Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: Marlin’s Dreaming - ‘Trophies’

There’s just something so very “deep south” about the jangly lo-fi indie of Dunedin’s Marlin’s Dreaming. ‘Trophies’, off the band’s 2021 album, Hasten, is merely the latest spin on a form of intoxicating melodic guitar pop the region has long since been famous (infamous, un-famous) for. ‘Trophies’ is our final Choice Kiwi Cut for 2021.

(Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021 is a series of blogposts which seek to highlight the best tracks released by New Zealand artists over the course of the calendar year. Not necessarily the “best” in any commercial sense, but those which have proven to be the best additions to this blogger’s music collection)

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: Unknown Mortal Orchestra - 'That Life'

UMO’s ‘That Life’ was quite simply one of the earworms of 2021. Here’s what art-popper-extraordinaire Ruban Nielson said at the time of its mid-year release:

“I saw this painting by Hieronymus Bosch called The Garden of Earthly Delights and in the painting there was a mixture of crazy stuff going on, representing heaven, earth, and hell. When I was writing this song, “That Life,” I was imaging the same kind of “Where’s Waldo” (or “Where’s Wally” as we call it in New Zealand, Australia, and the UK) of contrasting scenes and multiple characters all engaged in that same perverse mixture of luxury, reverie, damnation, in the landscape of America. Somewhere on holiday under a vengeful sun.”

(Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021 is a series of blogposts which seek to highlight the best tracks released by New Zealand artists over the course of the calendar year. Not necessarily the “best” in any commercial sense, but those which have proven to be the best additions to this blogger’s music collection)

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: Chaos In The CBD & Mongo Skato - 'Brainstorm'

Raised in Auckland but now based primarily in the UK, touring and releasing music under the Chaos in the CBD moniker, production duo - and brothers - Ben and Louis Helliker-Hales have developed a solid global following in dance music circles across the past decade. There’s been a series of consistently top notch releases over that period and this year’s Brainstorm EP was no exception. The title track, which is a collaboration with another local artist Mongo Skato, oozes so much deep house warmth it was the most obvious choice cut on the release.

(Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021 is a series of blogposts which seek to highlight the best tracks released by New Zealand artists over the course of the calendar year. Not necessarily the “best” in any commercial sense, but those which have proven to be the best additions to this blogger’s music collection)

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: Anthonie Tonnon - 'Two Free Hands'

Anthonie Tonnon’s ‘Two Free Hands’ dates all the way back to 2017 but it was included on this year’s Leave Love Out of This album so it qualifies as a 2021 choice cut. Tonnon never ceases to amaze with his rare ability to write and produce perfectly crafted pop songs which frequently snub lyrical convention and musical formula. ‘Two Free Hands’ is just one such example, and Tonnon has made a career out of combining his instinct for the experimental and the avant garde with an uncanny knack for pure pop vibes. He is, without question, one of Aotearoa’s most underrated artists.

(Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021 is a series of blogposts which seek to highlight the best tracks released by New Zealand artists over the course of the calendar year. Not necessarily the “best” in any commercial sense, but those which have proven to be the best additions to this blogger’s music collection)

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: The Chills - 'Monolith'

During a year (and in a world) full of upheaval and uncertainty it’s sometimes reassuring to know that some things never change. Especially when that “thing” has been around for decades and involves the mercurial ability to produce clever, quirky, intimate pop music on a whim. Step forward Martin Phillipps and The Chills, with another understated pop masterclass in the form of 2021 album Scatterbrain. It probably won’t win any shiny gongs or be acclaimed as the band’s “best ever” in years to come (because it definitely isn’t that) but it still has enough personality and warmth to be considered yet another primo addition to the band’s ongoing legacy. ‘Monolith’ was the scene-setting album opener and one of my own favourites ...

(Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021 is a series of blogposts which seek to highlight the best tracks released by New Zealand artists over the course of the calendar year. Not necessarily the “best” in any commercial sense, but those which have proven to be the best additions to this blogger’s music collection)

Album Review: Manchester Orchestra - The Million Masks of God (2021)

First things first: Manchester Orchestra are not from Manchester, England. Nor are they from Manchester, anywhere else. Manchester Orchestra are not even an orchestra. They’re an Atlanta, US-based alt-rock four-piece, and the band’s 2021 album, The Million Masks of God, is album number six in a career that dates all the way back to 2004.

Over the course, the band have appeared at big festivals such as Lollapalooza, Coachella, and Reading, and despite having an otherwise relatively low profile outside of their homeland, they’ve clocked up an impressive number of live television performances on US variety/chat shows like the Late Show with David Letterman (4 times), Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and Jimmy Kimmel Live! … if I hadn’t heard the band’s music, you could say it’s exactly the sort of mainstream rock resume I’d normally be a quite wary of and steer well clear of.

 And yet, here we are, late into 2021, and The Million Masks of God is shaping up to be one of the very best new release albums I’ve heard all year. I’d heard snippets - or singular tracks - lifted from the band’s previous full-length outing A Black Mile to the Surface (2017), all of which left enough of an impression for me to pick up The Million Masks of God almost as soon as it was released.

I initially thought the band might have some loose connection (or shared membership) with Seattle indie-folkers Fleet Foxes, such is the similarity in style, and the frequently layered vocal offerings of singer Andy Hull are not all that dissimilar to those of Fleet Foxes main man, Robin Pecknold. Albeit Pecknold and Fleet Foxes rely more heavily on actual harmonies than filters and studio wizardry such as over-dubbing.

The Million Masks of God feels like an assured and self-aware release, an album with a range of lyrical themes - although death does seem like the most predominant concern - and a blend of musical styles. With Hull’s vocal delivery perhaps becoming the album’s most consistent feature, and arguably, along with clever wordsmithery, the glue that holds it all together.

It’s an album of emotional peaks and troughs, where soft acoustic moments sit comfortably alongside edgier or heavier rock-out flashes. Where grand orchestral flourishes push hard up against what I suspect is the band’s more natural (collective) instinct to just relax and let everything breathe. Where the production is often lush, yet the arrangement occasionally sparse or spacious.

Nothing ever feels too rushed or forced. There’s conflict and contradiction to be found on The Million Masks of God. Equal parts joy and sadness. You get the sense on some songs that Hull is genuinely working through issues as he sings about them. Whether it’s mortality, afterlife, or perhaps that most confusing of life perennials, a human relationship. Searching for an answer without ever really being certain about the question.

Whatever else it is, it’s a brilliant listen, a journey, and a stick-on certainty to be one of this blog’s albums of 2021.

Highlights: ‘Angel of Death’, ‘Bed Head’, ‘Telepath’, ‘Dinosaur’, and ‘The Internet’.

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: Leisure - 'Flipside'

I’m not going to lie. I’m partial to the odd bit of 70s-style soft rock. Or yacht rock as it may sometimes be called. Just not too much of it. Small doses etc. I just don’t like to talk about it. Or write about it. In fact, I give a mate of mine some grief occasionally for admitting the exact same thing, whilst harbouring my own dirty little secret. It’s a nostalgia thing, a throwback to a 1970s childhood, when that sort of stuff dominated mainstream radio. When we had very little else other than mainstream radio. Which may or may not be my excuse for listening to a fair bit of Leisure over the past year or so … shamelessly lush, soft disco-infused tracks like ‘Take You Higher’, ‘Mesmerised’, and this Choice Cut, ‘Flipside’. All great slices of pure pop. All of which can be found on the Auckland band’s recently released Sunsetter album.

(Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021 is a series of blogposts which seek to highlight the best tracks released by New Zealand artists over the course of the calendar year. Not necessarily the “best” in any commercial sense, but those which have proven to be the best additions to this blogger’s music collection)

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: Lorde - 'Oceanic Feeling'

Lorde has always been a bit hit and miss for me. Mostly miss. Obviously, she’s hugely significant as a local artist simply because she hit it big internationally at a very young age and she’s now somehow managed to expand her fanbase well beyond its initial demographic. There’s no question that she’s talented and there’s something about her which suggests she’ll enjoy a relatively long career. Good for her. 

This year Lorde released her third full-length album, Solar Power, and although I couldn’t really have cared less about it, there was enough chatter around its release to arouse my curiosity, so I had a sneaky listen. My overall impression was that the album is very much her “summer of love” moment and a few tracks are quite derivative of the early 90s “baggy” period. 

Others will beg to differ, but I thought the vast majority of Solar Power was listenable but mostly unrelatable. Then I reached the album closer ‘Oceanic Feeling’ … what a relief. Relief partly because I’d reached the end of what was essentially an obligatory listen, but mostly relief because I’d finally found the unheralded album gem which made the previous hour’s effort all the more worthwhile. It was one of just a couple of tracks from Solar Power I downloaded and kept for playlist compilation purposes. 

‘Oceanic Feeling’ simply oozes “typical New Zealand summer family break” in ways I’ve never heard articulated in song before. The references to father, brother, fishing, food, and outdoor fun are clear and obvious, but more specifically, for me, the vibe of ‘Oceanic Feeling’ is all about my own sepia-tinged distant childhood memories of long hot carefree summer days at my Grandparents’ beach house or “bach” in Hawke’s Bay. Thank you for that, Lorde. 

(Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021 is a series of blogposts which seek to highlight the best tracks released by New Zealand artists over the course of the calendar year. Not necessarily the “best” in any commercial sense, but those which have proven to be the best additions to this blogger’s music collection)

EP Review: The Emptys Response - Nový Den (2021)

Nový Den is a three track EP from Wellington multi-instrumentalist Jamie Scott Palmer, wearing his solo artist hat as The Emptys Response.

Released in early January of 2021, Nový Den loosely translates (from Czech) to mean “a new day”, which seems quite apt for a new year release, but I also suspect the title may be of greater personal significance for Palmer; as someone I’ve followed closely on social media for a few years he strikes me as a guy who is constantly looking to move forward, to challenge himself, and to challenge wider society’s accepted norms. Someone who craves answers to many of life’s more difficult questions. I’ve met Palmer out and about very briefly a few times in Wellington, usually at the tail end of gigs, which isn’t always the best environment to discuss such matters, or to get a full grasp of what makes an artist tick, so all of the above is merely an impression I’ve formed and not necessarily the gospel according to those who actually know him well.

What I do know for certain is that two of the more recent musical projects Palmer has been involved with - Dreams Are Like Water and Buffalo Bunny - produced some of the best beneath-the-mainstream-radar indie rock I’ve heard from these shores across the past decade. I’ve previously raved about the solitary Dreams Are Like Water release (here), so I won’t go into too much more detail about that. Suffice to say, Palmer’s contribution (keys, occasional guitar) was an integral part of that band’s appeal.

And the Buffalo Bunny stuff - collaborating with performance artist Victoria Singh - of 2019/2020 was almost more David Lynch than Lynch himself. The duo’s early 2020 Covid-themed track ‘2 Meters’ (clip here) was easily the best musical realisation of the dystopian or pre-apocalyptic collective angst created by the first global lockdown I heard during that period. The nonchalant or subtle mimicry of that whole “be kind to one another, follow the leader, and don’t ask questions” theme within ‘2 Meters’ was subliminally brilliant, mischievously subversive, and for many, right on the money. There were other great Buffalo Bunny moments too, and it is of some regret that I caught only the tail end of one of their rare live sets (at Wellington’s Pyramid Club) during their all too short-lived existence.

Which brings us to The Emptys Response and Palmer in his solo guise (phew, we got there eventually), by some distance his most prolific platform when it comes to work released online. Across many years. Including the Nový Den EP, which amounts to three relatively lengthy atmospheric instrumental tracks which blend together or cross-pollinate a number of different genres, from ambient to electronica to dark post-punk to a mild form of spacey psychedelia.

There was a certain irony for me that I was stuck in motorway traffic gridlock when first absorbing the scene-setting opener ‘The Drive Home’ which is effectively a probing low key synthetic pulse that threatens to explode at any moment without ever quite managing it across its near eight-minute duration. It is dark and quite tense without ever becoming too overwhelming. More of a mood or vibe than anything else, and I’m still trying to decide whether the drums are program generated or the result of a more human or live organic approach, on a loop. There’s a lot to be said for a live drum sound, and if this isn’t that, then Palmer’s done a pretty good job replicating it.

The second track, ‘Terraforma’, feels more substantial and is perhaps the most accessible of the three on offer. A dense, repetitive, almost bleak slice of semi-industrial grinding electronica which builds in tension to become quite riveting, it’s probably my pick of the bunch. See clip below.

The final track ‘11:11’ - which not coincidentally is its length - is an exercise in spaced out ambience and it’s another which slowly builds in intensity as we journey through its various subtle mood changing soundscapes. Ethereal and entirely beatless until just before the seven-minute mark, it may upon first listen feel a little directionless, or prone to drift for too long, but subsequent listens will reveal that there’s a lot more going on than might initially be obvious.

You can check out Palmer’s extensive collection of solo work on his website here.

Classic Album Review: Primal Scream - Vanishing Point (1997)

Craig Stephen runs the ruler over yet another Primal Scream classic …

Vanishing Point, the movie:

A cult classic released in 1971 which mirrors America’s obsession with cars and the open road, and the plight of the little guy against the authorities. It is essentially one long chase sequence as Kowalski (no first name), played by cult actor Barry Newman, commits to a bet to deliver a Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours. There are flashbacks to personal trauma, a radio DJ who eggs him on (“the last American hero, the electric centaur, the demi-god, the super driver of the golden west”) and cops on his back. Of course, it doesn’t end well.

Vanishing Point, the album:

There was a country rock n soul soundtrack, featuring Kim Carnes, Jimmy Bowen and Delaney, Bonnie and Friends, but even by the 90s it was long forgotten and hard to find. The concept of doing an album for an imaginary film wasn’t new. But doing a soundtrack for one which had already been done … well that was a little bit leftfield. And the Scream did it because they wanted to. The resulting album sounds nothing like the original soundtrack; indeed, it contains some of most ambitious music the Scream ever made. Their soundtrack was based on a skewed and likely substance-filled take on the nature of the film.

‘Burning Wheel’, the opening track, sounds like an outtake from Screamadelica, something that may have been a little too Krautrockian for that swaggering composition to the days of new drugs and when indie music crossed into dance. Its Syd-era Floyd, Faust, and Primals c.1985 all wrapped up in one.

