Sommaire pour April 2024 de MOJO

Gered Mankowitz When Gered first shot The Rolling Stones in spring 1965, he had no way of knowing he’d provide umpteen album and single covers, posters, magazine spreads and the band’s passport photos. Unpublished and rare shots, including the latter, feature in his new book, extracted from page 38. Ted Kessler This month’s cover story with Liam Gallagher and John Squire (p68) clashed with a festive trip to Australia for Ted. Ever the professional, he locked himself in a hut down under alongside dog-sized spiders to compose it, pausing only to buy a Christmas day outfit (pictured). His biography of Billy Childish is out in July. Andrew Perry Andrew debuted for MOJO with a 1997 oral history of Nirvana, and has since quizzed artists ranging from Jerry Lee Lewis to…

THERE IS, AS EVER, AN ADMIRABLE candour to Liam Gallagher when you get past the provocations. This month, he tells MOJO of his new partnership with John Squire, talking about the Stone Roses guitarist with touchingly fannish ardour. The Liam Gallagher John Squire album might well be the finest record either of them has made for nearly 30 years, but Gallagher is also pragmatic enough to address the question of an Oasis reunion, and the summer solo shows where he’ll perform Definitely Maybe in its entirety. “People say it’s the comfort zone,” he notes, “I want to be in the comfort zone! Life’s stressful enough.” The comfort zone isn’t traditionally a place where we hardcore music fans see ourselves spending much time: the radical, the obscure, the neglected and unknown…

1 Open mike: little Len singing into his Grandpa Joe’s tape recorder in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, NY. 2 The player: Lenny with parents Sy Kravitz and Roxie Roker at home in Santa Monica, CA, 1976. 3 Letting love rule: Kravitz with wife Lisa Bonet and daughter Zoë, New York City, September 29, 1989. 4 “Europe was hipper”: Kravitz enjoys a London hang with Terence Trent D’Arby and Neneh Cherry, 1989. 5 D’oh my way: Lenny takes his place on Homer Simpson’s rock’n’roll fantasy sofa alongside (from left) Elvis Costello, Tom Petty, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger and Brian Setzer, 2002. 6 All locked up: Kravitz on-stage at the Paradiso, Amsterdam, 1995. 7 Class act: Kravitz making his movie debut alongside Gabourey Sidibe in the Academy Award-nominated Precious, 2009. 8 Road to…

“WHEN WE PUT out our first record in 1984, Butthole Surfers’ drummer King Coffey worked in a record store, I think, and he was one of our first big fans. So, in November 1986 they were doing shows in Dallas and Austin, and they asked us to open for them. We still didn’t know much about them, but then they played, and it was, ‘Oh my God, this is like our freaky older brothers here!’ “I mean, we were weirdos on Level 3, and they were on, like, Level 100. They were living it. We didn’t live like freaks like they did. We would tour and stay in people’s houses, and we’d be nice. We didn’t carry guns, take acid, and get in fights. We didn’t want that, but we…

WAXAHATCHEE ★★★★ American Weekend (Don Giovanni, 2012) Recorded over the course of a bleary weekend in her family’s vacation trailer during a historic snowstorm, this is a bracing lo-fi document of heartbreak and addiction. Informed by The Mountain Goats and Guided By Voices, Crutchfield suspends her instinctual melodies and sombre poetics inside tape-distortion haze. WAXAHATCHEE ★★★★ Out In The Storm (Merge, 2017) Crutchfield was still years from leaning into her country (and country-pop) roots, either on-stage or on record. But the fevered grace that would help define her later work is abundant on her fourth album, co-produced by alt-rock royalty John Agnello but powered by her versatile voice and sharp barbs about love and dejection. WAXAHATCHEE ★★★★ Saint Cloud (Merge, 2020) “I’m in a war with myself,” Crutchfield sang on…

WALK-ON PARTS FOR CHARLIE PARKER, THE opera singer Cathy Berberian, and a basketball player called Jungle Jim Loscutoff. Location visits to Annandale in upstate New York and the caves of Altamira in Spain. A drinks menu stocked with kirschwasser, retsina, Cuervo Gold tequila and Tanqueray gin. A ride on the Wolverine train out of New York. And, most delightful of all, a Japanese dildo invented by William Burroughs – the “Steely Dan III from Yokohama”. The world that Walter Becker and Donald Fagen evoke in the songs of Steely Dan resembles a connoisseur’s take on the American 20th century, at once snarky and affectionate, cynical and surreptitiously moral. Their songs encapsulate high art and low lives; their albums have the wit, heft, erudition and resonance of Great American Novels; their…

Don Peake: By 1973, Motown had completed their move from Detroit to Los Angeles and they had a studio on Romaine Street. LA was a small music community, everyone knew everyone. David Ritz: Marvin was reluctant to make the move. He didn’t really want to go to LA, but he was competitive. The Jackson 5 were having big hits and he wanted to make his LA statement, make a grand single and album and prove he could make it there. Ed Townsend: I was shopping songs around I had written in New York. I heard Marvin had been asking about me, I think he liked how I had worked with Nelson Riddle, and I went to Marvin’s apartment on Cattaraugus [Avenue] with Let’s Get It On, Please Stay (Once You…

I WAS IN Oxford at art school on a foundation course in early ’89 when I first heard The Stone Roses and John Squire. Ride had had their first rehearsal at the end of ’88 and I bought Made Of Stone – I preferred the B-side, Going Down – but then I got the album and saw them live at Oxford Polytechnic and had my mind blown. I took my camera to do a photography project, spent the whole day there, went to the soundcheck, had a chance encounter with Ian Brown in the bar while John and Reni were playing. At that point, my biggest influence had been Johnny Marr. Ihad been a teenage Smiths fan and his style had really informed my playing – but John Squire felt…

What do you think is your big breakthrough on this record? “For many years I’ve been working with traditional song and trying to find new sound-worlds for old songs. This record has been a big shift because it’s been much more about trying to find a narrative voice. I’ve accepted that I like to write songs and am trying to create a body of work that speaks about my personal, but also our collective relationship, with nature on a poetic, on an ancient, but also very contemporary level.” What is on your mood board for songdreaming? “I’m very interested in music that invokes trance-like states; Sufi music, a lot of north African Gnawa music, and also Adriatic and Grecian music, where it’s all about the ceremony, the way communities enter…

