Not Forgotten: Blonde Redhead – Masculin féminin
Seemingly permanently entrenched in the fringes of the independent scene, Blonde Redhead have been with us for 23 years now, releasing nine albums for four different record labels. On 30 September The Numero group are releasing Masculin féminin, a two disc compilation consisting of their first two albums and a load of other contemporary material …
Album Review: Matt Berry – The Small Hours
Matt Berry has is someone who has stealthily raised his reputation in the music industry in recent years without the wider world really noticing, slowly but surely increasing his audience size by word of mouth, putting out a new album every year since 2013 and playing rapturously received gigs. While The Small Hours hasn’t received …
Not Forgotten: They Might Be Giants – Mink Car
Having extracted themselves from the Elektra record label, They Might Be Giants spent the late 90s keeping relatively low key, with the live Severe Tyre Damage and the early internet oddity Long Tall Weekend being the only albums added to their already interesting CV. By 2001 though they had a backlog of material to clear, …
Not Forgotten: Bruce Springsteen – Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.
I took the scenic route to being a Bruce Springsteen fan. Perhaps bizarrely I started with his critically acclaimed Tunnel of Love, before back tracking to the stadium-conquering Born in the USA. Losing interest for a while, it wasn’t until one of my closest friends started dating a Springsteen obsessive that my interest was sparked …
Not Forgotten: William Shatner – Has Been
Can you imagine trying to pitch a William Shatner album to a record label in 2003? For decades he had been sniggered at for his various attempts at ‘singing’, with his much derided rendition of “Mr Tambourine Man” being a subject of much criticism down the years, though the reaction to that was nothing compared …
Not Forgotten: Leaf Hound – Growers of Mushroom
Ah, 1971, a time when rock music was rapidly evolving and youth culture as a whole was still suffering from the hangover caused by the end of the hippy dream. The giants of the new decade had begun to emerge in the late 60s, with The Beatles split having handily cleared the decks for a …
Album Review: Drugdealer – The End of Comedy
I really didn’t know what to expect when I was asked to review the new album by Mike Collins, the man who is Drugdealer, all I knew was that Collins had been on the LA music scene for a number of years and that he had a reputation for his Carole King-esque piano playing. I …
Not Forgotten: Ocean Colour Scene – Marchin’ Already
Anyone who has read more than a handful of my reviews will be familiar with my oddly conflicted attitude to the mid-90s Britpop movement. Seemingly a term coined by Stuart Maconie, it was one co-opted by mass-media to basically refer to any British guitar wielding act at the time. This led to a lot of …
Not Forgotten: Cat Stevens – Teaser and the Firecat
Teaser And The Firecat is in many ways the twin of the superb Tea for the Tillerman, which has been one of my favourite albums since my early teens and one that meant so much to me over the years, that I didn’t want my illusions of Cat Stevens shattered by finding out that the …
Not Forgotten: Wild Butter – Wild Butter
Every now and then, while perusing the racks at Record Collector, I’ll happen across an album that will demand to be purchased based on its artwork alone. Wild Butter’s eponymous debut of 1970, resplendent in its artwork featuring a giant stick of butter flying through the sky, is one of those albums. Upon initial listen, …