B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition
The Affectionate Punch
Amused As Always
Logan Time
Paper House
Transport To Central
A Matter Of Gender
Even Dogs In The Wild
Would I Bounce Back
Deeply Concerned
A
Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***
From the first notes of the Talking Heads-esque opening of the title track, which has none other than The Cure's Robert Smith as guest backing vocalist, this album by the great Scottish post-punk legends The Associates has you hooked. It's littered with standout moments, but the wiry bassline which underpins the offbeat guitar on 'Amused As Always' is high up there. It manages to pull off being belligerently repetitive by offsetting any sense of monotony with sheer style. Meanwhile, frontman Billy MacKenzie - who tragically died before his time in 1997 - has a voice to rival that of Robert Smith himself in terms of tone. The Associates may not be as readily cited in the typical indie record collection - but they're probably your favourite band's favourite band. regardless, this album is going to challenge why you've resisted so long in not putting it at the heart of your collection.
Review: Bananagun's long-awaited follow-up Why is the Colour of the Sky? reflects the upheaval and transformation the band experienced in the four years since their debut. Released during Melbourne's strict lockdowns, the group was scattered, making it impossible to rehearse or record as they once did. However, that tumultuous period also led to a new creative process. Gone are the meticulously pre-planned tracks of their debutithis time, the songs were jammed, written, and recorded on the fly, capturing raw energy and spontaneity. The result? An album brimming with bold, jazz-infused freak-beat experimentation, groovy rhythms, and spiritual overtones. It's a departure from the sunny afrobeat of their debut, showcasing a more adventurous and human side of the band.
Review: Originally released under the name The English Beat in 1982, this album sees the Two Tone experts spreading their wings and incoporating African vibes and jazz into their revolutionary sound. It's joyful, party-fuelling stuff but usually with a social message snuck in for good measure, which is just how we like it. Throw in some bonus studio and live tracks on this double deluxe RSD version and it really can't be Beat.
Review: "Hyperspace" sees Beck venture further down the pop road, drafting in a wealth of high profile, stadium-filling collaborators to realise what's arguably his most synthesised work to date. Full marks to anyone who, upon blind taste test, immediately jumped to the conclusion this was indeed Beck. Fear not, that's less a result of his iconic and infinitely listenable voice not shining through, and more down to what else is in these arrangements. Working with legendary studio genius Pharrell Williams (who co-produced and co-wrote), you'll also find Coldplay's Chris Martin and Georgia, US rapper and drummer Terrell Hines involved here, amongst others. Together with these names we're taken into a soaring, immersive and glittering world of sophisticated but chart-friendly anthems, from clap-a-long number "Die Waiting", to the epic space-rock closer "Everlasting Nothing".
Review: Focus On Nature is the new studio album from celebrated post-psyche singer songwriter Nick Saloman and his band The Bevis Frond. Seventy-five minutes of glorious melodies that span 60s psych, English folk, Seattle art-punks The Wipers, the buzzsaw pop of Dinosaur Jr and Hendrix-esque explorations. There's always an element of playful Englishness to their music. Heavily influencing the likes of The Lemonheads, Teenage Fanclub, Elliot Smith, Pavement and Dinosaur Jr, the cult icons have produced another off-kilter mix of melodic piano-led melancholy, acoustic ruminations, scratchy garage rock with a punky edge and full-on guitar histrionics.
B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition
Oral (3:44)
Oral (Olof Dreijer remix) (5:22)
Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***
Bjork and Rosalia team up for the limited marble vinyl edition 12" double-sider, 'Oral', now coming packed with a stunning remix by Olof Dreijer from The Knife. The record is described by its releasers OLI as not just a single release but a "call to arms", with 100% of the profits being funnelled directly to AEGIS, the Icelandic charity dedicated to eradicating intensive fish farming in the country. 'Oral' itself is now a staple of the latest incarnation of Bjork's ever-mutant career, consummating her and Rosalia's recent rapport; a sabre-wielding, purblind aesthetic - befitting also of another of Bjork's collaborative contemporaries, Arca - fits seamlessly with the elegiac reggaeton of the song. Dreijer's remix is rabid and wonky by comparison, its draggy, morphemic rhythms belying Bjork and Rosalia's equally wetted vocals, producing a wacky litany of faunal electronics and whizzing FX.
Review: Domino Records embark on an ambitious reissues double-bill of John Cale's earliest solo records. Here - third to his debut record after his self-excision from the Velvet Underground, Vintage Violence (1970) (to which Cale was infamously disparaging in his later years, deriding his performance on the work as "masked" behind a disingenuous imperative to prove he could still write songs) and second to his Academy In Peril (1972) - comes his third and much better loved LP, Paris 1919. Released in 1973, Cale has regained ground here, still flexing a wonderful talent for songcraft, yet also an entirely new orchestral chamber pop direction, easily foiling the unflappable cool cat persona depicted on the front cover, and eschewing the dark experimentalism of his preceding album. Where it's not plush with string movements, Paris 1919 brims with softly-strung guitar arpeggiations and electric piano hooks, its placid easy listening approach much befitting of the Paris Peace Conference, and other related postwar drives to armistice, that bestruck the public imagination during the earliest post-war 20th Century.
B-STOCK: Creasing to corner of outer sleeve but otherwise in excellent condition
She Belongs To Me (4:46)
Fourth Time Around (4:43)
Visions Of Johanna (9:11)
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (5:17)
Desolation Row (12:41)
Just Like A Woman
(5:46)
Mr Tambourine Man
(6:23)
Tell Me, Momma (4:58)
I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We
Never Have Met) (5:13)
Baby, Let Me Follow You Down (2:48)
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues (5:41)
Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
(3:53)
One Too Many Mornings
(3:50)
Ballad Of A Thin Man
(6:06)
Like A Rolling Stone (6:32)
Review: ***B-STOCK: Creasing to corner of outer sleeve but otherwise in excellent condition***
In November 2022, Cat Power took the stage at London’s Royal Albert Hall and delivered a song-for-song recreation of one of the most fabled and transformative live sets of all time. Held at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in May 1966 - but long known as the “Royal Albert Hall Concert” due to a mislabeled bootleg - the original performance saw Bob Dylan switching from acoustic to electric midway through the show, drawing ire from an audience of folk purists and forever altering the course of rock n' roll. In her own rendition of that historic night, the artist otherwise known as Chan Marshall inhabited each song with equal parts conviction and grace and a palpable sense of protectiveness, ultimately transposing the anarchic tension of Dylan’s set with a warm and luminous joy. Now captured on the live album Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert, Marshall’s spellbinding performance both lovingly honors her hero’s imprint on history and brings a stunning new vitality to many of his most revered songs.
Review: Sometimes an album comes along that you would never have imagined would exist evening a thousand lifetimes. The Electro-Bossa Songbook Of Coldplay is just that. It is the newest installment in this series of bossa-nova-tinged albums and it finds the Brit pop-rock outfit's catalogue getting reworked by Groove Da Praia, Sarah Menescal, Freedom Dub, Ituana and Michelle Simonal among others. All the hits are here from 'Clocks' to 'Fix You' to 'Speed of Sound' and they all have a fresh new identity that brings some sunshine and good times into your life.
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