FEATURE: Can You Hear Me: David Bowie’s Young Americans at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

Can You Hear Me

David Bowie’s Young Americans at Fifty

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I am looking ahead…

IN THIS PHOTO: David Bowie in 1975/PHOTO CREDIT: Photothèque Lecoeuvre

to 7th March and the fiftieth anniversary of David Bowie’s ninth studio album, Young Americans. This was a departure from the more Glam Rock-inspired albums that came before. Perhaps David Bowie does not hold Young Americans in the same regard as other albums. Produced by David Bowie, Harry Maslin and Tony Visconti, I am looking ahead to a big anniversary of an amazing David Bowie album. Perhaps an album that is more divisive than others, it would explain why there is less written about it than classics like Hunky Dory, Station to Station, “Heroes”, or The Rise and Fall if Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. It was a period of transition for David Bowie. 1974’s Diamond Dogs is another album that split critics. Bowie followed Young Americans with a golden run of albums that started with 1976’s Station to Station, then continued with Low (1977), “Heroes” (1977), then led to Lodger (1979) and Scary Monsters and Super Creeps (1980). Because the underrated Young Americans is fifty on 7th March, I think it is important to acknowledge Young Americans. I will start out with a feature from Far Out Magazine that was published in 2022. They revisited a divisive album that has gained more acclaim and interest after its release. It still does not find fans in all quarters:

“David Bowie’s 1975 album Young Americans is perhaps one of the least Bowieesque albums he ever made. There’s none of the glitter, none of the theatrics, and little in the way of glam-era guitar pyrotechnics. Put it next to his previous album, 1974’s Diamond Dogs, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that Bowie was abducted during his American tour and replaced with an imposter – Avril Lavigne style.

Of course, his fans had come to expect these swift transformations; they were an essential part of the Bowie experience. But this shift felt slightly different, largely because it was the first time Bowie had decided to strip away a layer of artifice rather than paint on a new one. In this way, Young Americans was the first album in which Bowie was being himself – or at least attempting to.

Young Americans was written and recorded during one of the most fruitful and troubled periods of Bowie’s life. Anyone who has watched the infamous Dick Cavett show interview in which Bowie is clearly blitzed out of his mind on cocaine knows that the mid-’70s marked the beginning of the drug years. As he told Rolling Stone in 1993, “I started on the drugs at the end of 1973 and then with force in 1974. As soon as I got to America, pow! It was so freely available in those days. Coke was everywhere. … Because I have a very addictive personality, I was a sucker for it.”

However, that same American tour would also introduce him to the world of soul. At a time when he was desperate to jump off the glam bandwagon before it was too late, American dance music offered a way out. Bowie’s desire to reset saw him slowly replace his entire band. As he worked his way across America, the original musicians fell away one by one until he was left with a brand new line-up, many of whom had ties to funk, R&B, and soul. After getting in touch with Tony Visconti, Bowie set about recording Young Americans with the help of Isley Brothers bassist Willie Weeks, Sly and the Family Stone drummer Andy Newmark, Pianist Mike Garson and saxophonist David Sanborn; and vocalists Ava Cherry, Robin Clark, and Luther Vandross.

Vandross, Cherry and Clark would turn out to be one of the driving forces on the album, frequently taking the lead vocal role and allowing Bowie to slip into the background for the very first time. Indeed, it was Vandross who came up with the chorus for ‘Young Americans’. As the singer recalled in 1987, he approached Clark during a session and said: “What if there was a phrase that went, ‘Young American, young American, he was the young American – all right!’ Now, when ‘all right’ comes up, jump over me and go into harmony.” Bowie apparently overheard the conversation and ran with the idea.

This wasn’t an isolated incident. The production of Young Americans is littered with examples of Bowie collaborating with his session band in such a way that he ceased to be the auteur. This was the birth of Low and Let’s Dance-era Bowie, who thrived on what the musicians he was working with bought to the table.

And yet, for many fans at the time, Young Americans felt like a wrong turn. You can’t blame them either. The album was a complete overhaul of style, which alienated much of Bowie’s original UK fanbase while putting off new listeners with that near-parodical cover of The Beatles’ ‘Across The Universe.’ It’s possible to argue that if it wasn’t for the likes of ‘Fame,’, ‘Fascination’, and ‘Young Americans’ the album would be a complete washout. That being said, it’s impossible to imagine Bowie’s later albums without Young Americans.

The record marked a distinct shift not only in Bowie’s sonic world but in his whole approach to production. With its minimalist soul aesthetic, the album has aged remarkably well and still looks and sounds much cooler than anything on Diamond Dogs. So while Young Americans continues to divide Bowie fans, I don’t think I’d have it any other way”.

I want to include as much as I can about Young Americans. As I said, there is not as much written about it as there should be. A sense that this is a minor or patchy work from David Bowie. Between this Ziggy Stardust and Thin White Duke personas, many critics write off Young Americans as transitional. Inauthentic Soul. Bowie himself called it Plastic Soul. On Young Americans, Bowie was one of the first mainstream white artists to embrace Black musical styles. In the years after Young Americans was released, artists such as Elton John, Roxy Music, Talking Heads and ABC mixed Funk and Soul. Young Americans was referenced by artists such as George Clinton and James Brown. It influenced other Funk artists but also had an impact on early Hip-Hop artists of the early-1990s. Young Americans was voted Bowie's ninth best album in a 2013 readers' poll for Rolling Stone. Also in 2013, NME ranked the album at number 175 in its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. I am moving on to a feature from Albumsim. They celebrated fort-five years of Young Americans:

“David Bowie made a career out of steadily changing his style of music and reinventing his onstage persona. 1974's Diamond Dogs was his transition out of his Ziggy Stardust phase and into what Bowie described as his "plastic soul" stage, which gave us the album Young Americans.

This period produced what is arguably one the most fruitful and creative periods in Bowie's career. It was also his most troubled. In a 1999 performance on the VH1 series Storytellers, Bowie stated, "1975 and 1976 and a bit of 1974...and the first few weeks of 1977, were singularly the darkest days of my life. It was so steeped in awfulness that recall is nigh on impossible, certainly painful." Bowie's growing cocaine addiction was a contributing factor to this dark period, yet he made an album that would become his best-selling album at the time.

Over many decades, numerous British musicians have enthusiastically demonstrated their love and affinity towards American R&B/Soul music and Bowie was no exception. For his new, soulful sound, Bowie wanted to hire some new musicians and he gave his assistant a wish list, which included MFSB, the house band for Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia. The strings and horn-laden music that was predominant in what was called the Philly Sound commanded the radio airwaves and the charts at this time. Groups like Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, the Three Degrees, and the aforementioned MFSB had great success around this time and most of their music was recorded at Sigma Sound Studios.

Bowie couldn't manage to get MFSB because they were unavailable, so he used a variety of musicians including some members of his touring band and newcomers, Bassist Willie Weeks and veteran session drummer Andy Newmark (Sly & the Family Stone, Roxy Music). Guitarist Carlos Alomar took on the role of music director to help Bowie flesh out what he wanted Young Americans to sound like.

The initial recordings began in August of 1974 at Sigma Sound. Bowie brought in longtime collaborator Tony Visconti to produce and engineer the record because he didn't like the results coming from the studio’s house engineer, Carl Paruolo. He wanted to record the album with the full band playing as opposed to recording each part separately, so he needed someone at the boards that he was familiar with.

During one of the sessions, Alomar brought his wife, backup singer Robin Clark, and Luther Vandross to watch the band work on the title track. As the session went on, Vandross came up with an idea that would eventually become one of music's most recognized choruses. Vandross told SPIN Magazine in 1987 about a conversation he had with Clark during the session, recalling that he had suggested, "What if there was a phrase that went, 'Young American, young American, he was the young American – all right!’ Now, when ‘all right’ comes up, jump over me and go into harmony." Bowie overheard the conversation and thought it was a brilliant idea. He invited the pair to join the session. Bowie began to consult with Vandross about many of the songs, which led to him (Vandross) arranging all the vocals and singing backup with Clark and Ava Cherry, who was Bowie's girlfriend at the time. The entire song was recorded live with the band with the exception of David Sanborn's saxophone, which was added later.

Another important Vandross contribution to Young Americans was a song he was working on called "Funky Music.” While working on the arrangements for the album, Vandross was singing "Funky Music" and Bowie heard the song and asked if he could record it. Vandross replied "You’re David Bowie. I live at home with my mother, you can do what you like." Bowie made some revisions and re-titled the song "Fascination,” with Vandross getting a co-writing credit. The bulk of the songs were written at the studio with Bowie giving the musicians room to collaborate. When listening to Young Americans, you get a sense of chill. No pyrotechnics or gimmicks that might have been associated with Bowie's previous output.

Bowie had been known to be a tireless worker in the studio, but on Young Americans, he worked even harder than he had before. He wanted commercial success in the States and to make a record that honored a genre that he loved and respected.

Bowie regretted calling his album "plastic soul" and in an interview with Q Magazine in 1990, he stated, "Yes, I shouldn’t have been quite so hard on myself, because looking back, it was pretty good white, blue-eyed soul. At the time I still had an element of being the artist who just throws things out unemotionally. But it was quite definitely one of the best bands I ever had. Apart from Carlos Alomar there was David Sanborn on saxophone and Luther Vandross on backing vocals. It was a powerhouse of a band. And I was like most English who come over to America for the first time, totally blown away by the fact that the blacks in America had their own culture, and it was positive and they were proud of it. And it didn’t seem like black culture in Britain at that time. And to be right there in the middle of it was just intoxicating, to go into the same studios as all these great artists, Sigma Sound. Good period—as a musician it was a fun period.”

Bowie finished recording Young Americans in eleven days, recording at least one track a day. During the time at Sigma, a group of Bowie fans waited outside the studio, hoping to get at least a glimpse of him and on the final day of recording, he brought them in to listen. After listening to the album a second time, an impromptu dance party broke out. Confident that he had an almost completed album that only needed to be mixed, Bowie took his band back on the road to finish the Diamond Dogs tour, which was now dubbed the Soul Tour. At that point in time, the track list for the album did not include two songs that were on the final product.

Under the impression that Young Americans was done, Visconti returned to England to work on other projects. Towards the end of 1974, Bowie struck up a friendship with John Lennon, which resulted in them getting together at Electric Lady Studios in January 1975. In the studio, Alomar had been working on a riff and when Lennon heard it, he started to sing the word "aim" over it. Bowie changed the word to "Fame" and began writing lyrics based on a conversation he had with Lennon about the horrible things that come along with stardom: the entourages, dubious managers, and the shallowness of the rock & roll lifestyle, among other burdens. Bowie also recorded a cover of the Beatles’ "Across the Universe.” Much to his chagrin, Visconti was not present for this session. In his autobiography, Visconti reflected, "I have to go down on record as saying that I love ‘Fame’ and would’ve liked to be a part of the team that made it. Maybe this was my karma for refusing to record ‘Space Oddity’ (I jest)."

Bowie's Young Americans stands out in his prolific discography because nothing else in his catalog sounds like it. It was a much needed break from his previous records. It still holds up and is a great lead-in to Station to Station (1976). It's unquestionably one of Bowie's best”.

I am going to end with a Pitchfork review of Young Americans. Reviewing it shortly after David Bowie’s death in 2016, they wrote how “Young Americans represented David Bowie's dive into soul music, particularly Philly Soul. Containing the stunning funk single "Fame," the album felt like a vehicle for Bowie to address one of his favorite topics—pop stardom—from a new angle, at a moment when it seemed likely to destroy him”:

“In the summer of 1974, as he was traveling across America on his mammoth Diamond Dogs arena-rock tour, David Bowie got deeply into soul music. By July, he was spiking his live sets with covers of the Ohio Players' "Here Today and Gone Tomorrow" and Eddie Floyd's "Knock on Wood," but he was even more interested in what was happening in dance clubs—particularly the new disco coming out of Philadelphia International Records. Bowie booked a mid-tour recording session at Sigma Sound, the studio where Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff were constructing the sound of Philadelphia. But he wasn't working with Gamble and Huff, or indeed any of the studio's house musicians: He had something else in mind.

The soul-inspired album that came out of the Sigma Sound recordings, Young Americans, was yet another new direction for an artist who staked his career on ceaselessly finding new directions. It was also the first time he’d made an album whose chief purpose was pleasure. There’s nothing like the apocalyptic visions of Ziggy Stardust and Diamond Dogs on Young Americans; it’s as smart as anything he’d recorded before it, but also relaxed and limber-hipped enough for his hardcore fans’ less alienated big sisters and little brothers to get into. And it was the first of his records to feature Carlos Alomar, the ingenious rhythm guitarist who would become his live band’s musical director for more than a decade.

Bowie had met Alomar at a session early in the year, when he'd produced the Scottish pop singer Lulu's covers of his own "The Man Who Sold the World" and "Watch That Man." He drafted Alomar in to play at the Sigma Sound sessions, and Alomar brought along a couple of singers: his wife, Robin Clark, and his best friend, the then-unknown Luther Vandross. Always quick to recognize talent, Bowie immediately got Vandross and Clark in on the recording.

At those sessions, Bowie recorded enough songs for an album (reportedly meant to be called either "The Gouster" or, more cynically, "Shilling the Rubes")—although it would've been very different from the Young Americans we know today. Its most radical gesture would have been "John, I'm Only Dancing (Again)," a rewritten and discofied version of a snarling, homoerotic glam-rock single from three years earlier. (Bowie didn't actually release "John, I'm Only Dancing (Again)" until 1979; it was a minor hit in England and ended up on his Changestwobowie compilation.)

"Young Americans" the song was a hybrid of contemporary soul (the Vandross-led backup singers were all over it), the hyper-emotive '50s singer Johnnie Ray, and—another recent obsession of Bowie's—the up-and-coming New Jersey songwriter Bruce Springsteen, whose song "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City" Bowie covered at Sigma Sound. It was also very current: Bowie sang "Do you remember President Nixon?" in the middle of a song he'd started recording three days after Nixon's resignation.

After that initial burst of productivity, the Diamond Dogs tour resumed, now so deeply influenced by Philadelphia soul that it was nicknamed the "Philly Dogs" tour. Bowie ditched most of his elaborate stage design, and added an opening set by the "Mike Garson Band"—his own group, fronted by Vandross and Clark. (Their set included a terrific Vandross original, "Funky Music," as well as a reworked version of Bowie's hippie mantra "Memory of a Free Festival.") One of the new additions to Bowie's own set was a medley of the Flares' "Foot Stompin'" and the old jazz standard "I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate," powered by a funk riff Alomar had come up with.

When the group returned to the studio in November to try to get a little more uptempo oomph into the album, they unsuccessfully tried to record "Foot Stomping." They did, however, come up with two killer additions to Young Americans: Bowie's dreamy, spiraling slow one "Win," and his lyrical rewrite of Vandross's "Funky Music" as the haunting "Fascination."

Bowie had also befriended John Lennon around that time, and invited him along to play guitar on a cover of his Beatles-era song "Across the Universe" at a final session in January, 1975. (Also present then, for the first time on a Bowie record: drummer Dennis Davis, who would go on to be the hidden rhythmic genius of all of his records up through 1980's Scary Monsters.) "Across the Universe" is the album's one genuine embarrassment, Vegas-y and bathetic. But bringing Lennon in yielded an unexpected dividend: Alomar's "Foot Stompin'" riff, a bit of arrangement brainstorming from Lennon, and a sharp, bitter lyric from Bowie combined, very quickly, into the stunning funk track "Fame." (Young Americans ended up being curiously Lennon-heavy: there's even a slightly mangled line from "A Day in the Life" in the middle of "Young Americans.")

"Fame" was a knockout, the song that gave Bowie his first American #1 single, and the soul world that he so admired took it to heart. By November, 1975, it landed Bowie on "Soul Train." (He wasn't the first white solo performer to play the show, but he was close.) George Clinton, by his own admission, modified its groove into "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)." And James Brown paid Bowie the ultimate backhanded compliment: The instrumental track of his 1976 single "Hot (I Need to Be Loved, Loved, Loved, Loved)" was a note-for-note duplicate of "Fame."

In the context of Bowie's flabbergasting '70s, Young Americans is distinctly a transitional record. It doesn't have the mad theatrical scope of Diamond Dogs or the formal audacity of Station to Station; at times, it comes off as an artist trying very hard to demonstrate how unpredictable he is. You couldn't mistake it for an actual Philly soul record, although like the LPs Bowie was devouring at the time, it often comes off as hits-plus-filler. Still, a good deal of the filler is lovely, and recording funk and disco in 1974 put him way ahead of the curve. While there had already been a handful of disco hits on the pop charts, no other established rock musician had yet tried to do anything similar, and Bowie pulled it off in a way that not only didn't seem crass but gave Luther Vandross his big break”.

I do hope that Young Americans gets more attention and love in future years. People noting its huge influence. Even if it was not what people were used to or expected from David Bowie, it was much more than him inauthentically trying out Funk and Soul. Also, the albums sports some of Bowie’s final material. Songs like Fame and Young Americans. Timeless songs Another reinvention and music evolution that Bowie pulled off with aplomb. On 7th March, it will be fifty years since Young Americans weas released. I think it is among Bowie’s best albums. It is a piece of his musical history that warrants…

MUCH more respect.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Bob Marley at Eighty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: David Burnett

Bob Marley at Eighty

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IT may sound maudlin…

marking the birthday of an artist that is no longer with us. However, as this artist is Bob Marley, it is well worth paying tribute to him. On 6th February, it would have been his eightieth birthday. Someone who has this incredible legacy and influence, I will end with a playlist combining the best Bob Marley music. Much of it with The Wailers. I am starting with this biography from AllMusic:

“Reggae's most transcendent and iconic figure, Bob Marley was the first Jamaican artist to achieve international superstardom, in the process introducing the music of his native island nation to the far-flung corners of the globe. Marley's music gave voice to the day-to-day struggles of the Jamaican experience, vividly capturing not only the plight of the country's impoverished and oppressed but also the devout spirituality that remains their source of strength. Backed by his all-star band the Wailers, Marley delivered classics in the ska era of the early '60s, all but invented roots music with '70s albums like Catch a Fire, and offered millions of listeners an entry point to reggae with his posthumous best-of collection, 1984's Legend. His songs of faith, devotion, and revolution created a legacy that continues to live on not only through the music of his extended family but also through generations of artists around the world touched by his genius.

Robert Nesta Marley was born February 6, 1945, in rural St. Ann's Parish, Jamaica; the son of a middle-aged white father and teenaged Black mother, he left home at 14 to pursue a music career in Kingston, becoming a pupil of local singer and devout Rastafarian Joe Higgs. He cut his first single, "Judge Not," in 1962 for Leslie Kong, severing ties with the famed producer soon after over a monetary dispute. In 1963 Marley teamed with fellow singers Peter Tosh, Bunny Livingston, Junior Braithwaite, Beverly Kelso, and Cherry Smith to form the vocal group the Teenagers; later rechristened the Wailing Rudeboys and later simply the Wailers, they signed on with producer Coxsone Dodd's legendary Studio One and recorded their debut, "I'm Still Waiting." When Braithwaite and Smith exited the Wailers, Marley assumed lead vocal duties, and in early 1964 the group's follow-up, "Simmer Down," topped the Jamaican charts. A series of singles including "Let Him Go (Rude Boy Get Gail)," "Dancing Shoes," "Jerk in Time," "Who Feels It Knows It," and "What Am I to Do" followed, and in all, the Wailers recorded some 70 tracks for Dodd before disbanding in 1966. On February 10 of that year, Marley married Rita Anderson, a singer in the group the Soulettes; she later enjoyed success as a member of the vocal trio the I-Threes. Marley then spent the better part of the year working in a factory in Newark, Delaware, his mother's home since 1963.

Upon returning to Jamaica that October, Marley re-formed the Wailers with Livingston and Tosh, releasing "Bend Down Low" on their own short-lived Wail 'N' Soul 'M label; at this time all three members began devoting themselves to the teachings of the Rastafari faith, a cornerstone of Marley's life and music until his death. Beginning in 1968, the Wailers recorded a wealth of new material for producer Danny Sims before teaming the following year with producer Lee "Scratch" Perry; backed by Perry's house band, the Upsetters, the trio cut a number of classics, including "My Cup," "Duppy Conqueror," "Soul Almighty," and "Small Axe," which fused powerful vocals, ingenious rhythms, and visionary production to lay the groundwork for much of the Jamaican music in their wake. Upsetters bassist Aston "Family Man" Barrett and his drummer brother Carlton soon joined the Wailers full-time, and in 1971 the group founded another independent label, Tuff Gong, releasing a handful of singles before signing to Chris Blackwell's Island Records a year later.

Catch a Fire, the Wailers' Island debut released in 1973, was the first of their albums released outside of Jamaica, and immediately earned worldwide acclaim; the follow-up, Burnin', launched the track "I Shot the Sheriff," a Top Ten hit for Eric Clapton in 1974. With the Wailers poised for stardom, however, both Livingston and Tosh quit the group to pursue solo careers; Marley then brought in the I-Threes, which in addition to Rita Marley consisted of singers Marcia Griffiths and Judy Mowatt. The new lineup proceeded to tour the world prior to releasing their 1975 breakthrough album, Natty Dread, scoring their first U.K. Top 40 hit with the classic "No Woman, No Cry." Sold-out shows at the London Lyceum, where Marley played to racially mixed crowds, yielded the superb Live! later that year, and with the success of 1976's Rastaman Vibration, which hit the Top Ten in the U.S., it became increasingly clear that his music had carved its own niche within the pop mainstream.

As great as Marley's fame had grown outside of Jamaica, at home he was viewed as a figure of almost mystical proportions, a poet and prophet whose every word had the nation's collective ear. His power was perceived as a threat in some quarters, and on December 3, 1976, he was wounded in an assassination attempt; the ordeal forced him to leave Jamaica for over a year. Released in 1977, Exodus was his biggest record to date, generating the hits "Jamming," "Waiting in Vain," and "One Love/People Get Ready"; Kaya was another smash, highlighted by the gorgeous "Is This Love" and "Satisfy My Soul." Another classic live date, Babylon by Bus, preceded the release of 1979's Survival. Kicked off by a concert in the newly liberated Zimbabwe, 1980 loomed as Marley's biggest year yet; a tour of the U.S. was announced, but he collapsed while jogging in New York's Central Park, and it was discovered he suffered from cancer that had spread to his brain, lungs, and liver. Uprising was the final album released in Marley's lifetime -- he died May 11, 1981, at age 36.

Posthumous efforts including 1983's Confrontation, the best-selling 1984 retrospective Legend, and the 2012 documentary Marley kept the man's music alive. In the wake of her husband's passing, Rita Marley scored a solo hit with "One Draw," but despite the subsequent success of singles "Many Are Called" and "Play Play," she had largely withdrawn from performing by the mid-'80s to focus on raising her children. Oldest son David, better known as Ziggy, went on to score considerable pop success as the leader of the Melody Makers, a Marley family group comprising siblings Cedella, Stephen, and Sharon; their 1988 single "Tomorrow People" was a Top 40 U.S. hit, a feat even Bob himself never accomplished. Damian Marley, Bob's youngest son, embraced a musical style that integrated reggae, R&B, and hip-hop, and in 2005 he scored a major hit with the single "Welcome to Jamrock." Damian has also collaborated with the likes of Mariah Carey, Bruno Mars, and Sean Paul. Ky-Mani Marley, whose music also fuses elements of reggae and hip-hop, made his international breakthrough with the 2000 album The Journey and the single "Gotta Be Movin' on Up," a collaboration with the conscious hip-hop duo P.M. Dawn. And Damian and Ziggy's half-brother Julian Marley (he grew up in England with his mother, Lucy Pounder) released his debut album, Lion in the Morning, in 1996, going on to earn a Grammy nomination for 2009's Awake.

Marley himself remained synonymous with reggae's worldwide popularity long after his death, and the wealth of music he left behind was repackaged, remixed, re-examined, and re-released regularly throughout the decades in the form of both legitimate projects and a never-ending string of bootleg releases. Apart from the obvious impact of Legend (which was certified platinum more than 15 times over and holds the distinction of best-selling reggae album of all time,) other releases of note issued after Marley's death include 1999's Chant Down Babylon, a hip-hop reworking of Marley classics that boasted contributions from the Roots, Lauryn Hill, Rakim, and others and 2009's B Is for Bob, which reimagines selections from his catalog as children's songs. In 2023, Island Records produced and released Africa Unite. Titled after the sixth track on Marley’s 1979 Survival album, it offered a roster of contemporary Afrobeat artists including Tiwa Savage, Sarkodie, Utty O, Winky, Afro B, , and Patoranking -- all adding their voices and rhythms to the Wailers' enduring songs”.

On 6th February, the world will mark Bob Marley’s eightieth birthday. I hope there is a lot of celebration around his music and what he left the world. Never forgotten, he is one of these artists we will be talking about for generations. His fire keeps burning strong. This is a salute to…

A true legend.

FEATURE: Do You Know What I Really Need? Kate Bush’s Title Track, Hounds of Love, at Thirty-Nine

FEATURE:

 

 

Do You Know What I Really Need?

Kate Bush’s Title Track, Hounds of Love, at Thirty-Nine

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I have written a lot…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush behind the camera whilst directing the video for Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

about this particular track. Every year on its anniversary, I like to return to it. As it is thirty-nine on 17th February, it is important to spend some time with the majestic and emotional Hounds of Love. New perspectives on the track. The third single from the album of the same name, it reached eighteen in the U.K. It seems outrageous that a song so iconic and genius barely cracked the top twenty! There are a few reasons why I want to write about this song once more. Apart from the anniversary angle, it is also considered by some to be Kate Bush’s finest songs. Always a tussle between this, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and maybe Wuthering Heights. I think this single also contained some of her most interesting B-sides. On the U.K. 7” was The Handsome Cabin Boy. A very different song to Hounds of Love, The Handsome Cabin Boy portrays a common sailor's dream that among the crew is a girl dressed as a boy. It is a traditional song Bush gave her spin to. Burning Bridge was the B-side of the U.S. 7”. Bush sees this song as positive and trivial, with superficial lyrics. She knew it was going to be the B-side of Cloudbusting (the second single from Hounds of Love), but I like the fact it reached the U.S. audience as the B-side for Hounds of Love. In terms of the musicians who played on Hounds of Love, it is percussion-heavy. Stuart Elliott and Charlie Morgan handling percussion duties. Kate Bush handling Fairlight CMI, Yamaha CS-80, with some stirring and beautiful cello from Jonathan Williams. Such an epic and big track that sounds like more people are on it. I would have loved to have been in the studio – her bespoke studio at East Wickham Farm – when this song was being recorded. Bush providing these simply incredible vocals. I will dive into the song in a second. In terms of its meaning, and when Bush sings about being chased by love’s hounds, it is not necessarily so they can attack her. Maybe just play with her. Her running away could be because she feels love will eat her and cause harm. Instead, she might be fearful of love in general, not realising it can be a good and positive thing.

It is perhaps no surprise Hounds of Love reached eighteen when the press reaction was quite muted. A song this good would get nothing but love today. However, in 1986, there was some ambiguity that was entirely underserved. A whiff of misogyny making their way through:

“All mock, muted orchestration and thumping mock-tribal drums, this is Kate simply being Kate, and whether that makes you want to roll around in sandpit is strictly up to you.

Jim Reid, Record Mirror, 22 February 1986

Bush has always strived to be different, but this quest has often led her astray – an olive stone in the ashtray of life. ‘Hounds of Love’ eschews the lentil nightmare as Bush reaches notes most groups never even dream of.

Ted Mico, Melody Maker, 22 February 1986”.

Before exploring Bush’s stunning title track, it is worth sourcing a couple of interview snippets where Kate Bush explored the background and meaning of Hounds of Love. A single that was unlike anything around it. Even though audiences heard it in 1985 when the Hounds of Love album was released, it gained new focus the following year:

“[‘Hounds Of Love’] is really about someone who is afraid of being caught by the hounds that are chasing him. I wonder if everyone is perhaps ruled by fear, and afraid of getting into relationships on some level or another. They can involve pain, confusion and responsibilities, and I think a lot of people are particularly scared of responsibility. Maybe the being involved isn’t as horrific as your imagination can build it up to being – perhaps these baying hounds are really friendly.

Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985

The ideas for ‘Hounds Of Love’, the title track, are very much to do with love itself and people being afraid of it, the idea of wanting to run away from love, not to let love catch them, and trap them, in case th hounds might want to tear them to pieces and it’s very much using the imagery of love as something coming to get you and you’ve got to run away from it or you won’t survive.

Conversation Disc Series, ABCD012, 1985”.