★★★★ Focus On Nature FIRE. CD/DL/LP Uncrowned classic-rock king Nick Saloman’s brilliant 25th album. Defying the law of diminishing returns, Saloman’s The Bevis Frond just seem to get better and better, their expertise and urgency only growing with age. By our calculation, this one’s their seventh consecutive double-LP, and it’s fully the equal of underground classics like 1991’s New River Head for its deluge of melodic riches, lyrical depth, stylistic diversity and explosive guitar-playing. Where 2021’s Little Eden railed against evil in broken Britain, Focus On Nature opens with Heat’s nightmarish, post-punk foreboding of eco-catastrophe, quickly followed by the title track’s exquisitely harmonised folk rock idyll. As Saloman soon variously nails Wipers-y thrumming (God’s Gift), late-’60s Kinks whimsy (I’m A Mirror) and Comfortably Numb-era Floyd (Mr Freds Disco), his lyrical…

★★★★ The Hard Line ALLIGATOR. CD/DL/LP New dispatches from the front line of the blues. O’Leary is a tough singer and a powerful harmonicaplayer, but what raises him above the ruck – and what has no doubt earned him a place in the Alligator catalogue – is his inventive songwriting. He doesn’t drift far from conventional blues formats, but his subjects are often novel, and even when they aren’t, his angle on them is always surprising and his language fresh and cliché-free, as in Lost My Mind or the rueful You Break It, You Bought It. Or take the sadly familiar road story of Who Robs A Musician?: “You can tell by the Chevy my wallet ain’t heavy, still got dents from the last three collisions… I gotta ask myself:…

★★★★ Real Power SONY MUSIC. CD/DL/LP Real song power, that is. Gems galore on their first LP for 11 years. Rick Rubin famously oversaw Gossip’s 2009 LP Music For Men, and it was at his request/ encouragement, we learn, that the group’s 2019 live reunion spilled over into this studio comeback. Hatched at Rubin’s tropical Kauai HQ, Real Power is a wondrous pairing of ’70s disco-influenced bangers and ’80s pop exuberance, nods to Chic (Give It Up For Love), Miami Sound Machine and Donna Summer (the brilliant title track), and the best instincts of Cyndi Lauper and Madonna all detectable. Beth Ditto’s Rolls-Royce of a voice is the divine electricity that powers it all, pitch-perfect and hugely emotive atop the percussive groove of Don’t Be Afraid, and bedding-down somewhere between…

★★★★ Love Remains GROENLAND. DL/LP London duo’s uncanny debut, recorded in a neo-gothic crypt. Some band names are perfect. Kieran Brunt and Matt Huxley are Strange Boy, friends since bonding over Joanna Newsom at Glastonbury; though these enthralling, elegant ballads have no obvious provenance. Take lead single Boston Blue Period: gently percolating synths give way to gorgeously drifting strings and Brunt’s androgynous voice spiralling through the ether. The mood throughout is warm, but shivery too; arrangements are minimal to say the least, including Brunt’s performance. When he occasionally lifts off (eg, the operatic climax to Annunciation), one possible pointer is Billy Mackenzie fronting The Blue Nile, but Strange Boy are stranger, more electronic, and on 100,000 Fireflies scary like Twin Peaks. Lyrics like “Oh the darkness, and oh the toil/The…

★★★ The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari BUREAUB. CD/DL/LP Former Kraftwerk man gets to grips with a Weimar Republic cinema classic. There’s an aptness to Karl Bartos writing a new soundtrack for the benchmark 1920 German expressionist silent film The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari. He was in Kraftwerk, whose warping of realism was akin to that achieved by director Robert Wiene. Bartos styles his new work as “narrative film music and sound design”. The 76-minute suite mixes longer pieces for the film’s major story elements with shorter, impressionistic segments for its linking sections. Despite working with a computer, he balances Stravinsky-like tension, Schoenberg-esque atonality and the classicism of Mozart to harmonise with the film’s off-balance nature. There are precedents: the UK’s Geoff Smith created a soundtrack in 2003; two decades earlier,…

★★★★ Volume 9 FIRE. DL/LP A cathartic experience from the mighty Pennsylvanian psych-rockers. In 2005, Philadelphiabased psych mavericks Bardo Pond sat down to work on instrumental pieces that would mark a shift from the more conventional material on their studio LPs. Recorded in one go, the resulting improvisatory compositions formed the basis of the Volume series. Now four-track Volume 9 features founding guitarists John and Michael Gibbons, vocalist/flautist Isobel Sollenberger, and drummer Michael Zanghi (Kurt Vile/The War On Drugs). Just as with their unusual creative union, the LP finds its fulcrum point in paradox. The acoustic core of opener Conjunctio defies gravity, providing a scaffold for dense, thundering guitars and celestial drone. Twenty-oneminute closer War Is Over Pt 2 evolves slowly into an overpowering force, not far from Sigur Rós’s…

Kim Gordon ★★★★ The Collective MATADOR. CD/DL/LP Former Sonic Youth superstar continues her singular quest. THERE’S SOMETHING haunting about Kim Gordon’s second post-Sonic Youth solo album – not the gauzy drift of the picturesque super natural, but the thrilling poltergeist racket that comes with a good séance. Like 2019’s No Home Record, The Collective is a collaboration with Angel Olsen/Charli XCX producer Justin Raisen, its industrial trap-pop death-rattling deep in the pipes of an overloaded world. The power-tool thr um of I’m A Man is a deadpan channelling of toxic masculinity, while Bye Bye’s packing-list mundanity (“iBook/ power cord/medications”) is destabilised by angle-grinder beats, landing like a tally of consumerculture grave goods. Fractured landscapes, inter nal and exter nal, are not unfamiliar spaces to the magisterial Gordon (deadpan even on…

