FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Electric Ladyland at Fifty-Five: ‘Electric’ Songs

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Electric Ladyland at Fifty-Five: ‘Electric’ Songs

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I wanted to mark…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Jimi Hendrix in 1968/PHOTO CREDIT: Barrie Wentzell

the upcoming fifty-fifth anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland. This masterpiece is the third and final studio album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, released before Hendrix's death in 1970. A wonderous double album, it was the only record from the Experience with production solely credited to Hendrix. Including classic cuts such as Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland), Crosstown Traffic, All Along the Watchtower and Voodoo Child (Slight Return), it is one of the greatest albums ever released. Before getting to a playlist where the songs all have an electric connection, Albumism marked the fiftieth anniversary of Electric Ladyland on 14th October, 2018 – two days before the actual anniversary (it was released on 16th October, 1968 in the U.S. and 25th October in the U.K.):

“Electric Ladyland is the third studio album released by The Jimi Hendrix Experience in a 14-month span. Sadly, it was their last as well.

Time has been very kind to Electric Ladyland. It has consistently ranked high on many greatest albums of all time lists including Rolling Stone’s 500 greatest albums of all time (it ranked 55th). Upon its release, music critics were confused by the Hendrix and engineer Eddie Kramer experimentation. Melody Maker called the album a muddled mess.

When I first heard Electric Ladyland, I must confess, I didn’t get it either. I’d skip to “All Along the Watchtower” and call it a day. When I eventually did a deep dive, I was mesmerized. Hendrix fused psychedelic rock together with some Delta blues and groundbreaking use of effect to create his best work.

What often goes overlooked when referring to Electric Ladyland is Hendrix’s intense work ethic in the studio. His dedication was akin to that of a gym rat who constantly works on his game on the basketball court. As you can imagine, life with Hendrix was nothing short of chaotic. The band had to record album tracks in between gigs because of their frenetic tour schedule that did not allow for any downtime. It was a surefire way to burn out a band. With Hendrix’s popularity skyrocketing, there was no shortage of people coming along for the ride, whether it be on the road or in the studio.

Recording for Electric Ladyland initially began in July of 1967 at several different studios. In April of 1968, the band finally settled in at Record Plant Studios in New York City with their manager (and former Animals bassist) Chas Chandler at the helm. The chaos spilled over into the recording sessions as Hendrix started to regularly invite friends to hang out and even sit in. Unlike the previous two albums, Are You Experienced (1967) and Axis: Bold as Love (1967), Chandler began to lose his firm grip on the band. The last straw for him was Hendrix’s constant demand for repeated takes.

Hendrix’s perfectionism along with his invited guests in the studio led to Chandler eventually ending their relationship. He wasn’t the only one with an eye towards the door. Bassist Noel Redding stated "There were tons of people in the studio; you couldn't move. It was a party, not a session." Redding formed his own band, Fat Mattress, so he became less available for the recording sessions. This prompted Hendrix to take over on bass for much of the album.

With Hendrix now in full command, he was able to see his vision come to life and on his terms. It was a preparation for the next phase of his career. During these sessions Hendrix became enamored with using echo, backwards masking and tape loops. One of the results of this experimentation is the lead track “…And the Gods Made Love.” Hendrix once explained why he chose this track to lead off the album. He said, “we knew people will jump on to criticize (this track), so I put it first to get it over with.” It serves as a nice intro to “Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland),” which features Hendrix on guitar, bass and all vocals. The song is beautiful, trippy and mystical without ever being on the verge of sounding cliché. It also serves as preamble for what’s about to go down. Hendrix is about to take you on a trip.

“Oh, (I want to show you) the different emotions / (I want to run to) the sounds and motions / Electric woman waits for you and me / So it's time we take a ride, we can cast all of your hang-ups over the seaside.

“Crosstown Traffic” is one of the few tracks on the album that features all three members of The Experience. It was the first time Hendrix played an instrument other than guitar on a record. In addition to playing piano, he also played a makeshift kazoo using paper and a comb. One of the many in-studio guests was Traffic’s Dave Mason, who wound up singing backing vocals on the track.

The song was a source of contention between Hendrix and Reprise Records. He never meant for it to be released as a single at all. Hendrix told Rolling Stone, “You have the whole planned-out LP, and all of a sudden they’ll make ‘Crosstown Traffic,’ for instance, a single, and that’s coming out of a whole other set.” Hendrix was no longer this guitar prodigy whose fate and musical direction was in the hands of his manager. He knew exactly what he wanted Electric Ladyland to sound like and in the process, drove everyone around him crazy with his need to get everything right. Case in point, and much to the consternation of drummer Mitch Mitchell, it took over fifty takes to record the track “Gypsy Eyes.” Much of the delays that plagued the album were due to Hendrix’s insecurity about his singing voice. He often recorded his vocals hidden behind a screen.

Inspired by a jam session with B.B. King, Al Kooper and Elvin Bishop, Hendrix’s 15-minute “Voodoo Chile” captures the mood and spirit of the album. While some have viewed this track as self-indulgent, the excellent musicianship by Jefferson Airplane bassist Jack Casady and Traffic's Steve Winwood (organ) on the track cannot be disputed. This bluesy jam session combined elements of Hendrix’s days backing The Isley Brothers and Little Richard with psychedelic rock making you feel like you’re in a tiny little club after midnight watching this ensemble just play and jam.

Arguably, the two most popular tracks on Electric Ladyland are the previously mentioned “All Along the Watchtower” and “Voodoo Child (Slight Return).” These songs have been staples on classic rock radio stations for decades. Hendrix’s take on Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” has been praised by Dylan and in some circles, remains the preferred version. It was the band’s one and only top 40 hit, peaking at number 20.

“Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” is a fitting close to Electric Ladyland. It was developed from “Voodoo Chile” and recorded the day after with The Experience lineup instead of Winwood and Casady. While filming a segment in the studio for a short documentary, the band just started playing the song. Guitarist Joe Satriani remarked to MusicRadar, "It's just the greatest piece of electric guitar work ever recorded. In fact, the whole song could be considered the holy grail of guitar expression and technique. It is a beacon of humanity.”

Pulling together Electric Ladyland, amid all of the chaos surrounding him may be Hendrix’s greatest feat. From what appeared to be one long extended jam session and party came a meticulous, well-crafted collection of songs that bounced between psychedelic rock, funk and blues. Hendrix created a groundbreaking LP that allows the listener to expand their musical palate, and there’s no doubt in my mind that Electric Ladyland is his finest achievement”.

If you need some more facts about Electric Ladyland, there are some great articles out there. A seminal Rock album from a virtuosic guitarist and one of the more underrated songwriters and singers, there was nobody in music like Jimi Hendrix – and there never will be! Ahead of the fifty-fifth anniversary of a genius album that is among the greatest ever released, below are some Electric Ladyland-inspired songs. Songs that are the word ‘electric’, or bands and albums that feature that word. It means that these eclectic tracks are….

VERY much electric.

FEATURE: Spotlight: V V Brown

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

V V Brown

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THERE are a few reasons…

why I am spotlighting V V Brown. Although she is an icon and has been in the industry a  while now, I do feel like there are stations and avenues that should be spotlighting her music. Someone who should be dominating festival line-ups next year, her new single, History, is among her most remarkable. I have been a fan of Brown’s for a while. Also, as this month is #BlackHistoryMonth in the U.K., I wanted to celebrate one of our most important artists. Later this month, V V Brown celebrates her birthday. I am excited to see what comes next for her. One thing we do know is that her album, Am I British Yet?, is out on 27th October. You really do need to pre-order it now! At a time when we are living under such a corrupt and morally reprehensible government, Brown’s words seem even more potent and truthful. An artist who I know how such a strong and admiring fanbase, here are some words about her forthcoming album:

“Multi-platinum musician, Grammy®-Nominated songwriter, and multi-faceted artist. V V Brown is back with her fourth studio album Am I Black British Yet? This is a groundbreaking exploration of black identity. This cutting edge project features influences from James Baldwin, Erykah Badu, Soul to Soul, Roots Manoeuvre, and Windrush generation poets. Showcasing her Jamaican and Black British heritage through genre blurring soundscapes, V V Brown has crafted an innovative musical experience that refuses the status quo.

PHOTO CREDIT: Tom Brown via Interview Magazine

This collaborative masterpiece was meticulously crafted between two musical powerhouses from opposite sides of the globe - J Sensible, hailing from the land down under, and Milton Keynes representing the UK. Despite being miles apart, they've managed to create a breathtaking album that sounds as if they were in the same room.The music is more than just sound; It's a cultural and sociological exploration into Black Britishness that transcends time and generations. A fusion of artists young and old come together to share their experiences with V V Brown leading the charge with her stunning vocals.

This album marks a pivotal moment for Black British music, forging a deep connection to history while exuding a present-day feel that will certainly stand the test of time. Get ready to be mesmerised by this musical journey that you won't want to miss adding to your music collection”.

I am going to lead up to some fairly recent interviews V V Brown has been involved with. You can search yourself. Through the years, this amazing artist has been under the spotlight in the hearts and minds of the masses. Her third studio album, Glitch, was released in 2015. Despite the fact her second studio album, Samson & Delilah, is her strongest so far, Am I British Yet? Is going to eclipse that. Before getting to any interviews, this biography feature provides some useful background to a music legend:

“Vanessa Brown (born 24 October 1983), known by her stage names V V Brown and V V, is a British singer-songwriter, model and producer, best known for her 2009 single “Shark in the Water”.

Vanessa Brown was born in Northampton, England. She is the eldest of six siblings. Her mother is Jamaican and her father is Puerto Rican. She attended Overstone Park School near Northampton, which her parents own and work at. Brown learned to play the piano, developed her vocals and took classical and jazz piano lessons at a musical arts school. Brown was given her name “V V” from her peers as an MC nickname when she attended her middle school. Her love for hip hop and artists such as J Dilla and Q-Tip still exists. Brown studied violin at the age of 9 but gave it up because she found she was better at the piano and trumpet. She completed her grade 8 jazz trumpet at the age of 16 and went on to play in jazz bands up to the age of 21.

Growing up, V V listened to jazz artists like Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie. Brown earned four “A” grade A-Levels, studying at Kingsthorpe Upper School (now Kingsthorpe Community College) a year early; she was offered places at five top UK universities to study law including Oxford, King’s College London, LSE and York. She declined the offers to follow a career in music. V V Brown was first offered a deal by Gut records when she was 14 but due to educational commitments she decided to finish her studies. She was then offered a deal by Danny Simms, the manager and mogul associated with Bob Marley. Brown declined to finish her studies. She joined a punk band at 15 and had the opportunity to tour Japan. Subsequently, P. Diddy attempted to sign her to his record label Bad Boy Records.

At 18, Brown was invited to an open audition for “VH1 Divas” by friends and was stopped outside the venue by an executive from London Records. Brown was offered a development deal by London records. The development soon came to an end and, at 19, Brown was offered a deal by Polydor records in the UK and A&M records in the US. She left her deal with Polydor and A&M in 2006, with just one single – “Whipped” – officially being released, and a planned album titled “Back to the Music” never materialising.

Brown moved back to London and began performing in bars and clubs around London. She was rediscovered by executive Darcus Beese and signed to Island Records. “Traveling Like the Light” was then recorded in 2007-2008. Brown said that most of the lyrics on the album were about a failed affair Brown endured. The album was promoted by four singles: “Crying Blood”, “LEAVE!”, “Shark in the Water” and “Game Over”. “Shark in the Water” charted in the British, French and American charts, and was certified gold in America and France in 2009.

On September 14 2011, Brown announced that the first single from her then untitled sophomore album would be “Children” featuring Chiddy of Chiddy Bang. The song was released digitally on September 20 2011 (the release was limited to the US, Canada and Mexico as her UK deal with Island Records expired). On October 4 2011, Brown announced that the album would be titled “Lollipops & Politics” and released on February 7 of the following year.

PHOTO CREDIT: Daniel King/Getty Images

Weeks before its planned release, a digital preorder for the album on Amazon was removed, leading to Brown announcing that the LP would be pushed back in order for a worldwide release to occur and to add more songs. However, she eventually confirmed that the entire release would be scrapped and a new album released in its place, with news also emerging that Brown had left Capitol Records and set up her own label, YOY Records (You Own You).

“Samson” was released as her second album proper’s lead single on July 14 2013. Brown announced that the LP would be called “Samson & Delilah” and released on October 8 in the US and September 9 in the UK. The second single, “The Apple”, was released on August 25 in the UK, with a third single, a remixed version of album track “Faith” featuring Bloc Party’s Kele, following in March 2014.

Brown commenced recording of her third album in mid-2014 exclusively with producer Nearly Native (James Leggett), who she had found on SoundCloud. The project, initially planned to be an EP, expanded into an album, with a planned release date of March 2015 being pushed back. Brown filmed 3 music videos for the songs “Shift”, “Instincts” and “Lazarus” in March, with the former song’s video leaking in June.

The next month, Brown announced that she would be adopting a new stage name, V V, made her album available for preorder on Pledge Music, and shared the video for “Instincts”. “Shift” was released officially on August 7 exclusively to streaming services, with its parent album “Glitch” expected in autumn”.

As she states in a recent interview Black artists are being under-represented. Whilst some like RAYE have great power and are going independent, there are so many being overlooked. Discussing the fact that Black artists seem to be a trend or on a conveyor belt of brief attention where Brown, Cat Burns, Laura Mvula or RAYE is spotlighted – and maybe Little Simz too – there does need to be more focus given to amazing Black talent throughout the industry. Before keeping things up to date, I want to look back. V V Brown is a terrific musician. She is also an entrepreneur. In this 2021 interview with The Guardian Brown was working on the Black Girl Magic festival - supporting Black women in music:

“I remember the first time my music was played on the radio. I’d made it into the top 10 of the BBC Music Sound poll – which predicts who might be successful – and it was common for a national radio station to play the music of each artist. So there I was, huddled on the sofa with my family.

But the excitement was short-lived. Immediately after the radio presenter played my song, she took a phone-in call from a guy who said, on air, that I was ugly and stupid. Their discussion then led to a lazy comparison with another black artist, and the presenter concluded the call by going close to the mic and whispering quite smugly that she thought Janelle Monáe was much better than VV Brown.

My sisters and I were in tears. I felt so humiliated: the comments about my looks; the kneejerk dismissal of music I had taken two years to put together with everything in me. My ego had taken a beating.

That call took place in 2008, and I have battled with it throughout my career. It knocked my self-esteem for six. Despite this, I told myself to stop being so sensitive and just concentrate on the music.

I tried to move on from it, but one of the things that stayed on my mind was that, during the show, I didn’t remember any of my white counterparts being compared to any other white artists in such a polarised way – being pulled apart for their looks, intelligence or sound. I understood that this criticism might come from the public, but I did not expect it to be encouraged by my industry.

Throughout my career I’ve noticed many other examples where the UK music industry pits black women against each other, making us believe there is only room for one of us. We are not seen or heard in the same way as white artists.

Approaching radio stations for airplay would regularly lead to responses such as, “There isn’t any room on the playlists because we already have that black female artist. It might be best to try 1Xtra.” And it was common for the press to perpetuate competitive language as if black artists were rivals with each other. The genre of music didn’t matter; it was only based on the colour of our skin. I hated being immediately categorised as R&B even though I had written a pop punk song, and it was frustrating to never be regarded as a songwriter or a producer despite writing and producing 70% of my first album.

In 2020 I checked myself into therapy because of the countless experiences that had severely damaged my self-esteem during my time in the industry. I related to the experience of Laura Mvula being dropped from her record label via an email. She said last month that, four years on, she “still feel[s] this kind of resentment. And, you know, my ego suffered a lot.”

It was exhausting having to prove to the industry that I wasn’t some sassy, aggressive diva. I was tired of worrying about feeling isolated and ridiculed on photoshoots for having afro hair. I was tired of being stereotyped, I was tired of journalists assuming I was a soul singer and never a producer. I was tired of white so-called feminists playing a huge part in the racism towards black women within my music industry and feeling unable to talk about it.

I would see countless images on social media of “UK women in music” conferences championing the progress on gender within the industry, yet with no black women to be seen. I would notice tight cliquey networks of white women in the industry supporting other white artists but ignoring black artists. It was unconscious, unintentional, packaged politely – and was never done in a way that meant to cause harm. However, it was deeply rooted in the industry.

Black female artists are used, abused, discarded and mistreated. The patterns of disparity are undeniable. Our careers have quicker expiry dates than our white counterparts and we are not promoted or treated with the same intent. There sometimes seems to be a one-in, one-out rule so rampant it can feel like a factory line of disposable blackness.

As I took my headphones off after listening to Laura Mvula’s latest album, Pink Noise, I almost wept because of her brilliance. I was so frustrated that her previous label had treated such a genius with such disrespect and I hope that she will receive the high praise she deserves. I thought about the British black female musicians who have come and gone over the years, and how their talents have never come to light in the same way as their white counterparts.

Artist Raye has spoken out about not being allowed to release her music, and throughout my years in the business there have been countless black artists in exactly the same position. I experienced it myself. For two years I was unable to release music and was completely neglected. I negotiated myself out of my first record deal in a 24-hour web cafe at 1am.

We musicians are trained to be silent about our experiences because there is a heavy stigma that our rebellion will be categorised as aggressive, bitter or ungrateful. We are supposed to accept what we are given because to be black in this industry is thought to be even more of a privilege for us than for white artists.

Why hasn’t the UK music industry produced a black pop star like Rihanna, and why do so many of us instead make our success overseas? I sold more than a million records in the US and had a strong fan base, but my album was derided as music for a children’s party by NME, and it spoke of “sass” as if I was a soul singer who’d just picked up a mic and danced.

Black female artists don’t lack talent, it’s the white infrastructure that stops them from fulfilling their potential. Our careers are in the hands of people who take from our culture and package it for the masses through a white gaze, whereas success stories of black individuals often arise from independent, grassroots, progressive platforms.

The next time you see a white female British artist on television, count the number of black women who stand behind them, supporting the continuation of white female artists singing music from our culture. The next time you see anything to do with championing women in arts, count how many black women are speaking. The next time you see an article in a music magazine, think of how few black women in the industry have the power to make executive creative decisions. The disparity is obvious and it needs to change.

Today, with Spotify and independent artists having more power, it’s exciting to see black female artists such as Little Simz taking control. However, unless we go independent or bang down the doors forcing the industry to embrace us, the UK music world will not allow black women to reach their true potentials. It’s obvious to see that the music industry leaves black women behind”.

Back in June, when highlighting her single, Twisted, Wonderland. asked about her return (as her previous studio album was more than a decade ago), in addition to how her sound has changed since she started out. It is always compelling and moving reading and hearing interviews from the sensational V V Brown:

“Off of her forthcoming album, Am I British Yet?, VV Brown shares a second single. Following the success of “Black British”, “Twisted” offers another glimpse into the meaningful project. The track reflects the artist’s multitude of mediums, weaving together research, journalistic styles, and sociology studies to paint a comprehensive, emotional, and empowering picture. Inspired by James Baldwin’s I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO, as well as Erykah Badu’s music, VV Brown tackles the complex subject of cultural appropriation in a clear, direct manner. Touching on the implications of the offence and what it truly means to steal from black culture, she brings awareness to the magnitude of the threat.

We had the honour of speaking with VV Brown about her time away from the industry and what this new body of work means to her.

Now for the interview…

Congratulations on your forthcoming album, Am I British Yet?! The last time you released new music was around 10 years ago, what provoked your hiatus and what has it been like re-entering the industry?

Yes, I released GLITCH 8 years ago which was an album inspired by the vogueing movement and the documentary Paris is Burning. I love that album and we had plans to do a voguing ball but things dramatically changed and we didn’t tour in the end. Wow…. how 8 years have whizzed by so fast. My hiatus was triggered by being pregnant. Motherhood induced a wonderful stillness. Motherhood grounded and challenged me in new ways and it was nice to be surrounded by wholesome feelings and things.

I was incredibly nervous to come back into the industry. It has changed so much. I was releasing records independently from 2013 and everyone thought I was mad when I chose to distribute alone and now the landscape is one where everyone is releasing independently. It is a powerful time which moves between music being like water, incredibly accessible and almost too available, yet propelling a strong freedom and a democracy which can only be a good thing for art and culture in some way.

How would you say the industry has changed in the past 10 years?

Artists are releasing independently and unafraid to know their worth. Black artists are being heard a lot more and given more space to express their creative visions. Music is fragmented so you can be more successful in your own world and connect with your fans. Despite this, music has become more hybrid. This is cool but it can make it feel a little lost at times as young artists make music that doesn’t feel as authentic. Gosh, I may be turning into the person who says…”Oh I remember in my day…”

What were some key reflections of your career as an artist during your time away?

Life is short.
Fame is delusional
There is nothing better than laughing with my kids
There is more to life than music
I am proud to be black and will never compromise my blackness or identity ever again.
You define your happiness
Invest your money
Respect each season
Always be kind
I can’t believe I had a number 1 album in France
We really did well in America
Why was I so worried and desperate to be validated by cool taste makers? They are only people.
Geez I didn’t stay present. I was always worried about the future.
Damn “Shark In The Water” is a good pop song and when I hear it in Tesco’s I always feel proud how long it has lived.

How has your sound developed since first starting out?

Each album is a photograph of my life. I used to be ashamed of my messy catalogue which is plagued with many different genres but I have come to love my catalogue. It represents a conviction that I won’t ever be boxed. My development is a representation of me evolving and changing and being true to that change unafraid of commercial strategy. This album is looking deep into the child like Vanessa who fell in love with music because of gospel, Hip Hop and Neo Soul. This album is about my Black British identity”.

When speaking with The Line of Best Fit earlier in the year, V V Brown explored her roots and talked about what sort of Black role models and representation there was when she was growing up. It does seem that, though some things have improved, British culture and the music industry hasn’t changed that much. In the sense that Black artists are still not celebrated and seen as role models by quite as many people as they should. Maybe not deemed essential when it comes to the heroes and heroines we need to look up to. If artists like Stormzy and RAYE are hugely important role models, more focus is on other artists in the industry. Maybe Beyoncé is an exception. Still, there needs to be more conversation around Black artists and their contribution to music:

“Growing up, Brown was an avid hip hop fan, played trumpet in jazz bands, sang gospel songs at church, and headbanged to punk songs in her spare time. She also loved neo-soul, especially Erykah Badu, and at age 21 was briefly signed to Polydor Records as Vanessa Brown, R&B star in waiting. Shipped out to LA, she made an album with big-name writers and producers, but was ill-equipped for the experience. Finding her own vision crowded out by the egos of others, she spiralled into a deep depression and a sleeping pill addiction. It was only after ending a disastrous relationship and selling her keyboard for plane fare that she was able to go home.

Determined to try again, she played every London venue that would have her, and by age 25 she was back on a major label and a star on her own terms. Or at least some of them. Her debut album Travelling Like the Light was originally meant to be a punk record, rather than the fizzy, retro-styled ‘musical mashed potatoes’ that sold by the truckload in 2009. “Obviously it ended up sounding very different, but if I played you my demos you would be shocked,” she says, laughing. “I mean, thank god for ‘Shark in the Water’ because it’s still paying the mortgage, but at heart I was still that girl who was out there playing shows, barefoot and rolling on the floor of pubs in Camden.”

Now a mother of two young girls, aged seven and four, Brown is more likely to be collapsing into a sofa at the end of the day than channelling her inner Poly Styrene. But the punk spirit is still there. When we meet at her manager’s flat, she’s keen for me to know she’s made an effort. “I wore these just for you,” she says, grinning and wiggling her feet to show off some chunky, blue-soled boots she’d bought especially for the trip to London. “I’m normally rocking up to the school run looking like a nightmare in Crocs with saggy tits and joggers with holes in, covered in paint.”

Brown left London in 2016, moving closer to her family in Northampton, and shortly after decided she was done with music altogether. After 15 years at the grist mill of the music industry, motherhood had given her an out and she grabbed it. Posting on Instagram to “put a peace sign up and say thanks for the ride”, she bowed out with love. Looking back now, Brown knows that part of it was the post-partum depression speaking, and that what she meant was not an ending but a pause.

“In the six years since then, I really feel like I've found my most authentic self, psychologically speaking,” she says, explaining how she used the time to reconnect with all the music she loved as a child. “I was going to the studio, but only sporadically. Obviously I didn’t have much time, but also I didn’t think I was good enough. I thought everything I made was so shit. But I kept going every now and then, more for the therapy of it than anything else.”

It was only when she stopped breastfeeding her youngest daughter that studio time became more of a need than a want. She called up a friend for advice, which led to her being introduced to Australian hip hop producer Sensible J, who sent her a bundle of bed tracks that he’d been working on. She lived with them “for ages,” listening while doing household chores and letting her mind wander and eventually something clicked.

“Suddenly I tilted my head and thought, ‘Right, okay,’ then sat down with my laptop and wrote the whole song ‘Black British’ in 25 minutes,” she says. “I listened back to it in the car on the way to pick up the children and was playing it really loudly outside the school gates, with all these very middle-class parents walking past. Then I called my husband and told him, ‘I feel like this is it!’”

In many ways, the Am I British Yet? project picks up where Brown’s last single “Sacrifice” from 2016 left off. In the self-directed video for that song, Brown used whiteface to make a bold statement about how being Black in Britain can feel performative. “I’ve always wanted to be an activist in my music,” she says. “I remember when I was making Travelling Like the Light, I went into a label meeting with four songs, and one was about slavery. The all-male A&R team were like, ‘This cannot go out.’”

And you are working on a documentary as well?

Yes! There have been a lot of documentaries about Black Britishness, but I really want to shine a light on the Black alternative scene and the people who are out there shattering stereotypes in Black British culture.

I remember having a massive argument on Twitter with one Black commentator. She was saying that to be Black you have to be a certain way, and that made me really angry because there are so many young Black artists who are in their rooms making punk records, electronic records, classical records, everything! Things that aren’t necessarily ‘urban’ – ugh, I hate that word – and I want to speak for them.

When we were growing up, pretty much the only visible Black woman in British alternative music was Skin from Skunk Anansie.

Yeah, she was it. I think she’s brilliant. She has so many interesting things to say about her experiences. It was fascinating when they announced Stormzy as the first Black person to headline Glastonbury, and she was like, ‘Well, actually it was me.’ Unbelievable! I didn’t even know that!

I feel like what we are talking about now is very much part of the current conversation. We had Arlo Parks speaking out recently about people trying to keep her in one artistic box. We have Rachel Chinouriri constantly having to fight to be recognised for the artist she is and not the artist people think she should be. And Laura Mvula, too.

There’s a lot of talent out there, and I love it when people are actively challenging the status quo. We can’t move forward as a culture unless we challenge our limiting ideas of Blackness. Art and culture are supposed to penetrate a sense of feeling comfortable by putting up a mirror to things that aren’t quite right. Taking the box and shaking it up! Because we’ve got to move past and shatter all these social constructs that are preventing people from just being themselves.

Going back to “Black British” and the lyrics, you say you're just vomiting them out but there’s a lot of food for thought there. I keep thinking about the line “navigating through the beautiful and terrifying life of Black British,” which I think sums up the album – or what I’ve heard of it so far – incredibly well. Do you feel like, since having your kids, that the world is even scarier than ever?

In a lot of ways, yes. Becoming a mother, the first thing that changed was a huge shift in my priorities. When I was in my twenties, I was worried and anxious about myself. And now I have children I am worried and anxious about them. It’s like I exist but I don’t really. Because I’m living for them, in a way. The things I was worrying about in my early days feel like nothing now. I am more terrified and more aware of this world, because of them. And I am constantly navigating through the beautiful and terrifying life, for them.

At the same time, I do feel a calmness now that I never had before. And there’s a beauty to that, but it’s scary too. And the world is looking scarier, just in general. We’re moving away from nature and into an age of narcissism on crack. I feel so blessed to have learned to think about others more. I wouldn’t say I was a selfish person beforehand, but being a parent is a whole new level of self-sacrifice and that gives you humility and perspective. It grounds you and makes you think about the things that are important.

Honestly, I think this is the healthiest place I’ve ever been in my life. For years the music industry has told me what I should define as happiness and success, and it was always attached to toxic things that don’t mean anything and don’t really exist. Now I’ve learned to define what I think is successful, what I think is peace, and what I think is joy. And those things are nature and my family, and creating a real connection with people like the one we are having right now. If anyone loves my music, I’m so grateful. But at the end of the day, I’ll still be going home to my husband and my kids. I’ll still be sitting in the garden and listening to the birds”

I am going to finish now. V V Brown’s Am I British Yet? Is going to be one of the most discussed and admired albums of this year. Her most direct and powerful musical statement to date, I wanted to spotlight this remarkable artist ahead of the release. Go and follow her on social media and buy her music. There is no doubt that one of the jewels in music’s crown is going to inspire people…

FOR generations to come.

___________

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FEATURE: Among Angels: The Beauty and the Divine: Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow at Twelve

FEATURE:

 

 

Among Angels

The Beauty and the Divine: Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow at Twelve

_________

HER most recent album…

 PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow came out on 21st November, 2011. I am going to talk about the album generally, bring in a few reviews, and write why 2011 was a year like no other for Bush. This is one of her very best albums. Reaching five in the U.K., it was the first where she was taking a more Steely Dan approach to the tracks. Deeper, layered songs that were longer. Only seven tracks on the album, but each is quite deep and immersive. Maybe not exclusively Steely Dan, though I feel she was channelling them in some way. I wonder whether, if she releases another album, we get something similar. With no weak spots on the album, you get this complete and wonderful listening experience. My personal favourite tracks are Misty, 50 Words for Snow – and the one song not about snow - and Among Angels. I think that there is a lot to recommend about Bush’s tenth and most current studio album. Although the compositions are the most piano-led since her 1978 debut, The Kick Inside, it is great there are other musicians in the mix. Even though Paddy Bush (her brother) is absent, Del Palmer (her engineer), Dan McIntosh (her partner), Danny Thompson, Steve Gadd (his iconic drumming is all over the album) and John Giblin john guest vocalists Andy Fairweather-Low, Stephen Fry and Elton John – and her then-child son, Bertie (Albert McIntosh). This is what Kate Bush said about her remarkable 2011 album:

“It may start with a birth but it’s the birth of a snowflake which takes its journey from the clouds to the ground or to this person’s hand. But it’s not really a conceptual piece; it’s more that the songs are loosely held together with this thread of snow. (John Doran, 'A Demon In The Drift: Kate Bush Interviewed'. The Quietus, 2011)

Actually, this is one of my quickest albums. It took me about a year, which for me is really quick. (South Bank Sky Arts Award, 2012)”.

