Table of contents for January 2025 in MOJO

“WHAT I’M ALWAYS looking for,” says James Mangold, “whether I’m making a western, or an Indiana Jones movie, or a Wolverine movie, or a Bob Dylan movie, is a fable of some kind.” The director – whose credits include the Academy Award-winning Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line, Ford v Ferrari, and various big budget Hollywood franchise films – is discussing his forthcoming Dylan project, A Complete Unknown. The movie, set to open on Christmas Day in the US and on January 17 in the UK, stars Timothée Chalamet as Dylan, and an ensemble cast that includes Ed Norton, Elle Fanning and Nick Offerman. Mangold, who penned the script with screenwriter Jay Cocks – based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, And The Night That…

THE CIMBALOM and the hackbrett; the yangqin and the santur: included in the sleevenotes to last year’s reissue of Dorothy Carter’s 1978 album Waillee Waillee is the musician, historian and composer’s illustrated family tree of the psaltery, the ancient stringed instrument that was one of Carter’s beloved “trapezoids”. Whether they were plucked or struck with hammers, from China or Ukraine, Hungary or Iran, Carter – who played dulcimer, psaltery, hurdy-gurdy and zither – carefully noted them down. It’s a tangled taxonomy, one that matches Carter’s time-stretching, space-bending work, vibrating at the junction between Appalachian folk, New Age spiritualism and world music. When she died in 2003, aged 68, Carter was best known as the unlikely co-instigator of the Mediæval Bæbes, the floral-garlanded early music group formed when she met co-founder…

BEST KNOWN as a founder member of Ride – and as the bassist for latterday Oasis – Andy Bell has been flying under the radar as an electronic artist since 2019, operating under the name GLOK. In a deliberate physical move away from his band activities, a decade ago he rented a studio specifically for his synthesizer and drum machine experiments, in a warehouse space in north London recommended to him by his friend, the late DJ, remixer and musician Andrew Weatherall. “It had been recently vacated by a Norwegian death metal band,” Bell chuckles. “It was kind of oppressive and covered in black carpet, floor-to-ceiling. But it was a good place to work because it was just so brutal.” In this unlikely setting, Bell began experimenting with the Tangerine…

THERE IS AN OLD FAMILY photograph that for Matt Berninger perfectly illustrates his anxieties about stepping on-stage. In it, his aquaphobic father is snapped in mid-air wearing a wet suit and flippers, a split second before plunging into the ocean. “Yeah, it’s my dad jumping into the water, with the big tank on, knowing he was going to sink way, way down,” he tells MOJO with a grin. “I mean, there’s 100 per cent a direct connection.” Starting out as anything but a natural frontman, The National’s singer depended on alcohol to lubricate his live performances. “But I used to over-lubricate,” he laughs. “Y’know, a little too much oil in the gears. Just because I was terrified.” In time, Berninger’s dread has become a key component of his on-stage act.…

Gruff Rhys: Me and Daf [Dafydd leuan, drums] had made three albums as Ffa Coffi Pawb with Gorwel [Owen] producing. I’d known Gorwel since I was 16 making music with my friend Rhodri Puw [later of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci]. Gorwel’s studio was in an old train station, then above a post office his parents ran on Anglesey. He had an MA in post-Cage composition and perfect pitch. Cian Ciarán: To me, Gorwel’s studio was like that suitcase in Pulp Fiction where they open it and it has a golden glow. He had a MiniMoog. Gorwel Owen: It was clear from Ffa Coffi Pawb they were unique as musicians and people. That rare combination of great songwriting and an open approach to what might happen when recording. When Cian, Bunf [Huw…

