Photo credit: Bill Wilcox

It’s now 20 years since then ex-Suede guitarist Bernard Butler linked up with the stunning singer David McAlmont for the first time, producing two classic singles in ‘Yes’ and ‘You Do’, both big hits, and with the attendant b-sides (remember those?) forming the basis of their debut album The Sound of McAlmont & Butler.

They’ve reunited subsequently throughout the last twenty years, as well as having successful solo careers, but with the news of a short tour in November, and a twentieth anniversary reissue of the debut album, why not share the stunning ‘no.8 hit that was ‘Yes?’ To me this is a song that still sounds fresh, whilst reminding me of the summer I left school. And still failing to understand why David McAlmont isn’t lauded as one of the best British singers of his generation. Funny buggers, humans…

And as a bonus, the other single they did in 1995 ‘You Do.’

The album is reissued on October 2 and the tracklisting is as follows:

1. Yes (Full Version)
2. What’s the Excuse This Time?
3. The Right Thing
4. Although
5. Don’t Call It Soul
6. Disappointment/Interval
7. The Debitor
8. How About You?
9. Tonight
10. You’ll Lose a Good Thing
11. You Do (Full Length Version)

Disc: 2

1. Yes
2. Yes (Four Track Demo)
3. Yes (Instrumental)
4. You Do
5. You Do (Mix 1)
6. Don’t Call It Soul
7. Don’t Call It Soul (Original Single Version)
8. How About You? (Original Single Version)
9. Tonight (Oompah Demo)
10. You Do
11. Walk On
12. Tonight (Overnight)
13. What’s the Excuse This Time?
14. Yes (Bernard Butler & Nigel Godrich 1995 Remix)
15. The Argument

The accompanying DVD is as follows:

1. Yes (Promo Video)
2. You Do (Promo Video)
3. Yes (‘Top of the Pops’, 18/05/95)
4. Yes (‘Top of the Pops’, 25/05/95)
5. Yes (‘Later. With Jools Holland’, 10/06/95)
6. You Do (‘Later. With Jools Holland’, 10/06/95)
7. You Do (‘Top of the Pops’, 02/11/95)
8. McAlmont Vs Butler (Interview)
9. Don’t Call It Soul (Live Acoustic, June 2015, London, NW6)
10. How About You? (Live Acoustic, June 2015, London, NW6)
11. You Do (Live Acoustic, June 2015, London, NW6)

One of the consequences of writing this blog over the last nine years or so is that I get invited to all sorts of events. Some of them are things in Australia and America but being based in Scotland means I can’t go.

And then sometimes, it’s something that’s happening just a few blocks away from where I live. Like on Friday night (August 7) when the Edinburgh International Festival launched with an amazing double bill of Beethoven and John Adams at the Usher Hall. I was privileged to be at the concert inside the Usher Hall of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasia in C Minor and John Adams’ Harmonium. Performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in conjunction with the Edinburgh Festival Chorus it was awesome.

And then outside we were treated to Harmonium again with projections by 59 Productions. Some kind person has recorded the entire event on their mobile – and it was great to see so many people (must have been 10,000) taking over the normally busy Lothian Road to watch and listen to awesome music.

It’s always pained me when people see something like classical music as being elitist and difficult to get into. It doesn’t have to be.

Take the time to watch this…

Read more about it here

Winter Villains -‘Once There Were Sparks, Now There Are Ashes.’ (Owlet Music)

Winter Villains are the Cardiff-based act Josef Prygodzicz and Faye Gibson. Descrined as being an experimental chamber pop-band, they could also be said to inhabit that relatively uncharted space where indie-pop meets post-rock.

‘Empire,’ the first single from this, their sophomore album is a perfect introduction: boy/girl vocals, deceptively simple and utterly heartbreaking. This track alone I could listen to for hours at a time (or my heart broke, which I think it could). Then there’s the beautiful ‘Hunters’ which is in waltz-time, and the experiments with a an ambient-meets pastoral sound on ‘We Lost Our Children To The Depths Of The Forest’ and the title track…I could go on.

As with labelmates Trwbador, there’s a sense of wonder at the sheer beauty, creativity and, Goddammit, originality that’s going on here. Are you ready to be heartbroken? Go on, you know you want to…

****1/2

Once There Were Sparks, Now There Are Ashes is out now on Owlet Music

Mark Lanegan -‘Imitations’ (Heavenly)

There’s something rather self-deprecating about the title of this, Mark Lanegan’s eighth studio solo album, and an album of covers. It’s almost as if he’s worried about how it will be perceived. Cover versions can end up flat on their face and an entire album’s worth can be disastrous. Of course, some can become so famous in their own right and take on an entire new life of their own. Trent Reznor has conceded that ‘Hurt’ belongs to Johnny Cash not Nine Inch Nails now. Sometimes it’s the arrangements that owe as much – for example, ‘Hallelujah’ is a Leonard Cohen original and most people will tell you that Jeff Buckley’s version is the definitive; the Buckley version is as much a cover of John Cale’s arrangement as it is of Cohen’s original.