★★★ Kaiser Chiefs’ Easy Eighth Album V2. CD/DL/LP/MC Album number eight. Nobody predicts a riot. When Kaiser Chiefs were rattling out early-career anthems such as I Predict A Riot and Ruby, it seemed as though the world was theirs for the taking. It wasn’t quite that simple. The well of anthems ran dry around the time frustrated drummer Nick Hodgson left in 2012, while erratic shows in 2022 suggested all was far from well. Yet, here they are for the first time since 2019’s Duck and they’re still shape-shifting. Now in thrall to the post-punk disco of LCD Soundsystem, the fate-temptingly titled Easy Eighth Album finds Nile Rodgers guesting on the spry Feeling Alright and David Arnold giving Bond-style ambience to Burning In Flames. Despite one-time Rudimental leader Amir Amor’s…

★★★★ KillerStar HIGHWIRE. CD/DL/LP Debut from London duo and revered friends of Bowie. Named mostly after a David Bowie song (Reality’s New Killer Star), featuring a host of Bowie alumni (notably Mike Garson, Earl Slick and Gail Ann Dorsey) and sounding a little like assorted eras Bowie, the ghost of one man hovers benignly over KillerStar. Songwriter/singer Rob Fleming and seriously moonlighting drum tutor James Sedge have their facsimile moments, such as Should’ve Known Better’s appropriation of the Absolute Beginners hook and Got Me All Wrong’s art-stomp, but when they go their own way and the Bowie alumni kick hard, KillerStar are a less contrived proposition entirely. The standout Go (Hold On Tight) moves in slinky fashion before unfurling a gigantic, irresistible chorus; You’re A Chameleon channels Suede and the…

★★★★ Tigers Blood ANTI-. CD/DL/LP A strong but slow-burning follow-up to 2020 breakthrough Saint Cloud. “My spine’s a rotted two by four,” sings Waxahatchee, AKA Katie Crutchfield, on Bored. More than its choice, but fairly minimalist alt-country arrangements, it’s Crutchfield’s nimble lyrical voice that distinguishes Tigers Blood, its 12 songs exploring friendships diverging at the crossroads and the anchoring, centring effects of her ongoing sobriety. With its measured banjo pecks and perfect shadow bv’s, courtesy of rising Southern rock talent MJ Lenderman, Right Back To It’s simple classicism seems to explore over-sensitivity, while Crowbar, possessed of a lovely, Peter Buck-ish jangle, also stands out. Amid the sophisticated shuffle groove of Lone Star Lake, the acrobatic scansion of Crutchfield’s self-analysis peaks. “In the drunkiness of free reign/I’m an outlaw in the…

Champagne Dub ★★★★ Rainbow ON THE CORNER. CD/DL/LP On-U Sound and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s experimental spirit are present in this mystic psych four-way between Comet Is Coming’s Betamax, Ruth Goller, Ed Briggs and Mr Noodles. Full of eerie clatters and echoed dread, its ghostly transmissions offset by bright electronics and some Pablo-like melodica. AC Coco ★★★ 2 FIRST CITY ARTISTS. DL/LP A second LP of mysterioso pop from the NY trio of Dirty Projectors, Lucius and Pavo Pavo alumni. And if that suggests so many missing vowels and edgy haircuts, then this has far more affinity with Talk Talk’s flickering candlelit melancholy or Karen Carpenter’s calming contralto on standout Cora Lu. JB Dina Ögon ★★★★ Orion PLAYGROUND MUSIC. DL/LP Swedish quartet’s third LP refurbishes old soul, jazz and funk tropes…

★★★★ Apocalypse NINJA TUNE. CD/DL/LP Tenth anniversary reissue for bass virtuoso’s breakthrough. While earlier releases confirmed the dizzying chops of this in-demand sessioneer (credits include Kamasi Washington, Mac Miller and Suicidal Tendencies), Stephen Bruner’s second full-length showcased his budding songwriting skills. His tempestuous futurist-fusion energy was tempered by downcast soulfulness and glimmers of the yacht rock songcraft that would flower on his sprawling 2007 masterpiece, Drunk. The finest songs here balance Bruner’s restless muso complexity and his feel for emotive chord changes – the questing, proggy Lotus And The Jondy, and Tron Song, a sublime devotional to his cat set to inscrutable time signatures. His capacity for both daffy playfulness and affecting pathos impresses, too, Apocalypse finding space for both Oh Sheit It’s X, which infectiously celebrates the rush of…

★★★★ Material Wealth HEYDAY AGAIN. CD The Beat father sings; assisted by Dylan, Paul McCartney, Arthur Russell and more. On this soundtrack to a new coffee table collection from Allen Ginsberg’s archives, author Pat Thomas curates recordings of the Beat poet’s songs and poems. Despite fame coming from 1950s epics like Howl, Ginsberg was inspired by Bob Dylan to set words to melody. Vocally, he was no Caruso, but his singing and recitations were lively and distinct. Assisted by Dylan, David Amram, Arthur Russell, Lenny Kaye and others, the musicians were as inspired by his work as he was by their talents. He nails political and cultural villains in The Ballad Of The Skeletons and is joined by Philip Glass on keyboards and Paul McCartney on organ, percussion and a…

★★★★ Power To The People CRAFT RECORDINGS/ JAZZ DISPENSARY. DL/LP 1969 classic from the tenor sax man, reissued on vinyl for the first time in 50 years. The titles of Joe Henderson’s LPs in the late ’60s and early ’70s – Black Is The Colour; In Pursuit Of Blackness; If You’re Not Part Of The Solution… – suggest an artist tuned in to the political mood of the times. Listening to those records now you also hear a musician in ferment, embracing a new free-flowing intensity that happily incorporated synthesizers, congas, Latin rhythms, and vocals. The best example of Henderson’s audacious post-Blue-Note eclecticism is this diverse and delightful set. Featuring Ron Carter on bass, Jack DeJohnette on drums, Mike Lawrence on trumpet, Herbie Hancock playing both acoustic and electric piano,…

