Ex Hex are back with a rockin' new album. It's Real drops on Merge Records on Friday and it's such a thorough riff-monster that I'm sorta expecting this one to go through the roof like Pyromania or something. While other bands might dabble in Eighties-style hooks ironically, Ex Hex -- Mary Timony, Betsy Wright, and Laura Harris -- grab this stuff and run with it wholeheartedly.
Lead single "Tough Enough" sounds like the sort of thing that might play under a training montage in a Karate Kid or Rocky sequel, while the brisk "Rainbow Shiner" stomps with a real Dio-worthy sense of how to structure a jam. It's a song that's nearly elegant in its melding of a few disparate styles...and it reminds me of "The Last in Line" just enough to make me entirely love it. Elsewhere, "Cosmic Cave"bops with a mix of abandon and New Wave intent, while the more supple "Radiate" serves up the kind of power-pop one once could easily find on the airwaves of college radio some decades ago. This is not to imply that Ex Hex are buried in Eighties references here but, rather to suggest that they are writing material that sits nicely next to classic compositions from artists as disparate as Tommy Keene and Joan Jett.
It's Real, engineered by J. Robbins (Jawbox), sees this trio really take command of whatever genre this is going to be called in the future by other music writers. It's punchy, and thoroughly catchy, blending, with a real ease, swatches of punk and hair metal. If Ex Hex are breaking any new ground here, it's ground of territory they've sort of discovered and claimed as their own.
It's Real is likely going to be the most listenable thing released in 2019, and I would not trust any music fan who didn't find something to love here. It's Real is out on Friday via Merge Records.
Dateline 8 September 1996: Sebadoh and Elliott Smith are playing the "new" 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. (Seeing as how the club had only been open about nine months, it really was "new" then.) Not too far away, Britpop darlings Sleeper are playing the "old" Black Cat club (the one that seemed smaller, about half-a-block down 14th Street from the current location).
I chose to see Sleeper instead of Sebadoh and Smith, forgoing the hip American ticket that night in favor of the chance to see one of my then-favorite U.K. acts here on these shores. Sleeper burned through most of their first two albums in the course of delivering what I'd rank right up there with one of the best concerts I've ever seen in this city. And I saw Loop and Nirvana in 1990, and The Pixies and Happy Mondays in 1989, so...
Sleeper went on to release a third album the next year, the underrated Pleased To Meet Me, and Britpop tottered on, with this fan obsessing over Kenickie and theaudience in the next few years after that. Still, Sleeper were remarkably good back then, which makes it more shocking to report how wonderful they still sound now in 2019. Here with a reunion record no one asked for (and even fewer people expected), Sleeper are dropping The Modern Age via their own Gorsky Records label this Friday.
The line-up this time around features three original members -- Louise Wenner on vocals, Jon Stewart on guitars, and Andy Maclure on drums -- and one new player -- Kieron Pepper from The Prodigy on bass -- but the group sounds nearly the same as they did in 1996. Opener "Paradise Waiting" echoes "She's A Good Girl" but with more punch, while lead single "Look At You Now" recalls, despite some sleek production effects, the louder songs on the band's fine debut LP from so many decades ago. Wenner, one of the best front-persons in rock ever, leads this material into a few new places, while offering up the very kind of thing that made The It Girl such an essential record back in '96.
And while lots and lots of The Modern Age has more heft than the band's last official release, I found myself drawn more to the mid-tempo selections here like "Car Into The Sea", one of Wenner's finest vocal performances, I think, and "More Than I Do", a languid ramble that seems of a piece with "What Do I Do Now?" but with a far bigger pay-off in sonic terms. Still, even with numbers like those, and the odd-but-lovely closer "Big Black Sun", fans of this band are going to line up here for tracks that sound a whole lot like the sort of thing that propelled this band to popularity in the first place. So rest assured that "The Sun Also Rises", "Cellophane", and especially "Dig" can safely sit next to lots of the best stuff from Smart.
The Modern Age works very, very well. It's the rare reunion album that actually feels necessary. So much of what's here is more urgent than what was on Pleased To Meet Me and a fan could be forgiven for wishing that this had been the band's third album, and not their fourth, some 22 years removed from their last public offering. Produced by Stephen Street, The Modern Age roars and soars where necessary, reminding again just what a fantastic singer and songwriter Louise Wenner is, especially when fronting a tight outfit like this one.
