Outsideleft Week in Music Gets Jazzy with it. In Parts At Least.

Brilliant single—Alan Vega circa 1982 crossed with that unmistakable Liminanas touch of class. Can't wait for the impending new album and... don't miss them live in London in April. 

.Latterly Yazmin Lacy's voice has graced the Ezra Collective LP.  You'll know her from that tune about ..."feet for dancing..." The Feels, feels way more like a tune for that moment where you're breaking out beyond the dancing, breaking out of the club with someone, mesmerising, who says I feel like I've know you forever, and the talking and touching isn't gonna stop and you're finding a hotel bar because you never know where this is gonna end up. I mean, eventually with regrets but that's not the moment this song is for. No regrets, just feels.

This single has been around for a few weeks now so I might as well tell you why I haven't alerted you to it before this moment—mainly because I just so dislike anyone coming up and telling me how much they love Julia Holter. Those types I intrinsically disdain. I am not opposed to Julia love, but I don't need to know about it. I searched wide this week for music to lift me even an inch. And all of this. Does that, so. I'm gonna need way more of it's disaprate sounds warbling around... 

From Juanita's forthcoming LP 'The Weightless Hour', the title alone makes me weep. Just when are we weightless? And so Motionless just sounds like the last time we'll hear Juanita Stein before some producers ramp up the genericisms for broad commercial appeal. It features grainy autos, and the greatest lyrical car journey since Adrienne Lenker sang about the last time she saw Paul... Whatever happens in the end, we'll always be Motionless. Weightless.

2468 sees Horsegirl apparently move from noisy indie pop to a more minimalist indie space. It seems successful. There’s a lot more going on behind the simple "2468, they walk in twos" lines than we may notice at first listen. Instruments drift in-and-out seamlessly and they look unobtrusive, too (in a No Brand way), yet after viewing the video I yearned for fewer poker-faces and synchronous movements, and more of the expressions and spontaneity shown near the video’s end. Their second album, Phonetics On and On, is released early next year.

You know, I sometimes have a dream where I have a rocket launcher aimed at a bunch of cheesy chart acts and I'm shouting "who's first?" at them.  East 17 would definitely be in my cross hairs for their many crimes against music, of which this is amongst the most heinous. Combining the shivering horror of the Christmas single, with the syrupy turd of a song that is "Stay Another Day", this truly is the worst Christmas present ever. I beseech you never to listen to this.  Please don't click on the YouTube link! This song has been officially classified as environment pollution.  "But, its for charidee!" is no excuse either. So why are we including this in our Week In Music if its such a steaming pile of reindeer poo? Well, we have to have something to measure our four and five heart reviews against.

Cover versions, cover versions. Is it just lazy to put out a cover, admitting that you can't write songs as well as someone else, or does it add an extra oooph to an already familiar track, such as Gary Numan's 'Metal'?  In this case, I'd say it was the latter as [melter] make a pretty good fist of producing a hefty twist on an already classic song.  I like [melter].  They have just the right balance of DIY and electronica for me. We must have a word with them sometime for Outsideleft. As an aside, I found out just the other day that the classic Gary Numan 'sound' was actually one pre set sound played on a Moog Polymoog synth, and used on pretty much every iconic track he did (Down In The Park, Cars etc).   Fancy that, eh?

How could that feel, waking up and finding that Al Green had recorded one of your songs? That's the Al Green. One of your uncoverable songs. As you will hear. Am put in mind of Booker T's Lauryn Hill cover. Of course Booker T didn't attempt to rap. He just rocked. Likewise, Al Green doesn't do Michael Stipe.

This is indeed lovely. Dawn Richard can of course sing the phonebook and we'd swoon. Here are some small-ish Noname inflections maybe, but still wholly great.

'Ships In The Night' was a track by BeBop DeLuxe.  I wonder if that's where solo singer Alethea Leventhal got the name from?  Soundwise, this is a light pop, incomprehensible semi-ballad about being set free or something (from some boy?).  All girl solo singers do seem to have a miserable life, either pining for lost love, or begging to split up with their no good, unfaithful, horrible boyfriends, or going a bit mad. All this wingeing gets a bit much after a while, and this is no exception, if set to an instantly forgettable tune.   Listening to this on YouTube, it went on to some of her earlier material after this finished, which I have to say sounded a good deal better to me.

More music about driving. It's been out for a while, but the LP is relatively new? Maybe. Pure splendidness going on from Homer and a myriad of collaborators. It rolls and it rocks, its blissfull horns over muttering mumbling and slinky sliding vocals. How did they do it. Every moment sounds utterly inspired.

Madi lost her religion a long time ago, but she needs people and to feel like a kid this Christmas. What can she do? For sure, it is hard to 'air on optimistic' right now, so her ideas to buy more lights, a plastic Jesus, and shoot whisky may work (for some). Her agreeable voice helps us feel her dilemma, but waking at 5 is not only for Christmas! She might do it more in 2025 (she may already do). Enjoy those early morns. Get more REMs & listen to less R.E.M. 

