While a dance song, ‘All That I Can Do’ is also an intimate declaration of love. Cat Dowling notes, “All that I can do is give you my love” the songs opening line captures the meaning of this song. “Love is the greatest we can offer anyone and that includes ourselves”.
The new 11-track long-player was produced by Gerry Horanwith Dowling as co-producer, and mixed by Ger Mcdonnell (The Cure, U2, Van Morrison, Martha Wainwright, Shane McGowan, Sinead O’Connor), This album was partially recorded at Crossroads Studioin her native Kilkenny with support from Ireland’s Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media.
Lauded as one of the most wonderful and evocative vocalists in Irish contemporary music, Dowling’s beautifully dark pop songs and husky, achingly intimate vocals will grip you from the outset. The former Babelfish and Alphastates frontwoman creates well-crafted songs that inspire.
Earlier, Dowling released the singles ‘Animals’, ‘Freedom‘ and ‘Trouble’, the video for which was created by BAFTA award-winning director Fergal Costello, recalling a dark, comedic and violent tale set outside of 1981 Belfast.
In 2013, Dowling debuted with ‘The Believer’ LP, ranked in numerous ‘Best of Year’ music polls, including The Sunday Times. The title track featured in the second series of ‘Banshee’, produced by Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, American Beauty, True Blood) and the ‘Witches of East End’ TV series, featuring Julia Ormond. The song ‘Somebody Else’ was also used in ‘My name is Emily’. Cat has also lent vocals on many collaborative projects, including for ABC’s ‘How ToGet Away With Murder’ with Emmy-winning actress Viola Davis.
Do you remember the childhood game “make you look?” What I present for you today is a twist on that cherished childhood game; it is called “made you listen!”
An Electronic Jazz Punk Passage Through Dreams did that to me. I had to listen. I just had to hear what an album with that name sounded like, and once I got there, I put it on an endless loop for the evening. What we have here (hear?) is a mighty fine electronic, jazz, punk band spinning some tasteful tracks.
Then I had a new conundrum, namely, what genre is this? Electronic? Yes, but more than that. Jazz? I didn’t notice much jazz, but there is a freedom to this album reminiscent of free-form jazz, so yeah, we can go with electronic jazz music. Punk? They encompass the rawness that the best punk delivers, so let’s go with electronic, jazz-punk for now. I would add chill to that list; it certainly chilled me out listening to it. I felt like this music had elements of trance as well.
I give up. Silent Cure has crafted an album that you have to listen to, even if it’s for no other reason than to find out what genre you would put them in.
Oh! And that album cover! Wow!
There is a lot to unpack with this release, so I will cut and paste some of the promo material that goes a long way towards explaining this musical adventure.
Danish electronic artist Silent Cure has announced his debut album‘An Electronic Jazz Punk Passage Through Dreams,’ which involves vocalists from various distant shores – Spain, Italy and Canada. This long-player was mixed and mastered by Alberto Pretto at Blackhead Studios Berlin and Multi-Platinum producer-mixer Yoad Nevo (Pet Shop Boys, Sia, Ed Sheridan, Moby, Bryan Adams, Sugababes, Goldfrapp).
The lead track‘Silent Love Song’features Barcelona-based artist M-Ana, who contributes vocals and lyrics. This album also features several other vocalists with a palette mainly instrumental in nature. Including Vancouver songstress Elisa King, who co-wrote and sang in tandem with Silent Cure on ‘So Annoyed,’ and Italian vocalist Serena Masciarelli on ‘Settimana A Diano Marina.’
As a music producer and digital collage artist, this project entails the realization of a lover of art in all shapes, colours and sounds. This 12-track offering combines electronic music with elements from pop, rock and jazz music with notable inspirations drawn from such artists as Massive Attack, Moby, Vitalic, Ladytron, Jean-Michel Jarre and The Orb.
New only in name, Silent Cure is a veteran electronic music producer with over three decades of music-making informed by a broader grasp of and a special love for multiple genres and artists with a penchant for blurring the borders between them. The result is an album that, while diverse in scope, is still widely accessible.
“I felt it was time to move out of my comfort zone being a part of the electronic underground scene for many years and challenge myself with something new. I listen to all kinds of music at home, so the inspiration comes from many places over many years,” says Silent Cure.