Because Leah Kardos’s 33 1/3 book about Hounds of Love came out recently, there is new perspective on Hounds of Love and its title track. I am going to utilise that for features about the album ahead of its fortieth anniversary in September. I am going to quote from the book. The song announces itself with a sample from Jacques Tourneur’s occult classic, Night of the Demon (1957). A favourite film for Kate Bush and her family, it was another case of Bush being inspired by films and T.V. for her music. I think it is a rare occasion when direct dialogue is in a song, rather than her quoting or paraphrasing. “It’s in the trees! It’s coming!” creates this mix of rush, terror and ambiguity. Is it birds that are in the trees? A dark spirit? A sense of fear and shadow that will engulf the heroine?

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in an outtake from the Hounds of Love cover shoot/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

Whereas Hounds of Love does not follow the story of Night of the Demon or nods to it too much more, it is an inventive start. I am fascinated by the technical aspects of Hounds of Love’s title track. Its “thick layers of thudding, adrenaline-drenched beats (combined takes of double-stick drumming from both Elliott and Morgan) kick into gear”. Not only does Hounds of Love not feature any bass at all. In terms of its percussion, it does not rely on cymbals. It is more about the heaviness and punch. The toms and kick drums being utilised. With its “3 + 3 + 2 cross-rhythm loop”, you get this sense of a chase happening – the Bernard Herrmann-influenced cello stabs brings Alfred Hitchcock to mind (the video for the single, which Bush directed, was influenced by The 39 Steps (1935) – and the blood rushing. The percussion representing the hounds or the heartbeat of the heroine. The cello about the racing pulse or the terror of the hounds. Are hounds chasing Bush to kill her or are they only curious? I have not mentioned the video. The first that she directed solo, its colour palette and feel nods to classic films.

I am going to come back to Leah Kardos’s book in a second. First, this feature writes why Hounds of Love is one of the best music videos ever. It does seem like a scene from a film. It is beautifully shot and mixes dramatic chase and celebration. Dizzying and wonderful to see. It is one of my favourite Kate Bush videos:

“It’s a shot of pure adrenaline, that irrational rush of falling in love for the first time. Three whiplash minutes to express the insanity that throws into the atmosphere, leaving responsibility and real life below.

The forces of order try to capture the young lovers. A daring chase through the woods ends at a mysterious party, bursting with lights and color. The jig is up, but our heroine has a plan. Slapping handcuffs on her and her lover’s wrist, they take flight into the dark as the song spirals away.

The camerawork, the costumes, and the urgent sense of drama make this one of the best music videos of the 1980s, and all time as far as I’m concerned”.

There is a lot of tension and anxiety in the composition. The energy and pulse rate always kept high. Compared to other songs on the first side of Hounds of Love like Cloudbusting or The Big Sky, Hounds of Love has a different emotional spectrum and feel.  Leah Kardos notes how a jumpiness is evident in the “lyrical prosody of the verse, which crams the line into a space of two beats (‘when-I-was-a child running-in the  night’, ‘hiding-in-the  dark, hiding-in-the  street’”), echoing the shape and urgency of the similarly rushed ‘If-I-only could’ line from ‘Running Up That Hill”. Kate Bush did say that there was a definite masculine energy through Hounds of Love. 1982’s The Dreaming was big on percussion and a masculine sound, though it is presented and arranged in a different way. Different colours and emotions. The gated compression techniques that Kate Bush and Del Palmer (an engineer on Hounds of Love and her boyfriend at the time) learned with Hugh Padgham at the Townhouse sessions during The Dreaming. The microphones being set at a distance from the drums to pick up “an amount of indirect sound from the room, then according to Morgan, ‘compressing them like mad, really crunching the sound up … this ridiculous blanket of percussion”.

I love how Leah Kardos dissects the instrumentation and composition of Hounds of Love’s tracks. For the title cut, there is a continuous flow of Fairlight. There is a “Rage R’ looping chord sequence that differs slightly between verse (three chord, F – C/F - B♭/F) and chorus (four chords, Dm/F – F - B♭/F – C/F). The chords are bright, major, hyper-alert, with a layer of Fairlight strings pushing in the background with pin-sharp staccato. From the first chorus (at 0’40” with the words ‘Here I go’), the texture becomes pinned down by the unchanging root note, played by cellist Jonathan Williams. His rhythmic staccato obsessively saws away on the ragged edge of F, not quite a bass line and not quite a drone, but bringing in a useful amount of brusque, excitable Bernard Hermann-style horror core energy to the table”. Going deep with this track, it highlights Bush’s brilliance as a songwriter and producer. The lack of bass on Hounds of Love has been compared to Prince’s When Doves Cry – another hit without bass. The lack of low-frequency instruments “serves to highlight the elegance and power of its simple, intricately calibrated production”. Even though Hounds of Love seems terrifying and tense, there is playful energy and something lighter. The vocal inflections and lovely details Bush puts into the song – often in the background. The counterpart lines against the “THHROWW” of the shoes into the lake is hounds yelping. Bush that the yelping/yapping is the hounds of love. It is a charming and funny detail that adds some levity and humour to a film noir song! Leah Kardos commends the courage and affirmation of the lyrics. The upward inflections in some of the lyrics (“Do you know what I really need?”) is, as Kardos writes, “self-understanding”. The vocal frolicking “around the melodic space”. Details I had not noticed previously. How Bush twirls through the vocal outro. The affirmation and understanding that the hounds chasing her are there to play and are safe. Like a short film moving from a dramatic start and then ending on something positive, it is a wonderful experience! In terms of the time signature, role of percussion and cello, Bush’s vocal details and emotional palette. Such a rich sound. I often wonder what Hounds of Love would sound like with a bassline. Would it give the song more twang and a different energy? It was an inspired move by Bush as a producer to omit the bass.

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

Leah Kardos speculates how some of the lyrical imagery for Hounds of Love was taken from the Powell and Pressburger 1950 film, Gone to Earth. That film is based on a 1917 novel. It concerns  a girl who adopts a fox and is soon pursued by a wealthy fox-hunting squire. Bush mentions a fox in the song. How she holds the fox in her hand. One that has been attacked (“I found a fox caught by dogs/He let me take him in my hands/His little heart, it beats so fast/And I'm ashamed of running away”). New depth and meaning to the lyrics. Kardos writes the following (about the novel Hounds of Love is partly influenced by: “The tragic story illustrates the dilemmas of female freedom, autonomy and entrapment within the confines of male desire”. The Hounds of Love video, as mentioned, influenced by Alfred Hitchcock. The cinema that is packed into Hounds of Love. Another song of Bush/the heroine being trapped by love. Her 1978 debut single, Wuthering Heights (from The Kick Inside). Oh to Be in Love (from the same album). Maybe even Babooshka (from 1980’s Never for Ever). If those earlier examples have a sense of teenage naivety and lack of experience, there is maturity and understanding on Hounds of Love that passion and love is complex. How we can “feel an instinct to run away from the thing we really need to face. It’s an exquisite anthem for the commitment-phobic that encapsulates something very honest about the ambivalence and intensity of romantic desire”. As it turns thirty-nine on 17th February – some sites say 24th February, 1986 but Gaffaweb says 17th February -, I wanted to revisit perhaps Kate Bush’s best song.

At that time, Bush also recorded the duet with Peter Gabriel, Don’t Give Up. She also abandons the plan to make a film version of The Ninth Wave side of the new album. Hounds of Love held in high esteem by critics. MOJO placing it number one last year:

“No matter how refined the circumstances of its creation – built at leisure in Bush’s new 48-track studio – or how newfangled its production – still tangible in the hi-tech stabs and pads of Fairlight, and the crispness of Jonathan Williams’ cello – Hounds Of Love is red in tooth and claw, its breathless, atavistic fear of capture mixed with almost supernatural rapture. Love is thundering through the psychosexual woods, hunting down somebody terrified of what it means to surrender to another person. The song opens with a quote from British horror film Night Of The Demon but that’s the only moment it feels like theatre. From then on, Hounds Of Love maintains a dizzying emotional velocity, the relentless double drumming of Charlie Morgan and Stuart Elliott stamping down on the accelerator. Bush’s voice might dip and soften, but those drums are merciless, while the strident backing vocals, like a hunting horn call, goad her on if introspection threatens to slow her down. It never lets up, every line heightening the pitch, closing the distance between song and listener. It ends with a suddenness that makes it seem like she’s hit the ground and you’ve hit it with her, breathlessly waiting for an answer to the question: “Do you know what I really need?” The uncertainty, however, is not reflected in the confidence – the perfect, dazzling completeness – of the song’s execution. On Hounds Of Love, Kate Bush is going at full pelt, chasing the horizon, running her vision to ground. Not really the hunted, but the hunter all along”.

The Guardian placed Hounds of Love fifth in 2018. Stereogum included in their top ten Kate Bush songs feature in 2022. Last year, Classic Pop ranked Hounds of Love eleventh in the top forty feature. In 2023, Prog included Hounds of Love in their top forty Kate Bush songs selection (“Sharon Den Adel, Within Temptation: “[This song is my favourite] vocally because Kate did things that no one had done before. It was out-of-the-ordinary, and that’s one of the key reasons that so many people fell in love with her music and her voice. And her stage presence of course, with the way she danced, was a new thing that people didn’t see much. She was free, very expressive in her movements”). In 2021, when deciding the twenty Kate Bush songs that demonstrate her brilliance, Dig! placed Hounds of Love third (“Is there a single song that captures the curious mix of anxiety and exhilaration that comes with falling in love quite as successfully as Hounds of Love? Drums thump, cellos saw incessantly and the vocals are every bit as dramatic and breathtaking as the song requires – the lyrics depict somebody who’s afraid of what falling in love might entail, and all too aware of how limiting that fear can be (“I’ve always been a coward/And I don’t know what’s good for me”), before throwing off those shackles and surrendering themselves to the “hounds”. Kate later embellished on her choice of imagery in a 1992 Radio 1 interview: “I thought Hounds Of Love and the whole idea of being chased by this love that actually gonna… when it gets you it’s just going to rip you to pieces, you know, and have your guts all over the floor! So this very sort of… being hunted by love, I liked the imagery, I thought it was really good”). It is good that The Futureheads covered Hounds of Love in 2005. That said, I do hate it and can’t see why anyone likes it, as it drains all the colour, meaning and tension from the song. None of the depth and brilliance of the original remains. The compositional details and techniques. The awesome and distinct production. The depth of Bush’s lyrics and how she brings so many emotions and conflicting thoughts to the fore. I know some fans like it. At the very least, it did means that the (vastly superior) original was discussed. A brilliant single (outrageously overlooked and under-bought) that arrived on 17th February, 1986; thirty-nine years later, we are still talking about…

THIS supreme masterpiece.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: The Interview Experience

FEATURE:

 

Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

The Interview Experience

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FOR many of my…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005

Kate Bush features, I am exploring various books that offer great insight and fascinating chapters. I am going back to Tom Doyle’s Running Up That Hill: 50 Visions of Kate Bush. I have talked about Kate Bush being interviewed before. How it was an important part of her career, though she grew wary of them. Not the best experiences for her necessarily. One would imagine that she would engage less with interviews as her career progressed. I mean, that is relatively true when you think of all the interviews she gave between 1978 and 1980. However, Bush is certainly not averse to the media. She knows that she needs to be involved with interviews. I think the sheer excess and saturation that was the promotional haul of her early career maybe enforces and influenced a more detached or homebound aesthetic. Someone now who will rarely conduct interviews away from her home. She is perfectly comfortable bringing people in to her home for interviews. I do like how Bush can remain active and visible but also not see the need to trapse into radio studios, onto T.V. sets and do the sort of press that other artists. It must be fascinating for those interviewing her. I think a richer and more interesting experience than in years previous. More time has passed so Bush has put more stuff out into the world. She can look ahead to future work but also provide detail and discussion about her previous albums. For those enamoured of Kate Bush and who work in the media, securing an interview is a dream. It is one shared by so many people (me included).

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at the Q Awards on 29th October, 2001

For anyone luck enough to interview Kate Bush, it differs greatly to other artists and how they will do things. Coming into Kate Bush’s home. Unless they are phone interviews, you get to come into the Bush household and there is this distinct atmosphere and mood. More personal and warmer than a hotel room or studio. It might be more dauting to be on her turf. However, as an excellent host and very warm, Bush never makes people feel unwelcome or nervous. She knows it is a big deal. Returning to the Tom Doyle book, he is someone who has spent hours in Kate Bush’s company. On a couple of separate occasions, he has spoken with Kate Bush. The first time was in 2005 when Bush released her eighth studio album, Aerial. The settings of Kate Bush’s interviews in the twenty-first century have been interesting. In 2001, ahead of her picking the Classic Songwriter award at the Q ceremony, Bush was interviewed at Harrod’s. Visible and public but also in this sort of neutral setting, the experience was not always great. The setting in this case perhaps a little visible and exposed. You can understand why Bush has preferred to be at home. Not being filmed for interviews. The fact people can photograph her in public. The lazy recluse tags still get applied to her. Bush seen as this media-shy and hidden figure. It is not that she wants to be left alone and project this secretive image. Having been in the spotlight and public eye for decades, Kate Bush has earned the right to conduct interviews on her own terms. In 2005, after a twelve-year period of no studio albums (1993’s The Red Shoes started a period of dormancy, though Bush was writing and creating during that time), there was understandable excitement about a new album. I know those that interviewed who got to listen to Aerial ahead of speaking with Bush did so in a small room where the album and console was pretty much bolted to the floor. So they could not copy or share the album. Practically signing documents that they would not breathe a word of what they heard.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

It is exciting that Tom Doyle was originally meant to interview Kate Bush at Abbey Road Studios. That would have been amazing! I kind of think there should be a modern-day interview there. Maybe something filmed. A high-profile fan or writer speaking with Kate Bush about her career so far in the historic Studio 2 of Abbey Road – where she spent many happy days. I do hope that she does do an interview at Abbey Road. Tom Doyle was then told his interview would take place at Bush’s home. He was not given an address. Instead, he was picked up by a driver and taken up the M4 towards Reading. The diver told Doyle that he recognised him. In the sense the driver had Bush in the back of the car recently and heard her on the phone apparently discussing her interview with Doyle. Joking that maybe she should put a bag over his head, there was this cross of a hostage taking and someone being led into a wonderful surprise. The car pulls up and you appear before a set of gates. Bush does not live in the same house that she did in 2005. However, things are going to be similar in terms of the secrecy and being picked up. Quite a cool and luxurious way of going to interview Kate Bush! Maybe Bush would not answer the door. However, she lives with her husband Danny McIntosh, so he might greet guests. Bush walking in all smiles and laughter. One reason why I wanted to publish this feature was to dispel myths – that are still perpetuated to this day – about how Bush lives and what her home is like. Dressed in comfy clothes and appearing quite casual, maybe people have this impression of her being quite serious. Maybe thinking there is going to be something eccentric in the way she dressed. Instead, her home – as it was in 2005 – has rooms with antiques. A lot of space. Rather than a modest family home, Bush now lives in larger properties. The one Tom Doyle was in was a Georgian mill house. The recording studio a mere short walk across her garden. Quite an idyllic and restful place to conduct an interview. As Bush is among family and is on her own patch as it were, she did not have to worry about beating traffic and having to stress about outside factors. When she does eventually release another studio album, one can imagine a select few people will be invited to her home. The rest will conduct interviews over the phone. Even if the living room might have changed dynamic since 2005, there are going to be similarities. An ordinary studio home. Not the gothic mansion the press thinks she resides in! Her son Albert was born in 1998. A young child in 2005, now he is someone who is vastly well-educated and well-travelled. His presence not as obvious in the Bush household today. However, in 2005, there were DVDs and toys around. I can envisage her living room now still having a lot of films stacked up. Bush favouring physical media and vintage speakers rather than too many gizmos and gadgets.

To start any interview, as was evident in 2005, there are some nerves and reservations about the interview experience. Twenty years later, maybe Bush has changed her approach. All of her recent interviews have been done over the phone. I wonder when the last time was she welcomed someone into her home for an interview. I guess in 2011 when she was promoting 50 Words for Snow. Tom Doyle did mention how, before his first interview with Kate Bush, he gave her his mobile number. It meant that she could have a say about anything she was uncomfortable with. The two could have a dialogue. Bush did call a couple of days or so after they met to change a few trivial details. Doyle explained how that first meeting and subsequent phone calls with her revealed the real Kate Bush. Rather than the caricature that still exists in the media, Bush was this warm, gently controlling, self-critical and pomposity-spiking woman who was very natural, real and ordinary. Someone whose music maybe painted a version of reality that is actually more heightened or fictional. See Kate Bush today and she would be gardening, working around the house and going about her business. The whole interview experience does seem wonderful. Bush had a landline and is unlikely to be speaking to people online. The in-person interview at her home seems like she is greeting a friend. Rather than everyone being on the clock and there having to be this buffer – Danny McIntosh pottering about but never looking large -, there is an intimacy and directness that is rare in this age. This real unearthing who Kate Bush really is. How there is so much misperception and lazy labelling from the press. Also, rather than a new album being met with a rotation of cut-and-paste interviews where she is ferried around, Bush can be more selective about who she speaks with and where it happens. At her home under her roof. That is really important, exciting and accessible. Her home quite modest and grand at the same time. Small wonder so many people dream of an interview with Kate Bush! Some lucky few might get their dreams realised….

ONE day soon.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Tanner Adell

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Tanner Adell

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EVEN if…

this artist has been on the scene for a little bit now, Tanner Adell is someone who has been highlighted as an artist to look out for this year. There are a few interviews with Tanner Adell that I want to bring in. Give more depth to this amazing artist who many tip as the future of Country music. I am starting out with an interview from PAPER. Anyone unfamiliar with Tanner Adell should definitely check out her music:

“Tanner Adell might describe her signature sound as “glam country,” but it’s more than that. It’s the future of country itself; it’s a future she’s been sprinting towards since well before her feature on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, or her induction into CMT’s Next Women of Country. “The day I moved to Nashville, I was sprinting, and then I never stopped in the last three years," she tells PAPER.

In a grove beneath the signature Hangout, the Gulf Shores haunt that Hangout Fest is named after, Tanner Adell sings, dances, rocks out on multiple instruments and even belts an acapella rendition of “Happy Birthday” to a fan near fainting. The heat hasn’t gotten to her one bit, at least from appearances, and for a moment the crowd seems to forget the sweltering sun. That’s how powerful her force of nature talent is in person: strong enough to make you forget the sun even rises in the sky at all.

The singer-songwriter — and fashion obsessive, as she makes clear to me later — burst onto the country music scene with 2022’s “Love You a Little Bit,” one of her earliest singles, later included on the deluxe edition of her debut album, 2023’s Buckle Bunny. The title track propelled this momentum further, with Adell hustling behind the scenes to make ends meet while chasing stardom in Nashville. In her trailer after the set, she tells me: “I sold everything that I had to be able to get there. I moved into low-income housing. I had my lights turned off. I had days where there was only cold water.”

Still, she never let the cracks show. On stage, she’s as polished as peers who’ve been doing this decades longer, the strength of her creativity and artistic vision showing in every minute detail of her outfit, her setlist, her skill on the guitar and banjo. Her outfit, custom-made by Levi's, is encrusted with ribbons and rhinestones. Her fans in the crowd are equally dolled-up; from my vantage stage right, I spot in cowgirl hats and boots and glitter and everything else that seeps through the doorway into “glam country” she’s thrown right open.

The inimitable nerve that propelled her to pack up and move to Nashville also shows in so many other ways. Like a tweet from earlier this year that, at the very least, aided along the feature on a Beyoncé song she’d prophesied about since her earliest memories: “As one of the only Black girls in country music scene, I hope Bey decides to sprinkle me with a dash of her magic for a collab.” I ask about those dreams and prophecies later. “I wanted to make sure over the last three years that I put in the groundwork, so that when the moment came, that I was going to open the doors, I’d be ready," she says.

Later, I leave her trailer shaken, knowing I’d just sat down with someone who will — no matter the shape of the industry to come — shake things up forever. My colleagues back in the holding area pick up on the energy crackling all over me, grip tight around my voluminous skirt, a grin cutting clear across my face. They ask how it went, and I tell them: “I don't even know where to begin. You’ll just have to see for yourself.”

Congrats on the release of “Whiskey Blues.” Let’s start there. As you’re getting back in the studio, what are you being drawn to sonically and artistically right now? What inspirations are you pulling from?

I love Olivia Rodrigo. I love “Driver’s License,” I love Guts. I’ve loved “Deja Vu.” It feels like she’s the first artist in a really long time to scream into the mic, and be like, “This is how I’m feeling!” My mood right now is writing exactly what I’m feeling and thinking and going through. I’m currently in the middle of finishing up my album, that may or may not be coming out by the end of the year.

Is this something new?

This is new! I’ve been writing it since last July, but there are songs on it that I wrote a couple of years ago, that I felt very, very deeply tell my story. Parts that I haven’t really talked about publicly. I’m entering this new mood, and “Whiskey Blues” kicked it off. I disguised it with a killer, pop diva vocal, and it has such a fun beat. But when you break it down, if you read the lyrics, it’s deranged? I’m moving into that, and speaking my truth. It’s the mood right now.

When you talk about speaking your truth, I’m reminded of your song “See You In Church,” because I was raised evangelical. I watched your video back when you put it out about growing up in the Mormon church and realizing all these things about what you’d been taught growing up. Did you find it hard to put that song out, or was it healing for you?

“See You In Church” is a little bit of my — and I don’t really use the word "ratchet" — but it’s about my wild side. It’s this juxtaposition of what I was doing during the week and then still having to show up and act like I’m this perfect person. And how exhausting that is. Now I am trying to be as vulnerable as possible, and let my walls down, and that can be really hard. But I’m trying not to let those walls come back up, and prevent me from sharing with people. There’s a lot of people like you and me, and it’s really important that people know this! This is my year that I am spilling everything.

I mean, that lifestyle of kissing boys in the backs of trucks, partying, running into people you don’t want to see you like that, and then having to see them in church that Sunday. So, you played an unreleased song for us during your set. Can you spill on what it’s called, or when we can expect it?

“Silverado” is the name of it. It’s an early tease for the album and it’s about a part of my journey in Nashville. I picked up and moved everything to Nashville. I’d never been there before, and I sold everything that I had to be able to get there. I moved into low-income housing. I had my lights turned off. I had days where there was only cold water. There was a night where I had an event, and I had been out all day, and I didn’t have a car, so I was literally riding those Lime scooters around Nashville.

Oh my god, not the Lime scooters!

In the sleet, uphill, both ways. I was like, I literally have half an hour to get ready, so I sat in front of my mirror, holding my phone light up to the mirror, trying to get as much done as I could. I ended up wearing sunglasses at night, because I was not confident I had gotten my makeup where I needed it to be. “Silverado” is the more extroverted, hopeful side of that. The chorus is like, yeah, we’re broke, but we ain’t broke down! We’re getting through this. We’re wishing on the stars that we can’t see behind the clouds, we’re still wishing on them, we know that they’re there. It’s that hopefulness. I’ve written songs that are more of my interior life, that go into the same story as “Silverado," but done in a very different way. “Silverado” is more of a little snack off the album, and I’ll be playing it all summer.

I made a mistake by reading Instagram comments on my way over here, listening to “Buckle Bunny,” and browsing what people had to say on Youtube. There’s so many people who seem to think you wrote the song not knowing what “buckle bunny” means. Do you ever feel frustrated by how people who approach your music that way or do you pay it no mind?

There’s too many people that love me! You know what I mean? I think I’ve learned very quickly that the energy that I want to spend is on the people who love me, who love my music, and the people who get it. That’s all that matters.

I find it cool that the song takes this thing that is a misogynistic thing men say about women —

And women who are not girl’s girls also say about other women!

Exactly, and you flipped it on its head and made it a feminist anthem.

That’s what it means now, as far as I’m concerned. Everyone wants to be a buckle bunny this summer.

Divas link up!

Absolutely, divas link up!

To follow up on that, I was listening to you just now talk about low-income housing, getting your lights turned off, and those are some of the most “I’m in a country song right now!”

I mean, that’s my whole life. I feel like I’ve lived a unique situation, between California and Wyoming. I saw both sides, which is why I love that everyone is saying the music is “glam country.” That’s what I am, “glam country.” At the end of the day, I was showing up even though my life was falling apart. I was showing up with the ribbons and the nails and the makeup, and I made sure that I could do my makeup really well. Nobody even knew, nobody could tell that the last two and half years, it’s been faking it ‘til I make it, and making my own clothes and thrifting and finding ways to be able to show up onstage or at an interview or an event looking like a billion dollars.

I mean, it’s this moment that you’re in with your career right now. One thing I connect to so much in your music and art, as do so many fans, is how you have such a distinct and specific point of view. I’ve heard you talk a lot about what you took away from your time in Wyoming, but I wonder what you also took away from growing up in California?

I think LA is what gave me the stars in my eyes. I think that’s where the performance side, and the entertainment side, the glam, I got from LA. I think if it was just Wyoming, then I would just be tilling the field, planting seeds, farming, and I still do want a farm. If it was just LA, I don’t know, I feel like I’d be a badass editor-in-chief, but I like having both sides. Music is what bridges those for me, and I started writing really, really young. I’m half and half, and I’ve been half and half my whole life: biracial, California, Wyoming. LA gave me the “glam” in “glam country”.

I am moving on to an interview from REVOLT. They explore the phenomenal work of Tanner Adell, but they also write how her influence goes beyond music. Someone who is making a big difference in the world. Even though I am a bit late to the party, I really love what Adell is putting out:

“Tanner Adell was always destined to be a princess. No, not prim, proper or precious, but powerful. Growing up with a voracious love for stories, she was captivated by the tales of brave heroines. “The Goose Girl” by Shannon Hale left an indelible mark on her young imagination. “I’ve always loved stories like that — princesses on a journey,” she told REVOLT in this exclusive interview, adding that Disney’s Brave is one of her favorites. “I just love bada** princesses.” Little did she know that this early fascination with fierce female protagonists would set the stage for her own character arc.

Nowadays, the star appears to be living a story straight out of a fairytale: A collaboration with Beyoncé under her belt, performing all over the world, a song on a major movie soundtrack, a historic televised award show performance, and donning dazzling designer dresses — all while the world can’t get enough of her. So, how did a girl from Lexington, Kentucky become one of Nashville, Tennessee’s shining stars?

The singer-songwriter's journey to the limelight began rather differently than that of most country artists. As a biracial child adopted by a white family and raised in a strict Mormon milieu, her early years oscillated between two different worlds. “I grew up in a unique situation between California and Wyoming, seeing both the Beyoncé and George Strait of it all,” she illustrated. This diverse upbringing is reflected in her eclectic sound. But it was Nashville — her home of the last three years — where the country pop artist honed her craft. “I’m making my strides in country music and mainstream music in general,” she shared.

When Queen Bey announced her next era after RENAISSANCE, Adell remained determined to land on her radar. “Beyoncé is just someone that I've always looked up to and really loved and wanted to collaborate with,” the "Love You a Little Bit” singer said. Though she was met with doubt by many, they were forced to eat their words in March when Beyoncé’s official foray into the country genre was released and Adell was featured on the project — twice. While the specifics of their collaboration remain a mystery, participating in “BLACKBIIRD” and “AMERIICAN REQUIEM” on COWBOY CARTER was a pivotal moment in her career.

Expressing her gratitude for the “incredible stepping stone,” Adell reflected, “I’m excited to finish the year strong and grateful for the incredible opportunities and doors that have opened.” Beyoncé became the first Black female country artist to top the genre’s charts, and Adell experienced her own firsts thereafter, including her Billboard debut.

In June, Adell became the first female country artist to ever perform at the BET Awards since its inception in 2001. She stunned the crowd in her signature sandy blonde waist-length tresses, pigmented lilac eyeshadow and an all-white lace ensemble. Her performance of the viral track “Buckle Bunny” along with her latest single, the insanely catchy “Cowboy Break My Heart,” was a defining moment. You’d never believe this was Adell’s first-ever award show appearance with the way she effortlessly blended classic country with pop sensibilities and Hip Hop undertones. The singer flawlessly showcased her versatility, vocals and magnetic stage presence all at once.

Reflecting on the momentous experience, she told REVOLT, “I found out the day of that I would be making history. It was definitely a shock, but as I thought about it, I realized no one has really done what I’m doing.” And doing what’s never been done has become commonplace for the rising musician.

“Cowboy Break My Heart” marked the beginning of a new era as she prepares for what is perhaps her most significant milestone to date: her debut album. The song has both an upbeat version and a more intimate acoustic rendition that she previewed on Instagram, highlighting her commitment to showcasing different perspectives in her music. “Any good song can be stripped down and have the same effect or even be better sometimes,” she shared. When detailing her songwriting process, Adell explained that the “stripped down” version is actually the basis. “I write everything starting on piano or guitar... That foundation, especially in country music, is everything,” the artist explained.

