SINGLES
NIGHT NAIL - Narcoleptic Dream Catcher (Metropolis)
by Alan Rider
Could this sound any more self consciously Goth? Shade wearing singer aping Andrew Eldrich? Tick. Gothic band and single names? Tick. Identikit goth tunes and lyrics? Tick. Absence of originality? Tick. Yep, it's all here. Apply kohl eyeliner and form an orderly queue please! The Metropolis label has a brand that this fits perfectly into and is a huge market in the States, and there are a lot of bands like Night Nail on Metropolis that are very adept at this stuff. Having heard such a lot of this genre over the years, I'm not seeing a lot of progression happening, so when something even a little different pops up it stands out. This isn't bad, so three hearts for a valiant effort, but it 'aint the next step, so I will keep waiting. Wake me up when it gets here will you?
ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE DARK - Slow Train (100% )
by Jay Lewis
Ooh la la ... Before they finally leave us, OMD would like us to know about their love of Goldfrapp's most well-known number (itself a nod to T Rex) by making some fairly heavy references to it here. It's a joyous new addition after the polished last album (The Punishment of Luxury - 2017) failed to excite. 'Slow Train' is driven (sorry!) by squelchier synths (there's a whiff of 'Voyager' era Depeche Mode in there too), rougher production, and plenty of whispered 'yeah, yeah's from Andy McCluskey. It's so that exciting I could almost forgive them for the horror of that other train-based song they made in a previous life.
CAT POWER - Any of these Dylan's Live at Albert Hall Things (Domino)
by LamontPaul
Ballad of a Thin Man is the one I listened to this morning from 'Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert'. It's a lovely idea, right there on a par with me wandering around stopping people in the street and asking them to read from Wayne Dean Richards' collection, It's A Mad World But Funny, while videotaping them. So that's the idea here, Cat Power was passing the Albert Hall and recalling Dylan's mid 60s concerts there, thought it would be fun to sing Dylan's set in full. One of the better ideas of the entire year because, this is Cat Power. Perhaps only Cat Power has the authority to bring simultaneously some entirely new joy to her reading of these songs while honouring Dylan's majesty. It's Cat Power's legacy now she can be the one touring this set for the next 50 years, keeping Dyland alive. Like a restoration project peeling back the decades and revealing new reason, new layers, a-new. The whole LP arrives on Nov 10. My final advice, line up for it at the record store like you would've did decades ago.
GIRL SCOUT - Bruises (Made Records)
by Alan Rider
Yeah yeah. Girl Scout have a slightly silly name but it's getting damned hard to find any name that hasn't been used already, so what can you do? I'm not blaming them for that. What I can take them to task for though, is for being so dull and uninventive. This sounds like SO many other bands out there that there really is no point. I'm sure they will play a few places, make a few videos (why do bands always stand on Persian carpets in these 'live in session' style videos?), release a few singles and albums, and then it will be as if they never existed.
HANIA RANI - Don't Break My Heart ft Duncan Bellamy (Gondwana Records)
by Jay Lewis
Hania Rani always seems to be rather busy. After releasing the quietly captivating 'On Giacometti' soundtrack earlier this year, she's delivered a series of beautiful tender, and transfixing songs as tasters for her forthcoming 'Ghosts' album. An earlier, jazz-tinged full-band version of this song can be found as part of her extraordinary concert at Invalides in Paris last year, but this version takes the song into a more haunted, lonelier place. The opening line 'Don't break my heart with truth' lures you into a tale of a delicate, maybe too delicate, love. Portico Quartet's Duncan Bellamy adds the mesmerizing loops.
A fabulous record.
