Innehållsförteckning för July 2022 från Classic Rock

Explosions, fireworks, massive pyrotechnics that seem beyond belief. We take these things for granted now when we go to see a big rock spectacular. Whether it’s Rammstein ramping it all up to 11 with flame-throwers and more, or just some celebratory lights in the sky at the end of an open-air gig, everyone’s at it. And, as Gene Simmons is at pains to point out in this issue, it’s all because of Kiss. And I think he has a point. Go to a Kiss show, and it’s like you walked in on Bonfire Night and the 4th Of July having a joint party. I remember being present at a tiny one-off gig at Islington Academy several years ago, and even in that tiny room the men in make-up saw fit…

November 29, 1956 – April 9, 2022 CHRIS BAILEY, THE frontman with influential Australian punks The Saints, has died at the age of 65. No cause of death has been announced. The news was confirmed in a social media post from the band, which said: “Chris lived a life of poetry and music and stranded on a Saturday night.” The mention of ‘stranded’ is a reference to (I’m) Stranded, the title track and lead single from the band’s debut album. One of the earliest punk rock singles, it came out in September 1976, a month before The Damned released New Rose in the UK. Bailey was born in Kenya, and spent his formative years in Northern Ireland before his family moved to Brisbane, Australia. He formed The Saints with two…

Sir Elton John is reported to be working on new music during his current final tour. An unnamed source told The Sun: “A few years ago Elton said he wasn’t interested in making new music, but over the past twelve months things have changed. A new generation has fallen in love with him and he’s never been in more demand.” Joan Jett has hit back at Ted Nugent after he criticised her inclusion in a list of 100 Great Guitarists compiled 12 years ago for Rolling Stone. “Ted Nugent has to live with being Ted Nugent,” the former Runaway told the NME. “He has to be in that body, so that’s punishment enough. He plays the tough guy, but this is [somebody] who shit his pants – literally – so…

“I’m doing whatever I need to get the sounds out of my head.” ZACH TABORI IS a vision in orange. “It’s my favourite colour,” he says, Zooming from his home in Los Angeles while wearing an orange robe, in front of an orange wall. His DIY home recording set-up is called The Orange Wonderland, and his press shots have him decked out in the colour, looking like a groovy boho yogi. His entire band get Tango’d too. Orange is the perfect hue for the half-Turkish 26-year-old guitarist; energetic, magical and a little in-your-face, not unlike Tabori’s eclectic and attention-grabbing musical style, best sampled via his latest record, Soft Boiled. Fans of Frank Zappa should rejoice, as Tabori names him his favourite guitarist: “I’ve been influenced by him for so many…

There’s passion at the heart of everything Graham Nash does. Crosby, Stills And Nash were born after his singular instinct led the Lancashire-born musician to quit The Hollies and head for California. It was during CSNY’s (CSN now joined by Neil Young) first hiatus, in 1971 that Nash embarked on a solo career that finally allowed his effusive songwriting to flourish. His first two records – Songs For Beginners, released in May 1971, and 1974’s Wild Tales – chronicled the fallout of his relationship with Joni Mitchell with deep, unrestrained emotions. The pair had lived together for two years upon Nash’s move to the US, and he has never been shy to reference her considerable influence on his songwriting, alongside that of his bandmates. On his new album, Graham Nash:…

If you were to write a science fiction novel set in the year 1967, it would be hard to imagine a more captivating cosmic messenger than Jimi Hendrix. With a wild afro that looked like a shock of electrical wires, psychedelic duds streaked with hues from the Crab Nebula and a strange language that was part-philosophical rambling, part screaming Stratocaster, he came to London, dropping jaws wherever he went. And since aliens always arrive on earth with a manifesto to help humanity, Hendrix’s was called, with futurist bravado, Axis: Bold As Love. He’d already grabbed everyone’s attention early that year with his band The Experience’s debut Are You Experienced. So the second album seemed the ideal vessel for a message. Axis was recorded in fits and starts amidst a hectic…

Tim Bowness is persistently prolific – this is his sixth solo album in eight years, aside from collaborations and the 2019 No-Man reunion with Steven Wilson. While those releases have stayed in close contact with the sublime, Butterfly Mind feels like the work of a reinvigorated singer, probing – gently, as ever – for new angles, avant-garde shapes within his established musical templates. For every trademark languid ballad (Dark Nevada Dream) there’s a surprisingly virile rock-adjacent knees-up (We Feel, Only A Fool). ‘So sensitive – and hard as nails,’ he sighs, both ironic and not. Bowness’s guest list is now reaching Elton-esque proportions, from Ian Anderson and Elbow’s Richard Jupp to Nick Beggs, Peter Hammill, Dave Formula and No-Man’s violinist Ben Coleman (revisiting after 30 years). It’s a mark of…

It’s taken a while, but at last Dirty Honey are heading for the UK and Europe. And the timing is ideal to mash their 2019 debut EP into last year’s rather short self-titled LP and bring everyone this side of the Atlantic up to date in one very enjoyable debut package. A handful of nonalbum singles are missing, which could easily have been added, but there you go. Sounding immediate and fresh yet making the very most of their classic rock influences – chief among these being Aerosmith and Led Zep – the band deliver the goods time and again on Rolling 7s, Down The Road, Tied Up, Gypsy and Another Last Time, guitarist John Notto swaggering like Perry and Whitford combined, and vocalist Marc LaBelle more than a few…

Starting strong, Beautiful Life and Rest In Peace are powerful watersheds. The former through its soaring, anthemic chorus, while the latter is a darker personification of addiction, yet remains ambiguous enough to be the world’s most cathartic send-off to a hellish ex (‘No one’s laying roses on your bones’). Hurricane is a full-frontal attack on relationship anxiety, while Close To Me Always clutches at the smoke of lost love. Trevor Lukather proves that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, matching his dad’s prowess in collaboration with Bon Jovi’s Phil X on such riffs as Top Of The World and Touched By Fire. The autonomy over struggle and success characterises Black Sheep and ultimately concludes the album, while Gifts celebrates powerful introspection in contrast to Rockisdead (2016). Dorothy’s place…

After bassist Caleb Scofield died in a car crash in 2018, to support his family a stunned Cave In issued reworked demos begun with him as their sixth studio album Final Transmission, perhaps expecting it to be just that. Now, with the long-time friend Nate Newton on board, they revisit the same spirit they began with Scofield in 1998 – stomping around that noisy landscape connecting grunge to metalcore. Producing them is Nate’s Converge bandmate Kurt Balou, who worked on Cave In’s ’98 debut – acircle completed. And so, across 70 minutes, the band return in their heavier style, with opening pair New Reality and Blood Spiller delivering brutal riffs of which Slayer might be proud, and, in Careless Offering, a no-nonsense boogie that Tony Iommi would probably admire. Just as…

