TUTV: Alarming vocals, vicious pulsations, sick guitars, ceaseless drumming,
and a cry-out chorus. Put all these expressive elements together, and you get
everything you need to go apeshit.
TUTV: Olé. A stirred-up ska-like groove gets your pelvis abuzz. Rapping vocals,
a hefty guitar upsurge, and 70s organ glow complete the hustling picture. What
if I tell you to jump? Would you?
TUTV: This is YF’s contribution for the recently released benefit longplayer Help (2)
to raise funds for Warchild UK. It’s a rushing, percussion-motorized steamroller.
Notorious blues rockers THE BLACK CROWES (1984–2002, 2005–2015, 2019–present)
with brothers Chris and Rich Robinson as prominent members, started their sonic odyssey in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1984.
Chris: “We made this record in eight to ten days. Bringing the high and inspiration
from our previous LP ‘Happiness Bastards’ into this album, it was a natural progression.
We experimented more, we wrote on instinct and how we were feeling in the moment. Rich brought a spontaneity to the record that I can’t describe, but it’s the best shit he’s ever done.”
Rich: “This album feels transformative to us. Going back to our roots, we felt that spark
in the studio and how we work together. Lighting a fire that hits harder, more jagged but
is still true to our musical essence.”
Album artwork
TUTV: The Black Crowes are one of those rawk ‘n raw roll bands I dig the most when
they’re on stage. Some of their records are pretty good (their first ones), but just like AC/DC, they use the same formula over and over again. So as a fan you know what to expect.
A salvo of rough riff- rippers, a couple of power ballads and Chris Robinson singing his heart out. Yep, TBC by numbers, but wait, some of them are red-hot enough to get you out of your lazy couch and play air guitar, like Prophane Prophecy, Cruel Streak, Do The Parasite!, and You Call This A Good Time. But at the end of the day, it’s just another Crowes album.
Number One (lead vocalist/producer) explains: “This song is about trying. It’s about that feeling when you give enough of a shit that it actually hurts, but you do it anyway. We wanted to capture the raucous, bloody energy of the crowds we’ve played for in Prince Edward Island and Scotland—places where people know how to celebrate and mourn in the same breath.”
TUTV: You can expect anything from these mental friends. This one resonates loudly
as if The Pogues team up with The Dropkick Murphys for a zippy punk chant before heading to the pub. I dare you to keep up with the pogo pace without tripping over your own feet and going down, head first. Sounds like big fun, right? You betcha?
Artist: pMAD Who: The moniker of Irish musician Paul Dillon, who draws inspiration
from bands like The The, The Cure, Killing Joke, Echo and the Bunnymen,
Rammstein, and Depeche Mode, and developed a unique sound that
traverses genres from Darkwave Post-Punk to Trash Metal Indie Rock.
Band: CHALK Who: Electro punks
from Belfast, Ireland.
Track: I.D.C.
Newest preview from their debut LP, named Crystalpunk. It’s out on March 13th.
TUTV: Boom! Boom! Boom! Chalk do it again. Here’s another jump here,
jump there, jump everywhere stomper. Their electro fuzz ignites your
funkiest dance moves.
In order to not miss a beat Turn Up The Volume scans the musical
horizon daily (doing it for years now, actually) to stay in touch with
all new things sonically great and shares the results on a weekly
basis.
Check the 10 new rad cuts just
added to this rad 2024 playlist.
ALL TOGETHER
. TRACK BY TRACK
Band: THE BLACK CROWES (Atlanta, US) Who: The blues rock Robinson brothers
“This is a song of two definitive sections. The first half was instinctive. It projects the uneasy feeling of late-night anxiety when you awake from sleep in the dark of the night and your brain jumps from one terrifying thought to another. The lyrics were just a continued representation of that atmosphere of the music, which spilled out on the page.
Haunting jam.
Eerie electricity.
Yearning vocality.
Blistering finale
Band: HOT JOY(St. Louis, Missouri) Who: Austin McCutchen (Choir Vandals / Foxing / Squint)
and co-vocals /bassist Nicole Bonura
New single: FINGERS ON MY SIDE
Piece from their upcoming debut EP, out on 19 April.
“This song is sort of about being afraid of confrontation, but leaning into it because you know it’ll make your life easier in the long run. By not confronting the things that are taking up space in your head, you’re living in a different sort of reality. Not knowing if anything is fact or fiction, feeling the friction of wrestling with those thoughts in your mind all the time.”
Sleater-Kinney jamming with Dinosaur Jr.
Guitar-bass-layered slackerness.
Melodic turbulence all the way.
