Table of contents for September 2019 in MOJO

Alison Fensterstock New Orleans-based Alison is a regular contributor to NPR Music, and writes for Rolling Stone, New YorkTimes and Los AngelesTimes. She writes a column on eccentric regional history,art,music and the occult for the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.She bids farewell to Dr. John from p40. Sylvie Simmons Biographer of Leonard Cohen and Serge Gainsbourg, and die-hard Tom Waits fan (her MOJO Interview with Tom was in issue 131), Sylvie has written for MOJO since it began. As she’s puts the finishing touches to her second LP with Howe Gelb and awaits the onslaught of record label bids, she also delves into Waits’s Island ‘Trilogy’ from p72. Vince McIndoe Award winner Vincent McIndoe was born in Canada. An illustrator and artist, he has designed for Canada Post (Toronto’s 200th…

BOOGIE IN MY BONES. IT COULD BE A TOM Waits song title, just about. But in fact Laurel Aitken’s side was the first single released by Island Records, promoted by Chris Blackwell as he made the rounds of Jamaica’s jukeboxes in his day job. That was in 1959, the starting point for 60 years of sensational music from Jamaica and far beyond. This month, we celebrate Island’s diamond anniversary with a meticulously-curated CD – the full gamut of roots mystics, folk-rockers, futurists and soul-reshapers – and the label’s most auspicious players, including Tom Waits and Blackwell himself. Their work together began with 1983’s Swordfishtrombones, a period Blackwell recalls as “one of the high times of my life – hanging out with him was extraordinary. I’d heard the record and thought…

“Americans have a fascination with death.” LAURIE ANDERSON LAURIE ANDERSON first encountered The Tibetan Book Of The Dead “sometime in the 1970s”. A 14th century Buddhist text, intended as a guide and preparation for death and rebirth, it has always been a key text in her art and music, influencing everything from 1982 solo debut Big Science, to more recent albums such as Landfall. “I’ve been fascinated by its description of the world as completely illusory, you know? [But] I never thought I would particularly do anything with it.” However, when pro-Tibet activist and composer Jesse Paris Smith approached Anderson with the idea of performing the text live at New York’s Rubin Museum of Art, in 2015, with Tibetan singer and multi-instrumentalist Tenzin Choegyal, Anderson jumped at the chance. “Americans…

WATCHERS OF the ongoing Specials rupture know the Hall-Golding-Panter line-up are on tour and in the charts, minus hypeman Neville Staple, guitarist Roddy ‘Radiation’ Byers and Specials prime mover Jerry Dammers. But at a Neville Staple Band show at the Weston-super-Mare Winter Gardens on June 22, fans got a welcome shock when Jerry sat in on organ for A Message To You Rudy, alongside Selecter guitarist and fellow 2-Tone original Neol Davies. Both men are no longer members of the bands they founded. “It was absolutely fantastic, a surprise for the crowd and a big coup,” says Neville. “Jerry was great, and, how can I put it? Too much has gone on. Same thing with Neol. So to get them together was such a highlight, and quite emotional. You can…

Small Faces Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake (IMMEDIATE, 1968) After rocking and knees-ups on side one, Professor Unwin, fresh from Tommy Cooper’s TV show, joins Steve Marriott and pals to narrate side two’s Happiness Stan suite: “Oh what a mindblast. Jacky Jill, knees up Mother Brodie.” Bill Wyman Digital Dreams (FILM, 1983) An odd, Mike Batt-assisted fantasy/documentary/ biography, where life (“we also bought a new house in Chelsea”) rubs against dramatised sections starring James Coburn and Unwin as a Wild West undertaker. Wyman wears a Duran Duran Rio T-shirt. Suns Of Arqa Erasmus Meets The Earthling (ARQA SOUND, 1987) Michael Wadada’s Suns Of Arqa mix raga, dub and electronics on Seven LP. Unwin out-weirds them, portraying the Renaissance scholar gone extra-terrestrial, and offers wisdom from the spheres: “I pondered deepful thoughts.”…