Rammstein understand one thing better than anyone else: that at the top end of the rock’n’roll game, when you’re packing stadiums and exploding more pyro than is safe or sensible, what you’re doing has more in common with The Blue Man Group or Cirque du Soleil than it does Chuck Berry and youthful rebellion. It’s about the show, and hitting your mark, and precision-tooled choreography. Latest album Zeit walks the usual tightrope between sombre intellectual reflection and puerile fantasy. Opener Armee Der Tristen cites Bertolt Brecht, the grinding Dicke Titten translates as ‘Big Tits’. It’s an album of brilliant moments – the unexpected autotune on Lügen, the clanking T.Rex rhythm that powers Adieu, the snatch of melody from Marlene Dietrich’s Muss I Denn embellishing Dicke Titten – but, perhaps…

He doesn’t exactly dominate the credits on Dream Theater albums, but singer James LaBrie has no problem finding enough material for his own career. On this, his fourth solo album (sixth if you include the two albums he recorded as Mullmuzzler), he delves into the complexities of human relationships, which can be hard to do without getting judgemental but he manages to avoid that… mostly. He also steers clear of the other 49 shades of grey. His band – guitarist Marco Sfogli, bassist/acoustic guitarist Paul Logue and keyboard player Christian Pulkkinen from British melodic metallers Eden’s Curse – occasionally veer towards the portentous, but are better when they play with a lighter touch, which works particularly well on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s Ramble On. Hugh Fielder…

The last band of ex-Motörhead guitarist Würzel (as the band like to remind us), Leader Of Down do a sterling job of following up their 2018 debut Cascade Into Chaos, across 10 tight and concise tracks. While Cascade played heavily on its guest appearances, The Screwtape Letters has almost none – except ex-Iron Maiden guitarist Dennis Stratton contributing to Hitman – although it makes not a jot of difference to the delivery, which positively crackles with energy. From the point opener Cat’s Eye Night fires up, to the closing sprint of Midnight In London, they barely slow down to catch a breath, rattling relentlessly through heavy hitters like Here’s Johnny and Dodging The Landlord with utter conviction. No-frills straight-up belters, one after another. Essi Berelian…

Proof that you can’t keep a bunch of psychopathic interplanetary warriors down, Gwar have weathered the loss of founder Dave ‘Oderus Ungerus’ Brockie, and simply carried on being the world’s most gleefully obnoxious metal band. The New Dark Ages is the Virginian space-mutants’ fifteenth album, and second without Brockie, and it’s one of their best. Admittedly there is not much to dislike about a concept album based on the notion that Gwar have been “sucked off into an alternative universe to do battle with their evil twins and the spectre of rogue technology”. But even ignoring the deranged conceit, there are some great songs here. In particular, Completely Fucked is a delirious hard-rock singalong, Berserker Mode is mutant punk-thrash par excellence, and Rise Again is a theatrical power ballad worthy…

The first rule of rock stardom comes straight from the gospel of Adam Ant: ridicule is nothing to be scared of. In fact, a willingness to embrace the ridiculous and the theatrical is exactly what gives many lead singers the edge on their rivals. Metalcore outfit Motionless In White, and particularly frontman Chris ‘Motionless’ Cerulli, are well aware of this. Which is why their new album has songs about werewolves and lyrics such as ‘You can’t spell out ‘virus’ without ‘us’‘ without the slightest hint of shame. The drama kicks in from the off with Meltdown, a barrage of nosebleed blast-beats shot through with electro-metal and even hints of hip-hop. A clear influence of captain spook/ social pariah Marilyn Manson is writ large on We Become The Night and Red,…

Years before he became the befanged beefcake we all knew and loved, Type O Negative gothmetal god Peter Steele fronted barbarian thrashers Carnivore, a sinewy power trio that slipped seamlessly between New York’s metal and hardcore scenes in the mid 80s. Obsessively button-pushing, Carnivore took Manowar’s loincloth shtick to its goofiest conclusion, beating their chests and singing about male supremacy and winning several of the next few world wars with the mighty power of their axes. Originally released in 1985, Carnivore is part thrash metal, part raging hardcore punk, a chaotic stew anchored by Steele’s vampire drawl and an insatiable desire to provoke. Remastered for maximum impact, this solid reissue includes new artwork, extensive sleevenotes, and a trio of raw, non-LP demos, including the sarcastic hardcore romp USA For USA…

Irrepressible, irreducible, the Mael brothers have been shooting out Ferris wheels of strangeness and beauty since the early 70s; oddly bewitching circus tumbrils full of intricately layered melodies (Ron), electrodisco beats, lush synth-pop and Russell’s always outrage-level falsetto vocal. These two reissues are part of a seven-album 21st-century Sparks collection. Exotic Creatures (2008, 8/10) is all playful and teasing and on song, once again showing off the clear debt that collaborators Franz Ferdinand (for one) owe their arch glam-stomp. Songs like the brilliantly framed I Can’t Believe That You Would Fall For All The Crap In This Song and Lighten Up, Morrissey (no, I ain’t making this up) utterly mesmerising and brilliant. Levels of consistency and inventiveness hard to beat anywhere. This reissue comes with five bonus tracks, including the…

As timeless and undeniable today as it was upon its original release in 1985, Epicus Doomicus Metallicus is one of heavy metal’s crown jewels. Like all certified classics, the Swedes’ debut has been reissued many times over the years, but this three-disc, 35th-anniversary box set is such a lavish and comprehensive upgrade that doom disciples will probably find that resistance is useless. A newly remastered version of Epicus itself is as magnificent as it ought to be. Every one of the album’s six tracks is a doom classic, and everything from Solitude to A Sorcerer’s Pledge zings with enhanced power. If anyone needs additional reasons to take the plunge, the official vinyl debut of 1985’s legendary Witchcraft demo should be more than sufficient. Non-album cuts Warchild and Into The Unfathomed…

Founder and frontman Richard Jobson reunited the Skids following the U2/Green Day cover of The Saints Are Coming (originally released as the opening track on Skids’ 1978 EP Wide Open) as a charity single benefitting victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2006. The late Stuart Adamson’s place was filled by erstwhile Big Country bandmate Bruce Watson on guitar, along with Watson’s son Jamie, plus original founding bassist William Simpson and Mike Baillie on drums. An exhaustive box set charting the band’s reunion, each CD is a separate live or session recording. The 2017 London Roundhouse date of disc two is a live highlight with the band on top form on a 20-track spectacular featuring a muscular performance on a par with disc one’s hometown Dunfermline set of 2010. Disc three is…

