PROJECT GEMINI – After the Dawn (Large Plants remix): TRACK OF THE MONTH

Posted on March 16, 2025 by kevinsmusicblog

Check this Rewind – no chitchat intro. Not through choice, more of a time pressure thing because life has got in the way AND the ‘unable to save draft’ tech hiccup only made things worse so here we are, rewriting and cutting and hurtling to hit publish just to get it done.

And breathe.

Calm.

Oh …

HIGH ON FIRE – The Beating

Never a truer title, and a deserving one, too – haven’t bothered with High on Fire for a few years. No great reason, just … haven’t. They’ve slipped off into a parallel slipstream but a track like The Beating whips them right back, demolishing all complacency in a two-minute rager that burns like a cosmic fireball and leaves a middle-finger shaped trail in the sky. Yeah. The High on Fire template hasn’t been fiddled with so you know the rough drill but the drums here really, really cook – and it’s new drummer Coady Willis, ex Melvins and trusted Melvins live stand-in, who’s driving the band these days. It’s not a brand new track because the album’s been out nearly a year, but having only recently caught it, The Beating makes it in for sheer good time brutality. No mercy.

WALDO’S GIFT – Malcolm’s Law

Instrumental, hard hitting new/post jazz crossover? Whatever this stuff gets called (if anything), Malcolm’s Law by Bristol-based Waldo’s Gift is it. See Run Logan Run for another.

The great thing about a track like this is you can zone in on any element and make a different listening experience for yourself. Want some jazz fusion with metallic edges? Put your receptors on the guitar, my fiend. Chasing a subsonic shakeout? Drop into that bass, man. Spicy beats? YES. Gilles Peterson played this on the radio earlier in the year and if you check Worldwide FM online, you can hear Waldo’s Gift in session last week. Haven’t heard it myself yet and you never know, Malcolm’s Law might be wholly unrepresentative. Then again, so might these words – after all, they’re just an attempt to capture a first impression. Check the track, then check the session.

JESUS LIZARD – Westside

Rack was a 2024 highlight. Did we expect such a resolutely Jesus Lizard-like outing after such an absence? Hard to say but it was a welcome return. Now we have new tracks and Rack’s high bar means expectations have been set …

Westside offers no real hook and doesn’t so much flow as lurch, stop, start and stumble while never quite losing balance … it staggers on. Prime Jesus Lizard, then, if a touch lighter. We’re lucky to have them. Submit.

[if Record Store Day is your thing, look out for Westside and the other two post-Rack tracks on vinyl next month.]

PROJECT GEMINI – After the Dawn (Large Plants remix)

Some classy psyche rock here – not the free-form brain-fry stuff but a more considered, groove-oriented take. There’s a history to Project Gemini but it’s all new to me, as is the news that Wolf People’s Jack Sharp is in Large Plants – which explains the impeccable prog/psyche devotion throughout. The riffs switch to extra fuzz midway through, floating vocals bring Dead Meadow to mind and there’s a classic lead guitar flourish to finish, all anchored by a tumbling, propulsive funk beat. After the Dawn right here.

VELVETINE – Miss Together

Glorious slab of dank quiet-loud here from London’s Velvetine, twisting a gothic edge – the Killing Joke, other-world edge – into an art-punk frame. It slams hard. Shades of late 80s Sub Pop. Squalling guitar abrasion owns the high ground, noise-rock bass bulldozers the low and Mia Scarlet channels Beth Gibbons to both soar and pull us down into the darker recesses. Meet Miss Together.

‘til next time!

Monthly rewind — The ~~monthly~~ music rewind

MUSIC FOR CAT & FIDDLE 4: Michael Chapman

Posted on February 7, 2025 by kevinsmusicblog

MICHAEL CHAPMAN – 50

Driving under fog – or so it seems. Cloud skims the roof of the car until the incline takes us up and at it. Into the milk.

The soundtrack to this journey through trapped daylight is Sometimes You Just Drive by Michael Chapman. With its loose, locomotive rhythm and pedal steel tints, it echoes the wide open American west … by way of long, deep Yorkshire roots.