Hailing from Copenhagen, Silent Cure thrives in tasteful sound designs with attention to small details. These sonic tapestries invite the listener to journey into and through various moods.
Ambient downtempo tracks like ‘Silent Love Song’ and ‘So Annoyed’ show the artist’s softer side, juxtaposed by upbeat electroclash / retrowave-inspired tracks such as‘Synthwave Retrospect,’‘Gratitude’ and ‘Symphony Octobre.’In contrast, the melancholic yet endearing ‘So Annoyed’ is about a couple that have clearly spent too much time together under lockdown conditions.
The album ‘An Electronic Jazz Punk Passage Through Dreams’ will be released on February 11 across digital platforms and can be ordered directly from the artist via Bandcamp. A limited-edition vinyl release is anticipated at some point in future.
On February 24, 2022, at 6 pm EST, music lovers can also tune in for the ‘Silent Cure – Around The Album’ Live Stream to embark on a journey into an expansive sonic universe, coupled with some words by the artist about these tracks and how this project unfolded.
Step number one for becoming a country and western music star is having the correct name. Waylon Jennings works for the C/W crowd. Not so appealing is the name, Arnold Jennings. Waylon made a good call using his first name, not the middle one. Alvis Edgar Owens Jr. doesn’t have the same twang as Buck Owens does it.
Tyler Joe Miller is a good country and western name. And Tyler Joe Miller is also the title of this blog because I have been listening to his music, and it is in today’s finest country and western style.
Step number two is having a hit single on country radio, ‘Pillow Talkin” at the end of 2019 was Tyler Joe Millers’ debut single. It went straight to number one on Canadian country radio and was certified gold. Not bad for a debut, eh?
How do you top that buckle bragging? Tyler Joe Miller topped it by becoming the first independent Canadian country artist to reach #1 on Canadian country radio with his first two singles following “Pillow Talkin’ “with “I Would Be Over Me Too.”
Tyler Joe Miller had his third single, “Fighting” reaching the top ten country charts. Following up those three highly successful singles, Tyler Joe Miller released his fourth single, “Sometimes I Do,” another Top 5 song on Canadian country radio, from his debut EP “Sometimes I Don’t, But Sometimes I Do.”
And sometimes I Do-Si-Do.
Diplo Presents: Thomas Wesley – Do Si Do (ft. Blanco Brown) (Official Music Video)
I can be a bit slow getting to the dance floor. The newest single from Tyler Joe Miller, “Wild As Her,” actually came out three days ago on February 11th. Better late than never, right?
Speaking on the single, Tyler Joe Miller tells us that “‘Wild As Her’ isn’t your typical love song; it’s the hopeful chase of a guy trying to get and keep this girl around who’s an untamable rolling stone.” Delivered in a voice that sounds as smooth as a dually on blacktop Tyler Joe Miller gives us a little slice of country heaven.
Check Tyler Joe Miller’s “Wild As Her” for your listening pleasure at any of these fine listening establishments, courtesy of MDM Recordings.
The Hoodoo Gurus told us that Mars Needs Guitars. I’m telling you that our Earth needs Star Collector. Hailing from the western edge of the Canadian landmass, Vancouver is one of the epicentres of music in Canada. Star Collector’s new album Game Dayfeatures Vic Wayne, who grew up in Edmonton and played in the music scene there eons ago (The Mods, Truth), Kevin Kane (Grapes of Wrath, Northern Pikes) and Evan Foster (Boss Martians, Dirty Sidewalks, Sonics).
They tell us that their musical influences are TheWho, Jam, Big Star & Sloan. I hear The Who on the opening track, Game Day. I can pick out some of the sweeping guitar and the vocal delivery style, not too shabby to be compared to one of the biggest names in rock and roll history.
After that frantic opening, Star Collector keeps the pace up through the next three songs, Rip It Off, Stranger (Renting Space in My Head), & The Silent Type. Then, we arrive at Super Zero Blues, which opens with an excellent bass line and maintains a more pedestrian pace giving us old geezers a chance to catch our breath. I also liked the instrumental interludes that highlighted their musical talents.
Hook, Line & Singer venture into using an acoustic guitar and a gentler pace, albeit with darker lyrics that slowly build towards some hope only to drop into the malaise again. I should also mention the play on words, I kept wanting to correct it to Hook, Line and singer. I can’t even blame autocorrect, it just my brain playing tricks on me.