1 Teenager of the year: a young Charles Thompson. 2 That’s educational: the pre-Pixies Black Francis (left) and Joey Santiago (right) practise with an unknown keyboardist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, circa 1985. 3 In heaven: Black Francis at the Paradiso, Amsterdam, September 23, 1988. 4 “We were excited”: Pixies in 1988 (from left) Joey Santiago, Black Francis, Kim Deal, David Lovering. 5 Frank Black And The Catholics: (from left) Scott Boutier, Rich Gilbert, FB, Eric Drew Feldman, Dave McCaffrey, San Francisco, May 2000. 6 Black Francis with Throwing Muses’ Kristin Hersh, on tour in the UK, April 26, 1988. 7 David Bowie and Frank Black meet after Bowie’s gig at the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, February 2, 2004. 8 Current-era Pixies: (from left) Joey Santiago, Black Francis, Paz…

IN THE LIVING ROOM OF RHIANNON GIDDENS’ house, a new build down a quiet suburban street in Limerick, a lute and a banjo battle for floor space with all manner of children’s toys. The Greensboro, North Carolina-born singer and musician is in the kitchen, serving up the vegetable soup and hummus she has just made. And she needs to get our interview completed before it is time to pick up her six-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter from their Gaelic language primary school. Giddens has split from her former husband and the father of her children, the Irish musician and piano technician Michael Laffan, but the two remain close friends and he lives five minutes away. With her new partner, the Italian early music scholar and jazz pianist Francesco Turrisi, Giddens…

“OUR MANAGER Bill Graham loved artists like the Grateful Dead, but he also loved the barrio and had a special affection for us because in his mind we were the children of Tito Puente and B.B. King. Most people who played blues just played it louder, but we were putting in people like Tito Puente and Babatunde Olatunji, and Bill was a dancer – he loved to dance to Afro-Cuban music. We were his babies. One day he told us that there was this thing manifesting itself in upstate New York: ‘I am going to arrange that you’re part of it. And you will never be the same again.’ And we’re going, Yeah, yeah, far out, thank you, but we’re from the Mission district and we’re not buying. He said,…

IT WAS A GRIM DAY, APRIL 27, 1978, THE DAY OF SANDY DENNY’S funeral. A cold wind blew on the 50 or so mourners at Putney Vale cemetery in south-west London, and a cloud of resentment hung in the air. On one side of the grave stood Trevor Lucas, Denny’s husband, and the man who, many believed, had abandoned his wife in a time of fragility and need, taking their daughter, Georgia, to Australia, with no immediate plans to return, leaving his wife to fall further into the self-destructive cycle of drinking that eventually contributed to her death. On the other side of the grave stood everyone else, friends, family, and former band members – including Richard Thompson, who’d played and sung with Denny during their years together in Fairport…

• The album was written with Carrie Brownstein living in Los Angeles while Corin Tucker and Janet Weiss were at home in Portland. Forced to write remotely, sending songs back and forth to each other, came with advantages for a band more used to working together in a room. “Once you have a very intuitive language with someone you can kind of fall back on what is facile, it becomes predictive almost,” explains Brownstein. “When you dismantle that, it forces you try new things, flex different muscles. I think we really embraced the differences.”…

“Laughner had vision, drive and talent but didn’t seem able to stay in any one group for long.” Peter Laughner ★★★★ Peter Laughner SMOG VEIL CD/LP “I LIKE SAD SONGs more than anything else,” exclaims Peter Laughner as he begins a version of Jackson Browne’s These Days. It’s September 20, 1972, and together with his small band, The Wolverines, he’s running through several tunes for Cleveland’s rock radio station WMMS, in a segment called Coffee Break Concert. It’s an eclectic set: songs by Lowell George, Bob Dylan, Jimmie Rodgers, Arthur Crudup – an encapsulation of Americana at that point. Laughner has recently turned 20. His voice in the chatter between the songs is informed and excitable. Yet the songs he performs, and the mood he casts, are totally at variance…