Chapman was 75 or 76 when he released 50. Backed by a bunch of younger players from the folk/roots/experimental scene, Steve Gunn among them, it’s a vital, honest sounding album. The voice might be weighted by mortality but the finger-picking remains ageless.

Let’s not pretend that I know anything about Michael Chapman, though. This album was my first encounter, followed by True North – the last album he recorded – and Americana. So, there’s quarry-loads of Chapman yet to mine but since first hearing 50, it’s become a winter fixture. Memphis in Winter shows why – and it’s not just for the title.

“We’re past the end of nowhere, all along the worn-out plain
Where the devil lies in waiting
And it gets too dark to rain.
It gets too dark to rain.”

If we submit to music’s potential for seasonal and environmental appropriation (which is pretty much the point of these Cat & Fiddle posts) then the busker’s stomp of a beat in Memphis takes on a quickening air, like it’s trying to outrun a biting chill. Electric guitar, sliding in late with frayed distortion and lived-in experience, delivers the flickering licks of much needed heat.

And that’s where we’re going to leave 50. The loping lilt of The Prospector and the electrifying flourishes over Rosh Pina‘s hypnotic picking are among the many riches, but this isn’t meant to be a review. Instead, it’s an association, an evocation of a sound and a spirit that lives up to the surroundings – which, on this drive, look something like this:

Cue it up while it’s still cold.

Note:
Ryley Walker played Sheffield a few days ago at the Sidney & Matilda. Solo set, wholly acoustic, stunning as you’d expect. He mentioned Michael Chapman. Said Chapman liked this song of his, which he then played. Think it was The Roundabout. Don’t quote me, but do go check Ryley if you haven’t already.

More music for Cat and Fiddle

A WORD FOR JOHN SYKES

Posted on January 29, 2025 by kevinsmusicblog

RIP TO THE GUITAR TONE THAT DEFINED A COMMERCIAL ROCK COLOSSUS

Some guitarists take us home.

They might not be the ones we listen to the most, we might not even have played them for years – but they’ve been in our lives the longest, on those played-to-death records from formative teenage years. That kind of exposure doesn’t just vanish, no matter how cutting edge we think we are. It’s hardwired into the unconscious. Play that music again and the strength of connection hits hard, sometimes unexpectedly so. It takes you into yourself and, crucially, back to yourself.

Home.

And this is why the news of John Sykes passing away – cancer, age 65 – is hard to take.

1987 was an album I played the life out of as a 14 year-old. The ballads were tolerated (no skipping with the record/tape format) and the keyboards mostly stank but the monstrous stop-start attack of Still of the Night was, and still is, a hard rock thrill for all time. Same for Crying in the Rain and deep-cut favourite, Children of the Night. And the thing that made the best of that album sound the way it did – the speeding rhythmic riffing, the shred-melodic solos and incomparable guitar tone – was John Sykes. He WAS 1987. His sound defined it and mega millions got sold on the back of period piece (cough) videos he never appeared in. Sykes has an exalted place in 80s rock history.

Credibility-wise, Whitesnake get short shrift – no surprise. For me, they were an adolescent band of a moment, but that moment put John Sykes out there. When his Blue Murder debut came out in 1989, firing out all the best bits of 1987 and far fewer of the worst bits, that album got played to death too – until the 90s took hold and both records got ditched without sentimentality as hair rock relics.

Wrong move.

You can’t shake that stuff. Many years later, realising that I needed that Sykes attack close to hand, I repurchased 1987 and Blue Murder. And in the past few years, I’ve been keeping gentle tabs on John Sykes activity – which is another reason why his passing away last week shocks.

There always seems to have been the promise of new music and a return to business. Fans were well up for it. Interviews with Tony Franklin and Carmine Appice said they’d been touch with him and the door was open so the rumblings were positive. Sykes himself said in 2019 that he had stuff ready to go … and each year passed by without. So everyone waited for further word, hopeful that one day something would appear.

A Carmine Appice interview published on YouTube in 2024 threw out the same Blue Murder question but where there was optimism before, now there was resignation. Appice said, “John…. know no-one knows what he’s doing.”

All too sadly now, I think we can guess.

