» Listings for 2024

1. 2023/4 Albums Thing 252 - Bill Nelson's Red Noise “Sound On Sound”

   Posted on 9:45am Friday 12th Jan 2024

   Right then, enough of messing about with these alphabetically out of sync pieces (there are a couple more to come tho'), shall we get back to the alphabet ? Back in December we finished the M's, halfway through our  ABC's, so today we'll pick it up at N...

   More music I’m sure I discovered listening to the John Peel Show. It would have been the single “Furniture Music” I heard first followed shortly by the second single from this album “Revolt Into Style”. All this would have been in early 1979, I had absolutely no clue that Bill Nelson had a history. I may have heard the name Be Bop Deluxe but knew nought of Nelson’s connection to that post-Glam/Prog-lite outfit. At that time Harvest Records, who Red Noise were signed to, to me meant The Saints, The Roxy Live abum and Wire and not their uber Prog past. As far as I was concerned Bill Nelson’s Red Noise were a new New Wave band making bloody good singles.

   But this was a band in name only. After losing creative control of Be Bop Deluxe, Nelson paid the members of his new band as session musicians, he was definitely in charge here. As an example, the drummer on half of this “New Wave” album is Fairport Convention’s Dave Mattacks ! Fans of Be Bop Deluxe hated it, prospective fans of the New Wave who knew who Nelson was avoided it due to his past with Be Bop Deluxe, his record company Harvest were asking themselves “What's wrong with Bill? Why's he doing all this crazy music?”. I guess it was those, like me, who knew nothing of his past that just heard the music and got it. 

   I ate up the two singles and the live B-sides of “Revolt Into Style”. I didn’t get a copy of the album until around 10 years ago but still think it’s a great record that sounds like all sorts of other stuff that was emerging in 1979, put it on a list with the likes of Ultravox! and Tubeway Army, rock bands making futuristic music with heavy use of synthesizers. As a result of liking this I even bought a Be Bop Deluxe album (“Drastic Plastic” which Nelson had envisioned as the first Red Noise album but was talked out of it by his management) and a Bill Nelson solo album (“Quit Dreaming And Get On the Beam” which he’d started to write as the follow up to this one) so I got something of an education out of it too. If you’re unaware of Red Noise but are a fan of that NewWave/Post Punk sound then click the link here and tell me you wouldn’t have fallen for this too, ignorance was bliss.

   Furniture Music - https://youtu.be/gm3OgLHALAU?si=_ab6FBESm7NuC4gH

2. 2023/4 Albums Thing 251 - Drive-By Truckers “The Fine Print (A Collection Of Oddities And Rarities) 2003-2008”

   Posted on 9:45am Thursday 11th Jan 2024

   I have the best customers. One of them saw this in the sale at another shop, bought it and and said I know you like them so if you want it you can have it otherwise I’ll keep it. I had it from him.

   “The Fine Print” is a compilation of previously unreleased recordings, cover versions and alternate takes. Most of these tracks were recorded during the sessions for “The Dirty South” and “Decoration Day”, my favourite period of Trucker-time when Jason Isbell was a member. For the first time a Truckers album includes cover versions, four of them. But in the main these are leftovers from a period when the Truckers had three and sometimes four songwriters contributing and with so much material being written, something was bound to get left behind.

   The covers of Tom Petty’s “Rebels” and Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” are OK, perfunctory passes through two songs you’d expect these guys to like. The update of Tom T Hall’s Vietnam homecoming song "Mama Bake A Pie (Daddy Kill A Chicken)" to the Iraq era is fitting. Then there’s their go at Warren Zevon’s "Play It All Night Long" which is an answer song to to Lynyrd Skynyrd's “Sweet Home Alabama” which was in itself an answer song to Neil Young's "Southern Man". As you can imagine, it fits the Truckers like a well tailored silk suit, not that I can imagine Mike Cooley in a well tailored silk suit.

   The first of the gems within is Jason Isbell’s “TVA” (that’s The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for those that don’t know, a federally owned electricity company created by Franklin D Roosevelt to bring jobs and power to Tennessee, parts of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and some areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. The TVA completely changed the economies and landscapes of those areas). It’s another languid Isbell story about life in the Southern backwoods that must have been real tough to leave off “The Dirty South” for which it was originally recorded.

   That’s followed by another real beaut, and a song I’ve long liked, Mike Cooley’s tragic “Uncle Frank”. This had been previously released on the Truckers 2nd album “Pizza Deliverance” but this version was re-recorded at “The Dirty South” sessions and was meant to have been one side of a single with “TVA”, the two songs telling different sides of the same story about the TVA. This alternate version is a much livelier affair than the original recording and I like it a lot.

   There’s another “alternate version” on here in a faster version of Patterson Hood’s “Goode’s Field Road” that was finally issued on “Brighter Than Creation’s Dark” in a much more subdued setting. It seems this recording of the song almost made it onto “The Dirty South” but lost out to “Lookout Mountain” when it came down to final track listings. I much prefer this take to the “Brighter…” version.

