New Releases: October 2016

Round-up of the most interesting albums, singles and EPs released in October 2016, featuring the excellent double CD and book "Wyatt At The Coyote Palace" by Kristin Hersh and Goat's third psych-folk opus "Requiem":

Albums

Wyatt At The Coyote Palace

KRISTIN HERSH - Wyatt At The Coyote Palace
GOAT - Requiem
BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE - Third World Pyramid
HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER - Heart Like a Levee
JAGWAR MA - Every Now & Then
TOY - Clear Shot
CONOR OBERST - Ruminations
D D DUMBO - Utopia Defeated
LEMON TWIGS - Do Hollywood
THE RADIO DEPT. - Running out of Love
JOSEFIN OHRN + THE LIBERATION - Mirage
CRX - New Skin
MALE BONDING - Headache
CROCODILES - Dreamless
GURR - In My Head
SKINNY GIRL DIET - Heavy Flow
WEYES BLOOD - Front Row Seat to Earth
JOAN AS POLICE WOMAN - Let It Be You
TERRY MALTS - Lost At The Party
THE GROWLERS - City Club
EZTV - High in Place
SAVOY MOTEL - Savoy Motel
PURLING HISS - High Bias
MOTORAMA - Dialogues
HOOTON TENNIS CLUB - Big Box of Chocolates
SLOWS - Slows
THE BLUE ORCHIDS - The Once And Future Thing
THE POP GROUP - Honeymoon on Mars
AMERICAN FOOTBALL - American Football (LP2)
JIMMY EAT WORLD - Integrity Blues
GREEN DAY - Revolution Radio
KINGS OF LEON - Walls
THE PRETENDERS - Alone
EBBOT LUNDBERG AND THE INDIGO CHILDREN - For the Ages to Come
LUKE HAINES - Smash the System
C DUNCAN - The Midnight Sun
XYLOURIS WHITE - Black Peak
LEONARD COHEN - You Want It Darker
NAIM AMOR AND JOHN CONVERTINO - The Western Suite and Siesta Songs
PEOPLE OF THE NORTH - The Caul
SOFT HAIR - Soft Hair
BENOIT PIOULARD - The Benoit Pioulard Listening Matter
SAINT LEONARD'S HORSES - Good Luck Everybody

HIS CLANCYNESS - Isolation Culture

NxWORRIES - Yes Lawd!
POWELL - Sport

Singles & EPs

Apocalypse Fetish

LOU BARLOW - Apocalypse Fetish EP
SLEAFORD MODS - TCR
FUJIYA AND MIYAGI - EP 2
PATIENCE - The Pressure
NEW ORDER - People on the High Line
SUMMER MOON - With You Tonight
CAVERN OF ANTI MATTER - I'm the Unknown
EL MICHELS AFFAIR featuring THE SHACKS - Strange Boy / No Surprise
THE LIMINANAS - The Woods / The Inventor
HAPPYNESS - Tunnel Vision On Your Part EP
THE LOVELY EGGS - Drug Braggin
SLAVES / WONK UNIT - Take Control / We are the England
NEIL MICHAEL HAGERTY AND THE HOWLING HEX - Full Moon in Gemini
UNIFORM - Ghosthouse
CC DUST - Shinkansen No.1
VUKOVAR - The Three Shades
H. GRIMACE - Royal Hush
JUNIOR BOYS - Kiss Me All Night EP
KAG - EP A
WIFE - Standard Nature EP
PUMAROSA - Honey

BABEHEAVEN - Moving On

HIS CLANCYNESS - Pale Fear / Coming Up Empty

DALTON DESCHAIN & THE TRAVELING SHOW - Roberta EP

Kristin Hersh - Soma Gone Slapstick

1979 Revisited: Top 40 Albums

Recently BBC Radio 6 celebrated the music of 1979 as part of My Generation, their year-long season of programmes presenting the history of pop music across the decades. Listening to The Sound of 1979 playlist reminded me that several of my all-time favorite albums were released on that year and although over the years I have compiled many "Best of" annual lists (all of which can be found  here), I have never gone on record about my favorites from 1979 (or any other year of the '70s for that matter).

Time to change all that: what follows is a list of 40 excellent albums released in 1979 which I would gladly listen to over and over again today. Most of them have been a huge influence on shaping what we now refer to as the post-punk sound and are indicative of the innovations and  transformations taking place in rock music at the late '70s as a result of the big bang caused by the punk explosion.