IT WAS THE news that everyone knew would come one day, but no one could quite believe it when it did. On Tuesday, August 27, 2024, after 48 hours of coded warnings, Oasis announced that they would be re-forming for a series of stadium shows in summer 2025. The date of the news-drop was well-chosen: that week marked the 15th anniversary of Noel and Liam’s bust-up at the Rock En Seine festival in Paris that had ended the group, and 30 years since their era-defining debut album, Definitely Maybe, first hit the racks. As tickets went on sale, fans desperate to attend the four-night run at Wembley Stadium plus further dates in Cardiff, Manchester, Edinburgh and Dublin, complained of hours queuing on-line, only to be timed-out or denied access for…

1 JACK WHITE Archbishop Harold Holmes “I’m gonna put you in the fast lane!” A testifying highlight from No Name ,as White takes on the persona of spiritual huckster-cum-Vaudevillian rapper. Amid Zeppish funk, the throbbing bass line is provided by his daughter, Scarlett. Written by Jack White. Published by Third Strings Tunes, administered by Universal Music Corp, (ASCAP) Produced by Jack White. Label: Third Man Records 2 THE BLACK CROWES Wanting And Waiting A sentiment familiar to Crowes fans, on hold since their last LP in ’09. The Robinson reunion brought this flab-free gospel rocker that would’ve fitted perfectly on 1992’s Southern Harmony… Written by Chris Robinson and Rich Robinson. Ⓟ 2024 Silver Arrow Records. Published by Psychedelic Hippopotamus (BMI) and Shetland Bolero Songs (BMI) exclusively administered by Songs of Spirit One…

Vazesh Tapestry EARSHIFT MUSIC. CD/DL Expansive studio outing from unconventional Australian trio of Jeremy Rose, Hamed Sadeghi and Lloyd Swanton. While Vazesh’s 2021 debut The Sacred Key contained two winding instrumentals captured live at Sydney Opera House, their first studio foray shows the breadth of possibilities of their intimate set-up. An atypical three-way between Hamed Sadeghi (Eishan Ensemble) on tar (an Iranian long-necked lute), Lloyd Swanton (The Necks) on double bass and Jeremy Rose (Earshift Orchestra) on bass clarinet/saxophone, it’s a model of economy that gracefully allows each player to shine. From Zircon’s waking rumble to Calabash’s insistent motifs and Saffron’s folky synergy, all three supply discrete melodic roles. And while Sadeghi’s vibrating tar is often the rhythmic hub, it’s balanced by Swanton’s intuitive grasp of where to go and…

Billy Strings Highway Prayers REPRISE. CD/DL/LP ONE THING you can say about Billy Strings is he doesn’t back down from a fight. Having seen off the traditionalist bluegrass naysayers – or as he calls them, the “grassholes” – by adding metal, hip-hop, prog and jam band vibes into his outrageously gifted finger-picking stew, he’s now gaslighting them by showing just how trad he can be. After three albums of brain-twisting experimentation, 2022’s Me/And/Dad was as homespun as could be, a collaboration with his stepfather Terry Barber, the man who taught Michigan-born Strings how to flatpick from the age of three. Highway Prayers takes Me/And/Dad’s baseline bluegrass and stretches its horizon far beyond all expectation, his musical ambition writ large. And that’s literally writ large: it’s a double album. Of bluegrass.…

Talking Heads Talking Heads: 77 RHINO. CD/LP “GET BEHIND IT before it gets past you,” ran the slogan Sire used to promote Talking Heads in 1977, bundling them with Richard Hell And The Voidoids, The Dead Boys and The Saints in a campaign that pushed “new wave rock’n’roll”. It irritated the art-school quartet, who didn’t exactly fit in with the “honest, unpretentious, energy-charged” sounds the label promised. Talking Heads, though, would be the band who cut through. “When people saw them, they realised they weren’t dealing with morons in leather jackets,” said Sire’s Ken Kushnick (somewhat unfairly) in 1979. This 4-LP box set, an expansion of their debut Talking Heads: 77 complete with singles and B-sides, shows just how they stood out from the New York crowd with their mutated…

