With their second single since whittling down to a duo, The Virginmarys continue to show that limited personnel and permutations of instruments does not equate to limited ideas or musical power.
‘You’re A Killer’ is unashamedly political, and articulates the anger of the many who aren’t millionaires and billionaires, coupled with the anxiety that pervades all aspect of life right now: ‘Working my bones and still earning a fraction / I’m hooked to my phone like a fatal distraction’ is as succinct a summary as you’ll hear all year, and that’s some nice wordplay in action too.
And it’s all blasted home in three minutes of jittery, choppy, raucous punk ‘n’ roll. The fire in their bellies rages hard and the chorus is 100% hook. There are hints of eighties rock in the mix too: imagine The Cult circa Sonic Temple played in the spirit of ’77.
The difference between the late 70s and early 80s and now is that Thatcher was at least up front and the working classes knew they were being shafted. Now, people are – literally – dying -starving as they queue at foodbanks and wait ten hours for ambulances and entire days in A&E while our leaders brazenly lie, and in recent years, the lies have become more threadbare and the bodies continue to pile high, heaped on the pyre of democracy as we sleepwalk into fascism.
The Virginmarys suck it all in and spit it out in a full-throttle guitar-driven blast of anger: global warming, the rich travelling on their jollies while the nation is sedated by the media, the new opium of the people, toward engineered social division.
The outlook is bleak, but this isn’t a bleak song: it’s a proper, raging protest song. Listen up, and wake up.
O.R.k., comprising of celebrated Italian vocalist, producer, and award-winning film score composer Lorenzo Esposito Fornasari a.k.a LEF (lead vocals), King Crimson’s Pat Mastelotto (drums), ex-Porcupine Tree’s Colin Edwin (bass) and Marta Sui Tubi’s Carmelo Pipitone (guitars) have premiered the video for their new single “As I Leave”, their first new music since the release of the acclaimed 2019 album Ramagehead.
The new single “As I Leave” is the first foray into the band’s new album (the second on Kscope) which will be released later this year. It is accompanied by an otherworldly and dreamlike video from 3D-VR artist Chiara Orsi who has managed to match the song’s expressive intensity in a highly imaginative visual display. Watch the video here:
AA
“As I Leave”, was an obvious choice for a new first single/calling card for the band, containing all the sonic elements that make up O.R.k’s unique and inviting world. Lef’s powerful vocals, Carmelo Pipitone’s energetic riffing, Pat Mastelotto’s inventive rhythmic accompaniment and Colin Edwin’s distinctive bass tones all infuse the sound with a refreshed intensity and a new luminosity.
O.R.k bassist Colin Edwin states that “Lyrically, ‘As I Leave’ is an ambiguous contemplation on the inexplicable reasons for close personal bonds and human connections. It’s a song for anyone who ever desired deeper connections with another, but in some puzzling way, just couldn’t make it work. The profoundest differences are rarely geographical, as most of us have discovered over the last few years. There’s often an unknowable reason under the surface, did your blow your chance? …or did your dreams just get old?”
Shit happens: some good, some bad. Feather Trade, who grabbed our attention when supporting Benefits in York back in February, were scheduled to support The Mission on May 26th. As fate would have it, the night’s scheduling with an early curfew meant they got dropped from the lineup, although their regular drummer is now occupying the stool for Hussey and co. How does stuff like that even happen? But when life gives you lemons, Feather Trade book a run of shows instead.
If you’re in the vicinity of any of these places, we’d very much recommend going.
Venus Principle are premiering the melancholic and powerful new track ‘Drag Nets’ as the final single taken from the dark psychedelic rocker’s debut full-length Stand in Your Light, which has been scheduled for release on May 27.
‘Drag Nets’ makes subtle use of a wide range of instrumentation from sax to mellotron vibes and Mini Moog, and the stunning vocal chemistry between Daisy Chapman and Daniel Änghede comes into play again as well.