So, this week has seen many riffs raised to a guy who made some of the best and made it all look so easy. Great singer too, the complete hard rock package. Watch the live version of Billy by Blue Murder on The Big Al Show – link below – from 1989 (?) and see. It comes with a Mullet Warning but the music and the performance is astonishing. The whole band smokes, every beat and note. And how Sykes sings, plays and peels off a screaming solo so effortlessly is something else. Favourite bit? Possibly the super-tight post-pause riff that explodes into the first solo. Or the casual intro.

Actually, all of it.

He was missed when he was alive. What more can you say now?

Not much, really. Better just pick a track, riff or solo, celebrate the gift of Sykes – and share it.

Some Sykes clips:
Thin Lizzy, Cold Sweat – The Tube, 1983
Whitesnake, Children of the Night audio, 1987
Blue Murder, Billy – The Big Al Show
John Sykes, Dawn of a Brand New Day, 2021

Blue Murder repurchased

MUSIC FOR CAT & FIDDLE 3: Catherine Graindorge & Iggy Pop

Posted on January 23, 2025 by kevinsmusicblog

CATHERINE GRAINDORGE – THE DICTATOR EP

Storm Darragh made this drive a wild one. Moors and skies packed with portent – a glove-like fit for The Dictator.

Everyone knows Iggy has a voice for the spoken word. You hear it with Death in Vegas on Aisha. You hear it on Avenue B with She Called Me Daddy. You hear it every week on BBC 6 Music, grizzled as hell but warm as hell too, inviting you in hearth-side for anecdotes and insights on music. It’s a voice to sink into. And here, set to music that follows the contours of the peaks outside, it’s a voice to feed your imagination.

The music is far from Iggy’s riotous past, though not unexpected given his later output. Belgian violinist and composer Catherine Graindorge is the visionary, crafting four tracks of string-driven moods, shimmering electronics and haunting atmospherics. No percussion, no signposted beats – just surges, pulses, drifts and searing trails of light. Iggy relays poetic warnings in The Dictator, then takes an introspective turn on Mud I and Mud II:

I walk along the river
in a thick fog.
You tell me about a book your father once gave you.
In my head turns this melody – no words.
And you read me a princess story
from a distance.

Pop’s words with Graindorge’s soundscapes? WIN. The instrumental last track of the EP, named Iggy in honour of the voice, echoes the violin-bow taps Jimmy Page did on Dazed and Confused live but here the mood is ethereal, not theatrical … a foundation for a symphonic swell which, like everything else, matches the land and the season.

Try it. Add this EP to your cold weather listens, maybe even pair it up with Neil Young’s Dead Man soundtrack – and not just for the Pop connection. There’s a rustic, earthy spirit running through both.

More Music for Cat and Fiddle

MUSIC FOR CAT & FIDDLE 2: Low

Posted on January 12, 2025 by kevinsmusicblog

LOW – HEY WHAT

F*CK. ME. This is it.

Then again: it’s Low so what do we expect? And when do you listen to Low?

They’re a band I can’t play any time or too often because they’re just too intense, too special – especially those last two albums. Low seem to have a direct line to something way deeper than the rest of us. After pressing play on Hey What in the car, I become aware that the opening track White Horses builds in noise and distortion completely in sync with the incline and the gradually emerging, slowly unfolding landscape. Urbanity receding, wild moors welcoming. Beautiful. No, more than that: awesome. This happens to be an ultimate convergence of emotive music and scenery.

But if that wasn’t enough – and it would have been, easily – there’s a divine intervention from the goddess of good timing. White Horses hits peak distortion and noise saturation around 2 minutes 15 seconds – the exact moment a turn round a blind bend reveals the top of the world in full, unending glory.

Breath taken? Damn right. The combination of sound and vision is huge, which explains the F bomb earlier. Rendered speechless.

Low’s fragmented, techno-glitch density opens portals to a parallel universe. But the effect that comes from wrapping their fragile/euphoric harmonising within and around such sonic manipulation is unfathomable and unexplainable. It’s why Hey What and Double Negative transcend so much other music. It’s electro-noise gospel. Those albums just cannot be played in casual conditions that lessen the mystique. They need to be played with intent: night darkness with volume cranked, wild walks in storm force gales, the deepest of snows and winter freezes

or a moody overcast drive on the Cat and Fiddle.

