks call to mind nobody more than everybody's favourite inquisitive smut bloodhound, Pete Townsend. And then by way of another contrast, we get 'Thrasher', which is the most straight-up hip-hop track on here with its unashamedly woofer-threatening thump-beats,were it not for the fact that it comes drenched with Sergeant Pepper-esque string arrangements. Elsewhere, Lenny Kravitz do ('Breakout', with its mosh-friendly chorus), a little more Prince, a little Curtis Mayfield…”.

I would advise everyone to listen to N.E.R.D’s music. If you have not heard Fly or Die, definitely give it a go. Songs She Wants to Move are played on the radio, though you do not really hear too much else from it. I love the album, and I feel it is a worthy follow-up to the remarkable In Search of… The fact Fly or Die reached the top-ten in the album charts in the U.S. and U.K. proves that there was demand for N.E.R.D’s brilliance. Seventeen years later, Fly or Die holds up. It is an album that you…

WILL want to play.

FEATURE: The September Playlist: Vol. 2: I’ll Say the Word

FEATURE:

 

 

The September Playlist

Vol. 2: I’ll Say the Word

__________

THIS week’s Playlist…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kacey Musgraves

has so many huge songs in the mix! Not only is there new stuff from Radiohead, Lana Del Rey, Kacey Musgraves, Chlöe, Sam Fender, MUNA (ft. Phoebe Bridgers), Ed Sheeran, and Glass Animals. There is music from Alicia Keys (ft. Swae Lee), Holly Humberstone, Tommy Genesis, and Hayden Thorpe. It is a packed and eclectic mix that should keep you occupied and energised! If you need a boost to get you into the weekend, then the songs below should do the job. It is a huge week for new music. I hope that this sort of quality and quantity continues to the end of 2021. Sit back and take in the very best of this week. It is another broad and quality-rich…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Lana Del Rey

SELECTION of tunes.   

ALL PHOTOS/IMAGES (unless credited otherwise): Artists

__________

Radiohead - If You Say the Word

Lana Del Rey - Arcadia 

Kacey Musgarves – simple times

Sam Fender - Get You Down 

Chlöe - Have Mercy

MUNA (ft. Phoebe Bridgers) - Silk Chiffon  

Ed Sheeran – Shivers

Glass Animals - I Don't Wanna Talk (I Just Wanna Dance)

Alicia Keys (ft. Swae Lee) - LALA (Unlocked)

PHOTO CREDIT: Phoebe Fox

Holly Humberstone – Scarlett 

Tommy Genesis – men

PHOTO CREDIT: Alma Rosaz

Remi Wolf – Guerrilla 

Ms Banks – Go Low 

PHOTO CREDIT: Jack Johnstone

Hayden Thorpe – Metafeeling  

Fickle Friends - Love You to Death 

Steps – Wasted Tears

Amyl and The Sniffers – Hertz

SZA - The Anonymous Ones (from Dear Evan Hansen Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Aaliyah – Rock the Boat

PHOTO CREDIT: Alexa Viscius

Big Thief – Certainty 

Yard Act – The Overload

Kate Nash – Horsie

Ari Lennox – Pressure

Sabrina Carpenter - Skinny Dipping

Tirzah - Hive Mind 

Josie Man - Stormy Skies (Diamonds)

Harrison Whitford – Meclizine 

PHOTO CREDIT: Nick Grennon

Yumi Zouma – Give It Hell

Charlotte OC – Mexico

Foy Vance – We Can’t Be Tamed

PHOTO CREDIT: Adam Rosenbaum

 Hak Baker – Cool Kids 

screensaver – Skin 

PHOTO CREDIT: @andanotherwave

Harpy - Into the Dark

FEATURE: Childhood Treasures: Albums That Impacted Me: De La Soul - 3 Feet High and Rising

FEATURE:

 

 

Childhood Treasures: Albums That Impacted Me

De La Soul - 3 Feet High and Rising

___________

THIS is another album that…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ebet Roberts/Redferns

I have featured before that I am revisiting now. Whereas before I have discussed the impact and importance of De La Soul’s debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising, on the wider world, today, this is very much about its personal relevance. Most albums I can include in features so that you can listen to it. That is not the case with 3 Feet High and Rising. Owing to a contractual stipulation implemented years ago, De La Soul’s music has not been available on streaming sites. There is some good news for fans of the New York Hip-Hop trio. As we can see here, their music is back in their hands:

“De La Soul are back in control of their master recordings. Or so says Talib Kweli, who wrote in an Instagram post yesterday that he’d been told about this development by De La Soul member Maseo.

Kweli wrote: “Ladies and gentlemen, I spoke to Maseo from the legendary De La Soul today and it’s official… after years of being taken advantage [of] by the recording industry in the worst possible ways, De La Soul now owns all the rights to their masters and is in full control of the amazing music they have created”.

“Let’s salute Plugs 1, 2 and 3”, he added, “for sticking to their guns and showing us that we can all beat the system if we come together as a community. Let’s hear it for black ownership of black art! Congratulations fellas”.

The news follows the recent acquisition by Reservoir of the label that released most of De La Soul’s albums, that being Tommy Boy. At the time, many people wondered whether that deal could bring to an end the long running dispute between De La Soul and Tommy Boy which has meant that the group’s classic albums have been unavailable on the streaming services.

Following the deal, a rep for Reservoir told Variety: “We have already reached out to De La Soul and will work together to the bring the catalogue and the music back to the fans”. Meanwhile a post on the De La Soul Instagram around the same time read “woke up feeling a greater sense of peace of mind”.

It is good that such an iconic album might be available on streaming platforms soon. 3 Feet High and Rising was an album I remember coming to not long after it was released. Maybe it was the early-1990s. Before this, I had heard Hip-Hop and was aware of groups like Beastie Boys and Public Enemy. It seemed that New York in the 1980s was fostering so many hugely strong and vital bands who were taking Hip-Hop to the masses.

Some did criticise De La Soul, as 3 Feet High and Rising is flower power. It is a Daisy Age release that is more about jokes and the lighter side of life, as opposed political concerns, corruption and the experience of the Black community (although they do touch on that). Whereas diehard Hip-Hop fans and certain groups disliked their less-than-serious approach, most others have seen the genius of 1989’s 3 Feet High and Rising. One can compare De La Soul with Beastie Boys, in the sense that they blend myriad samples with songs that are witty and have an infectious charm. I am going to quote a couple of reviews for 3 Feet High and Rising, just to give a sense of what critics made of this debut masterpiece. As opposed some of the Pop and other styles of the 1980s, Hip-Hop has remained so relevant and fresh. One can listen to albums like 3 Feet High and Rising. One can get a perspective of the time in which it was made, though there is that sense of timelessness. Songs like Eye Know, The Magic Number and Buddy are classics. Throw into that mix Me Myself and I! Posdnuos, Trugoy and Maseo are so compelling and tight throughout the album. Writing alongside producer Prince Paul, we get a wonderful array of sounds and samples through the twenty-four tracks. It is quite hard to find 3 Feet High and Rising on vinyl. For that reason, many will welcome its arrival on streaming platforms soon!

Classic Album Sundays provided a detailed backstory and dive into a seismic Hip-Hop release. There are so many interesting revelations and interpretations:

“Formed in the Amityvile area of Long Island, New York in 1988, De La Soul consists of Kelvin Mercer aka Posdnuos aka Plug One, Dave Jolicoeur aka Trugoy aka Plug Two and Vincent Mason aka Maseo aka Plug Three. The three formed the group known as De La Soul, directly translating to From The Soul, in high school and quickly caught the attention of producer Prince Paul with a demo tape of the song “Plug Tunin'”.

The group’s Long Island roots may help explain their unique, quirky, spacious and eclectic perspective. Once removed from the hustle of New York City, but close enough to be well familiar with the roots of hip hop culture and music, De La Soul expresses a side of the black hip-hop experience that may benefit from, and also be a benefit to, the space and distance they enjoyed to truly digest, re-interpret and create an evolutionary hip-hop sound based on playful wordplay, innovative sampling and, of course, their trademark wisdom laid out over positive and soulful grooves.

Despite their youthful exuberance and expression, moving through 3 Feet High and Rising quickly reveal that De La Soul possesses a wisdom and sensibility beyond their years. Perhaps this sensibility in no better expressed that through the consistent themes of love and respect for women, an issue that had until this time and continues to pervade hip-hop.

IN THIS PHOTO: De La Soul in Long Island, New York in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Janette Beckman 

Over a brilliantly wholesome musical composition that uses Steely Dan’s “Peg” and The Mad Lads “Make This Young Lady Mine” as a backbone, De La Soul offers an earnest and sincere love song aimed at wooing a target of their affection. Posdnuos summarizes his proposal, rapping “It’s I again and the song that I send / Is taking steps to reach your heart /Any moment you feel alone /I can fill up your empty part”.

Don’t get it twisted. De La Soul knows how to have a good time. And “Buddy” is one of the best examples of a De La track that shows the unbridled fun and camaraderie that De La Soul helped birth alongside their Native Tongues brethren.

Paraphrasing Angie Martinez from the 2011 A Tribe Called Quest documentary “Beats, Rhymes & Life”, Native Tongues was never about “Fight the Power” or “Fuck the Police”… we had other groups for that… Native Tongues was about expression and upliftment using the best tool out there: fun.

The Native Tongues is a collective of late 1980s and early 1990s hip-hop artists known for their positive-minded, good-natured Afrocentric lyrics, and for pioneering the use of eclectic sampling and later jazz-influenced beats. Its principal members are the Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, and A Tribe Called Quest. Built on the foundation of likeminded youngsters and support from hip-hop veterans DJ Red Alert, Afrika Bambaata and Prince Paul, Native Tongues stormed the gates of hip-hop in the late 80’s and early 90’s, with Jungle Brothers being the first to hit.

But next to hit was De La Soul. On 3 Feet High and Rising crew cut “Buddy”, De La layered samples from Commodores and Bo Diddley to create an era-defining party track with an accompanying music video featuring the entire posse. With contributions from the members of Jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah, Monie Love and Q-Tip, Posdnuos sums it up, rapping “Now when Tribe, the Jungle, and De La Soul / Is at the clubs our ritual unfolds / Grab our bones and start swingin’ our hands / Then Jenny starts flockin’ everywhere)”.

It’s likely no coincidence that De La Soul wraps up 3 Feet High and Rising with a simple message over a simple beat. The term D.A.I.S.Y. Age was coined by De La Soul: it stands for ‘DA Inner Sound Y’all’. This Daisy Age references and pays homage to the flower children of the 1960’s who pushed for social change while re-interpreting the ideas of social awareness and activism for a new age.  As one observer has written, “at a time when we had bands such as Public Enemy and N.W.A. penning these fired-up, political and vastly important songs, there was a movement emerging that took a more peace-and-love, pacifist approach; the need for us all to come together and create some love.” THIS is De La Soul’s legacy. More than legacy, it is their live that they live and share with us through their art.