The band comment: “After the initial recording sessions for Stand in Your Light were postponed, we had a chance to write a few more songs”, guitarist Jonas Stålhammar tells. “The last one written was ‘Drag Nets’. It turned out to be by far the heaviest track on the album. ‘Drag Nets’ represents the waste and rejects of man. You can trawl the sea for food and treasure, but humankind will always carelessly discard all unwanted matter only for it to be rediscovered as flotsam and jetsam. The idea of adding saxophone was a last minute thought in the studio when I reached the conclusion that we had too many guitar solos on the album already. Our amazing guest on the saxophone, August Eriksson, copied my guitar solo note for note and then added some improvised sprinkles.”
Kick Out The Jams & End Of The Trail Creative are putting on a 3-day mini-festival, The Brighton Rock ‘N’ Roll Circus at The Black Lion between the 12th-14th May 2022. The event, supported by CD Baby, Blackstar Amplification & The Zine UK, which features bands like The Pearl Harts, Moon Panda, Berries, A Void, Enjoyable Listens, Sons, DEH-YEY, Bullet Girl, and Aural Aggro’s new faves, Warning Signal is a free entry alternative to The Great Escape.
And what a lineup!
From the organisers: "Driven by a desire to offer live music fans in Brighton and from further afield a free alternative to the official Great Escape programme of shows, which are only accessible with an expensive conference badge or festival wristband, indie promoters Kick Out The Jams and End of the Trail have come together at The Black Lion for The Brighton Rock’n’Roll Circus; an exciting free entry three-day mini-festival of over forty bands running from 12th-14th May.
This show is the natural successor to The Brighton Mix-Up which last took place in May 2019, a similar three day show also at The Black Lion. Of course, the pandemic put a stop to all music festivals for a couple of years, so it’s really good to be back in Brighton again with an amazing lineup of bands from around the country, playing in an intimate venue in the heart of The Lanes area, bang in the middle of the town."
Kick Out The Jams & End Of The Trail Creative need your help! Unfortunately, they haven’t been able to secure the usual sponsorship for their 3-day FREE ENTRY mini-festival in Brighton in May.
Faced with taking a pretty big hit on production expenses associated with putting on an event of this kind, as the pub is not a regular music venue & doesn’t have any live music tech in place for the show, they are having to hire it all in.
So, if you are planning to come to the show and seeing some (or all!) of the 40+ bands they’ve lined up for you, please consider helping them with these costs by contributing to the Go Fund Me campaign.
I keep hearing – mostly from people over thirty-five, admittedly – that there’s no decent new music now. They’re talking crap. There has always been decent and exciting new music if you keep your ear to the ground instead off R1 and Jools Holland and don’t rely on recommendations from Spotify for everything.
Having formed in 2017, Glasgow duo Run Into The Night managed to build a fanbase with some hard touring before the pandemic hit, and ‘Common Stream of Consciousness’ slams into the public domain to coincide with their return to the live arena with a tour in May. It is, unquestionably, and absoluter belter.
‘Common Stream of Consciousness’ is s thundery, blustery, bass-driven (post) punky sonic attack that’s barely three minutes in duration, and it’s The Runaways, it’s Suzie Quattro – and it’s also early Royal Blood and Queens of the Stone Age. It’s proper energetic rock, and it’s a cracking tune.
On May 6th Italian alchemists and power trio Ufomammut return with their ninth studio album, Fenice via Neurot Recordings and Supernatural Cat, but not as we’ve heard them before, now “more intimate, more free.”
For over 20 years, the band has combined the heaviness and majesty of dynamic riff worship with a nuanced understanding of psychedelic tradition and history in music, creating a cosmic, futuristic, and technicolor sound destined for absolute immersion.
Fenice (meaning Phoenix in Italian) symbolically represents endless rebirth and the ability to start again after everything seems doomed. The album is the first recording with new drummer Levre, and truly marks a new chapter in Ufomammut history.
