Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2023 i Classic Rock

Let’s be honest, it’s a tough ask: when push comes to shove what’s your favourite Guns N’ Roses song? While they don’t have quite the extensive catalogue that many of the bands we cover do, what they do have (across half a dozen studio albums, a couple of EPs, a live album and a few compilations) is a body of work that is packed with absolute bangers and benchmarks in our high-voltage rock’n’roll canon. Earlier in the year we asked you via our website and social media to let us know what you thought their greatest song is. This issue is a celebration of those choices, ahead of Guns’ imminent UK dates at both Glastonbury Festival and British Summer Time in Hyde Park. Obviously that’s not all. This issue we…

John Regan October 28, 1951 – April 7, 2023 Bassist John Regan worked with Ace Frehley, Peter Frampton, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and many other famous names. The New Yorker was 71 when he died of unspecified cause. “I’ve lost one of my closest buddies,” said Frampton. “John enriched my life because of the person and the great player he was.” Lasse Wellander June 18, 1952 – April 7, 2023 Swedish musician Lasse Wellander was ABBA’s longstanding lead guitarist who played on the band’s biggest hits (including their 2021 reunion album Voyage), and toured with them between 1975 and 1980. The 70-year-old died after losing a battle with cancer. Johnny Fean November 17, 1951 – April 28, 2023 Veteran Irish rockers Horslips have said a sad goodbye to their…

MÖTLEY CRÜE AND their current guitarist John 5 have begun recording new music with producer Bob Rock, which seems to be final proof that the band’s relationship with co-founding guitarist Mick Mars has reached an end. Hostilities between Mars and Crüe escalated after the guitarist, who last year stepped back from touring duties due to having ankylosing spondylitis, claimed to have been forced out. In the fallout, Crüe accused Mars of making mistakes on stage, while Mars alleged that bassist Nikki Sixx, singer Vince Neil and drummer Tommy Lee have all used pre-recorded backing tracks. Mars gave a remarkable interview to Variety, in which he claimed the band had been trying to get rid of him “since 1987” and that he had “carried those bastards for years”, and vowed not…

“One reviewer said: ‘The music’s good, if you can get past the name.” IF GENIUS IS indeed one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration, then retro rockers Sweat might have a head start with their name alone. “Some people don’t like what we’re called,” says Sweat’s frontperson and organist Sue Pedrazzi, “One reviewer said: ‘The music’s good, if you can get past the name…’” For Pedrazzi, guitarist Richard Stanley and their bandmates Kayla Schureman (drums) and Dan Hernandez (bass), the name ably suggested a vintage rock band from the 70s and 80s. As does Walross, Swiss-born Pedrazzi’s previous heavy psych band back home. In 2013 she met Dave Wheeler when he performed with his band Carousel at a festival in Basel, and by the end of the decade…

Joe Perry is running late. This isn’t unusual behaviour for an A-list rock’n’roll musician. But the Aerosmith guitarist isn’t being a diva. It turns out his wife, Billie, found a dove with a broken leg near their Florida house and is trying to rescue it. Perry has been trying to find a box to put it in to keep it safe and calm it down. “She’s got the touch,” he says of Billie when he arrives, apologising for the delay. “One time she found a baby rabbit up in New England, and it was nearly frozen solid. She took it inside, massaged it under warm water and brought it back to life. In another century I would have had to protect her from the people with the torches and the…

Of all the new faces to raise rock’s profile in recent years, none get as many mentions as Greta Van Fleet. Six years on from their first single, opinions still proliferate on social media, over pints at gigs and among friends across the country. We’ve never really stopped hearing fans, other bands, readers and industry folk variously sing their praises, slate them as rip-offs, delight in the bigger spotlight they’ve put on rock and bemoan the sharp rise they’ve enjoyed – one that’s so at odds with what most of their peers experience these days. So when their new single came out (two years on from their last album), we found ourselves thinking about how 21st-century rock has looked in the meantime. How much other new music we’ve fallen for…

The end is near, crank some doom. For this quite overwhelming sixth album, Norwegian doomers Hex A.D. present us with a two-disc concept record about genocide. You may not feel like you’re emotionally ready for it; I can guarantee that you’re not. But here’s the thing: despite the bleak subject matter, this album really swings. Hex are like a heavier version of Damon Fox’s old doom-prog outfit Blindelf, or perhaps a lighter version of Cathedral. Their sound is at once progressive and primal, all treetrunk riffs, stone-groove organ fills and dramatic twists and turns. Given the album’s narrative, there are a few interludes here and there – Beyond The Venom Trail is a particularly affecting bit of acoustic campfire ambience, and St Francis is dungeon-synth, if you squint a little…

Power trio turn it up beyond 11. It’s a familiar story: band fail to enjoy making music because too many people are telling them what to do. And according to frontman Luke Bentham, so it was with The Dirty Nil when they were making 2021’s Fuck Art. Their reaction to that is Free Rein To Passions (the clue is in the title, really). It’s perhaps a bit more ragged in places compared with Fuck Art, but showcases effortlessly what makes The Dirty Nil a fantastic band: clever, ironic lyrics and hooky choruses powered by ear-splitting riffage. Celebration, Atomize Me and 1990 could easily annihilate your ears in a live setting, and Bentham dishes up some fine slacker poetry on Stupid Jobs (‘This whole working for you ain’t working for me’)…

NWOBHM veterans return with one foot in more windswept territory. Despite making ripples within the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal when they formed in 1979, Mark Sutcliffe’s young Suffolk-based quartet were perhaps a touch too young to achieve their potential. But since reuniting as older, wiser headbangers in 2014, they’ve been showing us what might have been. This second album since the re-formation shows ambitions towards a more epic sound, evident in the portentous pomp rock of Unsinkable and Back To The Woods. But they’re best when rekindling an old-school hard rock sound: the muscular riffs of Ghost Pilot and Crooked Cross, the air-punching anthemic intent of Daggers Drawn and the Wishbone Ash-style twin-guitar motifs of Other Worlds are where Trespass really make a home invasion. ■■■■■■■□□□ Johnny Sharp…

Huntington Beach titans’ career-defining masterpiece sets a new benchmark. Those paying close attention to Avenged Sevenfold over the past decade will know by now that guessing their next move is nigh-on impossible. But even the most wildly speculative fan couldn’t possibly have predicted this: almost seven years since the release of the prog-powered existential musings of The Stage, Orange County’s biggest ever metal export have crafted one of the boldest, weirdest and most majestic records the genre has seen in some time. Expanding on the conceptually loaded whims of its predecessor, Life Is But A Dream… tackles more of life’s big questions, inspired by the work of absurdist French philosopher Albert Camus and, according to frontman M Shadows, fuelled by some band members’ recent dabbles with psychedelics. It’s the latter…

Vive le rock. French garagerock is a very particular form of music. The heavy accents always make ‘em sound even snottier than their English counterparts, and every guitar player thinks he’s Johnny Thunders. It’s pretty great. Les Lullies have historically followed in this grand tradition, but with Mauvaise Foi they’ve gone full native. Don’t get me wrong, they were pretty French before, but this is the first Les Lullies album that’s mostly en Français. Six months of Babel lessons have completely failed me, so I can’t tell you exactly what Lullies are crooning about in Jetboy glam-punker Ce Que Je Veux, or the irresistibly bouncy ‘77 pogo-rocker Soirée Standard, or the power-popping title track, but I’m assuming it’s girls and motorcycles. For the monolingual dummies among us, there’s the paisley-powered…