SEERR - Free Julian (Bandcamp)
by Katherine Pargeter
I often feel that there is a dearth of genuine protest songs, or that there is a worrying lack of artists who have unambiguous and direct concerns that they wish to share. But Birmingham based Seerr is made of sturdier stuff and ‘Free Julian’ is a song that will make you want to refresh all you have learnt about the founder of Wikileaks, the charges that he has faced and all that has led to his current confinement at HM Belmarsh Prison. Seerr, who once again sings and plays all of the instruments, has soundtracked his forthright plea with a wall of grungy guitars, the lonely coda driving home the anger and the sadness.
https://seerr.bandcamp.com/track/free-julian
BAD HISTORY MONTH - Touch The Riff (Exploding in Sound)
by Toon Traveller
Lovely, trippy, dippy 'California Dreaming' opening, but then a Frank Zappa sound-a-like vocal slides in, same phasing, phasing, That fast fluttering runs of words, a soft rata-tata-tata-tata-tata-tat delivery that passes for Zappa wit and cynicism. There's Zappa-esque subject matters, self love in showers, ‘be confident’, philosophy, the future is fiction, write your own story. Dream fictional dreams, and imagine conformity. Sure it's an echo; a tribute to Zappa's messages, but they were sincere, revolutionary and presented with wit and verve. Familiar calls to reject conformity are underpinned by a swirling soundscape - melodic, but just the tuneful side of dissonance that Zappa managed to perfection throughout his ever changing career. If you’re gonna walk the Avant Garde's path, in wacky shoes, then trailing Frank Zappa is as good a path as any. This is a tribute to a master who released both audacious brilliance, and tired, played-out diarrhoea (one farmer's excrement is another's fertilizer). As a standalone tribute, carrying the torch, reviving a flame - it's a first step, but they need progression in vocal phrasing (that can be learnt), wider, more diverse playing (that can be recruited) and more intriguing lyrics (that's artistic inspiration alone).
GEORGE BOOMSMA - Lily of the Nile (George Boomsma)
by Jay Lewis
George Boomsma is a singer songwriter worth taking note of. 'Lily of the Nile' is further example of his ability to deliver evocative and sincere lines that linger long after you hear them ('I am lost, certain days when I fear in a bitterness of ways' may be my favourite line here). His voice is like a pure, effortlessly soaring instrument and his North Yorkshire phrasing is always a delight. The full band country tinged arrangement of 'Lily' is a delicious treat, as this is a song that deserves that old fashioned airplay thing to happen.
SOFT CELL - Entertain Me (2023 extended version) (Mercury-EMI / UMR)
by Alan Rider
It seems that Marc and Dave have completely ignored my plea last week to give it a rest for a bit on the back catalogue re-issues and instead charged ahead with a 6-CD, 98-track Super Deluxe Edition of their Non Stop Erotic Cabaret album for October. To sustain that wallet emptying product they've stuffed it with cutting room floor outtakes, demos, TV and radio appearances, live tracks, and extended 'reimagined' versions and mixes, to such an extent that the set now contains an entire version of the original album in extended form, of which this 6 minute track is an example. In justification they argue that these are totally different versions, but this one sounds pretty similar to me (as did most 12" versions at the time), apart from the last minute or so where it morphs into a lighter string synth-y version of the main tune just to play it out. That doesn't sound worth the extra outlay to me, but if you disagree, then get your wallet out and dig deep once more to help keep Marc and Dave in gold lame jackets and slippers.
CLEO SOL - Go Baby (Forever Living Originals)
by Ancient Champion
Beautiful. Not even inadvertently so, that I so often like the most. Dreamy, dippy, languid with the nerve to be quiet. What a wonderful record to be alive to hear. Wow!
SKINNY PELEMBE AND BETH ORTON - Who By Fire (Partisan Records)
by Ancient Champion
Hi-Energy version of Leonard's 1974 hit, Who By Fire. Probably if you are like me, you'll consider this an aberration. But this is not for me.
CRIME AND THE CITY SOLUTION - Brave Hearted Woman (Mute)
by Alan Rider
The album 'The Killer' that 'Brave Hearted Woman' is drawn from apparently started life as a PhD application about decision making in Afghanistan in the late '80s. Its a unique inspiration for sure, matched with the folk electronica of this track. Crime and The City Solution have always had a social conscience, right down to their name, and that trait seems to be getting stronger in them as they get older. I guess we all become aware of the many injustices of the world more sharply as we grow older simply because we witness them happening over and over. There is a humanity to C&TCS that you have to applaud.
