Tag Archives: Neil Young

JEHNNY BETH – Obsession: TRACK OF THE MONTH

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RAW INDUSTRIALS FROM BETH, BLACK METAL FROM EGYPT AND … A VIDEO OF GLOWING SHOELACES

It’s been a big few weeks for big names and big media coverage. Glastonbury dominated the BBC but if you weren’t screen-bound at the time Neil Young actually played, his set remains elusive bar whatever scraps you can sweep up from YouTube (here’s an Old Man clip that’s quietly hypnotic despite – no, because of – being filmed miles away from the stage from by someone who totally gets it… thank you BrainRotRebellion. Great laces).

As if Glastonbury all over wasn’t big enough, Oasis got us giddy for communal anthems less than a week later and then BLACK FCKN SABBATH reunited for a celebratory all-star last-ever show at Villa Park: Back to the Beginning. Massive. Sabbath are dominating the sounds round here but, to balance all that enormity and nostalgia, here are some new tunes – and it’s a noisier bunch this month.

Converge have not put out anything new but Mary Anne Hobbs played the ferocious Dark Horse on her new Sunday evening 6 Music show last month. Why? Seems that Jehnny Beth is a fan – and Hobbs had just given Obsession its first ever radio play.

Unsurprisingly, Beth aces it. Obsession grabs the wracked emotions and desperate aggression of early Nine Inch Nails and makes fresh industrial chaos for 2025 – here’s the video and her new album You Heartbreaker, You is out in August. Obsession bodes very well.

Meanwhile … Manchester for Maruja, anyone?

MARUJA – Look Down On Us

For Maruja first-timers, like what I is, Look Down On Us starts out like punk-noise bass with sax and rage. So far, so grit. But there’s more to it as this is a track (and video) of many parts, moods and movements, where anger slows to calm, calm swells to hope, and hope gets hit with headbanger intensity and a squalling free-form crescendo. Explosive, cathartic and very possibly ascendant, no doubt this is a beast when played live. Video right here.

STRATFORD RISE – Gunshow

Can you call this stuff prog? It’s two and a half minutes short so probably not. But then again, length isn’t everything … is it? In Gunshow, Belfast’s Stratford Rise mangle blackmidi/Geordie Greep quirk into a dense, churning chunk of artsy metallics that doesn’t quite go where you think – and stops before you find out.

WITCHCRAFT – Burning Cross

Very timely, given the music retirement news of the moment – a pure retro crawl from a descendant of a descendant of Black Sabbath. Absolutely nothing about Burning Cross screams ‘2025’. Nothing screams ‘summer heatwave’ either, but this Witchcraft tune is definitely at the quality end of any Sabbath devotion you might stumble on, especially the non-metal (jazzier?) breaks and ever so slightly stank-face wah. Check it here and file away for some appropriate autumn drizzle.

LYCOPOLIS – Mesektet

Feeling the need for raw dirt? An anti slick fix, a hot shot of sonic filth? This’ll do it. Sounding like it was recorded inside a tomb, Mesektet by Egyptian black metallers Lycopolis does to black metal what Entombed did to death metal – gives it swagger, gives it groove, gives it fucking ROLL. Atmos conjured, arrestingly unique.

TAKKAK TAKKAK – Garang

Cultures clash, but which ones? Who knows. Percussion-heavy chants and beats make for an underground cult where the ancient and the modern mix it up while metallic one-chord chugs pin you down. Subterranean club music, without borders, outside of time, impossible to describe. A spirited antidote to barriers and boundaries. Take a hit of Garang from Takkak Takkak and make your own mind up.

BLEETH – Echoes of Doubt

Bass alert: prepare to be steamrollered. Echoes of Doubt employs an absolute wall of it to bulk up its post-desert stoner anthemics so if you’re partial to the late Caleb Scofield’s four-string MO for Zozobra and Cave In, Bleeth are worthy. With thick, catchy riffs, super melodic vocals and a neat little tempo pick up, what more do you need for the summer?

’til next time!

Monthly rewind
The monthly music rewind

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

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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.

