Following from their rather lovely On The Wire album, released in 2010, Ardentjohn will release their new album Waiting For The Season next week.
From the album, you can download ‘In The Morning’ for free.
It’s folky, with nice use of brass, and anyone who seeks to compare it to other bands is just being bloody lazy!
For the full album tracklisting and more news, head to their website
Fat Goth + Vasquez + Hagana, Edinburgh Electric Circus, February 1
Tonight’s show is the launch for Fat Goth’s sophomore album, and it not only does what it says on the tin, but a packed-out show at the Electric Circus will prove a mighty sonic assault on everyone’s eardrums with not one, not two but three er, three-piece bands.
I vaguely recall getting sent something about Hagana a few years back. Though they might not have hugely impressed me on record (assuming it’s the same band), live they pack a mighty punch with their grunge-flavoured rock. A mere two songs in, my ears are starting to ring, but it’s worth it. Even for the first support band, the audience are appreciative and up for it. By the final number (sorry, couldn’t catch any of the song titles), I find I’m planing to see them again.
Vasquez hail from Edinburgh and are shortly to release a new EP, their third. They’re purely instrumental, and they’re more in a Maths rock vein. Think Battles collaborating with Shellac. Just as awesome as that sounds. Whilst it’s hard with instrumentals to google the lyrics once you get back home, they are loud and entertaining and you can see the crowd wanting to dance. For a place that can be as reserved at gigs as Edinburgh -and I’ve lived here for many years – that is no mean feat.
Hugely impressed by Vasquez, any doubts about whether Fat Goth are going to be able to live up to their supports are blown away pretty quickly. As are my eardrums. This may partly be my fault for getting right down the front -and with Fat Goth that’s like the really loud bit in ‘Like Herod’ but all through the set. They’re clearly enjoying themselves, as are the audience.
Fat Goth kick off their set with ‘I Am Leg end’ (sic) and tear through their set, almost never pausing for breath. Except to make it clear that ‘Bang Tidy’ is nothing to do with Keith Lemon. It’s not always clear where one song ends and another begins (that may be my eardrums reeling), but my heart is wowed.
We stumble out, blown away by their noise, energy and sheer greatness. 3×3=a bloody great night.
You may be aware that not only has Avalanche Records in Edinburgh avoided closing, but that they are putting on gigs. A couple of weeks ago I went there to see Randolph’s Leap and Admiral Fallow, and very good it was too.
On Friday night, Olympic Swimmers and Admiral Fallow played. I wasn’t there – I was at Fat Goth’s album launch, review to come -but friends were, and I was directed to this from the gig. It’s the bands covering ‘Lovesong’ by The Cure, originally on Disintegration, their best album, and my favourite album of the last twenty-five years.
Enjoy!
Julian Cope -‘St. Julian.’ (Island/Universal)
Julian Cope’s third solo album from 1987 stands as one of the best things he’s ever done. Certainly, it’s an album I fell in love with when I first heard it (admittedly, a decade after its initial release), but I’m encouraged to say that twenty-five years plus after its release, this is an album that has dated extremely well.
After the split of the Teardrop Explodes, his first two solo albums World Shut Your Mouth and Fried gave the impression of someone who was heading down the Nick Drake or Roky Erikkson route. Now our hero embraced his inner rock God -far enough removed from the post-punk scene of Liverpool in the late 1970s to be able to do so -and got on with creating an album that consisted of brilliant anthems.
‘World Shut Your Mouth’ (the song, and nothing to do with the earlier album) saw him back on Top Of The Pops and writing a hit that would continue to be played decades later, and may well be his best- known song. But other songs -not just the singles ‘Trampoline’ and ‘Eve’s Volcano’ -like ‘Spacehopper’ and ‘Screaming Secrets’ showed someone who was becoming more comfortable in his own skin.
And yet he hadn’t forgotten we he had come from. The second disc includes b-sides and covers of ‘Non- alignment Pact’ and ‘I’ve Got Levitation’ and the evidence that he could still experiment. Like the recent Marianne Faithfull re-issue of Broken English, this is an album from Island’s back catalogue where not only is the main album great, but the second disc is illuminating into the making of the album.
Twenty-five years since this album, Cope continues to write, record and perform, not just as Julian Cope, but also waking up the world to Japanese Rock Music, reinvigorating an interest in krautrock at a time when Britpop was the norm, and an intense scholarly approach to stone circles. A true original, this is a welcome place to into the world of the self-styled Saint Julian.
****1/2
Saint Julian is re-issued by Island/Universal on February 4.
The album’s big hit on Top Of The Pops in 1986, with THAT curious mike stand…