Lanegan doesn’t need to be self-deprecating, because this is a gorgeous record in its own right. Some of these songs are those he picked up from his parents’ music collection, others that are more comparatively recent, like Nick Cave’s ‘Brompton Oratory’ or Hall & Oates’ ‘She’s Gone.’ ‘You Only Live Twice’ was originally sung by Nancy Sinatra for the fifth James Bond film of the same name; it has been said elsewhere that it resembles Lee Hazlewood’s version more than the Sinatra version – certainly, ‘those’ strings have gone – and yet the song holds together, frail yet stronger for it at the same time.

The song I have kept coming back to on here is ‘Solitaire’ – popularised by Andy Williams and The Carpenters, it could be utter schmaltz in the wrong hands (and I dare say not much digging around the internet will produce a mass of versions that are the very worst sort of karaoke). But in the hands of Mark Lanegan it is as heartbreaking as anything by The Smiths or Joy Division.

Like any album should do, it hangs together pretty damn near perfectly. How people react to it will vary on what relationship they have with the individual songs as well as Lanegan’s work elsewhere over the past few decades. But with a huge amount of new releases coming out between now and the end of the year, do not allow this to get lost.

****

Imitations is out now on Heavenly

Covers albums can be a hit or miss affair.

But the forthcoming, self-deprecatingly titled Imitations from Mark Lanegan really is a hit, and deserves to be.

In his own words ‘When I was a kid in the late sixties and early seventies, my parents and their friends would play the records of Andy Williams, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Perry Como, music with string arrangements and men singing songs that sounded sad whether they were or not.

“At home my folks were also listening to country music — Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, George Jones and Vern Gosdin were some of our favourites.

“For a long time I’ve wanted to make a record that gave me the same feeling those old records did, using some of the same tunes I loved as a kid and some that I’ve loved as I have gotten older. This record is it. Imitations.’

Amongst the songs covered are ‘You Only Live Twice’ -originally by Nancy SInatra and Nick Cave’s Brompton Oratory (originally on Cave’s The Boatman’s Call album).

The album’s released on Heavenly on September 16, in the meantime, check out these two gorgeous tracks from it…

Following on from 2011’s Red Barked Tree album, it has just been announced that Wire are to release a new album on March 25, entitled Change Becomes Us.

According to the press release: ‘In spring 2012, Wire’s plan had been to convene at Rockfield Studios in Wales to review the rudimentary blueprints of songs that had never made it beyond a few live performances in 1979 and 1980 – a time when the band-members were in creative overdrive yet the band itself was disintegrating. The aim wasn’t simply to resuscitate and record old songs; in fact, many of them hadn’t become proper songs in the first place, existing only as basic ideas or undeveloped parts. Rather, the objective was to approach that unrealized work as an oblique strategy, a potential springboard for Wire’s contemporary, forward-looking processes – a possible point of departure for new compositions.

‘This took place with Wire firing on all cylinders, as a four-piece studio entity again, the core line-up of Newman, Graham Lewis and Robert Grey now enhanced by guitarist Matthew Simms. Simms had played a key role in helping the band to cultivate and shape its new sonic landscape throughout the preceding year’s live work. Out of the exploratory Rockfield session and subsequent, extensive development and production at Newman’s Swim Studio, the ostensible source material became, in the classic Wire tradition, something quite other than what it may have once been – or what it might have become if it had been pursued in 1980.’

This track ‘Doubles and Trebles’ is the first track to do the rounds. See what you think…

There’s plenty of bands that mix indie and folk, but there’s something refreshing about the approach of Glasgow’s The Deadline Shakes to the way they do it.

They sound nothing like M*mf*rd *nd S*ns, but I hear hints of Belle and Sebastian and The Beach Boys here. The band are Greg Dingwall (vocals and guitar), Iain McKinstry (guitar), Martin McLeod (bass) and Tom Booth (drums). Having released their debut single ‘Sweeten The Deal’ earlier this month, this very day (November 23, 2012, fact fans!) they have released a free single via bandcamp:

This was their debut single, ‘Sweeten The Deal’:

More news when I have it -for now, enjoy!

Lead singer with London-based 6 Day Riot, Glasgow-born Tamara Schlesinger is shortly to release her new solo album The Procession, on August 6. This will come out via her own label, tantrum Records.

The first track to do the rounds is the single ‘Again.’ A deceptively simple song, built around looped a capella vocals, it is curiously addictive, and it feels like something is missing when it stops playing. It bodes well for the album, and shows why she’s made an impact on the folk scene as well as the indie scene.

The album, incidently, was funded by Creative Scotland. The album saw her record in her native Glasgow for the first time and experiment with a new sound and a new way of working, namely the aforementioned weaving of a capella vocals and working with what is hinted as being the cream of Scotland’s musicians. Check out ‘Again’ here: