Album Of The Week

MIKE SCOTT And THE WATERBOYS Score With Astonishing, Cinematic Album ‘LIFE, DEATH AND DENNIS HOPPER’

Posted on by JL

7 April 2025


Album artwork

Scottish pop-rock-folk band THE WATERBOYS orchestrated by Mike Scott just released their astonishing album, their 16th one, titled LIFE, DEATH AND DENNIS HOPPER.

A concept one, glorifying the late, notorious, and fascinating actor (1936-2010).

Press info: Inspired entirely by the life and mythos of actor Dennis Hopper, Mike Scott and The Waterboys created this expansive album as tribute to one of American popular culture’s most compelling public figures. Deeply conceptual, this album of all original songs brings together high-profile featured artists like Bruce Springsteen, Fiona Apple, and Steve Earle to musically weave through Hopper’s life, including a song for each of Hopper’s wives.

Mojo Magazine: “The hit rate is high, and Mike Scott is clearly having fun cutting himself free from The Waterboys’ past, and playing fast and loose – much like the mercurial subject of this album.”

TUTV: This an amazing piece of work. A soundtrack for a yet to be made Dennis Hopper documentary. Hats off to Mike Scott for his boldness, imaginativeness, and ingenuity to score this musical movie, constructed marvellously with its sonically cinematic versatility.

Pop, rock, blues, country, bar-room jazz, and musing balladry take turns and puzzle
a most coherent and highly entertaining whole together, spiced with magnificent vocal contributions by Fiona Apple, Steve Earle and others. Never a dull moment with its varied stream of top-tier songs and Scott‘s awe-inspiring vocality throughout.

Movie shots from Hopper‘s parts in doom and gloom films such as Blue Velvet, Apocalypse Now, True Romance, Speed and, of course, counterculture classic Easy Rider pop up on the screen in your head. He was at his best when he played psychotic characters. And Scott is here at its best too. Can’t stopping listening to it and discover new things with every spin I know it’s only April but this pièce de résistance is, unquestionably, a contender for album of the year.

Singles/clips: I Don’t Know How I Made It / Hoppers’ On Top / Andy (A Guy Like You)

– I DON’T KNOW HOW I MADE IT –

– HOPPER’S ON TOP –

– ANDY (A GUY LIKE YOU) –

ALBUM


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HEISA – Belgian Post-Punk Crusaders Hit The Bullseye With Third LP ‘TROIS’

Posted on by JL

4 April 2025

Band: HEISA
Who: 3 Belgian noizzy
post-punk crusaders.

Album: TROIS

Press info: HEISA embarks on a new chapter with the release of their third album.
This album showcases an evolution in their sound, keeping the bombastic drums,
droning guitars, and dynamic vocals, but pushing further into melody and experimentation.

On this new record, Heisa brings their emotions to the forefront, revealing a raw, edgy intensity in tracks like “Lazar” and “Sad Dancer,” where vulnerability and tension intertwine.

TUTV: For a chance, I’ll start with my eager ears’ final verdict. Trois is without a shadow
of a doubt the most balanced, the most arousing and the most vitalizing noise rock record I heard in a very long time. No, never a dull moment. Heisa grab you by the throat for 40 wicked minutes, and you won’t protest for one second. The cliché all killers, no fillers is so accurate here. This magnum opus will show up in multiple end-of-the-year lists.

Les trois singles (Nandor / Flowers / The Harmonist) were the harbinger for something really special. Which we experience now. Every song stands as tall as the Eiffel Tower. There’s always an enigmatic anxiousness in the air that tests your nerves and boggles your mind.

On several occasions (Flowers / After Hours / Shifting / Sad Dancer) Heisa tease you with voltaic foreplay riffs before heading towards an orgastic burst of demonic hullabaloo. Primal screams out of the darkness, schizophrenic guitars and raw and rough post-punk dynamics work together to create a hell-raising turbulence. Think Fugazi and The Jesus Lizard .

No arty farty tricks, no unnecessary overdubs, no useless volume exaggerations.
The production is flawless, and is an instrumental factor for the overall organic
resonance of this expressive exploit. I’m quite sure that the late great Steve Albini
would have loved it.

Heisa is going places. Don’t miss them.
Embrace them. Join them. Love them.

