Our Daily Bread 301: Delicate Steve, Mozes And The Firstborn, Sir Robert Orange Peel, Bibi Den’s Tshibayi
February 7, 2019
Review Roundup: Words: Brian ‘Shea’ Bordello
Delicate Steve ‘Till I Burn Up’
(Anti/ Epitaph) 1st March 2019
Well this LP by Delicate Steve is a music publisher’s dream, if I had handed this into my publishers they would be performing cartwheels and my back would be bruised from all the backslapping. Nine well written well performed instrumental works that are catchy without being annoyingly so commercial, without being overly commercial. Tracks that will be played on both FM and alternative radio shows; instrumentals that one can be imagined used in adverts and TV shows of all genres, Sci-Fi, spy, romantic dramas, tunes being played behind the days sporting highlights.
This LP is ideal for soundtracking your daily routine without interfering too much in it. The music goes from having a modern day vibeness funk of Daft Punk, ‘Selfie Of A Man’ to the wonderful opening track ‘Way Too Long’, which if anything is way too short: With its squonky Synths and Robert Quine like guitar this is the kind of track you would have run home from school in the 70s for.
My personal favourite track is the royally majestic procession of a thing, the synth driven beauty Purple Boy, a song if not named in tribute to the sadly missed wonder that was Prince should have been.
It’s an LP that is well worth investigation.
Mozes And The Firstborn ‘Dadcore’
(Burger Records) 25th January 2019
An LP that wants to be a mixtape, a very good idea; an LP that is a love letter to rock music is music to these ears. Anyone who knows anything about my band The Bordellos loves such concepts, and know all-too-well how we go for things like that: Our How To Hate Friends And Influence No-one was a hate letter to the music industry and how bland it was becoming. I can happily report that this LP is in no way bland or boring but is a fine power pop album: All Glitter band drums, Raspberries guitars and melodies you could float on.
Songs that mention radio in the lyrics is always a good guide, whether the band have pop nouse and can be trusted with your pop heart, and any band that rips off The Beat’s ‘Save It For Later’ (or should I say is influenced by it) is alright with me as one should also try and rip off the best.
The opening title track is a fine example of what The Clash performing the Bay City Rollers ‘Saturday Night’ might sound like, if you ever wondered. Any lovers of The Eels and Fountains Of Wayne will no doubt embrace this LP; it has all the right chords in all the right places, it has its heart in its art; it has the right amount of darkness – as we all know when the darkness meets the light magic can happen and it does happen on a number of occasions on this LP.
It’s also nice to see that Burger Records can get things right occasionally (they turned down the chance to release a Bordellos LP (I’m not bitter, just a little twisted) but I do not hold grudges, even if I did I would still say this is a worthy addition to any lover of guitar pop collections.
Bibi Den’s Tshibayi ‘Sensible’
(Pharaway Records) 14th February 2019
This album is a gem of Ivory Coast Funk, kicking off with ‘Africa Mawa’, a wonderful mixture of jangly guitars and post-punk-funk like Synths; if it wasn’t for the vocals you could imagine it fitting nicely on Orange Juices’ Rip It Up album: A great way to start an LP. It is followed by the quite lovely ballad ‘Djwa Yango’; again of its time, this LP being recorded in 1983, it has the 80s synth sound but a wonderfully repetitive haunting synth riff.
Track three started and it sent me spinning back into the past: I was all of a sudden 18 again listening to the wonderful John Peel show, as he so very often filled the airwaves with quite wonderful African funk and the Sensible title track is indeed wonderful African music – maybe my favorite track of this four track album, quite marvelous in fact. Chanting vocals, funk guitar and incredible drumming, a song that puts the fun into funk. Then the final song comes all to soon the only fault I can find with this LP that at just over twenty five minutes on length it is over all too soon. I have not heard an album this joyful in a long time. In fact I’m going to put it on again.
Sir Robert Orange Peel ‘Turn That Bloody Racket Down!’
(Metal Postcard Records) 31st January 2019
Another LP from the wonderful Metal Postcard Records; this label releases so much wonderful music that is wrongly ignored. I am here to put that right.