Eight years ago Art Nation arrived with Revolution, a sparkling debut that marked them out as potential heirs to the Scandi-AOR throne of H.e.a.t. Led by frontman Alexander Strandell, the band’s fusion of melodic rock, pop and fist-in-the-air intensity burned so brightly, one wondered whether it could be sustained over the long term. Alas, such doubts were confirmed, and two albums later Art Nation crash landed thanks to Strandell’s self-confessed anxiety over the immediacy of their rise, and recriminations over his mistreatment of the rest of the group. Having re-set, the singer made peace with guitarist Christoffer Borg, and Art Nation were reborn. This, their first new music in four years, reminds us why we loved them in the first place. On stormers such as Superman, Fight Fire With Fire…

Enduring identi-punks don’t deliver any surprises. Say what you want about Rancid’s latest album Tomorrow Never Comes, but it doesn’t outstay its welcome. Of the 16 tracks on the band’s tenth album – their first since 2017’s unusually weary Trouble Maker – only the relatively Steinman-esque New American breaks the two-anda-half-minute mark. In fact only six last for longer than two minutes, and the whole affair will take up just 28 minutes and 47 seconds of your precious time. Band leader Tim Armstrong has always been more canny businessman than punk rebel, and since their label boss, Bad Religion’s Brett Gurewitz, again produces (the punk equivalent of taking your mum to work), Rancid’s song remains essentially the same. For better and for worse Rancid have never been overly concerned with…

Ex-Oasis chief returns to his musical roots. While the Gallagher brothers continue to squabble over the potential second coming of Oasis, Noel Gallagher and his High Flying Birds have quietly crept back with their first album in six years. Council Skies finds Gallagher senior moving away from the electro-psychedelic sonics that dominated his last album, shifting back to his more traditional, anthemic songwriting. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. Knocking out a tune for the masses was something the ex-Oasis mastermind was always very good at, and he doesn’t disappoint as he smatters the bulk of this new record with sweeping orchestral strings. The pick of the tracks here are the pulsating Pretty Boy, the string-laden I’m Not Giving Up Tonight and the soaring Open The Door, See…

Utah rockers return to revel in the dirt again with album nine. The Used have never been a band to keep their demons locked in a cage, preferring to let them run free. So this ninth album (preceded by singles People Are Vomit and Fuck You) is quite the fiesta of negativity and mental anguish. The band may be roughly corralled into the pop-punk/emo pigeonhole, but they, and particularly frontman Bert McCracken, were always the weird guys on the Warped Tour, something they’ve worn as a badge of honour. On this album there are moments of explosive heaviness, bolstered by McCracken’s lunatic energy. ‘Don’t ask me for no fucking favours, I’m not anybody’s goddamn saviour… No one can stop this wicked world from burning,’ he grizzles on bleakly catchy opener…

Former Vaccine man’s Latinoassisted but limited solo debut. No sooner has he announced that he’s leaving The Vaccines than their now ex-guitarist Freddie Cowan makes his solo bow on a record said to feature “some of the best in Mexico’s incredible music scene”, the result of his recent spell living there. Sounds promising. But somewhere along the line Cowan seems to have neglected the basic songwriting parts of the process. At several points on this record it threatens to cut through: the jug-band punkmeets-surf twang feel of Sensei is likeably arresting, and mariachi horns grace the dreamy contemplations of Ibiza Unicorn, before the brass gets ritzier and more Motowninformed on Begin Again, then it diverts into Santana-like guitar-led histrionics. But few hooks really linger, and you’re left with a feeling…

The future of indie: Norway? Yes way! Old-school indie kids, rejoice, because Lazy Queen are on hand to make 2023 that little bit brighter. On this new EP the Norwegian trio have pared down fizzy, punky rock to its gleaming core elements, distilling the thrill and simplicity of bouncing around a tiny venue into five aural nuggets of joy that exude a genuine love of powerpop created for the sheer sake of it. Guitar tones are as fuzzy as a cockapoo and just as loveable, the sweetest harmonies come in waves, and on Option To Nothing they crank things up to early-Nirvana levels of punk grime. Small but perfectly formed, Growing Pains reinvigorates the best of mid-90s indie rock without a hint of pastiche, and hopefully this tasty little…

Long-running Italian rockers serve up roba buona. Italian rock is having a moment in the sun thanks to the success of Eurovision-winning glam-pop show ponies Måneskin. Alt.rock veterans Verdena don’t have the international profile of their more flamboyant countrymen, but what they lack in global fame they make up for in credibility. The trio’s 25-year journey has seen them transform from late-90s Nirvana knock-offs into something much more interesting. Volevo Magia (rough translation: ‘I wanted magic’), their seventh album, is a protean beast that slips from the bold and anthemic (the stoner-glam stomp of Paul e Linda) to the more adventurous (the title track’s fuzz-thrash/glitchronica hybrid blow-out, woozy closing ballad Nei Rami). Non-Italian speakers will be confounded by singer/ guitarist Alberto Ferrari’s native-tongue lyrics, although the odd unexpected English word…

Priest man returns, armed to the teeth. After having gone through emergency heart surgery in 2021, Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner could be forgiven for taking his foot off the creative accelerator. Instead he has formed a new band. And they rock like an absolute bastard. Having Priest’s Scott Travis on drums and Pantera’s Rex Brown on bass ensures that Elegant Weapons are tighter than a bee’s back passage, but it’s vocalist Ronnie Romero who comes closest to stealing the show from Faulkner’s blistering lead playing. These are big, boisterous melodic metal anthems, and the Spaniard’s raucously soulful tones are perfect for them. Blind Leading The Blind and Do Or Die are weighty shards of gleaming old-school perfection; Downfall Rising and the title track dip into doomy grunge; Ghost Of…

Canadian spook-country veterans make an emotional return. Dedicated Cowboy Junkies fans will need a lot of shelf space for around 20 studio albums and many live ones, but their new record, Such Ferocious Beauty, earns its place. While you will hear backwoods folk and art-house sensibilities as before, an important additive is family grief. Margo, Michael and Peter Timmins recently lost their father to dementia, and that gives the music a fraught character, particularly the awful vacancy of What I Lost. This returns on Shadows, as the clouds darken and the death hastens. Margo is a great song narrator, akin to Bobbie Gentry, and her voice carries extra authority on this record. The sonic texture is also managed with care. Tracks often rely on low-slung grooves, accented by twanging, Morricone-like…

Beat on the brat. This fifth album from New Orleans eightpiece The Revivalists delivers more of the highenergy, horn-soaked rock’n’roll that is their unwavering trademark. Most of the band have homes to go to now, but that hasn’t changed the spirit, although it has altered the perspective. Hence the single is titled Kid, but you can bet your life they’re flinging that child around the room as they sing ‘You gotta get it off your chest/ Don’t worry about the mess’ while the brass kicks the riff. But behind that it’s delicate acoustic guitars and a piano doing the rocking, not thrashing electric guitars. Elsewhere they put their life-affirming zest into beating the mental burdens of lockdown and other skeletons in the cupboard. ■■■■■■■□□□ Hugh Fielder…

