Black Grape - Orange Head
Shaun Ryder is making up for lost time, it seems.
Following the a handful of shows in support of this album, Happy Mondays embark on a tour with Inspiral Carpets and Stereo MCs next spring, and he’s recently announced a lengthy jaunt round the country for Q&A shows. Who would have thought he would be the most hardworking of his generation?
For all his other projects however, there is a sense that – if the Mondays are his first love – Black Grape is his most musical wife.
The surprise success of debut album It’s Great When You’re Straight…Yeah! in 1995 was a real fillip. While there were many chefs in the Happy Mondays kitchen, Black Grape had only two (sorry Bez), his relationship with Paul Leveridge (Kermit) seemingly one of mutual appreciation. Loaded with street smarts and musical talent, the duo make a fearsome musical combination.
As they continue to be, nearly 30 years later. Orange Head (those fruit references just keep coming) is wonkishly and gloriously off-kilter, full of chilling energy and customary brio, but contemporary.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/11/review-black-grape-orange-head/
English Teacher - Live at the Louisiana, Bristol - 27th October 2023
There are so many elements that define the trajectory of a musician’s popularity.
Firstly, obviously, the songs need to be up to scratch, and the circumstances must be right unless you can define them. And of course, there’s a lot of luck involved too.
But charm. Charm goes a long way. It can hide something else, but it’s hard to fake. Lily Fontaine – vocalist and rhythm guitarist for Leeds’ English Teacher – has charm to spare. Whether it’s chatting amiably while signing merchandise after the show or apologising for the sheer volume of new (and therefore unknown) songs performed during it, people listen.
A Bristol audience is always receptive (so we tell ourselves) and Fontaine declares her appreciation for the crowd singing the ‘older’ material. ‘The magic of having someone sing words you’ve written back to you is insane,’ the singer gleefully declares after ‘Song About Love’ which, admittedly, isn’t too tricky to catch up with (the last minute simply a chant of ‘tick-tocking love’) but the preceding hypnotic, single-note groove (think ‘Psycho Killer’) sets the foundations nicely. The song’s ragged magnificence lies in the thumping delivery, with Fontaine’s vocals substituted for shouts as the song reaches its end.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/10/review-english-teacher-louisiana/
Deadletter - Live at Dareshack, Bristol, 25th October 2023
A few weeks ago your reviewer went to see the re-released Stop Making Sense, the 1984 concert film by Jonathan Demme about Talking Heads’ tour the previous year.
Taking place over four nights, the film offers little insight other than capturing the euphoria and sheer force of a band at the top of the game, with a host of musicians working in tandem to create a whirlwind of glorious majesty.
Watching six-piece Deadletter on the first night of their UK tour is a disconcertingly similar experience. Musically the two groups overlap, even if they are separated by nearly half a century: the ragged-yet-watertight dexterity, the synchronisation of the musicians (very obviously on the same page) and the magnetic qualities of the frontman. Equally, both acts combine an eclectic mix of genres to their music.
But while David Byrne and co specialised in funk, art rock and punk, Deadletter – as a requirement of the age in which they live – must have a ‘post’ prefix attached to the latter. And while Byrne often appeared delighted, frontman Zac Lawrence possesses an intensity which belies, sadly, the more serious times of 2023. In short, he’s not much of a smiler.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/10/review-deadletter-live-dareshack/
DJ Shadow - Action Adventure
Released in late 2019, DJ Shadow’s last studio album Our Pathetic Age fell through the gaps caused by the pandemic; with touring plans for summer 2020 shelved the album, like so many others, missed the opportunity to have life breathed into it on the stage.
DJ Shadow (real name Joshua Davis) instead took the time forced upon us to make music for himself again, without the validation supplied by guest vocalists or MCs, setting himself the challenge to, ‘write music that flexed different energies’.
The iconic producer reportedly listened to previously unheard records from his 60,000(!) strong vinyl collection for inspiration while also persistently questioning which chord progressions would be the least predictable when collating songs for what would become his seventh studio album.
