The Bevis Frond – White Numbers - May 2013 May 19th, 2013

The Walthamstow guitar guru Nick Saloman is sixty this year and his 21st Bevis Frond album is an undimmed double cd set. Fusing classic sixties rock and plangent pounding post-punk neo-psychedelia in a string of plaintive and psycho-geographically specific guitar-pop nuggets, it’s capped monumentally by an exemplary 45 minute modal jam. File The Bevis Frond…

The Fall – Re-Mit - May 2013 May 12th, 2013

The 18th century polymath Thomas Young, the last man to hear every Fall album, died denied the delight of this pinnacle of the ‘70s survivors’ catalogue. Gauleiter Mark E Smith disparages individuality, but his krautrockabilly template is bevelled by Peter Greenway’s retro-futuristic twanging. Kinder Of Spine uses shards of 60s pop 7″s as scaffolding for…

Barbara Dickson – b4 Seventy-Four, The Folk Club Tapes - May 2013 May 12th, 2013

Had she never taken Lloyd Webber’s shilling and sung for The Two Ronnies, the musical theatre star Barbara Dickson might have remained a folk scene phenomenon.This raw double set of reel to reel recordings from 1969-73 finds Dickson’s precision engineered phrasing and perfectly poised voice, an egoless vessel that contains the old songs’ sentiments, set…

Endless Boogie – Long Island - May 2013 May 5th, 2013

Experiencing Endless Boogie live accidentally in the mid-noughties, I assumed the band was a muso in-joke, but like all the best jokes Endless Boogie’s turns out to be quietly profound. “What do you get if you cross those glorious late sixties/early seventies extended electric John Lee Hooker/Canned Heat blues jams with the repetitious zen drone…

Minkley’s Night Of Mirth - April 2013 Chortle - By Steve Bennett - April 30th, 2013

It was a line-up many big charity benefits would envy – certainly enough to easily sell out Brighton’s Komedia. Minkley’s Night of Mirth was the third such fundraiser, organised by former BBC New Comedy Award-winner Angela Barnes in aid of The Samaritans and in memory of Oliver Minkley, a local musician and new-act comic who…

Meat Puppets – Rat Farm - April 2013 April 28th, 2013

Meat Puppets sickened Eighties hardcore punk puritans with country, bluegrass and psychedelic additives that eventually became palatable. Today, after decades of drugs, departures, and detainments, the resilient Phoenix trio’s signature sound is a fleet of foot, tie-dyed, hillbilly acid rock hybrid draped on the nimble exoskeleton of Curt Kirkwood’s languidly lysergic licks. The title track…