Doves really are quite prog rock aren’t they? It’s never really leapt out at me before, probably because I’d always thought of them as brooding indie first and foremost.There are elements of things like spaghetti western soundtracks, Scott Walker vadevillianism, krautrock rhythms and electronica woven in, sure, but those things were all in service of songs that definitely seemed to come from an unpretentious “alternative” tradition, dosed with northern kitchen sink grit, light years away from the flash of big Seventies acts.  Perhaps it’s because their initial flush of success in Read more ...

The exhortations don’t seem necessary as the audience is already letting off the steam which has built up in anticipation of a full-bore show. Nonetheless, The Courettes’ Flávia Couri knows higher levels of excitement are there to be tapped, that it’s possible to get the crowd to liberate themselves from any restraint they may have left. Limits are there to be pushed.She calls out. They respond. She sings. They sing along. She gestures, beckoning for more. They howl. It’s not enough though. Then, boom. She’s off the stage, burrowing through onlookers and on the bar, holding-up her guitar to Read more ...

On 26 September 1966, The Twilights set-off from Australia to Britain. The journey, on the liner the Castel Felice, took six weeks. A day after boarding they learned their sixth single, “Needle in a Haystack,” was an Australian number one. There was nothing they could do to promote the hit, so after disembarking at Southampton they looked for work.The trip was the prize at Melbourne’s Battle of the Sounds competition. They won and, as well as the travel, the accolade included a recording session with EMI in London. As The Twilights records came out in Australia on EMI’s Columbia label, this Read more ...

Yeti Lane’s second album The Echo Show was released in March 2012. The Paris-based duo’s LP was stunning: holding together overall, as well as on a track-by-track basis. There were obvious influences: Kraftwerk, late-period Spacemen 3, motorik, My Bloody Valentine. But it didn’t sound like anyone else. Charlie Boyer and Ben Pleng had created a wonder.The Echo Show, released by the Sonic Cathedral label, still sounds great. If it was issued next month or next year, it would still sound great. Eternally fresh. Back in 2012 it seemed to arrive from nowhere. Yeti Lane’s first album had come out Read more ...

The descending refrain opening the song isn’t unusual but attention is instantly attracted as it’s played on a harpsichord. Equally instantly, an elegiac atmosphere is set. The voice, coming in just-short of the 10-second mark, is similarly yearning in tone. The song’s opening lyrics convey dislocation: “You and I travel to the beat of a different drum.”“Different Drum,” the September 1967 single by an outfit dubbed Stone Poneys Featuring Linda Ronstadt, was immediate, had a country edge and was written by Mike Nesmith – then best known as a member of The Monkees. The band had already issued Read more ...

One of last year’s major joys was the box set version of Hawkwind's Space Ritual, an 11-disc extravaganza which made the great live album, originally issued in May 1973, even more great. Now the two studio albums which preceded it – X In Search Of Space and Doremi Fasol Latido – have become similarly packaged, though less colossal, box sets.X In Search Of Space – also known as (X) In Search Of Space – was released in October 1971. Hawkwind’s second album, it came out when the band were still an underground attraction, a band lacking traction with the mainstream music scene. They were popular Read more ...

Vanilla Fudge could provoke a strong reaction. Writing about them in 1982, Tom Hibbert – then best-known for his contributions to Smash Hits – said of their February 1968 second album, The Beat Goes On, that “on one side of the bombastic concept LP, Vanilla Fudge summed up the history of music from Mozart, through Cole Porter and Elvis, to The Beatles concluding that it was all worthless.”“On the other side,” continued Hibbert. “Fudge unleash on the unwary listener their vision of the ‘now generation,’ in the form of a dull reworking of Sonny Bono’s ‘The Beat Goes on.’ This was the recurring Read more ...

“The last we had was a bit of a flop. I own up about it, it was quite bad.” Speaking to the BBC’s Brian Matthew on 4 April 1967, Yardbirds’ frontman Keith Relf is candid about the chart fate of his band’s last single, October 1966’s “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.”Hearing a major figure in British pop being so frank is made doubly surprising as “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” was an epoch-defining single, one of the earliest signals that psychedelia was looming. Despite having broken ground, Relf was speaking in terms of chart positions rather than innovation. Relatively, though, it had Read more ...

Could melancholia be an elixir of creative youth? Or is it that sad people were never really that youthful, so age suits them? Certainly it seems that there was something in the water for so many of the foundational 80s indie bands who dealt in sadness, pain and existential angst that makes longevity suit them: The Jesus & Mary Chain, Dinosaur Jr., Throwing Muses, Ride, Slowdive just for starters have all somehow ambled into the 2020s on the creative form of their lives. And now the daddies of them all, The Cure, have clearly cottoned on and joined the forlorn party, because this album – Read more ...

Tess Parks’ fourth solo album is suffused with otherness. When lyrics are direct, they are destabilised by the etiolated, freeze-dried voice delivering them. “Sometimes it feels like everyone should be dancing, maybe I should be dancing,” she sings during “Koalas.” It does not sound as if Parks has the energy to dance.After a while, acclimatisation arrives and penetrating the album’s miasma-like atmosphere becomes possible. Nods to Mazzy Star and the solo Syd Barrett are evident (especially with “Koala”). There are also hints of early Chapterhouse, Recurring-era Spacemen 3, Nico and Judee Read more ...

The Undertakers were central to the Merseybeat boom. The best of what they issued on single in 1963 and 1964 captured the raw, stomping sound adored by Liverpool’s audiences. But hits were elusive and they dropped off the musical map at the end of 1964. The Beatles never forget The Undertakers though. In 1968, former Undertaker Jackie Lomax was signed to their label Apple.Tomorrow Never Comes: The NYC Sessions 1967-1968 captures a different aspect of the end game to that represented by Lomax’s solo endeavours. What’s heard are the final recordings by the rump of The Undertakers, made by a Read more ...

This record keeps you guessing. It starts off with “Hybrid Romance”, an ambient piece that’s very pretty but has swooping glassy synths that crack and fracture and could easily be about to break into some super jagged Berlin deconstructed club music at any minute.But less than two minutes later and we’re into “Chlorine”, a song in the modern country-inflected pop style which wouldn’t sound out of place on most daytime radio channels, and you could easily imagine the Californian Ded Hyatt performing as a support act for Taylor Swift or Harry Styles.The thing is, though, “Chlorine” has lots of Read more ...