Our Daily Bread 399: Bruce Springsteen, Beauty Stab, Nicky William, Salem Trials, This Is The Kit …
September 16, 2020
Reviews Galore
Words: Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
The cult leader of the infamous lo fi gods, The Bordellos, Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea has released countless recordings over the decades with his family band of hapless unfortunates, and is the owner of a most self-deprecating sound-off style blog. His most recent releases include The Bordellos beautifully despondent pains-of-the-heart and mockery of clique “hipsters” ode to Liverpool, the diatribe ‘Boris Johnson Massacre’ and just in the last month, The King Of No-Fi album. He has also released, under the Idiot Blur Fanboy moniker, a stripped down classic album of resignation and Gallagher brothers’ polemics.
Each week we send a mountain of new releases to the self-depreciating maverick to see what sticks. In his own idiosyncratic style and turn-of-phrase, pontificating aloud and reviewing with scrutiny an eclectic deluge of releases, here Brian’s latest batch of recommendations
Bruce Springsteen ‘Letter To You’
(Columbia Records) Title Track/Available Now
What a glam slam stomper of a hi energy dance around your handbag floor filler this new single is: a disco ball of sex and glitter. Only joking. No what we have here is the new song by Mr Boss himself Bruuuuuuuuuuuce Springsteen and yes it sounds like you would expect a slow paced Bruce Springsteen single to sound like, slow paced and Bruce like, which I’m not saying is a bad thing: if you love Bruce Springsteen you will love this, if you hate Bruce you will still hate him, and if you have no opinion on him this will not sway you either way. I quite like Bruce, so I quite like this.
This Is The Kit ‘Coming To Get You Nowhere’
Single/Out there now
Curse This Is The Kit, I was going to spend the afternoon catching up with my reviewing duties but instead I have been losing myself in the magic and wonder of This is The kit’s Youtube outpourings instead: this beautiful new single leading me astray into their wonderful and magical land of musical splendour of a back catalogue. Curse you and this new single! Yes is as magical as their other outpourings; fine stuff indeed.
Lizzy Young ‘Obvious’
Single/Available Now
I love this. It has a dark humour and a piano sound that reminds me of Captain Scarlet, which is what one wants from a short blast of a tossed away sass of a single; a blast of devil may care boredom and disinterest that runs through this way too short 3-minute pop gem. But that is far too obvious.
Beauty Stab ‘Beauty Stab’
EP/8th September 2020
Last month Beauty Stab released what I called “single of the year” with sublime erotically art synth pop beauty that is the lead off track from this new EP, French Film Embrace. So you would think that would be the highlight. Well how wrong you would be; this 4 tracker is one long highlight.
The already previously reviewed ‘French Film Embrace’ is indeed a beauty with a bass riff that sounds like a matador reliving the sexual wanderings of his youth. Next up is ‘The Rain’, a track that’s melodramatic post punk synth 60s pop genius, part John Leyton ‘Johnny Remember Me’, part Southern Death Cult, part Soft Cell; a track that is as camp as a row of tents and as dark as the darkest of nights: another pure pop gem.
The 3rd track ‘Protégé’ shows the other side of the band, the more experimental and art pop side, that they cradle with a gentle beauty only the gentle of soul truly possess. The Final track is ‘O Eden’, which was their debut single that was released on Metal postcard Records last year but in a remixed form, and a track that has not lost any of its heart breaking beauty, is a synth ballad to end all other synth ballads. Dan proving once again he is the rightful successor to Scott Walker with a truly outstanding vocal, this should have been all over the radio last year.
So hopefully with its reappearance on this EP that will be put right. An EP of true pop genius in a time when we need EPS of true pop genius more than any other.
See also…
Beauty Stab Interview (with Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea) (here)
‘O Eden’ Review (here)
Deepfake Moneybomb ‘Deepfake Moneybomb’
Album/8th September 2020
There is a Randy Newman feel about this album that I like. I have always had a thing for music when you can hear the performer arch his eyebrows and I certainly think Deepfake Moneybomb is arching both brows on this joy ride of subtle adventure. This is a songwriter who knows long words and is not afraid to use them. A man who is not going to dumb himself down so some knucklehead Oasis fans can swig their larger and belch and fart along to his quickie sci-fi folk songs.
We really need artists like Deepfake Moneybomb in these days of blandness and disease to offer us his quirky outlook on love and life and quantum mechanics. This album is an example of the DIY bedroom recording culture at its very best and has me wanting to go and dig out my Charles Douglas CDs and lose myself in laid-back home-recorded pure musical invention.
