Author: Tony

Tracks: Beaux Dimanches

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Blowing the dust off the cartridge to plug the ‘Tracks‘ format wherein I spotlight a particular song that stands out in my mental jukebox and sits amongst my favourites back into action. Are these favourite songs? I suppose so. If one of those folks in Hollywood could finally settle on a suitable compensation package for me, these tunes would no doubt occupy at least a side or two of the soundtrack to my life’s movie.

Why ‘Beaux Dimanches’ by Amadou & Mariam? It’s hard to to recall now exactly when this song floated into the mix but I know that it’s probably post 2008. Even before I started rebuilding and improving on my French enough to get to grips with the lyrics I was hooked – the slinky Mali-blues guitar lines, the beat, the sheer joy of it: there’s no way for me to hear this and not feel uplifted.

Amadou & Mariam are a musical duo from Mali. The couple, born in the country’s capital Bamako, began playing together in the 1980s, working their way up from more minimal arrangements of guitar and voice before perfecting their blend of rock guitar, Mali blues and about every kind of world-music vibe you could throw a hat at to form their own take on Afro-Blues as they moved from Mali to Paris via the Ivory Coast building up wider and wider audiences and fans like Stevie Wonder and Manu Chao. It’s a heady, delicious mix that vibes just right with me.

Both Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia are blind. Amadou lost his sight when he was 16, Mariam having lost hers at age 5 thanks to an untreated case of the measles. They met at Mali’s Institute for the Young Blind and, along with going on to form their musical partnership, would go on to marry and have three children.

It was Chao that produced their 2004 album Dimanche à Bamako (Sunday in Bamako) from which this track is taken. ‘Beaux Dimanches’ (Beautiful Sundays) is a joyous song about weddings in the capital -‘Les dimanches à Bamako c’est le jour de mariage’ – suitably upbeat and coloured with references to Malain traditions.

Dimanche à Bamako was the record that bought the duo to the attention of the world. From here they’d record the anthem for the 2006 World Cup, play major festivals like Coachella, Latitude and Lollapalooza and play with folks like David Gilmour, that knob from Blur (who’d also have a hand in producing their next record) and Beth Orton while touring with the likes of Coldplay and U2. They have continued to put out a wonderful album every few years. 2012’s Folia in particular gets many a spin in the motor and improves every drive when it does. When Matt Groening curated the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in 2010 he chose Amadou & Mariam to close it.

A New Music Fix

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“Why do you need new bands? Everyone knows rock attained perfection in 1974.”

In my determination, as I march toward the middle of my fourth decade, not to become stuck in any kind of rut, especially musical, I try and keep my ear out for good new music as much as I can.

As much as there’s plenty of dross out there these days there’s still plenty of great stuff too. Though I guess that’s always been the case – as great as the ’90s were for music, Celine Dion still bought a few houses off the back of ‘My Heart Will Go On.’

Anyway, here’s a few from some new artists – as opposed to new stuff from known artists – that’s been keeping my fingers tapping on the Ferrari’s steering wheel.

The Last Dinner Party – Nothing Matters

Apparently Queen, The Sparks, Bowie and Kate Bush sit high in their influence list. All good and clear but these five young ladies from London bring something unique to the mix too and their new album Prelude To Ecstasy is bloody strong.

Whitelands – The Prophet & I

If this group of Ghana-born, London-raised chaps weren’t opening for Slowdive this year with their glorious take on shoegaze and dreampop then there would’ve been something wrong with the world. Each track I’ve heard so far has felt like a warm bath for my ears and I’m looking forward to finding their album on my doorstep next week.

Divorce – Eat My Words

Divorce describe themselves as an ‘alt-country/grunge(ish) band from Nottingham’ – I’d heard a few tracks over the last year but this is the one that sticks.

Sheer Mag – Moonstruck

Maybe not brand-spanking, still got that fresh new-band smell new as it turns out Sheer Mag have been around a couple of years but they haven’t got all that many miles on the clock. There’s a lot of different things going on in this track – some funk, boogie, great guitar, Prince, Kravitz even Jackson 5 (though I doubt the kiddie fiddler ever sang ‘son of a bitch’), but I love it all.

