Widely considered one of the best Rolling Stones albums ever and one of the best rock albums of all time, Sticky Fingers is a dirty, grungy, sweaty, horny record. I mean, how could it not be with that title and that infamous cover?
It’s full of mega-hits, to boot. The opener, “Brown Sugar,” is an instant classic recorded in the famous Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama and brazenly covered taboo subjects in that part of the U.S. – interracial sex, heroin, slavery, and cunnilingus among them. The album goes from what sweaty blues rocker to the slower, fuzzier “Sway.” Mick Taylor‘s guitar work on it is outstanding (and his lack of a writing credit on it would be among his reasons for leaving the band down the road).
“Wild Horses” is one of Mick Jagger‘s many songs about being emotionally fragile after a breakup (and about missing home while being on the road). Keith Richards‘ Nashville-style playing is so subtle and masterful that it’s easy to overlook. “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” is one of the best one-take tracks in rock history, with Richards’ open-tuned guitar laying down sharp fuzz, Charlie Watt‘s pristine beats, Jagger’s pleading vocals, Taylor’s wild, jamming riffs, and Bill Wyman locking everything into place with his bass. The greatest part of it is the extended jam, which wasn’t intended, but started when Taylor decided to keep playing and everyone joined in with him…resulting in a wild, psychedelic trip that includes great saxophone playing from Bobby Keys (who almost makes the song his own), sweet conga from Ricky Dijon, and Billy Preston‘s outstanding organ work.
“You Gotta Move” is their version of the African-American spiritual standard, and Richards and Taylor crank up the fuzz and grit on it. “Bitch” is another instant-classic rocker with the bold horn work from Keys and Jim Price (on trumpet), and, as the story goes, Richards came up with the riff while eating a bowl of cereal. “I Got the Blues” is pretty much a Stones tribute to Otis Redding.
The title of “Sister Morphine” denied it airplay and release in the United Kingdom when the original version was first released by co-writer Marianne Faithfull. The Stones’ version is full of dangerous guitar from Richards and Taylor. “Dead Flowers” is one of the Stones’ many forays into country music…and it’s also a song about heroin. “Moonlight Mile” came about after a long night session between Jagger and Taylor and is an ode to love and sex…and possibly cocaine.
Sex, drugs, rock and roll…It’s all here. It’s all what you’d expect from vintage Stones, and it comes in an Andy Warhol-designed package. What more could you want (apart from a vintage vinyl copy with the working zipper on the cover)?
Released almost a decade ago, but sounding like it could’ve come out yesterday, My Bloody Valentine‘s collection of EP’s and rarities, appropriately titled EP’S 1988 – 1991, is a two-disc wallop of sound that collects the band’s four, rare EP’s and multiple bonus tracks.
The first five tracks on disc 1 come from 1988’s You Made Me Realise. The title track, with its punishing drums and bass, opens things with enough fuzz for an entire album (and reveals the massive influence MBV had on A Place to Bury Strangers). Debbie Googe‘s heavy bass propels “Slow” while Kevin Shields‘ guitar sounds like he left it in the sun too long. “Thorn” more than doubles the speed of the previous track and has some of Shield’s clearest vocals, which almost seem odd to hear when you’re used to so many tracks dripping with reverb and distortion. “Cigarette in Your Bed” does a neat balancing act with Bilinda Butcher‘s ethereal vocals and Colm Ó Cíosóig‘s voodoo drumming. “Drive It All Over Me” is one of MBV’s most upbeat tracks and makes you want to road trip with your friends.
The next four tracks are from the Feed Me with Your Kiss EP (also from 1988) . The title track also appears on their Isn’t Anything album from the same year. It’s a wild track with Shields and Butcher trading vocals while all four band members bounce around the room like a punch-drunk boxer intent on destroying everything in his path. “I Believe,” with its pounded piano keys, seems to indicate a love of The Stooges. Shields’ vocals on “Emptiness Inside” have a bit of a punk sneer to them, and Googe’s bass spares no mercy throughout it. “I Need No Trust” could’ve been a Velvet Underground track in a previous life.