Cayenne & Caramel gives us another neat play on words and disparate tastes that we wouldn’t normally expect to taste together. However, I was in Vancouver a few years ago and, I enjoyed a Jalapeno-flavoured gelato cone at La Casa Gelato. I imagine that would be somewhat like Cayenne & Caramel. At any rate, this is a sweet song that leaves us with a good taste.
The album closes with what I think is my favourite of the bunch, Funeral Party. Funerals don’t get sung about much. Arcade Fire named their debut album Funeral, but that’s all that comes to memory. Yes, I am sure you are quite capable of going on Genius or Apple Music and finding dozens more. I prefer to let my noggin do the googlin. There are many songs about death and dying, but for just funerals, there are fewer. The content of the song Funeral got me to thinking that we should celebrate a person’s life while they are still around instead of waiting till they are dead and we end up dancing in the cemetery and singing their virtues to only ourselves.
Funeral is also full of easter eggs. The Twelfth of Never is a tip of the hat to Johnny Mathis. The Great Hereafter could reference the 1997 Canadian drama film written and directed by Atom Egoyan. The Tragically Hip’s original version of “Courage” also appears in The Great Hereafter, and we Canucks can never get too much of The Hip. Twist This Joint To A Point, why the hell not? It’s legal in Canada now. “Turn up the Bunnymen tracks” shows us the excellent taste that Star Collector has in music, and I just bought the album Porcupine.”It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to… You would cry too if it happened to you!” A touch of Gore seems appropriate at a funeral. The song Funeral closes with a touring band’s nightmare, black ice on Highway Three near Grand Forks. Just a little south of nowhere.
So, there you have it—an excellent straight-ahead rock album that is easy to get pulled into, Hook, Line & Singer. When they tour through my neck of the woods, hopefully with no black ice, I’ll have to say hello to them and buy some merch. I like supporting musicians in general, and homegrown feels better for some reason. I hope you support them too. Here are some links to listen to them and buy their music.
It seems like forever ago that I started listening to the letter B. On December 12, I began to listen through the second letter in the alphabet. It has been fun, here are a few words and album covers from the tail end of B.
The father/daughter combo of Debbie Boone and Pat Boone were out of order in the alphabet. They should have been in front of Bowie, not after him. Same for The Boston Pops Orchestra. And it is worth noticing I have no albums by the band Boston. Anyhow, the Boone combo and Boston Pops only had three albums between them, one from each Artist. I adhere to the standard of “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
Baby I’m A Want You by Bread is an album of sugar-coated pop songs with a few pleasant moments and some sweet guitar work scattered here and there through the album. Bread were good at what they did, make radio friendly hit songs.
Alex Bradford has two albums in our collection. Alex Bradfords Greatest Hits and He Lifted Me. While I didn’t always identify with the lyrics, he has a great voice with an excellent choir and good musicians backing him up, which added to a good listening experience.
Roger Breland’s Truth, Songs That Answer Questions. I have a question. Why do I even own this record? It is so bad I couldn’t finish listening to it. The only truth is that this would make a good frisbee.
Brinsley Schwarz by Brinsley Schwarz is an album that I have kept in rotation on my turntable ever since I bought donkey years ago. This band should be labelled a supergroup with luminaries such as Nick Lowe, Ian Gomm and Brinsley Schwarz himself appearing on this record. This album is a keeper for sure. I didn’t buy this record in 1970 when it was released. I didn’t get it until the late ’70’s when I discovered Nick Lowe and Ian Gomm, who were prominent in the British New Wave scene. I’m curious that this is the only album I have by this band, knowing how much I like them. I may have to do some bin diving at Record Collectors Paradise.
Jackson Browne, Running on Empty. I enjoyed this album so much that I listened to it twice. Even after all the years since I acquired this album, I am still hearing fresh nuances that keep this record sounding as fresh as the day I bought it.
Lawyers In Love hasn’t aged as gracefully as, but it is still a darn good listen. I don’t find it as consistently good as Running On Empty. Both albums have great stories; Jackson Browne is a good storyteller. Running On Empty also has the song “Rosie,” which has to be the best song about masturbation. I do like the cover artwork on Lawyers In Love.
