Slug – Higgledy Piggledy. Solo project by mate of Field Music, and this is very much in the same ballpark as FM, particularly their earlier, spiky prog pop stuff rather than the more recent Hall & Oates meets 10cc vibe. Anyway, pretty good, if a bit clever clever overall.
National Jazz Trio Of Scotland – Standards vol IV. Bill Wells has been doing this kind of mellow avant pop thing for quite a while now, but this (I think) is a bit different, mostly due to the presence of singer Kate Sudgen, who has a hypnotically unaffected singing style. Seems strangely hookless at first, but it draws you in…
Cavern Of Anti-Matter – Hormone Lemonade
Sula Bassana – The Night. Most modern ‘space rock’ leaves me cold, but this from a few years ago is lovely, because it isn’t slavishly canonical: https://sulabassana.bandcamp.com/album/the-night
VA – Cosmic Machine. The French just love sci-fi disco.
Listen With Father:
Still blasting out my home-made rock comp on the way to school, which includes the utterly brilliant version of Joan Baez’s ‘Diamonds And Rust’ by Judas Priest. I was fascinated by this track when I was young, particularly the way it showed that a hard rock song could accommodate a literate vision without sounding clunky or wanky, “I’ll be damned, here comes your ghost again…” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLDazyvMMGw
The Vinyl Countdown – B:
Blind Idiot God – Undertow. BIG’s debut album is one of my all-time faves, but this follow-up is also tremendous. A band who should be a LOT better known/venerated than they are, they somehow manage to channel Black Flag, Jimi Hendrix, King Crimson, Sly & Robbie and Igor Stravinsky into a seamless whole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeFzmo-kAOU&t=274s
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