Peace, love, justice, equality, fun, togetherness, self-expression and self-worth. Yep, De La Soul gave us the blueprint, assembly instructions included. And if we’re following De La’s blueprint, let’s all take a look at their May 27th, 2020 post on what we should be doing and thinking right now”.

I will end with snippets from Pitchfork’s extensive and fascinating investigation of 3 Feet High and Rising from 2018. Alongside the brilliance and innovation through the album, the trio received backlash and could not have anticipated the sort of reaction some gave them:

“While he was still in high school in 1984, Prince Paul had been recruited into the Brooklyn crew, Stetsasonic, to serve as their showcase DJ. Stet sold itself as the first hip-hop band, a live act with studio chops, even predating the Roots. But as the scene evolved away from Old School showpeople toward New School bedroom lyricists and producers, Stetsasonic changed its style. Their 1988 album In Full Gear offered one path forward for hip-hop: a slick, high-def sound. Paul had become a key member of the production team, but he felt under-credited, and he also knew that the New York sound was shifting toward dusty sampler aesthetics. (Polish and sheen would not return to the forefront until Dr. Dre’s 1992 debut The Chronic.) He felt creatively stifled.

At the same time, Posdnous, Trugoy, and Mase were putting together “Plug Tunin’,” a song that had evolved out of a live routine the crew rocked over the “Impeach the President” break. But then Pos pulled from his father’s collection a rare doo-wop record by the Invitations called “Written on the Wall.” (Later, Tommy Boy stirred a small frenzy among the nascent crate-digging community when it offered $500 to the first person who could identify the sample. The prize went unclaimed for a long while, firmly establishing De La Soul and Prince Paul as beat-diggers par excellence.)

In the Long Island tradition of leaving no record unturned, “Written on the Wall” was on the B-side. Printed on the flip were helpful instructions for radio DJs needing to know what to play: “Plug Side.” From this odd detail, De La Soul developed an album concept: They were transmitting their music live from Mars through microphones—Pos on Plug One, Trugoy on Plug Two. It was an audacious step away from both Old School party-rocking and New School realism. Their lyrics didn’t lean too heavily on Five-Percenter cosmology or Afrocentric ideology for conceptual depth. They were striving for their own new rap language.

Armed with this obscure 45, a cassette deck, and a lo-fi Casio RZ-1, the crew slowed the routine to a toddler crawl and recorded it. They rocked head-scratching metaphors (Plug One: “Dazed at the sight of a method/Dive beneath the depth of a never-ending verse”) and odd riddles (Plug Two: “Vocal in doubt is an uplift/And real is the answer that I answer with”) in neatly matched cadences. When Paul heard the hissy demo, he knew he had found kin. He took them to re-record “Plug Tunin’” at the hip-hop hotspot, Calliope Studios, and they were on their way. Tommy Boy signed them to an album contract soon after and De La Soul began building their sonic world on a shoestring budget of $25,000. Over a two-month period, they learned how to work the expensive studio gear as they made the record.

The Black suburban imagination of Long Island rappers offered a distinctive kind of street romance and horror. Public Enemy rapped about cruising the boulevards in muscle cars, their adrenaline amping up their politics of provocation. De La Soul’s second single, “Potholes In My Lawn,” was a battle rhyme refracted through the brutal status consciousness of the ‘burbs. De La played the family on the block coming into success, only to be met with the envious rage of the Joneses next door. Trugoy complained, “I don’t ask for a barbed wire fence, B, but my dwellin’ is swellin’.” Meanwhile, imitating wannabes lurked in the bushes. These rhyme-biting rappers took the form of vermin leaving unsightly craters all over the front yard. The crew repatched the potholes with daisies. Individuality trumped suburban conformity.

But success threatened the group. On their first national tour, the crew seemed to recoil from their audiences. They trudged through low-energy sets anticipating the inevitable conclusion, having to perform “Me Myself & I,” as if their biggest hit had been their biggest mistake. Even later, long after they had become one of hip-hop’s best live acts, they would still introduce the record by asking the crowd to chant, “Say, ‘We hate this song!’”

Worse were the physical threats. From coast to coast, antagonistic fans and managers tried to roll them, believing their allusions to peace, love, and daisies made them soft hippie marks. Word soon got out that De La Soul was knuckling up and taking down heads from Rhode Island to Cincinnati to Denver.

De La Soul were making a point about the power of culture to mobilize people to action or immobilize them with fear. It was an idea they explored more explicitly on their fable, “Tread Water.” There were animals, squeaky organs, friendly humming—at the time, journalist Harry Allen called it the most African song he’d heard in hip-hop—but “Tread Water” also offered perhaps the most ambitious hope on the record, that De La’s music might help us all elevate our heads above the water. In this polar-cap-melting, politically disastrous age, the song feels prophetic.

Today’s debate over sampling is mostly mind-numbingly narrow, shaped largely by big-money concerns that are ahistorical, anti-cultural, and anti-creative. The current regime rewards the least creative class—lawyers and capitalists—while destroying cultural practices of passing on. Post-hip-hop intellectual property law rests on racialized ideas of originality, and preserves the vampire profits of publishing outfits like Bridgeport Music, that sue sampling producers while preventing artists like George Clinton from sharing their music with next-generation musicians, and large corporations like Warner Brothers that continue to disenfranchise Black genius.

By contrast, the processes of sampling and layering on 3 Feet High and Rising and other hip-hop classics of that era demonstrate the opposite: expansively, giddily democratic—Delacratic, even—values.

Pos’s production on “Eye Know” put Steely Dan into conversation with Otis Redding and the Mad Lads, his work on “Say No Go” Hall and Oates with the Detroit Emeralds. The musical chorus of “Potholes in My Lawn” pointed not only to Parliament’s 1970 debut Osmium, but to the African American roots of country and western music.

Together, the sampled sounds of the Jarmels, the Blackbyrds, the New Birth, and even white artists like Led Zeppelin, Bob Dorough, and Billy Joel, make a strong case that all of American pop is African-American pop, from which everyone has been borrowing. Sampling—De La Soul sampling Parliament, Obama sampling Lincoln, Melania sampling Michelle—is nothing less than the American pastime, the creative reuse of history amid the tension between erasure and emergence that is central to the struggle for the republic. No one can ever do it as big as De La Soul did”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

I think I connected with 3 Feet High and Rising at a young age because of the assortment of sounds and the somewhat charming and child-like aspect of some tracks. Even though the album is jam-packed, it is accessible and it makes a big impact. Whilst not as direct and socially aware of what was being produced by other Hip-Hop acts of the 1980s, De La Soul offered messages of peace and unity. The fact is that 3 Feet High and Rising is now considered one of the best albums ever. A progressive Hip-Hop album that offered an alternative sound and lyrical core, it is one of the first (if not the first) psychedelic Hip-Hop albums. Rather than blacks, greys, and dark reds, there are bursting oranges, greens, yellows and pinks. A multifarious joyride where we get samples of Johnny Cash, Hall & Oates, and Steely Dan! It is a shame that so many people have not heard 3 Feet High and Rising because of its lack of availability on streaming platforms and the fact that vinyl copies are quite expensive. An album that I have loved for so many years, it is one I come back to if I need a lift. Thirty-two years after its release, 3 Feet High and Rising is still being talked about as a landmark album. All these years later, it is definitely…   

ONE of my very favourites.

FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: Sister Sledge - We Are Family

FEATURE:

 

 

Vinyl Corner

Sister Sledge - We Are Family

___________

ONE of the Disco classics from the 1970s…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Sister Sledge in the 1980s/PHOTO CREDIT: Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redfern

I wanted to put Sister Sledge’s We Are Family in Vinyl Corner. You can find vinyl copies - though I wonder whether there will be a reissue, as most of the copies are second-hand. If you can find a good copy, this is an album that sounds fantastic on the format! We Are Family is the third studio album by Sister Sledge, released on 22nd January, 1979 in the U.S. Written and produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, there are four huge hit singles: We Are Family, He's the Greatest Dancer, Lost in Music and Thinking of You. Those are such timeless songs. It is amazing to think how much gold there is on the album! If you love R&B and Disco of the ‘70s and are familiar with Sister Sledge, We Are Family is a perfect album to get. The collaboration between Chic (Rodgers and Edwards were members of the band) and Sister Sledge is interesting. Sister Sledge signed to Atlantic in 1973. The label’s boss, Jerry L. Greenberg, told Rodgers and Edwards about the band. They (Rodgers and Edwards) had never met. The content and brilliance all stemmed from that meeting. That is quite an achievement! Although there are only eight tracks on We Are Family, the songs are given time to expand and work their magic. The title track is over eight minutes, whilst He’s the Greatest Dancer is over six minutes. This is an album designed for dancefloors, where one could work up a proper sweat!

If you need more convincing as to why you need to own We Are Family on vinyl, there are a couple of reviews that provide a lot of praise and positivity. This is what AllMusic wrote when they sat down with the album:

“Before 1979's We Are Family, Sister Sledge wasn't a huge name in the R&B/disco world. The group had enjoyed a small following and scored a few minor hits, including "Love, Don't You Go Through No Changes on Me" in 1974 and "Blockbuster Boy" in 1977. But it wasn't until We Are Family that the Philadelphia siblings finally exploded commercially, and the people they have to thank for their commercial success are Chic leaders Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards. The Rodgers/Edwards team handles all of the writing, producing, and arranging on this album; so not surprisingly, almost everything on We Are Family is very Chic-sounding. That is true of the sexy "He's the Greatest Dancer" and the anthemic, uplifting title song (both of which soared to #1 on the R&B charts), as well as excellent album tracks like the lush "Easier to Love," the perky "One More Time," and the addictive "Thinking of You." The least Chic-sounding tune on the album is the ballad "Somebody Loves Me," which favors a classic sweet soul approach and is the type of song one would have expected from Thom Bell, Gamble & Huff, or Holland-Dozier-Holland rather than Rodgers/Edwards. Meanwhile, the intoxicating "Lost in Music" (a #35 R&B hit) is about as Chic-sounding as it gets. When Rhino reissued We Are Family on CD in 1995, it added four bonus tracks, all of which are remixes of either the title song or "Lost in Music." These remixes are intriguing; it's interesting to hear late '70s classics turned into high-tech 1990s dance-pop. But they are less than essential, and the original versions are by far the best -- how can you improve on perfection? Both creatively and commercially, We Are Family is Sister Sledge's crowning achievement”.