We all know of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM). But what about its Geordie offshoot the North East New Wave Of British Heavy Metal? The NENWOBHM was indeed a thing, inspired by a teeming hotbed of Toon talent and featuring a cacophony of canny lads, including Tygers Of Pan Tang. The Tygers’ best album remains 1980 debut Wild Cat, released via indie Neat Records, despite (or maybe because of) an endearingly inept performance by vocalist Jess Cox. The band signed to MCA, and a familiar tale of major-label disgruntlement ensued. After disbanding in 1983, and to the clamour of no one in particular, the Tygers reunited two years later with just two familiar members: frontman Jon Deverill, who had replaced Cox, and original drummer Brian Dick (his…

While Bryan Ferry’s notes here are brief – they’re preceded by an excellent James Truman essay – they do reveal that in his youth “verses of John Donne, TS Eliot and Sylvia Plath were pinned to my bedroom wall”. An element of romantic confessional has always infused Ferry’s lyrics, usually in the form of an ecstatically melancholy sigh, but so has its counterbalance: the joy of the buoyant, be it inspired by Pop Art or cinema. There really was no one to touch him in the early years, as Mother Of Pearl and its underrated equal Sentimental Fool nailed the narcotic swoon of over-thinking. Later he’s trimmed and simplified, but his obsession with textures of sound has been fruitful and sincere, and songs like Manifesto and True To Life…

Even before the pandemic forced the shutters down permanently on a raft of places where live music once thrived, it seemed that every week one was being lost for one reason or another. When another one bites the dust, especially one of the more iconic or fabled ones, it’s not just the loss of a place to see live music, it’s often the loss of a piece of music history: the Marquee, the Rainbow, the Astoria, the Borderline, on a smaller scale the Nashville Rooms, the Wag Club, the Sir George Robey… Across 250-plus pages of his second volume (that there’s a second is itself depressing), Paul Talling’s well-researched book continues the engaging but sad tale of yet more places in the capital that hosted live music being repurposed or,…

★Having served up a delicious progressive banquet back in 2020 via a 20th-anniversary revisiting of their conceptual masterpiece Metropolis Pt 2: Scenes From A Memory, this evening Dream Theater have more contemporary matters in mind. Promoting their fifteenth studio album A View From The Top Of The World, the American/Canadian quintet elect to celebrate the flip-side of their oeuvre with a thoroughly bruising – though never anything less than virtuoso – display. After a third nomination, Dream Theater recently won a Grammy, for the new album’s introductory salvo The Alien, so no prizes for guessing which song begins the show. The Alien is one of several truly epic tunes, with the album’s three-part, 20-minute title track closing the set proper in the most dramatic manner possible. Over more than two hours…

★Still reliably wiry and intense at 63, Paul Weller is on impressively rowdy form at this postpandemic comeback show, his sharp-angled rock’n’soul attack bolstered by two drummers and a wall of clanging guitars. The Modfather has kept busy during lockdown, releasing two chart-topping studio albums that inform much of this set. He also dabbled in orchestral arrangements and musique concrete. In matters musical as well as tonsorial, Weller has always followed his own unique muse. Weller dips into his back catalogue only sparingly, earning huge cheers with evergreen Style Council tracks like the luscious Have You Ever Had It Blue and the eternally joyous Shout To The Top! A mere three Jam tunes, including a heart-tugging That’s Entertainment and a reliably bouncy Town Called Malice, feel like grudging obligations. Their…

★Let’s first address, if we may, the elephant in the room: The Hu are too damn quiet. Even jammed against the barrier at the front of the stage, the volume is such that earplugs are unnecessary, and the inane chatter of people who haven’t got the decency to shut up while a band is playing is all too noticeable and annoying. With two drummers, you should be able to feel the beats like the rumble of thunder, and surely the point of Mongolian throat singing is that it makes your spleen vibrate. Tonight it does not. Indeed, an elephant in the room would be louder. There is also a vague suspicion that The Hu are using backing tracks. But all that is not to suggest that this isn’t an impressive…

Died late April, 2022 RANDY RAND, THE founding bass player with American hard rockers Autograph, has died at the age of 62. “Although beyond devastated, we find some comfort and solace from the knowledge that the last couple of years have been some of his happiest as an artist and as a performer,” said his bandmates. Autograph formed in California in 1984 and released three albums, but the Seattle explosion would ultimately put them out of business. “Grunge came in and us hair bands couldn’t get a gig anywhere,” Rand told Classic Rock in 2015. “How did that make me feel? Angry and disappointed. I’d been working in music since the early seventies, and it hurt to get dumped.” More recently Rand was part of a reconstituted Autograph that toured…

May 24, 1947 – April 21, 2022 BORN CYNTHIA ALBRITTON, the Chicagoan found fame – some might say the term ‘infamy’ is more fitting – during the late 1960s by making plaster casts of the penises of touring musicians. Pamela Des Barres once called Albritton, who collected a string of replicas of phalluses, “the most notorious groupie of all of them because of her art form”. “At first it was a shtick to get laid, and then as it progressed I got this collector’s impulse to collect more and more,” Cynthia explained years later. “And then people told me it was art. And it is art in the school of Andy Warhol, art repetition.” Her conquests/‘models’ began with Jimi Hendrix, and although the guitarist’s “pubes got stuck” in the mould,…

Melodic hard rockers Journey release their first new album in more than a decade on July 8 via Frontiers. The 16-track Freedom, produced by guitarist Neal Schon, keyboard player Jonathan Cain and former drummer Naranda Michael Walden, is their third album with Arnel Pineda on vocals, and their fifteenth in total. It also co-stars Randy Jackson, the bassist who previously played on their 1986 album Raised On Radio. Paul Stanley has questioned whether Elon Musk could have used the $44 billion he proposes to spend on the purchase of Twitter for more worthwhile purposes. “Wouldn’t our world be better advanced by eradicating world hunger or curing cancer?” wrote the Kiss frontman. “The list is long and the possibilities endless.” The gap between John Lydon and his former Sex Pistols bandmates…