Jerry Butler ★★★★★ The Ice Man Cometh ELEMENTAL/MERCURY. CD/LP No extras, but this glorious 1967 LP doesn’t need ’em. Butler’s cool soul vocals – achy, croaky – excel on Hey Western Union Man, Never Give You Up, Are You Happy and Only The Strong Survive, four Top 40 US pop hits of proto-Philly from Gamble & Huff. Other gems: I Stop By Heaven and Lost. A soul essential. GB Nina Simone ★★★★ At The Village Gate STATE OF THE ART. CD/LP Often transfixing live, Nina was mesmerising in NYC, 1961. In a quartet setting, standards are refreshed – Bye Bye Blackbird spins from baroque to crazy swing; House Of The Rising Sun is gently sombre; Zungo and Brown Baby are Afro-futurist. With four live extras and two studio versions. GB…

TONY McPHEE was 14 when he got a guitar for Christmas in 1958. Raised on his siblings’ rock’n’roll and blues records, the Streatham axe-prodigy played his first gig a year later, at his school’s Christmas concert. “McPhee’s been name-checked by Julian Cope, Mark E. Smith, Karl Hyde…” Leaving school at 16 in 1960, McPhee started work as a GPO engineer. After witnessing Cyril Davies & The All-Stars play the Marquee, he formed blues-based outfit the Groundhogs, named after a track on John Lee Hooker’s 1959 Chess album House Of The Blues. Thanks to McPhee’s knowledge of obscure blues material, they became a fixture on the UK circuit, eventually backing the likes of Hooker, Little Walter and Jimmy Reed on tours and album sessions, and dubbed, by Hooker, as “the [UK’s]…

Shayne Carter ★★★★ Dead People I Have Known VICTORIA UNIVERSITY PRESS. £20 New Zealand rocker’s powerful, poetic memoir. A local writer recently labelled Carter, “the sneering king of New Zealand rock music”. The frontman of Bored Games, DoubleHappys and Straitjacket Fits (all renowned Flying Nun label alumni) might have good reason to sneer: part-Maori (caught between indigenous and colonial societies), an alcoholic mother and itinerant father; NZ’s stifling small-town conservatism and endemic violence through the ’80s. Carter was saved, and defined, by punk: “Primal, thundering, objectionable, convinced of its own might.” He is equally observant about NZ’s burgeoning music underground, its rivalries and epiphanies. Hearing his first finished song, “Its sky was borderless, and its horizon curled off a previously flat earth.” Carter is candid about his own drinking, while…

Bill Callahan Gundlach Bundschu Winery, California AN OLD REDWOOD barn in an older winery in Sonoma, the back opening out onto an idyllic view: trees, donkeys, acres of grapevines, and the sun taking its own sweet time to go down. “It’s like a postcard behind you”, says Bill Callahan a few songs into the show, and everyone turns around to look with him. Everyone being maybe 275 people, either sitting on folding chairs or standing at the back. Along with the haystacks abutting the stage, they give the impression of a well-attended barn dance. Last night he played to a sold-out crowd of 1,300 in San Francisco two hours away. But it’s hard to imagine a more perfect spot for his Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest tour than this old…

Who was the first rock singer who recorded an album of standards from the Great American songbook, à la Rod Stewart? You can’t get away from them now. Neil McLennan, via e-mail Fred Says: Was it Ringo Starr who invented the genre when he sang Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer on his mum-friendly Sentimental Journey back in 1970? Actually, you’d have to dig back a mite further for the truth, which is that Bobby Darin was the first rocker to deliver a game-changing songbook album with That’s All in 1959. Earlier linked with such jukebox fillers as Splish Splash, Queen Of The Hop and Plain Jane, That’s All found Darin tackling material by the Gershwins, Alfred Newman, Alec Wilder, Kurt Weill and others in a manner that almost…