The Best of The Browns is the epitome of country and western harmonies. Big Jim Ed Brown‘s baritone, along with his sisters’ excellent harmonies, make this record a keeper. This album was followed in my listening queue by the solo album Gentle On My Mind, another fantastic album that flows from the melodious title song to golden oldies such as Detroit City, Have I Told You Lately That I Love You and Big Bad John. Good stuff on both albums.
The Dave Brubeck Quartet gives us Time Out and Time Further Out. Time Out is easily a desert island record. I never tire of hearing the incredible musicianship on this recording. Time Out is from 1959, and I am only four years older than it. I think it has weathered the years better than me.
Speaking of remaining relevant over time, I acquired a new CD a day or two back and instead of waiting till I get it in the alphabet, I will mention it now while it is fresh in my brain. The album is World Wide Rebel Songs by Tom Morello. This album is a 2011 release, and when it came out, I streamed it on iTunes and thought it was a decent album. One song stood out more than the others, Stray Bullets. In the Breakout class, I used that song in my Remembrance Day playlist in Music Appreciation at Hope Mission. The fellas gave it good feedback, and I liked the song, so it remained in my earworm feed. I had some loose change a week for so back and bought the CD from Amazon at a reasonable price and looked forward to listening to it again. It has been about seven or eight years since I last played it. I still connected with the song Stray Bullets, the rest of the album could be tossed in the dust bin, and I would never miss it. It hasn’t aged as well, and I suppose my musical taste has shifted, so as of today, this CD only has one song that I like, Stray Bullets. Back to the B’s now that I have ranted.
Brush Arbor Live. If more gospel music was this good, I might listen to more of it. Bluegrass folk and country/western, this album features some good pickin’ and a grinnin’. They also do harmony very well; Brush Arbors vocals are smooth as silk and sewn together with no loose ends.
Larry Bryant, The Artist. And this is why I don’t listen to more gospel music. Chessy evangelical lyrics soaked in ’80’s pop synth without any of the energy featured in a mainstream pop synth of that era. Think, Soft Cell with Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, Eurythmics: Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). The Artist will now collect dust until the apocalypse. I will make one last observation, there is always something good, even in the dark corners. The song Shopping List is not too bad.
Jimmy Buffett is a legend in his own time with a handful of albums in our catalogue. Buffett is one of the world’s wealthiest musicians, with a net worth as of 2017 of $900 million. That is a lot of vinyl moved to build that bank statement up to where it is. Aside from the sheer volume that he sold, it is worth noting that he made some darn good music to get to where he is now. Let’s check some of them out from our catalogue.
Havana Day Dreamin’ starts this list of Jimmy Buffett albums. Jimmy Buffett is no strange to controversy, and Havana Day Dreamin’ has at least one song that could get under some people’s skin. That song is “My Head Hurts My Feet Stink and I Don’t Love Jesus.” This song is also a favourite earworm song for me; I am not shocked or offended by the lyrics. I darn well like the song. I will not go through this album track by track; suffice to say that I like them all, and the last song, “This Hotel Room,” is a great ending track.
Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes. What a great album name. I found that this album was a change in direction for Jimmy Buffett, and I am not alone in this observation. Check out the Wikipedia entry for this album; it confirms that others saw this album the same way I did. There is one song on this album that has special meaning for me. “Cheeseburger In Paradise.” It is not only one of the best songs about food that I know of but also another playlist from the Music Appreciation days; it was also played at the memorial for a man I looked up to and respected, Lorne.
Son of a Son of a Son of a Sailor is the last from Jimmy Buffett in my merger collection and it is another good album. I will concede that he is consistent, consistently good to my ears.
Next up is T Bone Burnette and the first in our collection is Truth Decay. A cute play on words that my dentist might appreciate. Truth Decay is another album that it feels like I’ve been listening to forever. It has a C/W feel to some of it, such as Quicksand. Overall, this is a great album. I had forgotten how good this album was until I played it again. A bonus of having memory loss, 35-year-old albums sound new again.
Trap Door is an interesting one because I have two copies. One is a 12 inch that runs at thirty-three and a third rpm. The other is a 12 inch that turns at 45 rpm. Either way, it is a decent album or EP.
Proof Through The Night, I don’t know what happened here. This album sounds like a train wreck, the lyrics on the song Hefner And Disney are bizarre. There isn’t a flow to the album, and the pieces don’t come together to form anything meaningful. To me, it sounds like a contractual obligation recording.