Softcult – Haunt You Still

My wife came home from her commute recently and said ‘I heard this band I think you might like.’ She was very much spot on. Canada’s Softcult are twin siblings Phoenix and Mercedes Arn-Horn and put out tunes with a sort of grunge meets shoegaze vibe. Not only do I dig the music but I love their DIY approach and the fact that you can only get their EPs on cassette (well, physical copies at least).

Post-rock Mondays: Post-rock français avec samples

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Bonjour mes amis et bon retour! As I stumble blindly forward with posting here I find myself once again starting off the week working from home and enjoying a post-rock soundtrack thinking “hey, it’s time for another one of those Post-rock Monday’ posts I used to try and do frequently”.

Given my affinity for our friends over the channel and the amount of time I’ve spent / spend there, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that I love exploring their additions to the genre either. While I’m not as immersed in their output as I am of that of, say, Spain, I’ve found plenty to love.

Oh, and, as per, here’s another ‘handy’ definition of that most beard-strokingy type of music: “Post-rock incorporates contamination that covers the entirety of the music spectrum, from Krautrock to heavy metal, to contemporary classical and free jazz, often blended together in unique ways that bring new sounds to life; in fact, one of the most crucial features of post-rock is its ability to embrace a wide range of musical influences and combine them all into a coherent soundscape.” If that doesn’t put you off…

Post-rock bands love a good sample and poached dialogue, film quotes or specifically written interludes have popped up in tracks way back to the genre’s earlier days – whether we’re talking Iggy Pop’s interview snatch on Mogwai’s CODY or Godspeed You Black Emperor’s immense ‘Blaise Bailey Finnegan III’. Aside from the intended message or reason form the band’s point of view, from a listener’s perspective it can provide a little anchoring in a genre in which actual vocals are predominantly absent as well as lend a cinematic element to the tuneage. And sometimes they’re just there to make you fucking laugh (Romanian band Am Fost La Munte Și Mi-a Plăcut do a bang up job of this). The French are no exception to employing a good sample so here, in a few smatterings, a some of my favourite from the rich post-rock scene in France.

Lost In Kiev – Mirrors

Parisan band Lost In Kiev’s Nuit Noire is one of the first international post-rock albums I added to my collection. Its dark, looming epic post-rock intertwined with a spoken word narrative continues to hit every one of my tingle buttons some seven years on. Rather than lift from anything existing they write their own spoken-word pieces that are then used to give their work a massive, cinematic effect.

GrimLake – Everything Everywhere

GrimLake is Paris-based Mathieu Legros’s solo project. I’ve featured on of his tracks before in these pages and will no doubt again at some point as I’m a big fan of both his albums. JFK’s manner of speaking and the substance of his speeches make for a rich vein in terms of sampling and his address on Civil Rights is a pretty heady one to tackle but I reckon Mathieu pull’s it off.

Féroces – Qu’est-ce qu’on va devenir nous deux

(What will become of the two of us?)… Féroces are another one that use the odd slab of written dialogue to drive their thumping brand of post-rock forward. They’ve released a handful of EPs over the years, each named after, presumably, a character – but seem to have vanished of late, sadly.

As The Stars Fall – No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I think there’s a rule, probably written down somewhere in Impact font, that sampling Christopher Walken automatically elevates your song to a higher level.

Have the Moskovic – L’inflexion des voix cheres

As part of one of the precious few New Year’s resolutions I’ve ever stuck with I’ve thrown myself into improving my French this year with daily lessons. Perhaps because of that but probably also down to the fact that it’s a bloody fine album, I’ve really been enjoying Have the Moskovic’s 2018 album Papier Vinyle.

