We're sticking with the columnar business for a second week, and it is kind of looking better already. Although that doesn't apply if you are on the phone. Whatever you are on, I think you'll discover this has been a pretty good week for new releases. We need interns to come up with ideas like, why don't we put all of these tunes into a playlist for everyone to listen to while reading through? Of course we have needs because things can always get brighter.
SINGLES
by Ancient Champion
In the world of Kim Gordon, would-be Kim Gordon's and Kim Gordon wanna-be's, that sort of sound like her, there remains really after 30 years only one Kim Gordon. The iconic one you hear here. Bye Bye is from a forthcoming LP The Collective on Matador which is a fine label, yet the fact remains that the music biz is fucked up because this should be on a major with buildings wrapped in Kim Gordon all the ways along Hollywood and Sunset. Probably only be a skullfucking minority interest instead. Gave my speakers a work out with it and my skull is fucked, and for that reason I am recommending everyone try it. Coco Gordon Moore in the video. Try the shampoo too.
by Toon Traveller
Opening notes, it's a Guinness Advert, the black and white surfing one. Pounding bass, crisp drums, and slashing guitar. A three chord, rapid fire strum, a rent-a-yob vocal, and a post punk attitude. There's anger, there's cut and paste lyrics, there's a drum break, well you already know the format. What's the song about? no idea. 'there's someone in a booth', 'put the foot down, see ya later, someone call up the undertaker', really? I've heard 5 year olds, make up better rhymes, waiting at the checkout. Sure it's got energy, and attitude, and pose, but that's it. One heart cos it's banality made me smile on a freezing cold Toonside Day
by Ancient Champion
Well, well, settling down over there by Lee Baggett, The Eastern Plain carve the neatest of details with woods and wires. While not doing too much to impress you. It's such a pleasure to hear instruments as they might actually have sounded one time. This is rich and rushing in to entertain. So, follow the ghost, go let yourself.
by Alan Rider
Toronto's Black Absinthe (great name btw!) channel Slayer, Testament, Anthrax, Cathedral and so on for this. And can't you just tell! I have to say though they do a pretty good job of it and this is a tad more enjoyable than the vast majority of their contemporaries in a vintage Motorhead way.
by DJ Fuzzyfelt
Best known as the singer and multi-instrumentalist with Stereolab, Laetitia Sadier has run a successful solo career as well as making guest appearances with such luminaries as Mercury Rev and Jarvis Cocker. Her latest single Panser L'inacceptable, a taster for her forthcoming Rooting For Love album due out next month. It floats by nicely in a Stereolab in easy listening mode kind of way then just stops fairly randomly. Not overtly exciting but I' expect more from the album.
by Alan Rider
A wonderful great big psyche shimmer of a single from Les Big Byrd. We loved their previous 11 minute epic single 'Mareld' and this is different to that, but is no less brilliant for it. They really have something here. The album of the same name will be a corker. Video is nicely done too.
by Toon Traveller
Acoustic RnB riffs, questioning modern ethos, assertion of First Nation values, issues in the North America, Australia and South America, universal themes, good as. Stereotypical Native Drums, fuzzy, lazy guitar, lyrics "where you gonna run to", a rallying call to remember roots, and how essential native lands are. It's got enough 'Rock' to catch the ear and "Roll" to stir a heart. Great anthemic chants, a tribal gathering in the making, inspirational, evocative, and uplifting.
by Ancient Champion
The first brand new music from Khruangbin in four years has the easy listening funk indeed... Just in time on one of the hemispheres to get your thinking about summer on. I'm writing this at a beachfront tiki bar, I won't bore you with where, but right here A Love International sounds so perfect among lapping waves and swishing of the cocktail shakers. It's all a bit like one of those Wham summer hits from aeons ago, except for desiccated people. Left the lard at home. Khruangbin's tide is high.