Marc loses the plot, big-time. The title poses a pertinent question. After a stellar year (1972), during which T.Rex enjoyed two No.1 singles (Telegram Sam and Metal Guru), played sell-out shows at Wembley’s Empire Pool (now Arena), released a Ringo Starrdirected concert film of the aforementioned (Born To Boogie), and had a top-five album with The Slider, the magic of main man Marc Bolan began, slowly but inexorably, to fade. The photos included in this four-CD/ five-LP box set – shot by Keith Morris, many of them previously unpublished – tell part of the tale. Bolan has cropped his corkscrew hair and lost his elfin looks. He’s cheerful and buoyant, but his cheekbones have gone and he’s put on the pounds. Compare and contrast these images with the mysterious, sunken-faced…

Not over yet, Baby Blue. One might wonder why Bob Dylan, who has just turned 82, would still want to be singing Forever Young, the lullaby he wrote for his eldest son Jesse that appeared on 1974’s Planet Waves. But intimations of mortality can provide a lease of life. Out of the blue, in 2021 Dylan filmed a club gig in Santa Monica that was directed by Alma Har’el in a mythical bordello setting, an imaginary dive in Marseilles called Bon Bon Club where indifferent cowboy punters loom like ghosts from an American-noir nightmare, rough but hardly rowdy. That film, subtitled The Early Songs Of Bob Dylan, was initially a shortlived stream, although it’s soon to be available on Apple TV. Inevitably, two years later comes the soundtrack. It’s an…

Yes bass boss’s stunning first solo flurry. The umpteenth reissue for the late Yes bassist’s 1975 solo album, this time on vinyl with fully restored gatefold artwork. It’s probably the best of any Yes member’s extracurricular records, and is well worth diving into again. Squire teamed up with Andrew Pryce Jackman, who in the 60s had been his bandmate in The Syn, and Jackman’s keyboards, arrangements and orchestrations go for a no-messing maximalism that makes Yes sound understated by comparison. The record opens with the St. Paul’s Cathedral pipe organ (played by the dude who went on to be musical director at Charles and Diana’s wedding, trivia fans), then decides that’s not quite grandiose enough. Counterintuitively, this works, as Hold Out Your Hand sews together enough hooks and harmonies (Squire’s…

The first five albums together on CD. No bells, no whistles, but what a beautiful noise. In 1979, Finnish singer Matti Fagerholm and guitarist Antti Hulkko sowed seeds for what became Hanoi Rocks. In February 1981, after adopting the respective stage names Michael Monroe and Andy McCoy, the band released their debut album, Bangkok Shocks, Saigon Shakes, Hanoi Rocks (7/10). It hit the shops while the five-piece were on a threemonth, 102-date tour. Playing that many gigs, they got good. In fact, considering there were so few templates for highenergy sleazy rock’n’roll bands – the members of Mötley Crüe had only just met each other, and Guns N’ Roses didn’t yet exist – they got very good indeed. Audiences saw this when Hanoi Rocks first came to London at the…

Guitarist explores the dark side. These two 90s albums – released on vinyl for the first time – highlight the more introspective side of Hackett’s character. Guitar Noir (’93, 6/10) was Hackett’s first album in five years, and at times struggles with the effort of getting back in the saddle. But when he rises above it, as on the instrumental Sierra Quemada, his guitar transcends the backing arrangements superbly. There’s also a special atmosphere about Dark As A Grave, while Tristesse effectively merges Hackett’s classical and electric styles. And a mention too for Hugo Degenhardt, whose refusal to stick within conventional drumming patterns adds to the character of the album. Several detours later, Hackett’s next conventional rock album was 1999’s Darktown (7/10), which returned to the introspection of Guitar Noir…

Maximum R&B memoir/ Eddie Steady Go! Even as a nipper, Eddie Piller had the makings of mod royalty. His dad owned a chain of betting shops across Essex and hung out at jazz clubs, his mum used to run the Small Faces fan club. His playmates included the Curbishley siblings whose father Bill managed The Who and mother Jackie steered Ed towards his entry-level job in the record biz. He becomes immersed in the mod lifestyle and becomes a successful promoter, DJ, record label founder and broadcaster. This book is an extraordinarily action-packed, sharp-witted account of teenage life in the era of punk gigs, mod-revival discos, tribal violence and run-ins with the law. It’s part nostalgia, and part enlightenment of how the mod ethic continues down generations and beats at the…

Rock polymath’s most memorable articles anthologised. From being the first person to write about Nirvana to coining the term ‘Britpop’ to chewing the fat with Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson during lockdown, John Robb has seen – and written about – both the great and the good over the course of 40 years on the rock’n’roll frontline. This 400-page tome, then, acts as a perfectly calibrated compendium of four decades of craziness. Whether it’s conducting the Jesus And Mary Chain’s firstever interview – prior to which the East Kilbride outfit each guzzle five cans of lager – to meeting the young Manic Street Preachers to discussing pop culture with The Clash’s Mick Jones, Robb’s writing is cleareyed and perceptive, the enthusiasm burning off the page in the articles describing the feverish…

Vital despatches from the golden era of rock journalism. This second volume of Rock ’N’ Roll War Stories from former Melody Maker editor Allan Jones is easily the funniest thing I’ve read since his first (2017’s indispensable Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down). It may be the sequel, but there’s no discernible dip in quality as Jones finds himself nose to nose – and pint for pint – with everyone from Elton to The Damned. No one paints a picture, sees the funny side or lambasts a grandiloquent icon quite like Jonesy, and while he invariably gleans illuminating quotes from his quarries he reliably garnishes his optimally edited memoirs with a descriptive flair worthy of PG Wodehouse. Don’t care for the artist in question? It doesn’t matter. These stories have…

ALAN PARSONS HAS paid tribute to Scottish guitarist Ian Bairnson, who has died at the age of 69, describing him as a “musical genius”. Bairnson had waged a long battle with dementia. Besides working with Parsons, he played with Kate Bush, including the iconic lead solo on her smash hit Wuthering Heights, and was a member of the band Pilot whose hits include Magic and January. Born in Shetland, Bairnson was happy to operate in the shadows, although his name appeared on more than 100 albums and he conducted a huge amount of live work with artists including Mick Fleetwood, Eric Clapton, Sting, Al Stewart, Joe Cocker, Jon Anderson, Neil Diamond and many more. “It was a great pleasure that Ian participated on every album by the Alan Parsons Project…

While there’s nothing particularly original about On Tour, the relentless onslaught of fuzzed-to-themax guitars makes it a cult album that’s highly sought-after by heavy-heads. Perhaps the only other 70s European album that tops this distorted mayhem is Could You Understand Me by Croatian (Ex-Yugo) acid freaks Fire.. Baumstan were from the German city of Witten, and were one of countless bands to spring up during the krautrock era of the early 70s. However, to describe them as krautrock just because they were a German rock band is both lazy and misleading. They were simply a very heavy, loud and raw bunch of rockers. By all accounts they were a popular live band, and their incendiary twin-guitar assault was a key factor in their notoriety. On Tour was a private pressing,…

50 Shadow Of Your Love Single B-side, 1987 Written by Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin during their Hollywood Rose days, along with Rose’s friend and Stradlin’s future sometime replacement in GN’R Paul Tobias, this is the fastest song in the GN’R canon. Originally slated for the Live ?!*@ Suicide EP (hence the faux crowd noise mixed onto the track) and introduced by Rose’s ‘1-2-3-4’ count-off, it proceeds over a breakneck 3:05. Rose claimed Thin Lizzy as its influence, but really Shadow Of Your Love owes a much greater debt to Motörhead. In fact Slash’s bottleneck-guitar contortions recall ex-Lizzy man Brian Robertson’s standout contributions to his solitary album with Lemmy’s troops, 1983’s Another Perfect Day. PR 49 You Ain’t The First Use Your Illusion I, 1991 Guns’ hit the back porch…