More Music for Cat and Fiddle here.

MUSIC FOR CAT & FIDDLE 1: Robert Plant & Alison Krauss

Posted on January 8, 2025 by kevinsmusicblog

PLANT | KRAUSS – Raise the Roof

Entry #1 of Music for Cat and Fiddle scenic soundtracks … and there’s something about the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss pairing, and Raise the Roof especially, that really lifts in this kind of space.

Which is no surprise given the general love/unfettered worship of all things Plant that I’ve been carrying forever, but even allowing for such fanatical tendencies, there are times of year when his music touches even higher levels. The Carry Fire album begs for a misty autumn or winter morning – play it one day when you’re up before the rest of the world awakes and tell me it doesn’t belong right there in that cool, quiet, open-to-reflection moment. Raise the Roof carries a similar torch for dawns and dusks and half lights, to my mind. Darker in tone than the also excellent Raising Sand, it’s tailored for the barren beauty of the Cat and Fiddle road drive

even when you can’t see shit:

And it’s those opening two tracks that do the business here. The gentle desert shuffle of Quattro (World Drifts In) reveals an existential reckoning while The Price of Love slows the beat to countrified lilt dripping with lyrical truths of love ended. You don’t need to know the Calexico and Everly Brothers originals to feel something but, as we said with Midwife, dusty Americana works in conditions that elevate the remote. It’s the very opposite of urban. And in the hands of Plant and Krauss, these songs touch on the devotional. They did for this drive.

But I guess I would say that.

[if you missed the link above or are just confused by the music words and fog picture combo you fell into, here’s the background to this music-as-soundtrack thread]

MUSIC FOR CAT AND FIDDLE

Posted on January 8, 2025 by kevinsmusicblog

WINTER SOUNDS FOR PEAK DISTRICT DRIVES

What do you do when a new 30-minute drive to work takes you through scenery so epic, vast, bleak and beautiful that it threatens to melt your opticals and steal your oxygen?

Try not to career off the road on a hairpin bend is the first thing, I guess – ultimate life-preserver move.

But before long, you get to thinking: what music could be the soundtrack to this?

It’s got to be more than something you like. It’s got to be something you love AND it’s got to fit – it has to be deserving of the jaw-drop views from behind this widescreen windscreen lens. Anything less would be a disservice to the gift outside.

This has been my nicely indulgent task on a new but short term drive to work. Having just moved to Buxton and got a temp role through December, my drives took me on Macclesfield Road, aka the Cat and Fiddle road.

It is spectacular. The road climbs into the official Peak District and splits the moors 1,689 feet above sea level by the Cat and Fiddle Inn, a former pub that’s the second highest in the UK. The highest is Tan Hill Inn in North Yorkshire who, at the time of writing, was caught in a snow-in.

The road then carves a winding, hair-pinning zig-zag descent to Macclesfield on the other side. The moors are vast in their brown-purple haze. Dense fog is common, even when it’s clear down below. When adverse weather moves in, the road quickly becomes impassable. It’s been closed across the last three days since snow moved in on January 4th.

Fortunately, my drives didn’t encounter any snow beyond an occasional light flurry but joining that road at 5.20 am in the pitch black dark is a little bit of a test. All you can do is lean forward, follow the dots and block out the drops to the side. When there’s fog, it’s milk. Tunnel vision. For this, there is no music. Got to focus.

But the return journey a few hours later is different. Music becomes a possibility so … what’s it going to be? Melvins and Metallica might well be massive favourites but such riff-heavy, beat-driven manna is not going to be on the cards, not for this – not yet, anyway. The newness of the views and shifting natural lights is too fresh. We’re looking for an emotional, more than a physical, response from our tunes. Something to swell hearts.

It’s a time/place thing, too. If you’ve ever chosen not to play, say, David Bowie’s Low because it’s the wrong time of the day or the wrong time of the year then you know what we’re talking about here. Some music has conditions attached, even if you’ve made them up yourself. And some environments have conditions too. This is one of them.