I think one reason why 50 Words for Snow resonated and got some a great reaction is that there is this child-like quality to the songs. Even though her son would have been about thirteen when the album was released, you get the feeling this was Bush writing songs for her son. Similar to some that she wrote for 2005’s Aerial, this was more of an album with Bertie in mind. Maybe I am over-reaching. In any case, I feel like 50 Words for Snow is underrated. It got terrific reviews, so that might be a strange thing to say! I feel those who awarded it three or even four stars might think differently if they passed through it now. This is what Pitchfork wrote in their review:

“On "Wild Man", the first single from Kate Bush's winterized 10th album, the singer tells of an expedition searching for the elusive Abominable Snowman. "They want to know you," she coos, "They will hunt you down, then they will kill you/ Run away, run away, run away." Of course, when it comes to modern popular figures-- who often court fame and adulation with an obsessiveness that can be fascinating or just plain sad-- Bush herself is something of a mythical beast. 50 Words for Snow is only her second album of original material in the last 17 years, and she hasn't performed a full concert since her groundbreaking and theatrical Tour of Life wrapped up its six-week run in 1979. So it's no surprise that she readily sympathizes with the misunderstood monster at the center of "Wild Man": "Lying in my tent, I can hear your cry echoing round the mountainside/ You sound lonely."

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

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

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

PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

The ending of that song brings up another common thread through Snow, aside from its blizzard-y climate. This is an album about trying, oftentimes futilely, to find connections-- between Bush and her characters, reality and surreality, love and death. "Snowflake" is a duet with her 13-year-old son, where he plays the small fleck of white falling down from the sky, his high-pitched, choir-boy voice hitting the kind of notes his mom was originally famous for. On the track, Bush encourages her son-- "The world is so loud/ Keep falling/ I'll find you"-- and yet the plaintive piano that steers things is seemingly aware that, once the flake arrives, it'll either melt or disappear among millions of other icy bits. Similarly, while the lake-bound ghost of "Lake Tahoe" is overjoyed to find her long-lost dog-- coincidentally named Snowflake-- at the end of the song, the reunion comes with its own specter of bittersweet afterlife. The same sort of disconnect defines "Snowed in at Wheeler Street", an eerie duet with Bush's teenage idol Elton John about a star-crossed pair who have "been in love forever"-- literally. The time-traveling track finds its leads going from ancient Rome to World War II to 9/11, always losing each other along the way. It acts as something of a sequel to Bush's "Running Up that Hill", another tale of pained co-dependence. There's no happy ending. "When we got to the top of the hill/ We saw Rome burning," sings Elton.

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

What made 2011 extraordinary is that 50 Words for Snow was Bush’s second album that year! She released Director’s Cut in May. Wanting to get that out so she could clear the way for new work, it is remarkable she managed to get her second 2011 album out in time – it was a struggle but, as she said in interviews, she couldn’t wait another year to put out 50 Words for Snow. I want to source an interview from The Quietus, where John Doran spoke with Bush (in 2011) about this exciting new album:

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

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

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

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

Now the cover art features a snowman kissing a girl and I was worried that her lips might get stuck to his. Do you know like when you’re young and you get your lips stuck to a lolly ice straight out of the freezer?

KB: [giggles]

And what about the carrot getting stuck in her eye? It’s a health and safety issue.

KB: Well she doesn’t look too worried does she?

Yeah, she looks like she's quite into it to be honest. Well, this leads me onto a serious question. Sometimes when I listen to your albums I think of Angela Carter. Sure there may well be a fantastical, almost fairy tale piece of story-telling going on here but just out of reach there is a quite torrid, sexual undercurrent. I mean, I’m right to read this sexuality into this album aren’t I? I’m not just being a pervert.

KB: Well, I think in that particular song obviously there is a sexual encounter going on… you are referring to that song aren’t you?

Yeah, ‘Misty’, which has the reference to the girl's affair with a snowman, the wet sheets, the idea of him melting in her hands and on her bed.

KB: Yeah. [massive pause] I’m sorry John, did you ask me a question? What was the question?

I asked if there was a sexual undercurrent to this record, which is ostensibly quite childlike and innocent?

KB: To that song, yeah. Yeah, because of the story that’s being told. But with the other tracks… I don’t know…

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

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

…yeah.

KB: [laughing uproariously] Oh John! I’m so sorry! Are you OK? I have this image that you just want to go to sleep and not listen to me! Are you sure you’re OK?

Yeah! Yeah! I’m fine… this is just the way I sound. [flapping] I’m going to treat myself to a very large cup of coffee as soon as I put the phone down.

KB: Well, that sounds like a good idea. And make sure it’s half full.

Oh, it will be. Possibly even three quarters of the way full. Now I’m on firmer ground with ‘Wild Man’. Kangchenjunga is a Himalayan mountain; the third tallest peak in the world.

KB: Well, I’m impressed! And the Kangchenjunga Demon is another word for Yeti.

If I tell you an interesting story about that mountain will you tell me about the song?

KB: It would be my pleasure John!

Ok, the closest anyone got to conquering Kangchenjunga before the successful ascent, was an attempt led by occult writer Aleister Crowley. Now, at about 22,000 feet four of his party died in an avalanche. Their Sherpa said that the deaths had satisfied the demon and if they carried on they would get safely to the top. And Crowley said, 'Nah, you’re alright mate. I think we’ll just be off home now.'

KB: What a wimp! Well, the first verse of the song is just quickly going through some of the terms that the Yeti is known by and one of those names is the Kangchenjunga Demon. He’s also known as Wild Man and Abominable Snowman.

Have you worked with Andy Fairweather Low before, the [Amen Corner] vocalist who presumably plays the role of the hirsute gentleman of the mountains?

KB: [laughing] Hirsute? Well, no, Andy doesn’t play the hirsute beastie, he’s one of the people on the expedition into the Himalayas. But I think that Andy just has one of the greatest voices. I just love his voice. When I wrote the song I just thought, ‘I’ve got to get Andy to sing on this song because he sounds great.’ Which I think he does. He’s just got a fantastic voice.

This is a slight digression but my favourite non-fiction book is called Straw Dogs by John Gray. And in a nutshell he’s saying that all of man’s fundamental problems come from the fact that he sees himself as being somehow separate from the animals, superior to them and in control of his own destiny, when he's no more in control of his destiny than a polar bear or a squirrel. Do you see the Yeti as being like a man or an animal or is that really the same thing?

KB: Well, I don’t refer to the Yeti as a man in the song. But it is meant to be an empathetic view of a creature of great mystery really. And I suppose it’s the idea really that mankind wants to grab hold of something [like the Yeti] and stick it in a cage or a box and make money out of it. And to go back to your question, I think we’re very arrogant in our separation from the animal kingdom and generally as a species we are enormously arrogant and aggressive. Look at the way we treat the planet and animals and it’s pretty terrible isn’t it?

Well, I think you can learn a lot about a person or a group of people by looking at how they treat both children and animals. So, yes, I agree with that. Do you think of yourself as being ecologically concerned?

KB: Well, I wouldn’t put it that way but I do have a great love of nature and I do think it’s an incredibly beautiful planet if you get chance to go and see the good bits. And I think it’s very positive that there are such a lot people looking at the whole issue and trying to do something about it even though it’s perhaps got a bit of a fashion banner attached to it and it’s pretty late in the day. Let’s hope it’s not too late that something can’t be done. 

Now, ‘Snowed In At Wheeler Street’ features the vocal talents of Sir Elton John and I was wondering, was the track written with him in mind?

KB: Yes. Absolutely.

How long have you known him?

KB: Oooh. I’ve known him for a long time. He used to be one of my greatest musical heroes. He was such an inspiration to me when I was starting to write songs. I just adored him. I suppose at that time a lot of the well-known performers and writers were quite guitar based but he could play really hot piano. And I’ve always loved his stuff. I’ve always been a fan so I kind of wrote the song with him in mind. And I’m just blown away by his performance on it. Don’t you think it’s great?

Yeah, he really gives it his all.

KB: He sings with pure emotion.

It’s good to hear him belting it out. Back when you were 13 years old and practicing playing the organ in your parents’ house and just starting to write your own songs and lyrics, what was the Elton John album that inspired you?

KB: Well, I love them all and I worked my way through them but my absolute favourite was Madman Across The Water. I just loved that record. I loved the songs on it and the production. It’s a really beautiful album.

Now please correct me if I’m wrong but this song, in my mind at least, seems to hark back to ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’ because it’s about a fantasy – almost idealised - lover.

KB: No it isn’t. It’s nothing to do with that at all. The idea is that there are two lovers, two souls who keep on meeting up in different periods of time. So they meet in Ancient Rome and then they meet again walking through time. But each time something happens to tear them apart.

So it’s more like a metaphysical love story between two spirits who span time by the occupation of different bodies?

KB: Yeah. It’s like two old souls that keep on meeting up”.

I am going to round up in a second. I will do another 50 Words for Snow feature closer to 21st November. Maybe ranking the songs on the album. That will be a hard job! I wanted to start off more generally. Many will look at the album as a moment when it seemed like Kate Bush was firmly back into releasing albums. Now it is almost twelve years since her last studio album, eyes will be her way to see whether she will bless us with some new material. We can’t rush her, mind! 50 Words for Snow showed that, over thirty years after her debut album was released, Bush was still at the top of her game! I want to end with a feature I have sourced previously. As Dig! noted last year, if there aren’t really fifty words for snow, it is also obvious there are not enough words to describe the beauty of Kate Bush’s 2011 masterpiece:

“Over the years, Kate Bush fans have become accustomed to the gentle pace at which she works. You can’t hurry genius, and when the double album Aerial emerged in all its radiance in 2005, 12 years after its predecessor, The Red Shoes, the world was as surprised as it was grateful. Six years later came Director’s Cut, a reworking of material from The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes – an unusual move that worked as a creative catalyst for Bush and led to a brand-new studio album, 2011’s icily beautiful 50 Words For Snow.

Bush reflected on the circumstances around the recording of the album in an interview with The Quietus. “This has been quite an easy record to make, actually, and it’s been quite a quick process,” she revealed. “What was really nice for me was I did it straight off the back of Director’s Cut, which was a really intense record to make. When I finished it, I went straight into making this, so I was very much still in that focused space; still in that kind of studio mentality. And also, there was a sense of elation that suddenly I was working from scratch and writing songs from scratch, and the freedom that comes with that.”

 

Bush admitted to a sense of urgency when interviewed by pianist Jamie Cullum for BBC Radio’s The Jazz Show. “I really had to pull my finger out at certain points because otherwise it was gonna have to wait until next winter, because you can’t bring a record like this out in the summer,” she explained, adding that the speed at which she was now working had amused her: “I also thought it was really funny, because people are always going on all the time about how long I take to make my albums, and I thought it would be so funny if I brought two out in one year.”

Speaking to the Irish Independent on the release of 50 Words For Snow, Bush emphasised how important she felt it was to balance her work with family commitments, something that home recording had allowed her to do ever since she built her own studio prior to beginning work on the Hounds Of Love album.

“It’s difficult explaining to myself why some albums take so long,” Bush said, revealing that the actual recording process wasn’t as protracted as it seemed to the outside world. “If you’ve had a five-year gap, people assumed that it took you five years to do an album, which is simply not true. I take a few years to do other things in life… It’s great because I’m able to work at home and have a family life. I couldn’t work in a commercial-studio environment. Most of the time the process is quite elongated for me, so it would end up being quite expensive, too. That’s really why I set up a home studio. I realised I’d have to if I wanted to continue working experimentally.” 

Released on 21 November 2011, 50 Words For Snow represented one of Bush’s most daring and experimental albums to date – a collection of long, ruminative and subtle songs with a wintry thread running throughout, which helped it find a place in fans’ hearts as one of the best Christmas albums of all time. The album’s opening track, Snowflake, sets the scene with flurries of meditative piano and sparing, hushed percussion and strings. Written from the perspective of a falling snowflake, it features a vocal from Bush’s then 13-year-old son, Albert McIntosh.

50 Words For Snow ends with Among Angels, a spare and celestially beautiful solo performance that was the first song written for the album. Immediately ranking among the best Kate Bush songs, it’s also the only track from the record to be performed live, during encores for her 22-night Before The Dawn residency at London’s Hammersmith Apollo in 2014.

Over a decade on from its release, 50 Words For Snow is the last collection of new music we’ve heard from the pioneering singer, songwriter and producer, who remains one of the most influential female musicians of all time. There are still not enough words to describe its beauty”.

I am glad that we soon get to celebrate the anniversary of Kate Bush’s sublime 50 Words for Snow. It is an album everyone needs to get. As Kate Bush recently announced that her studio albums are being reissued you can pre-order. It is quite expensive, though you can get a more affordable version now. Go and spend time listening to 50 Words for Snow, as it is such a moving listening experience. I definitely will be! On 21st November, we mark twelve years of one of Kate Bush’s…

FINEST works.

FEATURE: A Hammersmith Spectacular: Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn at Seven

FEATURE:

 

 

A Hammersmith Spectacular

Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn at Seven

_________

I have already…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/Rex Features

discussed the Before the Dawn live residency. I have covered the 2014 spectacular that consisted of twenty-two nights at Hammersmith’s Eventim Apollo. The live album came out on 25th November, 2016. I wanted to mark the upcoming seventh anniversary of the magnificent live album. Technically, this is the most recent original album from Kate Bush. Whilst not a studio album, it is Bush providing these entrancing performances of some of her remarkable songs. As I said in the residency features, most of the Before the Dawn set was fusing Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave alongside Aerial’s A Sky of Honey. The two very different suites were on albums released twenty years apart (Hounds of Love, 1985; Aerial, 2005). I am going to get to some reviews for the album. My impressions and feelings about it. This is my only feature about Before the Dawn, so I am going to pack a bit in! First, here is what Bush remarked about the live album and performing in her first and only residency (and her first huge live undertaking since 1979):

“It was an extraordinary experience putting the show together. It was a huge amount of work, a lot of fun and an enormous privilege to work with such an incredibly talented team. This is the audio document. I hope that this can stand alone as a piece of music in its own right and that it can be enjoyed by people who knew nothing about the shows as well as those who were there.

I never expected the overwhelming response of the audiences, every night filling the show with life and excitement. They are there in every beat of the recorded music. Even when you can’t hear them, you can feel them. Nothing at all has been re-recorded or overdubbed on this live album, just two or three sound FX added to help with the atmosphere.

On the first disc the track, Never Be Mine, is the only take that exists, and was recorded when the show was being filmed without an audience. It was cut because the show was too long but is now back in its original position. Everything else runs as was, with only a few edits to help the flow of the music.

On stage, the main feature of The Ninth Wave was a woman lost at sea, floating in the water, projected onto a large oval screen - the idea being that this pre-recorded film was reality. The lead vocals for these sequences were sung live at the time of filming in a deep water tank at Pinewood. A lot of research went into how to mic this vocal. As far as we know it had never been done before. I hoped that the vocals would sound more realistic and emotive by being sung in this difficult environment. (You can see the boom mic in the photo on the back of the booklet. This had to be painted out of every shot in post-production although very little of the boom mic recording was used. The main mic was on the life jacket disguised as an inflator tube!) The rest of the lead vocals on this disc were sung live on stage as part of the dream sequences. The only way to make this story work as an audio piece was to present it more like a radio play and subdue the applause until the last track when the story is over and we are all back in the theatre again with the audience response.

Unlike The Ninth Wave which was about the struggle to stay alive in a dark, terrifying ocean, A Sky Of Honey is about the passing of a summer’s day. The original idea behind this piece was to explore the connection between birdsong and light, and why the light triggers the birds to sing. It begins with a lovely afternoon in golden sunlight, surrounded by birdsong. As night falls, the music slowly builds until the break of dawn.

This show was one of the most exciting things I’ve ever been involved in. Thank you to everyone who made it happen and who embraced the process of allowing it to continually evolve. (Album liner notes)”.

I might have included quite a bit of this feature in others about the live album. Apologies, though it is important to cover the basis and ensure that there are annual nods to a remarkable thing. I want to get to a couple of the reviews for the album. Pitchfork. I have Before the Dawn on vinyl. It is this extraordinary experience. Whilst it does not replicate being in the Eventim Apollo and among all the fans, we do a lot of the atmosphere and wonder that would have been felt in 2014:

“Kate Bush always exploited technological advancement. In 1979, from just coathangers and Blu-Tack, the trailblazing British pop auteur pioneered the head mic for her vanguard Tour of Life. Her subsequent albums made her one of the earliest adopters of the Fairlight synthesizer that would define the ’80s. Before the Dawn, then, is a surprising throwback: the unexpurgated live album, a document of her 2014 live shows, her first in 35 years. There are no retakes or overdubs bar a few atmospheric FX. No apps, no virtual reality, no interactivity. She’s also said there won’t be a DVD, which is surprising given the show’s spectacular theatrics, conceived by the former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and a host of designers, puppeteers, and illusionists. The show, and this release, aren’t credited to Kate Bush but the KT Fellowship, in recognition of the vast ensemble effort. Yet in shucking off half the production, this hefty 155-minute, three-disc set (one per “act”) is also the best way that Before the Dawn could have been preserved, allowing it to tell its own story uninhibited by the busy staging.

I went to a show towards the end of the 22-date run, and was overwhelmed by how physically moving it was to see Bush in real life, since for most of mine she’s only existed in videos and BBC clip-show documentaries. The staging didn’t always have the same impact. The sublime Act One, as close to a greatest hits as we got, was stripped back—just Bush at the piano backed by her crack band.

PHOTO CREDIT: Gavin Bush

In Act Two, Bush realized her long-held desire to dramatize “The Ninth Wave,” the conceptual B-side of 1985’s Hounds of Love, which documents a woman’s dark night of the soul as she fights for life while lost at sea. While her “husband” and real-life son Bertie McIntosh blithely carried on with domestic life inside a tiny, sloping living room set, a video depicted Bush stranded in dark, choppy waters (now released as the “And Dream of Sheep” video). Moments later, the real Bush reappeared on stage to fight sinister “fish people” who carried her body off through the aisles. The whirring blades and desperate search lights of a rescue helicopter descended from the Hammersmith Apollo’s ceiling, illuminating and buffeting the crowd. Despite some hammy dialogue, it was staggering, and in sharp contrast to Act Three, which focused on Aerial’s second side, “A Sky of Honey.” McIntosh played a landscape painter from ye olden times while a life-size marionette of a jointed-doll simpered around the stage, embracing Bush, who looked on in raptures. At 75 minutes long, it was a sickly, trying accompaniment to one of the subtler achievements in her catalogue.

With the visuals stripped away, some confusing vestiges of the live show remain on the record—mostly the stilted dialogue (McIntosh’s lines as the painter are cringeworthy). But otherwise it flows remarkably well: the prog grooves and piano ballads of the first act setting up the gothic tumult of “The Ninth Wave,” which comes down into the sun-dappled ambience of “A Sky of Honey.” The sound is rich and warm, but rough, too: imperfectly mic’d and properly live-sounding. The arrangements are largely faithful, even down to the synth presets, though sometimes the veteran session musicians form an overwhelming battalion. “Lily” comes out sounding a bit like Christian goth rock, and “King of the Mountain” is a victim of breadth over depth, its dynamics drowned out by every band member playing at once. It’s a shame that the terror of “Hounds of Love” gets swapped for sentimental optimism, but the band recreate that album’s second half to sound as avant-garde and bracing as any current young outsider.

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

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

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

I am going to hop to another review. There was a lot of love and interest around the live album. Many who reviewed it saw Bush perform these songs. Others – like myself, sadly – were not lucky enough to get to see her. I wonder whether having seen her performance impacted the way the live album was perceived. Produced by Kate Bush – who spend a lot of time with the mix and getting it to sound as good as possible -, Before the Dawn is a magnificent album. This is what The Guardian offered in their (in parts of) review:

“Clearly a degree of tinkering has gone on with the music. A beautiful take on Never Be Mine, from 1989’s The Sensual World, seems to have mysteriously appeared in the middle of the initial act, which never happened during the actual concerts, raising the tantalising prospect that far more material was prepared than made it to the final show. Perhaps they were off in a rehearsal studio somewhere, trying out versions of Suspended in Gaffa and Them Heavy People after all. But the really arresting thing about Before the Dawn – given that Bush is an artist whose perfectionism has led her to make a grand total of three albums in the last 22 years, one of them consisting of pernickety rerecordings of old songs – is how raw it sounds.

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

Of course, raw is an adjective one uses relatively, when considering an album that features a band of blue-chip sessioneers, celebrated jazz-fusion musicians and former Miles Davis sidemen: you’re not going to mistake the contents of Before the Dawn for those of, say, Conflict’s Live Woolwich Poly ’86. But, unlike most latterday live albums, it actually sounds like a band playing live. There’s a sibilance about the vocals, a sort of echoey, booming quality to the sound, the occasional hint of unevenness: it doesn’t feel like a recording that’s been overdubbed and Auto-Tuned into sterility. Given their pedigree, you’d expect the musicians involved to be incredibly nimble and adept, but more startling is how propulsive and exciting they sound, even when dealing with Bush’s more hazy and dreamlike material. It’s a state of affairs amplified by Bush’s voice, which is in fantastic shape. On King of the Mountain or Hounds of Love, she has a way of suddenly shifting into a primal, throaty roar – not the vocal style you’d most closely associate with Kate Bush – that sounds all the more effective for clearly being recorded live. Furthermore, there’s a vividness about the emotional twists and turns of A Sea of Honey, A Sky of Honey – from the beatific, sun-dappled contentment associated with Balearic music to brooding sadness and back again – that just isn’t there on the studio version, great though that is.

That answers the question about what the point of Before the Dawn is: like 2011’s Director’s Cut, it’s an album that shows Bush’s back catalogue off in a different light. And perhaps it’s better, or at least more fitting, that her 2014 shows are commemorated with an album rather than a film or a Blu-ray or whatever it is that you play inside those virtual reality headsets people are getting so excited about. They were a huge pop cultural event, as the first gigs in four decades by one of rock’s tiny handful of real elusive geniuses were always bound to be, but they were shrouded in a sense of enigma: almost uniquely, hardly anyone who attended the first night had any real idea what was going to happen. Even more unusually, that air of mystery clung to the shows after the 22-date run ended: virtually everyone present complied with Bush’s request not to film anything on their phones, and the handful that didn’t saw their footage quickly removed from YouTube. Before the Dawn provides a memento for those who were there and a vague indication of what went on for those who weren’t, without compromising the shows’ appealingly mysterious air: a quality you suspect the woman behind it realises is in very short supply in rock music these days”.

I am going to leave it there. Most people won’t write about Before the Dawn ahead of its seventh anniversary on 25th November. I only mention it because, recently, Kate Bush said her studio albums are being reissued in new colours – each album has a different colour/design by Kate Bush – exclusively for independent record stores. It makes me wonder whether Bush will do anything with this album/residency in the future. Maybe a DVD release on the tenth anniversary next year. I would love to hear a documentary about Before the Dawn and intersperse interviews and recollections with songs from the album. Whether you were there or not, listen to Before the Dawn and…

BE blown away.

FEATURE: Goldy Locks and Snowy White… With Her Studio Albums Being Reissued Exclusively for Indie Stores, Is This a Sign Kate Bush Is Clearing the Way for New Work

FEATURE:

 

 

Goldy Locks and Snowy White…

IMAGE CREDIT: The state51 Conspiracy/Kate Bush (Fish People) 

With Her Studio Albums Being Reissued Exclusively for Indie Stores, Is This a Sign Kate Bush Is Clearing the Way for New Work?

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THIS week…

 IMAGE CREDIT: The state51 Conspiracy/Kate Bush (Fish People)

we got a treat from Kate Bush. To be fair, she has been quite active when it comes to engagement with fans. Even though there has been no new music since 2011 – more on that soon -, we got news that she has reissued her ten studio albums exclusively for Indie music stores. The U.K. will not get the first three albums – The Kick Inside, Lionheart and Never for Ever -, due to ownership/rights issues (I think EMI still have ownership of those albums). Bush’s Fish People label has the rights to her remaining seven albums – though you can get a U.S. import easily enough. On  20th November, there will be the studio albums with new vinyl colour designs from Bush herself. There are different colour names. I am not sure about the first three albums though, among the pack, we have ‘Dracula’ (The Red Shoes), ‘Goldy Locks’ (Aerial) and ‘Snowy White’ (50 Words for Snow). There are popular culture references. From Disney and fairytales, to Prince (Hounds of Love is ‘Raspberry Beret’). There is also ‘Smoky’ (The Dreaming) and ‘Ash Grey’ (The Sensual World) that, to me, seems to just be about smoking! I do love the titles and the fact the albums have come out. You have options of where to pre-order from. I have put the pre-link to Rough Trade above. In February, Rough Trade did a ranking and exploration of Kate Bush’s albums on vinyl. I think there are some big positives to the new announcement and reissues. Released through the independent music house, The state51 Conspiracy, I am going to discuss the pros and cons of Bush announcing her reissues – so close to Christmas too!

 IMAGE CREDIT: The state51 Conspiracy/Kate Bush (Fish People)

I am not sure whether there are official nicknames and titles for The Kick Inside, Lionheart and Never for Ever. The Kick Inside is in orange, so I think it should be ‘Satsuma Sun’. The official listing says the vinyl colour is ‘Mango Chutney’, so either or! Lionheart is listed as ‘Dirty Pink’, but the vinyl itself is more off-pink-slash-brown. I think ‘Mahogony Mane’ is more fitting. Finally, Never for Ever is ‘Blade Bullett’ on Rough Trade. I think that is a cool title! In any case, fans around the world can get a hold of these essential and classic very soon. You can also buy them on black vinyl and C.D. - so there are a range of lovely options available. I shall come to some of the debates. Given the fact Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) passed a billion streams on Spotify and was number one in many countries meant Bush made a lot of money. Millions indeed! Also, as her music is reaching new people, increased album sales and streams means her wealth has skyrocketed! That is great. I am pleased that she is earning a lot of money. At sixty-five, she is not someone who is going to buy flashy cars and big mansions. She can invest that money or use it to launch her music or do a project of some sort. I know there have been debates online as to whether the new reissues is a grab for cash. Bush did remaster and reissue her albums in 2018. Five years later, we get another set! For one, there is that added bonus of a new design. People who got her albums in 2018 might well splash out for the new editions. I think most of the sales for the 2023 releases are for newer fans and those who do not have the 2018 versions.

Kate Bush is at the stage of her career where she does not need the money and is not motivated by money purely. She allowed Stranger Things to use R.U.T.H. as it was used beautifully and was beneficial for the show – and she must turn down countless requests from filmmakers! Also, Bush could make a tonne of money by gong ever deeper and reissuing live albums and other bits and pieces. Even if the new vinyl albums are a little pricey, if you are a diehard or new fans, you can get this cool edition of The Red Shoes or Hounds of Love. U.S. fans might not know her first few albums, so grabbing The Kick Inside is a treat! Also, plenty of other artists and estates have raised the vaults and done anniversary reissues. Bush is not someone who has reissued her albums on their anniversaries, so three editions of an album is not that excessive. I do feel like the timing is perfect for the Christmas market. The downside is that many people feel that, as she has already reissued her studio albums, why not put out a DVD for Before the Dawn?! What about an album of The Tour of Life?! There will be rarities, demos and stuff people have not heard in the vaults. Documentaries that could be remastered. Many of her videos that deserve a 4K, HD remastering. Perhaps putting out something unique. Instead, we get the studio albums again…

 IMAGE CREDIT: The state51 Conspiracy/Kate Bush (Fish People)

Prior to 1986, when her greatest hits album, The Whole Story, came out, Bush had not really dabbled in retrospection. 50 Words for Snow came out in 2011. Before that – earlier in 2011 – she released Director’s Cut. An album with reworked versions of songs originally on 1989’s The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes, she went on to bring Before the Dawn to stage in 2014 – Bush mainly performing songs from Hounds of Love and Aerial. In 2018, she released her albums back onto vinyl/C.D. remastered. A book of lyrics, How to Be Invisible, has been released twice now! There has been a lot of retrospection since her latest studio album. I also think that it would have been cool to reissue her studio albums to cassette. Even if the vinyl copies are expensive, you get something special and they range from £30 or so upwards. It is a lot of money but, if it is the only version of the album you have, it is worth the cost! Also, as people are gagging for a new album, perhaps some sign that there is new work coming. Many say Bush does not owe people any news or update. I do think that some sort of sign that this is not Bush clearing up and getting things out of the way before retirement would be okay. She does not need to give specifics. Instead, a hint that things are bubbling. That is what people want: a new album from the legendary Kate Bush! I have theories as to why Bush has been really into ‘looking back’ mode. Taking these well-known albums and really making the most of it. I am not cynical into thinking that The state51 Conspiracy reissue for the independent record stores is for fortune and cashing in. As I said, Bush has all the money and success she could want! Instead, using her new fanbase and popularity to get these albums bought. It means that independent stores get people in and they see the tills ringing loud!

  IMAGE CREDIT: Kate Bush (Fish People)

The really good news is that people will get something unique. You can also hear an entire album. So many people still listen to individual tracks and stream albums. Bush said, when announcing the reissues: "It’s very exciting to see people appreciating the physical presence of an album released on vinyl. It’s how it’s always been for me, especially when I was a teenager. The whole buzz of the record store was part of the experience. Buying an album was an event”. She knows that so many new fans have discovered her work. This is a chance for them to own a vinyl and experience an album in its purest form. We all really need to do that if we want to understand Kate Bush and get a feel for her incredible talent and production skill. I also feel that Bush is clearing a path for new music. Many artists will use the break between albums to release older stuff and have a bit of retrospection. Even though it will be twelve years in November since Bush favoured us with an album, I feel all this activity in the past five years or so has been her engaging with her older work and making sure the fans have plenty of options. At Christmas, with these new albums out and reaching new and loyal ears, it gives her chance to look to the next chapter. It is inevitable that songs have been written. I do feel that an album will come soon enough.

 IMAGE CREDIT: The state51 Conspiracy/Kate Bush (Fish People)

The fans admire Bush for engaging and putting out her albums. Many artists do not look back and feel that once an album is out then that is it! Bush understands the importance of ensuring her fans know about her albums. If you are someone who already owns these studio albums, you are unlikely to go and get the full ten! Instead, you can pick your favourites – maybe ask for one for Christmas and buy another yourself. As Lionheart is forty-five in November and The Red Shoes is thirty in November, it is a good time for these newly-pressed editions to arrive. It means that these underrated and under-appreciate albums get some new love and plays – one hopes anyway! Not to be a vinyl snob, but I always prefer coloured vinyl. They seem more interesting and collectable. There is plenty of black vinyl. When you get these new designs and colours, it looks a lot better on the turntable. The bottom line is that these new words and reissues from Kate Bush are important. The fact that she is active and engaging. Sure, it would be nice to get new work and some light that an eleventh studio album is on its way. Maybe Before the Dawn being made available on DVD. We live in hope that these independent store-only albums compels her to release another album and reward this dedication to her music. Who quite knows…

WHAT will come next year.