It's been two years since the last USA/Mexico record and, if anything, the band's sound has gotten even more unremittingly punishing. Which is another way of saying that I *loved*Matamoros, out Friday on one-time Homestead Records honcho Gerard Cosloy's 12XU label.
"Matamoros" kicks off with the pummeling title cut, a rager that sounds like an argument being held in the apartment next door, and the dude-half of the equation is cranking an old scratchy Aerosmith record -- at the wrong speed -- in an attempt to drown out the yelling. Elsewhere, the wonderfully-titled "Eric Carr T-Shirt" nods in the direction of drummer King Coffey's Butthole Surfers stuff, while the brisk "Vaporwave Headache" is nearly hardcore in its deliberateness. Coffey, along with Craig Clouse and Nate Cross, sees USA/Mexico as a weapon and, thankfully, there remains something uncompromising here about the group's "music"; if you don't get it, you're just (rightfully) left in the dust. George Disher of Spray Paint shows up here, as does Kevin Whitley of Cherubs, the band responsible for the song "Shoofly" covered with some zeal here on this record.
Matamoros closes with the side-length "Anxious Whitley", a 17-minute epic that feels like the band's shoving you in front of tracks, the tune itself the train barreling forward onto you with unforgiving power. It's an admirably courageous thing to release in 2019, a throwback to stuff on 12XU label owner Gerard Cosloy's old Homestead Records, and a reminder of the sort of genuinely dangerous bands he signed back in the Eighties.
Stubbornly old-fashioned, bludgeoning and brilliant in its intentional stupidity, Matamoros is even better than the last USA/Mexico album. It is out on Friday via the 12XU label.
Maryjo Mattea is making the kind of alt-rock that I like a whole lot. If there's something here in her music that harks back to stuff like Belly and Letters To Cleo, that's a huge compliment as far as I'm concerned. Maryjo has been playing around D.C. and her brand of music is yet another flavor to a scene here in the nation's capital that is wonderfully diverse and consistently interesting.
"Forces of Nature" is charming, chiming, and winsome. A listener hears this and thinks back to stuff like "Bright as Yellow" from The Innocence Mission. And I realize that that might not be the most perfect comparison to make given the heft here in Maryjo Mattea's tune, but it was the first thing this aging indie-rock fan thought of. She's assisted in delivering this one by Scott Manley on drums, Joshua Hunter on additional guitar, and Eamonn Donnelly on bass. The players anchor this cut that succeeds mainly because of Maryjo's soaring vocals.
More details on Maryjo Mattea via her official website, or her official Facebook page. Check out those sites for news on her upcoming gigs this month in D.C.
Anthony Reynolds was the front-man of the band Jack, one of the real treasures of the old Too Pure Records label. He's also an author, and his new book, Cries and Whispers 1983-1991 looks at the solo careers of the members of Japan. Seeing as how I came in on Gone To Earth from David Sylvian in 1986 and worked my way backward to Japan, and forward through a succession of solo releases from Sylvian, Mick Karn, Richard Barbieri, and Steve Jansen, this book is something I was eager to see. I have the eBook version and I can tell you just from reading that that it's an impressive piece of work.
Before you run off and order Cries and Whispers 1983-1991here, I urge you to read this interview I recently conducted with Anthony Reynolds. For anyone else who's a fan of this material, the book is sure to be of appeal, as is this brief interview with the author.
Glenn, kenixfan: What made you interested in Japan? Were you a fan of the band when they were still active?
ANTHONY REYNOLDS: I was aware of Japan before I got into them but I was 11 when they split up and I wasn’t a fan then. I think I was into Madness and comics in 1982 both of which were much more visible and available in Wales. Japan were kind of mysterious, rarely on TV, so it seemed certainly not particularly popular where I lived. They were probably seen as a bit ‘elitist’ if i think back, a bit rarefied for the working class environment I lived in. But in time that became part of their appeal to me. In fact, I had friends who had big brothers who had the most exotic collections of something called "12 inches"! What were these strange, beautiful objects? I remember vividly flipping through such a collection and getting to the 12" of "Ghosts" and the big brother saying in his strong Cardiff accent, "That’s a bloody good song that is". That really stayed with me. How a song like that could infiltrate the deepest recesses of the ghetto... Eventually, in 1985 my cousin gave me a tape of Tin Drum. I was listening to the likes of the Thompson Twins, Nik Kershaw, and Howard Jones at the time as I was 14, and they suddenly seemed like cartoons next to Japan.
Glenn, kenixfan: It might not be a popular opinion, and I may be saying this because I really followed these musicians’ work quite a bit during the era covered in the book, but I’ve always felt that Japan was the rare band where the individual solo projects were far more interesting, innovative, and risky than the music made in the original band. What do you think about that idea?
ANTHONY REYNOLDS: Japan were a band and as such there were compromises to be made despite what Sylvian may have tried to dictate. All that talent and ego in one room...! So by default, the solo works may have been allowed to be a bit more unedited, a bit more indulgent. And also, those solo works -- especially Mick Karn’s Titles album -- were in some part a reaction to being in Japan. So I guess by default those solo works would seem more personal, or interesting and ‘risky’... But I actually prefer the boundaries that are inherent in a band such as Japan. I think constraints and boundaries can sometimes -- especially in pop music -- work to the music’s advantage. And someone may be a great instrumentalist when part of a group but when left alone, their work can lack focus. When I hear some of the ex-members' of Japan’s solo work, especially the instrumental stuff, it sometimes sounds to me less like true instrumental music but more like music without a singer. If I imagine Sylvian singing it, it becomes much more palatable and complete. Similarly, when I saw Sylvian do his "Slow Fire" tour in 1995, which was just him with guitar and piano, I felt it wore a bit thin after a while, and I missed the band arrangements. But as I say, this may be just my taste and I still haven’t worked out where taste comes from...
Glenn, kenixfan:Cries and Whispers 1983-1991 does a good job at balancing things, necessarily shedding a bright light on David Sylvian’s solo career while not neglecting the many efforts made by Mick Karn and Steve Jansen and Richard Barbieri as solo artists. Was that an easy thing to do, given how prolific Sylvian was following the dissolution of Japan?
ANTHONY REYNOLDS:Cries and Whispers 1983-1991 isn’t a biography of Sylvian; it’s an account of what all the ex-members of Japan did when that group split up. That was my remit. As a writer and researcher I have a particular tenacity and a fondness for trying to shine a light into dark musical corners. I get pleasure from focusing on the most obscure release or live appearance. If you think of just one day in the life of your subject, and if you could get enough detail on just that day, how it would be a book in itself. Of course, that’s easier said than done and, in real terms, because Sylvian’s albums were more popular, there is more press available on them, so it was hard to write as much about Jansen and Barbieri’s Worlds in a Small Room as it was about Sylvian’s Brilliant Trees. But my starting point, my approach, was to treat both equally.
I feel that just as much effort went into Karn’s Dreams of Reason Produce Monsters as it did into Gone To Earth. It’s just that the former wasn’t as popular as the latter. But that’s almost irrelevant to me as I’m writing primarily about the work and how it was conceived and made, and not how it was received by the public. So, no, attempting to cover all releases wasn’t an issue for me in terms of attitude, just in finding enough material.
Glenn, kenixfan: Having written about Japan more than once now, how do you, as a fan, feel about Rain Tree Crow, the "reunion" album from 1991? Perhaps unfairly marketed at the time as a "Japan reunion record", it feels stronger to me when viewed as a one-off that doesn’t attempt to be a Japan record; it sounds a bit like any number of projects from each member, only they’re all together this time.
ANTHONY REYNOLDS: The Rain Tree Crow album is tied to a period of my life. As I said earlier, I was too young to appreciate Japan first time around, but by 1991, being 19 I was more ‘awake’ and was buying the NME, Melody Maker, and Sounds, every week. So I was able to actively ‘take part’ in its release at the time, checking chart positions, listening to radio interviews, and so on...all the joys of being a fan! Rain Tree Crow was a worthy effort but it always felt a bit unfinished to me, the sound of a band finding their feet again. Unlike Sylvian's stuff, I wasn’t very taken with the instrumental pieces on it so in this regard it feels uneven... Also, Mick seems to be absenting himself from his playing almost, and I wanted to hear more of his ‘flamboyance’. It’s as if he’s treading on eggshells which, if you read the book you’ll see that he was in a way. It has some gorgeous, fully realized pieces on it for sure, like "Pocket Full of Change", but other tracks just never did much for me.
I want to thank Anthony Reynolds for his time today, and urge you to order his new album, A Painter's Life, here, and play some of his music via the Bandcamp link below.
Cries and Whispers 1983-1991 is up for order now here.
[Photo of David Sylvian by Tony Barratt; Photo of Barbieri and Jansen by Tim Goodyer]
Scott Crawford, director of 2014's Salad Days: A Decade of Punk in Washington, DC (1980-90), has done something remarkable in his new feature, Boy Howdy! The Story of Creem Magazine: he's documented the heart and soul that sustained a magazine famed for its irreverence. Who would've thought that behind that famed periodical there was a story with such richness?
