Anniversary Albums: Episode Twenty-eight - Primal Scream "Screamadelica" (1991)

This week on anniversary albums we took a look at Primal Scream's acid house classic "Screamadelica", Released in 1991 during the height of the rave and ecstasy scene in the UK, this album changed what was possible for indie bands in terms of musical experimentation, as well as gaining mainstream recognition. 

Primal Scream - Screamadelica

Tracks Played 

- Movin' On Up 

- Slip Inside This House 

- Don't Fight It, Feel It

- Come Together (7" Mix) 

- Sam 

Anniversary Albums: Edition Sixteen - The Smiths "The Queen Is Dead" (1986)

This week on anniversary albums we celebrate thirty years of The Smiths classic album "The Queen Is Dead". Released in 1986, this album is considered an indie classic and one of the defining albums of the 1980's. 

The Queen Is Dead

Songs Played

- Frankly Mr. Shankly 

- Cemetry Gates 

- Bigmouth Strikes Again 

- Vicar in a Tutu 

- There Is a light That Never Goes Out 

- Sam 

Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Multi-Love (2015)

Unknown Mortal Orchestra, ex-Mint Chicks front man Ruban Nielson’s offshoot project are quickly generating a strong musical cannon, and with it a large following, as they continue to make diverse and interesting sounding indie and psychedelic pop. The band’s first two albums “Unknown Mortal Orchestra” and “Unknown Mortal Orchestra II” were two solid first up efforts, however, their latest release “Multi-Love” trumps both of these as they explore new sounds in the form of funk, jazz and soul.

“Multi-Love” has quite an old-school authentic vibe to it both in terms of its sound and instrumentation. It has a very strong rhythmic feel in the drums and bass, while the added addition of horns and keyboards means this album has quite a poppy, almost Motown feel to it in places. This is a different path for the band, as previously their music held firm to that indie pop/dreamy psychedelic line, which I might add they did very effectively. But this new direction they have taken on this album is so damn catchy and sound so, so good. This is a late-60s/early-70s sound to my ears, but produced in a very contemporary fashion, I guess also highlighting Nielson’s skills as a producer more than anything and his strong ability to get the right sound for each song he composes.

The album kicks off with the title track “Multi-Love”. This is quite a poppy song and in the opening vocals has shades of early Queen, while that piano riff which drives the whole song is so effective, indicating also straight off the bat the funkier direction this album will head down. This is followed by “Like Acid Rain” which takes a more lo-fi direction, and as a track is very similar to their previous work. Next are two of the catchier tunes on the album in the form of “Ur Life One Night” and “Can’t Keep Checking My Phone”. These two tracks are perfect for the dance floor and I can see clubs going off to these with their dance-heavy beats, funk grooves and pop melodies. At this midway point of the album, things change direction again with the alternative jazz of “Extreme Wealth and Casual Cruelty”. This is a great track which shuffles along nicely before suddenly out of nowhere the jazz horns come in and you are instantly hit by their infectiousness. This is UMO doing their take on 80s sophisti-pop, where saxophones reigned supreme, and although some might accuse Neilson of sax crimes here, I think the added presence of horns shows how Nielson is willing to try new sounds and experiment when the song demands it. This is followed by “The World is Crowded”, a track with a pounding funky bass line, and what I would call the weakest track on the album “Stage or Screen”. The album then winds down with the psychedelic funk of the fantastically good “Necessary Evil”, one of the best tracks on the album, and finally album closer “Puzzles”, another track which resembles more closely the sound of their past material.

“Multi-Love” is a fantastic record and I congratulate Nielson for again evolving UMO’s sound and experimenting on this album. There are some seriously good tunes here which might even attract the band some new followers, while I am pretty sure these new songs will be great when performed live. UMO seem to be getting better with each new release they put out and “Multi-Love” proves this yet again in what is one of the catchiest pop/funk/soul/jazz/psychedelia albums you will hear all year. Listen to it now, you will not be disappointed.

A

- Sam  

Blur - The Magic Whip (2015)

Band reunions are a thing these days, and if they don’t actually happen, every week some rumor or another pops up about the potentiality of a reunion happening. What you do not often see though, is new material, usually it’s just artists living off past glories and churning out greatest hits sets left, right and center. Why, well usually any new material is never as good, while also when artists try and pimp their new material in concert, people inevitably cue for more beer or relieve themselves in the washer rooms. Somehow, I do not think this will be the case with Blur though as they prepare to tour their first album of new material featuring all members in sixteen years.