One does not need to have been alive in 1979 to understand We Are Family. The songs are so fresh and infectious that any person can pick up the album and enjoy what they heard. The BBC reviewed the album in 2010 and observed the following:

“Sister Sledge's We Are Family came at the summit of an amazing non-stop burst of creativity from Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, aka The Chic Organization Ltd, in 1978.

Recorded simultaneously with Chic's own C'est Chic album, We Are Family was written and produced by Rodgers and Edwards, who had recently scored big with Everybody Dance and Dance, Dance, Dance. They were offered the cream of Atlantic’s roster to work with. Icons such as The Rolling Stones and Aretha Franklin were rejected in favour of Philadelphia quartet Sister Sledge. By taking this relatively blank canvas, who’d already released a duo of underperforming albums, expectations were low.

Disco myth suggests that Sister Sledge’s records prior to this were simply not very good, but both had some great moments. If you listen to Funky Family from 1977’s Together, you hear the template for We Are Family. However, it sounds like a cola commercial as opposed to the gargantuan groove produced by Rodgers and Edwards.

Rodgers observed the four Sledge girls huddling together in the studio. Inspired, he penned the album’s title-track, one of their greatest hits, a song of sisterly love that brought a sense of family and joy to the late 70s ‘me’ generation. He’s the Greatest Dancer catalogued the suburban dreams of local Travoltas everywhere, and Rodgers’ eloquence (“he looks like a still, that man is dressed to kill”) is married with the wide-eyed wonderment of lead vocalist Kathy Sledge.

Lost In Music – the code phrase that Rodgers and Edwards used when they didn’t want to be disturbed – evokes the rapture of being caught up in a song (and has the distinction of having a marvellous cover version of it by The Fall). And then, there’s Thinking of You, one of the best songs to capture the glory of love. Sweet and subtle, it never outstays its welcome.

With these four classics and a four similarly strong others, We Are Family still sounds alive, zesty and vibrant. It was especially taken to heart in the UK, and awarded Sister Sledge the disco diva status that they so rightly deserved. It remains the album on which their reputation rests”.

I am going to round up. Recorded at The Power Station, New York in 1978, there are few albums that define the Disco era as memorably than We Are Family. With Nile Rodgers on guitar and Bernard Edwards on bass, it is a close-knit album. The vocals from Kathy, Debbie, Joni and Kim Sledge are reliably amazing and full of soul and power! Go and seek out We Are Family, as it is such an uplifting record. If you require a tonic to banish the blues, then Sister Sledge’s We Are Family…

WILL do that.

FEATURE: The Kate Bush Interview Archive: 1982: Company Magazine (Rosie Boycott)

FEATURE:

 

 

The Kate Bush Interview Archive

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982 

1982: Company Magazine (Rosie Boycott)

___________

AS Kate Bush’s fourth studio album…

turns thirty-nine on 13th September, I want to feature an interview that was published before The Dreaming came out. I am looking at an interview from the start of 1982. It is exciting to hear Bush talk about the upcoming album. Bush spoke with Rosie Boycott of Company Magazine. It was rare for Bush to be interviewed by a woman. She has been interviewed by women through her career, though most of the print, radio and T.V. interviews up to 1982 were conducted by men (and that continues to this day). There is no particular reason for that. I find there is a more interesting approach and angle when Bush speaks with another woman. Perhaps you get a more sexist and reductive interview from male interviewers – not always the case but there were quite a few examples! The interview in Company Magazine is really interesting. The interview is really about Bush being this unassuming star who has risen to prominence despite not attending big parties or doing worldwide tours. I have selected some parts of the interview that caught my eye:

“We all have preconceived notions of what superstars should be like. Larger than life on stage, we expect all these exaggerated qualities to be present in the person themselves. So I was not sure quite what to expect of Kate Bush. I had heard she is a terribly nice person; quiet, easy to talk to and family-minded. But I found it hard to associate this picture of Kate with her stage image: the blatantly sexual, pouting mouth; the high, almost freaky voice; the live body that twists and gyrates under the lights. Above all, could that enormous talent belong to someone who insists she is an ordinary home-loving girl? Which side was the facade?

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at her family home, East Wickham Farm in Welling, in 1978 

I went to talk to her at her parents' home in Kent. Her mother and father, a local GP, live in a beautiful old, white farmhouse. Now incongrously surrounded by a council estate, the house has a high wooden fence which surrounds an overgrown, jungly garden--the type of place that can easily feed a young girl's fantasy and imagination. Inside, the house is warm and homely: dogs flop by the fire, the phone rings incessantly, the atmosphere is very family-orientated--no sham here, the Bushes genuinely enjoy being together.

Wearing a knitted skirt and jumper, Kate sits beside me on the sofa, nursing a cold, complaining about the weather--it is raining heavily--and talking with ease and warmth. Meeting her has not made it any easier to understand how someone can be one person in the flesh and another on stage, but the fact that she is likeable and unaffected is certainly no publicity stunt.

Kate's arrival in the superstar ranks of the pop world was well timed. Not for her messing around at the lower end of the charts, waiting for the big break which would make her a household name. Her single, Wuthering Heights, entered the charts in early February 1978; and music lovers everywhere pricked up their ears to the entirely original, haunting, wailing sound of a nineteen-year-old girl, striking notes that seemed impossible and singing with a strength of feeling that was almost unnerving. Within six weeks, Wuthering Heights had ousted Abba and their hit, Take a Chance on Me, from the number one spot. Kate Bush had arrived.

The stories which began circulating about her were numerous; she was EMI's pet product, signed up as a schoolgirl at the age of sixteen, and kept under wraps until the time was deemed right to spring her on the world. She was reticent about giving interviews, carefully shielded by her family, and cossetted by the record company. Everyone was fascinated, but finding background information on this new star with the dynamic, sexy stage persona presented problems. Kate, for all her stardom, was--and still is--a very private person.

Twenty-three-year-old Kate Bush says publicity still makes her feel weird. "It comes," she says, "from seeing just how much I have done over the last three years. Sometimes I find it hard to understand people's interest in me. I hate it when I feel that someone is just after the scandalous details. The most important part of my life is my work." And with that we find ourselves discussing her new album, due out in February.

"At the moment it hasn't got a title," she says. "It has been very hard to produce because all the studios are so incredibly booked up, and becuase I wanted to use one engineer only. This is the first album that I have actually produced myself.

"Inevitably, this has meant a great deal more responsibility for me. But it is a responsibility I like; I think that as soon as you get your hands on the production, it becomes your baby. That's really exciting for me, because you do everything for your own child. And I have been forced to think harder about what is good and what is not so good."

I asked her if the vulnerability of that situation didn't worry her. "Yes, in a way--but it is a stronger position, too, though I find that I now rely much more on other people's feetback--especially when I lack confidence about a song."

In the past Kate says she used to find that her words and music came together with ease--now they take far more time. "I like to leave all my options open until the last minute so that I'm really sure--like about the title of an album, for instance. I'm taking a complete break from recording at the moment, going over songs, tightening up lyrics and tunes, not going near the studio. I've worked on this album so intensely for so long that I seemed to be losing sight of my direction. I really wasn't sure what to do next--and that has never happened to me before”.

Kate wants to dispel the notion that she is someone who writes about fantasy. "I think my lyrics have a far tougher edge to them now. I always thought that ultimately I would be super tough...presuming that as I gathered experiences I would learn to accept situations for what they are. That has worked in some ways, but in others I'm far more vulnerable."

One new song on her next album has Kate talking about herself and her new awareness of life, its goals and inevitable pressures. "The song is called Get Out of My House ," she says, "and it's all about the human as a house. The idea is that as more experiences actually get to you, you start learning how to defend yourself from them. The human can be seen as a house where you start putting up shutters at the windows and locking the doors--not letting in certain things. I think a lot of people are like this--they don't hear what they don't want to hear, don't see what they don't want to see. It is like a house, where the windows are the eyes and the ears, and you don't let people in. That's sad because as they grow older people should open up more. But they do the opposite because, I suppose, they do get bruised and cluttered. Which brings me back to myself; yes, I have had to decide what I will let in and what I'll have to exclude.

"While I was working on this album I was offered a part in a TV series. I've been offered other acting roles, but this was the first totally creative offer that has ever come my way. I had to turn it down--I was already committed to the album. Sadly, I don't think that offer will be made again, but you have to learn to let things go, not to hang on and get upset, or to try to do it and then end up making a mess of everything else. It's like wanting to dance in the studio when I'm recording--I want to but I know that I can't because it will just tire me. I wish I had the energy to do everything," she says, sighing at her limitations, "but at least I'm healthy and fit."

Kate is one of those lucky people who never puts on weight. <Well...> She's a slim, elf-like, five foot three and has been a vegetarian since sixteen because, she says, "I just couldn't stand the idea of eating meat--and I really do think that it has made me calmer." She smokes occasionally--though she admits she shouldn't--and hardly drinks. "Champagne, I love champagne...but I don't really call it alcohol!" She confesses that she doesn't do breathing exercises, though she is very aware of breath control when she is singing. She regards her voice as a "precious instrument: it can be affected by almost anything: my nerves, my mood, even the weather." On stage she's a bundle of energy--a complete contrast to the calm, mature, pretty girl who sits drinking coffee in the elegant farmhouse drawing room.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in the ‘Hollywood’ shot in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz 

"My plans for the future..." she muses. "Well, I want to get into films. And I want to do more on stage. I love staging my own shows, working out the routines, designing the whole package, and using every aspect of my creativity." What kind of films would she like to make? "My favourite is Don't Look Now. I was incredibly impressed by the tension, the drive and the way that every loose end was tied up. I get so irritated by films which leave ideas hanging."

Singing, she says, will always be with her. So will songwriting. Never satisfied with her voice or with her work, she strives all the time towards some impossible goal of perfection. "But, I suppose," she says, "that if the day ever came when I was 100 per cent satisfied, that would be the day that I stopped growing and changing--my deatch knell”.

That period between 1980 and 1982 is really interesting. Bush released Never for Ever in 1980. Many might have assumed another tour would be on the cards (as The Tour of Life was in 1979), but one could tell that she was more interested in the studio and writing new material. Those who thought they knew Kate Bush as an artist were in for surprise when The Dreaming arrived. The fact that Rosie Boycott mentions Get Out of My House. This is one of the most physical and unusual songs Bush ever recorded. Listen to Never for Ever, and there is nothing like it to be heard! I will write about The Dreaming ahead of its anniversary on 13th September. Bush released the single, Sat in Your Lap, in 1981…so there were some indications that The Dreaming was going to be a different-sounding record to her previous releases. I guess the media would have thought that a star in the 1980s would be courting a celebrity life and chasing fame. Many got a surprise when they interviewed Kate Bush: someone very humble but focused on the music; not getting caught up in the emptiness that many of her peers did at that time. Bush proved, through interviews and her music, that she was…

A very rare and special talent.