The magazine was so much more than the home of writers like Lester Bangs, but, of course, for those looking for all the Lester Bangs stuff, a lot of it's here. And while there's a case to be made for letting Lester dominate a narrative of Creem, Scott Crawford, wisely to my mind, doesn't do that. Instead, Crawford favors a holistic approach that takes in the environment of Detroit and the whole music scene there in order to chronicle the point in time, and place, that birthed the magazine.
And while the brief Boy Howdy! The Story of Creem Magazine is indeed the inside scoop on that mag and the shenanigans behind its issues' creation every month, it's also a crash course in Detroit rock-and-roll. Scott Crawford here turns his eye towards the Detroit scene with as much affection, and reverence, as he did the D.C. scene in Salad Days: A Decade of Punk in Washington, DC (1980-90) a few years ago. Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, Mitch Ryder, The Stooges, The MC5, and, of course, Kiss, all feature prominently here, with Boy Howdy! The Story of Creem Magazine making a concise case for the importance of that fertile era between the psychedelic Sixties and the first wave of American punk. This documentary reminds over and over again that the Seventies were not all James Taylor and disco, and that real counter-culture music was being made on these shores then, and being written about, and championed, by the writers and staff of Creem magazine.
Necessarily, there's a lot on publisher Barry Kramer and writer Lester Bangs here, including the pair's hi-jinks, and Lester's feuds with Kramer and editor Dave Marsh. Director Cameron Crowe may very well have the best quote in Boy Howdy! The Story of Creem Magazine (not counting the wonderful one Legs McNeil has about Dave Marsh), when he says that Lester Bangs and Dave Marsh got to argue about "why and how to love the thing they love." I think that's significant as there was a lot of love behind the pages of Creem back then. With Jann Wenner's Rolling Stone the nearest competition, Kramer and his crew, up in their commune in Michigan for a time, were doing whatever the hell they were doing out of love for the tunes, not necessarily to be political, or get closer to the mainstream.
And, in terms of how Boy Howdy! The Story of Creem Magazine works as a rock documentary, the film delivers generously in terms of giving the viewers what they want, which is lots and lots of expertly-chosen talking heads bits, with Chad Smith from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Michael Stipe of R.E.M. serving up some of the best, more personal anecdotes in the film. And beyond those, there are dozens of sequences here where even a casual fan of the era will find lots to smile about, with stories of artists from Iggy Pop, to Lou Reed, to Joan Jett peppering the narrative.
Still, acknowledging that things have changed for the better, Boy Howdy! The Story of Creem Magazine goes to great lengths to allow Jaan Uhelszki, Creem co-founder and writer, and Susan Whitall, editor and writer, among others, to offer up some thoughts on the kind of misogyny that regrettably fueled the pieces in the magazine back then. While it was a boys' club at times, it was also a product of its era, and, as such, given to silliness. That boys' club vibe gave birth to stuff like Stars' Cars, or the Boy Howdy! beer-ads, both covered here in the film, even if those features usually ran alongside genuinely fine pieces of music journalism.
Ultimately Boy Howdy! The Story of Creem Magazine is both a concise history of a magazine that miraculously challenged mainstream music publications in the lean years between the dissolution of The Beatles and the rise of MTV, and a story of the late Barry Kramer and his family, and how they corralled some disparate, unhinged talents in order to produce a monthly love letter to rock-and-roll. At its very best, Scott Crawford's film works in a similar way, a mix of nostalgia and scrutiny here serving the material well. Given some of the things in the magazine back then, it would have been impossible to look at Creem in 2019 without acknowledging the puerile ugliness that showed up in the pages at times.
Still, for a rag that was made by the "bozos on the bus", to quote Lester Bangs via Jaan Uhelszki, Creem did something remarkable every month. Kramer and his crew, as this film shows, pioneered a way of looking at rock, and writing about it, that seemed revolutionary at the time, and it was an approach that was thoroughly in debt to the same scene and attitude that birthed Wayne Kramer and The MC5, for example. And, taking all of that into account, Boy Howdy! The Story of Creem Magazine gets the tone right, and tells the story with an admirable brevity, the insights flying so fast here that the film is an absolute blast from start to finish.
The music of Turning Jewels Into Water is outside what I might normally cover here on this site but the duo's newest record, Map of Absences, out today on FPE Records, is a progressive and brave genre-bender. It is a record full of of percussive experimentation and a thoughtful sense of stillness when necessary.