★★★ Devil Tree BIG POTATO. CD/DL/LP Country-fried gem from the home counties; co-produced by Slowdive’s Neil Halstead. Coley Park named themselves after a suburb of Reading, but fortunately set their sights higher. As US trade mag The Gavin Report launched the first Americana chart in 1995, a little pocket opened in the town, spearheaded by Neil Halstead who formed Mojave 3 after the demise of shoegazers Slowdive. His friends Nick Holton and Nick Portnell both guested on Mojave 3 records, and when they formed Coley Park, Halstead co-produced this, the quartet’s second LP from 2004 (following a 2003 mini-LP) – originally titled Down At The Devilin’ Tree. Whilst Mojave 3 were as much influenced by Nick Drake as country rock, Coley Park were more trad – slide guitar and banjo…

★★★★ Song Keepers: A Music Maker Foundation Anthology NO DEPRESSION/MMF. CD/DL Celebrating 30 years of the Music Maker Foundation. For the last three decades the MMF have been quietly documenting the incredible wealth of underground blues, gospel and folk singers and players coming out of the American South, capturing these should-be-superstars living in poverty, playing live in their sitting rooms, churches and back yards. This 4-CD set is a mere snapshot of their work but it’s a vivid one and includes thrilling performances from, among others, Beverly ’Guitar’ Watkins, who once performed with Piano Red and played guitar behind her back. Watkins was working as a cleaner and street-busking when MMF came across her; Precious Bryant, an expert Piedmont finger-picker with a voice raw and loud which she used to cannonade…

★★★★ People & Love CRAFT RECORDINGS. LP Soul-jazz vibes player’s cult 1973 album. From Springfield, Ohio, Lytle (1932-1995) divided his time as a youngster between learning to box and playing the drums. Although he became a successful pugilist, in the late ’50s he concentrated on music, playing drums for Ray Charles and Jimmy Witherspoon before switching to the vibraphone. Once described by Lionel Hampton as “the greatest vibes player in the world” because of his lightning-fast melodic runs, Lytle had 15 albums to his name before releasing People & Love in 1973. Long out of print, the album finds Lytle combining three progressive original numbers with jazzy covers of recent soul hits: the Donny Hathaway-Roberta Flack gem Where Is The Love? and a wild deconstruction of The Stylistics’ People Make…

THE HOT NEWS AND BIZ ARRE STORIES FROM PLANET MOJO THE L AST RECORD Portishead singer Beth Gibbons released was 2019’s Henryk Górecki: Symphony No. 3 (Symphony Of Sorrowful Songs), which she sang with The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Warsaw in 2014. Unknown to all, that year she’d also begun work on a new solo record. That LP, titled Lives Outgrown, is released in May. Her creative foil this time is ex-Talk Talk drummer Lee Harris. She first worked with him in 1994 with .O.Rang, the group he formed with fellow ex-Talk Talk man Paul Webb. It was Webb who produced 2002’s much-admired Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man album Out Of Season. “First, we just got together to start looking for sounds,” Harris tells MOJO. “Beth had a…

“I’M IN Florida and I have a T-shirt on.” Dion DiMucci is 84 and feeling great. The Bronx-bor n rock’n’roll angel who transfor med ’50s and ’60s music with his doo wop street group The Belmonts and such pop’n’roll slammers as The Wanderer and Runaround Sue is excited to talk about his new album Girl Friends, and its collaborations with blues, soul and folk luminaries including Susan Tedeschi, Carlene Carter and Maggie Rose. It’s his third LP for Joe Bonamassa’s Keeping The Blues Alive label, records that, in Dion’s words, are all about “a total expression of joy and sorrow”. “I started out my career strong,” he says, “and I want to end it up strong.” You’ve picked some tough voices and mean guitarists to collaborate with. Does that say…

ONE OF Britain’s most gifted torchbearers for psychedelia, Nick Saloman has had his latest Bevis Frond LP on in the car – and that’s a ver y positive sign. “I don’t usually do that,” he explains, “but this one I’m still able to listen to. Like, Ooh, this is actually quite good, isn’t it?” Called Focus On Nature, this latest outing is his twenty-fif th in 37 years, and it’s right up there with his best. Despite a glorious way with melody, and extraordinar y abilities as a lead guitarist, however, east Londoner Saloman has always operated beneath the radar, but for an obsessive cult following, which includes fellow tunesmiths Teenage Fanclub, Evan Dando and Mary Lou Lord. “The great thing is, I’ve been largely unsuccessful…” “The great thing is…

HELLO, IT’S ME Lenny Kravitz Let Love Rule ★★★★ (VIRGIN, 1989) The influences were obvious – Around The World In A Day-era Prince, Sly Stone, Spirit, Hendrix – but an album on which Kravitz produced and played almost everything introduced a precocious talent. For all that precocity, Let Love Rule’s power lay in Kravitz’s songwriting, as he veered from the pyrotechnics of the title track, the themes of which Kravitz is still exploring, to the pop-psychedelia of the lavishly arranged I Build This Garden For Us. HIS WAY Lenny Kravitz Are You Gonna Go My Way ★★★★ (VIRGIN, 1993) His first UK Number 1 album was dominated by the riff that propels the title track, but elsewhere on this collection of earworms, Come On And Love Me was all percussive…

HIS OTHER SUBJECTS HAD included Yves Saint Laurent, Charlie Chaplin and Agatha Christie, but in February 1992 French filmmaker Jérôme de Missolz had a humbler assignment – albeit one with its own strains of style, comedy and intrigue. Shot for French TV network La Sept, You’ll Never Walk Alone was a dingy-yet-romantic overview of Liverpool’s music scene. Mersey faces included Ian McCulloch, Pete Wylie and early Beatles manager Allan Williams, but the most compelling screen time belonged to Michael Head. Then 30, Michael Head fronted early-’80s chart hopefuls The Pale Fountains and then Shack, whose wheels had come off after just one underachieving LP, aptly titled Zilch. Filmed by de Missolz in the Head family home in no-nonsense Kensington, at Anfield watching Liverpool beat Bristol Rovers in the Cup, and…