GENCAB - The Badge (Metropolis)
by Alan Rider
genCAB stands for generation cable. No, I don't know what that means either! Its a rubbish name, but then so many are I won't count that against them. This starts out sounding very much like Gary Numan does these days, before settling into anthemic industrial EBM from the Skinny Puppy/Front 242 school of such things. Played loud at a Berlin goth club night I can see this going down a storm. It has all the drops, BPM and everything. It's well crafted for sure and tbh is better than much of Metropolis' output, which bodes well for an album well worth a listen when that trundles this way.
WILCO - Cousin (dBpm)
by Toon Traveller
ARUAN ORTIZ AND ASSOCIATES - Pastor's Paradox (Clean Feed Records)
by Toon Traveller
Every now and again, something lands in my inbox that's so far off the usual Outsideleft fayre, you wonder if there's been a huge solar storm that's disrupted the internet superhighway, and something crashed up on a wrong turn, ending up in Toon Traveller's inbox. Well, here's a "blow-in", and it's magnificent. Brilliant piano and a pensive opening which is supported by a playful, low register saxophone, deliciously miked-up to capture the keys being pressed: all which creates a great sense of being there. Of course; there's a cello/bass with scraped strings - that I'm a sucker for - and all those low register piano chords, fears and tears, and cymbals splashed in the very best Jazz tradition. There's jagged single notes, edginess, darkness at noon, drizzled in pensive, awkward pauses, where your ideas add to the music, and it breathes in your heart and head. If this track were a day, it would be a snowed-in Thursday in January, waiting for the boiler man to get the heating on. Dark and lonely, but not in the ‘Hollywood Horror’ sense; more that stark winter wood whose trees will shelter from the gathering snow flurries and gathering storm.
EPs
BABY FIRE - Year of Grace (Coeur sur toi)
by Alan Rider
You come across some good stuff browsing through Bandcamp. It's often a lot better way of discovering interesting new music than any PR Agency can offer. This is a case in point. Brussels trio Baby Fire are a new name to me, but on the evidence of this, are innovative in their approach. The video is a little stingy, being a mere 40 seconds of teaser for the EP, so give the whole track a spin on the Bandcamp link below and see what you think? This is coming out on cassette and digital only in October (cassettes being the new retro chic items of desire) as the final part of a trilogy of releases including a previous album and an EP, but you can pre-order it now on the link below. It's intriguing, this, and temporarily restores my faith in the ability of people to at least try something a bit different.
https://coeursurtoi.bandcamp.com/album/a-year-of-grace
LPs
RICK WAKEMAN - The Prog Years 1973-77 £400 box set (Rickwakemansmusicemporium.com)
ZERO s
by Alan Rider
Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!
MOMUS - Krambambuli (Darla Records)
by John Robinson
Momus is reliably unreliable, never the shape you imagine he should be. Perhaps that's part of what makes him great John Robinson succinctly says, here⇒
THE HOUSE OF LOVE - The House of Love/Babe Rainbow/Audience With the Mind (Proper)
by Jay Lewis
Jay revisits a pair of overlooked greats, and one huge disappointment. What he finds, you can read right here.
THE NIGHTINGALES - Live in Balsall Heath (Tiny Global)
by Ancient Champion
The Nightingales live set is creeping out on Tiny Global. That should be all you need to know to get your ass over to Bandcamp and either order the vinyl or download something for the car so that you can hear it all the time.
Other Materials
FOA HOKA FEAT. EVGEN HODOSH - Povidomlennya (SKP Records)
by Alan Rider
Prolific Ukranian underground experimental duo Foa Hoka have been going since 1991 and are truly bizarre. That's totally 100% bonkers bizarre. This may sound a bit like a nervy The Pop Group, but don't be fooled, this is mainstream stuff for them.
Essential information
Main image screengrab from the Night Nail video