Steve Leach With The Crystal Grass Orchestra Ocean Potion PHILIPS, 1976 WHEN HITHERTO-UNKNOWN blues hobo Seasick Steve made his UK breakthrough playing Jools Holland’s Hootenany in 2006, he cut something of a grizzled, hairy dash. Playing a guitar dubbed The Three-String Trance Wonder – which he said was haunted – he set the rhythm for Dog House Boogie by stamping on a wooden box. The people liked what they heard, and five Top 10 UK albums followed, including 2008’s platinum-selling I Started Out With Nothin’ And I Still Got Most Of It Left. His was a ripe backstory. Steve Wold had started riding the rails aged 14, it went, and had learned his craft from Mississippi-born country bluesman K.C. Douglas. Along the way there was manual labour, juke joints, sleeping…

Elton John: Never Too Late Dirs: R.J. Cutler and David Furnish DISNEY+. S ELTON JOHN’s ’70s story reads like a superhero origin tale: bashful, bespectacled lad gets bitten by (musical) bug, transforms into Captain Fantastic and becomes a phenomenon, while suffering personal crises. It’s such a startling narrative that it has, of course, been told time and time again. Not least by Elton John himself, who in 2019 sanctioned Dexter Fletcher’s biopic, Rocketman, and oversaw a characteristically frank autobiography, Me, ghostwritten by The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis. Those empathetic interviews for the book provide the audio bed for this 102-minute documentary, co-directed by R.J. Cutler (previous subjects: John Belushi, Billie Eilish) and John’s husband David Furnish (responsible for the toys-out-of-the-pram 1997 study, Tantrums & Tiaras). Never Too Late cuts between archive…

HELLO JUNE 1977 I was a soul boy that could play the drums, signing on and hanging around in Wood Green waiting for Armageddon or whatever it is you do when you’re a late teenager. A friend of mine, [guitarist] Mark Ryan – Adam called him The Kid – called me and said that the drummer in this punk rock band he was in had a car accident or something, and could I stand in? I just said, Yeah, come over. So a white van appeared and out popped [manager] Jordan and Adam Ant. Jordan was wearing a sort of Vivienne Westwood string vested thing, showing her tits, unabashed, and Adam was in all black leather, like Elvis. They were real aliens. I’m sitting in this van with Andy Warren…

OF ALL EARLY Creation label groups, The Loft have the most singular legend. Great things were expected after 1985 indie hit Up The Hill And Down The Slope: instead, the same year, they dramatically split up on-stage while supporting The Colourfield at the Hammersmith Palais. The rancour was real, as detailed in David Cavanagh’s Creation history My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry For The Prize, which took its title from The Loft’s signature song. “It was fascinating, seeing it all laid out like that,” says frontman and songwriter Peter Astor, who made the grand gesture of announcing his departure in public. “I was quite impressed with our levels of stupidity, arrogance and self-belief, underlain with an incredible lack of confidence… what an annoying, mouthy little prick I was. But, you know,…

1 LCD SOUNDSYSTEM X-RAY EYES To beatbox clatter, Murphy speak-sings of seeing right through all your disguises. Disco malaria results, and excitingly, a new album is promised. Find it: NTS radio 2 BOOTSY COLLINS THE JB’S TRIBUTE PASTOR P Bootsy doffs his lid to the genius of The JB’s, with drummers Clyde Stubblefield and ‘Jabo’ Starks, trombone player Fred Wesley, plus rapper Harry Mack. Find it: streaming services 3 GEORGE HARRISON BE HERE NOW (TAKE 8) George runs through his song of the eye of the universe opening. From the fiftieth anniversary Living In The Material World. Find it: streaming services 4 BONNIE “PRINCE” BILLY (FEAT. TIM O’BRIEN) OUR HOME Up country, Oldham muses on the beauty of living right to waltzing fiddle and mandolin. From The Purple Bird, out…

