Down that rabbit hole again, here we go, bring the sweeties, hope you’re legs are ready, trace the feeling back to source, adopt a different kind of course. It kind of works like this, we just throw up the information, add a thought or two and those all important links, a bit of cross pollination left with you to do whatever you want with…
Unstoppable Sweeties Show have a new album out, the Liverpool band are regular’s on the Other Roc kShow of course, coverage on these fractured pages is well overdue (need more hours, all this typing about music eats up painting time). The new album is called Frosted Glass and, no hang on, let’s review it, that is what we’re supposed to do here isn’t it?
Unstoppable Sweeties Show – Frosted Glass – Okay, so what exactly is going on here? People eating dinner at breakfast time, or was it lunch, Christmas dinner at Easter time? Something like that? Ask Stag Knight? Who’s Stag Knight? Don’t ask us, ask five-piece avant-garde punk slash jazz-prog band Unstoppable Sweeties Show. They’re from Liverpool, did we say that already? Toffees we hope, lesser of the two as it were. They are rather unhinged, and food is the best medicine however much silence falls between us and eating Christmas cake on your birthday in March is reasonable (she never said her birthday was in March).
Prepare for something different, this latest offering from Unstoppable Sweeties Show – their latest epic, Frosted Glass, sounds nothing like Radiohead and this is what you get when you mess with them or with their unique blend of mischievous punk rock energy and progressive rock artistry (and no they really sound nothing like Radiohead, quit reading the review and just go listen to the Bandcamp thing down there, the Radiohead references will explain themselves and who reads or indeed need reviews in this day and age anyway!). Come on now, rain down on me, from a great height, everything in its right place and they are special, so flipping special. You do it to yourself, Unstoppable Sweeties Show have once again delivered a bag of music that’s both alive and provoking. Do we need a second take? No, this is fine.
She is very much a front woman, Yashashwi Sharma, she has quite a voice! Things kind of feels a little like Sack Trick’s epic Penguins on The Moon at the start there. Eat people, eat, people, eat people eat, at lunch time she has her tea, her kitchen is all spic and span, no squalor alive here (although there really is, more than healthy goings off and things in there with the low fat toast). On Christmas day she has her pancakes, on pancake day she eats hot cross buns. Gone all Gong and Gilli Smyth now. At breakfast time she has an empty plate, food is the best, is the moon made of cheese? Ask Stag knight, who is Stage Knight? This is rather good, this is excellent, this is a little deranged, you decide it all for me. Gone a bit Zappa around the edges now, never cynical though, Stage Knight, fighting for delight, oh what a delight. And here comes that seven year itch…
Properly forward looking progressive, experimental, difficult without ever being difficult and when you do listen a little more closely then lyrically, Frosted Glass is a deeply personal and introspective set of pieces. The songs explore themes of identity, mental health, and “the search for meaning in a chaotic world”. Singer Yashashwi Sharma delivers her words with glorious personality, raw emotion, and just as important as those things, with a refreshing honesty – honesty is what you get. Bold ambition, challenge, a set of colourful riddles and a great band who really do add so much adventurous colour, proper stuff, proper.. (sw)
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Legs on Wheels – Legroom (Dismembers Club Records) – Legs On Wheels are from Manchester, they’ve just released a new album, Legroom, “Wild and restless Chameleon Rock” is what they claim to make, not sure about the wild and relentless bit, they could do with being a touch more on the wild side if the truth be told, Not that this isn’t a more than interesting album. There’s certainly some defiant musical adventure here, a positively healthy need to do it their own way, rewarding lumps of classic English old school prog rock, hints of 70’s Genesis in there with their warm nods towards those Canterbury flavours of bands like Caravan or Hatfield And The North. Legs on Wheels are gentle, they’re melodic, no, they’re not that wild, and here on what is a good album, they’re rather let down by a flat production, you do sense that there really is something “wild and restless” trying to break out, there’s certainly plenty of adventure.
The Pearl and Dean opening to Marco Polo Goes To The Movies brings more than a smile at this end, but really they’re “nice” and mellow when what you really want from them is just a bit more bite, a couple of sharp edges, a barb now and again just a little something in there alongside their undoubted ability to twist a tune. Proper prog is of course, as we’ve said many time around here, as cool as flip, and Legs of Wheels are so so close to really really nailing it, this is so close to being something to really shout about, almost.
