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Premiere: Living legend Earl Slick pushes the instrumental blues into cinemascope with ‘Vanishing Point’, announces UK tour
JEEZ, will you look at that CV. Robert Smith, Bowie, David Coverdale, Glen Matlock, John and Yoko, The Yardbirds; quite clearly, Earl Slick is a man you need aboard if you need six strings tickled with real love and precision. He’s just dropped an album of instrumental blues, Fist Full Of Devils: but look, when …
Track: The Goa Express take the ‘Overpass’: a frenetic no-holds barred romp, and announce UK tour
‘Overpass’ is the ‘B’ Side to The Goa Express‘ single ‘Second Time’ (reviewed by me here). While the latter was a classic shimmering slice of indie pie, ‘Overpass’ releases the brakes, takes down the roof and tilts forward at a breakneck speed with the lights on high beam. Whip smart, attitude-laden and imbued with a …
Track: Courtney Barnett takes a gentle, wry look at ‘Rae Street’ and announces third studio album, ‘Things Take Time, Take Time’
Australian indie icon Courtney Barnett has just announced the release of her third studio album ‘Things Take Time, Take Time’ on 12 November 2021 through Marathon Artists and released the first single, ‘Rae Street’. ‘Rae Street’ is a gentle, reflective track with Barnett’s signature wry observations on the vicissitudes of life: immediate real and acute …
See: Far Caspian drops the hushed guitar thrill of ‘Questions’, announces his debut album and a European tour
THESE days based in Leeds, the grand capital of God’s Own Country, Yorkshire, but hailing from the rural south-western corner of Northern Ireland, Joel Johnston returned home to put together his October debut album, Ways To Get Out, to revisit past selves, the musical diet he grew up on, remember the ways he himself got …
Track: The Golden Dregs are back with the stunning new single ‘John’ and tour news
Released back in June 2019, ‘Nobody Ever Got Rich (By Making People Sad)’ by The Golden Dregs, still remains for me one of the most outstanding singles I’ve ever reviewed for Backseat Mafia. For some reason, I never got to review the later album, the brilliant ‘Hope is for the Hopeless’, but The Golden Dregs are back …
Track: New Zealand’s Sulfate release the dark, fuzzy track ‘Crossing’ and announce new album ‘Godzone’ through Flying Nun Records
‘Crossing’, from New Zealand band Sulfate, is a delicious, fuzzy, angst-ridden piece of darkness that buzzes with a satisfying intensity. A metallic syncopated undercurrent is swamped by angular, crunchy guitars and yearning vocals that have echoes of the brittle, observational delivery of the Robert Forster side of The Go-Betweens. The themes match the gothic darkness …
See: Devendra Banhart and Noah Goergeson unveil an expansive, meditative ‘Refuge’ double set for August; come float within ‘Into Clouds’ and ‘In A Cistern’
THEIR first meeting may have been entirely inauspicious – the one enquiring of the other whether in fact he was, indeed, a French drug dealer – but once that initial barrier was overcome, the twin, surging talents of acid folk scion Devendra Banhart and minimalist composer and producer Noah Georgeson became firm friends; collaborators. And …
See: Table Scraps come firing back with ‘Threads’ ahead of a post-apocalyptic September set
BRUM’S garage-psych-doom power trio Table Scraps have, like the rest of us, been busy frying their heads and kicking anxious heels indoors for like: doesn’t it feel like forever now? But they’ve also been busy with the guitar, bass and drums and things, because the lockdown league is one you can play your way out …
Track: Hushtones emit a radiant beam of sunshine with their new single ‘Sinking’, and announce news of an album ‘Greetings from the Other Side’
‘Sinking’, the new track from Liverpool ensemble Hushtones, is an effervescent and sparkling piece of sunshine: celestial harmonies, chiming guitars and a gravity-defying level of acceleration combine to create a euphoric blast. There is a swinging sixties merry-go-round whirl to the track, liberating, joyous and free wheeling. Duelling, harmonising vocals add to the vaulting chorus. …
Track: Ulrich Schnauss & Mark Peters drop the glimmer of ‘Hindsight is 20-20’, with a September completion of their three-album cycle in hand
HAILING from two great port cities – Kiel, on the German Baltic coast, in the case of Ulrich Schnauss, and Liverpool, in the case of erstwhile Engineers guitarist Mark Peters – these two musicians are united in a musical approach that’s always touched upon a hazy shoegaze from various exploratory angles and looks forward, outward. …