When I get an email from a band that has the subject “SpankyWanky New Music” I am always going to open it. So when I got such an email from Southampton band Hercules Morse, of course, I opened it. I was directed to the first song, “Time Will Tell”, to be released from their forthcoming EP ‘Enemy Ally’. The song is out now on Bandcamp and the EP is due out on 27th December. “Time Will Tell” is a jagged post-punk funky tune that made me think of XTC on a more metal trip, with perhaps an overlay of Foo Fighters and some input from Deaf School. It is overflowing with angular rhythms that make you want to move your feet. Steve, Harry, Paul, and Gizmo should be proud of this marvellous new tune and I am sure that they are. Click hereto check out the new tune on Bandcamp.
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Edinburgh artist Steve Hewitt released a new single, “Cold World” today. It is a delicately softly spun tune with a hard message about life. All wrapped up in a fine alt. country style. Steve’s warm and honest vocal delivery makes the lyrics sink in deeply, and those words hit home really well. The lyric spotlights the darker side of our reality and human nature as Hewitt observes the pervasive existence of conflict, distorted moral values, betrayal, and personal suffering in the world today. The track is taken from his forthcoming crowdfunded sophomore album ‘Never Two Days The Same’.
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“Lunacy” is the second single from Manchester artist Tamsin Middleton, a.k.a. VICE VERA. For starters, I bloody love the name! As for the song, it is a wondrous and magical serving of sublime post-punk with elements of Siouxsie Sioux, Patti Smith, PJ Harvey, and Toyah. It kicks off with a dark, brooding feel before the drums kick in big time, and the music becomes more frenetic, frenzied, and fabulous. Tamsin’s voice oozes passion, compassion, and honesty. The vocal hook, particularly towards the end is impossible to resist and I found it spinning around inside my brain long after I had listened to the song. The cover is a stunning piece of art from Kim R Foster.
Photo by Kenny Brown
“Lunacy” was co-produced by VICE VERA and long-term collaborator Macclesfield-based music producer Neil Mykowski. It follows the first VICE VERA single, “Tourist,” from earlier this year. Tamsin had this to say about the single “This song is intensely personal, having been inspired by a conversation I once had with my father, while he was in the grip of addiction. It speaks to interconnectedness and the limitless universe both outside and inside each one of us“. While VICE VERA is relatively new to the music scene Tamsin has had a lot of great experience. She has played in many bands in the past 15 years (including LIINES, ILL, JD Meatyard, Mr Heart & AAAK) and supported Sleaford Mods, Pixies, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and The Fall among others. It would be hard to disagree with what Louder Than War said about VICE VERSA, they said “visceral lyrics that open your eyes and give that feeling you had when you first heard PJ Harvey.” There are a few VICE VERA dates coming up soon (see below), sadly I can’t make any of them, but if you can just do it!
DE RIDDERT, ROTTERDAM – 31/10/24 CAFE AVERECHT, UTRECHT – 2/11/24 THE EAGLE, SALFORD – 07/11/24 – [SINGLE LAUNCH] THE TRADES CLUB, HEBDEN BRIDGE – 28/11/24 – [OPENING FOR BILLY NOMATES]
Follow VICE VERA on Bandcamp and Spotify to get a first listen to “Lunacy” when it hits the streets on 25th October! Give “Tourist” a listen while you are waiting, you will not be disappointed!
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When Oli Barton released his debut single “It’s Over Now” earlier this year I described it as “a raucous, rockin’ romper stomper of a tune” and went on to say “This will be the song to take the Indie Disco night to another level. Everything is absolutely bang on; music, Oli’s vocals, the song, the overall performance. It is an earworm that is more addictive than hard drugs. It is everything a great pop single should be, 3 minutes of absolute music heaven“! I stand by everything I said back then. Now it is available in 7-inch vinyl format and I am lucky enough to own a copy! What this means is that I also get to play a rather wonderful B-side track.
The B Side, “You Just Played My Mind,” is a frantic 21st-century electric blues workout. Its dark lyrics relate to what appears to be a toxic relationship, but one that is impossible to let go of. The funky guitar licks on the bridge are sublime. Actually, this is such a great song, and I reckon it could stand as a double A-side. I hear that Oli is a stunning live performer and I am looking forward to seeing him sometime soon. Click here to bag yourself a copy of this excellent slab of vinyl!
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Cumgirl8 is an American post-punk band and multi-media collective based in Manhattan, New York. They came together (no pun intended) in 2019 by Lida Fox, Veronika Vilim, Avishag Cohen Rodrigues, and Chase Lombardo (a.k.a. Chase Noelle). According to themselves, they are a “sex-positive alien amoeba entity,” they are artists in music, film, publishing, and fashion. Their music apparently functions as an “outlet [for] repressed and pent-up emotions” which they use to challenge the patriarchy and capitalism. They have just released their second album, ‘The 8th Cumming’ which is monumentally weird, but in a good way. It feels like 70s punk, 70s disco, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Lady Gaga, and Madonna in her full-on dance phase climbed into the conjugal bed together and produced countless offspring which matured into Cumgirl8 songs. As for the band, well I think it is obvious that they really are a sex-positive alien amoeba entity.
The album opens with “Karma Police”, not the Radiohead track, but a banging Cumgirl8 original which kicks off with a nursery rhyme style refrain and then goes all Pete Burns with a mountainous Hi-Energy beat. This is how disco might sound on Jupiter’s moon Europa. Next is the previous single “ahhhh!hhhh! (i don’t wanna go)” which storms along like someone has spliced Andrea True Connection and early Human League into a Frankenstein of sublime dance pop. “Mercy” will be a huge hit on goth nights with its deeply dark pop vibe. If ever a song was crying out for a mega club mix it is “Hysteria!” it would be a world-straddling remix. It might have time travelled from the Blitz Club in 1979. The Blitz Kids would have loved it. Some freaky, weird, backward masking and spoken word shenanigans open “uti, ” an infectious electro, heavy metal workout. Has anyone ever written a song about a urinary tract infection before? Well, I assume that is the subject matter.
There is a subtle slowed-down New Order ghost hovering all over “Simulation” which is perhaps the least frenetic track on the album. Guitarwise there are still some New Order sprinkles in “Girls Don’t Try” which also shows some homage to the Cure. I would love to hear Robert Smith duet with Cumgirl8 on this tune. Giorgio Moroder would have been proud of “iBerry” which has a relentless synth riff and some awesome percussion. A drum sound like industrial metronomic pistons introduces “ny winter” which is overlaid with dark angelic ethereal vocals. The album closes with the current single “Something New” which gallops along like a newly tamed wild horse, but one that you feel might run wild again at any moment. Who are Cumgirl8 really? I have no idea, but they are far more alien than David Bowie ever was and according to their record label 4AD “cumgirl8 met in a sex chat 8000 years ago in another metaverse“. That sounds entirely feasible to me. Maybe they are the angry daughters of Thomas Jerome Newton and they have travelled here from their home planet Anthea to find him. This is a great band, a great album and the future of interplanetary pop and rock. Embrace the weird, embrace the alien!
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Natasha Kozaily wanted a Kate Bush dance party in San Diego in 2017. Seven years later, what was born that night is almost at the end of their farewell tour. This is how Baby Bushka came into the world. Initially, I thought that they might be yet another Kate Bush tribute act, but they are so much more than that. Baby Bushka is an interactive, theatrical, interpretive, and often spiritual Kate Bush experience, with eight women who clearly love Kate and have an encyclopedia-style knowledge of her music. Even more remarkably they are American and Kate Bush was never huge across the pond. She rarely charted with singles in the Billboard chart until ‘Stranger Things’ helped “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” reach number 3 in 2022. Albumwise the ‘Hounds Of Love’ album reached number 12 in the US in 1985. This was the first time I had seen Baby Bushka and sadly as this is the farewell tour it would be the last.
I love the mix of hits and deep cuts this Kate collective performs. The great thing is that so many of these tracks have never been performed live by the one and only Catherine Bush. The hits were stunningly well enacted and played. Those included “Babooshka”, “Wow”, “Hounds Of Love”, “Army Dreamers”, “The Big Sky”, “Wuthering Heights” and the previously mentioned “Running Up That Hill”. You could have heard a pin drop during a haunting take on “The Man With The Child In His Eyes”. While “Sat In Your Lap” was not well received on release in 1981, but here with Baby Bushka putting every ounce of their power, energy, and passion into one of the high points of the night it became something else completely, I have revisited the original recording many times since. “Mother Stands For Comfort” was a mountainous run through a great tune. I loved the throwing of Baby Bushka tenners into the audience during “There Goes A Tenner”. I actually managed to get one too. There was not a duff song in the set, and the pinnacle was a gorgeous medley of “Why Should I Love You”/ “Cloudbusting”/ “Under The Ivy”. For years “Why Should I Love You” has been one of my favourite Kate songs. She wrote, produced, and performed the original, but Prince played guitar, keyboards, and bass guitar, and sang backing vocals. How many shows have you seen where you get to see wolves, polar bears, and an astronaut on stage at various times? What a night and I so wish I had discovered Baby Bushka earlier.
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“American Kid” is the exquisitely gorgeous stunning new single from ace psych-folk duo Straylings on Deadpan Records. If Stevie Nicks had been born in the 90s she might well be producing music like this. The backing is a dazzling display of classic rock styles and tropes reminiscent, particularly in the guitar motifs, of the Byrds. But it is Dana Zeera’s ethereal pop-rock vocals that are the cherry on top of this sublime tune. It is a shame it is autumn (or fall to anyone reading in the US) because this feels like the sort of song I would play a lot in the summer. But frankly, whatever the season or the weather this is an awesome tune. get it in your life now!
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Gilda House is composed of Meg Gildehaus (on lead vocals and bass synth; Meg is also the lyricist and the source of the band’s name), Tony Morales (on guitar, keys, and backup vocals), and Nick Miles (drums and lighting design). They have a new single out now, it is called “How Bad” and frankly it is damned good. The track has an underlying darkness, particularly the synth bass and fuzzed-up guitar sounds. Meg’s voice is crystalline and emotional and rides over the music like a punked-up Valkyrie. How bad is this release? Not bad at all!
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From the ashes of the Rosemaries a new band, Birdlands has arisen. Like the immortal Phoenix, I believe Birdlands could become an unstoppable force based on this bold, audacious, dazzling, and daring debut album. It is an extraordinarily mature album for a young band and sounds at times like the kind of record a band who has been around for years and lived to tell the tale of their rise and fall rock ‘n’ roll adventures. The obvious comparison is post-punk, particularly Public Image Ltd, but there are hints of psych, shoegaze and whisper it softly, pop here too. I do not know if any of the band have been to Art College, but the music sometimes hits me like a post-impressionist painting brought to life through sound, like Gauguin and van Gogh in a Seattle grunge band. I have always felt that if it is done right, weird is good and the intermissions on this album are certainly weird, but in a rather excellent way. Lyrically these songs contain sublime prose. Imagine an eclectic bunch of writers like Shelley, Poe, Keats, Lovecraft, and Burroughs using music as a tool to enhance and enrich their towering literary triumphs. There is not a duff song here, I think that previous singles “Gallows” and “3AM” are my favourites with “Dead Birds” and “Blue Lights” close behind. And what other band would have the wit and the balls to include their version of “(What Shall We Do With) The Drunken Sailor”, Birdlands do it with panache. It is a sardonically, dark, sometimes twisted album with a dystopian mood, and I bloody love it!
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Curtis Eller is new to these pages, but Dan Lucas a.k.a. Boss Caine is a huge fan, so I had to give Mister Eller a listen. Once again Dan Lucas proves he knows good music. The new album from Curtis Eller’s American Circus, ‘Another Nice Mess’ is rather special indeed. The album opens with a swampy deep south-sounding workout called “True Love In The Exclusion Zone”. This song would be a perfect fit to soundtrack a dark, gothic horror film. “Goddam Loser” has elements of Dr. John, but with banjo and not keys. It also has a twang of Elton and Bernie’s attempts to do country music. The light country jazz feel on “Conscientious Objector” showcases Eller’s smoky voice perfectly. If Roger Waters went down Eller’s musical road rather than the pomp and prog of Pink Floyd he might sound like Eller on “We Know This By Heart” which is an utterly gorgeous song in a collection of utterly gorgeous songs. It also picks on the type of subject matter Waters has tackled before, this time the sad resignation to and familiarity of school shootings. Curtis Eller knows how to tell a great story in songs and “Carry The Faces (for Martha Wills)” invites you into his world and weaves a remarkable raconteur’s tale. The brass arrangements suggest the dark side of New Orleans. The title track, “Another Nice Mess” reminds me of early Dr.Hook when they still had the Medicine Show suffix and Ray Sawyer sang on “Sylvia’s Mother”. It carries such beauty in its simplicity and is an homage to the great friendship between Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
“Sonny Liston Told Us” has a dark funereal mood. Is it a narrative about the mysteries and darkness in Liston’s life, I don’t know, but it is a damned good tune. The sparse arrangements of banjo, bass, and Eller’s voice on “An Only Child” set the hairs on the back of my neck to rise, particularly when Eller sings of being afraid to die. His voice oozes deep emotion here. A dark blues style erupts on “Standard White Jesus” and it seeps into the auditory cortex of your brain and takes up residence. The dreamy late-night female vocal takes “Time Moves Slow (For Lilian Leitzel)” in a wonderful new direction which takes in the feel of someone plucking a banjo on the back porch while listening to a gospel choir. Eller’s voice is at its most soulful too. I believe that the titular Lilian Leitzel was a circus performer in the early 20th century. This is probably the finest track on the album. Album closer “I Saw Fay Wray” is a bluegrass-style almost lament about Eller’s experience of seeing Fay Wray in New York and mentions the high point of her career, ‘King Kong’ from 1933. This quirky, emotive, and vibrant album might well be one of the albums of the year for me! How about you?
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