More more more. There are so many, shall we? More albums, shall we dance around it all again, all those tall buildings with post-modernist baroque bits of clocktower all showing the same stopped time, shall we dance around the architecture? Shall we try and keep up with all the demands and why haven’t you reviewed this yet? Did we say this last time? And the time before? Where were we? Catching up. Hey, too many albums not enough time, and (some of) these things do demand proper time and anyway, and, and then, and you do know we only have time for the good ones don’t you? You do know no one reads the editorial at the top, well why would they? Here’s some more albums, a couple of them already recently released, some about to be, some in awful album covers, people don’t seem to think that much about the cover art these days….

Cult Of Dom Keller – Unholy Drum (Fuzz Club) – Let’s be lazy and let The Cult tell you how it is or at least let them tell you about how they see it or indeed how they choose to quote it on their Bandcamp page;

“Unholy Drum is the long-awaited sixth album from Nottingham band Cult Of Dom Keller – not a ‘return’, for they were never really gone, but the product of five years spent evolving. In collaboration with Angus Andrew of Liars on production duties – Songs were cut apart, inverted, whispered to. Left alone long enough to twitch back to life. All while the fever dream of global instability seeped into the DNA of the record. The result finds a more expansive and left-field art-rock sound shining through the cracks in the Cult’s dark psychedelic noise-rock”

– Of course they can’t be calling themselves The Cult, only one band can do that and all others should fear the reaper. I guess that’s some quote from someone they sent the album to before it came out in March. We’re just afterthoughts, they’re only just sending it to us: “Hi, Hope you don’t mind us reaching out and hope you are well. We have a new album out and would love it if you gave it a few listens and considered it for review. You have reviewed previous albums and thank you for your previous support” – it is amusing the way bands only ever say thanks for previous coverage when they want some more, when they want to come flying in here in their shark-like ME262s to do some more harvesting of eyes or whatever it is they want and right now I’m not sure where I sit here as he sings about how he can’t think straight?

The combination of the Nottingham band and the Liar known as Angus Andrew should be a good one, we’ve always had time for both parties, yer man was right when he said we’ve supported previous Cult Of Dom Keller albums, we’ve done it in a rather positive manner and well, yes, we really should support this one was as well (and they can be rather good live, or at least they were last time I saw them, it was some time ago now), although this new album does feel a little different to our previous encounters with them;

I guess it feels good, this new album, I guess I need to guess for I have been listening to this new album rather a lot without really being able to put a finger on it. I do keep hitting the play it again button while promising myself I’ll write something this time around and well, in a minute, a painting needs attention first, or a pigeon, or a cup of tea is needed and oh, I’ll do it later, need to do the washing up or fight the powers or something, I’ll write about the new album from The Cult later…  

They talk of Broadcast, Silver Apples, Liars, Can, This Heat, Sonic Youth, Spacemen3, The Cure – you could add a quite a few names to that rather all over the place list of vague reference points that they’ve come up with without really nailing what they’re doing here, right now you could reasonably mention Oasis (and I do try not to mention Oasis as a rule, it is more Oasis that Can though, certainly far more Oasis than the magnificence of This Heat this time around). Actually, that list of theirs is quite a way from the reality of where The Cult Of Dom Keller are at now, there are details though, there are bits within the songs, there are moments within the pieces where the light shines on something and hints at Silver Apples or a Spacemen Three moment, just bits of riffs that really catch an ear, little detours that demand attention, moments that do catch your ear and draw you in, they you keep on falling in to…. 

Truth is, this time around the Cult have brewed up a rather clean cut amalgamation of slightly left-field alternatively polite art rock cups of tea. They say they’ve got a message from the dark side, it isn’t really sounding like the dark side to these ears, unlike last time when they really were dark, it kind of feels rather like it might be over on the light side this time around: lite, alcohol free larger when you really want it to take your head off. I mean, I do like it, I do want to be positive, I do rather like this band, I do rather like this latest album of theirs, it just lacks something. What is it missing? I don’t know? A finger print maybe? An identity, a need to really go somewhere, does it lack a direction, a destiny, a conclusion, a reason? Is it trying too hard to cross over? After a bit of mainstrrean attention? Right now things are sounding way too polite, way too nice, easy going, nice and polite and really, I want it to bite… I know, I’ll go do a bit more painting, take the pigeons for a walk, then I’ll come back and try again…

And I did come back and I did try again, then I put on their 2013 self titled far darker, far more convincing album on and that really is it, they’ve used the same teabags as before, it feels watered down this time though, it not as it was back there, this is a slightly weaker, dare I say slightly more commercial user-friendly version of what they once were? That 2013 self titled album wad a deliciously low slung mean thing, a dark thing that came with a bit of menace. This new album? Well, it feels like the nice version, the version that people who think bands like The Killers or the aforementioned Oasis are the on the cutting edge will love and really, I kind of want the darker meaner version, worth checking out though…

