Not Forgotten: The Divine Comedy – A Short Album About Love
Released at a time where the fashion was to fill the whole run time of a CD with as much material as possible regardless of quality, all in the name of offering the listener more ‘value for money’, The Divine Comedy’s A Short Album About Love, as its name suggests, pulled in the opposite direction. …
Not Forgotten: Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Ragged Glory
It had been a long time coming. Neil Young had last reached one of his irregular artistic peaks in 1979 with Rust Never Sleeps, but throughout the next decade he seemed to go into free-fall, until he recorded the Eldorado EP which stopped the rot and followed it up with the fair to middling Freedom. …
Classic Album: Jethro Tull – Songs From the Wood
The rise of punk triggered a wide variety of reactions among more established acts. Led Zeppelin nodded in approval, and continued to be Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd channelled their own disenfranchised feelings into the bleak Animals. A few other acts underwent underwent various identity crises, with some attempting to go ‘pop’ with mixed success (Emerson, …
Classic Album: Fleetwood Mac – Rumours
One of the weirdest gigs I ever attended was seeing Fleetwood Mac play Sheffield Arena back in 2009. While it was an entertaining enough show, there was a general undercurrent that resulted in an odd vibe. Christine McVie had departed the band for a solo career some years prior, Stevie Nicks, all slow hand-movements and …
Not Forgotten: E – A Man Called E
For two decades now E of Eels has steadily established himself as the premier purveyor of mature male angst. Literate, tuneful, and capable of creating great pop songs that can either be life-affirming or, as the man himself puts it ‘major bummer rock’, and sometimes, both of these things simultaneously. But what of the music …
Classic Album: Elton John – Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy
Managing to traverse the chasm between critics favourite and global commercial acceptance at the same time as David Bowie, the former Reg Dwight seemingly had the best of both worlds by the mid 70s. Like Bowie, he had segued almost effortlessly from lauded singer-songwriter to glam rock icon (and, lest we forget, had even cracked …
Not Forgotten: Pink Floyd – Animals
In early 1977 the winds of change were blowing. Reflecting the mood of unrest prevalent in the UK at the time, the established old guard of music acts had evolved into largely complacent animals, while the combination of general discontent and the cyclical nature of change meant that they were about to be swept away …
News: Buzzcocks to reissue Spiral Scratch EP & Times Up
On 27 January will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of the release of Buzzcocks’ legendary ‘Spiral Scratch’ EP by reissuing it. Then on 10 March they’ll be releasing Time’s Up, the 1976 demos recorded with founding member Howard Devoto and originally released as a bootleg, alongside the Buzzcocks (mk.1) Box, which will contain both vinyl …
Not Forgotten: Cat Stevens – Tea for The Tillerman
Maybe it was a reaction to being a social misfit during my school days, but while my contemporaries were falling underneath the spell of various grunge and hip hop acts back in the early 90s, I had started to pay more and more attention to my parents’ album collection. As teenagers during the 70s, they …
Not Forgotten: Rock Bass – Garbles
With their debut, Garbles, it’s quite obvious that Rock Bass do power pop. However, the trouble with a lot of power pop is that so much of it can sound really quite generic. Of course, historically the keystone act was Big Star, but there have been other stand outs as well. Cheap Trick, Teenage Fanclub, …