“I have to guard my energy,” she told the Star “I HAVE TO GUARD “I don’t think anyone knew she would be tabloid back then. “Just like the bunnies in those battery commercials. I’m the one that’s about to MY ENERGY. JUST playing entire songs by herself, playing electric keel over. I’m not the one that’s going and going.” LIKE THE BUNNIES guitar solos,” said Lucius’s Holly Laessig, who had Nearly 30 years later, could Mitchell tap even deeper into those reserves? Carlile, it seemed, IN THOSE BATTERY also been present for the handover of Bates’s gift. believed so. COMMERCIALS.” “That was a total ride for everyone.” “It was something Brandi had been wanting to manifest for a long time,” the songwriter JONI MITCHELL Mitchell turned 79 in November. Despite the Allison Russell, who harmonised with Mitchell for many of the set’s most poignant moments, said “So many aspects of this were left up to the ongoing example of Bob Dylan, 81, there’s been to MOJO two days after the Newport show. “At final moment: how much is she going to sing? her festival, Girls Just Wanna Weekend, earlier What would her voice allow her to do? And is no suggestion that there will be more Joni Jams this year, she pulled me aside and said I should she going to play guitar on a song?” said Mills, make it to Newport if I could, because she recalling a moment a year or so ago when the after June 10’s George show. But maybe it’s best thought this would happen. But no one knew if actress Kathy Bates gifted Mitchell an ornate Joni would be up to it until that very moment.” electric guitar carved into the shape of an eagle. that Mitchell’s appearances remain rare. As Mitchell played it like a child picking up the Blake Mills only became confident on the instrument for the first time. But he could see cherished songsmiths offload the rights to their Thursday before the performance. Carlile sent a her mounting resolve. group text from an aeroplane, Mitchell buckled catalogues or hit the reunion circuit for one last into her seat and headed to Newport for the first “And on Sunday, all of us were watching with time since 1969. She arrived with a team of nurses our minds blown,” Mills continued, “because payday, its momentary quality may be the real and a therapist just in case something went awry. there were things happening that hadn’t happened in rehearsal two nights before.” value of Mitchell’s Sunday afternoon song circle In preparation, Mills had transcribed Jaco Pastorius’s old bass parts on the car ride to T HAT ASTONISHMENT WAS clear when in Newport. rehearsals, hoping to add a little bit of Hejira-era Mitchell, who had studied old videos to magic. As soon as Mitchell joined the band in remind herself of her past guitar technique, It was a pan-generational celebration of a their stuffy rehearsal room at a nearby naval stood and leaned against a piano halfway base, he realised that wouldn’t be necessary. through the set, her angular Parker Fly electric singer and writer whose influence has grown strapped around her neck. As she sauntered “It was so much less about [musicianship],” through Court And Spark’s Just Like This Train, far beyond the shadow of misogyny, since Mills told MOJO. “It was more about the way a those on-stage lifted their cellphones high, trying group plays – not just when they’re in the to grab a photo of her. The audience clapped the days Rolling Stone magazine dubbed moment, but when the moment is a really along in unison. Mills and Mumford improvised intimate setting – no bells and whistles, but a alongside her on fretless baritone guitar and her “Old Lady Of The Year” or the decade the group of people playing songs they know really percussion. And Carlile threw the horns before well and arriving at little moments, together.” shouting “Unbelievable!” at the end. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame took to induct There was plenty, however, that remained up her. (She again lambasted that lag during her in the air. CBS interview at Newport.) The performance wasn’t perfect or polished. But it was a perfect moment, a testament to personal resilience and the redemption available in song. “It is a miracle, the way music is totally magical,” said Laessig, likening Mitchell’s achievement to that of her grandmother, who relearned to sing a little after Parkinson’s disease stole much else from her. “When you see someone holding onto their gift again after not being able to walk or talk or do anything, you know that music brought you back from there.” On June 10, fans at the Gorge will witness a miracle repeating itself. Who’s to say they’ll be the last? M MOJO 51
WET LEG SUEDE DRY CLEANING ON YOUR MOJO CD THIS MONTH... “Now everything is Starts like Public Image, Florence Shaw’s skill going wrong…” The takes in an impassioned for finding everyday anxieties Wet Leg tribute to Brett surrealism, and express on this debut Anderson’s late mother, juxtaposing serious LP closer proved to be and ends up as one of comment, crystallised: misplaced: their higher the great Suede songs. “Is it still OK to call path was assured not you my disco pickle?” by a bubble bath, but Written by Brett Anderson, by great songs like Richard Oakes. Published by Written by Florence Shaw, Tom Too Late Now. BMG Rights Management (UK) Dowse, Lewis Maynard, Nick Ltd. Produced by Ed Buller. Buxton. Published by Warp Written by Rhian Teasdale, 2022 Suede Ltd., under Publishing. 2022 4AD Hester Chambers and Mike exclusive license to BMG Rights Limited. Licensed courtesy of Champion. Published by Domino Management (UK) Ltd. Licensed 4AD Limited. By Arrangement Publishing Co. Ltd. &©2022 courtesy of BMG Rights with Beggars Group Media Domino Recording Co. From Management (UK) Ltd. Limited. www.4AD.com Wet Leg. wetleg.ffm.to/wetleg ALex Lake, Emma Wallbanks, Hanly Banks-Callahan, Ben Rayner, Michael Moodie, John Johnson, Greg McKean, Hollie Fernando, Neil Krug, Peter Crosby DANGER VIEUX FARKA RICH RUTH THE SMILE HORACE WILCO MOUSE AND TOURÉ AND ANDY BLACK THOUGHT KHRUANGBIN Nashville resident Virtuoso nerve-jangler Immaculate twangs Rich Ruth is reluctant from the Thom Yorke/ The reggae soothsayer’s and knowing asides – Super-producer, plus Ali Farka Touré and to make comparisons Jonny Greenwood/Tom mighty comeback was “O Jeff, don’t obsess” – rap legend, equals Ry Cooder’s 1994 with spiritual jazz in Skinner power trio. packed with covers as Wilco embrace their old-skool hip-hop gold. desert summit our interview on page Atoms For Peace might and reworks, but also oft-denied country reconfigured by 22. But listen to the be a better antecedent perfectly-judged new bona fides. Think Gram Written by Jerry Ragovoy, Mort his boy Vieux transcendent cosmic than Radiohead on this tunes, like this lovers Parsons’s Flying Burrito Shuman, Brian Joseph Burton, and Texan global shred of Taken Back, Afrobeat-infused gem. lilt written by producer Brothers or maybe Tarik Trotter. Published by citizens Khruangbin. kin to Santana & Adrian Sherwood and even – whisper it – Unichappell Music Inc. (BMI)/ Alice Coltrane’s Written by Thom Yorke, Jonny his crew. Uncle Tupelo. Mort Shuman Songs LLP (BMI)/ Written by Ali Farka Touré. Illuminations. Greenwood, Nigel Godrich, Tom Sweet Science/Sony Music Produced by Khruangbin & Skinner. Published by Warner Written by J. Nichols, A. Composed by Jeff Tweedy. Publishing (ASCAP)/Legend- Steve Christensen. Mixing by Written by Michael Ruth. Chappell Music Limited, Kobalt Maxwell, G. Oban. Published by Published by Words Ampersand elphia Music/Universal Music Steve Christensen. Master by Published by Where There’s Life Music Publishing, Copyright Gommsongs, Warp Publishing, Music (BMI). Produced by Jeff Publishing (ASCAP). Produced Chris Longwood. &©2022 (ASCAP). &©2022 Third Man Control. 2022 XL Recordings Copyright Control. &©2022 Tweedy and Tom Schick. 2022 by Danger Mouse. 2022 BMG Dead Oceans, in association Records. From I Survived, It’s Limited Licensed courtesy of XL On-U Sound. From Midnight DBPM Records Inc. ©2022 Words Rights Management (UK) Ltd. with Night Time Stories Ltd. Over. richruth.bandcamp.com / Recordings Limited. www. Rocker. on-u-sound.ffm.to/ Ampersand Music (BMI) From Licensed courtesy of BMG From Ali. deadoc.co/ali-album thirdmanstore.com xlrecordings.com horaceandy Cruel Country Wilcoworld.net Rights Management (UK) Ltd. BILL MAVIS ALDOUS MICHAEL WEYES BETH CALLAHAN STAPLES AND HARDING HEAD & THE BLOOD ORTON LEVON HELM RED ELASTIC An improvisational A staccato piano line, BAND A hug for humanity A second appearance statement of us versus A rousing memorial for subtle horns, a lovers’ from Natalie Mering, for Tom Skinner on them from zen master Helm, a 2011 rave-up tryst played out in hotel Liverpool’s very own AKA Weyes Blood, as drums, as he provides Callahan, as he pitches at his barn. Staples reception over “11 days Arthur Lee in peak she continues to finesse gently pattering the unenlightened – takes lead, renewing a in the heat of the city…” form. MOJO’s Best her Carpenters-gone- beats for the drowsy, “Big pigs in a pile of relationship with The Again, the chameleon Album Of 2022 – cosmic skills. Hold ethereal majesty of shit” – against his Weight that began Harding conjures here’s why. tight for the Philip Friday Night. Not questing brethren: with a 1968 Staple drama and mystery Glass-style rippling just beautifully “Meditate, ventilate… Sisters version. out of simple tools. Written by Michael Head and crescendo, too. written and sung microdose… do what Alice Head. Published by by the rejuvenated you gotta do.” Written by Robbie Robertson. Written by Hannah Topp. Modern Sky Entertainment. Written by Natalie Mering. Orton, but beautifully Published by Universal Tunes Published by BMG Music Published by Hipgnosis Songs produced by her, too. Written by Bill Callahan. (SESAC). &©2022 Mavis Publishing Limited. 2022 4AD &©2022 Michael Head & The Group (BMI). &©2022 Sub Pop Published by Your, My Music Staples and Levon Helm. Limited. Licensed courtesy of Elastic Band. Under exclusive Records. From And In The Written by Beth Orton. Published (BMI). &©2022 Drag City Under exclusive license to 4AD Limited. By arrangement license to Modern Sky Darkness, Hearts Aglow (Sub by BMG. &©2022 Partisan Incorporated. From YTILAEЯ. Anti-. From Carry Me Home. with Beggars Group Media Entertainment. From the Pop). www.weyesblood.com Records. From Weather Alive. www.dragcity.com/ mavisstaples.com/ Limited. www.4AD.com album: Dear Scott www. www.bethortonofficial.com michaelheadofficial.com 52 MOJO
THE 75 BEST ALBUMS OF JAZZ Compiled by ANDY COWAN 10 9 8 7 6 FONTAINES D.C. DRY CLEANING JACK WHITE BILL CALLAHAN SUEDE 1BINKER & MOSES Feeding The Machine (GEARBOX) Skinty Fia Stumpwork Fear Of The Dawn (DRAG CITY) Autofiction 2 TUMI MOGOROSI (PARTISAN) (4AD) (THIRD MAN) Long-term Bill Callahan (BMG) Group Theory: Black Music addicts will have “I always dreamed as a As with Fontaines D.C., A bountiful year for adjusted to his Suede’s effective knack (MUSHROOM HOUR HALF HOUR) teenager of making a high MOJO placing White fans saw two late-flowering of transcending ’90s three great albums, like for Dry Cleaning’s terrific new LPs, with openness and Britpop nostalgia was 3 ROBOCOBRA Nirvana had,” Fontaines second album, the rootsy and relatively beneficence by now, reinforced by album QUARTET D.C.’s Conor Deegan Stumpwork, showed conventional Entering ushered in by 2019’s nine, boldly trailed told MOJO. “Now we’ve how major talents Heaven Alive swiftly Shepherd In A Sheepskin by frontman Brett Living Isn’t Easy (FIRST TASTE) done that, I don’t really were now consolidating following this Vest. Still, his third Anderson as their mind what we do.” out of the recent UK energetically eccentric album after becoming “punk album”. 4 SARATHY KORWAR Skinty Fia marked three post-punk glut. fourth solo set. The wild a father was striking Autofiction, in fact, KALAK (THE LEAF LABEL) MOJO Top 10 albums Florence Shaw’s ideas kept coming on in its stated aim to followed a plausible in four years for the spoken-word reveries MOJO’s preferred Fear “rouse people”, as alternative trajectory 5 MAKAYA Dublin quintet, as continued to be weird, Of The Dawn: rap-metal! Callahan artfully they could have taken MCCRAVEN they developed their gripping and hypnotic Dub! Q-Tip! William transcended ruminative in the mid-’90s – an post-punk sound – “People say, ‘You’re Burroughs and states – and added urgent, heroic and In These Times (XL) into something like the woman on Manhattan Transfer horns as he went – to gothically-attuned take unostentatiously the satnav,’” she told samples in the same produce genuinely on guitar rock informed 6 SHABAKA anthemic, while never MOJO – but the music track! Even garage rock! uplifting songs like by PiL, The Chameleons HUTCHINGS losing any of their was subtly richer, too, But, crucially, White’s Natural Information. and even The Cult. relatability or poetic with warm Johnny Marr experimentation was As skilled, wise and High drama ensued, Afrikan Culture (IMPULSE!) intensity. A model of jangles to illuminate tightly packaged too, quotable as ever, but of course, but with how an old-fashioned the Sonic Youth aligned to some of his with bonus good vibes. gritty verité detailing 7 LAMPEN rock band could grow gridwork. Oh, and sharpest tunes in years. rather than pantomime Lampen (WE JAZZ) in challenging times. that sleeve… Standout track: self-parody. Standout track: Partition 8 CÉDRIC HANRIOT Standout track: Standout track: Morning, Noon Standout track: Time Is Color (MORPHOSIS ART) Jackie Down The Line Hot Penny Day And Night She Still Leads Me On 9 NDUDUZO MAKHATHINI In The Spirit Of Ntu (BLUE NOTE) 10 ALABASTER DEPLUME GOLD (INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM) AMERICANA Compiled by SYLVIE SIMMONS 54 Getting the Fear: 3 2 Jack White is ener- getically eccentric on his fourth solo LP. Paige Sara, Greg McKean, Dan Medhurst ARCTIC HORACE ANDY DANGER MOUSE WET LEG 1MAVIS STAPLES MONKEYS & BLACK & LEVON HELM Midnight Rocker THOUGHT Wet Leg The Car Carry Me Home (ANTI-) (ON-U SOUND) Cheat Codes (DOMINO) (DOMINO) 2 WILCO The journey from (BMG) What lurked beyond Cruel Country (DBPM) “It’s definitely not just Studio One in Kingston, the Chaise Longue? four people playing indie Jamaica to Ramsgate, “We made this record for Could 2021’s peculiar 3 AMANDA SHIRES music any more,” bassist Kent, proved smoother people from a certain one-hit wonders turn Take It Like A Man (ATO) Nick O’Malley told MOJO than most would’ve place and time who out to be the breakout last month, emphasising anticipated, as reggae’s identify with specific new stars of 2022? 4 DRIVE-BY the intriguing most seraphic voice aesthetics,” Roots MC Wet Leg’s apparently TRUCKERS complexities of the conspired with UK Black Thought told effortless way of nailing biggest British rock dub don Adrian MOJO – people, perhaps, the latter scenario Welcome 2 Club XIII (ATO) band of their generation. Sherwood for a timeless with a profound love of hinged on this Away from the festival album of roots. Old rap but a wariness about exceptional debut 5 MALCOLM moshpit, Sheffield Studio One sides its contemporary form. album, where their HOLCOMBE flâneur Alex Turner and were revisited, fellow For his return to hip-hop, unforced Isle Of his cohorts continued to travellers covered (Safe Danger Mouse saturated Wight surrealism and Tricks Of The Trade (NEED TO KNOW) disdain riffery on their From Harm, a Massive Cheat Codes in vintage post-Breeders antics magnificent seventh. Attack tune not sung by samples – Gwen McCrae, turned out to be just 6 FATHER JOHN Instead: Curtis soul, Andy), for Andy’s best Hugh Masekela – as much fun over 37 MISTY Scott 4 drama, ravishing album in 40-plus years creating the perfect minutes. Sometimes orchestrations and, from – and the dub version, soundbed for Black poignant, too: there was Chloë And The Next 20th Century Turner, a droll, nuanced Midnight Scorchers, Thought’s uninhibited a lot more to Wet Leg cinematographer’s was every bit as good. flow. Old school than buttered muffins. (BELLA UNION) eye for detail. reinvented for 2022. Standout track: Standout track: 7 MOLLY TUTTLE Standout track: Try Love Standout track: Too Late Now Crooked Tree (NONESUCH) Body Paint No Gold Teeth 8 STEVE EARLE & THE DUKES Jerry Jeff (NEW WEST) 9 MARGO CILKER Pohorylle (LOOSE MUSIC) 10 MIDLAKE For The Sake Of Bethel Woods (BELLA UNION) MOJO 53
ALBUM OF THE YEAR “Getting Off The now?! He gets close to me and goes, Sauce Gave Me A Chance” “What a fucking album, lad!” I’ll have that as well. And as much as it flows 1 MICHAEL HEAD that’s a summary of his songbook: all Bacharach- together as an album, it’s an array & THE RED like melodies and smoky psychedelia, with Head of songs. It’s quite diverse. ELASTIC BAND the pitch-perfect Scouse street-poet, drawing elegant pen-pictures from the inner city margins. It sounds like a summary of your songwriting Dear Scott No wonder it’s MOJO’s Album Of The Year. “I love career. the album,” he agrees. “I’ve had some bad times, (MODERN SKY) so to come out of that with this record is an It does, but that’s a fluke. I never had any amazing achievement by everyone involved. premeditated plan for it. I’ll tell you what How sobriety, storytelling And a relief.” influenced it most of all. We obviously all and a Scouser from the had that long break, didn’t we, the lockdown, 1800s helped put a Congratulations, you’ve won MOJO’s Album and everybody utilised it as best they could. fragile talent back on Of The Year for Dear Scott. How does that feel? Personally, I got creative. I started writing. There top. By Ted Kessler. were illustrations all around my flat from an 19th Fuck me, man! That’s amazing. I did not know century illustrator called William Herdman, who T HE HISTORY OF popular music is rich in that was coming. Wow! I was with [daughter] drew Liverpool in the 1800s. So I’m locked in, © John Johnson (2), Getty tales of triumph over adversity. Michael Alice the other day, wondering how it would do. his illustrations are covering the walls and they Head, however, has been a master of that You know what? For all the people who made it, influenced the album more than anything. narrative for 40 years. In his previous it’s well deserved. It’s a good album, you know? There’s one drawing in there by Herdman of bands, The Pale Fountains and Shack, London Road which goes to Kenny [Kensington], he overcame heroin addiction, grief, financial It’s the best album even, officially. which has been an important road all my life. I’ve apocalypse and even the loss of an album’s written songs on that road, written songs about master tape in a hire car to deliver a string of cult Yeah! It’s really well played, the production is boss. that road, and to have that window into its past… classics. But for Dear Scott, the Liverpudlian’s The label played a blinder. Ah, that’s boss news. wow! Then I found out that Herdman, who I second solo album without his guitarist brother assumed was from London or Bristol because he John by his side, Head faced a new array of Is this your first critics’ award? drew those places too, was born on St Domingo adversaries, including a broken heart and Vale in Liverpool. I was born on St Domingo Road, alcoholism. “That was close,” he recalls, “the I’d say so. Think of all the work that’s gone into it, right round the corner. It felt significant. detox almost killed me, but getting off the as a reward for that creativity it’s massive. sauce gave me a chance.” The album’s also influenced by personal As well as being a critical hit, it was the first UK turmoil, isn’t it? Clean and sober, Head teamed up with Top 10 album of your long career. Why do you producer Bill Ryder-Jones in his studio across the feel it connected with people in such a way? Yes. I was going through heartbreak. But there’s River Mersey in West Kirby and, alongside Head’s positivity in that. The word in the Chinese youthful Red Elastic Band, crafted an album A friend who’s been watching me play since I was language that means ‘crisis’ also means 19 said it was my most complete set of songs. I ‘opportunity’. That makes a lot of sense to me, thanked him and thought, I’ll have that. I was especially for this period. walking in town recently and this young scally was glaring at me. I’m thinking, Oh aye, what What was producer Bill Ryder-Jones’s impact on Dear Scott? Massive. We were joking we could have called the album ‘Bill’. You know, I’ve played with some amazing guitarists. My brother [John] for one. 54 MOJO
Great Scott: (clockwise from left) “This record is an amazing achievement by everyone involved” – Michael Head (centre) with The Red Elastic Band; Head, creating opportunities from personal turmoil; The Pale Fountains (from left) Andy Diagram, Michael Head, Chris McCaffery, Thomas Whelan, 1983; MOJO’s Album Of The Year, Dear Scott. “I’M IN LOVE AND WRITING LIKE FUCK. THERE’LL BE ANOTHER ALBUM Bill’s up there, his playing is quite SOONER RATHER avant-garde, out-there. The thing THAN LATER FOR he plays on Gino And Rico, fuck me. His understanding of my ONCE, I HOPE.” songs, his orchestration, was second to none. You get his studio MICHAEL HEAD and that craft, but you also get his musical talent. A lovely man, beautiful, sweet fella. It’s like a footie team done blew me away. They’d organised a trip to LA than we have for seven or eight years. He’s still writing, got some music he’s working on. manager, you get different styles of producers, within 30 seconds! The story evolved from that, and his style suited this team. but when they get to LA it takes on a The Day Of Do you ever play together? Is he your Jürgen Klopp? The Locust, Karen Black feel to it. The woman We occasionally might have a jam if we’re round from The Grass came from a documentary I our Joanne’s [their sister]. I saw Pete [Wilkinson, Shack bassist] on Saturday night, just walking I’d go with Klopp, yeah, but he wouldn’t be happy watched about drug smugglers, about a strong through town. He’d got up with The Red Elastic Band at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London this with that. He’s a blue. So let’s say Howard Kendall. woman who’d been wronged once so she summer, did a song we’d written together called Merry-Go-Round, so we’re in contact a bit. He’s One of the notable aspects of your songs became this ruthless smuggler. These characters with his son and we’re chatting away in the street, throughout your career has been the people come from observation, mainly. reminiscing about Shack. He’d sent me this picture from when we were in Japan where I who pass through them. Dear Scott has some Who’s under observation for future songs? had long hair and a shiner – no memory of that! I was saying to Pete that I’d love to play with our of your most vivid character sketches. Where We’ve got a few new songs, actually. There’s John again. He came from that era of your Will do you find them? a Mrs Rafferty who is an older lady, quite an Sergeants and your Johnny Marrs, those guitarists who were influenced by the psychedelic axe Grace And Eddie, for example. I was in Birken- interesting character, and she’s toying with heroes of the 1960s but they made their own thing with it, their own art form. Our John was there on head, on the water opposite Liverpool, with my a younger man, leading him a merry dance. that level. He could play anything. So, hopefully, in the future, we’ll be getting together. girlfriend of the time. I was making these little Giving up alcohol was a big factor in Dear 40-second movies, filming these two buskers, Scott appearing. Are you still on the wagon? and they were amazing. He’s about 70, shit-hot, she was obviously his partner, maybe 20 years I am. It’s going amazingly well. I’m in love and younger. She was playing a box-drum and they’re writing like fuck. Hopefully we’re going to go knocking out this blues-rock stuff, but it was the in with Bill soon, take these new songs to him, look of absolute love and devotion in her eyes as which means there’ll be another album sooner she watched him that inspired it. The only time rather than later for once, I hope. We’ve been I’d seen that look of admiration before was rehearsing them and have integrated a couple Watch this space. Always. watching Tina Weymouth looking at David Byrne into the set. There’s one called The Human Race, when they were doing Psycho Killer on The Old another called You Smiled At Me that we’re Grey Whistle Test. Wow! I know I’m married to the playing. You Smiled At Me is a beautiful song And finally – what’s the best thing you’ve heard all year? drummer, but I fucking love you! I just imagined about love, just a simple smile on a train means so the story of Grace And Eddie from that moment. much to somebody. But, yeah… to answer your Oh man! That’s a toughie! You know what… question about sobriety. It’s amazing. I said at something… oh, what was it?! Argh! It’s a tough So you pick these characters up in the streets? one of the gigs that it was great to be here and a I do. The girls in Fluke came from witnessing a girl in the audience said, “We’re astonished!” one that, mate, I haven’t heard that much. Let me conversation between two girls on a bench. One Have you seen your brother John recently? think. What did I hear? Can I text you back when was a PR, the other was a manager, and the it comes to me? Good on you for that. I will, immediacy, the speed with which they got things John’s brilliant. We see more of each other lately promise. (He has not, as yet, texted back). M MOJO 55
Purple reign: THE BEST REISSUES OF Prince And The Revolution 20 19 18 17 16 in their pomp, 1985. ROBERT THE LITTLE FEAT CHARLES THE ROLLING FRIPP WATERBOYS Waiting For Columbus STEPNEY STONES Exposures The Magnificent Seven (RHINO) Step On Step Live At The El Mocambo (DGM/PANEGYRIC) (CHRYSALIS) A key document of (INTERNATIONAL an exceptional live ANTHEM) (UMC) Beyond the These 102 tracks and band (and their warts-and-all King a 50,000-word book imminently doomed Producer of baroque Essentially a radical Crimson doc, Fripp’s by Mike Scott frontman Lowell psych soul for Rotary overhaul of 1977’s retrospective 2022 mapped out what George) since its first Connection and Love You Live, side activity was rigorous: The Waterboys did release in 1978. This Earth, Wind & Fire, three, zeroing in on a big book on after 1988’s classic 45th anniversary box these early-’70s two sweaty nights in guitar-playing; and Fisherman’s Blues: an extended the groove tracks revealed a a Montreal club. The this 32(!)-disc survey odyssey leading to across 8 CDs, and maestro’s intimate Stones cut loose as of 1970-83 solo 1990’s undervalued full live shows from side: stripped-back if their time was up, activity. Come for the Room To Roam. The Manchester, London home recordings, with Keith Richards doorstop, stay for the alpha and omega of and Washington. akin to Sly Stone’s facing seven years in peak Frippertronics. raggle-taggle. Stone Flower demos. jail after a drug bust. 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 PRINCE DEXYS BROADCAST ARTHUR KAREN DENNIS CAN AND THE MIDNIGHT Mother Is The RUSSELL DALTON BOVELL Live In Cuxhaven 1976 Milky Way REVOLUTION RUNNERS World Of Echo In My Own Time (50th The Dubmaster: (SPOON) (WARP) Anniversary Edition) The Essential Live Too-Rye-Ay, As It (ROUGH TRADE) Anthology The third chapter Should Have Sounded Occult psychtronica (LIGHT IN THE ATTIC) (SONY) and retro-futurism Rough Trade’s (BMG) of Can’s ongoing (EMI) met on three archive diligent re-upping of Two essential concert series This 1985 releases by the the Russell catalogue Dalton sets this year: A Brit reggae moved on from ’75 extravaganza offers ’80s pop production much-missed pivoted around his Shuckin’ Sugar, a motherlode, to ’76, illustrating an era-defining live prioritised sheen Birmingham mages. 1986 masterpiece, Colorado coffee charting as it did how the band band in their prime. over authenticity, so Pride of place: this where previous house live comp both Bovell’s role retained fearsome Shorn of the visuals, Kevin Rowland took 2009 tour CD, an dance and from ’63-64; and this as the foundational live thrust even as the Revolution share the master tapes for uncanny collage avant-garde 50th expansion of producer of lovers their studio work the audio spotlight a makeover of his that resembled excursions gave way her second album rock and his output lost some intensity. with their frontman: dungaree phase. the soundtrack to a lonesome voice proper, a Woodstock in rootsier band Landed tunes audacious jams The bonus live set to a lost British and cello iteration. reverie augmented Matumbi. No room surfaced out of the duking it out with further asserted folk-horror movie. Folk music for NYC’s with more useful live for his work with 30-minute improv, hyper-drilled the idea of an downtown set. tracks and outtakes. Orange Juice, mind. utterly transformed. tightness. ever-evolving band. 6 5 4 3 2 8 7 DAVID THE CLASH NEIL YOUNG NEU! LOU REED WILCO BLONDIE Getty BOWIE Combat Rock/The WITH CRAZY 50! Words And Music, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Against The Odds A Divine Symmetry People’s Hall HORSE (GRÖNLAND) May 1965 (Deluxe Edition) 1974-1982 (RHINO) (SONY) Toast Fifty years after (LIGHT IN THE ATTIC) (NONESUCH) (NUMERO GROUP/EMI) Michael Rother and Another busy year in Not quite the lost (REPRISE) Klaus Dinger set Left in a sealed A meticulous reissue This month’s cover the Bowie catalogue pre-Combat Rock motorik wheels in envelope since Reed project reached this stars magnificently department, with album Rat Patrol Young’s five archive motion, a handsome mailed it to himself career-redefining put their house in ’90s box Brilliant From Fort Bragg, but releases in 2022 box set brought their in 1965, here were magnum opus, eight order with this Adventure and lost still a hefty account stretched from 1971 three albums into songwriting demos, CDs charting how bumper 8-CD survey album Toy eventually of the original gang’s solo live LPs to a 2019 harmonious union. also featuring John great songs endured of their first act: six crowned by this last stand. Also this Promise Of The Real An additional Cale, that presented through personal complete albums; 36 excavation of the year: Joe Strummer set. Toast, though, tribute/remix album the early VU and human friction: unreleased tracks; route to Hunky Dory. 002, a handy was the high point: was an honourable repertoire as fragile country-soul unseen pics and This one was the real revisionist box set the long-promised extra, if inevitably Dylan-ish, with Jay Bennett, ephemera. The deal: no less than 48 of his underrated Crazy Horse album overshadowed by Greenwich Village gradually assailed by space between punk unreleased tracks last band, The of marital strife, the originals. coffee house folk. A waves of static with and pop navigated across five discs. Mescaleros. diplomatically genuine revelation. Jim O’Rourke. with unique style. shelved in 2001. 56 MOJO