T Bone Burnett, the album is self-titled, and it is far and away my favourite of his catalogue. It is hard to find any fault in this album. It is tight with both the lyrics and the music. It all comes together for one fantastic album that I can listen to repeatedly. Some highlight songs for me are River of Love and Poison Love. How the heck can those two songs exist side by side? It just works. Annabelle Lee is another standout on an album full of beauties. T Bone Burnett is a fantastic album.
Talking Animals is the last T Bone Burnett album on this list. It is hard to come after his S/T album and be compared to that, but it happens, and it is a good album in its own right. Different but still good. I like the story-song “The Strange Case of Frank Cash and the Morning Paper. It is a novelty song, and I like that because they are few and far between these days. Back in the old days, let’s say, prior it 1970, novelty songs were more common. Nowadays, they are a novelty because there are so few of them.
Listener fatigue is a condition that can happen when too many records by the same artist or band are consumed in a short period of time. I have experienced this phenomenon with other musicians but not with T Bone Burnett. As I went through his albums, I even listened to some of them more than once. I think that speaks volumes about the quality of his material.
Bram Tchaikovsky, Strange Man Changed Man. Pre-listen note: I liked this album back in 1979 at the crest of the New Wave with all of its creative force. This album was a part of that wave, and Bram Tchaikovsky pushed their way through that era. Let us see if my passion for this album has survived the test of time.
Yup. It survived. I still enjoy listening to it.
The Byrds Greatest Hits is an enjoyable album that had me tapping my foot and trying to sing along to it. Sweetheart of the Rodeo is the same. Greatest Hits Vol. 2 isn’t as good. It isn’t consistent, and I feel they had lost their mojo by the time this album came out.
Next up is the letter C. It sounds like I am doing the 12″ vinyl version of Sesame Street.
A new single has recently surfaced from an artist I have seen live, streamed on Apple Music and wished I had a physical copy to play in my car. Catching Flies is the song’s name,St.Arnaud is the artist in the spotlight, and I plan to gush ebulliently about the single until the album drops in April. St.Arnaud brings together a smooth as silk vocal delivery, primo music to carry the song along and witty turns of a phrase in the lyrics. For example, the narrator in the song, Catching Flies, moves from “I’ve been taking my pills most days” to “I’ve been taking my pills some days” in the middle of the song and ends with “I’ve been looking for pills some days.” That last one is ambiguous. Is he looking for the prescription pills he has lapsed in taking, or is he looking for some pills that don’t need a prescription? I don’t know for sure, but I lean towards the latter. I like that transition through the three phases of looking. Another nifty little lyrical magic is the whole first stanza. “Listen, what’s that little voice saying? when we lie to ourselves, hey everyone, could we play pretend better?” It reminds me of a line that we used in addiction counselling. “You can lie to yourself but don’t lie to me.” And then, after the lie is outed, we put on airs until we are challenged to “play pretend better.” Humans like to play pretend a lot, but we are not always good at it. Can “we lie to ourselves” and “play pretend better?” Intelligent lyrics like those immediately endear me to an artist. The music that carries those lyrics to us is equally excellent. From gentle guitar phrases that open the song, it moves into a lilting melody joined by tasteful horns and soft percussion with a touch of what sounds like maracas. I can not find fault in any part of Catching Flies. St.Arnaud have delivered package containing a delightful listening experience. Thank you.
Continuing the series on listening through my album collection on vinyl, we come to David Bowie. I don’t have a completist collection of Bowie, but there is a decent scan through his long career and ever so many releases.
First up, I listened to his self-titled album, David Bowie, which is a good listen, plus it gives us an anchor point from which to compare his future albums. Space Oddity is a song everyone knows and a great piece to launch a career—nothing quite like starting from the top. I also like the Chris Hadfield version because he is Canadian, he played it on the International Space Station, and because I like it. We jammed to this song at a men’s retreat many, many moons ago.
Hunky Dory, this album shows him maturing and starting to find his unique voice both literally through his lyrics and figuratively through his identities.
Aladin Sane, I bought this album in England as a souvenir. For some reason, this album doesn’t grab my attention the same way that some of his other albums do. I guess they can’t all be top ten hits.
Changesonebowie is an excellent compilation album that looks back on his early career. I immensely enjoyed listening to this slab of vinyl.
