Spring may have sprung, but there’s little in life to truly raise the sprits, so this week’s release of Who Believes in Angels? the much-anticipated album from Elton John and Brandi Carlile is especially welcome.
The sticker on the front cover says “The heaviest proto-metal compilation ever released.” And considering the label behind Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy is Rise Above, founded by former Napalm Death and Cathedral frontman Lee Dorrian, this is not idle hubris.
For fans of The Horrors, the headline here is that, 20 years into the career, for their sixth album, the band have lost two of their founding members. Original keyboard player Tom Furse has gone, as has drummer “Coffin” Joe Spurgeon, to be replaced, respectively, by Amelia Kidd of Scottish synthy post-punkers The Ninth Wave and Jordan Cook of alt-indie Welsh outfit Telegram.
Occasionally, when I pass my own reflection, out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of the likeness of my father, shining out through the bones in my face. In this way his ghost walks with me.
Sometimes the making process can feel like that, a matter of training our peripheral vision to retrieve the images and ideas that are flickering at the edge of our field of view, existing in the same dimly lit space as dreams, primal impulses and hazy memories.
Just the other day I overheard one of my kids watching a YouTuber called Nathan Zed and was instantly gripped. It was called “How Trying Became Cool Again,” and focused on pop cultural moments like Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl show, Doechii’s Tonight Show performance, Chappell Roan’s giant pink pony at the Grammys and Tyler, The Creator’s… well, just about everything.
Forty years ago, Chuck Prophet was the Keith Richards-like guitar hotshot in Green On Red, peers of R.E.M. and among the raw country-punk architects of what became Americana. Now he’s 61 and playing in a sold-out pub back-room in Hassocks, a downland commuter village near Brighton, still giving his all during two hours of humour and humane passion as if this is the biggest stage, and this crowd a community clearly worth serving.
Doves really are quite prog rock aren’t they? It’s never really leapt out at me before, probably because I’d always thought of them as brooding indie first and foremost.
Sol Abrahams, singer and guitarist for Essex rock’n’rollers Bilk, was suffering from a bit of guitar trouble in Birmingham on Friday evening. By the time the band was ready to power through “On It”, from new album Essex, Drugs and Rock and Roll, he was already on his third or fourth instrument, the last one having literally fallen apart in his hands.
Hinds don't believe in God. They declared this as they surveyed the converted church that is St Luke's, and given the past few years you can't blame them for lacking faith.
On the first date of a 17-concert tour that had its preview at Celtic Connections in January, Across the Evening Sky begins with the liminal, predatory dangers of associating in any way with the sly “Reynardine”, with Matt Robinson on piano and electronic keyboards and Alec Bowman-Clarke’s bass evoking the twilit murk of the magical faerie song, recorded by Sandy on Fairport’s Liege & Lief.