Bandcamp

Maebe – Brain Paint (Ripcord Records) – Sometimes painting does let you park your brain, not often, most of the time painting is a fight, sometimes though you just really need to find that state of mind where you’re able to not think about the paint and just let it move. Maebe that’s what they mean? Maybe? If you can allow yourself to ignore that dreadful album cover artwork (and it is hard to ignore, it is rather bad, how did they find such an unnatural looking green), if you can overlook the art then this is rather an enjoyable album. It is that instrumental post rock boys club of a thing again (who knows if they are all boys?) that slightly nerdy, slightly metallic thing that’s almost threatening to be be proggy but not quite getting there. That post whatever math-rock thing, something that sounds like they enjoyed making more than most post whatever instrumental math rock bands do (most of them sound like they’re trying to shit a trident that’s pointing the wrong way, mathy bands on the whole don’t sound like they’re enjoying it, this bands do).

You maybe can’t accuse Maebe of taking any great musical risks, it is all pretty safe, plenty of variety in terms of the tunes though, that rare thing, a math rock band with more than one idea! Maebe are all boys, I just looked them up, they’re from Bristol, they almost shred at times, they probably do create a tasty wall of guitar noise live and today, on the hottest day of the year so far, on their album release day, on this almost Summer’s day in late May they’re sounding rather refreshingly enjoyable in a post whatever instrumental park your brain and let them paint it (instrumental math rock) kind of way. I rather like Maebe, I’ll maybe wait for the repackaged re-issue in five years before I buy a copy though, not sure I can let that album cover in here… Bandcamp / Facebook / Linktree

Social Distortion – Born To Kill (Epitaph) – “Orange County’s finest are back with a vengeance: Social Distortion’s long-awaited eighth album, Born To Kill, will be released in May 2026….” Yep, this one is already out aswell, it came out a couple of weeks ago, it actually landed here a couple of months ago but Social Distortion never meant that much to me once they’d got past their early days and they didn’t really need our coverage did they? I threw it on though, it sounded pretty good back there at the start of Spring, and here we are catching up with it again and doing some Spring cleaning a couple of weeks after the release date; summer is in the air and the football season almost over (that’s proper football, not that thing with odd shaped balls you American readers call football – yes, we are aware we have five times more readers in the USA than we do over here these days, not that we’re loosing our readers over here, the numbers are just going up and up over there).

So anyway, Social Distortion brought out their (long-awaited) eight album, we probably didn’t pay the band that much attention after their first two or three, it has been fifteen years since the last one and there’s no denying their influence on US music of a vaguely alternative punk rawk nature and all that. Truth is I probably haven’t given Mike Ness and company a thought since the Sonic Boom Boys days and Geoff Starr going on and on (and on) about them (do miss Geoff, he was one the best). 

So the album landed back at the start of Spring, I wasn’t really expecting much, told the driver to keep the engine running while I had a quick listen, but hey, the driver’s still sitting outside as far as I know, I blasted it quite a few times on the day it landed then set it aside to write about later and then never did (like I said, they don’t need us and there’s so many albums landing here on a daily basis from people who maybe do?).        

What do we have here then? The first Social Distortion album since Mike Ness’ recovery from a bout with cancer; it brims with what we are told is “aggressive optimism” – see, I have read the press release now. Not sure I would call it aggressive though, defiant maybe? Basically just a really good no messing, joyful, positive f**k you release of it all. Just a whole lot of wholesome you’re-either-with-us-or-you’re-not rock ‘n roll attitude. He’s sounding older, probably wiser, he sounds like he and his current band are still holding on to those three chords and a good proportion of the truth in the right kind of way, that and a whole load of American hope in the face of it all.    

Co-produced by Ness and Dave Sardy, and featuring guest appearances from Benmont Tench of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Lucinda Williams and wrapped in collaborative cover art by Ness and Shepard Fairey (at least this Fairey collaboration is a little better than those awful Newport Street car crashes with Hirst and that Invader guy last year). What we have here is a healthy mix of low slung punk rock, Americana, a touch of honky tonk bar room country music and a whole load more white light, white heat, white trash and probably something that’s kind of needed right now.