“I’m sure I get a lot of rage out in this band. It’s therapeutic, screaming.” YOU CAN’T MISS Rot TV’s residence in Melbourne, Australia. It’s the house with the life-sized Grim Reaper looming by the front door. “He scares the shit out of visitors,” cackles singer Harriet Hudson-Clise of the Halloween decoration that became a permanent lodger. “He almost gave the guy who walks my dogs a heart attack!” More than likely it’s also the house that’s being shaken to its foundations by some of the southern hemisphere’s best new rock music. Hudson-Clise, her guitarist husband Graham Clise, bassist Zac Holly and drummer Lee Parker became Rot TV back in 2018, after the singer realised that their gig playing Blue Öyster Cult covers had limited legs. “It was the covers…

In March, as the announcement came of Simon McBride joining the Deep Purple line-up (standing in for Steve Morse), the Belfast guitarist was already blowing his newly disposable income. “Can I handle global rock stardom?” he says, repeating the question put to him. “Oh yeah. Completely. I’ve already got the sports car ordered. When I got the message that I was joining Deep Purple, I went straight down to the Lamborghini garage. Like: ‘I’ll have one of those…’” He’s joking. Of course. It’s not that McBride’s new paymasters don’t offer Lamborghini-sized wages, or that the guitarist isn’t raring for his first show with Purple, at Tel Aviv’s Menorah Arena at the end of May. But, at the age of 43, the Northern Irishman has perhaps been around the block too…

The Sheepdogs’ first full-length album since 2018’s Changing Colours sees the chooglin’ Canadian rockers doggedly determined to shake off the isolation blues. Forced to record without much studio frippery, the Currie brothers go to allpurpose mid-70s jams to keep spirits high while off the road. As such it’s an undemanding record, formed from a wish to create a good-time vibe in a vacuum. I Wanna Know You leaps out with a stadium-friendly chorus, while So Far Gone shuffles in sideways like JJ Cale. We’re guessing Scarborough Street Fight takes place in Toronto, rather than a punch up over parsley and sage between Simon & Garfunkel. Now and again they Doobie perilously towards yacht-rock territory in their effort to recreate the harmonies of a golden era. More ruff with the smooth wouldn’t…

Even in 1996 when K was the fastest-selling British debut album ever, Kula Shaker were already harking back to a mythical 1960s of pot, patchouli and letting it all hang out. In their world, time was something that happens only to other people. And so here we are, more than a quarter of a century down the line, and the retro-heads are still stuck in an endless loop of the past where only the cost of powering a lava lamp might well jolt them into the present. A double album held together by a series of spoken-word pieces set in a leaking church, it largely falls flat in a way that The Coral’s Coral Island doesn’t. I’m Against It and 108 Ways To Leave Your Narcissist show that their…

What Bob Vylan are doing for punk music – updating, politicising, merging with grime and electronica – London’s Nova Twins have simultaneously been doing for future-rock. Around their 2020 debut album Who Are The Girls? the duo’s hyper-charged clash of modernist metal, rap, industrial rock and snaking R&B drew comparisons to Enter Shikari and The Prodigy, and this second album brings the heft and enormity to make them serious contenders. Forthright of attitude on the BLM-inspired Cleopatra, the riotfor-recognition Antagonist and Fire & Ice (‘I wanna strut, I wanna scream, I wanna fuck, I wanna fight, I wanna bite’, bawls Amy Love), they now have the sonic goods to match, with unique twists. A Dark Place For Somewhere Beautiful echoes the atmospheric savagery of Wolf Alice, R&B metal shagging tune…

After delivering a wildly diverse, unpredictable clutch of songs on 2018’s Boarding House Reach, Jack White has given us more advance warning of what to expect from the two longplaying releases he’s putting out this year. And while he has indicated that this summer’s album Entering Heaven Alive will be a more organic, folky affair, on Fear Of The Dawn his foot spends plenty of time flat on the fuzz pedal. It pays dividends on the pounding, electronically treated Sabbath sludge of the title track, the quick-quick-slow assault of That Was Then, This Is Now and the furious, Jon Spencer-style turbo-twang of What’s The Trick?. He tears into his fretboard with agreeable abandon at regular intervals, but even as he brings the noise to large swathes of this record he…

While the tool of many singers’ trade gets rusty or wears out after decades of use, the distinctive upper-register voice that lit up 60s UK hits alongside Allan Clarke in The Hollies, and later brought sun-drenched harmonies to Crosby, Stills & Nash and CSNY, is, remarkably, still intact in the now 80-yearold and long-time solo singersongwriter Graham Nash. Also remarkable is the intimacy and warmth generated by the performances captured here of Nash and his band playing his 70s solo albums Songs For Beginners and Wild Tales in their entirety in 2019: songs often with a political message or addressing social injustice, but which don’t preach or hector. Still with a discernible Lancashire twang, even after decades of living in the US, Nash’s voice sails effortlessly over a set of…

The world’s leading – and possibly only – proponents of Bovver Rock, Italy’s Giuda (think Sweet meet Slaughter And The Dogs) are so niche that their UK fan base remains limited to Joe Elliott and his cousin Trevor. But if you’re a fully paid-up member of the Racey fan club – in other words, if you know your cipolle – Giuda are masters of their approach. This is glitter from the gutter, delivered with distinction: the unmistakable twang of Derek Longmuir’s braces accompanied by unrelenting Doc Marten stomps to the cranium. This live album is an absolute riot and brings the band’s punkrock tendencies to the fore – less Showaddywaddy, more Sham 69 (or Sham LXIX, as they say in Rome). The best bit is the rollicking mid-set medley –…

Not, as you might think initially, an average night out with Keith Vaz, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets are the rising foot soldiers of Australia’s Perthadelia scene that has given us Tame Impala and Pond. Their fifth album since 2016 (frontman Jack McEwan is no acid-fried slacker) aligns them closer to the boundless sideproject diaspora of Frisco’s Osees, though, with its intense bursts of ragged psych-garage as busy as the Bosch-style cover art and surrealist lyrics drifting from the blast zone: ‘No one wants to pick up your marbles,’ goes the raging Acid Dent, ‘Be more like Robin Hood’. Intended as a summation of the Crumpets’ entire catalogue thus far, the album encompasses driving, brimstone blues rock (Lava Lamp Pisco), corroded folkpop (Bubblegum Infinity) and pastoral Syd Barrett frolics (the title track),…