She plans to carry this duality into her highly anticipated upcoming LP, which promises to deliver both energetic and introspective tracks. In stark contrast to her previous project, which had no features, her debut will boast a slew of exciting collaborations, yet to be revealed. “People are gonna be shocked,” she said, emphasizing that her fans will become more connected to her than ever before. “I'm going to be addressing the inside of me and what has made me this way and gotten me to where I am as well as the outside of me and how my exterior is presented to the world.”

Adell aptly describes her last project, Buckle Bunny, as a mixtape, since it features a blend of country, pop and Hip Hop influences, showcasing her ability to seamlessly transition between genres. Tracks like “Bake It” and “Trailer Park Barbie” will pleasantly surprise you, proving she can rap as well as anyone on XXL’s Freshman List. When asked about the albums that inspire her to lean into the more contemporary side of her music, she cited Frank Ocean’s Blonde; Tyler, The Creator’s Flower Boy; and Taylor Swift’s 1989 as pivotal to her artistic evolution. Adell’s appreciation for “really great storytellers and world builders” who push creative boundaries and capture the zeitgeist is evident in her own work.

When it comes to translating her musical identity into visuals and fashion sense, Adell embraces an aesthetic that is as eclectic and dynamic as her sound. “It's not just about the music, it’s about how I want to be represented aesthetically,” she enthused, discussing how her style choices reflect her artistic persona. She acknowledged the frequent comparisons she gets: “So many people have said I’m like a country Beyoncé.” She laughed, recalling a recent incident where Azealia Banks discussed her on Instagram. “One day my phone was blowing up. People were sending me her Story, and I thought, ‘Oh no, what did she say?’” Adell remembered, but to her relief, the news was positive. “She said she discovered me off the Beyoncé album and called me her ‘Black Taylor Swift.’ I was like okay, there it is!”

This blend of Beyoncé’s ferocity and Swift’s whimsy is a perfect metaphor for Adell’s approach to her craft. “I love fairies, unicorns, and all the magic,” she explained. “But I also think there’s such a unique strength as a Black woman... Take both of those worlds and combine them, and I feel like that's definitely me.” Comparisons to these powerhouses — though high praise — can feel daunting. The singer takes it in stride. “It’s a good place to live,” she laughed.

Beyond genre-blending, Adell’s music also reflects her personal journey and exploration of identity. Her song “Strawberry Crush” delves into themes of self-discovery. “[It is] the moment before you dive into your sexuality, like having a crush on someone and hiding in the grocery store because you see this beautiful girl,” she explained. The record captures the innocence and complexity of exploring one’s feelings so cleverly that you may have missed it if you weren’t paying close enough attention.

As a newly independent artist, her recent distribution deal with Love Renaissance, a label predominantly known for its R&B roster including 6LACK and Summer Walker, marked yet another significant milestone. As the first country artist to join LVRN, the entertainer’s decision was driven by synergy. “It was just such an alignment of goals,” she explained. The singer felt the label’s fearless approach to supporting her unique brand exemplified their confidence in her ability to break new ground. “They presented me with a plan that aligned so well with who I am as a person,” Adell added. Having departed Columbia Records in February, she emphasized the importance of finding a label that understands and supports her artistic vision.

As the rising star reflected on her journey, she stressed surrounding oneself with supportive, like-minded individuals. “Show me your friends and I'll show you your future,” she advised. This principle has guided her through both personal and professional challenges, reinforcing the value of genuine connections and mutual encouragement.

A trailblazer with her eyes fixed on the future, Adell teased an upcoming project that fans have eagerly anticipated for two years while keeping the details under wraps. “It’s themed, and people have been asking for it for a long time,” she revealed with a hint of excitement. Expanding her horizons, the "Whiskey Blues” creator harbors a desire to break into acting, particularly with the ambition to portray a biracial Disney princess. “I will compose the soundtrack. I will write the songs, honey! I will voice act this princess,” she declared with conviction.

Adell’s drive to leave a lasting impact extends beyond her career. “My little brother had a heart transplant when he was 7 and so I've done a lot of ambassador work for the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles,” she revealed. Fueled by these experiences, her philanthropic aspirations include launching her own foundation. She envisions a legacy that transcends the arts, aiming to support various causes ranging from children with serious health conditions to global educational initiatives. “Whether I have kids or not, this is what legacy means to me — helping others,” she shared.

Her story is one of fate, fierce determination and hard-earned success. Though we can’t control how or when we arrive on Earth, we can choose what to do with our time here. “I don't know how in the history of the world that it ended up being me, but I'm here and I'm ready to keep going,” she said, echoing the resolve of the heroines she once admired. With every song she writes and stage she conquers, the star inspires everyone to craft their own story and chase their dreams. As Adell embarks on her next chapter, her fans get to witness the magic unfold. Her story serves as a testament to the power of human potential — a reminder that anything is possible when we dare to believe”.

I am going to finish up with an interview from GRAMMY. Maybe not as known in the U.K. as she is in the U.S., I do hope radio stations here give her most exposure and time. This is an artist who is going to have a massive future:

"As one of the only Black girls in the country music scene, I hope Bey decides to sprinkle me with a dash of her magic for a collab," she wrote, minutes after Beyoncé premiered "TEXAS HOLD 'EM" and "16 CARRIAGES" during this year's Super Bowl in February.

At first, Adell was mocked for her pitch. "You're trying too hard, love," one user said. Another chimed in, "Baby, that album is finished with all the songs cleared. I don't know about this one. Maybe, open for the tour," another user remarked.

But she wasn't bothered by the chatter: "Those people said I look desperate, I'm like, 'You must not know me, b—!" Adell reveals to GRAMMY.com with a hearty laugh.

Confidence is the inner core of the Tanner Adell ethos. And her boldness paid off because shortly after when Beyoncé approached her to feature on COWBOY CARTER.

In Adell's first music release of 2024, she appeared alongside Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts in Beyoncé's cover of "BLACKBIIRD" by The Beatles. It was a full-circle moment for Adell in more ways than one, as her father used to sing the song to her as a child. Little did she know, decades later, she would popularize the track's backstory — the plight of Black women in the American South — alongside one of her heroes.

But before Adell became one of Beyoncé's songbirds, she was also the Buckle Bunny. On the 11-track mixtape, Adell traced the provocative tales of an acrylic nail-wearing, lasso-wielding heartbreaker. But for every Black girl that listens, it's more than a country project. It's also a reminder that it's okay to be feminine and girly, just like Shania Twain, Carrie Underwood or Taylor Swift.

Among her rodeo of exciting firsts, Adell tacks another on June 8, when she makes her debut at Nashville's Nissan Stadium during CMA Fest. She'll perform on the Platform Stage at the stadium; the next day, she'll play a set at the Good Molecules Reverb Stage outside of Bridgestone Arena.

Below, hear from Adell about her most memorable firsts thus far, from having her debut daytime television performance on "The Jennifer Hudson Show" to bonding with Gayle King behind the scenes at Stagecoach Music Festival.

Seeing Her Breakthrough Single, "Buckle Bunny," Have A Second Life

I released "Buckle Bunny" on the Buckle Bunny EP in July 2023. I actually teased it on social media first. Almost nine months before that, I had gone super viral with it. It was doing incredibly well, so my plans were to release it in January or February of last year. But, I ended up signing a record deal in December of 2022. There were plans for it at that time, but the timeline kept getting pushed back. It turned into a fight to get that song back into my hands, which was what prompted me to go independent. Eventually, I was able to work with my label, shake hands, and mutually part ways.

I started this year as an independent artist with this song that everybody loves. It's become a huge part of my brand, but it's really my life story. People might think it's a dumb song that was easy to write, but I was called a "buckle bunny." As a teenager growing up between Los Angeles and Star Valley, Wyoming, I was into glam country, and "Buckle Bunny" is the pinnacle of that.

"Buckle Bunny" was my first single that charted. I felt like I finally had broken through that invisible box that Nashville put me in as a country musician. It was me saying, I'm not going to follow any rules. I'm going to be as true to myself as possible.

We, as Black women, have been fighting our whole lives. We've been fighting for space. I'm purposely trying to bring softness into the picture, allowing women who listen to my music to know that it's okay to feel that way. We don't always have to have our walls up.

"Buckle Bunny" is aggressively confident, but I think that's the door to softness. You have to be self-assured to let your walls down. My newest single, "Whiskey Blues," is my next step into that. I have another song on my social media, "Snakeskin," that people want me to release. "Buckle Bunny" is like the girl who protects those softer moments.

In a way, I look at all of this as a relationship between Tanner Adell, the artist, and Tanner, the person. For me, Tanner Adell is the buckle bunny. Then, you have Tanner, who's on the inside, writing all of these songs”.

If you have not heard of Tanner Adell then make sure you correct that. No doubt an artist who is going to be a massive name very soon (many say she is already), this is an influential role model who has produced some of the most distinct and phenomenal music of recent times. A magnificent artist, we are going to hear her name said loud…

FOR years more.

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Follow Tanner Adell

PHOTO CREDIT: Léonardo Volcy

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/tanneradell

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https://www.tiktok.com/@tanneradell

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https://www.youtube.com/@tanneradellmusic

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https://open.spotify.com/artist/5xKVALj2MSqOHmQhburCM8?si=DmuVZ_ScRTaqabVnWsNzXg

FEATURE: Spotlight: Chloe Qisha

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Chloe Qisha

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I will get to…

a review of Chloe Qisha’s debut E.P. Released in November, her self-titled release gained acclaim and attention. I am new to her music so it has been really interesting learning more about this remarkable artist. One that is fully-formed and ready for success. A hugely original and exciting talent that everyone needs to know. I am starting out with an interview from The Line of Best Fit. Qisha was training to be a therapist before music came calling. I wonder if any of the aspects of that profession and the training she went through have directly impacted her lyrics:

“Those songs have their staying power, but a different hook snuck its way into my brain late this summer to join them. “All I ever wanted was your hands on my body,” Chloe Qisha repeats on “I Lied, I’m Sorry” from her debut self-titled EP, out this Friday. It’s hard to tell if she’s genuinely regretful. There’s a taunt and a smirk that comes with the breathy desire on the half-apology “when I said I didn’t miss you, yeah I lied, I’m sorry.” Maybe she means it, but she’s also definitely toying with you.

“The goal for me is always to write the best pop song and wrap that up in slightly more left-of-field references,” Qisha tells me while scurrying around Soho House, looking for a good place to video chat without being caught. The Chloe Qisha EP is varied yet familiar, its influences clear — there’s a messy, gritty pop rock sound with the crunchy guitars on “Evelyn” familiar to any Olivia Rodrigo or Paramore fan, and a lot of the funk and silliness of “Sexy Goodbye” comes from Talking Heads or ABBA. But she easily fits into the modern pop landscape that prioritizes storytelling above all: there’s a Swiftian sigh as she sets up the story in one song, singing, “in a London house, there’s the loneliest girl…”

PHOTO CREDIT: Eleonora C. Collini

That comes from “I Lied, I’m Sorry”, the buzziest of the pre-release singles, which comes across like a straightforward pop song, but its story is surprisingly convoluted. Qisha was watching Apple TV’s The Buccaneers when its credits song, a cover of LCD Soundsystem’s “North American Scum”, couldn’t leave her head. She brought it to her collaborator Rob Milton, who’s worked with Holly Humberstone and Alfie Templeman, and the two created the soundscape before writing the lyrics. “Once you sit in the sound and the world of that production, you get a better idea of what the songwriting could be,” she says.

Qisha moved from Malaysia to the UK at 16 to finish the last two years of high school, something that cemented her selfhood early. “You become a lot more sure of yourself and a lot more solidified in your values,” she notes. Hellbent on becoming a therapist, she got a degree in psychology but realised she was “probably way too emotional to be anyone’s therapist.” Music suddenly seemed like a viable career path, so she wrote songs while she was in school, and pivoted to a master’s degree in communication as a back-up plan, “which sounds absolutely mental.”

It would be mental only if she weren’t an exceptionally strong songwriter. “VCR Home Video” is a haunting ode to family and the act of self-parenting (“You were my blueprint, my first word I learned”), and “Scary Movie” documents her anxieties with going forward with a career in music. “The hope is that it all goes successfully,” she says, “and you’re taking these small, incremental steps into potentially changing your life forever.”

Nervous as “Evelyn” is, it’s also striking as a horror movie where the quiet girl goes berserk; amongst its claustrophobic production, she mentions wanting to crawl into another girl’s skin and being lit on fire, rife with jealousy. She’s over it now, actually — the song takes place in high school, the era she prefers to write from, since it’s terminally relatable to most. “I protect my peace so well these days that I generally have nothing to write about,” she says, “which is an amazing problem to have.”

But at Chloe Qisha’s heart are the pop songs — the bright, sticky lyricism and the catchy beats that people come for. “Sexy Goodbye”, a quirky, off-kilter number about leaving with your best foot forward, uses AutoTune and deadpan talk-singing to dish on an ex: “I’m waiting on your karma while you’re waiting on a booty call.” But it’s about another breakup — this one amicable — with a music company she just wasn’t feeling, and was confident enough to step away from. “I remember feeling like, ‘Wow, that was the first big-girl decision I made in my 26 years of living.’ I was really proud of myself, and came out the other end even better.” So it’s about both and neither a shitty ex or workplace misunderstanding. The girls’ names sprinkled through the song aren’t even real — she and Milton came up with them on a train back from Leeds. “Songwriting is so all over the place, there’s never really one thread of how it came to be,” she says. “It’s everything coming into one and melding and meshing and suddenly you have a song, which is very bizarre. I still don’t know how it happens. It’s still magic, every single time.”

That magic’s baked into the EP — a solid set of songs from a strong voice. Even though it wasn’t intentionally laid out like so, it acts as a sampler for a listener that might pick and choose which pop direction suits them. “VCR Home Video” is for the swaying, songwriter-y crowd, “I Lied, I’m Sorry” is a well-rounded banger, and something like “Sexy Goodbye” hints that there’s still more personality to discover in the future. The EP didn’t start to come together until they wrote “I Lied” at the beginning of this year, which set the ground of the world they wanted to build. “They all come from the same mom and dad, me and Rob, I think that’s why they’ve aged well,” she says”.

 PHOTO CREDIT: Eleonora C. Collini

A natural storyteller, this compelling new Pop artist spoke with CLASH at the end of last year. One of the brightest hopes in Pop, I know that this year is going to be a really exciting and eventful one for her. Chloe Qisha enters a very competitive market, though she has a distinct style and energy that few of her peers do. It bodes well for a golden 2025:

“A few years later I got randomly contacted by a label and went for a meeting with them knowing nothing about the industry,” she continues. “I got into some sessions and kept at it for like, a year or two but never fully committed.” There’s a slight pause. “I didn’t know that music was ever an option for me, I think the industry can be such a mystery to the general public,” she points out. “Then COVID happened – it threw me into a really weird space with music. But through it I sort of ended up clawing my way back to it in the end.” She seems reflective, as if just discovering a truth in that moment. “I think I realised that I could write songs, and if the songs feel authentic to me, call them mine,” she smiles softly.

Through years of songwriting experience, Qisha has managed to craft a nostalgia tinged sound that still feels authentically her own – largely due to her quick witted lyricism that becomes a cornerstone for her music. As she divulges, it was that particular skill that could only be perfected from practice. “It was definitely an evolution,” she admits when asked about her writing process. “I think it’s funny that we’ve ended up coming to this process from more of a storytelling world,” she continues. “When I first started off, I thought the most important thing was to make the track catchy. But I’m glad that I didn’t start off that way, because it gave me the good foundations to keep at the back of my mind. I think now when I write, I try to be a  storyteller – and that’s definitely come from writing with Rob (Milton), my collaborator,” she beams. “He’s such a strong writer and has a way of drawing stories  out of the artist that he’s like working. He really strives for the best, which I definitely needed because lyrics were actually my least strongest aspect of writing before I met him. I think our brains mesh in the right way  – nothing’s off the table in our sessions.”

While her writing style leans on conjuring up narratives, Qisha’s sonic leanings focus on moments of musical history. “I’m definitely more influenced by the past,” she answers. “My references, at least right now, are very focused on nostalgia. They seem like polar opposites, but it can be anything from Abba to LCD Soundsystem – it’s that breadth of sound that I love. But I do have modern references too, like Sabrina Carpenter’s recent album. I love the way that she’s just been able to express so many emotions so cohesively across the record. It feels very empowering.”

However, the attention to detail doesn’t stop with the music. From simply scanning Qisha’s music videos and socials, it becomes apparent how refined the visual aspect is to her artistry. Red and black make up the colour palette, with Qisha adorning suits, movie theatre settings and a classic red lip to build an image of a Twin Peaks-esque universe. When asked about the visuals, her eyes seem to spark. “The music always comes first,” she begins. “But honestly, the visuals were almost just as important for me. I have a creative director, Lillie Eiger who’s the most incredible human being. When first planning the EP, we would be sitting in the British library together and she burrowed into my mind – we ended up talking about the most random topics, and it really helped tie all of my crazy ideas together.”

She divulges her preliminary vision, which is one of the first aspects of the release she thought up. “I knew I wanted red as one of the primary colours,” she explains. “I also wanted suits to be a big part of the visual aspect- basically the main costume of this world. The idea was to tap into slightly more masculine energy and that like naturally I have in my everyday life, to then play with and contrast with my feminine side. Lillie amalgamated all of these ideas together so when it came to shooting the artwork and the music videos, like we had this visual Bible to stick to,” she laughs. “It paid off in the end- I think everything does look really, really cohesive and that’s my main thing because I’m a perfectionist,” she says with a smirk.

Having such a precise vision has resulted in one of the most exciting debut’s to come out of the UK music scene this year. Qisha’s self-titled EP is one that plays with dynamics, lyricism and style with an effortlessly chic demeanor, resulting in a bundle of praise from critics and fans alike. When talking, Qisha still seems somewhat surprised by such a reaction. “You always hope people will like the music of course,” she spills. “But it’s a whole different feeling when people are actually reaching out to say they liked it. The human connection that you get when people DM and say they love Evelyn or Scary Movie- especially because they were like last to come out – feels so surreal and so amazing.”

The reception seems to have served as fuel for an even bigger peak for Qisha to hit in 2025. She relaxes as she tells me of her plans for the new year, and the anticipation it brings. “Hopefully, I hope to do so many more shows, that’s always been like a big sort of bucket, bucket list thing for me,” she explains. “But for sure the music will come hard and fast! There is no break in the Chloe Qisha world,” she states mysteriously, teasing new possible releases. “There’s too many songs and they all need to be released, which is an amazing problem to have. It’ll be coming a lot sooner than I think a lot of people think, which is exciting,” she grins. No matter what comes next for Qisha, the consensus is clear – she’s got a vision to make it the brightest it can be”.

Prior to coming to a review for the Chloe Qisha E.P., I want to introduce an interview from The Forty-Five that was conducted recently. An artist who blends elements of modern-day Pop queens and the 1980s sounds of her parents’ music collection, it is affective and potent blend. Go and check out Chloe Qisha if you have not done so already:

“From her androgynously suited aesthetic to her nostalgia-meets-perfectly-now musical palette (think Chappell Roan and Troye Sivan trading witty one-liners over ‘80s pop and ABBA), Qisha’s self-titled debut EP landed at the end of the year like a five-track application to join the upper ranks of 2025’s UK pop girls. With an equally excellent new single due later this month and a second EP shortly after, we’ve no doubt that by the time the year is through she’ll have come good on that proposal.

You were writing songs behind the scenes for a long while before releasing your first batch of singles last year – did it take an adjustment to see yourself as an artist that could be in front of the camera?

It just takes a lot more being an artist these days. It’s all-encompassing. Waiting until I was the age I am now where I’m more sure about my identity and fashion and the spaces I exist in and where my music sits – it all plays a part and I don’t think I would have had that a couple of years ago. Some artists are incredibly young and they manage to find themselves an incredibly strong identity from the get-go, but for me it took a hot second to do that, and also a hot second to actually feel that I was a good enough writer that was beyond writing singer-songwriter songs in my bedroom.

Had this always been the ambition?

It just didn’t compute in my brain that it was a possibility – whether that was [because of my] upbringing and my very Asian family not knowing that music or the arts was a viable career path, or just not knowing enough. I did a couple of degrees, poking and prodding where I would fit and doing music absent-mindedly on the side and then I fell into a side of the industry where you can develop as an artist while doing sessions and writing that you just wouldn’t know exists until you’re in it.

You lived in Malaysia until you were 16 – was there much opportunity to lay foundations as a musician there?

There’s definitely a thriving music scene there, I just don’t think I was ever exposed to it. I was quite sheltered in my international school and that was the bounds of what I knew. It was just naivety. My parents weren’t particularly strict but they definitely defaulted to thinking I’d go to uni and get a degree and earn lots of money and I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s fine with me’. I always knew I liked to sing but I was quite a shy kid in general – I was quite a boring child! – and it wasn’t until I moved to the UK that I started picking up a guitar.

If not from your teenage years, where do your influences mainly come from?

It was purely from my parents’ music taste. They were big fans of everything ‘80s and refused to play me anything but that, so I had The Bee Gees and Tears for Fears constantly; that’s all I grew up with. So landing on ‘80s music as a sonic reference really made sense – it was a very full circle moment.

There are also nods to LCD Soundsystem, Olivia Rodrigo and lots of artists that nestle at various points along the pop and alternative spectrum – where do you see yourself sitting?

The music right now sits in a really good moment in between those two forces. Those two lend themselves very well to each other. ‘80s music was essentially pop music back in the day. Now I see [my music] as sonically drawing from older, more obscure ‘80s references but melodically and lyrically we still want to be up there with the pop girlies because that’s what I listen to on a day-to-day basis: I’m with the Sabrinas and Chappells and Troyes and Charlis, so that naturally trickles in.

And really, what a perfect time to be entering the modern pop world…

I’m really grateful and honoured and lucky to be in this moment in time where the pop girlies are really having their moment and long shall it live. Not that they weren’t present before – when I was in high school I was definitely in that Katy Perry ‘Teenage Dream’ era – but I look at them now and think gosh, the songwriting has just never been better. Particularly Sabrina and Chappell, I look at them and their writing teams and I want to soak up every bit of it like a sponge and inject that into my own music as well.

How does Chloe IRL and Chloe the pop star compare?

She’s definitely an extension of myself – I wouldn’t go as far as a persona but she’s a cooler, far more confident version of myself that I can somehow tap into in different settings. I’m still more introverted. Chloe Qisha is who I like to turn on at events, whereas at my core I hate all human beings and I want to sit at home with my cats.

Across your first EP, there was this sense of nostalgia but also lots of young lust and hot under-the-collar moments. What is the world you’re building from there?

It’s just about not trying to take oneself too seriously in all aspects of love – accepting every instance you’ve had and embracing that something was very awkward, or that an interaction was not so great but you can sit and laugh about it now and that’s character-building. ‘Sexy Goodbye’ is a great example of that kind of song where we’re talking about love and lust in quite a heartbreaking but funny way. The foundation of someone not reciprocating your feelings is very sad, but I’m gonna strut down a Hackney street with a binbag over my shoulder and I’m gonna embrace that! That’s what we try and exude in the world: embracing everything about yourself even if it’s a bit cringe, which is so the opposite of who I generally am because I like things to be very organised and perfect”.

I am ending with a review from NME of Chloe Qisha. A remarkable debut E.P. from last year, Qisha will build off of this and we are going to see more remarkable music and development from an artist who has been tipped for big things this year. Someone I am very excited about:

“It hasn’t been half a year since her debut single, but singer-songwriter Chloe Qisha has already found her voice. The Malaysian-born, UK-based singer’s debut self-titled EP has an unpretentious, analog charm about it, even during her more polished, alt-pop moments. It’s a brilliant first glimpse into her vision of pop and her candid, honest lyricism.

Echoes of upbeat 80s pop ring through the nostalgia-tinged opening track ‘I Lied, I’m Sorry’, which immediately sets expectations high with its slick production and undeniable groove. Qisha’s crooning, whispered delivery here is impeccable, tailored to express the tension between the track’s playful lust and the underlying uncertainty attached to it as she finally admits her intense, visceral longing for its subject.

Every bit as evocative is ‘Sexy Goodbye’, a disco-influenced number on which the singer blithely bids a former lover farewell with style. Crowning herself the winner of the breakup, she takes witty jabs at her ex, who instead fills the void with meaningless sex. “Oh you’re leaving, that’s regrettable / That saves a call to pest control / I’m waiting for your karma while / You’rе waiting on a booty call,” she recites coolly in its second verse.

Meanwhile, the pop-punk-influenced ‘Evelyn’ – arguably the record’s strongest track – is where the cracks in Qisha’s nonchalance begin to show. ‘Evelyn’ is so painfully honest about the full-fledged ugliness of jealousy and unrequited love that it reads like a mid-breakdown diary entry. “She’s everything, I wanna crawl into her skin / Maybe then you’ll notice me / Notice it, it’s obvious, it’s obvious,” she laments over a cascade of distorted guitar riffs, all her previously slick pop stylings out the window.

‘Scary Movie’ showcases a softer, mellower side to Qisha as she compares her dating life to a horror film. Here, she expresses her anxieties surrounding her relationships (“I’m afraid of everyone I love / My face between my fingers have come undone”) through hushed sighs over a downbeat guitar instrumental and fuzzy synths.

Intimate piano-led ballad ‘VCR Home Video’ concludes the EP, which sees Qisha masterfully chronicle the growing pains of her relationship with her parents through her transition to adulthood. “Open up a can of worms / I was your child but somehow the roles reversed,” she shares, reckoning with the regretful realisation that her adolescent quarrels have pained her parents as much as they did her.

Throughout ‘Chloe Qisha’, the budding musician hits every emotional note exactly how she intends to with her clever and vulnerable songwriting. Not a single moment in her music comes off as superficial or impersonal, even on the coldly chic ‘Sexy Goodbye’. From start to finish, this EP points to a promising future for Qisha on the horizon”.

Even though this year is quite new, you can tell which artists are going to make an impression. Chloe Qisha is someone who should be on your radar. A remarkable artist with a long future ahead, I think that we will be seeing her on festival stages very soon. There is no doubt Chloe Qisha is one of the…

STANDOUT artists of this year.

____________

Follow Chloe Qisha

Official:

https://www.chloeqisha.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/chloeqisha/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@chloeqisha

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1WNmfSqydnt1FDJKg3l6lw

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/chloeqisha

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FEATURE: You Are My Sister: Anthony and The Johnsons’ I Am a Bird Now at Twenty

FEATURE:

 

 

You Are My Sister

Anthony and The Johnsons’ I Am a Bird Now at Twenty

_________

MAYBE this album…

will pass some people by. The twentieth anniversary of one of the best albums of the 2000s (the first decade of this century). Anthony of the Johnsons (now ANOHNI and The Johnsons) is an American collective led by ANOHNI. Her amazing collaborators. ANOHNI (Anohni Hegarty, formerly Anthony Hegarty) is a West Sussex-born artist who began her musical career performing with an ensemble of New York musicians as Antony and the Johnsons. The group’s self-titled debut was released in 2000. The amazing follow-up, I Am a Bird Now, was released on 1st February, 2005. I want to celebrate its twentieth anniversary. It rightfully and deservedly won the Mercury Prize in 2005. In 2016, ANOHNI became the first openly transgender performer nominated for an Academy Award. Her most recent studio album, 2023’s My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross, was hugely acclaimed. I Am a Bird Now features guest appearances by, among others, Rufus Wainwright, Devendra Banhart, Joan Wasser and Boy George. To mark twenty years of this phenomenal album that won awards and the heart of critics, I am going to bring in some reviews. I cannot see any features published where we get background to the album and its creation. I will instead bring in three reviews for an astonishing work. Technically it should be I Am a Bird Now by ANOHNI and The Johnsons but, as the album was released in 2005 and the group was Anthony and The Johnsons, I am referring to it as that.

The first review I want to bring in is from Pitchfork. Published when the album was released, it mesmerised and blew away critics and listeners alike. Twenty years later and the songs still sound so moving and effecting. It is a singular work that is truly mesmeric. I do hope it gets some renewed appreciation ahead of its twentieth anniversary:

“The 1974 photo of Andy Warhol superstar Candy Darling on the cover of Antony and the Johnsons' second full length, I Am a Bird Now, is the perfect complement to the ghostly hymnals that flit and sigh behind its black and white shadows. A melancholy but arrestingly beautiful image, it depicts Darling on her deathbed; bright flowers float behind her upturned arm like a cluster of soft, pale moons radiating light onto the bleached sea of sheets in which she's drowning.