We should have kept it every Thursday, Thursday Thursday in the afternoon…. for a couple of spins

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Never fear, readers of the blog world! I am here to put your mind at rest on multiple fronts: yes, I’m still about; yes, I’m going to answer that burning question ‘what the fuck has he been listening to?’; yes, you’ve made it to the ‘good’ list and Santa shall be dropping gifts beneath your tree; no, the Right will not win forth; YES, you have just seen the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, house-rocking, earth-quaking, booty-shaking, Viagra-taking, love-making, legendary E STREET BAND!

Well.. at least some of those, ok?

Life, being monumentally busy with work, health, DIY projects… all of these things have conspired to keep my fingers away from pushing ‘new post’ but music has continued to throb through my ears at various decibels throughout.

On a side note, I spent last year’s festive period absorbing ‘Get Back’ at leisure whereas this year looks set to be spent soaking in the joy of Lee Child’s famous one-man-army being perfectly captured by Amazon with the second season of ‘Reacher’ providing a pleasing counterpoint to the usual fluff on at that time of year:

So aside from a lot of Bruce (as I work on another longer-form Boss Post), what do I want to share today? Here are a few nuggets you can take or leave….

Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul – Inside of Me

It’s not Bruce but it’s definitely connected…. I’ve just got underway with Stevie Van Zandt’s book ‘Unrequited Passions’ and while I’m a way off I’m looking forward to getting his take on his departure from the E Street Band. Everything I’ve read indicates it was down to Van Zandt looking for more of a creative partnership whereas Springsteen wasn’t looking for that level of input. Given that Miami/Little Steve was already in the progress of making Men Without Women at the time the ‘now or never’ feeling to step out and try it alone proved too strong. I’ve yet to delve too deep into Van Zandt’s solo work but I’ve been giving that first album a lot of time this week. There’s some great lines in this one: “There was a moment in time, we could almost taste the adventure every day. Now I know that we’re a little bit older
but that don’t mean there’s nothing new left to say”

New Dad – Nightmares

In my efforts to stop myself turning into a guy in his mid 40s and paraphrasing Homer ‘they stopped making good music in 1996′ I keep trying to find new music that gets my feet boppin’. New Dad are exactly one of those newer acts that just tick a whole lot of boxes for me. They’ve been dropping great individual tunes over the last year or so with their debut album primed to drop early doors next year and no doubt going straight into my slightly-less-stuffed record shelves*.

Slowdive – Kisses

We’re already into that time of the year when everyone is publishing those ‘Best XXX of 2023’** lists and there’s been a lot of great albums. Slowdive’s Everything Is Alive is just one of those but it’s had a seemingly constant presence in the rotation list since its release.

H.E.R & Foo Fighters – The Glass

I had no clue as to who H.E.R was until I caught her collab with the Foos on SNL and then saw her mentioned when Music Enthusiast put Rolling Stones’s ‘fucking fiasco’ of a 250 Top Guitarists List on blast. As we’re talking great albums of the year I’m as surprised as anyone that Foo Fighters would make that list for me in 2023 as anyone else but But Here We Are is worthy of that place and this is a great take on one of its cuts.

Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears – Bitch, I Love You

Some time ago I got lost down one of those Spotify rabbit holes while delving into blues-rock and ‘artists like’ stuff and found Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears and stuck around to explore and enjoy. This is the kind of love song that should get more play – though I don’t think I’d try singing this to my wife at any point+.

F.J McMahon – The Spirit of the Golden Juice

A couple of months ago we popped over to Amiens and grabbed a copy of Mojo en route. I’ll often pick up one music mag or another a month these days but the ‘Buried Treasure’ cd on this one caught my fancy and F.J McMahon’s ‘The Spirit of the Golden Juice’ really stood out.

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying his album of the sam name since. It’s one of those glorious ‘mystery’ albums (much like Solid Oak’s Top Drawer) in that since being pressed in a small run in 1969 it and F.J disappeared without making an impact. I read recently that, frustrated at diminishing returns in a crowded scene, F.J headed to Hawaii on a friend’s advice but gave up after realising he’d ended up a covers act / juke box for tourists and walked away from music. He joined the Navy and got training and a career as a field computer engineer. His record, meanwhile, was becoming something of much-loved cult classic and, once it was rereleased properly back in 2017, found a much more appreciative audience than it had fifty years earlier.