There’s a special relationship between drummers and bass players. And while Blondie’s Clem Burke and former Sex Pistol Glen Matlock may not actually be husband and wife, they bicker with such unselfconscious, freeflowing ease that they might as well be. We join the pair of transatlantic punk rock legends in Colchester. They’re in the UK’s oldest recorded town to play with Lust For Life (a Katie Puckrik-fronted band of Iggy Pop alumni). Drinks have been poured, and Glen – full of cold in cap and scarf – is just embarking upon a story concerning late Faces keyboard player Ian McLagan as Clem, suited, booted, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, every inch the rock star, bursts through the dressing room door. Glen: Yeah, Mac was great, a lovely bloke, funny… Clem: I knew…

Band’s first new material in 15 years. Yes, 15. With a work ethic that makes 80s Def Leppard look diligent, Extreme have, by their own admission, been working on Six since around 2015. Admittedly, Rhianna has been keeping guitarist Nuno Bettencourt busy in her live band, but the rest of them might have been drywalling for all I know. It’s not clear which songs from those initial sessions have made it onto Six, but apart from the occasional slip – Mask, Beautiful Girls – this is a showboating and triumphant return. Less funk out, more crunching, brightly produced hard rock, matched with some very cleverly arranged vocal parts, that veers between pop and metal but never sounds misplaced. They rattle – the excellent X Out, the Velvet Revolver-like Banshee – and…

Rousing return from Welsh rock icons. ’I’m living for today!’ Mike Peters hollers in the title track. And after a year in which the singer was hospitalised once more following a bout of pneumonia and a serious leukaemia relapse, it’s a miracle that he’s had the strength to even complete the follow-up to 2022’s anti-war record Omega. Yet, as 17 Top 50 UK singles and six million album sales worldwide testify, Peters’s strength of character is matched by an unerring ability to create music that raises the spirits and stirs the soul. So while stadiumsized rabble-rousers Next and Whatever are delivered with trademark intensity, it’s when he drops his guard that Forwards really shines. Transition finds him staring into the abyss, sighing: ‘I don’t know which way to turn,’ while…

Nashville rockers crank up the volume on tenth album. They might have chalked up 238 dates in support of 2021’s Hellhound, but by the sound of Volume Ten Buckcherry are just getting started. ‘Anything can happen, strap in for action!’ Josh Todd bawls on frat-party anthem Good Time, and a manic energy courses through each of these 11 tracks. Somewhere amid the turbocharged funk (Turn It Up), sledgehammer riff-rock (One And Only) and vein-bulging barroom boogie (Let’s Get Wild) you get the sense of a band revitalised by the months on the road. A meditative Pain, in which Todd sighs ‘Some would say I threw it all away’, offers a glimpse of the emotional consequences of the rock’n’roll lifestyle, but the joie de vivre returns for a raucous rendition of…

At the end of the year around here you gotta submit your favourite albums for the ‘best of’ polls, and I never even get in the door because I’m always choosing shit like this. Maggot House is some housebound freak from Brooklyn puking up minute-long Misfits and Mummies homages on a beat-up synth, and if you ask me it’s the most majestic listen of 2023 so far. Greetings From Budget Beach is a concept album about asshole punks ruining everybody’s good time at the beach. The punks are the heroes, of course. Hard to pick your fave tracks when the whole album is only nine minutes long, but Slobs Rule (‘Quit your job you fucking tool/Your boss sucks, slobs rule’) is inspirational, and I Gotta Vette is just the cruising-theboulevard…

Dynamic Dutch duo dig deep into a banquet of raucous 70s rock tropes. For a two-piece, Eindhoven rockers Tankzilla sure make one hell of a satisfying racket. Tapping into the groove of 70s riffslingers like Mountain and delivering a stripped-back, fuzzed-up vision of classic rock’n’roll with the infectious zeal of a Danko Jones, their selftitled debut album is all about summoning the spirit of good times, and doing so with as little fuss as possible. Recorded live, it captures the electric energy and interplay between its two members, so much so that you can practically feel the heat and sweat of the swinging, sweaty subterranean venues this band could so easily rule. The exuberance of Lucifer and Wrong Place are sure to get heads bopping, but it’s the cacophonous Soulsurfer…

Pearl Jam-approved Brighton trio think big on third album. As we hurtle into the long days of summer, it seems a strange time to embrace the darkness so fully. But that’s where we find ourselves with Tigercub on their third album The Perfume Of Decay. It was written and recorded during the hours of darkness, and the enveloping atmosphere here is one of nocturnal anxiety and sleepless soul-searching. In the past the Brighton trio, led by seven-foot-tall frontman Jamie Hall, have been compared to Queens Of The Stone Age and Muse, and both remain valid; a queasy, sleazy analogue roll nods to the former, while a sense of high drama explains the latter, although they’re a warmer, more human proposition than Matt Bellamy and co. But there’s so much more…

This is the sound of NYC. Complex, subtle guitar textures and rhythms. Downbeat, haunting vocals. Lyrics that reflect disillusionment and despair at the world. Guitars that ring and chime around your head for days afterwards. Drums that pound a rhythm to the brain. Live Skull formed in NYC in 1982, peers of jarring, awkward three-piece UT, their music scary and inward-looking, experimental and frightening, the embodiment of no wave. The band split at the end of the 80s, but a chance meeting at a party in 2016 led to a reunion, and a fresh blossoming. Party Zero is their third postrebirth album, and damn is it good – like Lee Ranaldo fronting Sonic Youth during the early 90s (but not). Songs like Neutralize The Outliers and the anthemic Chords Of…

Punk unplugged. Winner of this issue’s album title of the month, Come And Have A Go… is the twelfth full-length record from the Norf Landahn greengrocers and occasional punks (and mods and rude bwoys) who first made their name in 1986 with the infamous Flibbiddydibbiddydob EP on which they reworked 80s TV ads and show themes in a hardcore style. They’ve since influenced the likes of NOFX, Lagwagon, Goober Patrol and Wonk Unit, but, naturally, without making the huge sacks of cash their transatlantic cousins made in the 90s. A diversion from the usual Snuff brand of frantic pop-punk, this is a completely acoustic album that reworks deep cuts from the band’s catalogue, from Nick Motown and others from 1998’s Tweet Tweet My Lovely up to One Of Those Days…

Record number 25 is still flecked with melancholy and socially minded ire. For a man who has spent a life railing at the musical barricades and who has a renowned selfdestructive streak, at the age of 71 John Mellencamp is looking and sounding a damn sight better than he might have the right to. These days he might resemble someone who might wave a fence post around to scare you off his land for trespassing, but as a painter and songwriter Mellencamp has aged very well indeed. His vocal range and tone might now haunt the hinterlands often visited by Tom Waits and Bob Dylan, but the rasp from those hard-lived years adds a wonderful lustre to the songs and subjects he’s addressing and the things he’s chosen to write…