Alex Edkins: “I was listening to lots of Jesu and Low, as I do most winters, when writing this one. Lyrically, it’s about missing your loved ones to the point of losing your grip on reality. We distorted and added a mechanical slap back to the drums to create a wild and huge sound. I love how big we got the production on this one. It’s like nothing we’ve ever made before, sonically or lyrically. Amber Webber (Black Mountain, Lightning Dust) was so great to work with, and her voice just takes this song to another stratosphere. I think the video by Colin Medley perfectly captures the vibe and intent of the song.”
Shoegaze guitar galvanism in slo-mo.
Starry-eyed, far-out, and hallucinatory. Metz explore new sonic boundaries.
“In “Cultural Consumer III the consumer has become a new ager who is blasting a killer curated playlist in his car on the way to the airport to fly to a meditation retreat in Taiwan. Despite all of his consuming and questing for self-help, unlike Bob Dylan, he has never once ‘gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.’ He is just buying crap.”
Rolling Stone: “Back in the 1990s, the Black Crowes blew up out of Atlanta, playing
soulful, swaggering classic rock in an era of alt-rock irony and grunge bellyaching. Even
more impressively, the two guys at the heart of the band — singer Chris Robinson and his guitar-playing brother Rich — managed to pull off their multi-platinum run while absolutely hating each other, like an American version of Oasis. But eventually the tension between
Chris and Rich forced the Crowes to close up shop.
The band released their last studio album in 2009, and the Robinson brothers needed
a decade to cool off before they reformed in 2019. In 2022, they released 1972, an EP
with covers of David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, the Temptations, T. Rex, Little Feat, and
Rod Stewart, forcefully arguing that Rock Eden could be specifically located in one year
of the Nixon administration. But what’s surprising about Happiness Bastards, their first
studio album together since reuniting, is how fun, energetic and, unmistakably not-crusty
it sounds, even as the references they lean into are all roughly a half-century old.”
TUTV: It feels like the Robinson bros were locked up in a cave somewhere in
the middle of nowhere after their 2009 album Before The Frost… Until The Freeze
and now, 15 years later, they found a way to escape and unleashed all their pent-up
anger and frustration on this red-hot-blooded record. Afire, ablaze, amazeballs stuff.
The Crowes let the good times stream again with badass steamrollers (Bedside Manners, Dirty Cold Sun, Flesh Wound), roasting blues stompers (Bleed It Dry, Wanting And Waiting, Follow The Moon), an AC/DC riff monster (Rats And Clowns) and a romantic country ballad
to close this blazing comeback record. Amazeballs fireworks .
For those about to rock
The Black Crowes salute you.
In order to not miss a beat Turn Up The Volume scans the musical
horizon daily (doing it for years now, actually) to stay in touch with
all new things sonically great and shares the results on a weekly
basis.
Check the 10 new rad cuts just
added to this rad 2024 playlist.
ALL TOGETHER
. TRACK-BY-TRACK
1. ‘Eat It And Beat It’ by SHEER MAG (Philadelphia)
Philly‘s garage punks SHEER MAG launch their 4th album, titled Playing Favorites on March 1. And they keep on throwing new tracks
off it around. The 4th one is named EAT IT AND BEAT IT, a raw rocker
that rattles and rolls all the way. Hail hail.
Sheer Mag: “‘Eat And Beat It’ is an anthem for the next generation. The legacy acts that we grew up admiring and styling ourselves after aren’t going to be around forever, and nor should they be. It’s high time for a new cohort to take over and carry the torch for rock and roll in the 21st century.”
Oliver Hohlbrugger is a Norwegian singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and
producer who carves out his own high energy 60’s pronto-punk/psychedelic pop.
He obviously has a very hot spot for the jangly side of legends The Velvet Underground.
His velveteen VU tribute is part of his new, upcoming album ‘Nothing’s Changed Everything Is New’ to be released digitally and on vinyl on 19 April 2024 via REVIR / Moon Flower Music.
The track is an intoxicating psych jam that goes on like forever. High-energetic electricity.
‘Mindcave’ was heavily inspired by FrodoBagg ins’ harrowing escape through the labyrinthine tunnels of Shelob’s Lair, home to the giant spider in ‘Lord of the Rings’.
Its frantic tempo mirrors the panic of the chase, underscored by the haunting lines”
Gravity apparates, and breaks in the depths of the cavity.”
These steamrolling Brits go fast-forward with no brakes nor breaks. It’s like if
a whole army of guitars try to crush your ears, assisted by distressed vocals.
Glorious. Striking stroke.
The brothers Robinson return with their 9th LP, called Happiness Bastards on March 15.
They still do what they did their whole career, playing vintage old-school blues-rock with flaming brio.