Besides being a tight aesthetic move, the image also links Antony to the early fabulousness of downtown New York, reminding the informed viewer not only of Darling's too-early death from leukemia, but the AIDS-related passing of the photographer himself, Peter Hujar in 1987 (the same year Warhol died, following routine gall bladder surgery). Klaus Nomi was already buried by then, and the Downtown scene was getting too close to saying goodbye to Cookie Mueller, Keith Haring, David Wojnarowicz, and Antony's sometime doppelganger Leigh Bowery (the subject of Boy George's musical Taboo), among others-- all victims of the AIDS virus.

This visual meditation on death and radical history smoothly conjures the family tree upon which pale, angelic Antony perches. The vocalist/pianist moved from California to NYC after seeing the documentary Mondo New York, lured by the 1980s cabaret scene it depicted. Quite fittingly, his first performance came with a musical troupe called Blacklips at the famed Downtown venue, the Pyramid. Jump now to 2003, when Antony opened for Lou Reed and sang the Velvet Underground classic "Candy Says" (yes, for Candy Darling) as an encore after most performances. Knowing all of this-- the very important history in that cover-- helps to understand the melancholy, sense of loss, and rapturous joy in these 10 tracks.

But however aesthetically intriguing and complex that history may be, the ultimate draw is Antony's voice, and within the first two seconds of the album, it should be very clear to even the most unaware newbies that Antony has an amazing Nina Simone/Brian Ferry/Jimmy Scott vibrato, a multi-octave siren that would sound painfully lovely no matter what he was saying. Lucky for us, he fills that promise with worthy syllables. The greatness of this downcast crooner is the melding of that otherworldly trill with a dark, powerful aesthetic. Looking past his sad eye make-up and kewpie-doll features are these mesmerizing songs about loving dead boys, plaintive letters from hermaphroditic children, the fear of dark lonesome purgatories, breast amputation, the fluidity of gender. The first words of "Hope There's Someone" and of the album "Hope there's someone who'll take care of me/ When I die" feel more lonesome than just about anything and then there's the rapturous promise of "For Today I Am A Boy"' that "One day I'll grow up and be a beautiful woman/ One day I'll grow up and be a beautiful girl".

I Am a Bird Now's majesty didn't come easily: Antony's self-titled debut was released five years ago on David Tibet's Durtro label, but only now has he found the perfect mix between style and substance. More stripped down than earlier offerings-- most of the focus is on piano and voice, although violin, viola, cello, sax, and flute are also heard-- there's no missing Antony's thoughtful words.

There are a number of guest vocal spots-- Devendra Banhart (gypsy incantations in the beginning of "Spiralling"), Boy George ("You Are My Sister"), Rufus Wainwright ("What Can I Do?"). All of these powerful singers are overshadowed by Antony's angelic chops, though Boy George ends up turning in a surprisingly moving performance. His duet with Antony explores private memory, brotherhood/sisterhood (regardless of gender), relationships, empowerment ("I was so afraid of the night/ You seem to move to places/ That I feared"), and wish fulfillment. (Really, grab the hankies.)”.

As Tiny Mix Tapes begin – and as many reviewers and fans have also expressed -, I Am a Bird Now is an overwhelming album. Maybe there have been albums as powerful since, though in 2005, I don’t think we had heard anything quite like it for many years. A hugely deserving victor at the 2005 Mercury Prize ceremony:

“I'm completely overwhelmed by this record. I Am a Bird Now is beyond any semi-confectionary aesthetic distance that you might bring to discussing your average album. This music grabs a hold of you and doesn't let go. It feels timeless and gorgeous and bigger than life. It may not be "soul" in the strict, music appreciation 101 sense, but it could make even the most jaded atheist approach a metaphysical regard. It is assured, seering and majestic SOUL to the utmost. I'd put on my critic's cap and dive into scrutiny, but I am too enraptured by this artist's music.

For some reason my CD of I Am a Bird Now is skipping and every skip is like a dagger in the heart. The pure unadulterated emotion on display decries such tedious interruptions. I never thought I could appreciate Boy George till I heard him singing with Antony on the impossibly touching "You Are My Sister." And there is no point in dwelling on the gender bending (I didn't even want to acknowledge it, to tell you the truth) aspects of the artist because his songs are so 'universally' moving. Whereas Antony and The Johnsons was a stark, chilling affair that was arresting and perhaps a little disconcerting, this album is a shining beacon of hope and healing amidst ceaseless pangs of heartache and loss. The gospel-tinged "Fistful of Love" brings in a horn section and Lou Reed for a particularly uplifting experience that bridges the middle of the album splendidly.

I have to see Antony perform these songs. It's not a question of the recorded material not being enough, but I could see the breathtaking sweep of these songs taking on a whole new power in a live setting. I'm reminded of the scene in Mulholland Dr. where the two principal characters are in the theater listening to Rebecca Del Rio's heart-rending solo version of Roy Orbisons "Crying." I love this scene so much; how incredibly heavy it feels. I understood completely why they cried, and probably did a little myself. What's interesting is the one thing that kept the whole thing from utter hokeyness was that the song was sung in Spanish.

In this sense, I Am a Bird Now is authentic and moving because it hits you in ways that are both recognizable and foreign. Like Nina Simone, Antony has this uncanny ability to take your standard blues progression and give it authority that skips whatever reservations and preconceptions the audience might lean toward and aims directly for their empathy and, ultimately, their belief in the innate, transcendent force music can contain”.

The third and final review I am bringing in is from The Observer. I Am a Bird Now does not get enough airplay and attention now. As ANOHNI has her own solo career, I don’t know how she feels about a former incarnation. A very different artist in 2005, I do hope she has fond memories of that experience and album. It is clear I Am a Bird Now has changed people’s lives:

“It hit me in the most prosaic of circumstances, alone at the kitchen table, late on a Friday night, in semi-darkness, I Am a Bird Now flooding from the speakers, the family asleep upstairs; but it hit me nonetheless and I felt a bit like the dead Thomas Chatterton in Henry Wallis's famous Pre-Raphaelite painting, which is not a particularly familiar sensation: I was in love with Antony and perhaps also the Johnsons.

As far as confessionals go, this isn't particularly troublesome - the group may feature guests such as Rufus Wainwright and Boy George, as well as Lou Reed and Devendra Banhart, and the record includes a song titled after a line from a poem by Marc Almond ('Fistful of Love'), but if my fandom suggests some hitherto unsuspected personal proclivities, well, so what? But the revelation was unexpected - such a strange, moving and glorious record, and one I suspect with fantastic appeal to a wider audience, which is still not something that can often be said of recordings by sometime performance artists with more than a shade of the Leigh Bowerys about them, particularly by someone with no prior keen interest in issues of gender identity.

Born in London, Antony was relocated to California at the age of 10, before settling in New York as a young man in 1990, with an ambition to become 'a transvestite chanteuse at 3am nightclubs bathed in blue light, like Isabella Rossellini in Blue Velvet', and this is as helpful an archetype as any; perhaps also Scott Walker, or Nina Simone, or Bryan Ferry or mid-Seventies Bowie, or Sam Cooke or Jimmy Scott or a medieval chorister, because Antony sounds like all of the above, but always himself.

<

It is his vibrato and multi-octave voice (often double-tracked) that stuns you from the first few bars on in, putting the washing-up on permanent hold. He is obviously the most original vocalist we've heard since Bjork, and never less than wholly affecting as he goes about eclipsing the impressive contributions of his guests.

The mood is predominantly mournful, but in its dulcet softness, luxuriously so. Cellos, violins, violas and flutes are used to frame Antony's voice and piano, and torch songs such as 'My Lady Story' feel exquisitely sad. Even then, it's only after several listens that attention is directed to the words, which in this instance seem to tell of transsexual woe: 'My lady's story is one of annihilation,' it begins. 'My lady's story is one of breast -amputation.'

But there's also an uplifting quality to what might be the highlight of the album, 'For Today I Am a Boy', which has much in common with black gospel music, both in style and in its sense of a quest for redemption. 'One day I'll grow up and be a beautiful woman...,' Antony sings with assured and powerful conviction, 'but for today I am a child, for today I am a boy.

'One day I'll grow up and feel the power within me, one day I'll grow up, of this I'm sure.'

Presumably, the song is at some level autobiographical, and as such is deeply moving. But possibly, it might also be read as a more general invocation of the feminine spirit, and that's some measure of Antony's facility as a songwriter as well as performer.

Likewise 'Fistful of Love', driven on by horns straight out of a Muscle Shoals soul classic, which could be the stuff of a bad Julian Clary joke, but really emerges, like this rest of this remarkable album, as a Valentine to the world at large”.

Released on 1st February, 2005 in the U.S., a Deluxe Pressing was released in the U.K. on 7th February. Whatever format you have it on, make sure you spend some time with I Am a Bird Now. Everyone will have their favourite songs from the album. Perhaps You Are My Sister is top of my list, though I also really like My Lady Story. An overwhelming and sense-changing listening experience, it is hard to believe I Am a Bird Now is twenty. It has not dated and doesn’t suffer the fate of many other albums from 2005. The production or lyrics seeming dated. I Am a Bird Now is a beautiful thing that continues to…

SOAR proudly and freely.

FEATURE: Down By the Water: PJ Harvey’s To Bring You My Love at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Down By the Water

PJ Harvey’s To Bring You My Love at Thirty

_________

RELEASED on 27th February, 1995…

IN THIS PHOTO: PJ Harvey in the studio in 1995/PHOTO CREDIT: Simon Fowler

PJ Harvey’s third studio album, To Bring You My Love, is almost thirty. Because of that, I thought it was worth writing about an album that stands tall with the very best of the '90s. It was recorded after the dissolution of the PJ Harvey trio; many consider this to be her first solo album. I guess it is. Important because of that at the very least. Co-produced with John Parish and Flood, there are some great guest musicians playing alongside Harvey and Parish. To Bring You My Love (Demos) came out in 2020 and is well worth investigating. I want to get to a few features/reviews about To Bring You My Love. I am starting out with The Quietus. Reviewing the album in 2020 to mark its twenty-fifth anniversary, this piece works from the perspective that PJ Harvey was as much an actor as she was musician. So much drama and cinema through To Bring You My Love:

“By 1995, Harvey had spent a depressing amount of time debunking the assumption that her music was autobiographical. Many had figured that the brutal imagery of her 1992 debut, Dry, must have stemmed solely from real-life experience; the truth was that if you’d cut her open, she’d have probably bled greasepaint. It could be violent and disturbing, but she also played for murky laughs by deliberately sending up tired virgin-whore tropes, pivoting from a licentious other woman’s leer on ‘Oh My Lover’ to an ingenue’s clumsy breathlessness on ‘Dress’. And while her nervous breakdown gave Rid Of Me a bleak backstory, that album wasn’t a confessional outpouring either. As Judy Berman’s terrific reappraisal explains, its songs were about performances – the parts people were forced to play, or tried to challenge – as well as being stellar performances themselves. Sometimes Harvey became other characters, like Tarzan’s fed-up other half, or Eve venting her spleen at the serpent. Sometimes she adopted a terrifying alter-ego: her delivery on ‘50 Ft Queenie’ was, she said, inspired by the braggadocio of hip hop, a literally monstrous way of bigging herself up.

Harvey knew she had to throw herself fully into her ideas to pull them off. "If you write words like that and sing it in the wrong way, it’s a complete disaster," she told Rolling Stone. Her voice may have sounded like a force of nature, but focusing on its elemental power sold short her judicious precision, the way she manipulated it to do her bidding. When she told the LA Times her favourite singer was Elvis, they assumed she meant Costello because of their shared sense of musical ambition; she was actually talking about Presley, another artist who, like her, knew exactly how to use their primal talent. “I love his singing, the passion, the depth in his vocals,” she enthused. 

But on To Bring You My Love, Harvey is less like either Elvis and more Marlon Brando: an actor with intense, chameleonic charisma, as tough, scary, heartbreaking or unnerving as each role demands, bringing the record’s desperate souls to life with her full-blooded, full-bodied portrayals. “I’ve lain with the devil, cursed God above,” she seethes over the title track’s sinister, serpentine guitar and eerie organ, full of such bitter longing that her voice shakes and trembles and sounds inhuman; when she rasps “I was born in the desert, I’ve been down for years”, she sounds like a hungrier, lustier incarnation of the rough beast from WB Yeats’ The Second Coming. On an album that explores how anyone can be unhinged by the all-consuming craving for sex, love, spiritual salvation and human connection, it’s the perfect transformation: a spurned admirer turned into an unearthly creature, dragging herself across the sand and bringing the apocalsypse with her.

Next, she brings a similarly demonic energy to ‘Meet Ze Monsta’ (which, like several songs, referenced another of Harvey’s idols, Captain Beefheart) and its netherworld stomp of sludgy, grungy riffs – only this time she adopts the tough-talking swagger of a larger-than-life prizefighter, like she’s looking the devil in the eye and refusing to back down from a scrap. “I see it coming at my head,” she taunts in a deep, defiant bark. “I’m not running, I’m not scared.” Then, for the uneasy chug of ‘Working For The Man’, she changes again, turning into a hushed, lonely figure driving down a dark highway in pursuit of love. “God is here being my wheel,” she murmurs, channelling the conviction of a zealot steeling herself for something awful.

Those first three songs alone have the range of a character actor’s showreel: three stories, three protagonists, three entirely different performances. As Harvey explained to the LA Times that year, she’d spent a lot of time honing her craft. “When I was young, I wrote plays,” she said. “And performed all the different characters when my parents’ friends would come over.” She approached records like To Bring You My Love with the same spirit, giving each character their own tale of rejection or ruinous obsession, and their own way of telling it. On the beautiful, bittersweet strum of ‘C’mon Billy’ she’s the personification of anguish, her wounded pleas catching in her throat as she begs her partner to return to their son. And then she spins that vulnerability completely on its head by playing another mother on the edge, only this time with a terrible secret.

‘Down By The Water’ still unfolds with the dramatic tension of a chilling one-woman play, the kind that makes your face blanch and stomach drop. Harvey’s narrator reels you in by hollering for her drowned daughter, although the the grubby, buzzing organ suggests something fouler at hand. Then comes the sucker-punch: the growing dread as you realise what she’s done, the sharp stab of cruel strings, her disturbingly fervid tone as she half-confesses, half-justifies her crime: “I had to lose her, to do her harm!” And when it finally ends, it’s not with a bang but a dreadful whisper: “Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water/ Come back here man, gimme my daughter.” Harvey’s delivery has the creepy cadence of a twisted nursery-rhyme, recited by a person so broken they’ve been driven to madness, or who thinks they can fix everything by chanting an incantation.

There were, Harvey wryly observed, some blinkered people who heard it and really believed she’d committed filicide. As she revealed to Rolling Stone, the reality was less gruesome: she knew how to use her own experiences for emotional fodder like a seasoned thespian, and also found it easy to imagine how other people must feel when they were suffering, too. Her interest in visual mediums like film – ‘50 Ft Queenie’, of course, owed a debt to the 1958 monster movie Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman – added to her work’s cinematic splendour. She wrote ‘Teclo’ after hearing Ennio Morricone’s ‘Teclo’s Death’, from his 1968 Guns For San Sebastián score. Her composition throbs with melodic instrumentation, and Harvey casts herself not as the titular Teclo but one of his mourners. “Just let me ride on his grace for a while,” she croons, summoning the doomy grandeur of someone singing a lonely elegy out in the moonlit plains – a finale worthy of any epic spaghetti western. 

Then again, it’s easy to imagine most of these songs thudding out of cinema speakers, especially the rockier, rougher ones (and especially in 1995, when alternative bands were favourites on big-screen soundtracks: The Cure on Judge Dredd, Hole, Belly and more on Tank Girl, Juliette Lewis covering Harvey for Strange Days). The blistering, unholy din of ‘Long Snake Moan’ has the dank aesthetic of an underground action flick, with filthy riffs and blasts of noise that detonate like bombs, while Harvey snarls about drowning, ritual and resurrection like a mythical warrior queen on a power-and-pleasure trip. “It’s my voodoo working!” she crows at the end, as the ground cracks beneath her feet and the walls cave in.

Listening now, it can seem like Harvey would rather play anyone than herself on To Bring You My Love, and its cast of pointedly exaggerated, often abandoned female archetypes must have vexed anyone looking for real-life tidbits. Yet her supposedly autobiographical albums aren’t always much more revealing than the elaborate fantasies. Her 2000 LP Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea was tangibly rooted in her experiences in New York, London and Dorset. That title, though, also hinted at the way personal experience can be romanticised into narrative – at old memories being recast with the same extravagant gloss as Harvey’s lush melodies – and tracks like ‘You Said Something’ are both intimate and elliptical: it dances around a charged conversation between two people, capturing their shared electricity without ever divulging the discussion itself. Her ostensibly truest-to-life work, meanwhile, is 2016’s The Hope Six Demolition Project, on which she documented trips to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington but felt curiously absent as a narrator, preferring to report what she saw rather than reflect on how it made her feel”.

Prior to getting to the third and final feature, I want to quote from this article from last year. They heralded a great reinvention from PJ Harvey. An album that is timeless and ageless. Perhaps she hit a peak here. In spite of all the brilliance that has followed from her, many consider To Bring You My Love to be her crowning achievement:

“In its fearlessness and imagination, To Bring You My Love was proof that PJ Harvey was built to last. Comparisons to giants like Patti Smith and her much-admired Captain Beefheart, were apt. Moreover, she’d split with her band at the end of 1993, and was now a solo artist. “I just wanted the experience of playing with different people, and didn’t want to feel tied in any way,” she explained in an interview on French TV.

The most significant benefit of going solo was being in charge of all creative decision-making. While U2 producer Flood might have helmed the recording sessions, the buck stopped with Harvey. One of her decisions was to open the album with the growling title track, whose first line, “I was born in the desert,” happened to be identical to the first line on Beefheart’s debut album.

A quarter of a century later, To Bring You My Love hasn’t aged, because its themes are ageless. Religion, sin, and nature are the touchstones; Jesus is called upon, and the devil often replies. The mothers, lovers, and voodoo priestesses in the songs would fit into any century. If any element ties the production to the 90s, it’s “Teclo,” a minor-chord creeper that could have come from the Twin Peaks soundtrack, but that’s a one-off.

Harvey’s innate theatricality was ramped up on To Bring You My Love, helped by the infusion of fresh blood – consisting of John Parish, an old pal from her first band Automatic Dlamini, and Nick Cave collaborator Mick Harvey – that helped steer the album in a more experimental direction.

While the album is pretty heavygoing at times, Harvey engineered in some light relief, too. There’s a moment in the swamp-rocking “Meet Ze Monsta” when she bellows in faux-fear at the approaching “big black monsoon.” It’s even funnier in the demo – released with other previously unheard versions as a separate album – because rather than bellow she emits a campy shriek. On the spaghetti-Western-inspired closing track, “The Dancer,” her used-and-abandoned character tries to entice her man back by squealing “Ah! AH! Aaah!”

In a way, she never hit such wild heights again, but she’d already proved herself and didn’t need to”.

To end, I am heading back to 2015. Stereogum marked twenty years of To Bring You My Love. PJ Harvey would follow this album with the remarkable Is This Desire? in 1998. Still recording to this day, there is no doubt Harvey is one of our most important and consistent artists. Someone who has released so many influential and pioneering albums:

“Sonically, To Bring You My Love is a full about-face from Rid Of Me. Where that album had clanged and scraped, To Bring You My Love floated and sighed. Harvey had assembled a supporting cast that included Bad Seed Mick Harvey (no relation) and John Parish, the childhood friend who would become her musical consigliere in the years after. Where she’d once recorded with Steve Albini, she went with his aesthetic opposite here: Arena-goth guru Flood, who’d helped teach U2 to move and Nine Inch Nails to project. The album’s sound was as spare, in its way, as what Harvey had done on Rid Of Me. But this time she went for ominous throb, not punishing crunch.

To this day, I don’t know whether the buzzing groove on “Down By The Water” came from a synth pretending to be a guitar or a guitar pretending to be a synth. The sounds just blurred into each other that way. Everything was ornamental: Spanish guitar flourishes on “The Dancer,” sustained string-drones on “C’Mon Billy,” those Dead Can Dance plinks on “Down By The Water.” When Harvey needed to make hard rock, she absolutely could; “Meet Ze Monsta” and especially “Long Snake Moan” are absolute crushers, closer to Zeppelin than the Jesus Lizard or whatever. But she was more interested in taking blues sounds and ideas and pushing them deep into the uncanny — riding the guitar figure on the title track until it turned into a hypnotic mantra, or straight-up smothering every last sound on “I Think I’m A Mother” (even her own voice) until it sounded like it was about to suffocate.

All that arrangement and production served to highlight Harvey’s voice, which has never sounded better, before or since. Harvey is one of the all-time great rock singers because she brought all-conquering strength and soul-ripping vulnerability at the same damn time. She was a feminist icon simply by virtue of existing, and she tore men’s souls to shreds with her teeth on Rid Of Me. On To Bring You My Love, she’s singing about transcending — about moving beyond physical concerns, finding the place where love and desire turn mystical. There are moments where the you can feel the physical impact of her full-blooded wail on her voice: the avenging-angel roars on “Long Snake Moan,” the sex-yelps on “The Dancer.” More often, though, she sounds like a being out of time. That title track, which opens the album, starts out with silence, its rotating guitar figure emerging and getting louder and louder. Harvey sings the same words again and again, first in a monotonal mutter and building to a fevered howl: “I’ve lain with the devil / Cursed God above / Forsaken heaven / To bring you my love.” Every lyric on the album comes with that same mythic weight. And she doesn’t just sing those words. She makes you believe them. 

Then and now, the song that crushes me the hardest is “Send His Love To Me,” with its camel-galloping-through-the-desert acoustic guitar thrum and Harvey’s searching desperation escalating eternally: “How long must I suffer / Dear God, I’ve served my time / This love becomes my torture / This love, my only crime.” It’s not a song about romantic love — or, at least, 15-year-old me didn’t hear it that way. It’s a song about longing, about needing something else, about that feeling where you simply cannot go on with your life as you’re living it right now. Harvey’s unnamed lover might be the conduit for those feelings, but they’re bigger than one man. When things were bad at home back then — and, without getting too personal, things at home were really bad right then — I’d retreat into my room in the basement, playing that song over and over, staring off into nothing. I don’t know if that song saved me, but it sure helped.

This is usually the point in these Anniversary pieces where I talk about an album’s enduring influence, about the impact that it left on the music that came after. I can’t do that here. Can you name a single album that built on the foundation of To Bring You My Love? A subgenre that it helped will into being? A culture that it reshaped? I can’t. It was a blip on the radar. It came and it went. This makes sense. When an album is channeling those sorts of energies, how can any other artist expect to step in and do anything even remotely comparable? Even Harvey never did again. She retreated further into the foggy ether on Is This Desire?, her next album, and then it was on to the next one, her restless spirit never staying long with one sound or persona. There might be a few echoes of the album’s darkness in something like EMA’s Past Life Martyred Saints, but I honestly cannot think of another example of an album that does similar things”.

On 27th February, it will be thirty years since PJ Harvey released her third studio album. Perhaps her very best releases, I know there will be new inspection and discussion about To Bring You My Love. All these years later, it still sounds breathtaking. It just goes to show that, when it comes to PJ Harvey, there are…

NO artists quite like her.

FEATURE: Sounds of Love: Love, Passion, Desire and Loss in Kate Bush’s Music

FEATURE:

 

 

Sounds of Love

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

Love, Passion, Desire and Loss in Kate Bush’s Music

_________

BECAUSE it is…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional photo for 2011’s Director’s Cut

Valentine’s Day, I wanted to spend some time thinking about Kate Bush’s music. In the sense of the passion and love that she weaves through some of her absolute best moments. I am going to end with a playlist of Kate Bush songs that are about love, loss or desire. It is interesting how Bush addressed attraction and love through her career. When she released The Kick Inside in 1978 she was still a teenager. One might think that the songs would be typical of a teenage artist. Quite cliché and juvenile in their way. Maybe the odd wise thought, though for the most part the lyrics quite ordinary and predictable. Looking out at the Pop landscape and there is more depth and originality in that regard - though that perhaps wasn’t the case in 1978. Instead, there are these remarkably original and mature songs. We can see Wuthering Heights, her debut single, as a sort of love song. Albeit tragic. The ghost of Catherine Earnshaw trying to come for Heathcliff. For the debut single, it was remarkably bold! There is something of literature and classic film in her music. Bush writing about love more with older eyes. Rather than it being contemporary and teenage, The Kick Inside’s songs of passion, love and sex splice in something classic. Maybe an exception is The Man with the Child in His Eyes. This fictional or imagined man, even this song is quite heightened and epic. Not what you might associate with a teenage artist coming through in 1978. Other songs on the album are quite direct and frank, mixed with fiction, fantasy and flights of fancy. If L’Amour Looks Something Like You’s chorus is lustful and has that crackling energy of desire, its verses are more, well…poetic? “My eyes were shining/On the wine, and your aura/All in order, we move into the boudoir/But too soon the morning has resumed”. There is fun and frivolity but it is also serious. Bush not appearing naïve or aiming for something commercial and vacuous. The sentiments expressed on Feel It: “Nobody else can share this/Here comes one and one makes one/The glorious union/Well it could be love/Or it could be just lust/But it will be fun/It will be wonderful”. The title track for The Kick Inside. Tragic and hugely original.

There has always been that mix of the personal and fictional. Bush never truly putting her heart out there on the first few albums. I don’t think it was until maybe Hounds of Love in 1985 where we got something raw and truly honest from Bush. In terms of the way love can affect people. The bravery needed. However, the songs of love and desire on her first four albums are exceptional and come from this distinct voice. If The Kick Inside is one of the most female albums ever and there is this exploration of sex, desire, love and a woman’s body, then Lionheart was perhaps (consciously) a decision to be less personal. There are still songs of love. Kashka from Baghdad about two gay lovers. There are two examples of Bush’s distinct style focusing more inward – Symphony in Blue and In the Warm Room. The latter seeming fit for inclusion on The Kick Inside. The former is this newly-written song. One passage strikes my eye: “I associate love with red/The colour of my heart when she's dead/Red in my mind when the jealousy flies/Red in my eyes from emotional ties/Manipulation, the danger signs/The more I think about sex, the better it gets/Here we have a purpose in life/Good for the blood circulation/Good for releasing the tension/The root of our reincarnations”. So many emotions and ideas crammed in. Spiritual, theological at times but direct and open. Perhaps The Kick Inside is one of Bush’s most overtly sexual albums. Not in an explicit or crude way. I mean the way the songs explore her desires and curiosities. I think about 1980’s Never for Ever. Bush, only in her early-twenties, changing her lyrical direction and narrative.

Sure, relationships are examined on the album. However, Babooshka (the second single from the album) is about trust and deceit. A woman testing her husband’s devotion and faith by dressing as another woman and enticing him with a letter. The Infant Kiss was inspired by the gothic horror movie, The Innocents - which in turn was inspired by Henry James’ novel, The Turn of the Screw. The tale is about a governess who believes the ghost of her predecessor’s dead lover is trying to possess the bodies of the children she is looking after. If not especially personal, it is complex, original and deep. Whereas fellow artists might bleed their hearts out and release soppy songs or be too personal most of the time, Bush could examine love and attraction through different lenses. Think about The Wedding List. If there is jealousy, deceit and mistrust through Babooshka, The Wedding List is about revenge. Again, Bush inspired more from a filmic or literature source rather than her personal experiences. This is what Kate Bush said to Kris Needs in 1980 when discussing The Wedding List: “Revenge is so powerful and futile in the situation in the song. Instead of just one person being killed, it’s three: her husband, the guy who did it – who was right on top of the wedding list with the silver plates – and her, because when she’s done it, there’s nothing left. All her ambition and purpose has all gone into that one guy. She’s dead, there’s nothing there”. We would see a notable change in the way Bush discussed love and passion from The Sensual World onwards. The Dreaming may be the only Kate Bush album where physical attraction, relationships and love is practically absent. All the Love is earnest and honest. Bush writing about how we can be surrounded by family and friends but we feel lonely. She wanted to write a song about loneliness, but also thinking about love. How we do not say it or say it when it is too late. It is no surprise The Dreaming focuses on other subjects as it is her least commercial album. More a push for artistic credibility. More experimentation with the sound and lyrics.

I am going to talk more about Hounds of Love’s title track for an anniversary feature very soon. By 1985, new emotions finding their way into music. If there was something of the innocent and moon-eyed about earlier songs of love and passion, there is are more dimensions around caution and fear. Quite natural when you get older. Bush was twenty-seven when Hounds of Love (the album) was released. In a newsletter from 1985, this is what Bush wrote about the majestic title track: “[‘Hounds Of Love’] is really about someone who is afraid of being caught by the hounds that are chasing him. I wonder if everyone is perhaps ruled by fear, and afraid of getting into relationships on some level or another. They can involve pain, confusion and responsibilities, and I think a lot of people are particularly scared of responsibility. Maybe the being involved isn’t as horrific as your imagination can build it up to being – perhaps these baying hounds are really friendly”. Hounds of Love might suggest an album filled with personal tales of love. Dissections on personal travails and passions. However, it is an album where passion is channelled into survival, wonder and other desires. The desire for men and women to swap places to better understand one another (as in Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). Bush grateful to have reached dry land to tell her family she loves them. The Morning Fog, the final song on the album, ends The Ninth Wave (a suite where Bush/a woman is lost at sea and is rescued). One might see The Ninth Wave as a metaphor for love and relationships. An allegory on the complexity of love. There is definitely love for family. That absence one feels when they are apart. However, Bush would write in a more personal and direct way soon enough. Her passion and desires more to the fore.

