Music Blog

All the music-related posts gathered together in one place.

Where is all the good music?

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Tim Hall

We’ve all heard friends like this. “There’s no good music around any more”, they say, like Homer Simpson. We know there’s all kinds of wonderful music out there in every genre from prog-rock to death metal to alt.country to electronic to solo bass to many many more that most people have never heard of. But they only know of the ITV Indie and Asda-pop of the commercial mainstream.

Steve Lawson said on Twitter

Ever heard anyone complaining that there’s no good music around any more? Those people are insane. Ignore them.

But I think Steve Lawson, thought he has a point, is still being a little bit on the harsh side, and although the people he rails about are indeed quite wrong, I can understand where they’re coming from.

When these people were in their teens and early 20s, they had plenty of time to discover new music. All the best music was well outside the commercial mainstream; they listened to the radio late at night, bought music papers, went to gigs, traded tapes with friends, all of it to discover the good stuff.

Now they’re older, with jobs and mortgages and kids, and they no longer have the time do that. All the new music they hear is the lowest common denominator slop served up by the mass media, drivel like X-Factor or daytime commercial radio.

What they forget is the mainstream media always was rubbish. At their seventies peak even huge selling acts like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin were conspicuous by their absence from TV or daytime radio, and people who weren’t active music fans were unaware of their existence. TV was filled with the likes of Brotherhood of Man and The Nolan Sisters in the same way as today has formulaic landfill indie.

Same as it ever was, if you want good music, you have to go look for it.

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Lou Reed & Metallica – Lulu

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Tim Hall

When I first heard the preview track “The View”, my first reaction was “What on Earth were Reed and Metallica thinking”? If you’re going to recite words over a rock backing, someone like William Shatner does that sort of thing far better.

Despite lyrics which have been described as sounding like the work of a 14 year old Goth, and an utterly uninspired sludge-metal backing, The View is by far the best thing on it. I have listened to the whole album all the way through (only the once, mind you), so that you don’t have to.

It’s awful.

There is no absolutely no evidence of the rhythmic inventiveness that made Metallica the genre-defining act of the 1980s on display on this record. I was tempted to say their contribution makes Load sound like Master of Puppets. But that would be most unfair on Load.  Much of what we have never rises beyond the level of formless jams which don’t deserve to be dignified by the word “song”. There’s no energy to any of it, either Hetfield’s sloppy tuneless strumming or Lars Ulrich’s appallingly half-arsed drumming.

The combination of Lou Reed’s incoherent and endless ramblings about sex and death and Urlich’s lumpen thud-thud-thud drumming is the sound of a ranting drunk at the bus stop fronting a broken cement mixer. And that’s the best bits.

I am entirely unsure as to what purpose this record serves. Is the whole thing an elaborate practical joke, and if so, at whose expense? Certainly the metal community has decided more or less unanimously decided that the emperor isn’t even trying to pretend he’s wearing any clothes here. Not being a Lou Reed fan, I have no idea if any of them will claim it a work of genius, just to be perverse.

This is a terrible record which will do nothing for the legacy of either artist.

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Chantel McGregor, The 100 Club, London

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Tim Hall

I first saw Chantel McGregor very low down on the bill at the Cambridge Rock Festival back in 2010, when she wowed the crowd with a blues-based set featuring some amazing guitar pyrotechnics, and left me wonder how someone so young could learn to play guitar like that. Her début album, “Like No Other”, released earlier this year, showed she could stretch beyond blues to hard rock and even pure pop. Now in the middle of an extensive club tour taking in venues throughout the UK, she came to London’s legendary 100 Club on Thursday night.

Fronting a classic power-trio with Richard Richie on bass, and Martin Rushworth on drums, Chantel cuts a diminutive figure on stage. But one thing I immediately noticed is now much more stage presence she has compared with a year ago. She’s not just playing dazzling guitar, although there’s never any shortage of that, but she’s now putting on a highly entertaining show too.

Her two hour set covered all the varied styles from her album, her take on some classic blues standards, and even extended to a prog interlude with a very heavy take on the closing “Worm” section of Yes’ “Starship Trooper”. Her guitar playing was as superb as I’d come to expect; the extended workout on Robin Trower’s “Dreams” was utterly mesmerising, and some spectacular one-handed playing reminded me of the late Randy California. Despite her obvious technical skill, there’s more than enough fire, soul and passion in her playing too. But it wasn’t all shredding guitar. The acoustic interlude that including her cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rhiannon” was beautiful, and certainly had something of an Odin Dragonfly feel about it.