MBV returned in 1990 with the Glider EP, and the lead single, “Soon,” became one of their biggest hits. It’s no surprise. The song is a shoegaze delight with Cíosóig’s beats sounding like early rave riffs, Googe’s hip-shaking bass, and Butcher and Shields’ twin wall-of-sound guitars and soft vocals. The EP’s title track sounds like it’s made up of parts of “Soon” played backwards. “Don’t As Why” brings in acoustic guitars to mesh with the fuzz and is a song Oasis probably wishes they’d written. “Off Your Face” has a bit of a psychedelic bend and some of Butcher’s loveliest vocals on any MBV track.
Disc 2 starts with the Tremolo EP from 1991, and the first cut, “To Here Knows When,” also appears on their classic Loveless album from the same year. It’s a swirling, fog-like track that seems to envelop you with its fuzzy, bright warmth. “Swallow” has Middle Eastern touches in its percussion and even adds a flute to the mix. “Honey Power” again puts Butcher on lead vocals and deftly moves back and forth between shoegaze pop and shoegaze power. “Moon Song” begins like some sort of death dirge, but soon turns into an incense smoke mind trip.
What follows are rare tracks and previously unreleased material. “Instrumental No. 2″ (the mellow one) and Instrumental No. 1” (the scorching one) are from a bonus 7-inch single released with Isn’t Anything. The full version of “Glider” (from 1990’s Glider E.P. Remixes) is over ten minutes of psychedelic drone. “Sugar” is from a rare 1989 split 7-inch flexi-disc and sounds like a Nine Inch Nails song if Trent Reznor were a lot happier in 1989.
The last three songs are the previously unreleased ones – “Angel” (seductive shoegaze with lead vocals by Butcher), “”Good for You” (a high-speed fuzz-fest), and “How Do You Do It” (a dangerous track with everyone playing their instruments like a professional hit squad). All of them are great treats to hear.
This stuff is essential if you’re a fan of MBV, shoegaze, noise rock, drone rock, or guitar rock…or even just rock in general. MBV are still a powerhouse and a band with whom you should not trifle. Approach with caution, but you’ll love them if you embrace the power.
Containing seven previously unreleased tracks and twenty more rare film score tracks, Morricone Segreto from the Cam Sugar label is a great treat for fans of the maestro – Ennio Morricone. Most of these tracks are from giallo, horror, and crime films from 1969 to 1983 – and all of them have weird, psychedelic jazz touches that showcase what kind of genius Morricone was.
The previously unreleased alternate take of “Vie-Ni” (from the film When Love Is Lust from 1973) starts off the album with sharp vocal sounds, plucked string instruments, and a piano that sounds like a clock in a haunted house. “Fantasmi Grotteschi (Edit)” (from 1980’s Stark System) blends lounge jazz with circus-like arrangements. Vita E Malavita” could work in either a comedic chase scene, a psychological thriller chase scene, or as the opening credits of a mystery film featuring a wizened detective (but is actually from a 1975 film about teenage prostitution).
“Tette E Antenne, Tetti E Gonne” is the longest track on the album (5:10) and has a bit of a bossa nova flavor to it that makes it dreamy (despite it being from an espionage thriller from 1975). The alternate take of “Patrizia” (from 1971’s Incontro) is anothe dreamy track with a cool lounge groove running through it. “Per Dalila” is pure bedroom jazz with its sultry organ and supple beats.
“18 Pari” continues the bedroom grooves with its fine touches, which are perfect for a film about a safecracker looking to do one last score (1972’s The Master Touch). The previously unreleased “Psychedelic Mood” will put you into that within seconds. “Fuggire Lontano (Edit)” has a bit of a Motown sound with its bass and drums, and the rest is cool jazz…until that fuzzy guitar comes in to melt your brain.
“Jukebox Psychedelique” has Middle Eastern guitars and instrumentation, just to throw you for a bit of a loop and prove that the Maestro could compose anything he damn well pleased. “Fondati Timori” is downright creepy, with the snare drums sounding like rattlesnakes and the horns like an angry nest of hornets. Speaking of instruments sounding dangerous, everything from the vibraphone to the synthesizers on “Edda Bocca Chiusa” (another previously unreleased track) sounds like its stalking you.