It is credit to Bush, as I have noted in a previous feature, how she never attacked or shamed men in her songs. One of the only artists in history whose songs of love and relationships were not negative. Even if, when she was dating Del Palmer during the 1970 and 1980s, there would have been conflict and arguments, she never dragged him through the mud. Always using her music to be one of positivity. Even when their relationship ended, Bush was singing about loss and sadness rather than putting the boot in. The Sensual World, released in 1989, has some direct examples of Bush’s addressing love and relationship complexities. If This Woman’s Work is more about a father having to grow up and take responsibility when his wife’s birth goes wrong and she and the baby are in trouble, you can feel something personal on a song like Love and Anger. A song that is not really angry at all: “Tell you what I'm feeling/But I don't know if I'm ready yet/You come walking into this room/Like you're walking into my arms/What would I do without you?”. If Bush’s viewpoint on love and sex was about new bloom and desire when she was a teenager and in her twenties, albums such as The Sensual World are more about loss and separation. Never Be Mine is an example: “I want you as the dream,/Not the reality/That clumsy goodbye-kiss could fool me,/But I’m looking back over my shoulder/At you, happy without me”. Like Hounds of Love, Bush reserved the most extraordinary and powerful moment for the title track. The Sensual World is one of the most tremulous, sensual and passionate songs. Bush wanted to get access to words from James Joyce’s Ulysses and recreate the soliloquy from Molly Bloom (she did for 2011’s Director’s Cut). She was frustrated she was denied permission. However, what was left was perhaps even more remarkable. This is what Bush said in 1989: “A lot of people have said it’s sexy. That’s nice. The original piece was sexy, too; it had an incredible sensuality which I’d like to think this track has as well. I suppose it is walking the thin line a bit, but it’s about the sensuality of the world and how it is so incredibly pleasurable to our senses if we open up to it. You know, just simple things, like sitting in the sun, just contact with nature. It’s like, for most people, their holidays are the only time they get a real burst of the planet!”.

How do you look at 2005’s Aerial and 2011’s 50 Words for Snow and talk about love and passion? How does Bush represent these subjects. I guess Aerial is the love for her son, Bertie (born in 1998). Family and home more at the fore. A nod to her late mother on A Coral Room. Passion and love less directed at a lover and more towards her son and family. A Sky of Honey is about a summer’s day and there is plenty of passionate moments to be found. Though less about sex and more passion for the world around her. Nocturn and Aerial crackle with energy and electricity. 50 Words for Snow, Bush’s most recent album, has a few examples of love and passion. Snowed in At Wheeler Street about lovers divided through various periods of time. Misty about a woman’s tryst with a snowman. One that melts in the morning. It is understandable the tone and viewpoint of love and passion would change as Bush ages. She would not write songs like she did when she was a teenager. However, this hugely original voice still remains. Bush not shying away from passion and attraction. One of the most complex albums, in terms of Bush’s views on love, is 1993’s The Red Shoes. Aside from The Kick Inside, I think The Red Shoes very much puts love, relationships and passion at the front. Eat the Music uses fruit as metaphors. This imagery of fruit being devoured and opened. “Let's split him open like a pomegranate/Insides out, all is revealed/Not only women bleed/You take the stone out of the mango/Put it in your mouth and pull a plum out”. If some see The Red Shoes’ lyrics as being conventional and cliché at times, there is no denying the fact that it is one of her most personal album. Giving the fact her relationship with Del Palmer was ending and she started a new one (she and Dan McIntosh would eventually marry), it is no surprise.

You’re the One offers these lines: “It's alright, I'll come 'round when you're not in/And I'll pick up all my things/Everything I have, I bought with you”. A cocktail of letting go but also exploring new possibilities. Why Should I Love You? provides these words: “The "L" of the lips are open/To the "O" of the host/The "V" of the velvet/The "E" of my eye/The eye in wonder/The eye that sees/The "I" that loves you”. Intrigue and something almost mysterious in Big Stripey Lie: “Don't want to hurt you baby/I only want to help you/I could be good for you”. Moments of Pleasure being less about love and sex. Life’s pleasurable moments. However, there is heartache to be found. “Just being alive/It can really hurt”. Being thankful for the moments we have. These lines among the most standout and striking Bush ever wrote: “To give these moments back/To those we love/To those who will survive/And I can hear my mother saying/“Every old sock meets an old shoe”/Isn’t that a great saying?”. That is a bit of a race through Kate Bush’s discography. A look at how love, passion, sex and relationships are assessed. From the more lustful and explorative The Kick Inside, through to more oblique or less personal moments, through to the way family, new responsibility or the loss of a long-term relationship were written about. One might not feel Bush is very personal when it comes to love but, if you take a deep dive, you can find plenty of examples of her being very honest and open. However, as someone raised on great literature, films and music, there is more nuance and layers. Bush writing about women’s experiences – whether mothers or lover – and writing in a way none of her contemporaries were. As it is Valentine’ day today, I wanted to address love and passion through Kate Bush’s music. Alongside hurt, revelation, wonder, desire, pain and detachment, there are plenty of…

MOMENTS of pleasure.

FEATURE: (Nice Dream): Radiohead’s The Bends at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

(Nice Dream)

Radiohead’s The Bends at Thirty

_________

ALTHOUGH the anniversary…

IN THIS PHOTO: Radiohead in 1995/PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Willsher

is not until 13th March, I wanted to look ahead as it is one of my all-time favourite albums. I will ask whether we’ll get a thirtieth anniversary release of a classic. This particular classic reached number four in the U.K. upon its release. I am interested in the phenomenon of a band or artist releasing a promising but flawed debut album and then vastly surpassing expectations with the sophomore realise. One can see the leap from Nirvana between 1989’s Bleach and 1991’s Nevermind. People might have their own examples. I think one of the most extreme rates of progression between a debut and sophomore album came from Radiohead. Their 1993 debut, Pablo Honey, had a few good songs but was defined by its biggest hit: the sensational Creep. Few expected such a remarkable follow-up album. The Bends arrived in 1995. It is a masterpiece album from a band who made a gigantic creative leap. They would do it again on 1997’s OK Computer. Because The Bends turns thirty on 13th March, I wanted to think about a possible thirtieth anniversary reissue. Produced by John Leckie, with extra production by Radiohead, Nigel Godrich and Jim Warren, there was a switch from Pablo Honey. More complex songs and a broader palette, the mixture of ballads and more introspective songs together with heavier numbers did make an impact. The start of the album was fraught with pressure. Starting out at RAK Studios in February 1994, there was expectation from Parlophone that Radiohead would or should produce another single as massive as Creep. Following an international tour in May and June 1994, work recommenced at Abbey Road Studios. They also recorded at The Manor in Oxfordshire. With Nigel Godrich adding valuable production support, he would produce for Radiohead going forward.

I am going to get to some reviews for The Bends. Upon its release in 1995, it did divide critics. Not sounding like anything around it, maybe at the height of Britpop, critics were not ready for something genuinely different or unconcerned with trends and ‘fitting in’. Years later, retrospective reviews have been glowing. People realising how important The Bends is. In 2015, marking twenty years of The Bends, Billboard provided their thoughts:

“Had Radiohead vanished after its first album, 1993’s Pablo Honey, the quintet from Oxford, England, would be remembered as a decent grunge band with one novelty hit. That song, of course, is “Creep,” a crushing outsider’s anthem that might’ve played like a post-Nirvana alt-rock parody had singer Thom Yorke not actually been such a creepy weirdo who didn’t belong on pop radio.

With “Creep,” Yorke was up front about his non-rock-star qualities, but when he moaned, “I wish I was special,” well, he was just being modest. Beginning with its second album, The Bends — released 20 years ago today in the U.K. and three weeks later in America — Radiohead proved it wasn’t just a bunch of smarty-pants Brits aping the Pixies or the Seattle sound.

On these dozen songs, Yorke comes into his own as a troubled, enigmatic lyricist and howler of haunted melodies. The band — and especially guitarist Jonny Greenwood— also advances the plot, riding a psychedelic tailwind beyond the borders of Alternative Nation. 
More than simply a successful skirting of the sophomore slump, The Bends is an early taste of the avant-garde flavor capsule Radiohead would serve up via android waiter two years later on OK Computer, the group’s real artistic leap forward.

If The Bends is less staggeringly different from Pablo Honey than some subsequent Radiohead albums would be from their immediate predecessors (see: OK Computer into 2000’s glitchy, guitar-lacking Kid A), the progression is unmistakable. The guitars don’t simply go from quiet to loud and back again; there are layers upon layers of jangle, shimmer, shudder, and crunch.

The sound is bold and confident, and it didn’t come easy. Reeling from the pressure of sudden fame, Radiohead faltered during its initial sessions at London’s RAK Studios in early 1994. It took a second go-round at Richard Branson’s Manor complex to wrap many of the tracks. Manning the boards both times was producer John Leckie, whose credits include the self-titled debut by the Stone Roses, a Radiohead favorite.

While drummer Phil Selway told Consumable in May 1995 that Leckie taught the band “how to use the studio in different ways and how to get the best out of our material,” Radiohead’s bosses at EMI weren’t totally sold. The label handed the master tapes to Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie, the producers behind Pablo Honey, and they set about giving the record a more American-style mix.

From a chart standpoint, they failed. The Bends peaked at No. 88 on the Billboard 200, and none of its singles managed to crack the Top 10 on even the Alternative Songs chart. But the album was a critical hit, and at the end of 1995 — after which time Radiohead had rocked arenas as tour support for R.E.M. — The Bends made many critics’ year-end best-of lists.

Two decades on, The Bends is seen as the jumping-off point for a group that’s been jumping around ever since. It’s experimental, but it also rocks, and if there were a Radiohead album everyone could agree on, this might be it”.

I am going to wrap things up soon. I want to highlight Pitchfork’s review of the Pablo Honey: Collector's Edition/OK Computer: Collector's Edition/The Bends: Collector's Edition in 2009. I am going to be interested to see how people approach The Bends ahead of its thirtieth anniversary. It is a magnificent album that has lost none of its power and impact:

“I distinctly remember then the first time someone suggested The Bends was a great record. Not being one of the million-plus Pablo Honey owners at the time, I was content to hear "Creep" on the radio over and over and expected I'd soon spend about as much about time with Radiohead's catalog as one would with, say, Hum or Ned's Atomic Dustbin or School of Fish. The My Iron Lung EP had beaten The Bends to U.S. record shelves by a few months, and the "High and Dry" / "Planet Telex" single was out a few weeks prior as well, but few noticed. Anyone who had explored those two earlier singles, however, would have been excited for the LP.

A reaction to the success of "Creep", "My Iron Lung" found Radiohead still exploring the loud/soft dynamic, but guitarist Jonny Greenwood was also locating his own identity and Yorke, inspired by Jeff Buckley, was using a wider vocal range, including some falsetto. Balancing a slightly artier sense of musical self-destruction with a sinewy guitar line, on "Lung" Radiohead found new ways to pick apart and re-construct the typical alt-rock template. Elsewhere on the EP, the five B-sides demonstrated a band whose collective heads seemed to crack open and spill out new ideas, moving the group away from the dour dead-end of grunge signifiers: With more loose-limbed and nimble guitar work ("The Trickster"), hints of art-rock ("Punchdrunk Lovesick Singalong"), the valuing of texture over riffs ("Permanent Daygliht"), offers of emotional nourishment ("Lozenge of Love" and "You Never Wash Up After Yourself") and tension and apprehension about workaday life ("Lewis [Mistreated]"), and themes of misanthropy (um, most of the five songs), these tracks pointed the way toward what was to come.

The band's next release, the "High and Dry" / "Planet Telex" single, announced that they'd arrived. "Planet Telex", an early exploration with loops and studio enhancements for the group, is their first song that could have fit on any of their albums, regardless of how experimental they grew; "High and Dry", meanwhile, is the blueprint for the big-hearted balladry that spawned the careers of imitators Travis, Starsailor, Elbow, and Coldplay (who, let's face it, wound up perfecting this sort of huggable, swelling arena rock).

The Bends was essentially split between these poles: warmth and tension; riffs and texture; rock and post-rock. The tricks employed by "Planet Telex" were rarely bested on it-- only arguably by "Just"-- while the "High & Dry" version of the band was topped at every turn here, especially on "Street Spirit (Fade Out") and "Fake Plastic Trees". Even B-sides such "Bishop's Robes" and "Talk Show Host" come close to matching "High".

To many fans, this more approachable and loveable version of the band is its peak. I can't agree, but the record is still a marvel. It feels, with hindsight, like a welcome retreat from the incessant back-patting and 60s worship of prime-period Britpop and a blueprint for the more feminine, emotionally engaging music that would emerge in the UK a few years later-- led by OK Computer. Alongside late 1996 or 1997 releases by Verve, Spiritualized, Belle and Sebastian, Cornershop, Mogwai, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Primal Scream, Super Furry Animals, the Beta Band, Mansun, and even Britpop stars Blur, Radiohead's OK Computer led the push back against knuckle-dragging Oasis clones who segregated their Boomer rock leanings from the fertile explorations of dance, classic indie, hip-hop, and art-school sensibilities going on throughout the rest of the UK. But once again, the press chose what they knew over the new, and despite the plaudits for 2000's Kid A, by the time of 2001's Amnesiac, people wanted another The Bends”.

I am going to end with this feature from Consequence from 2020. Marking twenty-five years of The Bends, they offered their review and take. They celebrated a restless album with ambitions to create and explore. Radiohead stepping things up and showing why you could not write them off or define them after Pablo Honey. I think I first heard The Bends in the 1990s and it was a real revelation. Still my favourite Radiohead album:

“It’s easy to look back on Radiohead’s discography and see the scope of their achievements as inevitable. In retrospect, the band have had a near-perfect career: initially gaining widespread attention with the much-loved and much-maligned “Creep” and a hit-or-miss debut album largely indebted to grunge and ’80s American indie rock bands like R.E.M. and Pixies and then becoming critical darlings, challenging themselves to stretch their sound to encompass new musical ideas. Many see their output up to 2000’s Kid A as the musical-career equivalent of a mind-expansion meme. The Bends was the album that forced critics and listeners alike to take them seriously — in a sense, it was the beginning of Radiohead as we know them today. However, as inevitable as it may seem in retrospect, it was anything but at the time.

One of my favorite anecdotes about the creation of The Bends highlights the important fact that at this point in their careers, Radiohead were twentysomethings, one-hit wonders who didn’t know what they were doing. It’s actually the story behind the now-iconic album cover, the first one Stanley Donwood, who’s been involved in all things Radiohead ever since, did for the band.

Thom Yorke and Donwood met at the University of Exeter, both of them studying art and literature. Donwood first collaborated with Radiohead on the cover for the 1994 single “My Iron Lung”, which would later appear on The Bends. Inspired by that single, Yorke and Donwood, two kids with an old-school video camera, went to a hospital to get footage of an iron lung, which, according to Donwood, turned out to be “not very interesting to look at.” They found a more interesting subject in the form of a CPR mannequin. After recording the footage, they played it on a television and photographed the screen, creating the grainy, shimmering variations in color you see on the cover.

I like this story because it shows a side of Radiohead that undercuts the mystique generated over the years by the band’s critical adulation, far-reaching influence, and exploration of increasingly insular, experimental sounds on later releases. The Bends shows us a group of young artists who are very much still figuring it out, jaded early on by unexpected fame, throwing ideas against the wall to see what works. We see this process of creation-as-discovery in the story behind the album artwork as well as in the record itself.

This need to experiment stemmed just as much from youth and inexperience as it did from desperation. The success of “Creep” took a toll on the band. Before they had a chance to discover who they were for themselves, countless listeners had already put them in a box: they were derivative, they were a one-hit wonder, defined by a single song at the start of their career. After a cancelled set, Thom Yorke told NME, “Physically, I’m completely fucked, and mentally I’ve had enough,” and the band’s record label hit them with an ultimatum. Though many have come to admire Radiohead for their consistency, in the lead-up to The Bends, it was becoming increasingly unclear whether the band had a future at all.

When opening track “Planet Telex” was released as a split single with “High and Dry”, it pointed toward the future, but no one, perhaps not even Radiohead, knew it yet. The loops, the keyboards, the studio flourishes, the shimmering tone, and the abstract lyrics — all, in retrospect, point to the band’s future. It’s difficult to listen to “Planet Telex”, and much of The Bends in general, without thinking of where the band would go from there, without hearing the feedback of OK Computer and the synthetic frigidness of Kid A. That opening single sounds nothing like Pablo Honey. It’s easy to see the band Radiohead were becoming in it, but the creative process was certainly not as clear as it seems now. There was a haphazardness to the way this song came together. Story goes, the band laid that record down in one night, after a night of drinking. Thom Yorke was lying on the floor as he recorded the vocals (in one take). And they were going to call the song “Planet Xerox” before they realized it was trademarked. They were still young, unaccustomed to fame, but they had something to prove, and they were spitballing, following their impulses and inspirations to truly exciting results.

One thing they were sure of was that they didn’t want to create a second Pablo Honey. Although The Bends still bears the influence of grunge and ’80s indie rock, musically it was a massive leap. The guitar playing became more complex and mercurial, oscillating between placid strums and frenetic freak-outs. We see this duality in a song like “Nice Dream” starting with chords and lyrics by Yorke before being expanded and complicated by Johnny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien. You can hear this tendency to fuck up (in a good way) a would-be straightforward song across the record, particularly in tracks like “My Iron Lung”, which purposefully flouts the constraints of a song like “Creep”.

Greenwood’s influence (particularly his string arrangements, which are incidentally all over the band’s most recent album, A Moon Shaped Pool) became more pronounced. And The Bends saw the entrance of Nigel Godrich, the band’s longtime producer and de facto sixth member, who did engineering for the record and produced “Black Star”, which could have been a more straightforward song if it weren’t imbued with such menace and restless energy. This restless energy permeates the record.

On The Bends, Radiohead were not content — to be another Britpop band, to be a one-hit wonder, to be what they were last year, last month, last minute. That restlessness has ironically been a major factor in the band’s consistency over the years — an unwillingness to settle, to continue making the music they’ve always made. Their constant reinvention has given the illusion of consistency and inevitability, but it was the band’s frantic desire for discovery, for trying new things, that have made them the band they are today. As Thom Yorke said shortly after the release of Kid A, “The best things are often those that go somewhere you weren’t expecting”.

Ahead of 13th March and the thirtieth anniversary of Radiohead’s The Bends, I am wondering if there will be a reissue. Extras, possible demos and outtakes. It would be fascinating to think there is something coming. If not, there will definitely be new reviews and insights from critics and fans alike. One of my favourite albums, it is a pleasure to revisit it for this feature. If you have not heard The Bends for a while then listen to it now. 1993’s debut album, Pablo Honey, had the odd promising moment but was underwhelming. The Bends changed everything. It was certainly a…

GIGANTIC leap forward.

FEATURE: A New Year with The Trouble Club: Upcoming Events I Am Looking Forward To

FEATURE:

 

 

A New Year with The Trouble Club

Upcoming Events I Am Looking Forward To

_________

I am returning my thoughts…

IN THIS PHOTO: The Trouble Club’s CEO and owner Ellie Newton with recent guest Carol Vorderman

to The Trouble Club once more. Rather than look back at events I have attended in the past few months, I am looking ahead to what is to come. Urge people who have not joined yet to investigate. You can join here. Check out The Trouble Club and you can see what is coming up. As I write this (14th January), there are some exciting dates on the schedule already. On 27th January, I am attending How to Trust and Be Trusted, with Rachel Botsman. Taking place at The Conduit in Covent Garden, it is going to be a terrific event. This is an event run by Conduit who have asked The Trouble Club members to attend. As an example of the sort of events Trouble Club members attend, this gives you a good guide and insight:

“Rachel Botsman, in conversation with Helen Barrett, FT columnist, explores how trust shapes behaviour, culture, and connection.

In a world that feels more uncertain every day, trust is what keeps people, communities, and societies working together. Rachel Botsman, renowned thought leader on trust and author of How to Trust and Be Trusted, joins us at The Conduit for an illuminating conversation moderated by Helen Barrett, Financial Times columnist and expert on workplace dynamics.

Together, Rachel and Helen will delve into why trust is so essential—how it changes behavior, shapes cultures, and fosters open communication to solve problems. Drawing on real-world examples, they will unpack the dynamics of trust: how it is built, broken, and repaired, and why it is a cornerstone of strong connections and meaningful progress.

Rachel Botsman is a leading expert on trust in the modern world. She is the author of twocritically acclaimed books, What’s Mine is Yours and Who Can You Trust?, that have beentranslated into 14 languages. Her writings on trust have been widely published in the Guardian,Financial Times, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Wired. Through herpopular newsletter, Rethink with Rachel, she engages with a community of over 85,000subscribers every week. On top of this, Rachel is an experienced broadcaster hosting the BBC series Money, Money, Money as well as her own podcast called Rethink Moments in which she challenges different cultural ideas and events with the help of experts in the specific field.

Helen Barrett is a London-based writer and editor specialising in art, design, architecture, fashion, and culture. A former Financial Times journalist and editor of the House &Home section, she now writes for the FT, The Telegraph, The Spectator, and more. Her work includes in-depth features on topics like London’s invented place names and Sydney Modern’s architects, as well as sharp reviews of books and music. An experienced interviewer, Helen has spoken with cultural figures such as Norman Foster, Es Devlin, and Peter Saville. She is also a director of the London Modern festival”.

Another event – which will be held on 30th January - at Conduit in Covent Garden is Diane Abbott: A Woman Like Me. This is going to be an historic night! The Trouble Club hosts a variety of inspiring and brilliant women across various fields. From the arts to politics, so many iconic women have enthralled and moved Trouble Club members. Diane Abbott is going to be one of the all-time great guests. You can buy her book here:

“Diane Abbott is a history-maker. From challenging expectations as a bright and restless child of the Windrush generation to becoming the first elected Black female MP in the UK.

We are incredibly honoured to be welcoming Diane, the mother of the House (the longest uninterrupted female MP) to The Trouble Club to discuss her outstanding life of service.

Ever since the day she first walked through the House of Commons as the first Black woman MP, she has been a fearless and vocal champion for the causes that have made Britain what it is today, whether it’s increasing access to education for Black children and speaking out against the Iraq war or advocating tirelessly for refugees and immigrants.

A unique figure in British public life, Diane has often had nothing but the courage of her convictions to carry her through incredibly hostile environments, from torrential abuse in the mainstream media and on social media, to being shunned by the political establishment, including by her own party.

Join us for an intimate evening with one of the most influential politicians in British history”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Adriana Brownlee is a Trouble Club guest on 11th February

The owner and CEO of The Trouble Club, Ellie Newton holds virtual coffee mornings for new members. For anyone about to join, this is a great opportunity to meet new members. I have been a member for nearly two years, though it is always a pleasure hearing from new Trouble Club members and networking. Even though I live in London so can’t afford to see events there, The Trouble Club also exists in Manchester. Great events held there. Boxer and lawyer Selma Masood will be hosted by The Trouble Club on 4th February. I am going to round up this feature writing why I love being a Trouble Club member and why it is important to keep writing about them in the hope people see it and join. I cannot emphasise enough the variety and quality of the guests. On 11th February, at the beautiful Kindred at Hammersmith, there is an event I am really looking forward to. 14 Peaks with Adriana Brownlee is going to be amazing:

“Adriana Brownlee just made history as the youngest ever female climber to summit the world’s tallest mountains (let’s hope she hasn’t peaked…….we’re here all night.)

On the 9th of October she summited the last of the fourteen peaks over 8000m, a feat only 64 people in the world have officially achieved. She is also only the second ever British climber to accomplish this.

Adriana will join us at Trouble to discuss her adventures, the highs and lows (both literally and emotionally) of being a world-renowned mountaineer and the incredible female mountaineers that have inspired her throughout her journey”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Caitlin Moran will appear for The Trouble Club at the Manchester Central Exchange Auditorium on 15th February

There are five more events I will highlight before closing up. I know that new events will be announced very soon. One of the biggest and most anticipated events in Trouble Club history is Caitlin Moran: For the Love of Women. On 15th February, at the Manchester Central Exchange Auditorium, there will be a packed crowd to welcome Caitlin Moran but also hear the incredible Lois Shearing. I am not attending the event in-person, though I am seeing it virtually. I am really pumped for this, as I am a fan and admirer of Caitlin Moran:

“CAITLIN MORAN PEOPLE, CAITLIN MORAN! Wow are we fans of this woman, can you tell? At Trouble we've been devouring her books and articles for years and it's about time she graced the Trouble stage.

Caitlin has hilariously documented the pot-holed road of womanhood from teenage sweat to midlife reinvention. She'll join us at The Trouble Club in Manchester to discuss how she's so brilliantly chronicled the journey and kept us laughing along the way.

We'll also dive into Caitlin's icons from the celebs she adored in her early years to the personal mentors who have shaped her incredible writing career. We'll discuss what kind of support we owe to the next generation and how her icons have changed as the years have progressed. There will also be lots of time for Q&A, so get your questions ready!

Caitlin Moran is an award-winning columnist for the Times and the author of multi-award-winning bestseller How to Be a Woman which has been published in 28 countries, and won the British Book Awards’ Book of the Year 2011. Her two volumes of collected journalism, Moranthology and Moranifesto, were Sunday Times bestsellers, and her novel, How to Build a Girl, debuted at Number One.

Our second speaker of the day is the incredible Lois Shearing who will join us to discuss the significant roles women are starting to play in far-right movements. From tradwives to femtrolls Lois will talk us through how and why women join these movements.

This will be our biggest event to date and it's taking place in Manchester, the home of our second Trouble location. Don't worry London members, the event will take place in the afternoon so that you can be back to London on the same day. Or stay, and enjoy the delights of the city”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Emily Austen is a very special Trouble Club guest on 19th February

I think I will wrap up with three selected events. On 19th February, at the stunning Allbright in Mayfair is  Work Smarter with Emily Austen. What I love about the events is that they can be practical and useful in all kinds of ways. Whether it how to cope with bereavement or businesswomen speaking; networking coaches or authors discussing how they got where they were. Although a lot of fun is had at The Trouble Club, every event is designed so that you take something away:

“Busyness has become a status symbol. The 'more is more' philosophy still prevails, running us into the dirt and out of natural energy. We jostle for our position balancing work, family life, fertility, misogyny and mental health, and we have been told that working late, over-caffeinating, being the first in and last out, sacrificing our personal lives, and eating on the go, are conducive to succeeding long-term. But instead, we are burnt-out and less motivated than ever.

Join us as we meet Emily Austen, entrepreneur, bestselling author and founder of Emerge London to learn about her SMARTER method. We’ll reframe previous systems that our brains predict, switch our mindset from one of scarcity to one of abundance, join the 8am club (not the 5am club), conduct a busyness detox, define what success means to us, track our energy not your time, identify and set healthy boundaries, time block, habit pair and switch to mono tasking, and so much more.

This is not for the bare minimum Mondays or the take it easy Tuesdays. It's an evening for those who strive for success; for ambitious women wanting to do it all, those who understand that you have to make a deposit to be able to make a withdrawal”.

Jumping to 5th March, that is when Trouble hosts Caroline Lucas: Another England. Her book that the event is based around is must-read. At a charged and divided time, this is going to be a compelling evening.

“One of our most requested speakers, Caroline Lucas, is coming to Trouble. For 14 years Caroline was the sole Green Party MP while also leading and co-leading the party. Having stepped down at the last election, Caroline is focussing on a different conversation, reclaiming Englishness from the far-right.

With the UK more divided than ever, England has re-emerged as a potent force in our culture and politics. But today the dominant story told about our country serves solely the interests of the right. The only people who dare speak of Englishness are cheerleaders for Brexit, exceptionalism and imperial nostalgia. Yet there are other stories, equally compelling, about who we are: about the English people’s radical inclusivity, their deep-rooted commitment to the natural world, their long struggle to win rights for all. These stories put the Chartists, the Diggers and the Suffragettes in their rightful place alongside Nelson and Churchill.