Storm Darragh meets The Dictator

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 TWO-YEAR-OLDS

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SEPTEMBER REWIND: BIRTHDAY TRADITIONS, MORE DRORE AND STADIUM ROCK TOP-UPS

It’s probably not how Sam Evian wants his music to be known, but that new album of his, Premium? Music for a two-year-old.

At least, it was two weeks ago. That’s when I was in Truck Store, asking which albums came out that very week (thanks for your help and patience, Truck staffers). Why was I seeking a CD for someone too small to listen to CDs? Well, I started this thing when my daughter was born: I bought an album that was released the week she arrived, as a memento of the time. And then I thought, why not do this every year? One day, if she’s piqued by music, we’ll have a nice little story to share, so here are the trez complexico rules wot I made:

  • CD must be released in the week of my daughter’s birthday
  • It must come from my local music brewery, aka Truck Store

And this is how I stumbled on a never-heard-of Sam Evian. Not music for tots, but instead – to steal Truck’s sticker wordage – ‘…a strange yet seductive listen that adds synths and sax to his whispery take on downbeat funk.’ Sounds about right for what we want…Sam Evian, you’re in, following New Order (2015) and spelling rebels Deap Vally (2016) into the birthday collection. To be listened to again in about 10 years, no doubt.

OK, bit of a diverting start – let’s get some quickie first impressions on September newbies, and we’ll start by keeping it local.

DRORE

It landed. Tape Two, JOY OF FUCKING JOYS. Heavy post-Undersmile Oxon rage, streaked with non-Billy childish pranks… New Skids on the Block, anyone? YES. At eight minutes, New Skids is the sole squatter on side two of the tape, but all four of these Life Regrets do what you want Drore to do: drag you through sewer hell, just like Tape One did. A filthy racket. Nice tablecloth cover design, too. Tape Two here.

BLAWAN

Burial’s new release Rodent isn’t what you’d expect from Burial – and not in a good way. Tension-free dullness, no edge, no ice. But the track that followed Rodent’s tail on Mary Anne Hobbs’s Recommends show the other week – Calcium Red by Blawan – shuts the light right down, packing some dense night-time menace over unrelenting beats. You go for Burial, you leave with Blawan techno.

GREG FOX

That man Colin again. EX EYE crossed our ears last month, and now it’s the turn of Stetson drummer Greg Fox to push adventure our way. Restless, machine-gunning drum ‘n’ tenor sax here on By Virtue of Emptiness.

TRUPA TRUPA

Hazy, warped post-ish rock from Poland that comes off like Dead Meadow tripping through bogs with Holy Mountain. Or maybe it’s the drunkest, most arse-rough Sigur Ros wannabe you ever heard. Works for me, make your own mind up with To Me from the upcoming album.

NEIL YOUNG

At once familiar and fresh, like most of Young’s work, Hitchhiker shows him at his most solo and most urgent, chopping a rhythm off that acoustic like only he can. Certified future classic from 1976, available on the now un-unreleased Hitchhiker album.

GY!BE, Myrkur and Chelsea Wolfe among the other heavies making September sound waves – not caught them yet, some other time.

BACKTRACKS

Get the Van in. Not Morrison, not Der Graaf Generator, not a paraphrased Rollins book but Van Halen. The early gold, the Hagar dynamite, the unabashed stadium rocKAKAKAKAKA – that’s where we’ve been this month. Big harmonies, tasteful shred and many a heavier, sharper riff than you probably dare remember, there’s much to revisit on the first four albums. However, it’s two percussion-heavy Hagars that take top backtracks billing this month.

Mine All Mine

OU812. What an intro. Not industrial exactly, but not far off. Percussion and keyboard dominant, which ain’t exactly what you think of with VH, Mine All Mine is surely one of Van Halen’s best. Alex up front, urgent momentum and a half decent lyric for once.

Pleasure Dome

A long-time highlight from 1991’s F.U.C.K., Pleasure Dome sounds at least as good as it did back then. Proper songcraft and musicianship that is, again, rhythm-driven while Eddie’s guitar dives, bombs, twists and spirals through to a tough-nut finale. A beast of a hard rocker from a guitar-driven record. 

Sorry about the lack of proper reviews of late, just been short of time.

’til the next one, then!

amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind

amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind