Yes indeed! I suppose that yet again you’re going to require some kind of editorial introduction to this page? You always do, why is that? Next you’ll be demanding we proof read the damn thing. You’ve got four pieces on another four albums just down the page there and I’ve got to prepare to go into space this Saturday so…

Jon Anderson and The Band Geeks – True (Frontiers) – Jon Anderson and Nick Cave have both have new albums out in the last couple of weeks, they are pretty much saying the same things about life, love and the joy of it all, they’ve both made forward looking uplifting albums, some would argue spiritual albums, somehow Anderson comes out sounding like the bit of a hippy – actually there’s no bit of about it, he comes out as that almost naively happy hippy he’s always been while Cave sounds so cathartic about it all, so evacuant, so lenitive, so I-took-on-the-pleasures-of-the-damned-and-came-through-it-all, Nick Cave sounds just so damn cool about it. Oh look, you can’t kick Jon Anderson, it really is like kicking several bags of puppies all at once, you can’t scoff at his mountains touching the sky and the oh to be aliveness of it all, you can’t hit out at all his we’ve-got-to-make-it-right happy reaching out for everyone bits. Wipe off that cynical smile and just go with this one, you’ll feel better for it, just do some going for the one. Yes. Nick Cave can put on his suit and just do it, the cynic is me finds Jon Anderson a little harder to go with, but, as Mr. Bukowski said, the free soul is a rare thing, you know it when you see it, basically, you feel good, very good, when you are near that free soul. Jon Anderson, like Nick Cave these days, has a way to make you feel very good about things (and there’s a whole thesis to be written about how one of them can get away with it while one probably can’t, we haven’t got time to write it though, we haven’t even got time to review their new records)  

Hang on, did Mr Anderson just fire a shot at his old band there? Six minutes into the sixteen that is Once Upon A Dream, did he just fire a shot into the heart of the sunrise? How much more Yes could the sixteen and a half minutes of Once Upon A Dream be? And the answer is non, none more Yes. Oui! That bit there surely is straight out of Awaken, actually this is brilliantly over the top, the most Yes anything has been in years. No idea who the Band Geeks are? The press release is lacking in information, sound like he really has got together a load of yes men, there could be an argument that he just maybe needs to dial it down just a tiny little bit maybe? Ah hell no! Pile it all in there, Yes upon Yes with a bit of extra Yes, yes to it all, would you like some extra Yes sauce on top of that? Yes please, pile it all on!   Not sure how Jon Anderson actually ended up leaving Yes yet again back in 2008 to be replaced by the very Anderson sounding new guy from a Yes Tribute band, I long since stopped tuning into the Yes soap opera, what I can tell you is Jon Anderson and his band of geeks, whoever they are, have made the best Yes album in many many years and that is pretty much what we want isn’t it? This is one for Yes fans, the rest of you probably won’t get it, excellent stuff. Awful artwork though. (SW)  

Places to find the album / Jon Anderson website

Praise Team – Praise Team (Diminishing Returns Records) – Oh the demand of it all, let me chase you up again, where’s the review? How many hours are there in the day? How many albums are released every single day? Oh the diminishing returns. Usually found heading up noise rock acts such as Damn Teeth, Thin Privilege or Salò (so it says here as if they were all household names), “Praise Team’s self-titled debut instead sees McArthur channelling the folk-rock of Pentangle and Current 93, the baroque pastoral of Kate Bush and late-period Talk Talk, and the eclectic looseness of Joni Mitchell’s 1970s output. Constructed in-studio with no prior written material and with McArthur on all instruments, the resultant album emerges as a series of hazy and melancholic – yet also, on occasion, explosive – musical vignettes”.  Well I’m not really hearing the baroque pastoral of Kate Bush or for that matter the beautiful craft of Pentangle, that sounds like a a bit of wishful thinking and Talk Talk always sounded way too clinical to hold my filth-demanding ears, Praise Team does sound interesting though, more than worth a mention on these fractured pages, there’s a need to do things a little differently and yes I can see where the Current 93 angle comes from, musically anyway, none of those slightly unsavoury hints of something wicked this way comes that are hinted at with Current 93’s words. Praise Team is, without being that revolutionary, without having anything that really has us jumping around excitedly needing to write about it, it is nice enough. These songs, there musical constructions, they do hold the interest,they do desire a different way, they are kind of rather in a rather English electronic folk meets some kind of West Coast hopefulness (yes I know he’s from Scotland, he does sound kind of English though)     

“Previous projects have found McArthur wrestling with mental illness, disease and psychosexual anxiety; here, the emphasis is on memory, and on his coming of age growing up on Scotland’s west coast. The songs on Praise Team concern themselves with traumatic road safety adverts (Red Balloon), fading memories of dead relatives (Strict), lingering fears of nuclear annihilation (The Hush) and simulated necrophilia (Cold Comfort). The front cover art deserves a mention, something embroidered by Manchester-based artist Victoria Merness.  Praise Team will be released on 13/9/24 through Edinburgh micro-label Diminishing Returns Records, both digitally and as a limited-edition CD

Bandcamp

Tindersticks – Soft Tissue (City Slang) – Where have I put that damn paintbrush? Loaded it with paint and now I can’t find the damn, it really is all about preparation for the Art Car Boot Fair this week and Tindersticks and their new album have been helping the paint flow for most of the day, they’re sounding rather easy on the ear in the last of the Summer light.  Last time I saw the band they were playing the Powerhaus way way back in the last century, back in the Islington Pied Bull Days (the once great venue/pub is a building Society now, actually I haven’t passed it for a bit, they’ve probably closed the branch by now, I expect the place has been eaten up by a Pizza Hut, most banks and such, the one’s that aren’t boarded up, are Pizza places now). I tell you this by way of a bit of background, you see, I’ve dipped my toes into the world of Tindersticks now and again, enjoyed an encounter here and there, I’ve always found then rather agreeable, they’ve never really dragged me right in though, I’m not familiar enough with them to give you anything that insightful.

That’s wonderfully subtle riff that’s moving second track Don’t Walk, Run along in a silky soulful manner bodes rather well, a gentle soul shuffle, some gorgeously lush understatement, a second track that follows the wonderful album opener New World and that opening horn that sounds like it wants to herald some kind of Northern Soul meets classic Stax style goodness. It is a rather warm album, an atmospheric album, very very easy, mellow, refined, quiet, subtle, now and again (really) beautifully detailed. Soft Tissue sounds graceful, it sounds slightly different, it doesn’t feel quite like previous times and yet it does, and yet it is does feel very very Tindersticks. Singer (and producer) Stuart Staples is of course the fingerprint, that fluid way he puts things, that mix of almost lounge cool, soul and experimentation that they pull together and blend so well. And yet it isn’t quite holding me, they never quite do, there are some beautiful moments, those soulful backing vocals on Turning My Back, the detail in the stroke of the Secret Of Breathing, but you want him to do more with his voice, you want more light and shade, you want them to stop repeating so much, I just need a touch more something and once again, as beautifully souldful as some of it is, I’m kind of dipping my toe in yet again and kind of enjoying it (yet again) and probably not too much more… (sw)   

Tindersticks.co.uk / Album details / Bandcamp

Luce Mawdsley – Northwest & Nebulous – We have here a rather lush instrumental album, a radiant album, expansively heartwarming composed pieces that throw up all kinds of peaceful possibilities, ideas, tastes of the Northern English coastline. Built on sometimes sparse breathy English folk, a touch of Americana hints of expansive soundtracks, sometimes romantic, exploratory, freshly engaging both composer and listener – “The way I compose feels a lot like setting off on a journey: the music is a landscape that presents itself to me. I might have a loose framework of intentions, but it’s always about being curious,” explains Luce.

Luce Mawdsley is right, it does feel like journeys, it feels like the coast, the open spaces when most people have gone home (or is that just because I’m listening to at the start of September and remembering how wonderful it was to live on the coast when everyone had gone home again). The album was recorded and mixed by Luce Mawdsley in the Grade II listed Scandinavian Church in Liverpool, with a core chamber trio of Luce on guitar, organ and percussion, Nicholas Branton on clarinets, and Rachel Nicholas on viola. “They’re all vignettes from the same pantheon, with recurring themes around water, rippling melodies and gauzy distortions”.

“If the Northwest in the album’s title is located in Formby, Nebulousness can be found in Mawdsley’s intentions for the record. As a non-binary neurodivergent composer embracing fluidity and unfixed states, the album has become a document for their own changing identity while also inviting listeners to project their own worlds upon these tracks. “I wanted each to present an unfixed state, for it to be an outward nourishing meditation; to explore the animacy of landscapes and my understanding of gender through the lens of non-human worlds,” they explain. “For me the music is both romantic and playful. This is a compassionate and vital vessel for reimagining the world.”

This is an album that takes you to your own ideal places. your own spaces, the landscapes inside, it is experimental but then is is always traditional. “It’s a platform for other people to have their own cinematic experiences” Luce explains. “For a period I was trying to make records where I was writing words, but it was an unhealthy cycle of reinforcing myself being deeply unhappy… so when I started to genuinely feel the possibility of happiness, I wanted to share that sense of worn-out joy; of companionship; and of curiosity.” And yes, it is a simple joy, it sounds and feels like a simple joy, the cleverness is in that the complexity, the willingness not too always take the obvious path does feel simple. These are gentle beautiful pieces, some of it delightful, some of it uplifting, now and again, a moment or two in the title track for instance, it sounds like fun. If these are journeys then they’re in old cars or maybe on even older pushbikes (or maybe I’m getting too romantic about it now). This is a delightful album. (sw)

Bandcamp / website / more links

Luce Mawdsley has just announced details of an autumn tour following the release of the latest album, Northwest & Nebulous, the album out now on vinyl and digitally via the Liverpool based artist’s own imprint, Pure O Records. The tour will coincide with a cassette edition of the album, available from 25th October 2024 (with early copies available on tour).

LUCE MAWDSLEY AUTUMN TOUR

14 Sep – Birkenhead, Future Yard

21 Sep – Manchester, Fat Out Fest

2 Oct – Newcastle, Summerhill Bowling Club

4 Oct – Edinburgh, Leith Cricket Club

5 Oct – East Linton, Village Hall

6 Oct – Todmorden, Nan Moors