Join us as we meet Caroline Lucas, author of Another England and one of the most impactful politicians of the last decade”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Dr Haru Yamada

I am very interested in The Art of Listening with Dr Haru Yamada. Occurring on 11th March at Century Club in Soho, this is going to be one I would recommend to anyone who is thinking about joining The Trouble Club but is not sure yet. There is more information here. I am keen to get my hands on a copy of Haru Yamada’s Kiku: The Japanese Art of Good Listening which is released on 6th March. Another demonstration of the eclectic nature of events and speakers hosted by The Trouble Club. This year is going to be a rich and really brilliant one. It is wonderful being a member:

“Drawing on the Japanese concept of 'kiku', sociolinguist and listening expert Haru Yamada will join us at Trouble to share a transformation guide to becoming better listeners in our daily life. Kiku is a particular type of listening that goes beyond the superficial. It is a deep listening that brings us together.

Once you understand how hearing and listening work, you'll start noticing your own. You will gain a deeper understanding of the world. You'll read rooms better because you'll be reading more deeply between the lines of the people around you.

Dr Haru Yamada is a PhD sociolinguistics researcher, writer, and leading authority on the subject of listening. Her pioneering analyses of conversations has since led to international publications and journals used as staple textbooks in universities across the world, and her articles are regularly cited in academic work”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Selma Masood will be appearing at 100 Embankment Manchester on 4th February

Although this feature is less detailed than ones I have published previously, the objectives are still the same. Not only highlighting the incredible events The Trouble Club hosts at some wonderful venues – go and check each of them out to get an idea of the setting and location -, but they also emphasise how enriching it is. Not only is it fulfilling and a pleasure meeting fellow members and newcomers. Each speaker has an impact on me. I learn something every time. Think differently. Different emotions brought to the surface. I think I am made a more informed, conscientious and better person attending the events. That might sound weird or the wrong words. What I mean is that my mind and heart is opened in a way that it is not anywhere else. I am so thrilled and intrigued every time a new event is added to the schedule. I do think this year is going to e one of the most successful and best for The Trouble Club. In addition to events like the ones I have highlighted, there are social events, book clubs, member dinners and roundtable discussions. That social aspect that is brilliant is you are a new member. The very finest voices. These simply incredible women. I have had so many life-changing evenings at Trouble Club events. Moved profoundly. Evenings that were full of laughter. Others where members got up to share stories and open up to those around them. I am looking forward to seeing how the Trouble Club evolves, expands and moves in the coming year. Anyone who has heard of The Trouble Club but is not sure what to expect, I hope this feature has helped a bit. From the friendly and warm members to the beautiful venues and the wonderful guests, time and time again, I come away very fortunate being part of this phenomenal club. To those unsure or merely curious, when it comes to The Trouble Club, it is very much…

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WELL worth exploring.

FEATURE: In the Light: Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

In the Light

Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti at Fifty

_________

I am looking ahead…

IN THIS PHOTO: Led Zeppelin performing at Earl’s Court, London in 1975/PHOTO CREDIT: Ian Dickson

to 24th February, as that date marks fifty years since Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti was released. 24th February, 1975 was when it was released in the U.S. It came out four days later in the U.K. I want to spend time with a classic album from perhaps the best Rock group of them all. The album was a huge commercial success. It debuted at number one on the U.K. chart and three in the U.S. I am going to come to a very detailed and passionate review of Physical Graffiti from Youth (Martin Glover) soon. I would also recommend a documentary such as this, which delves into the making of Physical Graffiti. First, tied to a fortieth anniversary (2015) reissue of the album (that included unreleased tracks), Jimmy Page (the band’s guitarist and co-songwriter with their lead, Robert Plant) talked to The Independent about the background to the album - and what he considered Led Zeppelin’s legacy to be:

“So many myths have grown around Led Zeppelin, the British rock band that ruled the Seventies and continues to cast a long shadow over popular music, that their guitarist, producer and curator extraordinaire Jimmy Page has to see the funny side. The 71-year-old’s hair may be snow-white but his black-clad frame is as pencil-thin as it was in his prime. The years roll back while we converse in front of a roaring fire, in a plush Kensington hotel, a stone’s throw from the Royal Albert Hall, where Led Zeppelin triumphed in 1969 and 1970.

He is talking up the 40th-anniversary edition of the double studio set Physical Graffiti, the third tranche of a reissue campaign that kicked off last June. The addition of companion discs containing out-takes, alternative, and rough mixes has returned the group’s first five multi-million-selling albums to the charts, introducing them to yet another new generation of fans.

Page is debunking a story about what happened before the recording of Physical Graffiti started. “On this one, we’re really bouncing. We’ve been touring and we’re going in there and John Paul Jones has left his choir,” he quips, alluding to the rumour that, at the end of 1973, his multi-instrumentalist bandmate considered quitting the biggest group in the world to become a choirmaster at Winchester Cathedral. The truth is more prosaic. “John had a big family and he wasn’t there on the first few days. His holidays over-ran,” he says.

Back in 1973, since vocalist Robert Plant was also late arriving, Page and drummer John Bonham began rehearsing the epic “Kashmir”, the unstoppable, Panzer-like track which typified the ambition and scope of Physical Graffiti. “I had that riff on an acoustic piece I was working on and I also had those staccato parts that became the brass parts. The idea of using the orchestra over that riff goes back to classical music, things like Benjamin Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge and The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. I knew it was pretty radical. John Bonham understood what it was about. The whole band took to it. “Robert said, ‘oh, I’ve got some lyrics that I wrote before, in Morocco’. He tried them out and they worked really well,” says Page.

As he admits, there was no guarantee the Eastern-flavoured majesty of “Kashmir” was going to translate across to the general public. Yet it became another gem in the superlative Led Zeppelin catalogue, more sonically ambitious than the era-defining “Whole Lotta Love” and “Stairway to Heaven”, and a milestone at the crossroads of world music and rap, recycled by Puff Daddy for “Come With Me” on the soundtrack to the Godzilla blockbuster in 1998. “People went, ‘oh, he shouldn’t have done that’, but you might as well say, ‘oh, he shouldn’t have dabbled in world music’. Of course, I should have. I was doing that as a teenager, so why in heaven’s name not? It’s all part of the big picture,” says Page.

Like many of his contemporaries, he followed up his interest in skiffle, rock’n’roll, folk and world music by delving into the blues. “We were doing the best research before the internet,” he recalls. “I’d include Arabic instruments like the oud and Indian ones like the sitar in that. It was all permeating into my playing, and that grew when I was in the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. But everyone in the band had their own influences.”

In the summer of 1968, Page and Jones considered vocalist Terry “Superlungs” Reid and Procol Harum drummer BJ Wilson but, once they teamed up with Plant and Bonham for that first rehearsal in Soho’s Gerrard Street and started jamming “Train Kept A-Rollin’”, they never looked back. Within weeks, Page and Jones had ditched the New Yardbirds moniker and come up with Led Zeppelin. The name was inspired by a comment made by Who drummer Keith Moon when they had jammed with the Yardbirds guitarist Jeff Beck and pianist Nicky Hopkins on “Beck’s Bolero” two years earlier. “This will go down like a lead balloon”, said Moon.

By the time they returned to the States in the spring of 1969, they were topping the bill and recording their second album on the hoof. As their popularity grew, they headlined stadiums, travelled by private plane and created mayhem wherever they went, with many a tale of groupie debauchery passing into rock lore.

They also became the most bootlegged band of all time. Peter Grant, their formidable manager, used to scour the audience for recording devices, and made the occasional baseball-bat-assisted intervention in record stores selling pirate recordings. Page has remained fiercely protective of their catalogue and amassed his own collection of bootlegs, which proved handy when he began considering the current, definitive, state-of-the-art, expanded reissues.

Unlike many of the groups they inspired, Led Zeppelin were a versatile, ever-changing outfit, with Page as likely to strum a mandolin or a 12-string acoustic as to attack a twin-necked guitar with a violin bow before plucking another killer riff from thin air

“I made it my business to see what was out there, especially with this project. This stuff hadn’t come out on bootleg because it had been so carefully guarded,” says Page. “Because I was the producer from day one of Led Zeppelin all the way through, I had more points of reference than anyone else... The prospect of being able to do a companion disc to each of the originals, to give the fans what they wanted and more, was so attractive. On Physical Graffiti, there’s an early stage version of “In the Light”, you’ve got the structure of it, and you can hear the additional work that went into it.”

This approach is commensurate with the fact that, back in the Seventies, Led Zeppelin didn’t release singles in the UK. Indeed, by 1974, they’d assumed even greater creative control with the launch of their own label, Swan Song Records. They hit the ground running with the eponymous debut by Bad Company and Silk Torpedo by the Pretty Things but, as Page proudly recalls, “Physical Graffiti was the first piece of Led Zeppelin product on our own label, the right album for the right time. We had material that was left over from the fourth album and needed to be heard. Other people had done double albums and I was really keen to do a double showing all that we were capable of, from the sensitive guitar instrumentals through to the density of something like “In the Light” and the urgency of something like “In My Time of Dying”. Every track has its own character.”

Indeed, many consider Physical Graffiti, with its lavish, fenestrated cover and breadth of styles, the pinnacle of Led Zeppelin’s output. They would not be as carefree again. After a car crash in Rhodes in the summer of 1975, Plant was in a wheelchair when they recorded Presence. Two years later, the singer’s first-born son Karac died of a stomach infection. The making of In Through the Out Door in 1978 was overshadowed by Bonham’s struggle with alcoholism and Page’s battle with drug addiction.

And then John Bonham died in September 1980, putting an end to the last chapter of their stellar career. Page, Plant and Jones have reunited three times since, for Live Aid in 1985, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Atlantic Records in 1988, and to pay tribute to Ahmet Ertegun in 2007, but these, as well as the two albums Page and Plant made in the Nineties, have been mere postscripts.

While Plant has forged on as a solo performer and the frontman of the Sensational Space Shifters, the guitarist has struggled to find partners on his wavelength, despite collaborations with Paul Rodgers, David Coverdale and the Black Crowes. He talks wistfully about doing his own thing “towards the end of the year. Not anything you’d imagine I’d ever do. I’m warming up on the touchline. I know what’s coming next, the fans do not and it’s nice to surprise them,” he muses, as much about the reissues as about his next venture. “It’s been fun. We didn’t repeat ourselves, we went over the horizon in every direction. There are so many tangents, so many facets to the Led Zeppelin music. We were not a one-trick pony.”

Unlike many of the groups they inspired, Led Zeppelin were a versatile, ever-changing outfit, with Page as likely to strum a mandolin or a 12-string acoustic as to attack a twin-necked guitar with a violin bow before plucking another killer riff from thin air.

How does he feel about their legacy? “Some bands have done terrible things, some bands have done really good things, playing in the spirit of Led Zeppelin. You’re only passing on the baton really. What does matter is that we’ve managed to make a difference and quite clearly Led Zeppelin’s music did”.

I am surprised there are not more anniversary features around Physical Graffiti. However, as the album turns fifty on 24th February, I think there might be more activity and engagement – as that is a properly big anniversary! Before finishing off with a review from AllMusic, here is Youth’s take on perhaps the greatest double album ever. Reviewing for Classic Rock, he explored a classic that contains some of the band’s finest material (including Kashmir and In My Time of Dying):

“Why is this possibly the greatest double album ever made? Why indeed. There’s a feral mystery to it even today, that still defies description, nevertheless we like the impossible. Let’s have a go, shall we?

Custard Pie lets us know what we’re in for. A menacing and salacious riff, dripping with intoxicating dirty blues lust opens the door to a Dionysian orgy, writhing with desire, revelling in its own relentless pursuit of pleasure. The unapologetic mutant funk rhythm section of Bonzo Bonham and John Paul Jones buffalos a path through the fray. Wha-wha clavinet snakes around your hips and spins you around. It’s primitive voodoo.

Razor-sharp guitars slash and burn, shredding and mangling your sensibilities. Robert Johnson, chicken blood and smoking valve amps are all invoked and teleported into leafy Barnes’ Olympic Studio 2 (amongst other locations). Inside, it’s aural carnage.

We get the beautiful Bron-Yr-Aur next, a gorgeous acoustic jig resuscitated from earlier sessions in 1970. It’s wistful and boasts a delicate beauty again reminiscent of Celtic/Vedic correspondence: its Raga-like open tuning, obviously pioneered and influenced by Davey Graham and Bert Jansch, but given a unique reinterpretation from Page within a strong melodic structure that strengthens the overall dynamics of the album.

The remastering, by Led Zeppelin veteran John Davies, is clearly apparent on this release. Remastering is important here. Though the band’s past CD releases saw some terrible mastering crimes committed against humanity the digital package I’m reviewing from here does sound great - warm and lush - on my home system. The vinyl sounds amazing and reveals that the mastering is certainly better than ever before, with more sub and lots of clarity. It’s also reassuringly heavy to hold.

Down By The Seaside, again a little light pop flavoured digression, is a little bit Beach Boys with Doo Wop backing vocals. Although its genesis was acoustic and influenced by Neil Young, it comes over more whimsical-Faces/Stones-like: the middle eight changes gear and it kicks off with some real verve. Page excels again. This really reminds me of waiting for school to finish during the long summer of ‘75.

When I listen to Ten Years Gone now it’s still spellbinding. Our astronaut alchemists nearing the end of their quest, heroin-soaked, cocaine-addled. Lost in the desert, wheels spinning in the sand. The struggle is beating them down, you can hear the weariness in the voice and beats, the end is near. It is prophetic, as nothing the band recorded subsequently would again match these heights.

Night Flight is another rescued outtake from ‘71 that, despite out of tune guitars, swaggers along like a maliciously strutting droog. These b-side ‘throw aways’ would be other bands’ lead tracks… staggering.

The Wanton Song is another anthem to female sexual promiscuity. A killer beat, arc welded to a filthy riff. Dirty, gravelly, soulful howls are exorcised from Plant, superb reversed guitars and a bridge that reminds me of Ace’s How Long, a great Lesley rotating speaker cabinet guitar overdub and a slick-wristed, psychedelic flowerpop solo. This is Zeppelin at their solstice zenith, and maybe their most influential track, but it’s all down hill from here.

Boogie With Stu is a lighthearted jam that evokes an image of the band on a day off in a New Orleans Bordello with the Stones’ Ian Stewart woogie-ing away at a 1920’s ragtime piano. It’s quite Bolan-esque really, but where it leads us is to the incredible Black Country Woman. “Shall we roll it, Jimmy?” asks a young Eddie Kramer as they’re captured recording al fresco in Mick Jagger’s Stargroves garden in ‘72. You can hear an airplane flying overhead.“Nah, leave it,” replies Page with a nonchalant chuckle. I love the way they leave that on, like a current hipster field recording. Its intimacy is prophetic. Bonham’s four-to-the-floor kick and twisted Beefheart break smashes this otherwise ordinary acoustic, country blues stomp.

Sick Again: “Through the circus of the LA queens”. Ten long years of on the road decadence and way too much impersonal sex with teenage groupies had taken its toll. They sound tired. Although I love the way Page generally mixed Plant’s vocals down into the mix, allowing the listener to investigate and get involved with the recording, to be able to work out, or even reinvent, what the lyric is. “Teenage dreams already old at 16”. This really is the end. Though fate prophetically points her finger to the new barbarians storming the rock citadel… Punk.

This is the last track on the album. The intro riff sounds spirited, like early Damned, but then the track kicks in and is ponderous and over-produced, too many overdubs. Halfway through there’s a shot of adrenaline administered and they all pick it up, but just a bit. Punk was something not even Zeppelin could have predicted or even withstood. (Punk’s zeitgeist within a year or two would make the band suddenly look and sound old, slow and cumbersome). Despite its failings (the demo is a lot more Beatles-like and lively) the track and album does end beautifully, on a solo reversed guitar dubbed up with echo and ominously, a prophetic Pistols-like pick scrape.

Just one year later, when I was 15 in 1976, the Job Centre in Fulham sent me to 484, King Road, Chelsea for an interview as a runner at Swansong, the band’s own record label. I couldn’t believe my luck… but it didn’t last long, as I made the fatal mistake of wearing a Zep vest and declaring my fanboy credentials to the receptionist. My interview was a cursory glance and grunt from Peter Grant and I was ushered unceremoniously out the door.

Skip to 1982, I am 21, a bona fide cult hero, a rock star with hit albums and a sizeable following, standing outside the very same Kings Road door (this area of Chelsea is ironically called World’s End) in a Biblical thunder and lightning rainstorm. Way too much Sorcerer’s Apprentice LSD and excessive touring has resulted in my own meltdown. My body is producing industrial strength DMT that is coursing through my blood… I am the walrus. I had gone from Sid Vicious to Syd Barrett in one quick amphetamine-fuelled, psychedelic dystopian summer. Everything had become cosmic and heavy. Like Joseph Campbell meeting Terence McKenna in a scene from The Omen.

Tired and emotional, I made the solitary shamanic pilgrimage back to where it started. “I know what you’re up too!” I screamed at the unanswered door, “It’s all black magic!”. I shouted feebly past the marble lions outside the door, which mockingly roared silent curses into my drug-fevered, abyss-like eye sockets. Ravens cawed above and the wind howled. Luckily, Mr Grant was in a kindly sympathetic mood that day. I was recognised and Peter rang my manager, Mr Fenwick at EG Management (another exclusive boutique management agency who also represented Killing Joke, Roxy Music, Eno and King Crimson and whose offices were only just a little further up the Kings Road).

“Come and get yer boy before we break his bones”. (Must have been some bizarre pirates’ honour of rock management etiquette and courtesy that dictated they didn’t break my bones before ringing EG up). Five minutes later and Mr Fenwick’s vintage Bentley purrs up alongside and gently but firmly, like at the end of the movie Performance, where James Fox is bundled off, I’m being whisked inside.

“That was close, Youth,” exclaims Mark Fenwick with a nervous chuckle (he still manages Roger Waters). “What were you thinking…? ” Love is the law”.

I am going to wrap up soon. In a year where there are some important anniversaries for a whole range of classic and beloved albums, I had to show some respect for Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti. It is a double album that suffers few of the flaws many double albums do. Few filler tracks to be found in the pack in my opinion. Some prefer earlier Led Zeppelin albums where you got more focus and a leaner album. However, I like their later work. Epic tracks that sit alongside tight and funky tracks. It is an eclectic album that has stood the test of time and remains undetected. Here is what AllMusic wrote in their review:

“Led Zeppelin returned from a nearly two-year hiatus in 1975 with the double-album Physical Graffiti, their most sprawling and ambitious work. Where Led Zeppelin IV and Houses of the Holy integrated influences on each song, the majority of the tracks on Physical Graffiti are individual stylistic workouts. The highlights are when Zeppelin incorporate influences and stretch out into new stylistic territory, most notably on the tense, Eastern-influenced "Kashmir." "Trampled Underfoot," with John Paul Jones' galloping keyboard, is their best funk-metal workout, while "Houses of the Holy" is their best attempt at pop, and "Down by the Seaside" is the closest they've come to country.

Even the heavier blues -- the 11-minute "In My Time of Dying," the tightly wound "Custard Pie," and the monstrous epic "The Rover" -- are louder and more extended and textured than their previous work. Also, all of the heavy songs are on the first record, leaving the rest of the album to explore more adventurous territory, whether it's acoustic tracks or grandiose but quiet epics like the affecting "Ten Years Gone." The second half of Physical Graffiti feels like the group is cleaning the vaults out, issuing every little scrap of music they set to tape in the past few years. That means that the album is filled with songs that aren't quite filler, but don't quite match the peaks of the album, either. Still, even these songs have their merits -- "Sick Again" is the meanest, most decadent rocker they ever recorded, and the folky acoustic rock & roll of "Boogie with Stu" and "Black Country Woman" may be tossed off, but they have a relaxed, off-hand charm that Zeppelin never matched. It takes a while to sort out all of the music on the album, but Physical Graffiti captures the whole experience of Led Zeppelin at the top of their game better than any of their other albums”.

Released on 24th February, 1975 in the United States, it is no surprise Robert Plant calls the album his favourite Led Zeppelin release. Jimmy Page considers it a high watermark for the band and recalls fondly the jamming sessions where song structures were being worked out. Throw in the drumming prowess of John Bonham and the genius of John Paul Jones and this was a band at their absolute peak! An ambitious, eclectic and hugely impressive double album from the band, it still sound exhilarating and electrifying fifty years on. That is testament to an album that…

FEW have equalled.

FEATURE: Melt: Leftfield’s Leftism at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Melt

Leftfield’s Leftism at Thirty

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PERHAPS not placed…

IN THIS PHOTO: Neil Barnes, left, and Paul Daley of Leftfield/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Double/Camera Press (via The Guardian)

as highly as other classic albums from 1995 by critics, Leftfield’s amazing debut, Leftism, is still a hugely important release. An iconic Dance album, it contained collaborations with artists who were not connected with Dance – a left-field decision as it were! Among those collaborators was John Lydon  and Toni Halliday from Curve. Although it is a Progressive House album, Leftism is a multi-genre masterpiece. Leftism was hailed and heralded by critics in 1995. The album was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 1995 but lost to Portishead's Dummy. Reaching number six in the U.K. upon its release and seen as a landmark Dance album in years since, Leftism still sounds fresh thirty years later. Released on 30th January, 1995, it is a classic that takes risk but ones that pay off. The album was re-released in 2017. I will get to a review for Leftism 22. I want to start off with a 2020 feature from The Quietus:

“Since their fo:rmation in 1989, Leftfield had slowly but surely set up the template for much of what was to follow on the dancefloor over the next decade. Be it their own material in the shape of ‘More Than I Know’ and ‘Not Forgotten’ – tracks that arguably moved on British house music in huge leaps and bounds – through to still stunning remixes for the likes of Stereo MCs (‘Step It Up’), React 2 Rhythm (‘Intoxication’) and Inner City (‘Hallelujah’), as well as David Bowie’s ‘Jump They Say’ among many others – Leftfield were defining the next wave of dance music. And with Leftism, they’d caused a seismic shift.

Much like Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, Leftism was a long time coming and an album heralded by a stream of landmark single releases before its eventual arrival. Though released in the opening overs of 1995, Leftism took its first indelible step three years earlier with the release of ‘Release The Pressure’. Featuring reggae singer Earl Sixteen, the 12”-only release marked a departure from the sound Leftfield had become known for. The bpms were reduced to create a more intense groove, while the bassline – certainly on the single’s ‘Rough Dub’ flip – introduced Leftfield’s burgeoning reggae infatuation.

Not that they were alone. Primal Scream had deployed dub dynamics across Screamadelica while The Sabres Of Paradise were reaching new levels of dread, echo and space on Haunted Dancehall, as were The Aloof. And of course there was The Orb, whose epic soundscapes blended those 70s hinterlands of dub, ambient washes and electronica, while soon to follow were Renegade Soundwave with The Next Chapter Of Dub. Yet for all that, none of them quite blended the mix of dub and house music to the same degree as Leftfield did.

Witness the album version of ‘Song Of Life’ for evidence. Whereas the original 12” single from 1992 leapt pretty much into the heart of the action, Leftism’s reading builds slowly and methodically with at least half of the song relying on dub dynamics to create a sense of tension screaming out for release. Here, Leftfield are more concerned about the journey than they are about the destination, but it’s an approach that reaps rich rewards.

Indeed, to listen to Leftism at a remove of a quarter of a century is to reframe the album from its original perception. Though widely regarded as the pinnacle of progressive house, the album had actually moved away from the form Leftfield had helped create. And perhaps most striking now is how the album works best when it’s banging the least. The sensual grooves of ‘Original’ feel more aligned to the sounds that were emanating from Bristol at the time. Elsewhere, ‘Melt’’s shimmering haze still evokes the moment when the sun begins to greet the dawn, as do the gentle undulations of closer ‘21st Century Poem’.

Which isn’t to deny the album’s banging credentials. Though ‘Space Shanty’ is undeniable straight-ahead fun, it pales next to the joy at the heart of ‘Afro-Left’, a heady and potent blend of African rhythms and driving beats and ‘Open Up’, featuring John Lydon – a man with serious form when comes to being in the right place at the right time – is easily a career highlight for both parties (there’s a good reason why PiL regularly include it in their live sets) But whereas the Full Vocal Mix of the original single is a full-on raver, here it takes an off-road detour into the space-dub explorations that beat at the heart of Leftism.

It’s not difficult to see why. Having revolutionised the dancefloor through a stream of infectious singles and remixes, with Leftism, Leftfield were already looking ahead. Their next area of conquest would be the live arena and that campaign would need an overhaul in sound and delivery. Along with Underworld, Orbital and The Prodigy, Leftfield were taking the party out of the clubs and into festivals. Forget the retrospective chat about Britpop in the mid-90s; it’s worth bearing in mind that the new generation of dance music held considerably more sway. The evidence is there in those Tribal Gathering line-ups and the rise of professionally organised dance events designed to circumnavigate the Criminal Justice Bill of 1994. Crucially, the proof is also there in live performances of staggering dimensions. No longer would electronic music face accusations of anonymity or a lack of personality.

Finally catching up with the live Leftfield experience during a particularly rain sodden Homelands festival at the Winchester Bowl in 2000 made up for missing them four years previously. The memory still lingers of several thousand damp ravers crammed into the Home Arena visibly taken aback when the bowel-quaking bass dropped from a colossal height. Those dub reggae influences had been tweaked, refined and ramped up to near absurd levels. But there was no denying that the effect on the gathered masses was genuinely profound. There was no way anybody was going to be standing still. And it all started with the alteration in sound and dynamics on Leftism, an album that’s far more diverse in identity and influence than was initially perceived”.

I want to bring in a review from The Student Playlist. A towering album from 1995 that has lived on and has this important legacy today, I know there will be a lot of new celebration for Leftism ahead of its thirtieth anniversary (30th January). I think I only heard the album a few years ago. Maybe the odd song connected with me in 1995, but I heard the entire album fairly recently. It definitely moved me:

“Avoiding the traps of many contemporaneous dance records of the mid-Nineties, which tended to suffer from a lack of variation and the imagined necessity for immediacy, Barnes and Daley decided to take a more subtle approach for much of their debut full-length statement, opting for explorations of texture over bursts of hedonism and novelty. If there’s a comparator or an equivalent to Leftism, it’s the try-everything experimentation of a band like The Clash circa London Calling, rather than anything in the immediate sphere of dance music. Not for nothing is Leftism’s front cover an image of a speaker cone framed by a jawbone.

There are guest vocalists on Leftism, something that would become a fixture of dance albums that sought a crossover audience (see The Chemical Brothers), but they don’t overpopulate the album and they dovetail into the needs of the music, subservient to it instead of using it as a platform for their own personalities. Singer Neil Cole, credited as ‘Djum-Djum’, delivers a rapid-fire string of vaguely African-sounding gibberish (apparently his own invented language) that serves to enhance the adrenaline rush of ‘Afro-Left’. The ribcage-shaking bass of ‘Original’, a soulful and trip-hop-influenced gem of a track that has a cinematic, worldly quality that other dance artists rarely achieved in the Nineties, is capped off with the gorgeous vocals of Curve’s Toni Halliday. The brilliance of Lydon’s contribution to the aforementioned ‘Open Up’ hardly needs to be stated, the wide-eyed malevolence of his “burn, Hollywood, burn… take down Tinseltown” incantations matching perfectly with the incendiary, skull-crushing house that Barnes and Daley conjure up.

Instead, by and large, the real core of Leftism is to be found in its instrumental deep cuts, where Barnes and Daley use huge sonic canvasses to explore emotion by way of texture. From the opening tones of first track ‘Release The Pressure’, whose notes dissolve blissfully and sound like a new dawn, the emphasis is primarily on vibes, not easy hooks or the more immediate gratification of high bpms. The hazy aura of ‘Melt’, whose vaporous horns sound the like the sonic equivalent of a mirage on the desert horizon, and the stunningly atmospheric ‘Song Of Life’, with its cavernous troughs of dub and general demeanour ofdark, druggy spookiness, are the most seductive of these.

It’s not until half an hour into the record, with the arrival of ‘Black Flute’, that the bpm is raised considerably, at least to the point where it could be considered anything like conventional ‘house’. Following the monumental epic ‘Space Shanty’, one of the undisputed high points of the decade in British dance music, Leftfield decide to lay off the onslaught and explore a rumbling hybrid of dub reggae and house with ‘Inspection (Check One)’, showing that unexpected flourishes of invention are just as impactful as keeping the tempo up. In this way, Leftfield continually play with their audience’s expectations throughout this seminal debut. They decide to end things on a low-key note, with the dignified anger of Mancunian poet Lemn Sissay set to a percussion-free, ambient piece on ‘21st Century Poem’.