“Non Può Essere Vero” is a perfect track for 1972’s My Dear Killer, as the whole thing sounds like the theme song for a professional hitman who probably drinks too much and has one last score to settle. “Eat It” is not a cover of Weird Al Yankovic‘s parody of Michael Jackson‘s “Beat It,” but it is a weird track full of fuzzy guitar, Phantom of the Opera organ work, strip club beats, and what sounds like people wailing in agony. It also features Morricone on trumpet. “Nascosta Nell’ombra” has a wild organ (a Hammond B3?) riff running around the room for about a minute straight.
“Dramma Su Di Noi” exchanges the organ for psychedelic guitar and juke joint piano. “Lui Per Lei,” the title track from the 1971 film of the same name, could easily be the opening theme to a soap opera…or a softcore porn film. “Beat Per Quattro Ruote” is a slow, trippy jam with drum beats that sound like they’re happily drunk. “Stark System (Rock)” is the theme you’ll want in your earbuds during your next cardio-kickboxing class, because it will make you feel like a bad ass mofo.
“Il Clan Dei Siciliani (Tema N. 5)” is the title track to the film of the same name from 1969, and it’s perfect for a crime movie with its driving beat and suspense-inducing guitar and synths. “René La Canne” is the title track to another film (from 1977) that leans heavily on vintage 1970s synths. Police whistles take on a prominent role on “Ore 22,” as do woodwinds and gritty percussion instruments. “Sinfonia Di Una Città – Seq. 4” sounds like something Morricone might’ve conjured up with John Carpenter. “L’incarico” is the sound of a lonely trumpeter playing outside a closed jazz club at 3am.
“L’immoralità (Edit)” (from 1978’s film of the same name), meanwhile, is the soundtrack of that jazz player having a nightcap with the lovely singer from the club. The previously unreleased “Insequimento Mortale” is full of panicked strings, which is befitting for a song from a film about a psychopath with a venom-dipped knife stalking women at a health spa. The closing track is the haunting, breathy “Macchie Solari (Versione Singolo).” It’s from a 1974 film of the same name about a morgue attendant who gets caught up in a string of murders. In other words, it’s perfect for a Morricone score.
The whole album is great, and will make you want to track down these obscure films. The Maestro’s catalog never seems to end, which is fine by me.
2021 is shaping up to be the year of Alan Vega. Every year should be but, this year is definitely it. The announcement of the opening of the Alan Vega archives, which will be unleashing an untold amount of unreleased material dating back to 1971 via Sacred Bones, the release of Mutator (a lost album from the mid 90’s) which has gained rave reviews, a massive feature in the New York Times…Alan has been celebrated everywhere of late. In The Red is over the moon to participate in this celebration with the release of Alan Vega After Dark – an album that captures a late night rock n’ roll session with Alan backed by Ben Vaughn, Barb Dwyer and Palmyra Delran (all members of the incredible Pink Slip Daddy as well as countless other cool projects). This album serves as a reminder that Alan Vega was an incredible rock n’ roll/blues/rockabilly vocalist. He was one of the best.
From the desk of Jason P. Woodbury: I only spoke with Alan Vega once. It was over the phone and the topic of discussion was the 2015 reissue of Cubist Blues, the phenomenally out there album he’d originally released with collaborators Alex Chilton and Ben Vaughn in 1996. I was in a noisy stadium for reasons that no longer matter at all, on a cell phone, but even with all that extra noise considered, Alan was exceptionally difficult to understand. At first at least. He’d suffered a stroke a few years earlier, in 2012, which still had lingering effects on his speech. But even before that, his heavy East Coast accent had sometimes made him hard to decipher, lending his voice the character of “a cab driver describing fine art,” Vaughn says. If you weren’t from New York—specifically Alan’s New York, an older version of Gotham that may have died with him on July 16th, 2016, when he passed on his sleep—it could be hard to keep up. But after a few minutes, I adjusted to the rhythm. Suddenly, without warning, I found myself able to dance to the peculiar beat of Vega’s jutting back and forth, his Jewish mystic cadence, the kind you hear in gasps and yelps on the transgressively savagely conceptual records he made in the late ‘70s with Martin Rev as Suicide, or the solo records he made starting in the 80s and continuing through to his final studio album “IT” finished in early 2015 and released posthumously in 2017, collages of machoismo-powered rockabilly, space cadet hard rock, renegade cowboy soul, and neon-drenched pop art Americana. You acclimate and then boom: You’re immersed in the “one-man subculture,” to borrow Vaughn’s description, of Alan Vega.
