Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell – Don’t Hear It… Fear It! - October 2012 October 14th, 2012

The sleeve of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s debut reveals the trio in 1972 flares and trainers. A bulbous bird head apes countless album covers by the Seventies Welsh blues rock wranglers Budgie. But the period product within is dispatched with a New York 1976 punk energy and flanged with iridescent late Sixties psychedelic effects. Don’t…

Corb Lund – Cabin Fever - October 2012 October 7th, 2012

Former farm boy Corb Lund’s cowpoke honky-tonk evidences a Canada dry wit. Bible On The Dash sees him evading border confrontations by faking belief, and Mein Deutsches Motorarad is a rockabilly German bike tribute. But Lund and his tight-chapped bar band, The Hurtin’ Albertans, respect the roots rock rules and, on the bleakly dispassionate Priceless…

Neil Diamond – Hot August Night - October 2012 October 1st, 2012

In 1973, my mother returned from a lengthy bridgework session, where the dentist played her what became her favorite record, Neil Diamond’s career making live double, Hot August Night. It’s a more interesting set than I, age 5, then realised. The former Tin Pan Alley tunesmith, brandishes his cast iron contributions to the Great American…

Various Artists – Electric Eden, Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music - September 2012 September 30th, 2012

Rob Young’s book Electric Eden, for which this double CD is a companion, charted the unruly assimilation of British folk music into Folk Rock. A rare demo version of Fairport Convention’s monumental 1969 epic A Sailor’s Life is a key track, jumping the hedgerow to a world of wyrd folk hybrids. A shortened version of…

Ken Stringfellow – Danzig In The Moonlight - September 2012 September 30th, 2012

The ubiquitous multi-instrumentalist Ken Stringfellow staffed Alex Chilton’s Big Star for seventeen years, prolonged REM’s painful decline, and co-fronts Seattle’s resilient power pop professionals The Posies.His solo albums beat his band projects, omnivorously devouring vast swathes of canonical American pop tropes, tailgating bigger beasts like Wilco or The Flaming Lips. Drop Your Pride is a…

Matana Roberts – Coin Coin Chapter Two : Mississippi Moonchile - September 2012 September 30th, 2012

Fans of Roberts’ fulsome free jazz alto blow-outs might have hoped for a few more incantatory explosions before she embarked on Coin Coin, an ongoing conceptual composition exploring of black American identity. The saxophonist and her sympathetically psychic supporting quartet are intermittently skewed by unwelcome operatic interruptions. But Roberts’ own soulful vocal is a quiet…