Chuck Prophet – Temple Beautiful - March 2012 March 25th, 2012

The Stetson-sporting Tucson punks Green On Red suddenly clicked into country rock classicism when an unknown Prophet brought his chiseled guitar-for-hire to 1985’s Gas Food Lodging. With songwriting assistance from the poet Kurt Lipschutz, Prophet’s eleventh solo album anatomises his hometown of San Francisco. The upbeat Stones party rock of the title track is this…

Lee Ranaldo – Between The Times And Tides - March 2012 March 18th, 2012

The guitarist Lee Ranaldo’s songs were among the New York art rockers Sonic Youth’s most beautiful, his extended tonal workouts mixing Deadhead riffing with minimalist repetition, unencumbered by the ironic fascinations with kitsch pop culture that dates his colleagues’ work. Ranaldo’s extracurricular activities usually display solid downtown experimental sensibilities, but this solo album offers grown-up…

Napalm Death – Utilitarian - March 2012 March 18th, 2012

Thirty years ago, Birmingham’s Napalm Death invented ‘grindcore’, and initiated a dialogue between hardcore anarcho-punk, extreme metal, and the experimental jazz crew. Without them, almost nothing your surly weed-eyed nephew nods out to at weekends would exist. Today, behind an ersatz protest punk sleeve, a long serving line-up finds Barney Greenway bellowing fearsomely incomprehensible cut…

Belbury Poly – The Belbury Tales - March 2012 March 12th, 2012

Sleeve notes for Belbury Poly’s 5th album suggest the soundtrack to a travelling salesman’s adventures with an acid-spiked ploughman’s lunch, somewhere in early seventies rural England. Belbury Poly play like dispirited sixties psychedelic survivors, reluctantly meeting the demands of television or advertising commissions in the subsequent decade, redeeming their banal compositions with snatches of haunting…

Earth – Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light II - March 2012 March 11th, 2012

In the nineties, Earth taught a generation of stoned seekers to slow Sabbath riffs into abstract endurance tests, and disappeared. A new Earth features Dylan Carson on crawling king snake guitar, the jazzy drums of Adrienne Davis, the sphincter-dilating cello of Lori Goldston, and the modestly minimal bass of Karl Blau, forming a sentient musical…

The Plimsouls – Beach Town Confidential - March 2012 March 4th, 2012

The Plimsouls played melodic sixties mod pop with punk aggression, Peter Case’s grazed white soul vocals and Eddie Munoz’ plangent guitars bleeding through the surface noise and cheerleader air-punch rhythms. This 1983 live recording, the group in explosive form after their second album, betters their studio output in terms of sheer energy and reveals The…