Yes, Blur have a new album out and it is called “The Magic Whip” and yes it is very, very good, so good in fact I would say it ranks up there with their best work from the 90s. The story behind this album is also quite interesting, as it started life as a series of jam sessions in between concerts on a tour to South East Asia, after an initial gig was cancelled. The band ended up in Hong Kong in a small back ally studio and played around with their instruments for a few days, not knowing the results would yield an album a couple of years later. The influence of the big city is seen lyrically and sound-wise throughout the album, with themes of over-population, urban life, crowded streets and being lost in the city coming through strongly in the songs. While musically, the band takes the opportunity to experiment with some different sounds not seen in their previous work. Despite new sounds such as reggae, experimental, soul and folk influences coming through in many of the tracks, this album does, however, have a sense of familiarity about it and one can certainly here Blur, Gorillaz and even Damon Albarn influences in its overall sound and feel. So I guess, it’s not entirely a complete departure, but more a varied and eclectic mix of the old and the new.

So for the songs themselves. Well the album kicks off strongly with the very “Great Escape” sounding “Lonesome Street”. This is classic Blur and bounces along with driving guitar and bass, while featuring a nice homage to Syd Barrett with Graham Coxon’s mid-song vocal. This track is followed by the Damon Albarnesque “New World Towers” which takes in the urban feel of Hong Kong in what is quite a melancholy explorative track. “Go Out” harks back to the “Blur” album with its distorted guitar driven lo-fi vibe, while “Ice-Cream Man” lyrically is quite Gorillaz-like with lines such as “here comes the ice-cream man” and “with a swish of his magic whip”. “Thought I Was a Spaceman” is one of the best songs on the album and one of the band’s best tracks overall I feel. In this spacey Bowie-sounding song, it starts off with just Damon singing, classical guitar and a drum machine loop before the band kicks and it turns in to this atmospheric driving pop track. Again, like on “Lonesome Street” Coxon wrote himself a little bit in the middle in what is a very effective and quite innocent vocal line “thought I was a spaceman digging out my heart”. This track is followed by another driving guitar track “I Broadcast”, while “My Terracotta Heart is Albarn’s melancholic take on his and Coxon’s friendship. From here, things diversify even more with the 80s new wave of “There Are Too Many of Us” which is full of synths and a marching drum beat, and the fantastic “Ghost Ship”, a reggae-sounding funk track which is another album highlight and probably the most out of the ordinary Blur song ever. The album then winds down with the gorgeous “Pyongyang” about Albarn’s trip to North Korea, the happy go lucky anthem “Ong Ong” and the country twang of Mirrrorball which closes out the album.

So in conclusion, “The Magic Whip” is a great return for Blur. It is their most diverse sounding album yet and musically is very interesting as they explore new things, while at the same time retain some of the classic Blur sounds. All band members are on fine form and you can really tell the guys are enjoying being back playing new music together. The band have already previewed the album live with some promotional gigs, including a great performance in New York, and as they kick off their official tour in the next few weeks watch for these songs to be well-received live. So all up, a great edition to the Blur cannon, and if this does end up being their last album, then “The Magic Whip” will be a fantastic way for them to go out on. 

A+

- Sam 

George Ezra - Waiting on Voyage (2014)

Waiting on Voyage is the debut album by twenty-one year old British singer/songwriter George Ezra, yet another in a long list of twenty-something year olds breaking through in this very in vogue acoustic-folk style. However, at the same time, this guy is quite different stylistically from the likes of Ed Sheeran and Jake Bugg largely thanks to his very distinctive singing voice.

George Ezra’s voice when you hear for the first time is a voice that you do not immediately think belongs to a twenty-one year old, and sounds more so like someone in their sixties, someone with years of singing behind them. With this in mind, I must confess that I don’t think I have heard a voice quite like this one on someone in the early stages of their career, and Ezra certainly has a voice way beyond his years. Sound-wise I would describe his voice as being a cross between Eddie Vedder and someone in the ilk of Robert Johnson, or other delta blues musicians, with its warm bluesy tone and deepness. It is this unique and very mature voice which more than anything ensures that Ezra’s music stands out within what is quite a saturated singer-songwriter market, and after hearing a couple of singles, made his debut album Waiting on Voyage that much more intriguing to find out if the songs themselves could match up to the singer.

Ezra’s music is very much acoustic-based (he uses a semi-acoustic guitar and occasionally a resonator) and contains a blend of folk, skiffle, blues, and pop. Yes the song-writing at this stage is quite simplistic and the music definitely owes a lot to Ezra’s unique voice and the overall sense of melody it portrays, but often when you have such a distinct sound in your armoury whether it be a distinctive guitar, or singing style, simplicity can work best, with complex arrangements or experimental sounds only working to distract the listener. With this in mind, at times the music on here does suffer a bit from over-production, with whoever is producing trying to give some of the tracks a modern pop kick to them, something which is totally unnecessary. Some of the tracks could do without the synths, sequencing and electronic backing as they do not add anything, and quite frankly do not work well with the style of music Ezra is playing.