Chantel is now far more than just a virtuoso guitarist, and far more than just a blues artist. The original material shows the work of a talented singer-songwriter who can write and perform in a host of diverse musical styles. And seeing her on stage it’s clear she’s rapidly developing into a confident and charismatic live performer too, a big smile on her face, exchanging between-song banter with the crowd all evening making for a great atmosphere, and rising above a few niggling technical problems to deliver an electrifying show.

Posted in Live Reviews, Music | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Touchstone / Heather Findlay, Bilston Robin 2

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Tim Hall

I love Bilston Robin 2 as a venue. With great sound, and some seriously professional promotion that means just about everyone who plays there draws a bigger crowd than anywhere else they play, it doesn’t have a reputation as one of Britain’s best rock clubs for nothing. The length of the queue just before the doors opened showed that yet again they’d pulled in the crowds even on a Sunday night.

Though Heather Findlay & Chris Johnson were “only” the support, with an hour-long slot the gig had feel of a something approaching a double headliner. There was certainly a buzz of anticipation before she came on stage, with an awful lot of familiar faces in the front row. Just as at The Borderline two days earlier, Heather had the audience’s rapt attention from the very beginning, and you could have heard a pin drop throughout the performance.

Apart from a few numbers from The Phoenix Suite, much of the set came from the Mostly Autumn and Odin Dragonfly back catalogue, including several Chris Johnson-penned songs. “Gaze” was lovely, and “Magpie” worked well too, with Chris somehow managing to play both the guitar and flute lines on his acoustic. The songs from The Phoenix Suite came over well in acoustic form, so much so that I’ve wondered if that was how they were originally meant to be performed. “The Dogs” from Halo Blind’s album “The Fabric” was an interesting choice; with a reworked ending incorporating a few bars of Heather’s “Red Dust”. But perhaps the highlight was a sublime Silver Glass, transposed from piano to guitar, with Heather singing lead, a performance which left me wondering why she didn’t sing lead on the original studio version.

Even without the power of a full band behind her, Heather came over as a class act; a superb vocalist and charismatic performer, and there’s more than a little of the vibe of her earlier acoustic side-project Odin Dragonfly about these shows. Chris Johnson, while never a flashy lead guitarist, deserves a lot of credit for the richness of sound he gets out of that battered acoustic guitar.

Having Heather touring with Touchstone seems to work well for both bands. Heather’s own fans certainly helped swell the crowds, and she went down well with Touchstone’s audience, such that the merch stand ran out of copies of both “The Phoenix Suite” and Odin Dragonfly’s “Offerings”. Indeed, the latter is now completely sold out and is to be remastered and reprinted. I think this success of this tour shows that she was wise not to follow the advice of those who claimed that supporting a band labelled as “prog” would damage her career because of the alleged stigma associated with the genre.

Touchstone themselves proceeded to awe the crowd with 90 minutes of full-on prog-rock. They’ve come an awful long way since I first saw them support The Reasoning way back in 2007 at the now-defunct Crewe Limelight. I’ve previously described them as prog-rock with the emphasis very much on rock, and rock they did. Their set was tight and full of energy, driven by the sort of enthusiasm of a band who are clearly enjoying every minute on stage.

On this tour they took the brave move of playing a set drawing very heavily from their latest album “The City Sleeps”, released just days earlier, which meant that something like two thirds of the show was brand new material. Much of the new music is epic and symphonic, huge wall-of-sound stuff with soaring melodies, although there are still plenty of places where they rock out. Moo Bass and Henry Rogers have always been one of the best rhythm sections in the scene, Adam Hodgson was on particularly fine form with some spectacular shredding guitar, and Rob Cottingham added swathes of colour on keys. As always, Kim Seviour makes an enthusiastic frontwoman with a tremendous stage presence. But it’s the undoubted chemistry of the five of them together on stage which makes them such a great live band.

On the strength of performances like that, with a record deal in their pocket, and an album that’s made the UK Rock chart to their name, Touchstone seem poised for a major breakthrough. And I’m sure that will be a good thing for all other bands in the “scene”.

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Sankara – Enigma

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Tim Hall

Sankara is the band formed by vocalist and keyboard player Gareth Jones and drummer Vinden Wylde, both formerly of The Reasoning, and guitarist Jay McDonald, formerly of The Bluehorses, with bassist Rhayn Jooste completing the lineup. “Enigma” is their first release.

