SEE: Don Letts’ new video for The Clash’s ‘Magnificent Seven’
COME December 1980, and The Clash brought their all-encompassing ambition to bear on the triple-disc, 36-song Sandanista!, taking in dub, rockabilly, jazz, disco, hiphop, reggae and more. One of the singles to be spun off from the album was the open and funky “The Magnificent Seven”, which reached no.34 in the UK charts. And now, …
EP REVIEW: Tori Amos – ‘Christmastide’: four originals for the season
A stateswoman of female musical discourse takes the Christmas song tradition and makes of it something thoughtful, intelligent and nuanced
TRACK: Tindersticks cover the Television Personalities’ ‘You’ll Have To Scream Louder’ – new album next year
NOTTINGHAM’S finest, Tindersticks, are all set to release a new album in 2021 on City Slang, their home for most of the past decade; and they’ve dropped their first single, paying homage to one of the lost greats of Eighties’ British post-punk and indie – Dan Treacy, and the Television Personalities. They’ve decided to take …
SEE: Jon Hopkins covers Thom Yorke’s ‘Dawn Chorus’
AS THIS most hellishly viral year’s eyelids droop and it prepares to exit stage left, the masterful Jon Hopkins has brought some beautiful piano catharsis and grace for our troubled brains as he drops a cover of Thom Yorke’s “Dawn Chorus”. The track features on Thom’s most recent solo outing, Anima. It was recorded in one …
SEE: The animation for King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s ‘If Not Now, When?’
TWO THINGS about New Zealand’s King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: one. They’re immense, ass ‘n’ tousled locks-shaking fun. Two. Christ, they’re prolific. Their cup of creativity runneth o’er. Twenty-three albums in eight years, if you follow the Discogs tally of these things – a mere three this year, slackers – but that’s only if …
TRACK: Porridge Radio feel the darker Yuletide vibe with ‘The Last Time I Saw You (O Christmas)’
PORRIDGE RADIO are drawing down the curtain on 2020 with one final, fine salutation: their own contribution to the vein of alternative Christmas songs which Low kicked off back in ’99 with that mini-album that made Yule songs cool again. It’s entitled “The Last Time I Saw You (O Christmas)”, it’s out via Secretly Canadian, and …
SEE: The video for Bill Callahan’s ‘Breakfast’: a visual nugget sifted from ‘Gold Record’
OUR DEEPEST Americana poet Bill Callahan put together his latest album, Gold Record, really quickly, and previewed it over those long, lazy lockdown summer days with the neat idea of dropping a track every Monday afternoon leading up to its eventual September release. Loose and freewheeling it may have been, but that doesn’t take anything …
TRACKS: Erland Cooper wraps up the year with a gorgeous choral EP, ‘Eynhallow’
ERLAND COOPER wraps up a year in which he’s brought us much light, creativity and joy with one final aural missive, the choral EP, Eynhallow, out today on Phases. Hether Blether, the concluding chapter of the Orkney Trilogy, seduced everyone who came into its welcoming arms in June, with its delicacy, its history, its cultural …
TRACK: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – ‘Where They Perform Miracles’: Alec brings the yearn and then some
ALEC OUNSWORTH’S Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are following up the double whammy of October’s twin single drop, “Thousand Oaks”/”Hesitation Nation” (which we adored here) with the beautiful and elegiac “Where They Perform Miracles”, from forthcoming new album, New Fragility. It’s intimate, has that beautiful, tremulous voice and bodes exceedingly well for the album, his first since …
SEE: Dave the Keys – ‘The Lights of the Pub’: Komputer man’s tune to save his local
DAVID BAKER has had a pretty varied career in the British music scene to date; but as Dave the Keys he’s decided to give something back: he’s releasing a little swingin’ Christmas nugget to save his local. David began his musical career back in ’87 as a DJ at Middlesex Poly. He met fellow disc-spinner …