FEATURE: You Can't Hurry Love… Now That's What I Call Music! at Forty

FEATURE:

 

 

You Can't Hurry Love…

Now That's What I Call Music! at Forty

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THIS 28th November…

we celebrate the fortieth birthday of a legendary compilation series. It seems somehow wrong that the Now That’s What I Call Music! series is forty! One always associates it with our teenage year. Iconic and unmissable, it is still going strong today. You can check out the official website for all the latest news and releases. Whilst the series, for a long time, released yearly/bi-yearly compilations with the best music from that year, now it has expanded and it more thematic and broad – whilst still doing its annual releases of the best from the year. 28th November will be a big date for many who grew up collecting the Now That’s What I Call Music! series. With the initial pressings on vinyl and audio cassette, most people get the compilations now on C.D./digitally. There have been anniversary celebrations for big Now That’s What I Call Music! years. I wonder, on its fortieth, whether anything special has been planned. Follow their Twitter page and Instagram. You can also check them out on YouTube. Released in July, we are now up to 115. Looking back on that first release from 1983. I was only six months old, so I was not conscious of what was unveiled. It must have seemed quite exciting at the time. I am not sure if people had access to Pop compilation then. The first track on that first release was Phil Collins’s You Can't Hurry Love. The chance to buy a single album where you got all of these chart hits! Before carrying on, there is a little more housekeeping to do. Follow and support the Pop Rambler podcast, Back to NOW!. I am going to drop in some podcast episodes from various sources, a few of the tracks from the first Now That’s What I Call Music!, the advert that went alongside it, plus the album itself (which was compiled by a fan).

In December 1983, the compilation debuted at number seven on album chart in the U.K. It got to number one a week later, staying at the top for five non-consecutive weeks. I want to start by dropping in the entirety of a great feature The Guardian published back in 2018. They marked the one-hundredth release with a terrific insight into the making and history of the serries. Among those interviewed was Peter Duckworth, one of the directors of the Now That’s What I Call Music! brand:

“Peter Duckworth, one of the directors of the Now That’s What I Call Music brand, is a bespectacled man in his 50s who has helped put together the famed pop compilations for about half his life. That’s since 1990, if you measure things by the regular calendar, or “since 18”, if you go by what Duckworth and his collaborators Steve Pritchard and Jenny Fisher call “Now-time”, in which recent history is marked out entirely by the release of the numbered, three-a-year disc sets. The trio, who work out of the Sony Music offices in London, are about to celebrate the release of Now That’s What I Call Music 100, and in the buildup to this landmark, I shadowed them in their work. I wanted to learn how Nows are made and try to understand why the anthologies, on the shelves since 1983 and still selling well, have had such staying power.

It is February when we first meet. Months to go until the July release of their 100th edition, and in fact the team still have the Easter-time Now 99 to compile and master. In a corner of the Sony office that’s busy with coffee cups, branded mouse mats and a Guinness World Record naming Now the longest-running music album series, they set to work.

Any new Now starts with Fisher – the hoodied, soft-spoken fortysomething director of the brand – and her clutchbag full of loose, clacking memory sticks. For weeks, Fisher has been collecting songs for possible inclusion, which are sent to her by email. It all used to be more glamorous, she admits, back in the analogue era, when labels sent over individual songs on massive DAT tapes by courier. But what can you do?

My first Now was 23. It ran deliriously from Erasure to Abba to Billy Ray Cyrus

Across the office from Fisher, Pritchard, a 58-year-old motorcyclist who occasionally shows up for work in leathers, crunches commercial data, scowling at his iPad as it notes chart positions and streaming counts. At a facing desk, Duckworth, who is the savant to Pritchard’s metrics guy, immerses himself in pop culture in a more general way, trying to work out what tracks will be popular by the time their next Now comes out. Duckworth has a party trick that he demonstrates to me. “What was the first Now you owned?” he asks.

“Now 23,” I say. (A Christmas present in 1992, double-tape edition. Even the name of this record still gives me a little tickle of pleasure.)

“So you’re... 35 years old.”

I blink. “How did you do that?”

Duckworth shrugs. “Everyone gets their first Now between nine and 10. I only hesitated because I couldn’t remember if that one came out in ’92 or ’93.” Meanwhile, Pritchard has found the old tracklist for Now 23 and asks if I can name the first song.

But it’s a silly question. Can’t we all? Nows tend to land at a particular moment in your young listening life. Some time after the realisation that the pop playing on the radio and out of Chinese restaurant speakers isn’t all indistinguishable mulch, but some time before you learn what albums really are and turn obsessive about track arrangement and liner notes, bearing choices of favourites like a coat of arms and self-defining by your dislikes as much as your likes. The Nows scooped up whatever was charting at the time – so that Now 23 could run deliriously from Erasure to Abba to Billy Ray Cyrus to the song from the video game Tetris. I must have played it a thousand times. Of course I can remember track one, I tell Pritchard. “Tasmin Archer, Sleeping Satellite.”

He nods. Oh, they had high hopes for Archer, he recalls, but she was never included on another Now. So many acts have come and gone in this way that the trio admit blocks of Now-time are a bit of a blur. To refresh their memories, they refer to a book, published a couple of years ago, that lists all the tracks on all the compilations from the early 1980s onwards. Flicking through, they purr with delight at the memory of a recent high point, Now 85, which began with what they see as an unbeatable two-track punch, Get Lucky by Daft Punk, then Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke. Then Justin Timberlake! Taylor Swift! Jason Derulo! The gang sigh. It was one of their biggest sellers. 

I ask how they come up with the running order and they invite me to the mixing day for Now 99. By 35-year tradition, the mixing takes place in a small upstairs room at Abbey Road Studios. Fisher brings her bag of memory sticks and printouts of a spreadsheet that lists about 65 songs for possible inclusion. There’s room on a double-disc comp for about 45. The cull starts at 10am, after the trio are joined in the studio by an engineer, Alex Wharton, who has “been doing this since the late 70s or early 80s, in Now-time”. 

Wharton uploads a couple of gigabytes of songs to a PC attached to a mixing board. He has to crawl in behind the computer tower and thunk in each memory stick. Beside Fisher on a sofa, Pritchard has an iPad, waiting for the midweek chart numbers to come in. Duckworth, on an office chair, twirls a Biro. It’s 10.17am when they start to compile Now 99 and by 10.19am Fisher’s pitch for the first track on disc one – These Days by Rudimental – has been agreed to.

Easy. The song’s ubiquitous. Its sales and streams are unarguable. “We try to get that opening section to be familiar with as wide a section of the population as possible,” Duckworth says. Tracks two and three don’t take long either. Dua Lipa? Portugal. The Man? They do a lot of “top-and-tailing”, as Duckworth calls it, repeatedly listening to the first and last 15 seconds of each song to see how they segue into each other. The process will be familiar to anyone who’s obsessed over the momentum of a homemade mixtape.

Soon, decisions about track ordering get harder, paths leading from paths. The trio confer nonstop. “Can Justin go next to Marshmallow? There’s something attractive about the two of them together... Taylor next? Where’s Bruno in today’s chart? Taylor to Bruno! They’re made for each other... Sigrid’s sales have dropped a lot since Sunday. Craig David instead? The Craig David features Bastille. Two names for the price of one! Jax Jones? Try Derulo after Bruno… We haven’t done Kylie yet.” I ask the gang if, in the work they do, they’re essentially wedding DJs, fiddling around with the order of bankable hits. Or is there more to it?

“Being a good wedding DJ is important,” Duckworth says. “You don’t want to put a heavy metal track next to a Celine Dion ballad. But, yeah, there’s more to it.” Often, they’re trying to freeze a pop moment a little earlier than it wants to be frozen. They might be working against their own tastes, or prejudices. “You have to leave your own feelings at the studio door,” Pritchard says. “You can’t judge a generation’s tastes.”

Phil Collins! Duran Duran! UB40! The guy from Kajagoogoo! And so it began – disc one, side one, Now 1. It was 1983. A poster of a kitschy old ad for Danish bacon hung on the walls of the Virgin Records office in Notting Hill. It showed a singing chicken next to a frowning pig, with the pig thinking, “Now. That’s what I call music.” Virgin founder Richard Branson had brought in the poster on a whim, and when a team of his A&R chiefs, working with executives from EMI, were trying to drum up a name for a compilation of the two labels’ biggest pop acts, they decided to pinch the poster’s slogan.

Out on vinyl and tape a month before Christmas 1983, Now That’s What I Call Music was a hit, at the top of the album chart until the new year. Three more Nows were released through 1984 and a release pattern established – new Nows before Christmas, Easter and the summer. Polygram and Universal were contributing tracks to Now, while other labels, including Sony, set up a rival compilation brand called Hits. Because Hits tended to get the exclusives on big American acts such as Michael Jackson and Madonna, Now’s flavour was more domestic. Cosier. A bit twee.

Probably this helped create affection. Though the Nows featured European and American acts, what threaded through these anthologies was a relentless, grinning, slightly frayed Britishness. Now 2 and Now 6 began with a one-two of Queen and Nik Kershaw. Now 7 had a divine run of Bananarama-Bucks Fizz-A-ha-Simply Red back to Queen. After a decade, Now 1 veterans UB40 kicked off Now 26, only the Birmingham band were among eurodance and cheeky California rap, as well as mid-career Take That, early Jamiroquai, late Belinda Carlisle and... Radiohead?

Pritchard smiles when I ask how Radiohead wound up on a Now. “People will do things, early on, that you don’t remember later.” Duckworth adds: “And I know there are Now buyers for whom this became their lead-in to Radiohead. So, having these more interesting songs on there, even if they are tucked away, they sometimes lead people to musical discovery.”

This pair used to handle the marketing of the Nows and theirs was the dynamite decision in the early 20s – I remember this – to give the records a 3D-rendered logo. As the Nows progressed (flush with Britpop through the 30s, lots of Robbie in the 40s and Black Eyed Peas in the 50s and 60s), Duckworth and Pritchard took on more responsibility for the brand. Tape and vinyl went. A foray into MiniDisc-formatted compilations did not last. The Now brand moved into the hands of Sony, in partnership with Universal. By the mid-70s, Pritchard and Duckworth, with Fisher, had pretty much full control.

There have been strange decisions, this trio will admit. “Does anybody remember Mattafix?” Duckworth asks. “I do!” Fisher says. “I think!” But it is the ephemeral stuff that makes old Nows so special – these bizarre time capsules of a cultural moment, for instance the spring of 2003, when t.A.T.u. could sit next to Timberlake, next to Nelly, next to Liberty X on Now 54.

There are said to be about 2,000 Now superfans around the world, who have made themselves known as owners of all the editions released to date. “These are smörgåsbords of popular music!” says Patrick Kelly, a 61-year-old Canadian bank employee. “These treasure troves! I was in from the beginning, as soon as I found Now 2 in an import shop. Later, I found Now 1 on tape in a remainder bin, and I nearly cried.”

Claudia Lucatelli-Cutter, who works in a school in the north-east of England, is chasing the full set: “The early ones are so difficult.” Apparently there’s a thriving underground market in the single-digit Nows. And Pritchard tells me about a strange week when Now 48 shot up in resale value from 50p to £50, after its appearance in the Peter Kay sitcom Car Share.

In terms of tangible purchases, I bowed out of the Now scene in the mid-30s. It was Now 30 that put me on to Oasis, and after that it was only a matter of time before I was too much of a snob to buy a compilation. When I find out that in this modern era of boundless, costless music to stream the Now CDs are selling well, I admit my amazement to the trio. Nows were the biggest-selling CDs every year from 2010 through to 2017, beaten only by Adele in 2015. How come?

Duckworth gives his honest take. “It’s the car – the last bastion of the CD. People like to listen in their car. Plus, the CDs are gift-y. At Easter, when people don’t want to give more chocolate, they give a Now.” Pritchard says that, for customers in their 30s and above, the Nows are a relatively unstressful way of keeping up with the churn of global pop. Need to catch up on how it sounds when Iggy Azalea features on an Ariana Grande song, and when Charli XCX features on an Iggy? Get thee to disc one of Now 88. Curious about the difference between a track credited to “Mabel & Not3s”, and another to “Not3s x Mabel”? That’ll be Now 99.

IN THIS PHOTO: Steve Pritchard/PHOTO CREDIT: Leonie Morse/The Guardian

In the mastering suite, they’re on to disc two, traditionally a place for the more niche hits of the day. In the Now 20s, this meant leather-clad Europeans who made frisky techno, and in the mid-40s it meant the trance crossing over out of Ibiza. In the latter Nows, disc two has tended to mean rap. A track by Stormzy goes first on disc two, followed by the American rapper Post Malone and then 10 more tracks that would categorise roughly as grime or hip-hop.

I wonder if the compilers aren’t ring-fencing a genre that might be ready to grow even larger if it weren’t kept in check by industry decision-makers in this way. But the Now compilers insist it’s all about “flow” – what sounds good with what, that wedding-DJ instinct not to create a sound-collision between tracks – and I take them at their word. From my observation of them in the studio, there’s more pernickety fanboy care put into ordering and reordering the rappers on disc two than into arranging the cheesy boy balladeers at the end of disc one.

There are minor crises to be overcome, Fisher fretting about missing .wav files (“I’ll call and see if Radio 1 can help us”), and Duckworth about swearing. “We imagine kids in the back of a car, singing along…” The biggest dramas are over whether songs have been cleared for inclusion with their owners. A song by Hailee Steinfeld goes close to the wire. Ed Sheeran’s people have said no this time. “There have always been the non-clearers,” Pritchard says in the voice of somebody recalling old, lost loves. Rihanna’s people never say yes, which Duckworth puts down to the mindset of the US music industry. “They think that if people buy the Now albums, they might not buy their artist’s album, too.” In fact, the trio point out, inclusion on these compilations patently favours the artists, who get royalties and a big bump to their overall streaming numbers via Now’s popular Spotify page.

And so to the last track of disc two, which according to Now custom will attempt to pack a little emotional punch. Charity singles go here, or a major artist who has died since the last instalment. “We’ll try to pay tribute,” Pritchard says. (That’s why Freddie Mercury was last on my old Now 23, I learn: Christmas 1992 was the first anniversary of his death.) To acknowledge the anniversary of the Manchester Arena bombing, Oasis conclude Now 99. One last play of the package, tracks one through 45, and the trio are done. “Nice, isn’t it?” Duckworth says. They finish their coffees and head back to the office.

The next morning, Fisher writes the liner notes and finalises the album artwork: psychedelic multicolour bubbles swirling around the famous 3D logo. (Now 1 pictured individual artists, including a flat-capped Phil Collins, but due to the spectre of last-minute “non-clearers”, the compilers don’t dare do that any more.) A day’s more fiddling and then Now 99 is gone, away for pressing and printing. They won’t see it again for about 10 days, until it’s a shrink-wrapped product.

One day in May, I sit with the trio in the office, surrounded by the plastic glitter of Now 99s. We catch up on their progress on the 100th instalment. Because production happens so close to release, by the time you read this they won’t have mastered it; when we meet, they’re in the clacking-memory-stick phase. It’s looking like Calvin Harris and Dua Lipa for the opening track, they say. Meanwhile, they’ve decided to break their own conventions and make a special disc two that is ring-fenced for nostalgia. It’ll be a greatest hits, a meta-Now, with one artist plucked from every decade in Now time.

I ask, hopefully, if Tasmin Archer has made the cut. Pritchard checks his list and says, sadly no. “It’s Wet Wet Wet. I’m sorry.”

They’ll master Now 100 in early July, they say, before a late-July release. And then what, I ask.

“101,” Fisher says. “101,” Duckworth says. How long do they think the brand can survive? Surely even car drivers will leave CDs behind eventually?

“Even in an age of streams,” Duckworth says, “people need a curator. It’s a vast forest of songs out there.”

“And we’ve got an app,” Pritchard says (this is like a Now-only Spotify).

“And we’ve got an app,” Duckworth agrees. “But I take your point. Reaching 100, it’s a good moment for reflection.” He says they see themselves only as “custodians of Now”. Maybe there’s value in keeping it as unchanged as they can for as long as they can.

And I see what he means. All these curiosities that bob by on pop’s current, the good and the mediocre and the deeply regrettable. We need somewhere to put this stuff and keep it pristine, if only to remember how brilliantly ridiculous we were, those few months around Now 23, when we could like Enya and East 17, Roy Orbison and the plinky song from Tetris, all at once.

Now that’s what I call nostalgia - fans look back

Clara Amfo, Radio 1 DJ and presenter Whoever had the Now in my class would be the most popular person of the day. My stand-out one is album 54. It had Jay-Z and Beyonce’s 03 Bonnie & Clyde on disc one, and Camron’s Hey Ma on disc two: two of my favourite music videos at the time.

It reminds me of the corny hip-hop and R&B club nights I used to go to, as well as fun times staying in with my girlfriends, whose parents kept up with the collection. The albums made you think you were getting the very best of the chart at the time, even though now, looking back, they all missed out key songs (I’m sure due to pesky record label politics). I can empathise: making mixtapes was basically my job at school. I made a really good girlband one that I wish I still had.

Alexis Petridis, music critic I never bought a Now compilation when I was a kid. I’ve no idea why – I was 12 in 1983, the ideal age. Then, a few years ago, I was researching a feature about compilations, and ended up listening to Now 5. Somewhere between Simple Minds’ Don’t You Forget About Me and The Commentators’ N-n-nineteen Not Out, I found myself fully transported back to 1985. It happened because the albums were, and are, compiled without discrimination: if it’s a hit, it’s in, regardless of whether it’s good or bad, built to last for ever or destined to be forgotten in a flash. It offered pop’s past not seen through the distorting lens of nostalgia, but as it really was: a perfect time capsule.

Dan Smith, lead singer, Bastille The CDs are these markers of time. Often a quite mad and eclectic jumble of songs – whose only common link was that they were massive (until you reached the later end of each disc) – that would live on and be replayed in car CD players for what felt like way too long. From novelty songs about being horny or literally being the colour blue, to world music trends that would temporarily invade chart pop music, they’re a collection of tunes that don’t belong together on an actual album elsewhere. Stumbling upon an old issue can be the most surreal time warp back to school rides and family trips”.

I was born in 1983, and the first Now That’s What I Call Music! was in 1993. That was 24. This was a huge introduction to Pop! Aged ten, I was opened to the eclectic possibilities of modern music. Although it was mainly chart-based and did not dig into Grunge or anything too heavy, it did allow me this access into a world of music that I would not have had access to. In 1993, pre-Internet, you had to rely on the radio and the charts. Having an album with all these hits in one places was mind-blowing! Even if I have not bought a new Now That’s What I Call Music! in many years, I still keep track. It is testament to its popularity that it is still being made. The empire is expanding by the year! I like that people want a compilation of the best hits of the year. They could stream them. Instead, they keep an album that is almost a yearbook of the best music from a given time. One of the biggest talking points is this: Which number in the series is the best?! Which year was strongest for Pop, I guess? I am subjective when I say 24, as many other people would disagree! There seems to be some crossover and consensus when you look at features that rank the series and declare the very best. Many would say that the late-'90s was a particularly fertile time. That may be because the person who wrote the feature is of the age where they were a teen when that album came out. That said, people of different generations argue that the end of the 1990s was a great time for chart gold! If some prefer the 2010s, there are those who love 44 – a year (1999) when Britney Spears was breaking through. Many stick within the late-1990s/early-2000s when it comes to their faves. This feature recommends we avoid the ‘best’ of 2014. This 2018 feature marked the one-hundredth Now That’s What I Call Music!:

“Now That's What I call Music albums – known as Now! to its fans – has been collecting the biggest contemporary chart hits since December 1983, when the very first edition topped everyone's Christmas list and spent five weeks at the top of the Official Albums Chart.

Although Now! is one of the most well-known hits collections, they didn't invent the format: compilations by various artists had been around in some form or another for a couple of decades, usually released by a record label wanting to showcase their own artists.

Tamla Motown, for example, had a successful Motown Chartbusters brand which gave them three chart-topping albums and telemarketing companies K-Tel and Ronco released collections featuring tracks licensed from record labels. Ronco managed a couple of Number 1s on the Official Albums Chart with various artists' albums – the That'll Be The Day movie soundtrack in 1973, and the amazingly titled Raiders of the Pop Charts in 1983. But you weren't guaranteed a record full of actual hits.

Michael Mulligan, who spent twenty-five years in music retail - including ten as Head of Music for Tesco - details the evolution of the compilation in his upcoming book, The Story of NOW That’s What I Call Music In 100 Artists, released to coincide with the release of Now's upcoming 100th compilation. In the foreword, he recalls of the Raiders albums: "It featured seven songs from the Virgin vaults, one of which was the compilation's only Number 1, Do You Really Want To Hurt Me by Culture Club; customers scanning through the rest of ‘Raiders’ thirty strong track-listing would have scratched their heads at the non-chart padding provided by The Chaps rendition of ‘Rawhide’, ‘The On And On Song’ by Precious Little, and a jazz-funk workout of the ‘Bladerunner’ theme by Morrissey-Mullen."

The compilations' success was due in part to the huge inconvenience of listening to a variety of singles by different artists – back in the vinyl days, you'd have to race over to the turntable every three minutes or so to change the song. Compilation albums, then, gave you a good half-hour of interrupted tunes – perfect for a party. And when CDs came along, you could have hours! Who needs DJs, eh?

But what if you wanted to get your hands on hits and the label hadn't released it on a comp? One weird quirk of the pre-Now! era were cut-price albums of covers by session singers. Yep, proving that the song was the star, among the shameless copycats was the Top of the Pops series – nothing to do with the long-running BBC TV show – which was hugely successful. The series, known for its slightly pervy covers featuring women models, scored a couple of Number 1s in 1971, before "budget" albums were disqualified from the chart because their lower price gave them an advantage. Listeners of early editions were hearing a future superstar, however – Elton John was known to have started his career appearing on anonymous covers. Says Michael Mulligan: "While TV advertised compilation albums were nothing new [when Now! launched] it was still necessary to reassure potential buyers these were ‘Original Songs, Original Artists’ and ‘Full Length Versions’ – not the imitations of variable quality."

So the Now! series wasn't a pioneer, but they had a distinct advantage that two huge record labels – Virgin and EMI – were behind them. Now! came about when the two label bosses, irked at quality of some compilations featuring their artists, decided to join forces rather than put out rival albums, enlisting songs from 12 other labels too to ensure a bigger collection of popular hits and, of course, more sales. The first edition, a double album, boasted eleven Number 1s including Duran Duran, Phil Collins, Culture Club, and New Edition. The deal was said to have been inked on Richard Branson's boat, at Little Venice in Paddington, London.

The comp's iconic name came from an antique poster bought by Branson for his cousin Simon Draper and hung over his desk at Virgin Records. The poster, featuring a pig listening to a chicken singing and saying yes, you, guessed it "Now. That's What I Call Music" was a joke as Draper was notoriously grumpy in the morning. The pig himself was the mascot of the first few albums before the covers became more arty and the visual feast we know and love today, although he does make a guest appearance on the 100th edition, released on July 26.

Now! was a runaway success and all but one of the first 13 editions topped the Official Albums Chart – poor old Now 4 got trapped at Number 2 behind a rival compilation The Hits Album. By 1989, hits collections and other compilations by various artists, like soundtracks or charity albums, were quite a dominant force on the Official Albums Chart. It was decided to create a chart especially for them, the Official Compilations Chart, and have the Official Albums Chart reserved for albums by a credited artist”.

I have said in previous features how there should be some anniversary events of the big fortieth on 28th November. I know you can get some of the Now That’s What I Call Music! albums on vinyl and cassette. Maybe it would be expensive to do it! I would love to be able to order any of the editions on vinyl or cassette! I am keen to get a new cassette version of 24. In any case, we should promote the podcasts, write new features, and get people together to discuss what Now That’s What I Call Music! means to them. Forty years on, and this legendary and essential compilation king is showing no signs of sagging or a mid-life crisis! In fact, as there are yearbook editions and genre-specific Now That’s What I Call Music! albums, it is growing stronger and more powerful. I look back to 1983 and wonder what it was like seeing that advert for an album where you could get the chart-troubling artists who you only heard before on the radio. Like a selection box, you could buy Now That’s What I Call Music! and hear a song by Culture Club or Duran Duran. If you liked that song, you could then get the studio album it was from. The joy  of discussing the latest Now That’s What I Call Music! album and saving your pocket money so you could get it! I think I bought them up until about 1999 - though I still have a huge interest in the series and how it has evolved. You can buy the first Now That’s What I Call Music!. Many fans of the complications are primed and ready to see what is coming from the makers prior to 28th November. A very special day, it will spark off new debate as to which of the one-hundred-and-fifteen numbered albums is best. We will flash back to childhood and our teenage years and say why particular Now That’s What I Call Music!  albums resonated – and why they still do to this day. I cannot understate how important they were to me. How seismic Now That’s What I Call Music! 24 was (and still is!). Once heard, it opened my mind and changed how I saw and connected with music. For that reason alone, the mighty Now That’s What I Call Music! deserves…

HUGE love and respect.

FEATURE: Waxing Empirical… With Another Rise in Vinyl Sales, Will This Lead to a More Widespread Physical Music Renaissance and Reassessment?

FEATURE:

 

 

Waxing Empirical…

PHOTO CREDIT: Alana Sousa/Pexels

With Another Rise in Vinyl Sales, Will This Lead to a More Widespread Physical Music Renaissance and Reassessment?

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SOME more good news came in this week…

 PHOTO CREDIT: Yelena Odintsova/Pexels

relating to vinyl and increased sales. In fact, rather than classic albums driving sales and being the go-to, new albums are leading a lot of people to the format. In fact, Lana Del Rey’s Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd has seen massive vinyl sales. With the choice available online and the communal aspect of going to record shops and browsing, it does mean that we will continue to see steady sales. Events like National Album Day have raised interest in the classic format. Vinyl is very much a go-to for many. I will spread this out and ask about whether this new heigh for vinyl sales will impact other physical formats – in the sense that there is a revival and resurgence of physical music in general. Streaming is still popular, though there is a clear affection and desire for viny. Music Week explained more in their feature from yesterday:

“Vinyl sales have surged by 13.2% year-on-year for the first nine months of 2023.

According to data from the BPI, 3,952,262 vinyl LPs were sold during the year to the end of September. The year-on-year increase was ahead of the 12.4% growth for the first half of 2023.

At 15.1%, the year-on-year increase was even bigger during the three months of the Q3 period. A total of 1,237,620 vinyl LPs were sold in the quarter.

Vinyl sales increased by a fairly modest 2.9% in 2022, but double-digit growth for the format looks likely to return for 2023. With a potential blockbuster Q4 line-up – including albums from Take That, the Rolling Stones and Taylor Swift – vinyl is set for another strong quarter during the gifting season.

Black Friday, Record Store Day’s sister event, will take place on November 24. More than 90 artists, including De La Soul, Sia, Joni Mitchell, Prince, Rilo Kiley, The Doors and Post Malone, will release limited edition vinyl editions.

The indie retail sector spoke to Music Week for a feature in our current edition – you can read insights from Rough Trade, Crash Records, Banquet and Drift.

 Speaking about the impact of Record Store Day as part of the feature, ERA CEO Kim Bayley said that the annual event “stands alongside the invention of streaming as a landmark moment for music” and became “the single most important catalyst” for the vinyl revival.

Record Store Day stands alongside the invention of streaming as a landmark moment for music

Kim Bayley

“Are there wrinkles in it? Are there challenges? Of course,” she told Music Week. “That is why we tweak the day every year and take feedback from the entire industry as to ways to shape the day. But the big picture is that it has been and continues to be a resounding success.”

Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) by Taylor Swift was the biggest-selling vinyl release during Q3 with 29,649 sales (Official Charts Company), followed by Blur’s The Ballad Of Darren (26,894), Kylie Minogue’s Tension (19,160), Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts (14,611) and Wham!’s The Singles: Echoes From The Edge Of Heaven (10,782).

The biggest vinyl release for the year to date is Lana Del Rey’s Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, which has sales of 33,568 on the format.

With CD sales down 6.3% year-on-year so far in 2023 (to 7,270,654), physical sales are flat overall (down just 0.5% to 11,365,554).

Streaming is of course the dominant means of music consumption now, taking an 88.5% share of the recorded music market. Streaming growth remains in double digits with an 11.6% increase in Streaming Equivalent Albums (SEA) to the end of Q3 (118,914,835 units), according to the BPI.

Overall music consumption (AES) is up 9.8% year-on-year so far in 2023 at 133,914,835 equivalent album units.

IN THIS PHOTO: Taylor Swift/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

2023’s biggest albums & singles

According to Official Charts Company data, The Weeknd’s The Highlights is the most consumed album of the year so far (304,923 chart sales in 2023). It has been out in front since Q1.

The Highlights is one of six catalogue titles in the Top 10 for the year to date.

Taylor Swift’s Midnights is at No.2 overall (264,260 sales in 2023) for the year to date, followed by Harry Styles’ Harry’s House (230,927).

The biggest week one sale so far remains the 95,882 for Lewis Capaldi’s Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent.

In the artist album rankings, Taylor Swift’s Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) was the biggest album of Q3 (131,471), followed by Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts (100,848), which achieved that gold certification in just three weeks.

The biggest UK breakthrough in the album rankings so far this year is Polydor-signed Clavish, whose mixtape Rap Game Awful makes the overall Top 100 to the end of Q3 (No.94, 59,092 sales).

Miley Cyrus’ Flowers, which spent 10 weeks at No.1, is the biggest single with 1,496,859 sales, followed by UK star Raye’s smash Escapism (feat. 070 Shake) on 997,024 chart sales in 2023 (the No.1 for Raye has 1,228,614 sales including those at the end of last year).

During Q3, Sprinter by Dave & Central Cee – which spent 10 weeks at No.1 – emerged as the quarter’s biggest single (612,888 sales).

Olivia Rodrigo was at No.2 with Vampire (498,407), followed by Dua Lipa’s Dance The Night at No.3 (402,282).

Dance The Night is taken from The Barbie Album soundtrack, which would have made No.2 in Q3 (127,152 sales) but for its inclusion on the compilations chart.

Subscribers can click here to read our feature on independent retail as the sector prepares for the busy Q4 period”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Alina Vilchenko/Pexels

Some might say that younger listeners buying vinyl is to be trendy or have the artwork. As I have said in previous features when reacting to the ongoing popularity of vinyl, there is this need for ownership and having something tangible. You get a different relationship with and reaction from an album if you play it on vinyl. Something that can be prized and passed to friends or future generations, there are modern albums that will be future classics. In the same way our parents bought vinyl and have kept them alive, we will see many albums bought this year that are going to be in record collections for decades to come! Maybe the fact C.D.s are stalling and no real boom is happening leads us back to cassettes and alternative physical formats. I think a reason C.D.s are not played as much is because of the lack of devices. Fewer people have C.D. players in their cars. Older systems and Hi-Fis where you could play C.D.s are more reserved to older listeners. For younger fans of physical music, it is great that vinyl is healthy. Despite the fact the cost of a single album on vinyl can cost anywhere between £15-25, there is still this demand. Artists such as Lana Del Rey and Taylor Swift are helping bring vinyl to a new generation. Also, as this report lays out, the effect of increased vinyl sales means the turntable market is growing:

“The Turntables Market is a thriving industry that caters to audiophiles, music enthusiasts, and professionals in the music production sector. This report offers a comprehensive overview of the market, presenting key market insights, the impact of COVID-19, latest trends, driving and restraining factors, segmentation, regional insights, key industry players, industry developments, report coverage, and frequently asked questions.

“According to the Market Research Report, the Turntables market is expected to surpass USD 569 by 2027, which is an increase from its current value of USD 395 in 2022. This growth is projected to have a compound annual growth rate (5.4%) between 2023 and 2027.” Ask for a Sample Report

KEY MARKET INSIGHTS: Turntables Market

The Turntables Market is witnessing steady growth due to the resurgence of vinyl records and the revival of analog audio equipment. Key market insights reveal that direct-drive turntables are gaining popularity among DJs and music producers for their precise speed control and quick startup. Additionally, belt-drive turntables are favored by audiophiles for their smoother rotation and reduced motor noise.

COVID-19 IMPACT: Turntables Market

The COVID-19 pandemic had a mixed impact on the Turntables Market. While the initial lockdowns and restrictions disrupted supply chains and sales, there was an increase in demand for turntables from consumers seeking home entertainment options during quarantine. The market experienced a surge in vinyl record sales, benefiting the turntables market”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Matthias Groeneveld/Pexels

I have said this before, but I do feel that to encourage physical sales wider than the vinyl market, there needs to be the same availability of other technologies to go alongside turntables. I am not sure what bizarre hybrid it could be. Manufacturing new turntables so there is a playing option/compatibility for C.D.s and cassettes. A new line of players and Hi-Fis for cassettes and C.D.s. Of course, one can still buy older models, though I am not sure how many people buying vinyl who also would necessarily have space or budget for a Hi-Fi. It takes me back to the debate around portable players and reviving them. Again, there are options out there, yet they can be expensive or old-fashioned. A turntable does not necessarily need to adapt in the modern age. I do feel the price of vinyl needs to come down a bit to make it more accessible to all. There are issues and hurdles regarding shipping, the number of vinyl plants, together with the cost of producing a vinyl record to start. I know I am repeating myself from features earlier in the year. The new good news regarding vinyl sales is reason to reinstall and highlight those points. I think that there does need to be focus given to other physical formats and ensuring that there are affordable and convenient options - that means we do not solely rely on vinyl. People still want to listen to albums on the go. The vast majority of people doing that do so through their phones.

PHOTO CREDIT: Car Girl/Pexels

Even if the overall sales of vinyl are high so far this year, as has been pointed out, sales of new albums have slightly declined. Perhaps classic albums are still favoured or obtainable to a different (maybe older) demographic. I wonder whether a younger audience who might want to buy a vinyl copy of a new album do not have the disposable income. That, or they are being given too many reissues and deluxe editions. It is a hard thing bringing down the cost of a vinyl album, given all the costs and logistics involved from pressing to manufacturing. If we celebrate the vinyl market in general, at such a tough and cash-poor time where fans still want to show to own physical music, there does need to be serious thought given to C.D.s, cassettes, and even relaunching a bygone option like MiniDisc. Few of us felt that, by 2023, physical music sales would be hampered by outdated hardware formats or the discontinuation of others. With so many new artists struggling to make a living and relying on album sales to do anything, it is imperative that we make it an affordable as possible. Sites like Bandcamp are really great if someone wants a digital copy. If you are in a shop or want to get a new album, often the vinyl copy can be expensive. You may buy that and decide not to buy a further one (to budget). That, or people are not buying vinyl at all. It would be interesting to see an age demographic and types of albums that each bought.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Feist/PHOTO CREDIT: Mary Rozzi via The New York Times

One of the best albums of this year is Feist’s Multitudes. I was sorely tempted to own it on vinyl but, as you can see, it is quite pricey. Maybe the sheer weight of vinyl makes it harder to produce at a lower cost. Even so, I see different websites and stores quoting different prices for albums. Artists want to sell as many as they can, and yet they have no influence when it comes to setting the price. With so many offering album bundles where you can get a C.D. and cassette, there are options. As I have said many times, fewer people have the devices on which to play them. It is an awkward situation where the fuller picture needs to be represented. Yes, vinyl sales look brilliant, though they do not really highlight how few non-mainstream artists see big vinyl sales. I suspect a lot of teens and people in their twenties do not have the income and option to buy many vinyl albums. Also, there does seem to be this assumption that C.D.s are cassettes are irrelevant and shouldn’t be highlighted. Maybe they have disadvantages that will require major restructuring and remodelling (the vulnerability of the cassette; the fact people don’t have C.D. players). A few things are clear. Vinyl is growing and sales suggest, whether older or new albums are being bought, there are encouraging signs. We also know that fans want physical music and to have that balance with streaming. That means, if vinyl prices are high or there are reasons why fewer new albums are selling huge number, cost and accessibility is considered. Whether uncool or flawed, I still feel there is value and that cheaper option by making C.D.s and cassettes available to play portably – which might mean reissuing a new-style version of the classic Discman/Walkman. Regardless, those sales figures at the top are reason to be cheerful at least! I hope that this pleasing trend continues…

 PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels

RIGHT through 2024.

FEATURE: Summertime Sadness: The Increasing Cost of Attending Music Festivals

FEATURE:

 

 

Summertime Sadness

PHOTO CREDIT: Wendy Wei/Pexels

The Increasing Cost of Attending Music Festivals

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MANY people are looking forward…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Lana Del Rey at Glastonbury Festival earlier this year/PHOTO CREDIT: Kate Green/Getty Images

to next year’s Glastonbury Festival. Organisers Emily and Michael Eavis have promised there will be two female headliners in 2024. This year saw another all-male line-up. With the likes of Lana Del Rey already on the bill and more than headline-worthy, excuses around ‘pipeline issues’ – one reason why few women are booked as headliners – did not hold water. The Debbie Harry-fronted Blondie could also have headlined. Reacting to this by ensuring that there are women headlining is long overdue. It is something all festivals need to follow! Quit making poor excuses and recognise the talent that is out there and ready to headline! I hope that all festivals get a fifty-fifty gender balance across their bills. With very few major festivals achieving that this year, things need to change next year. That all said, music festivals are a lifeline at a time when many smaller venues are closing. With COVID cases back on the rise, let’s hope that we are not in a position in the summer where we are isolating and not able to mingle! There are a terrific range of festivals that are available to a variety of tastes. One of the main problems with larger festivals is the cost of tickets. Even a one-day pass can be very steep. News broke recently that highlighted some climbs in festivals passes/tickets next year:

“Ticket prices for Glastonbury Festival next year will rise to £360.

It is a £20 increase from this year's event, which cost £335 plus a £5 booking fee - and a £75 hike from the price in 2022.

Fans will be able to buy ticket and coach travel packages on 2 November, and standard tickets on 5 November.

Festival goers will be charged £355 plus a £5 booking fee for standard tickets, with £75 as a deposit and the balance due by the first week of April.

 These standard tickets will not include additional perks like glamping accommodation, paid for separately after tickets are obtained.

Glastonbury co-organiser Emily Eavis made the pricing announcement on social media and said people would need to register in advance on the festival's website.

To purchase a ticket, members of the public must register on the Glastonbury's website by 17:00 GMT on 30 October.

Several major UK festivals have released prices for standard tickets next year - all of which are cheaper than Glastonbury:

• Download - £275

• Wireless - £259.25 (plus £3.25 booking fee)

• Isle of Wight - £190 (plus £19 booking fee)

But Glastonbury is by far the biggest festival in the UK - hosted across the 900-acre site of Worthy Farm in Somerset.

Around 200,000 people attended concerts at this year's event, and a record 21.6 million watched TV coverage on the BBC.

It was headlined by Arctic Monkeys, Guns N' Roses, and Sir Elton John, who all took to Glastonbury's iconic Pyramid Stage.

Other top artists filled the line-up, including rock band Queens of the Stone Age, and rapper Skepta.

Stages also hosted film screenings, speeches by politicians, and circus and theatre performances.

Despite a price increase of £70 between 2019, when tickets were sold for the 2020 concert, and last year, tickets for the 2023 event sold out in 61 minutes”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Wendy Wei/Pexels

Despite the fact festivals are an essential release and community for music fans, I don’t think they are being supported and backed by the Government. Same goes for independent venues. As costs rise and it is getting more expensive to stage festivals, it will means ticket prices need to rise. What is the solution? It is clear that many will be squeezed out. With the cost of living going up and people having to ration and budget hard, it will be quite a sacrifice for people going to large festivals in 2024. Even if demand will mean festivals sell out, I think that this comes at a loss for so many. Once on site, there is the cost of food and drink. Throw in travel to get to an event and it makes for a very expensive experience! With rent prices rising heavily, it is going to be even more difficult for many to go to festivals. It is not the fault of organisers. Last year, this article highlighted the fact that rising festival ticket prices are almost unavoidable. There is no safety net in place at all:

“British music fans expressed dismay this week as Glastonbury announced that the cost of tickets for next year’s event will rise from £265 to £335.

Emily Eavis, co-organiser of the not-for-profit festival, said: “We have tried very hard to minimise the increase in price on the ticket but we’re facing enormous rises in the costs of running this vast show, while still recovering from the huge financial impact of two years without a festival because of Covid.”

It is likely that Glastonbury is the canary in the coalmine, as many festival organisers grapple with increasing financial challenges.

Paul Reed, CEO of the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF), said the concern over transferring the financial burden to the consumer was shared across the sector: “Organisers are very mindful that there is a cost of living crisis. I think festivals by their very nature want to be inclusive of all parts of society, but they run with incredibly tight margins at the best of times – it can be 10% or less in terms of your potential profit margin – and costs are going up by 25%-30%, so ultimately something has to give.”

PHOTO CREDIT: freestocks.org/Pexels

Many of the rising costs stem from the ongoing effects of Brexit and the pandemic. Supply chain issues continue; many events professionals retrained throughout the lockdown periods, meaning the available workforce is far smaller than at the beginning of 2020. With demand increasing as the festival market grows, labour costs have swelled. Even so, many festivals honoured their 2020 prices for ticketholders returning in 2021 and 2022, despite a dramatic rise in inflation in the interim.

New challenges, such as an increase in artist fees to account for higher post-pandemic touring costs, add to the financial strain. Meanwhile, fluctuating fuel prices mean that the cost of operating generators and transporting infrastructure to sites is unpredictable.

“This is something that is unique to festivals because you build the entire thing from scratch,” says Marina Blake, creative director of Brainchild, an independent festival that had to cancel this year due to a combination of increased costs and slow ticket sales. “In the past, there’d be a quote including hire fee and transport costs right at the start. Now, they’ll give you the quote for the equipment but not the transport costs until the week of the event, which means you don’t know what it’s going to cost you, but you know it’s going to be more than you’re expecting.”

The risks, she says, are too much to bear during a time in which consumers’ financial habits are changing constantly: “We’d sold out every year for the last four years; I felt as if our demand was the only thing I could count on. Now, the people who usually buy tickets are going out less and spending less money”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Caio/Pexels

I think the latest news of yet more ticket price rises for U.K. festivals needs to send a message to the Government that they need to be supported and backed. Many artists are having to pull out of festivals because of the rising cost of touring. The Guardian published a feature earlier this year that underlines how many artists are paying more than they are earning for playing at festivals. Even though I do not buy the fact there is a pipeline issue that means fewer women are visible as potential headliners, it is clear that so many potential festival names are simply unavailable to perform:

“Musicians are dropping out of festivals because huge rises in the cost of performing are outstripping their fees. Artists told the Observer they have had to turn down offers to play or cut out elements of their live shows, while others have revealed they have lost as much as £17,000 for a single performance.

Although ticket prices have risen by 15% on average, the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) warned that the costs of staging a show are up by 30%, and that gap is costing both artists and promoters.

More than 100 UK festivals – one in six – have closed permanently since the start of the Covid pandemic, three in the last week alone, due to staffing shortages and the high costs of energy and equipment such as fencing, toilets and stages.

Maxïmo Park were due to play Chagstock in Devon this month but the organisers cancelled it, blaming escalating costs and lower than expected ticket sales.

“It’s a real shame,” said Paul Smith, Maxïmo Park’s lead singer. “I think a lot of festivals are wondering whether it’s worth putting it on, and a lot of smaller acts are wondering if it’s worth the small fees to get there.” The indie rock band are known for their lively stage shows and were unable to tour with their 2020 album, Nature Always Wins, because of lockdown. This summer they have just a handful of dates planned, including Hartlepool’s Tall Ships festival.

IN THIS PHOTO: Elkka

“We’ve stripped back because of the costs – we didn’t take a lighting engineer on our recent European tour,” Smith said. Brexit rules have also made touring more expensive due to the cost of visas and cabotage rules on tour buses.

The Newcastle singer is also part of Unthank : Smith, a collaboration with folk singer Rachel Unthank. “We put a record out this year,” he said. “We looked at a few logistical things. It would have cost us a lot of money to do festival dates, and our fees would have been minimal. So we didn’t.”

Elkka, the electronic artist whose 2021 club hit Burnt Orange helped get her a Radio 1 residency, played a DJ set at this year’s Glastonbury. “I have to be really, really selective about what I do and whether it’s possible financially,” said the musician, whose real name is Emma Kirby. “I’m a DJ as well, so sometimes I look at something and think that I can’t afford to take a show because it’s too expensive to take my show there. So I DJ instead – but I’m lucky to have that option.”

Even as an emerging solo artist, Elkka needs a tech expert to maintain her synthesisers and drum machinesso they don’t fail during a performance, a live sound engineer and a tour manager. Sometimes she will just accept a loss-making trip. “I’m a queer artist. I like to play in spaces where I’m with my allies, and those parties don’t always have the money to take you there. But I can’t keep doing things at a great loss,” said Kirby”.

 IMAGE CREDIT: All Points East

Our economy and position on Brexit means that festivals are struggling to keep costs down. As Time Out showed in their feature that was published before the announcement of price rises in 2024, it does appear that the U.K. is in a unique position. Our festival prices are rising faster than festivals in other parts of the world:

“And not unsuprisingly, it seems that the cost of UK festivals is rising faster than anywhere else. Out of the world’s top ten festivals to see the biggest price surges, seven were based in Britain. Revellers at Reading and Leeds this year have paid 34.4 percent more to attend than last year, making it the second highest increase worldwide after Open’er in Poland (which inflated by 42.1 percent in sterling terms).

London's All Points East didn’t fall far behind, with tickets to see Stormzy et al rising from £68 to £91 from 2022 to 2023 – a 33.8 percent increase. Then came Cornish surfing and music fest Boardmasters, for which attendees have paid 30.3 percent more than last year.

Despite being one of the country’s most spenny weekenders, Glastonbury only came fourth on the list of UK events, with a 19.6 percent increase in ticket prices. Creamfields and Wireless followed with an 18.2 percent and 17 percent increase respectively.

These are the percentage increases of ten UK festivals between summer 2022 and 2023, according to No1 Currency:

1. Reading and Leeds (34.4 percent)

2. All Points East (33.8 percent)

3. Boardmasters (30.3 percent)

4. Glastonbury (19.6 percent)

5. Creamfields (18.2 percent)

6. Wireless (17.0 percent)

7. Latitude (12.2 percent)

8. Isle of White (10.3 percent)

9. Download (2.6 percent)

10. Parklife (0 percent)”.

If some festivals are not raising prices – or only by a small percentage –, it does appear that our biggest are having to incur massive costs - and, as such, it means an average ticket price is almost beyond the reach of many. That is a shame. Attending festivals like Glastonbury or Boardmasters provided these incredible memories. An essential live music experience, it is disappointing that it is so expensive. I hope that there is more funding for music festivals.

 IMAGE CREDIT: Reading Festival

Brexit means that fewer EU musicians are able to play in the U.K. That means that artists from wider afield are being booked. This article highlights a real issue when it comes to artists from the EU being able to come to Britain. This access restriction is causing big damage for music festivals. Something that is not going to be solved next year:

“Figures published today by internationalist campaign group Best for Britain show that, on average, the number of European musicians scheduled to take to the stage at major festivals across the UK this summer has fallen by 40% compared to 2017-19.

The findings mark a slight improvement on 2022 figures where in the first festival season after Brexit and Covid restrictions, European musicians booked to play British festivals had fallen by 53% compared to the years 2017-19. Industry leaders have attributed the improvement to festival organisers and musicians having some experience with new restrictions and paperwork in the second post-Brexit Festival season.

However, this year the number of European musicians playing at Britain’s most iconic festival, Glastonbury, has decreased even further, down 50% this year compared to 42% in 2022.

These new figures have reinforced concerns around the impact that Brexit is having on the diversity of the music scene in the UK. Earlier this year, Best for Britain published research suggesting that the number of UK musicians playing EU festivals had fallen by a third since Brexit.

Industry leaders have confirmed that the government’s Brexit deal continues to make touring much more difficult with new rules on visas and cabotage, and is incompatible with common industry practice where musicians are often asked to fill last-minute vacancies in a festival line-up”.

It is a real problem. The cost of buying a ticket to a major festival. That article I opened with shows what a problem we have. Costs will only rise each year, to the point where people hoping to attend festivals are going to be spending an inordinate amount. I know many will make that sacrifice. They shouldn’t have to! It is an issue reflected across live music. So many big artists are putting their ticket prices up. The cost of seeing your favourite artist on the stage is rising ever higher. Live music should be something everyone is able to access! Festivals especially. Let’s hope there is a solution and price hike freeze soon. Festivals in the sun should not be about stress, sadness and financial strains: they are all about…

HAPPINESS and togetherness.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Grrrl Gang

FEATURE:

 

 

 

Spotlight

Grrrl Gang

_________

WITH a couple…

of great dates ahead in Australia – 20th 0ctober at Pleasures Playhouse, Sydney, NSW: 21st Oct at The Chippo Hotel, Sydney, NSW – there is this international respect and demand that is coming the way of Grrrl Gang. The trio from Yogyakarta, Indonesia consists of Angeeta Sentana (vocals, guitar), Akbar Rumandung (bass, vocals) and Edo Alventa (guitar, vocals). The group have been making waves since 2016. A lot of K-Pop bands translate from Asia and are highlighted in the media. I am not sure whether any other types of music from the Asian continent are given as much spotlight. In fact, most of my Spotlight features concern artists from the U.K. or U.S. It is nice to embrace and dive into the music of Grrrl Girl. They are getting some real praise and salute from the British press. It is no surprise! The trio’s new album, Spunky!, is one that is among this year’s absolute best. I shall come to a review for the album to end. First, here is some detail about a remarkable album:

“Indonesian trio Grrrl Gang build on their considerable worldwide buzz with Spunky!, their full-length debut album. Released on 27 September 2023 by Green Island Music in partnership with exclusive licensees Kill Rock Stars (for North and South America), Trapped Animal Records (UK and EU) and Big Romantic Records (Japan and Taiwan), the album is preceded by its title track and first single which drops on May 31.

Spunky! arrives following some major life changes for Angeeta Sentana (vocals, guitar), Akbar Rumandung (bass, vocals) and Edo Alventa (guitar, vocals), including a switch in locale from Yogyakarta, the city where they formed the band while still in college. “This is Grrrl Gang’s first release after we graduated and got day jobs that made us have to move to Jakarta, which is undeniably 180 degrees compared to Yogya,” says Rumandung. “But moving to Jakarta enabled us to work with Lafa on Spunky! from start to finish.”

Overall, Spunky! is the sound of a band not content to rest on its laurels, despite gathering an impressive list of achievements since Grrrl Gang first got together in 2016 and proceeded to take the local, regional, and international indie scenes by storm, leading to a prestigious performance slot on the pandemic-induced online edition of SXSW 2021 and an A- review that esteemed music critic Robert Christgau bestowed upon Here to Stay!, the 2020 compilation of their early singles. According to Rumandung, “We want this album to show that we’ve changed, that Grrrl Gang is a band that isn’t stuck in one place and that we always have the urge to discover new things.”

In other words, Spunky! proves that Grrrl Gang are – to borrow a familiar phrase – here to stay”.

Let’s move to some interviews from this year. It is hard for any group outside of the U.K. and U.S. to grab a larger foothold and get that international attention. We do not really look at the music coming out of countries like Indonesia. Before getting to a recent NME interview A-indie spoke with the captivating and cool Grrrl Gang:

“The Origin of Grrrl Gang

– I know you formed in 2016. How did the three members, Angie, Akbar, and Edo, meet and get to form the band?

Angee: We went to the same university. I was still a freshman when I met Akbar and Edo, they were already in their third year. Akbar and I studied the same major, while Edo studied economics. I was introduced to them by our former drummer, because I was invited to be a part of a music collective, called Terror Weekend, which Akbar and Edo founded in 2015.
Akbar and I were in a car ride together with said former drummer, as he was looking for new housing, and we thought that it would be great to form a band together. Then Edo came along to be the lead guitarist to make our sound less flat and more colorful.

– What is the meaning of the band’s name, “Grrrl Gang”?

Angee: I think there’s no meaning behind the name “Grrrl Gang”. The idea to name the band came into fruition as a joke, and we looked for other names using a band name generator on the internet, but they all sucked! So, we just stuck with “Grrrl Gang”.

The Choice of English Lyrics

– I’ve heard that there are about 500 languages used in Indonesia. If your home language is Indonesian, why do you use English in lyrics instead of using your first language？

Angee: It’s because I use more English on a daily basis, rather than Indonesian. I feel more comfortable writing, speaking and singing in English.

PHOTO CREDIT: Tiny Studio 

The Issue of Hijab in Indonesia

– I read an article that Indonesian women are practically not free from wearing or not wearing hijab. Regardless of such situations, I guessed it would be “spunky” that Angie didn’t wear hijab in promotion photos. Angie, could you tell us your ideas about wearing or not wearing a hijab?

Angee: I’m not a Muslim, that’s why I don’t wear hijab in promotion photos and in daily life. Indonesia is a multicultural country with many different religions, and what I understand is that for some Muslim women wearing the hijab comes from their own choice and is a rite of passage for them—basically, it’s their own business with God and spirituality. So, seeing how several institutions in this country are “forcing” Muslim women to wear the hijab is quite depressing.

The Asian Indie Music Scene

– How do you think of the Asian indie music scene these days? And do you have any competitors in Asia

Angee: I think it’s great how globalization and the rapidly increasing access to the internet opened up the possibilities of discovering new music in Asian countries and for the Asian indie music scene to be more exposed to more people in different regions, especially considering how traditional media was mostly dominated by the West. I think right now, the Asian indie music scene is bustling and thriving and I’m looking forward to see what’s to come.
Akbar: We don’t see any competitors because music is not a competition anyway.

The Story Behind the Album “Spunky!”

– Listening to this album “Spunky!” just once, indie music fans will get hooked on Grrrl Gang. How did you name this album and the single “Spunky!”?

Angee: The themes that are written about are quite depressing, and the takeaway that I want the listeners to know is that you can overcome anything despite your circumstances. So, we decided to name this album “Spunky!”, because all you need in life is courage and determination. As for the single, I figured that it’s very fitting to name it that, because, I feel like, this is the first ever song that I’ve ever written where I proudly declare that I am powerful and remarkable.

The Concept of “Cool Girl”

– In “Cool Girl”, which is the 5th track of the new album, “Spunky!”, Angie sings “I wish I was a Cool Girl” repeatedly. What is like “Cool Girl” do you think of?

Angee: The “Cool Girl” that is referred to in this track is the patriarchal idea of what a girl should be. The song is satirical and personal, because I can’t deny that I’ve internalized these ideas that manifest in my need to be deemed “perfect” by everyone and myself. The “Cool Girl” that I strive to be is someone who just doesn’t care about what others think.

The Target Audience of Grrrl Gang

– Is there any particular listener or person aiming for?

Angee: Not really, to be honest. I just want everyone that listens to our songs to enjoy and relate to them.
Edo: Same with Angee, we don’t really aim for any specific segment when we wrote the album. This album is for everyone.

The Influences of Punk Music on Grrrl Gang

– I guessed your music was influenced by punk music. Please tell us about three albums that have influenced your music. And tell us about the specific part that inspired you in each album.

Angee: The three albums that inspired “Spunky!” for me are Hole’s “Live Through This”, Sleater-Kinney’s “Dig Me Out”, and The Go-Go’s “Beauty and the Beat”. I love Courtney Love’s candid and morbid lyrics in “Live Through This”, and I deeply relate to them. I guess, her honesty assured me that it’s okay for me to be completely honest about what I went through. “Dig Me Out” made me want to play the guitar for the tracks in “Spunky!” to be more aggressive, meanwhile the vocal melodies in “Spunky!” were inspired from “Beauty and the Beat”.

This NME interview spends time with a trio making irresistible Indie Pop. Angeeta Sentana spoke about the group’s beginnings and how they got to their debut album, Spunky! I have selected some parts of the interview that caught my eye. It is clear that we will be hearing a lot more from Grrrl Group. They are very much here to stay:

“There’s a saying: bands from Jogja that move to Jakarta or other cities when they finish college will disband,” says Rumandung. Grrrl Gang decided they would break the curse. Sentana pushed through her creative block by writing the first song for the record, ‘A Fight Breaks Out At A Karaoke Bar’, and then keeping at it until it felt “effortless” again. Instead of working with a producer they already knew, Grrrl Gang picked someone from outside their circles: Lafa Pratomo. Over a month-long recording process, the band had free rein of Pratomo’s studio, Alventa’s experiments with guitars and pedals manifesting in the noisy, grungy moments of ‘Spunky!’ – textures never before heard in Grrrl Gang’s discography.

The band describe Pratomo as a producer who needs to “deep-dive” with his collaborators. “Talking to Lafa before recording really helped me access those old moments [in the lyrics],” says Sentana. “I told him everything that happened in college, from shitty exes to sexual assault experiences and sexual harassment on stages. I harboured all these feelings that had always been stored in my body but never vocally expressed.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Hafiyyan Faza for NME

Grrrl Gang were, from the beginning, a statement against machismo in Indonesia’s music scene – specifically the othering and objectification of female musicians. That was one of the reasons the band named themselves Grrrl Gang: to anticipate and defang that misogynistic framing, says Sentana. I know you’re going to see me as a woman in a band – so I’ll own it. That was the logic.

Nevertheless, Grrrl Gang still came face to face with these ugly perceptions. “No one really saw me as a songwriter,” Sentana says of her experiences fronting the group, especially early on. “They would just focus on me being a woman in a band: the mouthpiece, the trophy for this group. They only focused on how pretty I looked, and never on the qualities of the songs we make.”

And with Grrrl Gang, it’s all about the songs. “We always thought that this band had to have a female perspective for all lyrics and narration,” Rumandung says. “We never had that before, especially in Indonesia where the industry and community are too masculine sometimes. We need to balance it. And there are lots of stories that Angee needs to tell.”

As a storyteller and a musician, Sentana hopes she can be a positive influence: “I just hope I inspire young women to pick up a guitar or any musical instrument and write their own songs.” That hope manifests in their music video for ‘Spunky!’, which follows an introvert at a rowdy Grrrl Gang show. As she gazes at Sentana, resplendent before the crowd, her discomfort morphs into open-mouthed awe – and before long she’s imagining herself holding a guitar, standing on stage singing ‘Spunky!’.

I am going to finish with a glowing review for Spunky! An emphatic debut that people should get, I first want to quote from Rough Trade, and what they say about one of the most exciting and essential debut albums of this year. Proof that some of the very best and most important Pop is coming from Asia:

“Indonesian trio Grrrl Gang builds on their considerable worldwide buzz with Spunky!, their full-length debut album. Released on 22 September 2023 by Green Island Music in partnership with exclusive licensees Kill Rock Stars (United States), Trapped Animal Records (United Kingdom) and Big Romantic Records (Japan and Taiwan), the album is preceded by its title track and first single dropped on May 30, featured from the same title of the album, 'Spunky!' Spunky! arrives following some major life changes for Angeeta Sentana (vocals, guitar), Akbar Rumandung (bass, vocals), and Edo Alventa (guitar, vocals), including a switch in locale from Yogyakarta, the city where they formed the band while still in college. “This is Grrrl Gang’s first release after we graduated and got day jobs that made us have to move to Jakarta, which is undeniably 180 degrees compared to Jogja,” says Rumandung. “But moving to Jakarta enabled us to work with Lafa on Spunky! from start to finish.” The song itself essentially describes Sentana's experience during a manic episode. “I feel like I’m on top of the world, untouchable. I do things without thinking, always chasing after that feeling of instant gratification. I feel extra confident in myself to a point of grandiose thinking and that I could do anything,” Sentana explains. That would be Lafa Pratomo, the in-demand producer brought in to help shape the ten tracks that make up Spunky! With a resume that includes the likes of the chanteuse Danilla and legendary singer-songwriter Iwan Fals, Pratomo might not seem the obvious choice to take the Grrrl Gang producer’s chair. But according to Rumandung, “In terms of production, this was something new for us by working with someone outside of Grrrl Gang’s comfort zone.”

Indeed, Pratomo considerably beefs up Grrrl Gang’s sound particularly Alventa’s guitar tones, Rumandung’s rumbling bass, and touring drummer Muhammad Faiz Abdurrahman’s muscular beats while preserving the band’s signature raucous energy, catchy melodies, and Sentana’s attitude-filled, equal-parts-honey-and-vinegar vocals. The music video for Spunky! premieres on the Grrrl Gang YouTube channel on the same day as the release of the song. The video, directed by Bathroom Girls, is part of a continuous movie, with Spunky! being the second chapter. It tells the story of an introverted girl who goes to a house party to validate herself among her peers. Despite facing challenges to her self-esteem, she manages to overcome her discomfort to survive the night. During the party, she watches Grrrl Gang perform Spunky! and is mesmerized by the confident performance of Angee, the lead singer. The girl imagines herself as Angee, a confident and cool person that she will never be. Hailing from the cultural city of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Grrrl Gang is a rising force in the independent music scene with their infectious melodies, anthemic songs, and electrifying live performances. The power trio, composed of Angee Sentana on guitar and vocals, Akbar Rumandung on bass, and Edo Alventa on guitar, has been making waves in the Southeast Asian music scene since their formation in 2016. Grrrl Gang's music is a celebration of their collective roots and a testament to the power of pop music to connect people across cultures and borders. Their lyrics touch on themes such as feminism, mental health, and relationships with a raw honesty that speaks to a generation of young listeners. With their infectious energy, socially conscious lyrics, and unique sound, Grrrl Gang is poised to take the global music scene by storm and become a voice for a new generation”.