*upgraded storage not ditching any wax

**XXX as insert here rather than “step bro, what are you doing?”

+Not more than once that is

And here’s a man with a lust for life, he lives for now on the edge of a knife – Five From Thurston Moore

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Thurston Moore – erstwhile founder and guitar wrangler, singer etc of Sonic Youth – has been popping up a fair bit on my news feed of late. He’s got a memoir out (which I look forward to reading) and as a health issue has limited his physical wandering to promote it, there’s no shortage of interview opportunities to do so. 

Along with his former band’s work, Thurston’s solo work has proven a strong mainstay in my collection and I always enjoy slapping on one of his albums. In the same manner that his band used to straddle both the alt-rock and avant-garde worlds, Moore’s solo work has swung from one to the other with an array of noise-based, experimental recordings across a myriad of labels and outputs as well as a now seven album long roster of song-based projects of which those recorded with the ‘Thurston Moore Group’ probably lean as close to the Sonic Youth ‘sound’ as we’re likely to get since that band’s move to inactivity in 2011.

While there are certainly some elements of his less song-based stuff worth checking out – if you’re curious I’d recommend 2021’s Screen Time and 12 String Meditations for Jack Rose (Moore’s tribute to that mighty of drone musicians) – I thought it worth tipping the proverbial to a smattering of his solo catalogue…

Frozen GTR

While Moore’s first solo album Psychic Hearts was very much a snapshot of mid-’90s Sonic Youth in sound, his second song-based solo album Trees Outside of the Academy felt wrapped more around acoustics – save for the odd searing lead laid down by J Mascis whose studio the 2007 album was recorded in. The album has long been a favourite of mine, it’s a decidedly warm sounding album and showcases Moore’s ability to create hypnotic acoustic rhythms. 

Benediction

Following the acoustic-leanings of his previous solo effort, Demolished Thoughts was produced and assisted by Beck in his more folk-pastoral mode with splashings of harp and violins adding to the album’s delicate lushness. Unfortunately, according to Kim Gordon’s ‘Girl In A Band’, Thurston realised that most of the songs on it were about ‘the other woman’ and so it was buried. Twelve years on and with Mr Moore now married to the presumed subject of these songs it’s worth a revisit without the baggage, right?

Forevermore

With Sonic Youth on hiatus, Moore’s first rebound effort came via the short-live, punkier edged Chelsea Light Moving. When he next emerged with an album in his own name it was 2014’s The Best Day which also marked the first effort of his Thurston Moore Group which featured My Bloody Valentine’s Deb Googe on bass, James Sedwards trading guitar licks and Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley on drums. The Best Day feels like a statement of intent as well as a great collection of tunes and ‘Forevermore’ bristles along with a real thump and kick across it’s eleven minutes that manages to combine Moore’s penchant for sprawling guitar epics with his ability to craft a real driving hook.

Smoke of Dreams

While <The Best Day leant to SY and Thurston’s harder-driving sound, for 2017’s Rock n Roll Consciousness he, and the Thurston Moore Group, paired with producer Paul Epworth – yep, he of Adele, Rhianna and Florence and the Machine work – for an album the delved into the gentler, hippy-like side to Thurston Moore’s writing. Yes there are noisy, bouncing guitar jams but there’s more of the softer side with some real optimism in the lyrics.

Hashish

By The Fire – so called because it’s “the idea of people sitting around a fire and dialoguing” – is the Thurston Moore lockdown record, if there’s such a thing. Finished and released in 2020 while Moore was coming off the back of the Spirit Counsel project, By The Fire feels like a glorious melding of that project’s experimental leanings to Moore’s riff and song-based work in a way that his solo work to date hadn’t really managed

The Fascination by Essie Fox

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From the PR: “Victorian England. A world of rural fairgrounds and glamorous London theatres. A world of dark secrets and deadly obsessions…

Twin sisters Keziah and Tilly Lovell are identical in every way, except that Tilly hasn’t grown a single inch since she was five. Coerced into promoting their father’s quack elixir as they tour the country fairgrounds, at the age of fifteen the girls are sold to a mysterious Italian known as `Captain´.