The album’s centrepiece, and the lead single, ‘Kowalski’, samples heavily from the film itself – all from the DJ’s magnificent diatribes that turn a cop chase into a road race: “Two nasty Nazi cars are close behind the beautiful, lone driver / The police know that they’re getting closer ... closer / Closer to our soul hero in his soul mobile / Yeah, baby, they’re about to strike / They’re gonna get him, smash him, rape / The last beautiful free soul on this planet.”

Bobby Gillespie’s own, sparse lyrics seem only to fill the gap between the dialogue-cum-verses; a drum sample from Can’s ‘Halleluwah’ is thrown in and the song cribs the bassline from a Funkadelic song. Ex-Stone Roses bassist Mani is on fire here, a valuable addition to the gang.

The instrumental ‘If They Move Kill ‘Em’ – a line from the bloodiest and baddest western of them all, The Wild Bunch, is driven by a constant drum backbeat, a hollering synthesizer and pounding bass. Following closely by is ‘Stuka’, its dub bass intro introducing the cacophony of noise of the German dive-bomber in full flow. The airplane included wailing sirens intended to smash their enemies into submission, something the Primals attempt to recreate. There’s almost two minutes of instrumentalism before the voice kicks in, a muted, low-fi drone, which comes across as Darth Vader singing Lee Hazlewood, and limited to such oblique snippets as “I got Jesus in my head like a stinger / He moves from tree to tree in the back of my mind / A ragged shadowy figure, I got him.” Is this even Bobby Gillespie singing? Seems so.

An intriguing inclusion is a cover of Lemmy’s ‘Motorhead’, initially released as a B-side in his final days with 70s prog-punks Hawkwind, and his metal monster band’s debut single. The two songs are somewhat different with the metal version, more, erm metally. Scream’s take on this rock anthem is to revert to Hawkwind’s original, retaining all its nastiness and throwing in a perverse opening verse, with Gillespie sounding like a gecko being mauled by a domestic cat, and various loops and layers thrown in for good measure.

There’s also a chunk of instrumentals, including a brooding update of ‘Trainspotting’ from the Scottish drugs and ... well more drugs degenerate movie of the same name, with about two minutes trimmed from the version that appeared on the official soundtrack.

Among all this dub’n’bass and dirty garage rock, it is a little surprising to hear ‘Star’, the second single to come off the album (as part of an EP), which owes a little to ‘Loaded’, with a horn section, snaky melodica played by Augustus Pablo, and a sincere and simplistic chorus: “Every brother is a star / Every sister is a star” as well as these killer lines that Gillespie throws in to the love-in: “The Queen of England, there's no greater anarchist / One man's freedom fighter is another's terrorist.”

After the Stones-devotional Give Out But Don’t Give Up (1994), the Scream really took a leftfield turn with Vanishing Point. Out went the Keef riffs and Jagger swagger, in came an industrial level melding of krautrock, dub, electrofreakery and Ennio Morricone. It’s magnificently experimental, and utilises all manner of distortion, fuzztones, tape delays, drum machines, and sitars. It’s a rampant adventure into the unorthodox, at a time when British bands were encouraged to go retro. But this was the backlash to Britpop, the Santa Claus of music scenes that disappeared as quickly as it appeared. And with the Super Furry Animals and Radiohead ramping up the weirdness and the outlandishness at the same time, there was only way for the future of so-called Cool Britannia: oblivion. It was the beginning of something new: the Scream followed it up with XTRMNTR and Evil Heat, both of which simmered with unadulterated Krautrock, post-punk, Millenium confusion and anti-capitalist anger.

De dub version: Echo Dek (1997)

Echo Dek was the logical dub and remix version of the album which was released just a few months later. Master knob twiddler Adrian Sherwood was at the controls, bashing and smashing eight of VP’s tracks – with ‘Stuka’ getting the double version treatment. These already mightily impressive tracks were cut up and reconstructed into an even further and abstract dub orbit. Sherwood sampled Prince Far-I on ‘Wise Blood’, one of the rejigs of ‘Stuka’. Some tracks merit the makeovers but the versions of ‘Star’ and ‘Kowalski’, if we’re being honest, remain pretty much honest to the originals. Remix albums tend to suffer from laziness and record company pushiness, but Sherwood has a free rein and the passion to carry out a good job.

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: Merk - 'Laps Around the Sun'

Auckland multi-instrumentalist Mark Perkins (ex-Fazerdaze, others) continues to gain a lot of global traction in his solo guise as Merk, and his latest album Infinite Youth was widely lauded in indie pop circles when released earlier this year. It was a release chock full of gentle existential insights into that age old conundrum of growing up / growing older, and how we’re all forced to deal with the inevitability of that (the alternative is not much chop, right?). ‘Laps Around the Sun’ is one such melancholic reflection, and it got a fair bit of ear time on my pod in 2021. It’s another one of those mellow choice cuts that won’t exactly have you throwing yourself around the mosh, but it does have a little bit of that earworm thing going on, and I think it offers a great snapshot of the album itself.

(Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021 is a series of blogposts which seek to highlight the best tracks released by New Zealand artists over the course of the calendar year. Not necessarily the “best” in any commercial sense, but those which have proven to be the best additions to this blogger’s music collection)

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: Vietnam - 'What Have I Done?'

From the Straight Outta Wainuiomata files. Also from the Most Unlikely Comeback of 2021 files. Early 80s post-punk veterans Vietnam returned this year with a new track called ‘What Have I Done?’ and the promise of a new album in early 2022. As comeback releases go, this one was right up my alley.

Founding member and bass guitarist Adrian Workman says of the track:

“‘What Have I Done?’ is about the experience of being in a destructive and co-dependent relationship, which is always destined to fail. The lyric contains a desperate plea for understanding and forgiveness, while at the same time projecting the hurt and anger that comes with the inability to take responsibility for your own behaviours and feelings. The desperation in the chorus lyric (and title of the song) is the inner voice of shame that drives the narrative.”

Download the track from the Vietnam Bandcamp page here

(Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021 is a series of blogposts which seek to highlight the best tracks released by New Zealand artists over the course of the calendar year. Not necessarily the “best” in any commercial sense, but those which have proven to be the best additions to this blogger’s music collection)

Choice Kiwi Cuts 2021: Repulsive Woman - 'Julia Knows Beauty'

With another year end approaching it seems timely to reconvene a regular everythingsgonegreen blog pre-festive tradition – the all-too-readily missed and/or often completely ignored practice of me sharing with you some of my thoughts and reckons on Aotearoa’s musical year. 

I’ve got to be honest, in my view, 2021 hasn’t been particularly epic for local music. At least not when it comes to album additions to my own collection. Over the past decade, “new” New Zealand-made music has always featured prominently among those additions, and it hasn’t been unusual for a number of homegrown albums to make my annual “most listened to” or best of year-end list. 

Unfortunately, I just can’t see that happening this year. But that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been some good stuff released during 2021 – it just means I didn’t pick up a physical or digital copy of it … Spotify doesn’t count. Over the next couple of months, I’ll be posting a series of clips or streams of those local tracks that did move me sufficiently in 2021 to earn a, um, highly coveted place on the, um, very prestigious everythingsgonegreen Choice Kiwi Cuts list. 