Let’s finish on a review from Joyzine. This is what they had to say about an irresistibly listenable album that is going to be among the most-celebrated of the year when critics decide on the best albums of 2023. I am excited to see where Grrrl Gang go next. Let’s hope they have some touring dates in the U.K. very soon. So many people here would love to see them play:

“Spunky!’ is the debut album from Indonesian band Grrrl Gang I have to say for me, if I see any band in any way associated with the Kill Rock Stars record label, it always piques my interest.’ Spunky’ has been released across several labels across the world- Green Island Music in partnership with exclusive licensees Kill Rock Stars (for North, Central, and South America), Trapped Animal Records (UK and EU), and Big Romantic Records (Japan and Taiwan). So many good bands have been associated with Kill Rock Stars in particular, and Grrrl Gang are no exception.

Spunky! is a fun debut that is in no way one dimensional. I note that on their Bandcamp bio, they have described themselves as an ‘indie pop trio’. While there is definitely indie-pop moments to be had here- such as songs ‘Blue Stained Lips’ and ‘The Star’, there is also punky, riot grrrl moments too. Title track ‘Spunky’ is one of those moments, even featuring lyrics that wouldn’t seem out of a place on a Bikini Kill album- ‘I was born in the pit, I gave birth in the pit, I never shave my pits, Let me swallow your spit’. ‘Better than Life’ is a minute and a half shouty assault that will stick in your mind. The song is quite dark, dealing with thoughts of depression.

Other topics touched upon on this album include insecurity on single ‘Cool Girl’ (a personal favourite for me) and self loathing on ‘Birthday Blues’. So despite the fun sounding title, ‘Spunky!’ actually covers a whole spectrum of personal emotions.

The band have been together since 2016 and have already built an impressive fanbase in that time. They have toured around South East Asia and one of their first singles ‘Bathroom’ received over a million streams online. With the release of ‘Spunky!’ I am sure that they will be making waves here in the UK also”.

Such a sensational, fresh and colourful trio who have provided us with one of the best albums of the year in 2023. Spunky! is a sign that Grrrl Gang are going to be a huge name. Such a broad and varied group who can make any subject and sound completely compelling and their own, many will sit back and watch to see…

WHAT they do next.

___________

Follow Grrrl Gang

PHOTO CREDIT: Hafiyyan Faza for NME

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/grrrlgang/

TikTok:

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

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/grrrlgangband

Bandcamp:

https://grrrlgang.bandcamp.com/

YouTube:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4GgA61hzcYno3GYTrjhZ6A

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/grrrlgangband/

FEATURE: To Be Someone (Didn’t We Have a Nice Time): The Jam's All Mod Cons at Forty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

To Be Someone (Didn’t We Have a Nice Time)

The Jam's All Mod Cons at Forty-Five

_________

ALTHOUGH fans of The Jam…

 IN THIS PHOTO: The Jam (from left to right: Bruce Foxton, Rick Buckler, Paul Weller)/PHOTO CREDIT: Ebet Roberts/Redferns

would argue which of their studio albums is the best, few can deny that All Mod Cons was a big step forward. Released on 3rd November, 1978, I wanted to look ahead to the forty-fifth anniversary. One of the best British albums ever, it was produced by Vic Coppersmith-Heaven. 1977’s This Is the Modern World got some good reviews - though it was largely seen as a disappointment by many critics. The third album from The Jam saw everything click into place. All Mod Cons was when Paul Weller, Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler released into the world their first major work. You can buy All Mod Cons on vinyl. Mature, confident and assured,  The Jam had definitely moved up and were in stunning form. Classics like Down at a Tube Station At Midnight, English Rose, David Watts, All Mod Cons and ‘A' Bomb in Wardour Street rank alongside the finest songs that The Jam ever recorded. I want to get to a couple of features about All Mod Cons. Last November, Udiscovermusic. highlighted an album that announced The Jam as one of the most essential and influential bands of their generation:

“Unlike contemporaries such as Sex Pistols and The Clash, The Jam initially spent several years honing their craft on the small club circuit, so when they burst onto the scene early in 1977, they blazed with passion and purpose. In just five short years, with albums the likes of In The City, All Mod Cons and Sound Affects, the group spearheaded a mod revival that still reverberates today.

Seemingly at odds with punk’s “Year Zero” mentality, the Rickenbacker-wielding, Surrey-based trio didn’t immediately slot in with their peers. Though acceptably loud and aggressive, the band’s music openly betrayed their collective love of mod-inclined forbears The Who and The Kinks, while their sharp black stage suits were anathema to young punks sporting safety pins, ripped T-shirts, and bondage trousers.

Nonetheless, the kids dug The Jam from the word go. After the band signed to Polydor Records, their debut LP, In The City, rose briskly to No.20 in the UK charts in May 1977; its swift follow-up, November ’77’s This Is The Modern World, climbed to No.22 and went silver. Yet while This Is The Modern World was superficially a success, it was largely savaged by the press and, during the first half of 1978, The Jam were plunged into crisis. Frontman and primary songsmith Paul Weller was struck down with writer’s block, while Polydor rejected the band’s next set of demos. After Weller eventually finished a fresh batch of songs, The Jam were forced to complete their third LP, All Mod Cons, with engineer Vic Coppersmith-Heaven, after producer Chris Parry was sacked during the fraught initial sessions.

Triumph ultimately sprang from adversity, however, and fans bagged an exciting preview of the imminent All Mod Cons when the LP’s superb lead single, “Down In The Tube Station At Midnight,” was released in October 1978. Buoyed by an intricate Bruce Foxton bassline and Weller’s vivid, narrative-style lyric bemoaning the rise in right-wing violence, the song was effectively The Jam’s first truly great 45 and it rapidly re-introduced the band to the British Top 40, where it peaked at No.15.

Issued just weeks later, on 3 November 1978, the pivotal All Mod Cons more than fulfilled “… Tube Station”’s promise. Tracks such as “‘A’ Bomb In Wardour Street” and the caustic, stardom-related “To Be Someone (Didn’t We Have A Nice Time)” were laced with the band’s hallmark nostril-flaring aggression, but this was tempered by a rapidly flourishing maturity in Weller’s songwriting abilities, which ensured that The Jam could now deliver material as brave and diverse as the Revolver-style psychedelia of “In The Crowd,” the bittersweet “It’s Too Bad” and the wistful, Nick Drake-esque “English Rose.”

Championed by fans and critics alike, the album hit Gold status, shot to No.6 in the UK Top 40, and scooped the New Musical Express’ prestigious Album Of The Year award. Its success was integral to The Jam outstripping punk and embarking on a lengthy tussle with the mainstream which, a mere 18 months later, yielded their first British No.1, courtesy of “Going Underground”.

I will come to some reviews of the mighty All Mod Cons. Whist many might name 1979’s Setting Sons as the best album The Jam ever released, All Mod Cons usually comes in the top three. The improved songwriting and the range of sounds and emotions that one hears on All Mod Cons means that it held in high esteem. It is clear that The Jam were close to splitting after This Is the Modern World. Paul Weller was apathetic and the band were being written off as a one-hit wonder. A Punk band without stamina, this criticism and pressure almost spurred The Jam onto proving themselves. All Mod Cons instantly made an impression. Maybe inspired by Ray Davies and his observational, character-driven songwriting, this source of influence means All Mods Cons is the rich and relevant album that is as important today as it was in 1978. I am going to move on to CLASH. It is amazing that The Jam managed to produce something as incredible as All Mod Cons following the disappointing reaction to This Is the Modern World. Weller departing London and going back to his hometown. The promises and perceived glamour of London was not all it cracked up to me. Maybe the quiet and lack of opportunities outside of London were frustrating:

“In 1978, to a backdrop of tribal youth cultures and economic crisis, The Jam answered years of snobbish disregard from the London-based punk elite when their aggressive and melodic sound, previously sneered at by the capital’s hip art school set, came of age with the release of their third album, ‘All Mod Cons’.

By 1978 The Jam had released two albums of R&B-infused teenage punk to transient acclaim. Their debut ‘In The City’ had hit a real nerve with the new wave of mod kids, however their weak second album, ‘This Is The Modern World’ was met with a frosty reception by the music press. This scathing reaction shook main man Paul Weller and sent the band into a period of severe creative drought. Hoping the location would provide inspiration, Polydor hired an isolated country house to record the third album. Unfortunately the fresh air left little impression on the cappuccino-loving Weller and the new material drew a blank with the label.

Taking the opinion of Polydor to heart and realising that the glamorous mythology of London perhaps wasn’t all that great, Weller, the band’s principal songwriter and spokesman, left the buzz of London for his hometown of Woking to ponder their next step. The unchanged landscape recalled the life he had left behind; crumbling brick walls and empty chip shops, romantic teenage lovers under streetlights, the pouring of rain and the missing of buses. In the face of the transparency of the London scene these places and memories, although only half-formed, seemed real and true. This hazy nostalgia added a touch of whimsy to Weller’s songwriting, which referenced directly the innocence of English psychedelia.

Reunited with engineer Vic Coppersmith-Heaven the band progressed from their early Who arrangements, delving deeper into their beloved Sixties and finding massive resonance with the innovative recording techniques pioneered by George Martin and The Beatles. Coppersmith-Heaven introduced the band to double-tracking and phasing, adding to the psychedelic feel of the lyrics on the tender ode to love ‘It’s Too Bad’. This dreamy sentimentality is continued on ‘English Rose’. With its opening sounds of a tugboat and the tide splashing against the sand, it is a stripped-down acoustic track using finger-picking to accompany a personal and tender lyric that demonstrates the depth of feeling and maturity to Weller’s thoughts at the time. This level of reflection enabled him to look inward, adding depth, pathos and luxury to his songwriting.

As a consequence the lyrics became more like narratives, telling fly on the wall stories laced with emotion about the unnoticed subtleties of life. Influenced by The Kinks’ Ray Davies, Weller developed a third person commentary, honing a talent for narrative and storytelling. ‘All Mod Cons’ advances this notion in its creation of nameless characters moulded in the current issues of the day. In ‘Mr. Clean’ Weller mockingly parodies the rat race and capitalism backed by a tight rhythm section flirting with psychedelic phasing. Equally as studied, ‘Billy Hunt’ is a small-town reactionary pissed off with low-wages, shit pubs, and the limitations of a working class boy in Thatcher’s Britain.

From its Sixties-influenced inner sleeve to the beauty of effects-drenched compositions like ‘The In Crowd’ and the lyrical perfection of ‘The Place I Love’, ‘All Mod Cons’ was the starting point in a journey that would see The Jam become one of the most revered bands of all time. The albums that were released in its wake saw Weller take the band on a diverse route to the very top of the music industry that he so despised. Petrified of complacency and always applying the mod ethos of never looking back and always progressing, Weller presented a new sound or idea for each further album before breaking up the band at the very peak of their powers, amid mass media hysteria and fans dependant on their mythology tearfully grieving their loss.

Although their ideas strengthened in its wake, never again were they as tight, incisive and fresh as on ‘All Mod Cons’, the album for which they will always be remembered and whose influence is plastered all over the sound of this decade”.

I am going to finish off now. Uncut spoke with Paul Weller in 1998. Twenty years after All Mod Cons was released, Weller was reflecting on his career and time with The Jam. It is clear that Weller, when writing All Mod Cons, had unlocked something inside of him:

“All Mod Cons was enthusiastically received. Could you feel your songwriting improving?

"Yeah, I could. I'd found my feet. Modem World was a low point. You make your first album - basically, it's your live set. It took about 10 days to record. All of a sudden, we'd used our 10 songs and you've been out on the road and you've got to sit down and write another album. Which we did, the same year - and it shows. But it didn't happen. It was . . . what's the word I'm looking for? 'Shit ! It was shit. I had to sit back and going to let this slide or fight back against it?' I had to prove my worth, sort of, 'This is it.'"

You had a steady girlfriend - Gill Price -by this point. Was that stability important? "I think it's totally separate."

Had you started to move away from the other two in The Jam?

"Well, I fell in love. All of a sudden, that person becomes your world, you know, so you don't hang out with your mates any more. [Pause]. But I wouldn't say any of that had a bearing on my work."

Did that distance give you the space to create? "Nah. More like, 'Fuck, I'm going to prove myself.'"

To critics, to your audience, or just to yourself?

A bit of all of that. But to myself, mostly. I've often been good at that, when my back's against the wall. It's like self-pride. A belief that I am still fucking good and I can do it."

"English Rose" was the first punk ballad. Quite a brave step?

"It was at the time, because we hadn't done anything like that."

How did it go down at gigs?

"We never played it live. I had enough fuckin' trouble recording it-it had quite a few tricky chords. I can actually remember recording it. No drums or bass, just me and an electric guitar. I was very self-conscious singing those kind of open words. It was very revealing. Like bearing your soul a bit."

Was that the first time you did that?

"Yeah. There were even some seagull noises on it-1 needed something to hide behind."

An early glimpse of the solo Paul Weller?

"I suppose so."

Is it a shock to hear that "version" of yourself 20 years on?

"No, not so much a shock because I feel comfortable with that part of me as well. Some of the lyrics make me cringe because they're so youthful. Naive idealism? Yeah, but I can appreciate it. It was that age, written for that moment. That state of mind." "A-bomb In Wardour Street" was pretty apocalyptic. "It was quite a violent time. There were always fights at gigs. You were guaranteed it was going to kick off at the end of the gig. Even walking around London was a violent thing at the time."

In December, 1977, Weller was alleged to have glassed a bloke's face in the bar of Leeds' Hilton Hotel. He turned out to be the Australian rugby team's manager. Said team proceeded to beat "seven shades of shit" out of Bruce Foxton: Weller spent the night in the cells.

Did you ever get attacked on the street like Johnny Rotten did?

"Not so much, but there were times we come close to it. At gigs, beer mugs would come at you -that's if people liked you People would spit on stage and all that bollocks "

You didn't like that?

"No, I wasn't that keen, really."

Did the public think you were more like them than your Strummers and Rottens?

"Yeah, and they were right, we were. I think also, by the same token, the press - it was easier for them to get into The Clash because there was an intellectual side, like fuckin' Lenin, or. . . know what I mean" And I could only quote Lennon'

"We were the real deal, though, I think. Without hyping it all up, we were three suburban, pretty green, ordinary people."

The People's Band?

"It was a people's band. I know it's dodgy ground when you say those things because it sounds a bit pretentious, but it's fuckin' true And there was always that feeling at gigs, man. That we weren't all that dissimilar to our audience."

You would always talk to your fans, let them come back stage.

"It was great at first, because we was popular - we'd started to take off. Then all of a sudden there were 100 people outside after the gig, and then there were 500. I kind of retracted from that point. Put up a wall a little bit It was a bit freaky for me I thought it was kind of a bit odd. We was trying to say, We're the same as you.' But once something blows up big . . . one of my aunty's friends was saying something about how in Hendrix's day they used to speak to people afterwards, but I was saying to her, 'You forget there were only about 60 people at his gigs in them days What about when it's 6,000?' It gets increasingly difficult”.

I think there is some context and useful insight from Paul Weller. On 3rd November, we celebrate forty-five years of this brilliant album. If some of the press had written The Jam off in 1977, a renaissance and resurrection happened. Few would doubt them again. Such a timely and important album that so many people reacted to, it is no surprise that it has endured and still speaks truth. The Winter of Discontent was the period between November 1978 and February 1979 in the country where we saw widespread strikes by private, and later public, sector trade unions demanding pay rises greater than the limits Prime Minister James Callaghan and his Labour Party government had been imposing. At such a turbulent and tough time for the U.K., The Jam released this album that talked about politics, class struggle, and the far-right. In some ways, All Mod Cons is relevant and timely…

IN whole new ways.

FEATURE: Kissability: Sonic Youth's Glorious Daydream Nation at Thirty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Kissability

Sonic Youth's Glorious Daydream Nation at Thirty-Five

_________

I want to spend some time with…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Sonic Youth in 1988/PHOTO CREDIT: Frans Schellekens/Redferns

the iconic Daydream Nation. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to call it that. The fifth studio album from Sonic Youth came out on 18th October, 1988. This phenomenal and highly acclaimed double album earned Sonic Youth a major label deal. One of the most celebrated albums ever, the band adopted a new creative process here. Longer sessions and jams were favoured in search of finding that perfect sound. Led by Thurston Moore’s melody ideas and chord changes, the band spent ages fashioning these into songs. Far from sounding like a laboured and complex album, there is an accessible, nimbleness and urgency to the tracks. Strangely for a double album, there is no baggage or wasted moments. Even the very best double albums have some filler on them. The Beatles’ 1968 eponymous album for example. After signing with DGC, Sonic Youth released the mesmeric Goo in 1990; 1992’s Dirty was the completion of a sensational trio. An album that I would recommend everyone grabs on vinyl, this is one of those classics where you do not need to know much about the band to appreciate it. I don’t think it is possible to do justice to Daydream Nation in a single feature! I will try my best. Nearly thirty-five years since it came out, it has this huge and vital legacy. One of the most important albums of its era I think. I am not sure whether Sonic Youth’s members are marking the thirty-fifth anniversary. Maybe Kim Gordon will say something? Whether Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley have an announcement coming? It will be interesting to see.

I am going to come to a couple (of the many) incredibly positive reviews for Daydream Nation. It is clear that the band ascended to a new level after the stunning Sister (1987). I said that Daydream Nation was the start of a trilogy of genius albums. In fact, ever since their third studio album, 1986’s EVOL, they had hit this rich vein of form! Established this unbreakable connection and set a golden standard for all Alternative Rock/Post-Punk sounds. Albumism spotlighted Daydream Nation on its thirtieth anniversary in October 2018:

“Sonic Youth has always been a band with a lot to say and their fifth full-length studio album Daydream Nation is no exception. It’s an incredible album, both angry and funny, thoughtful and flippant—a perfect equation for “cool.” Recorded in the summer of 1988 at Greene Street Studio in New York City, Daydream Nation featured a photo in the liner notes of the band standing in a dark city alleyway. They look young and aloof, Thurston Moore wearing his sunglasses in the streetlight. There isn’t anything in the photo that would look out of place 30 years later, a testament to the enduring coolness of Sonic Youth.

When released on October 18, 1988, Daydream Nation was met with widespread critical acclaim. It was produced by Nick Sansano, who up to this point had mainly worked on Public Enemy albums. The Wharton Tiers-bred jazz and noise elements of earlier albums are used on top of a pop structure, instead of as the foundation. A studio engineer whose experience had been with hip-hop, not art rock, his rhythm-driven influence played beautifully with the more obscure sound the band had cultivated to that point.

Sister (1987), the album preceding Daydream Nation, shares a similar conceptual background, based on the science fiction writing of Philip K. Dick. While not a true concept album, Daydream Nation incorporates the same futuristic paranoia, this time finding inspiration in Neuromancer and James Ellroy. The mindset of a dystopian near-future feels prescient in the late ‘80s ultra-consumerist society and adds an edge of desperation to the general punk angst.

Widely considered Sonic Youth’s greatest album, it served as a manifesto for alternative music. College radio was thriving, bringing a very specific brand of New York cool to campuses across the country. “Teen Age Riot” kicks off the album with a Kim Gordon incantation. Originally referred to as “J. Mascis for President,” the threat of a second coming of punk is an enthusiastic rallying cry for indie music.

Charges against capitalism and the American Dream are leveled again on “The Sprawl.” Gordon drawls, “Does fuck you sound simple enough?” and kicks off an ode to suburban horrors. “Come on down to the store / You can buy some more and more and more and more,” serves as the chorus, a menacing pastiche of the late ‘80s culture.

“Eric’s Trip,” “Hey Joni,” and “Rain King” are Lee Ranaldo tracks, adding surrealist drama to the album. Based on the monologue by Eric Emerson in the Andy Warhol movie Chelsea Girls, “Eric’s Trip” is a dry parody full of manic noise, Moore using a drumstick on his fretboard while Ranaldo roars ahead on his guitar. Ranaldo’s significant contributions to Daydream Nation would position him as a vital member of the band and help to further define their sound into their second decade.

“Silver Rocket” and “‘Cross the Breeze” are full throttle rock music, everyone having fun and showing off a little bit. They fit nicely into the ‘80s college rock zeitgeist, with hints of Hüsker Dü. “Total Trash” sounds like Sonic Youth’s version of pop. Musically, the group runs the gamut on Daydream Nation in a more comprehensive fashion than previous albums, perhaps due to the extended double album length giving them some room to try things out.

Despite the length of Daydream Nation, every song is good. There is a frantic intensity that never seems to die down, normally only captured by a newborn band hungry to prove their collective rage. Even when a track begins to wind down, there’s rarely a moment of ambient noise, normally a Sonic Youth signature. A two-minute song turns into seven minutes, yet even after all of the original tracks, it’s still not enough. Daydream Nation is essential to the punk rock canon, an exceptional point in a band’s already prolific career”.

Let’s move onto another thirtieth anniversary feature. The Quietus published their piece by announcing that there were events and special things happening. 2018 was a big year for Daydream Nation. Amazing and quite right that this phenomenal album was being properly celebrated and given this special recognition:

“The album’s 30th anniversary is being marked with a series of events presenting Daydream Nation-related films with filmmaker Lance Bangs, Sonic Youth archivist Aaron Mullan, Thurston Moore and Steve Shelley from the band, and others. By wielding carefully-curated – and, importantly, generation-spanning – source material, an immutable truth emerges: no matter the bandwidth or doting column inches that have been dedicated to it over the years, the legacy of Daydream Nation feels like it resides in the unrepeatable backdrop of its creation (namely New York City of 1988) and the epiphanies that it later spawned live. Only film could vividly translate those realities and it’s something that 30 Years of Daydream Nation comfortably pulls off.

The gist and schedule is straightforward: a “SY edit” of Put Blood in the Music is shown in a brand-new, restored transfer, followed by excerpts from Lance Bangs’ new concert film of the band performing Daydream Nation in its entirety in Glasgow in 2007. Rounding out the bill are unseen gems from the band’s archives with an emphasis on “localising” the presentation for each city. As ever with Sonic Youth, the fans play a sizeable role. “I’ve been in contact with tape traders and the people who originally filmed or taped the shows,” Mullan tells us. “Often times there are superior audio sources that we can re-sync with video, and with modern tools we can fix old issues like misaligned azimuth, DC offset, and just plain old noise to present old recordings better than they've been seen or heard before. Audiences often get emotional about the archival stuff.”

Centring on the heady creative energy of New York at the tail-end of the 1980s, Atlas’ Put Blood in the Music feels inextricable from the Daydream Nation story. Featuring a towering cast of scene protagonists including Glenn Branca, Lydia Lunch and John Cale, it’s a busy and beatific eulogy to, as one voice puts it early on, “the white noise of the city sounds” that finds Sonic Youth – still fresh from laying down their defining statement – thriving centre-stage. Nothing hones in on the essential topographical heart of Daydream Nation quite like this particular edit of Atlas’ film.

Fast-forwarding twenty years, long-time Sonic Youth collaborator Lance Bangs’ new concert film bounds forth today as an equally vital document from the recent past. Capturing the band, four years shy of disbanding, revisiting Daydream Nation at Glasgow’s ABC in 2007, it’s a slow-burning, multi-camera throwback that, crucially, frames the occasion with the fans (shots of the giddy yet static onlooking mass conveys something more potent than Charles Atlas or anyone else could ever hope.) Just as the woman who introduces Put Blood in the Music refers to downtown Manhattan on the cusp of the 1990s, the band’s “loud, violent, non-stop energy” is laid bare, a transmission coursing forth as sheer meditative resolve.

If there’s one thing 30 Years of Daydream Nation exhumes it’s that Sonic Youth’s defining statement didn’t just mirror the rapture and anxiety that was New York, America and the world at the tail-end of the decade. From the vantage point of the future it fiercely confronted – by having this chance to view it via the broad prism of Bangs’, Atlas’ and Mullan’s presentations – it feels like a self-contained revelation forever insisting upon the beginning of another new path. As Ranaldo incants on Daydream peak ‘Hey Joni’: “Forgot the past, and just say yes.” Thank God they took their own advice”.

Since Daydream Nation arrived on 18th October, 1988, it has received nothing but plaudits and applause! It is an album impossible to ignore or dislike. So many powerful and fascinating tracks fit together wonderfully. I can only imagine how much of a nightmare it would have been for the band and producer Nick Sansano to sequence the songs and ensure there was this consistency. As it stands, Daydream Nation is an album that will be loved and honoured forever. So many bands formed after hearing Sonic Youth’s masterpiece. This is what AllMusic say about the New York City’s band’s magnum opus:

“Sonic Youth made a major step forward with 1987's Sister, their first album where the songs were as strong as the group's visionary approach and they rocked with the force and authority they'd clearly sought since the beginning. If 1988's Daydream Nation didn't make as decisive a leap in terms of theory or style, as far as execution was concerned, it was Sonic Youth's first unqualified masterpiece, a triumph that made them one of the most respected bands in indie rock. Initially released as a two-LP set, the sheer scope of Daydream Nation was ambitious, but the longer tracks worked to Sonic Youth's advantage, allowing them the space to lay down solid melodic structures and then use them as a framework for extended jams (thankfully, the band made splendid use of their wanderlust without wearing out their welcome).

Sonic Youth were playing at the top of their game on the Daydream Nation sessions; the guitar interplay between Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo was stronger and more intuitive than before, and bassist Kim Gordon and drummer Steve Shelley had grown into a powerful rhythm section that cut an impressive groove, giving the band a greater freedom to explore the space around them without getting lost. Sonic Youth were not simply tighter on Daydream Nation, they were making better and more satisfying use of their arsenal of alternate tunings and bent but elemental song structures, and the final product fused their love of creatively applied noise and the sound of the electric guitar with song structures that merged elements of punk, prog, boogie, and psychedelia. The journey from the trippy joy of "Teenage Riot" to the hot-rodded choogle of "Eliminator Jr." was a bracing, glorious experience, and Daydream Nation confirmed their status as one of America's best and most original alternative rock bands, and one that had a shot at a future outside the underground -- a pleasant surprise given the alienating air of their earliest work”.

I shall wrap things up with a review from Pitchfork. They assessed the Deluxe Edition in 2007. It seems that, regardless of what your musical tastes are, there is something on Daydream Nation for everyone. I first heard the album in the 1990s. You hear songs from the album played today. They still have this incredible power to move and get under the skin:

“I don’t expect to hear too many complaints about the rating above. Daydream Nation is a great uniter: You’d be hard pressed to find many fans of indie rock who don’t have some love for this record. That’s partly because this record is great, sure—that’s one boring reason—but it’s also because this record is one of a handful that helped shape the notion of what American indie rock can potentially mean. It’s almost a tautology: Indie fans love Daydream Nation because loving stuff like Daydream Nation is part of how we define what indie fans are.

Not that there wasn’t plenty of underground music in the U.S. before this album’s 1988 release—hardcore punk, high-art avant garde, quirky college rock, DIY, weirdo regional scenes. But the notion that all those Reagan-era discontents might be in the same boat—a new Alternative Nation just beginning to converge—hadn’t yet been fully articulated. Sonic Youth sensed that convergence in the making, and they were pretty sure it had something to do with Dinosaur Jr.: “A new aesthetic of youth culture,” Thurston Moore called it in Matthew Stearns’ 33 1/3 book about the album, “wherein anger and distaste, attributes associated with punk energy, were coolly replaced by head-in-the-clouds outer limits brilliance.” Right. So the band writes the most glorious, accessible pop song of its career, calling it “J Mascis for President”—i.e., an underground-rock campaign song—and it kicks off this record under the title “Teen Age Riot.” What does that sound like if not the grand calling-together of a nascent underground audience?

Sonic Youth don’t set the song up as a call to arms. Instead, Thurston, singing, is in bed, just like you might be while listening to it—or to Bug, or Surfer Rosa, or Isn’t Anything, all of which came within the same year. Just two motes of potential energy, both waiting for Mascis to “Come running in on platform shoes/With [his] Marshall stack/To at least just give us a clue.” The video for this song contains more images of musicians who aren’t in Sonic Youth than musicians who are: Ian MacKaye, Patti Smith, Mark E. Smith, Iggy Pop, Black Flag, Sun Ra, Daniel Johnston, Neil Young, the Beach Boys—a crash course in what still, almost 20 years later, looks like an indie canon.

Following that, the band spends this double album managing to inhabit just about every major strain of the underground, collecting and referencing each facet of what this “new youth culture” might look like:

avant-garde Downtown NYC new music, complete with odd harmonic collisions and screwdrivers wedged in guitars

hardcore punk sneering and double-time drumbeats

good old off-kilter, accessible collegiate pop music

gorgeous, oceanic “head-in-the-clouds outer limits” guitar stuff, which-- along with the previous year’s releases from My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr., and the Pixies—would define indie rock’s guitar vocabulary as much as anything this side of Joy Division/New Order

high-art, film, and literary references, ranging from the album cover (a Gerhard Richter painting) to the lyrics (which borrow from an Andy Warhol film and books by Harry Crews and Denis Johnson—and this is before Denis Johnson published Jesus’ Son)

giant tongue-near-cheek rock gestures, like including a three-part “trilogy” and four Led Zeppelin-style icons representing the band members

slacker poses and goofy skater-kid trash culture

ambitious art-world braininess

this

that

the other

All melted down into one lump: “Seamless” isn’t even the word.

Of course, now that a whole genre's grown out from Daydream Nation’s roots, all its “difficult” sounds, modified guitars, and strange collisions have become de riguer, invisible, and normalized, more clearly revealing the shimmering pop epics that always lay beneath. What’s really shocking is the energy of it. This record’s default setting is the place most rock bands try to work up to around the third chorus—guitar players veering off into neck-strangling improvisations, singers dropping off the melody and into impassioned shouts. These songs start there and just stay. Usually the guitars spend a few bars wandering off and into sideways tangles, choking out their harmonies, and then come back together and spend a few bars pinning down the riff: On “’Cross the Breeze,” that means Kim Gordon keeps returning to the same refrain, each time grunting it more insistently than the last. Sometimes they don’t even stay there: Lee Ranaldo’s “Hey Joni” starts off already on some next level of energy, and then Lee shouts “kick it!” and the band ratchets up to some next next level, and then he coasts up to one exhilarating shouted “HEY!” and the band bursts through a ceiling higher than you could have imagined at the start of the track. It’s the kind of transcendent glory that crosses genres and even arts: that same in-the-zone feeling you get from a be-bop combo in top gear, a rapper at the absolute clear-eyed peak of his game—hell, even an athlete in perfect function.