… SINÉAD O’CONNOR, AKA SHUHADA SADAQAT, told RTÉ DJ Dave Fanning, “I’m beginning to write now [and] I’m about to record a covers record which I’ve always wanted to do.” Expect her next original solo record in two years … sample rock conceptualists PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING’s J. Willgoose is working on a follow-up to 2017’s Every Valley. What will it be about, and what samples will it use? “I’ve been asked if we’re going to write about Brexit,” he tells MOJO. “But could you listen to all those voices for years to come?” …producer Madlib has told Entertainment Weekly that he’s recorded eight tracks with Yasiin Bey/ Mos Def and Talib Kweli for a new BLACK STAR album … Future Islands’ bassist WILLIAM CASHION has a new instrumental solo project,…

“IT’S HARDER than hard in Jamaica and it’s down to religion and politics. Someone’s got to keep telling it,” says the 74-year-old Max Romeo from his label’s office in Kingston, Jamaica. His new album, Words From The Brave, is both tough social commentary and autobiography, over rhythms provided by Paris’s Roots Heritage. He first broke outside of Jamaica with the lewd Wet Dream. Banned by the BBC, it became a 1969 UK Top 10 hit. 1976’s Lee Perry-produced War Ina Babylon marked him as one of reggae’s greats, with later albums such as 1995’s Our Rights confirming it. “I’m like the tortoise,” he says. “I keep out the fast lane, but I win the race.” What life lessons has 50-odd y and out of Kingston studios taught you? Lesson one:…

“I’VE BEEN blessed to work with Terry Hall, one of the best lyricists ever, even though it’s never recognised,” says Lynval Golding, on tour with The Specials in Montreal. “Murray’s not far behind. What better bunch of guys to pass the baton on to?” Golding is talking about Murray Matravers, frontman of Easy Life, a Leicester quintet he first spotted on Later… With Jools Holland. It transpires that Easy Life’s connection runs far deeper – keyboardist Jordan’s father, Gaz Birtles, played saxophone on Fun Boy Three’s first album. “I love the way they put themselves across, they’re so fresh,” Golding adds. “They are the future, without doubt.” Matravers is quick to return the compliment. “Lots of bands don’t age well, but The Specials are an exception,” he says, “they’ll always…

EXECUTIVE MICKEY KAPP (b.1930) was working at the Kapp Records family firm when he was called upon to compile some notable mixtapes. Beginning with the Apollo 7 mission in 1968, he collated music to be listened to by astronauts on their Sony TC-50 cassette recorders, asking each one for their listening tastes. On transmissions from the Apollo 11 moon landing of July 1969, Buzz Aldrin can be heard suggesting “let’s get some music” (Glen Campbell, Blood Sweat & Tears and Barbra Streisand were among his choices). Kapp also produced the six-disc/ book documentary To The Moon, and held positions at Elektra, Capitol and Warners. RAPPER BUSHWICK BILL (above, b.1966) made his name as short-statured MC with Texas hardcore hip-hop crew The Geto Boys. Initially a dancer, by 1988 he was…

THE SAUCY ONE Pixies Surfer Rosa ★★★★★ 4AD, 1988 Amid the chaste confines of ’80s indie-rock, where sex was something people read about in books, the Pixies’ deviant bump and grind felt revolutionary. Be it the crushing power of Bone Machine (“You’re so pretty when you’re unfaithful to me!”) or the perverse pop genius of Gigantic, Surfer Rosa captured a band in its definitive state of grace, framed by Steve Albini’s visceral audio verité. THE SOLO SMASH Frank Black Teenager Of The Year ★★★★ 4AD, 1994 If Frank Black was his slightly self-conscious push to establish an identity distinct from his band, here was pure “Freedom Rock”, as one of Teenager Of The Year’s 22 songs declared. The affable, unfettered sound of the true Frank was mostly recorded live and…

(from Unhalfbricking, 1969) Thompson’s electric dulcimer leads this queasy, wyrd mesh of stringed instruments, while his masterly modern broadside lends balladic weight to a recent event: the police turning out the occupants of a squat – dubbed Genesis Hall – on London’s Drury Lane. DE (from Unhalfbricking, 1969) A folk standard, about a young woman’s quest to find her seafaring lover, transformed by Thompson’s shimmering arrangement, and the rock-underground freedoms of the day, into a hypnotic electric squall. “Something we never really equalled,” Thompson told MOJO. “A one-take miracle.” AM (from Unhalfbricking, 1969) Sandy Denny’s song is simply one of the greatest in the English language, but the constant sotto voce chatter of Thompson’s guitar is also genius. Fuzzy, lyrical and full of heart-skipping turnarounds like the one at 1.52…

