Loud and heavy rocking episode today with new music from J Mascis’ Heavy Blanket and San Francisco band Older Sun. Lydia Lunch is here with a cover of Black Sabbath’s War Pigs. We introduce two bands from Melbourne AU: Cable Ties and Civic. Also, new for us are Märvel from Sweden and Blue Heron from Albuquerque, NM. Towards the end of the show, we pay a tribute to Van Conner, bass player of Screaming Trees who passed away on January 17th this year. He was only 55.
Sisteria – Om-Yes
Civic – Born in the Heat
MÄRVEL – All For The Glory
Stack Waddy – Rosalyn
Heavy Blanket – Crushed
Older Sun – Misty Mountains
The Deviants – Broken Biscuits
Blue Heron – Push the Sky
Lydia Lunch – War Pigs
The Mark Of Cain – Visions Of Love
Predatür – Take A Walk
Cable Ties – Perfect Client
Screaming Trees – Julie Paradise
Solomon Grundy – My Mind
Last year a surprisingly uncharacteristic album came from Lydia Lunch. She and her collaborator, guitarist Cypress Grove recorded a mighty fine, moody, rock’n’roll album called appropriately A Fistful of Desert Blues. Rarely does a record title fit the sound so well. It’s a western desert blues record that can stand next to any Gun Club record and live up to it.
Every musical outlet out there has a year-end list. Little Lighthouse is not an exception, although the order should be understood conditionally. It does not rely on objective measurements, it simply compiles feeling towards albums that preoccupied my attention through 2014. Number one is Sweet Apple. Yours truly marginally participated in making of that record, and perhaps there’s a strong bias towards it for me. You would be right about that. But this particular record is a fun collection of songs without much pretension. What more can you ask from an LP? OBN IIIs and Liquor Store are great new bands which made ambitiously sounding records that rock. They even bring out a long forgotten idiom of hard rock, back into the modern rock’n’roll dictionary and it made me realize how much that sound is missed in the music world today. Together with some important reissues, these two albums mark the revival of that lost musical genre. Those two records are so rich with sounds and ideas that live performances of these two bands must be stripped down to a skeleton. Outragous Cherry has an astonishing return, with one of their best records ever. First Base and Strungs go back to the basic three chords and short songs – a formula that oh so often works great. Lydia Lunch calls out the ghost of Jeffrey Lee Pierce like no other artist before. Doug Gillard attempted to make a good easy listening record and ended up with a timeless masterpiece which will be remembered well in his opus. Billy Childs makes a loving tribute to Laura Nyro which borders madness and saccharine. Who’d have thought those two “lands” share a border? Kelley Mickwee and Haden Triplets show interesting ways to keep bluegrass alive and it trips my mind how most folks out there think negatively of this wonderful Haden Triplets record. Bonnie Prince Billy takes some old songs and brings in a new life to them with an incredibly focused interpretation… and so on. All the best in 2015, actually 2014 wasn’t that bad musically as it may appear on the surface.
We start of rocking hard. Mojo Magazine came up with the third instalment of their Heavy Nuggets and it sounds heavier than ever. Then we have a new name from Sweden – a hard rocking band Blues Pills fronted by Elin Larsson. Twin Peaks hail from Chicago and have a new album Wild Onion. Then we have a nice pair from Hozac – two singles and two new bands, 999999999 from the US and Southern Comfort from Australia, lead by Harriet Hudson and Angie Bermuda (also in Straight Arrows). One of the strongest albums this year so far is a duet by Lydia Lunch and Cypress Grove, entitle simply A Fistful of Desert Blues. They recorded a bunch of punky blues songs and it’s really strong. Then we have Richard Thompson with a new acoustic solo record in which he revisits his classics. But probably the coolest little bit today comes out in our Live in CLE segment. Today we have a brand new band from Cleveland called Monday Sound and it’s put together by Tom Fallon (New Salem Witch Hunters) and Brent Ferguson (Living Stereo). They covered no less than two Jackie DeShannon songs on their first gig ever and my recorder was handy…