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Monday, 10 February 2025
Listening To This Week Playlist
Sunday, 9 February 2025
Them Elephants - Sugar
Having covered Them Elephant's second album, Come Calling, here, it is great to listen to the follow up from San Francisco's Alex Charlow. It is, again, not quite what you might expect from the West Coast relying on great melodic Indie Rock with killer riffs.
The title track maybe best explains what Them Elephants are most about, all riff and handclaps, slightly Power Pop, yet very Indie Rock with a killer big chorus. A bit retro, yet also sounding modern. Charlow can play with some stunning solos, but these are never to the bereft of the song.
The Way You Move appeared on a recent Listening To This Week Playlist and that fuzzed up riff matched up with another killer chorus still sounds great. Make It Last is celebratory 90s style all together now where the chorus and the riff just get you on your feet.
There isn't a lot of variation, but when you know what you are good at and have the formula to offer up great 3 minute listens, why step off the path. Too much of Indie Rock is either moody or sounds like everybody else. Sugar doesn't and that is to its absolute credit.
You can listen to and buy the album here.
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Why Comments Are Moderated
We don't really go for comments here, preferring the music to be listened to We do enjoy people saying they like an album, but don't really look for people telling us how great our taste is. It is about then artists not us.
Comments are moderated, but not for us to decide what people can say. There has always been the odd problem with Spam. Lately, the spam has got far worse. One spammer picks an old review and attempts to spam on that post continually. The latest saw them under the name Akram or Anonymous try to post the same spam 28 times in one day and they are still at it today. All on the same review. When I put the post in draft for a bit, they turned their attention to a different one.
It also gets a bit sinister. One spammer posts "die die die" on random posts regularly. Some are hilarious, mistaking the context of the post title. Tips for Dry Stone Walling, getting rich quick. The Custard Review brought in comments about buying Curtains.
It is getting tiresome deleting all this nonsense. So Comments may be switched off for a while if this continues.
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Friday, 7 February 2025
Sura Laynes - Sura Laynes
When you first hear Sura Laynes, you'd maybe mistake them as not coming from Derby, but Liverpool. There are big hints of Scouse Pop in the vein of The La's or Cast. There are also shades of the Wirral with similarities to The Coral.
You know from hearing the short opener, Comrade In Arms, that you are in for something special with its harmonium background and unplugged vocal harmonies. There is great variety across the dozen songs. Yet, whatever path they take, the Pop sensibilities are never lost.
This lot can certainly offer up a chorus no matter what the genre. Take for instance Feel Alright which is a sort of jaunty let's do the song right here affair, but adds harmonica and a sort of R and B Guitar feel. And what a fantastic mix of styles they come up with.
The Scally Guitar Pop of Let The Good Times Roll, the 60s storytelling of Smalltown Love Song and The best Coral song that The Coral didn't write Promise You'll Stay which is set to a Rock and Roll-ish riff and a Power Pop Drum Beat.
The songwriting also reveals a real lyrical wit on the likes of The Captain Ain't Qualified and the aforementioned Feel Alright. Blade In My Back is very 60s UK Beat, indeed there is a 60s feel throughout as well as a link to the Sea.
What is so encouraging, is that a debut album can sound so accomplished. Unusual and adept arrangements add to each song, but the melody is never forgotten. It restores your faith in music. Spotify hasn't totally killed creativity, you just have to look further than the playlist hell.
You can listen to and buy the album here.
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Thursday, 6 February 2025
Clean Lines - Nuisance EP
The last time I heard Seattle's Clean Lines, before playing Want More on a recent Listening To This Week, was a few years ago. with Teenage News. That was a little Glam Rock, but not as Glam as Want More, with a driving riff. Now they are on Madrid's excellent Ghost Highway Recordings label.
Want More still sounds great, all handclaps and stomps with its extended intro. In The Way is much more up and at 'em. Scuzzy and Fuzzy, with a New York Dolls feel of Noo Yawk, a sort of perfect antidote to the Flares and Butterfly collars that preceeds it and a perfect end to a cracking fun packed EP.
So Sharp is cracking UK New Wave at its very best. It is like 1978 all over again, big riffs, big chorus and a real killer from its chiming Guitar Intro to its Guitar paint stripping solo. The pace just doesn't let go, getting your fist pumping.
The title track that opens this splendid EP is more 90s in feel, delivering speed and coming in at under 2 minutes. It isn't a million miles away from the new wave of slightly more aggressive Indie Power Pop. This seems to be the year of Guitar fun, leaning slightly 70s, long may it continue.
You can listen to and buy the EP here.
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Wednesday, 5 February 2025
Girl For Samson - Blend All The Seasons
I rarely get to converse with anyone these days. Here seems to be all consuming and there seems little time for the activity I used to have with all the listening, writing and selecting. So it has been nice exchanging emails with Johnny Marie.