So, the next few posts are short rambles about music that matches up to the mother of mid-winter views. See what you think of their seasonal potential.

MIDWIFE – Rock n Roll Never Forgets: TRACK OF THE MONTH

Posted on December 19, 2024 by kevinsmusicblog

DECEMBER REWIND: MANIAC THRASH, OCCULT-ISH FUZZ, METALCORE LOUNGE AND MORE

Welcome to the last Rewind of 2024 – not that there have been many to digest this year. What was once a monthly (give or take) post has slipped shamefully close to a flatline with occasional blips indicating ‘life’.

But, like a tortoise on an uphill grind into a tarmac-scraping headwind, we carry on. ’tis the season of goodwill and joy after all so the least we can do is share some new discoveries before the Xmas madness intoxicates. ONWARD. Slowly…

HELLRIPPER – Fork-Tongued Messiah

Nothing slow about this though, the most recent new blood from every metaller’s favourite Highlander. The track came out in August but it’s the bleak end of the year where such two-minute mayhem makes most sense, not just because the days are literally darker but also because Hellripper takes you back to times of youthful innocence when Kill ’em All and Killing is My Business ruled your fledgling earwaves and Bathory stoked fearful fascination. No stylistic breakaways at this point, thank satan – just riotous escapism at maximum speed. ALL HAIL.

EARTH TONGUE – Bodies Dissolve Tonight!

On Bodies Dissolve Tonight!, Earth Tongue – from Wellington, New Zealand – add a chanty, gonzo spook vibe to some wickedly fuzz-rocking riffage. On the one hand, it’s got the primitive no-frills edge you’d expect from a two-piece. On the other, it dances with the sci-fi occult grooves of the late 60s and early 70s underground, thanks to Gussie Larkin’s staccato vocal delivery. You could easily imagine this on one of those box sets of unearthed now-cult gems like I’m a Freak, Baby… where bands like Wicked Lady, Iron Claw and Devil’s Teabag* spread dank cheer. Listen to Earth Tongue, then watch the video for beach-driving high jinx.

*not really

THEODOR KENTROS – Trystero

7 minutes of ambient doomgaze and looped layering, anyone? Grab those headphones. Downbeat in tempo but not in spirit, Theodor Kentros‘s Trystero exists as some kind of shapeshifting heavy vapour, slowly unfolding and expanding over your world. Sparse guitars echo like cinematic Mogwai teasing an impending onslaught but here, they pull back, making way for swollen enormo-drones and elemental clangs to reveal themselves. When those same guitar lines reappear and repeat cleaner, brighter and bigger, it’s like the day burst wide open. Immersion time.

TENUE – Union

It’s not hard to imagine a band playing Pelican-ised post metal with screamo vocals and black-metal blasts, and that’s a rough marker for what Tenue do on this track – nothing wrong with that. But the real loop they throw is the mellow jazzy breakdown which has no connection with the rage either side yet completely belongs, snapping your focus into attention by showcasing deft musicality and prog tendencies. Intriguing? File under Spanish Metalcore Loungecore. Or something. Check Union here.

MIDWIFE – Rock n Roll Never Forgets

Calexico, Giant Sand and assorted Americanas make for supreme winter listening if you find the right tracks, despite the warmth and dust in the origins of their sound. It’s all about the openness and isolation they conjure and this gentle, dronesome hush by Midwife does exactly the same thing. Madeline Johnston inhabits the monochrome zone where distorted whispers weave through pedal-steel caresses and buried strings. Devoid of all bluster or hard edges, it occupies a space that’s permanently in-between – locations, hours, states of consciousness, whatever you choose. Lo-fi ambience for late night drifters, low-light hibernators and want-to-be-aloners… keep it close when Christmas gets too loud. Rock n Roll Never Forgets.

And that’s that. Tyler the Creator‘s Noid (and video) was dynamite and then 2024 year-end listmania was unleashed. So we’d better leap on some of that

if tortoise catches a downhill break.