Lyrically, it’s Thurston who turns in the rock slacker trash: When he’s not just lying in bed, heÆs wandering around downtown Manhattan, getting mugged, blowing up amplifiers, and talking in a stoned skater-kid argot (“you got to fake out the robot!”). Lee, being Lee, exists on some more mystical future/past plane, located in dreams and open fields instead of on the Bowery. Kim’s lyrics are the brutal, terrifying ones, each song outlining a flirtation with some demonic jerk. In “Kissability,” it’s a rotten entertainment mogul, pledging “you could be a star” and probably playing with himself under his desk. In “Eliminator Jr,” it’s Robert Chambers, the teenage rich-kid “Preppy Murderer,” and a horrible little shit even before he raped and strangled Jennifer Levin behind the Met in Central Park. In “’Cross the Breeze,” it may be the devil himself”.

A real classic that is heading up to its thirty-fifth anniversary, I wanted to spend some time with the amazing Daydream Nation. The mighty fifth studio album from Sonic Youth, everyone needs to spend some time with it. Still absolutely essential and wondrous, I don’t think any band has matched it in terms of its importance and endurance. Daydream Nation is still mind-blowing…

AFTER all of these years.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s The Whole Story at Thirty-Seven: When Comes the Next Instalment?

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s The Whole Story at Thirty-Seven

When Comes the Next Instalment?

_________

THE of only greatest hits collection…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in an outtake from The Whole Story shoot/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

from Kate Bush, The Whole Story arrived in 1986. Released on 10th November that year, I am going to explore 1986 a bit more. Such momentum still from Hounds of Love (1985), this was Kate Bush at her commercial peak and creative high. I am sure that there were plans for a greatest hits album before. There had been compilations. There have been some since. None that count as strictly greatest hits. Since 1986, Bush has released a lot of great music. I think many people still know her from Hounds of Love and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). On The Whole Story, there were ten hit singles. Also, and somewhat divisive, was Wuthering Heights recorded with a new vocal. That iconic debut single still sounds familiar, yet there is a slightly deeper vocal. I prefer the original. Bush felt the original was a little high/child-like/young. She wanted to sing the song from the perspective of the slightly older woman. I am going to continue in a second. First, the Kate Bush Encyclopedia provide some details about The Whole Story. Words from Kate Bush about it. What those reviewing it had to say:

“Critical reception

Roger Holland in Sounds (UK): "Over the last nine years and five albums, Kate Bush (...) has matured into quite the most sensual, expressive, and creative artist this country can now boast". Colin Irwin, Melody Maker (UK): "This glorious retrospective collection... she's playing a high-risk game, and more often than not her irrepressible flair, her instinct for a hook, and her gift for unusual and gripping arrangements carry her through."

John McReady, NME (UK): "More useful and more enjoyable than the constipated jangling of a hundred and one little lads with big mouths and even bigger clothes allowances. Such people are not worth a carrot. Meat or no meat, Kate Bush is streets ahead." Andy Strickland, Record Mirror (UK): "A monumental tribute to this craziest, coziest girl-next-door. (...) One of the most refreshing compilation LPs it would be possible to put together."

Kate about 'The Whole Story'

Yes, I was [against the release of a compilation album] at first. I was concerned that it would be like a "K-tel" record, a cheapo-compo with little thought behind it. It was the record company's decision, and I didn't mind as long as it was well put together. We put a lot of work into the packaging, trying to make it look tasteful, and carefully thought out the running order. And the response has been phenomenal - I'm amazed! (Kate Bush Club newsletter, Issue 22, December 1987)

It wasn't chronological because we wanted to have a running time that was equal on both sides, otherwise you get a bad pressing. In America, where I'm not very well known, they didn't realise it was a compilation! ('Love, Trust and Hitler'. Tracks (UK), November 1989)”.

I can understand why Kate Bush did not think a greatest hits package would be a good idea. It may give the impression her career had peaked and this was almost the end. Someone who wasn’t keen on looking back too much – at that point anyway -, the fact The Whole Story reached number one in the U.K. and was this massive success would have changed her views. Kate Bush’s 1986 was hugely busy! For those who wondered why it took Bush a while to release new music, the fact is that so much was happening between releases. This timeline gives us a sense of what 1986 was like for Bush:

“January 11, 1986

In the annual Sounds poll Kate is voted Best Female Vocalist of 1985.

February 10, 1986

Kate performs Hounds of Love live at the British Phonographic Industry Awards presentation. She is nominated for (but does not win) three awards: Best Album, Best Single and Best Female Singer.

February 17, 1986

The third single, Hounds of Love, is released in seven- and twelve-inch formats.

Kate records a duet with Peter Gabriel for his fifth solo album. The track is called Don't Give Up.

Kate abandons the plan to make a film version of The Ninth Wave side of the new album.

March 6, 1986

Kate appears on Top of the Pops to perform Hounds of Love.

March 19, 1986

For the making of the video for The Big Sky Kate assembles over one hundred fans on the sound stage of Elstree Studios.

Kate records a live performance of Under the Ivy at Abbey Road Studios for the 100th edition of the Tyne Tees TV programme The Tube.

April 4, 1986

Kate participates in the first of three Comic Relief shows at the Shaftesbury Theatre. She performs Breathing live and performs a duet of Do Bears Sh... in the Woods? with Rowan Atkinson.

April 5, 1986

The second Comic Relief show.

April 6, 1986

The third Comic Relief show.

May 25, 1986

Kate joins in the Sport Aid mini-marathon at Blackheath, South London, along with many other celebrities.

May 1986

The fourth single, The Big Sky, is released.

Kate does some session work for Big Country on the title track of their album The Seer.

June 16, 1986

The videos for the four Hounds of Love singles are released as a video EP under the title Hair of the Hound. It goes straight to the number 1 spot on the music video chart.

Hounds of Love passes the double platinum mark in the U.K.

October 20, 1986

Don't Give Up, the duet with Peter Gabriel of his song, is released as a single.

October 23, 1986

Kate participates in a personal appearance of the Comic Relief stars at the Claude Gill Book Shop, Oxford Street for the launch of the publication of the Comic Relief Book.

October 27, 1986

A new single, Experiment IV, is released in seven- and twelve-inch formats.

October 31, 1986

Kate appears on the BBC TV programme Wogan for the second time, giving a lip-synch performance of Experiment IV [with violinist Nigel Kennedy].

November 1986

Kate directs the video for Experiment IV, which is made on location at a disused military hospital in South East London and a street in the East End. The film features the Comic Strip regulars Dawn French and Hugh Laurie.

November 9, 1986

Kate interrupts the shooting of the Experiment IV video to attend a party at the Video Cafe organised by the Kate Bush Club and Homeground.

November 10, 1986

The Whole Story, the first Kate Bush compilation album, is released. It is promoted by the most expensive TV advertising campaign EMI has ever mounted. Sales are massive”.

As a convenient way of introducing new fans to her work, The Whole Story is a must-listen. It got terrific reviews. That is no surprise! Whilst not every song on the album was a massive hit, the songs are all distinctly recognisable and popular. Experiment IV was the new single released for the album. Out on 26th October, 1986, it reached twenty-three in the U.K. Prior to rounding off asking about another compilation, here is some information about Experiment IV. It is a song that many Kate Bush fans might not even be aware of:

“This was written as an extra track for the compilation album The Whole Story and was released as the single. I was excited at the opportunity of directing the video and not having to appear in it other than in a minor role, especially as this song told a story that could be challenging to tell visually. I chose to film it in a very handsome old military hospital that was derelict at the time. It was a huge, labyrinthine hospital with incredibly long corridors, which was one reason for choosing it. Florence Nightingale had been involved in the design of the hospital. Not something she is well known for but she actually had a huge impact on hospital design that was pioneering and changed the way hospitals were designed from then on.

The video was an intense project and not a comfortable shoot, as you can imagine - a giant of a building, damp and full of shadows with no lighting or heating but it was like a dream to work with such a talented crew and cast with Dawn French, Hugh Laurie, Peter Vaughn and Richard Vernon in the starring roles. It was a strange and eerie feeling bringing parts of the hospital to life again. Not long after our work there it was converted into luxury apartments. I can imagine that some of those glamorous rooms have uninvited soldiers and nurses dropping by for a cup of tea and a Hobnob.

We had to create a recording studio for the video, so tape machines and outboard gear were recruited from my recording studio and the mixing console was very kindly lent to us by Abbey Road Studios. It was the desk the Beatles had used - me too, when we’d made the album Never For Ever in Studio Two. It was such a characterful desk that would’ve looked right at home in any vintage aircraft. Although it was a tough shoot it was a lot of fun and everyone worked so hard for such long hours. I was really pleased with the result. (KateBush.com, February 2019)”.

Various compilations have been released since 1986. In recent years, we had The Other Sides in 2019. As part of her remastering series in 2018, The Other Sides is a selection of 12" mixes, B-sides and a selection of cover versions. There has been some retrospection. That is good to see. What I wonder if whether there is going to be a second greatest hits collection, given the fact a new generation are fans of her work. There are some who may only know her for one or two songs. I have raised this before. Bush may now only want to look ahead. That said, she has not been averse to looking back. 2011’s Director’s Cut was reworked versions of songs from The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes (1993). Apart from the remastered albums, Bush also allowed Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) to be used on Netflix’s Stranger Things last year. She is selective about who uses her work. It is clear she wants it heard. I feel like there are some terrific tracks that are never played on radio. Bush is still defined by one or two hits by a lot of stations. It is insulting and reductive to think an artist as long-standing and diverse as Bush should only exist in the form of a couple of her songs. As we look ahead to the thirty-seventh anniversary of Kate Bush’s greatest hits album, The Whole Story, I do wonder whether there will be a next instalment. A great desire is out there for something from Kate Bush. If there is another studio album coming, a greatest hits release before then would be very welcomed! It has been a few years or so since Bush opened up her music archives. She doubtless has a lot of appreciation for young fans who are discovering her. A way of leading them to her amazing studio albums might be to give them a taste of the singles from those albums. Including some songs that were not on The Whole Story. Some newer inclusions. We shall see. If you need an introduction to the iconic Kate Bush, then The Whole Story is…

A great place to begin.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Johnny Marr at Sixty: The Ultimate Playlist

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

Johnny Marr at Sixty: The Ultimate Playlist

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ONE of the true music greats…

I am looking ahead to 31st October and the sixtieth birthday of the great Johnny Marr. Beginning his career as founder, composer and guitarist with The Smiths, he has since gone on to record with member of the Pretenders, The The, Electronic, Modest Mouse, and The Cribs. A prolific session musician, Marr has worked with names such as Kirsty MacColl, Pet Shop Boys, Talking Heads, Bryan Ferry, and Hans Zimmer. His upcoming album, Spirit Power: The Best of Johnny Marr, is out on 3rd November. His essential book, Marr’s Guitars, is out now:

“A stunning photographic presentation of the guitars that defined the distinctive sounds and style of Johnny Marr with personal reflections and insights from the legendary guitarist himself.

'Guitars have been the obsession of my life ... they’ve been a mission and sometimes a lifeline' – Johnny Marr

The guitarist’s guitarist, Johnny Marr redefined music for a generation. His ringing arpeggios and chordal innovations helped elevate The Smiths to be one of the most influential and important British bands of all time.

Tracing Marr's career from his teenage years to his recent work on the Bond soundtrack, Marr’s Guitars showcases the most significant of Marr’s superb collection of electric and acoustic guitars, revealing through them the evolution of his iconic sound and style of playing. Each guitar is identified with a crucial moment, a specific song or a particular sound, and each embodies a key aspect of Marr’s lifelong passion.

Renowned photographer Pat Graham presents each instrument as a full portrait, supported by micro shots highlighting the specific details that make each one unique, while Johnny Marr himself reveals in his accompanying commentary on what tracks and at which shows the guitars were played. Many of the guitars are closely associated with Marr, such as the Rickenbacker 330, the Gibson ES-355 and the Johnny Marr Signature Fender Jaguar. Some were passed down to him, including Nile Rodgers’ Stratocaster, Bryan Ferry’s Roxy Music Hagstrom and Bert Jansch’s Yamaha. Others are guitars once owned by Marr that have since been passed on to the next generation of guitar heroes, including the Stratocaster used by Noel Gallagher on ‘Wonderwall’ and the Gibson Les Paul Goldtop used on In Rainbows by Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien.

Punctuating the photography of the guitars and the accompanying commentary are contextual studio, backstage and onstage shots. Together, they make Marr’s Guitars a unique cultural history of modern music and guitar playing told through the prism of Johnny Marr’s experiences and achievements”.

I am going to end with a playlist featuring his best work with The Smiths, The The, Modest Mouser, Electronic, The Cribs and his solo stuff. Such a consistently inventive and brilliant artist, Marr is one of the most influential guitarists ever. Before getting to that playlist, AllMusic have compiled a useful biography and insight into the wonderful Johnny Marr and his incredible career:

“As the guitarist and co-songwriter for the Smiths, Johnny Marr helped create the musical vocabulary for indie rock in the 1980s and beyond. The Smiths were fueled by Marr's intricate, ringing guitar parts that assiduously avoided cliches while being rooted in classic British guitar pop. Marr's strengths as an instrumentalist made him a popular gun for hire after the Smiths split. Immediately following the band's separation, Marr played with the Pretenders, The The, and Talking Heads while striking up a lasting collaboration with New Order's Bernard Sumner with Electronic. He continued to bounce between projects during the '90s, eventually forming Johnny Marr and the Healers in 2000. The group didn't last long and Marr wound up joining Modest Mouse in 2006, staying with the band for several years while also playing in the Cribs. The Messenger launched Marr's solo career in 2013 and over the next decade, he toured and recorded regularly, issuing such ambitious projects as 2018's socially conscious Call the Comet and the multi-part Fever Dreams, which culminated in the release of the full double album in 2022.

Born John Maher in Manchester, England on October 31, 1963, he played in such little-known groups as Sister Ray and Freaky Party before forming the Smiths with singer Morrissey in 1982. In the years to follow they became one of Britain's most successful acts, but in 1987, following sessions for the LP Strangeways, Here We Come, Marr dissolved the group, claiming their musical approach had gone stale.

In the wake of the Smiths' demise, he made cameo appearances on records by the likes of Talking Heads and Kirsty MacColl before joining Matt Johnson's The The for 1989's Mind Bomb. Marr also teamed with New Order's Bernard Sumner and Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant in the alternative supergroup Electronic, scoring a hit with the single "Getting Away with It." Apart from a handful of guest appearances, he maintained a relatively low profile during the '90s, most notably lending his talents to The The's 1993 effort Dusk and Electronic's long-awaited sophomore record, 1996's Raise the Pressure.

Marr returned to music three years later on Electronic's third album, Twisted Tenderness, which wasn't released in the U.S. until fall 2000. He also spent time working with his new band, the Healers, playing dates across England. The next few years were a time of redefinition and reflection for Marr. He finally assembled his Healers with ex-Kula Shaker bass man Alonza Bevan, and Ringo Starr's drumming son Zak Starkey in 2002; a deal with Artist Direct's iMusic followed before the end of the year. Fans of this legendary guitarist were treated to Marr's proper singing debut in early 2003 with the release of Boomslang. In 2007, he appeared on the Washington band Modest Mouse's album We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, and toured with them as a member.

Marr stayed with the band into 2008 but soon switched allegiance to another band from another country -- the British indie group the Cribs. A songwriting session soon expanded into full-fledged membership and Marr wrote, played, and toured for the 2009 album Ignore the Ignorant. Like his stint in Modest Mouse, Marr lasted for only one album with the Cribs before leaving for another project, and this time it was one that he led himself. He relocated his family to his hometown of Manchester and set about recording a solo album. The result, The Messenger, appeared to strong reviews in February 2013. He quickly followed it with a second solo set called Playland, which appeared in the autumn of 2014; the live album Adrenalin Baby was released in 2015. Marr published his autobiography, Set the Boy Free, then turned his attention to writing and recording his third solo album. The resulting Call the Comet appeared in June 2018.

Marr signed with BMG in August 2021 with the intent of delivering Fever Dreams, a double-album released as a series of EPs. Fever Dreams, Pt. 1 arrived that October with the second installment arriving in December. The full album, Fever Dreams, Pts. 1-4 arrived in February 2022”.

To celebrate the genius that is Johnny Marr, I have put together a career-spanning playlist. I have been a fan of his work since I was a child. One of the most recognisable guitarists of his generation, Marr has gone on to be this broad artist who has fitted into various bands and alongside an array of artists. His solo work is possibly his purest and most personal work, though everyone has their favourite Marr period/incarnation. To honour him ahead of his sixtieth birthday on 31st October, here is a playlist with a selection of hits and deep cuts where Marr is either playing, a member of the band, or singing (or all in some cases). There is no doubting the fact that he is…

IN a league of one.

FEATURE: Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town: Pearl Jam's Vs. at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town

Pearl Jam's Vs. at Thirty

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EVEN though it was a number one album…

in America, there was a certain pressure on Pearl Jam’s shoulders after the release of their 1991 debut, Ten. Released in the same year Nirvana’s Nevermind came out, Ten was seen as a more Hard Rock approach. Not as feral or filthy, Ten was a more epic and slightly cleaner sound. Pearl Jam’s masterpiece debut was followed by relentless touring. A rawer sophomore album followed. Probably closer in turn to what contemporaries like Nirvana produced in 1993, Vs. (released on 19th October, 1993) is Pearl Jam’s first collaboration with producer Brendan O'Brien and its first album with drummer Dave Abbruzzese. Compared to their commercial debut that was met with videos and a lot of promotion, that was all pegged back for Vs. The band did not release any music videos. In spite of this, Vs. sold almost a million copies in its first five days of release. Staying at the top of the Billboard chart for five weeks, it was a monster success and emphatic follow-up to Ten – proving they could change direction and keep the excellence and consistency up. I am going to mark the upcoming thirtieth anniversary with a few features and reviews for the album. The band - Dave Abbruzzese – drums; Jeff Ament – bass, upright bass; Stone Gossard – rhythm guitar, backing vocals; Mike McCready – lead guitar; Eddie Vedder – lead vocals -, were on sensational form for their second album! I guess there was a lot of hype and people pitting Pearl Jam against Nirvana.

There was no real rivalry or competition between Pearl Jam and any other band. They did not need to prove themselves. Regardless, they very much meant business on an album that still sounds as direct and raw as it did back in 1993. Thirty years later and you can feel and hear every element and layer of Vs. I am going to get to some anniversary features. LoudWire did a retrospective on Vs. last year. In spite of Vs. being this incredible album that one assumes was quite quick to record, Pearl Jam did have some conflicts and struggles:

"For me, that title represented a lot of the struggles that you go through to make a record," revealed guitarist Stone Gossard to Rolling Stone. "Your own independence — your own soul — versus everybody else's. In this band, and I think in rock in general, the art of compromise is almost as important as the art of individual expression. You might have five great artists in the band, but if they can't compromise and work together, you don't have a great band. It might mean something completely different to Eddie [Vedder]. But when I heard that lyric, it made a lot of sense to me."

Vedder revealed that the title also dealt with the media scrutiny the band was under, stating, "They were writing all these articles ... Our band against somebody else's band. What they hell are they talking about? You know, don't try to separate the powers that be. We're all in this together."

Speaking of the struggles, the band had a few en route to completing the disc. As the new guy coming in on Ten, Vedder had a bit of a blueprint to work from, but relocating to remote location in California to record Vs. didn't exactly sit well with the singer, who struggled with writing during the sessions.

Bassist Jeff Ament recalled, "Recording Vs., there was a lot more pressure on Ed. The whole follow-up. I thought we were playing so well as a band that it would take care of itself. ... He was having a hard time finishing up the songs, the pressure, and not being comfortable in such a nice place." Vedder himself told Spin, "The second record, that was the one I enjoyed making the least ... I just didn't feel comfortable in that place we were at because it was very comfortable. I didn't like that at all."

However, one positive from the album sessions was the band's newfound relationship with producer Brendan O'Brien, who would go on to oversee many of the band's albums after this first experience. During the sessions, O'Brien had the band line up as though they were playing live. Gossard recalls, "I think we allowed things to develop in a more natural, band-oriented sort of way, rather than me bringing in a bunch of stuff that was already arranged”.

Maybe that idea of Pearl Jam not being in competition with someone was short-sighted. As Albumism speculated with their twenty-fifth anniversary feature in 2018, there is a degree of aggression and Pearl Jam making a statement. Things would drastically change in Grunge and Rock the year after Vs. came out. Whereas Nirvana lost their leader, Kurt Cobain, Soundgarden released their definitive album, Superunknown. The years between 1991 and 1994 were sensational for Grunge and Hard Rock:

“Pearl Jam’s sophomore effort Vs. (1993) was a record born of conflict. The title alone is an obvious indicator that the band was gunning for something or someone. Lyrically, the album is awash with references to trauma and discord. The opening refrain from “Animal,” the album’s second song, recounts “One, two, three, four, five against one” that puts the band at odds with some notion of corporate America.

Some of the conflict came from the relentless touring that went into promoting the band’s debut album Ten (1991), an endeavor that was no doubt rewarding as the band became one of the biggest acts in U.S rock music, but equally exhausting as the toil of press junkets, award ceremonies, interviews, music videos and dealing with obsessive fans were considered the downside to fame. Something was changing in the band’s collective mindset.

Upon the release of Vs., the band were adamant that they would not play the corporate game of making music videos for MTV to broadcast non-stop, nor would they allow as much press access or interviews. So in some respects, Vs. exists at an intriguing point in Pearl Jam’s career; the moment in which their trajectory towards self-determination was truly set upon and the mystique that would surround the band in the years to come was first put in place.

In fact, this would be the era in which Pearl Jam would stand up to what they perceived as injustice. Bleeding from the embers of Vs.’ slogging world tours into Vitalogy (1994) and even into No Code (1996), the band would embark on an epic lawsuit against Ticketmaster on grounds that the astronomical service charges were tantamount to extortion for the band’s fans. Pearl Jam would tour sports halls and stadiums that Ticketmaster had no jurisdiction over and basically try and undercut the monolithic ticker seller. A noble cause for sure, and one they faced alone, yet an undertaking that took them out of the game for a number of years as they tried to find these out-of-the-way venues in all major cities across the U.S.

Not like these activities saw much dent in their popularity. A quick look at the numbers will tell us this. Vs. has to date sold a staggering seven million copies in the United States. In its first week of release alone, it racked up 950,378 units sold, making it the fastest selling album of all time, a record it held on to for five years. Six of the album’s songs generated top forty positions in the U.S. Modern Rock Charts, despite only four actual commercial singles being released. The record also received three Grammy Award nominations.

And this is just the U.S perspective. The album topped the charts in eight other countries around the world.

Listening back to the record twenty-five years on, it is hard to understand how the record was actually so massive. Not, I should clarify, because the record is a bad one. Far from it. But when placed in sonic comparison to its predecessor, it’s almost like two different bands recording under the same moniker. Sure there are similarities, with Eddie Vedder’s vocals a dead giveaway for a start.

There was an obvious attempt to recapture Pearl Jam’s energetic live performances. The record’s production by Brendan O’Brian, a collaborator the band would return to again and again over the subsequent decades, is an edgier and more aggressive affair then their debut and certainly does capture that live element to a tee. It also, dare I say, dates the record to that period of the 1990s.

Only a few remnants of Ten’s soft, warm and fluid production are found on Vs. The one song that might have sat comfortably on that record is “Dissident,” maybe at a push “Daughter.” Instead the record relies on Dave Abbruzzese belting drums, Mike McCready’s face-melting solo riffs, Stone Gossard’s chomping rhythm guitar, Jeff Ament’s steady bass and Vedder’s squalling and screeching vocals. Prime examples of this are “Go,” “Leash” and “Blood,” as these songs teeter on the edge of all-out explosion”.

I am going to end with a couple of reviews. Like Ten, there was this incredible wave of affection and respect for Pearl Jam’s second album. You would think some critics would not like the band changing course and sound. Maybe many felt Ten could have been grittier. Perhaps a natural evolution, there was this praise and support for one of the best albums of the 1990s. This is what AllMusic wrote in their Vs. review:

“Pearl Jam took to superstardom like deer in headlights. Unsure of how to maintain their rigorous standards of integrity in the face of massive commercial success, the band took refuge in willful obscurity -- the title of their second album, Vs., did not appear anywhere in the packaging, and they refused to release any singles or videos. (Ironically, many fans then paid steep prices for import CD singles, a situation the band eventually rectified.) The eccentricities underline Pearl Jam's almost paranoid aversion to charges of hypocrisy or egotism -- but it also made sense to use the spotlight for progress.

You could see that reasoning in their ensuing battle with Ticketmaster, and you could hear it in the record itself. Vs. is often Eddie Vedder at his most strident, both lyrically and vocally. It's less oblique than Ten in its topicality, and sometimes downright dogmatic; having the world's ear renders Vedder unable to resist a few simplistic potshots at favorite white-liberal targets. Yet a little self-righteousness is an acceptable price to pay for the passionate immediacy that permeates Vs. It's a much rawer, looser record than Ten, feeling like a live performance; Vedder practically screams himself hoarse on a few songs. The band consciously strives for spontaneity, admirably pushing itself into new territory -- some numbers are decidedly punky, and there are also a couple of acoustic-driven ballads, which are well suited to Vedder's sonorous low register. Sometimes, that spontaneity comes at the expense of Ten's marvelous craft -- a few songs here are just plain underdeveloped, with supporting frameworks that don't feel very sturdy. But, of everything that does work, the rockers are often frightening in their intensity, and the more reflective songs are mesmerizing. Vs. may not reach the majestic heights of Ten, but at least half the record stands with Pearl Jam's best work”.

In 1997, Rolling Stone wrote about the mighty Vs. Maybe people associate Pearl Jam more with Ten still. I think that Vs. and its songs warrant much more exposure and representation across radio. It is a sensational album with some clear highlights. My favourite song, Go, opens the album in spectacular and imperious fashion:

“Pearl Jam are explosive. Few American bands have arrived more clearly talented than this one did with "Ten;" and "Vs." tops even that debut. Terrific players with catholic tastes, they also serve up singer-lyricist Eddie Vedder. With his Brando brooding and complicated, tortured masculinity, he's something we haven't seen in a while ­ a heroic figure. Better still, he's a big force without bullshit; he bellows doubt.

Like Jim Morrison and Pete Townshend, Vedder makes a forte of his psychological-mythic explorations ­ he grapples with primal trauma, chaos, exultation. As guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready paint dense and slashing backdrops, he invites us into a drama of experiment and strife. "Animal," "Daughter" and "Blood," their terse titles urgently poetic, are songs of a kind of ritual passion, tapping into something truly wild.

And when Vedder roars, "Saw things . . . clearer . . . /Once you were in my rearviewmirror," it seems that it's not only some personal sorrow that he's willing himself to tear beyond but the entire weight of the past itself.

Voicing the dreams and furies of a generation, Nirvana rock brilliantly in the now. They suggest a visceral understanding of rehab rites of passage and gen der overlap, stardom fantasy and punk nihilism. Their themes parallel both David Cronenberg's "venereal horror" and David Lynch's atonal wit, and their inchoate striving after feeling combats the blithe vacuity of outdated Warhol-style hipness. Blank generation? Not really, just young people fighting for some kind of meaning”.

On 19th October, the world will mark the thirtieth anniversary of a giant album. Even if Pearl Jam might have had some more commercial and artistic pressure to follow Vs., they delivered another phenomenal album with 1994’s Vitalogy. One of the greatest opening trio of albums in music history. If you have not heard the album before – or you have not listened since the '90s -, then take some time out to have a good listen. It is a brilliant album that is going to be talked about for decades more. From the powerful opening declaration of Go, through to Indifference (the reissue has a few extra tracks and ends with Crazy Mary), Vs. is an album that, thirty years after its release, remains so…

VITAL and extraordinary.

FEATURE: How Does Your Garden Grow? Kate Bush’s Aerial at Eighteen: Bringing A Sky of Honey to Life

FEATURE:

 

 

How Does Your Garden Grow?

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

Kate Bush’s Aerial at Eighteen: Bringing A Sky of Honey to Life

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ON 7th November…

Kate Bush’s Aerial turns eighteen. It was released after a twelve-year gap. After 1993’s The Red Shoes, many did not expect her to release an album. She unveiled this beautiful double album in a year that really cried out for someone as original as Kate Bush. Critics loved the album. Fans did too. Another top ten success, there was a lot of love for this icon. A relief to have her back, we did not know what would follow. Bush waited another six years to release another album – we got two in 2011 with Director’s Cut and 50 Words for Snow. I am going to do a few Aerial anniversary features. I wanted to start by looking at the second disc. Bush split Aerial into the first half/disc, A Sea of Honey, was more conventional singles – like on Hounds of Love – and, similar to her 1985 masterpiece where we had the second side, The Ninth Wave, Aerial featured A Sky of Honey. Her second-ever conceptual suite of tracks, this was the charting of a summer’s day. Taking us through the morning and evoking nature and the wonder of the skies, the natural world, gardens, fresh air and this overall tranquillity, the songs on that suite are phenomenal! There is a lot of talk around a new venue that has opened in Las Vegas. A $2 billion Sphere has seen U2 give it an emphatic and sensational opening. This giant sphere that is immersive and filled with LEDs, you get this dazzling and almost cinematic elements around you. I wanted to start in an unorthodox way. Thinking about Aerial, and I see A Sky of Honey suiting that sort of setting. Many people have argued how witnessing The Ninth Wave from Hounds of Love projected on a sphere would be immense!

That suite was about a woman swept overboard and having to survive at sea. Whilst I maintain a short film would be the best option, maybe filming one and projecting it in a Sphere-like venue would be an absolutely incredible thing. I think there is something about A Sky of Honey that warrants the dramatic and beautiful. Maybe it would also be a good short film though, if you imagined Kate bush performing again, being in a giant venue where you had a screen/projection around you would be perfect. Her songs would come to life in a whole new way. I think A Sky of Honey would be breathtaking. Bush did perform songs from Aerial during her 2014 residency in London. We have seen songs from A Sky of Honey performed on stage. There was not anything as bewildering and epic as you’d get from that Sphere venue. Having bird, butterflies, the tumultuous sky and the brightness of the sun all brought together around an audience. That would be something to see! I would urge people to listen to Aerial and check out its phenomenal suite on the second disc. On the album, we have A Painter’s Link – Rolf Harris originally voiced the painter, but he was removed from the album and replaced by Bush’s son, Bertie -, where artwork and artistic visions could spring and dance. A mix of Disney-like animation and different-coloured LEDs would create this fantastical and almost psychedelic combination. If The Ninth Wave could stir drama, fear and let us sea what is in the sea under the heroine and the vast sky above, there are similar possibilities when we think of A Sky of Honey. The expansiveness of the sky together with the nature all around us. The intimacy and beautify of an English country garden brought to life.