Stefski & Hutch is a rock band founded in 2016 by a songwriter born in Paris and
a guitarist, composer and producer from Warsaw. New cooking Selling Lies, is a protest song addressing the confusion resulting from the flood of information and disinformation.
No, they’re not the legendary glamorous detective duo. They’re a high-voltage
tandem that combines hard-rock riffs with garage-punk gusto. And the candescent telling lies chorus completes the sharp-cutting fake news message.
Lisbet Fritze and Louise Foo have shared artistic trajectories for half of their lives. As Glas, the duo reveals a patchwork of everyday observations rooted in significant life changes while their alternative pop sounds convey a quest for balance, riding the line between doomy drama and playing it cool.
New piece Hungry Moon“raises the impossible questions about the well-being of our planet, addressing big-scale frustrations while simultaneously delving into human feelings of big dreams, loss and insufficiency. Musically, we also wanted to create a duality with two distinct vocal parts. Almost like a duet between night and day. In one, dreamy vocals are interwoven into a fabric of layered guitars, creating a chant. In contrast, the other features a groovy, spacious arrangement with dry vocals.”
Hungry Moon mesmerizes and magnetizes with its part ghostly, part crystalline vocals,
its shoegazy dreamy feel and its moony atmosphere. Beguiling and compelling.
Hudson Valley-based singer-songwriter Jack Manley gears up for his upcoming
debut EP Unmeasurable Terms, out on May 10. Pre-order info here.
Smack Water is a “relaxed yet aggressive vibe—I wanted this song to have
a lot of space and attitude with moments of distortion, swells and feedback,
so that it raises the stakes as the tune progresses.”
I hear echoes of the late great Alex Chilton. Jangly and rousing, soothing and
entrancing with commanding vocals. An electrical and melancholic thrill.
10. ‘New’ by LUNAR PATHS feat. Ben Keaton (Chicago)
Veterans of the original UK northern goth scene, Lunar Paths are a transatlantic musical duo. With memorable hooks woven through intricate, powerful percussion, laced together with haunting vocals, their eclectic sound shares traits with goth & alternative indie artistes.
New is a psychedelic and darkwavish slo-mo trip with a trancy effect.
Its glowing, shadowy The Cure-like guitar radiance and its hallucinatory
female/male vocals lead to an eerie experience. Intriguing stuff.
It’s a brutalist slab of heavily effected droning guitar and bass,
corrosive blasts of feedback and gut-wrenching vocals centred
around the persistence of grief over time.
Deafening sledgehammer.
Screamo disorder.
NIN on acid.
The blues-rock duo still looks like accountants but with this terrifically
infectious and surprising chant they come up with one of their best
singles ever.
GDLV: “Northern Lights” is a song that plays with emotions, touching peaks in every direction, transforming for example the concept of solitude, presenting it not as a negative element, but as a companion on the journey toward awareness of one’s condition within the complex design of life. A moment of redemption that explodes in the serenity that comes through a deep and necessary catharsis in the human experience.”
Following the powerfully groovin’ lead-single Off My Chest this 2nd piece
off the album is more laid-back, meditative and emotive until the electrical finale.
American veteran blues rockers THE BLACK CROWES are touring again.
Last weekend they played in Melbourne, AUS and behaved like assholes when
Rich Robertson hit a stage crasher with his guitar while his brother/frontman
screamed his head off in the face of that guy. I agree, stage crashing is stupid,
but the way the Robison bros reacted was despicable. Patheic rock stars they are.
Who: Celebrated blues rockers from Atlanta, Georgia founded
by the Robinson Bros (Frontman Chris and guitarist Rich) Active: 1984–2002, 2005–2015, 2019–present / 8 studio LPs
Rolling Stone Magazine wrote: “The Crowes are a Southern band that plays rock,
so there is a buried blues base to their music… the Crowes didn’t learn to play at the feet of Howlin’ Wolf; they learned by listening to records by Humble Pie, the Faces, midperiod Stones, Mott the Hoople and the rest of the second-wave British Invasion from twenty years ago… The Crowes’ songs are a pose, just as singing about thirty days in the hole was a pose for Humble Pie. But it is a testament to the skill, intelligence and force behind the Crowes’ music to say that their posing doesn’t matter — or really, their posing is what matters most of all.” Score: 3.5/5.
Deinze, Belgium – 2 December 1992 – Top concert
Turn Up The Volume: Electrifying retro rock blues brought with Stones-esque swagger, full-energetic force and several sweaty & sultry highlights, fast and slow (Sting Me / Remedy / Hotel Illness / No Speak No Slave / Black Moon Creeping / Time Will Tell) and they were even nastier on stage, as I experienced a couple of times.