’til next time – MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Rewind Xmas — A rock-a rewind the Christmas tree

FIRE-TOOLZ – To Every Squirrel… : TRACK OF THE MONTH

Posted on September 26, 2024 by kevinsmusicblog

SUMMER REWIND: MIND-MELTING MASH-UPS, TRANSCENDENT DRONES AND A NEW TYPE-O ON THE BLOCK

In the previous Rewind, I said that my cassette deck coughed its last breath (clunked its last wind?) and that sad ending probably meant a hiatus for these Rewinds. Such Doomsday thinking came about because the thought of writing new-tunes blather without first taping those tunes onto a trusty blank was unimaginable. Which might sound odd because no-one needs a tape to write.

Thing is, I’ve been taping for too many years to count. It’s built into the way I choose to do these posts because the tapes and the taping came first, long before any word outlet. Writing a Rewind is just a way to do something with a pre-existing activity. Capturing radio highlights in hard copy analogue has been a fixture since the late 1980s and it’s ingrained, like a behavioural tattoo. It might be fading but it’s still permanent.

But although not having a tape feels strange, the idea of letting those ear-pricker tunes drift by without any kind of note feels even stranger.

So, let’s get back to business – ish – with a bunch of hot rocks and warped sonics from the vanishing summer stretch that’ll blow minds OR confuse the shit out of them (talking to you, Fire-Toolz).

Before that, a quick salute to Iggy Pop for a four-song sequence the other week that sounded like a plot to destroy the BBC Radio 6 Music’s RAJAR figures or get him fired.

Did you hear it? Wombbath Conceal Interior Torment, Gorement Vale of Tears and Full of Hell Doors to Mental Agony around 5.30pm on the radio on a Sunday afternoon with only a bit of Anna Von Hausswolff to separate them. Brutal. And horrible. But great to hear such shitbombs being lobbed on daytime radio every now and then. Mary Anne Hobbs has good form on that front, too.

She played this on her weekday morning show.

FIRE-TOOLZ – To Every Squirrel Who Has…

For squirrels’ sake, what the flattened roadkill is this format-defying track title? Here’s the uncut version:

To Every Squirrel Who Has Ever Been Hit By a Car, I’m Sorry & I Love You

Say you’re not curious.

But if you’re hoping to get the general musical idea from a quick listen, it’s not going to happen because there IS no general idea – not on first play. This is an avalanche of ideas in six and a half minutes: Prince-style euphoric synth intro, black metal screams, death metal chugs, hyper pop, triggered beats, glistening electro, ambient guitar, new age trips, the fckn works – a medley of fragments and attention deficits. Definitely not a genre but when the stylistic leaps are this wild and fleeting, it’s head-breaking stuff. It’s maximalist post-genre everything, like a multi-screen art installation with fidgeting technicolour flickers of Fantomas, Mr Bungle, Amon Tobin, Devin Townsend, Steve Vai and millions of others I don’t even know I don’t know.

I also don’t even know if I like it but it’s impossible to ignore – and the more you replay, the more the fragments stretch and the more you do find yourself being drawn in… give it a go.

RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI – Control Your Soul’s Desire for Freedom (ft. Julia Kent)

The very opposite of a Fire-Toolz assault, Rafael Anton Irisarri conjures meditative heavy weather with this enormous unfolding of drones, tremors and strings that lift off and up from terra firma. Tranquil and serene yet heavy with it, Control… seems to offer some sort of healing while still acknowledging trouble’s presence. Engrossing and enveloping. Breath taken.

NEON NIGHTMARE – Lost Silver

Looking for a tribute to Type O Negative? Neither was I. But now that one’s popped up in true undead style as we welcome autumn’s gothic sensibilities, maybe the time’s right for a Type O mini me to slide out from a misty dusk. And this debut track from Pennsylvania’s Neon Nightmare is SO close to the Brooklyn Four that resistance is futile. Look no further than the artwork. It’s the exact same layout and typography (make your own pun) as every Type O Negative cover, so much so that you think someone from the original band must be involved somewhere. Surely.

Musically, there’s no new soil broken. Of course, the voice is cleaner but everything else – delicate piano/keyboard breaks, pick slides down the guitar, luscious Sabbathian mid tempo riffs, smooth as blackened silk finales – is replicant. It’s so brazenly and meticulously Type O that it just has to be the deepest tribute and for that reason, you have to love it. Perhaps not to death, but at least until Halloween. Lost Silver, the new green and black.