“I think we lost our spontaneity, album after album,” says Urlo. “We tried to make more complicated songs and albums, but I think at some point we just ended up repeating ourselves. With Fenice, we were ready to start from zero, we had no past anymore – so we just wanted to be reborn and rise from the ashes..”
Whilst the band are well-known for their psychedelic travels into the far reaches of the cosmos, Fenice is a much more introspective listening experience. Fenice was conceived as a single concept track, divided in six facets of this inward-facing focus. Sonic experimentations abound in the exploration of this central theme; synths and experimental vocal effects are featured more prominently than ever before as the band push themselves ever further into the uncharted territory of their very identity.
The Virginmarys have been knocking around for a while, and released their debut album King of Conflict back in 2013. You couldn’t exactly say they’ve been flying under the radar, since that aforementioned debut hit #3 on the Billboard New Artist Alternative Chart and #8 on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart, as well as their being dubbed the buzz band of SXSW. Like so many of the best bands, they’ve found the most appreciation overseas rather than at home, where it’s taken them rather longer to build up – but build up they have. It’s perhaps just a matter of time having released three albums (KoC was followed by Divides (2016) and Sitting Ducks (2017), as well as throwing down Northern Sun Sessions in 2018), and played with Queens Of The Stoneage, and been championed by Slash, and collaborated on stage with Frank Turner.
All of this, they did as a trio, and it’s been a full four years since their last album proper. ‘The Meds’ is their first release as a duo, stripped back to founder members, drummer Danny Dolan and guitarist/vocalist Ally Dickaty. How do they sound? No question, they’ve nailed it: they don’t sound like a duo on this full-throttle blues-based riffcentric rockout, hell, no: ‘The Meds’ is a dense, ball-busting rock beast that which really does pack some meat and sounds like a full band, and like (early) Royal Blood, Yur Mum and personal faves Modern Technology, they’ve gone all out to (over) compensate the lack of bodies / instruments by not only cranking it all up to eleven (good) but optimising their amps and pedals to blast out a maximalist sound that sounds live: you almost feel the air displacement from the speakers as the riff bursts forth, before Dickaty launches his raw-throated vitriol.
Ally’s vocal is strong and gritty, and it’s pegged comparatively low in the mix against the blast of guitar and pulverising drumming, and the bottom line is that this is a blistering tune.
Sometimes, there’s simply no escaping the fact that grooves and hooks are important. However wearying the conventions of rock and pop are so much of the time, there’s still a vital appeal. Sometimes you just need something to grab hold of, something to grip your short, feeble attention span. But what happens when you bring all the conventions together at once and then mash them, bash them, squash and smoosh them with joyful irreverence? It goes one of two ways: it’s a horrible hybrid mess with no cohesion, or it’s genius. Supersound is genius. It mines many aspects of those conventions to forge an album that’s got groove and hooks, while making unusual takes on country, rockabilly and post-punk, and wrapping them in an abundance of noise that’s pretty gnarly at times. It’s all in the mix – blues rock, alt-rock, grunge, even regular radio rock – but delivered in a twisted, mangled fashion that’s guaranteed to keep it off the airwaves.
The story of the creation of this masterwork is decidedly un-rock’n’roll as it involves Red (Olivier Lambin) suffering from presbyopia and purchasing a bass because it has ‘bigger frets and fewer strings’ and recruiting a collective who can actually see to play their instruments to realise his musical vision. It’s perhaps no wonder it’s a blurry haze of bits and bobs. Said lineup involves ‘two drummers, Néman (Zombie Zombie, Herman Düne) and DDDxie (The Shoes, Rocky, Gumm)’ who Red asked to create their own rhythms, plus Jex, aka Jérôme Excoffier, his lifelong accomplice, who still has excellent eyesight, who played all the guitars on the album.