Turning Jewels Into Water, Indian-born drummer/producer Ravish Momin and electronic percussionist Val Jeanty from Haiti, make music that skirts the edges of both electronica and world music, with a number like "Talang" here on Map of Absences lodging itself in the brain on the back of its rhythmic insistence. "Warm winds of Jaipur" is percussive too, but faint melodic hooks peppered throughout the track make it one of the standouts here on Map of Absences, while "Cave rain drumming in my ear" is very nearly the sort of thing that one would find on a film soundtrack. Elsewhere, the bright and fun "Desert Fire" rides a sample forward into the sun, the poly-rhythmic base-track insistent and exciting.
The tunes here on Map of Absences are lush in spots even as they're filled with striking bits of sampled beats, or flashes of funky instrumental swatches. The music of Turning Jewels Into Water is dance-y, but it's also oddly contemplative. It's the sort of thing that fans of the collaborations of Brian Eno and David Byrne should enjoy, as well as those who find themselves lost in the music under an M.I.A. rap.
The debut self-titled album from Dragon Welding is an impressive set of post-punk songs. The band's name is an anagram of Andrew Golding, one of the founding members of the esteemed British band, The Wolfhounds. And, like those legends from the C86 era, the music here is bracing, angular, catchy, and smart all at once.
Dragon Welding, out tomorrow on A Turntable Friend Records, opens with the determined chug of "The Builders", before the drone-y"One Miserable Summer" unfurls like one of the slower numbers on The Holy Bible. If Andrew Golding is not as obsessed with metal-ish guitar pyrotechnics as was the young James Dean Bradfield, he is, like his mates in The Wolfhounds, addressing, however obliquely, the state of a U.K. wrapped in the throes of Brexit. Elsewhere, "These Are Dangerous Times" marries a faint folk-y strum with a real purposeful, striding hook, even as the rougher "Join the Dots" edges a bit closer to classic Wolfhounds material. Dragon Welding gets more abstract as it goes along, with the closer "Lament for Common Sense" revealing itself as an epic Fripp-inspired drone that stretches into the void for nearly 7 minutes.
There's a seriousness here that befits this sort of project, and, like The Wolfhounds, Andrew Golding understands how to make indie-pop. For any serious theme, or near-avant-garde musical idea that he puts forward, he makes sure that Dragon Welding is, on the whole, a listenable record. It's that, and an really fantastic piece of work. I would love to hear more from this Wolfhounds spin-off.
The debut album from Seattle's La Fille, Alright Already, is a nice collection of power-pop. The record, out on Friday, suggests that Jay Louis, Joe Oakes, and Michael Benjamin Lerner are part of something special and darn-near old fashioned here, with fans of classic Yellow Pills-era stuff advised to grab this one as soon as possible.
The title cut is all crunchy goodness, while "Letting Go" is even punchier, flashes of Flamin' Groovies shining through here. Elsewhere, the languid "Skyline" sends things in a new, more subtle direction, while "Great Escape" is reminiscent of the slower songs on those first superb records from Silver Sun. In fact, for fans of that band, and this kind of thing, I'd say that lots and lots of Alright Already sounds like those early sides from that British band, even as bits and pieces here should remind us Yanks of stuff that originated on our own shores, way back in the early days of bands like Cheap Trick and The Raspberries rising to prominence.
Amid a good deal of hype that I thought was largely bullshit at the start of the new year, Stephen Malkmus was said to be prepping an album of electronica. Groove Denied, arriving Friday on Matador Records, features a lot of keyboards but it feels, for the most part, like a Malkmus record, not like, say, one from Aphex Twin.
Of course, Groove Denied contains a handful of numbers that sound as much like Pavement and solo Malkmus as God will allow, electronic effects be damned. "Rushing The Acid Frat" is all stoned sluggishness, the sort of lazily catchy sort of thing that Super Furry Animals still routinely crank out, while "Come Get Me" is even more interesting, waves of instrumentation and samples washing over the kind of melody the Beach Boys would have killed for in the early Seventies. And while the first three cuts here on Groove Denied owe huge debts to Frank Tovey and Fad Gadget, they're also easy to love, especially the affected"Viktor Borgia", a fairly chirpy ramble. Some of what's here on this short record, specifically the lilting hesitation of "Ocean of Revenge", and the spry indie of "Love the Door", feels just familiar enough to please a fan of any era of this man's wonderful career. And yet, the real highlight of Groove Denied, a long-player billed as electronica, is the ballad, "Grown Nothing", that closes this album in a fashion that suggests nothing so much as "Major Leagues" rewritten by Nilsson. It's an absolutely stunning track and the sort of thing that nearly floored me when I heard it the first time.