★★★★ Audio Vertigo POLYDOR. CD/DL/LP Built from “gnarly, seedy grooves”, their tenth feels suitably landmark. A panoply of touchstones informs Audio Vertigo, everything from Arctic Monkeys’ recent spy-noir to Fela Kuti grooves to Smithsian indie (see Good Blood Mexico City) ennobling imaginationoverload songs about self-deception, toxic relationships, and a real-life knife fight Elbow’s frontman saw in Istanbul. Sung with his steamrollered Mancunian vowels intact, Garvey’s allusive, playful lyrics are as golden as those of your Bermans and Caves here, drawing on Wordsworth, but also name-checking Leo Sayer and The Jungle Book’s affable bear, Baloo. Brief segues such as Where Is It and Embers Of Day offer glimpses of Elbow at work –“Give it fat, wide wheels!” shouts Garvey parsing groove options for the former – while Her To The Earth…

★★★★ Happiness Bastards SILVER ARROW. CD/DL/LP The Robinsons’ first studio LP in 15 years. Sparked by the brawling Robinson brothers’ 2019 reconciliation – “We made the decision to be adults”, guitarist Rich has said – Happiness Bastards is infinitely better than its ‘will this do?’ cover art portends. Tapping myriad trusted influences yet distilling something uniquely corvine, it’s a thrilling return, oozing sass and swagger. A professed AC/DC influence motors incisive tale of a Johnny Thunders wannabe Rats & Clowns, Cross Your Fingers blends Led Zeppelin III-style acoustica with a chunk of righteous funk, and Chris Robinson and rising country star Lainey Wilson’s duet Wilted Rose waltzes to a spectacular coda. Pleasingly devoid of flab, Happiness Bastards James McNair is great news for Crowes fans; even better news for the…

★★★★ Cold Sea OUTSIDE MUSIC/TREMONE. CD/DL/LP Cinematic first solo album from Lost Brother. Co-vocalist with Alex Turner on the Arctic Monkeys’ cover of Baby I’m Yours, singer in indie nearlymen The 747s and half of dark Irish acoustic duo The Lost Brothers, Oisin Leech is in lush, filmic mode on his solo debut. On an album recorded in just four days on the Donegal coast, M Ward plays guitar on the stately October Sun, Bob Dylan’s long-term bandsman Tony Garnier adds bass throughout and Irish folk giant Donal Lunny brings the bouzouki. It’s a warm, reflective collection, sometimes with strings and synths and it moves with galleon-like serenity, most notably on the brief Maritime Radio, where twinkling guitars back a reading of the shipping forecast, and the instrumental title track.…

★★★★ Rooting For Love DRAG CITY/DUOPHONIC SUPER 45s. CD/DL/LP Exquisite art-pop meditation on healing from the Stereolab co-founder. On The Dash, one of this LP’s Anglophone songs with an unmistakable elegant touch, Laetitia Sadier addresses the “discrete shine of your darkness”. Although similar oxymora and metaphors appeared on her previous works, Rooting For Love comes across as the artist’s most adventurous work to date. At times, the scale of experimentation and intensity resonates with that of Björk’s Fossora (see polychronic chant-like La Nageuse Nue or Krautrock-ish closer Cloud 6). Similarly, most songs on Rooting For Love feature a group of backing vocalists simply credited as The Choir. The overall sonic complexity amplifies the idea behind the album: transformation through love and co-creation on collective and personal levels. With melodies as…

★★★★ Original Flow WE RELEASE JAZZ. CD/DL/LP Powerfully soulful concoction of laconic, jazzy, Afrocentric jams. Half-Mauritian, half-English musician Joseph Deenmamode relocated five years ago to find inspirational solitude in the Japanese countryside. Now he folds jazz, loose-limbed funk, hip-hop and fluid sega rhythms into his fourth album, Original Flow. There’s an appealing, improv quality to its 21 tracks, whose provenance is jam sessions conducted with Deenmamode’s brothers, Reginald Omas Mamode and Jeen Bassa, and a collection of pals. As its title suggests, original, organic loops create a sinuous flow. They’re accompanied by a lyrical thread devised to uplift and empower but, also, to critique the world’s political order. “They wanna send rockets to Mars,” Deenmamode observes on the Cymande-esque street soul of Rockets To Mars, “but down here my people…

★★★★ Qasr ERASED TAPES. CD/DL/LP Startling introduction to a Californian who merges jazz with RD Burman. You have big boots to fill if your namesake had a pivotal role as a storyteller in The One Thousand And One Nights, but the San Francisco-born Sheherazaad – her roots are in both north and south India – appears up to the task. Produced by Arooj Aftab, this five-track, 24-minute collection is the perfect calling card (a self-released debut, 2020’s Khwaabistan, may have reached few ears, but they were all influential). Opening with flurries of classical guitar and the slow burn of Mashoor (the singer’s thoughts on the toxicity of fame), it picks up steam and drama with Dhund Lo Mujhe and keeps you on the edge of your seat thereafter. Pick of…

★★★★ Love Is The Call CAST RECORDINGS. CD/DL/LP Follow-up to 2017’s Kicking Up The Dust. “A cosmic call to arms,” says John Power. This seventh album sees John Power return to his first instrument, the bass, which he last played in The La’s. He says he was prompted to do so because Love Is The Call was written to operate in the space between the aforesaid’s beloved 1990 eponymous LP and Cast’s 1995 debut All Change. The results are Brit Invasion melodies, thrusting rockabilly guitars, and lyrics that find hope in seaport-based fantasy and the power of connection. Throughout, Power’s vocals retain their lovable keen and Youth’s production is uncluttered and crisp (it was put down quick in his Space Mountain studio in Spain). High points are the heraldic Forever…

★★★★ All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade EMI. CD/DL/LP The troubled millennial heroes pull themselves together for a fourth album. Anthems For Doomed Youth, The Libertines’ first reunion LP in 2015, cast Pete’n’Carl as condemned soldier-poets beneath a tattered Union flag. All Quiet…’s punning WW1 title suggests more of the same, but instead it largely side lines nostalgic tales of old Albion in favour of songs populated with dealers, migrants and young mothers in Juicy Couture track suits – reflective, no doubt, of the band’s edgy new Margate base. Completing the reboot, All Quiet sounds distinctly unlike any previous Libs LP, go-to producer Dimitri Tikovoï beefing up the ensemble group playing with Thunder Thighs-style BVs (the Stones-y Mustang) and even flowing strings and synths (Merry Old England). Thankfully, Doherty’s songwriting…

