17 SECONDS

Rob St. John -’Charcoal Black and the Bonny Grey’/'Shallow Grey.’ (Song, By Toad Records)

I’ve long been a supporter of Rob St. John and his album Weald in 2011 was a fine thing indeed.

This is his first release since that debut album (though he also performs as part of eagleowl, who are about to drop their utterly brilliant debut on Fence any day now). It’s two rather fine folk songs, both of them now over a hundred years old, on one slab of 7″ vinyl, and they are utterly beautiful. ‘Charcoal Black and the Bonny Grey’ is a Lancastrian song originally sung to Cecil Sharp (a man to whom English folk music owes more than possibly be imagined) in 1905. It’s described as being ‘a song of the Industrial Revolution: crumbling mill towns butting up against moorland and trees growing out of chimneys.’ Meanwhile, the b-side (or is that AA? It’s hard to know in the digital age, and I may be the only person left who still cares about such things), ‘Shallow Grey’ is a West Indian sea shanty collected by H.E. Piggott and Percy Grainger from the singing of John Perring in Dartmouth, Devon in 1908. Whether these songs are a century plus old or not, even at face value the package is a thing of beauty.

Limited to 250 copies (I have Rob St. John singles limited to 100!) track it down and check it out. You may not hear something so beautiful and heartbreaking this year.

*****

Savages -’Silence Yourself’ (Pop Noire/Matador)

Bloody hell.

The hotly anticipated debut from Savages does not disappoint. Not one iota.

‘Sounds like a bloody racket!’ quipped one of my colleagues as the pre-release album stream thundered out of the computer speakers at work.

Yes. It is a bloody racket. It’s dark, powerful, uncompromising music -and all the better for it. It’s menacing. Drenched in feedback. It does not care what you think. The promise that was hinted at on last year’s ‘Husbands’/'Flying To Berlin’ debut single is here in spades.

This is an album to be played loud. This is an album that some won’t be able to handle. This is an album that follows in the footsteps of a heritage of bands like The Slits, The Raincoats, Throwing Muses and Sleater-Kinney, amongst others, whilst not necessarily sounding all that much like any of those bands.

Bugger believing the hype. Savages are here in your face, and taking no prisoners.

Are you up for the ride?

****1/2

Silence Yourself is released on Pop Noire/Matador on May 6.

Ahead of the album release, the album can be streamed over at the band’s website.

Meursault/Found/Withered Hand

Edinburgh Liquid Rooms, April 26

Put on as part of Haddowfest, even before a note had been played, on paper this was a fantastic gig featuring three of Edinburgh’s finest acts. And given the profile that both Meursault and Withered Hand now have - having headlined the much bigger Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh in their own respective rights- at this point in their respective careers it could be argued that this was an intimate gig.

Doors were at seven so I was aghast to arrive at twenty-past seven to find Dan Willson and his band well into their set. Focusing on new songs, they sounded brilliant, and when the long-awaited follow-up to Good News appears, don’t expect it simply to be part 2 on the evidence of tonight.

‘Hi, we’re Found…we think.’ Found have parted company with bassist Tommy Perman, but the new look, two-piece band are now trading in rather fine analogue electronica. Their most recent album, 2011’s Factorycraft saw them reaching new heights critically and commercially, so let us hope that they continue. ‘Bangin’ has been the description of their recent shows -and I would agree.

Neil Pennycook and his merry men take to stage with a reminder from the compere that they have been longlisted for the Scottish Album Of The Year Award, alongside obvious pals like Paws, Errors and RM Hubbert and commercial heavyweights like Calvin Harris and Emelie Sandé. To my shame, I hadn’t seen a full band show from Meursault before, but I’m in quite a hurry to see them again. If their third album, Something For The Weakened demonstrated that they had evolved from folk-meets-electronica (don’t you dare call them folktronica!), then live this is one step even further. Opening with ‘Flittin’ they show that actually they can rock -but on their own terms.