REISSUE OF THE YEAR Children of the revolution: (left) The Beatles prepare to flip their wigs; (below) mixmaster Giles Martin. “I Hope You Can three extra Got To Get Hear More” You Into My Lifes are exciting, and valid in 1 THE BEATLES inventive and eclectic. In fact, observes Giles their own right. Martin, receiving MOJO’s plaudits with his usual Revolver modesty, “Revolver is so diverse, it’s like remixing The Beatles were happy to eight separate bands.” make big calls on songs, (Special Edition) because they knew that Congratulations, Giles. Revolver is MOJO’s they’d find the right place. (UNIVERSAL) Reissue Of The Year. They had the confidence to push things, because they That’s amazing. Thank you, MOJO. knew they were probably going to end up making the right decision. You told us earlier this year that Revolver was I think you always hear that in their outtakes. already a pretty great-sounding record. How do you Perhaps that’s an understatement. What do It was rumoured at one stage that this might you think your remix added or enhanced? have been a Rubber Soul and Revolver combo. make The Beatles’ best How far did that idea get? I hope people get a bit more immediacy and a bit album (ahem!) even better? more vibrancy. We’ve pulled Ringo slightly away That was when we were concerned we didn’t from the guitars, so the intensity of his playing have enough outtakes to make Revolver on its With a little help from can be heard. And with that separation, you hear own. But I don’t think it would have been the the intensity of the other members of the band a right thing to do. Rubber Soul and Help! are more Peter Jackson. “Pushing bit better as well. I hope you can hear more – like of a pair than Revolver and Rubber Soul, stylisti- the finger snaps on Here, There And Everywhere. cally. I know that George Harrison saw Rubber the technology felt very I’d never noticed them before! Soul and Revolver as a pair, but musically I don’t see it. There’s a swagger and a darkness to ‘Beatles’,” Giles Martin You used technology that Peter Jackson’s Revolver which is not on Rubber Soul. The aim WingNut company developed to separate the to please has gone. tells Danny Eccleston. sonic components of a single track. Which songs did that particularly benefit? W ITH NO REPUTATION to massage à Will you eventually remix all the Beatles la Let It Be, Apple’s Revolver reboot Well, the most obvious case is Taxman, where albums? Is that the plan? faced a tougher task: adding value before you had guitar, bass and drums on one to many fans’ favourite Beatles track. Now we can have the drums in the middle, Well, there is no plan. As you know, The Beatles album – almost as many people’s the guitar and bass either side. I think it sounds a pick for Greatest Album Ever. The formula was bit more aggressive, and truer to the live band, thing, there’s very little corporation behind it, familiar: a Giles Martin/Sam Okell remix added because, you know, George wouldn’t be playing presence and breadth, a powerful picture of The a guitar standing on top of Ringo. which is nice. Revolver happened because we Beatles getting heavy, plus fascinating outtakes that included sizzling fuzz guitar versions of Got The outtakes in this package told a story of went through the outtakes and realised that, yes, To Get You Into My Life and poignant Yellow the development of the songs. As usual, the Submarine demos. Full-fat Super Deluxe editions listener rather ends up endorsing the band’s these are really enjoyable to listen to, maybe (5-CDs or 4-LPs according to taste) included a choice of keepers. Yet every one of those mono version for groovy Luddites and a lavish there’s something to do here. And the WingNut and detailed book. All but the 1-disc versions featured new stereo mixes of Paperback Writer technology allowed us to do something that and Rain, but again you needed to go Super Deluxe for a mind-blowing original-speed take hadn’t been done before. Pushing the technol- of the latter. The whole experience was a rollercoaster ride with the band at their most ogy felt very ‘Beatles’. The main thing is that The Beatles is the most important music catalogue in the world, so there are a lot of responsibilities around getting things right. Responsibilities to The Beatles themselves but also to the fans, and we take them really seriously. When I remixed Sgt. Pepper I thought there was a risk my house would be burned down (laughs), and I think Revolver is easily as loved, so it means a lot that MOJO appreciate what we’ve done. © Apple Corps Ltd, Alex Lake Part of what I’m doing is for my kids – because “THERE’S A SWAGGER AND A DARKNESS TO I don’t want them to think of The Beatles as REVOLVER WHICH IS NOT ON RUBBER SOUL. THE AIM TO PLEASE HAS GONE.” GILES MARTIN something from the past. Because they are and they aren’t. Someone who was interviewing me said Revolver sounded like it was mastered a month ago. I couldn’t resist telling him, of course, that it was. M MOJO 57
“THE BEST me feel less alone in the world. TOM SKINNER THING I ’ V E She’s a legend. HEARD ALL Son Of Kemet, third of The Smile, This Is A Photograph by Kevin all percussion. YEAR!” Morby has been inspiring to me this year. He is an artist that has such a The one thing that clear vision, and it really translates sticks out for me in this record. Kevin is a lifer, and is Sam Gendel. that’s comforting in a world where He’s a saxophonist, artists and our creations have been composer, guitar treated as disposable. I’m excited to player and continue following his journey and producer, based see where he takes us next. out of LA. He’s really prolific so narrowing it down OUR FAVOURITE MUSICIANS’ to a particular release isn’t easy. FAVOURITE MUSIC OF 2022 Earlier this year there was Superstore, a collection of JEFF TWEEDY Alexa Viscius, Akasha Rabut Indie Film Lab, Biff Blumfumgagne, Alex Kurunis, Neil Krug, Noé Cugny, Filmawi, Sarah Piantadosi, Kahimi Karie, Kiss Diouara popular throughout West Africa, JIM O’ROURKE unreleased things, almost like a so everyone will hear when he sketchbook of ideas. It’s lo-fi – some Wilco’s fan of contradictions. releases a new album as well. His Out-rock mage, producer, collaborator. of it must have been recorded on I can’t remember music always relaxes me. I love to his phone – and a lot of these pieces the last time I play it loud in my car. I cannot feel For me, any are very short, under a minute or encountered a the stress of life when I am driving unreleased Cecil two minutes. Then, when I was record that left with Alpha’s music blasting. Taylor is essential, touring with Sons Of Kemet this me feeling so but Respiration summer, he dropped Cicada Lite: fully healed ROBERT FRIPP – released this year Live In Texas. It was quite a gruelling as Alabaster on the Polish label, schedule and I found myself turning DePlume’s Gold. Predictably unpredictable. Fundacja Sluchaj to this to transcend that kind of – is remarkable, as travel, travel, travel place you get Joyful and solemn. Hushed and My number it comes from 1968. There aren’t into. It’s mostly solo saxophone exuberant. Spontaneous and one this year many commercial recordings of with, I guess, laptops and drum deeply considered. I could go on. is Slipknot’s that period, and a solo piano machines. But then it also Think of any two adjectives that Psychosocial performance to boot. That alone is incorporates field recordings, and seem to contradict each other and [from 2008 album, remarkable, but this performance is there are tracks with him playing you’ll be getting close to how it All Hope Is Gone], truly earth-shattering for longtime along with cicadas, hence the title. feels to listen to this music. It’s a which Toyah and Taylor fans. In one listen it may have So it has this diary quality, and a magic trick but it’s also pretty I considered for become my favourite Cecil Taylor kind of integration with nature and much how the world really works. our Sunday Lunch series of YouTube solo record ever. the environment. In the jazz world, One person being themselves covers. I very much enjoy the [Minimalist experimental it feels like, more and more, we’re on purpose – unafraid of guitar work: the altered tuning, musicians] Giancarlo & Massimo moving away from conventional contradictions and proudly the really digging-in riffs. It’s Toniutti’s Stratégies Obliques I is studio recordings. That’s a fragile – always brings a tear to superb, energetic music. We absolutely fantastic. They are two refreshing thing. With Sam Gendel my eye. A smile and a tear. also considered covering Lenny of my favourite creators of their you’re getting a little window into a Kravitz’s Are You Gonna Go My generation. Massimo Toniutti’s Il moment in time. VIEUX FARKA TOURÉ Way. It just digs in; the beat is right Museo Selvatico from 1991 is still one there and the co-writer Craig Ross of my favourite records, and his CONOR ‘DEEGO’ A chip off the old desert blues block… is a stunning guitarist. return this year after decades of DEEGAN There were two Jennifer Higdon is an American silence has been a dream come true. albums I really classical composer; String Lake, the His brother Giancarlo is brilliant as Fontaines D.C.’s low-end theorist loved. The first second movement of her four-piece always as well. goes ’90s. was Timbuktu by work All Things Majestic, has really Oumou Sangaré. sung to me this year. It was written The act that really Oumou is like an about the Grand Teton range of wowed me this aunt to me and I mountains in Wyoming, and in my year is have always hectic life, maybe on a Sunday Wunderhorse. We morning when I have a moment’s took them on tour admired her and her music. Of reflection, it transports me to an in America and I course, when Oumou releases a new open, quiet space that is supporting got to watch them LP everyone in Mali hears about it. and rich. But mostly it’s live a lot. They’re a This new album is magnificent. It performance that transports me. great band, probably better than has so many styles and influences The last great concert I saw was us. They brought it every night working together in it, lots of rock Robert Plant at this spring’s consistently. It really shows that and blues and funk, and her voice Cheltenham Jazz Festival. It’s they’ve had the time to figure out soars. She is proving she is still the essentially roots music with local who they want to be because the queen of Malian music. The second musicians that felt authentic and album, Cub, is very mature and is Alpha Blondy’s album Eternity. real, no going through the motions, nuanced. While you can still hear Ever since I was young he has been but live in the moment. something that sounds a bit like my favourite reggae artist. He is very Pearl Jam or a song that sounds ALYNDA SEGARRA a bit like Alice In Chains, the 58 MOJO influences are much less marked Hurray For The Riff Raff’s than on most first albums. enthusiast-in-chief. I loved Been Stellar as well. They’re a really young band from I had been eagerly waiting for the New York – kids basically – but they’re making really great music, new album from Ezra Furman, All Of Us Flames, and it was everything I needed. Her lyricism has amazed me ever since I fell in love with Transangelic Exodus and to me this feels like a continuation of that work. Ezra creating at the same time as me makes Alynda Segarra: Hurray for Ezra Furman and Kevin Morby.
the best I’ve heard from New York For Weyes Blood, AKA n a long time. There’s something Natalie Mering, it’s nothing beautiful about it but it’s quite edgy but an Alex G thing. and street. It has something in common with what Sonic Youth were doing in the ’90s. They put out an EP this year and there’s a song on it called Kids 1995 which is really, really great. LEYLA MCCALLA compilation series, like The Truth Is A year – I didn’t know there was such a Lie, The World Is A Cafeteria, All Of thing, but of course it’s out there! Carolina Chocolate Drop looks to the This Goes Too and Do You Believe it?. And one beautiful track from Afro-future. Tracks from the ’50s to the ’70s. I Ghana: Charlotte Dada’s cover of love compilations when you don’t The Beatles’ Don’t Let Me Down. Meridian know what’s coming next. The foil Brothers & El sleeves are beautiful too. I also NATALIE MERING Grupo discovered Jamaican doo wop this Renacimiento are Weyes Blood’s alt-Karen Carpenter from Colombia. backs “fruity fun”. of restricted. Very few people were El Grupo having a lot of weird, fruity, creative Renacimiento I love Alex G, God Save The Animals. fun. You can tell that they just had a are actually the When I first heard it, it caught me off blast making it. It’s such a journey Meridian Brothers’ imaginary band, guard. My friend was listening to it and it’s so colourful. At times it playing and updating salsa roots and I was like, “What is that?” I’ve reminds me of Ween, because Ween music with a psychedelic twist. always been an admirer of him are the only other band that really Their [self-titled] album is super-fun because he’s also from Philly, but shifts and alters their vocals so low and the arrangements, singing and this is the first record of his I’ve really and so high in the same song, but rhythms are amazing. It feels very in dived into. What’s so cool about otherwise it feels totally innovative. line with what I’ve been exploring, it is that I feel in some ways, keeping Afro-diasporic music alive. post-pandemic, people have taken Now I really have to see it live. ➢ Jake Blount’s LP The New Faith also an approach that is a little more resonates with me. He has stripped-down or intimate, or kind re-imagined old negro spirituals as an Afro-futurist concept record, imagining the impact of climate change in 500 years’ time, because the people who will be most affected are black and brown. I’m currently obsessed with Gilberto Gil’s [1972] album Expresso 2222. He’s such an amazing singer and guitarist, the rhythms are super-inspiring and his expression is breathtaking. I find a lot of similarities between Tropicália and Haitian music, which makes me feel connected to Brazil – but, of course, we’re all part of the African diaspora. JASON PIERCE Spiritualized seer, back from the grave. We toured America this year and I picked up a stack of gospel records. Every church seems to have made a record so there’s a lot out there, usually in local stores. I feel like I can’t go wrong with those records. I especially like The Gospel Clefs, and especially the track So Good. And the Brotherhood Of Cross And Stars LP Mustard Seed – the music is like Casio pre-set keyboards but the most beautiful voices. I also love Dorothy Love Coates, The Brotherhood Crusade Choir and Bill Moss & The Celestials. I’ve just discovered the Cairo label’s American soul MOJO 59
“THE BEST Oumou SanLguacryé:Dacus, THING I ’ V E setting an esxhaemepnljeofyosr HEARD ALL French-MaliaaJnaspianngesre Aya NakamuBrae.akfast. YEAR!” Holly Whittaker, Dean Chalkley, Will Hutchinson, Sulyiman, Phoebe Fox, Sandra V BRETT ANDERSON titled Oumou Sangaré, in which she DENNIS BOVELL song where they saluted all the explained that I am an example for rappers that they liked from their Suede’s suave Sussex Man. her in difficult moments. I am very, The Dubmaster. area, and I think it became a bit of an very proud of her and how she is anthem amongst many. I actually Fontaines D.C.’s now at the top, because it is not There are two invited them to perform with me album Skinty Fia easy for a girl to get respected in artists that I at the South Bank Centre and they is great. I love the rap music. absolutely could were great – they wiped the floor. singer’s slightly not stop listening The three of them are all talented. surly, don’t-give-a- KEVIN MORBY to this year. I first But I really love L. Dot’s sound. She is fuck delivery, but encountered her own sound engineer, records there’s poetry and Texan tunesmith, talking backwards. [melodic North herself, does her own loops, she’s passion behind it London rapper] totally unique. Check out her rather than emptiness. They have a I am writing this on Coops’s music when he was a very mixtape: How We Are & Be. It’s a fantastic range, from really hard the morning of the young lad at school with my son. I very clever title – think about it! songs, such as the title track, to The release of the new have watched his career grow ever Couple Across The Way, which is Bill Callahan since. His new album, Lost Soul II, is CARL BARÂT beautiful and harmonious. They’re record. Though I simply electric. His way of riding the on a really interesting artistic path. am only one song rhythm is unique, and his stance on The Libertines’ sensible one (relatively). The first time I heard Working in, I can, with great certain issues through his lyrics Men’s Club’s album Fear Fear – a confidence, align with mine and my way of I’ve been incredibly great title – I literally danced around announce that this will inevitably thinking. He’s a great artist. busy, starting the kitchen all night, it’s got such be one of my favourite things from Secondly, I first heard of [grimester] businesses and energy. It’s such an interesting this year. I also really love the L. Dot when she performed with a moving house, so record, very raw even though it’s album’s title, ytilaeR. I like that it trio called F2D. They did a fantastic it’s really hard to very electronic, with a feeling of forces you to refer to the album as get into a whole claustrophobia, like it was born out “Reality Spelled Backwards” when album. I’m of desperation. I really like the tunes describing it to someone else. ashamed to say too and the way the singer puts his Another great discovery has been two of my choices come via voice in interesting places against Nick Cave’s new book Faith, Hope Spotify’s algorithm. Jake the chords. And Carnage. It’s been my bible as Thackray’s Lah-Di-Dah is a love I only heard Dry Cleaning’s first of late. I’ve chosen not to read it song about someone getting album this year. It’s really good but front to back but instead whenever I married and has a charming, tragic the single Scratchcard Lanyard is pick it up I choose a random chapter Englishness, a Tony Hancock sitcom magical. It’s a fascinating and dive in. Cave and co-writer Seán pessimism about it, like embracing combination of gnarly band and O’Hagan discuss everything from, her mother’s scabby cat and how the singer’s spoken word. She walks well, faith to hope to carnage, and her dad won the war. GMF by John a really tricky line between being I’m already dreading the moment Grant [from Pale Green Ghosts, 2013] profound and funny. “Tap dad it comes to an end. is an excellent piece of songwriting. on the head, all right you old loudmouth, thanks very much for the Twix” – completely bonkers and absolutely brilliant. OUMOU SANGARÉ All hail the Queen of Mali. I am a big fan of [Nigerian-American R&B singer] Davido, and the track Stand Strong was his return in 2022. His talent is still shining. This song means a lot to me because he sings about not taking notice of haters and their jealousy – a situation that many people have to face. I also loved Aya Nakamura’s song Méchante. Aya is the rising star of Afro-European urban music and one of the most successful female singers in Europe. She’s French but from a Malian family. She wrote a song about me a few years ago, 60 MOJO
Often, lyrically, you want to give given how long Mal’s been doing started releasing music at the me what a great band they were. people a puzzle, and it’s almost this, and how minimal it is. He’s still beginning of the millennium, vulgar to expose what you’re saying, pushing the boat out, still very he died in 2016. Imagine if Chet There’s John Fogerty’s voice and but GMF does the complete much in his own lane – very Baker was a guitarist. It’s romantic opposite with a clarity that’s like a admirable. I also like the Marina and dreamy with a syrupy the songs are extraordinary in their stand-up comedian, saying what Allen album, Centrifics, especially atmosphere, kinda like Marc you shouldn’t. A surprise bonus is the song Superreality. She’s a Ribot with a touch of Link Wray. simplicity. They were a rock’n’roll that the voice that props up the Californian singer-songwriter and It immediately transported me, song perfectly is Sinead O’Connor. just writes really beautiful songs, like the best stuff does. band, not a rock band, and there’s a I also love Jamie T’s The Old Style classic songs. And I think Gabe Raiders [from this year’s The Theory Gurnsey’s record Diablo – another JACOB LUSK difference. I really loved Gwenno’s Of Whatever]. His lyrical style is electronic record, on Errol Alkan’s incredibly unique, the way he places Phantasy label – is really boss. The gospel according to Gabriels’ new album [Tresor], this is her best so far. the emphasis on words you usually Phantasy are putting out some soul superstar. wouldn’t, and how he settles into a really good stuff at the minute. It’s Seeing Celeste live, that was She sings in Cornish and Welsh, groove and the melody settles into a good label, run by artists, which definitely one of the best things I’ve the beat. He writes in a puzzle, with I think is really important. Oh, and I seen all year. We opened for her in so I’ve no idea what the lyrics are images far and wide so you can went to see Moonage Daydream, the UK and I was gobsmacked by choose your own adventure, which I thought was brilliant, and her voice… woah! The way she about, but the sound of the words is and the chorus can be sung as a it sent me back to Bowie’s last sings, it’s not like anyone I’ve heard triumphant battle cry or a lament. album, Blackstar. A pretty before, to be honest. And Harry so beautiful and evocative. Kathryn incredible record, and to make Styles’ Matilda touched my heart. JAMES SMITH that on your deathbed… I was like, Oh my God, this can be Williams too: she’s released many me, I can start a family who will Yard Act’s post-Brexit boulevardier. MAKAYA McCRAVEN always show me love, doing my records but Night Drives is one of Wu-Lu’s album own thing. It blew my socks off. And Loggerhead is Give the drummer some. I saw this girl Emma-Jean Thackray her best; it’s more concise and a tapestry of perform. She is wild, from another influences, like a That new band, planet – she’s got soul and jazz and complete. Is nepotism acceptable? mixtape. There’s The Smile, with electro at the same time, her band metal, drum’n’bass, Tom Skinner and was killer. It was nuts! Steve Pilgrim has drummed for rap, drone, and Thom Yorke from neo-classical Radiohead – that PAUL WELLER me since about 2009, and I was really exciting. arrangements. It goes from spoken It’s a real cool, The Guvnor’s annual report. produced his latest album Beautiful word to pure death metal growl, interesting kind of After getting the which sounds weird but it feels project with a unique cast. It’s great album, I’ve just Blue. It’s just gorgeous, in that folk pure, like he’s done it for himself to see these kinds of pop stars with seen the film of and not played any kind of game. success working with all kinds of Creedence singer-songwriter tradition. And my I was a bit late to Richard Dawson creative, progressive musicians, Clearwater & Circle’s album Henki. The way bringing that into their fold. You see Revival At The daughter Leah’s album Freedom is he draws out melodies from the that all across from Kendrick Lamar Royal Albert Hall, funniest sentences is so hypnotic. to Lady Gaga. It makes for broader which reminded fucking great. She’s been chipping He sounds medieval whilst singing new sounds traversing genres. about vape shops! I really enjoyed The Black Star record No Fear Of Gabriels’ Jacob Lusk away for years, but she’s really got If My Wife New I’d Be Dead by CMAT. Time was also really exciting. I’m a got deep into Celeste, She’s an Irish country singer, but major [Black Star producer] Madlib Harry Styles and her writing together: it’s proper it’s pop too, with contemporary fan, and a major hip-hop fan who Emma-Jean Thackray. lyrical references. The songs are came up in the ’90s with Mos Def melodic tunes and good words. super-high calibre but she doesn’t and Talib Kweli. What’s great about take herself too seriously, which is it? Dope beats and great MCing! I really believe in it. M refreshing to hear in that genre. Finally, I wanted to give a shout I’m also really excited about the out to the young saxophonist on anniversary reissue of Revolver by Blue Note records, Immanuel this band called The Beatles, Wilkins. He’s one of the most after hearing the early, alternative exciting young jazz artists of today. version of Tomorrow Never Knows, His most recent album is The the way Ringo’s drums shape 7th Hand. There’s lots of pretty the sound, taking the swing out compositions, and he’s a dynamic and played dead straight. powerhouse musician through and Absolutely fascinating. through. Beautiful and emotive. SYD MINSKY- KAREN O SARGEANT Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ positive affirmations. Working Men’s Club’s poet with an 808. I really like the new The Linda Lindas record by [former twice supported us Cabaret Voltaire this year, and their frontman] Stephen charisma and Mallinder, Tick Tick freshness was like Tick. It sounds so punk rock and contemporary, rock’n’roll through which is amazing a prism, which made me feel like I was a teenager again. Oh!, on their album Growing Up, is like a mix of Bikini Kill and Missing Persons. It’s life-affirming watching these young Asian- American women kick so much ass. Another favourite is My Horror, from Santigold’s new album Spirituals. The music has a floaty, positive vibe, but the lyric sounds like the trauma of living in a pandemic, a total counterpoint. I discovered Charlie Megira’s album Tomorrow’s Gone this year. He was an enigma, an Israeli transplanted to Berlin who
Rebel ink: Bob Dylan in his Greenwich Village apartment, March 13, 1964, shortly after the release of The Times They Are A-Changin’; (inset) mercyful Mose Allison.
