Album Review: Little Steven – Soulfire
For anyone to successfully step out of the shadow of one of the iconic figures in American popular song is a rare thing. To do so and return to the familiar shadow later, with their own career in full swing and successfully diversified, is a rare thing. While Little Steven will forever be associated with …
Not Forgotten: Parliament – Mothership Connection
Simply put, Mothership Connection is the album which proved that you could do the ostentatiousness of prog rock and still make the listener want to get up and dance. It’s a headspinningly brilliant throw down from funk to every middle-class prog rocker with aspirations to be taken seriously. Sure, prog rock often showed musicianship, but …
Not Forgotten: Rainbow – Rising
The haziness of music history shows that Rainbow were one of the first acts to actually identify themselves as Heavy Metal. While it may have been Jimi Hendrix’ guitar playing that had been described as ‘heavy metal falling for the sky’, and the trio of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath started out as …
Not Forgotten: 10CC – Deceptive Bends
Having cornered the intelligent pop market with a brace of hit singles and a quartet of albums which made the most of each individual band member’s top-draw songwriting and cutting-edge production techniques, by 1976 10CC had very little to prove. The arty / techy duo Godley & Creme were getting increasingly enamoured with the types …
Not Forgotten: The Bees – Octopus
There’s something heartening when you discover a band that’s obviously not part of a media-hyped ‘scene’. Released during a period where tie-rock, Brit-pop revivalists and Coldplay-clones still held sway here in the UK, at least as far as rock music goes, Octopus confirmed that The Bees particular brand of shaggy retro-revivalism just didn’t seem to …
Not Forgotten: The Soundtrack of Our Lives – Welcome to the Infant Freebase
Retro rock is a risky business, if you pay homage to your influences too closely you risk ending up in a creative cul-de-sac, when your fans don’t need to know what your new album is like, only if it is any good. In a worse case scenario you could do all you can to attempt …
Not Forgotten: Alison Moyet – Alf
When Alison Moyet launched her solo career, there was no small amount of anticipation. One of the few genuinely standout vocalists on the British Music scene in the early 80s, Moyet had impressed as the voice of Yazoo, with her warm and soulful voice managing to transcend the limitations of synthpop. Moyet was able to …
Not Forgotten: Supergrass – In It for the Money
I never really held out that much hope for Supergrass. To the untrained eye they appeared to spring from nowhere to unleash the chirpy (but not to the point of being irritating) “Alright”, a song that marked them out as a cut above the plethora of guitar bands that were being thrown against the wall …
Not Forgotten: Supertramp – Even in the Quietest Moments
Even in the Quietest Moments is the second of two albums wedged between Supertramp’s best album, 1974’s Crime of the Century, and their most commercially successful, 1979’s Breakfast in America. Prior to starting work on Even in the Quietest Moments, Supertramp had made the prescient decision to move their base of operations to America, where …
Not Forgotten: Silver Jews – Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea
Silver Jews are a band that I knew by name long before I heard a note of their music. Apparently they were originally associated with Pavement, and that was enough for me to not need to know anymore, at least until recently. Then I stumbled across a copy of Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea in a …