This LP is a fine example; any LP that starts off with a wonderful farting synth and proceeds to erupt into a fury of lo fi funk before going on to a sample of telephone scammers over a slow drumbeat (slow very funny and very strange) is what the world is crying out for; music that deals with everyday life but with a dark smile on its face.
Who else would take a 70s sample of Mastermind the TV quiz show, when the persons specialist subject was the Sex Pistols, and just put a simple drumbeat behind it?!! As I have already said, insane but brilliant, the whole LP carries on in a similar vein and conjurers up both feelings for the nostalgic days of the past and the horrors of the world today.
I will not go into the subjects of all the tracks, as I do not want to spoil this wonderful eccentric dance record for you. GO AND DOWNLOAD IT AND CHEER YOURSELF UP!
Words: Brian ‘Shea’ Bordello
Our Daily Bread 296: Telescopes ‘Exploding Head Syndrome’, Kungens Män ‘Chef’, The Paris Street Rebels ‘I Don’t Want To Die Young’
January 23, 2019
Reviews Collection – Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
The Telescopes ‘Exploding Head Syndrome’
(Tapete Records) 1st February 2019
There is no place like drone, well not at least if you are a member of The Telescopes: Just over thirty minutes of top class dronery, not something I normally spend my Friday evenings listening to but as they say a change is as good as a rest.
I was to be honest not expecting to like this as a lot of people I know who like the Telescopes get on my tits, you know the type, the kind who think The Brian Jonestown Massacre are the second coming. But this is very enjoyable. And I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for the Telescopes: I loved the LP they released on Creation, one of the best five albums that much over rated label released.
This is in fact a very fine pop LP, it has melodies, it has textured whispered vocals, it has tunes that remind me of both Syd’s Pink Floyd and The Velvet Underground – if only the last Jesus And Mary Chain LP was as good as this I might have played it more than the one and a half times that I did.
If this LP were a debut album by some young new psychsters they would be being raved about and hailed to the rafters as the second coming, the next new big thing. I hope the same platitudes are heaved onto this wonderful LP by this wonderful band, as it really has taken me by surprise how much I love it and I feel guilty in not expecting to like it. For that The Telescopes I offer my humble apologies you have indeed blown my head. A fine LP.
Kungens Män ‘Chef’
(Riot Season Records) February 15th 2019
Kungens Män hail from Stockholm, Sweden and have been around as a musical unit since 2012 so the press release tells me, which is a very good thing as I had never heard of them before.
This to be honest is not the type of music I normally sit at home and devour but this is in fact very good indeed. An LP of four long improvised instrumental tracks, the first track ‘Fyrkantig Böjelse’ is a fine eleven minute piece of sonic jazz rock – imagine late 60’s Santana, The Velvets and Sonic Youth jamming over the drum beat of Jaki Liebezeit from Can: and yes it is as good as it sounds.
The second track ‘Öppen För Stängda Dörrar’ at just over the eight minute mark, being the shortest track on the LP, takes us on a gentler ride. More synth dominated, I can imagine it being used in one of those wonderful
80’s horror movies, as it has a John Carpenter feel to it, and again is a quite stunning piece of music. ‘Män Med Medel’ follows this; a ten-minute plus track of fuzzed up psych rock, the kind of track you can imagine
soundtracking Julian Cope dressed in leather simulating having sex with the floor to. The final track ‘Eftertanke Blanka Krankheit’ takes us back to the underground, the Velvet Underground, and could well be my favourite of the four; the three guitars intertwine beautifully as the bass and drums keep a hypnotic slow groove of a beat.
All Hawkwind fans need hear this, or even better, own it. So fantastic in fact that if I grew wings and could fly I would have this track playing on my mp3 player as I dive-bombed the less worthy below.
This really is a hell of an album and I would recommend it to all space rock aficionados.
The Paris Street Rebels ‘I Don’t Want To Die Young/ Freakshow’ double A-Side
February 15th 2019
The press release says for fans of the Libertines and the Clash, well I like the Libertines and The Clash and I like the Paris Street Rebels. They may not be the most original soundings of bands – they remind me of the early Manic Street Preachers: even the names are similar.