Scary Monsters is a good album that maintains a steady pace as a complete album instead of having many songs thrown together. I am particularly enamoured with such well-known songs as Ashes to Ashes and Teenage Wildlife. One reason I can relisten to this album some forty years later is the emotional connection between me and the album. Scary Monsters came out in 1980, part of my rapidly expanding album collection era. I don’t buy albums to pad my collection, I buy them to listen to, and I certainly did and continue to do so with Scary Monsters.
Lets Dance was released after Scary Monsters and continues to be one of my favourite Bowie albums and a strong album on its own accord. My only gripe about this album has nothing to do with the album. It is the video for Let’s Dance that irks me. I can’t watch Bowie and Mick Jagger faking dancing down a street while they lip-sync. To quote a friend of mine, urgh!
Young Americans. I got out of sync with the chronological order and jumped backwards from 1983 with Let’s Dance to 1975 and Young Americans. I find this to be an uneven album with some excellent material popping up occasionally. I like the song Fame but there are some less than stellar recordings, such as his cover of Across The Universe.
Station To Station feels more like an EP with six tracks than a full LP. It has some lengthy jams and bumps the album’s length up to a full-on LP time of roughly 17 minutes per side. Some nice grooves are going on, such as Golden Years, which gave me an earworm that instantly kicks in with something so innocuous as typing the song’s name. It happened again just now!
Tonight, this album very nearly missed this list. Tonight is an album regarded as one of Bowie’s weaker recordings, and I suppose that is why I so quickly forgot that I had even listened to it.
We have more Bowie on CD and a sealed copy of Blackstar on vinyl. The vinyl will stay sealed, and I will get to the CD collection after listening to all of our records.
Today I am listening to the EP Kris from the Swedish death disco band, KÅRP. The opening track, also named Kris, features some deep rich dark tones that immediately hooked me and dragged me into the swirling maelstrom of Kris. It becomes apparent that this is not a coincidence. KÅRP tells us that they started working on a trilogy of EP’s representing the three stages of an apocalypse: chaos, silence, and new world order, shortly after their first album release. I love the name of their first album, Album 1.
Their first EP – Kris – brings us right into the chaos and disorientation of the downfall. KÅRP elucidate, “The world is burning. The police are shooting innocent people. Natural disasters and wars are forcing families to flee for their lives. The barbed wire gets sharpened by the wealthy nation’s borders, and a pandemic is closing our societies down in a way that’s never been seen before. Turn off the lights. Close the windows and put your mask on because this is the real pandemic, and it comes with a thundering death disco.”
Death Disco is what KÅRP calls their style of music, and I think it is a good choice. Death is the message in the songs, and the disco bass that pervades this EP is an excellent way to drive that message home. I somewhat expect music associated with death to be morbid and dreary, but Kris keeps the listeners’ attention with the danceable part of disco. I associate this style of music where the content is not readily apparent within the context of the piece, i.e. dark messages in bright and likely music, to artists such as of Montreal, among others. It confuses my body when the music says dance and the lyrics say dirge.
I will be keeping an ear aimed at KÅRP to find out where they are going with this musical triptych’s middle and third panels, which will be about silence and the new world order. I am especially keen on how they will express silence through the medium of sound. There have been a lot of good songs on the topic, I just googled it, and I need to make a playlist now that I’ve started talking about it. Hush by Deep Purple is probably my favourite, although Sounds of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel isn’t far behind.
I look forward to hearing more from KÅRP. You should check them out for yourself; they make some catchy music with lyrics that make you think. KÅRP has already planted an earworm in my brain, thanks a lot. 🙂
Big Stir Records is proud to announce our first major album release of 2022: Darling Please from celebrated North Carolina singer-songwriter Chris Church. Recorded eleven years ago and seeing full-scale release for the first time in a newly remastered version (courtesy of audio maestro Nick Bertling and adorned with newly tracked backing vocals from Lindsay Murray of Gretchen’s Wheel), the album is out on CD and digital January 21 and features the lead single “Bad Summer”. It’s up for preorder at www.bigstirrecords.com, www.bigstirrecords.bandcamp.com, and on sale everywhere music is sold or streamed on the release date.
