Review: Animal Collective are celebrating the 20th anniversary of their influential album Sung Tongs by releasing Sung Tongs Live at the Theatre at Ace Hotel, capturing the complete set from their 2018 performance of it in full Tracks like 'Leaf House,' 'Winters Love,' and 'College' channel the essence of American folk akin to the Simon & Garfunkel, with the pure yet imperfect harmonies of the Beach Boys. Tare and Bear's vocal interplay evokes the ambitions of 'Cabinessence' and Smiley Smile, but unlike Brian Wilson's grand symphonies, Animal Collective keeps things dynamic and untethered. 'Who Could Win a Rabbit' bursts with playful energy, its acoustic guitar setting off a joyous race of harmonies and chaotic, exuberant vocals. The reflective 'The Softest Voice' layers delicate guitar lines, with whispering harmonies suggesting a serenade to forest spirits. 'We Tigers' brings a ritualistic feel, leading to impressionistic ballads like 'Mouth Wooed Her,' filled with coos and birdcalls. Sung Tongs is a vibrant, unpredictable journey of chance meetings, celebratory dances, and fleeting epiphaniesia captivating and joyous exploration.The live album offers a fresh take on a beloved classic, highlighting the band's dynamic performance.
Review: Animal Collective return with album number eight, their first for Domino. "Strawberry Jam" was recorded by Scott Colburn in Tucson, Arizona. It's an amazing record, which should finally mark some sort of crossover for them. It bears all of their unique and charming hallmarks but with vocals and melody much more to the foreground.
Review: One of Britain's best-loved and most accomplished pop-rock bands are back with another highly anticipated album. The Car is epic on every level with its adventurously designed tunes, lots of grand orchestration and plenty of easy-to-enjoy and enigmatic songs of love but also doubt. The Sheffield outfit's seventh long player was written by frontman Turner at his home in LA and mixes indie and psychedelic rock, baroque, glam and orchestral rock with production largely taken care of by frequent collaborator James Ford. The title is a nod to the fact that there are many references to cars throughout the lyrics.
B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition
We Were Alive
Future Politics
Utopia
I'm A Monster
I Love You More Than You Love Yourself
Angel In Your Eye
Freepower
Gaia
Beyond A Mortal
Deep Thought
43
Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***
Katie Stelmanis, the spectrally-voiced and ferociously-talented figure behind maverick electro-pop outfit Austra, set herself the not inconsiderable target of setting out 'a commitment to replace the approaching dystopia' with this third album, yet against all odds she's done a sterling job of marrying the icy binary chill of technology with a very human frailty to emerge with a defiant and emotionally affecting statement of intent. Indelible melody and Stelmanis' extraordinary tones may dominate, yet the sonic landscapes here - equally bracing and beatific - have the rare effect of making the listener hopeful for what 2017 has in store.
Review: It's now been ten years since the world first became aware of Dev Hynes, yet through humble beginnings in Test Icicles and Lightspeed Champion, it seems very much like this last decade has been a journey in the direction of this moment. With 'Freetown Sound' he makes his mark firmly as a modern-day auteur whose co-ordinates can be found somewhere between the funk-pop midas touch of Prince and the firebrand iconoclasm of Kendrick Lamar. A dizzying array of styles can be found in the album's compelling meld of the personal and political, yet with as much melodic richness and musical invention to be found here as confrontational food-for-thought, this is a stridently modern and multi-faceted joy.
Review: There's no denying Domino know how to knock 'em down hard. Having already delivered long players from Cat Power, Bob Moses and Villagers just this year alone, they are now turning to Devonte Hynes who is no stranger to the label either. Negro Swan provides the London artist with his fourth studio album which in large draws from the lost souls of '90s pop. It's hard not to hear Michael Jackson, Phil Collins and R&B four pieces all at once in tracks like "Saint", and even "Charcoal Baby", while there's even suggestion of Will Powers' spoken charm in the words to "Family". More Contemporary touches of genre are there in the emotional, beat pop of tracks like "Chewing Gum" and "Nappy Wonder" without forgetting the tropes of neo soul in "Holy Will". A grand album wrapped up in the angel wings of Blood Orange's queer poetic.
