Monthly Archives: December 2022

VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Strokes confirm the release of The Singles—Volume 01, a box set collecting the group’s electrifying early singles set for release on RCA Records/Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment. The Singles—Volume 01, available in stores and online on February 24, 2023, is available to pre-order HERE now.

The set features ten unforgettable singles from the band’s first three albums—Is This It (2001), Room on Fire (2003), and First Impressions of Earth (2006)—as well as rare B-sides from the original single releases. All ten singles will be pressed on black 7” vinyl, with the artwork from each original release replicated in the package.

Videos for all ten A-sides, including “Hard to Explain,” “Last Nite,” “Reptilia,” “Juicebox,” and “Heart in a Cage,” are now available in high definition. The Singles—Volume 01, a first of its kind collection from the band, is a perfect holiday gift for the modern rock enthusiast in your life.

Formed in Manhattan in 1999, The Strokes—singer Julian Casablancas, guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr., bassist Nikolai Fraiture, and drummer Fabrizio Moretti—were at the center of a fertile scene of guitar-driven rock bands in New York City at the turn of the 21st century. Their debut EP “The Modern Age,” released by the venerable indie label Rough Trade, sparked a worldwide frenzy; major label debut Is This It, released later that year, was hailed as the best album of the year by Billboard, NME, Entertainment Weekly, Time and CMJ. It also made the year-end best-of lists in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, USA Today, MOJO and the No. 2 spot on the Village Voice’s prestigious Pazz & Jop poll.

Celebrating Rick Buckler, born on this date in 1955. —Ed.

I missed most of England’s post-punk music—was too busy doing my taxes or drugs or something—and what I did hear (New Order, er, New Order) simply confirmed me in my mad conviction that I wasn’t missing much. What can I say? As a great man once said, Youth is wasted on the young.

The Jam are one of the many bands I snubbed back in the day. Why? Because I heard “Town Called Malice” exactly once and thought it was bouncy pop tripe, that’s why. It’s a piss-poor reason to write off a great band, but that’s the way I am. I was in an ugly mood back then and I needed ugly music to put me in the proper ugly frame of mind to think ugly thoughts about all the ugly things in the world. It was an ugly time.

The sad thing is I missed a lot of excellent music. The good thing is I’m getting a second chance to catch up, and what better way to catch up than by basking in the brilliant pop glow of 1980’s tres smart and musically adventurous Sound Affects? I used to smirk when people called Paul Weller a genius. Mark E. Smith—now there’s a genius, I would say to myself. And I will always prefer Smith to Weller, if only because I prefer off-kilter rock cranks with odd ideas on how to build songs to pop savants, Elton John and Eric Carmen excepted. But Weller is a Wunderkind no matter how you cut the liverwurst, and on the Jam’s fifth studio LP he outdoes himself.

Weller—who has gone on record as saying he thinks Sound Affects is the Jam’s best LP—cited the Beatles’ Revolver and Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall as key inspirations. I certainly hear the Beatles; Jackson not so much. Okay, so I suppose I do hear Jacko in the funky bass line that harbors “Pretty Money,” and on the heavy funk bass and drums that propel the altogether strange (the band basically natters away the first minute before launching into a herky-jerky ska beat) “Music for the Last Couple.” As for the Beatles, they’re all over “Start!” And amongst the unreleased tracks from the Sound Affects sessions are covers of “Rain” and “And Your Bird Can Sing.” The unreleased “Liza Radley” and “Dead End Street” both have Paul McCartney’s fingerprints all over them as well.

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Formed in New York City in the late 1970s, the Revelons specialized in power-pop with a punk edge, but they only managed to squeeze one 45 (plus a few tracks on compilations) while extant. ’77–’82, the new LP available now from HoZac Records of Chicago, collects that single and adds ten more cuts for a surprisingly consistent whole. It should hit fans of melodic punk right in their sweet spots. And while a few Revelons collections have been available over the years on compact disc, this edition serves as the vinyl debut for nearly everything nestled into its grooves. Plus, Hilly Kristal contributes liner notes. Nice!

Mavens of pre-HC punk and associated styles may recognize the Revelons from Numero Group’s 2015 4LP Ork Records: New York, New York, which included their 1979 45, “The Way (You Touch My Hand)” b/w “97 Tears.” The A-side is heard on ’77–’82 twice, in its first recording dating from ’78 and in a second shorter take issued on the single that also closes HoZac’s reissue.

In either version, the song is a tough but catchy bit of business that supports the Revelons’ rep as a strong live act having played not just CBGB but also Max’s, the Mudd Club, Hurrah’s, and Danceteria. And “97 Tears” makes clear that the A-side was no fluke, as the flip’s raw melodicism blends street-rock attitude with guitars that crunch and chime.

Punk nuts might also know “Red Hot Woman,” the slab of sneering rockabilly that opens ’77–’82, from its inclusion on the 1980 Red Star Records comp Marty Thau Presents 2×5, where the Revelons were joined by The Fleshtones, Bloodless Pharaohs (featuring soon to be Stray Cat Brian Setzer), Comateens, and Ork labelmates Student Teachers.

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DETROIT, MI | The powerhouse trio of Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, and Tom Skinner put on an electric show at Detroit’s Masonic Temple last Monday night. Known as The Smile, taken from the Ted Hughes poem, they not only put out one of the best albums of 2022, A Light for Attracting Attention, but they put on one of the best shows of 2022.

Classifying their sound would be too reductive, but safe to say that if you’re a fan of Radiohead, you’ll certainly be a fan of The Smile. Good things happen with Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke connect, and their connection is only enhanced by Tom Skinner’s jazzy drumming.