Ted Russell/ Polaris/ Eyevine, Getty BOB’S BNOEOWK! OEEmHvXfiitecCMtrirLnyooUgbdsSoecaIdorVnnypEdeS!Cr:Iorun“ynnTitgnnhh,i’iinBssMgoese,bxorbtncDurgyyatclcuiashtnneafdrrpleoliunramtghbsTioasMhunmeotdshPueeyhsxPpiAihtcloeoolatlcrsoilmsrgoirospainnpyhh’a.ysbtyinTegd…Ru”ssell MOJO 63
The greatest show on Earth: glimpses from behind the curtain in images from Bob Dylan's The Philosophy Of Modern Song. “YOU’RE ON THE SPINE-TINGLING ROLLER COASTER OVER THERE AT THE AMUSEMENT PARK, WHILE ALL OF MANKIND CRIES MERCY.” BOB DYLAN SONG: Everybody N THIS SONG YOU’RE HEMMED IN, GOING Cryin’ Mercy favours, take people at their word, and you want to be ARTIST: Mose Allison round and round the loop, doing full turns – emp- FROM: I’ve Been treated the same. Even if you goof up, you’re not going ty-headed, blind to where you’re going and stum- Doin’ Some Thinkin’ to be one of those miserable rascals with his knees in the bling through the dark. You’re loaded to the rafters, (Atlantic, 1968) dust begging for mercy. You’re not a crybaby. You have smacking, and slapping at things, WRITTEN BY: buttoned down, no holds barred, Mose Allison no idea what the proper definition of the word is anyway. Whatever is going to happen, is going to going non-stop in a direct line, happen, so let’s just get on with it. and everybody’s patting you on This song is all about hypocrisy. Hitting and the butt. running, butchering and exterminating, taking You’re on the spine-tingling the grand prize and finishing in front. Then be- roller coaster over there at the ing big hearted, burying the hatchet, apologis- amusement park. Thumbing a ing, kissing and making up. It’s about the hustle. ride on the Ferris wheel, shooting You’re high principled, chivalrous and Mr. Re- ducks and winning kewpie dolls, spectable, Mr. Don Juan, but you don’t have to while all of mankind cries mercy pretend with me. You’re the spoofer, the playac- – every race, creed, and colour – tor, the two-faced fraud – the stool pigeon, the rich and poor, from all quarters, scandalmonger – the prowler and the rat – the hu- from all over creation. man trafficker and the car jacker. Take your pick Funny thing you’re detached and be selective and be honest about it. You’re from it all, scoffing at everything you the hardliner for fair play and a square deal, just see, giving no credit, to whatever you as long as you’ve got your irons in the fire and hear. You’re being diplomatic, ask no enough on your plate. Muckraking, chaos and bedlam, you’re a party to it all. Strangely enough, you find the lack of justice intolerable and the lack of mercy even more so. It sets you off, and you wonder if it’s even possible in this world. Even handed justice, tempered with the milk of human kindness, the divine light of mercy, the kind of mercy that signals a new beginning. You like to praise it and put it on a pedestal, almost worship it, but it has no place in your life as long as you’re employed. Whatever Getty (6), Ted Russell/ Polaris/ Eyevine your racket, your shit job, whatever your routine task is, you never had it so good, so let’s leave justice and mercy to the gods of heaven. Better to go to the local movie theatre, be a movie goer, sit in the opera – some wacky farce, some silly bull-crap stage show, or better yet stare at a crack moving down the wall. Think about kindness and benevolence, giving people a second chance. Ball of confusion: Mose This song says let’s be just and honourable to the point Allison (top) and (left) The of our natural ability. Temptations, cooking up a “frenzied jumble”. 64 MOJO
SERIES OF DREAMS 66 songs, from Jimmy Reed to Judy Garland, evoked, explored, and eviscerated. Buckle up, says ANDREW MALE, for a strange and magical ride. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN SONG ★★★★★ By Bob Dylan SIMON & SCHUSTER £35 This book is weird. Nothing in the bold, red and white typeface or the smiling faces of Little Richard, Alis Lesley and Eddie Cochran on the cover can prepare you for how deranged a journey into songs and songcraft Dylan has mapped out. It might look like a benign Christmas present for dad, and is elite. It’s like finding out a friendly Join the dots: Dylan clearly being marketed neighbourhood house is haunted. at work, 161 West 4th as one, promising Street, New York, 1964. The book is at its best when “extraordinary insights Dylan is reviving old exhausted into the nature of friends like Ricky Nelson’s Poor popular music…” But, Little Fool or locating secret wisdom in reality, Dylan has Let’s not make empty gestures, or expect inside some dusty, ancient text, created a text that, at channelling Harry Smith and Jack people to let up on us, let’s not expect to be its high-flying best, has Parsons, reading old pop songs as the haunted quality of bewitched palimpsests where the pardoned or forgiven. Mercy may be a trap a powerful grimoire, real meaning is just below the one for fools. a book of magic spells you see, improperly erased. An intense and serious take on hypocrisy in and conjurations that Take his thoughts on Marty allows you to enter the real world by the great Southern gentle- Robbins’ El Paso, where “the song inside the old, dark man, blues/jazz giant Mose Allison. Like peek- hardly says anything heart of ancient ing through a knotholed fence and seeing the you understand, but forgotten songs world for what it is. Have Mercy Baby, Mercy and rediscover JHCOE“FHHRODENORYTANFOLPTIAPEHMENORETALAUBTKYYSOEGELENAKOASEMERCFE’YIASPT.S”SE if you throw in the their mystical, signs, symbols, Mercy Me, and Sisters Of Mercy. The word spiritual and shapes, power. it hardly says mercy comes from the same Latin root that anything Best to you don’t the word mercantile or merchant comes from. read it like understand.” Borges’s Under Dylan’s It’s hard to see the connection, but Mose does. Book Of guidance this That’s why he slips in “just as long as it’s busi- Sand: open it gently meandering ness first.” Have mercy, you say to the judge. Temper it with mercy. Give a cheer and get at random and gunfighter ballad your souvenir. Life is a sideshow. alight on a song or dissolves to reveal, “Moloch, Mose sings this song in his usual style. Laid- story previously the cat’s eye pyramid… Jews of the back, half asleep. Like you don’t want to spend any unfamiliar to you. Holocaust, Christ in the temple, the Your reviewer did blood of Aztecs up on the altar. This this and discovered song kicks you down, and before energy. It’s too hot and humid. It’s sung in a lazy The Whiffenpoof you can get up, it hits you again. This way, disguising the important intent. Mercy is a Song, the signature is the stuff to live for.” word that has almost been exempted from com- song of venerable It truly is. It’s not all blood of the mon speech. Tough guys show no mercy. A song Yale University a Aztecs, however. Sometimes, it’s that goes beyond social commentary, it’s a facet of cappella group, even more bizarre. In Chapter 25 human nature that we don’t really want to know. The Whiffenpoofs, Dylan uses the title (and little more) written by Meade of Johnnie Taylor’s 1973 soul-blues Well you don’t have to go to off-Broadway to see Minnigerode Cheaper To Keep Her to make a five- and George S. something plain absurd, just open up your eyes page case for the societal benefits Pomeroy in 1909 and walk down the street. Yes, indeed. A lot of jazz of polygamy. Occasionally, you’ll and released as get unlucky and alight on an entry chords in this song – augmented thirds and a single in 1947 fifths, lots of passing chords that Mose can’t that reads like Dylan’s last-minute by Bing Crosby. college essay. His piece on The Listen to the Bing do without. Listen to the way Mose sings his Platters’ heavenly My Prayer is little version’s dreamy vowels, and you’ll see how it’s connected. more than a trio of Wikipedia lists barbershop on “songs with prayer in the title”, doggerel, then read This song could easily be the skeleton of and “pop songs based on classical Dylan on it. Here, you the monster that is Ball Of Confusion. Each melodies and foreign melodies”. But of these songs offers a jaundiced view of discover the pop song this is Dylan. We’re used to it. It’s part as “grinning skull…” of his trickster identity, Dylan the the current state of the world – both when (Dylan might also conman alongside Dylan the genius. the songs were written and, sadly, now. But be thinking of Yale’s And actually, the conman is where the Tempts sang a frenzied jumble of not-so secret society, the genius – so when he tells you Skull And Bones), “a listening to Dave Macon’s 1924 words exploding from the centre of the fray, Cabalistic song with a single, Keep My Skillet Good And Mose is the bemused detached observer of coded message… an in- Greasy, transforms you into “The a few extremely carefully chosen words, re- crowd song not meant Dalai Lama, the Black Monk and the signed to our foolish foibles but unwilling to for the middle class to Thief of Baghdad… prowling and understand… a song shoplifting saddlebags full of barley let them pass without comment. M sung by dues-paying and cornbread, rosemary and ivy, members of the inner and sides of bacon in your pocket” The Philosophy Of Modern Song, by Bob Dylan, is circle.” Suddenly, you you don’t know whether it’s a grift out now, published by Simon & Schuster, priced £35 hardback. are part of Dylan’s own or a truth. But you want to believe. Hidden truths: inner circle. You can see. Either way, be warned. There is welcome to Dylan’s This song is no mere metamorphic magic in these pages. inner circle (from top) puffery but the cryptic Who cares if it’s occasionally packed Bing Crosby, Johnnie Taylor, Ricky Nelson. invocation of an obscure out with a little cardboard and corn.
Court in the act: Rick Credit in here Wakeman in an outtake from The Six Wives Of Henry VIII’s cover shoot at Madame Tussauds in London, 1973 (note the model of Richard Nixon in the upper left background). MOJO EYEWITNESS RICK WAKEMAN CROWNS PROG WITH THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII
Credit in here …and then followed up with grandiose treatments of Journey To The Centre Of The Earth and, on ice, the Arthurian legends. In amongst these glorious monuments to ’70s rock overload, the former Yes keyboardist navigated a sceptical music biz, warred with his mighty appetites and suffered a heart attack. “Rick had three great ideas, back-to-back,” say friends and collaborators. “I was never daft enough to think it would go on forever,” he replies. Interviews by MARTIN ASTON • Portrait by BRUCE RAE MOJO 67
More horses, more beer, more everything: Wakeman in gold cape, Rotterdam, 1974; (right) ready to ride for King Arthur on ice, May 1975; Rick in the studio, 1973. “I’D HAVE MADE KING ARTHUR ON ICE BIGGER.” Rick Wakeman ➣ together, you could tell he saw the Rick Wakeman: My dad was a great pianist. headline news. He bigger picture in his head. Getty (8), Shutterstock He said classical training will give you technique, was as much at but play in as many different styles as you can, so home on synth, CW: Each track sounded different in I did: dance bands, jazz, folk, blues, even country Hammond and sound, feel and tempo: a Hammond and western, to understand why people liked it. mellotron as jazz organist then a progressive rocker on church organ, harpsichord and grand piano. Catherine Of Aragon, then Anne Of Cleves was Chas Cronk: Dave Sims, who owned the Music really fast. But Rick had that classical understand- Bargain Centre in Ealing, told me about this great RW: There were no keyboard stands then. ing of dynamic, to leave spaces and silence. keyboard player. I saw Rick play the likes of To mount more than one, I had to buy chests Mustang Sally in a little dancehall, and in a posher of drawers and take the sides off. RW: By November 1972, all I had left to record band at the Top Rank ballroom, and he was was the Henry track, Defender Of The Faith, but astounding. I gave Rick his first session, for the Brian Lane: He was the first to play multiple the engineer said there’s no room left, we already soul singer Jimmy Thomas, produced by Tony keyboards, and the first to incorporate the had enough for two sides of vinyl. So the album Visconti [in 1966]. Rick had this arpeggio thing, Minimoog. It all started to build, and from then title had to be changed. I played it to A&M in even when he was playing a soul classic, which on he’d top the keyboard player polls in the London, and it went down like a lead balloon. The blew everyone away. music papers. best course of action was to get pissed; that way I didn’t care any more. At the end, one guy over RW: I told [Visconti’s boss] Denny Cordell, “Sorry, RW: Record companies started signing band from America said, “When are the vocals going I’m not Booker T.” But he said, “Don’t change, deals with options for individual members on?” “It’s an instrumental album,” I said. “Well, you’ll work non-stop playing like that,” and he around that time. I was touring with Yes [in late we’re fucked,” he said. I drank the other half of the was right. ’71] when [Strawbs label] A&M asked me to make bottle of Scotch. But [A&M co-founder] Jerry a record. I didn’t sing; I just had to find a concept Moss loved it, and another guy in London said, Ray Cooper: I was doing a session, and in walked for the record. Before one flight, I bought a book, “I like it too, it’s really different, if we can just get this gigantic Nordic-looking gentleman with The Private Life Of Henry VIII, and I was reading it to the right people…” long blond hair, a sheepskin top, a wonderful about Anne Boleyn when a couple of melodies smile, and immediate inquisitiveness and popped into my head. I wrote them down, and BL: I never discouraged him. Whatever decision eagerness to play. Rick had the technique of a the next day, reading about Catherine Howard, he’s made, bizarre though it may have been at concert pianist but could refer to Bach and it happened again. There was the album. the time, it turned up trumps. rock’n’roll. CW: The concept was perfect for Rick, with his RW: What really changed things was the Old Grey Dave Cousins: Strawbs needed a keyboard romantic inclinations – he’s had almost as many Whistle Test producer Mike Appleton, who asked player for a John Peel Top Gear session [broad- wives in the intervening years, though he is a me to play live [on October 24, 1972]. That cast September 7, 1969], and he ended up joining very courteous man, unlike Henry. It was perfect evening, the show was up against an Andy the band. He had very long and incredibly strong too for a virtuoso keyboard player, to show all Warhol film on BBC1, which Mary Whitehouse fingers that he hardly moved whilst playing, aspects of his musicianship. said was disgusting porn. The BBC eventually which gave him the most distinctive, fluid sound replaced it with something like Pansy-Growing In of any of the keyboard players around. Our first RW: I first recorded Catherine Of Aragon with my The Himalayas, so everyone switched over to headline concert in London got ecstatic reviews, Yes bandmates. Yes were incredibly busy and BBC2. I’m reliably told it was the most viewers and Rick appeared on Melody Maker’s front page whenever I had time off, I’d book a studio and the Whistle Test ever had, and the album took off. as ‘Tomorrow’s Superstar.’ Strawbs played Hull invite players who I thought would be ideal for I think it’s sold 14 million now. City Hall, supported by Yes, who watched us from a track [recording began in February ’72]. the wings. Next thing, Rick is bunging down bits BL: A&M jumped on board once it started for our new album and disappearing. Turns out CC: The session I did for Catherine Howard was happening. Rick outsold Yes in Europe and he was rehearsing with Yes. quite chaotic. It didn’t necessarily make a lot America – on his first solo tour there, he did three of sense at the time, with a breakdown in the nights at Madison Square Garden [the album Chris Welch: Rick joining Yes [in July ’71] was middle, and Dave Cousins playing this weird banjo part. But when Rick fitted the parts 68 MOJO
Why have one vindaloo when you can have two: Rick Wakeman says yes to progress, May 17, 1973; (rIght, from top) Six Wives’ inspiration, the LPs of Journey To The Centre Of The Earth and The Myths And Legends Of King Arthur And The Knights Of The Round Table. DRAMATIS PERSONAE ● Rick Wakeman (keyboards) ● Brian Lane El et quam nos autem (manager of Yes doluptat. Derume sit, ea and Wakeman) sinvel in corempo rporem alia aut qui diti ommolum nisqui aciendemquas errovidel iume a dicid mos est reached UK Number 7 in March 1973, and US chronic pneumonia, double pleurisy… ● Dave Cousins Arthur was peak Rick, and peak prog, Number 30 in June]. (Strawbs leader) and Rick probably thought it was time DC: I think Rick brings the stress on to move on to something different. RW: The way Yes worked was to pull ideas apart himself, making things grander and ● Chas Cronk until you ended up with your contribution. By bigger than anything that has ever (session player, RW: I was never daft enough to think 1973, I didn’t want this or that ripped up, so I kept been done. Journey… had an member of it would go on forever. But musical ideas for myself. I thought [double Yes album] enormous stress factor, and when he Wakeman’s band) genres find their place eventually, and Tales From Topographic Oceans had too much staged his next album [The Myths And there has been a big resurgence in padding, and the next demos weren’t where I Legends Of King Arthur And The Knights ● Chris Welch prog. I met a 16-year-old in Argentina, was heading, so I left. My plan was not just to mix Of The Round Table], he did it on ice [at (Melody Maker who asked me to sign something, and I orchestras and rock music, but make a rock band the Empire Pool Wembley from May journalist, Yes said, “Why do you like this old music?” part of the orchestra. 30-June 1, 1975]. It was a daft idea in biographer) He said, “I heard it for the first time last my opinion – prog rock at that point week, it’s not old for me.” BL: Rick wanted to record his Journey To The became almost a laughing stock. ● Ray Cooper Centre Of The Earth concept [based on Jules And it nearly bankrupted Rick. (percussionist) CC: I toured with Rick in the mid-’80s, Verne’s 1864 sci-fi novel] live at the Royal Festival which is when he stopped drinking. Hall with an orchestra and choir [on January Ken Scott: I put King Arthur on ice ● Ken Scott He told me, “I must stop or it’ll kill me.” 18,’74]. We did two shows the same day, the down to Rick’s sense of humour. (engineer) And he’s been teetotal since. first to rehearse for the second which we were recording. Sod’s law, the first was perfect, the BL: We must have been completely RC: In 2009, out of the blue, Rick rang. second had a few mistakes. But that’s what made drunk when we put that show “I’m doing Six Wives… live at Hampton it so exciting. Live albums weren’t flavour of the together, like having skaters on hobby Court, do you want to play?” On the month, so Rick was doing something innovative horses. The more bizarre we made it, night, Rick was in costume as Henry as well as risky. the more enjoyable it was. VIII. Each ‘wife’ came out in turn, in full regalia, and Rick would then escort DC: Rick is over the top. He had to outdrink RW: If I hadn’t done King Arthur on ice, them from the stage after their song. everyone, and if we ordered a curry, he’d order would we be talking about it now? not one vindaloo but two, and two rice. It I admit, I like grandiose, and people RW: I only wanted to play Hampton eventually hit him like a sledgehammer. want to be entertained. I’d have made Court when Six Wives… came out, but it bigger if I could – more skaters, got turned down – our request was RW: I came off-stage at Crystal Palace Bowl after dancers, acrobats, everything. tantamount to treason! In 2009, we playing Journey… [on June 27, ’74] and collapsed, finally got there. The cost spiralled out which turned out to be a heart attack. Nowadays, CW: At Wembley, I was sitting next to of control, but what an opportunity. they’d do a quadruple bypass and you’d be out Brian Lane. When Rick thanked the Bowie once told me, “Stand or fall by the next day, but I was in hospital for nine weeks. audience and said, “You’ll be glad to your own decisions.” He also said, “A&R The doctors told Brian I should retire, but I was in hear we’re doing the show again, and men don’t know a hatchet from a my mid-twenties, music was my life, so if I can’t going all the way to South America,” crochet.” Even if Six Wives… had died do this, what’s the point? Brian leapt to his feet and shouted, on its backside, I’d still be very proud “Oh no you’re not!” The expense would of it. M RC: I was shocked because I didn’t know Rick had have been frightening. It’s one reason got into such difficulties. But on the road, things behind punk rock, I think. Prog was Rick plays Six Wives… and King Arthur at can get out of hand, and the serious side of the moving British rock out of reach of the London Palladium on February 22, 2023, music industry can creep up on you, and it can be average guy. then a Classic Yes set and Journey… at the very hurtful to the soul as well as your health. same venue on February 23. His Grumpy BL: Rick had three great ideas, Christmas Stocking Tour begins in Croydon RW: I decided I wouldn’t have any more heart back-to-back. Most artists are lucky if on November 24. attacks after that! But when I’m ill, it’s serious – they have one. It’s possible that King MOJO 69
FUSING ART AND PUNK AND CLASSIC POP IN THEIR LOWER EAST SIDE CRUCIBLE, BLONDIE BECAME A POSTER ON THE WORLD’S BEDROOM WALL, UNIQUELY ICONIC. BUT AS THEIR REVELATORY 2022 BOX SET REVEALED, THEY WERE A BAND FOR ALL SEASONS, WITH STRENGTHS THEIR FAME OBSCURED AND, PERHAPS, ULTIMATELY UNDERMINED. “WE WERE OUR OWN WORST ENEMY ONCE WE GOT SUCCESS,” THEY TELL TOM DOYLE. PORTRAIT BY MICK ROCK. EST HOLLYWOOD, 1977. BACKSTAGEMick Rock Tuned in, turned on, at the Whisky A Go Go on Sunset Strip, dressed up: Blondie in there was a knock on Blondie’s dressing room 1978 (clockwise from door. Outside stood two bodyguards flanking a left) Clem Burke, Jimmy long-haired and bearded Phil Spector. The fa- Destri, Debbie Harry, bled producer was dressed in black, wearing Gra- Nigel Harrison, Frank dient Aviator shades and a cape, a crucifix dangling Infante, Chris Stein. from his neck, and two badges pinned to the lapel of his suit jacket. One bore his sonic motto, “Back To Mono”. The other, “In The Flesh”, the title of the New York band’s distinctly Spector-esque second single, released the previous year. “He practically locked us in the dressing room and sort of lectured us at length,” remembers Blondie’s then-bassist Gary Lachman (AKA Valentine). “I guess it was already common knowledge that he was kind of out of his mind,” notes drummer Clem Burke. “He was fucking nuts,” flatly states guitarist Chris Stein, who recalls that after Spector tried to entice his partner, the group’s luminous singer Debbie Harry, into his limousine, the band warily accepted the unhinged producer’s invitation to follow him up to his walled-off Beverly Hills mansion. “He answered the door to his house with a [Colt] .45 in one hand and a bottle of Manischewitz wine in the other hand,” Stein remembers. “The whole time he spoke in a WC Fields voice.” Inside, Spector blasted out rough mixes from the album he was working on, Leonard Cohen’s Death Of A Ladies’ Man, before coaxing Harry to sit alongside him at the piano and sing Be My Baby and other Ronettes hits. At one point, he pointed his gun into her thigh-length leather boot and exclaimed “Bang, bang!” “It was a little intimidating being there,” says Harry, with no little understate- ment. There was talk that night of Spector perhaps producing the next Blondie album. But these weird scenes rightly set off alarm bells. “We’re really lucky we avoided Phil, is all I can say,” concludes Stein, drily. While superficially a band of scrappy Lower East Side proto-punks, Blondie had already tapped into their ’60s girl-group influences. Debut single X Offender, released in June 1976, may have been a lurid street tale of a hooker falling for the cop who arrests her, but it opened with a Shangri-Las-echoing spoken-word introduction from Debbie Harry (“I saw you standing on the corner/You looked so big and fine”), before its propulsive pop thrills rushed in. Elsewhere, Blondie made their love of the Brill Building songwriting tradition explicit on their debut by featuring, on In The Flesh, the cooing backing vocals of Ellie Greenwich, co- writer (with Jeff Barry and George ‘Shadow’ Morton) of Leader Of The Pack. ➢ 70 MOJO