HOW DO YOU make a film about Brian Eno? The self-styled non-musician and mischievous disrupter-producer would seem a fertile subject for cinematic exploration. This is the man, after all, who fed Roxy Music’s art-rock through pioneering electronic effects, helped Bowie, Talking Heads and U2 to think outside the box, and pioneered ambient music in the ’80s and self-generating music in the ’90s. But as the director of MOJO’s Music Film Of The Year points out, there were some major obstacles to securing his involvement in the project. “Brian told me he hates most music films and has no interest in getting nostalgic about his work,” admits Gary Hustwit. Hooking Eno would be a matter of technological seduction. Generative AI software evolved by Hustwit and Liverpudlian digital artist/coder Brendan Dawes allowed…

1 ANOUSHKA SHANKAR Chapter II: How Dark It Is Before Dawn (LEITER/BMG) 2 AROOJ AFTAB Night Reign (VERVE) 3 MDOU MOCTAR Funeral For Justice (MATADOR) 4 SEUN KUTI & EGYPT 80 Heavier Yet (Lays The Crownless Head) (RECORD KICKS) 5 MOMO. Gira (BATOV) 6 THE JOY The Joy (TRANSGRESSIVE) 7 LES AMAZONES D’AFRIQUE Musow Danse (REAL WORLD) 8 MARCOS VALLE Túnel Acústico (FAR OUT) 9 EL KHAT Mute (GLITTERBEAT) 10 BAB L’BLUZ Swaken (REAL WORLD)…

LAWRENCE (just the first name, if you please) made his first record in 1979, but as the Birmingham-born singer and songwriter in revered ’80s indie romantics Felt, ’90s conceptualists Denim and, most recently, Poundshop ‘B-side band’ Go-Kart Mozart/Mozart Estate, the fame he craved remained mockingly out of reach. It would be ironic if the catalyst for the dam to break were to be this full-disclosure, hugely entertaining book – neither a memoir nor biography, but built around the topics addressed by Lawrence with author and MOJO contributor Will Hodgkinson as they tramped the outskirts of London in 2023: notably his perversely pursued music ‘career’. Along the way there’s obsessive trivia, self-sacrifice, romance and hilarity, plus addiction and destitution, with a strange kind of deliverance as Lawrence witnesses a massive marble…

MIKE SCOTT The Waterboys’ spiritual leader These days the Japanese are the true keepers of the flame of rock’n’roll. Their rock subculture has the original energy and wildness. This year I discovered Yanagiya Mutsumi & The Ratbones through their Atami Hihokan EP [2017] – which I bought for its funny cover. They mix humour, vibe and sleaze. I saw them in Tokyo six months ago and they were fantastic, one of the best live acts I’ve ever seen. And I picked up a killer LP Document by a Japanese blitz-rock trio called My Funny Hitchhiker [2023]. I also fulfilled a long-held dream and visited Marrakesh where I was entranced by the music on Jemaa el-Fnaa, the old town square, every night, especially a group called Amal Assaha – in English,…

IN OCTOBER 1979, when Neil Young sat for an hour-long interview with Los Angeles DJ Mary Turner, he didn’t exactly lie about the film he was then making, an improvisational comedic drama about the end of the world called Human Highway. He just talked about it without ever calling it by its name. “I’m still of the school of trying to make it or keep it spontaneous as you go along,” Young said of scripts during a talk in which he referenced Devo, the film’s co-stars, and the impact they’d had on his songwriting. “A one-page list might be good with improvising characters. That’s the way I would do it.” In fact, as Devo’s Gerald Casale remembers it, Young and a confederation of friends that included actors Dennis Hopper and…