Steve Earle has gifted us a series of tribute albums, hailing Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clarke and, tragically, his late son Justin Townes Earle. His idea of a homage is true to the original artist but also ragged in that singular, Steve manner. Jerry Jeff Walker (1942-2020) was a New York troubadour who worked the Greenwich Village scene before installing himself in Austin, Texas. He recorded his best-travelled song, Mr. Bojangles, in 1968; Nina Simone, Sammy Davis Jr and others have accented the emotions of the song. Steve Earle’s message is that the Jerry Jeff songbook amounts to more than this. So he delves into lesser-known parts, like Wheel, a 1973 song about tragic, rural cycles, and he sings Old Road, as a sparse holler, akin to the original. Other…

Released to coincide with Pistol, the predictably controversial six-part Disney+ mini-series based on Steve Jones’s autobiography Lonely Boy, here again – collected together “for the first time in over 20 years”, apparently – are the Sex Pistols’ finest recordings. Possibly the most straightforward job of compilation available to modern man, considering the fact that the band only released 15 selfpenned songs during their brief tenure as a John Lydon-fronted quartet. And yet UMC have still managed to overlook EMI, Liar and Seventeen (aka I’m A Lazy Sod) in favour of the band’s admittedly raucous, if hardly essential, live-in-the-studio covers of The Monkees’ (I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone and The Who’s Substitute originally hiked from the file marked ‘trash’ to make up numbers on The Great Rock ’N’ Roll Swindle. But,…

Now this is a rich, strange, lovely thing. In the late 60s, before becoming half of 10cc, Manchester art students Kevin Godley and Lol Creme recorded an aborted album under the name (ahem) Frabjoy And Runcible Spoon for Marmalade Records, the short-lived, cashstrapped label of psychedelic impresario and former Yardbirds manager Giorgio Gomelsky. Couched in off-mic studio chatter and fuzzy analogue acoustics, 11 of these 19 tracks are previously unreleased, and most stand up well. Gomelsky envisaged the duo as a British Simon And Garfunkel, and their blended folk-pop harmonies certainly stand out, but the widescreen music-hall arrangements and wistful Carnaby Street surrealism of jingle-jangle tracks like Chaplin House, Easy Life and The Best Seaside inevitably invoke lateperiod Beatles. Among the bonus cuts is The Late Mr. Late, a Mungo…

Two months after Citizen Kane Jr. Blues (7/10) was recorded at New York’s Bottom Line in May 1974, Young’s pivotal On The Beach album was released – the live show was a surprise 2.15am set for Ry Cooder and Leon Redbone fans, at which 28-yearold Young played seven new songs including Ambulance Blues and On The Beach for the first time, acoustic, raw and unembellished. The atmosphere is stunned, reverential. You can hear every reverberating string, every whispered imprecation. Even better is Royce Hall ’71 (8/10) recorded on campus at UCLA on January 30, 1971, not least because it includes classics such as Old Man, Heart Of Gold and Sugar Mountain. It’s a delight to hear the fully emergent Young so up and close with such a pantheon of wonder,…

1996 was a momentous year for the Monsters Of Rock festival, but not for the right reasons. After 16 years, this venerable event-come-pilgrimage finally reached the end of the road. And it was Kiss who brought the curtain down once and for all. Europe had always been more resistant to the band’s charms than the US, and even the lure of the reunited original line-up in full make-up wasn’t enough to pack out the Donington field. The result was a damp squib of an evening that suggested the decision to shut up shop wasn’t the worst move. Still, this third instalment in the band’s under-the-radar live series suggests their 70s-centred performance wasn’t as underwhelming as it seemed at the time. It’s a long way from the glory days of the…

Biff Bang Pow! A Better Life (Complete Creations 1983-1991) CHERRY RED Defined by an intrinsically 80s inept indie charm, Biff Bang Pow! featured Creation boss Alan McGee and future Primal Scream guitarist Andrew Innes. Good-intentioned jangling naïveté is all well and good, but six discs? 6/10 Various Bubble Rock Is Here To Stay Vol. 2 GRAPEFRUIT To those whose puberty coincided with the birth of glam, these three discs of unremittingly uncool pop-candy treats (Pipkins, Christie, Sweet, 76 others) will provide four entire hours of nostalgia-tweaking guilty brilliance. Headphones essential. 8/10 Frank Zappa Zappa/Erie ZAPPA Seventy-two tracks, three shows, three different line-ups, same Pennsylvania city location, ’74-76. A great find for FZ lifers, from an epic Cosmic Debris through a rare Freak Out/We’re Only In It For The Money-era revisit…

Twenty years after its initial publication, and 50 since the Ziggy album landed, this sizeable volume of more than 600 Mick Rock photos and remembrances (prompted by them) from Bowie seems even more of an important document now both men have departed. Bowie recalls thinking the 1970s were the start of the 21st century: “We are the future, now.” Yet his natural demeanour is to pre-emptively take the mickey out of himself and his attitudes of the period, while praising the designers and friends who enabled his provocations and overdue overnight fame. As the Pinups phase arrives, he’s already moved chapters ahead in his thinking, the Ziggy character thrown off like a hat. These images, though, capture the sweat and greasepaint of the electrifying moment: we sometimes forget how unglamorous…

Instantly recognisable for his iconic blond Mohawk hairdo, as a black man operating in the predominantly white area of rock music Jean Beauvoir has carved out a career against the odds, writing hits for Kiss, John Waite, Lionel Richie and the Ramones, among others, as well as fronting his own groups Voodoo X and Crown Of Thorns. Once allegedly described as a “legend” by Michael Jackson and “on point” by Prince, Beauvoir met many interesting people along the way, from royalty to presidents and supermodels. Unfortunately this memoir reads like one long list of famous names. We learn more of his cherished pet dog Rosie than of the personality of Wendy O Williams, his Plasmatics bandmate who took her own life in 1998. Beauvoir’s talent and charisma are beyond dispute,…

Ray Fenwick July 18, 1946 – April 30, 2022 Talented jazz guitarist Ray Fenwick, who played with the Spencer Davis Group and the Ian Gillan Band, has died at the age of 75. Born in Romford, Fenwick also played with Purple’s Jon Lord, appearing on the keyboard player’s 1974 live album Windows, and also with Steve Howe and Graham Bonnet and in the studio project Forcefield. He co-wrote the signature tune to the 70s cult TV show Magpie. Chris Alexander March 9, 1964 – April 6, 2022 A promoter of concerts at London’s Astoria Theatre, and more latterly the Assembly in Leamington Spa, Chris Alexander passed away suddenly due to bile duct cancer. He was 58. Alexander was diagnosed just seven weeks before he died, and was unable to receive…