SINCE THE mid-’80s, when, for one of his first showbiz-related commissions, he delivered the front cover pic for the Asylum label’s Anthology Of Tom Waits (1984), painter-photographer Matt Mahurin has been making images in consort with the singer. “It’s crazy when I think about it,” says Mahurin. “When we first met I was 25, he was 35. Now I’m 60. It’s 35 years of collaboration. It blows my mind.” As Mahurin is quick to admit, Waits’s music, and its presentation, are manna for the image-maker. “The worlds that he creates in his songs, I feel very comfortable in: the dark humour, the mystery. His songs are such fully formed worlds,” says Mahurin. “And the way he moves on stage – he’s like a cross between an ape and a ballerina!…

How is making the second post-comeback album different? “I’m really proud of No Cities To Love but it’s hard to differentiate between reception of the record and affection for our return. What helped was looking out in the audience and realising that we had fans both young and old, that it wasn’t just wholly about nostalgia. But I think the stakes are much higher for The Center Won’t Hold because you’re essentially committing to a middle period of the band. To dedicate yourself to creating a part of your art that will be assessed both in relation to the earlier period and on its own is a lot of pressure.” Did you have musical reference points? “Corin was talking about Depeche Mode and I’d been listening to Ministry’s The Mind…

Jude Rogers speaks to Joan Shelley. Louisville, Kentucky to Reykjavik is quite the trip. Why did it feel essential? “I’m such a Kentucky homebody, it’s the best thing for me to travel. I need to get out of my mothballs! I’d been there a year before for a show, but was sick – I only saw the inside of the hotel. I had such an urge to go back: it’s like another planet. The moss growing everywhere, the hot springs – it’s so geologically new. It forces you to look at things in new ways.” You encountered other Icelandic music there too. (Laughs) “Yeah! In the studio we were next door to this band of very young Scandinavian youths beating these 300-year-old plaster walls. That was invigorating!” The album’s first…

Up for the download The podcast boom continues with esteemed US label Rhino, who recently posted a two-part Ian Anderson interview and a three-part mini-series on Aretha Franklin, starting with her 1972 live album and now film, Amazing Grace . Part two covers her stunning sequence of albums for Atlantic in the late ’60s and early ’70s, while episode three discusses hits and cover versions. All three feature British soul writer David Nathan, who spoke to Aretha about why she blocked the release of the film Amazing Grace. Technical issues, lost contracts and financial wrangling are all cited as obstacles while Nathan suggests, fascinatingly, that the raw intimacy of the footage itself was problematic. What we now consider one of the film’s boons didn’t play well with the then 30-year-old-star,…

• Peter Laughner only had two records released during his lifetime: the first two Pere Ubu singles, Heart Of Darkness (for which he wrote a brilliant sleevenote) and Final Solution. These were written while he was in Rocket From The Tombs: another song from this period, Ain’t It Fun, is his best known. Covered by Guns N’Roses on their million-selling 1993 album The Spaghetti Incident?, Ain’t It Fun is indicative of a headlong, self-destructive approach to life: “Ain’t it fun when you know that you gonna die young.”…

Don’t bother with Crosscut Saw’s disappointing follow-up, Black Diamond (1976). Instead, check out 1987’s Back Against The Wall which is straight-ahead heavy-rock uplift. Also try Dupree ‘N’ McPhee: The 1967 Blue Horizon Session (Ace) which finds the 22-year-old guitarist sympathetically backing the New Orleans pianist on acoustic guitar, and, for a snapshot of young psychedelic McPhee, Herbal Mixture’s Please Leave My Mind (Distortions, 1996). In terms of literature there are two choices: Martyn Hanson’s Hoggin’ The Page – The Groundhogs’ Classic Years (Northdown, 2005), and Eccentric Man (Incompetent Publishing, 2012) by Paul Freestone, who McPhee credits with knowing more about the Groundhogs than he does.…