Though his relationship to the mainstream was flirtatious but never a fully committed one, Vega’s sub rosa influence on a disparate but extensive list of punks, new wavers, industrial deconstructionists, garage rockers, and pop stars is clear. His admirers included Ric Ocasek of the Cars, a frequent collaborator, and Bruce Springsteen, whose 1982 album Nebraska, particularly the creeping song “State Trooper,” explored the same haunted backroads Vega sang about. “The bravery and passion he showed throughout his career was deeply influential to me,” Springsteen noted on his Facebook page, memorializing Vega. “There was simply no one else remotely like him.”
No one else like him. That was certainly the case in 2015, when Vega decamped to Renegade Studio in New York City’s West Village with Vaughn on guitar, bassist and keyboardist Barb Dwyer, drummer (and Sirius XM DJ) Palmyra Delran, and engineer Geoff Sanoff. Sporting sunglasses, a knit cap and long rider coat, Vega looked tough as nails in his 78th year, and as always he was dedicated to the moment, to capturing the ghosts for what would prove to be his final live band recording.
Years before, the stroke had slowed Vega down, but he’d recovered and continued making music, often remotely, vocalizing over pre-recorded tracks by electronic musicians. He wanted a different feel for this project, wanted “to feel connected,” Vaughn says, to the musicians in the room, the way it had worked when they made Cubist Blues with Chilton, a music industry rebel in his own right. That record had taken two frenzied, off-the-cuff nights, this album required only one. “We got better at it,” Vaughn says with a chuckle, his velvet voice—the one I’ve so often heard on his essential and always joyous radio program and podcast The Many Moods of Ben Vaughn —underserved by my cellular telephone (once again).
Vega was obsessed with the enormity of any given moment, and to that end, he insisted the band be assembled with absolutely no preparation. They would be responsible for creating, ears tuned to each other and Vega’s incantations, a spontaneous space for his magical recitations. “It’s the only way I’ve ever worked with him,” Vaughn says. “We would start playing, and Alan would wait a little bit,” drawing in a notepad the entire time, working on his “zillions of sketches” — potential self-portraits, though he’d be loathe to indulge you asking if they were — or reading his copy of the New York Post. Eventually he’d rise to the microphone. “Some of the stuff he comes up with, it’s really unbelievable,” Vaughn says, citing the elementally profound lyrics for “River of No Shame,” delivered for the first time as the band churned on. “The animals are hunting, the animals are hunting/Making a break for the river/Making a break for the river/The river of no shame,” Vega riffs, over a motorik groove that’s somehow equal parts Neu! and John Lee Hooker.
Vega didn’t consider the marketplace at all, never considered what would become of his art after he made it, living like the embodiment of what visionary director David Lynch would describe as “the art life.” For Vega creating was the sacred act. Creations? He could take them or leave them. “Liz, Alan’s wife, has told me that when he would finish a painting, he’d immediately paint over the canvas — she’d have to snatch them away from him,” Vaughn says.
Luckily, Vaughn and company have been able to do something like that with Alan Vega After Dark, a set of songs that exist fully in their genesis, realized and recorded one night in New York City. They snatched one away from Alan, so we can pore over it. Listening to it, Vega’s words sometimes slip past me, like they did early in our single phone call. Wait, what was that he just said? It might have been the secret of the world! But I have the luxury of knowing that even as I can return to the LP over and over again, I’ll never hear the same thing twice. “Alan was writing from the future,” Vaughn says. I think back to 2015 when, during my interview for Aquarium Drunkard, Vega swatted away my inquiries about where his visions originated: “I don’t know where it comes from. People ask, ‘Why?’…There is no why. Who gives a shit? It’s not supposed to be why. It’s supposed to be the world. The mystery.”