FEATURE: Ahead of Tomorrow’s Ceremony… The Ten Best Mercury-Winning Albums Ever

FEATURE:

 

 

Ahead of Tomorrow’s Ceremony…

IN THIS PHOTO: PJ Harvey in 2000 (she is the only person to have won the Mercury Prize/Mercury Music Prize twice: for Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000; she won in 2001) and Let England Shake (2011) 

The Ten Best Mercury-Winning Albums Ever

___________

THIS year’s Hyundai Mercury Prize…

IN THIS PHOTO: Portishead

is a step back into normality, into the sense there will be live performances and something similar to ceremonies of the past. The shortlist this year is as strong as ever. The official Mercury Prize page provides the lowdown:

“Arlo Parks  ‘Collapsed in Sunbeams‘

BERWYN  ‘DEMOTAPE/VEGA‘

Black Country, New Road  ‘For the First Time‘

Celeste  ‘Not Your Muse‘

Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra  ‘Promises‘

Ghetts  ‘Conflict of Interest‘

Hannah Peel  ‘Fir Wave‘

Laura Mvula  ‘Pink Noise‘

Mogwai  ‘As the Love Continues‘

Nubya Garcia  ‘SOURCE‘

SAULT  ‘Untitled (Rise)‘

Wolf Alice  ‘Blue Weekend‘

The Hyundai Mercury Prize ‘Albums of the Year’ celebrate and promote the best of British & Irish music recognising artistic achievement across a range of contemporary music gen-res. The shortlist was chosen by an independent judging panel and was revealed at a launch event, hosted by BBC Music’s Huw Stephens on 22 July 2021. The shortlist was also an-nounced live on air just after 11am on BBC Radio 6 Music, with a Mercury Prize special from midday presented by Huw Stephens.

The 2021 Hyundai Mercury Prize judges are: Anna Calvi – Musician & Songwriter; Annie Mac – Broadcaster & DJ; Danielle Perry – Broadcaster & Writer; Gemma Cairney – Broad-caster & DJ; Hazel Wilde (from Lanterns on the Lake) - Musician & Songwriter; Jamie Cullum - Musician & Broadcaster; Jeff Smith - Head of Music, 6 Music & Radio 2; Michael Kiwanuka - Musician & Songwriter; Mike Walsh - Music Consultant; Phil Alexander – Cre-ative Director, Kerrang!/Contributing Editor, Mojo; Tshepo Mokoena – Editorial Director, VICE.com; Will Hodgkinson - Chief Rock & Pop Critic, The Times. The Chair of the judg-ing panel is Jeff Smith.

The judges said ‘It is testament to the strength of British music that, during a year which saw musicians face the toughest challenges of their lives, so many remarkable albums came out nonetheless. There was an embarrassment of riches for this year’s Hyundai Mer-cury Prize judges to choose from, but the final twelve show how diverse, vibrant and far-reaching British music continues to be. Choosing one winner out of twelve albums that bring so much hope for the future will be a challenge indeed’.

The 2021 Awards Show will take place on Thursday 9 September at the Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith. The event will feature live performances from many of the shortlisted artists and the evening will culminate in the announcement of the overall winner of the 2021 Hyun-dai Mercury Prize for ‘Album of the Year’.  The Prize’s broadcast partner, BBC Music, will be providing coverage of the event across BBC TV, radio, online & social media.

Hyundai, the title sponsor of the Prize, is thrilled with the list this year. Out of the most challenging times has come the most extraordinary creativity and as a brand that likes to push the boundaries ourselves, we’re delighted to hear innovative music that breaks new ground and inspires a better world.

As part of its ongoing commitment to support UK recorded music, renowned British audio brand, Bowers & Wilkins, will continue as a partner of the Hyundai Mercury Prize, helping to celebrate the album format and the shortlisted artists’ creative achievements”.

Ahead of the ceremony tomorrow, I wanted to go back and select the ten albums from Mercury history I feel are strongest. The first album to win the prize was Primal Scream’s Screamadelica in 1992. Last year’s KIWANUKA by Michael Kiwanuka was a worthy winner. There are many British and Irish albums from the past year that missed out on the shortlist, though those nominated are superb. Below is my list of the…

TEN best Mercury-winning albums ever.

______________

Primal Scream – Screamadelica

Winning Year: 1992

Release Date: 23rd September, 1991

Labels: Creation/Sire

Producers: Andrew Weatherall/Hugo Nicolson/The Orb/Hypnotone/Jimmy Miller

Standout Tracks: Don't Fight It, Feel It/Come Together/Loaded

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/primal-scream/screamadelica-45efb525-69b0-44ce-b27f-1ab4a95b4554

Review:

“Autumn 1991 saw a wealth of excitement for the indie set. You had Nevermind quietly munching its way across the planet, Teenage Fanclub's defining Bandwagonesque, Saint Etienne launched Foxbase Alpha and My Bloody Valentine were about to be dropped after their colossal Loveless nearly bankrupts their label. Amongst all this, Primal Scream released Screamadelica and seemingly altered the musical landscape.

The first signs of the genesis of Screamadelica came in Spring 1990 when they released Loaded. Initially something of a dance/rock traitor excursion, Andrew Weatherall took a I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have from their previous album, slipped it a couple of bad things, threw on a Peter Fonda sample and transformed it into a masterpiece of the era. Loaded was the Primal's passport to Top Of The Pops and elevated Bobby Gillespie to Smash Hits poster-boy status. Subsequent singles Come Together (here in a remixed version), Higher Than The Sun (one of the most 'out there' singles to have graced the Top 40, here in both original and epic dub symphony in two parts) and the MC5 meets the rave-up italo sensation Don't Fight It Feel It. Kick off the album with the still-jubilant Movin' On Up, and the ingredients for something very special indeed were there.

Weatherall had loosened up the Scream, and they would never be the same again. A whole new menu of opportunities and sonic exploration was theirs, and allowed them out of the constraints of the 'rock outfit' set-up. That they followed it up with the slightly underwhelming Give Out But Don't Give Up is one for the history books, but proving it wasn't a one-off with the further adventures of Vanishing Point and the seminal Xtrmntr, showed that the Scream were almost chroniclers of the times.

Both of its time yet quintessentially timeless, Screamadelica still sounds like nothing else, yet all things at once. Digestable whether off your nut in a club, soundtracking a barbeque or even indie seduction. 18 years down the line, it's not too much to suggest that it's a solid gold classic” - BBC

Key Cut: Movin’ on Up

Portishead - Dummy

Winning Year: 1995

Release Date: 22nd August, 1994

Labels: Go Beat!/London

Producers: Portishead/Adrian Utley

Standout Tracks: Sour Times/Numb/Roads

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/portishead/dummy-bf2f8084-5399-4cde-852c-687d7af48f33

Review:

“Portishead's album debut is a brilliant, surprisingly natural synthesis of claustrophobic spy soundtracks, dark breakbeats inspired by frontman Geoff Barrow's love of hip-hop, and a vocalist (Beth Gibbons) in the classic confessional singer/songwriter mold. Beginning with the otherworldly theremin and martial beats of "Mysterons," Dummy hits an early high with "Sour Times," a post-modern torch song driven by a Lalo Schifrin sample. The chilling atmospheres conjured by Adrian Utley's excellent guitar work and Barrow's turntables and keyboards prove the perfect foil for Gibbons, who balances sultriness and melancholia in equal measure. Occasionally reminiscent of a torchier version of Sade, Gibbons provides a clear focus for these songs, with Barrow and company behind her laying down one of the best full-length productions ever heard in the dance world. Where previous acts like Massive Attack had attracted dance heads in the main, Portishead crossed over to an American, alternative audience, connecting with the legion of angst-ridden indie fans as well. Better than any album before it, Dummy merged the pinpoint-precise productions of the dance world with pop hallmarks like great songwriting and excellent vocal performances” - AllMusic

Key Cut: Glory Box

Pulp – Different Class

Winning Year: 1996

Release Date: 30th October, 1995

Label: Island

Producer: Chris Thomas

Standout Tracks: Mis-Shapes/Common People/Sorted for E's & Wizz

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/pulp/different-class-bd7678dd-9056-4be3-914d-6ed5cd083bf7

Review:

“Although the band recorded its first album in 1983, Pulp didn’t find an audience until over a decade later, when the things that English pop stars do best — irony, sordid sexuality, self-importance — came back into vogue at home with Suede. Like that group’s Brett Anderson, Cocker can pose up a storm as he identifies with the underdog. Although Pulp’s His ‘n’ Hers nearly won the Mercury Prize (England’s top critical music honor), this lanky, unlikely lady-killer didn’t become a household name in his homeland until last summer’s “Common People,” a hilarious single about the upper class taking a holiday in other people’s misery; “I want to sleep with common people like you,” a rich new acquaintance sings to Cocker.

“Common People” isn’t the only great one on Different Class. Under the guidance of Roxy Music/Pretenders/Sex Pistols producer Chris Thomas, the other members of Pulp elevate themselves to a level more supportive of Cocker’s minutely detailed narratives and excessively theatrical delivery. The new-wave arrangements stay focused where they used to wander, the melodies grab with stickier hooks, and the heftier beats give Cocker’s bile a bouncy physicality. This band has quoted disco riffs before, but the way it alludes here to Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” approaches genius. There are songs about naughty infidelities, sexless marriages, grown-up teenage crushes, twisted revenge fantasies, obsessive voyeurism, and useless raves; songs that demand your full attention and deserve it. When was the last time you read along to a lyric sheet?” - SPIN

Key Cut: Disco  2000

Gomez – Bring It On

Winning Year: 1998

Release Date: 13th April, 1998

Label: Hut

Producers: Gomez

Standout Tracks: 78 Stone Wobble/Get Myself Arrested/Free to Run

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/gomez/bring-it-on-20th-anniversary-edition

Review:

“On their debut album, Bring It On, England's Gomez introduce their original take on bluesy roots rock. Unlike Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, this isn't amphetamine-fueled freak-out music but similar at times to Beck's acoustic-based work (One Foot in the Grave), with more going on vocally. The band has a total of three strong vocalists, who can switch from pretty harmonies to gutsy blues outpourings in the blink of an eye. The band manages to cover a lot of ground convincingly on Bring It On, which is unusual, since it commonly takes bands the course of a few releases to hone their sound. The three British singles released from the album are definite highlights -- "Get Myself Arrested," "Whippin' Piccadilly," and "78 Stone Wobble," the latter containing a beautifully haunting acoustic guitar riff similar to Nirvana's unplugged version of the Meat Puppets' "Plateau." All the praise that Gomez's debut received is definitely not hype. The album is consistently great, as proven by such tracks as "Tijuana Lady," "Love Is Better Than a Warm Trombone," and "Get Myself Arrested” - AllMusic

Key Cut: Whippin' Piccadilly

PJ Harvey – Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea

Winning Year: 2001

Release Date: 24th October, 2000

Label: Island

Producers: Rob Ellis/Mick Harvey/PJ Harvey

Standout Tracks: Big Exit/Good Fortune/This Is Love

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/pj-harvey/stories-from-the-city-stories-from-the-sea

Review:

“More pertinently, ‘Stories…’ is PJ Harvey’s best album since 1991’s ‘Dry’, a return to the feral intensity of that remarkable debut. For while it’s a cliché any frank woman singer-songwriter is ‘disturbed’ in some way, there’s no avoiding the fact Harvey’s last album, ‘Is This Desire?’, was unhappy; painfully-constructed third-person narratives buffeted by electro-industrial static.

‘Stories…’, however, is suffused with vitality. The clarity of the electric guitars played by Harvey, Rob Ellis and Mick Harvey is enough to make you fall in love with elemental rock all over again. When Thom Yorke adds his blustery yowl to ‘This Mess We’re In’, you wonder if it was the realisation he’d never write something as stark that prompted the itchy ambience of ‘Kid A’.

Harvey’s delighted at getting Yorke to sing, “Night and day I dream of making love to you now baby”, too. More than ever – check the snarling ‘Good Fortune’ and ‘You Said Something’ – she’s indebted to Patti Smith. Here, Harvey’s adopted her mentor’s positivity, so that the urban vignettes are filled with a lust for life. If the roar of ‘This Is Love’ represents the album’s sexual climax, the still moment in ‘One Line’ where she sings, “And I draw a line to your heart today, to your heart from mine/One line to keep us safe”, is its brilliant emotional fulcrum.

You could quibble Harvey has absolved her responsibilities by making an album earthed in the New York sound of 20 or 30 years ago. But when rock is so invigorating, so joyous about love, sex and living, all arguments are null and void. Hey, take a walk on her wild side” - NME

Key Cut: This Mess We’re In (ft. Thom Yorke)

Dizzee Rascal – Boy in da Corner

Winning Year: 2003

Release Date: 21st July, 2003

Label: XL

Producers: Dizzee Rascal/Chubby Dread/Moulders/Mr. Cage/Taz/Vanguard

Standout Tracks: I Luv U/Fix Up, Look Sharp/Do It!

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/pj-harvey/stories-from-the-city-stories-from-the-sea

Review:

“Before you get to the lyrics, however, there is the sound of the album to overcome. Mills allegedly honed his production style after being excluded from every school lesson other than music. Boy in da Corner certainly appears to have been born in isolation. It sounds like nothing else - which is surprising in a time when some people seem to think that rock and pop are trapped in a kind of terminal postmodernity, eternally doomed to borrow from the past.

Presumably, they haven't heard Boy in da Corner, which appears to borrow from nothing other than the terrifying sound inside Mills's head. Disjointed electronic pulses pass for rhythms. Above them lurch churning bass frequencies, disturbing choruses of muttering voices, clattering synthesisers that recall police sirens and arcade games, and, on forthcoming single Fix Up Look Sharp, bursts of rock guitar. In contrast to the macho swagger of most garage MCs, Mills delivers his rhymes in a frantic, panicked yelp. The overall effect is shocking and unsettling in the extreme.

Shocking and unsettling people may be the point. The lyrics of Boy in da Corner deal with teenage life on an east London council estate, a world of "blanks, skanks and street robbery... pregnant girls who ain't got no love, useless mans with no plans". There is much talk of stabbing and shooting - "We used to fight with kids from the other estates," says Mills on Brand New Day, "now eight millimetres settle debates" - and a distinctly queasy humour on display. I Luv U tackles the subject of underage sex with mordant wit: "Pregnant? What you talking about that for? 15? She's underage, that's raw."

Given that Mills himself was stabbed last week in garage holiday destination Ayia Napa, you suspect that Boy in da Corner is likely to send Kim Howells apoplectic with rage. If it does, however, he's not listening properly. So Solid Crew's lyrics are repugnant not because they talk about violence, but because they explicitly equate violence with success, threatening to "bring the gats" or "take you to the morgue" before bragging about their champagne lifestyle. By contrast, Boy in da Corner depicts a bleak world, devoid of aspiration: no one in their right minds would want to live there. When, on Hold Your Mouf, Mills delivers the album's most striking line - "I'm a problem for Anthony Blair" - it sounds less like thuggish boasting than a despairing statement of fact.

However, whether anybody will listen seems questionable. Both Dizzee Rascal's music and message are wildly unpalatable, and the British record-buying public is not currently renowned for wild risk-taking. If they ignore Boy in da Corner, however, they may well be ignoring the most original and exciting artist to emerge from dance music in a decade” - The Guardian

Key Cut: Jus' a Rascal (ft. Taz)

Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

Winning Year: 2006

Release Date: 23rd January, 2006

Label: Domino

Producer: Jim Abbiss

Standout Tracks: Fake Tales of San Francisco/Mardy Bum/When the Sun Goes Down

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/arctic-monkeys/whatever-people-say-i-am-that-s-what-i-m-not

Review:

“With hindsight, 2006’s Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not lacks both the acerbic edge of its fairly immediate successor Favourite Worst Nightmare – released just 15 months later – and the sense of completeness conveyed by their most recent, Josh Homme-assisted affair, Humbug. But the same – that the debut doesn’t match its follow-up releases – could be said of many a domestic indie success: Radiohead’s Pablo Honey is an embarrassment placed beside the superlative structures of The Bends, and Pulp didn’t hit their stride until fourth effort, His ‘n’ Hers. Granted, Oasis have perhaps never bettered Definitely Maybe, but they’re the exception to what’s otherwise a fairly established rule.

Exuding the ramshackle character of their preceding (freely distributed) demo material, much of Whatever People Say… flows at a rambunctious pace, its players’ shortcomings at the time masked by an infectious energy – listening back, it’s the spirit of When the Sun Goes Down and I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor that nailed them to our hearts, not any particular compositional flair (Alex Turner’s John Cooper Clark-indebted lyricism aside). With their innocent faces but wicked tongues, the Arctics were always a commercial proposition in waiting; Domino’s success in signing them sped the process up, but it’s hard to imagine a world without these songs finding a sizeable audience, label assistance or not.

The album’s clearest hooks are broad enough to cover several sub-genre bases, while the spiky riffs appeal instantly to punk-minded indie kids after something with true bite – especially after the likes of Keane and (modern era) Snow Patrol took the torch passed by Radiohead et al and proceeded to dampen it down to a smouldering shadow of its former self. Today’s definition of what passes for an indie band has everything to do with this album: it redefined one’s musical lexicon, pinching from the past but resolutely contemporary with its tales, however faked, of young-adult-eye-level social minutiae. 

And it’s for its legacy, rather than actual content, that Whatever People Say… warrants categorising as a classic of its era. Its roots might not stretch deep, but branches continue to sprout forth from its frame” - BBC

Key Cut: I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor

Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid

Winning Year: 2008

Release Date: 17th March, 2008

Labels: Fiction/Polydor/Geffen

Producers: Craig Potter/Elbow

Standout Tracks: Starlings/Grounds for Divorce/One Day Like This

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/elbow/the-seldom-seen-kid

Review:

“If 2005’s ‘Leaders Of The Free World’ was Elbow’s on-tour love letter to Manchester, this is the sound of them returning and re-evaluating their relationship with the city. Mancunians have a curiously tempestuous relationship with their hometown that renders them both partisan and pessimistic and it’s an emotional conflict that Guy Garvey wrestled with during the conception of this fourth Elbow record. It was a tumultuous two years that saw the band marooned without a record contract and dealing with the death of their friend Bryan Glancy, a local singer-songwriter and the ‘seldom seen kid’ of the album’s title.

“I’ve been working on a cocktail called grounds for divorce”, asserts Garvey of his hometown on the brilliant Zeppelin-ish lead single ‘Grounds For Divorce’ – and it’s this sense of emotional upheaval that permeates the entire album. A semi-comic duet with Richard Hawley (‘The Fix’) aside, it’s their darkest record in years – ‘Some Riot’, for example, is a return to the claustrophobia of 2001 debut ‘Asleep In The Back’ – but also one with euphoric peaks at every turn. Lush epics such as ‘Starlings’ and ‘Mirrorball’ dominate the landscape and none more so than ‘One Day Like This’ – a seven-minute gospel-tinged masterpiece built for a chorus of thousands at Glastonbury this summer.

‘The Loneliness Of A Tower Crane Driver’ is the jaw-dropping centrepiece, however: a majestic orchestral lollop that details the pitfalls of success and which sounds like a dinosaur learning to ice-skate. Like almost everything here it’s an awe-inspiring labour of love that both soothes and swells the soul.In spite of the turmoil of its conception, ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ is a stunning record, a career-best from a band whose consistency has seldom been matched by any British indie band this decade” - NME

Key Cut: The Fix (ft. Richard Hawley)

Wolf Alice – Visions of a Life

Winning Year: 2018

Release Date: 29th September, 2017

Label: Dirty Hit

Producer: Justin Meldal-Johnsen

Standout Tracks: Yuk Foo/Sadboy/Visions of a Life

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/wolf-alice/visions-of-a-life

Review:

“Wolf Alice have transformed since their 2013 single, Fluffy. The four-piece from North London have unfurled from their musical chrysalis, spreading each wing into a different genre, and the similarities between this alt-rock album and a butterfly don’t stop there. While some tracks – such as the opening melody of St. Purple & Green and Ellie Rowsell’s vocal on Don’t Delete the Kisses – include moments of serenity, the trashing drums and riff on Yuk Foo will leave you all in a flutter.

Visions of a Life addresses each milestone of a relationship, from deep lust to extreme bitterness. The track order prevents the linearity of a classic love album and instead leaves you feeling caught up in an emotional whirlwind. Yuk Foo is brimming with resentment and should be prescribed to anyone suffering from excess teenage angst, while Beautifully Unconventional and Don’t Delete the Kisses are the perfect anthems for a developing crush.