John Mayall GODFATHER OF BRITISH BLUES What music are you currently grooving to? Not anything at the moment. I’m getting ready to go on an American tour, and we don’t rehearse, so… but I’m a big Cannonball Adderley fan. Everything he does is terrific, it has that vibrancy. I did meet him when he was still around, he was a great fella to hang out with, very personable, just like you’d expect when you listen to his music. Anything you put on by him is going to be great! What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? Freddie King’s Getting Ready… It’s a classic, one of his later ones, but a very, very strong record. Give that a listen, you’ll find out what I’m talking about. What…

CHRIS BLACKWELL was always a bit of a rebel. Born in London, raised in Jamaica, he was schooled at Harrow but scorned its uniform – especially the straw boater pupils were oblige “I used to go into town to buy liquor and cigarettes and sell them to the other students, including the prefects,” Blackwell tells MOJO today. “When I got found out, the headmaster suggested to my mother that I might be happier elsewhere.” A not inconsiderable slice of that attitude, one suspects, went into the record label he launched 60 years ago. Built on Blackwell’s youthful passion for American jazz and R&B, Island Records supplied the world with the treasures of Jamaican pop music, then used its success to back mavericks and one-of-a-kinds including Brian Eno, Grace Jones, Richard…

“I was at art college in Banbury when I bought my first Stone Roses record, the Made Of Stone single. I got drawn to the Jackson Pollock sleeve, and Going Down on the B-side referenced his painting No. 5, 1948. The ’60s guitar too – the whole vibe. Ride were already a band, but we were more influenced by My Bloody Valentine and House Of Love. The Roses turned us from black-and-white into colour. Me and [drummer] Loz lived in the same student house: I had a small, damp room at the top and Loz had a ground floor room with high ceilings, and a sound system with a weird gimmick of a vertical turntable. That’s where we got obsessed with the album. Bands begin like magpies, looking for things…

OWNERSHIP OF a band name can be a complicated thing, as the existence of The New Cars, Oliver/ Dawson Saxon and ELO Part II proves. But what does a group do when a third party trademarks its moniker? This is the challenge now facing venerable purveyors of pleasing delirium The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band: an “entity” registered their name as a “figurative trademark” without their knowledge in 2015, meaning they can’t play or record using the banner they’ve used for decades. “It would never have crossed my mind that anyone would have tried to do it,” says Bonzos saxman Rodney Slater. “The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band never thought anyone would try to be them. I defy anybody to be me, Viv, Neil, Legs, Sam Spoons… it wasn’t a brand, it…

1 JENNY HVAL ASHES TO ASHES Third eyes, snakes and a fantastic meta dream narrative involving a song about a burial ritual, with lilting, Björk-esque beauty, electro beats and a swooning break down. Find it: streaming services 2 MICHAEL KIWANUKA AND TOM MISCH MONEY Kiwanuka does soulful disco longing for music video wealth – before opting for real love. Find it: YouTube 3 BRITTANY HOWARD HISTORY REPEATS On Alabama Shakes hiatus, Howard shifts the action from Southern garage-soul to somewhere much more freaky and funkadelic. Find it: YouTube 4 SETWUN SUN’S CHILD Sydney producer takes Sun Ra chant, adds Latin-house rhythmic drive, chimes and synth strings that fill the sky like the solar wind meeting the magnetosphere. Find it: SoundCloud 5…

FROM FRONT DOOR TO SECOND FLOOR of Kensington’s Royal Garden Hotel, MOJO has already exchanged polite nods with enough expensively-attired middle-aged Americans that one more hardly registers. The man by the lifts does look familiar, though. Maybe a film actor? Only when he breaks the silence – “Um, are we due to speak soon?” – does MOJO look properly and recognise Charles Thompson: AKA Black Francis, FKA Frank Black. Five minutes later, we’re sat together in a dimly lit suite. Now 54, dark-suited with silver-grey hair, Thompson is in London to herald Beneath The Eyrie : eighth album by the Pixies, the ’80s alt-rock nature-force which united David Bowie and Kurt Cobain in hero worship. It’s also the third LP since the reunited band was eventually finagled back into the…