Maybe the loads of copy about the new direction the former Pavement singer was going to pursue on Groove Denied set fans up for disappointment at the prospect of something wildly experimental arriving right after Sparkle Hard. But instead of making something truly transgressive, Malkmus went and crafted a record that feels at once somewhat disposable in terms of his solo work, and yet entirely endearing. Groove Denied is, at least in spots, nearly as pleasurable a listen as Stephen Malmus from years ago. And for a release that was pitched as a new direction for this guy, the best numbers on Groove Denied seem more natural than some of the moments on past post-Pavement releases where Stephen Malkmus sounded like he was desperately chasing the ghost of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. If the melodies here are, largely, more languid than on some of his better albums, the selections are also a lot more fun than some of his more indulgent compositions with The Jicks.
Two new Alex Chilton compilations have dropped from Bar/None Records and I'm here to write a few words about each. Songs From Robin Hood Lane and From Memphis To New Orleans, both out now, each offer up a lot of reasons for fans to seek these records out, even if the pleasures on each are disparate ones.
Songs From Robin Hood sees the former front-man of Big Star tackles a lot of standards. And the results are uniformly affecting and good. "Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying" reminds fans what a warm singer Chilton could be, while "That Old Feeling" reveals a vulnerable, imperfect crooner trying his hand at a new form. If Chilton here sounds like he's having a lark, and not entirely positioning himself as the next Chet Baker -- despite a cover of "Let's Get Lost" here on this new compilation -- he's at least willing to make himself tackle material that might be a bit out of his reach ("Like Someone in Love"), or that's far beyond needing a fresh interpretation ("All of You"). Still, for a guy who was likely doing this on a whim, the jazzy run at "Time After Time" proves that Alex Chilton had real chops as a cover artist in the Reagan era, beyond being simply a legendary songwriter.
Having moved to New Orleans in the Eighties, Chilton was out of the limelight by choice in those years, releasing a string of iconoclastic and sometimes difficult records to listen to for anyone who was hoping for something like a Big Star album. Collected here on From Memphis to New Orleans are the highlights from those releases, selections from Feudalist Tarts and High Priest, among other records, carefully culled to make up this set. "Underclass" has a fine sting, while the acerbic "No Sex" is clever and sorta funny. Elsewhere, "Dalai Lama" has a nice Nuggets-like vibe to it, while a ripping cover of "Little GTO" takes things even further back, to the kind of past inhabited by Chilton's own, pre-Big Star group, The Box Tops.
What we've got here on these two compilations are the two sides of post-Big Star Alex Chilton from right around the time that guys like Paul Westerberg started writing about the guy's legacy. Songs From Robin Hood Lane is the picture of the crooner that Alex always wanted to be, a fairly successful, intimate set of runs through standards that should warm the ears and heart, while From Memphis To New Orleans is a compilation of material from that odd string of records he made in the mid-Eighties. If this one didn't work so much for me it's probably down to me having worked in record stores in that era, and hearing his solo stuff far more than his Big Star classics on the turntables in the shops.
Songs From Robin Hood Lane and From Memphis To New Orleans are both out now via Bar/None Records.
The new album from Swedish band Arre! Arre!, Tell Me All About Them, is a blast. Full of good old-fashioned punk energy, the record sees the superb PNKSLM label serve up an incendiary (yet fun) record that tackles the sorry state of the world today. That this is the most political offering on the label to date is worth pointing out, even as I stress just how enjoyable this release is.
"Anthem" roars out of the gate, the sort of thing that sounds like the bands from the first wave of British punk, as well as more modern acts, while the title cut is even shorter and rougher. Elsewhere, the excellent "All Time Low" is early Siouxsie and The Banshees mixed up with the sort of buzzy guitar-hook that propelled the very first Joy Division singles to success. At their best here, Arre! Arre! convey a sense of political urgency through the mad rush of the music. "A Storm is Coming" is more subtle, the mid-tempo number echoing pioneering sides from Sleater-Kinney and earlier bands, like Penetration. This is necessarily brutal music at times, but it's also entirely catchy stuff. Arre! Arre!, their name from an important podcast in their native Sweden, breathe fire into this stuff, and a listener can barely find time to catch a breath as this rock-and-roll rockets into the future.