What I like is that they’re four young men who have taken the glamour of T Rex and injected themselves with the early workings of the Subway Sect and The Clash, picked up their guitars and decided to try and change things through the power of rock n roll. Whether they succeed or not really does not matter, at least they are trying, which is more that can be said of ninety per cent of the current crop of young guitar bands, all they want is to get played on daytime BBC 6 Music and play in front of the middle class festival goers who will stand and wave inflatable fruit and farm animals at them. I of course could be wrong, The Paris Street Rebels might want the same and in fact they certainly could achieve this hell on earth as the songs are commercial enough on I Don’t Want To Die Young – there is even a beautiful Byrds like chiming guitar riff -, but I believe they also have fully functioning brains and are not afraid to use them, which in this day and age is a rarity.
I say ones to watch. And I wish them all the luck in the world.
Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea is the patriarchal leader of the mighty St. Helens cult underground favourites The Bordellos. We throw a slew of releases at him each week and see what sticks.
Album Reviews – Brian Bordello
Welcome our 2019 signing, Brian Bordello, to the Monolith Cocktail fold. The self-depreciating maverick patriarch of the dysfunctional cult lo fi Bordellos will henceforth be, in his own idiosyncratic style and turn-of-phrase, pontificating aloud and reviewing with scrutiny an eclectic deluge of releases for us. Here’s his inaugural couplet review of upcoming albums by Cleaning Women and Eerie Wanda.
Eerie Wanda ‘Pet Town’
January 25th 2019
The lost sounds of childhood summers, the finger clicking bliss of a Joe Meek hit, the beauty of the lost rainbow in an angels wish, this LP by Eerie Wanda makes me recall all this.
Pet Town is a fine album indeed at times it gives me the same feelings of joy I have when playing The Beach Boys much-underrated classic Friends; songs wrapped up in the power of the pureness in being alone.
This is simple in its beauty and the beauty is its simpleness, the vinyl etchings of acoustic nights wrapped in your ex’s arms soundtracked by a lovingly compiled mixtape of the Marine Girls and Holly Golightly’s softer moments.
This LP is one of pure delight, a lo-fi lovers dream date, a shy boys aural pin up, this is what you imagine the sound of the girl you wanted but was never confidant enough to ask out whispering I want you in your ear.
The sparseness of the backing, the wonderful percussion sound gives the whole affair a cocoon of warmness. There are so many things to love, like the way the song ‘Sleepy Eyes’ starts with the same guitar chords as Elvis Presley’s
‘Jailhouse Rock’ and finishes with a psychedelic organ solo, and the handclaps on the ‘Hands Of The Devil’ are rockabilly percussion par excellence.
Summing up, this is an LP to wrap around you to keep you warm in the coming winter months and the LP to play as you walk in the summer sun remembering how happy sad life can be. A stunner.
Cleaning Women ‘Intersubjectivity’
(Svart Records) 15th February 2019
I can honestly say I’ve never heard of the Cleaning Women before; a band from Helsinki who make their instruments from cleaning implements, or so they say, and who am I not to believe them it would explain why this music is so shiny and refreshing to listen to.
This LP brings back memories of growing up in the North West of England listening to the strange pop post punk sounds of the mid 80s; bands that were not scared to try something different and at the same time not afraid to make music with melody, style and beauty. And this LP has all those things in abundance.
Intersubjectivity is truly a thing of great beauty. It’s not often that you hear an album that reminds you of the 80s pop gods Aha and Can at the same time; an LP that makes you want to go back and revisit your love for the mighty Laibach whilst wishing I still had the energy to frug wildly to the captivating post punk of ‘We Work It Out’, or, to wrap myself in a sleeping bag and pogo to the funky Captain Beefheart meets Julian Cope of ‘Living On The Streets’.
This is my first review of 2019 and if all the music I write about is as exciting as this what a year it will be, or this could be a great one off and everything in comparison will be a crushing disappointment, a warning for you 2019 the standard has been set high…
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