Matthew Smith is a long time fixture on Detrot rock’n’roll scene. For years, his music is very well informed with all those genres that make rock music so exciting for all of us. His band with a revolving membership, Outrageous Cherry has been proving that for the past 20 years with some 15 odd albums. This year’s album Digital Age is in many ways a special one.
First, it comes after a four year break in discography – the longest one so far on Smith’s list. But sometimes, making a longer break like that can result in a very positive result. A bunch of songs piled up and Digital Age can be heard as the most consistent Outrageous Cherry album in my memory.
Smith’s songwriting is super clever and catchy. Lots of songs deal with the modern times and even some politics. Very engaging stuff, but not overwhelming. The music contains a lot of cool guitars and vocals are drenched in powerful reverbs and phasing. The bass player Colleen Burke also did a great job on it.
Talking about Colleen, she is also in Danny And The Darleans – another really cool Detroit band that had a record recently. Just by looking at the cover, I think it’s titled Stink, but it appears title-less on some other listings out there.
Danny of course is Danny Kroha who was with The Gories and Demolition Doll Rods. He’s taking the main stage on this new trio – the spotlight is on him this time. Stink contains some strong garage rock material and it really stands out in the ambitious tune Les Fleurs Du Mal.
Stink by Danny And The Darleans and Digital Age by Outrageous Cherry are two strongest records from Detroit in 2014, which will obviously remain as one of the strongest rock’n’roll towns. Both bands contain Colleen Burke on bass and both records are recorded in mono. Really great stuff!
Making a good tribute is not an easy thing to do. You can have the best musicians the best songs but rarely do things fall together so nicely. On Map To The Treasure things came together perfectly and I think several things contributed to that.
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.
The First Base LP review of any length would probably end up being too long. To state it very simply, First Base is a band from Toronto that writes simple two minute catchy melodies in the best traditions of bubblegum punk. Songs of unacquainted love, cool harmonies and unpretentious production will win your heart and have you play this record on repeat. Imagine if Ramones recorded an album where all songs were like I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend – the result would be something like First Base. First Base doesn’t want to be your dog, First Base just wants to be in your record collection. The purest fun record this year again comes from Hozac label.
Today’s show is dedicated mainly to my favorite reissues this year. The two comps I enjoyed the most were Mojo’s Heavy Nuggets III and Numero Group’s Warfaring Strangers Darkscorch Canticles, as a roadmap to the new band on some cool underground hard rock from the seventies. There were some excellent power pop reissues as well. Anyway, dive into today’s show for a complete list. Also, about a third of today’s show is dedicated to songs from some cool albums which did not make our top 20 albums, but were still cool enough to mention. This concludes our year end review, and we go back to our regularly irregular programming starting next week.
Nowadays, singles and eps come out in various different forms. The old vinyl and CD, but it also can be a download, a video… So, it’s not easy to navigate through this mess. So, all singles and short albums up to four songs are what I call “short form”. Todays list compiles a list of my favorite singles this year. The second half of the show is dedicated to some of the albums that I liked last year, but that somehow did not end up on the top 20 last week. Happy new year everyone!
The two records that are subject of this review have something in common. They are seamlessly reintroducing hard rock into the garage-rock club scene and it’s an incredibly welcoming and rejuvenating moment in the newer rock’n’roll history. These two bands do it with pride.
Cover albums are a fad of this millennium. They give an artist a chance to show off their interpretive abilities and taste. Will Oldham’s new record is also an exercise in interpretation, but Oldham doesn’t go back to other people’s songs. He goes back three years behind, to his own album Wolfroy Goes To Town.
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.