One Of These Days (I'm Gonna Spend The Whole Night With You) (3:48)
Is My Living In Vain? (3:12)
Our Home (2:55)
Review: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's The Purple Bird marks a rare collaboration with a 'producer', this time under the seasoned hand of David 'Ferg' Ferguson (known for his work with Johnny Cash and Sturgill Simpson). Supported by Nashville's eliteicountry icon John Anderson and Bluegrass virtuoso Tim O'Brienithis album both embraces and defies BPB's signature style. With voices from multiple composers woven throughout, each track adds a new dimension to BPB's ever-evolving persona, shaping a record that's as transformative as it is rooted in tradition.
One Of These Days (I'm Gonna Spend The Whole Night With You) (3:47)
Is My Living In Vain? (3:11)
Our Home (feat Tim O'Brien) (2:55)
Review: On his latest LP, Will Oldham aka. Bonnie "Prince" Billy dares to work with a producer for the second time: David "Ferg" Ferguson of Johnny Cash and Sturgill Simpson fame, whose attentive hand guides each of these idling songs through to their sinister, diminished conclusions. Led by the ingenious 'London May' - a lolloping Americana concept piece, illustrating the ostensibly lonely, isolated, suicidally ideating (but ultimately not) persona that is BPB - this sombre record ends up a difficult-to-pin one, touching on themes of self-loss, death and devilish deals. Unlike many other records by Oldham, this lilac lilter hears the convalescence of several composers' and vocalists' voices, reflecting a newfound collaborative opening for the artist, perhaps breaking from a common interpretation of his music as solipsistic.
Review: Domino Records embark on an ambitious reissues double-bill of John Cale's earliest solo records. Here - third to his debut record after his self-excision from the Velvet Underground, Vintage Violence (1970) (to which Cale was infamously disparaging in his later years, deriding his performance on the work as "masked" behind a disingenuous imperative to prove he could still write songs) and second to his Academy In Peril (1972) - comes his third and much better loved LP, Paris 1919. Released in 1973, Cale has regained ground here, still flexing a wonderful talent for songcraft, yet also an entirely new orchestral chamber pop direction, easily foiling the unflappable cool cat persona depicted on the front cover, and eschewing the dark experimentalism of his preceding album. Where it's not plush with string movements, Paris 1919 brims with softly-strung guitar arpeggiations and electric piano hooks, its placid easy listening approach much befitting of the Paris Peace Conference, and other related postwar drives to armistice, that bestruck the public imagination during the earliest post-war 20th Century.
Review: It's hard to feel 'meh' about John Cale. In fact, it's impossible. The Welsh musician, Velvet Underground alumni and composer has given us 18 studio albums, including June 2024's Poptical Illusion, and there's nary a misstep in the lot. His latest plays out like a warm bath full of dreamy optimism, a follow up to the highly collaborative affair, Mercy, here we see the super-talent adjust his focus and fly out alone to prove the point. And prove it he does. Across 12 weird and unarguably wonderful tracks, Cale manages to defy genres, flitting between chamber punk and beach pop, theatrical croon-dom and syrupy downtempo. While there are dark-er moods, 'Funkball The Brewster', for example, on the whole this is smile-inducing, if bat-shit crazy stuff, from start to finish.