The new record sees the genre-hopping Chris Church in full on rock and roll mode, with dominant Crazy Horse-style guitars topped with some of the most immediate and aching vocal performances in Chris Church catalog. The emotionally direct and often elegiac tone of Darling Please derived in large part from its origins: “I made the album in my basement studio,” says Chris Church. “It was and is dedicated with love to my late great brother Mike Church, who’d passed not long prior to my decision to start this project. It was actually the first time I’d played all instruments on an entire album.” The self-produced ethic makes the album a forerunner to last year’s acclaimed, home-recorded Game Dirt, but Darling Please is if anything even more visceral.
Opening with the rough, ready and stately “History” and diving directly into the “Satisfaction”-beat rocker “We’re Going Downtown,” the album pays overt and indirect tribute to Mike Church (who’d played drums on most of Chris’s earlier music) on a number of tracks. The Sugar-inflected “Pillar To Post” finds the singer feeling “like a guest and a host, like taking a walk with my own ghost” while Chris Church describes the loping “Never So Far Away” as “my legit attempt to bridge loss and love, the big struggles, mortality, how the same old stuff still surprises us no matter how repetitive.” “We Could Pretend” channels “all of what it takes to cope… The hugeness is empty, and vice versa” over a “Cinnamon Girl” groove, and closing track “Triple Crown” sees Chris Church on the drums, recreating Mike’s restrained approach from live performances of the song.
Elsewhere, the empathetic backing vocals of Lindsay Murray (who also designed the sleeve art) illuminate the choruses of the single “Bad Summer” and the whole of “Atlantic”. Both tunes are sharp and heartfelt character studies derived from Chris Church’s circle of friends at the time. “I Wish I Could Say I Was Sorry” opens with a guitar and piano workout that sets the stage for one of the album’s most indelible choruses, again spotlighting Murray. And “Nepenthean” dives into psychedelic sludge to immersive effect.
Gripping and emotive, Darling Please is a belated but essential addition to the Chris Church catalog, following on the heels of the 2021 relaunches of his SpyderPop Records albums Backwards Compatible and Limitations of Source Tape. More than a relic, it’s a rewardingly rough-hewn gem deserving of inspection and a sincere tribute to a musical and familial brother, and it stands among Chris Church’s very best.
Lost In A Daydream is the second song from the album Flavor Of The Month. Dang it all, the British Canadian in me wants to spell it Flavour. I wonder if I can avoid using that word for the remainder of this blog. Yeah, O.K., the song Lost In A Daydream is a nice tip of the hat to the Beatles. It is a subtle but engaging bit of music-making—well done, Lannie Flowers. The essence of Lannie Flowers can be captured in his own words from 1986: “The two most import things in my life when I was growing up was The Beatles and the Dallas Cowboys.” Lannie Flowers is another artist that I had to search for information about since I hadn’t listened to his music until this landed in my inbox courtesy of the fine folks at www.spyderpop.com and www.bigstirrecords.com.
So here is the low down on Lannie Flowers. He is from Texas. The guitar is his weapon of choice, and Lannie Flowers makes power-pop that gets close to rock and roll at times—putting artists in a genre box, eh, what a fool’s errand. Lannie Flowers is not the fool. He is a genius at making power pop records, and this is his fifth by my reckoning.
If you want your daily dose of pop-rock, Lannie Flowers is an excellent place to listen for it. This album, the name is up above, is one of those records where I jerk my head up like a long dog on a short leash and say, “Hey, that sounds like …’;. And then I can’t quite figure out who the so and so is. Lannie is a master class on making accessible, easy pop music that sounds familiar and fresh at the same time.
What follow below is from the web of these fine folks who save me from the anguish of writing the album name in the lingua franca of the fine folks south of the 49th.
SPYDERPOP RECORDS (and our partners at Big Stir Records) are proud to announce the February 25 release of FLAVOR OF THE MONTH, a brand new album from Texas guitar pop legend LANNIE FLOWERS, on CD and all digital platforms. It’s both a completely new collection and the long-awaited physical media debut for the songs that made up Lannie’s celebrated and groundbreaking March To Home Singles Series in 2019 all newly remixed by Lannie himself and featuring the new lead single “Summer Blue.” Flavor Of The Month is up for pre-order now at www.spyderpop.com and www.bigstirrecords.com and will be streaming, as well as on records store shelves worldwide, on release day. A deluxe vinyl edition including a special bonus CD will follow later in 2022
Weathered Music 