Month: June 2020
Blood Sweat And Fears – First Solo Album ‘TO LOVE IS TO LIVE’ By JEHNNY BETH
24 June 2020
Artist: Jehnny Beth
Who: frontwoman of Savages, a band that matters
Album: TO LOVE IS TO LIVE
Released: 12 June 2020
Pitchfork says: “‘To Love Is To Live’ not a Savages record by another name. Beth sidelines
the grimy, distorted guitar and reaches for a more diverse palette, including strobe-like synths, downy woodwinds, and inscrutable snippets of found sound. But there are constants: ‘To Love To Live’ is rife with the same livewire intensity, the same embrace of tensions and apparent contradictions. Lyrically and musically, it vacillates between the corporeal and the ethereal, prudence and excess, softness and severity.” Full review here.
Keywords: genuine and impassioned emotions, goosebumps tension, VOICE,
dark brightness, blood sweat and fears, musical Odyssey, brilliant album artwork
Key phrase: “I used to be a human being / Now I live in the web.”
Key tracks: I Am The Man / Heroine / Innocence / We Will Sin Together /
How Could You / Human
Singles/clips…
– I AM THE MAN –
– HEROINE –
– INNOCENCE –
Full album
.
JEHNNY BETH: Facebook
Order facilities here
Poster This – RUNAWAYS And RAMONES – 1978
Great concert posters from the past
RUNAWAYS
RAMONES
Akron, Ohio
13 March 1978
One Live Track A Day Keeps The Doctor Away – NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE
‘Rockin’ In The Free World‘ by NEIL YOUNG
Ragged Glory Tour – 1991
IMMORTAL CLASSIC
Rock it Neil…
NEIL YOUNG: Twitter
Swinging Ska Lockdown With Special NEVILLE STAPLE And Wife SUGARY STAPLE…
New sonic impulses…
24 June 2020
The original Rude Boy NEVILLE STAPLE – founder and co-frontman of The Specials,
Fun Boy Three and Special Beat – and his wife Sugary Staple wrote a vintage 2Tone
style single called ‘LOCKDOWN’. A swinging ska shaker about the surreal times the
whole planet experienced.
“Sugary came up with the idea to write a song about the lockdown, which, at first, was a very fast-stomping ska track. We then realised that it was too fun and happy a tune for the theme. Most of us have been quite down about the whole virus thing, so we decided to take it on a more sweet but moody 2Tone reggae route, in a similar vein to ‘Ghost Town’, with some music we had worked on previously with Sledge (Steve Armstrong),” said Neville Staple.
Swing your hips right here…
NEVILLE STAPLE: Facebook – Bandcamp
TIME-OUT!
PREFAB SPROUT – Second Album ‘STEVE McQUEEN’ Released 35 Years Ago
23 June 2020
Band: Prefab Sprout (Witton Gilbert, UK)
Start: formed in 1978 by brothers Paddy and Martin McAloon
Album: Steve McQueen
Released: 22 June 1985 – 35 years ago
Pitchfork said: “McAlloon aspired to the standards of Stephen Foster, Gershwin, Sondheim, Quincy Jones, McCartney; saw himself as a contemporary of Prince rather than Lloyd Cole. He had a grand sense of pop music, and in 1985, that kind of grandeur seemed to be available via producers like Thomas Dolby. You can imagine these songs performed by, oh, Marianne Faithfull, Bryan Ferry, Will Young, Kylie Minogue, Rufus Wainwright, or Antony Hegarty. A handful of these songs have the quality of standards.”
Keywords: stream of pop delight, the Fred Astaire of words, feel good-better-best quality
Key tracks: Faron Young / When Love Breaks Down / Moving The River
– WHEN LOVE BREAKS DOWN –
Full album…
.
PREFAB SPROUT: Facebook
Uplifting And Alarming – Here’s New Single ‘ENERGY CZAR’ By THE ZOLAS
Daily fuel to load your sonic batteries…
.
23 June 2020
After 2016’s radio-smashing, Juno-nominated breakthrough album Swooner
Vancouver’s amplified pop trio THE ZOLAS are ready for a new adventure and
a new direction.
“We thought it was hilarious to make a Britpop record at a time when nobody but us is
listening to that, but we have our little clique and that made us more excited to do what
we want and say fuck it to how it might be received.”
About the new album: “There’s so many sounds we love that came out of the mid-90s UK; Britpop and acid-house and trip-hop all carrying on in parallel scenes. If felt right to cross-pollinate this album with all of that,” Gray says. “So we’d write simple songs in our jam space and then steal sounds from the Prodigy or Primal Scream or the Happy Mondays or Tricky whenever it felt good.”
First single ‘ENERGY CZAR‘ is about the narcissism and self-loathing
that comes with being a human being in the 21st century.
It’s a sickly sticky pop banger that activates your lazy bloodstream on the spot. Make
some room and start swinging, swaying, shaking and swirling. As long as high-spirited
and electrifying tunes like this uplift our mood, without losing sight of reality, we can only aspire that humankind will learn that we need tolerance, equality, and respect for one another, to survive on this messed-up planet Let’s hope and believe.
Here we go…
THE ZOLAS: Facebook
(photo via PR agency Auteur Research)
Elegant And Stylish – Multifaceted Belgian Artist rOZZ Covers The Late Great ROBERT PALMER…
22 June 2020
A couple of weeks ago Turn Up Up The Volume named the new album ‘ELECTROMANIA‘
by Belgian singer/songwriter/musician rOZZ ‘Album Of the Day‘. You can read and hear all about it here. She’s a multifaceted, experimental and terrifically innovative and productive artist.
When doing research about roZZ for the aforementioned feature I discovered her cover of JOHNNY AND MARY, one of the most famous songs by the late great Robert Palmer. Her version is elegant, stylish, moody and respectful. A beauty.
Listen here…
.
The original…
Now that you’re here take some time to discover
this remarkable artist and her new longplayer
ELECTROMANIA…
.
rOZZ: Website
Poster This – JOHN LENNON
Great concert posters from the past
JOHN LENNON
New York City
30 August 1972