With that in mind, compiling any form of coherence is an impressive achievement, yet Davis has done so masterfully. Indeed, Action Adventure arguably suffers from the opposite problem: on first listen, the variations in sound or tempo can be indiscernible. It’s subtler than that, and on repeated listens both the effort and intricacy is clear, with huge variations in scope.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/10/review-dj-shadow-action-adventure/
Vega Rally - This Moment
The Spirit Of Spike Island is a truly independent label that’s building up a head of steam: Afflecks Palace have two splendid albums to their name, Pastel are being name-dropped by the likes of Ride’s Andy Bell and this latest offering promises to consolidate their position.
Vega Rally (real name Simon Hall) is a self-taught bedroom producer from Manchester (but of course) who signed to The Spirit Of Spike Island last year.
With over 100k streams and airplay from BBC Radio 6 Music and Radio X across three singles to date, the future is promising for the young man.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/10/review-vega-rally-this-moment-ep/
The Ties That Bind - Part 2
The 1988-89 season saw one of the tightest-ever battles for the First Division title, with both Arsenal and Liverpool — who happened to be playing each other — in contention on the last day of the season. Owing to its importance, the game was broadcast live on television and finished most dramatically: Arsenal needed to win by two goals to be crowned champions and, with seconds to remain, Michael Thomas scored the Gunners’ second to land them the prize.
With such drama on live TV, it showed how entertaining football could be and, more significantly, how many viewers it could bring in — untapped commercial potential. Within months, conversations between broadcasters and football chairmen about how to exploit this began and the Premier League was born, with BSkyB winning the rights to show 60 live games a season.
The Liverpool-Arsenal match was a key element of the memoir (and later film) Fever Pitch by then-upcoming writer Nick Hornby. The (sort-of) Londoner represented a hitherto low-key football fan; considered, thoughtful but no less passionate and obsessive than the stereotypical supporter. The book was a huge success and for his sophomore effort, Hornby wrote the novel High Fidelity, about an obsessive and sensitive music fan undergoing an existential crisis; a character who was likely closer to home than the author would admit.
Meanwhile, as the Premier League blossomed, music in the UK underwent one of its semi-regular changes and, arguably, the last true youth culture movement exploded circa 1992: Britpop.
The Ties That Bind - Part 1
Paul Weller (the legendary frontman of The Jam, not the former Burnley player) once said that music and football are the post-war British belief systems, superseding traditional religions. An astute observation coming from the not-particularly-football-inclined Modfather – and one that is undeniably true.
But why? On the surface level, the differences between the two are stark: music is a creative process with an untethered gestation and limitless possibilities, while football – or specifically a football match – is both tactical and spontaneous.
As the cliché goes, it only takes a second to score a goal that can affect the mood of players, coaches, and managers and may even determine a club's fate. Musicians' spontaneity, barring those that happen in the studio, is limited to the live arena and therefore cherished by a select few.
Yet the relationship between the two runs deep. Back in the early 1960s, when post-war Britain was taking shape, pop music, as we understand it, was formulating and The Beatles were conquering all before them while the two teams from their hometown of Liverpool were dominating top-flight football.
Interview - Rob Spragg, Alabama 3
Although founding members Rob Spragg and the late Jake Black met a few miles away (at a rave in Peckham, long before it was cool), the influence of one of London’s most multicultural areas goes way back to their debut album (1997’s Exile On Coldharbour Lane), named after one of Brixton’s most infamous streets. Emerging from the South London acid house squat scene of the decade before, Alabama 3’s trademark fusion of techno and soulful rock has long seen them lauded as pioneers.
Spragg still resides in Brixton and, over the course of a detailed conversation with Clash, explains what it is that makes the area so special: “I’ve lived in Brixton for 30 years now. What keeps me in the area is the same thing when I arrived. I left college in Aberystwyth and I moved to North London. I was there for about four years and I decided to move south. At the time I was – shall we say – heavily involved in the wrong kind of substances or whatever. Of all places, I moved to Brixton to sort myself out! I sorted myself out by the general buzz.”