★★★ Girl Friends KTBA. CD/DL Lively duets album featuring female blues vanguard. In her sleevenotes to Girl Friends, Darlene Love equates Dion to the protagonist in The Crystals’ outsider anthem He’s A Rebel, and at 84 he still has a touch of the charismatic bad boy about him. Girl Friends, like 2020’s Blues With Friends and 2021’s Stomping Ground, draws on his deep love of the blues and features an abundance of guests. This time round he’s duetting with “the women who inhabit my headphones”. These include Susan Tedeschi, Joanne Shaw Taylor and Rory Block, who all deliver satisfying, straight-down-the-line blues rockers. But it’s the tracks that mix it up a bit that appeal most. Such as Mama Said, which captures Dion in a fiery call and response with Shemekia…

★★★★ The Pendulum Swing COOKING VINYL. CD/DL/LP Striking follow-up to 2021’s The Eternal Rocks Beneath. Priddy’s first EP won acclaim from Richard Thompson; her first album earned glowing reviews. Her third is simply brilliant, though there’s nothing ‘simple’ about it besides the ease with which it gets under your skin. Musically it feels deeper, more complex, with wonderful arrangements – rural, filmic, even psychedelic in that ’60s British way – all held together by the clarity of Priddy’s pure strong voice. She still has that haunted folk nostalgia, but here it takes place within the walls of her old childhood home (First House On The Left) that inspired the album. Its 10 full songs are bookended by two small atmospheric tracks, Returning and Leaving, adding to the effect that you’re…

★★★★ Two Tons O’ Fun SOUTHBOUND. LP 1980 debut from Sylvester’s ‘girls’ who later became The Weather Girls. Martha Wash and Izora Rhodes Armstead brought grit and intensity to disco, first as Sylvester’s backing singers, then as the somewhat forgotten duo Two Tons O’ Fun who made two excellent LPs, their first, 1980’s self-titled – receiving its first repress on vinyl since its original issue here – and the same year’s follow-up Backatcha. Working with producer Harvey Fuqua of Moonglows/Motown fame, the pair – like Sylvester – dealt in the fantasy self, exploring notions of identity and inclusivity on their debut’s four singles. The first three, Earth Can Be Just Like Heaven, I Got The Feeling and Just Us, are the perfect blend of church-honed raw performance, hi-energy vibrations and…

The Bacon Brothers KEVIN BACON WITH BRO’ MICHAEL What music are you currently grooving to? Kevin Bacon: I can’t stop listening to [Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak supergroup] Silk Sonic. I’m getting ready to do a series that has some vintage country roots so I have a playlist, people like Eddy Arnold, Ralph Stanley, Townes Van Zandt, Lucinda Williams and Johnny Cash. Michael Bacon: I love Lawrence. They’re a brother/sister group from Brooklyn and unabashedly soulful. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? MB: Music From Big Pink, The Band. KB: Maybe Earth, Wind & Fire’s That’s The Way Of The World or Revolver by The Beatles. Or Stevie Wonder’s Songs In The Key Of Life. What was the first record you ever bought and where…

“THE CONCEPT of this podcast is hidden gems,” Idles’ Joe Talbot tells Andrew Male in the latest instalment of The MOJO Record Club podcast. “But for me, these albums are like lifelines… Since I was a ver y young boy, since I was given headphones by my dad, music’s been my safe place… There are certain albums that reinvigorate my imagination, my lust for ever ything.” For the past year and a half, we’ve been inviting some of our favourite musicians to join us on The MOJO Record Club podcast. In the company of our host, MOJO’s Senior Associate Editor Andrew Male, they ’ve been encouraged to tell us about a record they love – a “lifeline”, as Joe Talbot would have it. The resulting inter views have been wide-ranging,…

‘‘WE HAVE COWS.” It’s a glorious Califor nia mor ning, but Lenny Kravitz’s mind is in Brazil, specifically the for mer coffee plantation outside Rio de Janeiro that he’s transfor med into a farm. “We do bamboo, eucalyptus, coffee and most of the fr uit and vegetables that grow in the state of Rio. We don’t eat the cows, of course,” he adds. “We just let them graze, eat grass and live.” Rather like his cows, for the 35 years since his debut album Let Love Rule catapulted him to instant European fame and eventual American renown, Kravitz has grazed and lived. There’s been grass too. For the past month, however, he’s been in Los Angeles, finetuning his twelf th album, the sparkling Blue Electric Light, the longest album of…

THREE DAYS INTO THE FIRST SESSION FOR THE SIXTH WAXAHATCHEE ALBUM, IN Durham, North Carolina, the producer Brad Cook sent the band home early. It was a muggy afternoon in late July 2022, the heat and humidity of the Piedmont region closing in like a sauna. Katie Crutchfield had just finished an early-summer tour opening for Sheryl Crow and Jason Isbell, on which she had locked into a fluent songwriting rhythm. After her early set, she would retire to her bus with a keyboard, guitar, and laptop, turning bits of melody she’d stowed for years into full songs. By tour’s end, she had four new tunes. “I didn’t see Jason or Sheryl much, because I was tucked away,” says Crutchfield. “I got good at finding ways to have privacy.” The…

“In 1975, I’d arranged rhythm tracks for Joan Baez’s album Diamonds & Rust. Walter heard it, and called me to play on Katy Lied. I did two takes on Bad Sneakers. Donald was at the console, and said, ‘Do you know how many guys we had come in and play that part? We’re finished!’ That showed me we agreed on what music could be between us. Later I asked Walter, How’d you guys happen to call me? He said, ‘I’m not a Joan Baez fan, but I wanted to hear the guy that could make her sound that good.’ In my opinion, the guitarists they hired were the perfect marriage of rock energy and sophistication. Really, all the studio guys they chose were just a bunch of pros at the…