One of the topics that came up was getting coverage and it wasn't the usual moans about not appreciated, music dying or Spotify taking all the air. It was about genres and how hard it is for a band who offer variety to get around the labels and you know how I adore variety
This is Johnny Marie and Patrick Meagher's fifth album as Girl For Samson and lest we forget they are also active as The Real Flower Pots and then there is Marie's solo career. But we concentrate here on Girl For Samson and Blend For All Seasons is a superb album.
It will suit both followers and the Like Minded Reviewers on the Right Hand Side of IDHAS. The variety is commendable and attempting to label it seems pointless and unnecessary, so how does it get listened to? Maybe we should all help with the word of mouth,
Girl For Samson are a Kansas City quartet who offer up a heady melodic mix of what might be sketchily called Pop Rock, but remember we are not labelling. The shared vocals of Marie and Meagher adds even great variation.
The former has a vocal suited to the likes of Brit Pop, Pop Rock or Indie Rock. Meagher's voice suits itself more to Modern Prog, Classic Rock as well as Shoegaze. All of these areas and more filter into the results here.
Faking Your Beauty for instance as a blend of harmonies that would fit easily amongst the West Coast brigade, yet (You Took) One Of Everything is a mixture of 70s Easy Listening and Prog. Yet the killer single, Cigarette, is pure Brit Pop and edges into Psych Pop.
The title track hints at Shoegaze and adds a mesmerising Guitar solo, but You Better Run is vocal harmony led gentle Prog. Soon just washes over you, feeling slightly 80s, yet Get Off That Stake is simply a cinematic soundscape.
You can probably sense from these words that this is a wonderful album to listen to. Beautifully arranged and produced, it is an enthralling listen that deserves a much wider audience. Blend For All Seasons is an album that you just don't want to end.
You can listen to and buy the album here.
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Tuesday, 4 February 2025
The Move - Message From The Country (2025 Remaster And Expanded)
It may seem strange to kick off 2025 properly with an album from 1971. But that album has been remastered from the original Harvest Tapes and extended on Cherry Red's Esoteric label for release at the end of the month and it is time for a reassessment of what for a long time was looked upon as the least favourable of The Move's four album career. There are those more occasional fans that think everything beyond the first album was strange. Why were such a fine singles band messing about with longer songs when they could create three minute joys. But that was The Move with every album offering something different.
More regular fans point to Shazam as their favourite. It is a fantastic album, but very cover heavy, although these covers translated into some extraordinarily great live performances. Looking On is my favourite, a magnificent mixture of Prog and Psych and of course Brontosaurus. My own dalliance with The Move began when I was armed with a £10 Record Token for my birthday and under my own steam chose the first albums under my own steam. I had £2 left and all I could afford was an MFP compilation and I went for The Move. That album opened up an incredible world, one that stays with me five decades on.
Compilation wise, nothing ever appeared from Message In The Country, due to it being on Harvest and so I had to dig out that album and it seemed very different. It was definitely a Lynne or Wood album, very experimental with Wood raiding the instrument cupboard. There was a lot going on in The Move camp. This album was being recorded at the same time as the first ELO album, the reason that Lynne had joined and Wood was also recording his solo album, Boulders. So material was switched around.
Roy Wood's slower material went on ELO 1 and Boulders, so here you are getting him in Rocker mode. Lynne was still very much in Idle Race land at times, his Psych Pop on this album is exceptional, indeed it does get overlooked that Lynne was a master of the genre. The Minister and the title track were as good as anything you heard from supposed superior artists. My Marge is pure Toytown. Words Of Aaron hints big time at what was to come in the early Lynne led ELO. Wood doesn't shrink from the challenge.
Ella James and Until Your Mama's Gone are stompers in the Brontosaurus manner. It Wasn't My Idea To Dance gets splendidly Proggy and revives that wonderful Feel Too Good vibe. Don't Mess Me Up gives indication of some of the stuff to come on Wizzard's Brew. Ben Crawley Steel Company is Bev Bevan being Johnny Cash and we can't forget No Time. Lynne at his most delicate with Wood adding instrumentation from everywhere, including flute. It would be enough if it ended there, but there was another side to the band, the singles.
The three singles were not on the album, but showed a very different Pop side. All three are here and as a series of singles, Tonight, Chinatown and California Man match any run you care to mention. The B Sides, Down On The Bay (another Move song covered by Cheap Trick) and the original version of Do Ya, made famous when orchestrated by ELO on A New World Record.There are also four alternate versions present here among the 19 tracks. Don't Mess Me Up is all vocal harmony without the instrumentation. Words Of Aaron and DO Ya sound like early versions with distinct differences. My Marge adds studio chatter at the end.
I have to admit that although having multiple versions of each album, I usually go back to my original Vinyl versions of the albums. There is something special in hearing the cracks and pops that take me back to the time that I bought them. For the embeds, I have gone to the 2005 Remaster, but the new 2025 version is far superior.
Message In The Country is released on 28 February. You can pre-order the album here.
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