“The Prince Albert (pub) was run by an Irish woman and all the customers were Jamaican. Then there would be a bar on the corner that was mostly Jamaicans…this is where Alabama 3 came from. I was hearing reggae versions of country and western… there was an old fella singing Hank Williams songs! For the development of Alabama 3’s concept, that was really important, to know you could amalgamate that remix or dancehall culture. If it’s a good song, it will change its genre to what you want it to be. So, we came up with country and western techno, like reggae but a bit faster. So basically, I’m ripping off a load of Jamaicans!
https://www.clashmusic.com/features/exile-on-coldharbour-lane-alabama-3-on-their-brixton-bedrock/
The Rolling Stones - Hackney Diamonds
Dear reader, thank you for taking the time to read it, but this review is largely pointless.
For The Rolling Stones are beyond reproach: an unprecedented 60+ year run, as well as lucrative tour after lucrative tour ($170mill made in 2022 alone) means that Mick, Keith and Ronnie are bulletproof, and a hugely important stitch in rock’s fabric. They don’t need the money to keep touring, but they do it because they love it. Chances are, they will outlive you and me, and their legend most definitely will. And quite right too.
But it’s fair to say that there has been indifference to their recorded output for some time, including by the band themselves. Barring 2016’s Blue & Lonesome (an album of covers), the output of new material has been sparse for 18 years, consisting of just 3 singles (2 of which were for a Best Of). Did anyone even notice? Does the world need a new Rolling Stones album in 2023?
Hackney Diamonds may not be needed, but by god the world would be a poorer place without it. It shrewdly extolls the flab that has bedraggled every album since Dirty Work (1986), but its strength lies not only in its sense of purpose, but its familiarity.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/10/review-the-rolling-stones-diamonds/
Gang Of Four - o2 Academy, Bristol - 7th October 2023
Widely lauded as one of the most influential groups of all time, who can list Franz Ferdinand, R.E.M., Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nirvana in their pantheon of fans, Gang Of Four rarely get the credit that their post-punk impact deserves.
Largely unknown, they are perhaps the original ‘muso’ band but the paucity of attendees for tonight’s show sadly reflects their cult status. The venue is by no means empty but an act of such significance should be able to muster a larger crowd, yet it matters little because it’s a joyous show with smiles all round.
Warming up for the Leeds art-rockers is The Miki Berenyi Trio, with the former Lush singer on something of a renaissance in 2023, in part due to her excellent autobiography Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/10/gang-of-four-live-academy-bristol/
Genn - Unum
If it was a point that needed making, Genn gleefully thumb their nose at the concept that ‘multiculturism has failed' as the UK Home Secretary disgracefully declared this week.
Three-quarters of Genn (guitarist Janelle, bassist Leanne, and vocalist Leona) have Maltese routes, while drummer Sofia’s background is Portuguese, Jamaican, and British, with the group adopting Brighton as their new home. Although not essential ingredients for the musically diverse, intoxicating collection of songs that make up Unum, one can assume they influenced this fine debut.
Interview - James Skelly, The Coral
Given their headcount of five and their relentless creativity, it would be reasonable to assume that getting The Coral to dedicate time to a project would be akin to herding cats. Books, albums, artwork…anything can happen on Coral Island (and invariably does) but experience has given the Liverpool act the ability to harness their strengths.
Their latest creative venture comes in the form of two brand-new albums. Picking up where 2021’s sprawling-but-coherent Coral Island left off is Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show, which acts as a bridge to the more traditional Sea Of Mirrors.
“‘Holy Joe…’ is the low-budget sequel and then we used most of the budget for Sea Of Mirrors!” explains frontman James Skelly over Zoom. “We had the ‘Holy Joe’ idea floating around and I think we’re going to go in and out of the Coral Island world over the years. It’s our world.”
https://www.clashmusic.com/features/its-our-world-the-coral-interviewed/
The Coral - Sea Of Mirrors/Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show
Oh, to live on Coral Island.