Leaders of the pack: (clockwise from far left) Phil Spector, mooted Blondie producer, 1978; Ellie Greenwich, 1964; The Shangri-Las, key component of the Blondie “common aesthetic”; Debbie Harry in 1963; My Boyfriend’s Back hit- makers The Angels; Chris Stein at Max’s Kansas City, New York, with Blondie producer Richard Gottehrer (left ) and singer Robert Gordon, 1977. ➣ drummer in ’75, though performed only one Meanwhile, the producer gig at CBGB before bassist Fred Smith quit to Alamy, Getty (4), Tony Korody/Polaris/eyevine of their debut long-player was join Television. Richard Gottehrer, writer of 1963 hit My Boyfriend’s Back Straight away, Blondie were in flux. for The Angels – a song Harry Debbie Harry credits Burke’s cheerleading had loved as a teenager. The loca- enthusiasm as the force that convinced her tion for these first album sessions not to give up on the group. “He really want- was half a world away from the scuzzy ed to get out of New Jersey,” she quips. CBGB habitat where the group had honed their repertoire. Plaza “He was calling and saying, ‘Let’s go, let’s Sound Studios, in midtown Man- go,’” Stein remembers. hattan, sat on the top floor above Radio City Music Hall and was a “I tried to get people motivated,” high-end facility. The members says the drummer today, speaking to of Blondie were tickled to find MOJO in his LA studio. “I thought themselves sharing the elevator there was definitely something there, with dancers from Radio City’s high- with the songs, and of course, Deb- kicking star attraction, the Rockettes. It bie’s charisma and talent was obvi- was perhaps the first indication that a band ous to me. We all had a common aes- that had formed on the dirty, dangerous streets of lower Manhat- thetic, whether it be the New York tan were destined for a far brighter and starrier future. Dolls, or the Velvet Underground, or the Shangri-Las. So we had a com- “It was fun just to travel uptown,” reckons Clem Burke. monality amongst our musical influ- “Because we never went above 14th Street prior to that.” ences, which was really not the norm at the time.” B LONDIE WERE VERY MUCH A DOWNTOWN NEW “We tried to sort of illuminate all the different possibilities,” says York band. In their loft at 266 Bowery, lived in by Debbie Harry. “It wasn’t like it was one person’s idea of what a band should Harry and Chris Stein, along with a lodging Gary Lachman, sound like. It was really a group effort.” they’d developed their idiosyncratic sound in intensive rehearsals Among the earliest studio recordings featured in 2022’s vast that threw together the loose three-chord sashay of the New York Blondie box set, Against The Odds 1974-1982, are five songs Dolls with ’60s R&B and bubblegum pop. It wasn’t, however, the committed to eight-track tape in a basement in Queens during the most salubrious of settings. baking New York summer of 1975. These reveal the range of their inspirations and aspirations: a funky early run at Heart Of Glass “It was three floors above a liquor store and a restaurant supply (written in ’74 as The Disco Song and retitled Once I Had A Love), place,” recalls Lachman, a London resident since 1996. “Someone a confident stab at the Shangri-Las’ Out In The Streets, and Har- had ingeniously tapped into their sources of electricity, so we didn’t ry’s mission statement Platinum Blonde (“I wanna be a platinum have an electricity bill. Debbie’s cats peed everywhere, so it smelled blonde/Just like all the sexy stars”). The latter song was, however, like cat piss, and we all had this kind of kitschy magic stuff… upside dumped by the band. down crucifixes, and pentagrams.” “Debbie, would you say that maybe it was a little obvious?” Stein asks Harry; the pair are connected to MOJO via Zoom, Stein Harry and Stein had met in 1973 when they were in raucous at his place in upstate New York, Harry in New Jersey. “Kind of glam rock/cabaret band The Stilettoes, before peeling off to form an overstatement?” their own group, Angel And The Snake, which morphed into “Fuck off!” the singer snaps back with a laugh. Blondie. Bayonne, New Jersey-born Clem Burke had joined as 72 MOJO
“PHIL SPECTOR ANSWERED THE DOOR WITH A .45 IN ONE HAND AND A BOTTLE OF WINE IN THE OTHER.” CHRIS STEIN Getty, Bob Gruen That presence rare: (above) intentions was always to have people danc- Debbie Harry on-stage at ing. Up and on their feet, instead of sitting CBGB, New York, September there being, y’know, erudite or whatever. 1977; (right) the Blondie line- That added to the excitement for us.” up on 1977’s debut album (from left) Burke, Destri, But, back in New York at Plaza Sound Stein, Harry, Gary Valentine, in the summer of ’77, making their sec- at the Bel Air Sand Hotel, ond album, Plastic Letters, the mood within LA; (insets) Dr. Feelgood’s the band turned darker. Gary Lachman Malpractice, a fave chez had expressed a desire to break off from Harry/Stein; Plastic Letters Blondie and form his own band following LP; (I’m Always Touched By the sessions. In the end, the management Your) Presence, Dear 45. pushed him out before he’d played a note. “I was young, and I was headstrong,” Lach- In Gary Lachman’s mind, Blondie’s career really man says. “I got a call from Peter Leeds, who was took off with their appearance on August 1, 1975, at the manager at the time, telling me my services the CBGB Rock Festival, where they played in be- were no longer required.” Even so, Clem Burke tween Talking Heads and headliners the Ramones. pushed the Lachman-less Blondie to record the “I guess it was, ‘Here we are… the scene,’” says the Lachman-penned (I’m Always Touched By Your) bassist. With the addition of keyboard player Jimmy Presence, Dear, a brilliant, chiming pop song Destri, the line-up was complete. “We got Jimmy,” with a bizarre topic: telepathy. Lachman says, “and that’s when that more or less “It was about these psychic experiences I was conscious ’60s retro sound came together with the having with my girlfriend at the time,” explains Farfisa [organ].” the bassist. “We were having shared dreams and, when I was on tour, we would each know when the other one Further confirmation that Blondie were on the wanted to phone.” right track came when Clem Burke returned from Chris Stein remembers the recording of Plastic Letters – the first a trip to London in the winter of ’75 with a copy of album to feature second guitarist Frank Infante, also doubling on Dr. Feelgood’s second album, Malpractice. It soundtracked a wel- bass – as being more fraught than its predecessor. “It was a little come home party thrown in his honour in the Blondie loft. more angsty. There was always a lot of tension in the band and crazy bullshit going on… egos flying about. I certainly was not the least “Everyone who was anyone was there,” Lachman recalls. “The of it. Everybody was egomaniacal about their roles. But I always Ramones and the Heartbreakers. The Dr. Feelgood album was a big thought the tension made for a good result.” hit, being just stripped-down pub rock. This was before punk, the “Yeah,” Harry adds. “Chris has always liked chaos.” Sex Pistols or anything.” A new bassist for Blondie was found in Los Angeles. British-born Nigel Harrison was living in California and playing in The Doors’ “I related to what was going on in London,” says Burke. keyboardist Ray Manzarek’s short-lived band Nite City when he “Especially with the Feelgoods, who kind of dressed like Blondie. was tipped off that the group were looking for a sixth member. After Y’know, Wilko [Johnson] in the black suit and all that.” sneaking a cassette recorder down the front of his trousers when he went to see the band perform at the Whisky A Go Go, he went B LONDIE’S FIRST TRIP TO THE UK SAW THEM home and learned Infante’s parts note-for-note. landing in London in the spring of 1977 to tour their debut album. Even at their first show, at the Village Bowl in “They didn’t know I’d taped the show,” chuckles Harrison, ➢ Bournemouth on May 20, it was immediately clear to the band that British punk was a far more physical affair than its more cerebral New York counterpart. Harry, for one, was delighted to see the audience break out in a riot of pogoing. “There was more of a tribal feel,” she says. “One of our early MOJO 73
Heaven every time: Blondie make their Top Of The Pops debut on February 22, 1978, performing Denis, originally a 1963 hit – as Denise – for Randy & The Rainbows (pictured right). ➣ everything into shape,” says the guitarist. “He was on the phone from Italy. “So I said, ‘Why like the director of the movie.” don’t you just do the first few songs of the Australian-born Chapman, the co-writer (with Nicky set from last night?’ The first song was X Of- Chinn) of a raft of glam pop hits for The Sweet (Ball- fender. Debbie gave me a wink. I think they room Blitz), Mud (Tiger Feet) and Suzi Quatro (Devil were stressed out, like, ‘How are we going Gate Drive) had relocated from the UK to America and to find someone?’ That’s how I got the job.” was seeking new musical adventures, leading him to Blondie. “He seized the opportunity,” says Burke, “and A mere four months later, Harrison was saw the potential to take the band further.” back in his homeland, performing with Chapman flew to New York in the summer of ’78 Blondie for millions of viewers on Top Of to begin working with Blondie at The Record Plant on the album The Pops. Denis, their gender-flipped they would call Parallel Lines. Along with bringing his pop nous, he cover of US doo-wop band Randy & The Rainbows’ 1963 single proved himself to be a freewheeling individual who liked to party Denise, was to be their first UK hit, reaching Number 2. It was a just as much as the band. star-making performance for Debbie Harry in particular: a post- “We were crazy in those days,” relates Chapman from his punk Marilyn Monroe in a red shirt-cum-mini dress, gazing into current home in London. “There was a lot of drinking, a lot of the lens with cool insouciance. drugs, and I was indulging in all those things to excess. That was the ’70s (laughs). But they had all the right ingredients for the songs. It “Growing up in England,” Harrison says, “I knew how powerful was tough going at first because they were a bit all over the place and Top Of The Pops was. I said to Debbie, ‘Everything’s gonna change had never really had any discipline. So, it was quite a bumpy start.” from now on.’ The song was already brewing on the radio. But once Chapman pushed Blondie hard, employing a Kubrickian meth- we did Top Of The Pops, and seeing how stunning she was, there od of forcing them to do take after take until he felt they’d achieved was no turning back.” perfection. This approach irked Nigel Harrison in particular, his fuse blowing when recording the punky, if tricksily chordy 11:59. C HRIS STEIN CAN’T DECIDE WHETHER BLONDIE’S next (and pivotal) producer, Mike Chapman, was their George Martin, or their Stanley Kubrick. “He really guided Home truths: Harry and Stein in their loft at 266 Bowery, New York City, 1977, and (right) on NYC public access show TV Party, February 1979, with fellow guest Robert Fripp (third left). 74 MOJO
Rip it to shreds: Debbie “BLONDIE NEVER KNEW HOW TO NEGOTIATE. in the vocal booth at the THESE ARE NOT PEOPLE WHO NEGOTIATE… Record Plant, New York, THEY JUST YELL AND SCREAM.” MIKE CHAPMAN 1978, during the Parallel Lines sessions. One way or another: recording Parallel Lines, 1978 (from left) Stein, (part-hidden) Burke, pro- ducer Mike Chapman, Harrison, Harry, Infante, Blondie manager Peter Leeds; (insets below) the finished LP; disco touchstone I Feel Love; Heart Of Glass 45; studio visitor Ronnie Spector. “Suddenly, we’re on take 18, almost as an afterthought. Harry had expressed BBC Photosales, Bob Gruen, Alamy, Getty (4) and I go, ‘For fuck’s sake, to Chapman her love for Donna Summer’s Mike! How many times do Giorgio Moroder-produced electronic disco you want us to do it?’ So there wonder, I Feel Love. was a showdown. After take “I said, ‘OK, well, then let’s take a bit number 22, I was like, ‘Fuck of that approach,’” Chapman remembers. it, this is insane.’” “Blondie were always, apart from a fight or two, up for experimental sessions. But that “It almost came to blows,” was the early days of trying to sync machines Chapman laughs. “He’d had with people.” enough of me telling him what to play. He said, ‘I’m gonna do The main difficulty came when it my way.’ And after about an hour of doing it his way, we did Chapman realised that the sequencer it our way. And it worked.” driving the circular synth pulse of Heart Of Glass kept slipping out of time, As much as Parallel Lines was to prove a gold standard pop requiring many punch-ins on the master album, it was also an adventure in sound. The brooding Fade tape, as Clem Burke thumped away at Away And Radiate, as murkily atmospheric as any Berlin-era the four-on-the-floor bass drum part to Bowie track, featured a guesting Robert Fripp in a buzzing keep time. “I wasn’t a big champion of guitar cameo. “He was not only an outstanding musician,” Heart Of Glass,” Burke admits. says Harry, “but he was just a gent.” “Clem had to go in there and just put the bass drum on, like, boom boom boom The recording of Fade Away And Radiate also coincid- boom,” Harrison recalls. “I was sitting ed with a surprise visit to the Record Plant by Ronnie there smoking a cigarette and thinking, Spector, one of Debbie Harry’s formative heroes. “Debbie was out at the mike,” Chapman recalls. ‘He’s hating it.’ He was like, ‘What the fuck are we doing?’ It “She said to me (whispers through gritted teeth), ‘I was like a Meccano set, this whole assembly thing. But I don’t can’t sing in front of Ronnie Spector. I can’t do it.’ I said, ‘You can do it, honey. Get out there think anyone, including Mike, had any idea it was going to and show her your real stuff.’” be the hit it was.” Although buried deep on side two of Parallel Lines, “Debbie was doing the a cappella thing when released as a single in January 1979 Heart [at the start of] Fade Away And Radiate,” Of Glass became Blondie’s international break- says Harrison. “She could see Ronnie through smash. “Chapman flew to Italy just Spector’s silhouette through the studio to tell us that Heart Of Glass had gone to glass… which is pretty heavy, really.” Number 1 in the States,” Stein remembers. “It was very moving, y’know.” “She had to take a couple of deep “They were part of my life,” the producer breaths,” Chapman adds, “but she says of this grand gesture. “I was so into the sang the song beautifully. Ronnie was project that nothing was too much trouble.” sitting there, going, ‘Oh my God, what a Thanks to the success of Parallel Lines, and voice she’s got.’” the intensive touring it entailed, by the time Blondie re-entered the studio to make their next B UT THE GREATEST BREAKTHROUGH for Chapman and Blondie in their research and album, 1979’s Eat To The Beat, the band were ➢ development department was Heart Of Glass, the demo of which Stein had played to the producer MOJO 75
Radiate, not fade away: the Parallel Lines line-up on the roof of the Record Plant at 321 West 44th St, New York, 1978 (from left) Burke, Stein, Harry, Destri, Infante, Harrison. “ONE OF OUR EARLY INTENTIONS WAS ALWAYS TO HAVE PEOPLE DANCING. UP AND ON THEIR FEET.” DEBBIE HARRY In dreams: Harry and Stein recording Eat To The Beat, Mediasound Studio, New York, May 1979; (left) Heart Of Glass goes gold in France, April ’79; (below left) Debbie goes beat crazy; (insets) LP and single sleeves. 76 MOJO
brimming with confidence and very much on top of their game.➣ Kung fu girl: Debbie So much so that Mike Chapman approached producing the record throws shapes on- in a very different way. Out went endless takes, in came spontaneity. stage, Los Angeles, 1977; (inset, below) the For instance, Clem Burke’s thunderous, Keith Moon-like 2022 box set Against drumming on Dreaming was recorded in one take. “I think Mike The Odds 1974-1982. used reverse psychology on me,” says Burke. “We were just running through the song and that’s why I was playing so over-the-top on it. ATTACK OF THE Then, after the take, Mike said that was it. It was quite surprising GIANT BOX SET because it was the antithesis of his approach on Parallel Lines.” BEHIND THE ARCHIVE-DIVING FEAT OF 2022 “I just had the [tape] machine running all the time,” says WITH CHRIS STEIN AND STEVE ROSENTHAL. Chapman. “I captured everything I could.” DOWN THE YEARS, Chris Stein has on some 4-track home recordings Eat To The Beat spotlit Blondie as a rock band, while still yielding sterling hits in the form of Harry and Stein’s Dreaming, the Ennio been the one Blondie member who made in Stein and Harry’s Morricone-goes-disco vibes of Atomic and the soaring, Springs- teen-esque Union City Blue which (like One Way Or Another on archived the band’s master and apartment between 1978-9. “They Parallel Lines) was a Debbie Harry/Nigel Harrison co-write. Both Union City Blue and Atomic (Harry/Destri) highlighted how demo tapes – although not always were really problematic,” he says of different members, or groupings of members, brought different flavours to the band’s biggest songs. successfully. When Steve Rosenthal these rarities, which include an early “I would have a cassette of, like, four or five ideas, and give it to of New York’s Magic Shop Archive sketch of Sunday Girl and a cover Mike,” says Harrison. “He would listen to everything and then go, ‘OK, those first two,’ and give them to Debbie. It wasn’t like anyone & Restoration Studios was brought of Johnny Cash’s Ring Of Fire. “They was sitting around the campfire writing songs. But I knew once we fired up Union City Blue, it felt good.” in to help curate the 36 previously were at the wrong speed. They were Come the end of 1979, with Dreaming sitting at Number 2 in unreleased tracks featured kind of distorted. So, it was a the UK chart, the band stumbled into full-blown Blondiemania. Appearing for a record signing at the Our Price store in Kensington, on Against The Odds 1974- ”IT WAS really challenging thing they were mobbed. 1982, Stein warned him to do.” REALLY A “The cops were there, and they had to shut the street down,” that some of the tapes Rosenthal, Stein marvels. “A year or so earlier, we had gone to Our Price for the same autograph signing thing and hundreds of people showed up. had literally been SMORGASBORD meanwhile, singles The second time we did it, it was thousands.” underwater. OF DIFFERENT out an outtake “We weren’t the Stones or The Beatles, who probably had that happen every single time they appeared in public,” Harry points “It was force FORMATS – version of Detroit out. “So, for us, it was really a moment.” majeure,” the TAPES, 442 from the Plastic “It was just insanity,” says Harrison. “I was stuck in this crowd. guitarist tells CASSETTES, Letters sessions It was like every fantasy of being a pop star.” MOJO. “When I was as being sonically in Manhattan, the CDS.” STEVE illustrative of the “It was all going according to plan as far as I was concerned,” fucking space flooded. Blondie he remembers Burke laughs. “I was like, ‘Yeah, this is it.’” ROSENTHAL B UT THEN, FOR BLONDIE, THINGS STARTED TO Same thing upstate performing live in their get tougher, the direction forward less clear. Having made two albums in New York, the band agreed to meet Mike where they were in my garage. early days. “I went to CBGB a whole Chapman on his home territory for the recording of 1980’s Autoamerican. They flew into a Los Angeles that, even to Lower East The pipes broke from being bunch of times during that period,” Side habitués, seemed edgy. frozen one winter and I he says. “That’s a track that to me “It was the Wild West,” says Stein. “We landed and the hills around the Hollywood sign were on fire.” had a flood.” represents what it sounded like.” “We were at these short-term apartments called the Oakwood,” Nonetheless, Overall, Rosenthal feels that the says Burke. “One night there was a shooting in the parking lot, so we left and went to the Chateau Marmont. That was a bit when Rosenthal box offers the listener an insight more glamorous.” drove up to Stein’s into the step-by-step process In LA, working at United Western Recorders – the legendary studio that current home near of exactly how Blondie became had birthed key records by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and The Woodstock, he was Blondie. “We sort of take them for Beach Boys – the intra-band griev- ances that had been bubbling be- amazed by what he granted as this hit-making New gan to spill over. “Everyone was strong-headed and stubborn,” found in the garage. York City icon group. But I think Harrison says. “There was always underlying tension constantly, be- “Analogue tape is a this pulls back the veil, and lets tween Jimmy and Clem, and Debbie and Chris, even. Y’know, all of us.” very resilient format,” you see what it was like to get from “It was unmanageable,” says Chapman. he stresses. “But CBGB to Madison Square Garden. “It truly was. There were attorneys and managers and all sorts of weirdos coming we wore gloves and You get to see the points along and going from the studio. Just getting their masks because there was the journey, and the things that attention and their focus at times was ➢ white mould on all the tapes. worked and things that were a little It was really a smorgasbord problematic. I really admire the fact Alamy, Getty (4) of different formats – tapes, that they were willing to open up cassettes, CDs.” this part of their lives to the public.” All of the outtakes were Next, there’s the possibility of a freshly mixed by Rosenthal and Blondie live box set. “There’s still a his team. The most intensive lot of material,” says Stein, “and the restoration work was done tapes are all in a safer spot.” MOJO 77
Factory fodder: (main) Harry in her Andy Warhol’s Bad T-shirt, 1979; (right, from top) Debbie goes wild for The Hunter’s cover shoot, 1982; Stein and Harry, 1981; Blondie’s 2006 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction; Clem Burke backstage during 1980’s UK tour; (insets, from top) Autoamerican; Rapture 45; Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel; The Hunter; Harry’s solo LP KooKoo; 1999’s comeback hit Maria. “IT HIT ME HARD THAT THE BAND WAS NO MORE. Brian Aris, mptvimages/eyevine, Getty (2), Bob Gruen I MEAN, I WAS KIND OF WASHED UP AT 26.” CLEM BURKE ➣ terribly hard, ’cos they had problems with each other within the The album opened with Stein’s orchestral opus Europa, moved band. And all those little problems sort of turned into rather large through the ’40s jazz of Here’s Looking At You and ended with a problems. They weren’t listening to each other.” big musical theatre closer, a cover of Follow Me from Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot. It didn’t help that Autoamerican was by far Blondie’s most ambitious musical project, involving a parade of name session Not everyone in the band seemed to be digging this particular musicians including saxophonist Tom Scott (Joni Mitchell, Tom brand of eclecticism. At the very end of the latter song, just as the Waits), double bassist Ray Brown (Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald) track is fading out, Clem Burke can be heard muttering, “You’re not and The Turtles/Flo & Eddie’s Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan. really gonna put this on the album, are you?” 78 MOJO
“I thought, Well, he’s got to listen to that now for the rest of his I’M GONNA life,” Mike Chapman laughs. “You shouldn’t have said it, mate.” LOVE YOU TOO “I’m a rock’n’roller at heart,” Burke states in his defence. THE TOP 10 LOST CUTS 6 ONCE I HAD A LOVE “Y’know, I would have been happy to carry on with ‘Oh Denis, ooh be doo.’ But Autoamerican is actually my favourite record now. I FROM AGAINST THE (1978) really think it stands up as an entire album.” ODDS 1974-1982. Early Mike Chapman-produced Eight tracks into Autoamerican lay Rapture, Blondie’s ground- recording of Heart Of Glass at breaking meld of rock and hip-hop. Debbie Harry and Chris Stein 1 SEXY IDA the Record Plant before the had witnessed the evolution of rap first-hand on the streets of the synths transformed the aural Bronx in 1978. (1974) picture. Still pretty great in its scratchy post-punk funkiness. “It was just super-exciting,” Stein says. “The DJs would switch, Newly mixed rehearsal recording Clearly would have been a hit and the MCs would switch, and it was non-stop. This whole group from Performance Studios in New even in this straighter, electronic- of kids literally finding their voice.” York reveals the nascent group free form. taking a louche rock run at Ike & Tina “It was very much like a happening or a be-in from the ’60s,” Turner’s R&B 45 (released the same 7 SUNDAY GIRL adds Harry. “A lot of it was really big ego tripping. It was kind of year). An early example of Blondie’s amazing.” flair for making cover versions (1978) sound entirely their own. Following its January 1981 release, Rapture was absorbed back Blondie’s greatest bubblegum into hip-hop culture when Grandmaster Flash scratched it into the 2 PLATINUM BLONDE pop song (and second UK Number sonic collage that was …On The Wheels Of Steel (along with Chic’s 1) essayed at home with drum Good Times and Queen’s Another One Bites The Dust). Having (1975) machine, guitar drones and a been key participants in punk, Blondie were helping to grow the semi-detached Debbie Harry commercial fortunes of rap. Tongue-in-cheek glitter rocker, vocal. Proof that the commercial and the first lyric Debbie Harry ever highs of Parallel Lines weren’t The band then went on a sabbatical that saw Harry release her wrote, sees her declaring her blonde all a result of Mike Chapman’s Nile Rodgers/Bernard Edwards-produced solo album, KooKoo. By ambition and namechecking top-drawer production. the time Blondie regrouped in December ’81 at The Hit Factory Monroe, Mansfield and Harlow. in Manhattan, focus and momentum had been lost. Harry has said Originally ended with the singer 8 RING OF FIRE that it was a case of “problems converging” and “a lot of things sighing, “I hope I get laid” (changed crumbling at the same time” as the band made their final album of to “I hope I’m OK”). (1979) the 1980s, The Hunter. 3 SCENERY Pulsing beatbox and chorus FX “It was wintertime in New York,” says Harrison. “Drugs, guitars fuel this speedy, Suicide-like dark times.” (1976) zip through the 1963 Johnny Cash classic. Blondie later performed “It was a very, very hard record to make, because it was obvious Outtake from the band’s a different (straight-ahead rock) that Blondie was falling apart,” says Chapman. “The Hunter was a eponymous debut, written by Gary version when guesting in the Meat very, very sad and somewhat depressing record to work on. They Lachman/Valentine and revealing Loaf-starring 1980 film, Roadie. never knew how to negotiate. These are not people who negoti- the bassist’s penchant for ’60s pop, ate… they just yell and scream (laughs).” not least with his Byrds-y 12-string 9 YULETIDE electric riff. Ditched from the final THROWDOWN The resulting album was Blondie’s weakest. Even today, the tracklist by producer Richard calypso pop of Island Of Lost Souls (UK Number 11, US Number Gottehrer, who deemed it a bad fit. (1982) 37) sounds strangely listless, while wobblily retracing the Heart ➢ 4 MR SIGHTSEER A slowed-down version of Rapture backdrops this festive rap battle Everybody’s fly: Fab 5 (1978) between Debbie Harry and Fab Freddy and Debbie Harry 5 Freddy (the pioneering New feel the rapture, 1981. Home 4-track demo sonically York hip-hopper/graffiti artist imagining the Shangri-Las on namechecked in the original a trip to Jamaica. The Roland track). A rarity created for a beatbox (used on Heart Of Glass) giveaway flexi-disc. pumps away gently, backing Chris Stein’s skanking chords. 10 CALL ME The result echoes Lee ‘Scratch’ (CHRIS STEIN MIX) Perry’s early recordings with a pre-fame Bob Marley. (1982) 5 MOONLIGHT DRIVE One of three instrumental mixes (along with War Child and Heart Of (1978) Glass) for what the Against The Odds linernotes enigmatically describe Debbie does Jim in this storming, as “an unknown project that was punky cover of The Doors’ 1967 never realised”. Strips the Giorgio cut from Strange Days. Harry had Moroder-produced song down to witnessed a Doors show at Fillmore its synths and comes across like East in ‘68, but insists, “I wasn’t something from a John Carpenter madly in love with Jim Morrison film soundtrack. or a groupie type or anything.”