Singles/clips:

– NANDOR –

– FLOWERS –

– THE HARMONIST –

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CANYONS AND LOCUSTS – Boston’s Two-Motor Diesel Kick Ass On New Pyrotechnic Album ‘THE GOAL GIGOLO’

Posted on by JL

24 February 2025

Band: CANYONS AND LOCUSTS
Who: Two-piece act, Justin Keane (vocals, guitar) and Amy Young (drums, backing vocals), from Boston, MA. Fueled by the current chaos of the world and an urgent need to be part of the conversation, the two took the indie rock foundation they built in previous bands and upped the ante by adding new levels of noise via pervasive, edgy guitar sounds, low and thundery drumbeats, and emotional vocals.

Album: THE GOAL GIGOLO

Press info: The record draws together several storytelling narrators underneath the
duo’s unhinged wall of fuzzed-out rock and roll. Each of Canyons and Locusts’ 10 songs
in The Goal Gigolo, tabbed by WBUR, Boston’s NPR, as one of the most-anticipated New England records of the winter, point to the album’s storyline as a north star, developing
a narrative path forward as the eponymous anti-hero comes to life in cinematic ways.
It’s not exactly linear storytelling, but it’s no less gripping.

Keane: “Broadly speaking, The Goal Gigolo is the story of a guy who makes his living solving others’ emotional problems while trying not to get entangled with them romantically. It’s set
in the 1970s, so I guess we weren’t calling those people life coaches yet.”

TUTV: C&L hit harder and rougher than The White Stripes (Motorwall Oil / Anna Save A Life / Detain The Piano Man) in their early days. At times the DIY tandem turn up the roasting heat as if they want to kick Dinosaur Jr‘s ass (Trapped In The Trigger / Moriarty The Serpents / It’s A Long Goodbye) and they make your limbs twist around with a salvo of AC/DC riffs.

No fancy production nor redundant studio tricks for Keane/Young. They’re for real and leave all their sweat on the floor to make their loud and clear mark. Jello Biafra should
take this two-motor diesel on his label. Now.

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AVALANCHE PARTY – English Hit Team Produce Non-Stop Fireworks On Their New Startling Album ‘DER TRAUM UBER ALLES’

Posted on by JL

10 February 2025

Band: AVALANCHE PARTY
Who: High-voltage outfit from Yorkshire Moors (UK),
formed by Joe and Jordan Bell, vocalist and bassist
respectively.

Album: DER TRAUM UBER ALLES
Their second one.
Order info: here

Press info: “The band’s 2019 debut LP ‘24 Carat Diamond Trephine’ spurts forth a
spectrum of styles, leaping from frenetic garage-psych to sedate surrealistic Americana to staccato uplifting indie rock over the course of its thirty-nine minutes. New album ‘Der Traum Über Alles’, is compared to their debut a more considered, full-formed beast, its dark underbelly undoubtedly a result of it being conceived during and after the caged-animal isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For all its urgency, the making of the LP required near-superhuman patience from the band. Recorded in November 2022 with Dave Catching (Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal) at Rancho de la Luna – his beautifully eccentric home studio on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park, California – Avalanche Party were set to be there two years before, but had to wait for the US border to reopen after repeated lockdowns Stateside.

Swapping subterranean Teesside for this magical, hazardous desert landscape populated
with rattlesnakes, scorpions and cholla cacti, the band recorded ‘Der Traum Über Alles’ in just ten days. The idiosyncrasies of malfunctioning equipment were embraced as the band blazed through the songs, Catching’s laidback mastery of his own beaten-up equipment ensuring each track felt like a spontaneous eruption after so many months of suspended animation.”

TUTV: Warning. If your physical condition is only so-so, hurry up to the gym and work out for a week, if not you won’t be able to catch up with this mean funk and punk, buzz and fuzz, move and groove machine record.

Your ears will go berserk non-stop, as AP shoot a series of titanic tunes from their hips (John Coltrane’s Moscow Skyscraper / Nureyev Said It / No Neutral / Serious Dance Music / Target and my standout fav belters Shake The Slack and Ecstasy). Even when they slow down just a tiny bit like on Slinky and Chainz your limbs still can’t relax (as if you want
to do that, anyway).

Avalanche Party have become masterly songwriters who know exactly how to construct adrenalized knockout killers with the right combination of roasting riffs, jagged hooks, bang-on licks, powerhouse drumming, effervescent synths and sultry horns here and there.

