Feature: Vinyl Reissue vs streaming
With the vinyl re-issue of Annie Lennox’s Diva, me and Spouse decided to put vinyl versus streaming to the test. I’m a simple soul who likes good music well played, but Spouse is an actual musician and former science teacher, with a fairly extensive vintage vinyl back catalogue. He has VIEWS on music quality. We …
Album Review: David Byrne – American Utopia
Can you hear the name David Byrne without thinking of the super-sized suit or humming ‘Once in a Lifetime?’ Me neither. The Talking- Head-in-Chief moved to New York years ago. Like so many of us in recent years, he felt the urge to despair and hide whenever he watched the news. But he made a …
Meet/Live Review: A-ha Unplugged: Bedsit to the O2
I interviewed Pål Waaktar-Savoy before he played guitar for the A-ha MTV unplugged acoustic gig at the O2. That gig was half concert, half band history. Before A-ha, Mags and Pal had been in a band called Bridges. Morten heard them play a song called ‘Sox of the Fox’ and realised he wanted to join …
Meet: Pål Waaktar-Savoy on Savoy, songwriting and See the Beauty in your drab Hometown
Every song is a puzzle. It isn’t often you get to meet your musical hero, much less one who taught you one of the essential tools of being a writer. Pål Waaktar-Savoy is the quiet, talented one in A-ha, who wrote or co-wrote the most of their hits. I was thrilled to meet him and …
Album Review: Twin Peaks – Sweet ’17 Singles
I love Twin Peaks the TV show more than I love damn fine coffee or the best cherry pie in the Tri-Counties. But there is also Twin Peaks the band, who have been gigging since 2010. The Chicago based garage-band were struggling to balance their three year tour with recording. Rather than commit to a …
Track: Erasure – It’s Still Not Over (rework)
In LGBT+ History month Erasure celebrate their role in the struggle with a classical reworking of ‘It’s Still Not Over.’ I don’t know when it began, but there has been an epidemic of classical versions of pop songs recently. Even so, it is very unusual to do it with an obscure album less than a …
Album Review: Johnny Jewel – Digital Rain
Johnny Jewel is a musical Renaissance man: he owns a record label, he writes film scores, he collaborated with David Lynch on the recent Twin Peaks soundtrack and he’s a member of Chromatics and Glass Candy. And having grown up in Texas, he’s obsessed with the idea of rain, which is why he’s written this …
Not Forgotten: A-Ha – Scoundrel Days
In 1985, Norse rock gods A-ha ruled the airwaves. Powered by remarkable cheekbones, teen acolytes and a cutting-edge video, they were on the Smash Hits cover most weeks. We worshipped them fervently, but we knew that like Odin, even if they carried on, their fame would inevitably fade. Nobody troubled to tell A-ha this. Secretly …