Life on the road isn’t all glamour and rock’n’roll excess and MOTÖRHEAD’s punishing tour schedule in 1981 took them all over the globe as they rode high on the success of Ace Of Spades. One integral part of the daily grind on the road is the sound check, although very little of it is ever seen or documented in the public domain. Fortunately during the Short Sharp Pain In The Neck tour of March 1981,
MOTÖRHEAD had a mobile recording studio in tow as they recorded their thunderous, number 1 live album, No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith now celebrating its 40th year. This rare recording of them performing “Stay Clean” as they warmed up for the night at Newcastle on March 30 is accompanied by a video containing behind the scenes montages of the backbone of the MOTÖRHEAD live show; the legendary road crew!
Deluxe CD Box-Set and Special 40th Anniversary Editions of No Sleep‘ Til Hammersmith to be Released on June 25th 2021 Watch a New Video for a Previously Unreleased, Live Version of “The Hammer” Plus Preorders & Exclusive March Bundles Here – https://motorhead.lnk.to/nosleep40PR
Back in the Summer of 1981, MOTÖRHEAD got louder, dirtier and more universal, and you’re getting an invitation to relive this most glorious of achievements once again…
Following on from 2020’s year-long celebration of MOTÖRHEAD’s iconic Ace Of Spades album comes the live album to end all live albums, the undisputed definitive live record of all time: No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of this number one album, it is being presented in new deluxe editions. There will be hardback book-packs in two CD and triple LP formats, featuring a new venue demolishing remaster of the original album, bonus tracks and the previously unreleased – in its entirety – concert from Newcastle City Hall, March 30, 1981, the story of the album and many previously unseen photos. Also, the album will be released as a four CD box set of all three concerts recorded for the album released here in their entirety for the very first time and primed to gleefully shatter what’s left of your grateful eardrums.
Upon that original June 27th ’81 release, Lemmy is quoted as saying of No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith after it crashed into number one in the UK charts, “I knew it’d be the live one that went best, because we’re really a live band. You can’t listen to a record and find out what we’re about. You’ve got to see us.”No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith was MOTÖRHEAD’s first and only number one record in the UK and is still the most necessary live album of all time.
The No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith CD box set contains:
The No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith album, remastered from the original master tapes, featuring extra bonus tracks and newly unearthed, previously unreleased sound check recordings.
The three full recordings of the concerts that made up No Sleep, never before released in their entirety.
The story of No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith told through previously unpublished and new interviews with the people that were on the road at the time.
Never before seen photos and rare memorabilia.
Double sided, A3 concert posters from 1981.
Reproduction USA ’81 tour pass.
MOTÖRHEAD ‘England’ plectrum.
1981 European tour badge.
Reproduction Newcastle City Hall ticket.
Port Vale gig flyer post card.
MOTÖRHEAD in 1981 was a band of extremes; a flammable mix of non-stop celebration over their rising success and punishing graft, underscored by an inter-band powder-keg dynamic. After recording Ace Of Spades, it had shot to number four in the UK; the killer breakthrough after Overkill and Bomber had done essential groundwork, late 1980s Ace Up Your Sleeve UK tour was a triumphant lap of honour that spilled into the recording of No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith. The album took its title from an inscription painted on one of the trucks, referencing the 32 gigs they were playing with only two days off. The track listing ended up featuring three tracks from Ace Of Spades, five from Overkill, Bomber’s title track and two from their self-titled debut.
Recorded on December 05, 2012 in front of an audience of about 12,000 fans, Mötorhead‘s Louder Than Noise…Live in Berlin is a good record of the band’s power and ferocity. The trio of Phil Campbell (guitar), Mikkey Dee (drums), and Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister (bass and vocals) was the longest-running Mötorhead lineup, and their locked-in energy is palpable throughout the show.
The show begins with Kilmister yelling, “Guten abend! How you doin’? All right? We are Mötorhead…Phillip, if you would be so kind?” in his signature bourbon-and-cigarettes-laced voice before they rip into the snarky “I Know How to Die.” “Damage Case” swings with a bluesy groove that is made dangerous by Kilmister’s growls and Campbell’s rock riffs. It rolls right into “Stay Clean” thanks to Dee’s relentless yet effortless drum fills.