Perhaps the best news to come from the evening was Thom’s announcement that they’re already working on a second album. And if the preview of a few of their new songs was any indication, we’re in for another treat.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | ANTI- Records is releasing the 20th anniversary re-issue of Solomon Burke’s critically acclaimed 2002 album Don’t Give Up On Me, which features an all-star roster of song contributors including Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Tom Waits and Joe Henry. The reissued vinyl is a double LP available in black and a limited edition opaque red and a clear version in Europe. The reissue also features the bonus track “I Need a Holiday,” written by legendary R&B songwriter Dan Penn, who also wrote the title track of the album.

In addition to the contributors listed above, legendary veteran writers like Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil all contributed commercially unreleased original compositions, either specifically custom tailored to, or innately suited for the interpretive genius of this unrivaled singer. Never before has such a cross-section of revered pop talent enthusiastically converged on one album, but there are precious few vocalists on the aerie artistic level of Solomon Burke.

“The entire album was very exciting, and it was heartrending to think all these writers, the Bob Dylans, Elvis Costello’s, would even think of me,” Burke said. “I would characterize these as art, pieces of art, songs that were designed in some way with me in mind, in each one of these writers’ minds—all of them are beautiful. I wanted each piece of that art to hang in my own palace. To me, they all belong in a special place. It was remarkable.”

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When teen puritan Ian MacKaye of Washington, DC hardcore band Minor Threat came up with the novel notion that the best way to have fun was by not having fun, little did he know his personal lifestyle preferences had created a movement. His version of Martin Luther’s 99 theses (”I don’t smoke/I don’t drink/I don’t fuck/At least I can fucking think”) wound its monkish way north to Boston, where it was adopted by vocalist Phil “Springa” Springs, guitarist/lyricist Al Barile, and the rest of the boys in SS Decontrol.

There’s nothing wrong with straightedge as a way of life—it’s not for me, perhaps because I don’t wear a tall black hat with a buckle on it—but SS Decontrol and the droogies in their notoriously fist-happy “Boston Crew” more or less decided that everyone on the local hardcore scene should abide by straightedge rules. This did not make them fun to be around—puritans never are. And this goes double for puritans with violent tendencies.

Various people have gone on record saying different things about SS Decontrol and its crew’s treatment of apostates—knocking beers out of people’s hands was a more benign expression of their conduct—but I for one wouldn’t have wanted to find out. True believers can be very dangerous people, and god only knows what they would have done with Samuel Adams’ “Your cousin from Boston” guy.

To give SSD their due, they were an above average metal-riveted hardcore band—they were brutal and aggressive if not particularly tight, and their songs were better than many of those by the 7,000 or so other hardcore bands at the time. What they lacked was subtlety—they didn’t have the distinctive personality of bands like Bad Brains, Black Flag, and the Circle Jerks (to name just a few), and Springa’s belligerent bellow didn’t stand out from the hardcore pack.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Today, Third Man Records has released Southeast Of Saturn Vol. 2, a follow-up compilation to 2020’s Southeast of Saturn, a collection of music from Detroit’s space-rock/ shoegaze/ dream pop scene of the ‘90s.

The second volume expands upon the Michigan-centric aural delights purveyed on Vol. 1, by including groups from throughout the Midwest. Highlighting groups spanning Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, Vol. 2 works to cement the Midwest’s status as a breeding ground for the space-rock and shoegaze subgenres, which more famously burgeoned in the UK.

Exclusive limited-edition copies of Southeast Of Saturn Vol. 2 on Full Moon and Great Lake colored vinyl will be available in select independent record stores across the US and in UK/EU, as well as at Third Man Records’ Nashville and Detroit storefronts.

To celebrate the release, Minneapolis’ Electric Fetus and Third Man Records will celebrate the release of Southeast of Saturn, Vol. 2, with a tribute to the 27 Various featuring the original members Bart Bakker and Mike Reiter, who will be joined by Casey Virock, Kris Johnson, and Janey Winterbauer. The free event is at 5pm, and is open to all ages.

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Four years before Ronnie Van Zant uttered the immortal words “Turn it up” to open “Sweet Home Alabama,” Van Morrison was uttering the same injunction—but in his case he was talking about your radio, not the world’s greatest Southern Rock band. The Gaelic soul singer with the mystical streak turned the phrase into a mantra on “Caravan” from 1970’s Moondance, and by so doing transformed your cheap hand-held FM transistor radio into a means of tuning into the cosmos. That little radio is, quite literally, our ticket to Heaven.

From “Gloria” and “Here Comes the Night” with his days with Belfast, Ireland’s Them to the brilliant string of solo efforts that extended from 1968’s Astral Weeks, 1970’s Moondance and that same year’s His Band and the Street Choir, 1971’s Tupelo Honey to 1972’s St. Dominic’s Preview, Morrison veered from the simple romantic lyricism of songs like “Tupelo Honey” and “Moondance” to deeply spiritual and more ambitious songs like “Listen to the Lion,” “Cypress Avenue,” and “Madame George.” Call them his Songs of Innocence and Experience.

On 1970’s Moondance—which is horn-heavy and replete with female backing vocalists—Morrison works the innocence vein, while imbuing many of its songs with a deep strain of Irish mysticism that charges even the simplest of subjects with a sense of awe. On “And It Stoned Me” he gets drunk on a jar of water from a mountain stream. On “Into the Mystic” he takes us spiritually seaward—just as he does on “Tupelo Honey” and “Listen to the Lion.” He implores us to let our spirits fly; tells us he wants to rock our gypsy souls, and lets us know “it’s too late to stop now.”

And speaking of gypsies, it’s their caravan that moves triumphantly our way in the song of the same name. Talk about communion; his friends are there, and his love too—he commands her to turn on that electric light, so “we can get down to what’s wrong and what’s right.” Never have a string of “la la la la, la la las” been imbued with such spiritual depth.

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