by Alan Rider
KMFDM have been around a while. 40 years to be precise. They used to be good and along with Skinny Puppy, Front 242, Front Line Assembly, and others, ushered in what we now know as modern guitar driven industrial rock. So they do have a bit of a case to answer, as there have been many crimes against music carried out under that umbrella, but setting that aside, this is pretty average, dated sounding EBM fodder, which includes the unfortunate phrase "ready to rock" before yelling "lets go!". Predictable to the extreme, complete with cringe worthy sing-along-a-KMFDM lyrics, its a poor showing. "Giddy Up!" they say as the track draws to a close. Honestly, they really do sing "Giddy Up!". Jeez!
by Alan Rider
I could make all sorts of obvious jokes about this sing song song being derivative crepe (because that word sounds a bit like 'crap' doesn't it?) but won't. Oh, hang on, I just did. Marketed as a 'queer love song', that term is something I find slightly offensive, implying that same sex love as an emotion is in some way different from other love so needs its own type of love song rather than just a simple love song like any other. Regardless of gender, it's still love, goddammit, get over it! The track itself sounds like so, so many others, that you can just hum any old sing songy-y tune you've heard and it will pretty much give you the gist. It's only a couple of weeks into January and I'm already already suffering from musical deja vu. This could be from 2023. Or 2022. Or 2021..or...or...or.
by Alan Rider
Gosh, this lot look look miserable here, despite hanging around miming very badly in a New Zealand beauty spot (Clay Cliffs if you fancy hopping on a plane and eating airline food next to someone with too long legs who keeps squirming around in their seat for the next 12-14 hours to take a look) whilst pumping out a shoegaze/slacker influenced track tailor made for mildly stoned teenage boys and girls who look like teenage boys. Lighten up guys! You are one of the privileged few who get to dick around doing this sort of thing rather than having to hold down three low paid jobs just to be able to eat, like so many other poor souls in the world.
by LamontPaul
Vancouver raised Kaleah Lee's Rotting Fruit is from a forthcoming EP that promises to be minimal, slight and epic. Rotting Fruit is stripped to the essential constituent parts... Quietly insistent, hushed vocals, a delicately picked acoustic guitar. This is so like a private yearning that daren't be spoken, tacitly shared. Kaleah's selling out San Francisco, she's disarming Taylor Swift. She's making a fan of Bon Iver. Like Elvis, 20,000,000 TikTok Fans Can't Be Wrong. I never think popularity validates music though. If I did I wouldn't be sitting here writing this. Popularity invalidates music. We know that. Here, Kaleah displays a grace akin to youthful Mark Kozelek, or something. She moves fluidly from unsettling depths, ascending an uncomfortable vertiginous stratos (Hex#070F54 or RGB is 7, 15, 84 for reference). “‘Rotting Fruit’ was emotionally liberating to write,” Kaleah says. “Navigating through my beliefs, disbeliefs, and who I feel I am at my core has been challenging, but more importantly it’s been a very freeing process. I didn’t know how much I needed to release what I was feeling until I did through this song.” Kaleah has been writing songs for two years. Future Giant.
by Toon Traveller
Transported back, late 70's, Kraftwerk Kraut Rock marries Mahavisnu Orchestra, minus 'Birds of Fire' McLaughlin's intensity. Driving rhythm, high pitched voices, swopping swaths of whopping staccato strings. It's a great marriage of sound's ideas, and inspiration. This hops, skips, and jumps it's way on joyous and happy solitary path, Emerald Steps. It's leaps and bounds, outside fashion and genre, to a place where my Goals Beyond. It's a jolt of expresso, it's a flash of light, it's the wake up alarm. It's a great day's start. Light as a feather, it's a Trans Europe Express's sunlit journey, it's crossed the Rubicon of styles, and arrived in that timeless space, Between Nothingness and Eternity.
by Lee Paul
Tenderly dipping his toe into Willy Vlautin territory, Lee's languid Americana is as pleasurable as some of the great ones. You can probably fit the name of your favorite authentic drifter/ne'er do well right here. Rich with rocknroll melody. Lee Baggett is a delight.
by Jay Lewis
I'm colourblind so I'm not entirely sure what colour Cashmere Grey actually is. But if Boomsma has used the shade as a metaphor for those sunless wintery mornings then I'll just take his word for it.