This is perhaps best demonstrated by ‘Crank Resolutions’ which live is more in keeping with the magnificent melancholia of The Blue Nile or Mogwai. It’s not to say that Meursault are a miserable band -live on stage Neil Pennycook is on fine form, and quite the cheery bloke. He even dedicates ‘Dull Spark’ to Oskar ‘who is four today!’ Between their first album in 2008 Pissing On Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues and the present there’s an impressive trajectory, and it will be interesting to see what Neil and co. do next. THere will be an ever-growing crowd of obnservers waiting, too…

Where exactly did heavy metal begin? The phrase is said to begin with the line in Steppenwolf’s ‘Born To Be Wild’. There’s certain bands that laid the groundwork for it in the sixties, amongst which Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience would be forerunners, and The Who (’My Generation’ and ‘Substitute’), early stuff by The Kinks (’You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day And All Of the Night’), and even The Beatles (’Revolution’ and ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy).’

However, perhaps the band with the most claim to have truly invented heavy metal is Birmingham’s Black Sabbath.* And this year sees the release of 13, the first album in 35 years to reunite singer Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Tommy Iommi and bassist Geezer Butler (drummer Bill Ward has been replaced by Rage Against The Machine’s Brad Wilk).

My favourite Sabbath albums are probably still Black Sabbath and Paranoid, though I enjoy Sabbath Bloody Sabbath as well. To list all the bands who have been influenced by Black Sabbath would take a long time, but when you consider sources as diverse as Slipknot and The Cardigans** have claimed them as an inspiration, that shows the length of the appeal of a band that the critics of the time hated. You can hear them on stoner metal bands, goth bands (well over a decade before goth rock was even termed), grunge, thrash, death…

The album tracklisting is as follows:

‘End Of The Beginning’
‘God is Dead?’
‘Loner’
‘Zeitgeist’
‘Age Of Reason’
‘Live Forever’
‘Damaged Soul’
‘Dear Father’

The bonus deluxe edition tracks are:

‘Methademic’
‘Peace of Mind’
‘Pariah’

Stream the awesome first single ‘God Is Dead?’ (note the significance of the question mark).

*yes, I’m aware of the importance of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, but Sabbath consolidated the whole thing, frankly.

** yes, really. The Swedish band covered ‘Iron Man’ ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ and ‘Changes.’

Mick Harvey has certainly had a pretty interesting life. Starting off alongside Nick Cave in The Boys Next Door, which then morphed into The Birthday, he then joined Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in 1983, for much of the next twenty-five years and played pretty much most of the instruments in the band at one time or another.

He also worked with PJ Harvey on Let England Shake, one of the best records of this century. She’s one of the collaborators on his new, sixth solo album, which is out next week, entitled FOUR (Acts Of Love). This is a song cycle, actually divided into three parts. As well as PJ Harvey on ‘Glorious’ there are four cover versions on the record; The Saints’ ‘The Story of Love’, Van Morrison’s ‘The Way Young Lovers Do’, Exuma’s ‘Summertime in New York’ and Roy Orbison’s ‘Wild Hearts (Run Out of Time).’

The album tracklisting is as follows:

Act 1 - SUMMERTIME IN NEW YORK
1. Praise the Earth (Wheels of Amber and Gold)
2. Glorious
3. Midnight on the Ramparts
4. Summertime in New York
5. Where There’s Smoke (before)

Act 2 - THE STORY OF LOVE
6. God Made the Hammer
7. I Wish That I Were Stone
8. The Way Young Lovers Do
9. A Drop, An Ocean
10. The Story of Love

Act 3 - WILD HEARTS RUN OUT OF TIME
11. Where There’s Smoke (after)
12. Wild Hearts
13. Fairy Dust
14. Praise the Earth (An Ephemeral Play)

From Act 2, you can download the rather gorgeous ‘I Wish That I Were Stone’ which is only a minute and a half long, and yet, really rather moorish…

Harvey Lanes is the Edinburgh band, led by multi-instrumentalist Tim Young. Formerly known as Chancer, he has been tipped by Vic Galloway from BBC Scotland, and also appeared on the most recent album by UNKLE.