Sam Lee ★★★★ songdreaming COOKING VINYL. CD/DL/LP “WE DON’T have the tools with which to relate to nature any more,” Sam Lee tells MOJO as he tries to explain the thought behind his Ber nard Butlerproduced fourth LP. “I’m a guide in that sense and music is my sort of Pan pipe, tr ying to bring people over into a new way of feeling towards what loving nature can be.” Momentarily, he catches himself and pauses. “I’m wor ried this is all sounding like total bullshit.” If you want an excuse to stop reading, it’s worth noting that songdreaming (note: self-conscious lower-case ‘s’) is a collection of new songs full of bits recycled from traditional material, suffused with gaunt Astral Weeks jazz vibes perfor med by a north Londoner who…

★★★★ Liam Gallagher John Squire PARLOPHONE. CD/DL/LP Oasis singer and Stone Roses guitar whiz become the Fab Two. This Manc super-duo album poses a fascinating question: were some of the ideas here originally for the third Roses LP that never was? No one’s letting on, yet Gallagher fits effortlessly in his hero Ian Brown’s shoes, his quartz-edged voice the perfect plating for Squire’s roving Physical Graffiti guitar gymnastics set atop melodious, mid-Beatles-y songs. Sometimes, as on Mother Nature’s Song, we’re back in the Roses’ chiming Mersey Paradise; elsewhere, as with Just Another Rainbow and I’m Bored, the Fabs are mercilessly plundered (namely, Rain and Paperback Writer). What’s really interesting is hearing Liam being stretched stylistically, most notably on the bluesy rocker I’m A Wheel, a close cousin of Wings’ Let…

★★★★ Visions BLUE NOTE. CD/DL/LP Multi-Grammy-winning singer/songwriter finds joy in musical rebirth. Don’t try to second-guess Norah Jones. Just when you think you’ve got her figured out, she’ll reinvent herself, as she did with 2009’s The Fall, which showed her grittier side, and 2012’s Little Broken Hearts, an experimental hook-up with producer Danger Mouse. Her ninth album, Visions, her most unpredictable yet, is a fruitful collaboration with producer Leon Michels, best known for his work with soul revivalists Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. Helped by Michels, whose grainy lo-fi production exudes a ramshackle charm, Jones has rediscovered her mojo, proving there’s life after 2020’s Pick Me Up Off The Floor, her joyless mid-life crisis album. Defined by the vibrant garage band rawness of Staring At The Wall, featuring Jones’s jangly…

★★★★ Eat The Gold MUSIC’S NOT DEAD. DL/LP Sussex quartet’s second: the greatest Kraut-gospel-funk party album ever? From the burgeoning ‘new Seattle’ of St Leonardson-Sea, this Neu!-loving quartet propelled by Elastica, Lush and Jesus And Mary Chain drummer Justin Welch here evolve apace. Where 2022’s debut St Leopards packed four sprawling motorik instrumentals, two lasting 15 minutes-plus, this follow-up sees the focus sharpen to six monster tracks, each five-to-eight minutes long, four featuring doubled-up vocal raps from ‘synthesist’ Riz Maslen and guitarist Oliver Cherer, all drenched in stargazing euphoria. Airports opens as a thrilling Neu!-scape variant, the iconic Klaus Dinger beat mutated amid shimmering keys to a near-baggy shuffle, until 4:51 when a female choir ecstatically voices the band’s name, ushering in a Damascene upward-spiralling climax. Aircooled soon get down-and-dirty:…

★★★★ Cuckoo Storm ONE LITTLE INDEPENDENT. CD/DL/LP Beak praxis: folk scion teams up to hit goth-prog-jazz sweet spot. “I’ve had bad dreams my love and not yet been to bed,” sings Marry Waterson on Undear Sphere, the Vampire Weekend-bycandlelight opener to this omen-heavy collaborative effort with Irish singersongwriter Adrian Crowley. Blessed with a voice like unpaid bills, Waterson has inherited her mother’s elliptical lyrical skill (skilfully repurposing one of the late Lal’s own lines for Arthur Rimbaud tribute One Foot Of Silver, One Foot Of Gold), and has once more found a kindred musical spirit, just a year after her trad-arr all-star link-up with Lisa Knapp and Nathaniel Mann as Hack-Poets Guild. Waterson and Crowley do a cadaverous Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood on Lovers In The Waves, and dredge…

★★★★ The Great Bailout ANTI-. CD/DL/LP Experimental jazz and blues targeting the UK’s slave legacy. There’s a palpable rage coursing through the ninth album from Philadelphian poet, artist and musician Camae Ayewa, AKA Moor Mother. In her crosshairs is the brutal legacy of the British slave trade – of the terrible physical and mental price paid by enslaved Africans and the ‘compensation’ paid to slave and plantation owners by the UK government post-abolition. It’s purposefully uncomfortable listening. Death By Longitude, for example – “46,000 British slave owners, bailout, bailout, bailout…” growls Ayewa – is a riotous cacophony of feedback and pummelling beats. On God Save The Queen, Ayewa posits “God save the Queen… because who else’s life has value?” over a discordant mix of soul/operatic vocals and spoken word, crashing…

★★★★ Half-Divorced SUB POP. CD/DL/LP Debt, parenthood and catalytic converters: scabrous noisers sing the suburban blues. Midlife crises await all who live long enough, even repulsively named Pennsylvanian ‘pigfuck’ revivalists Pissed Jeans. Their sixth LP ditches the savvy anti-machoism and perversity of earlier outings to vent the frustrations of punks-turneddads who, as the title suggests, are struggling to acclimatise to domesticity. Possibly the only hardcore LP to rail at seatbelt alarms and “helicopter parenting”, Half-Divorced’s bougie targets are nevertheless dispatched with extreme prejudice, accompanied by a brutish clatter that pairs the bloody-minded, avant flourishes of late Black Flag to Oi! anthemics. As such, the LP’s worldview is best articulated by Everywhere Is Bad, a withering, TV Party-esque list-song finding fault with pretty much every location across the globe (“Helsinki? Too…