You’ll hear echoes of Scottish celebs Franz Ferdinand, English post-punks Squid and
rowdy rockers Young knives but all 3 references’ new album can’t match the fireworks extravaganza of Der Traum Uber Alles.

Album of the week, not only this one, but many weeks to come.

Singles: John Coltrane’s Moscow Skyscraper / Shake The Slack /
Nureyev Said It Best / Collateral Damage

– JOHN COLTRANE’S MOSCOW SKYSCRAPER –

– SHAKE THE SLACK –

– NUREYEV SAID IT BEST –

– SERIOUS DANCE MUSIC –

– COLLATERAL DAMAGE –

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TOUR DATES 2025

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BLACK VIIOLET Entertains With Femme Fatale Flair On Her Jazzy Trip-Hop Debut LP ‘AFTER YOU’

Posted on by JL

3 February 2025

Artist: BLACK VIIOLET
Who: Alter-ego of American garage punk ‘n’ roll
turbo The Darts‘ front Amazon Nicole Laurenne.

Album: AFTER YOU
Her debut.

Laurenne: “The songs were written in the style of vintage jazz standards, but are then drenched with Rhodes piano and sparkling horn parts, with upright bass and triphop beats holding down a groovy, downtempo feel underneath. The vocals are the polar opposite of my garage rock sound in The Darts – in Black Viiolet, I am quietly telling you secrets in the dark.

After You was recorded by nine producers on two continents with fourteen French and American jazz musicians – including Digable Planets drummer Conrad Real – and contains thirteen original tracks that I wrote all the parts for and arranged, plus one special cover song, “My Baby Just Cares For Me.” My influences include spy movie themes, Nina Simone, Portishead, Budos Band, Lovage, Nouvelle Vague, Digable Planets, Propellerheads, Sneaker Pimps, Forniquette, Nick Waterhouse, Hooverphonic, and even cartoon character Jessica Rabbit!”

TUTV: Imagine Nicole Laurenne‘s sultry alter ego coming from behind a curtain
on a stage in a smoky nightclub, leg by leg, with a bright spotlight on her and
making all spectators go ‘sigh‘.

From there on she becomes Black Viiolet. A femme fatale that entertains us with
bouncy trip-hop vibes à la Portishead (About A Woman / Never Know / New Day / Drop),
jazzy candlelight musings (Don’t Leave Me On The Dancefloor / Not It / Stayin / You Can’t Afford Me) and a seductive version of 1930 jazz standard My Baby Just Cares for Me
made immortal by the late great soul diva Nina Simone.

The record is subtly, yet richly orchestrated. The instrumentation at work here – contrabass, trumpet, trombone, saxophone, piano – serves the overall mood perfectly.
On top of it comes Viiolet‘s near-whispering, hoarse and sensual voice to complete the arousing sonic picture with a saucy sensuality. The ambiance is spellbinding and ravishing.

After You is delectable music for the midnight hours that massages your ears for
40 minutes. The most sexy record I heard in a long time. It transfers you to a place
where you can dream away, far from today’s depressing outside world.

Dim the lights, relax, sit down, have a bottle of your favorite wine at hand, close
your eyes and let Black Viiolet enter your spicy fantasy of choice. Trust me, you’ll
love the tantalizing trip.

SINGLE

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BV: Linktree

LAMBRINI GIRLS Launched Debut Album ‘WHO LET THE DOGS OUT’ – Faster Than A Formula 1 Ferrari, Louder Than A Supersonic Jet

Posted on by JL

11 January 2025


Album artwork

Band: LAMBRINI GIRLS
Who: Two razorblade riot girrrrlzz – vox/guitarist Phoebe Lunny
and bassist Lilly Macieira – from Brighton (UK) with an insatiable
appetite for mass moshpits.

Album: WHO LET THE DOGS OUT
Their debut longplayer. Buy here.


Photo by Turn Up The Volume – Lille, France – 24 February 2024

Press info: “The album rips through a laundry list of social ills. Sirens blare over a heavy distorted bass and a live drum breakbeat. The band dance between upbeat poppunk, dirty grunge tones and discordant post-punk. There’s even some noise-popcheer for putting yourself first, whether it’s having an autistic meltdown or doing apoo at your mate’s house.

With instrumentals that inhale you like a Level 5 tornado and sentiments that make you want to kick the nearest door through, it’s a take-no-prisoners debut from one of the UK’s most fun and fearless bands.”