In the flesh: Blondie on-stage at the Paradiso, Amsterdam, November 19, 1977. “THERE WAS ALWAYS A LOT OF TENSION IN THE BAND AND CRAZY BULLSHIT GOING ON… EGOS FLYING ABOUT.” CHRIS STEIN ➣ Of Glass blueprint on War Child effectively snuffed the band’s phone, “One thing that could really make it better is if we could ac- singles career when it struggled to Number 39 in Britain. tually perform for you tonight. But for some reason some of us are For his part, Chris Stein considers The Hunter to be “a little not allowed to do that. I’d like to play… Debbie, is that allowed?” light… it could use a couple of heavier elements”. Harry instantly agrees and adds, “It’s so funny, because that whole theme of not “I wanted to run away,” says Nigel Harrison. “My heart was being exactly what we intended, or what we were capable of, becomes very explicit in the cover art.” beating so fast, I was thinking, ‘I’m gonna faint here… this is a “Oh, the cover sucks,” Stein reckons. “It’s just a non-event. fucking disaster.’” We were supposed to get one of these great makeup guys, and “It was one of those moments where nobody could figure out everybody would be half animals and half human. We just couldn’t get it together. The record company couldn’t figure out how to pull whether it was a joke or not,” says Gary Lachman. “The place did it off for us, y’know.” go quiet. It’s a shame that it turned into something like that. But In the end, Blondie fizzled out, and broke up in 1982. Their fate was sealed when Stein became acutely ill after developing there you go. I mean, Blondie was a dysfunctional family.” pemphigus vulgaris, an autoimmune disease causing chronic Accordingly, perhaps, Blondie’s line-up has shapeshifted in blistering of the skin. recent decades. Jimmy Destri quit for good in 2004, and Chris “It hit me hard that the band was no more,” Burke admits. “I Stein has this year been forced to stop touring with the band due mean, I was kind of washed up at 26. We were our own worst en- emy once we got success, in a lot of ways.” to the energy-sapping side effects of the medication treating his S INCE RE-FORMING IN 1996 (WITH HARRY/STEIN/ heart arrhythmia. Burke/Destri as their core), Blondie have enjoyed a second act that first involved a comeback UK Number 1 hit (their “I’m not writing it off,” Stein says of a potential future return to sixth) with ’99’s Destri-written Maria and has continued through years of arena-level touring. the stage with Blondie. “I’m just dealing with some health bullshit “Musically, there was a dynamic there that still existed,” says at the moment.” Burke. “And it sounded like Blondie. So, we kind of went from “Maybe,” says Harry, “we’ll figure out a way for Chris to play, but there with it, and added a few different people.” not travel.” In 2006, however, the ongoing enmities between Blondie mem- With a new album in the can (produced, like 2017’s Pollinator, bers past and present caused an ugly scene on-stage in New York when the group were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. by John Congleton) and due for release in 2023, Blondie are keen Disgruntled ex-guitarist Frank Infante announced into the micro- to look forwards. But compiling the material on the new box set has inevitably forced them to reconsider the dizzying highs and plunging lows of their past. “I think, oddly enough, I was happiest in the very early days,” Debbie Harry concludes. “When everything was new and sort of a challenge and we were, y’know, scuffling about, I was kind of happy. “But then the workload became pretty intense, covering many continents. There was a lot of demand. It was rigorous and didn’t Getty really give you a chance to step back and collect yourself. We were at the head of this projectile.” M 80 MOJO
MOJO FILTE R YOUR GUIDE TO THE MONTH'S BEST MUSIC EDITED BY JENNY BULLEY [email protected] CONTENTS 82 ALBUMS • Bosstax! Bruce Springsteen flexes his soul power • Billy Strings: guitar god; family man • Myths and mayhem with Gaye Su Akyol • Richard Dawson: have time, will travel • Plus, Nathan Salsburg, David Crosby, Plaid, Joan Armatrading, Duke Garwood and more. 94 REISSUES • On the way to Hunky Dory: revisiting Bowie’s busiest year, 1971 • Going Dutch: The Beach Boys’ archive series reaches Holland • Harvest festival: Neil’s most popular album turns 50 • Going up! The best of The 13th Floor Elevators • Plus, Cluster, Tom Petty, Fela Kuti, King Crimson, Donna Summer, Bog Shed and more. 106 HOW TO BUY • Paradigm-shifting 21st century pop star, Beyoncé. 108 BOOKS • He can’t quit you: Bono’s autobiography, Surrender • A thought-provoking new biography of Chuck Berry • Plus, Bez, Leonard Cohen, The Beatles in ’63 and more. “Florid and INDEX flighty, crashing into punchy 13th Floor Elevators 99 The Cosmic Something 91 Poster Paints 88 and pungent.” Acid Klaus 89 Garwood, Duke 91 Raymonde, Simon 96 DANNY ECCLESTON TAKES A BONO Akyol, Gaye Su 87 Harper, Honey 86 Ride 101 READING, P108 Archers Of Loaf 86 Honey & The Bees 98 Salsburg, Nathan 84 Armas, Virgilio 98 Hues, Jack 86 Sonic’s Rendezvous Armatrading, Joan 86 Jamieson, Sophie 91 Band 96 Aslan, Mehmet 86 Johnston, James & Soundwalk Beach Boys 100 Gullick, Steve 89 Collective With Beales, Trevor 102 Joplin, Janis & Patti Smith 101 Beat Happening 101 Kaukonen, Jorma 96 Springsteen, Bruce 82 Billy Strings 85 King Crimson 98 Strehli, Angela 89 Bingo Harry 90 Kuti, Fela 98 Summer, Donna 98 Bog Shed 99 Leftfield 84 Svensson, Esbjörn 89 Bowie, David 94 Mandel, Harvey 84 That Petrol Brik, Addie 91 Masin, Gigi 88 Emotion 101 Celtic Frost 96 McNabb, Ian 90 Tibbetts, Steve 102 Cluster 99 Mieke, Anna 86 Tippetts, Julie 102 Crosby, David 84 Montparnasse u-Ziq 90 Cymande 96 Musique 88 Unkle Bob 90 Dawson, Richard 90 Moura, Ana 89 VA: Detroit Artists DoubleHappys, The 98 Nichols, Jeb Loy 91 Workshop 101 Essential Logic 99 Nicols, Maggie 84 VA: A Tribute To Field Guide 84 Nosaj Thing 88 Billy Joe Shaver 91 Flaming Lips 101 One Eleven Heavy 88 Village Of The Sun 89 Folsom, Robert Pablo, Augustus 96 Wasylyk, Andrew 84 Lester 101 Pearls Before Swine 96 Wau Wau Collectif 88 Fankhauser, Merrell 98 Petty, Tom 99 White Lung 88 Freeman, Jemma & Plaid 86 Young, Neil 97 MMOOJJOO 813
FILTER ALBUMS Soul Asylum The Boss finds spiritual nourishment in 15 covers, most from the golden age of Motown, Stax and Atlantic. By David Fricke. Illustration by Borja. Bruce Springsteen adhere to the original sermons and love letters with ★★★★ almost monk-ish rigour: the symphonic gallop-with- glockenspiel of Frank Wilson’s 1966 Northern soul Only The Strong Survive holy grail Do I Love You (Indeed I Do); the Gothic eccentricity of The Four Tops’ 1967 noir 7 Rooms Of COLUMBIA. CD/DL/LP Gloom; the slinky conga-driven funk in The Com- modores’ 1985 Marvin Gaye eulogy Nightshift. The IN THE EARLY chapters of his 2016 memoir singer instead leaves his mark in distinctive inflections Born To Run, writing about the Jersey boy on a – like that Jersey-barroom preacher’s laugh tucked rock’n’roll mission, Bruce Springsteen hits a new into the spoken intro of the title song – and the pure, R&B crossroads – and revelation – every day. He pilgrim’s rapture of a voice that, in wear and range, delights in the “great, narrative clowning records” of “15 covers has travelled far in its own right. the late ’50s – The Olympics’ Western Movies; The In The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore, Springs- Coasters’ Along Came Jones – and recalls an uphill fight with his first guitar to master the licks in Bill from a golden teen quotes the opening frames of The Walker Broth- Doggett’s 1956 “two-string blues concerto” Honky ers’ 1966 melodrama to the letter – until he comes age of African- through those Mexican-cantina doors, bruised but Tonk. And there’s the night Springsteen’s garage unbeaten, illuminating the reverb and holding the long band The Castiles were the only white faces at the American notes with rough, plaintive grace. Springsteen takes Matawan-Keyport Roller Drome for the Tri-Soul confession Levi Stubbs’ soliloquy at the front of the Tops’ record in a higher register and fire, wearing the weight of sor- Revue: backing The Exciters (Tell Him, 1962); and party, row like a boxer’s robe. And he goes back to the mag- playing their own set of “soul, soul and more soul”; curated with a isterial pleading in Butler’s Hey Western Union Man and going home with a “notch in our belts for a job decently done” in front of “a tough audience that connoisseur’s with more funk and an impatience in his vocal stride. could’ve gone either way.” twist.” If Butler epitomised the cool of desire on The Ice Man Cometh – his ’68 Philly-soul collaboration with Kenny Named after and opening with Jerry Butler’s silken 1968 battle hymn, Only The Strong Survive is steeped Gamble and Leon Huff, producing the two singles in that boot camp and exultation: 15 covers from a revived here – Springsteen is a heat-seeking missile, golden age of African-American confession radiant and direct in desperation. and party, mostly drawn from the Motown, Nostalgia, inevitably, comes with age; Springsteen, 73, is no excep- Stax and Atlantic libraries but curated with a tion. The most recent song on this album, Soul Days, comes from connoisseur’s twist and, in a few instances, a 2000 CD by Dobie Gray. Written by a white country songwriter, a long reach into the ’80s and beyond. The E Jonnie Barnett, it sounded there like one of Springsteen’s ’70s out- Street Band did not get the call here. Spring- takes donated to Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes. The yearning steen made his 21st studio album at home, in remains clear-cut and unrepentant (“Cruising in my Chevrolet/I held my baby in my arms/But my first love was always the songs”). his New Jersey studio with Ron Aniello – the co-producer and instrumental fulcrum on And Springsteen’s take lays it on with a smile, adding a guitar lick 2014’s High Hopes and 2019’s Western Stars BACK STORY: – playing virtually everything but strings and descended from Gray’s 1973 smash Drift Away and a guest-vocal SUPREME horns. “I wanted to make an album where I turn from Sam Moore of Sam & Dave. LEADER Springsteen’s choice of songs, especially in the deep tracks and ● First cut by Johnny just sang,” Springsteen said, announcing the left turns, also underscores a deeper retrospect and aspiration. Turn and Jackey – singer- record, and that’s all he does – for the sheer Back The Hands Of Time, a slice of Chicago grit and sparkle that went writers Johnny Bristol pleasure and homage. Number 1 R&B and Top 5 Pop for Tyrone Davis in 1970, is the kind of and Jackey Beavers – for hard lesson learned – with a faith in second chances – that Springs- Detroit’s Tri-Phi label in Yet this album is, in effect, one that 1961, Someday We’ll Be Springsteen has never stopped making, in teen was already striving to write as a young man via Dylan Together went through front of every audience: the raw, saloon-com- and The Animals. The pop-R&B bounce of When She Was My Girl, Motown’s cut-throat bo reading of Chris Kenner’s Something You a 1981 single from The Four Tops’ short spell at Casablanca Records, A&R grind on its way to Diana Ross & The Got on Houston radio, 1974; the jubilant echoes Springsteen’s ’80s stabs at the dancefloor in Hungry Heart Supremes. In 1969, detonation of The Chiffons’ A Love So Fine at and Dancing In The Dark. There is a poignant evocation too – in the Bristol – by then a staff my first Springsteen show, that November at low-end street-corner hum of backing singers Fonzi Thornton, writer and producer there – was preparing a Philadelphia’s Tower Theater (I was an Dennis Collins and Curtis King Jr. – of his late sax-and-vocal wing remake for Junior usher); the Eddie Floyd, Isley Brothers and man Clarence Clemons. Walker & The All Stars Gary U.S. Bonds oldies that were reliable when his boss, Berry Someday We’ll Be Together seems, at first, like a soft landing at the Gordy, decided the song encore dynamite into the stadium era. For end, cushioned in strings and chorale. It is, in fact, the most ironic should go to Ross for her Springsteen, as with Bob Dylan and the song here. Diana Ross’s 1969 finale with The Supremes was nothing debut solo single. Hedging that bet, Gordy public-domain ghosts that perpetually haunt of the sort, a cynical ploy to launch her solo career (see Back Story). changed the billing to his songwriting, soul music has been an Springsteen dumps that baggage and sings what’s left like he got it the group – even education for which there is no final exam from Pete Seeger by way of David Ruffin – a national anthem for the though Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong were or degree. Because class is always in session. stateless; the same promise of hope and glory he’s always found in his not on the session. Springsteen cut his last covers project, favourite storytellers and jukebox 45s. Springsteen will preside over Topping Billboard’s Hot his nightly communions again when he takes The E Street Band back 100 on December 27, 2006’s We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, Alamy 1969, the single was in the same spirit but with a lot more license, on the road next year. And if the leader doesn’t pull out any of this Motown’s last Number 1 adapting America’s bedrock folk songs for an soul power for the encores, it’s because, by now, he’s written plenty hit of the 1960s. arena-scale barn dance. Here, he and Aniello of his own. 82 MOJO
Nathan Salsburg Jewish cantors and Check his record: Harvey Mandel ★★★★ Turkish dance bands. Nathan Salsburg ★★★ The six lengthy medita- on the shelves. Landwerk III tions here refine the Who’s Calling formula, with spectral, gauzy, funereal piano of NO QUARTER. LP dust-laden samples and crystal- XI is allowed to linger TOMPKINS SQUARE. CD/DL/LP line guitar arabesques alloyed into a hypnotically before Sals- Kentucky-based archivist-guitarist near-Proustian conduit between past burg unleashes further Woodstock veteran’s 16th communes with phonograph ghosts and present. Typically, IX wreathes spangles of arpeggiated solo LP of wild space blues. once more. susurrating hymnal murmurs from a quicksilver. Like much here, the 1914 Meyer Kanewsky recording in closing XIV’s slow accretion of A stalwart of NATHAN SALSBURG’S previ- a lattice of sinuous fretboard figures organ, guitar and piano, daubed over the Chicago ous brace of Landwerk long-players that suggest a summit between Loren a primordial percussion loop (lifted blues and found him improvising mellifluously from a 1940 Abe Ellstein Orchestra improv scenes against crackling, corroded loops Connors and Tom Verlaine, while the reading of Mazel Tov, no less) is at since the ’60s, plucked from antediluvian 78s of once ineffably moving and a paradigm a former of ascetic restraint. sideman for Canned Heat, the Stones and John Mayall, and a David Sheppard huge influence on both Ryley Walker and Eddie Van Halen, Harvey ‘The Snake’ Mandel’s own LPs are filled with wild, unclassifiable guitar playing that spirals out into the cosmos. Skirting the lines between jazz, blues and rock, even flirting with techno and hip-hop, the diversity of his music has meant he’s never sat entirely comfortably with fans of any genre. Who’s Calling switches mostly between reggae-ish backing tracks and the kind of soft, lunar jazz-rock played to the crew of Moon Base Alpha during restful moments of Space: 1999. Electric Mud it ain’t, but for fans of wigged-out 77-year-old blues guitarists it’s a goldmine. Andy Fyfe Andrew Wasylyk beauty and loss, that Soul’s labyrinthine do the new songs break the Maggie Nicols ★★★★ simultaneously create a sense Underworld-ness, a flat-out spell cast by the slightly ★★★★ of profound warmth and acid banger (Accumulator) and wobbly Dumbledore who Hearing The Water security. even a wah wah jam (PULSE) presides. Are You Ready? Before Seeing The Falls score highly. Andrew Male Mat Snow OTOROKU. CD/DL/LP CLAY PIPE MUSIC. CD/DL/LP Andrew Perry Leftfield Field Guide The radical queer socialist Fifth album of hazy ★★★★ David Crosby & ★★★ vocal improviser flies free. environmental jazz The Lighthouse travelogues from the This Is What We Do Band Field Guide From her ’70s work with the binomial Dundee polymath. ★★★★ Spontaneous Music Ensemble, VIRGIN. CD/DL/LP/MC BIRTHDAY CAKE. CD/DL/LP the Feminist Improvising Group As Andrew Mitchell he fronts Live At The and Centipede, to more recent Dundee indie-pop quartet The Only Neil Barnes’s fourth Capitol Theatre Warming country feedback outings with fellow free- Hazey Janes and plays bass album in 30 years, but it’s from Canadian singer- improvers Les Diaboliques, with Idlewild. As Andrew another stonker. BMG. CD/DL/DVD songwriter. Edinburgh-born improvisor Wasylyk he’s spent the last five Maggie Nicols has always years soundtracking his corner In the early YouTube live gem now on It’s not just walked a thrilling line between of east coast Scotland with a ’90s, Leftfield silver discs: a sorcerer and Dylan what she calls “the rational and series of (mostly) instrumental initiated apprentices. MacDonald’s the intuitive”, allowing herself LPs that have ranged from ‘progressive voice that has to move between song (folk, 2017’s Bill Wellsian Themes For house’, guiding A mash-up of a touch of Bon jazz, ghosts or traditional Buildings And Spaces to the UK dance jolly Tyrolean Iver about it; ballads) and liberation. restorative dawn-light music away from rave and innkeeper, his second album as Field Listening to this exquisite disc daydream jazz of last year’s amped-up disco towards gun-toting Guide was partly recorded in of Nicols’s own songs, recalled Balgay Hill: Morning In something more drug fiend and a wood-stove-heated cabin from half-forgotten memories, Magnolia. This second Clay sophisticated, strongly Twitter troll, during a harsh winter, an echo played solo at the piano, and Pipe release, inspired by the flavoured with bass-heavy the musical messiah behind of Justin Vernon’s radical reborn in improvisation, is like work of US landscape west London reggae. In the the very naughty boy can seclusion on his 2007 debut tuning into some positivist photographer Thomas Joshua intervening decades, progress, struggle to be heard. Now 81, For Emma, Forever Ago. feminist, folk-jazz Krapp’s Last Cooper, has awakened in frankly, has been rather slow, David Crosby was reborn with There is more fleecy musical Tape, a singer searching for the Wasylyk a deeper, richer palate but, even after drummer/DJ 2014’s Croz initiating a golden insulation around MacDonald’s fire of her life and finding it of sounds. Accompanied by Paul Daley quit, leaving Barnes album run rooted in jazz and songs of love and undimmed. Even more strings and brass (including alone at the helm, the project’s folk rock vocal harmony. disillusionment, though; astonishing is the ‘bonus’ CD, the ethereal, feathering avoidance of futuristic Recorded live in Port Chester, emotionally and lyrically, he Whatever Arises, which scans saxophone of Alabaster affectation (see prosaic album NY in December 2018, we’re stays close to the path more like a double-tracked DePlume), Wasylyk’s Fender title) coupled with reliably immersed in a wistful, travelled. A few songs have spiritualist search for hidden Rhodes and Juno 60 synth pulsating music have helped it translucent flow of outré little knotholes that let in voices, all of them speaking weave lonesome, exploratory survive where many peers chords and feminine vocal fresher air – the drone through Nicols in ways creative patterns, heavy with foundered. Undaunted by textures (guitarist Becca underpinning In Love Now and intimate, conversational, depression and even, last year, Stevens and keyboardist For Sure, Looking Back’s lo-fi terrifying, and revelatory. Are bowel cancer, Barnes’s first Michelle Willis get a song of breeze, the light Kurt Vile you ready? Absolutely not. outing in seven years offers their own apiece), with bassist/ dusting of Worst Of Ways – a timely blast of healing guitarist Michael League of but Wishing Well or Leave You Andrew Male positivity, all but impossible jazzniks Snarky Puppy the Lonely share as much ground Joan Shelley to resist. Second track in, John third youngster doing a lot of with Coldplay as with any Lydon’s guest-star mantle from heavy lifting. The reverie Americana wildcards. For 1995’s Leftism is thrillingly quality of Laughing from the all its gentle pedal-steel assumed by Fontaines D.C.’s gossamer dreamweaver’s 1971 thoughtfulness and rustic Grian Chatten, who yowls over solo debut marinates old mood-building, Field Guide is a clattering backdrop more group classics Woodstock, a little light on distinguishing befitting of prime-time Guinnevere and Déjà Vu, nor features. Prodigy. Elsewhere, Heart And Victoria Segal 84 MOJO
FILTER ALBUMS Kind of bluegrass: Billy Strings’ new LP is a family affair. Blue Blooded hell of a homecoming, Strings having assem- Joshua Black Wilkins Bluegrass’s new guitar god sprawl, he plays the likes of Flatt, bled a band of bluegrass comes back to his earthly home. Monroe, Watson, and even the dreams as a public By Grayson Haver Currin. Oak Ridge Boys straight and display of affection for snappy here, like a note to self the man who first took Billy Strings validating his own bluegrass bona him there. ★★★★ fides. The band around him is a Me/And/Dad first-call bunch: mighty bassist That powerful Mike Bub; fiddler Michael Cleve- storyline aside, the ROUNDER. CD/DL/LP land, one of the most moving instrumentalists music still moves: in the history of the United States’ backwoods Barber’s ragged delivery BLUEGRASS HAS forever been the domain music; and Ronnie and Rob McCoury, the of Life To Go, a George Jones classic about the of family and friends, led by bands who share banjo and mandolin players from bluegrass’s actual blood or bonds so deep they seem to be modern first family. Dobro paladin Jerry Doug- sad perseverance of a prisoner, feels real and common-law kinfolk. Such lineages have been las even stops by for a moment of pining strings. a gift for traditions, for preserving techniques Oh, and there’s a second guitarist and singer, lived in. Strings offers one of his most vulner- and perpetuating songbooks; they’ve also been this record’s reason for being – Terry Barber, able vocal takes yet on John Deere Tractor, a occasional hindrances to evolution, heritage the man who raised Strings as dad. slowing the changes in a form with endlessly in- tender note home to a country mom from a triguing potential. Guitar phenom Billy Strings, Strings had a notoriously fractured child- it turns out, is happy to dazzle on all sides of hood in Michigan. His biological father over- son stuck in and troubled by a city; it feels like a that divide. dosed when Strings was two. Drugs overrode letter from the road, hungover and threadbare. their family dynamic and his childhood, the And the playing is flawless and charged, from Me/And/Dad, a sterling and sweet collection home becoming a pipeline of sorts from meth Cleveland’s steam-engine fiddle during Way of 14 reverent takes on bluegrass or country use to jail. But then there was the guitar. Barber Downtown to Rob McCoury’s edgy delicacy standbys, is the most traditional album the showed the pre-teen Strings how to move freely during Frosty Morn. young iconoclast has ever made. Where among bluegrass and classic rock, an ethos that previous records and, most especially, his guided his ascent into the highest echelon of Still, as is so often with bluegrass, it’s the magnetising live shows glide into psychedelic contemporary players. Me/And/Dad, then, is a family ties that will get you. Maybe it’s Barber and Strings’ mother, Debra Apostle, harmonis- ing on the closer, or Barber telling Strings at one point the band sounds so good “it makes me kind of crack a little bit.” Billy Strings is, at the very least, a key component of bluegrass’s future; it’s galvanising to hear how comfortable he now is with its – and his own – past. MOJO 85