   Isbell’s “When The Well Runs Dry” would easily have fit on any of his solo albums. And then we are treated to DBT’s Xmas song, “Mrs Claus’ Kimono”, which is as warped as you can imagine it would be…who knew the Elves thought about Santa’s wife like that !!!

   Rather than being a great album “The Fine Print” is a nice collection of waifs and strays from one of their most productive periods. Another one for the completists but it wouldn’t make a bad intro for a newbie.

   Play It All Night Long -  https://youtu.be/4PZuuExyKxs?si=SEWgcdjfUREns06

3. 2023/4 Albums Thing 250 - King Creosote “I Des”

   Posted on 9:50am Tuesday 9th Jan 2024

   Post #250 in this project which has now slipped into its second year feels like a real milestone. It's therefore appropriate that it's about some new music, well it was released in November 2023 and that's new to me, so let's get on with it shall we...

   Xmas and the New Year was over, Deb and me are lounging about with Tom Robinson on BBC 6Music streaming in the background. After him playing a Motown tune (can’t remember what it was) and me bemoaning what happened to 6Music, I thought it was supposed to be the BBC’s “new music” station, Tom played something that made my ears prick up. It was a gentle, beautifully melodic song with lots of pianos and synthesizers washing around in the background. Once it had finished Tom explained it was an excerpt from a 13 minute song (!) called “Please Come Back, I Will Listen, I Will Behave, I Will Toe The Line” from the album “I Des” by King Creosote. Actually he said it was by Kenny Anderson and that it was Kenny’s 50th (!!) studio album.

   Now the thought of a 13 minute long song should have put me off, but the bit I heard was so lovely I did some digging around and found that I could stream the whole album on YouTube. I did just that the next morning and three songs in I’d ordered the (Gold) vinyl. Effortlessly melodic songs all of them, with lyrics I can’t wait to dig into, what’s not to love.

   King Creosote is/are Kenny Anderson, a singer and songwriter from (The Kingdom of) Fife, just across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh. King Creosote released his/their (?) first album in 1997. Since then he/they have released as few as none and as many as seven albums a year (2021, the lockdown years were productive for Kenny as he released 7 self financed albums on CD-r although most journalists don’t seem to count these, saying his previous album to this was released in 2016). Kenny sings in a gentle, soothing Scottish accent and absolutely has a way with a tune if “I Des” is representative of what he does.

   The first two songs, “It's Sin That's Got Its Hold On Us” and “Blue Marbled Elms”, are superb. “It's Sin That's Got Its Hold On Us” begins with distorted tubthumping electronic drums which are joined by an acoustic guitar and strings and finally that soothing Scottish lilt in the vocals. Caveat is I could live without the preacher at the end. “Blue Marbled Elms”, which I believe was the albums first single, has what sounds like what might be a Harmonium droning away (*checks credits* I was right but how do I know what a Harmonium sounds like ?) and Kenny’s vocal is joined by Hannah Fisher’s voice which lifts the whole thing. Third song “Burial Bleak” is sparse, almost hymnal with a real Folk feel to it and it’s dazzling.

   Later on “Please Come Back, I Will Listen, I Will Behave, I Will Toe The Line”, an excerpt of which is the first thing I heard, is stunning. I don’t generally have the attention span to stick with songs of 13 minutes in length, they have to be pretty special or have a lot going on and this has both. For around 6 minutes it’s very much in line with the sound of the rest of the record (apart from “Susie Mullen”, an uptempo dance tune which feels incredibly out of place) and then suddenly after a rousing chorus a full on rock band breaks out for a couple of minutes, big drums, electric guitars, squealing synths. Then, just as suddenly, it settles back into something you’ve become more used to before sliding back again into synth washes, haunting girly vocals and tinkling johanna’s for the last couple of minutes. Thanx Mr. Robinson, I love it.

   Final piece “Drone In B#” isn’t going to be everyone’s cuppa. It’s a 36 and a half minute instrumental (with the vinyl release it’s a download only extra) that for almost 8 minutes is purely what the title says it is although having listened to it a couple of times there’s Krautrockers out there that will love it. Bizarrely, at around 12 minutes, it’s a little reminiscent of the incidental music toward the end of “Crocodile Dundee II” !

   “I Des” feels like electronic folk music (folktronica…is that a thing ?). The musical settings are overwhelmingly electronic but folk instruments and melodies make themselves known and that calming Scottish lilt in Kenny Anderson’s vocals add to the feeling. The first 3 songs are as good as anything I've heard in a long aul time and there is much more later on. Reading back through this I've used the descriptives lovely, soothing, superb, dazzling, stunning, rousing, haunting, calming and of course more than once the one word I've seen applied to this record by many a review I read, and it fits perfectly…it’s beautiful.

   Have a listen below, check the album out on YouTube like I did, hopefully you'll be as captivated by it as I have been.

   Please Come Back, I Will Listen, I Will Behave, I Will Toe The Line - https://youtu.be/Ln7pTGiIp6Q?si=yT1IEt-tn8yoXgAr