“AS SOON AS I SAW THE line-up, I knew I was going,” remembers Fred Weis. “It was clear this was going to be phenomenal.” In 1969, Weis was a 16-year old high school student and devoted rock music fan with shoulder-length hair. These characteristics would earn him the then-current handle of “hippy”. The resident of suburban Philadelphia had already seen Jimi Hendrix and Cream live, but “the breadth” of the line-up for the Woodstock Music & Art Fair was like a candy store for a kid with a deep sugar jones. It was billed as “An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days Of Peace & Music” on August 15-17 in the town of Bethel (listed as the community of White Lake on the poster), two hours north of Manhattan in upstate New…

SQUEEZE DRUM. MARIMBAS. CALLIOPE. AFRICAN TALKING DRUM. BRAKE drum. Bell plate. Glass harmonica. Harmonium. A percussive, avant-garde construction site staffed by an international team of circus freaks. And the vocals: primordial growl, spoken word, gravelled croon. This in all its mad, invigorating glory was Swordfishtrombones – the first of three albums released over four years in the ’80s, in which Tom Waits turned his musical past on its head and found his voice. For the 10 years since his 1973 debut Closing Time , Waits had been a romanticised barroom beatnik, holed up at Los Angeles’ picaresque Tropicana motel, slouched at a piano in his battered hat, playing jazz and almost painfully beautiful songs of love, loss and losers. Now here was Waits the junkyard scavenger, throwing bricks at the…

“The Center Won't Hold sounds like a band urgently resetting their course, putting their fury and fear on a war footing.” Sleater-Kinney ★★★★ The Center Won’t Hold MOM + POP. CD/DL/LP SIX WEEKS before this album was due to be released, drummer Janet Weiss announced she was quitting Sleater-Kinney after 24 years. “The band is heading in a new direction and it is time for me to move on,” she wrote, quietly adding, “We were a force of nature.” From the moment the album was announced, though, it was apparent that Sleater-Kinney were in the mood for change. The information that St. Vincent was producing the album came via a photograph of Annie Clark sitting in front of the trio, beaming like a cigar-brandishing mogul. There was avant-garde eyeliner and…

Richard Skelton ★★★★ Border Ballads CORBEL STONE PRESS CD/DL Informed by his new home in the northern-most edge of the Scotland-England borders, these 12 wordless songs by the Yorkshire-born composer move away from his trademark bowed-string landscapes, suggesting instead airborne ghosts of ancient ballads, low-voiced cello and keening viola crying out for words long lost to time. Ellen Arkbro ★★★ Chords SUBTEXT CD/DL/LP In contrast to the meticulously assembled minimalist serenity of her 2017 debut, For Organ And Brass, for her second investigation of harmonic sound the Stockholm-based composer edges into metallic wave-like dissonance, using organ (track one) and guitar (track two) to explore points at which sonic clarity starts to mess with our spatial awareness. Ernstalbrecht Stiebler ★★★★ Zwischen den Tonen EDITION TELEMARK CD/DL/LP Believing “much less is much…

Peter Zummo ★★★ Deep Drive UNHEARD OF HOPE. CD/DL/LP Peter Zummo, storied trombonist with New York’s avant-garde (Arthur Russell; Lounge Lizards) trades licks here with turntablist JD Twitch, producer Ralph Cumbers and cellist Oliver Coates across long tone rows of chromatic pitches. While the rich rush of Zummo’s floaty trombone is a deep draw, nothing quite matches the languorous majesty of 14-minute walk on the wild side Prepare For Docking. Resavoir ★★★★ Resavoir INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM. CD/DL/LP Chicagoan producer/arranger Will Miller carefully builds up his songs using samples and loops. While the trumpeter’s bubbly arrangements fizzle with wit and charm, well-chosen guests, including the harpist Brandee Younger and fleet-fingered saxophonist Sen Morimoto (on jazz/rap standout Elevators), add depth to his tightly woven designs. These elegantly spaced-out creations will appeal to fans…

