Now that concerns Nina Persson’s A Camp project would only be a once-off novelty have been somewhat satisfied by this year’s Colonia, 2001’s self-titled debut is worth spinning again with a little more leisure. With its grim tones at hyperspeed, or droning descending bars dragging the always against the flow vocals of Persson into gloomy vignettes [...]
An astounding series of peaks across North-West Spain are reified in folklore as instantly recognisable landmarks nefarious conquistadors and regular Joes all fixed upon as they finally sailed into the serenity of home waters. Anabel Santiago’s 2007 album Desnuda is in effect a rejuvenation of a musical heritage which sails between those many Spanish traditions, the ghosts of imperialism, the lonely [...]
Listening to Diamond Head’s most enduring of epics (although forgive the mild misnomer “epic” as it happens to be under 5 minutes long), offers the chance to discuss exactly why Stourbridge’s hairiest, most underground rockers never quite grasped the glittering prize of major league renown. As the title track of 1983’s critically mixed Canterbury swaps range from [...]
Words launch other words, and names have a way of establishing themselves as footholds - nothing could be truer than with the name Jesus, which - thanks to the centuries of teaching, tradition, imposition and imperialism which have used him as currency - has come to mean whatever you earnestly wish. The devil may have [...]
April is the cruellest month - always has been, and always will be, just like tuesdays never come out right; but there is hope at the end of the tunnel, glimpsed briefly through the showers. In those long northern winters, when you’re cooped up, it seems natural to think ahead, to dream - more often [...]
Wailing “God Bless America…” is not the selling point on which you can convince someone of a song’s cathartic merits, even if this song magnifies in grace over one of the most astounding cinematic closing sequences ever, James Guercio’s wirey, disillusioned, Electra Glide In Blue. Tell Me, also written by Guercio, and delivered as a [...]
Serafino Murru passed away in 1994. It would be difficult though to accept the terminal shockwaves of this roughly sketched street balladeer after the scraping acoustic spears of Lo Scudetto In Sardegna rip through any dustclouds gathered in the decades since Luigi Riva and the Rossoblu last ran rings around mainland hierarchies. Murru is the archetypal everyman, [...]
St. Vitus Dance - what does it conjure up in your musical mind? Probably visions of doom-metal bands, either the original gloom merchants Black Sabbath, or various Scandinavian cardboard copycats. Maybe it’s the medieval buzz, and visions of Brueghel, but the title always brought to mind frigid northern metal more than anything else.
How wrong can [...]
“Jesus”
And that’s the way the song starts, leaving a man-god hanging as an insistent but quiet guitar chisels rythmically in the background. All the more potent for the Scottish accent blunting the edges of the singer’s troubled voice.
“Is just a Spanish boy’s name”
And that’s the bit when the chisel breaks off a large bit of [...]
Though it’s officially springtime, celebrating the sunshine I find myself paradoxically listeing to Paddy Casey’s Ancient Sorrow (rather than the more appropriate Sunnyside of the Street by the Pogues) - a song that, with a brave production that highlights the voices of Casey and the real foundation given by the soulful singing of Terry Sutton. [...]