That list seldom features the most obvious stuff so if you’re a fan of Six60, L.A.B., or insert-popular-biggish-name-Kiwi-artist-here, you’re probably going to be disappointed. It goes without saying then, that the list does not profess to be anything close to a definitive summary of everything that happened on these shores during the year. I’ll reserve a place only for those tracks or artists I personally liked or enjoyed. 

Starting with … Repulsive Woman – ‘Julia Knows Beauty’ 

Repulsive Woman is the musical handle for former Astro Child, Millie Lovelock, whose 2019 album Relief won the Taite Music Prize for Best Independent Debut in 2020. Lovelock didn’t offer us too much in the form of new work in 2021, but this track, ‘Julia Knows Beauty’, was a stand-out cut on a Z Tapes ‘Summer 2021’ compilation I picked up. It’s a bit of a slow burner but one that really starts to reveal its charms after a few repeat plays and a little bit of patience. It isn’t going to rock your socks off, but beautifully crafted acoustic ballads rarely tend to do that, and the appeal lies elsewhere.

 

Album Review: Brain Damage meets Big Youth – Beyond the Blue (2021)

Released earlier this year on the Jarring Effects label, Beyond the Blue is an album with quite a sobering backstory. A collaboration between legendary Jamaican DJ Big Youth, France-based dub producer Martin Nathan (aka Brain Damage), and Jamaican-born studio veteran Samuel Clayton Jr., it was recorded in Kingston in March 2020, just as the first wave of Covid-19 sent the planet into meltdown, and lockdown. And that’s when things took a tragic turn for the worst.

The trio had barely started the process, recording just a few takes before both Nathan and Clayton Jr. contracted the virus. Nathan somehow managed to return to France, with the remaining pair opting to try to continue with the album in Kingston alongside fellow Anchor Studios producer Stephen Stewart. Sadly, Clayton Jr. would not survive, succumbing to the virus before the project reached completion. 

With the support of his label, Nathan resolved to finish the album, mixing the work-in-progress and adding the finishing touches back in Lyon, after eventually winning his own prolonged battle with Covid-19. The result is Beyond the Blue, a masterclass in reggae toasting and dub production, and a fitting tribute to the talent and determination of all three key protagonists. 

For the uninitiated, Big Youth (Manley Buchanan, to his Mum) is something of a legend in Jamaican DJ circles. With the recent loss of Jamaican uber producer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, you could say he is one of the last great survivors of the reggae’s 1970s and 1980s golden age. Now in his 70s, he is one of the pioneers of the popular “toasting” vocal style, alongside contemporary U-Roy, who coincidentally, is another of the genre’s greats to pass in 2021. 

The album itself is superb. A compelling mix of rootsy flavours, rocksteady, ska, jazz (yes, jazz) it finds Big Youth in fine vocal form. There’s a couple of jazzy remakes of the classic ‘I Pray Thee’, which bookend the 12-tracks on offer, and beyond the usual declarations of faith and chants of praise, there’s a fair bit of prescient social and political content as well. As you’d expect. 

And naturally, given the context, there are also a couple of references to the virus itself. There’s a nice touch on a couple of tracks where the recording of in-studio spoken narrative or preamble is left in, raw and unedited, presumably as a tribute to Clayton Jr. 

I especially enjoyed the old school rocksteady-paced stuff, with the ridiculously infectious, yet relatively simple groove of ‘Those Days’ in particular, quickly becoming a firm favourite. 

But they’re all pretty good tunes, and Martin Nathan, wearing his Brain Damage hat, deserves enormous credit for not only providing the compositions which allow Big Youth to shine, but for bringing the project to completion at a time when it might have been easier to simply shelf it. The album can be found on Bandcamp here. 

R.I.P. Samuel Clayton Jr. 

Here’s the 2020 version of ‘I Pray Thee’, which opens the album:

Album Review: The Killers - Pressure Machine (2021)

I can’t say I’m a big fan of The Killers. I quite liked a couple of the band’s early singles, but I’ve never really been drawn to any of the many album releases, and I think party anthem ‘Mr Brightside’ is one of the most overrated pieces of bombast ever to pass itself off under the guise of an iconic indie rock tune. 

Which will make it all the more surprising when I tell you that I’m absolutely loving the latest Killers album, Pressure Machine, right now. I’m not sure quite how I got here. 

To compound just how disconcerting this is for me is the fact that as a long-term sceptic about the worth of Bruce Springsteen in the widescreen view of rock history (not a fan), I reckon Pressure Machine might just about be the most Springsteen-like album ever made by a bunch of musicians not called the E Street Band.

The biggest issue I’ve had with both Springsteen and The Killers in the past is that inescapable in-yer-face over-produced celebratory or triumphant “big” sound so beloved by so many. Subtlety and understatement have seldom been in the vocabulary of either Bruce or (Killers’ all-American hero) Brandon Flowers. Unless the album is Springsteen’s stripped-back masterpiece Nebraska, which admittedly is rather great, or as with this case, a 2021 rebirth for The Killers called Pressure Machine. 

The overriding vibe of the album is one of smalltown midwestern America, out in the back blocks of beyond, with tales about “hillbilly heroin pills”, opioid abuse, poverty, blind love, bent truths, sexual difference, suicide, and as on one stand-out track (‘Quiet Town’), the supposedly true story about the death of a teenage couple after they were hit by an oncoming train. Real life, observational, blue collar, gritty, grassroots stories that will surely resonate. 

The bonus being you won’t have to listen through too much sonic overload in order to grasp the theme of each song. Aided by short introductory spoken/dubbed narratives for most of them. The lyrics are right up in your face, but only because they’re not being drowned out, and because Flowers doesn’t have to strain to be heard above the din. Which means that musically it’s a little more stripped-back than might have otherwise been expected. A lot of acoustic guitar, some steel guitar, large helpings of harmonica, plus there’s a fair bit of atmosphere-enhancing cello and violin/fiddle etc. 

There are moments when the aforementioned “big” sound kicks in, resulting in a few of those overbearing pompous moments, but for the most part it feels a hell of lot more authentic and honest than anything I’ve ever previously heard from The Killers. Flowers sings these songs with an integrity and humility I’ve never before associated with him or his band. Where Flowers’ vocal might once have pushed me away, on Pressure Machine it draws me in close. 

And that might just be the key to my enjoyment of this Killers album, one that I picked up on a whim. I’m thankful that I did so. 

There’s no filler here, and the highlights include ‘West Hills’, ‘Quiet Town’, ‘Runaway Horses’, which features Phoebe Bridgers, ‘In Another Life’, and ‘Desperate Things’.

EP Review: Camomile Dawn – Bruttissimo (2021)

I've seen the music of Camomile Dawn described as "house" or "dance music". Which isn't really all that accurate. I struggle with each of those labels. The four tracks found on the Bruttissimo EP play out rather more like a frayed-around-the-edges form of synthpop. Equal portions melodrama, psychedelia, and melancholia. Not unlike the Cocteau Twins, yet not really like the Cocteau Twins at all. And that’s without even starting on the (lack of) requisite bpm factor. If this is dance music, then it’s dance music for dancing on the inside. Little head bobs, finger taps, and warm brain fuzzies. That sort of thing. 