Theo is an orphan, raised by his grandfather, Lord Seabrook, a man who has a dark interest in anatomical freaks and other curiosities … particularly the human kind. Resenting his grandson for his mother’s death in childbirth, when Seabrook remarries and a new heir is produced, Theo is forced to leave home without a penny to his name.

Theo finds employment in Dr Summerwell’s Museum of Anatomy in London, and here he meets Captain and his theatrical ‘family’ of performers, freaks and outcasts.

But it is Theo’s fascination with Tilly and Keziah that will lead all of them into a web of deceits, exposing the darkest secrets and threatening everything they know…

Exploring universal themes of love and loss, the power of redemption and what it means to be unique, The Fascination is an evocative, glittering and bewitching gothic novel that brings alive Victorian London – and darkness and deception that lies beneath…”

I know they say you should never judge a book by its cover but I’ve got a feeling that’s a load of tosh, there are some great novels on my shelves with covers that are just as glorious and Essie Fox’s The Fascination has joined that list, it’s a stunner inside and out.

I tend to be wary of historical novels, I find the notion of characters within pages set, for example, in the time of Henry VIII behaving or using phraseology too close to the time they were written vs the time they supposedly inhabit, especially when we have literary touch points from that time that are more likely to be accurate in that respect. Perhaps its because I studied the era and its literature (specifically that of crime and law) at university, I’m typically less forgiving of novels set within the Victorian era that find characters either cliched or as historically convincing as Ben Affleck in, well, anything other than a meme.

With that preamble out of the way… how do I feel about The Fascination? I bloody loved it. Essie Fox’s novel feels like a delicious example of that classic Victorian narrative that made the era and genre so ripe and important. From the syntax to the characters, their clothing and actions and presentation, The Fascination is so immersive and richly of its time you’d be forgiven for doubting it was published in 2023.

More than managing the tricky feat of creating an accurate setting in time, Essie Fox’s novel also delivers a compelling and, if you’ll pardon the pun, fascinating storyline that’s loaded with mystery, suspense and underpinned with a whole lot of heart.

While the principal trio of Keziah, Tilly and Theo deservedly evoke plenty of emotion (the twins’ early years are rendered so heartbreakingly), they’re supported by a bevvy of characters that are painted with similarly sympathetic colours and attention to detail, providing the emotional warmth of the novel even as it treads into some seriously grim and dark waters.

Those dark waters do get pretty disturbing too… it’s to Fox’s credit that she manages to convey those horrors so vividly while still maintaining the feeling that you’re reading a classic Victorian novel. As thrilling as some of those moments get, I think it’s fair to say that The Fascination is more an enthralling mystery than it is a thriller and there are some genuine surprises in store as its different threads come together – indeed, the very last one was one that left my mouth agape and made me go back and double check I’d read it correctly.

The Fascination is rich in detail, overflowing with brilliant characters and reading like a true classical Victorian novel and wholeheartedly recommended.

Wooo! You got a date Wednesday, baby! Midweek spins

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The will is there, the time isn’t always there for getting back into this after a summer lay-off… but lobbing up a quick ‘I’ve been listening to this sort of thing’ list isn’t a bad way to get into it, I guess.

It’s been a surprisingly music-heavy time lately helped by needing (thanks to throwing my back into a ridiculous shape) to work from home a bit more meant the turntable got more action than usual. Though that does mean less of my listening went to ‘new’ music rather than newer stuff from the familiar like the new albums from Slowdive (a clear march on album of the year) or Explosions in the Sky (absolutely brilliant).