In his own words, a full length, self produced album has emerged from the depths of some hard drives, and will be released on May 1 on the band’s own label, Curved. There’s a jazzy, trippy feel to these which makes me want to investigate further.

The album’s called Sines, and I think it’s fair to say that if you’ve enjoyed work by the likes UNKLE, then I think you’ll enjoy this, too. If you only have time to check out one track, go for ‘Planting’ which manages to cover an impressive amount of ground in six and a half minutes…

I don’t normally run many news pieces in here, but when there’s a box set coming of the first five Scott Walker albums, that’s worth shouting about, right?

Right. Scott: The Collection 1967-1970 contains his first five solo albums (Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3, Scott 4 and Til The Band Comes In). Amazing pieces of work in their own right, and with awesome songs on it. It’s out on June 3.

I think I picked up on Scott Walker in my mid-twenties, as I was working my way through the influences. He’d been a big influence on David Bowie, Ian McCulloch and Julian Cope. Plus I’d loved Marc Almond’s cover of ‘Jacky’
, which was a hit in 1991. This wasn’t a Walker original, but he’d made it his own, and Almond’s cover, looking back, is just as much a tribute to Walker as Jacques Brel, the author.

You can see the tracklisting here.

Meanwhile, here’s a few videos for songs from the collection. Enjoy.

From Scott ‘Amsterdam.’

From Scott 2 ‘Plastic Palace People.’

From Scott 3 ‘Winter Night’

From Scott 4 ‘The Old Man’s Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime)’

From Til The Band Comes In ‘The War Is Over (Sleepers).’

All these years later, there are still a handful of labels who, no matter who they signed, the fact that that their back catalogue and history is so strong, I have to check it out.

I’d include the following on that list: Chemikal Underground, Warp, Matador…and obviously 4AD.

The latest signing to the label is an artist called Sohn (pronounced Sonn), which I have to confess was a new one on me, but the following is seriously awesome electronica. Actually, seriously awesome, full stop. However he is -and the press release tells me selected info, this artist who escaped London for Vienna, whoever they are (for all I know, it could be a fat , balding man in his late seventies or a skinny hipster in his early twenties has a knack for making extremely emotional music) is producing great stuff.

Check these out, from before he signed to 4AD. If you only have time for one track, I suggest ‘Warnings.’

As I mentioned earlier, he has signed to 4AD and his first single for the label is ‘Bloodflows.’

PS - this Guardian article may answer some of my (and your questions)

Do statistics tell us anything about how good music actually is?

Well, probably not if you consider the very lowly chart placings for some of the greatest albums ever (Astral Weeks, The Velvet Underground & Nico etc.. etc..) but consider this:
The awesome new single from Daft Punk, ‘Get Lucky’ has broken streaming records and has also shot straight into no.3 in the UK charts after only being on sale for two days.

Taken from their forthcoming fourth album Random Access Memories, the single not only features vocals from Pharrell Williams but disco legend Nile Rodgers (without whom, the lives of so many acts, including Queen, Madonna and pretty much all hip-hop would have turned out very differently) on guitar.

Bring on May 20, say I but for now, listen to this and then go and buy it.

Barely a few weeks have passed since Lana Del Rey’s cover version of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Chelsea Hotel#2′ started doing the rounds. But there is now an equally good cover -IMHO- of Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Summer Wine.’

This time, the song and video feature her boyfriend James-Barrie O’Neill of Kassidy fame.

The original can be heard below:

You can read about ‘Summer Wine’ - nothing to do with the long-running Last Of The Summer Wine, by the way - over at Wiki.

Other cover versions that I’d like her to consider are ‘Some Velvet Morning’ ‘ Nights In White Satin’ and ‘A Whiter Shade Of Pale’…