SCOTLAND Assai 241-243 King Street, Broughty Ferry, Dundee DD5 2AX 01382 738406 1 Grindlay Street, Edinburgh EH3 9AT 0131 228 3943 Europa Music 10 Friars Street, Stirling FK8 1HA 01786 448623 Maidinvinyl 7 Rosemount Viaduct Aberdeen, AB25 1NE 07864 547203 Mo Fidelity 126 Murray Street Montrose, DD10 9JG 07870 491240 NORTH WEST 81 Renshaw Street Liverpool L1 2SJ 01517071850 Action 47 Church St, Preston PR1 3DH 01772 884 772 / www. action-records.co.uk Five Rise Records 30c Park Road Bingley, West Yorks BD16 4QF 01535 439463 Grind and Groove Records 58 Cavendish Street, Keighley BD21 3RL 07483 156867 Loafers Vinyl & Coffee Rustic Level, The Piece Hall, Halifax HX1 1RE 07960 532371 Piccadilly Records 53 Oldham St, Manchester M1 1JR 0161 839 8008 Vinyl Cafe 44 Abbey St, Carlisle CA3 8TX…

Tracks: (Song Side) Knickers / Devon’s Dead / Plenty Of Time / Fagorf / Fax ‘N’ Figgers / Nuclear Band / WPC Hodges / Knickers / (Words And Music Side) Aren’t We All? / Twist / Psychiatrist / Deep North / Fish / Fishfriars / S.S. / I Remember Personnel: Mike McGear, Roger McGough, John Gorman (ld voices), John Megginson (pno, bs, arr), Peter ‘Oly’ Halsall (ld gtr), Andy Roberts (gtr, ld acoustic), Neil Innes (bottleneck, pno), Zoot Money (pno, org), Ray Warleigh (flte, alto sax), Gerry Conway (drms), Anthony ‘Bubs’ White (gtr), Norman Yardley (gob iron), Average White Band, Harry Beckett (brass), Roger Ball (arr, bari, alto sax), Mike Rosen (trmpt), Doris Troy, Jimmy Helms, Paul Korder, Alan Gorrie (voices) Production: Tim Rice, Roger Watson Recorded: The Manor, Oxfordshire;…

Bikini Kill Brixton Academy, London TONIGHT, SAYS Kathleen Hanna, with a sharp flick of her fringe, “is not some punk-rock retro bullshit thing.” Twenty-eight years on from their 1991 statement-of-intent demo, Revolution Girl Style Now!, and 23 years since they last performed in the UK, Bikini Kill’s meld of punk, politics and art, devised to upset the dynamics of a male-dominated scene, hardly feels less relevant. With two young LGBT women attacked on a London bus just days earlier and US conservatives falling over themselves to restrict abortion rights, when Kathleen adds a few extra expletives to the opening volley of Joan Jett-produced ’93 single New Radio and Jigsaw Youth from 1992’s split LP with Huggy Bear (“Don’t fit your definitions/ Don’t need your fucking demands”), few here could blame…

JIVE TIME  6 Jive Bunny And The Mastermixers (above, with Chubby Checker) are at Number 1 in the UK for the second week. A medley of Glenn Miller, Bill Haley, Little Richard and more, it also tops charts across Europe and reaches 11 in the US. POT MART?  6 U2’s Adam Clayton is arrested in the car park of Dublin’s Blue Light Inn and charged with possession and intent to supply marijuana. He tells The Guardian in 2009, “ it was just so stupid.” WHO, OW!  17 At a Who gig in Tacoma, WA, Pete Townshend injures his right hand while guitar-windmilling. PE “CON”  19 It’s reported that less than two months after Public Enemy said they were disbanding after anti-Semitic remarks made by Professor Griff, the group had resumed…