Wolf Alice have always been masters at lulling you into a gentle melody then pulling you out without apology, and this album is no exception. The album caters for all – there are heavy tracks for hardcore fans and songs with a more approachable indie feel for those who need a gentle introduction to the ways of the Wolf. So sit back, relax and scream to your hearts content” - The Skinny

Key Cut: Don’t Delete the Kisses

Michael Kiwanuka – KIWANUKA

Winning Year: 2020

Release Date: 1st November, 2019

Labels: Polydor/Interscope

Producers: Danger Mouse/Inflo

Standout Tracks: You Ain't the Problem/Piano Joint (This Kind of Love)/Solid Ground

Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/michael-kiwanuka/kiwanuka/lp-x2-4f34a4e3-8b4a-4fe6-9b20-9391039bf559

Review:

“No longer was he hiding behind that delicate soul sound of his debut. Instead, there were lush, sweeping string arrangements, church-choir sized backing vocals, songs clocked in at ten minutes, and at the centre of it all was Kiwanuka, now embracing being a “Black Man in a White World”. This wasn’t just standard, simple soul anymore, this was something much more than that; this was the very soul of Michael Kiwanuka himself, on resplendent display, like a newly patched together flag, blowing in the winds of triumphant self-discovery. Finally, he was feeling comfortable in his own skin.

And so, we come back to the name. Kiwanuka. If there was ever a time to fly it proudly, it was now. There’s a fierce identity flowing through this record. It’s immediately evident, from the eponymous title – the very surname that he was urged to ditch all those years ago – to the regal portrait of the man himself on the cover. It’s a striking statement, from an artist that’s always been more modest about who he is and what he stands for than anything else. But with vocal interludes that sample civil rights activists and leaders, and defiant claims like “I can’t deny myself” and “I won’t change my name / no matter what they call me”, Kiwanuka has uncovered as much of himself as he ever has, and he’s fully engaged and in tune with his own identity.

A boldness and strength comes with being so sure of who you are. It’s given Kiwanuka the bravery to take the grand, expansive sound on Love & Hate even further, into new, unexplored musical territory. “Rolling”’s Mayfield-esque shuffling grooves and biting guitar licks evaporate into the tranquil, spirit-lifting gospel of “I’ve Been Dazed”. The naked intimacy of “Piano Joint (This Kind Of Love) Main” is preceded by a shadowy, atmospheric intro, a swirl of pitch-shifted vocals and guitar squawks off in the distance. And later, the bustling, skittering breakbeat and airy backing vocals of “Final Days” carries you up into the clouds, then giving way to a dream-like sequence in “(Interlude) Loving The People” – all glimmering piano notes, misty voices, and fuzzy guitar – before you’re brought back down to earth again with “Solid Ground”’s pensive, dusky balladry. There are still moments where Kiwanuka feels he’s “lost [his] way”, and that he “could use a friend”, but come the end, “all of [his] fears are gone”, sent fizzling away by the radiant beams of album closer "Light".

Everything here feels like it exists as one unified, harmonious body, like the very current of Kiwanuka’s identity has come alive, flowing like a river containing multitudes; at times it babbles, at others it gushes, it’s choppy and serene, and it washes over you with a warm sense of purpose. Finding your identity and coming to grips with who you are, and not just accepting it but championing it, is what Kiwanuka embodies. This is an exceptionally compelling, absorbing, rich, and genuinely human piece of work” - The Line of Best Fit

Key Cut: Hero

FEATURE: Spotlight: Samm Henshaw

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Samm Henshaw

___________

MAYBE you know about him already…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Jordy Bikila

but, as there has been rumours of a debut album, Untidy Soul, I thought it would be a good time to spotlight Samm Henshaw. He has been on the scene for a few years but, as there are so many great new artists, it is understandable that some might be aware of Henshaw. I am going to bring in a few interviews where we get to learn about his background and which artists/sounds have inspired him. I really like the warmth and soulfulness of his voice. The sound has changed and evolved over the past couple of years, though it is Henshaw’s vocal that, to me, is his strongest suit – few have one as distinctive as him. There are some 2019 interviews that are interesting. Then, Henshaw was relatively fresh and getting a lot of buzz. He spoke with GQ, where we got a sense of the artists he lauded growing up:

“You might not immediately recognise Samm Henshaw, but chances are you’ve heard him. With a voice so warm and rich a synesthete would call it golden, the 24-year-old South Londoner makes the sort of timeless music you just can’t help but like. His two huge viral hits from last year, “How Does it Feel?” and “Broke”, already feel ever-present, like songs from a film soundtrack that you instantly recognise, but can’t put your finger on when or where you heard them.

Henshaw – full name Iniabasi Samuel Henshaw – grew up listening to Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. The son of a reverend, this gospel artist's soulful style was honed at church, but his sound is still thoroughly "modern", with a definite London edge. Sunny, feel-good vibes are tempered with a thoughtful, engaging lyricism. It’s little wonder, then, that the powers that be sat up and listened to Henshaw – one of YouTube's Ones To Watch for 2019 – from the very start of his career. He has supported Chance The Rapper and James Bay on tour and has worked with the likes of Pharrell, Rag ‘N’ Bone Man, Wretch 32 and Maverick Sabre. Here, Henshaw talks to GQ about his formative firsts, from falling in love and feeling stage fright to making music and promoting student nights.

The first time you realised you wanted to be a musician...

"I’ve been into music my whole life but I don't think I’d ever considered it as a career until I was in university. That was like four or five years ago now."

The first time you made money out of being a musician...

"I was in a band called Ill Phunk and I think we did a show at 229 on Great Portland Street. That was my first payment. Either that or a wedding”.

It is intriguing discovering how young artists got their start and those experiences. It seems like the next couple of years are going to be transformative and successful for Henshaw, as his music finds more ears and a wider audience.

When Fred Perry spoke with Samm Henshaw, again, we got a look at his influences and musical heroes. It is clear that the church and soulful music has made a big impact on him:

“If you could be on the line up with any two bands in history?

Damn maybe Queen, first, the Bohemian Rhapsody film despite its critics actually solidified for me just how many hits they had, they were actually geniuses!
Second, it’ll be Outkast, they were and are one of the best ever hip-hop group to exist (quietly hoping for a reunion), musically, creatively, the boundaries they pushed they sound-tracked so many people’s lives.

Which Subcultures have influenced you?

Definitely the Church as my Dad is a reverend, so was brought up in the Church, from the music, to the worship, to the style of playing, if definitely influenced my music heavily.

If you could spend an hour with anyone from history?

Ummm maybe Martin Luther King, I would love to know what motivated him but also if he knew his life would have such a massive impact on society after he passed.

Of all the venues you’ve been to, which is your favourite?

That’s a hard one! Possibly Brixton academy, I’ve played there a few times but also watched some great artists play there, James Bay, Chance the Rapper, Tori Kelly, it’s one of them London venues that always knows how to create the proper London vibe no matter who you see

The first track you played on repeat?

Michael Jackson - 'Beat It'
The whole song just blew my mind from start to end the energy, his vocal it just made me want to dance as a kid

A song that defines the teenage you?

Bashy - 'Black Boys'
During my teenage years I was into anything grime or grime related and Bashy alongside, Sketpa, Ghetts, Kano and Wiley just stood out for me. This song, in particular, felt like a little anthem for us growing up.

One record you would keep forever?

'Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill'
Over 20 years in and still going strong, imagine making one album and being able to tour off of it for over 20 years!! The proof is in the pudding, absolute monster of an album”.

I am going to move on to some more recent interviews in a minute. Reading that interview above, it is clear that there was so much excellent and vibrant music being played in the Henshaw household. That has fed into the work he is producing now. I can hear elements of Lauryn Hill and shades of OutKast, perhaps. Henshaw is definitely original, though there are touches of his musical favourites through his songs.

 PHOTO CREDIT: YouTube Music/Dan Wong

The final 2019 interview I want to bring in is from Wonderland. Aside from, once more, chatting about his musical heroes, Henshaw was asked about his uplifting music and what he wants the listener to take away:

“What do you think are the key differences between a studio and gospel album?

I think studio albums limit what you do a lot, but it’s understandable if you want to get on the radio. But then with a live setting, you can end up giving away too much of what you can do. I think the main difference is everything is a little more watered down in a studio setting.

What inspires your music?

Life experiences, the things that I’ve seen in myself or what’s going on in my life. I’m always just trying to tap into those things. There are some songs I’ve written that are about my relationships with my dad, mum, sisters, friends, girlfriends – stuff like that.

Your music is really happy and uptempo. How do you want people to feel after they’ve listened to you?

For me, I wanted to marry the juxtaposition of things sounding happy and uptempo, but also actually being able to say something. I remember Kanye used to do it, when you listen to his earlier records. I recently now am hearing the things that he was saying, songs that used to make me so happy, and then you realise he’s talking about real stuff. For me, that’s what I wanted to do. Grab these nice, warm sounds and really talk about something.

How do you feel about Kanye now?

I don’t pay too much attention to what he’s doing. I mean there’s things that he’s said that have definitely hurt people, but I don’t feel like that’s his intention. But who knows what’s going on in his mind. Hope he’s all right.

Who are your musical heroes?

Kanye. Mostly because of production and the stuff he worked on before his own album. I love the Common album, Be, and the early John Legend Get Lifted album – which I thought was wicked. Also Lauryn Hill”.

I am going to move things to 2021. Even during the pandemic, Samm Henshaw has been getting attention and new investigation. Songs such as Grow are among the best he has ever produced. I am looking forward to an album and what we might get from that. Flaunt talked to Henshaw earlier in the year about the then-new single, All Good:

“Being from South London, what was the household growing up?

It was quite a packed house, I lived with a few people. My parents took in two of my older cousins. They were  a lot like my older sisters, my little sister didn't come along till later on. We lived in a really small flat in Camberwell. I remember everything being played from gospel to Spice Girls. It was cool being the youngest in that house because there were different tastes from everywhere. My parents were obviously into gospel, my dad loved jazz, country music, and a bunch of other vibes. My older cousins were listening to whatever was on MTV at the time or on the radio. Whatever commercial, mainstream vibes were going, then the hip-hop stuff. My older sister as well.

Everyone had their own vibe so there’s so much to take from growing up. I had an uncle that loved music, he DJ’d a lot and would make mixtapes for us. The music he’s providing us with was very versatile, it was a vibe to have that much music taste. As I got a bit older when I was in secondary school (or high school), it was more grime. I started falling more in love with soul music and wanting to be a bit more intentional about educating myself on that stuff. I grew up with a lot of it but the older I got, the more I’m like “let me become a student on these people.”

“All Good” out now. It’s such a vibe. What was that recording session like?