Muscle Shoals MASCOT. CD/DL/LP Dutch blues-rock trio’s pilgrimage to the heart of the American South. BARELY INTO their thirties, this hard touring, bass-free threesome from Geleen in southern Netherlands here dispense their tenth long-player in 17 years – a dream outing which saw them record, as per title, in the legendary studios of Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Domestically chart-topping (2021’s Wolffpack was only beaten by Foo Fighters), these youngsters freely admit their influences: “The Black Crowes were like our Beatles,” they say, and their mission to the hotbed of ’60s/70s soul was equally inspired by The Black Keys’ Brothers, recorded in 2009 at Muscle Shoals Sound. Captured between MSS and FAME, their endeavours span from In Love’s Black Keys-ish contemporary pop-soul, where siblings Pablo (guitar/vocals) and Luka van de Poel (drums/vocals)…

Silkroad Ensemble With Rhiannon Giddens American Railroad NONESUCH. CD/DL/LP Musical companion to a podcast on the labourers that built America’s railroads. Rhiannon Giddens has a habit of turning up in all manner of interesting, edifying, collaborative musical projects. Here she’s the Artistic Director of a group of 13 musicians from different ethnic backgrounds telling the story, via music, of how America’s Transcontinental Railroad was built by immigrants and former slaves. Instruments range from Giddens’ banjo and fiddle to tabla and taiko, cello and violin, and the lonesome sound of a train with which the album begins. The first song, Giddens’ arrangement of Swannanoa Tunnel, has her striking voice coupled with the dark sound of a hammer hitting steel. It’s very dramatic, but the more moving songs are the beautiful blues…

Robbie Basho Snow Beneath The Belly Of A White Swan: The Lost Live Recordings TOMPKINS SQUARE. CD/DL DURING ONE of the concerts in this box of acoustic steel-string alchemy, guitarist Robbie Basho cheerfully introduces Song Of The Stallion – a new composition of dancing-horse cadence, aggressively plucked harpsichord-like tone and operatically mannered singing – as “a minuscule history of California that will be on my new Blue Thumb-Capitol album.” He spoke too soon. Blue Thumb, an LA imprint distributed by The Beatles’ US overlords, had issued Basho’s 1969 LP, Venus In Cancer, but declined to release another. When Song Of The Stallion – actually cut in 1968 – finally came out in 1971, Basho was back where he started in 1965: on Takoma Records, the Berkeley label founded by his…

Neighbourhood Songs 1965-1978 NEIGHBOURHOOD/THE WINTERGARDEN. CD/DL/LP A 6-CD trove of mostly unreleased versions from the late Ms Safka. HER REPUTATION too often reduced to flower-child by her Woodstock set or to twee pop star by 1971 mega-hit Brand New Key, Melanie’s true worth is her voice – channelling Edith Piaf, but tender and sweet too – and the songs that revealed her artistic depth. That this box set is the first exhaustive round-up of her work underlines the historical neglect. Some Say (I Got Devil) (as doomed as prime Laura Nyro) and her empathetic reading of the Stones’ Ruby Tuesday (here in four rawer versions) are proof alone of her merit, but these 122 tracks of live, demo and radio rarities – many in revealing acoustic versions – emphatically argue…

SOME HAVE greatness thrust upon them. After the vastness of All Things Must Pass, and a further boxed set, The Concert For Bangladesh, a project which had occupied a lot of his headspace in the previous year, George Harrison was perceived as a ‘heavy dude’ by 1973, mixing with diplomats, money men and spiritual leaders. But hardly any of the Bangladesh money ended up where it was supposed to, bringing George a weight of guilt and frustration, and a million pound personal tax bill, which didn’t help. The prevailing vibe around George’s second song-based solo album, Living In The Material World (Dark Horse Records/BMG), was that it felt rather dour, po-faced even. Hit single Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth), was yet more conversing with his sweet lord,…

EVEN IN THE context of a career studded with brilliant putdowns of terrible people, Taylor Swift hits particularly hard on 2012’s We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together. Mocking an ex-boyfriend, she describes the aftermath of their fights: “You would hide away and find your peace of mind/With some indie record that’s much cooler than mine.” If the laugh in her voice isn’t crushing enough, then the fact that Swift would actually make her own ‘indie’ records with The National’s Aaron Dessner in 2020 must have added insult to hipster injury. In 2012, Swift explained the backstory. “This guy was the kind of dude that would say, ‘Oh, I just once saw this basement concert and there were only four people there, but they’re starting to blow up now, so…