The four track EP gets off to a strong start with the opening title track. Building from a piano arpeggio to a big soaring chorus the end result is a song you just can’t get out of your head. This and the following hard rocker “Exalted Star” with it’s growling riff and multi-layered vocal harmonies recall bands like Styx before they descended into cheese. The ballad “Lay My Body Down” is perhaps the weakest of the four songs, never really coming to life despite some good guitar work from Jay towards the end, but the EP ends on a high note with the hard rock of “Full Flow”.

This highly melodic mix of hard rock and AOR ballads is quite a way from the prog-metal leanings of Gareth’s and Vinden’s previous band. But there are still definite echoes of some of Gareth Jones’ earlier songwriting contributions for them, and his accomplished vocals prove he’s more than capable of fronting his own band, not that it was really in any doubt. On this disk he sings all the harmonies as well as lead, which makes me wonder how they’ll reproduce the songs live; I guess it depends on how well the rest of the band can cope on backing vocals.

This is a promising start for the band. Even if the production isn’t slick and polished, the quality of the songs and playing shine through, and I’m sure we’ll be hearing more good things from them in the coming months and years.

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Karnataka – The New Light Tour 2012

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Tim Hall

Atmospheric Celtic-tinged proggers Karnataka are back on the road in the new year with a new lineup. The New Light Tour runs through much of Feburary 2012. The 13 dates announced take in regular progressive rock venues like Montgomery Hall in Wath, Bury Met, and of course, The Robin in Bilston, as well as that strange little venue The Village Hall in Lowdham. A London date is also promised, with venue and date to be confirmed.

This tour marks the début of what is now the third incarnation of the band, with Hayley Griffiths as the new lead singer, and only bassist and leader Ian Jones and guitarist Enrico Pinna remaining from the band that recorded the superb The Gathering Light released in 2010.

It will be very interesting to see this version of Karnataka in action, and to see how well they manage to interpret the material from the two previous versions of the band. I’m hoping there will be some new songs in the setlist too!

Posted in Music, Music News | Tagged | 5 Comments

Don’t Buy the Pink Floyd Box Sets

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Tim Hall

I see there’s a shock-and-awe advertising campaign for the reissues of the classic 70s albums by Pink Floyd.

Yes, an album like Dark Side of the Moon is all-time classic which has stood the test of time and has finally emerged from the long shadow cast by of Punk to take its rightful place in the British Rock Canon. But let’s face it, if you really cared about the album, you’d already have it on CD, right?

September has been one of the best months for new progressive rock releases I can remember for a long, long time. In the space of two weeks there have been new releases by Dream Theater, Opeth, Anathema, Matt Stevens, Steve Hackett and Steve Wilson. That’s one hell of a lot of new music, and you can have all of it for the price of just one of the ridiculously overpriced “Immersion editions” that you’ll probably only ever listen to the once.

I realise the target market for these things is the middle-aged bloke who stopped caring about new music when he got married and had kids decades ago, and now in the throes of his mid-life crisis is desperately trying to reconnect with his long lost youth. He’s probably never even heard of Opeth.

Don’t be that guy. Don’t buy the box sets. Pink Floyd really don’t need your money. And EMI certainly don’t deserve it.

Posted in Music, Music Opinion | Tagged , | 38 Comments

Opeth – Heritage

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Tim Hall

Sweden’s Opeth have proved themselves one of the most original and creative prog-metal bands of the past decade. On recent albums such as “Ghost Reveries” and “Watershed” Mikael Ã…kerfeldt and his band balanced moments of delicate beauty with moments of brutal heaviness, and it was the way they seamlessly combined the two that was a big part of the appeal.

With their tenth album they could have taken the easy option of trying to repeat a successful formula. But instead they’ve taken an abrupt turn, and done something completely different.

Gone are the death-metal growls. While it still has it’s heavier moments it’s can’t really be described as a metal album. The whole thing has a warm, retro 70s vibe, with echoes of artists as diverse as King Crimson, Frank Zappa and Uriah Heep. There is still much here that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the quieter moments of the last couple of albums, and they still eschew traditional song structures in favour of complex epics with constantly shifting moods. Mikael Ã…kerfeldt again shows how good a vocalist he can be when he sings in a ‘clean’ style, and he’s got a keen ear for unorthodox but beautiful melodies.