 IN THIS PHOTO: U2 at the Sphere, Las Vegas/PHOTO CREDIT: Rich Fury

I think there is real scope when you consider the sounds and detail through A Sky of Honey. I definitely feel The Ninth Wave should be turned into a short film. As Bush sees A Sky of Honey as a compassion piece in a way, one could certainly imagine it made into something bigger. Tracks like Somewhere in Between and Nocturn are gorgeous. Imagining those songs and watching the suite go from day to night is sensational. I am going to go more into Aerial in future features. When Bush was interviewed in 2016 - around the release of the live album for 2014’s Before the Dawn -, the suite from Aerial was mentioned alongside Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave:

“She certainly brought new language to pop, and has continued to do so throughout her career – one thinks of the inventive feat of her (literal) 50 Words For Snow, and of her musical realisation of 'Pi' to 80 places. And not just human language, either. On Before The Dawn, the new 3CD live album of her extraordinary shows of 2014, there’s a passage in the suite A Sky Of Honey, from 2005’s Aerial, where she imitates the frolicsome chatter of birds.

“I’ve always loved birdsong,” says Kate, “and I suppose that was the starting point for that piece on the record, speculation about whether it’s a language. The key idea was this connection between birdsong and light, that singing seems to be triggered by the breaking of light, and in the absence of light, they stop singing.” She pauses. “Though there’s a few exceptions – nightjars, reed warblers, blackbirds. And of course, the owl!”

In that suite, an artist appreciates the changing light from sunrise through sunset into night, a progress musically evoked in green and golden tones and timbres. It’s balanced in the show by another suite, The Ninth Wave, from 1985’s Hounds of Love, which presents the drifting ruminations of a woman slowly drowning, alone in the ocean at night. The extraordinary staging for the work involved the skeleton ribs of a boat’s hull, a floating buoy, a helicopter, and a Caligari-esque room of odd angularity, while a huge back-projection of a life-jacketed, singing Kate presented her and her crew with one of the production’s more difficult challenges”.

I have a lot of affection for A Sky of Honey. Maybe pairing it with The Ninth Wave and having this contrasting story about the same woman. The one who is in a garden watching nature around her. Th one who is lost at sea. Never quite sure which is real and which is a dream. Which came first indeed. It could be this spectacle where we see the beauty of nature and the unpredictability of the ocean at night alongside one another. The more I read about Las Vegas’s mega Sphere and what it could do, the more I think of Kate Bush. Because Aerial is eighteen on 7th November, I wanted to explore and spotlight the magnificent A Sky of Honey. Witnessing that projected in a venue as an audience watches agog would be…

A sight to behold!

FEATURE: Groovelines: Lorde - Royals

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

Lorde - Royals

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RELEASED in June 2013…

I have missed the tenth anniversary of Lorde’s single, Royals. In fact, it was Lorde’s debut single. The New Zealand-born artist released her debut album, Pure Heroine, on 27th September, 2013. Written by Ella Yelich-O'Connor (Lorde) and Joel Little, it went to number one in many countries around the world – including the U.S. and U.K. Inspiring artists (in terms of the sound and tone of Royals) such as BANKS, Billie Eilish, Clairo, Halsey, Mallrat, and Olivia Rodrigo, Royals has a huge legacy. I am covering the song now, not only because it is seen as one of the best debut singles ever. Royals debuted in the U.K. at number one on 28th October, 2013. Celebrating the tenth anniversary of that track scaling the U.K. charts is important. Lorde became the youngest solo artist to score a U.K. number one single since Billie Piper's 1998 song, Because We Want To. It was an amazing introduction to this incredible artist. There are a few features that I want to get to. They give us an insight into a remarkable track. First, here is some background regarding the genesis of Royals – and how it proves that quickly-written songs can be the most successful and resonant:

“Lorde wrote the song in 2012 at her house, which only took half an hour. Herself and Joel Little worked on Royals at Little's Golden Age Studio in Golden Age Studios in Morningside, Auckland NZ. Within a week they had finished the song.

The first idea for the song came to Lorde after she read an article published by National Geographic with a picture of  Kansas City Royals baseball player George Brett signing baseballs, with his team's name emblazoned across his shirt. She said "It was just that word. It was really cool." Historic aristocrats were also an inspiration for the song. She also explained the lyric "We're driving Cadillacs in our dreams" was something she read in a diary she received at the age of 12. Lorde further revealed that she took inspiration from hip-hop-influenced artists during the writing process, yet criticized their "bullshit" reference to "expensive" alcohol and cars.

"I was definitely poking fun at a lot of things that people take to be normal. I was listening to a lot of hip-hop and I kind of started to realise that to be cool in hip-hop, you have to have that sort of car and drink that sort of vodka and have that sort of watch, and I was like, "I've literally never seen one of those watches in my entire life." (- Lorde about the lyrics)

The song was produced by using the software Pro Tools. A Spin writer described the song as being "artpop". Written in the key of D Mixolydian, it is followed by the chord progression I-vii-IV (D – c – G). The song has a moderate tempo of 85 beats per minute (Andante). "Royals" is instrumented by finger snaps and bass. On the song, Lorde performs with a mezzo-soprano vocal range, spanning from F♯3 to F#5. Lyrically, Lorde sings about the luxurious lifestyle of contemporary artists”.

There has been some critique and scrutiny as to whether Royals is offensive, or its lyrics can be seen as racist. As Royals talks about wealth and extravagant lifestyles, some lyrics maybe pertaining to Hip-Hop and excess were called out by writer Bayetti Flores. Rather than home in on a criticism that is unwarranted and untrue, I wanted to highlight the positives. This feature, published in September, discusses how Lorde’s debut album, Pure Heroine, calibrated and refreshed Pop music with songs like Royals critiquing and examining Pop music and the lifestyles of artists, it was a shot in the arm:

“Even if you haven’t heard “Royals” in years, it’s likely that just seeing the title has caused its slinky, subdued groove to worm its way back into your mind. There’s not much to the song’s arrangement – finger snaps, a hip-hop beat, a wobbling bass after the first chorus – but it’s enough to get stuck in your head, and it doesn’t distract from Lorde herself, whose deep vocals and sly, self-assured delivery made her one of the most immediately compelling singers since Adele. Clearly, Lorde was onto something, and “Royals” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for nine weeks.

The love club

“Royals” was almost a year old when it hit the airwaves. When it was recorded, the ground hadn’t even been broken for Pure Heroine. After a few false starts with other songwriters, Lorde began working with fellow-Aucklander Joel Little, who’d had some success down under as a member of pop-punk band Goodnight Nurse, in December 2011.

Over a three-week period in 2012, the two finished “Royals” and four other songs for Lorde’s debut EP, The Love Club, which was uploaded to SoundCloud later that year. The EP was a success, it was downloaded 60,000 times with virtually no promotion, spurring Lorde’s label to release it commercially. While Lorde and Little were keen to release another EP, it wasn’t long before what they were working on grew into a full-length album”.

Rather than Lorde’s lyrics about excess and flash cars being about Rap and, therefore, racist, it is actually about growing up in a country like New Zealand, where the media covers and celebrates American wealth and dominance. That anti-imperialist stance that Royals takes was highlighted by Buzzfeed in 2013:

“Royals" is a song about growing up in New Zealand immersed in American cultural imperialism. The core of the song is alienation, sure, but the lyrics about pop culture are far more ambivalent than they are angry and strident. This is part of why it has resonated with so many people — Lorde isn't saying that she doesn't like this music, only that she sees a disconnect between the hyper-consumerist fantasy at the core of contemporary pop and the actual lives of anyone she knows. "I've always listened to a lot of rap," she recently told New York Magazine. "It's all, look at this car that cost me so much money, look at this Champagne. It's super fun. It's also some bullshit. When I was going out with my friends, we would raid someone's freezer at her parents' house because we didn't have enough money to get dinner. So it seems really strange that we're playing A$AP Rocky."

If you grow up in the United States, it can be very easy to have no perspective on living in a culture dominated by art and media from another country. Some music from around the world seeps into mainstream American culture, but it's never dominant, and music from abroad is made with the understanding that you have to cater to the American market to be a big star. Americans are used to the rest of the world bending over backwards to blend in with their culture, and think nothing of foreign stars from ABBA and Björk to Shakira and Phoenix singing in their second language to appeal to the English-speaking world. Americans are almost never asked to adapt, and very rarely have to feel as though their culture is being infiltrated by the value systems of foreign nations.

This context may get lost a bit when "Royals" is played in the United States, but it clicks with American listeners because this sort of cultural imperialism happens within the U.S. too. The "culture wars" that have informed the past few decades of American politics are rooted in a belief that the values of media produced and promoted almost exclusively by companies based in New York and California are disconnected from the majority of the country. On a more personal level, it's just easy to look at mainstream culture and feel disenfranchised, that no one is speaking for you.

"Royals" may be ambivalent about music, but it's openly defiant when it comes to class and this sort of imperialism. It may well be the most leftist song to become a major hit in years, at least in that it's focused on rejecting wealth and privilege, and questioning capitalist ideas that encourage people from lower classes to buy into a system that is mostly rigged against them. Lorde's song takes pride in not coming from money, and asks the listener to give some thought to why they want to buy into a glamorous fantasy. If it seems like Lorde is being especially rough on rap, but it's mainly just because she's a fan, and it's the genre that is most invested in this fantasy. There are a lot of valid reasons why African-American culture in particular is invested in these material fantasies, but that's not really what Lorde is talking about here. She's mainly interested in the unintended cultural consequences of those values on the other side of the globe, and perhaps pushing Americans to consider for a moment that their pop culture is not happening in a vacuum”.

Maybe it is worth coming back to critique and scrutiny of the lyrics. The fact that the then-teenager Lorde wrote this song so quickly - and yet it has been poured over and is this complex and compelling thing goes to show what an amazing songwriter she is. Someone who definitely hit a nerve when it was released in 2013. The fact is Royals didn’t translate in all overseas territories too well. As it got to number one around the world, it was clear that the buying public loved the song and connected with its messages. The Guardian, writing in 2013, argued how Royals deserves a more nuanced investigation:

“Those are a few possible ways of hearing it, anyway. Another is that it’s a privileged white woman belittling black cultural aspiration. At least, that was the take of Verónica Bayetti Flores on feministing.com, who caused something of a minor international pop cultural incident with her analysis, under the unambiguous headline ‘Wow, That Lorde Song Royals is Racist’. It goes on to ask: “why not take to task the bankers and old-money folks who actually have a hand in perpetuating and increasing wealth inequality? I’m gonna take a guess: racism.”

Predictably, because Lorde is ridiculously popular, the post became an excuse for commenters to beat up on the writer, a venting space for a bunch of New Zealanders to defend their countrywoman.

It’s funny (read: embarrassing) that whenever anything gets written about New Zealand anywhere on the internet, we as a nation all dutifully congregate to refute, apologise or agree wholeheartedly with what’s being said. Click-hungry web editors take note: as a small, self-conscious set of islands with high internet penetration, we’re easily manipulated. Praise or pillory us and the clicks will roll in for days like the waves at Raglan.

Many of the guests from the bottom of the world arrived at feministing bearing well-argued responses, often pointing out that the song’s very next line ridiculed white cultural excess. Other visitors behaved a little strangely, making the post’s author’s point seem more valid in their attempts to refute it. “Wayne” summed up one vein of the sentiment:

If this woman that did the review, would have opened her ears a little more, than she would have realized what Lorde was referring too, and that is the over popular culture in music today. Bling, Pimped out rides, half naked artist on stage and in video’s, as well as showing off their money to the point, that they look like a big damn joke.

Basically what Wayne is saying is that, even if Royals isn’t racist, he sure is, and thoroughly enjoys the way listening to it reinforces his prejudices. This is a bit of a shame. Because Royals deserves a more nuanced critique.

Fortunately, the Wayne-type response was balanced out by the biting response of New Zealand satire site The Civilian, which went digging for other racist elements in Royals. These included discovering that the line "let me live that fantasy" really meant that “Lorde desperately wants to live out her fantasy of owning black slaves”.

I will get to reviews. INQUIRER.net had this to say when they reviewed Royals upon its release. It is amazing that an artist so young wrote a song like Royals. Both catchy and singalong but also deep and challenging, it is no wonder that we are still discussing the track a decade down the line. This majestic and emphatic introduction to the wonderful Lorde:

“Lorde, whose real name is Ella Maria Lani Yelich-O’Connor, is a 17-year-old singer-songwriter from New Zealand. She is starting to quickly establish her own identity with music aficionados spanning every age group with her meaningful and well-crafted lyrics that speak directly from the heart of who she is as an artist. That right there explains a lot to me why there are so many teens now moving away from listening to artists like Miley Cyrus to more thought-provoking and sensible music that Lorde has to offer.

The lyrics of her single “Royals” isn’t all about nonsensical themes that really do nothing to help broaden the tastes of listeners. Her song is surprisingly simple and sincere which provides a window to her humble beginnings and her own aspirations while growing up.

We can take for example in the pre-chorus: ” But every song’s like gold teeth, grey goose, trippin’ in the bathroom blood stains, ball gowns, trashin’ the hotel room, we don’t care, we’re driving Cadillacs in our dreams. But everybody’s like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece. Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash. We don’t care, we aren’t caught up in your love affair. “To even listen to lyrics as poignant as these isn’t exactly the “norm” these days.

Switching to other aspects of “Royals”, I would say there was really a conscious effort to keep things to a minimum as much as possible when it came to its instrumentation. And almost everything else about this single is minimalistic in its approach too—from the simple backing drum beat to even the finger snapping in the chorus section.

The best part about “Royals” is Lorde’s voice quality—low-pitched and husky—which is truly reminiscent of the late Amy Winehouse.

Normally, the production serves as a “boost” to make the song better in heightening the listeners’ experience. But in this case, if that method had been applied at all in the engineering of “Royals” in the recording studio, it would not have fit and most likely, it would have even worked the other way around because her voice would only have been drowned out. I say this because no amount of multi-layered sounds in the background was needed so that listeners could have a better appreciation of Lorde’s vocal work.

It really proves an old phrase “less is more.”

Everything I have mentioned and enumerated above leads me to believe we have a “counter-culture” artist who just so happens to have struck a chord with mainstream listeners looking for something different this time.

There will always be a huge chunk of music aficionados who are in search for new artists that would challenge their own definition as to what music sounds good to them. And this is where Lorde fits the bill perfectly.

Her voice alone speaks for itself”.

I will round off with a round up by Wikipedia. They collated reviews for the mighty Royals. A modern classic that has been covered by everyone from Selena Gomez, Jack White, and Bruce Springsteen, there is no doubt that this song has huge pull, power and importance. Something so many other artists wanted to add their stamp to. The sign of a true classic:

“Royals" received widespread acclaim from music critics. Lewis Corner from Digital Spy awarded the track a five rating and lauded its "addictive hook that thrives on its simplicity". The Guardian's Duncan Grieve was impressed by the song's "direct response" to excess and wealth. The Boston Globe writer James Reed selected "Royals" as the highlight of the album Pure Heroine. Rita Houston of NPR praised its melody, "heartfelt" songwriting, and Lorde's "rhythmic" vocals that combine to create a "polished little gem of a song". Jon Hadusek from Consequence of Sound also named the track the album's standout, singling out its "self-reflexive" lyrics and "catchy" production. PopMatters writer Scott Interrante felt that the song's sound was "distinct and fresh", while The New York Times's Jon Pareles highlighted its clever message, describing it as a "class-conscious critique of pop-culture materialism".

The lyrical content of the song was scrutinised after Feministing blogger Véronica Bayetti Flores called it "racist". She felt that "gold teeth, Cristal, and Maybachs" were direct references to items used by mainstream black artists. This prompted responses from several media publications, including The Washington Times, Complex, and Vice, who disagreed with Flores's comments. Journalist Lynda Brendish wrote that the song also critiques other stereotypes associated with affluent, high-profile personalities, such as rock musicians, socialites, and Russian oligarchs.[57] In contrast, Spin writer Brandon Soderberg argued that the inclusion of "Royals" on urban radio was an attempt by the music industry to whitewash traditionally black radio stations”.

Because 28th October was when Royals went to the top of the charts in the U.K., I wanted to mark and celebrate that anniversary with a closer look and dissection. If some misconstrued the lyrics and were misinterpreted, since it is seen as what it is: a teenager in New Zealand reacting to all the wealth and excess of American/western culture that was everywhere. Maybe some of the excess that musicians were used to. Quite gaudy and tacky. Perhaps a little cool too. I think everyone has a slightly different take on the lyrics. Whatever your impression, there is no doubting the fact that Royals is…

A supreme, all-conquering work of wonder.

FEATURE: Simon Le Bon at Sixty-Five: Duran Duran’s Biggest Hits and Amazing Deep Cuts

FEATURE:

 

 

Simon Le Bon at Sixty-Five

IN THIS PHOTO: Simon Le Bon in New York City in 2018/PHOTO CREDIT: Julia Johnson & Cody Cloud/The Licensing Project

Duran Duran’s Biggest Hits and Amazing Deep Cuts

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ONE of the…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Duran Duran in 1983

all-time great band leads of all time turns sixty-five on 27th October. Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon is one of the most distinct voices in music history. Le Bon has received three Ivor Novello Awards from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, including the award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. I am going to get to the playlist very soon. Before then, turning to Wikipedia for some background and history about Duran Duran and their history, here is some useful information:

“Duran Duran was founded by childhood friends John Taylor and Nick Rhodes along with singer-songwriter Stephen Duffy in 1978, but Duffy left a year later, convinced that the band was not going to be successful. The band went through a long succession of line-up changes after Duffy's departure, but finally settled on a guitarist and drummer.

Le Bon's ex-girlfriend, Fiona Kemp (a bartender at the Rum Runner nightclub where Duran Duran were rehearsing), introduced him to the band in May 1980, recommending him as a potential lead vocalist. As band legend has it, he turned up for the audition wearing pink leopard-print trousers, and carrying a notebook containing a large collection of poems he had written—several of which would later become tracks on the early Duran Duran studio albums.

After listening to the songs the band had already composed together, Le Bon spent some time fitting one of his poems ("Sound of Thunder") to one of the instrumentals, and found they had a good match. Le Bon agreed to "try [Duran Duran] out for the summer"; within six weeks the band was playing steadily around Birmingham, London and Nottingham, and a national tour supporting Hazel O'Connor led to a recording contract with EMI Records in December that year.

The band's debut studio album, Duran Duran, was released in 1981, and they quickly became famous as part of the New Romantic movement. Three more albums followed in quick succession: Rio (1982), Seven and the Ragged Tiger (1983) and the live album Arena (1984). Each album release was accompanied by heavy media promotion and a lengthy concert tour. By mid-1984, the band were ready for a break. Duran Duran's only other work that year was an appearance on the Band Aid charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" which was recorded at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill, London on 25 November 1984. Le Bon's vocal appears fourth on the song after Paul Young, Boy George and George Michael sing their lines.

Following the departures of Roger Taylor and Andy Taylor, Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor continued on as Duran Duran, recording and releasing Notorious (1986) and Big Thing (1988). The group added guitarist Warren Cuccurullo and drummer Sterling Campbell and recorded the studio album Liberty (1990), but the band's success had begun to wane in the late 1980s.

Duran Duran had a resurgence in popularity in 1993 with The Wedding Album, featuring the top-10 single "Ordinary World". Several months into the extensive worldwide concert tour supporting this album, Le Bon suffered a torn vocal cord, and the tour was postponed for six weeks while he recovered.

In 1995, Duran Duran released the covers album Thank You, and Le Bon had the chance to cover some of his favourite artists, (Jim Morrison, Lou Reed and Elvis Costello), but the album was severely panned by critics from all quarters. That year Le Bon also performed Duran Duran's 1993 hit "Ordinary World" with opera tenor Luciano Pavarotti during a "Children of Bosnia" benefit concert for War Child. Le Bon described the event to Jam! Showbiz thusly: "If you're talking about name dropping, he's one of the biggest names you could drop, Pav-The-Man".

When bassist John Taylor left the band in 1997, Le Bon and Rhodes remained as the only two members who had been with Duran Duran from the beginning of their recording career. The successive two studio albums with Le Bon, Rhodes, and Cuccurullo, Medazzaland (1997) and Pop Trash (2000) were not commercial successes.

In 2001, Duran Duran's original five members reunited to record a new studio album, Astronaut, for Epic Records. Astronaut was released worldwide on 11 October 2004. The album was preceded by the single "(Reach Up for The) Sunrise", their first UK Top 10 single in a decade”.

To mark the approaching sixty-fifth birthday of Simon Le Bon, I wanted to assemble a collection of Duran Duran tracks. Even though Le Bon is more than the band, this is where people know him from. His best work is with the Birmingham-formed group. Whether you are younger and do not know much about Duran Duran, or you are someone who has followed them for decades, below is a playlist that should give you a good taste and representation of…

A music legend.

FEATURE: Inspired By... Part One Hundred and Three: Elliott Smith

FEATURE:

 

 

Inspired By...

Part One Hundred and Three: Elliott Smith

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ON 21st October…

it will be twenty years since the wonderful and hugely influential Elliott Smith (Steven Paul Smith) died. The Nebraska-born artist - raised primarily in Texas, he lived much of his life in Portland, Oregon – left the word some truly incredible music! From his beguiling and astonishing 1994 debut, Roman Candle, to 2000’s Figure 8, seemingly everything he put out into the world was impactful and astonishing! In terms of his masterpieces, maybe 1997’s Either/Or is seen as that peak. Regardless, there is no doubting the fact that Smith’s cannon of music lives on through other artists. I am going to mark twenty years of his passing with a playlist of songs from artists who have been influenced by him. First, and as I do with these features, AllMusic provide a detailed biography of the much-missed artist:

“An acclaimed singer/songwriter with a distinctively melancholic sound, Elliott Smith was a member of the thriving music scene of Portland, Oregon in the mid-'90s when he began releasing a series of highly influential solo albums. His musical palette expanded over time, from the hushed acoustic guitar demos of his 1994 solo debut, Roman Candle, to the orchestrated studio craftsmanship of his fifth album, 2000's Figure 8. Still, all were distinguished by a vulnerable demeanor conveyed by intense but wispy vocals (often double-tracked) and personal lyrics that referred candidly to subjects like addiction, depression, and alienation. His music's character was also shaped by artful chord transitions, which he called his favorite part of songs. He moved abruptly from indie cult status to mainstream success in 1997 when his contributions to the Good Will Hunting soundtrack resulted in an Academy Award nomination ("Miss Misery"). He recorded only six solo albums, releasing five before his untimely death at the age of 34 in 2003.

Born Stephen Paul Smith in Omaha, Nebraska but raised mostly in Texas, Elliott Smith's musical influences included such figures as Bob Dylan, the Kinks, Big Star, Elvis Costello, and the Beatles; he said he was inspired to become a musician after hearing The White Album. He began writing and recording his first songs around the time he moved to Portland, Oregon at the age of 14. After high school, Smith headed to Amherst, Massachusetts to study philosophy and political science at Hampshire College. It was there that he met future bandmate Neil Gust. After graduating in 1991, Smith moved back to Portland with Gust, and the co-singer/songwriter/guitarists formed the indie rock band Heatmiser with bass player Brandt Peterson and drummer Tony Lash. Mixing Smith's melancholy-pop sensibilities with Gust's more aggressive style and a notable grunge influence, they signed with Frontier Records, which released 1993's Dead Air and 1994's Cop and Speeder. Peterson then left the group and was replaced by Sam Coomes.

In the meantime, Smith's then-girlfriend convinced him to send some of his solo demos to Portland-based Cavity Search Records. The label immediately expressed interest in releasing a full album. A set of spare acoustic guitar ruminations with just a few other instruments used as accents, Roman Candle was home-recorded on a four-track tape recorder. Four of the songs didn't even have titles. It stood in sharp contrast to the scene's alternative rock that was popular upon its release in 1994. He signed with noted indie label Kill Rock Stars for the next year's Elliott Smith. It was recorded partly at his bandmate Lash's house and featured Gust on additional guitar. The attention the records received soon overshadowed Heatmiser, though they helped draw the interest of Virgin Records, which signed the band for their final LP, Mic City Sons. It arrived via subsidiary Caroline Recordings in 1996. Heatmiser officially disbanded prior to its release.

s Smith continued to develop as a songwriter, his more ambitious but entirely self-recorded third solo LP, Either/Or, arrived in early 1997. With its title taken from a Søren Kierkegaard book of the same name, the album's expanded instrumentation included several songs with full-band arrangements and even keyboards. The results were still intimate, however, marked by his whispery, often despondent delivery and lyrics, even among a few livelier, uptempo tracks. The album was mixed by Smith and Heatmiser producers Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf.

By then, Smith had made a fan of film director Gus Van Sant, who asked for permission to use his music in an upcoming film. Counting an orchestral version of "Between the Bars" recorded with score composer Danny Elfman, four of his existing songs could be heard in the critical and box office hit Good Will Hunting later in 1997. The soundtrack also included Smith's original song for the film, "Miss Misery." When the Academy Award nominations were announced the following February, the track was a surprise entry in the Best Original Song category. Although it didn't win, Smith performed an acoustic guitar rendition live on Late Night with Conan O'Brien a few days before the Oscars, marking his network television debut. He followed it with a live performance of "Miss Misery" on the Oscars telecast accompanied by the Broadcast Orchestra.

The newfound exposure led to a record deal with DreamWorks, resulting in Smith's first album in professional studios. Though he had relocated to Brooklyn following touring for Either/Or, he headed to Los Angeles to work with musicians including Jon Brion and Joey Waronker on the notably more elaborate XO. Released in 1998, the Beatleseque production was again mixed by Smith, Rothrock, and Schnapf. His first album to appear on the Billboard 200, it reached number 104 in the U.S., also charting among the Top 50 in Australia and Sweden. Smith performed on TV's Saturday Night Live in October 1998, backed by Schnapf, Brion, Coomes, and John Moen. In 1999, he contributed a cover of the Beatles' "Because" to the soundtrack of Best Picture winner American Beauty and moved to Los Angeles, where he began work on his DreamWorks follow-up. Recorded partly at Abbey Road Studios in London, his fifth solo album, 2000's Figure 8, was co-produced by Smith, Rothrock, and Schnapf. Its more textured, orchestral arrangements drew further comparisons to the Beatles' later recordings. Figure 8 charted in several European countries and hit number 99 in the U.S.

For the next couple of years, Smith labored over what was to be his next album. He parted ways with DreamWorks, and after a falling out with Brion, he scrapped an album they had begun together. In the meantime, "Needle in the Hay" from his eponymous LP was used by Wes Anderson to accompany a suicide-attempt scene in his film The Royal Tenenbaums. Smith eventually made a fresh start at his sixth LP, combining home recordings and material from sessions with Goldenboy's Dave McConnell. Musicians including Coomes and the Flaming Lips' Steven Drodz contributed performances to parts of a planned double album. However, Smith would not live to see its completion.

Elliott Smith died on October 21, 2003, after he was found in his home with two stab wounds in his chest. The coroner was unable to determine whether he killed himself or was murdered, and the Los Angeles Police Department's investigation remains open. Smith's estate asked Schnapf and former girlfriend Joanna Bolme to complete the album in progress. After mixing -- or in some cases remixing -- 15 tracks from over 30 he left behind, they completed From a Basement on the Hill. It was released as a single album by Anti- just two days shy of the first anniversary of Smith's death, to a warm critical reception. It became his only Billboard Top 20 album, reaching number 19.

In 2007, his former label Kill Rock Stars issued a two-disc set of Smith's earlier unreleased work, all of which had been recorded between 1994 and 1997. Entitled New Moon, the 24-track collection contained three songs that had been previously released on hard-to-find compilations or soundtracks, including an early version of "Miss Misery" and a cover of Big Star's "Thirteen." It, too, charted in several countries, peaking at number 24 in the U.S. The career compilation An Introduction to Elliott Smith appeared in 2010, and in 2015 Smith was the subject of a documentary called Heaven Adores You. The first such documentary to receive permission to use his music, its soundtrack album followed in 2016 and landed on the Billboard soundtracks chart. A 20th anniversary expanded reissue of Either/Or returned Smith to the Billboard 200 in 2017. Three years later, Kill Rock Stars reissued his self-titled second album with the addition of Live at Umbra Penumbra, a 1994 recording of Smith's first performance as a solo artist”.

It seems hard to believe that Elliott Smith is not in the world. I was into his music in the 1990s. I was instantly struck by how powerful his lyrics were, in spite of the fact his delivery is a lot softer that a lot of his peers. Somehow more affecting and potent than a more pained and angered delivery, albums like Roman Candle will inspire artists for generations. Below is a playlist of songs from artists either compared to Smith or have cited him as an inspiration. It is an impressive list of names who owe a little something to the legend. Although we mark twenty years of his passing on 21st October, we also can look back at his work and celebrate. It is an honour to pay tribute to…

A towering and peerless talent.

FEATURE: Second Spin: Billie - Honey to the B

FEATURE:

 

 

Second Spin

Billie - Honey to the B

_________

NOT that one needs any reason…

to write about Billie’s debut solo album, Honey to the B…though, as it is twenty-five on 19th October, I wanted to mark the important anniversary. For this Second Spin, you can grab a copy of the 1998 album and listen to one of the most infectious Pop albums of the '90s. 1998 was a year when the music landscape shifted dramatically. Now Britpop was very much gone, classic albums from Madonna (Ray of Light), Beastie Boys (Hello Nasty), Air (Moon Safari) and Ms. Lauryn Hill (The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill) were dominating. Pop music was still very much alive and well though, in a year when the music landscape was shifting, one might think that Billie’s debut would have sounded more fitting a few years earlier. At a time when the likes of Shampoo were releasing songs like Trouble (1994), Honey to the B would have slotted in perfectly. Maybe that is why some critics were not that warm towards a great album. We all know Billie Piper as a superb actress. There are some that do not know about her brief music career. Her second and final studio album, Walk of Life, arrived in 2000. I think that Honey to the B is her strongest album. You occasionally here hits like Because We Want To on stations like BBC Radio 2, Capital and more Pop-oriented options. I feel that the great and still fresh songs from the album warrant wider appreciation. With terrific deep cuts like You’ve Got It and Don't Forget to Remember, Honey to the B is well worth a listen. The then-sixteen-year-old was writing and performing music that had a lot more kick and attitude than many of her Pop peers. Songs such as Girlfriend and She Wants You were played a lot when I was at high school. I was fifteen when the album came out, so it was quite common that something like Honey to the Bee or Because We Want To would pop up on the radio. It is a shame some of the music videos from the album have not been remastered and preserved. They could do with an HD transfer.