Anna Mieke: Anna Mieke Jack Hues And free floating ★★★★ The Quartet in dreamtime. ★★★★ Theatre Plaid Epigonal Quark ★★★★ NETTWERK. CD/DL/LP Feorm Falorx DAWN CHORUS. CD/DL/LP Global citizen’s second WARP. CD/DL/LP Quark, strangeness and album of worldly folk. charm from the Wang Chung Menace and mellowness frontman and friends. pervade Warp mainstays’ ANNA-MIEKE BISHOP eleventh album. hails from County Wicklow but Guitarist and As reliable as autumn rain, her musical DNA suggests an vocalist Jack Ed Handley and Andy Turner itinerant life: Maori songs learnt Hues’s bluesy, have made a career from during childhood in New Zealand, jazzy, fastidiously tweaking and later sojourns in Bulgaria and envelope- refining their hyper-melodic Spain, West African and Brazilian pushing music electronic blueprint. In line roots imbibed via family connec- with The Quartet is a world with recent epistles Digging tions. Her debut album, Idle Mind, away from Wang Chung’s ’80s The Remedy and Polymer, now sounds like a stepping stone hit Dancehall Days. Epigonal album 11 is all about the subtle to Theatre, eight lengthy bouts of Quark was recorded live, twists. From the sweeping exquisite thrumming folk, like mainly in 2019, with members abstractions and glassy keys she’s playing in a free-floating of Canterbury psych-proggers of Perspex to the dying dreamtime. Multiple colours – Syd Arthur and Led Bib and hornet synths of C.A. and including clarinet, violin, harp stretches the template further. supercharged Tangerine and harmonium – are painted Saxes and electric piano give a Dream-isms of Cwtchr, Feorm with restraint, over which Mieke’s ’70s electric jazz vibe, and the Falorx is a vortex of abstract lulling voice amplifies the humid ensemble apply this approach beats, disorienting arpeggios conditions. If it all sounds bucolic to a wide range of cover and unexpected chord (For A Time possesses the same versions. There’s a lovely lyrical progressions where scything meadow-hazy heat as Nick Drake’s take on Radiohead’s Weird mandolins, sweeping River Man), the album’s lyrics Fishes/Arpeggi, which harpsichords and whistling reflect the tug of war between culminates in some robust rock strings blur the electronic/ rural and urban life: Mannequin’s riffing, a tough and tender acoustic lines. While the odd “Fuschia burns a summer road/ cover of Robert Wyatt’s Sea misstep lurks (the cheesy Asphalt melts as we watch”, and in Song and a powerful reading of jazz-funk of Wondergan), Coraline, “Desert rock face shy in Soft Machine’s Facelift with its longueurs are few and far the car lights.” solemn, monumental themes between, the skippy guitar and fluid improvisation. The figure of Nightcrawler and Martin Aston highlight is an audacious creeping tension of Wide I’s 20-minute plus cover of Beck’s Lluis Tudela scaling harmonic heights legend of the Loaf lives again. Mehmet Aslan shadowy, acoustic Nobody’s against the odds, recalling Keith Cameron ★★★★ Fault But My Own with the early millennial triumphs verse melody taken for a long, Double Figure and Spokes. Honey Harper The Sun Is Parallel scenic walk. The New ★★★ Canterbury Sound, anyone? Andy Cowan PLANISPHERE EDITORIAL. CD/DL/LP Honey Harper & Mike Barnes Archers Of Loaf The Infinite Sky Swiss producer makes ★★★★ confident, multi-layered, Joan ATO. CD/DL/LP dark dancefloor debut. Armatrading Reason In Decline ★★★ Space cowboy and Mehmet Aslan MERGE. CD/DL/LP companions unroll a new doesn’t lack for Live At Asylum Chapel blanket under the stars. ambition. The North Carolina quartet’s Basel-born BMG. CD/DL first new album since 1998. With 2020’s artist embarks Starmaker, on a Her only show of 2021. Barbed of Honey Harper whistle-stop global tour on Career spanned. tongue and riff, – then his debut album, embracing Archers Of Loaf singer- Middle Eastern and abstract A year last July, rode the ’90s songwriter rhythms, while touching on with normal US indie wave William Fussell’s alter-ego – themes including hauntology concert activity for four albums went hard down the and identity. If Aslan’s curtailed, Joan until ennui dispersed them post-modern cosmic country background as a DJ and Armatrading into other groups, new careers, track. Now a band (members producer hints at a dancefloor played what and in singer-songwriter Eric include Spoon keyboardist leaning, then it’s more of a remains her only show since Bachmann’s case, a steady solo Alex Fischel and Fussell’s wife guiding spirit here. There 2018. Peckham wedding venue output. Fans of the band’s and co-writer Alana Pagnutti), are elements of Ricardo the Asylum Chapel was an dissident singalongs might they rub the lines between Villalobos’s expansive unlikely setting and, since no well have settled for nostalgic tradition and experimentation approach on display – mystical, fans were permitted, the show reruns, but Reason In Decline is even smoother. Ain’t No atmospheric, fantastical. It’s was streamed worldwide. With an authentically new chapter, Cowboys In Georgia feels like most readily apparent on the biggest hits augmenting a dispatch from the mid-life the Eagles experiencing a mild Domo, which knits together selections which cover the trenches that sees Bachmann existential crisis; Heaven Only horror film synths, twanging waterfront from as far back as melding his latterday Knows could be Roy Orbison Dick Dale guitars and a drum 1975’s Travel So Far to several confessionals with Archers’ inside Flaming Lips fancy dress break reminiscent of Public selections from 2021’s snarky surrealism. Human while Crystal Heart’s Enemy’s Bomb Squad. On Consequences, Armatrading sets the tone, its arena-scaled reincarnation imagery keeps Garden, acclaimed and her four-piece band swing GBV smoulder exploding company with Bill Callahan. “If percussionist Valentina for over two hours. There’s into full-on yaggerdang as you’re tired of feeling good all Magaletti brings poise to a little re-invention, although Bachmann addresses a “heavy the time/Just hang around brooding late-night strut Empty Highway rocks with reckoning”. Screaming with me for a while,” sings clearly inspired by Talk Talk’s admirable gusto and All The Undercover is an anti-capitalist Fussell on Tired Of Feeling The Rainbow, while Tangerine Way From America’s insistent slam, while Eric Johnson’s Good – tough self-judgment, is a dark, electronic take on guitar riff blossoms when it’s spiralling guitars receive aptly but the song’s lushness flamenco, one that explores its played on piano. Curiously, heroic billing throughout, tempers the melancholy. North African roots. Adding for all that she can be chatty channelling Stuart Adamson Honey Harper and co can play judicious use of spoken-word on-stage these days, her on both the Springsteenian it a little too straight, but if it’s samples from the likes of between-song chat has been In The Surface Noise and War Is not entirely cosmic, it moves James Baldwin bolsters the edited out, rendering the Wide Open’s sorrowful sustain. through space beautifully. feeling that Aslan is keen on whole affair curiously Amid these epic soundtracks making bold statements. detached. Still, the sound of rage and empathy, the Victoria Segal Stephen Worthy is faultless and the songs themselves remain of the highest quality. John Aizlewood 86 MOJO
FILTER ALBUMS Gaye Su Akyol: avoiding the comfort zone of the past. Enter The Dragon vision in spangles, as the Aytekin Yalçın Fourth outing for Turkey’s which she grew up and, in a irresistible glam-rock shapeshifting retro-futurist nutshell, there lies the allur- groover. By David Hutcheon. ing paradox of Akyol’s music. stomp of Sen Benim On her fourth album (the third Mağaramsın (You Are Gaye Su Akyol released by Glitterbeat beyond ★★★★ Turkey, where she runs an My Cave), bludgeoned entirely self-contained DIY indie Anadolu Ejderi operation), she displays her its way beyond your belief in the righteous fury of Kurt Cobain, the GLITTERBEAT. CD/DL/LP grooves that spread like tentacles from Persia television. Then, centuries ago, and that brief window in which “POLITICALLY AND economically we’re forward-thinking pop stars spawned Turkish everything seemed both witnessing a country in collapse,” is the sort of psychedelia. “I’m Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd,” complaint it’s easy to get blasé about hearing she proclaims on Içinde Uyanıyoruz Hakikatin fantastic and possible. Western musicians utter in interview. Yes, but (We Are Waking Up In Reality), “Brian Jones of the good guys won’t let that happen, will they? The Rolling Stones.” The comfort zone of The cavalry are on their way, aren’t they? To the east, in Istanbul, home to Gaye Su Akyol, owner Four years ago, on Istikrarlı Hayal Hakikat- the past. of that statement, such optimism may seem out tir, she was declaring that “Consistent Fantasy Is of place. In her short life, she has seen military Reality” as if this was a good thing. Consistent If you are looking for a contemporary voice coups both successful and failed, the sidelining of fantasy has a habit of doing that to you, sadly. from nearer to home to use as your gateway secularism, purges, conflict between extremist Leaving aside the sad trajectories of Barrett and to this world, Nadine Shah comes to mind, groups… What to do? “It would have been easy Jones, you can imagine the future that Akyol particularly on the slow-burning Bu Izdırabın to sit in the comfort zone of the past,” she adds. glimpsed in their music. A lover of glittery hot Panzehiri. However, despite an orchestra of pants and thigh-high boots, she could have been encyclopaedia-requiring instruments, no im- It’s all a far cry from the liberalisation that in the Top Of The Pops audience circa 1972, a mersive prep is necessary. Akyol describes as accompanied the progressive pop music with “non-existent” the Turkish folk underpinning Anadolu Ejderi, though this is an album of myths: its title translates as “Anatolian Dragon”, the fire-breathing creature she suggests may rise once again to see off those who have seized con- trol of everything from news feeds to our origin stories. “Are we slaves or donkeys?” she asks on the title track, hoping that one day collective action can triumph over pure evil. Akyol is quite clearly neither. MOJO 87
FILTER ALBUMS The men behind the Nosaj Thing masks: Montparnasse ★★★★ Musique’s Aero Manyelo (left) and Nadjib Ben Continua Bella create the pan- African sound of 2022. LUCKY ME. CD/DL/LP Montparnasse ing members of grooves created by those ensembles, Korean-American artist Musique Konono No.1, Kasai played on thumb pianos and percus- makes downbeat soul in ★★★★ Allstars and Mbong- sion and sculpted into something con- the wee small hours. wana Star would temporary by production duo Aero Archeology sound like, but Manyelo and Nadjib Ben Bella (from Jason ‘Nosaj here for the uninitiated is the answer South Africa and Algeria respectively). Thing’ Chung REAL WORLD. CD/DL/LP in all its glorious, relentless distor- With brains from three great centres has opened for tion. “The intersection of club floor of African music responsible, then, The xx and The Congotronics beat is the gift and ritual,” says the press release, this truly is the pan-African sound of produced the that keeps on giving. accurately, though you don’t have to 2022. Turn it up loud and shake your likes of Kid Cudi be interested in either to get a heap of home to its foundations. and Kendrick Lamar, which IT’S UNLIKELY that fans of that elec- enjoyment out of the huge traditional paints an accurate enough tric Kinshasa sound would have been David Hutcheon picture of his own downbeat stumped if asked what a band featur- soul vision. Chung’s fifth album was largely recorded between Wau Wau musicians. Mesmeric, with only one gear, and One Eleven the hours of 2am and 5am, Collectif trance-inducing stuff, perfect one that has now run out Heavy partly woven out of lengthy ★★★★ listening for both dawn and of road. ★★★★ improvised jams but also the late-night sessions. input of guest vocalists, like Mariage Stevie Chick Poolside ambient sorcerer Julianna David Hutcheon Barwick, who sings Blue Hour, SAHEL SOUNDS. CD/DL/LP Poster Paints KITH & KIN. CD/DL/LP warming to the theme. It’s the White Lung ★★★ album’s most ‘Massive Attack’ Return of the mysterious ★★★ Exemplary third helping of moment. Likewise, Grasp’s Senegalese-Swedish Poster Paints transatlantic alt-boogie. slurred, blurred beats are more ensemble. Premonition akin to Tricky, but if Continua’s ERNEST JENNING & OLIVE GROVE. Sarcasm palate of dark blues and blacks Last year’s debut collection felt DOMINO. CD/DL/LP CD/DL/LP fuelled the title bears an uncanny likeness to like a remarkable yet surely of this latest that of ’90s Bristol, it’s a much unrepeatable event, the Vancouver punks reunite Glaswegian dream-pop convening of sleepier, blissful take. perfect distillation of a series after five years for a duo’s full-length debut. Nick Mitchell Contributions from Animal of jams coordinated by final farewell. Maiato (from Collective’s Panda Bear, Swedish musician Karl Jonas Introduced to Bradford), James Toth (Staten rapper Pink Siifu, soul stylist Winqvist while stranded by a White Lung each other by Island) and their Anglo- serpentwithfeet and South plane strike in Toubab Dialaw, began The Vaselines’ American jam band. Pandemic Korean singer Oh Hyuk pull a seaside artistic commune in recording their Eugene Kelly conditions had derailed album Continua this way and that, Senegal. If anything, this fifth album half and Frances sessions in Nashville with but, overall, Chung’s vision second volume is even a decade ago, McKee, Poster pianist Hans Chew, so Maiato, unites his disparate team dreamier, a dozen floaty but life got in Paints, AKA singer Carla J now resident in Valencia, into one harmonious ruminations built around West the way – singer Mish Easton (Teen Canteen) and took a crash course in piano group sleepover. African foundations then Barber-Way had a family, and guitarist Simon Liddell to replace him. So, Poolside directed into entirely new then she became executive (Frightened Rabbit), bring didn’t come easy, but you’d Martin Aston spaces by Winqvist and editor of Penthouse magazine, a Dusty or Ronettes-esque never know it, as One Eleven producer Arouna Kane. and then there was the romanticism to their heavily Heavy’s Allman-Brothers- Gigi Masin Pitchou Goudibi is a fine pandemic. The album surfaces processed debut. As vocals meet-Royal-Trux take on ★★★★ example of how they work: now as their valedictory and instruments pothole for Cosmic American Music here Gilbert Badji gruffly recites a statement and hews close to heartbreak in cavernous transcends its initial barroom Vahinè rhyme about a bird of the their well-trodden formula chambers and Chvrches’ Jonny holler for something more night, the sea lapping in the of galloping thrash-punk Scott hatches grooves both mellow and ineffable, if no less LANGUAGE OF SOUND. DL/LP background, he fades away, rhythms, trebly melodic garagey and electronic, intricate, with extraordinary replaced by a kora, electronic guitar, and Barber-Way’s Cocteau Twins and Jesus And guitar solos erupting from Warm, uplifting reflection ambience and a drummer. On unblemished pop vocals. Mary Chain-shaped spectres every hidden crevice, and on grief from Venetian Xale, a children’s choir sing, But while Premonition serves loom up and soar away. Not compositional left-turns ambient maven. their rhythm picked up then up some impressive moments everything is as striking as aplenty. Toth’s Rizzo In The altered and extended by the – the corrosive, swerving dryer, (possibly) toy piano-led Wig intrepidly shadows one One night last guitars of Tomorrow, the tidal opener Still Got You, wherein solo with both wobbly piano year, Gigi Masin Eric Beckman wave attack of If You’re Gone warmer nuances of Easton’s and burbling synth, before found himself – a deadening samey-ness voice reveal themselves, or drifting to a close, then sat in front of pervades. This isn’t helped by Falling Hard, which needs little recommencing à la Television’s a TV in the Barber-Way’s vocal melodies, to propel it other than its Marquee Moon; Mitchell, early hours, which often feel static, fail-safe melody. Still, with meanwhile, brings “sha-na- unable to sleep, watching a undercooked, and despite friends from bands including na’s” (to Plinth) and a documentary about Tahitian the band’s commendably Arab Strap and The Pictish Trail “shame-shame-shame” refrain dancing. The day before, the cyclonic hardcore punk flying in their home-studio (Fruit Loops) to shoot pop ambient master’s wife had energy, Premonition contributions remotely, Poster hooks through the group’s passed away. The smiling, underscores the fact that Paints create a transporting, ever-wilful explorations. swaying movements of the White Lung are a vehicle richly detailed canvas. female dancers provided Andrew Perry comfort and a chance to James McNair reflect on the spiritual freedom that death had granted his wife. Vahinè – Tahitian for woman – is a poignant, emotional tribute to her. Childlike voices dapple the celestial drone of Shadye, gracefully transitioning into the soft-focus motorik of Malvina. Marilene (Somewhere In Texas) may reference the US state but its thumb pianos and steel drums trigger images of a faraway, paradisiacal beach. The rattling, vibrant techno of the title track that closes the album is in contrast to the serenity preceding it but strikes an uplifting note. For its creator, Vahinè is symbolic of hope and regeneration – one with universal resonance. Stephen Worthy 88 MOJO
JAZZ BY ANDY COWAN Ana Moura summon a mournful blues on Acid Klaus Esbjörn Svensson ★★★★ A Fear Of Everything and The ★★★★ ★★★★ Casa Guilhermina Town That Couldn’t Sleep, spaghetti western-styled Step On My Travelator HOME.S SONY. CD/DL/LP instrumentals shot through with the ruined beauty of ZEN F.C. DL/LP ACT. CD/DL/LP A Portuguese superstar Johnston’s harmonica, strings goes back to her roots. and wordless wails. Elsewhere, Exuberant aural biography Recently unearthed solo album Unquestionably the singer reedy lamentations Save Our of fictional dance music from late EST founder and pianist is against whom all fadistas have Souls and A Greater Silence casualty. a philosophical revelation. to be compared right now, find Gullick’s barrel-chested Moura is a phenomenon in register evoking Swans’ Subtitled: Recorded in his basement, weeks before his sudden passing in Portugal – her fifth album, Michael Gira at his incantatory “The Imagined 2008, HOME.S is Svensson’s only known solo recording. Desfado, was the biggest seller best. All are mere pavestones Career Renowned for his spine-tingling alchemy with Dan Berglund and of the 2010s by a Portuguese to the title’s track epic Trajectory Of Magnus Öström in e.s.t., Svensson’s knack for conjuring haunting artist; its sequel, Moura, is the denouement, whose distorted Superstar DJ memorials is strikingly vivid amid the tinkling Bach-like melodies fourth best-selling ever in her guitars, oscillating synths and & Dance-Pop of Alpha and tear-lashed melancholy of Gamma, mini- homeland. The key to this apocalyptic advice (“Hold onto Producer, Melvin Harris”, in a symphonies of invention that capture its creator at his most success, perhaps, is her your love/No heaven above”) play for the longest title for a philosophical and conversational. Untethered from e.s.t.’s willingness to play with the prove strangely, powerfully debut since China Crisis, Acid dramatic build-ups, frenetic hooks and rhythmic propulsion, the form while remaining true to healing. This won’t get the Klaus – a new project by interweaving patterns and high-wire sleights of hand of Theta fado’s heritage. Agarra Em party started, but it’ll root out Salford’s Adrian Flanagan – and Eta similarly fizz with Monk-like idiosyncrasies, the latter Mim, the first single, uses unwanted guests. serves up conceptual dance marrying a dissonant bass figure and a stately top line with R&B; Jacarandá, a tribute to music artist, Melvin Harris. Its goose pimple-raising intensity. Less reliant on repetition than fado-lover and Moura fan Andy Cowan track titles chart Harris’s career before, these mesmerising private meditations prove both Prince, features one of his through boom, bust and then a unexpectedly sensuous and acutely self-aware. favourite guitarists, Mike Scott. Angela Strehli protracted extinguishing of the As the singer celebrates her ★★★★ flame. There’s Crashing Cars In ALSO RELEASED own, mixed-race, background, Ace Of Blues Ibiza, Bad Club Bad Drugs Bad there are distinct musical People, I Used To Be A DJ In A Svaneborg Kardyb Santaka influences from overseas ANTONE’S/NEW WEST. CD/DL/LP Club (But Now I’m Just a DJ In ★★★★ ★★★★ (particularly Angola and Brazil), My Bedroom) and the closing but elsewhere she sticks to the First collection in 17 years Eulogy To A Quiet Life. Over Tage No Rivers Here poetic rules of fado, throwing from Texan blues legend. Accompanied by a doleful, in a splendid cover of Estranha muffled piano, the latter is GONDWANA. CD/DL/LP BYRD OUT. DL/LP Forma De Vida and focusing on Texas-born Strehli possesses narrated by actor Maxine the blue moods and solitude a tough, raw alto that at 76 Peake. Each track features a Subtle echoes of Seasoned drummer conveyed by her heroes. she’s honed to cool assurance. different collaborator. Richard Esbjörn Svensson, Marijus Aleksa and Having co-founded Antone’s, Hawley provides guitar on Tord Gustavsen and electronic producer David Hutcheon the club at the centre of another (the sad cowboy Jan Johansson peek Manfredas deliver Austin’s blues scene, she lament of My Hat’s On Fire). through the a great hunk of James Johnston performed alongside greats More indicative of the reflective early morning hymnals searching kosmische jazz on & Steve Gullick like Albert King and Muddy pervading mood is Blow Your of this Danish keys/drums duo. their debut. While the side-long ★★★ Waters, and this LP pays tribute Speakers, a rollicking neo-disco Recorded facing each other, the title track’s bubbling mutations Everybody’s Sunset to those guys – but Strehli’s romp, peppered with laser slow-release introspection and and modulating bass riff are female reinterpretations give gun blasts. It’s all good, subtle dynamics of Orbit and offset by treated acoustic GOD UNKNOWN. DL/LP every track a wild new punch. eccentric fun. Farvel conceal genuine brass melodies, the ever- Elmore James’s Person To Stephen Worthy emotional weight as seemingly developing rhythms of 555 and Gallon Drunk founder and Person might swagger like the effortless Wurlitzer melodies Opening Chasms evoke Stellar rock snapper pursue noise, original, but it also winks with Village Of spring forth. With a knack for OM Source as much as Miles folk and classical obsessions. tongue-in-cheek humour. The Sun simplicity, Over Tage’s warm Davis or Jon Hassell. OV Wright’s Ace Of Spades, ★★★★ embrace is like a thick Nordic Much like last remixed as laid-back reggae, knit on a hostile day. Fowler/Perelman/ year’s highly was a strut about keeping a First Light Amba/Shipp/ stylised We girl under his thumb; instead Uusi Aika Parker/Hirsh Travel Time, Strehli shrugs, “Listen to me, GEARBOX. CD/DL/LP ★★★★ ★★★★ Johnston & baby, you just can’t win/Places Gullick’s you tryin’ to go, I already UK jazz duo Binker & Moses’ Uusi Aika Alien Skin second outing majors on been…” Closing number SRV, exploratory dance-off austere bleak folk, doomy largely acoustic, was written with Basement Jaxx’s WE JAZZ. CD/DL/LP MAHAKALA MUSIC. CD/DL dirges and creaky instrumen- by Strehli for late friend Stevie Simon Ratcliffe. tation. Gullick navigates his Ray Vaughn. Sweet and spare, Drawing inspiration A sense of spiritual, piano’s broken keys to her voice finally vulnerable, Once pegged from Lester Young cathartic joy this one is bluer than blue. as throwbacks and Jan Garbarek, accompanies these Ana Moura: focusing to sax/ this Finnish veteran New York on the blue moods Glyn Brown percussion quartet’s debut sound painters as of fado. duos like John weds melodic hooks to free they throw everything at the © ACT_Katarina Grip Höök Coltrane and improvisations. Otto Eskelinen’s canvas with a six-way smile Rashied Ali or Charles Lloyd breathy sax and flute are a across their chops. The three and Billy Higgins, Binker & constant, whether riding saxophonists sound like they’re Moses ripped up their tried Henget’s spiritual zither playing entirely different and tested recipe on this year’s meditations, Gudrid’s walking instruments on standouts Feeding The Machine – pushing double bass monologue or Kaksi Sentient Sentiment and the title avant-garde sonics and Puuta’s horror score pianos, track, their untamed wails electronic minimalism to the replete with deliberate bum underpinned by William Parker fore alongside sound designer notes. Wily enough to know and Steve Hirsh’s instinctual Max Luthert. Their latest when to stick or twist, Uusi Aika’s rhythmic pulse and Matthew collaboration continues to original ideas never outstay Shipp’s raggedy piano runs. AC break rank as Golding’s tenor their welcome. sax soliloquies and Boyd’s shifting rhythmic textures ally with Ratcliffe’s shimmering atmospherics and rifling percussive pianos. Ratcliffe’s presence is most overt on the progressive house-inspired title track, samba-driven The Spanish Master and highlife- propelled yet futuristic Ted, enhancing Moses’ stormily intense drums and Golding’s rare-toned fire-juggling. A spiritual jump-start to any day, First Light shimmies towards the mainstream with no loss of class. Andy Cowan MOJO 89