The English press is going fully nuts over the record, resulting in an
overall 87/100 score, for 13 reviews. Check them out on Metacritic.

TUTV’s EARS REPORT:

Faster than a Formula One Ferrari.
Louder than a supersonic jet.
Punkier than any punks around.

Trashing. Crashing. Slashing.
Hellish. Demonic. Manicial.

Deeper-cutting than a Swiss knife.
More lethal than a rattling riot-gun.

11 knockouts. 11 killers. 11 hits.
11 Molotov cocktails. 11 bulls-eyes.

Bitchy. Boiling. Blasting.
Chaotic. Mental. Queer.
Bonkers. Berserk. Banging.

Massive bass buzz.
Schizo guitar riffs.
Octopus drumming.
Exorcistic screams.
Cuntological rages.

100 sneers. 100 spits.
100 rants. 100 bursts.
100 shits. 100 fuck-offs.

Middle-finger to all LGBTQ-haters.
To hell with all greedy capitalists.
Kick Brex-shit in the nationalistic ass.

Singles (shared so far): Love / Big Dick Energy / Company Culture

– LOVE –

– BIG DICK ENERGY –

– COMPANY CULTURE –

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US 2025

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KIM DEAL Charms With Her Riveting Solo Debut Album ‘NOBODY LOVES YOU MORE’

Posted on by JL

23 November 2024


New album artwork

KIM DEAL is best known as the utterly cool bass player of indie
icons Pixies and from her own band The Breeders, featuring
her twin sister Kelley.

In the past she wrote/shared some of her self-made songs but without any real
attention from the outside. That’ll change, now that Deal has launched her debut
solo album NOBODY LOVES YOU MORE.

Press info: “Nobody Loves You More is Kim Deal’s debut album although it’s not the first
time she has gone solo. She self-released a five-part, ten-song seven-inch vinyl series in 2013.
In keeping with Deal’s meticulous approach to her art, the album was refined over several years. Its oldest songs, ‘Are You Mine?’ and ‘Wish I Was’, were written and originally recorded
in 2011 shortly after Deal came off the Pixies’ “Lost Cities Tour” and relocated to Los Angeles (early versions of those songs were included in said vinyl series).

The last recording for Nobody Loves You More took place in November 2022 with legendary engineer and close friend Steve Albini, who helmed final track ‘A Good Time Pushed’ at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago. Along the way she has brought in a variety of collaborators from Breeders past and present (Mando Lopez, twin sister Kelley Deal, Jim Macpherson, Britt Walford), to Raymond McGinley (Teenage Fanclub), Jack Lawrence (Raconteurs) and Savages’ Fay Milton and Ayse Hassan.”


Credit: Kristin Sollecito

MOJO (British music monthly): “Nobody Loves You More is a singularly uplifting, life-affirming listen, where joy and despair, love and loss, are irrevocably entwined, and kept afloat by Deal’s unfailing lightness of touch.” Score: 10/10.

TUTV: Kim Deal on her own, expresses mixed emotions about past and present
personal experiences on this record. Mostly with meditative, moony, and subtly orchestrated reveries such as the title track, Coast, Are You Mine?, Wish I Was and Summerland. All charming songs for a quiet winter night in.

Deal‘s slightly hoarse voice is instrumental. Its tender-hearted aura creates a relaxing ambiance, interrupted now and then by more uptempo, upbeat tracks like stand-out
vibe Crystal Breath, the vigorous guitar-frisky Disobediece and the buzzing Big Ben Beat
jam. The critics jubilate euphorically, a bit too much for my aural liking. Mind you, Nobody
Loves You More is a riveting record, but not an overwhelming triumph as stated by many.

KEY SINGLE

ALBUM


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KD: Linktree

THE CURE Have Their Heart-And-Soul Stirring ‘SONGS FROM A LOST WORLD’ Out – Contender For Album Of The Year

Posted on by JL

4 November 2024

Goth Gods THE CURE launched their 14th album,
their first in 16 years, titled Songs Of A Lost World.

Maestro Robert Smith about the new record.

NME says: “Robert Smith and co’s first full album in 16 years deals in darkness and death,
but with flowers on the grave. ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ feels sufficient enough for the wait we’ve endured, just for being arguably the most personal album of Smith’s career. Mortality may loom, but there’s colour in the black and flowers on the grave.” Full review here. Score: 5/5.