Slightly off topic but I’ve also been enjoying the Wes Anderson helmed takes on some Roald Dahl short stories that have been added to Netflix lately. As a fan of both film maker and writer it’s been great to sit down as a family (my wife and I are about halfway through ‘Asteroid City’ and waiting for it to really take off…) but more surprised to see the credits for each of them cite Maidstone Studios (about a mile or so from our place) as a location for filming. While a lot’s been filmed there over the years (it used to be the location for Jools Holland’s Hootenany) it’s a surreal idea to think Wes Anderson was working away that close to home.

Getting back to the listening…. I don’t think I even made it all the way through the new song from U2, ‘Atomic City’. What a lot of shite. I wouldn’t say that they’ve done much of note for some time but someone clearly bypassed all elements of quality control there in the rush to cash-in even more from their no doubt minimum wage gig at the Sphere. No doubt Rolling Stone will praise it as record of the year… Anyway here’s a quick heads up on what I have been listening to….

Bleach Lab – All Night

Bleach Lab’s newly released debut Lost in a Rush of Emptiness is a wonderful thing, another gorgeous slab in what seems to be a resurgence of etherial, shoegaze fuelled dreampop.

Cocteau Twins – Heaven or Las Vegas

Speaking of etherial shoegaze lushness… I’m fast playing catch-up with Cocteau Twins and their Heaven of Las Vegas album has been getting a lot of spinnage lately.

Motörhead – Emergency

It can’t always be ‘Ace of Spades.’

Bruce Springsteen – Burnin’ Train

I’m toying with the notion of updating my ranking of Springsteen’s albums given he’s released two studio albums since then. A recent free-trial of Apple TV meant I was able to watch the Letter To You feature which was a lot of fun – the somewhat overly hokey voice-over narrative aside – and much more of an insight into the E Street Band’s recording approach than ‘Blood Brothers’ proved especially when it came to Stevie Van Zandt’s role in terms of arrangements and increased solo playing as on this cut. I really must get hold of SVZ’s book….

The War On Drugs – Change

What to do when you discover a new record shop has opened in your town after years of no alternative to HMV? Well… you go in and browse and if you find I Don’t Live Here Anymore on vinyl for a tenner less than you’ve seen it anywhere else you buy it, take it home and spin that sumptuous album because no matter how many times you hear it it’s still fucking great.

Mitski – Heaven

One of those names I kept hearing / reading but never followed up on until I heard ‘Heaven’ on the radio a couple of weeks back and have been hypnotised ever since.

There’s a piece of Maria in every song that I sing – Five From Counting Crows

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The Counting Crows are one of those bands that seemingly achieved mainstream success overnight on the back of their hit single ‘Mr Jones’ – they managed to pull of a neat trick of combining complex and wrenching lyrics with a roots inflected take on alternative rock with a sumptuous production (thanks to T Bone Burnett) that hit the magical sweet spot between sounding nostalgic and contemporary just at that moment in the early ’90s. August and Everything After remains one of that decades strongest albums and while they’ve continued to pump out solid albums (albeit with an increasing number of years between them) since they’re probably still best known for that first flurry of tunes. Or singer Adam Duritz’ (now removed) dreadlocks and his ability to punch way above his weight with the ladies.

That strange DJ function on the streaming service most of use recently plucked a couple of their songs out of my listening history and I thought throwing up a few of there’s would serve as a toe back into posting here.

Perfect Blue Buildings

August and Everything After is just an exquisite combo of rich ballads, brilliant melodies and cracking musicianship all pinned down by Adam Duritz’ lyrics and voice. There’s a particularly strong trifecta in the middle of the album with ‘Perfect Blue Buildings’, ‘Anna Begins’ and ‘Time and Time Again’ but ‘Perfect Blue Buildings’ become one of the groups most beloved songs and there’s something about that line ‘It’s 4:30 A.M. on a Tuesday, it doesn’t get much worse than this’ that hits the sweet spot for me.

A Murder of One

After an album of relatively serious, angsty ballads and a run for Springsteenism on ‘Omaha’, ‘A Murder of One’ is a joyous, upbeat way to end an album and a cracking tune to boot.