Aussie garage rockers loosen up. After last year’s Rapscallion saw this Melbourne five-piece dip their toe into concept-record waters with “a coming of age novel in album form”, for this seventh album they’ve taken avowed influence from the golden age of American country-rock and British pub-rock. What helps them put their own stamp on such sounds is Ambrose Kenny-Smith’s distinctive vocals, redolent of Rush’s Geddy Lee at times, and it adds a resonance to tracks such as Common Sense Civilian, which further piques the interest as it suggests we ‘do the Dennis Wilson Charlie Manson shuffle’. Meanwhile, the rollicking barroom swagger of Undone And Unashamed, complete with sax solo, is similarly appealing, as is the sardonic strut of Centennial Perspective. ■■■■■■■□□□ Johnny Sharp…

Wonderful, erudite eighth from Americana singersongwriter. John Prine’s sad demise in 2020 left a gaping void at the heart of Nashville, but his good friend and admirer Jason Isbell might just be the closest thing to a spiritual heir. Isbell’s literate songs carry a similar sense of gravity and purpose, peopled by characters beset by a variety of tribulations and existential crises. As with Prine, the rub lies in the detail. The homemade house shoes sliding across the floor in King Of Oklahoma signal the impending exit of a woman who can no longer tolerate her partner. Suffused with regret, the droll Strawberry Woman observes ‘a young man crying in a cowboy hat/Got square-toed boots so he ain’t for real/Wouldn’t last five minutes on a pedal steel’. Weathervanes is full…

Brat-rap stream-magnet targets rock market – and misses. Colby Aaron Suoy aka Nascar Aloe aka (it says here) New Sid Vicious has been peddling his questionable hip-hop/punkchannelling wares for some time now, with Hey Asshole! being his tenth EP in seven years. Specifically, Aloe’s stock-intrade is a lo-fi combo of nearnod-out cloud rap spiced with just enough sub-nihilistic sneering profanity and rudimentary guitar scrubbing to claim punk lineage, and thereby profess some kind of pioneering cross-generic fusion status. Trouble is the Cooky Puss-era Beastie Boys already did this and did it with way more wit and aplomb than simply stubbing cigarettes out on their tongues while giving it plenty on the ‘Suk ma dick, mufugga’ front and, most crucially, did it 40 years ago. As the old adage nearly goes:…

It’s quite a trip. All hail the return of The Fabulous Baker Boys (AOR division): Neal Scone and Bread Rolie, otherwise known as Neal Schon and Gregg Rolie, founding members of Journey way back in 1973. This epic three-CD set immortalises a February 2018 benefit show that raised funds for the city’s North Bay area that had been ravaged by wildfires. Guitarist Schon assembled a one-off troupe of Journey alumni for the show (including keyboard player/vocalist Rolie, natch), and the results are both supremely musicianly and surprisingly rough-and-ready. With Schon in full-on guitarhero mode and an eclectic setlist (including Kohoutek, an instrumental throwback to Journey’s jazz-rock roots), this is about as glossy as a piece of scuffed carpet – and all the better for it. No Jonathan Cain, who was…

Hotly tipped Cardiff newcomers aim high. It’s said that you have your whole life so far to write your debut album. And Welsh rockers Himalayas seem to have taken that to heart, with the seven years between their earliest singles and debut album From Hell To Here spent honing their anthemic, indie-tinged rock. There’s more than a shade of AM-era Arctic Monkeys to Himalayas’ debut, vocalist Joe Williams an almost note-perfect reproduction of Alex Turner’s often sultry tone. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing; the Monkeys have long-since inexplicably left the realm of riffs with serpentine grooves, in favour of schmaltzy ballroom ballads, leaving a vacant throne that the Cardiff-based newcomers could so easily claim. Himalayas certainly have a good go, but the lack of a propulsive rocker like…

Confusionaires Westernization CONFUSIONAIRES Flawlessly combining positive attributes of Reverend Horton Heat, Stray Cats and Georgia Satellites in a fiery gumbo of rockabilly, punk, rawk and high-octane Americana, Edmonton trio Confusionaires serve up a kick-ass third that’s extremely hard to dislike. 8/10 Gallus We Don’t Like The People We’ve Become MARSHALL Occasionally reminiscent of Blink 182 (no, keep reading, it gets better), this engaging debut from Glasgow’s Gallus seethes with untrammelled exuberance, synapse-shagging riffs and erudite angst. A nu-punk snapshot of dented ambition in the post-covid snoring twenties. 8/10 Boo Radleys Eight BOOSTR There was always a lot more to Boos than the appallingly catchy Britpop zeitgeist hijacker Wake Up Boo!. Now re-formed as a Sicedriven trio without guitarist/writer Martin Carr, they can still craft the odd pop-rock banger. And while…

The raconteur of the dark turns his gaze inwards for his best album yet. While the thought of selfexamination by an artist this far into their career might cause an urge to run, Baxter ‘Son of Ian’ Dury is improving with each release. And what counts in his favour is an acceptance of a background that fuses bohemia and privilege and his urge to find his place, but with a total lack of pity aimed at himself. ‘Why am I condemned because I’m the son of a musician/Because I don’t wash or you think I’m too posh?’ he asks on Leon in his trademark lugubrious tones against music that straddles a walking funk bass line, strings and Madeline Hart’s dreamy vocals. Elsewhere, on the darkly groovy Crowded Rooms Hart is…

Plush reissue of the band’s first album with new singer Steve Hogarth. It’s difficult to recall now what seemed like such heady times: frontman Fish’s abrupt departure from what was then an arena-filling Marillion and the barroom debates that followed; how could they possibly go on without him? Well, with relative ease, it seems. Although his replacement Steve Hogarth initially resisted the band – he was 24 hours late for his audition – he was the perfect fit and foil for Marillion, as this redoubtable reissue reminds. The excellent stereo mix plus the whole thing done live at last year’s Marillion Weekend are the aural icing on the cake. There are two documentary films: Seasons Change, in which the band reminisce in The Crooked Billet pub, the scene of their…

Tying up some Trapeze loose ends. Focusing on the post-Glenn Hughes part of Trapeze’s career, Midnight Flyers offers five packed CDs, rounding up the band’s official studio and live albums. With bassist Hughes’s move to Deep Purple in 1973, rather than simply parachuting in a replacement the band made the bold move of expanding to a four-piece, with guitarist Mel Galley on vocals for 1974’s tougher, less soul-sounding Hot Wire. The quality of the songs made it clear that Trapeze had plenty more to offer, and for 1975’s Trapeze (their second self-titled album) Hughes popped back into the studio to guest on Chances and Nothing For Nothing. For 1979’s Hold On, the band’s sixth and final album, future Uriah Heep singer Pete Goalby took the mic and shared the songwriting…

Previously overlooked sleeper back on wax. Although Steely Dan are routinely hailed as one of the last century’s most subversively brilliant bands, when their second album Countdown To Ecstasy was released 50 years ago the UK remained largely unmoved by its virtuoso complexity, hyperintelligent broadsides and luminous confessionals. Following 1972’s Can’t Buy A Thrill debut with another Brit-flop, it took years to be recognised as the evocative crystalisation of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s idiosyncratic visions of jazzcharged contemporary rock, digging deeper lyrically and musically within NY’s classic pop framework. With singer David Palmer replaced by Fagen’s distinctive vocals and guitarist Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter on dazzling form, the songs gestated on the road while touring behind Thrill, throwing US rock a subtly insidious curve with skilled studio precision as they…