‘til next time!

MARK LANEGAN BAND: Here Comes That Weird Chill

Posted on July 28, 2024 by kevinsmusicblog

It seems absurd to place Mark Lanegan as a man of sunshine. And yet, so much of his music was made with desert scene players that he must have been drawn to it.

Home is where the heat is? Maybe.

* * *

Anyone who knows Bubblegum knows Methamphetamine Blues. Alongside Hit the City, it’s one of the rock-action peaks from that 2004 album and here, on the preceding Here Comes That Weird Chill EP, it gets prime position: track #1.

Methamphetamine Blues, Extras & Oddities

Driven by an electro-clank machine pulse, the Methamphetamine Blues groove is anything but bluesy. Fumes and distortion are the order of the day, more workshop grind than back-porch swing, with a sumptuous cast of backing singers teasing a gothic, seductive touch. Despite the huge cast, the loops and the near-constant lead guitar streams by Josh Homme and Dave Catching, it’s controlled … like a lot of Lanegan’s work. Containment, no histrionics. This one revels in taut compression.

On the Steps of the Cathedral, a hymn-like confessional with surround-sound Lanegan choir and a muted beat, fades in/out with the ghosted air of a Masters of Reality interlude – fitting, given the presence of Chris Goss – before the amps strike back for Clear Spot. It’s a faithful cover, maybe even an unadventurous one given Beefheart’s many outer limits, but it lends itself to the same mechanised distortions as Methamphetamine Blues. For that reason, it works. Let’s rock.

But from here, a looser vibe takes hold and the EP’s subtitle Methamphetamines, Extras & Oddities rings more true. Deen Ween brings the heat haze with his just-off-enough guitar solos through Message to Mine before the mood turns a 180 with this:

“Break my heart and hope to die
before Lexington could slow down.
They say a chariot’s waiting
when you get cut loose.
The place starts swinging
when it’s me on the noose.”

When those words get spoken in Lanegan’s heaviest baritone over rain-sodden piano, they cut through everything.

They sound too true. You believe. Lexington Slowdown is a double-take moment that reorients your listening and elevates the EP because this is where the already obvious quality shifts to next-level. This EP is what made Bubblegum a must-buy the following year. And this EP is probably why I’m more a Lanegan Band casual than a completist because, honestly, nothing else captures Mark Lanegan in rock mode as much to my own liking as fully as this does.

If Lexington is pivotal then Skeletal History is definitive. The Voice leads, of course, but with alien interference crackling down the left side, desert dry riffs on the right and storm-brew bass and skittish beats locked down the centre, there’s no shortage of elements. No chorus, just flow, an ongoing slow eruption as a storm slowly builds. Explosions darken the track’s fadeout. Played like this, the music sounds less like a band than a telepathic convergence of forces. Vast, wide-open and ominous.

Wish You Well lightens the tone with a droning ebb and flow before Sleep With Me continues the Skeletal History vibe – but this is like the tentative calm after the threat has receded. Adrenalin slowing. Reprise extends Sleep With Me, softening further with immaculate bass lines while guitar distortions break the spaces around Homme’s dubby beat.

In some ways, it’s harder to see this EP as the Mark Lanegan Band than the album that followed. His name is in the spotlight sure, but the smaller cast of core players – the desert hands like Alain Johannes, Dave Catching, Chris Goss, Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri – knit together like low-ego equals drawing on more than just the music. Maybe it’s their shared histories that make the difference. Maybe the tunes with Nick Oliveri just turn out differently (he plays on more here than Bubblegum). Maybe it’s nothing more than presentation: a bunch of looser experiments being given their own space to run. Whatever it is, something extra comes through in the way this EP flows and hangs together.

Is it a Desert Session in all but name?

Possibly, yes. And if so, it’s the most consistent of the bunch – the lack of joke tracks and guest singers make for a darker, more focused mood – and the one that fits Lanegan’s voice best.

If you lapped up Bubblegum but somehow missed this … track it down: a small trove jammed with riches.