Active: Since 2006 / 6 albums including the new one Artwork: Cover of the brand new album THE PHANTOM TOMORROW.
Originally planned for a summer release but due to pandemic, it came out 2 days ago, perfectly in time for Halloween.
Like many other artists during lockdown, the question for Richard Ashcroft was also “What I am gonna do with all this free time between four walls?” Most of them started to cover others (that trend never seems to stop), some continued making new music and some were counting their money and/or annoyed their families.
Ashcroft decided to re-dress 12 of his most famous songs (The Verve/solo) and released Acoustic Hymns Vol. 1 this weekend. Acoustic? No, not really. Besides an acoustic guitar,
I hear piano, strings, synths, horns, and layers of harmonies. This album is actually about killing time by turning the selected tunes into bittersweet lockdown symphonies with smooth, elegant, and soothing arrangements.
I’m an Ashcroft fan, but I’ll go back to
the originals for my candlelight dinners.
Stream album via Spotify…
C’mon, get your lazy ass out of your lazy couch and make some
room to move like a sensual snake with your window dressing
doll while swaying your hips to the sickly sticky beat of Fuzz Guitar.
Wurlitzer jukeboxes were invented to play sultry jams
like these in pubs, discos and your living room.
After they contributed a new song to a compilation album, the veterans
from down under are back. And, yes, the beds are still burning, they still
know how to rock and they still write songs about our fiercely threatened
nature/climate.
“The song is meant to “add the band’s unique voice to billions of others
around the world seeking a safe, habitable, and fair future for our planet.”
Sitting somewhere between arena rock and the classic sound of 1960’s soul
singers, Philadelphia-based band PHNTMS creates music bursting with vast
soundscapes and colliding instrumentation. The band has opened for Kings
of Leon, The 1975, Bastille, Fitz & The Tantrums and Empire of the Sun among
others.
Paper Flowers is the first single from a forthcoming EP.
A funky guitar-fueled pop earworm with charismatic frontwoman Alyssa Gambino in the middle having a ball.
Big sound, big tune, big vox.
With Gambino identifying as queer, PHNTMS also hope to reach
out to and support the LGBTQA+ community. Damn right!
Who? A genre’less pack of guerrilla D.I.Y / D.I.T musicians making war on music
of mass production with our satirical not so moderate rock. I’m sure that these
Nothern Ireland rebels will dedicate their upcoming mini-album titled ‘Super
Callous Fascist Racist Tories Are Atrocious‘ to Bojo and his professional idiots.
Anyway, here’s single number two. A haunting and minatory mid-tempo groove
that moves like a vicious serpent waiting to attack, but so far no Tories within sight
unless they’re the ones playing Irish folk instruments in the end. Wankers!
Albums are medals
For the medical Sheep
For the pop propaganda
For the false n the weak
Costello phoned his band The Imposters, they met in
the studio and recorded new album The Boy Named If,
out January 2022.
The lead single takes us back to his 70s sound. Crackling pop
a la Costello with that retro organ glow, vocal twists and turns,
a steady beat/chorus and muscled guitars.
Theis bouncy riff-addicted trio produced a couple of EPs
and 3 albums between 2013 and 2017 and then went missing.
But the sonic surfers are back in business now. A bit older but still wild at heart.
With Valley Boys they do what they do best, dropping bathing a mesmerizing melody
in an electrifying pool of burning guitars. No, they don’t like the spoiled Valley Boys
and Girls and their rich dads.
Artist: BEIJA FLO Who: A versatile Liverpool-based artist involved in lots of happenings in the burgeoning arts scene. She is a regular life-model, part of the Eggy Records fold of exciting musicians, and a member of performing arts collective The Secret Circus. Spontaneous and with an undying lust for creative output, it’s impossible to say what she’ll turn her hand to next.
New single: HEADS OR TAILS
The first piece of a trio of three.
Flo: “‘Heads Or Tails’ is the rusty ferris wheel that just keeps turning, going absolutely nowhere. The loud neighbors next door with the dog constantly in the garden. Hooded boy, in and out of the front door. Endless. Horrific. Sad. Intoxicated. Hilarious. Hopeful. Hopeless. Unflattering desperation. Omnipresent insanity. You hate it. You want to hug it. You can’t describe it. You can’t taste it.”
Turn Up The Volume: If you look kooky, if you sound kooky and you release
a kooky single with kooky artwork and the length of a punk single then you are
be Beija Flo and I’m her new fan.
Band: BAKED A LA SKA Who: A super charged 11-headed ska monster on a rampage through the
dance floors of the UK leaving a trail of skanked-out bodies in their wake.
Info: Written and recorded over a five-year period, “Better Than Life” features some of Chris Shackleton’s most mature and versatile songwriting yet featuring ambitious sonics that take influence from alternative rock, post-punk, post-rock, krautrock and shoegaze. Lyrically, “Better Than Life” broaches on both the personal and the political with songs that focus on themes such as loneliness, populism, gentrification and just how far one is willing to go to find satisfaction in life.
Turn Up The Volume says: Expect an intriguing mix of moody moments (Coming Home /
In Your Hands / Ballad Of The Byford Dolphin / Hammerfest), guitar-driven riff-hook-and-lick knockouts that cut like a Swiss knife (Better Than Life / She Hangs On The Western Wall / Phantom Pains / Cigarette Machine) and a slo-mo closer (Basilisk) that could feature on
the soundtrack of David Lynch’sTwin Peaks TV series.
An overall versatile accomplishment that grows on you with every spin. A twists and turns record swinging from dreamy pop to fuzzing and buzzing rock and back. Don’t miss this! You don’t need a pool to throw a party with Better Than Life on the stereo. Best album October 2021!
TURN UP THE VOLUME 