Or, more specifically, how satisfying it must be to be in one of Britain’s most innovative, creative, and distinct bands. Following 2021’s Coral Island, a (double!) concept album – which just so happened to be one of the most critically acclaimed of their two-decade plus career - with two further concept albums, in today’s 30-second society, belies the confidence of only the truly liberated.
But James Skelly and co are no fools either and indeed, are having their cake and eating it. While Sea Of Mirrors is undergoing a bells and whistles campaign, Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show (to give it its full moniker) will only be released physically. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, etc. It’s also the obvious sequel to the last record, interspersed once again with running commentary from The Great Muriarty (Grandad Skelly) as DJ across a sequence of murder ballads. At only 30 minutes it’s a slight thing, albeit consisting of 17 tracks.
https://www.clashmusic.com/reviews/the-coral-sea-of-mirrors-holy-joes-coral-island-medicine-show/
Public Image Limited - o2 Academy, Bristol - 28th September
It’s not revelatory to say that John Lydon is a complicated fellow. His long and storied history notwithstanding, in the last decade he has declared support for both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and advocated for both Leave and Remain in the ‘Brexit Years’. For most, if not all, those opinions are at odds, but Lydon is able to wholly justify them to himself, if not to anyone else.
So it goes: midway through tonight’s show Lydon is barracked by an audience member which clearly infuriates him, roaring back in response: ‘Rundown lavatory of a country and you dare challenge me. You’re the cunts that ruined Britain…but I like you.’ He may be contradictory, but he is at least true to himself. His schtick is no act.
If it is, it must be exhausting. As he and the rest of Public Image Ltd, the original post-punks, walk (or, in Lydon’s case, lurch) on to the stage, clad in an oversized pinstripe jacket and tie, he takes to the mic: ‘I have one request for you this evening. Put your cell phone up your arsehole. When that light gets in my eyes, that’s when the music stops.’ Impressively, the crowd (mainly made up of greying/balding heads, barring some smatterings of youth) generally acquiesce to his demand.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/10/public-image-ltd-live-o2-bristol/
The Chemical Brothers - For That Beautiful Feeling
Perennial festival headliners, The Chemical Brothers have been at the top of their game for nearly three decades but, despite this album now putting their catalogue into double figures, the duo never rest on their laurels.
Their music is largely designed for euphoric nights, complete with comedowns, and For That Beautiful Feeling starts as such: opening track (Intro – see what they did there?) drops us straight in, like we’ve just popped our heads round the door on a party night that is in full flow, with wonky beats that segues into single ‘Live Again’.
The muscular track crashes in on a wave of electronics and beautiful Balearic sci-fi sonics, with Halo Maud (French psyche-pop singer and the album’s main collaborator) adding dreamy – if slightly repetitive – looped vocals and a deftness of touch. The swirling ‘No Reason’ follows, all sultry bassline and snapping percussion. So far, so banging.
Goodbye changes the tempo, fusing a euphoric melancholy with stuttering percussion, tugging at the heartstrings with a simplistic melody (providing by a soulful but uncredited vocalist) and allowing the mind to wander.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/09/rev-the-chemical-brothers-beaut-feel/
Interview - Cian Ciarán, Super Furry Animals
For a band with such a rich and diverse a career as Super Furry Animals, selecting a career peak is a thankless task. But the consensus is that they were at the top of their game around the turn of the century, at least commercially.
During the nineties Super Furry Animals were defined by their uniqueness, with tank purchases and world record-beating recordings containing the most sung profanities but in the post-millennial era, on a new label (post-Creation Records) and a bigger budget, Rings Around The World (2001) and its successor Phantom Power (2003) were both critically acclaimed (as usual) and mainstream hit albums.
Continuing their ongoing reissue project, the latter album is the latest to receive the bells and whistles treatment. In an exclusive interview with Live4ever, multi-instrumentalist (calling him just a keyboardist is doing him a disservice) Cian Ciarán walks down memory lane as best he can.