A strolling bass and jagged guitar slew angular lines on ‘Normal’ that’s spineshaking swamp rock, sounding like a collision between the B52s and The Volcanoes. ‘Ready to Founce’ has all the groove and all the swagger, and has the glorious grittiness of Girls Against Boys at their scuzzy, sleaze-grind best, calling to mind ‘Rockets Are Red’. Then, ‘Shark’ sounds like Butthole Surfers covering an early Fall Song. ‘Screen Kills’ is altogether gothier, with acres of flange swathing the trebly guitar, and all paths lead to the tense, needling jabbing jangle of the final song of the album, ‘Carcrash Disasters’. It could have so easily been tempting fate, but while they veer wildly and screech around every corner on two wheels, DER remain on the road to the end of a crazy conglomeration of an album that buzzes from start to finish.
So a quick scan back tells me I’ve been covering Salvation Jayne since they released ‘Burn it Down’ back in April 2017 – which actually predates their formation according to the bio on their own website. No, I’m not here to be pedantic, or explicitly to gloat about having been one of the first people to have ‘discovered’ them or whatever, but… well, there’s always a certain element of pride to know you spotted a talent, even of the talent introduced itself first.
They’ve come a long way since, and their debut album, A Mouthful Of Magnificent Spite is a very different beast from where they were back then. That said, they’re still big on attitude and choruses, only more so, and then some. You wouldn’t expect anything different from Chess Smith, who demonstrates a fierce – but friendly – drive to succeed where her musical career’s concerned. Salvation Jayne have never been hesitant about coming forward, and have sold out multiple headline shows as well as scoring notable support slots with the likes of Milk Teeth, Rews, Saint Agnes and The Subways.
That Mouthful is a proper album rather than an assemblage of tracks from previous EPs and singles – of which there is easily an album’s worth – tells us where the band is at. Forward-facing, creating, moving, and at pace. There’s a nod to ‘Burn it Down’ in the form of a fifty-second snip that acts as a bridge between ‘Diadem’ and ‘No Antidote’ (which is an instant classic, bringing together urgent and energetic drumming, chiming 80s indie guitar verses and a belting chorus with all the vocal power) but none of their previous singles make the cut here. Even 2021’s ‘Violent Silence’ is absent, and it makes sense: it’s too pop and doesn’t sit within the sequence, and it’s clear they’ve spent a long time working on making this a document of the band now. If ‘Cortez’ and ‘Coney Island, Baby!’ showed that they could do proper solid rock tunes with some chunky riffs, then A Mouthful Of Magnificent Spite realises that promise with wall-to-wall riffs.
‘Apathetic Apologies’ was perhaps an obvious choice for a lead video-single release: it’s kinda crisp and clean (although still boasts a thick bass sound) and eases the listener in with manifold layers and some nice production. It’s got big guitars and big production, and it’s overtly ‘rock’ but at the same time it’s easy on the ear and has clear radio airplay potential. Reflecting on this, for many bands, this would be an album or EP closer: it’s got anthem written all over it. So where do you go from here? Well, Salvation Jayne go into goth-tinged 80s alt-rock territory with the sultry, brooding ‘Diadem’.
They really crank up the riffage with ‘I Am Simply Not What You Thought’, a song they’ve been honing live over the last couple of years, and which has evolved substantially over that time. While the vocals remain melodic and harmonious, they’re not weedy or emo: this is full-lunged, solid rock to the core. And it’s sincere, and that sincerity imbues it with power beyond the drive of the guitars and powerhouse percussion. A Mouthful Of Magnificent Spite is brimming with passion, and you feel it .
The title track is a rollercoaster of emotion and stylistic switches, but hangs together perfectly, highlighting the band’s songwriting skills. The title track takes a turn for the heavy with some monster riffage in the last minute, and they go stoner on ‘Cody’, and they’d probably start bracing them selves for an arm-wrestle with Queens of the Stone Age before long.
‘Drink you Down’ swerves into 80s electro pop with a hint of shoegaze. It’s misty, but so, so buoyant, and the guitars take a back seat. You couldn’t say A Mouthful Of Magnificent Spite isn’t varied. It’s a fiery and exhilarating album that kicks arse from beginning to end.
Aural Aggravation 