Even with death-metal stripped out, it’s an enormously varied album. It begins with a very simple unaccompanied classical piano piece, a gentle lead-in for the delights to come. The hard rock of “Slither” with it’s barrelling rhythm comes over as a very deliberate homage to Deep Purple, with a riff and solo that’s pure Ritchie Blackmore. Then there’s the strongly jazz-tinged “Nepenthe” and “Hāxprocess”. An undoubted highlight is the penultimate track “Folklore” with a dramatic closing section which has to be one of the most exciting pieces of music I’ve heard all year. It ends, as it began, with an instrumental. The semi-acoustic “Marrow of the Earth” starts out sounding like a Blackmore’s Night piece, but builds to assume a melancholic grandeur beyond the scope of anything that band have done.

While this is likely to disappoint some out-and-out metal fans, this is still a very impressive release, and a strong candidate for progressive rock release of the year. There is endless debate in prog circles as to whether the term should refer to bands who try to capture the actual sound of classic 70s progressive rock, or for bands who evoke the same spirit of adventure of music without boundaries. Opeth are a rare band that fulfil both of these, sounding both unapologetically nostalgic and absolutely contemporary at the same time. Almost nobody else can pull that off as well as Opeth can.

Posted in Music, Record Reviews | Tagged | 4 Comments

Anathema – Falling Deeper

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Tim Hall

Anathema are a band whose music has changed a lot over the years. They started out playing doom metal, but later evolved towards avant garde progressive rock with strong influences of Pink Floyd and Radiohead. Very little trace of metal remains in their most recent albums.

“Falling Deeper” isn’t an album of new songs, but orchestral reinterpretations of their back catalogue, much of it from their very early metal years. It’s an ambitious project. The songs are completely reworked, stripped down and rebuilt so that only the basic chords and melodies remain.

This is really an album where you sit back and let it all wash over you. Although songs like “Everwake” feature the ethereal vocals of Anneke von Geirsbergen, much of the album is instrumental, with piano or strings taking the original vocal line. The result is an album of atmospheric soundscapes drenched in melancholy. With the repeated piano figures, e-bowed guitar and washes of strings it’s far removed from the doom metal of the original recordings. In places I can hear echoes of Sigur Ros and even Godspeed You Black Emperor. The magnificent “Sunset of Age”, which closes the album, is a case in point. Female vocals replace the original death metal growls, strings replace the grinding metal riff, and one of the most amazing moments is when the orchestra takes up the spiralling solo. Epic is an overused word, but it’s entirely appropriate for that song.

Pretty much at the opposing end of the progressive rock spectrum from the technical virtuosity of someone like Dream Theater, Anathema have delivered one of the surprises of the year. Even if the none of the songs are new, the new versions are so dramatically different it’s as good as an album of completely new material.

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Dream Theater – A Dramatic Turn Of Events

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Tim Hall

Dream Theater’s first album without founder member Mike Portnoy has been one of the most eagerly awaited releases of 2011. Following his somewhat acrimonious departure from the band many fans loudly declared that the band were finished without their charismatic drummer. But others, including myself, had felt the band had been coasting for the last few albums, and wondered if the enforced lineup change might be just be the thing the band needed to shake them up and make them hungry again.

I wasn’t sure about this album for quite a few spins. At first it felt like just another recent Dream Theater album, good but not especially outstanding. All the trademark sounds of the bands that defined prog-metal as a genre are there; machine-gun riffs, tricky time signatures, neo-classical piano fills, and of course all those solos. But on repeated listens the songs started coming alive and lodging in the brain. This is definitely an album that a bit of time before it hits home, but when it does, it hits hard.

There’s a noticeably stronger sense of melody than on recent albums, whether it’s the anthemic stadium-rock chorus of “Build Me Up, Break Me Down”, the gentle opening section of “This Is The Life”, or the piano-led ballad of “Far From Heaven”. James LaBrie, sometimes the weak link in the band, sings far more than he screeches, especially during the less heavy moments.

Naturally, being a Dream Theater album, there are still plenty of opportunities to showcase the band members’ virtuosity in some serious instrumental wig-outs. But this time the technically superb musicianship doesn’t completely overwhelm the songwriting. Petricci shines in particular, and his solo on “Breaking All Illusions” is one of the high spots of them album.

So, while this album isn’t quite a career-defining masterpiece, it is a significant improvement on the last couple of albums; “Breaking All Illusions” and “This Is The Life” have all the makings of Dream Theater classics, and there’s relatively little in the way of filler. As the first album with new drummer Mike Mangini the band have something to prove, and it shows.

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