Art is seldom so black and white. Bruttissimo is moody grey, with flecks of sunlight peeking through. Presented with a stylish French sheen. It all works quite well. Except perhaps for the EP cover design, which looks a little bit like one of those paint-by-numbers canvas artworks my dear old Gran used to occupy her time with.

Whatever else it is, the EP is one of the best short form releases I’ve heard all year. 

Joe Muggs kind of nails it in his write-up for “The Best Electronic Music on Bandcamp”, August 2021:

"Just when you think there can’t be more mileage in fizzy, nostalgic, lo-fi house, here comes another alias of Turkish producer Sumatran Black to make it feel fresh again. All the signifiers are here: The voyeuristic feeling of finding an old VHS of someone else’s wedding, the cosmopolitan and stylish voiceovers, the fizz that becomes part of the instruments. It’s rich, it’s romantic, it’s irresistible."

EP Review: FRTG13 – Supersymmetrie (2021)

Here’s a thing. Another great recommendation from Fabrizio Lusso’s excellent White Light // White Heat website. Another great name-your-price digital download on Bandcamp. Dark industrial synthpop crossing over seamlessly with more orthodox forms of post-punk. Coming to you by way of Hanover, Germany. With a nod and a definite debt to compatriots Kraftwerk. Five tracks, the best of which are the title track, ‘Supersymmetrie’, and the more than vaguely familiar ‘Computer Welt’. 

Grab a copy from the link below, and if you like this, why not go back further and pick up a copy of last year’s Corona Sessions, which is also name-your-price.

Album Review: Sneaker Pimps - Squaring The Circle (2021)

Nineteen years is a long time between the release of albums, yet the fully formed return of Sneaker Pimps in 2021 might have you believing they never really went away. They did, for roughly a decade, while key protagonists Chris Corner and Liam Howe pursued other projects. Corner kept busy with an underrated solo project called IAMX, while Howe has been quite prolific as a production guru for many of pop music’s good, great, and downright awful.

 I was a bit of an IAMX fan for a few years around a decade ago, and I thought Corner’s 2009 album (as IAMX), Kingdom of Welcome Addiction, was one of those beneath-the-radar gems that often tend to slip by unnoticed and unloved, sans much promotion or media interest.

Squaring The Circle is album number four for Sneaker Pimps, and whilst there’s no real banger to match the band’s best-known hit ‘6 Underground’, which went top ten in 1997, there’s plenty here to keep old - and presumably some new - fans happy.

There’s no real change in formula, and although the wider pop-electronica genre no longer enjoys the same level of hype it did during the band’s phase-one pomp, Sneaker Pimps are past masters of the art, and improvements in technology have doubtlessly aided a seamless comeback for Corner and Howe.

Anyone expecting “progression” or a change in approach might be disappointed. If anything, this is slightly more lightweight than earlier Sneaker Pimps work, fitting rather more neatly into the pop realm than might have been anticipated – particularly when you consider how bleak or challenging some of Corner’s solo work became.

Corner takes care of much of the vocal duties, but there’s a nice balance across the entire album thanks to the shared vocal presence of the multi-talented Simonne Jones, who adds elements of light to soothe or counter Corner’s often angsty darker edge.

At 16 tracks it’s a relatively generous listen and it feels as though Squaring The Circle deliberately builds to some sort of mid-album peak before tapering off slightly. Certainly, my own favourite tracks sit snug within the album’s core … the likes of ‘Stripes’, ‘Black Rain’, and ‘Love Me Stupid’, even though the pre-release singles - ‘Fighter’ and the title track - feature as album bookends.

All told, Squaring The Circle is pretty decent, and a pleasant surprise.

Classic Album Review: Gene - Revelations (1999)

Craig Stephen looks back at a pure, bona fide “semi-classic” album from a band who surely deserved a lot more love ...

Britpop seemed to make anything possible at its peak in the 1990s.

It made stars of the mediocre and created a scene for people starved of any youth movement for a decade or so. It drew in a range of acts whose only qualification was that they played guitars, and were British.

Gene were both part and aloof from the retro-friendly movement. Led by Martin Rossiter, and aided by Steve Mason, Kevin Miles and Matt James, their heart-wrenching lyrics, sexual ambiguity, and a love of life’s underdogs would soon have the hacks comparing them to The Smiths, Gods to many of the period’s stalwarts. But the comparison was a little misguided as they were just as much influenced by The Jam, The Faces, and The Stone Roses.

After the sparkling, critic-friendly debut of Olympian and a lavishly-produced and sprightly written second, Drawn To The Deep End, they embarked on a new turn: the suits and white shirts were packed off to the op shops, replaced by Fred Perry polo tops, a look that was complimented by trips to the barbers for enthusiastic trims.

Revelations thus was a musical, ahem revelation, of Detroit-heavy brute force, angry politicised songs and a band sounding on edge. Released in 1999 at a time when the New Labour government of Tony Blair had proven itself to be a professional con-job as its veneer of radicalism was soon exposed by its devotion to extreme capitalism and division.

The betrayal of millions was summed up as “When red became blue/ Hope denied,” a line from the single ‘As Good As It Gets’.

The Mod-like album opener was a brutal take-down of the direction the country was taking, and the ingrained class division that had long blighted the United Kingdom. It was a state-of-the-nation address and while its message was primarily that politicians could never be relied on to enact radical change, there was always the hope that one day the thieving rich might get their comeuppance.

“Be careful in life and you'll see/ The greedy live off you and me/ This is the code, we can't break history/ The greedy still fear you and me.”

It was a theme returned to on ‘Love Won’t Work’, which is delivered with the type of forlorn bitterness Rossiter was highly adept at.

“Some thrive, we try to keep ourselves alive/ Strike first, the rich must be deprived/ Or Highgate armies will arrive/ I've seen the light.”

Perhaps the most striking example of Gene’s disgust with contemporary politics was displayed on ‘Mayday’, which resurrects Britain’s revolutionary Minister of Health in the 1945 Labour government Nye Bevan, hailing him as a true socialist and radical. Rossiter envisages Bevan spinning in his grave as the party (Labour) nears ever closer to terminal decline, a prophecy that has proven to be on the mark. This is now the party of Peter Mandelson and his cronies who have infiltrated it and stripped it bare of all its original intentions.

The ode to binge drinking ‘Fill Her Up’ contains Spanish horns and is one of the more uplifting and memorable tracks.  ‘The English Disease’, ‘Angel’ and ‘You’ll Never Walk Again’ are among a string of powerful and venomous heavyweights, which demand to be played louder. ‘The Police Will Never Find You’ is a curious item, a song about violence and revenge, displayed in a bovver-boy manner as Rossiter warns his intended victim: “Your face is my canvas/ And Stanley my brush.”

At the other end of the scale, ‘Something In The Water’ is a slow-burning melancholic ballad that runs on for too long, but such mournful sounds are rare on this album.

At the time of its release, many critics didn’t take to Revelations as kindly as they should have, which is partly due to a desire to leave the embers of Britpop to cool out and move on to the next big thing. But, revisiting it so many years later it’s apparent that this is a hidden gem, a delight of rock music with a swagger and attitude in abundance.

Following this, Gene left their major label Polydor due to disagreements over promotion and formed their own label. On it they would release a final opus, Libertine, before going their merry ways.