The reception that greeted Leftism was little short of rapturous. Essentially, Leftism marked the point at which British dance music found a mainstream audience in its pure form. Sure, the likes of Screamadelica and Pills, Thrills And Bellyaches had been embraced by indie fans, but those albums were the works of predominantly guitar-based acts building bridges with dance culture, not the other way around. Q magazine, traditionally a pretty straight-down-the-middle rock publication, hailed it as “the first truly complete album experience to be created by house musicians and the first quintessentially British one”.  It was nominated for the 1995 Mercury Music Prize, narrowly losing out to another groundbreaking British dance record in the shape of Portishead’s Dummy. To date, it has sold well over half a million copies in the UK”.

The penultimate review I want to highlight is this one from 2017. Leftism definitely made an impression in 1995 but, in a year that sported classic albums from the likes of Oasis, Garbage, Alanis Morissette, Radiohead, Björk, PJ Harvey, Pulp and Supergrass, people do not really rank Leftfield’s debut alongside them. It is one of the first true greats of 1995 to mark its thirtieth anniversary. If you have not heard the album before then please do so:

“Leftism was, in many ways, the absolute centrepoint of the 1990s, and represented the breaking of dance culture's second wave of mainstreaming. The first had come early in the decade with the likes of LFO, Altern-8, The Orb, Orbital and The Future Sound Of London proving that '90s electronic music was an album- and festival-friendly genre. In 1994, though, Underworld's Dubnobasswithmyheadman and The Prodigy's Music For The Jilted Generation went further. Rather than being electronic or rave records that crossed over, they were crossover records in themselves, built with big, generalist festival crowds in mind. In '95, Leftism sealed the deal: even amidst the backwards-looking guitar conservationism of Britpop, it was becoming normal for dance producers to sit at the mainstream music industry's top table. It was perfect timing for Leftfield. They'd built a huge store of goodwill for themselves at the start of the decade with bona fide club smashers that, for better or worse, set the template for progressive house. Tracks like "Not Forgotten" and "More Than I Know"—and their remixes for React 2 Rhythm, Inner City, Ultra Naté, Stereo MCs—laid down that steady pile-up of simple riffs that felt like a safety net beneath the ever-accelerating mania of hardcore. Prog would eventually become grossly overblown, but until late '92 it was all good fun. Leftfield didn't go that way, thankfully: through "Release The Pressure," "Song Of Life" and "Open Up" they kept what was charming about their original sound, and added drama without locking into the lazy formula others did. Leftism, then, really was bang in the middle of everything. And if that suggests "middle of the road," well, there was that, too.

It became the default soundtrack of every student-shared house, every between-bands bit of Glastonbury, and, increasingly, every dinner party. Listening back now, it still pumps. But it's a palatable pump, with enough hooks and vocals to work as well over pasta as in a field at 4 AM. Funnily enough, the tracks that have aged best are the ones that pump least: the sensual Orb-like ripples of "Melt" and "21st Century Poem," the trip-hop lope of "Original," the endearingly ham-fisted attempt to fuse jungle and trance on "Storm 3000," and the wonderfully mature peace-and-unity cheese of "Release The Pressure." The 4/4 tracks that make up the skeleton of the album sound more dated, but they were never bleeding edge anyway. The album sounds as much like a raver's comfort blanket as it ever did. For Leftism's remixes, Leftfield have done a smart thing in keeping the album's running order, remixing the whole experience of the album as much as the individual tracks. It starts out well. Adrian Sherwood is a genius pick for "Release The Pressure," scrambling an overfamiliar song with all his dub utensils. Likewise, Peverelist and Hodge couldn't be better for "Afro-Left": they retain all the deft parts and dubwise quality but turn its predictable '90s plod into a razor-sharp groove. Adesse Versions uses a deep understanding of older dance track tonality to subvert any sense of retroism, turning "Original" into a shuffling house beauty that keeps the original's spirit entirely intact. Though other remixes in the middle section update the production techniques, they don't really advance on the festival-pleasing 4/4 or big beat predictability of the originals. Skream and Zomby, rounding off the album, haven't turned in their best work. Zomby's contribution is more subdued than, say, his recent Hyperdub album, Ultra. Skream's take on "Open Up" is a shameless crowdpleaser. The remixed album, as a coherent listen, doesn't work as Leftism does. Though there's an uncanny excitement in hearing familiar motifs in new forms, the constant shift between production styles stymies the flow. It's a fascinating experiment in rewiring something so plugged into the collective unconscious, and there are some truly brilliant bits in it. But while Leftfield managed to be all things to all people almost by default, the remix album seems to be trying a little too hard to pull off the same trick”.

I am going to end with The Line of Best Fit. They provided their take on Leftism 22. An expanded edition of a golden album from 1995, we got to see Leftism in a new light. I will be interested to see what perspective people offer when Leftism gets its round of thirtieth anniversary kudos. It will introduce the album to more people and a whole new generation:

“Dance acts transferring their ability to thrill beyond one off 12”s to the long playing format was a relatively new thing, and a trick not yet mastered by many; only Underworld’s Dubnobasswithmyheadman, Orbital’s Brown Album, The Prodigy’s Music For The Jilted Generation and Fluke’s Techno Rose of Blighty had really pulled it off at the time, though each now enjoys 'classic album' status. While many played up the rock-y angle of Underworld, the soundtrack geekery of Orbital and nu-punk of The Prodigy, Leftfield proved to be the most purist of these acts, and Dubnobass... aside, this is the album that has aged best out of those it was lumped in with at the time.

Leftfield's live performances from that era now hold the same legendary status as those of My Bloody Valentine - volume was key, and as such it's no surprise that it's on the more aggressive tracks that Leftism excels. A tune such as "Afro-Left" still sounds like a year zero for electronic music; fusing African rhythms with trance riffs and a pounding techno beat had probably never been done prior to Leftism, and it still bangs with punk vigour. The furious futurism of "Space Shanty" will still manage to make you frantically gurn against your will, while the jungle-influenced beats of "Storm 3000" still prove a thrill even after all this time. The dubby beats and chillonic intro of "Song For Life" could only come from the 90s, plus it remains a mystery that the more dancefloor ready "Cut For Life" - only released on the vinyl version originally - isn't promoted to this reissue, as it’s a real highlight of the record. The slow paced dub-hop of the Toni Halliday (Curve)-featuring "Original" remains deep and menacing, and of course there's "Open Up" featuring John Lydon, the track which brought Leftfield their commercial cross over. It remains one of the weirdest ever top 20 hits and is absolutely the best song either party has ever been involved with.

Of course there are tunes here that do date the record, but they remain relevant for showing a different, subtler side to the band beyond their bang bang, club-based material. The spatial ambience of "Melt" gives the LP a much needed moment of moody soundtrackism, a route many went down when wanting to show off a mellower side, while "Inspection One"'s big beats evoke memories of stoned late night sessions playing Wipeout 2097 on PlayStation One.

Being such a similarly important part of British dance music history, you would have expected Leftism 22 to beafforded a similarly deluxe reissue package to the one Dubnobass... received. That album’s comprehensive reissue in the form of an exhaustive four CD set is not replicated here, thus making the package much more precise; you get the album, then you get the album remixed by current artists. Of those remixes, Maafi impressively taps into the dancehall elements of "Inspection One", Adrian Sherwood does that Adrian Sherwood thing to "Release The Pressure", fans of harder dance music will find much to love with Ben Sims techno retouch of "Black Flute" (which proves to be much more maximal than his usual material), Bodyjack twists "Song of Life" into big room minimal-tech which utilises the euphoric breakdown of the original to great effect, and Skream continues his journey into tuff tech-house with his impressive jacking touch up of "Open Up".

Let’s be frank here, every single copy of Leftism that was bought at the time is totally wrecked for a multitude of reasons, so a reissue of it is very much welcome. Once re-acquainting yourself with the album, those hazy memories attached to it trickle back, while the reasons why you loved it in the first place will smack you in the face as soon as that glorious first note of "Release The Pressure" booms from the speaker. It’s a wonderful thing, and its standing as one of the best albums of the 90’s remains undiminished”.

The stunning Leftism turns thirty on 30th January. A winter treat from the duo of Neil Barnes and Paul Daley, they would follow Leftism with another phenomenal album: 1999’s Rhythm and Stealth. I think their debut is their finest release. Regarded by some as one of the first Dance albums released, it definitely inspired so many other acts. Take some time to play Leftism and let it…

OVERWHELM the senses.

FEATURE: Behind the Scenes: Kate Bush’s Road into Music Video Directing

FEATURE:

Behind the Scenes

Kate Bush’s Road into Music Video Directing

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YOU can always tell…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush and an extra during the shoot/rehearsals for the There Goes a Tenner video in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

that Kate Bush had a deep interest in music videos. For many artists, music videos are an obligation but not something they enjoy. Kate Bush seemed to enjoy music videos as much as recording music. Bush didn’t direct her first music video until Hounds of Love’s title track was released in 1986. However, she assisted videos and was very much involved in the process. That was the case from the very first video: Wuthering Heights in 1978. The choreography was devised by Robin Kovac. Bush very much putting herself full into the video. Two were actually shot. One where she wears a white dress and another in a red dress. I think the first album, where she was having more say and building that fascination is 1980’s Never for Ever. For Wow from Lionheart, maybe there was still that sense of her being directed rather than directing. Her association with Keith MacMillan (Keef) – who is ninety and still with us – was intrusive and educational, though perhaps not always happy. Whilst she adored some of his videos, especially for Army Dreamers (from Never for Ever), there perhaps was not the collaborative ease and connection she had with other directors. I am not sure of the details of their relationship. You could tell Bush was fascinated and loved the videos produced with Keef, though there was perhaps a desire to work with other directors.

Through The Dreaming, although the singles the videos were attached to were not overly-successful, I love the cinematography and look of them. Bush definitely more hands-on with videos for Sat in Your Lap, The Dreaming and even There Goes a Tenner. If the directors of those videos might have felt at time there were two directors on set and she might have been trying to take over, this was a young woman who was a born visionary, director and visual thinker. It is only natural that she wanted to know about how videos worked and the art behind them. As these were her songs, Bush would already have visual ideas and storyboards in her head. It was not her trying to muscle into the space of experienced directors. Instead, Bush wanted to be more than the product. Put her own ideas into the mix. It would see her direct solo soon enough. Paul Henry directed the videos for The Dreaming and There Goes a Tenner. The former video was not that well-received. Bush very much wanted there to be wide shots and it to look like a film rather than a typical music video. I covered this recently, but the video for There Goes a Tenner saw EMI ask Paul Henry and Kate Bush to reign it in. I had quite a big budget though the video had to be more conventional and commercial. I don’t think Bush liked this compromise and direction. Her mindset was less in a commercial direction. She and Paul Henry would part ways soon. I don’t think Kate Bush was a difficult customer. She knew that she wanted but perhaps felt that the video treatments coming in were too simple, predictable or commercial. For the video for Suspended in Gaffa, she worked with director Brian Wiseman. Maybe going more in the direction that she wanted.

It was not until the videos for Hounds of Love and after that Bush became truly satisfied as a video director. Whereas previously she was more behind the scenes where it came to the decisions, you can very much feel her presence through the video for Hounds of Love. Especially true for Cloudbusting’s video. The second single from the album, I have said before how Bush personally tracked down Donald Sutherland to appear in the video. Going back a bit, and the video for Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), directed by David Garfath, saw Bush very much pulling strings behind the scenes. Bush was a huge fan of Terry Gilliam. Perhaps having him in mind for that video, she tempted him to direct Cloudbusting, though he was not used. Bush loved Time Bandits and you can see some of that influence in the video for Cloudbusting. She also loved Monty Python, so you can understand why she was determined to have him direct her. For Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), Gillian recommended David Garfath. Bush occasionally rang Gilliam’s office in Covent Garden to wax lyrical about his work and ask him to direct. Gilliam would recommend people. Maybe he was wary of his ability and skill at that time, rather than him trying to avoid Kate Bush. Bush was very strong-willed when it came to her videos. She kept this close-knit group of collaborators. So respected and loved was Kate Bush that people would move mountains and fulfil her requests. Again, this was her music being projected onto the screen so she wanted to work with the best crew, camerapeople and directors. David Garfath observed a very nice woman who was fine taking directions and a joy to work with. She was also definitive in what she wanted. The two met up for tea a chat. A different concept for Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) was decide originally but not used. The iconic video we see now was more of a compromise and unity of Kate Bush and David Garfath. The scenes where cut-out images of Kate Bush and Michael Hervieu’s faces – Hervieu danced with Bush in the video – were placed on an army of dancers was the result of discussion between Bush and Garfath.

Even if Patrick Troughton was suggested first for Cloudbusting, you cannot imagine anyone but Donald Sutherland in that part! Sutherland was in the U.K. to work on the film, Revolution. He was unhappy on that shoot. He declined the original invite to appear in the video, so Bush arranged a dinner meet-up. He was charmed and won over by Bush! The fact that the video would be cinematic attracted him. It was not a typical, silly Pop video. Kate Bush was definitely pushing that direction. Bush and Sutherland got on famously and there was this close bond. From the two meeting at the Savoy Hotel to discuss the video, to him leaving the set, there was this love between them. Sutherland was also interested as the song was inspired by Peter Reich's 1973 memoir, A Book of Dreams. Sutherland was familiar with Reich and agreed to appear in the video for free because he was unable to get a work visa in time. One reason why I wanted to write this feature is because I was again inspired by Graeme Thomson’s book, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. How Bush was constantly being instructed and talked to by the crew. Many artists would not interact with crew. Bush was getting tips and was learning how videos came together. Not only was Bush learning – on the set of Cloudbusting – from a masterful actor, Donald Sutherland; she was being told about the shots. How to get the best results. Bush would soon direct herself. In 1985 came Hounds of Love. 1986’s The Big Sky. She would direct the videos for Experiment IV (1987) and Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time) (1991); she co-directed videos on The Sensual World and would direct for 1993’s The Red Shoes and solo-direct the 1993 film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve. Even though Bush got a lot of practical assistance from people around her, it was clear she had a distinct style.

Many might scoff at the idea of Bush being a genuine ‘director’. Although she was getting assistance on her earliest videos (where she directed solo) and everything from the editing to camerawork would see men around her provide tips and help, Bush was definitely the one driving the shots. Browns, greens and purples. Heavy stylised and cinematic videos that nodded to directors like Alfred Hitchcock. Bush’s fascination with films from the Thirties and Forties – the noir and comedy capers – blends into the videos. As Graeme Thomson writes, we find “operatic grand gesture: there’s a lot of clenched fists, enveloping hugs and long stares into the mid-distance”. If self-indulgent at times, Bush was definitely a cinephile. She had a collection of films at home from classic directors. If her initial plans to make Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave into a film did not come to fruition, she was always working her way up to do something fuller and more extensive than a single video – which came to pass with The Line, the Cross and the Curve. There are great articles that explore the cinema of Kate Bush’s work. I love the period from 1980 onwards, when she was becoming more involved in her videos. I guess 1982 was the first year where she  was providing a lot of input on set. From 1985 through to 2011, Bush directed quite a few of her own videos. I did recently write about Bush being this visual auteur. I think her blossoming career as a video director is fascinating and worthy of further discussion. Bush is still directing now. Last year, she directed the animated video for Little Shrew (Snowflake). It is amazing to chart the progress from Bush being in front of the camera and being fully directed, to her offering suggestions, assisting with videos and then directing on her own (there were a couple of directing collaborations along the way). Bush using her knowledge and love of cinema and utilising it for these…

TIMELESS music videos.

FEATURE: “Is There Gas in the Car…?” Steely Dan’s Katy Lied, The Legacy of the Band and Future Donald Fagen Material

FEATURE:

 

 

“Is There Gas in the Car…?”

IN THIS PHOTO: Steely Dan's Walter Becker (L) and Donald Fagen, pictured here in 2009, ahead of a North American tour/PHOTO CREDIT: CJ Gunther for USA TODAY

Steely Dan’s Katy Lied, The Legacy of the Band and Future Donald Fagen Material

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I do like to post Steely Dan features…

as I feel it is important to keep their name alive. Not to say they are obscure, though there are still no artists out there that you can compare to Steely Dan. Or that are especially influenced by them. I always wonder why. I was re-reading Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan. Written by Alex Pappademas with artwork from Joan LeMay, it is a fascinating read. I would advise any Steely Dan fan to read it! Even if you are not aware of them, it is a beautiful read that is wonderfully written. There has been a reissuance for Steely Dan in recent years. More people discussing their music. The fact there have been studio album reissues means that more people are connecting with their music. Alex Pappademas argues that people might be picking up on Steely Dan because they are realising how good a band they are. Even though one half of the core members, Walter Becker, died in 2017, there is much more love and appreciation for them now than ever. Maybe because the themes addressed in the songs seem more relevant today. The slow-motion apocalypse as Pappademas writes, together with the self-destructive escapism is very apt now. Revivalism today means that so many older acts are coming into fashion. Through memes, online discussion and the music being easier to share than it was when Steely Dan started life (the 1970s), one cannot say they are obscure. However, there have been no new documentaries or many podcasts about them. Even if they are dissolved, their catalogue remains relatively un-adapted and untouched. No animated music videos created for songs. Album reissues coming about but not a lot in the way of extras, outtakes and demos. I shall come to that in a minute.

Since 2019, there has been much more in the way of discussion and discourse around Steely Dan. However, has this translated into wider culture. Maybe it is a case of the gatekeepers refusing access, yet the lack of documentaries or any new celebration of the band is telling. Artists not covering their songs much and there not being this 2020s version of Steely Dan. I wonder what is holding artists back. I myself have been inspired to write an album, American Grammar, very much in the mould of Steely Dan. Lyrics, song ideas and concepts flow to the mind. The desire to record it at Electric Lady Studios in New York City. Having great musicians playing on these rich, cynical and Dan-esque tracks. An eye-catching and striking album cover. However, this is just a dream as I am not a musician or songwriting – though I can write lyrics and ‘hear’ the tunes. My point is that I wonder what is responsible for a lack of modern-day Steely Dan acolytes. I can’t think of anyone in modern music that ‘follows’ them. Donald Fagen, who founded the group with Walter Becker, is still making solo music. His brilliant latest studio album, Sunken Condos, came out in 2012. I know there was talk he was working on new ideas. His wife Libby Titus died last year, so that might have put any imminent album plans on the backburner. I have been musing about older artists. Donald Fagen turned seventy-seven earlier this month. I do hope there is another studio album coming soon, as I know there is a definite void and desire. Artists like Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan much more in my heart and mind than new artists. There is something about the music made by artists in their seventies and eighties that seems more affecting and powerful. Also, these legends will not be around forever. It is that desire to hang onto them!

Album reissues are a good way for an act to reach new people. In the case of Steely Dan, there is a new reissue for their 1975 album, Katy Lied. Their fourth studio album turns fifty later this year. It is one of their best releases. Out on 31st January, here is some more information:

“You can see it in their eyes, but is it really any surprise to learn that we are finally getting the much-anticipated 200g 45rpm 2LP UHQR edition of Steely Dan’s rightly acclaimed March 1975 album Katy Lied on January 31, 2025?

Once again, the fine folks at Analogue Productions do right by the SD catalog, just as they’ve done with the five previous releases in the UHQR Series for Can’t Buy a Thrill, Countdown to Ecstasy, Pretzel Logic, Aja, and Gaucho. (Click on each title to read our reviews.)

The UHQR Katy Lied has been mastered directly from the original master tape by engineer nonpareil Bernie Grundman and has been pressed on 200g Clarity Vinyl at Quality Record Pressings (QRP). The going freight for this 2LP 45rpm edition is the expected, typical UQHR Series SRP of $150, and it can be preordered from Acoustic Sounds here, and/or from Music Direct here, and/or via the MD link graphic below ahead of the tracklisting section.

As per usual, the premium UHQR packaging for Katy Lied features tip-on, old-style, gold-foil, individually numbered, double-pocket gatefold jackets with film lamination by Stoughton Printing, as housed in a black slipcase with wooden dowel spine. The Katy Lied UHQR is limited to 20,000 numbered copies.

A companion 180g 33⅓rpm 1LP edition of Katy Lied (seen below) will be released via Geffen/UMe as well on January 31, 2025 — but that version has instead been remastered by Joe Nino-Hernes at Sterling Sound from hi-res digital files, and is being pressed at Precision. This edition goes for $29.99, and it can be preordered here. Naturally, AP will be reviewing both new versions of Katy Lied as close to the release date as possible.

Originally released on ABC and later reissued via MCA, Katy Lied is the first “post-touring” Steely Dan album following the departure of guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and drummer Jim Hodder, and it reinforces chief SD duo Walter Becker and Donald Fagen’s penchant for utilizing top-shelf studio musicians as their core recording partners.

SD’s fourth LP, Katy Lied also features the notable debuts of Michael McDonald on background vocals (“Bad sneakers and a piña colada my friend,” indeed!) and then-21-year-old Jeff Porcaro on drums for the balance of the album. Needless to say, we here at AP can’t wait to get the Katy Lied UHQR in hand to spin and spin and spin — and review for you, of course! Stay tuned. . .“

I do hope we see some further exploration of Steely Dan this year. I have not really seen recent films or T.V. shows where their music has been used. I don’t think Donald Fagen would refuse every request. A film maybe based around their music or a period film where you get a representation of Steely Dan. I don’t think we would ever get a Steely Dan biopic, though I would be intrigued to see Donald Fagen and Walter Becker represented by modern-day actors! Rather than it being exploitative, it is giving credit and respect to a band whose influence has definitely spreads. To new fans. However, in music terms, there remains that question as to why you cannot hear their influence more. I still hold hope we will get at least one more Donald Fagen album. He still tours under the Steely Dan name. I would love to see him perform live very soon. I kind of wish I was an artist so that I could bring some Steely Dan-inflected songs to life. I know the session musicians would cost a fair bit, but, when you consider the results and what would come, it would be worth it! I don’t think it is cost prohibiting artists. Maybe not seeing how effective and wonderful that sound is. The richness of the compositions. The characters they (Steely Dan) weave through their songs. A gulf in the modern day scene that definitely needs to be properly addressed. I do think there is a love for Steely Dan still burning bright. To quote The Royal Scam’s (1976) Kid Charlemagne: “Is there gas in the car…?

“YES there’s gas in the car”!

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Natalie Imbruglia at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

Natalie Imbruglia at Fifty

_________

PERHAPS one of the more…

IN THIS PHOTO: Natalie Imbruglia in 1999/PHOTO CREDIT: Polly Borland

underrated artists of her generation, I wanted to celebrate and spotlight the music of Natalie Imbruglia. As she turns fifty on 4th February, this is an opportunity to compile a mixtape featuring some of her biggest songs and some deep cuts. From her debut album, 1997’s Left of the Middle, to her most recent, 2021’s Firebird, she has had this amazingly successful career. As of 2021, Imbruglia has sold more than ten million copies worldwide. She has won multiple awards, including eight ARIA Awards, two Brit Awards, one Billboard Music Award, one Silver Clef Award. She also has three Grammy nominations. Before getting to a playlist, here is some biographic detail about a wonderful and much-loved artist:

“A singer and actor with a crystalline voice and empathic persona, Natalie Imbruglia became an international star with her smash hit "Torn'' and helped set the tone for adult alternative rock for years to come. Her 1997 cover of the Ednaswap song -- as well as that year's debut album, the equally successful Left of the Middle -- had a sensibility that was somewhat left of center, but its pretty execution resonated with the mainstream. Sometimes she favored an edgier approach, as on 2001's White Lilies Island, and sometimes a more straightforward one, as on 2005's Counting Down the Days, but she continued to have hits into the mid-2000s in Europe and her native Australia. She also pursued work in film and on television, including appearing as a judge for two seasons on the Australian version of The X Factor. When she returned to music with 2015's Male, a collection of covers of songs by male singer/songwriters, and 2021's Firebird, her first collection of original material in over a decade, her commitment to making creative yet broadly appealing pop was renewed.

Born in Sydney, Australia on February 4, 1975, Natalie Imbruglia first studied dance as a teenager, but she soon turned toward acting, appearing in commercials for Coca-Cola and Twisties before she turned 16. She landed her starring role on Neighbours in 1992 and she stayed with the show until 1994, after which she relocated to London with the intention of pursuing a singing career. After recording a four-song demo at the behest of her manager that included an early version of "Torn," RCA/BMG signed Imbruglia in 1996. The label released "Torn" in November 1997 and it became an immediate hit in the U.K., peaking at two and selling over a million copies. The song soon turned into an international sensation, reaching the Top Ten throughout Europe and Australia; although it only reached 42 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. (partially due to the lack of a CD single being released in the States), it topped the Billboard Airplay chart and stayed on that chart for weeks. Over the years, "Torn" remained a radio staple worldwide, breaking records in Australia and the U.K. in particular. The later singles "Big Mistake" reached the Top Ten in both the U.K. and Australia, while "Wishing I Was There" reached 19 and 24 in the U.K. and Australia, respectively.

Driven by the success of "Torn," Imbruglia's November 1997 full-length debut Left of the Middle was also hugely popular, topping the chart in Australia and becoming a Top 10 hit in the U.K. (where it was certified platinum) and the U.S. (where it was certified double platinum). Selling over seven million copies worldwide, it became the best-selling debut album from a female Australian singer. Imbruglia won several ARIA awards, including Best Female Artist, while "Torn" won the Single of the Year award and Left of the Middle won Best Pop Release. She also won the Brit Awards for International Newcomer and International Female Solo Artist, and earned Grammy nominations for Best New Artist, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for "Torn," and Best New Artist.

After recording a cover of INXS' "Never Tear Us Apart" with Tom Jones for his 1999 album Reload, Imbruglia returned with her second album, White Lilies Island, in November 2001. Named for the singer's home in Windsor, it featured her as a co-writer on every track and offered a slightly moodier style than Left of the Middle. Supported by the singles "That Day" (a top 20 hit in the U.K.) and "Wrong Impression" (a top 10 hit in the U.K. and the U.S.), White Lilies Island was certified gold in Australia and the U.K., it was a commercial disappointment in the U.S. Imbruglia recorded a third album for BMG in 2003 but the label chose not to release it. After she appeared in the film Johnny English, Imbruglia and BMG parted ways in 2004. She then signed with Brightside Recordings, which released Counting Down the Days in April 2005. A more traditional pop album than its predecessor, it featured production and songwriting contributions from Gary Clark, Eg White, Ben Hillier, Ash Howes, and Daniel Johns. The album topped the U.K. Albums Chart and was certified gold, while its first single, "Shiver," was a number eight hit there, becoming her biggest single in the U.K. since "Torn."

The compilation Glorious: The Singles 97-07 followed in 2007 and was another U.K. hit, debuting at number five. Imbruglia then separated from Brightside, signing with Island for the October 2009 album Come to Life. With contributions from Coldplay's Chris Martin, Brian Eno, and Daniel Johns, it was a splashy, ambitious affair but its commercial performance was poor, and Imbruglia took a break from music. In 2010, Imbruglia joined the Australian version of The X Factor as a judge; she also appeared in the U.K. version in a guest capacity. She performed in several films, including 2013's Underdogs and the following year's Among Ravens. Also in 2014, she appeared in a U.K. production of the Alan Ayckbourn play Things We Do for Love.

Imbruglia returned to music in July 2015 with Male. Her first album in six years and her first to be released in the U.S. since White Lilies Island, it was a collection of covers by male singer/songwriters that marked her first album for Sony Masterworks. The album reached number 20 in the U.K. and number 25 in Australia, and Imbruglia supported Male with tours in 2017 and 2018. During this time, she appeared on the television shows First Contact and Who Do You Think You Are?, and in 2019 she gave birth to her son. That year, she signed with her original label BMG and headed to the studio with collaborators including the Strokes' Albert Hammond, Jr. and the band's frequent producer Gus Oberg, as well as Romeo Stodart, KT Tunstall, and White. Arriving in September 2021, Firebird was an eclectic set that featured the optimistic single "Build It Better”.

To mark Natalie Imbruglia’s upcoming fiftieth birthday (on 4th February), I have compiled a selection of her great music. Let’s hope there are many more albums from her! Someone whose music I have loved since the 1990s, I was keen to pay tribute to her. This salute to Natalie Imbruglia was…

A real pleasure.

FEATURE: The Song of Solomon: Kate Bush and the Simplicity of Her Work

FEATURE:

 

 

The Song of Solomon

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the video for And So Is Love (released as a single from 1993’s The Red Shoes)

Kate Bush and the Simplicity of Her Work

_________

THIS feature…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2011 for a promotional image for Director’s Cut/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

is going to be given over to Kate Bush’s music. More specifically, the simplicity of it. One might think that Bush’s music is layered and complicated. Granted, some albums are. She is someone who definitely puts a huge amount of effort in to make her songs stand out. Some of the albums are definitely a lot more layered than they are simple. However, there were points in her career when simplicity was required. When Bush began writing for The Red Shoes, she wanted to return to a more “rooted way of working”. Perhaps feeling that her previous couple of albums – 1989’s The Sensual World and 1985’s Hounds of Love – took too long or there was tussle in the studio, this was going to be easier. Bush went back to the piano and worked her songs over and over. If technology and the limits of the studio had been previously used to an extreme extent, this was not going to happen here. In fact, as I shall mention later, this approach was also used for 2005’s Aerial. Bush did voice her concerns that she feels her music was too complicated for people to take in. That they really had to work hard to understand it. She wanted the listening experience to be an easy one. Because of that, the dynamic and working routine for The Red Shoes would be different. As Graeme Thomson suggests in his book, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, this was not just a commercial aspiration. Kate Bush was worried she wasn’t communicating as directly as she would have liked. This thing that she overloaded songs and stretched them. Could she do simply effectively? That was a conundrum that lay at her feet. Think about what we actually got on The Red Shoes.