August 13, 1951 -May 1, 2022 THE SON OF swing-band leader Jack Parnell, drummer Ric Parnell played with Atomic Rooster from 1970 to ’74, recorded with Yes vocalist Jon Anderson, Michael Des Barres and Joe Brown, and played on Toni Basil’s huge hit single Mickey. However, he was probably best known as Mick Shrimpton, one of several doomed drummers in the all-time great rock spoof movie This Is Spinal Tap. In one of the mockumentary’s most celebrated plot-lines, Shrimpton spontaneously combusts on stage during a live show. After the film’s release in 1984, Parnell continued to appear with Spinal Tap, this time as Mick’s twin brother, Ric. Harry Shearer, who as bassist Derek Smalls was his rhythm-section partner in Spinal Tap, commented: “No one ever rocked harder.” Michael McKean (Tap’s…

Riches from the rock underground Switzerland was home to a number of killer early progressive/ hard rock bands such as Krokodil, Toad, Cardeilhac, The Shiver, Pacific Sound, McChurch Soundroom, After Shave, Country Lane and Brainticket. Geneva-based Spot, were a pretty obscure band that featured the talents of English guitarist John Woolloff and Greek vocalist Pavlo Pendanki. Their sole, self-titled album was released in 1971 and received very little recognition outside Switzerland, but it’s a solid underground LP and a genuine rarity today, due largely to its limited initial pressing. Their approach to hard rock was both tasteful and diverse: elements of Led Zep and Black Sabbath add great contrast to its folkier aspects. ‘Their approach to hard rock was both tasteful and diverse.’ Short acoustic opener I Am One brings…

The Bridge Of Sighs is one of the most popular tourist locations in Venice. It was built in 1600, and linked a courthouse to an adjoining prison. Its name refers to the expressions of sadness of the convicted prisoners who could be heard as they looked out over the beautiful city for the last time before being taken to their cells or the execution chamber. As a subject for one of the deepest and most despairing songs in rock, it could hardly be bettered. But Robin Trower has never been there. Nor was he even thinking about this, or any other historic monument, when the inspiration to write the song struck. “I was reading a paper one morning, and there was a horse running called Bridge Of Sighs. And I…

The Sex Pistols saved Steve Jones from a life of crime. Born in Shepherd’s Bush in West London, and abandoned by his father at age two, Jones was raised by his hairdresser mother and a sexually abusive stepfather in Hammersmith Functionally illiterate, he found solace in theft. Fourteen criminal convictions later, he was remanded to an approved school, where he fell in love with the Faces. Once back at large, he met Malcolm McLaren, learned to play guitar, formed the Sex Pistols with equipment stolen from David Bowie’s farewell Hammersmith Ziggy show, and subsequently changed the world. Since the Pistols split in ’78, Jones has played with everyone from Guns N’ Roses to Bob Dylan, conquered addiction and enjoyed a second career as host of LA-based radio show Jonesy’s Jukebox.…

Germany’s Kreator were always the connoisseur’s thrash band of choice: vicious and gimleteyed, they swerved the acnecream-’n’-vodka-fuelled buffoonery of some of their American counterparts. Forty years into their career, that unrelenting approach has dimmed only slightly. Recorded at Berlin’s fabled Hansa Tonstudio, the 11 tracks that make up Hate Über Alles are sharper than a cut-throat razor. The title track and Killer Of Jesus are relentless barrages of double kick drums and frontman Mille Petrozza’s demon-dog bark, punctuated by rabble-rousing backing vocals and the occasional glimpse of melody. Even when they slow it down, as on the crawling Crush The Tyrants, it still sounds like a knife fight waiting to happen. It’s not all non-stop belligerence, though. Dying Planet’s on-the-nose title suggests there’s a conscience lying beneath the extreme…

A Heartless Portrait (The Orphean Testament) NAPALM Evergrey have been at this game for more than 25 years now, so they must be doing something right to have reached studio album number 13. Unlucky for some, but for these rather morose Swedes it’s pretty much business as usual, with mainman guitarist/vocalist Tom Englund leading from the front, his passionate and often soulful vocals perfectly complementing their trademark crunching prog metal. The group are no strangers to dealing in melancholia; Wildfires, Midwinter Calls, Ominous and The Orphean Testament are the pick of the bunch for emotional anguish and soul searching here, while Reawakening and Blindfolded inject some brutal riff power into the gothic bleakness. At times it feels like misery overload, but Evergrey are masters of the genre. Essi Berelian…

’With smiles on our faces, we’ve got all the right grooves that hit in all the right places,’ Crobot announce, with a cheery, boundless energy that’s impossible to deny. There’s nothing especially distinctive about these guys – they observe all the metal protocols, right down to the quiet, pastoral breathers (which, as on Without Wings, they do rather well). Mostly, though, as on Electrified and Dizzy, they deal in straight-up, fat-free riffery, big, chomping riffs, and hollering vocals that give the hairdryer treatment to life’s vicissitudes. The centrepiece is Golden, their tribute to Chris Cornell, saluting his spirit as it soars free from his flesh and bones to the hereafter. Crobot are happy to operate in the slipstream of metal gods and earn their place there. David Stubbs…

Much loved by the prog community, The Pineapple Thief haven’t gone hungry for glowing reviews over the years, thanks in no small part to the music collected on Give It Back. Perhaps inevitably, though, this is far from your standard greatest-hits compilation. It’s a reinvention of songs from Little Man, All The Wars and Tightly Unwound, scrupulously chosen by drummer Gavin Harrison (also of King Crimson), who wasn’t in the band when they were first released. He and frontman/TPT central force Bruce Soord then reworked and re-recorded the final track-list, adding a new depth and maturity, and sometimes even new lyrics, to songs from the band’s infancy. Their claim that they sound like entirely new songs is stretching it. But the title track, the first to be given an aural…

If Lit had visions of riding into the sunset as grizzled cowpunks, they’ve had to press the pause button. It seems that their audience (now at the second/ third wife, third/fourth child stage – abit like the band themselves) were not ready for the Nashville nod attached to 2017’s These Are The Days. They wanted more of the drunken laments that the Orange County punks had copyrighted back in the post-grunge daze, preferably with more Boris Johnson-style insincere regret. So it’s back to the “that was a helluva party” antics of Yeah Yeah Yeah and the allegedly autobiographical Kicked Off The Plane where, despite singing about ‘the walk of shame’, it’s hard to know how much of the regret is real. But they’re still intrigued by that fourth chord, so…

