Folk – rock
News: Fairport Convention fiddle player Dave Swarbrick dies at 75
WE had to check it was for real this time, following The Telegraph’s famous obituary published back in 1999. Sadly it is. Former Fairport Convention fiddle player Dave Swarbrick has died at the age of 75, his family confirmed today, from emphysema. While perhaps not unexpected, Swarbrick has suffered form ill health for a long …
Not Forgotten – Bob Dylan – Blood on the Tracks
Blood On The Tracks is that rare thing, an album that deserves every word of praise heaped upon it. At this stage in his career Bob Dylan had done his best to shake off the oh-so cliched ‘voice of a generation’ tag. His mid 60s electric trilogy had been rightly celebrated, but it had made …
Track: Heron Oblivion – Your Hollows
Heron Oblivion are making it easy for us to love them with their new single Your Hollows. Although they’re a new band out of San Francisco, they boast members of Sic Alps, Six Organs of Admittance, Howlin’ Rain and Feral Ohms amongst others, as well as Meg Baird of Espers. Taken from their debut self-titled …
Track: Promised Land Sound – Push and Pull (All the Time)
Ahead of the release of their sophomore album, For Use and Delight, Nashville’s Promised Land Sound give some indication of what we can expect with the rustic psych-rock/folk of Push and Pull (All the Time). It opens with these woozy chords, before it dances along, full of harmonies and the edgy yearn of frontman Joe …
Not Forgotten: Jethro Tull – Benefit
For some reason Jethro Tull are never spoken of in the same hushed tones of awe as Led Zeppelin or King Crimson. Or Deep Purple and Yes. Or Wishbone Ash… Quite why that is may be down to the fact that their style was very difficult to pigeon hole and emulate, therefore no one has …
A Beginners Guide to Bob Dylan
Over the last fifteen months we here at Backseat Mafia have been publishing a series of Buyers Guides on a number of musical acts. Sometimes these guides have covered a specific period in an act’s career, sometimes it has been a more general overview. There are some acts though, where an exhaustive overview can be …
From an old record box: R.E.M. – Orange Crush
“I’m only a person, with Eskimo chain I tattooed my brain all the way Won’t you miss me? Wouldn’t you miss me at all?” My love for R.E.M. has been constant since first seeing the video for ‘Losing My Religion’ on MTV in 1991. I was soon scrimping the cash together to buy the tape of …
Not Forgotten: Neil Young – On the Beach
Some albums become legendary because of the huge amounts they sold (The Joshua Tree, The Dark Side of the Moon), some because they made a distinct cultural impact, (Revolver, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars) and some just because they contained utterly brilliant music (Blood on the Tracks, Catch …
Feature: Cheerio Jethro Tull – thoughts on the ending
Following a particularly demanding day at work, I wandered into Sheffield branch of HMV on Tuesday. As I walked through the doors, my eyes inevitably flicked to my right and across to the new release display. Ninety percent of the time I don’t even recognise the name of at least half of the acts on …
A buyers guide to Jethro Tull
Jethro Tull are a band who are special to me. They’re the first band I saw live, the first band that I felt a genuine connection to, the first band where my adolescent mind went ‘Yep, this is for me’. Given that my peers at the time were obsessing over Nirvana or the contemporary hiphop …