Campbell had a long history with Beach Boys musical genius Brian Wilson.
He played as session-musician on a ton of BB records, including their classic Pet Sounds. When Wilson suffered a nervous breakdown and stopped touring
with his band, Campbell replaced him.
A new version of a song that Campbell wrote and recorded late
in life, titled STRONG with co-vocals by Wilson is online now.
The song is about Campbell‘s struggle with Alzheimer and the fight to be
there for his family as good as possible. He lost his battle in 2017, aged 81.
I’ll be on an upcoming album, titled DUETS: GHOST CANVAS SESSIONS
featuring remixed versions, with some notable guests such as Carole King,
Dolly Parton, Elton John, and Dave Stewart, of his final 2011 LP Ghost On The
Canvas. It’s out, next Friday, on April 19.
Hear the wonderful, symphonic Campbell-Wilson duet STRONG here.
A couple of weeks ago Washington‘s indie-pop-punk band SLEATER-KINNEY ,
who started their journey (with 3 members) back in 1994, went on a break in
2006, reloaded their engines in 2014, became a duo – Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker – announced the upcoming birth of their 10th LP. It’s named Little Rope and will be shared with the world on 19 January 2024.
It feels like if NEIL YOUNG releases an album every other month.
Live ones, compilations, new ones and lots of archival material.
Next month, on December 8, another longplayer will land. It’s named BEFORE AND AFTER, only available on vinyl. More info here.
Press info: On Before And After, Young chooses favorites from his playbook like a trip into his music history and performs them mostly alone on a solo acoustic journey. Each of the songs blend into each other and morph with mesmerizing clarity into a continuous flow of music creating a 48-minute pure and intimate listening experience. The 13-track album spans Neil’s career, from Neil’s early Buffalo Springfield contribution, “Burned” (1966) to the recent “Don’t Forget Love”(2021) and includes the previously unreleased song “If You Got Love”.
Neil Young:“The feeling is captured, not in pieces, but as a whole piece — designed to be listened to that way. This music presentation defies shuffling, digital organisation, separation. Only for listening. That says it all.”
TRACKLIST
1. I’m The Ocean 2. Homefires 3. Burned 4. On The Way Home 5.If You Got Love (Previously Unreleased) 6.Dream That Can Last 7. Birds 8.My Heart 9.When I Hold You In My Arms 10.Mother Earth 11.Mr. Soul 12.Comes A Time 13.Don’t Forget Love
As already announced, eternal iconic rock stars THE ROLLING STONES canned
a new longplayer, and baptized it HACKNEY DIAMONDS. It’s their 24th British and
26th American album. It lands on 20 October. Their first proper LP in 13 years, since
the release of A Bigger Bang.
Ahead of it, the 3 Stones shared
two stellar tasters (so far).
– ANGRY –
A classic Keef-riff rocker,
with classic Jagger vocals
and a classic Stones chorus.
– SWEET SOUNDS OF HEAVEN –
An instant blues-rock-ballad classic with impassioned Jagger vocals and
sky-scraping gospel delirium caused by Lady Gaga‘s fantastic vocality.
Legendary American magazine (print/website) Rolling Stone put
their review of the LP online yesterday.
It reads as follows (shortened by TUTV).
“A collection of bangers, old-school division) that nobody in their right mind had a right to expect in 2023, ‘Hackney Diamonds’ isn’t just another new Stones album, but a vibrant and cohesive record — the first Stones album in ages you’ll want to crank more than once before filing away.
“Whether it’s a first-time Stones producer (Andrew Watt), bits of technological wizardry, or simply a desire to remind us why we cared about them in the first place, they haven’t sounded this brisk and focused in what feels like a half century. Keith Richards’ and Ron Wood’s guitars are crisp and uncluttered, with most of the slovenly strumming of the past banished. Depending on the song, Mick Jagger sounds snappish, peeved, needy, or insouciant, with lyrics and a more pronounced British accent to match: In the sputtery single “Angry,” he spits out, “It hasn’t rained in a month, the river’s run dry/We haven’t made love, and I wanna know why.” Not exactly rock poetry, true, but he also hasn’t sounded this engaged with the songs since the heyday of the cassette. “Depending on You” could have been one of those draggy ballads that have made their way onto later Stones albums, but Jagger wails as if he wants the whole world to hear him.
When all of those elements come together, a fountain of musical youth miraculously emerges. Toward the end of “Live by the Sword,” one of two tracks they made with drummer Charlie Watts before his passing in 2021, Jagger snarls as the guitars tear it up around him, and you’d hardly think it was the 21st century. With Watt burnishing their sound just enough, songs that could have easily been rote feel revitalized.
Steve Jordan, the longtime X-Pensive Winos member who has taken Watts’ place on the road, plays on the majority of the record. Jordan hits his kit harder than Watts ever did, but his contributions aren’t as jarring as they could have been.
What you won’t find much of here is the late-in-life introspection heard on recent records by some of the Stones’ peers. We’ve arrived at a fascinating period in rock history, when aging boomer rockers aren’t just dragging themselves onstage but continuing to write songs — uncharted territory for them and us. In a first for that generation, we get to hear what‘s on the minds of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, or Judy Collins as they approach or enter their eighties — in songs that confront mortality, look back over tumultuous lives or recent history, and occasionally rant about the state of the planet or politics.