Yes, there’s a cover song or two that we could maybe have done without (yer another version of Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game, really?), mostly though, this is top quality no messing proper unadulterated rock ’n’ roll. Still all that defiance, this time laced with a bit more world-weariness, the (slightly) mellowed sound of middle age defiance maybe? Hey, look, Mike Ness and Social Distortion don’t need our coverage, I imagine this album is enjoying more than enough mainstream music press attention (I haven’t read the music press for years, if Kerrang is still a thing they’ve probably been on the cover recently). Besides the mid-album covers-lapse, this is a damn good positively defiant middle aged punk rawk and roll album, that’s pretty much all I wanted to say really… (sw)    Links

Fuudge – Les horribles (Folivora) – What’s going on here? We’re all over the bleedin’ place, it really is one of those albums that you need to catch at the right time, or maybe an album that needs to catch you at the right time? Yesterday it sounded like a complete dogs dinner of a directionless mess, I almost didn;t bother giving it another go today. Today? Well today it looks (and sounds) like a rather inviting dish of rather tasty earfood.

Who knows where they’re coming from? Well we know they’re coming from Montreal, Québec, but we have no idea where Fuudge are going or indeed where they want to go? Do they need to be going anywhere? Les horribles indeed. Some of it sounds a bit like the 90s and Mr Bungle ruffling Dog Fashion Disco’s hair, some of it sounds a little grungy, right now they’re sounding like one of those millions of (mostly rather good) backroom bar bands who got excited by Nirvana and singing like Kurt, and right now they’re sounding like a new wave punk band who’ve been hanging around with people who wear Napalm Death t-shirts (as one of them is in their band shot on Bandcamp) and now they’ve gone all acoustic, no hang on, they’ve jumped on the Nirvana peddles again, is it time to end the sentence now?

All sung in French so we’re only catching bits of what they’re singing about, but don’t worry and no, don’t burn your jacket, the world will love you. No matter your name, Mais là, t’inquiète, they’re raging against some machine or other now and today, where it didn’t yesterday, today it all makes perfect sense as we take to running on the spot and asking us if Tu veux-tu du cul, Tu veux-tu le mal, Vivre sans but, Ou être normal? and well, Do you want sex? Do you want evil? To live without purpose? Or to be normal? Nothing normal here, this bit sounds like Zag and The Coloured Beans and Les voix d’ punk opéra with things going off and Smiling at the camera, Putting on a show. Hey, how’s it going? I wonder if we’ll like it tomorrow? Sounds très bien today. Go listen for yourself, if you don’t like it today, give it another go tomorrow.

Bandcamp

David Torn – now i imagine a place not the same (Kou) – That’s his lower case with the album title, son’t blame us, it does get annoying, it does tend to look like our mistakes. The new album by “pioneering electric guitarist composer and producer David Torn, now i imagine a place not the same. The album is his first solo release for a decade and will be released on May 29th via Charmaine Lee and Randall Dunn’s Kou Records” and in this heatwave this quiet minimalism is just right.

Sparse, moving at pace that suggests it doesn’t have to be anywhere; minimal electric guitar, all instrumental, light, very much a less is more thing and the space between the sounds as import as the space occupied by the brushes of sound, “an emphasis on texture, space, and long-form listening” so we’re told.

He recently played a show in NY with Sunn O))) (Stephen O’Malley also contributed a concrete poem to the album’s sleeve), that they should work together makes perfect sense although in many way David Torn couldn’t get further away from Sunn o))) while still playing guitar if he tried. Weightless, alternative tunings (although don’t ask me what that means, you can’t tune a paint brush)

“A pioneering figure in electric guitar processing, Torn has exerted a quiet but far-reaching influence on both film scoring and contemporary electro-acoustic music. In addition to his own scores, he has made formative creative contributions to works by Carter Burwell, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Cliff Martinez, Howard Shore, and Mark Isham. Across these collaborations, his guitar language helped shape a cinematic vocabulary that feels atmospheric, psychological, and texturally alive. Beyond film, Torn’s presence spans an unusually broad range of artists, including David Bowie, Madonna, John Legend, Tori Amos, k.d. lang, Don Cherry, Bill Bruford, Tony Levin, and David Sylvian. His recordings for ECM Records further defined an immersive, spatial approach to processed guitar that continues to resonate across generations” –   

Now i imagine a place not the same is mostly just a quietly experimental, expressive, mellow, delicately touched, powerful, less is more pleasure; a little deeper than most of the things of this nature that walk in here (and we do get an awful lot walking in here), don’t think much of the album artwork once again – 

“My approach to these peri-composerly improvisations was pretty basic: everything in my view, grasp, and reach became an instrument for tone and feeling. Strings, pickups, electronics, the amplifiers, even a stone or two — anything could enter the music. Sometimes a sound would appear suddenly; sometimes an accident or interruption would open the door. The important thing was trusting that shape and feeling would emerge, and following it until the music revealed itself whole.”

Enjoyable, rewarding… 

links / www.kourecords.com / Instabloodygram

And there you have it, another page of albums reviews, we’ll be along with more in a moment I expect, the endless parade…

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