Even so, there is a lot to recommend about Honey to the B. Billie was the first and youngest British female artist to have a debut single enter the U.K. singles chart at number one. That is not to be sniffed at! At a time when the singles charts was rammed with quality and variety, Because We Want To won out and was this massive hit. Reaching number fourteen in the U.K., Honey to the Bee is an album that I think would win and charm people now. One cannot deny the fact that its singles sound relevant now. So many current young artists have elements of Billie about them. Or at least some of the Pop that was around in 1998. Even if there are a couple of songs that can be seen as inessential or weaker – Saying I’m Sorry Now is quite difficult and a little cringey -, there are so many terrific tracks. This is what Pop Rescue wrote in their 2021 review. They awarded Honey to the B four stars:

“Today’s Pop Rescue from a fate unknown, is the 1998 debut album Honey To The B, by British pop star and actress, Billie Piper. Will this album give you a buzz, or is it simply a Honey trap? Read on…

Billie Piper – Honey To The B (1998) album

This 12 track CD opens with the debut hit single Because We Want To, which bursts open with some full-on teenage rebellion. The track is full of powerful parental defiance and this, alongside the energy the song exudes quite rightly ensured it was a hit, taking roost at #1 in the UK singles chart. The crowd shouting moments, plodding bass all help to keep this song catchy. This is a few years into Girl Power, super-charged by the Spice Girls a few years later, and you can certainly hear the musical similarities here. We’re off to a brilliant start.

That’s followed by second single Girlfriend, which takes the tempo down and temperature up. This track takes a more RnB sound to it, giving Billie a great platform to show off her richer vocals on a slower track. It’s slick, and effortlessly wanders from verse to chorus to verse. The track also hit #1 in the UK chart, a contrast to the lead single.

Officially Yours follows this, again picking up an RnB beat, with a few vinyl scratches thrown in. The synth orchestral hit works well here. I’m reminded a bit of Eternal here, but Billie’s vocals are softer. It’s quite a nice little song, with some thrown in asides from Sweet P, although it doesn’t particularly evolve much.

A gentle keyboard sequence opens next track She Wants You as a pop beat fades in and we see a return to an upbeat catchy track. Billie’s vocals sound effortlessly rich here. This track was the album’s third single, giving Billie a #3 UK hit. I seem to remember there being some excellent pumping remixes of this song, whereas this album version is a little more mellow. Still, it’s perfectly catchy and and a great pick up from the previous two slower tracks.

Next up is Love Groove, and we have a wonderfully funky introduction with bass, simple beat, more vinyl scratches and interjections from Sweet P, and even a little flurry of brass. We even get a flute in this track. Musically, it sounds like something left over from George Michael‘s Older, or a Stereo MC’s album. Vocally, it sounds odd though – with a meandering melody, and Billie takes on a slightly weird vocal style in this wafty jazz-funk track.

That’s followed by a ringing phone of Party On The Phone. You’ve got to love the 1990s, and the concept of this song reeks of 90s party lines. Whilst the song is catchy, with its ‘na na na’, chiming bell sounds from keyboards and phone ringing samples, set on top of a funky RnB track, it is now quite amusingly dated. ‘Everybody swingin’ it on the phone’ – really? ‘So get ringin’ it!‘ Billie demands. Can’t wait for the Zoom follow-up ‘everybody on mute’ ‘Tina’s left the call’.

Saying I’m Sorry Now is next, and we’re back into 90’s pop, and very much back into a kind of Eternal sound. Billie’s vocals sound a bit off at times here in this multi-layered – sometimes too low, and sometimes taking a wrong step. Breathy vocals, an RnB beat, a tinkling piano, and Billie’s vocals sound ok, but they don’t feel like they are always pushing in the same direction at the same time. This makes it a bit odd.

Then it’s time for You’ve Got It, which bursts open, feeling like a return to form. Billie is joined by the London Community Gospel Choir, who help to lift her higher in the chorus. It’s a fairly simple pop song, and it allows Billie to shine nicely. There’s a really nice bridge at roughly the 2:20 mark where Billie and the choir get to shine without the beats for a few moments. The pair also get to shine again towards the end. It’s nice enough, but lacks the same amount of oomph that the singles have.

I Dream follows that, and returns us to a heartfelt reflective Billie. Her vocals are soft and tender here, set against a shuffling beat and acoustic guitars. This is a really nice little mid-tempo song, and probably could have been a nice final single for the album. It has a really nice synth pad ending that adds to the dreaming theme of the song.

Birds sing and a bee buzzes around as titular song Honey To The Bee begins. ‘C’mon, buzz me up to heaven’ Billie whispers suggestively. Musically, the song reminds me a lot of Never Ever by All Saints, but Billie definitely makes the vocal performance her own. The track was the album’s fourth and final single, giving her a sultry #3 UK hit. The London Community Gospel Choir are back again singing about ‘heaven’, but it’s possibly a different kind of heaven to what Billie is talking about being buzzed to here. It’s a brilliant song, that grows perfectly before returning us to those birds and bees.

Penultimate track Whatcha Gonna Do follows this, and Billie is rejoined by Sweet P again, and she’s clearly taking issue with him this time. A slinky guitar riff leads us through this RnB track. Billie once again seems to be channeling All Saints a bit, as she sings about taking control and leaving her lover. It’s a nice plodder of a track, and gives Billie plenty of space to show off her vocal range.

The album closes with Don’t Forget To Remember. The song opens with what sounds like a lone pianist playing in a busy bar before a beat bursts in and we’re back in pop stomping Billie richness again. This is a really nice catchy pop song, and one of the non-single highlights of the album. The perfect ending to a debut album of a debut pop career.

Billie’s lead single ‘Because We Want To’ (1998).

VERDICT

Over all, this album is packed with an acute awareness of the late 90’s chart music of which it was part. The similarities at times to Eternal and All Saints are a reflection of the style of music that was dominating the UK at the time – bursting pop/dance songs, and slick RnB inspired tracks. That similarity clearly leant it some success but Billie’s choice of singles singled her out without relying on those.

Billie’s vocals are playful, occasionally childish, but there’s no doubting the power and control that she has over them. As a young pop star, with a debut album, she was likely at the whim of the team writing for her. What we do get here are some of the best late 90’s pop songs in the form of Because We Want To, She Wants You and Honey To The Be, but that’s joined by Girlfriend, I Dream, and Don’t Forget To Remember.

Sadly, there are some low points too, with Saying I’m Sorry Now being a difficult listen, followed by Love Groove. These are a minority though on a 12 track CD, and would have been better to have been left off of what is otherwise a great pop album, and a wonderful debut.

Why you gotta play her songs so loud? Because you ought to. Because you ought to”.

If artists of that time such as All Saints got a bit more traction and critical respect, one listens to Billie’s debut album now and realises it deserved more acclaim. Billie Piper is one of our very best actors, though she had this amazing music career. An artist that I think could release a great album now and it would do terrifically. I am going to finish off with Off the Record’s 2022 review of Honey to the B:

“Billie Piper, is an English actor and musician, she first came to the public attention when she released her debut single ‘Because We Want To’ at the age of fifteen, which made her the youngest female artist ever to enter the UK Singles Chart. She however did not truly come to be a household name until she starred as Rose Tyler, a companion to the Doctor, an alien time traveller, on the first season of the revival of the BBC show Doctor Who back in 2005. Following on from her tenure on Doctor Who she also starred as Hannah Baxter, the titular and main character, on the hit show Secret Diary of a Call Girl. She was also Brona Croft/Lily Frankenstein in the horror-drama Penny Dreadful, and she was nominated for a British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the Netflix Original Collateral, where she played Karen Mars. More recently she co-created and starred in the Sky Atlantic series, I Hate Suzie, a comedy/drama in which she plays the titular character, Suzie Pickles.

As I touched on above, Billie Piper, or as she was known back then, just Billie, is a former musician, having retired from the music business in 2003 to focus on acting, but prior to this point she released two albums, the first of which we are here to discuss today. Yes, we will be reviewing her debut album ‘Honey to the B’ which was released on 19th October 1998.

‘Because We Want To’ opens fast, high energy, percussive beats support Billie’s vocals, she has a nice voice, melodic but fresh, she’s obviously just starting off at this point and yet despite that she has a maturity and strength to her voice that some performers never learn. I like the energy of this track, the fun pop energy, and the back and forth, call and response nature of the chorus. Even the rap sections work well, they’ve got a nice rhythm and structure to them, that make for an overall good track.

‘Girlfriend’ opens with record scratching, and melodic vocal fills that blend into a funky, little tune, that is fun and catchy, and not just in the repetitive, cookie cutter, pop way, it’s just a nice little melody, that again shows off multiple sides to Billie’s voice. I like that even though she has a nice that’s nice to listen to, she doesn’t rely just upon that, instead throughout this song and the rest on the album she experiments with style, delivery and performance.

‘Officially Yours’ has a really nice rhythmic opening, light percussive and beats that lead into some softer vocals, you can feel the soulful delivery of the lyrics, it all comes together really well. This one is a lower tempo track than the past couple, but while it’s not as full of energy it’s still a strong performance, and you get the clearest impression of Billie’s voice throughout the track.

‘She Wants You’ has piano chords building slowly, while beneath it a more upbeat, high energy beat is playing, it then explodes and takes over, and Billie matches it, high energy vocals, but still rich and deep and passionate, you just get caught up in the vibe of this one. I’ve talked about it before but especially for a debut album by such a young artist, she’s got a remarkable range. Perhaps my only issue is that perhaps the subject material of the songs are just a touch mature, but other than that they resonate well and have a nice energy to them.

‘Love Groove’ opens with counting, before kicking into a tight bass and percussive melody, and this one just kinda flows over you, a funky tune and again we see a different side to Billie’s voice, I admire a vocalist that is confident enough to see what they can do musically, I recently reviewed Kat Graham, and I felt very much the same about them, a talented and appealing voice, but she also didn’t steer away from exploring things in her music. I really liked the pipe section towards the end, and the rap breakdown by the guest vocalist, all added to the performance.

‘Party on the Phone’ is a very busy track, it incorporates in phone trills, and a heavy bass driven beat that work to support Billie’s voice, and once again can I say that she’s genuinely a talented singer, her voice is nice to listen to, she’s got a strong range and works well within the structure of the melody. I’m curious, listening to this years after the release, how much creative control she had over this album, whether she had a hand in producing the songs. It doesn’t really impact the quality or my enjoyment of the track but it’s something to think about.

‘Saying I’m Sorry Now’ is maybe my favourite on the album, it’s a relatively simple beat and melody off the bat, especially compared to some of the other tracks, but it has some of the best vocal work on the entire album, and it just flows really well. It’s also a slower track, which is usually my preference, but honestly it’s not even just that it’s more in keeping with my personal musical tastes, it’s just a really strong, even tempo track, with a sharp percussion beat to it, and it just works.

‘You’ve Got It’ opens with a hammering beat that blends out to a sonorous sort of ambient synth melody which works really well with Billie’s voice. It’s got a really nice rhythm as well, and is surprisingly memorable as I found myself humming it a few days after I’d finished writing the review. I think it’s probably my second favourite on the album, after the song directly before it.

‘I Dream’ opens with percussive tones that build, as an electronic guitar is laid over it, it blends to create a really beautiful and filling melody, and obviously Billie’s up to the task vocally, her voice is deep and resonant and you just get caught up in it. Despite having my own favourites, I think I would recommend this song to someone if I were trying to get them to listen to the full album, there’s just something about it that’s not only good, but has mainstream appeal.

‘Honey to the Bee’ kicks off with the sound of nature, and gentle guitar notes and vocals, meshing and bouncing off one another. I really liked this track, it’s very different overall to the rest of the album, and yet it works as part of the greater help. I liked the melody a lot, and I liked the building nature of the track, you just get kinda caught up in it.

Whatcha Gonna Do’ is also different, deeper and heavier, a percussive beat is the driving force behind this track, and unlike the majority of the tracks so far, Billie has another voice to bounce off, it helps to flesh the song out, and add something to it.

‘Don’t Forget to Remember’ closes out the album for us, we are greeted by the sounds of an audience and electronic piano chords, building and creating a soft, melody before breaking, a quick percussive fill changing up the track, and then the vocals kick in. Again, I’m amazed by the range and vocal depth Billie is capable off, especially this early in her career, and I feel like this was a strong track to close things out on”.

As Honey to the B is twenty-five on 19th October, I wanted to nod to it. I am not sure whether Billie Piper will celebrate or recall memories of making the album. I’d like to think that she at least smiles remembering a wonderful time in music where this exciting and arresting Pop artist broke through. As I say, I could well see Billie Piper recording an album now and it being remarkable. Perhaps something soulful or Jazz-influenced. Her vocal range through her 1998 debut is stunning! If you have some spare pennies to get a copy of Honey to the B on cassette or C.D., it is well worth some time. It deserves a second spin. This is one of those '90s albums that sort of passed under the radar a little. It was worthy of much more than that. For anyone in need of a lift, I can thoroughly recommend you check out Billie’s…

TREMENDOUS Honey to the B.

FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: Nico - Chelsea Girl

FEATURE:

 

 

Vinyl Corner

Nico - Chelsea Girl

_________

THERE are a couple of places…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Nico with The Velvet Underground’s Lou Reed in 1967

where you can get this album. If you want a vinyl copy of Nico’s classic 1967 album, Chelsea Girl, then you can grab it here or here. I would recommend people think about investing in a copy, as it is one of the all-time great albums. I am featuring it now, as Nico would have turned eighty-five on 16th October. She sadly died in 1988. It was a tragic loss of a unique and unforgettable artist. She released a few iconic albums during her career. Many might know her from the timeless 1967 album, The Velvet Underground & Nico. Nico’s amazing debut solo album was produced by Tom Wilson. The title is a reference to Andy Warhol's 1966 film, Chelsea Girls, in which Nico starred. Wilson added strings and flutes to the album, even though Nico was very much against this. It is a shame that the German singer was dissatisfied with Chelsea Girl. It is considered a masterpiece by so many. When Nico was quoted in Dave Thompson's liner notes for the 2002 Deluxe re-issue of The Velvet Underground & Nico - which includes all five Velvet collaborations for Chelsea Girl -, she remarked (of Chelsea Girl):

“I still cannot listen to it, because everything I wanted for that record, they took it away. I asked for drums, they said no. I asked for more guitars, they said no. And I asked for simplicity, and they covered it in flutes!... They added strings and – I didn't like them, but I could live with them. But the flute! The first time I heard the album, I cried and it was all because of the flute”.

Perhaps, in a year where the likes of The Beatles released psychedelic albums like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Chelsea Girl sounded twee or out of step with what was around it. It is those qualities which make it stand out. Perfectly accompanying Nico’s vocals, the flutes work really well. It is a pity a compromise could not have been worked out – so that there were flutes but more guitars and drums. I am going to get to some reviews of the mighty and mesmeric Chelsea Girl. It is a magnificent record that everyone should hear. This feature from 1st October is a brand-new view and assessment of Chelsea Girl:

“Part lost Velvet Underground album and part baroque-folk pop-art experiment, Nico’s solo debut LP, Chelsea Girl, was worlds apart from anything else she’d ever record, but it’s a classic on its own terms.

The album was made almost immediately after the March 1967 release of The Velvet Underground & Nico, and was reportedly assembled in a mad frenzy of activity over just a few days, with VU producer Tom Wilson at the helm. Its basis was the solo act Nico had recently begun developing, sometimes backed by her 18-year-old paramour Jackson Browne, who contributed three songs to Chelsea Girl. Browne would later recall that amid the hectic sessions, he was in the studio playing with Nico on his compositions the same day Lou Reed was there laying down guitar on tunes he wrote.

Chelsea Girl was not a million miles from “I’ll Be Your Mirror” and “Femme Fatale,” the ballads Nico sang with the VU. The basic template for the singer’s husky vocal approach was still Marlene Dietrich meets ‘60s mod, but instead of a full-band backing, the album places the German émigré in a baroque-folk setting.

There were precedents in Marianne Faithfull’s early recordings, which became mid-’60s U.K. hits, and Judy Collins’ In My Life, which helped break the folk singer into the mainstream. This may have informed the business-savvy Wilson’s decision to make a drumless album and engage Larry Fallon for chamber-style woodwind and string arrangements. A 1968 review in New Society would memorably dub Nico “a satanic Marianne Faithfull.”

Time has vindicated Wilson’s decision. From an objective distance, the taut but warm string and flute parts feel like the ideal foil for Nico’s deadpan delivery. But both Nico and Reed would later gripe about the arrangements. “I cried when I heard the album,” Nico would say, “I cried because of the flute.” In a 1978 Creem interview, Reed held forth on the album: “Everything on it – those strings, that flute – should have defeated it. But with the lyrics, Nico’s voice, it somehow managed to survive. We still got ‘It Was a Pleasure Then’ on, they couldn’t stop us. We’d been doing a song like that in our beloved show; it didn’t really have a title. Just all of us following the drone. And there it sits in the middle of the album.”

Half of Chelsea Girl was written by some combination of Velvet Underground members. Reed’s “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams” and the Cale/Reed tune “Little Sister” had both been tried at the Velvet Underground & Nico sessions, ballads with calm surfaces belying the lyrics’ psychological and physical violence. Cale’s “Winter Song” and the Reed/Sterling Morrison-penned “Chelsea Girls” bear the same sort of contrast, the latter inspired by the studied decadence of the 1966 Nico-starring Andy Warhol film of the same name. The staccato string arrangements bring just the right blend of archness and accessibility to all of them.

As Reed suggested, “It Was a Pleasure Then” grew out of a wild, avant-garde improv piece from the Velvets’ live set known as “Melody Laughter.” While it moves at an unhurried pace similar to the other tracks, Fallon’s arrangements are eschewed for Reed and Cale’s ebbing and flowing currents of sonic derangement.

The Browne songs are far closer to the folk-rock singer/songwriter conventions of the day. Their tender melodies and melancholy yearning balance with Nico’s emotional distance, especially on the poignant “These Days,” the only one of his three tunes that Browne would later record himself.

Chelsea Girl is rounded out by a song each from Bob Dylan and from Nico’s labelmate and occasional accompanist Tim Hardin. Dylan’s open-hearted “I’ll Keep It With Mine” was first recorded in 1964 by Judy Collins, creating yet another parallel between her and Nico. The album closes with Hardin’s literally mournful “Eulogy to Lenny Bruce,” which would turn up as “Lenny’s Tune” on 1968’s Tim Hardin 3: Live in Concert. Hardin’s lyrics bemoan the substance abuse that led to his famous friend Bruce’s untimely death, and the song becomes all the more chilling in light of Hardin’s own early, drug-assisted exit from our realm.

After completing Chelsea Girl, Nico diverged from the album’s path as quickly and drastically as humanly possible. Her 1968 Cale-produced album The Marble Index was the start of two decades of self-penned albums embracing utterly uncharted territory. But, for a brief moment in 1967, Nico occupied the strangely compelling space between arty abandon and fragile balladry. It was – and is – a pleasure”.

Before getting to a couple of other reviews, I want to source The Vinyl District’s 2017 view on a wonderful album that you can hear in so many artists who have come along since. In one of music’s strongest-ever years (1967), Nico’s debut stood alongside the very best. The Marble Index followed in 1968. It kept the quality up – announcing Nico as a truly wonderful and compelling solo artist:

“Everybody, or so it seems, loves Teutonic chanteuse Nico’s absolutely enchanting 1967 debut solo album Chelsea Girl–except Nico. In 1981 she said, “I asked for simplicity, and they covered it in flutes! They added strings and–I didn’t like them, but I could live with them. But the flutes! The first time I heard the album, I cried and it was all because of the flute.”

“They” were Velvet Underground producer Tom Wilson and arranger Larry Fallon, and as should be obvious from the above quote they sugar-frosted Chelsea Girl without so much as asking for Nico’s by your live.

Nico may have been crestfallen about Chelsea Girl, but generations of listeners have been bewitched by her hauntingly droning approach to songs by the likes of the young Jackson Browne, Bob Dylan, Tim Hardin, and (of course) her former Velvet Underground bandmates Lou Reed, John Cale, and Sterling Morrison. These songs are as coldly tender as a Baltic Sea wind blowing through the pines of Spreewald Forest where Nico spent her childhood war years, watching the flickering lights of Allied bombers devastating Berlin on the horizon.

The veddy veddy German Nico (aka Christa Päffgen) is certainly one of the most distinctive vocalists you’ll ever run across; my East German ex-Frau lost her accent within a year or so of leaving the Deutschland, but the ex-model, Warhol actress, and member of his Exploding Plastic Inevitable’s accent remained every bit as thick as the walls of Hitler’s bunker, making her without a doubt the frostiest Ice Queen in the history of modern pop music.

But Nico’s frigid vocals are warmed up by this collection of winsome songs; with the exception of the eerily beautiful (and vaguely Middle Eastern sounding) “It Was a Pleasure Then” (on which Reed and Cale bring to bear the all of the dissonant powers they displayed on “European Son”) “Chelsea Girls,” and Hardin’s “Eulogy to Lenny Bruce” the tunes are fetching, and the Wilson-Fallon strings and flute overlay gives the LP an accessible, chamber pop sheen. Which, of course, Nico despised.

Some albums are disparate affairs; others are uniform in mood. Chelsea Girl falls into the latter category; its 10 songs, taken as a whole, evoke a bittersweet wistfulness. They bring to my mind the misty grey days I used to spend with my former significant other walking across the desolate potato fields of Mecklenburg-Vorpommen off the Baltic Coast, storks wheeling regally overhead towards their nests in the smokestacks of derelict sugar factories. The LP conjures memories and induces trances, alternately haunts and teases, leads one by the hand down a set of stone steps to the cemetery where your dreams are buried.

This is Nacht Musik to be listened to alone, preferably while strolling the backstreets of Berlin or Hamburg–some Northern German metropolis where the fog is made welcome, and the weight of history lies as heavy as the monolithic Nazi-era flak towers that still stand in the latter city. Nico is a siren calling you back to a place you never even knew was home, harkening you back to a lurking sadness you didn’t even know you felt.

Very few artists have this power to bewitch, intoxicate and mesmerize; in its power Chelsea Girl reminds me of nothing so much as Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, another masterpiece of stirring evocation and sustained mood. I have my favorites (Browne’s “These Days,” Dylan’s “I’ll Keep It With Mine,” Reed and Morrison’s “Chelsea Girls,” Reed and Cale’s “Little Sister”) and you probably have yours, but in the end they’re all enchanting, they all flicker and disappear the moment you turn your gaze upon them, they’re all as hard to catch as the fugitive feather falling from the sky in “Somewhere There’s a Feather.”

Nico would go on to make her artistic dreams come true on 1969’s The Marble Index, 1970’s Desertshore, and later albums, all of which are formidably stark and fully realized evocations of gloom, doomm and other Wagnerian fun stuff. I find ‘em a bit too Gotterdammerung bleak for my tastes, which ain’t to take away from the fact that “Janitor of Lunacy” is probably the greatest song title of all time. If you’re a depressive or just like to pretend you’re one, I suggest you check them out.

GRADED ON A CURVE:
A”.

I am going to finish with a couple of other reviews for Chelsea Girl. In fact, I will come to a review and then end with a feature that talks about the album and the legacy it holds. Pitchfork reviewed Chelsea Girl fifty years after its release in 2017. I don’t think I have ever seen a review of Chelsea Girl that is anything but effusive and hugely complimentary. Even if Nico very much went in her own direction with 1968’s The Marble Index, there is no doubting the fact Chelsea Girl holds a very special place in music history:

“Chelsea Girl presents a young woman torn between the regrets of her past and the unknown but hopeful future. Browne’s three contributions—“These Days,” “The Fairest of the Seasons” and “Somewhere There’s a Feather”—are introspective meditations on change backed up by Cale’s chirping viola and Browne’s gentle acoustic guitar. “These Days,” the ultimate loner anthem and the most famous song of Nico’s career, has been covered by artists from Drake to Elliott Smith, and is as iconic as Nico herself. It’s no wonder Wes Anderson chose to use it as a theme of sorts for The Royal Tenenbaums’ Margot, a character whose mystery and sadness is as heavy as her mink coat. But upon listening to Browne’s twangy version of “These Days,” it becomes obvious that Nico’s droning, Germanic drawl is what makes the song so affecting.

While Browne focuses on transitions, Cale pushes Nico into more a more esoteric realm. On “Little Sister” (co-written with Reed), Nico’s voice is flat and brooding in direct contrast to the whimsical organ which pipes along beside her. She sings in “perfect mellow ovals” as Goldstein wrote in 1966. “It sounds something like a cello getting up in the morning.” “Winter Song” on the other hand, basks in an almost medieval atmosphere which is heightened lyrically by talk of “tyranny,” “royal decay,” and the “worshipping wicked.” The closest thing to a Velvet Underground song on Chelsea Girl is Reed, Nico, and Cale’s hefty eight-minute “It Was a Pleasure Then.” While Cale’s viola groans with distortion and Reed’s guitar drives into darkness, Nico’s voice soars into a wordless soprano at the peak of her range. She draws out the words until they lose definition and simply become expressions.

PHOTO CREDIT: Billy Name

Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Keep It With Mine” provides some levity at the end of Chelsea Girl. Though Judy Collins also claimed that Dylan wrote the song for her, technically he wrote it while on vacation in Greece with Nico in 1964. Whereas Collins’ version is an alarmingly cheery love song drowning in organ, Nico’s take indulges in darkness despite the poppy orchestra backing her up. “I’ll Keep It With Mine” brings Nico full-circle from “I’m Not Sayin,” and would be the last time she ever made a song so conventional.

Reactions to Chelsea Girl was at best indifferent and at worst, sexist. One Los Angeles Times writer remarked, “Nico’s a classy girl, but they’d sell more Nico if she were naked...and not hiding behind a string orchestra in a flower print dress.” For her next record, 1968’s wintry The Marble Index, Nico picked up the harmonium and wrote all of the songs after being encouraged by her “soul brother” and part-time lover Jim Morrison to document her dreams. She dyed her blonde hair with henna and trading her white clothing for an all-black ensemble. “I felt that at last I was independent, and that I knew what independence was,” she said.

But while Nico was taking some control of her music, her life was spiraling. There was the time in 1974 that she performed the German national anthem “Das Lied der Deutschen” including the verses that were banned in 1945 due to their Nazi associations. A year later, Nico was dropped from Island because she told a reporter that she “didn’t like negroes.” In an alleged instance in the early ’70s, Nico declared that she “hate[d] black people,” smashed a wine glass on a table, and stabbed the eye of a mixed-race singer who worked with Jimi Hendrix. Concert footage of a middle-age Nico in the early ’80s portray her as a skeletal figure with gaunt cheeks, rotten teeth, and sunken eyes from a disturbing heroin addiction. It’s as if Nico found power in destroying her image.

Nico once admitted that she could not relate to the songs Reed wrote for her. “I can’t identify with that,” she said of “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” “to notice only the beautiful and not the ugliness.” Despite its melancholy, Chelsea Girl is still very much caught up in this world of the Screen Test, one focused on ineffable, alluring melancholy. To today’s casual Nico fans, she still exists in this bubble, a blonde monolith in a white pantsuit, a vessel for dreams and desires. But to consider Nico as frozen in her Chelsea Girl years is a disservice to the active efforts she made later in life to move beyond her image. But consider all of Nico, the strange circumstances of the Velvet Underground, the image of Chelsea Girl, and the horrific, inexcusable actions of her later life. It’s a wholeness she craved all along”.

I will end with this feature from The Student Playlist. Another 2017 feature, they paid tribute to an album that has a really interesting background. I can imagine that there were these magical moments in the studio. Even if Nico was not fully onboard with the album, it was a breath of fresh air against what was popular and expected in 1967. Chelsea Girl is so beautiful and entrancing:

“By all accounts, Nico herself had very little creative control of the recording process for Chelsea Girl. Producer Tom Wilson was responsible for a great many of the string and flute arrangements that adorned many of the tracks, something that Nico herself had no knowledge of at the time and which were added after her vocal contributions had been finished.

Nico also had to put up with a fair amount of professional ridicule and belittlement around this time. She was deaf in one ear, which caused her to occasionally veer off-key while singing live. The more research one does into the recording process, the more it reads as a case of female creative input being casually sidelined or worse, and determined by a male-dominated process – something that seems difficult to imagine fifty years later in 2017, or at least in such a routine and egregious manner.

LEGACY

In 1967, the year of the Summer of Love and the height of flower-power, the listening public was unprepared for Nico’s music, the experimental art-rock masterpieces and autumnal, melancholic suites that Chelsea Girl offered. Commercially speaking, it barely registered. However, just like Nico’s other 1967 album with The Velvet Underground, its influence is vastly disproportionate to its raw album sales.

The desolate beauty of the album’s VU-penned numbers has enraptured artists like Patti Smith, the High Punk Priestess of American punk, and her British counterpart Siouxsie Sioux, who even offered her a support slot on some of her first tours. Portishead’s Beth Gibbons and indie icon Cat Power both owe her a great deal of gratitude in terms of their performance artistry, while in the 21st century, artists like St. Vincent, Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen continue to draw inspiration from Nico.

More widely, Chelsea Girls became widely rediscovered when its opening two tracks, ‘The Fairest Of The Seasons’ and ‘These Days’, were used by director Wes Anderson on his 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums. Since then, it has gone from being regarded as a strictly cult affair to an increasingly fondly regarded ‘60s classic, albeit one that was unfairly overlooked. While some have always talked it down as an interesting but superfluous counterpart to The Velvet Underground & Nico, largely because its creative genus came from Reed and Cale, that view completely unfairly disregards its unique charms.

As for Nico herself, her next album The Marble Index, released in 1968, saw her lash out at the sense of creative suffocation she experienced with Chelsea Girl, producing an alarming volte-face with some pretty frightening lyrics and avant-garde instrumentation. That album was followed by 1970’s Desertshore and 1974’s The End…, forming a loose trilogy of similar works that went on to inform the gothic and post-punk movements later in the Seventies. Only two more records followed in her lifetime, as she struggled on and off with heroin addiction for the best part of 15 years until the early 1980s, by which time she had settled in Manchester.

Nico died in July 1988 at the age of 50, following a cycling accident while holidaying in Ibiza with her son Ari, hitting her head and succumbing to a fatal cerebral haemorrhage. Her grave in Berlin has long been a tourist attraction for indie music fans around the world, and her status as an art-rock icon is secure, with many emerging artists in the last ten years recognising her influence. That status is, in large part but not exclusively, bound up with Chelsea Girl”.

As 16th October marks Nico’s eighty-fifth birthday, I wanted to focus on her best-known album. Chelsea Girl is one that some people might be unaware of. I would urge anyone who hears the album on streaming services and likes it to consider getting it on vinyl. An undoubted classic, Chelsea Girl is fifty-six this month. Nico died in 1988. Thirty-five years since her passing, it is clear that the music world has not seen anyone like her. Go spend some time listening to…

THE sublime Chelsea Girl.