The stirring Throwing Muses legend KRISTIN HERSH has her new solo LP,
titled CLEAR POUND ROAD on 8 September. Pre-order info here. She will
tour the UK/IRE and AUS next Fall/Winter. All dates here.
Fire Records: “Kristin Hersh’s new album is a cinematic road trip; a series of personal
vignettes from a fiercely independent auteur, sitting plush with layers of all-consuming
strings and mellotron. It’s a watershed moment in a career overflowing with creative firsts
and inspirational thinking; an elegant piece of personal reportage, a home movie caught in time.”
Kristin Hersh: “Sweeter, sadder, and somehow no less alive. Some records demand
to be made. And you know this is the case when the songs function as systems in a body.
I octavized an acoustic baritone as the skeleton, cellos are the lungs, a Nashville-strung Collings and glockenspiel were the fingertips feeling around in this weird-ass dark space, and drums are always your heart, of course… but the vocals are a strange narrator here. A narrator lost
in the story, of all things, more like eyes.”
Three singles (so far)
came our ears’ way.
– DANDELION –
Fragile and romantic. Marianne Faithful.
Acoustic melancholia with weeping violins.
– MS HAHA – “Mr Bones is my man and Ms Haha is me, ripped
off from a Truman Capote story. So heavy. Love is
goofy gravity.”
Not really sure what Hersh is talking/singing about
here, but I do love the song’s subtle, catchy groove.
– CONSTANCE STREET –
“I lived on Constance Street in New Orleans when that song’s story happened.
Buying slips in the Irish Channel/broken prince in fluorescent camo is a very
Southern day. I was born a hick and I guess I’ll always be one.”
It’s not the first time that I think that Hersh
loves Bob Dylan‘s enigmatic imagery, and uses
it too in her own poetic storytelling way.
It’s a discography-spanning set that includes tracks from ‘Psychocandy’, ‘Darklands’, ‘Automatic’, ‘Honey’s Dead’, ‘Stoned and Dethroned’, ‘Munki’ and ‘Damage and Joy’.
The band already shared a first taster with Sometimes Always
featuring great Scottish voice Isobel Campbell (former Belle
and Sebastian vocalist).
Press info: “I Thought I Was Better Than You marks a new era for Baxter, and with this
new era comes a new character. “Faux- confrontational,” Baxter calls him. Here, not only is he recounting his childhood, but he’s also reckoning with it. Instead of just swinging at his past blindfolded with a baseball bat, he talks openly about the toxic cocktail of being born into unfortunately fortunate circumstances, with a persuasive surname but no structure or sense of responsibility with which reap the rewards of it. “Really, it’s about being trapped in an awkward place between something you’re actually quite good at, and somebody else’s success.” That ‘somebody else’ being his dad, Ian Dury. As one of the album centrepieces – Shadow – agonisingly puts it: “But no one will get over that you’re someone’s son/Even though you want to be like Frank Ocean/But you don’t sound like him, you sound just like Ian.”
It’s a collection of previously unheard live performances taken from
the early days of their career from across four different shows that took
place between July 1979 and September 1980 at Jay’s Longhorn Bar in their
hometown of Minneapolis.
The album (CD/Digital) will be out on 25 August via their own Reflex Records.
But a limited-edition 2xLP vinyl will already be available on this year’s Record Store Day, April 22. It has original artwork by drummer Grant Hart
and liner notes from ex-Sonic Youth hero Thurston Moore.
More info via the Record Store Day website right here.
Bob Mould (HD’s singer/guitarist) “Most artists begin their careers by looking to their heroes for inspiration. ‘Tonite Longhorn’ is a comprehensive overview of three teenagers paying homage, experimenting with different genres, and — most importantly — building a foundation for things to come. We knew what we had: good chemistry, great melodies and harmonies, and an overabundance of young (and sometimes dumb) enthusiasm. We knew we were different, and we knew we were on to something different.”
High-passionate mavericks AFGHAN WHIGS from Cincinnati, Ohio
with general GREG DULLI upfront will share their 9th longplayer
named HOW DO YOU BURN? with the world on 9 September.
Work on it was begun in September 2020 – the COVID pandemic having forced Whigs frontman/songwriter Greg Dulli to abandon plans to tour his highly-praised solo album, ‘Random Desire’ – and continued over the next 14 months.The global pandemic dictated
also that the band record largely apart from, and in different locations to, each other: Dulli,
his co-producer Christopher Thorn and drummer Patrick Keeler together in California; bassist John Curley, guitarist Jon Skibic and strings man Rick Nelson laying down and engineering
their own parts in Cincinnati, New Jersey and New Orleans, respectively.
The late monumental voice Mark Lanegan came up with the LP’s title.
He contributed backing vocals to two tracks on the record before his
sudden death last February.
Singles/clips (so far): I’ll Make You See God / The Getaway
– I’LL MAKE YOU SEE GOD –
A blistering blast
– THE GETAWAY –
Sepia-colored Dulli reflection
TRACK LIST:
I’ll Make You See God
The Getaway
Catch A Colt
Jyja
Please, Baby, Please
A Line Of Shots
Domino and Jimmy
Take Me There
Concealer
In Flames