WOODLAND STUDIOS IN NASHVILLE HAS had quite the history since it opened in 1967. Originally a cinema, it was repurposed as a recording facility by Glenn Snoddy, the engineer who’d cut Ring Of Fire straight to acetate, and who’d accidentally invented fuzztone during a Marty Robbins session in 1961. By the mid ’70s, the complex was welcoming rock stars as well as country dignitaries, and it was here Neil Young fetched up in November 1977, fleshing out his latest set of folk-tinged songs at the behest of his label. The album that came out of those sessions, Comes A Time, sits at the heart of a tempestuous Neil streak beginning with Zuma and ending with Live Rust, and in the middle of this issue’s excellent cover story by Grayson Haver…

…Jack Antonoff confirmed last month he’d been working on LANA DEL REY’s (right) new LP Lasso. Lana told Vogue that Lasso would, “be a little lighter lyrically, and more pointed in a classic country, American, or Southern Gothic production” …French musician JEANCLAUDE VANNIER releases a new LP next February. Featuring his Mandolin Orchestra and accordions, he called it “the musical score for a silent film” …Robert Smith indicates that THE CURE have another LP almost done, after 16 years waiting for Songs Of A Lost World …MOGWAI’s The Bad Fire arrives in January. Recorded with John Congleton, songs include God Gets You Back, Fanzine Made Of Flesh and Pale Vegan Hip Pain …MADONNA is in the studio with Stuart Price, who worked on 2005’s Confessions On A Dance Floor …THE…

“I felt very confident. I was prepared for it not to be perfect.”NAIMA BOCK A LIVE TO the magic of intense flavours, 21st-century bohemian Naima Bock makes a critical appraisal of her midday drink as she talks to MOJO in a south London café. “Two tea bags in one teapot,” she says to herself. “Interesting.” The one-time Goat Girl bassist has infused plenty of powerful (and seemingly disparate) elements into her luscious second album. Below A Massive Dark Land encompasses trad folk techniques, nerdy indie meanders and Southern soul brass on lead single Kaley, as well as the kind of hand-cranked weirdness that might have earned her a guest appearance on a Kevin Ayers album, circa 1974. Having signed to prestige US indie Sub Pop before she had played a…

1 GILLIAN WELCH & DAVID RAWLINGS Woodland (ACONY) 2 CHRIS SMITHER All About The Bones (SIGNATURE SOUNDS) 3 VERA SOLA Peacemaker (CITY SLANG) 4 PETER BRUNTNELL Houdini And The Sucker Punch (DOMESTICO) 5 CHUCK PROPHET Wake The Dead (YEP ROC) 6 PHOSPHORESCENT Revelator (VERVE) 7 HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF The Past Is Still Alive (NONESUCH) 8 JOHNNY BLUE SKIES (AKA STURGILL SIMPSON) Passage Du Desir (HIGH TOP MOUNTAIN) 9 PERNICE BROTHERS Who Will You Believe (NEW WEST) 10 T BONE BURNETT The Other Side (VERVE)…

IN NOVEMBER 1976, JUST BEFORE the year slumped into the Christmas holiday season, Warner Bros honchos came to visit Neil Young. He had become the label’s most coveted rock star, not only able to dispatch albums to the top of the charts but also make critics swoon, an intersection of prestige and profitability to which few of his peers could aspire. And he was famously mercurial or, perhaps, intractable. Earlier that year, he’d bailed on a tour with Stephen Stills with one of the ’70s’ most notorious kiss-offs: “Dear Stephen, funny how some things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat a peach, Neil.” And, suddenly, Warner Bros’s capricious star had a new vision: Decade – the three-LP compilation he’d spent more than a year building and annotating and of…