From the LP 'A Musical Tour of Haiti', this is the authentic sound of Haiti, in 1956... This has not been updated even one iota to accommodate contemporary taste. So raw it is more punk than punk. Superb.

Joke title. Joke EP.  Joke 'rave' band.  God, its depressing!

Clan of Xymox were always one of the more interesting bands in the goth genre.  Although they still sported the black lace and eyeliner and flirted with occult imagery, they had a little more about them than the legions of Bauhaus/Sisters of Mercy copy bands you will find hundreds of cluttering up Youtube and Spotify.  June's 'Exodus' album proved that they haven't lost it either, with its gloomy sounds echoing the despair of a world rapidly on the slide towards the End of Days. 'Blood of Christ' may well sound like it should be a Catholic hymn, but it is anything but - a glacial anthem underpinned by a pulsing sequence and drums, overlaid by band leader Ronny Moorings distinctive vocals.  Although described as an EP, this is in fact a two track single, with multiple re-mixes of those two tracks extending it out to album length.  I don't quite know what that makes this, but you get just the two tracks over and over, with each version sounding a little bit different from the previous.  Its a way of squeezing full value out of a recording I guess, but personally, I would have preferred to stick with the originals.  The second track (what would have been the B side back in the days of vinyl 7 inches) has far more of a 'Sisters' vibe about it.  It is a little old school goth-by numbers, but is OK for a B side.

David O'Byrne on a newly released Bill Evans live set, David's review is right over here

Change comes from within says Alan Rider after listening the The Apostles.  Read his review here.

Ghost Mechanic Nine is a refinement of The Inca Babies more recent sound. I also used to have a thing about Link Wray, but I'll listen to The Inca Babies the next few Saturdays. They are now making tight songs drawn from a range of rock-related influences - and with Simon 'Ding' Archer’s production, you know it should be quality. And it is!  Filled with tight songs and a hint of menace, Ghost Mechanic Nine may win new fans who could catch up on recent releases on Bandcamp. In another age, Spacewalk may have skirted the nether regions of the Top 40 (Gallup, not Indie) chart. It should do today!  C'mon Everybody! Make It Happen! 

A rare set from Emily Remler gets the full workover from Paul Mortimer, right here

A new dub compilation from Dennis Bovell? Yes please says Tim London, right over here

As these hail from my neck of the woods out here in sunny Snorefolk, this caught my eye.  The Happy Couple do sound supremely drippy, though, even down to the name they've chosen to go by, and there is a liberal covering of smug self satisfaction coating their Press Release, full of phrases like "They can often be heard playing at their favourite spots, such as the ruin of St. Saviour's, Penguin Dyke or in the secluded backwater known as Newman's Hole, bobbing along in their rowing boat."  Acoustic Ambient Folk usually makes me turn a funny shade of green before I run screaming from the room, but this drifts along quite pleasantly, if inoffensively.  "Why would we want to offend?" I can hear them say in a gentle sing song voice, coffee bubbling on the stove in their farmhouse kitchen with its tiled floor and flint walls, a pine dresser lined with shelves full of jars marked 'split lentils' and 'wholemeal flour' and the sound of church bells and birdsong floating in through the window.  He probably has a beard, drinks real ale, wears cordouroy trousers, and makes things out of wood. He has more than one Christmas jumper. She probably bakes a lot (singing to herself whilst she does it), paints landscapes, and shabby chic's furniture which she sells online and through a shop in the village.  They have two dogs, both labradors, which they take on long walks.  You get the picture.

Here we go.  Opening track 'Glamhammer' is a mini Marilyn Manson.  The rest of the album is a mash up of the styles of Skinny Puppy, Front 242, Frontline Assembly and so on.  All of which was 40 years ago by now.  I know that pretty much everything musically has already been done, and we are in an endless cycle of diminishing returns, but the Industrial Goth genre sems to suffer from that more than most.  There are the occasional bright spots (picked out in previous Week In Music's) but, sadly, although this has some decent enough tracks ('Dick'), I just feel I have heard this same album performed by others too many times before.  Metropolis is an odd label, with a real mix of (largely) dross, with the occasional special thing popping up in the mix.  Their shotgun approach, signing up everything and firing it out in the hope that some will stick, is wearing to any reviewer.  I have developed a keen filter for this, though, that can spot a duffer coming towards me a mile off and take evasive action.  I gave this one a listen, so it got further than many, but I will pass this time.  Sorry.

Have to thank DJ Fuzzy for drawing my attention to amazing sounding Jackdaw with Crowbar track recorded at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. Whatever the vocalist is wearing, I want one, don't you. It's all so gorgously abrasive from beginning to end. Joyous noise everyone. 

A sonic marriage between Swans chanteuse Jarboe, their Nico to Michael Gira's Lou Reed,  (she was also behind the excellent Skin - Blood and Roses album btw) and California's sludge/doom metal/dark ambient/industrial music stars Neurosis, issued on their own Neurot label.  What's not to like?  This is taken off the ' Neurosis & Jarboe' album issued in 2003.   I might just track down a copy of this.