Birdie songs. This three-CD compilation makes no sense, randomly comprising a brace of live albums and a bunch of cover versions. But it matters not a jot. Crash! Bang! Wallop!? More like Snap! Crackle! Pop!, the entire collection fizzling like a firkin of Rice Krispies laced with nitric acid; every song achieving a velocity in excess of 671 million mph. NWOBHM ne’er-do-wells Raven are at the absolute top of their game on 1984’s Live At The Inferno, their last album for Neat Records before signing to major label Atlantic Records in the States. Poignantly, early Metallica champion/Megaforce Records mainman Jon Zazula is credited as executive producer, along with wife Marsha. Both now RIP. Destroy All Monsters: Live In Japan (1996) follows in much the same fashion: it’s the epitome of…

Mixed bag of Bolan covers, its motivation so sweet. Now that the canon has conceded that Bolan had the universe reclining in his hair and then some, it’s no shock that as well as a series of excellent reissues and repackagings, musicians are lining up to cover his work. The Angelheaded Hipster album brought us the superstar names, but this more homely tribute opts for lesser-known artists with idiosyncratic takes. It’s a fund-raiser for the Marc Bolan School Of Music And Film in Sierra Leone, founded by Bolan’s partner Gloria Jones, and it’s important to remember that when listening to some of the less glorious stabs at bumping and grinding here. Like any scattershot compilation, it veers from exciting to execrable. Kelly Reilly’s Ballrooms Of Mars and Mair’s Cosmic Dancer…

Len Price 3 Chinese Burn WICKED COOL Largely overlooked on its original 2005 release, this incandescent debut from the Chatham mod/punk trio recalls the formative harmonic aggressive of The Who and The Kinks. Available for the first time on vinyl and with four extra tracks it’s a Medway essential. 8/10 Undertones 2 vinyl reissues BMG The first two LPs from Derry’s ‘Tones moved contemporary reviewers to call them ‘the best pop group in the English-speaking world’. Now on coloured vinyl their self-titled ’79 debut (green) and 1980’s Hypnotised (red) haven’t aged a day. Teenage dreams? Still hard to beat. Both 8/10 Lemonheads Come On Feel… (30th Anniversary Edition) FIRE With flaxen-haired über-slacker Evan Dando smouldering up-front, largely unexceptional pop-punkers Lemonheads found themselves briefly major-labelled and bankable in 1993’s post-grunge millieu.…

Beautifully written paean to rock’s romantic and dramatic dark side. It’s 44 years since the release of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, the album pinpointed here as the touch-paper that was lit to spark the goth explosion. And while the story of their frontman Ian Curtis’s life is largely bleak, his legacy was a scene brimming with dark glamour (and humour), literary lyricism and, above all, atmosphere. Cathi Unsworth’s love letter to the music and the people that made it all so beautifully dramatic takes a deep dive into individual bands – Magazine, Siouxsie And The Banshees, The Cure – but, crucially, paints a vivid picture of both the wider musical landscape of the day and the political situation it grew from – Margaret Thatcher casts a long and villainous shadow.…

GUITARIST GUY BAILEY, a co-founder of The Quireboys, has died after a short illness. He was 62. The news was confirmed by vocalist and bandmate Spike. “My best friend Guy Bailey passed away peacefully in hospital last night in the arms of his beloved Bianca,” he wrote. “Guy was the kindest, funniest man you could have the pleasure of being around. He was loved by everyone who he ever worked with, all the bands he ever toured with and all the Quireboys fans he ever met. He certainly loved you all more than you will ever know.” Last December Bailey had made a very brief stage appearance along with Spike and vintage-era Quireboys members Nigel Mogg, Chris Johnston and Rudy Richman during their one-off concert at London’s Islington Academy. Bailey…

Andrew Laing Died April 3, 2023 Sunderland-born Andrew Laing – nicknamed Lainey – was the drummer with East End punks The Cockney Rejects from 1999 to 2016. The band said: “Our condolences to his wife, children and extended family. RIP, mate.” Ahmad Jamal July 2, 1930 – April 16, 2023 The acclaimed jazz pianist, an influence on Miles Davis and winner of a Lifetime Achievement Grammy for achievements in music, Ahmad Jamal has died of prostate cancer at home in Massachusetts at the age of 92. Harry Belafonte March 1, 1927 – April 25, 2023 Tyketto’s Danny Vaughn was among the rock musicians to pay tribute to the three-times-Grammywinning American singer, actor and activist Harry Belafonte (pictured), who has died of congestive heart failure at 96. Belafonte released 30 studio…

NASHVILLE LEGEND DOLLY Parton has confirmed details of her upcoming rock album. The 30-song Rockstar will be released on November 11, and features an extraordinary line-up of guest musicians including Steven Tyler, Elton John, Sting, Steve Perry, Ann Wilson, John Fogerty, Kid Rock, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, Peter Frampton, Nikki Sixx, John 5, Rob Halford, Pat Benatar, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and more. “I’m so excited to finally present my first rock’n’roll album, Rockstar!” says Parton. “I am very honoured and privileged to have worked with some of the greatest iconic singers and musicians of all time, and to be able to sing all the iconic songs throughout the album was a joy beyond measure. I hope everybody enjoys the album as much as I’ve enjoyed putting it together!” Rockstar…

“I can be cocky and brash and arrogant; I try to make sure that guy stays on the stage.” AyronJones never knew his parents, but he thinks about them a lot. “They never saw me play guitar,” he tells us at the Royal Albert Hall, where he’ll open for Daughtry later. “So I carry them with me as I go out there.” Formerly a child of Seattle’s foster-care system, Jones began playing guitar in bars at 19, and turned heads in 2021 with Billboard chart-topping single Mercy. Tours with the Rolling Stones and Guns N’ Roses ensued, lifting him into rock’s new elite. Now 36 and a father of four, Jones is gearing up to release new album Chronicles Of The Kid. A commanding firebomb of heavy riffs, stunning solos,…

One of the greatest album openers ever, Welcome To The Jungle compresses Guns N’ Roses’ entire essence into one ferocious four-minute mission statement. Danger, sex, violence, unhinged guitar riffs and sirenscreaming vocals, all amid a clash of metal and pop. And that’s just the first verse. As Slash said in an interview with Guitar Center: “This represents to me probably the first real Guns N’ Roses song, with Izzy, Axl, Duff, Steven and myself. The first real song we wrote together as a band. That was the product of the five of us taking an idea and making it our own. You can almost hear everybody’s input.” The initial idea was Slash’s. He’d been playing the stuttering intro riff around the house for weeks, and even when he did it…

Luminous autumnal meditations from a master craftsman. Despite embracing semiretirement in recent years, a restless master craftsman like Paul Simon was never going to fade away quietly. An exploratory chamber-folk suite of seven poetic ruminations on religious faith and looming mortality, all flowing together and linked by recurring motifs, Seven Psalms continues Simon’s fruitfully experimental latecareer phase. The ambient acoustic arrangements are exquisite, his vocals grainy and intimate, harmonising gorgeously with his wife Edie Brickell in places. First coming to Simon in a vivid dream in 2019, the project then developed into “an argument with myself” about spirituality and the dubious promise of an afterlife: ‘Two billion heartbeats and out/Or does it all begin again?’ Like Nick Cave’s recent work, these mystical meditations sound like free-form prayers to an elusive,…