Christy Moore A Terrible Beauty CLADDAGH. CD/DL/LP “…OUR PART to name upon name/As a mother names her child/When sleep at last has come,” declares W.B. Yeats in his valedictory musings on the martyrs of the Easter 1916 uprising, with its haunting refrain, “A terrible beauty is born.” Seventy-nine year-old Christy Moore’s 23rd studio album finds him doubling down on his life’s work as Ireland’s bush telegraph and conscience – naming names, recalling the forgotten, calling for justice. Famously a live powerhouse as recent collections like Magic Nights testify, Moore is mostly in considered, mournful form here, voice and guitar to the fore with sparse accompaniment from Gavin Murphy’s keyboards. Highlights include the Scottish ballad Broomielaw, first heard from Mick Moloney when Moore was setting out in 1964, and a couple…

Ballad Of The Broken Seas COOKING VINYL. CD/DL/LP Dreamy folk rock from one of the ’00s’ most inspired duos. THIS 2006 release was the first of three magical collaborations between Campbell and Lanegan. Inspired by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, the former Belle & Sebastian singer/cellist created her own kind of dark Americana, and Mark Lanegan, with his deep baritone purr, became her Lee. In these folk tales of obsession, infidelity and revenge, his resonant tones provide the perfect contrast to her ethereal voice. Like the interplay on The False Husband, for instance, where his subtle menace is mixed with her elusive, fluttering vocals and a cavernous Twin Peaks-style synth. Arrangements are simple yet evocative – light jazz drumming, mournful cello, a bluesy harp for their version of Ramblin’ Man.…

How To Re-Assemble An Atomic Bomb UNIVERSAL/ISLAND. CD/DL/LP “Shadow album” to 2004’s How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. THE POST-millennial U2 reclaimed commercial ground with the back-to-basics, if oversmoothed All You Can’t Leave Behind, and wanted to go harder with its successor. …Atomic Bomb was rawer than its predecessor, not least with the Never Mind The Bollocks riffing of Vertigo, but a lot of material was left on the cutting room floor, now reclaimed as this standalone record (also included in a 20th anniversary deluxe reissue). The Who vibe is strong in both Picture Of You (X+W) and an earlier version of All Because Of You with different lyrics. Of the four tracks not previously released as bonus tracks or B-sides, Happiness is a stomper à la Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me…

SINGER INGER LORRE (b.1963) fronted New Jersey alt-glam rockers Nymphs, who signed to Geffen during the grunge gold rush and whose sole LP in 1991 featured Iggy Pop. That year, a voicemail from her appeared on Hole’s song Sassy. Hits there were none, though Lorre, who had substance abuse issues, found notoriety when she urinated on A&R man Tom Zutaut’s desk. She later recorded with Jeff Buckley and Henry Rollins, and solo. ONE DIRECTION STAR AND solo artist LIAM PAYNE (b.1993) found fame on TV talent show The X Factor in 2010. His Simon Cowell-assembled boy band One Direction went on to sell 70 million records, and split in 2016. Wolverhampton-born Payne hit the Top 10 with his debut single Strip That Down in 2017, and embraced rap and electronica…

EVER FEEL digital music can sound a little flat on your headphones, lacking the depth and range of analogue? Maybe you need a GO Bar Kensei DAC from iFi Audio, the world’s first ultraportable DAC (that’s a digital-to-analogue converter) with K2HD technology. K2HD technology works to revive music with the natural harmonics lost during digitalisation. The GO Bar Kensei offers a tailored experience thanks to four digital filter options as well as XBass+ and XSpace options to create a more spacious sound field. It’s equipped with a 4.4mm balanced output, a symmetrical twin-mono output stage, and a formidable 477mW maximum output power. Built from Japanese stainless steel for maximum rigidity, it draws inspiration from the craftsmanship of a sword belonging to a Kensei, the honorific given to a master swordsman.…