They give the crowd and the listener a brief break before rolling out “Metropolis,” which starts like a stoner metal track and then two sharp snare cracks from Dee turn it into a fuzzy rocker. Kilmister dedicates “Over the Top” to Campbell, probably because Campbell shreds for almost three minutes straight on it. “Doctor Rock” is just as fun and fast and furious as you hope it will be. Campbell plays a nice two-minute solo (“String Theory”) and then his bandmates join him in the classic “The Chase Is Better Than the Catch.”
“Rock It” comes after the band takes a quick drink of…something, and then it rolls into the wicked, dark blues cut “You Better Run,” which I’m sure had the mosh pit amped up even more than it was at the start of the show. “The One to Sing the Blues” has some of Dee’s most ferocious drumming, including a tremendous solo. The whole track sounds like Mötorhead are daring any challengers to their throne of skulls.
“Now, then, this is a rock and roll song,” Kilmister says before they launch into the swinging, blazing “Going to Brazil” (as if all the other songs aren’t). “Killed by Death” brings plenty of fuzz and power to warm you up (if you’re not already sweating) for, of course, “Ace of Spades” to close the main set. “Remember? We’re deaf!” Kilmister yells to the audience after the song ends. I’m sure the whole audience was, too. “Overkill” is the crazy, wild finale, with Dee going for broke and Campbell and Kilmister doing their best to blow the back of the joint.
It’s a fun recording, and I wish I could’ve seen them live before Kilmister left for the giant after-party in the sky. This is a good substitute, however.
Keep your mind open.
[Why not go over to the subscription box while you’re here?]
BBE Music is thrilled to announce Modern Love, a tribute album to Bowie, out May 28th. In conjunction with the announcement, BBE present We Are KING’s cosmic, open and airy cover of “Space Oddity.”
Featuring an array of artists such as Jeff Parker, We Are KING, Meshell Ndegeocello, Helado Negro, Khruangbin, Matthew Tavares, L’Rain, Nia Andrews and more, Modern Love seeks to champion his lesser known connection to soul, R&B, jazz, funk, and gospel. The prominent jazz influences throughout Bowie’s final album,Blackstar, were a key inspiration for curating this collection of reimagined Bowie songs with these artists. The resulting album is an eclectic tribute featuring a group of artists who not only fit together creatively, but who, like Bowie, straddle different worlds musically, with soul and jazz at their core.
Modern Love offers a fresh look at Bowie’s diverse and transcendent career, aiming to highlight the often overlooked relationship between his back catalogue and musical genres traditionally pioneered by artists of color. The project was curated by music executive and DJ Drew McFadden, alongside BBE Music founder Peter Adarkwah. “I felt that the connection between Bowie and R&B, jazz, funk, gospel and all things soulful, had never really been explored before — at least not so much in covers, which tend to lean more towards rock and pop,” says McFadden. “Certainly, there’s been plenty of Bowie covers over the years, but none that have really tapped into what seems to have been a big part of his core musical style and direction.“
We Are KING’s cover of Bowie’s surprise 1972 hit, “Space Oddity,” is a paean to this wholly singular and somewhat eccentric anthem. Smooth, subtle and assured, their version remains true to the original, while blending in just enough soul to make it their own. “There were so many amazing Bowie compositions to choose from but ‘Space Oddity’ has always been our favourite. It’s so visual; it has always felt like time travel in a song,” explain Amber and ParisStrother, who released their debut album as We Are KING in 2016 and have since worked with the likes of RobertGlasper, Corinne Bailey Rae, Bilal and The Foreign Exchange, among many others. “It tells such a vivid and imaginative story of Major Tom’s trip through space and it was such a cool experience to reimagine what it’d be like on the voyage.”
Here we are at the top of the music mountain. Again, putting this list together wasn’t easy. It went through at least four drafts before it felt “right.”
#5: BODEGA – Endless Scroll (2018)
This post-punk record by the Brooklyn band took a good chunk of the world by storm, receiving a lot of airplay in England and across U.S. alternative radio stations and being played at Paris fashion shows. It’s full of great hooks, scathing lyrics about hipsters, death, perceptions of masculinity, sex, and people willingly enslaving themselves to technology. BODEGA instantly became my favorite band of 2018 when I heard this.