The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal spawned plenty of global superstars and hugely influential, if commercially underachieving, figures. Prowler didn’t come close on either front, not least because the Essex quartet didn’t get to release a full album in their original ’75-’82 lifespan. Forty years on, Cherry Red Records have attempted to rectify that. Prowler aren’t pushing the envelope. High-octane opener Gotta Get Back To You sounds like a close cousin of Maiden’s Running Free, and elsewhere their reliance on tightly wound riffs has a strong Saxon vibe about it as twin guitars lace Prisoner’s breathless assault. Although the late, legendary Chris Tsangarides produced the original 1980 tracks, the low budget is reflected in a lowfidelity finish. Yet none of that detracts from the sinewy hard rock punch these…

Drive-By Truckers documented the Trump years across three fearsome records, channelling the rage and paranoia as it escalated. Their conflicted feelings about the American South are welldocumented, and that slouching, smart rock has been an insightful guide to the times. Yet it’s also understandable that they might take a breather for this, their fourteenth album. For much of it they elect to look backwards, to formative times in their music story. The album title remembers a cherished dive bar in Muscle Shoals, and the track in question revives the fall-about grace of The Replacements. Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley previously looked for adventure in their first band, Adam’s House Cat. They mock their own mythology in song, but the fun won’t be denied. Likewise opening track The Driver is a seven-minute…

To the fury of the self-appointed intelligentsia, Liam Gallagher (the most irretrievably Oasis of all former Oasis members) continues his unstoppable rise to mainstream ubiquity. Having casually, and apparently effortlessly, identified and then serially supplied the exact strain of post-Lennon terrace-friendly, air-punching, tears-in-the-beers anthems required to set the prevailing zeitgeist’s populist pop-rock pulse racing, he continues to make hay while the sun shee-ines. Of course, this used to be his elder brother’s alchemical area of expertise. But now? Not so much. It’s already set to be Liam’s year – two sold-out Knebworths attest to that. So what better time to deliver not only C’mon You Know (8/10), a caricature third album accentuating every last sneer-propelled, Revolverinformed ingredient that his Oasis-weaned fan base expect, but also Down By The River Thames’s…

It may or may not shock you to find out that this is the seventeenth Christian Death album. I had to take a breath. Long gone is the creepy-crawly LA death-rock sound the band developed in the early 80s under the shaky stewardship of reedy voiced original frontman Rozz Williams (RIP), replaced here by the stately, chamberroom moan of long-running main man Valor Kand and a thicker, meatier sound that slips further into metal territory as the decades fly by. Evil Becomes Rule is a strident, gloomy and surprisingly catchy collection of dungeon rockers that bring to mind early Sisters Of Mercy as interpreted by corpse-paint-smeared Vikings. Rise And Shine is a particularly grandiose display, a steely goth anthem sprinkled liberally with exotic instrumentation. Blood Moon has that classic elastic…

Joan Jett & The Blackhearts Changeup BLACKHEART There’s much for longtime fans of La Jett to get their teeth into on this, the ex-Runaway’s first non-compilation release in nine years, but there’s no new material, just 25 raw acoustic takes on her greatest ‘hits’. 7/10 Primus Conspiranoid EP ATO Released in tandem with Primus touring their own take on Rush’s A Farewell To Kings, Conspiranoid (centred on an epic title cut showcasing Les Claypool’s over-and-above bass dexterity) is 70s technoflash incarnate. 6/10 Blinders Electric Kool Aid Part II EP SELF-RELEASED This four-track companion to EKA Pt I provides a perfectly complementary second side to what is effectively an enormously satisfying third album from the rapidly maturing, brink-dwelling, reverb-toting Doncastrian alt.rockers. 8/10 Delbert McLinton Outdated Emotions HOT HOT/THIRTY TIGERS Packed with…

Teen-dream idol, blue-eyed soulster, Modfather, metal merchant… Steve Ellis has been there, done that and bought the T-shirt. (Although one suspects his preferred purchase would be emblazoned with The Jam’s logo, not Judas Priest’s.) Even during a career hiatus in the 80s, Ellis’s life was not without incident: while working in Brighton docks he had an encounter with a forklift truck, breaking both his feet in half. Revered by his peers, including Roger Daltrey and Paul Weller, in a face-off with his great contemporary Steve Marriott Ellis will always be the connoisseurs’ choice. This 10-CD celebration begins with the period 1967-69, some 24 songs chronicling the singer’s chart-busting stint in the Love Affair. The band’s lavishly orchestrated pop music – initially underpinned by session man Russ Stableford’s pulsating bass playing…

This is not a resume of Al Stewart’s career.This is Al Stewart’s career, expanded, enhanced, annotated and chronicled across 50 (yes, 50) CDs, a 160-page hardback book, a 24-page annotated guide to the tracklisting, two posters and two prints. The 21 albums Stewart has released since 1967’s Bedsitter Images are not even the half of it. There are another 18 live CDs, three discs of BBC sessions and eight discs of demos, outtakes etc. The Admiralty Lights has to be the most comprehensive retrospective ever compiled for a single artist, and all the more remarkable given that Stewart, after numerous London flats, relocated to Los Angeles in the late 70s. Credit to his parents for preserving the boxes of tapes he dumped on them. Stewart started out in the London…

Having parted ways with Iron Maiden in 1981, singer Paul Di’Anno spent much of the 80s trying to find his heavy metal niche, with Battlezone probably coming closest to providing a home for his tough and brash vocal style. Across three discs this package includes 1986’s Fighting Back and 1987’s Children Of Madness, and a live album from Di’Anno’s follow-up band, Killers, all solid, hard-rocking fare. Fighting Back is probably the best of the two Battlezones, the songwriting largely by guitarist John Hurley, with Warchild and Welcome To The Battlezone standout tracks; the inclusion of Rising Star is a bonus. Follow-up Children Of Madness allowed the band to make some headway in the US, with I Don’t Wanna Know doing the rounds on MTV; this version of the album includes…

Max Cavalera’s departure from Brazillian metallers Sepultura in 1996 seemed like a seismic event, but both he and his ex-bandmates made light work of establishing new legacies. The Soul Remains Insane recounts the first few years of a bold new dawn for Cavalera, with each of his band’s first four albums represented, and a disc of B-sides and other curios thrown in. Even taking Fred Durst’s petulant yelp on Bleed into account, 1998’s self-titled debut still takes the roof off. Exuberance has always been one of Cavalera’s chief weapons, and whether delivering straightup brutality on Eye For An Eye or duelling with Skindred’s Benji Webbe on Quilombo, Soulfly was riotous and irresistible. One too many guest cameos made Primitive (2000) slightly harder to love than its predecessor, but Son Song…

