Pssst…Like Rock? I think got something for ya. Like a disappeared postcard that got mailed 35 years ago, this showed up on my porch and promptly blew the doors off. It’s the first Rockets recording since they disbanded in the early ‘80’s.
Monster drummer and songwriter Johnny Bee Badanjek (think Detroit Wheels, Free Ride, Welcome To My Nightmare) has relaunched The Rockets with Jim Edwards - a fantastic singer, and a badass group of Detroit musicians.
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- By Geoff Ginsberg
- Hits: 6548
Rising from the ashes of trio Hy-Test, BRUCE! (capital letters compulsory) is a band from the once-industrial musical nursery of Wollongong, south of Sydney, that plays skull-crushing guitar rock with occasionally complex arrangements. This EP showcases four of their simpler tunes delivered to mostly damaging effect.
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 5775
It’s the third album for one-man bent bluesman Chicken Diamond and it marks another point on his descent into sonic hell. Ten songs of dirt-flecked distortion with a rusty sawtooth edge.
The Chicken’s coop is France where anything that has the odour of being musically underground is driven so far below the surface you’d need a miner’s helmet and a canary in a cage to find it. Thankfully, brave labels like Beast are around to facilitate tours of the aural subterranean catacombs and cast some light.
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 5508
Cypress Grove, one-time collaborator with Jeffrey Lee Pierce (check out their Rambling Jeffrey Lee LP - "Real Steel Blues") is unwilling to let the magic die. He feels Jeffrey’s echoes all around him.
So do his friends and admirers. One can’t help wondering whether, if Debbie Harry had predeceased him, Jeffrey might have been tempted to do a similar project for Her.
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- By Robert Brokenmouth
- Hits: 7190
“Yummy!” marked the Hard-Ons’ arrival on a major label's promotional roster and you had to be mad, deaf, both or no longer breathing not to hear the greatness in the songs. A decade-and-a-half later with a re-mastering job in place, it sounds even better.
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 6122
There’s a news story that’s been doing the rounds of mainstream media about a man with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder who was given a brain implant that turned him into a Johnny Cash fan.
If you want to delve further, the journal “Frontiers in Behavioural Neuroscience” (yeah, I read every issue) describes the case of “Mr B”, a 58-year-old Dutch man who had suffered severe OCD from the age of 13. The insertion of a brain pacemaker apparently turned him into a follower of The Man In Black.
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 7046
If Thee Oh Sees are a version of The Replacements for the Two-Thousand-And-Teens - as in critical darlings overlooked by the mainstream, including me in both instances - where does that leave Montreal’s PYPY? Playing this sort of fucked-up mix of psych, electronica and punk is not going you pigeonholed anywhere fast.
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 5647
Here’s an album that starts relatively sedately, grows a brass section and descends into off-kilter garage rock hell. If that sounds like a dissing, think again.
The Revellions are from Dublin in Ireland and have made a nine-song album of two distinct halves. The first recalls, at times, Boston institution The Lyres with its strong reliance on surging organ and wailing vocals, while the second goes to that noisy and mind-altered place where the Black Lips and The Oh-Sees reside. Soulful versus Trippy. Both bases covered.
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- By The Barman
- Hits: 5588
He writes songs in his sleep and records them before breakfast so assembling an album while on a two-year hiatus, back in his birthplace Australia, is no big deal for Simon Chainsaw, the Brazil-based power-punk road warrior. “Don’t Kill Rock ’n’ Roll” finds him in familiar surroundings, matching pop melodies with razor riffs in much the same way his Vanilla Chainsaws did 20-plus years ago.
- Details
- By The Barman
- Hits: 7793
More Articles …
- Playing With Fire - The Prehistorics (Kill City)
- Magical Dirt - Radio Moscow (Alive Natural Sound)
- Secret Fields, Spring Reverb, Personality Disorder Temperance League - Neptune Syline (Neptune Skyline Records)
- Golden Greats No. 1 – The Soundtrack Of Our Lives (Telegram Records)
- Feel It Like A Scientist - Chrome (King of Spades)
- River Mirrors - Infinity Broke (Come To The Dark Side Luke)
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Artifacts and reviews from days gone by.
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