Like this, it was literally over Zoom. It was fun. It’s weird because the guys I wrote with, Josh Grant and Emma D. D., I’m used to being in a room with them. We'll goof around for 6 hours, work for 30 minutes, goof around for a few more hours then get back to work. It was hard not being able to do that in the same room, but it was still fun. It was a unique experience having to sit down and write a song based off a flow we’d been given. We’d been given a bunch of flows, we had to come up with a song around it. This is what we ended up with, which is fun and cool.

What does a record like this mean during this time? I feel like we’re all going through it.

It’s important. For me personally, I had a year where it started off pretty good, got crappy when Covid hit, then remained crappy for a while. I started speaking for myself and having more time with myself, feeling like “I need to make the most of this situation.” I need to figure out what I can do and what can be done within this time with this position I’m in. How do I figure stuff out? A lot of what we ended up writing was based off of conversations about how the year’s going. The thing that kept hitting me was gratitude. I kept looking at all the negative things that happened this year, I kept looking at the negative sides of this year. When I took time out to pray or speak about it with people, I’d say things and realize how grateful I was for the time I had this year and the parts I could be grateful for this year.

The song really was to make me or anyone to look at the situation and their circumstance this year, be able to try to look at the positive side of things. That really changed the perspective on how things have gone and how things are going. That’s not to take away from any of the negative things that happened. It’s the idea of the more I dwell on the negative things that happened, it's not going to change. It’s still going to remain very negative and that’s going to affect my mind, my body, my spirit, my soul. It became very important to give people hope, something to look at even if it’s a reminder. That doesn’t even apply to this year, that applies to life in general. If something bad has happened or I have a negative thought, I think to myself “it’s all good, it could be worse.”

Looking back, how does it feel to be where you are today?

It’s great, I’m grateful. It’s a big deal. I wasn’t the best type of human growing up. A lot of people who knew me thought that I wasn’t going to amount to anything and I felt that way about myself a lot of the time. To be doing something I love and to be doing it the way I love to do it, the experience I’ve had, the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met, I can only be grateful. It’s incredible.

Talk about the independent journey and wanting to start your own label.

I was with Columbia for the majority of my career, the easiest way of putting it is both of our visions for me were different. The way they perceived me, the way I perceived me, was very different. The things I wanted to accomplish and the things I ultimately cared about weren’t the same things they cared about. When it comes to labels, they're very much a one track way of doing everything. The more I’ve been in this industry, the more times have changed, I’m seeing there isn’t one route you need to take now. It’s about what you prioritize and what your end goals are. We were on two very different wavelengths. Ultimately that’d affect the creative side of everything, which I hated.

We parted ways and now, I'm happier than I've ever been. I’m really getting to use my brain and use the creative side of me with everything I do. Get to pick who I want around, run it how I want to run it. I get to learn from my mistakes. One of the things that pissed me off a lot about being with a label is someone else can make a mistake and it’s still my fault, because it’s my name on it all. It’s nice to be able to make decisions and choices and it all be down to me at the end of the day”.

Actually, I will leave things there. I would urge people to check out Henshaw’s music and follow him online (there are links below). We are going to see so much more fantastic and sumptuous music from him. One of the brightest young British talents, Samm Henshaw is definitely primed…

FOR big success.

_______________

Follow Samm Henshaw

Official:

https://sammhenshaw.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/sammhenshaw/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/sammhenshaw

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/SammHenshaw

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1Q2mS59tFYLm2KGFoCgWN4

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9PlhjF8doWtKVRc0YoAgiw

FEATURE: Modern Heroines: Part Sixty-Five: Lucy Dacus

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern Heroines

PHOTO CREDIT: Ebru Yıldız

 Part Sixty-Five: Lucy Dacus

___________

WHILST the incredible Lucy Dacus…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ebru Yıldız

has recorded two other studio albums and is in a group with Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker (boygenius), I am going to focus on her latest studio album, Home Video. The twenty-six-year-old released it back in June. It is one of the best albums from this year. Her previous solo albums, No Burden (2016) and Historian (2018), are fantastic. I feel she is producing her best work right now. Maybe it is the collaboration in boygenius that has added something to her solo work. I will end with a couple of reviews for Home Video. As someone who I think is a modern-day star who is going to influence a lot of other artists, I want to dive deep and feature a few interviews. We get to learn more about Dacus’ upbringing and the inspirations behind Home Video. If you do not own Home Video, then do make sure that you go and get a copy:

“This new gift from Dacus, her third album, was built on an interrogation of her coming-of-age years in Richmond, VA. Many songs start the way a memoir might—“In the summer of ’07 I was sure I’d go to heaven, but I was hedging my bets at VBS”—and all of them have the compassion, humour, and honesty of the best autobiographical writing. Most importantly and mysteriously, this album displays Dacus’s ability to use the personal as portal into the universal. “I can’t hide behind generalizations or fiction anymore,” Dacus says, though talking about these songs, she admits, makes her ache.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ebru Yıldız 

That Home Video arrives at the end of this locked down, fearful era seems as preordained as the messages within. “I don’t necessarily think that I’m supposed to understand the songs just because I made them,” Dacus says, “I feel like there’s this person who has been in me my whole life and I’m doing my best to represent them.” After more than a year of being homebound, in a time when screens and video calls were sometimes our only form of contact, looking backward was a natural habit for many. If we haven’t learned it already, this album is a gorgeous example of the transformative power of vulnerability. Dacus’s voice, both audible and on the page, has a healer’s power to soothe and ground and reckon”.

It is a bit early to do the best-of lists in terms of 2021 albums. I would be shocked if Lucy Dacus’ Home Video was not in the higher spots. It is such a rich album where Dacus demonstrates one she is one of the finest songwriters of her generation. I am excited to see what comes next for her. I would love to hear more boygenius music (their eponymous E.P. arrived in 2018). She is an incredible talent that is going to provide the world with plenty more phenomenal music.

The first interview I want to introduce is from CLASH. In addition to discovering more about Home Video, we also learn about her home in Virginia:

“The sleepy streets of Richmond were laced with recollections; her first kisses, falling outs and the childhood friends who have come and gone as the years pass by, and just like that she was lost, in a land that had such a strong grasp on her identity. The inspiration behind her highly anticipated third album ‘Home Video’, Lucy crafts an audible time machine from the ground up, diving head first into her hippocampus and delivering a hopeful, heartbreaking record that is both a love letter to her younger self, and a defiant statement that home will always be where the heart is.

“Being back here makes me feel hot in the face” she sings on opening track ‘Hot & Heavy’, and the pungent imagery of her lyrics relay an all too familiar feeling. A stiff knot in the stomach, blushed cheeks and fidgeting fingertips as she steps foot into Virginia once again, no longer Lucy the girl next door, but Lucy who has begun to make a name for herself, Lucy who gets recognised in the street. “The night I got back I broke up with my partner and hadn’t been there for so long,” she reveals. “Life was really different immediately. My social circle was different and everybody's opinion of me was different because of starting to be noticed, and it just hit me that ‘you can never go home again’ is a really true phrase”.

Pouring through stacks of her old diaries indented with scribblings of her life, Lucy found a solace in her unabashed teenage honesty that played a crucial part in the writing process. “I didn't want to reread them until it felt right. If I remembered a specific thing, I'd go back into the journal and try to find how I wrote about it in the moment to help get more details or context, but I actually began to read them during quarantine for the first time ever and type them up. I got up to age 16 and was like that’s enough for now! I can wait a few more years to unlock the rest”.

One of the most candid offerings on ‘Home Video’ is a track called ‘Triple Dog Dare’. Perfectly painting the moments she discovered that her emotions for a close friend tip-toed between platonic or further, she contemplates what could have been had she embraced those feelings, and how the decision to cloak her attraction came from not fear, but instead confusion. “I think the main person I was hiding from was myself. I didn’t even realise that was how I felt, I just had these intense feelings and thought they were unique to the situation and not an indication of my sexuality or anything that would affect my identity. I do still wonder how much attraction actually factors into identity because I feel like attraction is just about the involved parties and you have a choice whether you want to incorporate that into your identity, but for a long time I didn't. Now I'm more willing to do that. It took many many years to feel comfortable doing that”.

A natural storyteller, Lucy’s love for books has transcended from her infant years to adulthood. Proudly exhibiting her vast collection neatly stored into organised bookshelves, from fiction to fact and cookery to witchcraft, the ability to soak into a world other than her own would often be more than inviting. Whilst ‘Home Video’ is a proposed shedding of skin for the singer-songwriter, her past two releases were less about thematics, and more of a somewhat accident. “No Burden’ I thought nobody would hear, and I didn’t make it intending for anyone to hear it other than our guitarist Jacob's professor as it was a school project for him, so it was a big surprise” she laughs”.

One might feel that an album that nods to home and childhood was as a result of Dacus looking for sanctuary and a safer space during the pandemic. As we read in the interview conducted with The Forty-Five, Home Video has been in the works for a couple of years:

“As easy as it would be to believe that this record of memories and reflection was a product of the pandemic, when ‘Home Video’ is released to everyone on June 25, it will be almost two years old: “The whole record was actually done and recorded before lockdown. Completely done. But I did double down in lockdown, looking into the past. I started typing up my old journals, starting at the top and reading which I had never done before. I like things that make me feel weird and the passage of time reliably makes me feel weird. So maybe there’s a chance that people will be able to relate now.”

She’s right to note a cultural appetite for revisiting the past to make sense of the future; a planet trying to hold onto muddled memories before they’re unceremoniously taped over. “I’ve been seeing a lot of people going back to the old detritus of their childhoods. That can be such a trippy experience,” she says. “Every time that you remember something, even neurologically, you’re kind of rewriting the memory. I heard somewhere that the people with the most pristine memories are people with dementia because they don’t actually recall the memories and technically, they’re the truest in their minds. I do a lot of remembering and I believe I get a lot of insight with distance but I also kind of wonder, ‘Am I getting farther from the truth by remembering so much?’”

PHOTO CREDIT: Natalie Piserchio for The Forty-Five 

Growing up in Richmond also meant growing up under the suffocating shelter of the Church. “When you’re a kid, they teach you about lovely things like forgiveness and patience and self control. Love, kindness and gratitude. I don’t regret that part of my upbringing.” It couldn’t stay that way forever. When she went to high school, “literally every single sermon was like ‘don’t have sex’,” so when Church shifted, so did she. The impact of those formative years is unambiguous now (“We’re coming home from a sermon / saying how bent on evil we are”), but for a while, her entire life was Church. Dacus doesn’t really believe in God anymore – “that’s the short answer”– but her belief “didn’t go from something to nothing. It went from something to something bigger.”

Did that faith double as a comfort blanket? “Oh my God, yeah,” Dacus says, irony not lost. “A comfort blanket and a crutch and an identity and a shell to inhabit and a community and a family and a reason. It was everything.”

“I think that my friends are worth the world. It’s their choice to settle for less and I can’t change their minds but I see it as my job to remind them that they could do better by themselves. It’s not their job to teach someone how to be kind. I want their kindness to be celebrated instead of drained.”

Dacus’ sense of duty shines brightest on ‘Thumbs’ – the first single and darkest moment on the record that debuted as a VHS tape sent to a select few fans. She’s there for a friend when they visit their abusive father but can barely contain her own blind rage – “I love your eyes / and he has them” so Dacus imagines her thumbs on his irises “pressing in / until they burst”. The process of revisiting all that anger felt “physically bad as an emotion” but she also considered it “good to be connected to an aspect of the human experience and to be able to understand violence a little more.”

For much of her youth, Dacus was a pacifist, a stance she considers a privileged one in many ways – it’s easy to reject all forms of violence when you’re rarely in a position that calls for it – that was also shaped by her womanhood, having never been taught to embrace anger. “I don’t feel like female anger is taken seriously or it is taken so seriously that it is disempowered all the time. Whether it’s overt or not, it makes sense that women would be mad. For many reasons, it would be totally justified. So if men feel threatened, they know it might be for a good reason. Particularly in ‘Thumbs’, that man probably knew that he deserved his comeuppance and rage against him. I’m just thankful to my friend for inviting me into her life in that way”.

Before coming to reviews of Home Video, there is one more interview that interested me. The Line of Best Fit caught up Dacus. One of the most interesting segments from the interview is when she is asked about the lyrical themes behind a couple of tracks:

“A lot of the songs on Home Video were written and recorded before the pandemic. Do you find your understanding of the record has changed over the past 18 months? Have any tracks taken on new meaning?

I’m still finding out what the songs mean. I always think I know what they mean, and then something happens and I’m like, oh no, that’s actually what that’s about. I feel like I can never fully trust my own comprehension skills. “Cartwheel” I started writing in 2017, and even just as recently as a month ago – four years later ­– there’s a couple of lines in that that finally make sense.

On this record you explore religious themes on “VBS” and “Triple Dog Dare” – why do you think queer people are so drawn to religion in the art we make?

Religion sets you up to be a heteronormative person. I didn’t realise it was a barrier, but it was. If it wasn’t there, I probably would have come out to myself sooner. I really like people who are queer looking back at their religious experiences – I’m still doing that. I wrote these songs, but it doesn’t feel like it’s over. It doesn’t feel like I’ve fully been able to express to myself what these times meant. I’m just another step along the path of figuring that out.

“Triple Dog Dare” is about a relationship I had in high school, though I picture the characters in that song a little younger than that. My friend’s mother was Catholic and a psychic, and read my palm and told us we couldn’t hang out anymore. I think basically she saw what was going on before we did – saw there was romantic potential there and tried to keep us apart by any means possible.

In truth, that worked. We stopped being close friends, and it sucked. In the song, I wrote this alternate ending, where the characters leave their homes and run away together, and don’t listen to anybody. It felt good to write that for myself.

Recent single “Brando” reads as a very cutting riposte to toxic masculinity and the kind of poseur attitudes that so many men have towards both media and the women they date (or want to date). What was the inspiration for that song?

I didn’t really like “Brando” at first because it felt a little mean, and also a little cute – if those two things can coexist! I showed it to Colin [Pastore], Jacob [Blizard], and Jake [Finch], who I make records with, and they were like, this is the best one! This one’s just fun!

Having fun is really important, and you can say things that are honest in a playful way. I don’t think I’m being mean on that song, because I’m literally just saying stuff that happened. Maybe it’s a little mean to say “you’ll never be Brando,” but it’s also technically true. I was bothered by the fact that this person was trying to mould himself off of characters. That’s not even real, who are you? Why are you trying to be all these fake people, when there’s a real person that you could be getting to know in yourself – and also me! Why was he insisting that I be an accessory to his life, rather than a full-fledged person? Who’s to say.

Obviously you have worked a lot with Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, the other boygenius members, over recent years, has working collaboratively influenced your style as a solo artist?

For sure! They feel really different, and they both feel great. I think that both benefit each other, because it takes the pressure off. I’ll write a song, sometimes, and be like, I don’t know if this is a me song, maybe it is a boygenius song. I don’t know if we’ll ever do that again, but I’ve been seeing things as having different places. I had a lot of fun writing with them, and I’ve been able to lasso that fun into the rest of my music.

From Phoebe and Julien, I understand that any idea that makes your eyes widen is a good idea, whether it’s funny, or dark, or anything. That feeling of intensity is something worth pursuing”.

To show the love that Home Video has received, there are two reviews that are worth exploring. As I said, the album is one of the very best of 2021. I am sure that Lucy Dacus is keen to get the album out to the people and see how the songs connect with her fans! This is what CLASH said in their review for Home Video:

“Bible camp boyfriends, sneaking out of the house, beautiful friendships, terrible friendships, closeted queerness – this is Lucy Dacus re-examining her adolescence and she’s not shying away from the sad bits.

'Home Video' is the 26-year-old American’s third solo album and it’s an emotional exploration of her youth. Her cutting lyrics combine the vividness of teenage experiences with Dacus’ adult reflections on them. "You called me cerebral and I didn’t know what you meant / But now I do, would it have killed you to call me pretty instead?" she sings in ‘Brando’, a bop about a bad friendship. Her language is often playfully subversive: the title of the brilliant opening track ‘Hot & Heavy’ is not just sexual innuendo but refers to the emotional impacts of revisiting memories; meanwhile the childishly innocent titles of ‘Cartwheel’ and ‘Triple Dog Dare’ contrast their melancholic lyrics and grown-up perspectives.

Dacus’s album sifts through memories corroborated by the journals she has kept since she was seven. Christianity is a recurring theme – "in the summer of ’07 I was sure I’d go to heaven" Dacus sings in the opening lines of ‘VBS’, an acronym for ‘vacation bible school’. In ‘Christine’ she sings of "a sermon saying how bent and evil we are". Although it was a large part of Dacus’ adolescence, she is not religious now. Sometimes things need to stay in the past, Dacus suggests in ‘Thumbs’, a heart-breaking song about meeting a friend’s estranged father.

Dacus’ talent for crafting emotionally devastating rock songs has been undeniable since she opened her 2018 album Historian with the incredible ‘Night Shift’, but there are also some surprises on the album. In ‘Partner in Crime’, a song about lying about her age to date an older man, Dacus uses autotune because she was recovering from a vocal injury at the time of recording. It works perfectly – the slight artificiality of her voice complements the song’s subject.

Other surprises include cameos from Dacus’ boygenius bandmates, Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers, as well as singer-songwriter Mitski. In addition to their backing vocals in ‘Please Stay’, her friends’ laughs and voices can be heard at the end of ‘Going Going Gone’, a delightful acoustic campfire-style song.

'Home Video' concludes with the intense ‘Please Stay’ followed by the anthemic eight-minute ‘Triple Dog Dare’ which is full of nostalgia, longing and innocence. It’s a powerful ending to a powerful album, confirming Home Video as another exquisite offering from Lucy Dacus”.

I am going to return to Home Video, as I have not listened to the album for a little while. I am interested in Lucy Dacus as a creative person. I feel she is a very compelling artist who is going to go on to be one of the greats. Home Video is the sound of an artist near the top of her game. SLANT reviewed her third studio album and offered up some interesting observations:

“Hot & Heavy,” for instance, toys with polyrhythms, featuring layered guitars that alternately sway and chug, its propulsive melody building steadily. “You used to be so sweet/Now you’re a firecracker on a crowded street,” Dacus belts, encapsulating the simultaneous discomfort and exhilaration tied to the memories she explores throughout the album.

Ultimately, it’s less the nuances of Dacus’s writing than her willingness to expose herself and her past so freely—even the most difficult parts—that make the strongest impression on Home Video. The spare, plaintive ballads pack just as much wallop as the rockers, as Dacus exposes the most vulnerable moments of her past, like when she grapples with unrequited love and a sudden maturity in the ambling “Cartwheel”: “When you told me ‘bout your first time/A soccer player at the senior high/I felt my body crumple to the floor/Betrayal like I’d never felt before.”

On the sweetly endearing “VBS,” Dacus looks back on meeting her first boyfriend at bible camp, reading his awful poetry, and taking an early stab at rebellion by snorting nutmeg with him. “While you’re going to sleep, your mind keeps you awake…Playing Slayer at full volume helps to drown it out,” she sings, just before a seconds-long blast of heavy, ultra-distorted guitar. It’s the kind of dorky nod that the teenage Dacus probably would’ve thought was cool, which is why its inclusion makes the song seem even more genuine.

Other songs delve into much thornier territory. “First Time” and “Triple Dog Dare” luridly tackle the stress of coming to terms with one’s adolescent sexuality while being raised Christian in the South. But they’re the epitome of politesse compared to the album centerpiece, “Thumbs.” Over nothing more than a low synth drone and a few whooshing sound effects, Dacus recounts an experience she had accompanying a friend to a bar to meet up with the latter’s deadbeat dad for the first time in years. “Honey, you sure look great/Do you get the checks I send on your birthday?” the dad asks flippantly as Dacus silently stews for her abandoned friend. “I would kill him if you let me,” she seethes with chilling stoicism. “I imagine my thumbs on the irises/Pressing in until they burst.”

It’s not easy to remain a sympathetic character once you’ve given a clinical explanation of how you plan to commit murder. “Thumbs” is the clearest distillation of why Dacus does, and it’s also what sets Home Video apart from standard confessional singer-songwriter fare, as the album isn’t actually about her. It’s about other people who have come and gone from her life and shaped her in the process, from old flames on “VBS” and “Going Going Gone,” to old friends on “Thumbs” and the disarmingly direct “Christine,” on which she mourns for a friend who stays in a safe relationship she knows won’t make her happy in the long run: “All in all nobody’s perfect/There may be better but you don’t feel worth it/That’s where we disagree.”

Even on “Brando,” written about someone whose pretentiousness and obsession with obsolescent pop culture drove him and Dacus apart, the song’s breeziness leaves the impression that she’s glad to have known him anyway. It takes profound empathy to write an entire album about your own past and have it turn out to be about your love for others instead”.

I shall end it there. Go and listen to Home Video if you have not discovered it. Follow Dacus on Twitter and keep an eye on a wonderful artist. Maybe she will release another solo album next; perhaps more work with boygenius. With excellent, near-career-best new albums from Bridgers (Punisher, 2020) and Julien Baker (Little Oblivions, 2021), there is no energy and creative flow in the group. Who knows! Lots of respect to the fantastic Lucy Dacus. She is truly…

A world-class talent.