Angels of the Silences

How do you follow up the success of August and… ? Recovering The Satellites is a bloody good album. Problem is it’s also a pretty long and heavy one – feeling every minute of its near hour length at times. It’s got a lot of great tunes on it but I always found it too much for one sitting and a lot of the quiet joy that lives between the lines of August.. missing here. ‘Angels of the Silences’ always hits the spot though with its urgency

I Wish I Was A Girl

Third album This Desert Life is an underrated gem in Counting Crows’ catalogue – after the overwrought writing and weight of their second album, it’s a tighter, more professional effort that relatively zips along at 11 songs but each of them are very well-crafted and benefit immensely from both a lighter tone and Duritz seemingly having reigned tendency to over-emote. Hooks and cracking melodies abound but I’ve always loved the lyric and delivery of “You dive into the traffic rising up, and it’s so quiet, you’re surprised and then you wake.”

1492

Those first three albums still find their way into my ears a lot. Their fourth Hard Candy was pretty solid but I kind of drifted away from Counting Crows and, it seems, so did many. After another few years between albums they dropped the double album Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings in 2008. They’ve dropped another one and a half studio albums in the 15 years since but I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything about them. ‘1492’ – all dirty guitars, energy and frenzied lyrics – has been a favourite since I heard it and one I never reach for the skip button over.

Is Thumbelina size ten…. on a Wednesday: mid-week listens

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It’s been a while again but welcome back, my friends, to the show that stumble and mumbles along in fits and starts.

After a couple of weeks without being able to really access music of my choosing or new music this month I’ve spent the last week or so making up for lost time, positively abusing my ears like a conservative politician abuses the truth.

Here’s a few choice picks from what’s been penetrating my aural orifices since I hit land:

Bleach Lab – Nothing Left To Lose

Sitting in the ‘good new shit’ playlist is the latest from Bleach Lab (not to be confused with Beach House) – a band I’ve been enjoying each new tune from lately to the point that I anticipate a strong album from them shortly. Plenty of obvious touch points in the music but not to the point of being derivative – if Hole had gone shoe-gaze and chime instead of angst and bitch perhaps.

De Le Soul – Eye Know

3 Feet High and Rising was one of those albums that had become almost mythical and hard to get your mitts on until this year thanks to its uncleared samples causing legal headaches. Having it in the wild now is great as it means that – after we saw Seth Rogen’s ‘TMNT: Mutant Mayhem’ (absolutely brilliant, btw) last week – I can dial up ‘Eye Know’ on Spotify along with Tribe Called Quest and other tracks featured on its soundtrack for the cub to get into too.

The Big Moon – Wide Eyes

Another from the ‘new’ file.. well, it’s from last year’s Here Is Everything that I saw all over the year in ‘best album’ playlists but somehow failed to pay attention to until I started hearing this track on the radio recently.

The Replacements – Left of the Dial (Ed Stasium Mix)

I’ll be swinging back (like a swinging party) to the subject of The Replacements’ revisionist packages soon on this blog but this one has been getting a lot of ear time lately. While The Replacements were often their own biggest hurdle on the road to success, their choice of produce was probably just as big a factor and it seems that they’re out to fix some of the damage.

Their major label debut Tim contains some of their best songs but the production was shite. Originally recorded by Thomas Erdelyi. Unfortunately, Thomas’ ears were shot – no surprise really when you consider he’s usually known as Tommy Ramone, the original drummer for The Ramones. So he listened back to everything and mixed it using headphones which can really only result in album that sounds like it was mixed on headphones. The new Tim: The Let It Bleed Version features, along with the requisite dump of unreleased stuff, a new mix of the album by Ed Stasium. Given how much stronger ‘Left of the Dial’ sounds I’m looking forward to this one.

Hüsker Dü – Don’t Want To Know If You Are Lonely

Another of those bands I’d heard of but never really tuned in for – and a fitting tune to follow The Replacements – this one sits in the midst of side one on a compilation album I was recently given and provided just the nudge I needed to delve deeper into this Minnesota band’s back catalogue.