B-STOCK: Creasing to corner of outer sleeve but otherwise in excellent condition
She Belongs To Me (4:46)
Fourth Time Around (4:43)
Visions Of Johanna (9:11)
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (5:17)
Desolation Row (12:41)
Just Like A Woman
(5:46)
Mr Tambourine Man
(6:23)
Tell Me, Momma (4:58)
I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We
Never Have Met) (5:13)
Baby, Let Me Follow You Down (2:48)
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues (5:41)
Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
(3:53)
One Too Many Mornings
(3:50)
Ballad Of A Thin Man
(6:06)
Like A Rolling Stone (6:32)
Review: ***B-STOCK: Creasing to corner of outer sleeve but otherwise in excellent condition***
In November 2022, Cat Power took the stage at London’s Royal Albert Hall and delivered a song-for-song recreation of one of the most fabled and transformative live sets of all time. Held at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in May 1966 - but long known as the “Royal Albert Hall Concert” due to a mislabeled bootleg - the original performance saw Bob Dylan switching from acoustic to electric midway through the show, drawing ire from an audience of folk purists and forever altering the course of rock n' roll. In her own rendition of that historic night, the artist otherwise known as Chan Marshall inhabited each song with equal parts conviction and grace and a palpable sense of protectiveness, ultimately transposing the anarchic tension of Dylan’s set with a warm and luminous joy. Now captured on the live album Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert, Marshall’s spellbinding performance both lovingly honors her hero’s imprint on history and brings a stunning new vitality to many of his most revered songs.
I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We
Never Have Met) (5:13)
Baby, Let Me Follow You Down (2:48)
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues (5:41)
Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
(3:53)
One Too Many Mornings
(3:50)
Ballad Of A Thin Man
(6:06)
Like A Rolling Stone (6:32)
Review: In 2022, Cat Power, otherwise known as singer/songwriter/producer Chan Marshall, fully recreated Bob Dylan's legendary 1966 show at the Royal Albert Hall. In turn, Dylan's 1966 concert was the culmination of one of the most consequential tours in the history of rock & roll - when he electrified his songs, and by doing so enraged his devoted audience, who just had to catch up. Power's recollection of Dylan's radical re-rendering, now pressed to vinyl, hears her perform the songs in the same order as Dylan himself that night: the first half of the show being an acoustic set, not long before being joined by her electric band for the second half.
Review: The ninth album by English folk singer Shirley Collins, Archangel Hill, comes as a collection of traditional songs from England, Ireland, Scotland and America. Collins breathes fresh, reanimatory, magic vocal dust into the songs, with her distinctively breathy voice once more imbuing a collective energy into the English folk revival styles of the 1960s and 1970s... and now, perhaps, the 2020s. It's her debut for Domino, who describe Collins as one of the most important voices in the folk revival scene. Naturally, this means Collins' selections reflect her deep knowledge of folk song, with some tracks like 'Hares On The Mountain' widely known among the public, while others are sourced from close personal friends and relatives.
Review: Fat Dog's debut album, WOOF., is a frenetic and electrifying trip through a kaleidoscope of genres, encapsulating electro-punk, rock'n'roll snarls, techno soundscapes, industrial-pop and rave euphoria. Frontman Joe Love and synth player Chris Hughes lead the charge, delivering a sonic assault that defies categorisation. The album's tracks, like 'King Of The Slugs' and 'Running,' pulsate with runaway rave intensity, showing the band's knack for combining dance-punk energy with klezmer-tinged interludes and broken-down grandeur. While WOOF. offers few moments of reprieve, its relentless fervor and wracked nerves keep listeners hooked from start to finish. With their rapid ascent and zany hybrid sound, Fat Dog emerges as a captivating force in London's art-rock scene, leaving audiences both fascinated and puzzled by their enigmatic charm.
Review: Billed as the most vital and sophisticated creation of their career yet, Fat White Family return with Forgiveness Is Yours. As if to reaffirm that forgiveness begins with forgiving oneself, the South London band's fourth album comes with limited fanfare (they hardly need it), perhaps owing to the fact that this is a record said to have pushed the band to "the limits of their very existence", entailing a consistent "will to create even when catastrophes keep happening". Forgive oneself for what, though? Torpor, apparently; from 'Bullet Of Dignity' to 'What's That You Say', this slick and suggestive indie album is a testament to finding the correct harmony in chaos, and waking up from our half-dazes to find an active truth.
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