FILTER ALBUMS 10-minute, semi-improvised instrumental with Dawson’s guitar probing around in search of a Richard Dawson: structure together with long-time collaborators pushing on a bit Angharad Davies on violin and harpist Rhodri further. Davies, and Andrew Cheetham’s brushed and clattering drums. Time Out Of The song is dense with imagery and allu- Mind an atmosphere of The sion, and Dawson’s vocal lines, which include Incredible String Band some unexpected dissonances, begin to cohere Head-spinning conclusion to singing outtakes from The Wicker Man. Then, into a pattern coloured further by empathetic Dawson’s time-travelling trilogy. on the album entitled 2020 – released in 2019 ensemble playing. Once relaxed into the jour- By Mike Barnes. – he picked the bones of present-day existence ney, one is faced by a testing section of his solo to boisterous fuzz guitar and unpredictable falsetto singing before the song culminates with Richard Dawson synths. Now The Ruby Cord catapults us 50 years Dawson and a small choir of “mates” singing a ★★★★ into the future: the possibilities of withdrawal gorgeous melody, accompanied by strings and The Ruby Cord have enabled an extreme form of solipsism glittering harp. where you only engage with your own imagina- DOMINO. CD/DL/LP tion, with all the pleasure and pain that implies. The Hermit takes the storytelling of the At least that’s a broad outline. bardic tradition and extrapolates it to some WITH PEASANT in 2017, Dawson entered into a Dark Ages troubadour mindset, mixing The Ruby Cord does not sound so much distant horizon. It evokes memories of the courtly with the gnarly, and conjuring up futuristic as out of time, and some listeners the sprawling, rhapsodic forms of Joanna will fall at the first hurdle. But what a hurdle it Newsom’s Ys, and Roy Harper’s 23-minute is. The Hermit, which opens the 80-minute The Lord’s Prayer on Lifemask. Harper said album, clocks in at 41 minutes. It begins with a of that song, “Don’t be scared of it, it’s only a movie”, and the same applies to The Hermit. Dawson’s singular approach looks at both melodies and lyrics from unusual angles. The chugging rock guitar of The Tip Of An Ar- row dives off into free-form sections, and on Thicker Than Water we take a metaphorical and literal journey away from family and into isolation over pretty guitar figures that suddenly blossom into vocal chorales. Horse And Rider ends the album in typi- cally enigmatic fashion. Dawson sings of the protagonist: “There’s no way back to the world from which she was born/And the only way out is forward and down.” But the sense of unease is tempered by the musicians playing an an- themic tune with a traditional feel, which gives some kind of resolution. Dawson’s approach to making The Ruby Cord was exemplified by his question, “What happens if we push on a bit further?” He’s answered that with one of the most inventive, exploratory albums of the year. µ-Ziq Green Chaos), intricate, tapestries. The crushed velvet solo album at his Nabby Road Unkle Bob ★★★★ sweet-natured rave (Magic essences of Hunky Dory Bowie studio, and it’s dedicated to ★★★★ Pony Ride Part 3) and, on and the immediately pre-glam her. He’s done the old girl Hello the record’s second half, a Bolan suffuse the album. proud though. There’s the Invisible discernible nod to classic µ-Ziq There’s also an angular trademark McNabbian PLANET MU. CD/DL/LP material. It’s 25 years on from approach to the songwriting glorious twang, a dreamy HIGHPONY. CD/DL/LP perhaps Paradinas’s most – a post-punk spikiness. This instrumental (Sausalito) Esteemed electronica feted work, Lunatic Harness, hermetic creation beckons which nods to Chris Rea’s One more time for stalwart still has plenty reissued earlier this year. inward and, once ensnared, magnificent Nothing’s Glasgow’s purveyors to offer. Pentagonal Antiprism surrender is inescapable. Happening By The Sea; flashes of bittersweet pop. and Metabidiminished Bingo Harry is Benny Jones’s of wit (Guest List re-invents To call Mike Paradinas one of Icosahedron – titles seemingly musical vehicle. His home ‘Wilson Pickett’ as rhyming Unkle Bob’s the great survivors does the plucked from a µ-Ziq title studio is incorporated into the slang); a namecheck for 2006 debut label he founded, Planet Mu, generator – exhibit similar houseboat he lives on, and his Sterling Hayden on Film Noir Sugar & Spite a disservice. Mu continues to abstract polyrhythms, playful second Bingo Harry album was Star and handy advice for was an aberrant take risks, support new artists melodies and devilish completed there, along the young lovers on Gentlemen delight, and champion fresh sounds experimentation. A north of England’s waterways. Dress For Dinner. As he admits, rivalling the across the electronica realm. commitment to the latter It is issued by the label also Nabby Road is really a wake for cream of ’80s literate pop Always looking to the future is keeps Paradinas ever relevant. homing The Blue Orchids, his mother and his friend – Aztec Camera, Prefab Sprout, a vital strand of Paradinas’s whose Martin Bramah was Janice Long, but there’s no Pale Fountains – with frontman DNA – as well as being prolific. Stephen Worthy blown away when Bingo Harry moping, only elegy and uplift. Rick Webster channelling Hello is his own evergreen supported his band. A door The highlight Start Again is lovelorn despair with a voice µ-Ziq project’s third release Bingo Harry duly opened. The founder built around a dazzling riff; to match. Cue frothing reviews, of the year and a companion ★★★ member of The Fall must’ve Holy taps into Veedon but no chart action; likewise for piece to Goodbye, released thought he’d stumbled across Fleece-era Van Morrison and 2010’s Shockwaves, after which, several months prior. There’s Where Do We Go? a modern-day musical warlock. Amazing is an atypically direct the band split. In 2014, they growling, sharp-edged link to Icicle Works. A peak to returned for two albums before junglism (Iggy’s Song, TINY GLOBAL PRODUCTIONS. Kieron Tyler leaven a time of troughs. disappearing again. Now sampling the screaming of one CD/DL/LP they’re trying again to break of his children, and saturnine Ian McNabb John Aizlewood hearts and raise pulses, and Benny Jones’s second LP ★★★★ Invisible is as good as they’ve Kuba Ryniewicz summons the ethereal ever been. The title track spirit of early-1970s Britain Nabby Road comments on Unkle Bob’s with aplomb. fortunes but also social media FAIR. CD/DL/LP ghosting; Webster sees Where Do We abandonment everywhere Go? evokes a Fourteen solo albums in, the he looks. I Still Think About world where songwriting fires still burn. You is a pure distillation of brocade heartbreak, while What Would cushions It’s been difficult for Ian We Be Without Each Other is as scatter the McNabb since last year’s much about band longevity as floor of a shadowy room with sparkling Utopian. His mother it is love. walls hung with William Morris died as he recorded his 14th Martin Aston 90 MOJO
AMERICANA BY SYLVIE SIMMONS Sophie Jamieson On Board on conversations Jeb Loy Nichols Various ★★★★ with a lifeboat captain. Four ★★★★ ★★★★ years later, she’s recruited Paul Choosing McCartney’s Robbie McIntosh United States Of Live Forever: A Tribute and Deacon Blue’s Jim Prime The Broken Hearted To Billy Joe Shaver BELLA UNION. CD/DL/LP for a mannered but brisk seven-track album which ON-U SOUND. CD/DL/LP NEW WEST. CD/DL/LP A raw, intimate, brilliant re-positions her midway debut. between Kate Bush (First Odd Country-soul-folk A fine tribute to one of the great Prime evokes The Dreaming’s troubadour’s politically Outlaw Country songwriters. Sophie’s choice percussive clutter) and the charged twelfth album. was to accept, avant swirl of Jesca Hoop. If you’re going to make a Billy Joe or not, that Gearless is based around an A wandering Shaver covers album it had better be good. During his lifetime, she was an interview with a KGB defector, spirit, it’s no which ended two years ago at age 81, he was covered by Waylon, alcoholic. It’s while the National Youth Choir surprise Willie, Cash, Kristofferson and Elvis. Thankfully this is really good. taken her a Of Scotland bring angelic singer- Produced by Charlie Sexton and former Shaver collaborator Freddy while to get to this debut, nine wonder to the piano-led songwriter Jeb Fletcher, its 12 songs – among the Texan’s best known – are sung years after her first EP, and, on Retromingent. She’s an Loy Nichols’ lovingly by some of the best around. Willie Nelson sets a high bar every level, Choosing feels like acquired taste, but she’s worth peripatetic existence (born in with opening song Live Forever, which features Lucinda Williams an emotional undertaking, the effort. Wyoming, raised in Missouri, on backing vocals, equal parts tough and poignant. My only beef matching labelmate John now settled in remote rural is that Williams – unlike Miranda Lambert, Edie Brickell, Allison Grant for candour. Falling John Aizlewood Wales via New York and Russell, Margo Price and Amanda Shires – didn’t get to sing lead. somewhere between Sharon London) bleeds into his socially Price’s heartbreaking Ragged Old Truck, Shire’s Honky Tonk Heroes Van Etten, Lisa Germano and Duke Garwood conscious campfire country- and Lambert’s Old Chunk Of Coal are among the highlights, along P.J. Harvey’s demos, Choosing ★★★★ soul. It’s a warm, inviting sound, with George Strait’s Willy The Wandering Gypsy And Me and focuses attention on fully realised here on Nichols’ Rodney Crowell’s gorgeous Old Five And Dimers Like Me. Jamieson’s wavering voice and Rogues Gospel twelfth solo LP, and second her fall-to-climb saga, mostly with On-U producer Adrian ALSO RELEASED given one-word titles: Empties, GOD UNKNOWN. DL/LP Sherwood following 2016’s Violence, Sink. Her torch-song dub-oriented Long Time Anthony D’Amato KB Bayley voice is often exposed by Minimalist sessions deliver Traveller. Sherwood’s subtle, ★★★★ ★★★★ spare arrangements – a less-is-more ambient-blues pared-down treatment – all solemn piano or glowing excellence. resonant cello, softly parping At First There Flatlands embers of electric guitar – but horns, skittering percussion Was Nothing songs also burst into euphoric Though and twinkling keys (the latter KBBAYLEY.COM. CD/DL life, like exorcisms: Addition’s formally courtesy of Primal Scream/Felt BLUE ROSE. CD/DL/LP sweltering mood, Runner’s a blues man Martin Duffy) – provides The follow-up to gospel climax. Choosing starts album, Duke the ideal backdrop for Nichols’ D’Amato’s first the UK musician’s brutally – “What did I do last Garwood’s intimate, easy drawl, most full-length album 2021 album Little night/I lost my bike and broke eighth solo LP notable on Paul Simon-esque since Cold Snap Thunderstorms has a hole in my memory” – and is all about the ambience. acoustic strum I’m Just A Visitor (2016) might be his a real intimacy. Fill is particularly eviscerating Recorded in drummer Paul and a gently stirring cover of best. Some great Nothing fancy, just a man, a (“I’m more than a drought/I’m May’s bungalow during the Woody Guthrie’s prescient songwriting on these 10 new guitar (once in a while a dobro or more than a flood”) but every sweltering summer of 2020, Deportees. Both illustrate the tracks, recorded in Utah with piano) and 10 songs, six originals second is disarming and this wonderfully elemental set genuine grit and heart in these Joshua James and band. There’s and four covers, including Tom beautiful. conjures the unhurried vibe of songs to the downtrodden. a warm, uplifting feel to Waits’s Johnsburg, Illinois. Dusty, those sessions: Garwood’s Simon McEwen country-gospel opener Long evocative folk-blues Americana Martin Aston guitar shimmering like a Haul and a sunniness to Trying – Comet Girl; The Black Crow heat-haze, his gnarly growl Jemma Freeman To Change (“but it’s fucking hard Keeps On Flying; Driftwood Addie Brik incanting mantras and haiku, & The Cosmic to do”), while the horn solo on Avenue, whose mournful ★★★ May holding these enigmatic Something catchy Kinda Strange shows you harmonica sounds like a distant grooves in place. A pervading ★★★★ can take D’Amato out of New train – they draw you down the That Dog Don’t Hunt voodoo spook suggests Jersey but you can’t take New road with him, eavesdropping Dr. John at his medicinal peak, Miffed Jersey out of his songs. Best of on his thoughts. ITZA. CD/DL while Garwood’s laudable all: Broke Tooth Smile, The Oyster intolerance of genre cliché TRAPPED ANIMAL. CD/DL/LP And The Pearl and But I Go. Steve Wallis Fourth album from finds him seeking ley-lines ★★★ Savannah-born, Troon- linking the Southern Delta Second album from grizzled Joe Ely residing singer-songwriter. with Eastern mysticism and psychedelic trio. ★★★★ Nothing Stays The Krautrock’s potent reiterations Same Way For Long Addie Brik on Maharaja Blues, which Hostile, Flatland Lullaby seemed to could easily have ploughed its vulnerable, STEVEWALLISMUSIC.COM. DL have it all. trance-like furrow for another but strangely RACK ’EM/THIRTY TIGERS. CD/DL Mentored as a 10 glorious minutes. The life-affirming, Nice solo debut poet by Allen simmering, spiritual blues of Oh Really, It’s hard to rate from a folk- Ginsberg and Love Comet finds Garwood What’s That this previously Americana artist discovered as a musician adding his glowering Then?, Jemma Freeman’s 2019 unreleased LP who was raised in by Peter Gabriel, she’s saxophones to the mix; closer debut, was a swirling racket of from the mid ’80s, Australia, lives in collaborated with Wendy & Lion On Ice, meanwhile, the highest order. Second time because Ely really Paris and recorded this in Devon. Lisa and Red Hot Chili Peppers, channels the wounded, heroic around, the perennial outsider made it for an audience of one: Wallis wears his influences on his as well as writing some music darkness of fallen comrade and (she’s gay, autistic, she has his two-year-old daughter. As sleeve, borrowing here and there for Sex In The City. Then, in collaborator, Mark Lanegan. ADHD) has refined her vision children’s LPs go, it has some ace from Townes Van Zandt 1998, she fled to Troon (albeit without sacrificing its intensity. musicians (Jimmie Dale Gilmore, (noticeably on Amsterdam) via Budapest), from where she Stevie Chick Seven-minute opener Big Roscoe Beck, Lloyd Maines). And and John Prine (Blue-Eyed based 2018’s I Have A Doctor Bread sets the tone admirably as Joe Ely LPs go, it has a lot of Annie). For the most part the Off the wall: enough: speakers-rattling gentle, lullaby-tempo songs, songs are reflective and light Sophie Jamieson’s buzzsaw guitar, loud-quiet- mixed with child-friendly tracks on embellishments, putting the debut is disarming loud grunge stylings and such as The Cats And The Rats focus on a fine, warm voice that and beautiful. Freeman declaring, “I talked and a cover of Woody Guthrie’s counteracts the more dolorous to the trees today”, before it Car Car. Also slow, reflective lyrics. Highlights: opener The escalates to a delirious, Milkmaid, and backporch- Loneliest, and the closing title out-there squall. Elsewhere, country Wake Up Sunshine. track. SS Easy Peeler begins with the most dramatic drums since James’s Laid before it takes on Brexiteers, the anti-vax mob and, just for good measure, the patriarchy, while Take Me is surprisingly hooky and the brief, dark Huge echoes both Shonen Knife and Ut. Freeman clearly isn’t seeking the mainstream here, but for all her fury, she never loses focus. A force of the future. John Aizlewood MOJO 91
INTRODUCING PODCAST CRATEDIGGERS ASSEMBLE! Join ANDREW MALE and the extended MOJO family of record obsessives, musicians, writers and fans, as we hunt down unheralded gems, reconsider classic albums, bring you the very best new music – and much more. AVAILABLE ON APPLE, SPOTIFY, PLANET RADIO, AND ALL YOUR REGULAR PODCAST PLACES. SCAN ME TO LISTEN www.mojo4music.com/podcast
FILTER ALBUMS EXTR A Attawalpa Black Ox Orkestar Fenella Neal Francis Ingredient ★★★★ ★★★★ ★★★★ ★★★ ★★★ Presence Everything Returns The Metallic Index Sentimental Garbage Ingredient ATTAWALPA. CD/DL/LP CONSTELLATION. CD/DL/LP FIRE. DL/LP ATO. CD/DL/LP TELEPHONE EXPLOSION. DL/LP Luis Felber (Jamie T guitarist, This Montreal band’s Jane Weaver focuses her Very Fine, Pts 1&2 sets the tone Over subtle, swelling electronics, other half of Lena Dunham) avant-garde twist on Yiddish folk extrasensory analogue powers for this Chicagoan singer- Torontonians Ian Daniel Kehoe taps his Peruvian roots for this via cinematic rock and freeform into a second LP with her songwriter-pianist’s mini-LP: a and Luka Kuplowsky’s debut latest project’s title and the jazz is undiminished, despite a experimental trio. Inspired by quality ’70s soul reconstruction trades philosophical lyric-poems fertile ground of ’80s Brit 15-year hiatus. Scott Gilmore’s Stella Crenshaw, a 1920s nurse of horns, electric keys and with homespun minimalism. art-pop for its sound. baritone, Thierry Amar’s with psychic abilities, titles like Curtis-smooth falsetto that wears Be it Photo’s avant-pop or Highlights: the LCD Soundsystem contrabass and Jessica Moss’s Telekinetoscopes and After The its leather trenchcoated Raindrop’s torch song restraint, glo-pop of Too Much; a violin excel on a series of dark Visions are as gripping as the soundworld with aplomb, as their intimate musings recall Gabrielised Ian Broudie on chansons imbued with rich levitating grooves and flickering does his sweet cover of Shuggie Momus’s Voyager and The Ignore The Pollution. JB melancholy. AC pulses that accompany them. JB Otis’s Strawberry Letter 23. JB Beloved circa Conscience. AC Simon Juliff Nyx Nótt Adrian Quesada Run Logan Run Spoon Vs ★★★ ★★★★ ★★★ ★★★★ On-U Sound ★★★★ Stars Themes From Jaguar Sound Nature Will Take Care Of You Lucifer On The Sofa DOG MEAT. CD/LP MELODIC. CD/DL/LP ATO. DL/LP WORM DISCS. CD/DL/LP MATADOR. DL/LP A Melbourne-scene stalwart, Aidan Moffat has now issued Black Puma’s second solo LP of Juliff shares GBV’s Robert more instrumental solo LPs than 2022: all-instrumentals expertly Bristol sax/drums duo move Austin indie grafters receive a Pollard’s ear for ’60s classicism vocal ones. Here the Arab Strap constructed, guests include beyond power jazz improv on soup-to-nuts dub reconstruction paired with punk’s ramshackle singer’s musical instincts and pianist Neal Francis (again), their self-dubbed ‘big band’ LP. A by Adrian Sherwood. Aided by aesthetic. To wit: the title track percussive intuition prove harpist Mary Lattimore (hip-hop/ string quartet and brass section the peerless On-U rhythm section puts a sauntering Beatlesy spot-on amid Docudrama’s harp collision Starry Nights) and detail the depth-charged of Doug Wimbish and Keith guitar melody through a ratcheting stringy tension and soul revivalists Ikebe Shakedown, Growing Pains on a forward- LeBlanc, Sherwood works his best Stoogian filter, Till Next Time Porno’s dopey trumpets and whose brass/woodwind vamps facing exercise in movement, magic with On The Radio and the is slanted pop with a dreamy, wheezing synths. Elsewhere, it lend ’70s funk-soul film score dynamics and velocity. AC down-beat Astral Jacket. JB Big Star spirit. JB increasingly leans into jazz. AC sophistication to Spirits. JB EXTENDED PLAY My Morning Jacket You want it darker: My Morning Live From RCA Jacket’s Jim James goes solo from Studio A (Acoustic) RCA Studio A. Star Feminine THE LOUISVILLE voyagers have built Band a formidable live reputation that’s seen ★★★★ them expand their soulful psychedelic In Paris excursions to fit all sorts of spaces: are- nas, cruise ships, holiday resorts. A sec- BORN BAD. CD/DL/LP ond, vinyl-only live set, MMJ Live Vol.2: Beninese septet’s self- Chicago 2021 (ATO) demonstrates statementing theme song sets their skyward stage trajectory. The the tone for second LP’s blend of flipside to the inflatable pool toys and Congolese rumba and girl-gang, beer buckets, Live From RCA Studio A is a garage brio. Therein, these gifted digital, seven-song set of acoustic tracks teens tackle subjects like forced from last year’s self-titled LP, performed marriage and exorcism via West solo by Jim James and shot by Danny African pop and punk vigour. JB Clinch in warm, dark, vintage tones that match the famed studio’s parquet floor STR4TA to James’s wildman beard. Adopting ★★★★ a comedy croak for Lucky To Be Alive STR4TASFEAR reminds us of his real-life Muppets col- laboration, while the spine-tingling coda BROWNSWOOD RECORDINGS. to Out Of Range suggests that vocally, at CD/DL/LP least, very few things are beyond him. Gilles Peterson and ‘Bluey’ Best of all, a slow and Maunick continue to flip the lid low take on In Color on ’80s Brit-funk, reinvigorating resonates in the its enveloping bass lines, spacey pin-drop atmos- keys and synthetic strings. Taking phere like an outtake in atypical turns from Omar and from Tim Buckley’s others, this buoyant second LP is Happy Sad. far from retro-mania. AC MOJO 93
FILTER REISSUES Show Your Working Reverse engineering Hunky Dory via demos, BBC sessions, live and studio recordings from Bowie’s most productive year. By David Buckley. David Bowie Bowie collectors will have heard inferior sound ★★★★★ quality versions of all these demos but not King Of The City. It had been assumed, from its title, that this might have been the progenitor of Suffragette City. But no, A Divine Symmetry it’s an entirely different song, pleasing enough, un- remarkable except for that melody underpinning the PARLOPHONE. CD/LP/BR verses which Bowie would repurpose in the “I’ve never 1971 STARTS with Bowie, if not in the total done good things/I’ve never done bad things” section musical wilderness, then as a fringe figure. of 1980’s Ashes To Ashes. And the ‘repurposing’ goes Despite being the most productive year of his on. Tired Of My Life was ripped up and started again entire career, it ends that way too. as It’s No Game, also for Scary Monsters and again dras- tically improved upon, whilst Shadow Man was one of He used it caching songs, building on an already size- the songs Bowie reworked much later in his 2000 Toy project, given an official release in 2021. able repertoire and, at the end of the year, releasing his “It focuses on first undisputed classic, Hunky Dory. It’s the go-to LP Hunky Dory’s CDs 2 and 3 are wholly devoted to live material. In for anyone new to his music, yet in so many ways, it is the ending, not the beginning of a story. This was the last June 1971, David Bowie And Friends performed for Bowie LP made in a position of relative anonymity, the stages of John Peel’s In Concert slot and here we get both stereo last year in which David Bowie, and his creator, Brixton- creation.” and mono versions, whilst in September, Bowie once boy David Jones, would be anything less than famous. again performed at the Beeb, this time a session for Bob Harris’s Sounds Of The ’70s. The audio is clear, Recently married and about to become a dad, he would compose on acoustic guitar and the piano at home in Haddon the performances stripped down and the repertoire includes the non- Hall, Beckenham. His band the Spiders were forming but were as yet LP song, Bombers, Jacques Brel’s Amsterdam and the first rendition unnamed. Bowie had no manager and wasn’t signed to a record label. of Kooks, written, so Bowie explains, when he was told of the birth He was just 24. As a songwriter, he was still committed to not only of his son Zowie whilst listening to a Neil Young record. Finally, Live writing songs for himself but for others. As a performer he was not yet Friars, Aylesbury, also from September ’71, is a live performance from confident stepping front and centre stage. an artist who still seemed ill at ease as a frontman. The set starts with just Bowie and his guitarist “Michael Ronson”, with Bowie quipping This vulnerability marks CD1 of this exhaustive box set, including “are you going to get nearer?… To the mic!” to an almost silent audi- 14 demos from which only six became actual finished tracks on Hunky ence. Fill Your Heart starts the acoustic set, one of five covers played Dory. We start with Tired Of My Life, written in 1970, unpromising that night. Oh! You Pretty Things had been a sizeable UK hit for Peter with its wearied tempo and self-absorption. It’s binned… for now. More promising is Shadow Man, with its melody faintly reminiscent of Noone but now Bowie was making it his own, twisting and improv- Bee Gees’ To Love Somebody, and a lyric deal- ing the melody. Just six months later, Bowie would debut The Spiders ing with the possibility of adopting a new per- From Mars at the very same venue. The transformation from this sona. The theme predates the Ziggy Stardust hesitant live performer to the new demigod rocker was miraculous. experiment. The music, like the next demo, A Divine Symmetry does not try to cover everything Bowie recorded Looking For A Friend, is mildly derivative of in 1971. Its focus is on Hunky Dory, reverse engineering Bowie’s American country rock. Bowie is breaking no music, showing the stages of creation. Very much like a portrait artist new musical ground here. Another demo for will make numerous sketches, so we see the evolution of these songs How Lucky You Are switches styles completely as Bowie rewrites lyrics, improves melodies, tweaks arrangements, to a Brechtian staccato 3/4 time and has a each stage an improvement on the previous. Not long after Hunky Dory, Bowie would create unscripted, record with no demo and with BACK STORY: rather contemptuous lyric suggesting the co- perhaps just a basic melody in his head. By sharp contrast, HD is as DREAR DAIRY ercive emotional control of a partner (“When well-tuned and road-tested as any Bowie LP has ever been. Bowie, re- you walk, you follow two steps behind”). The cording at Trident Studios with producer Ken Scott, remade his sound ● Even for the song was offered to Tom Jones, who passed. and gave the music pinpoint clarity. Whilst in Mick Ronson, Bowie completist, the six Right On Mother could have sat comfortably had found a friend, gifted arranger and superb pop-rock guitarist. studio versions of Life on Bowie’s 1967 debut, telling the tale of a On Mars? and eight different renditions of live-at-home man trying to break free of his Of course, we know Hunky Dory is brilliant, containing as it does Kooks in this box set mother. It too is never pursued beyond demo the first bona fide glam rock Bowie song, Queen Bitch, the manifesto- might feel like overload, stage. However, we get to hear demos for like Changes and the twin poetic enigmas of Quicksand and The but the whole package is undeniably classy. The songs which would become Bowie classics: Bewlay Brothers. CD4 collects alternative mixes, promos and single artwork and design are Changes, Quicksand and Life On Mars?. versions of several HD songs but also Lightning Frightening which perfect, using the same first made an appearance on the Ryko Bowie reissues of 1989. The 1970 sans-serif font, Also included are live versions of Quick- The David Bowie Archive. Photo by Brian Ward Zipper, as the original. sand, and The Velvet Underground’s Waiting fifth disc, a Blu-ray audio, finishes the journey with a re-imagined full It’s an authentic For The Man (with an intro that seems to in- LP compiled from various alternative mixes, a bonus mix of Life On fabrication – Bowie terpolate The Ad Libs’ doo wop song The Boy Mars? and the Bob Harris session. would have liked that. Best of all is the From New York City). Both were recorded Hunky Dory would go on to become a huge commercial success, reproduction of Bowie’s not in concert, but in a San Francisco hotel. but only after its follow-up, The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The own student notebook, In January and February 1971 Bowie made Spiders From Mars, had been one first. Astonishingly, by the time Hunky complete with doodles, crossings out and a promotional visit to America to promote Dory was released on December 17, 1971, his follow-up LP, apart misspellings. His his then new LP, The Man Who Sold The World, from one song, had already been written and recorded. attempt at ‘Dory’ (Bowie and these songs were recorded unofficially. In guesses with ‘Dorrey’ Bowie began 1972 with a new confidence, finally unafraid of put- ting himself out there, on-stage. But that’s another story, the story of and ‘Dorey’) is proof that fact, he performed seven songs in this private, Ziggy Stardust, a story, one would reasonably guess, that’s next to be even our Rock Gods hotel-room gig, one of which, reported to be anthologised, as the Bowie Afterlife shows little sign of dying. needed a dictionary. named So Long Sixties, remains unreleased. 94 MOJO
New kid on the block: David Bowie in 1971 – his busiest ever year.
