Music Review: Frog Eyes, Carey’s Cold Spring

By Hanna

After a hiatus of three years, during which the album was already mostly finished, Frog Eyes’ Carey’s Cold Spring was self-released by Carey Mercer through Bandcamp last October, and is now being released by Paperbag Records on vinyl and CD.

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Music Review: Little Barrie, Shadow

By Hanna

Shadow is the fourth Little Barrie album and their first release after a pause in activity for the band; their last album, King of the Waves, was released in 2011. In the meantime, several members of the band have been working for other bands, notably Primal Scream, while Virgil Howe has joined as drummer. These changes are audible in this new album, as Shadow is different from their previous albums.

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Music Review: Fox, Images ’74 – ’84

By Hanna

Fox is one of the few bands that have truly crossed over from junkshop glam into mainstream glam rock over the past decade or so. They always had people—notably Steve Wright—lobbying for them, but it wasn’t until Cherry Red started re-issuing the albums and YouTube allowed them to be rediscovered that they took their proper place in the genre. That initial wave of interest has only become stronger, and with this compilation most of their known music is now available. The three albums (Fox, Tails of Illusion, and Blue Hotel) were previously re-issued by Cherry Red, and there have been a number of compilations by various companies, but none as comprehensive as this one.

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Music Review: Clan Of Xymox, Matters Of Mind, Body And Soul

By Hanna

Matters Of Mind, Body And Soul is the first Clan of Xymox studio album in several years, since 2012’s cover album Kindred Spirits. Because of this, and their sudden and short recent return to L.A., there has been some tradgoth excitement about this release. The result is safe but not boring: on the one hand, this album sounds like their music has always sounded; on the other, it’s new and varied.

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Music Review: Nikki Sudden (Waiting On Egypt, Bible Belt) and Jacobites (Jacobites, Robespierre’s Velvet Basement) – Vinyl Reissues

By Hanna

The re-issue of these four albums is part of a seven-album Nikki Sudden oeuvre re-issue from Numero Group. This, the first part, consists of the first two Nikki Sudden solo albums (Waiting on Egypt, Bible Belt), and the first two Jacobites albums, (Jacobites, Robespierre’s Velvet Basement). Together, they give an overview of Nikki Sudden’s work directly after Swell Maps.
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Music Review: Lynsey de Paul, Sugar And Beyond/Into My Music Anthologies

By Hanna

The entire ‘70s catalogue of pioneering female singer/songwriter Lynsey de Paul has finally been collected in two new anthologies: Sugar and Beyond 1972 – 1974 and Into My Music 1975 – 1979. Using exclusive material and information from Lynsey de Paul herself, this is a unique collection, signifying a new chance to discover her work and to grant it the recognition it deserves.

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Music Review: Matmos, The Marriage of True Minds

By Hanna

One of the best things about Matmos is their enduring sense of the wacky. It’s rare to find truly challenging and avant garde music, but rarer still to find some with a sense of humor. One of the ways that expresses itself is in their penchant for bizarre—almost gimmicky—methods of making music and collecting sounds.

This time this is focused less on the use of weird noises, but on the entire way of making the album. The buzzword for The Marriage of True Minds is telepathy, continuing from The Ganzfeld EP from last year (review). Both works were made using ganzfeld experiments; a pseudoscientific method of tapping into the psychic senses by limiting regular sensory perception and creating a ganzfeld effect; an effect similar to sensory deprivation. It’s characterized by the halved ping pong balls placed over the eyes, like the beginnings of a Crow from MST3K cosplay. By carrying out ganzfeld experiments on their friends over the years and recording the results, the basic structure of this album was formed.

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Little Richard, Here’s Little Richard

By Hanna

For the 55th anniversary of the original release of Here’s Little Richard, Concord Music Group has reissued a remaster of his debut on Specialty Records. This reissue also features a bunch of extras to put the album into context and provide some information on its meaning and background (and make total nerds like me wig out, of course). I wish I could just shout my review, but here it is in written form.
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