Revelations was reissued and remastered in 2014 as a double CD with the second disc full of excellent B-sides and a live set. One day it might get the full, multi-disk super special deluxe treatment. Or maybe not.

Introducing ... Graysons

I know nothing about mysterious Austin-based post-punkers Graysons – other than the fact that the band hails from Detroit and is currently based in Austin (clearly, thanks Bandcamp). I wish I knew more, but it probably doesn’t matter too much – the important bit is they sound great and their debut full-length release, I, is currently up on Bandcamp as a name-your-price digital download (link below). The album itself ticks all the right boxes for me, sitting at the darker end of the post-punk spectrum, veering occasionally towards shoegaze. Nine tracks, clocking in at just over half an hour, the highlights include ‘Til The End’, ‘Illuminate’, and ‘Through The Ether’. Grab a copy:

 

Album Review: The Orb - Abolition of The Royal Familia - The Guillotine Mixes (2021)

Sometimes a remix project can wind up being a little too clever for its own good. And sometimes an album in its original naked warts-n-all form is best left that way. 

That’s exactly how I feel about The Orb’s 2020 album, Abolition of The Royal Familia. The remix follow-up, the Guillotine Mixes version, which was released earlier this year, adds very little of value, save perhaps for David Harrow’s sublime edit of album opener ‘Daze’. 

I can understand the attraction though. On one hand it was an album screaming out for a reboot, given that the original tended to slip beneath the radar of all but the most dedicated of Orb fans. On the other hand, the album was already close to perfect, and the remix edition just feels like 90-odd minutes of unnecessary lacklustre fluff. I can see the intent. It’s just that the execution doesn’t really match the ambition.

 Harrow adds plenty to ‘Daze’, for sure, converting it from a relatively sunny lightweight disco mix into a brooding, pulsing EDM creeper. Harrow also touches up ‘House of Narcotics’ (simply called ‘Narcotics’ on the Guillotine version). 

The roll call of producers is certainly impressive enough on paper; KLF conspirators Moody Boyz remix ‘Queen of Hearts’, former Orb associate Andy Falconer takes on ‘Slave Til U Die’, Youth reconfigures ‘Shape Shifting Pt.1’, and the much-travelled Kris Needs contributes to ‘Weekend’. I was very surprised that renowned dub merchant Gaudi removed so many of the dub elements from ‘Ital Orb’, thus stripping it of all the special qualities that made it one of the original album’s best tracks. 

I guess my biggest problem with it, is that after the initial promise of Harrow’s opening track, the whole thing just tends to wash over me. Nothing really grabs me. I drift off into a trance-like state, and for all of the spit and polish applied, these remixes veer irreversibly into the realm of ambient background noise. It’s all very pleasant but unlike the original work, there is nothing really challenging or thought provoking about these works. 

It might be that I’m being too picky, but I consumed the 2020 version of Abolition of The Royal Familia during peak-lockdown, early in the year, just as Covid-19 was taking hold of our planet, and it felt like a fairly weighty faux-apocalyptic piece of work. I enjoyed that facet of it. It was an album for and of the moment itself. Something that captured the sense of angst and foreboding we were living through at the time. These Guillotine mixes evoke little more than ambivalence and a resigned nonchalance.

A release for fans and completists only.

Album Review: The Chills - Scatterbrain (2021)

A few months back, when the Guardian published a list of the ten “best” Chills songs to celebrate the arrival of the band’s new album, Scatterbrain, all of the songs featured on the list were released between 1981 and 1990. And although that list did tend to capture the essence of the band’s best work, anyone unfamiliar with The Chills might be left wondering if that’s all there is, or was, to The Chills ... a band consigned to the 80s with little worth celebrating over the past 30-odd years? Fans of band are likely to see things a bit differently.

 For the record, ‘House with a Hundred Rooms’ topped the list, ahead of more obvious bangers like ‘I Love My Leather Jacket’ and ‘Pink Frost’, but there was no room for ‘Heavenly Pop Hit’ or a multitude of other post-1990 gems. Fair enough, lists are merely lists after all, and that was the Guardian’s view. 

Scatterbrain is the band’s seventh studio album, the first since 2018’s well-received Snow Bound, and it finds the band’s songwriter and key protagonist Martin Phillipps in a contemplative and reflective mood. Which is perhaps understandable … anyone who has viewed the excellent recent music-documentary, ‘The Chills: The Triumph and Tragedy of Martin Phillipps’, will have been given a good insight into Phillipps’ rather tumultuous personal journey over the years. 

On Scatterbrain we find Phillipps offering up a few more thoughts about where that journey has taken him, bringing us up to date with where things are at, a little further along the path, in 2021. With a refreshing honesty and maturity. In that same warm familiar clever way he always has. As a man now confronting his own fragility, his own mortality, and that of those around him. 

But while death is one of the most immediately evident themes on Scatterbrain, not least on tunes like ‘Destiny’ and ‘Caught In My Eye’, there’s also plenty of positivity to be found, and an affirmation that life is full of twists and turns. Delivered with certain pragmatism and an acceptance that all of our journeys are constantly evolving. 

‘Safe and Sound’ is one of the best low-key takes on offer, a very Dunedin take, even, where Phillipps ponders the simple pleasures of being tucked up “safe and sound” at home on the sofa in front of a crackling fire on a cold winter’s night … “let’s stay at home, we won’t go out tonight” … 

Musically it is everything you’d expect from The Chills. Subtle hooks, catchy choruses that tend to creep up on you, and clever use of instruments that wouldn’t always be the most obvious choice for a lesser composer of classic pop tunes. 

The album isn’t without its flaws, or without the odd cringe(y) moment. And it’s probably not the sort of work that will grab you instantly upon first listen, but Scatterbrain goes well beyond any expectation I had of Phillipps and The Chills in 2021, and it’s another worthy addition to the musical legacy of one of Aotearoa’s best and most durable artists.

EPs and other oddities ...

My regular reader (Hi Mum!) will know I use this blog as a way of recording my thoughts on all manner of new release albums, with album reviews - both current and “classic” - accounting for a fair portion of everythingsgonegreen content. But I don’t often get around to covering off my many EP or shorter format purchases. Of which there have been quite a few over the past 18 months or so. 

Across 2020 I did manage to record some thoughts on EP releases from Dub Empire (here), Féroces (here), and International Bad Boys Inc. (here), but there were a good number of other worthy EP additions which failed to get a mention on the blog at the time, despite my best intentions. To put that right, this blogpost will be all about some of those new-ish release EPs. That often ignored and mostly unloved stray waif of a format … the hard to nail down “mini album”. The not-quite single and the not-quite album. Usually anything from four to seven tracks in length, and usually less than 30 minutes in duration at its most generous.

I’ll start with 48 Hours at Neon Palms by The C33s, which was released as far back as 2018. The C33s were new to me when a friend sent through a link to the Manchester band’s terrific 2020 single, ‘Harpurhey Hostility’. Which prompted me to work my way back through the band’s discography - all singles, no album yet - until I found the debut EP, which consists of four surf-pop-styled post-punk tracks of the highest calibre. I now have a copy of everything the noisy three-piece have released (to date) and I can hardly wait for a full-length outing. Maybe this year? 

I’ve reviewed three relatively recent Pet Shop Boys albums on the blog, and if you’ve read those reviews, you’ll know how much I struggle with PSB. What I like, I really love. What I don’t like, I dislike intensely. With a passion, even. I just can’t seem to get a handle on my feelings about the prolific duo’s work. So, I was very surprised how much I enjoyed their well-below-the-radar 2020 EP, My Beautiful Laundrette, which I suppose is more formally recognised as a “soundtrack album”. A very belated soundtrack album recorded specifically for a - planned, possibly postponed - 2020 stage production of the Hanif Kureishi-penned 1985 cult classic (film) of the same name. The majority of its seven tracks are instrumentals, but all capture the vibe and atmosphere of the original film perfectly. I can well imagine a couple of these tracks being quite big hits had they been conceived or recorded and included in the film at the time. It takes a special sort of talent to recreate the mood of working class, multicultural, homophobic, peak-Thatcher London, some 35 years after the fact, but Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe play a blinder on My Beautiful Laundrette. If you’ve seen the film, track titles like ‘Omar’s Theme’, ‘Angelic Thug’, and ‘Johnny’s Darkside’ will resonate. If you haven’t seen the film … where the hell have you been?

Minuit Machine’s album Infrarouge was one of the very best things I heard back in 2019, so it was a no brainer for me to pick up a copy of the duo’s EP/single Don’t Run From The Fire when it was released in late 2020. Four tracks, all stunning state-of-the-art dark melodramatic synthpop at its finest. If anything, the release had a harder edge to it than much of the material found on Infrarouge, with an almost industrial feel to the still very danceable title track. I’m fast becoming a big fan of the Synth Religion label/platform it was released on, and I’ve also recently picked up a copy of the duo’s Basic Needs EP of 2021 … although at just three tracks that one might be considered more of a “single”.

I suspect Scottish band Snow Patrol is deeply unfashionable these days. That wasn’t always the case. I loved the breakthrough hit ‘Run’ all those years ago, and of course, the band’s biggest hit, ‘Chasing Cars’, was a global monster which propelled the band well beyond its original “indie pop” niche and into the mainstream stratosphere. 2020 saw Snow Patrol return with a new EP called The Fireside Sessions. Written and recorded during lockdown, it was a fairly unique little beastie in that it was made in collaboration with fans of the band. Five songs written and constructed during a series of streams on Instagram Live called The Saturday Songwriters. How very 2020. More to the point, it’s actually pretty good, with ‘On The Edge Of All This’ in particular becoming a firm favourite of mine during the second half of the year. All proceeds from the sale of the EP went to an anti-poverty charity, so kudos to Snow Patrol for that.

French melodica ace and committed Augustus Pablo disciple Art-X has received plenty of coverage on everythingsgonegreen previously. He’s been quite prolific with output over the past half dozen years or so - just check out this link to his Bandcamp page (here) for proof of that. 2020 saw yet another album release, Tales of Melodia, and while I picked up a copy of that release later in the year and enjoyed it, I was far more impressed with his earlier Polarity EP collaboration alongside The Roots Addict. Six melodica-drenched gems with a deep rootsy dub vibe, I played it loud, and I played it often.

Right at the start of 2021, or perhaps even in late December 2020, the hugely underrated Death Cab for Cutie released The Georgia EP – a five song collection of covers of tunes originally released by artists from Georgia (the US state, not the country). TLC’s ‘Waterfalls’ (yes, really, and it’s a great version even if you’re not a fan of the original), R.E.M.’s ‘Fall On Me’, and Cat Power’s ‘Metal Heart’ being the pick of a fairly decent bunch. The Cat Power cover is close to brilliant, which is as much due to the song itself as Death Cab’s treatment of it. I’m uncertain of the specifics or the precise charity involved, but I’m fairly sure this was another release which saw sale proceeds donated to a cause – in this case, I think, a pro-US Democratic Party-political cause … don’t make me research it, my eyes are already glazing over.

Last, but not least, by dint of it being the most recent EP addition to my collection, we have a mysterious self-titled debut EP from Lisbon-based darkwave devotee Floating Ashes (aka João Pinheiro). And it arrived - via Bandcamp name-your-price (here) - as a fully formed, quite dazzling piece of work, full of pulsating rhythms and glistening synths. With a requisite sense of darkness right at its core. The EP is quite short, at just three tracks across 15 minutes, but since it ticks so many of the musical boxes I hold near and dear, I’ve been giving it a real thrashing over the past month. I really don’t know much about the artist, but if this is what we can expect on future releases, it’ll be more than enough to keep me listening.

 

So that’s a wrap of all of the shorter-form releases I’ve picked up across the past 18 months. A fairly eclectic batch of music, admittedly, incorporating a number of different genres, so not all of it will appeal, but I reckon you could pick up the job lot for a combined outlay of around $50 and not regret any of it.

Album Review: Various - Ambient Maladies (2021)

Released this week on the Strange Behaviour platform, Ambient Maladies is a compilation of downbeat ambient work by a bunch of Aotearoa-based artists and producers. Clocking in at just a few minutes shy of an hour, over the course of ten tracks, it’s the sort of album that is probably best appreciated on headphones. An album to be fully absorbed without distraction, at a time when you’ve got little else to do other than to gaze off into the distance. Perhaps. Or maybe even the sort of album you’d listen to when you’re heavily under the influence of something that aids involuntary gazing off into the distance. I really wouldn’t know much about such frivolous indulgence. 

Compiled by Paul Berrington - who may (or may not) be better known as Wellington DJ B.Lo - it features local luminaries such as Ludus, who also mixed and mastered the release under the guise of her real name (Emma Bernard), Jet Jaguar, Stephen Gallagher, and a couple of artists who have previously featured on everythingsgonegreen, Arcology (see here), and Box of Hammers (see here). Plus there's a handful of others.

 For those who aren't big fans of the ambient “genre”, it may prove a bit of a mixed bag, but the highlights for me include the Arcology track ‘Now Exhale’, which was described by a friend as being “menacing”, which I thought was a very accurate description, Box of Hammers’ soundtrack-ready ‘Maelstrom’, and Stephen Gallagher’s excellent ‘Even A Bird Loves Its Nest’. 

Bonus point: the release is available on cassette. Grab it at the Bandcamp link below. 

Here’s the Bandcamp blurb: Welcome to Ambient Maladies, a selection of atmospheres, vignettes and expressions from Aotearoa New Zealand. Embracing the geographical isolation of the land of the long white cloud, Strange Behaviour's second release is at times dark and brooding while at others delicate, detailed and melancholy.

Gig Review: Courtney Barnett, San Fran, Wellington, 9 July 2021

Okay, so this review is a bit late to the party. Courtney Barnett’s short New Zealand jaunt is almost over. Which means any sort of comment I make on it is already largely redundant. But I feel compelled to post a few words about her opening night in Wellington a few Fridays back, just for posterity’s sake. Just because I was there. A sure sign that gigs are few and far between for me at present. 

The Friday night at San Fran was the first night of a three-night sold out run at the venue for the popular Aussie indie troubadour.

Support was provided by Emily Edrosa, and San Fran was already packed to overflowing when I arrived to catch the last 15 minutes of Edrosa’s well-received set. In all honesty, I wasn’t overly impressed with what I heard, but that may have been more to do with the fact that I was heavily distracted, and frustrated, by not being able to find a comfortable standing spot amid the throng of activity around me. I eventually settled for a spot at the rear of the venue, while my more resilient gig-companion opted for somewhere much closer to the stage. 

Barnett arrived on stage at 9.30pm and for the next 70 minutes she offered us an absorbing mix of decade-old songs and brand spanking new ones, an Arthur Russell cover, and a Kurt Vile duet that wasn’t really a duet at all. 

After opening with long-time favourite ‘Avant Gardner’, the solo Barnett then gave us ‘Walkin’ on Eggshells’ and ‘Dead Fox’ before being joined on stage by current co-conspirator Stella Mozgawa (of Warpaint) for new single ‘Rae Street’, which was followed by another new track, and the aforementioned Russell cover, ‘I Never Get Lonesome’. Mozgawa then exited proceedings temporarily. 

There was a lot of audience banter and interaction throughout, with the in-joke being that a lot of enthusiastic fans knew all of the lyrics and Barnett was quite happy to let the crowd sing along unaccompanied at various points. Never more so than on gig centrepiece ‘Depreston’, a highly relatable tune about the minutiae of suburban living, and easily the highlight of the night for yours truly. That song really has morphed into something of a signature tune for Barnett. 

Barnett sang both parts in the Kurt Vile “duet” ‘Let It Go’, which was slightly odd - if understandable, given Vile’s absence. That was followed by ‘Sunday Roast’ before Mozgawa returned to the stage for another brief run of songs from the pair’s upcoming collaborative album, Things Take Time, Take Time. 

All of the new tunes had a pronounced country/folkie flavour, and all were enjoyable enough. The sort that will doubtlessly grow in familiarity over time, with the album, as I understand it, not due for a full release until November. 

We finished up with ‘History Eraser’ and a one-song encore, ‘Nameless Faceless’, but not before Barnett had described the gig as “the best night of my life” in her finest deadpan voice.

I had my doubts about the authenticity of that statement, but much younger, less cynical attendees lapped it up and seemed convinced. As I set off to brave the chilly Wellington elements, post-gig, I tried to recall the last occasion (pre-lockdown) I’d seen an “international” artist live on stage at San Fran, but it was a forlorn task, and I was mostly just happy to have enjoyed a rare night out.    

Classic Album Review: Primal Scream - Evil Heat (2002)

Craig Stephen enjoys a close encounter with the Devil’s music … 

Through their multitude of stylistic changes, Primal Scream have always retained a bit of a punkish, anti-establishment streak. 

This could be partly explained by the band’s mainstay, Bobby Gillespie, coming from good socialist stock: a great-grandfather was one of the founding members of the Independent Labour Party in Glasgow, and his father, also Bob, was a union leader and a Labour Party candidate in Glasgow (losing to the Scottish National Party when he was effectively a shoe-in). 

So the young Gillespie would’ve grown up surrounded by such lofty ideals. 

Consequently, the Primals have never quite fitted in with the record industry, such as their adoption of electronica about 1990, a hitherto verboten idea in the world of indie music. 

They upset the poor wee things of Rangers FC (1872-2012) by branding them “the most fucked up scum/ That was shat into creation” on a Scotland football single collaboration with rabble rouser Irvine Welsh and On-U Sound. Cue an orchestration of contrived outrage from the dark side of football. 

As the band matured they perversely became more difficult to label, a band that the record industry never quite came to terms with. 

Therefore, the band’s seventh album, Evil Heat, is a bizarre, bewildering and yet mesmerising album that veers between extremes. 

As examined in a previous review, the predecessor album XTRMNTR was a veritable axe thrown at the world. This extraordinary collection mangled Suicide with Can and contained Molotov cocktails in the likes of ‘Swastika Eyes’ (“Exterminate the underclass/ Exterminate the telepaths/ No civil disobedience”). 

A year after that album’s release, Primal Scream toured with a song called ‘Bomb the Pentagon’. A problem arose when someone did exactly that during the 9/11 attacks. Rather unsurprisingly, no song with that title has ever appeared on record.

Gillespie’s excuse that that was because it wasn’t a particularly good song falls flat through the appearance of ‘Rise’ on Evil Heat. This is a reworking of ‘Bomb the Pentagon’ with a new chorus and a few other lyrical tweaks, but the music was largely unchanged. 

It was a rallying call to the dispossessed and the desperate: rise up you bastards FFS, Gillespie was screaming at the masses. 

“Hey wage slave where's your profit share?/ They got ya down, they're gonna keep you there ... Get on up, protest riot/ Are you collateral damage or a legitimate target?” 

There are external talents at play throughout Evil Heat. My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields produces six tracks, half the album therefore; Two Lone Swordsmen (aka old hand Andy Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood) produce a further four tracks, and one more is cooked by the ubiquitous producer Jagz Kooner. And on the other side of the window helping out were a veritable array of British stars, such as Jim Reid, Robert Plant on harmonica, and Shields himself on guitar effects. 

One contribution that came as something of a surprise is supermodel Kate Moss playing Nancy Sinatra to Gillespie’s Lee Hazlewood on the duet of ‘Some Velvet Morning’. Moss hadn’t shown previous form in a recording studio, but perhaps that was the objective. 

This is a remarkably different version from the Sinatra/Hazlewood original: big crunchy beats shower Gillespie’s initial, lush vocals. Moss does a decent job of her portion of the lyrics, and gives a beauty to what is a down’n’dirty electroclash take on a song that Hazlewood says was inspired by Greek mythology. 

‘Skull X’ sees the band delve into its punk roots, and there’s an element of the Sex Pistols in the robustness, but they actually sound more like The Stranglers. Lyrically, it reeks once more of Gillespie’s sharp, dark mind: “The sky's black with locusts/ My eyes are burning stars/ There's a mountain of gold teeth/ in every bank vault in this world.” 

The Weatherall/ Tenniswood-produced ‘Autobahn ’66’ is reminiscent of Kraftwerk. It appears to be an instrumental, until we first hear Gillespie at 2.29, with what is mere background vocals limited to an oft-repeated verse of “Dreaming/ Dreaming/Seeing/Seeing/Dreaming” for a minute and a half till the singer develops the theme with an expansive chorus. 

Album opener ‘Deep Hit of Morning Sun’ is a rabbit punch to the senses: backwards guitars, a mystical vibe, barely any drums, and a ghostly chorus. It’s unlike virtually anything the band have done, and I would like to imagine it as being left off XTRMNTR, but that’s probably not the case. 

‘Miss Lucifer’, meanwhile, is reminiscent of The Prodigy with its punk-techno feel; ‘Detroit’ is hard and heavy electronica; and ‘A Scanner Darkly’ is an instrumental similar to anything off the second side of Bowie’s Low. 

Evil Heat is something of a seminal album which is underpinned by pulsating electronica. It has no balance, no theme, and it often bemuses. And that is why I like it. I had previously regarded Evil Heat as a weak follow to XTRMNTR but having played it several times over the past few days I’m discovering an awful lot more than I did on the irregular listens over the past 20 years. It has a cult feeling; not everyone is going to like it, but those who do shower it with glowing terms.