Standing tall: Cymande created a lodestar for ’70s black Britishness. make them identifiably theirs – sounds of glory to come. Michael Simmons Cymande from Guyana, Jamaica for brother: “But it’s al- Augustus Pablo & ★★★★★ and Saint Vincent but right, we can still go on,” Rockers All Stars calling south Lon- they sing over bright, ★★★★ Cymande don home, created a triumphant brass and lodestar for ’70s black tribal rhythms) to the Lightning And Thunder PARTISAN. LP Britishness. With producer John stirring nyabinghi chanting and twit- Schroeder, they fed their easy- tering flute of Zion I – they dubbed ONLY ROOTS/DEEP ROOTS. DL/LP Groundbreaking 1972 debut going vibes and Afrocentric aesthetic what they did ‘nyah rock’ – they turn remastered. The band’s name came through melting pot influences – grim urban reality into an empower- A dip into Pablo’s vaults from a calypso word meaning ‘dove’. soul, funk, blues rock, reggae, jazz, ing statement, a forward-looking yields treasure. calypso – to tell a vibrant story. From philosophy that still resonates. FOREGROUNDING identity, the irrepressible spirit of Bra (slang Before his community, and culture on their first Lois Wilson death from a album, this eight-piece, originally nerve disorder in 1999, the Sonic’s Pearls Before Celtic Frost Janis Joplin & visionary Rendezvous Band Swine ★★★★ Jorma Kaukonen producer and ★★★★ ★★★ ★★★★ melodica master Augustus Danse Macabre Pablo created some of the Second Chance-A2: The Wizard Of Is The Legendary deepest roots reggae ever Monday Feb 18.1980 BMG. CD/DL/LP Typewriter Tape: issued. Authorised compilation EARTH RECORDINGS. CD/LP 6/25/64 Jorma’s House Lightning And Thunder gathers REAL O MIND/EASY ACTION. LP Gargantuan anthology of a handful of unreleased Psych maestro’s 2004 rarities Swiss avant-garde metal OMNIVORE. CD/DL recordings taken from master A last-chance dance with collection makes its vinyl pioneers’ complete tapes and a number of the Michigan high-energy debut on 2-disc edition. recordings, 1984 to ’87. Two future rock stars shine unknown dubplates, the supergroup. in their youth. intriguing material affected in In the 1950s, Few bands ever places by audible surface noise. With a fidelity eight-year-old really start with Before either were famous, Beginning with a tough cut of somewhere Tom Rapp a plan, but Jorma Kaukonen would Hugh Mundell’s Stop Them Jah between came third in a Celtic Frost did. accompany singer Janis Joplin with new lyrics delivered by club-land talent contest, On June 1, on acoustic guitar. The former an unidentified singer, a soundboard two places 1984, the duo taped a home rehearsal of the shimmering companion dub and high-end above fellow Minnesotan of vocalist/guitarist Tom G two Bay Area regulars nailing features alternate melodica audience tape, this previously Bobby Zimmerman (a Warrior and bass player blues chestnuts while his lines; Linval Thompson’s Stand unreleased napalm from MC5 sequined baton-twirler won). Martin Ain, aged 20 and 17 then-wife quietly typed in the Strong places us directly in the guitarist Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith’s If early Rapp sounded respectively, emerged from an background, and it became a studio, as the singer wobbles ’70s ravers, at their regular Dylan-esque, he quickly all-night session armed with a popular bootleg. Cleaned up before completing a full take. haunt in Ann Arbor, also has morphed into an uncanny new name and a defined view for this official debut release, it Dragon Style is another high history on its side. Less than a voice, plying ethereal acid folk of how to evolve their sound shows off both musicians to point, being an unheard cut of month later, Smith married madrigals across several Pearls beyond the proto-death metal killer effect. “Janis was a an early Black Ark rhythm that singer-poet Patti Smith and Before Swine line-ups. of their original band, woman who took her place in appeared on Kung Fu Meets The retired from the bar wars with Nuanced lyrics tapped human Hellhammer. The lavishly the universe as a blues singer Dragon, plus a sparse dub mix only 1978’s one-song 45 City suffering, mysticism and packaged Danse Macabre seriously,” Kaukonen told to Mundell’s Day Of Slang as SRB’s studio legacy. oblique love songs, while traces their remarkable MOJO last year. Few young Judgement. Founded in 1974, they should quoting Housman, Auden and journey into more expansive, white shouters could ride a have been huge but were Herodotus; credits included ambitious territory and comes blue note with as much heft David Katz always mighty with top-shelf bowed psaltery; Rapp loaded with extras – the and heart. And the guitarist’s thunder in the rhythm section favoured macabre artwork seven-disc vinyl box set gymnastic playing gracefully Simon Raymonde – bassist Gary Rasmussen from by medieval giants like includes a ‘Heptagram’ USB blends flash and feel. They ★★★ the Up; Stooges drummer Hieronymus Bosch. His finest (housing all 46 tracks), cover weathered classics such Scott Asheton – and former Swine originals – Translucent 40-page book, a replica as Trouble In Mind and Solo Works 96-98 Rationals singer-guitarist Carriages, Another Time, 1984 rehearsal cassette, the Nobody Knows You When Scott Morgan binding his Rocket Man (inspiring Elton’s obligatory woven patch and You’re Down And Out, and BELLA UNION. CD/LP garage-soul aesthetic to song) and The Jeweller – are more. From the raw power Partisan Records Smith’s avenging-Detroit fury. here but in alternate and live of their debut Morbid Tales, Former Cocteau Twin’s solo Guitars are up front in this versions, the latter often through the aggressive album. Features other finale, vocals fight for airspace trailed by lengthy spoken bombast of 1985’s To Mega Cocteau Twins. and the setlist includes introductions that only Therion and on to their esoteric late-period grenades (Earthy; diehard fans will relish. But for masterpiece Into The In 1996, by the China Fields) and an SRB rarity, them, a treasure trove awaits, Pandemonium, this time Simon the 15-minute slow blues peppered with cover versions completist’s collection Raymonde got American Boy with Smith (Dylan, Cohen, Mitchell), fully enshrines a legacy that around to bringing the fire-music expressing all facets of this extends far beyond metal into making his first Coltrane on saxophone. fearlessly unique character. all aspects of extreme music solo LP, and art. Cocteau Twins’ traditional David Fricke Martin Aston disarray was about to end in Phil Alexander dissolution. Released a year later, the ruminative Blame Someone Else was surprisingly untethered to the mothership, despite Robin Guthrie contributing guitars and Liz Fraser adding a Twinsy vocal turn to Worship Me. A quarter of a century later, Raymonde has dropped the feisty title, added three luscious tracks that didn’t make the original and re-released a vinyl version on his own label. It’s retained its charms too. Three covers (Felice and Boudleaux Bryant’s In My Place, Scott Walker’s It’s Raining Today, Television’s Days) round out Raymonde’s melody-drenched world. It’s A Family Thing is a winsome opener and there are curveballs aplenty, especially Tired Twilight’s sax and drums-led electro sound collage. John Aizlewood 96 MOJO
Ready for the country: FILTER REISSUES Neil Young behind the wheel of his 1951 Jeepster, Broken Arrow ranch, 1971. Happy Accidents banjo, stoned out of his gourd, singing Out On The Weekend, Joel Bernstein/Reprise Neil Young’s fourth and biggest- Of Loneliness, with Linda or in the barn studio trying selling studio album hits its half- Ronstadt and James Taylor out Alabama with his band, century. By Sylvie Simmons. on backing vocals. not Crazy Horse or CSNY, but the Stray Gators. In Nash- Neil Young There are also two ville to appear on the Johnny ★★★★★ DVDs. BBC In Concert, Cash TV show (along with February 1971, has Young Ronstadt and Taylor), Young Harvest: 50th singing eight songs, alone met producer Elliot Mazer, Anniversary Edition with piano or acoustic guitar: one from After mentioned he’d written some new songs he The Gold Rush, a handful from Harvest, and solo wanted to get down, and Mazer set him up with REPRISE. CD/DL/LP versions of Dance Dance Dance and Journey a studio and session musicians, including steel Through The Past. Two highlights are the slow guitarist Ben Keith. Young hadn’t been looking WELL HERE it is, the golden jubilee box set beauty Love In Mind and – for those like me for a Nashville sound but there they were. of Neil Young’s most popular album. A bit late, who find the album version bombastic – One of those songs, Old Man, was about the given its original release date was February 1, a spare, solo A Man Needs A Maid. elderly caretaker at Broken Arrow. Another, 1972, but then Young’s LPs have been backing The Needle And The Damage Done, was about up like buses this past year or so. In any case, his Since fans have likely seen the BBC show on the death of Crazy Horse bandmate Danny entire career has been predicated on his right to YouTube, the second DVD is far more interest- Whitten. But the muse of its best-known songs, do what he likes, when he likes, with whomever ing. Harvest Time is a previously unreleased, Heart Of Gold and A Man Needs A Maid, was he likes doing it. Harvest – an album he called an two-hour, loose but often revealing documen- Carrie Snodgress. Another “accident”. A friend “accident” – would turn out to be the biggest- tary on the making of Harvest, directed by ‘Ber- of Young’s suggested they go see Diary Of A selling album of the year. Triple platinum in the nard Shakey’. Young had been mucking around Mad Housewife, a dark comedy movie starring UK, quadruple in the US, it topped the charts with a Super 8 in Topanga Canyon, where he Snodgress, and like the song says, he fell in love on both sides of the Atlantic. lived with his then-wife Susan Acevedo, but with the actress. The same year Harvest was after leaving for Broken Arrow – the Northern released, Young became a first-time father. In the box set, besides the original album, California ranch he bought with the proceeds Critics weren’t as kind to Harvest as record- poster and fancy new linernotes book, there of CSNY’s chart-topping Déjà Vu – he started to buyers in 1972, but Young once called it his are three album outtakes recorded with the get into film-making more seriously. There’s a finest album. Then again, in his Decades (1977) Stray Gators, his “accidental” band – a demoey good deal of Broken Arrow footage on the first linernotes he wrote that Heart Of Gold “put me Dance Dance Dance, a countrified Journey half of the DVD – cattle lowing, a Jeep kicking in the middle of the road. Travelling there soon Through The Past with pedal steel, and Bad Fog up the golden dust, Young on his back with a became a bore so I headed for the ditch.” MOJO 97
FILTER REISSUES Fela Ransome-Kuti: Honey & getting into the tight The Bees grooves for ’73’s Afrodisiac. ★★★★ Fela Ransome- cut makeovers centre – into the template for Talking Love Kuti & The of songs that had Heads’ Remain In Light. Thus, the Africa ’70 been hits in Nige- tight grooves of Alu Jon Jonki Jon REAL GONE MUSIC. LP ★★★★ ria, would prove an international and Eko Ile, garlanded with Kuti’s First time (limited honey Afrodisiac breakthrough for coloured) vinyl reissue the Afrobeat sound as conceived by indefatigable, James Brown-indebted of the Philly girl group’s PARTISAN. DL/LP the Promethean Kuti and drummer 1970 album. Tony Allen at the turn of the ’70s. Yoruba vocals, are as animated as they Fiftieth anniversary double vinyl Brian Eno would later parlay Afro- There’s a case reissue of the Afrobeat opus. disiac’s stylistic approach – eschewing are detailed, while the loping Jeun to be made for chord changes in favour of kinetic the under- A PROPULSIVE hybrid of funk, jazz, Ko Ku (Chop & Quench) proffers a appreciated highlife and jùjú, 1973’s Afrodisiac, organ, guitar and brass textures trad- four-piece comprising four lengthy, Abbey Road- jazzier earthiness. The 13-minute- Honey & The ing against an inexorable rhythmic long Je’nwi Temi (Don’t Gag Me), Bees as the pioneers of the meanwhile, anticipates the singer’s Sound of Philly. Back in 1970 in later political broadsides while Sigma Sound with the studio’s remaining mercilessly danceable. go-to arrangers and musicians Norman Harris, Ronnie Baker David Sheppard and Bobby Martin, they made Love, what turned out to be their sole album. Issued on the Josie label, it sunk on release – though it’s now a holy grail, original copies fetching upwards of $500 – but the quartet’s elegant style, with buttery harmonies bathed in complex orchestrations (swirling strings; punching horns), presaged The Three Degrees with Gamble & Huff by three years. The building blocks are most implicit on their sumptuous cover of The Royalettes’ It’s Gonna Take A Miracle, a hit for H&TBs in 1971, but it’s all too good to be forgotten. Lois Wilson King Crimson Wilson. Discipline, though, The Merrell Donna Summer ★★★★ stands as the best blend of DoubleHappys Fankhauser ★★★★ brain and brawn. ★★★★ ★★★ Discipline Donna Summer John Bungey Nerves Goin’ Round In My PANEGYRIC. LP Mind: The Anthology CRIMSON/DEMON. CD/LP Virgilio Armas FLYING NUN. LP 1964-1979 Heavyweight Crim LP returns Y Su Grupo Quincy Jones-produced on heavyweight vinyl. ★★★★ Vinyl debut for Dunedin GRAPEFRUIT. CD LP from 1982: a glorious rabble-rousers’ 1992 celebration of when disco A King Crimson emerged in Espejismo compilation. Six-CD trawl across mostly met AOR. 1981 that ditched the prog unheralded maverick’s foibles of the early 1970s and WE ARE BUSY BODIES. DL/LP Between his career. In many entirely re-imagined the other bands respects, noises a “rock” band might Rare 1973 album from – Bored Games’ A mostly 1982’s Donna make. Discipline is a breathless, long-in-tooth Venezuelan snotty punk forgotten Summer can be virtuoso mix of tricky meters, jazz pianist and bandleader. and the native of viewed as both African percussion, high-tech post-MBV Kentucky, who a response guitar synths, gamelan Virgilio Armas dynamics of Straitjacket Fits worked from to her No More Tears duet textures, minimalism – and summoned his – Shayne Carter shared the California and partner Barbra Streisand’s some decent rock music too. easy fusion of limelight with singer-guitarist then Hawaii without ever all-conquering 1980 album Yes, Elephant Talk sounds too Latin jazz Wayne Elsey in The threatening a commercial Guilty and a dry run for Michael much like undigested Talking swing with DoubleHappys. Drummer John breakthrough, Merrell Jackson’s Thriller. Produced by Heads – guitarist Adrian Belew self-fashioned Collie (replacing the drumbox Fankhauser could be classed as Quincy Jones, Donna Summer had done time with David variants on son cubano, christened Herbie Fuckface) a serial loser. Instead, these 98 – her tenth solo album – is a Byrne. Elsewhere, though, the montuno and merengue while made three (note: no bassist). tracks suggest he was simply smooth, groovy record that invention shines: Indiscipline trawling Caracas clubs in the Named after a brand of chewy unlucky. Blessed with a sweet redefined Summer as a erupts in precision fury, and early ’70s. First recorded for sweets, The DoubleHappys voice, he sailed from the mature radio-friendly artist. the ear-bending manoeuvres sale at shows, the furiously were more a sour sensation, garage rock of Merrell & The Grammy-nominated single of the title track, as Belew and sensual bossa nova of punk in attitude (they sang Exiles – who featured future Love Is In Control (Finger On Robert Fripp’s guitars cycle in Espejismo wastes little time on about Big Fat Elvis) but Magic Band man Jeff Cotton The Trigger) stands with Don’t and out of phase, effectively niceties, getting straight down sounding closer to The Clean’s – to the more gentle Stop ’Til You Get Enough as invent math rock. This line-up, to business on the breezy pop smarts. The posthumous Fapardokly (whose sole album Jones’s greatest disco with Tony Levin on bass and Barlovento and cartoony Doña Nerves gathers 1984’s was in fact by The Exiles) production. His team were so Bill Bruford on drums, made Mentira, Armas’s dramatic double-A debut Others Way/ without breaking stride. perfectly drilled by now, they two more LPs, which are also stabs offset by dog whistle Anyone Else Would, the Cut It HMS Bounty were more were able to routinely provide being re-released on vinyl flutes and tin-pot percussion. Out EP, parts of the How Much psychedelic, before such accelerating excitement. using 2011 remixes by Steven Subtleties enter the fray via Time Left, Please? EP and two Fankhauser combined garage Its equal is the thoroughly the clipped organ intrigue of live cuts from when Herbie and whimsy on two eclectic inspired cover of Jon & Bernard Matussière Indecision, on-edge María was in the band; minuscule Mu albums. By the time of the Vangelis’s State Of Gracia and cinematic Sobre El budgets means that solo The Maui Album, Independence, with its all-star Orinoco, which transforms everything sounds rough, Fankhauser was living in a choir including Dyan Cannon, from a pensive flute figure to but vibrant and visceral jungle cabin in Maui. Not quite Michael Jackson, Dionne an exuberant bossa breakdown nevertheless. Their often- having enough to separate Warren and Stevie Wonder. that reminds of Aldemaro neglected contribution to him from the herd, he’s no Protection is intriguing; Romero Y Su Onda Nueva the famed Dunedin scene was lost genius, but sometimes written for Summer by Bruce without the vocal stylings. cut tragically short in 1985 (Mu’s Make A Joyful Noise; Springsteen, it sounds like Armas’s frolicking 1970 trio LP when Elsey was killed in a Fapardokly’s The Music Scene) something heard in the De Repente is also reissued. train accident. it’s a close call. cocktail bar on a John Aizlewood Mediterranean holiday. Andy Cowan Martin Aston Daryl Easlea 98 MOJO
Bog Shed Cluster Going up: 13th Floor Elevators ★★★★ ★★★★ (clockwise from top left) Dan Galindo, Stacy Sutherland, Danny Thomas, The Official Bog Set Cluster II Roky Erickson and Tommy Hall. MELODIC. CD/LP BUREAU B. LP Ascendant Russell Wheelock ’80s Northern indie Fiftieth anniversary vinyl Stars Next up are a trio of mono mainstays abnormals, for the first time edition of the kosmische from the Psychedelic Sounds album: Thru on digital media! duo’s second album. A superior collection of The Rhythm, Roller Coaster and Rever- the Texan psych legends, beration (Doubt). All three play the acid, Some bands, it Originally a mastered from original tapes, with Roller Coaster in particular sounding seemed, were Berlin-based reverberates with Jon Savage. astounding in its clarity and sure footed- so associated trio, Kluster ness in the face of incredible acceleration. with John Peel released a 13th Floor Elevators The real revelation from this section is a they didn’t troika of ★★★★ carefully transferred Kingdom Of Heaven, exist in experimental, with a shamanistic Roky Erickson vocal and daylight. So it was with Hebden turn-of-the ’70s LPs before 13 Of The Best a guitar part by Stacy Sutherland that is so Bridge’s Bog Shed, whose rechristening themselves mobile and ethereal that you can feel the manic chaos was encapsulated Cluster on the departure of CHARLY. CD/LP earth move under your feet. as, “Beefheart at the Conrad Schnitzler. After an Wheeltappers and Shunters abstruse 1971 debut, IT’S ALWAYS a pleasure to revisit this Up next are two of the group’s most Club.” This 5-CD box collects remaining synth alchemists bunch of incandescent Texans, and this elemental rockers, (I’ve Got) Levitation almost everything: jarring ’85 Hans-Joachim Roedelius and new compilation adds detail and clarity to and She Lives (In A Time of Her Own), mini-LP Let Them Eat Bog-Shed Dieter Moebius began an what is already a complicated and confusing both sounding fresh as a daisy. Both were achieves Platonic perfection inexorable journey toward a catalogue. Put together by Elevators author included on second album, Easter Every- with the comic/forlorn Fat Lad brand of more playful, pastoral and confidant Paul Drummond, 13 Of The where – the keynote song of which, Slip Exam Failure, ’86’s Step On It is electronica of which the Best has strict rules: all band performances Inside This House, is presented in a cut crabbily funky and haunted, following year’s Cluster II would – so no I Had To Tell You and Splash One; down single mix on LP (full length on CD). while the slipped-disc pop be the first tentative step, all Roky Erickson vocals – nor Nobody To Another key Easter Everywhere song, Earth- mutations of ’87 swan song allowing just a little light into a Love; and all band originals, so also no to quake, is rescued from the mud, enhancing Brutal culminates in Loaf’s still predominantly stygian, Dylan cover (It’s All Over Now) Baby Blue. Sutherland’s scything guitar and the rhythm buried-alive evocation of dissonantly textured sound section’s deep, chthonic rumble. nothingness. Further world. Granted, the swarming Unlike the generations of bootlegs and immersion comes with signal generators of unsettling off-vinyl remasters, Drummond has gone The final four tracks come from an expanded BBC sessions opener Plas or Im Süden’s back to the original multitrack session tapes collection Tried & Tested Public barbed wire guitars and where possible and transferred the record- abortive February 1968 session for a third Speaker and CD-only rarities inchoate drones are far from ings in accordance with the mixes on the LP. The undubbed Dr Doom and Livin’ set, Who Scoffed The Trill, whose bucolic, and Live In Der Fabrik’s original releases. The payoff comes imme- The Amazing Roy North Penis eerie clouds of static anticipate diately, with a true stereo mix On are pristine Elevators, while Never Band (almost the group’s early Cabaret Voltaire, but the of the Elevators’ signature name) is wired rather than less forbidding Georgel, with song, You’re Gonna Miss Me: Another all too accurately reproduces the funny ha-ha. There’s additional its gliding organ lines, hints at as well as added clarity, the Bog-jolt via bassist/cover artist Cluster’s proto-ambient future. background harmonies stand chaos besetting the group just before their Mike Bryson’s brand-new band Tellingly, the 24-year-old Brian out and as Erickson screams portrait – if only orator Phil Eno was a major fan. and hollers, the song comes demise. The set ends with Erickson’s spec- Hartley and drummer Tris King David Sheppard to a full ending. were alive to see it. tral May The Circle Remain Unbroken – a Essential Logic/ perpetually circling loop that Ian Harrison Lora Logic defies time. This sparkling ★★★★ reissue is hardly a best-of, but Tom Petty & The a sampler for what is planned Heartbreakers Logically Yours ★★★★ to be yet another upgrade of HISS AND SHAKE. LP Live At The Fillmore, this group’s back catalogue. 1997 Five-LP archive of post-punk saxophonist and vocalist’s On this showing, it will be the WARNER. CD/DL/LP long out-of-print recordings. last word. America’s greatest bar Lora Logic’s band’s residency distilled saxophone into a 6-LP/4-CD box. wailed like a siren Tom Petty & throughout The X-Ray Spex’s Heartbreakers Oh Bondage! Up Yours!. Ejected played 20 from that group soon after, the nights at San 15-year-old formed her own Francisco’s Essential Logic. This set Fillmore between January and compiles their sole album, February 1997. Now the best of 1979’s Beat Rhythm News, plus these shows have been EPs and singles, along with whittled down into 58 tracks, Logic’s 1982 solo set Pedigree plus over 30 cover versions. Charm, stray tracks from the Listeners won’t hear the join ’90s and a new Essential Logic because American Girl and You album, Land Of Kali, that’s much Wreck Me are hewn from the stronger than you might same bedrock as most of these reasonably hope. The true covers; a point compounded magic’s in the earlier work, when Roger McGuinn bowls up however, Logic melding for a brisk run-through of Byrds post-punk, wild jazz and free hits (including Eight Miles groove with a fearlessness that High) and a vocally acrobatic must’ve influenced peers like take on Bill Withers’ Ain’t No The Slits; the combination of Sunshine segues into their own her strident sax and bewitching Good To Be King. Live At… double-tracked vibrato is casts the late Tom Petty as a intoxicating. Highlights include great rock scholar, bandleader the twisted, joyous blues-punk and MC but also illustrates The of Aerosol Burns, the Heartbreakers’ peerless chops. bittersweet Rat Allé – placing Only they could breathe fire Logic in the airspace of the into the well-worn Lucille and similarly maverick Kleenex/ Bye Bye Johnny and turn John LiLiPUT – and her sublime, Barry’s Goldfinger into an acid spiritual signature anthem, country-blues. Effortlessly Music Is A Better Noise. good fun. Stevie Chick Mark Blake MOJO 99
Going Dutch: The Beach Boys (from left) Ricky Fataar, Blondie Chaplin, Al Jardine, Mike Love and Carl Wilson, Braamberg, Holland, June 1972. FILE UNDER... A Mess Of Help goodpromo,butnotacoherentalbum. Reprise initially rejected Holland as weak and lacking a single. Van Dyke Parks stepped in and played executives a tape he said contained Facing choppy waters without nominates as his all-time favourite Beach Boys the germ of a hit. Beach Boys biographer much input from captain Brian, moment, and two mountainous yet vulnerable Timothy White described this extraordinary The Beach Boys run adrift with songs, drenched in orchestration, from Den- recording: Parks encourages Brian to write a all hands on deck. By Jim Irvin. nis’s abandoned Freckles album, Make It Good song from scratch in front of him. Brian asks and Cuddle Up. Confused billing and atypical a favour in return. “Convince me that I’m not W ITH SAIL On Sailor – 1972 music – busy, dense arrangements, sometimes insane,” he says, multiple times. “Cut the shit, (UMC) ★★★★, the enjoyable oddly recessed vocals – neither enticed the Beach Boys archive series arrives public nor helped reset the brand, especially Brian,” soothes Parks. “I want you to write at an unusually bizarre period, even by their when initially packaged with a free copy of Pet standards. By late ’71, they’d struggled to Sounds! A marketing mess, all told. this tune right here.” Naturally faltering as he sell two excellent records in their deal with Reprise (Sunflower and Surf ’s Up) and were When Rieley scored them a booking on conjures chords and rudimentary lyrics, in 15 wondering how to refocus themselves as rock a TV show in the Netherlands, he suggested became the dominant thing. “It’s safe now to minutes Brian reaches something bearing a listen to The Beach Boys,” ran one of hipster that the band remain there and make a record manager Jack Rieley’s pithy slogans. (working title Landlocked), close resemblance to Sail On Sailor. Retooled shipping in studio equipment A frustrated Bruce Johnston had departed by Carl, without Brian’s further involvement, and two members of South African band The – and, eventually, Brian – at Flames, drummer Blondie Chaplin and guitar- it would indeed provide band and worried ist Ricky Fataar, had been recruited to beef great expense. While home- label with a decent hit and a up the sound (Dennis Wilson had injured his highlight of this awkward hand and couldn’t drum). Some thought the sick Al Jardine fussed with his period. A three-year recording silence followed. California Suite, an unwieldy, Mindful that this is not the best-loved region of the 10-minute cornerstone for band’s career, UMC have gone to town on formatting: the sessions, and Carl worked 6-CD edition, 5-LP+7-inch EP vinyl edition, both includ- on the lush Trader, Brian bus- ied himself with something new line-up required a new name. One sug- inspired by repeated listens gestion was simply, The Beach. Another was to to Randy Newman’s Sail Away ing a previously unreleased Live At Carnegie Hall, a bump- revert to the group’s original name, Carl & The album, which got him in a er crop of session outtakes Passions. The expanded group’s first effort, So “really weird mood”. This “A trick- and remixes, with or without Tough, seemed to be issued under that name, but wasn’t really. It was all a bit confusing. trick-track suite of disparate track suite limited lithographs and origi- fragments called Mount of disparate nal Holland promo booklet, “One particular song grooved so great I Vernon And Fairway (A Fairy fragments plus 48-page book, stretch almost flipped,” chief producer Carl Wilson Tale), casting Mike Love as a casting Mike informed the press gamely, referring to some- prince, turned out so odd the of Californian coastline etc, thing that became blustery opening track and band opted to leave it off the etc. There’s fascinating, the album’s philosophy, You Need A Mess Of Help To Stand Alone. So Tough also featured excellent music here for sure, Marcella, a song Brian Wilson sometimes Getty record and issue it as a bonus Love as a but if you’ve not heard these 7-inch EP. prince.” records before, don’t expect instant gratification. Such weirdness made for 100 MOJO
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