“It’s flown by! I feel like an old man when I say, ‘Time’s relative and it gets faster when you get older’, but it has,” he told us.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/09/l4e-int-cian-super-furry-animals/
Forwards Festival 2023 - Day 2
There is no shortage of festivals in the Bristol area, given its proximity as the ‘Gateway to the South West’, as well as being just three hours outside London (apart from the Glastonbury weekend when everyone in the city makes the 30 mile journey south).
But the jewel in Bristol’s festival crown (with all due respect to Love Saves The Day) comes at the tail end of the summer. Rebranded post-pandemic from The Downs Festival to Forwards, the 2023 iteration has pulled off quite the coup for its headliners. Hot on the heels of Queen of Neo Soul Erykah Badu on Day One, the legendary Aphex Twin closes the festival on Saturday in one of only two UK festival shows.
However, there is a feast of music with something for everyone to get through first: Jockstrap continue to sustain their momentum as critical darlings, with thudding electro or acoustic musings, often in the same song. Georgina Ellery has something of the Goldfrapp about her, gleefully casting a spell on the sizable crowd. The duo impressively fill the East Stage, albeit in volume rather than physical presence.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/09/review-arlo-parks-forwards-fest-23/
Interview - Joel Stoker, The Rifles
Image by Patrick Ford
Across their 20-year friendship and five studio albums, Joel Stoker and Lucas Crowther have built a loyal and enduring fanbase as The Rifles.
Now, Stoker is temporarily going it alone on his new studio album The Undertow. In an exclusive chat with Live4ever, the singer-songwriter tells us all about the new album, the music industry and why fans of his main band should have no fear.
How did the solo album come about?
‘It was never my intention to do a solo album, I just had a bunch of songs around the lockdown period – I’ve always got lots of ideas floating about – but I had 5 or so songs that were fully formed, all similar in subject.
They were a bit too personal for the band, so I wrote a couple more and fell into that vein. I thought, ‘If I do a couple more there’s an album there’. It wasn’t a planned thing as such.’
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/09/live4ever-interview-joel-stoker/
Slowdive - Everything Is Alive
Dignity as one reaches middle age is a tricky thing to manage, especially for musicians.
The feverish clamour to act as if the rigours of time don’t exist is all too tempting, to say nothing of the risk of alienating your fanbase with a new sound.
For example, despite all their value and historic importance, expectations aren’t particularly high for the forthcoming Rolling Stones album, which will undoubtedly come with video packages of Mick Jagger prancing around in a way unbecoming for someone half his age, but when he’s giving the people what they want, who can argue?
For reformed bands it becomes even trickier to negotiate as the whole appeal of their comeback is geared towards nostalgia. God bless Shed Seven, but for them to release an album of jazz instrumentals would be a bold step, to say the least.
Slowdive don’t care about that. Evolution has always been their watchword, and to disregard the progression in electronic music since their early 90s heyday would be churlish to the point of ignorance.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/08/review-slowdive-everything-alive/
Live Review - Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds & Ride - Vivary Park, Taunton - 24th August 2023
There’s something about the summer that immensely suits Ride.
Perhaps it’s nostalgia: their feedback-heavy, hazy sonic soundscapes evoke memories and images of summers past from the first act of their career over thirty years ago. Even more so in late August, with the lower sun casting a particular kind of light over our green and pleasant land that the band so aptly soundtrack.
Not that the Oxford gang are a heritage act. Arguably the most creatively successful of the reformed acts of the era, the two albums released in that period sit comfortably with Nowhere and Going Blank Again.
Indeed, their walk-on music (‘R.I.D.E.’, taken from 2019’s This Is Not A Safe Place) is more blistering and industrial than anything from the nineties. Before a note is played, being the good egg he is Andy Bell congratulates Phil Smith (Noel Gallagher’s long-time tour DJ) on his choice of music.
https://www.live4ever.uk.com/2023/08/review-noel-gallagher-ride-taunton/