Brian Harnetty ★★★★ The Workbench WINESAP. DL The Ohio composer’s last album, 2022’s Words And Silences, matched recordings of theologian Thomas Merton to chamber music, and this follow-up only intensifies his work’s delicate emotional heft. Harnetty creates a threnody for his late father out of voice messages, the watches and music boxes he mended, and his sleeping breaths in a hospice, underpinned by bass clarinet, violin, cello and piano. Dignified, meticulous, profoundly moving sound art. Dean McPhee ★★★★ Astral Gold BASS RITUAL. DL/LP The Yorkshire guitarist’s progress from beatific folk picking to a reverberant kosmische twang has been so mellow over the past 15 years as to be barely perceptible. But here, on his fifth solo album, he achieves a sort of elegantly blackened transcendence: like, roughly, Michael Rother and…

★★★ The Likes Of Us INSIDE OUT. CD/DL/LP Veterans of new prog introduce new singer Alberto Bravin. Can you still pack a punch with a musical arsenal mostly reclaimed from 1970s prog rock? As the blustery Oblivion, the album’s first single, reaches its close, doubts set in. But then comes Beneath The Masts, a 17-minute multi-part epic. Amid neo-classical chords and a whiff of early Genesis, this is BBT riding high, the music intricate but light on its feet. Some pleasingly wistful tunes follow, with new vocalist Alberto Bravin an honourable replacement for the late David Longdon, his tone lighter, less grainy. The MTV power balladry of Love Is The Light is not exactly what fans signed up for, and the band’s increasingly cosmopolitan line-up has smoothed out some of…

★★★ Djesse Vol. 4 DECCA. CD/DL/LP The last of jazz-pop chameleon’s album series. The first British artist to win Grammys for his first four LPs, Collier sells truckloads of albums in the US, where he’s feted like a superstar, but in the UK, he’s still flying under the radar of mainstream adulation. Perhaps that’s because his grandiose musical vision, epitomised by Djesse, a quadruple-album project on an epic scale, resonates more with America’s ‘Dream Big’ mentality. Like the previous three Djesse LPs, the set’s denouement is the aural equivalent of a roller-coaster ride, its 21 tunes giddily flitting from R&B to South Asian music and even death metal. Impressive, too, is Collier’s enormous guest list (everyone from Stormzy to Steve Vai), which reads like a Who’s Who of pop. Though…

★★★★ David Nance & Mowed Sound THIRD MAN. DL/LP/MC Garage rocker finds spiritual home at Jack White’s label. As someone who released his own version of Beatles For Sale with “These guys STINK” scrawled across the Fabs photo on the cover, you’d be forgiven for thinking Omaha’s David Nance has a pretty punchy take on rock history. In fact, his wiry garage rock is inventive rather than iconoclastic, with full, raw covers of Goat’s Head Soup, Berlin and Doug Sahm And Band also nestling in his digital catalogue. This first ‘proper’ LP since 2020’s fine Staunch Honey is generally more of the same, even with a backing band replacing his regular solo, multi-tracked approach. Hence Mock The Hours picks up where Staunch Honey’s Merchandise left off, roughly like Exile On…

★★★ Tall Stories & New Religions TAPETE. CD/DL/LP Almost resprayed: Loft man fixes his back catalogue. Marking 40 years since the release of Peter Astor’s first record – The Loft’s Why Does The Rain? single – this collection gives an autumnyears overhaul to some of the bookish auteur’s old songs with his array of former bands: The Weather Prophets, Wisdom Of Harry, Ellis Island Sound et al. The charity shop cardigan feel of She Comes From The Rain is traded in for Bryan Ferry-esque tailoring on a revised version, neglected Emblem gets a new twinkle, while third-age Bob Dylan winks through Astor’s retakes of one-chord wonder Chinese Cadillac and faux-Appalachian doodle Nancy True Knot. Astor never had the cachet of fellow travellers The Go-Betweens or Lloyd Cole, but Model Village…

★★★★ Mar tin Car thy TOPIC. LP Foundation Anglo folkie’s 1965 debut back on vinyl. Controversy once raged as to whether Martin Carthy’s arrangement of Scarborough Fair from his 1965 debut LP had been lifted for Simon & Garfunkel’s rather more commercially successful version, but wounds have long-since healed; as Carthy put it: “It’s a fucking folk song, everybody owns it.” Nonetheless, “The One With Him Sitting On A Pallet” – back on vinyl as part of Topic’s 85th anniversary celebrations – remains a towering example of open-source music. An early folk revival adopter, the Londoner’s takes of High Germany, Sovay and The Handsome Cabin Boy were plundered by a generation of trad-minded hep cats, the ex-skiffler’s guitar accompaniments as much imitated as his clipped vocal style. New arrivals may…

★★★ Going Home SEA NOTE/DRAG CITY. DL/LP Chicago folk-rock relic from 2001, starring Josephine Foster and Slint’s Dave Pajo. While Pajo toured as guitarist in Billy Corgan’s short-lived supergroup Zwan from 2001-2003, he’d moonlight as drummer with support act The Children’s Hour, whom he’d chanced upon in small Windy City venues. Today, he describes that involvement as “like putting on a gas mask and getting clean oxygen”, aptly marvelling at Foster’s crystalline vocal purity, and the guileless idiosyncrasy of her and guitarist Andy Bar’s songs. These concurrent eight recordings lay dormant for the intervening 20-plus years awaiting mixing and bass lines which Pajo never got around to finessing. Here belatedly completed, it’s obvious why Pajo fell under TCH’s spell: Foster’s graceful keening exquisitely adorns Bar’s twisty-turny strumming, the upbeat tracks…

★★★★ Jon Savage’s 1983-1985: Welcome To Techno City ACE. CD Punk chronicler and MOJO writer revisits the mid-’80s. Like all eras, the mid-’80s were a mix of the good, the bad and the indifferent. Splendidly, writer Jon Savage spent most of it selecting which pop videos would be shown on the doomed TV-am. As well as watching, Savage was a reasonably discerning listener too, hence these 30 selections, thwarted only by licensing restrictions and the exclusion of anything with rock or reggae pretensions. As with the best comps, it’s a catholic treat and almost every pick is open to debate – here former and future Buzzcock Pete Shelley’s drab Telephone Operator, an unappealing moment on the appealing XL1 LP – but there lies the joy. Alison Moyet’s censor-busting Love Resurrection,…