So what tracks stand out on the album? Well the album kicks off with a great opener “Blame It on Me”, which contains some skiffle influences in the guitar playing and also has a great sing-a-long chorus, something most of the songs on here contain. “Budapest” is one of the singles on the album which began to get Ezra noticed in the music world, and is more a mellower folk track with a slight calypso feel to it especially in the vocals and guitar. It is on tracks like this one that you really get to hear the unique quality of Ezra’s voice and his very distinctive deep tone. “Cassy O” is the second single, and although lyrically it is a bit throw-a-way, it has a very nice country shuffle to it and does a good job in highlighting Ezra’s efficient rhythm guitar playing, a style that is quite experimental when it comes to different strum patterns. “Did You Hear the Rain” musically is perhaps the most interesting track on the record and begins with a very haunting delta-blues like moan, before Ezra begins singing a cappella in a deep bluesy voice which sounds as if it could have come straight from the cotton fields in the Southern states of America, it is truly something. The track then transitions into a bit of an alt-folk track full of mood and feeling in what is definitely one of the album highlights. “Drawing Board”, “Stand by Your Gun” and “Barcelona” are also other noteworthy tracks on what is a very varied album stylistically and one which keeps the listener guessing as to what will come next, with Ezra bouncing from style to style across each track. There are a few dud tracks on the record, namely “Leaving It Up to You”, “Breakaway” and “Over the Creek”, but on the whole these are the exception to the rule and do not really diminish the overall quality of the album.

Waiting on Voyage is a very interesting and eclectic first up effort from George Ezra. There are a lot of things going on here musically which stand out and the fact he is willing to move from style to style across the album is quite daring for a debut. At times the production does get a bit too much and sees some of the songs lose their focus a bit, with the production team going dangerously down the pop for pop sake road which tends to be employed a lot in this day and age. Despite this, there is definitely plenty to work with here and if anything his quite remarkable voice will ensure he has a future in the industry. It will be very interesting to see where he goes from here musically, especially as he begins to mature as a song-writer, while as the voice itself, maturity-wise is already there. 

A- 

- Sam 

Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Unknown Mortal Orchestra II (2013)

Unknown Mortal Orchestra are an American-New Zealand indie, psychedelic, alternative band which was started by ex-Mint Chicks singer Ruban Neilson in 2010. Neilson is accompanied on this venture by Jacob Portrait on bass and Greg Rogove on drums. And, after a solid debut in 2011 with their self-titled first album, the band has gone from strength to strength on their second outing, 2013s Unknown Mortal Orchestra II.

The band’s sound is what I would describe as being trippy neo-indie pscyhedelia, which comes right in the middle of a psychedelic rock/pop revival that seems to be in vogue these days. Although this album is not just about psychedelic music, and the music seems to go in all sorts of directions with funk, soul, prog rock and folk just some of the styles that have a heavy presence on the record, while a steady hip hop backbeat appears on most of the tracks as well. With quite an eclectic mix of styles, it is probably also suitable that the production of the album is quite lo-fi overall, something which brings to the fore the wonderful pop melodies, multi-layered psychedelic sounds and melancholic tones in Neilson’s falsetto vocals. Aside from his great vocals, Neilson’s guitar playing is also a strong feature on this album and although he is in no way a virtuoso, he does manage to mix his playing up between a more delicate textured style of playing, with a heavily distorted attack and the occasional baroque sounding flourishes.

As for the tracks themselves, well the album starts off brilliantly with “From the Sun”, a song which has an indie folk feel to it initially with some acoustic finger picking, before moving into a psychedelic pop track setting the tone for the direction of the rest of the album. This is followed by “Swim and Sleep” another psychedelic pop track which this time showcases Neilson’s diverse guitar playing with a baroque sounding guitar motif. The triple-whammy of great songs to start the album ends with one of the album’s best tracks in “So Good at Being in Trouble” which has a prog-rock undertone to it and as a song just floats along effortlessly allowing the listener to get lost in its melancholic beauty.

Things change direction again on “One at a Time” which has a bit of a funky feel to it with its heavily distorted funky guitar riff and drums, and sounds as if it could easily have been a demo for an early Funkadelic album or something similar. And, then its back again to psychedelia on the next track “The Opposite of Afternoon” which has more of a jam feel to it compared to the other tracks on the album with an extended instrumental break during the second half of the track. It is then at this point that the album begins to drift a little bit with a couple of lengthy psychedelic tracks which appear to just fill space more than anything in “Monki” and “No Need for a Leader”. This slight lul in the album is followed by the totally unnecessary token one minute instrumental “Dawn”. It is fair to say I have never understood why artists decide to include on albums totally pointless short instrumentals like this one, as they don’t add anything musically, while leaving the listener confused as to what they are hearing as they reach for the skip button. Luckily this slight drop in the middle of the album is not permanent and the album ends on a high with the psychedelic riff lade track “Faded in the Morning” which wouldn’t have sounded out of place in 1967, and finally album closer and candidate for song of the album “Secret Xtians” which has a very infectious groove especially in the bass and drum parts.