Post-rock Mondays: Que viva España

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Another Monday only this time to sit alongside the buzz kill of work I’ve got an emergency date with the dentist to add insult to injury. However, post-rock is once again providing a comforting tonic and as I prepare to set sail for summer in less than a week I’m enjoying a volley of offerings from Spain where we’ll be touching shore twice in the coming weeks.

Once again I’ve tried to find a way of summing up the genre and have found this handy yet daft and pretentious explainer: “Post-rock generally applied to bands that used the typical instruments of a rock band—two guitars, a bass, and drums—with nontraditional rhythms, melodies, and chord progressions. Guitars created ambience by altering the colour and quality of the sound. Vocals, if they were included, were frequently treated not as a vehicle for lyrics but as an additional instrument. The focus was on the texture of the music and the sound produced rather than on melodic patterns and the basic structure of a rock song. Embracing “quiet as the new loud,” post-rock shifted away from the hard, male-driven outbursts of rock music as that music became more commercialised; post-rock and other alternative genres were more independent and less commercially oriented.”

I’ve mumbled before about how I love the universality of a genre that doesn’t rely on words and can, accordingly, be created whether those inclined to do so happen to be. Spain, particularly, has proven to be a real treasure chest of great post-rock bands and with a real sense of variety across those. My way into it came by chance when I found the website for AloudMusic – a label and distro operating out of Barcelona and championing all things of alt / post / homegrown bent. I’ve found through my admittedly non-expert ears that the bands from the Catalonia region lean toward the the melodic with bands out of the capital providing some almighty wallop. I’m probably wrong, as much exposure as I try to seek there’s undoubtedly more to learn.

Anyway, here’s today’s selection.

Toundra – Cobra

Probably the most widely-known of Spain’s post-rock bands and bringers of the aforementioned almighty wallop. Toundra hail from Madrid and formed in 2007.

Exxasens – Your Dreams Are My Dreams

Also formed in 2007, Exxasens hail from the beatific Barcelona. What I love about this band are that they typically have a space theme to their albums and that their drummer feels like he’d be equally at home in a hard rock band – I’d like to think that live he beats the shit out of his kit – propelling it along like bloody rocket yet never overpowering it.

Audiolepsia – Brain Fog

Another of those melody-first acts from Barcelona, Audiolepsia lean more toward the soaring guitar end. They’re a couple of albums in and while I picked up Muses from Aloud Music when is was put out with assist from another all-things-post championing label, Dunk!. Their recent Waves and Particles was self-released and picked up via Bandcamp, something which makes me feel like I’m kicking more coin to the band themselves, always a plus.

Jardin De La Croix – Intermareals

These guys come from Madrid and veer – see – toward the heavier, citing themselves as a mix of post-rock, post-hardcore, post-math and post-is-always-late. Maybe not the latter. Five albums in, the latest released on Aloud Music. This is from their 2016 stormer Circadia.

Astralia – Abyss of Night

It’s been a while since Astralia – formed in La Floresta, just outside of Barcelona – have released anything. Their two albums – 2017’s Solstics from which this track is taken and 2014’s Atlas – are great examples of the more ambient end of the genre (I’m not talking panpipe moods, mind, there’s still plenty of clout) and I hope there’s more to come.

Exquirla – Destruidnos Juntos (EN: Destroy Us Together)

Technically this is Toundra, again. Well, sort of. This is what happens when one of Spain’s most crushing post-rock bands finds itself on the same bill as one of the country’s flamenco singers, Niño de Elche. Fittingly – as I’m going to be revisiting the city shortly – the meeting took place in Cadiz. It’s one of those things that on paper doesn’t sound like a winner: the power and intensity of Toundra combined with flamenco singing. As it turns out it’s fucking GOLD. The album Para Quienes Aún Viven (EN: For those who still live) is one of my favourites and I’ll punch this up at home and in the car. I just wish they’d do it again.