Kim Wilde’s first two albums evoke new wave perfectly, capturing the bleak post-punk futurist period with meticulously arranged songs without a pop gloss that instead absorbed the nihilist rebellion of punk. That rock sensibility belied the previous career of chief songwriter Marty Wilde (Kim’s dad) with a sound influenced by electronic synth-pop pioneers of the era – Ultravox, Gary Numan, OMD at al. Standing the test of time, Kids In America remains an absolute banger. Subsequent singles from the self-titled debut (7/10) – Chequered Love and Water On Glass – could never have realistically reflected the colossal global impact of Kids, yet they’re equally important new-wave classics despite Wilde’s uncertain vocal range; work on the debut began when she was only 19. Select (8/10) blew the concept of the ‘difficult…

By last November, Between The Lines, the first in-depth biography of the long-serving and increasingly successful Big Big Train, was ready for publication. Then singer David Longdon died following a fall at his Nottingham home. In accordance with Longdon’s wishes, the band continued. Newly topped and tailed to encompass the tragedy, Between The Lines serves as a fine tribute. It’s published by the band’s management, so few feathers are ruffled, although admirably the divisions that led to members such as David Gregory departing aren’t glossed over. Already disenchanted by the gradual reduction of his role in the group, the 67-year-old diabetic former XTC man couldn’t tour the United States by coach; the band couldn’t afford not to. Both genial and precise, Grant Moon is the ideal guide to a complex…

Subtitled Every Album, Every Song, this is part of a series issued with an automatic trainspotter alert. Compiled by a fan and Bullseye quiz champion, its strength is in the sheer weight of information presented for each release. The disclaimer says it focuses on the band’s UK output so the title shouldn’t be taken literally. Along with copious context, expect personal observations from the author, who tells us he had a perm on the day in 1978 when he bought Misfits and heard Permanent Waves. What it does exceedingly well is remind us of the staggering number of excellent songs written and recorded by Ray Davies and his assorted Kinkdom over the decades. Without wishing to score points, we couldn’t find a reference to Nobody’s Fool by Cold Turkey, the…

As rock’s heyday recedes in time, it seems that years have become the new stars, as much as the stars themselves – Take Jon Savage’s study of 1966, or David Hepworth’s of 1971. Simon Goddard’s Bowie Odyssey 72 follows similar volumes on 1971 and 1970. Drawing on interviews, memoirs and the broader context of 1972 as a whole (David Cassidy, power cuts, anti-immigration demos, Lift Off With Ayesha), Goddard’s narrative is immersive, novelistic as he gets as deep inside as he can of the Bowie experience of 1972. This was the year in which he was still living in Beckenham, Elton John light years ahead of him in the pop stratosphere, about to relaunch himself as Ziggy, as “queer”, and as a transatlantic phenomenon, leaving Britain to the mercy…

‘We know she’s a superb player, but her voice tonight is a revelation.’ ★Since she was last in the UK (from her adopted base in Detroit) Joanne Shaw Taylor made The Blues Album, a record of off-the-beaten-track covers, with Joe Bonamassa. “Jolly good!” one punter booms, PG Wodehouse-style, when she relays this fact. “Things you never hear in America…” Taylor chuckles. Addressing a packed Empire, in a shiny suit, black shirt and black heeled boots, Taylor looks utterly at home. She plays with the joy of someone for whom the guitar has always been her happy place. She has fun with these Blues Album songs (“Let me just be clear: I think that’s bullshit,” she deadpans of Two Time My Lovin’, a Fabulous Thunderbirds song about staying with a cheating…

★It’s a glorious sunny afternoon in Camden, so naturally most of London’s tattoo-covered, leather-clad, baldy-beardo headbangers are crammed into windowless sweatbox venues for the tenth anniversary of Desertfest, the Glastonbury of underground doom, sludge and psych-rock. Strong pedigree draws a huge crowd to the Electric Ballroom for Stöner, the new power trio fronted by Kyuss and QOTSA veterans Brant Bjork and Nick Oliveri. Sadly their straight-ahead shtick proves as generic as their name: plodding blues-metal with occasional detours into guttural punky gruntcore. This no-frills grind doubtless sounds better under a widescreen Mojave sky, but today it feels lumpy and underpowered. Fortunately, great things are happening over at the Roundhouse, from the symphonic freak-out of Elder to the riotous, self-lacerating clown show of Pissed Jeans. Topping the bill is Steve Albini’s…

‘Sparks shame much younger bands with their tireless energy.’ ★The electrifying collective love for Ron and Russell Mael at this packed show could probably power an entire city. Crowning a glorious autumnal resurgence fuelled by Edgar Wright’s superb Netflix documentary The Sparks Brothers, the veteran LA duo’s biggest British concert in decades is a homecoming of sorts, part of an ongoing 50-year transatlantic love affair dating back to their glam-era London exile. Every semi-obscure gem from their bottomless back catalogue of absurdist avant-rock, operatic electro-disco and post-modern meta-pop is greeted with huge cheers. Resplendent in yellow trousers, singer Russell may be the hyperactive focus on stage, but his elder brother’s deadpan keyboard antics remain a major Sparks selling point, generating maximum effect with knowingly minimal effort. Ron’s semi-rapped spokenword vocal…

★Two years ago, these underrated archdukes of art-rock released their first album in almost three decades and limbered up to tour, eager to showcase those new songs. Covid had other ideas. Now at last the Psychedelic Furs get to strut their immortally cool stuff with that Made Of Rain material flavouring their cauldron of sound. It means the set sacrifices some momentum, as it goes, in the main, new song, old song, new song, old song… People are up on their feet for Love My Way, then scratching their chins through Ash Wednesday. Yet any reservations are blasted and charmed away by the squadrons of guitars and saxophone and singer Richard Butler’s rakish charisma. One of the great rock frontmen, he steers this ship of noise and nuance with consummate…

★“I finally got on the plane!” crows Joe Bonamassa, and the relief is mutual. It’s three years since the bluesman last played a show in the UK, and for the next two hours at Cardiff’s Motorpoint Arena there’s a sense that he’s giving us not just tonight’s quota of guitar solos, but also all the ones we’ve missed. No complaints from this audience, of course. Guitar geeks to a man, many have spent the moments before show time leaning over the barrier to snap Bonamassa’s pedalboard. Then as the set rumbles to life with Evil Mama there’s much neckcraning to watch the sacred dance of the digits. During the 13-song set, Bonamassa roams the chronology of his catalogue, revisiting 2002’s heavy funk-blues Pain And Sorrow, and peaking with The Heart…