Overall, in conclusion I would say this album is a fantastic psychedelic pop album and betters the group’s first up effort which in itself was a great album. The tracks here are groovy and melodic, and combine psychedelic pop with other styles such as folk and even classical brilliantly in a blender of musical goodness. Unknown Mortal Orchestra II is perfect listening material for summer, but would also do very nicely as a tonic through the cold winter months. Definitely one of the albums of 2013, and I cannot wait to see where they go to next. 

A-

- Sam 

Jake Bugg - Shangri La (2013)

19 year old British singer-songwriter Jake Bugg’s rapid rise from obscurity over the last year has surprised many people, most of all the man himself. So quick has his music career gotten up and running he is already releasing his second studio album Shangri La. Bugg had been working in Malibu, California re-recording a song off his self-titled debut album with renowned American producer Rick Rubin when the sessions for Shangri la began. There was no plan to record an album, simply to play around with some songs and record them, something which ultimately developed into the recording of an album.

After the massive success of his self-titled debut which saw him being compared with Bob Dylan, Donovan and others, whilst also being seen as a saviour for music, Shangri La takes the folk sound of his debut but expands it to include other influencesThe Dylanesque folk is still there across the album, but Bugg also delves into punk rock, Brit pop, indie, rockabilly and even folk-jazz. The production on this album is also much greater; something that I guess comes with the territory of working with Rick Rubin, with a much bigger sound overall including a full backing band on most of the tracks. With his move towards a more electric sound, Bugg also had the opportunity to showcase more of his ability on the guitar, proving that he is just as good on the electric as he is on the acoustic. Although his delicate acoustic playing drew plenty of comment on his debut, the guitar remains almost a hidden bow within his repertoire and his playing often appears in the shadow of his vocal performances and song-writing which draws most of the attention. Speaking of his vocals, they continue to standout on this latest offering, if not sounding more mature and complete. Although that folk twang is still there in patches, Bugg also shows off his skills as a ballad singer showing there is a softer side to him as well.

This brings me then to the songs themselves of which many standout. The album begins with the interestingly named “There’s a Beast and We All Feed It”, a song which is similar in style to the more folk-oriented tracks on his debut and has a “Subterranean Homesick Blues” feel to it. This is followed by “Slumville Sunrise”, an electric rockabilly number that contains immense riffage and a pounding rhythm section. Already you can tell after these first two tracks how this album will be quite different from his first album in terms of its greater electric sound. As we head in to the middle part of the album, Bugg begins to change gear and spice things up a bit starting with the sweet indie-folk of “Me and You”. On this track Bugg combines some soothing acoustic playing with a delicate vocal that shows off his softer side, while proving his music isn’t all just built around a hard-edged country twang. This is followed by the anthemic “Messed Up Kids” which is sure to be a live favourite, and the beautiful ballad “A Song About Love” which in my mind could go down as Bugg’s best song to date. This beautiful ballad has a Nick Drake feel to it especially in the verses and sees Bugg show off his vocal range in the chorus proving he can belt out a ballad just as good as a folk rocker. The final part of the album continues the theme across the album where quality overrides filler on most occasions. “Kitchen Table” is a folk-jazz number similar in nature to John Martyn’s Solid Air and combines some great acoustic folk licks with jazzy electric piano flourishes and a great drum track. Then there is the gorgeous “Pine Tree”, an alt-country ballad featuring Bugg on his own singing and playing acoustic guitar in what is one of the more heart felt tender moments on the album. Finally, the album ends with the Neil Young sounding electric folk rocker “Simple Pleasures” and “Storm Passes Away” which sees Bugg end as he started with folk, this time in a similar mould to Woody Guthrie with this very rootsy country number.

Shangri La is a massive step forward for Bugg musically and showcases quite a lot of growth and progression from his first album. It is not a straight out country folk album and contains a lot more musical diversity on it than his debut. The greater role of electric instruments also adds another dimension to proceedings and gives Bugg’s sound that extra maturity, allowing him to play around more with musical ideas and different musical styles. He showcases a greater depth to his vocals, while the added bonus of having an greater electric sound allows him the chance to showcase his guitar playing more than he did on his debut. My only real criticism would be around some of the production which at times I feel Ruben overdoes. This is particularly the case in the adding of a rhythm section and a big drum sound to songs which would have sounded better stripped back with just Bugg playing guitar. However this is just a fussy observation more than anything and the production doesn’t take away from the quality of the song-writing. In conclusion then, I feel Shangri La is a more rounded album and improves on his debut, showing Bugg’s maturity as an artist and offering more versatility musically. All in all a very good album with some really well constructed and nice sounding songs by this great talent, showing that Bugg won’t be a one album flash in the pan.

 

A-

 

- Sam