There's a warmth to be found here though, there are intricate guitar textures and strings that gently weave around Boomsma's quietly introspective vocals. It's the time of year for being reflective and this captures that mood wonderfully. As with his two previous singles, Boomsma has graduated from a solely acoustic sound to a full band, and it's a delight. An album is due in the spring. We're eager to hear it.
by Alan Rider
This reminds me very much of the sort of light orchestral meanderings you'd find playing over time lapse films of flowers opening they used to show on BBC2 to fill in between programmes. Those would all be up on Youtube now of course. Pleasant, in an inoffensive Lift Music-y way, despite it's title hinting at a slightly more racey theme. There is real potential here however, and its intriguing. That doesn't happen that often so lets keep an eye out for Luce.
by Alan Rider
A Certain Ratio (lets call them ACR - everyone else does) have slimmed down for this to a trio of principle band members – multi-instrumentalists Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop and Donald Johnson. Following on from last years excellent 1982 album, 'All Comes Down To This' is the advance guard single for a new album of the same name, returning to a slightly more stripped down sound, yet with all the experimental funk elements that are the ACR signature very much intact. ACR have been a fixture on the Post-Punk scene since the very start, sharing a stage and label with Joy Division and other contemporaries, yet by going back to basics they actually sound every bit as fresh as they did back then. ACR are far from being throwbacks or dinosaurs, rather they have evolved without becoming bloated in the process. Not a lot of the bands they started out with can honestly say that.
by Lee Paul
Even the extraneous noise at the outset, is great. But that's not at all. Here is music languidly perfect, the instrumentation - just enough, never too much. Fiddles. What is it with Adrianne Lenker that makes her so fab? Lyrically, she effortlessly strips paint. Fills your mouth breathing tonsils with a toxic combination of what William Morris left behind for you. Beauty becomes beauty. Honestly does. Honesty asks. Here she dabbles with some ol' timey sounds but the existential concerns... What a person should be at any given moment in a persons short time, and what a person can become. All because Sadness is a Gift.
by Alan Rider
I don't know why acts insist on producing these videos showcasing their lyrics, when all it does is expose what nonsense they are singing about. This is no exception. I have no idea what she is going on about as she seems to have chosen rhyming words at random and strung them together around an identikit pop tune. Instantly forgettable.
by Toon Traveller
Slow build opening, whispered music, heavy breathing, echoes of Bjork, hush, hush, tsch, tosh . Whispery, drifting soundscape, words about what? Goblins, hobbits, who knows or cares. Recycled hippy '70s prog rock doodling, meets late '90s atmospheric electro swish, splosh, splash, sounds. Five minutes in, a raw throated rasping voice, head banging riff, explodes the calm, (wtf ), why? Gave up at this point, poured another coffee, played Bjork CDs, back to back.
by Toon Traveller
I enjoy a dabble of easy on the soul, country blues, sadly this some way from that. Sure it's got a tired, played out vibe, strummed strings, and tap slap drums, acoustic blues need to keep it real. But even these 'blues' need pained anguish. Here, it's just a gentle whimper, whispered over melody, that sinks into mud, that's nowhere even near the Mississippi delta's shore.
by Toon Traveller
Country, Americana strikes a chord, flat or sharp. This is the former. "It's a long way down" sure is, swooning steel Guitar, and self pitying vocals, saccharinely sweet, cloying, it's drifts on a journey to a string middle passage, inoffensively supine and unpleasant.
by Lee Paul
Grrr. You know I am a loverrr of everything arrrse, anything with superior lumpen lumpiness to the rear and Villagerrr as evidenced by their single Neverrr Everrr right here, have gotten the gloopy glutinous beat down. To alleviate the struggles some might have with that, there's harmony galore. Great to hear guitars afore. This is the sound of beyond the suburbs and it ain't bad.
by Toon Traveller
Do we need 00's guitar pop, heard it, Arctic Monkeys, seen it - Kasabian, liked it, Glasvagas, bought CD - Kaiser Chiefs. Little Man Tate return with danced up, pop powered sounds. Probably great live, packed club, shuffling pensioners, (me), Gen X youth, mixed-up, for a good Friday night out. This delivers, raw vocals, "it's all starts over again," and "made for each other, does he really love her" yeah lyrics grab the ear. It's magic - it's got what all great pop songs need, an earworm riff, and a belt it out Karaoke chorus. Air punching, front room dancing, foot stomping, bed diving, guitar pop at it's very best.
by Toon Traveller
A 'top o' the streaming platforms, a chance to buy a 'Cream Stout Vinyl Copy'. Clever joke, for a great song. It's a call to recognise the oppressed everywhere, rages against small minds, small cold hearts, and the victims of austerity. Celebrates small time, dodgers, the real rebels. Small time petty crime, real people, desperate victims, are NOT the enemy. Cross haired focus, slum landlords, petty officials, corrupt politicians, the clergy, and hypocrisy, Ireland, England, States, China same story, different faces. Great messages of redemption, while celebrating a new hope in Ireland.
ZERO s
by Toon Traveller
Deceptive 90's danceability opening, straight outta Ibiza clubbing. Then, incoherent rasping vocalist's roar. Too much Doctor Paint Strippers' Arkansas Moonshine rubbing spirit. A throat wrenching, gut churning, ear splitting, chain saw rasping, load of unintelligible pointless, yells, and roars. Empty pseudo 90's clubbers soundtrack. Failed 90's rave party, spent mud dancing, in rain lashed Essex fields. Imagine Nine Inch Nails hammered into the ground. I tried to give it a negative hearts reating it's that bad.
by Alan Rider
You can hum along to this. It sounds vaguely familiar, but I just can't place it. According to the PR blurb this is " lushly rendered, unafraid to boast rich strings, moody synths, and bighearted guitar riffs." Bighearted eh? Not reheated then? In common with just about every US act, they, or rather 'he' as Slow Hollows (what does that name even mean??) is now a solo act, are embarking on a 27 date US tour of venues with names like 'Beer City'. I presume he will get the bus to keep touring costs down. That sounds potentially dangerous as you could easily end up playing in a bar like the one in The Blues Brothers and they would never find your body.
by Toon Traveller
Great funky opening, incessant drums and deranged manic vocals, old sounds, new ideas, in a mix. A musical experiment? More of a mish-mash, bash, slash. Sure, the energy's there, wasted, translated into the rat-a-tat-a-tat, machine gun-sprayed lyrics. I suppose it passes for excitement. I've heard this style before, ahh yes, reminded of "It's the End of the World as We Know It." Good thing, bad thing, you decide. As they might say in cotton country, "fair to middling."
by Toon Traveller
Years before Artificial Intelligence, when CGI, was a misprinted restaurant, UK had Channel 4'sMax Headroom. John looks like Max, or rather Max's secret love child. Never heard 'Max' sing, and listening to this, glad I never did. Like all good Prog Rockers, he's on a journey, aren't they all. Middle Earth, Interstellar Space, or California in their mind. There's the usual guff, big bad 'rip off world', there's no telling "what you're worth", let me "take you to the moon", to "find a bit of Immortality". Floats like butterfly, stings like a marshmallow. Slow fade, tasteful guitar slips and slides. Just about, it is JUST ABOUT, a lonely, solitary heart.
LPs
by Ancient Champion
Lou. Contemplating. There's a lot more of this where this comes from.
by Jay Lewis
Jay loves Sprints. Official. Check out the whole review right here.
Other Materials
by Ancient Champion
Understated, mellowing, guitar rock. Barely a guitar rock pulse though and that is enough to warrant inclusion here. Then then they go and make something marvelous without the whispered mumbling. Make of that what you will at that point. But everything else... So good. I can't find the video for the mumble free one. You get the mumbling and to use your own fucking imagination. Really maybe, let me loan that SM57 for David Benjamin Blower's guitar at Cork's I am already worrying about that.
by Alan Rider
What makes music great and life worth living.
Essentials
Main image, Kim Gordon by Danielle Neu