Arnold The Slime King is seventeen and a half minutes of closing track intent that kind of blends that aforementioned Canterbury style prog with Deep Purple flavoured blues before taking off to more dramatic pastures, and yes, why keep it to three minutes when it could be a quarter of an hour (and all with the motion passed without a cursory glance). Legroom is certainly an album that stands up to continuos playing and those production flaws do become less of an obstacle with each repeated play, it is, without a doubt, a very good album, at times a delightful album, there are some beautiful details, twists here and there that really will take you along it you let them. The Canterbury Scene was always a little too polite for me, I suspect those who do like that slightly more gentle way will love this rather warm album (they do have bits where big dogs knock on doors, it isn’t always gentle, never a waste of breath). A more than interesting relatively new band swimming up stream here then, certainly one for you progheads to pay serious attention to, is there a hint or two of Cardiacs in there? This is getting better with every play and you know we’d never waste our breath on thing not worth out time or yours, love the Pearl and Dean bit… (sw)
Links: Website / Facebook / Bandcamp
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Emmett Elvin has an album called Being of Sound Mind and over and over and over again we’ve been meaning ot mention it. Yeah, I know, damn those Organ people and just cut to the chase, who needs to read about music when you can just listen to it and form your very own opinion. Being of Sound Mind is a very fine album indeed, it came out in late 2022, and we know there are strange people out there who ignore everything else we ever cover and just fish out these things that are down the prog rock rtabbit hole. There is more about this fine album on another page of this rather fractured and often rushed Organ thing and there aren’t enough hours in the day, but hey, let’s park it here as well as a bit of a belt and braces thing just so you don’t miss it… Bandcamp
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And further down we go….
Malcolm Galloway is a contemporary classical/minimalist composer and also the frontman/ multi-instrumentalist with self proclaimed prog rock band Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate, heresomething new from him as well as something new from is band…
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Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate are a London band asking why we’re choosing to burn the world – “We are at a turning point. If action is taken to substantially reduce the damage we are doing to our environment, then millions of lives are likely to be saved. If we don’t, as usual, the most vulnerable will be the least protected. Past actions mean that anthropogenic climate change is now inevitable, but the extent and the speed of the change depend on what we do now
The song is sung from the point of view of someone in the future regretting the changes that we didn’t make.
All proceeds from sales of this single via Bandcamp until at least the end of 2024 will be donated to our Prog The Forest fundraising (which donates to the World Land Trust, to support their work buying threatened habitat to put into protective trusts in collaboration with local communities)”.
Musically the track is a little too polite and PinkFloyd flavoured for tastes around here, it might be your cup of yea though and it is good to see and hear them not only making music but trying t odo a little something..
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And while we’re down this rabbit hole, how about a bit of Blade Aid? Those who know Mr Bell from his book about hitchhiking around the land following Sheffield United, a book that talks as much about prog rock, Poisoned Electric Head and Cardiacs as it does football, will know what we mean by Blade Aid. Indeed he has another book that’s all about hitching around following Cardiacs, Adrian also has a regular weekly Prog Rock flavoured radio show that goes out every week
“The Progressive Alternative is broadcast on Brooklands Radio every Tuesday at 22:00. Presented by Adrian Bell – aka Belch – the silly so ‘n’ so has got himself in a tangle, so a glorious gaggle of musician friends have given their blessing to appear on this compilation to help him out a bit” – see, some Blade Aid in the form of a seventeen track downloadable compilation feature prog flavoured alternative rock tracks from all kinds of interesting people, find it all on Bandcamp, damn fine compiation actually, loads of good things to explore and unlike a lot of compilations, it really works well as one great big whole, well worth your time and not really about picking out hightlights, go explore….
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And if you missed the latest weekly Other Rock Show on London’s Resonance 104.4FM, it went soemthing like this. And may I say this one was a particularly good one, I ca nsay that, Marina puts the show together, not me…
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And also while we’re here, can’t have too much Supper, how good is this version, I can smell the Marquee carpet from here. See once you go down the rabbit hole, there’s always more…
THE ORGAN 