This short list, being of course a subjective collection of personal favorites, does not try to include everything that was going on in 1979, but in the near future we will publish in Cool Music Database an expanded and much more wide-ranging version that will cover all bases. But for now, here's our version of The Sound of 1979:

Top 40 Albums of 1979

1.  Entertainment! - GANG OF FOUR
2.  Unknown pleasures - JOY DIVISION
3.  Live at the witch trials - THE FALL
4.  London calling - THE CLASH
5.  Fear of music - TALKING HEADS
6.  Setting sons - THE JAM
7.  Armed forces - ELVIS COSTELLO AND THE ATTRACTIONS
8.  Cut - THE SLITS
9.  Second edition - PUBLIC IMAGE LTD.
10. 154 - WIRE
11. Three imaginary boys - THE CURE

12. The B-52's - THE B-52'S
13. The Undertones - THE UNDERTONES
14. Drums and wires - XTC
15. Specials - SPECIALS
16. Secondhand daylight - MAGAZINE
17. Join hands - SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES
18. Dragnet - THE FALL
19. 20 jazz funk greats - THROBBING GRISTLE
20. Colossal youth - YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS
21. Eat to the beat - BLONDIE
22. Machine gun etiquette - THE DAMNED
23. A different kind of tension - BUZZCOCKS

24. A trip to Marineville - SWELL MAPS
25. Real to real cacophony - SIMPLE MINDS
26. Reproduction - THE HUMAN LEAGUE
27. Reggatta de blanc - POLICE
28. One step beyond... - MADNESS
29. The Raincoats - THE RAINCOATS
30. GI - GERMS
31. Y - THE POP GROUP
32. New picnic time - PERE UBU
33. Door, door - BOYS NEXT DOOR
34. Rust never sleeps - NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE
35. Wave - PATTI SMITH GROUP
36. Tom Verlaine - TOM VERLAINE
37. A can of bees - THE SOFT BOYS
38. Quiet life - JAPAN
39. Life in a day - SIMPLE MINDS
40. Eliptical optimism - SPHERICAL OBJECTS

Live: Lorelle Meets The Obsolete @ Death Disco (Athens, October 14, 2016)

Friday night we were back to Death Disco for our second fix of guitar noise for the week, this time courtesy of Mexico's Lorelle Meets The Obsolete (check out what happened on Monday at Girls Names' gig here).

Lorelle Meets The Obsolete record their music as a duo, with Lorena Quintanilla and Alberto González playing all instruments, but on stage the band presented its latest record, their fourth effort titled "Balance" as a five piece. Lorelle's melodic vocals, following shoegaze tradition, are usually buried in the fuzz of the guitars, keyboards add insistent, psychedelic drones and the distinctive rhythm section often drives the songs towards the paths that krautrock opened.

With so many musical threads to weave together, the band seems to strive to find, as the title of their new album suggests, the right balance that will tie everything together and when this happens, as on the mesmerizing single "La Distinción", the results are truly spectacular.

Their hour-long set was a fine introduction to Lorelle's and The Obsolete's idiosyncratic, psychedelic universe, a journey with many twists and turns that you're never sure where it will lead, but you'll certainly be glad they took you along for the ride!

Check out below two songs from their set, "Music for Dozens" from their 2014 album "Chambers" and the title track from the new LP "Balance":

Lorelle Meets The Obsolete - Music for Dozens, live @ Death Disco

Lorelle Meets the Obsolete - Balance, live @ Death Disco

Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, live @ Death Disco

Cruel Anagrams, live @ Death Disco

The night opened with a half-hour set by local duo Cruel Anagrams, playing electronic-influenced experimental pop. Guitar and synths build the backdrop for Lily Truble's narratives and although the result is at the same time strange and intriguing, I believe their live sound would benefit if they brought on a drummer to flesh out the rhythms. Modern technology makes it easy to record music with just one or two persons, but to get a good result live you still need a full band, something that was proven later on by Lorelle Meets the Obsolete and their live band.

Live: Girls Names @ Death Disco (Athens, October 10, 2016)

The second week of October had plenty of live action in store for us, with the Death Disco club hosting two events of fine guitar music. For starters, on Monday night we had the chance to see Girls Names playing their third gig in Athens with support from local act Acid Barretts.

In the three years since the first Girls Names' gig in Athens (at 2013's Plissken Festival), the Belfast band has evolved its sound, adding more energy and more noise to its music, which still draws inspiration from the riches of the '80s post-punk scene. While their previous album, "The New Life", and consequently their live presence, was more in debt to the dark, rhythmic new wave of bands like Joy Division, last year's "Arms Around A Vision" ups the aggression and the balance has shifted in favor of guitar assaults and more adventurous, explosive arrangements.

As a result the gig was certainly more engaging than our first encounter and proved that Girls Names is certainly a band to watch as they move forward and strive to create their own, personal sound where noise and melody coexist and fight for dominance in each song.

Acid Barretts, the Athens duo that opened the gig, mix guitars with drum machine rhythms bringing to mind the first demos of the Jesus and Mary Chain, when the Reid brothers were yet to hire the services of a drummer. Add Spacemen 3 psychedelia and the ghost of Suicide's Alan Vega and you get a very interesting result that you can explore further by visiting their bandcmp page to listen to their new EP titled "DK".

Acid Barretts, live @ Death Disco (Athens, Oct. 10th, 2016)

Girls Names - A Hunger Artist, live @ Death Disco (Athens, Oct. 10th, 2016)

Girls Names played: Reticence, Take Out The Hand, Desire Oscillations, Zero Triptych, Hypnotic Regression, Malaga, A Hunger Artist, I Was You. Encore: The New Life

Girls Names, live @ Death Disco (Athens, Oct. 10th, 2016)

We left the Death Disco club with buzzing ears and a content smile on Monday night, only to return there a few days later to close our week in the company of Lorelle Meets The Obsolete. More on the subject, coming up very soon ...

New Releases: September 2016

We have already extolled the virtues of Angel Olsen's latest LP here, time to have a look at what else looks interesting in the long list of September's new releases:

Albums

My Woman

ANGEL OLSEN - My Woman
WARPAINT - Heads Up
NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS - Skeleton Tree
WOVENHAND - Star Treatment
HAMILTON AND ROSTAM - I Had a Dream You Were Mine
JENNY HVAL - Blood Bitch
TEENAGE FANCLUB - Here
THE WEDDING PRESENT - Going, Going
PREOCCUPATIONS - Preoccupations
BEACH SLANG - A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings
ULTIMATE PAINTING - Dusk
BON IVER - 22, A Million
OKKERVIL RIVER - Away
WILCO - Schmilco
PIXIES - Head Carrier
JACK WHITE - Jack White Acoustic Recordings 1998 - 2016
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - Chapter and Verse
DRIVE BY TRUCKERS - American Band
ALLAH LAS - Calico Review
STILL CORNERS - Dead Blue
LORELLE MEETS THE OBSOLETE - Balance
LVL UP - Return to Love
NOTS - Cosmetic
CYMBALS EAT GUITARS - Pretty Years
SLAVES - Take Control
BOXED IN - Melt
TRENTEMOLLER - Fixion
M.I.A - AIM
DEAP VALLY - Femejism
PUBLIC ACCESS TV - Never Enough
TIM PRESLEY - The Wink
THE WARLOCKS - Songs From The Pale Eclipse
THE WYTCHES - All Your Happy Life
THE HANDSOME FAMILY - Unseen
DEVENDRA BANHART - Ape in Pink Marble
REGINA SPEKTOR - Remember Us to Life
HANNAH PEEL - Awake But Always Dreaming
MERCHANDISE - A Corpse Wired for Sound
NICOLAS JAAR - Sirens
ZOMBY - Ultra
KOOL KEITH - Feature Magnetic
DANNY BROWN - Atrocity Exhibition
DE LA SOUL - And the Anonymous Nobody...
CLIPPING. - Splendor and Misery
VANISHING TWIN - Choose Your Own Adventure
HOW TO DRESS WELL - Care
DAWES - We're All Gonna Die
LOCAL NATIVES - Sunlit Youth
AGAINST ME! - Shape Shift With Me
THE MONOCHROME SET - Cosmonaut
THE GASLAMP KILLER - Instrumentalepathy
ALUNAGEORGE - I Remember

Singles & EPs

100% Or Nothing

PRIMAL SCREAM - 100% Or Nothing
BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE - The Sun Ship
HOPE SANDOVAL AND THE WARM INVENTIONS - Let Me Get There 

BECK - Wow 

SUNFLOWER BEAN - From The Basement EP
ULTIMATE PAINTING - Dust on my Eyes / I Wish I Could Disappear
PETE ASTOR - Do Nothing
NIGHT FLOWERS - Glow In The Dark
KINGS OF LEON - Waste A Moment / Muchacho
THE LIMINANAS - Garden of Love (Andrew Weatherall Remixes)
SLAVES - Spit it Out
THE BIG MOON - Silent Movie Susie
ULRIKA SPACEK - Everything, All The Time
SOFT CANDY - Bixarre Luv Pyramids
DIABLOFURS - Sweet Janine / Flowers To Burn
THE FAT WHITE FAMILY - Breaking into Aldi
BIBIO - The Serious EP
GLASS ANIMALS - Life Itself / Youth
FU MANCHU - Slow Ride / Future Transmitter
FLOWERS MUST DIE - Sista Valsen EP
SOCIETY - Will to Win (A Genuine Primal Scream remix)
MAGGIE8 / CEILING DEMONS - Connected / Lost the Way
ST FRANCIS HOTEL - Mondello
THE LUYAS - Says You

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - I Need You