TUTV: In the past 16 years Robert Smith lost his mother, father, and brother. All the painful experiences surrounding these impactful, indelible passings led to this brilliant, gloomy record. One long emotionally layered lament, one that seems to work liberating in the end.

Strong sentiments of heartache, grief, and sadness are omnipresent, but you hear and
feel frequently that Smith has accepted humankind’s inevitable destiny. Live and die. “There’s nothing you can do to change the end‘ he sings on ‘A Fragile Thing‘.

Sonically, it resonates as if you’re part of a funeral march that progresses in slow
motion, just the way the music evolves. Every song starts with a long instrumental
intro of waves of melancholic synths and weeping guitars, and every time when Smith‘s feverish voice joins in, the intensity augments wondrously captivating. Only on two tracks Drone:Nodorne and All I Ever Am the pace goes up a bit, but they have the same overall orchestral somber sonority of the full album.

The most drastically soul-stirring record I heard all year, accentuating how sorrow
can overwhelm and hurt one’s heart and mind. It’s a universal experience that millions, and millions of people who lost loved ones – past, present and future – can relate to.

I played Songs Of A Lost World at least 5 times for
4 consecutive days now, always in full, always. I didn’t
do that with any album this year. I can’t see who will top
this sublime opus in the coming 2 last months of 2024.

SINGLES: Alone / A Fragile Thing

ALBUM


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Instagram – All The Cure Albums

New 135-Track Benefit Comp Raises Funds For Hurricane Drama In WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA – Many Big Names And Previously Unreleased Songs

Posted on by JL

10 October 2024

Following the deadly destruction by Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina
many initiatives are set up to help raise funds for organizations doing relief work
at the affected areas.

One of those initiatives is a brand-new music compilation, titled CARDINALs AT THE WINDOW . It counts no less than 135 tracks, including previously unreleased and live ones, from a lot of big names such as R.E.M., The War On Drugs, Jeff Tweedy, Angel Olsen, Sharon Van Etten, Phish, Hotline TNT, Waxahatchee, Feist, Fleet Foxes, Indigo De Souza, The Hold Steady, Archers Of Loaf, Iron & Wine, The Avett Brothers, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, The Mountain Goats, Jason Isbell, Real Estate, and
many, many more.

You can buy/download the full compilation via Bandcamp for 10$ or more. Proceeds go to Rural Organizing and Resilience, BeLoved Asheville, and the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina.

Full Tracklist HERE
Buy Album (digitally) HERE

Libby Rodenbough (community organizer and musician): “There were just so many folks who, like us, had witnessed the destruction of these holy places from the outside and felt their hearts trying to break out of their chests. It was instant, the way people signed on. They also feel what I feel, that these mountains are the cradle of some deep and ineffable magic.”

THE WAEVE – Partners Graham Coxon And Rose Dougall Deliver A Richly Orchestrated And Varied 2nd LP With ‘CITY LIGHTS’

Posted on by JL

24 September 2024

Blur‘s guitarist Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougall
launched their sophomore album, titled CITY LIGHTS.

Order info here.

Press info:”A year on from their acclaimed eponymous debut album, The WAEVE is back with City Lights, a collection of 10 songs that illustrate the evolution of their collaborative musicianship and sees the band’s sound solidified into something bolder, more expansive and self-assured. Written by the pair, and produced once again by James Ford (Fontaines D.C and Arctic Monkeys) the album features Graham and Rose on vocals, as well as keyboards, guitar, bass guitar, drums and saxophone.

MOJO (monthly UK magazine): “A yin-yang parity asserts itself with the wistful, jazzy,
Rose-sung Simple Days, electro-pop You Saw and epic, wicca-ish Druantia. Elsewhere,
there’s arty chamber pop, demented swing-jazz and the epic Surf’s Up-echoing closer
Sunrise: middle-aged bliss has rarely sounded so weirdly magical.”

TUTV: Partners in love, partners in parenthood, partners in music. With this 2nd LP
Coxon and Dougall offer an even more varied one than their notable debut. They rock out (City Lights, You Saw, Moth To The Flame, Broken Boys, Simple Days) and slow down (I Belong To, lullaby for their little daughter Song For Eliza May, Girl Of The Endless Night) with three constants.

Arrestive tunes, rich instrumental orchestrations and emotional, alternating and duet vocals. You hear a happy and dynamic couple delivering a high-songwriting-quality record. Embrace it with your ears, heart and soul, it’ll feel good.

SINGLE

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