Fortune favours the grave. Released to tie in with the Vampires’ European tour this summer, this album – surely a missed opportunity not calling it Undead In Rio? – contains zero surprises and delivers exactly what you would expect: Brazilian fans getting it in the neck. Once you’re past opener Raise The Dead, Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp, Joe Perry and Tommy Henriksen stake a claim to being the greatest covers band on earth as they sink their fangs into My Generation, Manic Depression, Whole Lotta Love, Cold Turkey and a full-blooded rendition of I Got A Line On You – basically, a set-list comprising a generous chunk of their 2015 debut album. Saving the best bites until last, Billion Dollar Babies, a runaway Train Kept A-Rollin’ and a lip-smacking Brown…

More machine beats and bad vibes from the ‘Flesh. With a towering legacy that stretches back to the early 80s, Godflesh have influenced so many bands over the years that it’s easy to forget how uncompromising they are. Since they re-formed in 2009, Justin Broadrick and BC Green have steadily mutated into a refined version of their very earliest and gnarliest incarnation. Purge offers a bleak and overwhelming rush of circular dissonance and disintegrating hip-hop beats, and is closer in spirit to the spine-shattering might of Streetcleaner than to the duo’s more experimental, transcendent material. Land Lord is a twisted, post-punk robot war, sodden with feedback; Lazarus Leper strips it all back to stuttering, dubbed-out menace; Permission is a lurching blob of break beats and grinding bass. The ninth Godflesh…

The Danger Danger offshoot continue to deliver the goods. Having released a pair of albums that topped ‘best of year’ charts in the world of melodic hard rock, The Defiants have done it all over again. They really should be named The Dependables. Best experienced in a Corvette with the top down, Drive is shagpermed, blow-dried, sugarsweet AOR perfection. Comprising a trio of current and former members of Danger Danger – bassist Bruno Ravel and guitarist Rob Marcello always worked so well with Paul Laine, a singer whose voice was born to grace radio rock – it would be tempting to say The Defiants exist to fill a gap left by Danger Danger’s reluctance to create new music, but they’re much, much better than that. Each of these 11 tracks…

Hard rock and then some. The title track, which opens Sweet & Lynch’s third album, sounds like a turbo-charged version of Immigrant Song. Which tells you just about everything you need to know about Stryper singer Michael Sweet and former Dokken guitarist George Lynch’s project. And it’s not even among the three tracks they’ve released as singles so far. But then the pairing of Sweet’s screaming vocals and Lynch’s incendiary guitar was always a no-brainer. The only surprise is that it’s taken them six years to follow up their second album, Unified. Sweet apparently griped that Lynch was too busy to promote that record (er, pot, kettle, black?), but the allure of making another hard-rock-on-steroids (sorry, George) album was always going to be irresistible. Frankly the idea of gentlemen in…

McFly feed their 80s influences into an AI and tell it to make an album. Veterans of noughties power-pop, McFly have emerged from a DeLorean holding aloft an album jammed with mindless arena anthems. Lead-off single Where Did All the Guitars Go bemoans the lack of solos in modern pop, kicking off the reel of call-and-response chanting – ‘Rock’n’ roll is good for the soul’ – alongside the ‘Amen’s in the hairmetal-drenched God Of Rock And Roll. Route 55 pokes fun at the band’s glory years – ‘It was 2005, we were a sold-out band, and God we felt alive’. The one respite from the persistent rocking is Honey I’m Home, a welcome contrast to the overpowering cartoonishness of it all. Power To Play encompasses Van Halen and Def Leppard…

Alcatrazz keep up the momentum. With three albums in three years, Alcatrazz appear to be on something of a roll. Their sixth studio album and the follow-up to 2021’s V, Take No Prisoners, with Doogie White still on vocals, does its damnedest to live up to its title, delivering 10 solid tracks designed to appeal to anyone who digs 80s-flavoured riff ’n’ shred. It’s book-ended by genuine whip crackers Little Viper and Bring On The Rawk, and they vary the approach with the stately Strangers, the midpaced Holy Roller (Love’s Temple) and the punchy Don’t Get Mad… Get Even (featuring Girlshool), but for the most part the band clearly enjoy flooring it. Some might miss vocalist Graham Bonnet’s flair, but there’s still plenty to air-guitar to here. ■■■■■■■□□□ Essi Berelian…

Going round the ring. Veteran Finnish drummer Mirka Rantanen has rounded up another ensemble of musicians from across the local hard rock scene and beyond for this second melodic hard rock extravaganza following his debut in 2021. Although the crew is different and the production is a little crisper, it’s essentially more of the same: driving beats and riffs that frame dynamic multitracked vocals and ripped guitar solos. Occasionally the tempo drops and a single voice provides contrast but, considering the number of people involved, there’s not a great deal of variety. It’s all well played and maintains the spirit and tradition of melodic rock, but it doesn’t offer anything new and no real sense of purpose beyond a vague underlying theme. ■■■■□□□□□□ Hugh Fielder…

Brilliant return, but tinged with heartbreak. Taylor Hawkins’ sudden death last year was a truly tragic moment in Foo Fighters’ 28 year history. For the second time, Dave Grohl was left to mourn a larger-than-life bandmate, and in this case a best friend too. Hawkins’ positive personality shone a huge ray of sunshine over the band and delivered some of their finest moments, whether that was fronting Queen’s Tie Your Mother Down with Brian May and Roger Taylor at Hyde Park in 2006, or singing Led Zep’s Rock And Roll with Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones at Wembley in 2008. So when he was cruelly taken away in Bogotá, Colombia in March 2022, Foo Fighters were well within their rights to call it a day there and then, such…

While Manchester’s past glories cast a long shadow over the city’s young musos, Ashley Sherlock’s debut album eschews the monkey walk to mint his own sound. Citing a broad range of artists, Just A Name is the sound of a runaway talent trying not to trip over its surfeit of ideas, meshing roots and alt.rock with a bagful of hooks and just a hint of likeable northern lip. Holding sessions at an unheated local cotton mill last December, Sherlock and his propulsive power trio (Charlie Rachael Kay on bass, Danny Rigg on drums) sometimes sound like they’re trying to get done before their fingers freeze, and that sense of urgency thrills on the faster cuts: try the stormy falsetto-driven opener Trouble, or recent single Realise with a guitar tone as…

Prog rockers cut to the chase. Like a good Scotch whisky, Amplifier have been maturing for almost 20 years. Now, on album number seven, they’ve distilled themselves to their essence: huge guitarscapes, brilliant drumming and clever lyrics – recorded as a two-piece. Hologram’s sleeve-notes credit Sel Balamir with “vocals/guitar/ production” – modestly drawing no attention to his ear-catching bass lines – while a simple “drums” alongside Matt Brobin’s name seems to be a glaring understatement. Because even reduced, Amplifier sound as colossal as ever. Hard-rocking openers Two Way Mirror and Sweet Perfume hook you in as Balamir’s gentle vocals make sinister references to ‘scalpels of paradise’ and ‘grinding down unicorns’. The title-track oozes heady psychedelic textures, Tundra layers acoustic guitars over tricky time signatures, then Let Me Drive swirls like…

Tim Booth and the gang go orchestral. Re-imagining past glories is becoming something of a thing at the minute. First U2 and now James are retreading their greatest hits and deeper cuts. But unlike Bono and co., who reworked the bulk of their back catalogue, the former Madchester veterans have brought in an orchestra and choir to shake things up. For the most part, Be Opened By The Wonderful is a soothing departure as the band slow down their hundred-mile-anhour hits for grander, more contemplative takes. It works brilliantly on tracks such as Sometimes, where Tim Booth’s vocals are complemented by gentle strings and ethereal harmonies. But deeper cuts like the sea shanty-driven Why So Close and the downbeat Alaskan Pipeline are a bit dull and wearing. Be Opened By…