The Amplifier Heads ‘Music For Abandoned Amusement Parks’
Album/9th September 2020
A new album by The Amplifier Heads is always something to look forward to, for you are always guaranteed sublime melodies beautiful lyrics and the magic spell of true rock n roll invention. Part XTC part Cleaner From Venus but mostly The Amplifier Heads psych power pop and guitar jangle meet in an album of melancholic nostalgia songs recalling the end of the summer’s past.
This 14-song album is a concept album of sorts with as mentioned the “Abandoned Amusement Arcade” being a metaphor for the passing of youth and your memories of it. So, songs of youthful abandon and abandoned youth are covered quite beautifully; leaving one with the same feeling one has after watching George Lucas’s masterpiece American Graffiti.
Music for Abandoned Amusement Parks is the perfect album to soundtrack the oncoming Autumn/Winter months and anyone with a love for guitar and melody this album is a must have.
Salem Trials ‘Fear For Whatever Comes Next’
Album/Available Now
So the third album of the year by the most exciting guitar band of 2020 arrives and once again with little fanfare, slipping it out on their Bandcamp, and once again proving how unfair this rock n roll malarkey is as the very average Fontaine D.C. achieve all kinds of sales and critical ravings are heaped upon them. This fine album songs of Buzzcock like panache and excitement mixed with early experimental escapades of Barrett’s Pink Floyd and early 80s Fall and full on Beefheart shenanigans will no doubt go by unnoticed.
This is the true sound of the guitar underground. This is where the magic is kept. This is what should be what is coming out of your radio when you turn it on after 9pm. This album sounds like a best of John Peel radio show. This is the true alternative and just how wonderful the true alternative sounds.
See also…
Salem Trials ‘Do Something Dangerous’ Album Review (here)
Nicky William ‘Pathetic Fuck’
Single/28th August 2020
A funky little offering from Nicky William, who goes all dandy on us, with a short and sweet dark swipe at his own character traits. A strange subject matter I suppose, but one that needs exploring and indeed he does explore it in the two minutes 15 seconds this little gem spins around your head, with its drum beats, flutes and “oooh” backing vocals. A fine track, and one that’s taken from his forthcoming EP.
Our Daily Bread 391: Shishi, Reardon Love, ROLES, SLONK…
August 10, 2020
REVIEWS/Brian ‘Bordello’ Shea
Aua ‘I Don’t Want It Darker’
(Crazysane) Album/4th September 2020
I love this album. Should I just stop there and tell you to get your wallets out and buy it?! Or, should I give you reasons to do so?
Well if you have a penchant for Blur (when they are not being annoying and in an experimental frame of mind), or a love for the amazing Silver Apples this could well be the album to soundtrack these oncoming months of strangeness and wonder. There are even hints of Jean Michel Jarre, and I hate that cunt; but imagine if Jean Michel Jarre was good and wrote music with verve spirit and guile and been injected in the arse by whatever makes Can and Neu! so special, and if you can’t imagine that you need to buy this album anyway. And if that’s not reason enough it has a dark splendor I can imagine David Lynch standing and applauding. Another fine album to add to the list for the end of the year best.
Warped Freqs ‘Shifting Initiation’
(Wormhole) Album/24th April 2020
The sound of laid back wonky psychedelic rock has always been something I have enjoyed to varying degrees over the years and this ltd edition cd is a bit of a peach of a release; a psychedelic peach at that, the kind of peach Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd and the Soft Machine might have enjoyed; the kind of peach Stuart Maconie would suck on whilst hosting the Freak Zone in-between records dripping the juice down his Wigan rugby jersey giving it a hurrah of the 1967s. It also has a nice spaced out Saturday night at the movies feel about it that is as if the movie was featuring crimson pantalooned beauties who swung their hair as they slowly danced in the underground discotheque to the mellow becoming sounds of the Warped Freqs. You could have a wail of a time in a crochet hammock gently rocking to this, losing yourself in the looseness of the soft kisses this enigmatic little beauty supplies. There is a very ltd edition cd available so space cadets get one while you can.
Prize Pig ‘The Line’
Single/24th July 2020
The debut release from a new DIY bedroom pop prince in town, the wonderfully named Prize Pig; and what a lovely pop song it is to stomping drum machine a reverb guitar and a melody Andy Partridge would be proud of, and would fit on nicely on one of his Fuzzy Warbles albums. Yes it is that good, bathed in old English Pasture pop charm; certainly one to watch.