#4: Flat Worms – Antarctica (2020)
This wild psych-punk (and I’m not sure that’s an accurate description) album unleashes raw power from the get-go and doesn’t let up for the entire run. It takes subjects like consumerism, rich elitism, racism, existential angst, and xenophobia head-on with hammering guitars and drums as heavy as a glacier. This album was locked into my #1 spot for Best Albums of 2020 after its release.
#3: The Well – Death and Consolation (2019)
This doom metal album from Austin, Texas’ The Well was my favorite album to send to fellow doom-lovers for Christmas in 2019. It hits hard in all the right ways – chugging bass and guitars, fierce yet in-the-pocket drumming, and lyrics about mortality, horrible things that lie beyond the veil, epic mystical battles, and overcoming fear of such things to transcend this illusionary existence. Heavy stuff? Yes, but The Well carry it with the ease of Hercules.
#2: Kelly Lee Owens – (self-titled) (2017)
This album made me want to create electronic music even more than I already did. I hadn’t touched my digital turntables in months, and then Kelly Lee Owens releases her self-titled debut of house, ambient, and synthwave music and slaps me awake with it. Seeing her live at the 2018 Pitchfork Music Festival only slapped me harder. The problem? She’s so good, and this album is such a strong debut, that it’s tempting to hear it and think, “Damn, why should I even bother?” I’ll be happy if I can create something a fifth as good as this.
#1: David Bowie – Blackstar (2016)
I mean, come on, was there any doubt? David Bowie’s final album is a masterpiece. I can’t say it any better than that. He faced his mortality with introspection, acceptance, and even humor. His backing jazz band is outstanding on this, and every song carries extra weight when viewed with the hindsight of knowing the Thin White Duke was getting ready to head back into the brilliant dimension that spawned him.
We’re halfway through the list, and the decision of what to include gets tougher with each post. This one includes two shoegaze surprises and a legend.
#20: Cosmonauts – A-OK! (2016)
I don’t remember where I first heard Cosmonauts, but I do remember being floored by the sound of this record. The sunny, southern California shoegaze riffs and power these lads put out was nothing short of stunning. The themes of boredom, lost love and youth, and growing tired of hipsters were deftly handled and backed with a trippy sound that’s not easy to make.
#19: Hum – Inlet (2020)
Easily the best surprise of 2020, these Chicagoland shoegaze giants dropped Inleton an unsuspecting, but wildly grateful, public and immediately became the talk of the music industry – again. It proved that they never lost anything – chops, power, influence, mystery. Let’s hope they get to tour in 2021, because they deserve sell-out shows.
#18: All Them Witches – Sleeping Through the War (2017)
Speaking of power, All Them Witches are brimming with it, and this album was like chugging psychedelic tea mixed with Red Bull. At times blistering with fury and other times a bluesy, swampy mind trip, Sleeping Through the Wardeals with disconnection, celebrity worship, invasive technology, and, as always with ATW, mysticism.
#17: The Duke Spirit – Kin (2016)
Kinwas another surprise release. It wasn’t a surprise that The Duke Spirit put out a new record. The surprise was that, instead of their heavy, sexy, blues-influenced rock, the band put out one of the best shoegaze records of 2016. They metamorphosed like a caterpillar and emerged into something new that somehow thrilled me more than they already had done.
#16: Gary Numan – Savage (Songs from a Broken World) (2017)
The legend I mentioned at the beginning of this post? It’s Gary Numan, and Savage (Songs from a Broken World)was a great return for him. This album brims with power as hard as the post-apocalyptic landscape portrayed on the cover and in the lyrics. Numan wasn’t messing around (nor does he ever) with this record, tackling climate change, fascism, mania, despair, and dread with massive synth riffs, knock-down drums, and pure force. I was lucky to catch him at the Chicago stop on this tour and it was one of the best shows I’d seen in a while.
Next up we have dance-punk, live doom metal, stunning psychedelic jams, an EP from a band that broke up just as they were becoming popular, and an improvised instrumental record.