Nineteenth album from David Thomas and co., with seven bonus tracks on CD edition. As suggested by its title, 2019’s The Long Goodbye represented a terminus for Pere Ubu, the end of a long and winding journey across a notional American terrain that David Thomas had been on since 1975. Trouble On Big Beat Street, however, sees Ubu begin again – despite retaining faithful personnel including Keith Moliné, Andy Diagram, Michele Temple and Gagarin, aka Graham Dowdall, this is the sound of a group re-fired, re-blooded, reshaped, reinvigorated. Worried Man Blues, on which Thomas revisits the crossroads at which Robert Johnson made his pact with the devil, suggests he’s ready to once more undertake a journey across vast, inescapable terrain. Thomas insisted that these songs were recorded pretty much on…

Erudite proggers deliver a brainy slam-dunk. The Intersphere have always been a bit more thoughtful than most when it comes to creating their music, and so it is with Wanderer, which takes its cerebral lyrical themes from a variety of sources. Excellent single Bulletproof, for example, is based on the writings of socio-political scientist Hartmut Rosa, and delivers them in deceptively accessible form. Always pushing at the boundaries of alternative progressive rock, the varied and skilful songwriting allows them to entice with the gorgeous, shimmering pop melodies of Underwater, Down, Corrupter and Treasure Chest, and to take genuine creative risks with the brutal, crushing Heads Will Roll and the abrasive A La Carte, which sit at the album midpoint. With these head-spinning gear changes The Intersphere are pleasing themselves first…

David Gedge’s indie heroes recreate their 1992 glory year with double the (new) tunes. The Wedding Present’s 1992 The Hit Parade project was both recordmatching and mischievously mind blowing: 12 Top 40 singles in a year, released monthly, each backed by a cover version, which took in ferocious alt.rock, sci-fi drone-pop, threesome ballads and gutter grunge Christmas songs. Twenty years on, frontman David Gedge repeated the endeavour over 2022 via subscription, minus the covers but not the adventurous spirit. Compiled non-chronologically, 24 Songs makes for a rich, rewarding and highly consistent double album maintaining Gedge’s standing as one of the finest craftsmen of melodic indie rock. Barely any tracks smack of B-side material, and while there are plenty of classic, breathless noise-pop moments building to riff-on-riff crescendos reminiscent of Kennedy…

Hey Mr Spaceman. In 1969, as Neil Armstrong took one small step on the Moon, the Moody Blues celebrated the giant leap with a concept LP dedicated to space travel. By this point the group had reinvented themselves from a seconddivision R&B act to psychedelic rock pioneers. To Our Children’s Children’s Children was the first release on their Threshold label and their second album in that year. Once again it made heavy use of Mellotron, a discovery of keyboard player Mike Pinder, whose commanding voice is heard on the ‘rocket launch’ opener Higher And Higher. Each of the five members contributed to the album’s vision. Lead singer Justin Hayward’s Gypsy is the strongest of the bunch, and one of the only tracks that could be played live due to the…

North-East heroes’ sessions recovered from mists of time. Tyneside paladins Lindisfarne were festival favourites and unlikely chart botherers across the 70s, their folk-rock a curious mix of spellbound mysticism like Lady Eleanor and beery singalongs like Fog On The Tyne. For every morsel of melancholy, usually written by Alan Hull, they offered a blast of blokey boorishness. They split in ‘73 but reunited in ‘78, with that year’s single Run For Home returning them to the Top 10. This eight-CD box set, half of its eight hours previously unreleased, gathers concerts and sessions from their heyday, spanning from Sounds Of The 70s, via multiple John Peel and Johnnie Walker slots, to a triumphant hometown Christmas show in 1984. The band’s duality is evident throughout. Early on, Winter Song and January…

Previously unheard gig, backed by the Memphis Horns, from Stills’s own archive. Come the summer of 1971, Stephen Stills was nearing his peak. His self-titled debut album had arrived on the back of superstar exploits with CSN(Y), scoring the huge hit single Love The One You’re With in the process. A second album, Stephen Stills 2, was hurried out to provide an outlet for his remarkably prolific songwriting, swiftly followed by his first solo tour across the States, The Memphis Horns Tour. This riveting set from the Berkeley Community Theatre, recorded over two nights that August, shows the full range of Stills’s extraordinary power. Divided into solo acoustic and full-band performances, it’s the former that really punches. A lithe Love The One You’re With, with backing from just Joe Lala’s…

Kevin Parker’s neopsychedelic landmark revisited with extras. Even though it was released in 2012 rather than 1972, Tame Impala’s lysergic odyssey Lonerism always seemed designed to be housed in a gatefold sleeve or three, so the three-LP box set this reissue comes in seems like a natural habitat. “I had finally given permission for music to take over my being,” Parker has said of it. And there’s a beautifully immersive quality to the starry-eyed wonder of Endors Toi and Apocalypse Dreams, while the way Keep On Lying’s dizzy, yearning melancholy drifts into heady maelstroms of laughter suggests there’s always an edge of delirium close by. Those are punctuated by more conventional thrills, on the anthemic alienation of Why Won’t They Talk To Me and psych-glam banger Elephant. The latter single-handedly…

A return to the glamorous fringes of the late-90s UK rock scene . The music industry was a very different place in the mid-90s and early 2000s. There was money – loads and loads and loads of money – floating around that meant major labels could take a risk on signings that didn’t quite fit in but tickled their fancy. That’s exactly what happened to Rachel Stamp, a band of particularly glamorous fish out of water who made a great splash before being thrown back into the deep when their A&R guy moved on. Led by frontman/ bassist David Ryder Prangley, whose love of classic rock was, very audibly, equal to his love of Prince or the 80s synth-pop of Dead Or Alive, they eventually released Hymns For Strange Children…

Documentary profiling NYC punk-rock cauldron Max’s Kansas City. The scuzzy NYC Bowery venue CBGB was synonymous with New York’s late-70s punk scene and 80s hardcore milieu. But on Park Avenue and East 18th, the more avant and hip Max’s Kansas City nightclub and restaurant attracted both the performers – Alice Cooper, Velvet Underground, Iggy & The Stooges, New York Dolls, Suicide, The Heartbreakers – as well as the era’s in-crowd artists, film stars and celebs. Both groups would influence, foment and catalyse the punk scene from Max’s infamously debauched back room and eclectic music venue. In Nightclubbing, rockumentary director Danny Garcia successfully redresses that balance between the two celebrated Manhattan sites. At the eatery and nightclub where Iggy and Bowie met for the first time and Debbie Harry worked…

Mudhoney guitarist gets down and dirty. Steve Turner is the guitarist with Mudhoney. Mudhoney are grunge. The genre begins are ends there. Steve Turner is likeable, laconic, knowledgeable and talented but no way a show-off. He’s a fanboy, a vaguely bewildered insider witness to a music phenomenon, one that carried plenty of his peers to international stardom but somehow forget to include the core spiritual founders. Mudhoney remain an awesome cult band. No matter. It was a fun ride anyway, if at sometimes sad and tumultuous. Turner’s good-natured, wry sense of humour, his insider eye for detail, serves this book well: from his early beginnings as a skater kid, through the formation of Green River (the band that spawned Mudhoney and Pearl Jam), the Hype! Years (Reading Festival, Nevermind and…