If that album does lack the warmth and richness of her previously albums, the songwriting and sound is simpler than The Sensual World or Hounds of Love. Bush was seeking to have direct human connection. At a time when people around her were going through some hard times – her mother was ill and died in 1992 -, that negative energy needed to be transformed. Bush talked about the idea of being comfortable being the observed rather than the observer. At a fan convention in 1990, Bush told fans that she hoped – if things go well – that the songs she was working on for a new album would be toured. Even though that never happened, she did at least want to get out and see people. The ambition of her albums prior to The Red Shoes achieved what they needed to. Even if Bush’s aim was to be simple and direct with her music on The Red Shoes, there were there own issues. Songs that didn’t know when to stop. Why Should I Love You? overloaded and too packed. And So Is Love maybe too mainstream and stale. Perhaps accessible to listeners, was it possible for Kate Bush to keep things simple but also be remarkable?! If personal circumstances were different and life around her was happier and more settled then that experiment and ambition would have been realised more successfully. However, with personal loss and change – she broke from long-term boyfriend Del Palmer -, that was not to be. If her first five or six albums were Kate Bush displaying this girl-like innocence and wonder, The Red Shoes was this album from a woman. One trying to hang on to that innocence. However, as Bush said, when you lose your mother you are no longer a girl. I don’t think that the unhappiness round The Red Shoes led Bush to reverse her opinions.

Think about her albums since 1993. I do think Bush was genuinely tired of being in the studio too much. She could write quickly but the recording would take so long. Maybe things were not as rosy in the 1990s to allow an album that was easy for listeners to understand but also distinct. Cliches coming into her lyrics. The production sound being a little tinny and lacking soul. Graeme Thomson writes how there is a forced quality. Bush trying to achieve direct communication but everything being overstated. Not a writer who had the conversational gifts as, say, Joni Mitchell. Bush had a gift of suggesting an idea or vision that the listener then could imagine. The Red Shoes the first time she had to spell things out. However, I feel this is an album that marked a transition. The results more successfully captured for Aerial in 2005 and 50 Words for Snow in 2011. Look at those albums and one might jump to the view they are complex and a retreat to her previous mindset. When Bush spoke with John Wilson in 2005, he noted how there is a simplicity to the work. Though Bush stated that many of the compositions took so long to finish and it was frustrating, there is a directness to the music. Especially on the first disc/album, A Sea of Honey. Whether that is a paen to her son (Bertie) or the number-listing π (Pi), things were different. The writing more extraordinary and back to her best. The production sound different. Kate Bush definitely meant it when she said she wanted her music to be direct. A worry the listener was being alienated or had to work too hard to find the meaning in a song.

One can argue that Bush’s latter albums are the most successful and brilliant of her entire career. She has struck this balance. The songs sound epic and ambitious though they are not as layered or intangible as some of previous albums. It is a shame that she never toured in the 1990s, though she suffered loss so wasn’t able to do that. At a point in her career when things were getting too much. Yet I listen to an album like The Red Shoes and I can at least identify this artist trying to make her music easier to understand for those hearing it. If the results were a little mixed, that did improve. Maybe the compositions on Aerial seem quite nuanced, layered and huge. The lyrics and Bush’s performances are very much designed not to obscure or create too much mystery. With her being a mother at this point and enjoying family life, you can understand why she was less concerned with pushing things to the limit or taking songs to extremes. The same with Director’s Cut in 2011. Reworking songs from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes. If she though the latter was an unsuccessful album or The Sensual World packed too much in, this was an opportunity to dismantle and rework. Several songs from Director’s Cut were new versions of older songs. The rest saw some element replaced. It was an older vocal and new take. Hounds of Love was a massive success and this masterpiece, yet you feel the labour and time invested was too much. To achieve something remarkable Bush had to sacrifice so much.

I do love how 50 Words for Snow is almost a return to the debut album, 1978’s The Kick Inside. The piano very much at the heart of things. Not to say that the piano is symbolic of simplicity of directness. Kate Bush was at a point in her career and life where her working method had shifted. In terms of the hours she was spending working and in the studio. Still able to write and record in an ambitious and unique way, she had perfected the art of knowing what a song needed. There being this combination of the simple and almost otherworldly. Things being suggested rather than forced. A looseness that came through. I don’t think that Bush was compromising anything. I discussed this recently. Bush did want to start off the 1990s and see it as a blank page. Making her work easier to understand and the listener not feeling alienated. If The Red Shoes was perhaps dogged by issues many artists faced in the 1990s – the need to cram so much into a C.D.; a production sound that was digital and sounded unnatural -, into the new century, Bush could create music that was more direct and easy to appreciate but the quality was incredibly high. Aerial being this double album. John Wilson felt there was a simplicity to the music, though. A grand album that could be instantly loved and felt because it didn’t feel forced or was not pushing to be complex and ‘show off’ maybe. Bush never deliberately did that, though she was aware that she could take things too far. This was not to be the case for albums like Aerial or 50 Words for Snow. I suspect a new studio album will also follow these rules. Because of this, her albums sound and feel all…

THE better for it.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Lonely Hearts Club Band: Alternative Valentine’s Day Songs

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels

Lonely Hearts Club Band: Alternative Valentine’s Day Songs

_________

ALTHOUGH I am not…

PHOTO CREDIT: Helena Lopes/Pexels

someone who celebrates Valentine’s Day or feel it has any worth (perhaps partly because I am single), I still do think of 14th February as a day to celebrate the traditional love song and more alternative takes. One of the most common type of song, there have been many variations and evolutions through the decades. Modern-day artists expanding songs of love and taking them in new directions. Rather than a compilation a selection of classic love songs – that can veer into syrupy and slightly cheesy -, this is a mixtape of ‘alternative’ love songs. Not necessarily all cynical or anti-romance, instead, they are ones that are not discussed in the same conversation as the all-time classics. Ahead of Valentines Day, this is a spotlighting of the less traditional and sometimes less romantically-inclined ‘love song’. Whether you embrace 14th February or tend to treat it as a normal day, it is hard to get away from Valentine’s Day. Because of that, I thought I would get into the spirit…in a less-than-traditional route anyhow! This is a Valentine’s Day mixtape that mixes bleeding and broken hearts…

 PHOTO CREDIT: ATC Comm Photo

WITH the sexy and sensual.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: When I’m Sixty-Five: The Beatles’ Hits and Deep Cuts

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

When I’m Sixty-Five: The Beatles’ Hits and Deep Cuts

_________

THIS year is a very special one…

when it comes to The Beatles. As the legendary band formed in 1960, I wanted to mark sixty-five years since their formation. Although they did not release their debut album Please Please Me until 1963, the band formed years previously. It is amazing but not a surprise that they are still being talked about all these years later. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr changed culture and the music world! Their legacy is almost impossible to put into words. Before I get to a playlist featuring a lot of their best-known songs and some deeper cuts, here is some background about the band’s formation and earliest years:

“The Beatles were an English four-piece rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960.

The members of the band were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, with John and Ringo playing the guitar, Paul on bass guitar and Ringo on the drums.

In March 1956, John Lennon, aged 16, and a few of his friends from school played in a skiffle band called the Quarrymen. After meeting John in the July of that year, Paul McCartney joined the band as a rhythm guitarist and invited his friend George Harrison to watch the band perform. George then auditioned to be in the band, but John thought that he was too young, however, after several months of persistence, he performed lead guitar in a performance as was enlisted as their lead guitarist.

By January 1959, John’s friends from school had left, and he began studying at Liverpool College of Art. The three guitarists, John, Paul and George, were playing under the name Johnny and the Moondogs, and playing rock and roll whenever they could find a drummer.

Stuart Sutcliffe, an art college friend of John and band member, suggested that the band name should be Beatals, as a tribute to Buddy Holly and the Crickets. They used this name until May of 1959, where they went to the Silver Beetles, the Silver Beatles and then in August, shortened to simply The Beatles.

The Early 1960s

In August 1960, their unofficial manager Allan Williams had booked a residency for the band in Hamburg, but without a full-time drummer, they had to audition for a new band member. They auditioned and hired Pete Best in the same month. Six days after hiring Pete, they left for Hamburg for a 3 and a half month residency. The Beatles played in Hamburg in several different locations, but mainly in the red-light district.

Stuart Sutcliffe decided to leave the band early, in 1961, making Paul the bassist, and they were signed into another contract in Hamburg until June 1962. After their second residency, they became increasingly popular in Liverpool with the Merseybeat movement, but they were growing tired of playing the same clubs night after night.

During one of their performances at The Cavern Club, they met Brian Epstein – a local store owner and music columnist. He became their manager in 1962, after courting them for a couple of months. Brian eventually released the band from contractual obligations in Hamburg a month early in exchange for a recording session.

In April, the band was met with horrific news: Sutcliffe had died suddenly from a brain haemorrhage.

Three months later, Brian negotiated a deal with George Martin, the owner of EMI’s Parlophone label. Their first recording session with George Martin took place on 6th June 1962, at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios. Martin immediately complained about Best’s drumming ability, and suggested a session drummer in his place. The band was already considering dismissing Best, and therefore hired Ringo Starr in August 1962. Starr left his band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, to join them”.

To celebrate sixty-five years of The Beatles, I have compiled an ultimatum mixtape. From their debut single, Love Me Do (1962), through to their last-released track, Now and Then (2023), this is a salute to the greatest band of all time! This year also marks fifty-five years since they split. In their decade of existence, there is no denying the fact that The Beatles transformed the world and left an impression no other artist can match. Sixty-five years after they formed, they are still very much being discussed and dissected. Documentaries and books very much keep them relevant and adored. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr proud of the band’s legacy and occasionally performing together. Even though they split in 1970, The Beatles will influence and find new fans…

CENTURIES from now.

FEATURE: Spotlight: jasmine.4.t

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

jasmine.4.t

_________

BACK in July…

as this article explained, “Manchester-based trans-singer-songwriter jasmine.4.t, also known as Jasmine Cruickshank, has inked a deal with Saddest Factory Records”. I wanted to spend time with this amazing and distinct artist. I am going to come to some interviews with her from last year. One that was published a few weeks ago. Before that, Rolling Stone UK included jasmine.4.t in their Ones to Watch 2025 feature (The Guardian also marked her as one to watch too). This is an exciting talent who will be on the scene for years:

“The story of how Manchester-based artist jasmine.4.t signed to Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory label  reads like a dream, with Bridgers’ boygenius bandmate Lucy Dacus playing her the demos to debut album You Are the Morning in her car, and Bridgers being stunned. The finished album – recorded in LA with all of boygenius – is a striking statement of community and resilience from a special new voice, and, as she told us last year, “about love and community and joy in the face of all the shit”. (WR)”.

There are some great interviews with jasmine.4.t. Not only does she discuss her then-forthcoming album, You Are the Morning (released on 17th January); she also talks about coming out as trans and life as a role model in a country (the U.K.) where the trans community are not embraced as they should be. I am going to end with a review for You Are the Morning.

I am going to move to a couple of review. Let’s start out with a very recent chat with The Forty-Five. Talking about You Are the Morning; resilience, community and music as catharsis, it is a revealing and illuminating interview with an artist who has been tipped for big things this year:

“As the first UK artist to sign to Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory label, Manchester-based jasmine.4.t is already keeping top tier company; with her imminent debut album – this month’s raw and resilient ‘You Are The Morning’ – produced not only by Phoebs but the whole of boygenius, the singer has essentially earned herself the golden ticket in the indie lottery. Documenting the years following her transition with a deft and fragile touch that’s diaristic yet generous and empathetic, however, it’s easy to see why the trio have taken Jasmine to their hearts: these are songs that show their open wounds but find solace in community and chosen family, a lesson for us all to live by.

Having recorded in LA with Phoebe, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, Jasmine talks us through the turbulent process of reaching her debut and her hopes for inspiring and showing up for the next generation of trans people.

Is writing how you’ve always processed life?

When I was in the closet, I found it so hard to write. Being true to yourself and being connected to your emotions is so important, so when you’re pretending to be a different gender and trying to bottle up everything it’s obviously just impossible. My first EP was written from 2014 onwards and was all pre-transition stuff about the relationship that was to become my [ex-]marriage and some of the troubling behaviours that were already showing in that. There’s a song on my debut EP that we renamed ‘Shoes’ and then re-recorded a version of it as ‘New Shoes’ for this record. It was a lot.

Did you want to reclaim something by reworking that track?

When Lucy suggested re-recording it, I was immediately like, ‘No, it’ll be way too painful’. But it’s a song about starting a family and wanting to do that in spite of exhaustion and being broken, so singing it in this environment with my trans-femme bandmates who came to LA from Manchester with me, I thought it could be about chosen family. When we started recording it I was finding it so painful and I couldn’t stop crying for long enough to record a full vocal take. There’s one take where I got most of the way through that we used, and at the end of it you can hear Julien and Lucy and Phoebe all coming in to hold me and comfort me.

In the album, amongst the fear and the pain there’s a real highlighting of the positive and beautiful parts of being trans too – was that a balance you were aware of maintaining?

I feel a lot of responsibility now that I have landed on my feet in this way with my life and my career; I want to be a visible trans role model in music and also to show that things get better, because they do. That’s what ‘You Are The Morning’ means – it’s about the resilience of trans people, the incredible solidarity we have and how, if we all pull together, I think we’ll be a huge part of history and bringing about a brighter future. As trans people, we’ve gone through so much that we’re kind of like antennas to all the horrible shit going on and we want to do as much as we can to change things. We’re on the frontline and that’s fucking cool to see.

PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Grubb

Sonically, the record is just as raw and, as you’ve mentioned, has the unpolished, human bits left in. How did you approach that?

We didn’t have much time! We had 14 days to record the whole album. But on top of that, I just like music that’s very honest. I’m a big fan of Elliott Smith and Iron and Wine, and Phoebe is as well, so I think we both just wanted to make something raw and something that was real and emotionally connected to ourselves. The sounds are very different to how it would have ended up if I’d have just been doing it myself; I have no idea how Julien makes those guitar sounds. We just wanted to tell an honest story because we knew it would resonate with so many people.

You’ve toured with Lucy before and spoken about becoming proper friends. Does that mean that doing the record with boygenius felt normal or was there still a bit of ‘Oh shit!’ to it all?!

I mean, I wasn’t NOT like that! There were definitely moments where I’d be like, ‘What the fuck is my life?!’ They’re just so fucking funny – as individuals but especially as a group they’re just hilarious. They’re so loudly themselves and I love them all so much. There were definitely moments when I was driving them all to the studio when I’d be like… fuck. Primarily they’re my friends but also they are Gods to me.

Does it feel like the music industry in general is starting to feel like a more inclusive place?

We need more trans role models and I think it does come at a cost – we’re a long way from trans people being able to have a nice, comfortable experience in the music industry; touring especially is fucking terrifying. Venues need to have a safe place for artists to get changed and have to ourselves; I’ve had to get changed in a toilet so many times, which feels very unsafe. And also not tokenising us – it’s so common to be the one queer artist and if it’s a trans woman, she’ll probably not be having a great night. But I think it’s amazing how much more representation we’re getting. It’s not there but it’s definitely a step in the right direction”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Grubb

There are two more interviews that I will include. The first of the two is from Rolling Stone UK. jasmine.4.t reflected on her debut L.P. and how she builds a trans-led community. An album that tells stories of triumph and resilience. If this artist is not in your life then do make sure you correct that straight away:

“They were in the car together one day and Lucy played the track,” Jasmine remembers Dacus telling her. “I got a text from Lucy saying, ‘Oh my god Phoebe’s heard the tracks and she’s gonna sign you!’” In lightning-fast time, Bridgers then gushed over her love of the songs on a Zoom call and Jasmine.4.t became the first British artist signed to Saddest Factory.

Her debut album You Are the Morning, recorded in Los Angeles with boygenius, is a candid and beautiful indie rock record about life as a trans woman, and the communities forged against systemic hate and oppression. Lead single ‘Skin on Skin’ tells the story of Jasmine’s first trans love, and she performs live with a band made up entirely of trans women.

“I’m surrounded by so many creative people, and every single queer person in my circle is creative,” she says. “Everyone is so in love with each other’s art.”

What was happening in your life when you wrote the songs that end up on the album?

My first EP came out pre-transition, and then I got really sick during COVID and transitioned while having long COVID. I left an abusive marriage and was homeless for a period after I wasn’t accepted by my family. From there, I found this incredibly community up here in Manchester. My first show up here was a fundraiser for my friend’s top surgery, and I was going to DIY release my demos, but then it all happened…

What did writing songs do for you in this period?

It’s always been therapeutic for me. If people want me to sing in front of them then I will! Since transitioning and experiencing life as a trans woman, and [because of] how much the world sucks for trans women, it made me a lot more driven to put myself out there and represent us and be vocal about how shit things are for us in terms of systemic transphobia and street violence. I have a song about that on the record. 

Tell us about recording in Los Angeles with boygenius…

Everyone had such a shared goal in mind, and we were like bouncing ideas off each other and such an exciting and creative and respectful way. It was so fun and how I want to live my life forever, in this wonderful, creative space with these incredibly, incredibly talented musicians. The record ended up very different to how I would have done it, but I love it so much for what it is. I love the record, I listened to it in my car! It’s embarrassing!

What’s the overarching story of the album?

It’s about a new beginning. I don’t mean just my transition, but it’s wishing for a peaceful future for trans women. The record’s called You Are the Morning, and the title track is about queer friendships. It’s about love and community and joy in the face of all the shit.

Is visibility the most important part of what you want to represent as an artist?

Given how many talented trans women there are, there are so few that are publicly known and visible as artists. I take that quite seriously in terms of visibility, but also trying to trying to affect change using my platform. I think visibility without protection is a trap and it puts people in danger – if people are like, ‘Oh, look at this horrible trans woman’. We don’t have political action to try and protect us and to try and fight for our rights, because they’re going to be fighting against our rights. I’m fighting for trans visibility and antifascist action”.

Although it is a very long and detailed interview, I am not including everything from The Line of Best Fit. jasmine.4.t’s words about her debut album and its creation. She also discusses the trans community that healed her to working with boygenius in L.A. It is a terrific interview. This is someone with a big future in music that is going to inspire and give strength to so many people:

“It’s in this warm and blossoming world that much of jasmine.4.t’s debut album You Are The Morning exists, bathed in a glow of candy-coloured joy and catharsis. The brainchild of Bristol-born and Manchester-based trans artist Jasmine Cruickshank, it’s an album that looks for meaning first and foremost in love – love for her friends, love for her personal journey, and for an intimacy that had once felt so far out of reach.

When the other reality of being a trans woman in our increasingly radicalised society does intrude, it creeps in softly, makes its sober point, and fades into the wallpaper of You Are The Morning’s house of rosy devotion. That’s not to say that the stakes are low. In centering her own hangups – and her tender heartbreaks, too – Cruickshank counterweighs her multilayered reveries with a dose of kitchen sink realism (one is literally called “Kitchen”) that keeps them from drifting into the ether like castles in the air.

Look for jasmine.4.t on streaming platforms and you’ll find just a handful of songs predating You Are The Morning – mostly from her 2019 EP Worn Through – but there’s a lot more out there under various guises, including whole albums that we’ll likely never hear, recorded on the cheap and sold in Bristol coffee shops on self-burned CD-Rs. Few things are ever entirely lost, though; she was bemused by meeting someone recently who had a copy of an album of Daniel Johnston covers she recorded at 16. She’s twice that age now, and finally at peace with who she’d always yearned to be.

The first time Cruickshank tried to come out as trans, she was an academic teen about to leave Bristol to take up a bachelor’s degree in maths at Oxford University. “It… didn’t go very well,” she says. “Oxford fucking sucks and is super transphobic as well. I really hated it there.” Forced to squirm reluctantly back into the closet to survive, her mental and physical health collapsed from the stress. A severe case of myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome or ME, followed and she was left with no choice but to quit and go home, where she lived in the basement of her parents’ house while working as temp staff for the NHS. 

In 2016, she co-founded a punk, folk and indie label, the still-going-strong Breakfast Records, with friends Josh Jarman and Dan Anthony of west country Americana band Langkamer, through which she released Worn Through and other music with early bands Human Bones and The Gnarwhals. She got married, too, to someone she’d met while at Oxford, but the key in her chest still sat there, burning silently away. When the pandemic hit in 2020, she was knocked flat, ending up practically bedbound with long Covid (a close relative of ME) for almost half a year. It was there, during the long hours of unhappily staring at the ceiling, that she made the decision to try and transition again.

“It went just as badly as it did the first time,” she says with a hollow laugh, shaking her head of blue and bright pink hair. “My marriage fell apart. Then I tried to move back in with parents and that went terribly. I was very traumatised by the whole experience and had really bad PTSD symptoms.”

Shellshocked and broken, she left Bristol for Manchester, where kind friends offered sofas and long talks over steaming cups of tea. It’s to those friends, and the wider trans and queer communities of Manchester and beyond, that You Are The Morning is dedicated. Even before she played her first show as jasmine.4.t, “at a fundraiser for an incredible trans guy’s top surgery,” Cruickshank had around 30 songs written and demoed, capturing all the new sensations, superheated feelings, and heart-pounding crushes of the early months of her transition.

PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Grubb

An essential part of any new moon party is to set your intentions for the coming month(s), and intentions are something that Cruickshank says she takes quite seriously. As someone who has long been involved in grassroots activism and advocacy, particularly with Trans Mutual Aid Manchester, there was a worry that people in her community might feel like she was leaving them behind as her star began to rise. “I don’t ever want to not be paying my dues to my community at home,” she explains. “So my intentions were very much about making sure that this record was made in a way that could benefit the wider trans and queer community that has supported me up to this point. And I feel like we’ve stayed true to that.”

As well as working out ways in which the record release and merch sales could support Trans Mutual Aid Manchester, You Are The Morning features the Trans Chorus of LA – the first of its kind in America – who joined the Sound City sessions for the album’s closing choral piece. Arranged by Phoenix Rousiamanis, whose composing credits include the London Philharmonic Orchestra and trans opera Songs of Descent(“mind-blowing, literally phenomenal”), it begins in the closing minute of the terrific single “Elephant”, continues through the interlude “Transition”, and concludes with the spine-tingling affirmation of “Woman”, the first song written and released as jasmine.4.t.

“We were recording in Studio B, which is what we call the Punisher studio [after Bridgers’ second album], but it wasn’t available on the day that the Chorus was coming in,” she explains. “So we recorded them in Studio A instead, which is this massive, iconic live room that Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and Nirvana’s Nevermind were recorded in. Thirty trans people in that historic room together? That had never happened before, clearly. Fucking hell. What a thing to be a part of. I feel so grateful to them. To hear that space filled with solely trans voices was a really incredible moment, and I think we all felt that. I have a video where I’m filming them and then pan around to Lucy Dacus next to me, and she’s just welling up.”

In fulfilling her own potential, Cruickshank says she’s often surprised by the depth of feeling her music seems to have stirred up. “I’ve been so overwhelmed with messages and comments from trans women and other queer people expressing gratitude and I’m a bit like, ‘Why are you grateful? I’m the one who’s reaping here,’” she says. “I didn’t expect that, because I’m just starting out here, but it’s so wonderful to know that my being a visible trans woman in the music industry has meant a lot to a lot of people already. It’s wonderful to wake up to all this wholesome shit in my Instagram notifications. I do get a lot of hate as well, but it’s massively outweighed by the amount of love.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Grubb

According to statistics gathered by Trans Day of Remembrance organisers, the past 10 years have seen more than 3800 trans people worldwide reported dead, with violence and suicide the two most common causes. That’s more than one trans person every day, and the increasingly fascist-leaning anti-trans rhetoric of the political class isn’t exactly inspiring confidence in brighter days ahead. It’s no wonder that other trans women and queer people are latching onto the jasmine.4.t vision of radical softness and unbending solidarity. Of being our own lights – and each other’s – in the face of loud injustice.

When the noise of negativity gets too much for Cruickshank to bear, she’s grateful for her chosen family like Han and another close friend Yulia, who will step in during the periodic pile-ons she endures to block, report, and delete if needed, to protect her from the worst. With the album coming out shortly, her excitement is mixed with some nervousness too. “I want it to go well but I’m still a bit on edge about the hatefulness that might come my way,” she says.

“However many lovely messages you get, the evil ones do stick in your head. Especially with what’s happening in America right now, it’s a fucking high stakes situation being a trans woman. So I need to be brave. It’s so important to not back down and to be visible and be fighting for trans rights and every other fucking thing that we need to be fighting for right now. It’s a long list.” 

As well as producing, playing, and singing backing vocals, each member of boygenius gets their own star turn on the album, with “Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation” being Phoebe Bridgers’ moment, and it’s perfect for her breathy, deadpan warmth. Julien Baker blesses “Tall Girl” with her soft soprano, while Lucy Dacus adds some extra oomph to the moving and brilliant “New Shoes”, which Cruickshank originally recorded pre-transition for Worn Through.

It was actually Dacus who coaxed her into revisiting the song and bringing it into the benevolent world of You Are The Morning. The only hesitation was that she had originally written the song about her ex-spouse, early on in their relationship. “Recording it again after the divorce, with my chosen family singing ‘Let’s make a family,’ was both devastating and incredibly affirming of this new and joyful road that I’m on,” she says, her voice cracking slightly with emotion. She shakes her head. “Yeah, it was a lot.”

If you follow any trans advocacy accounts on social media, you might be familiar with a quote by non-binary trans writer Kai Cheng Thom that goes “Those who have survived the unthinkable are also those who know how to create a better world – because it’s ended for us before," and I think part of the blueprint for that world lies in You Are The Morning. Through confidently expressing her unbroken self, insecurities and all, Cruickshank is remade once again into a source of light and strength for us all.

“There has been turmoil, but it’s been beautiful too,” she says, summing up. “I feel like I’ve landed on my feet and it’s really getting emotional now. I wrote these songs at the worst possible time, when everything had gone to shit and no one was accepting me for who I was, so it’s been amazing to see other trans women getting hope from my journey and from this incredibly lucky life that I’m now living.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” she adds, grimacing. “It fucking sucks being a trans woman in the fascist state of the UK, but I have my incredible chosen family around me and I’m so, so happy”.

I am going to end with this review from last year. Even though there is not a lot of online material from jasmine.4.t online – I am writing this on 11th January -, what we do have available is sensational. Personal songs with kitchen sink realism, there is also this aroma of perfume and, as The Line of Best Fit wrote “candy-coloured joy and catharsis”:

“It’s not even out until January, but I’m calling it already: this thing of beauty will be one of 2025’s finest. Based in Manchester, Jasmine Cruickshank, who writes and records as Jasmine.4.t , makes music that disarms through its intimacy and hopeful, wistful intensity.

Produced by Boygenius, it shares sonic DNA with early Perfume Genius, Boygenius’ own Lucy Dacus, and Elliott Smith. It’s bedroom pop, but even more fully-formed. Her lyrics tackle looking for love when all seems lost, celebrating her trans identity, and moving forward in a new location.

Where ‘Elephant ‘ is zesty dream pop, ‘Roan’ and ‘Skin On Skin’ ache with desire. ‘Tall Girl’ flirts with a breezy, grungy country style, and the brilliantly titled ‘Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation ‘ is a mantra to existential despair in the frozen food aisles. We’ve all been there. The title track, underpinned by swooning strings and delicate finger picking, tackles the dizzying heights of new love.

Her soft, lovely vocals are sure to bring comfort and reassurance to the cold new year. These are vignettes that feel profound, finding beauty in unexpected places . All hail a unique new talent, enveloping us in the warm embrace of her songs”.

I am new to the music of jasmine.4.t but I am already intrigued and invested. An artist that you will be hearing a lot from through 2025, do go and follow her and listen to You Are the Morning. One of the most important debut albums of this year. We have in our midst…

A stunning artist with a long future ahead.

___________

Follow jasmine.4.t

 Official:

https://www.jasmine4t.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/jasmine.4.t/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@jasmine.4.t

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2mSYfudGtQzxNYHApMjZBm?si=kOL1aNCBSNS0P-t9inbLxA

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkT3ODAxmm8