Tiger Mimic ‘Where The Fire Used to Be’
Single/14th August 2020
Tiger Mimic describe themselves as a band to watch and who on earth am I to disagree with such a statement. There is nothing wrong with being confident in your own music or otherwise what would be the point of making it. And I quite like this as it slightly has a strange amateur dramatics vocal quality about it, which you don’t normally hear in guitar indie rock. It also stops and breaks off into a “Be My baby” drum beat midway through, which is always an egg in my basket. I expect this to get lots of plays on radio x (but don’t let that put you off).
Nicky William ‘I Fell In Love With Her’
Single/Now
This is heartbreakingly beautiful, a song steeped in the romance and hurt that love inspires, a song that brings to mind the many fine moments of Smog and Lee Hazlewood, one that inspires a dark melancholy to fill the room, one that swirls with the mists of regret stumbling through the corridors of yearning and solitude and the loneliness of being in love with the prettiest girl you have ever seen but knowing every other fool also wants her, and all that captured in the magic of a three minute song: the true magic of music.
Shishi ‘Mafitishei’
Album/30th June 2020
If all girl post punk from Lithuania is your thing and by the sounds of it, it is indeed my thing, this could be for you; harmonious off kilter pop with angular surf guitar, the aroma of The Pixies in 45rpm splendor and early Fuzzbox surrounds the whole delightful surroundings. It also has the pop suss to have a song, ‘Nebesikalbam’, that sounds like the 60s beat classic ‘Fortune Teller’ and not everyone has the nous or spirit not only to blatantly do such a thing but have the panache to carry it off: the slight fuzz bass brings tears of joy to this old fools eyes; quite a wonderful track. And this LP has plenty of those. A quite poptastic album in a Lithuanian post punk pop kind of way.
Abel Cain and the Scrubs ‘Scrub This’
(Pigeon Cove Records) Album/28th July 2020
There is a touch of the Bob Dylan’s about this album that I very much approve of, but in a late 70s garage Stiff records kind of way, and at the same time it has a lovely 60s garage feel about it – I know, I will call it rock n roll and be done it with.
This is simple undiluted stripped-down basic rock n roll with all the magic it entails; fine melodies, decent lyrics played live in a cheap studio, the sound of blue-collar working-class poetry at its finest. I hear the glorious history of rock n roll laid out in these seven tracks, from Hank Williams via Dylan the beat bands of the 60s through to Springsteen, Tom Petty and the Clash, and right up to Green Day. It’s punk rock with a country bar band feel. It is simply a very wonderful timeless album, one I advise everyone should give a listen to.
Reardon Love ‘Locked In The Panopticon’
Single/Now
It’s really lovely to see that there are young exciting bands taking the influences of 80s synth pop with all its glamour and sleaze and moulding it into modern fine pop songs. Alongside the wonderful Beauty Stab I can see Readon Love leading the charge and grabbing the ears and hearts of radio programmers and blog editors with their grasp of the glamour melodies and songwriting talent. Maybe in these dark times music may once again add the sparkle and escape we desperately need.
Keys ‘This Side Of Luv’
(Libertino) Single/17th August 2020
Let’s transport back in time to the golden days of 70’s pop, where the Bay City Rollers meets ELO in a mellow sunshine romp of Saturday summer days gone past. Very unusual and quite refreshing to hear actually, the lovely warmth the Keys emit, especially over the soulless dross I have just put my ears through, sometimes drawing on nostalgia for inspiration is a good thing indeed as this record so lovingly proves.
ROLES ‘Rinpoche’
Single/7th August 2020
This is sexy funky and unusual and I like it. This may have been what Transvision Vamp would have sounded like if they had got Brian Eno in to produce. It’s all glam guitar and wonky synths with a scientific edge about it; a pop song with an experimental undercurrent or an experimental track overcome with pop sexuality; either way a damn fine single.
SLONK ‘Postman’
(Breakfast Records) Single/7th August 2020
A song to capture the hearts and minds of all those who remember the off-kilter guitar pop of A House from the late 80s early 90s; a song that has everything one wants from a diy pop single, catchy chorus refrain, nice melodies and lyrics that are both heartfelt and heart-warming. Who did indeed not want to be a postman at some point in their life. I actually failed my interview; I don’t think they thought my love of the Cramps and inability to either drive or lack of bike riding panache made me an ideal candidate. But I’m going off the point, the point being that this is a fine three-minute pop single worthy of your attention; so much so I’m quite interested in hearing the forthcoming album.
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