Outer Battery Records are building quite the musical roster for themselves not just with Swervedriver’s brilliant recent EP The World’s Fair, which was reviewed recently for Ghost Cult, but also the inclusion of Heavy Blanket (with J Mascis), Petyr and finally Obits; best known for featuring the legendary, late, great Rick Froberg (Drive Like Jehu/Hot Snakes), RIP. Excitingly, there are also live albums from Dinosaur Jr, Om, and OFF! available from the label. Impressive, right?Continue reading
As a genre, Indie Rock hit its peak in the mid-2000s, as bands like Arcade Fire and Death Cab for Cutie became mainstream, thus causing bands to branch off into the post-punk branch of punk rock. Activity’s new album A Thousand Years in Another Way (Western Vinyl) takes you back to the last great days of indie rock. The album opens in a tense, more brooding mood than their previous work. They balance this out with the fragile plea of the pained tenor vocals. The trembling urgency of this vocal approach brings Radiohead to mind.Continue reading
LA-based London natives Bones UK are releasing their sophomore studio album Soft via Sumerian Records. Nearly five years in the making and recorded across London, LA, Chicago, and Texas, Soft follows Bones UK’s debut self-titled album from 2019. Featuring contributions from Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins and Mike Shuman from Queens of the Stone Age, Soft conveys an overall heightened intensity, maturity, and vulnerability within the musicality of Bones UK.Continue reading
Helmet are a legacy band, who at over 30 years into their career– albeit with an early 2000’s hiatus– are still very much thought of as a specific, early mid-nineties era band when alternative rock was king. And for good reason, as they are a band who certainly had a huge influence with early Interscope Records such as Meantime (1992) and Betty (1994), providing a sludgy down-tuned version of the more commercial alternative styles of the time. Â
With their debut album, Modern Grotesque, Dreamwell certainly hit the ground running, full of cathartic, screamo energy that most bands several years into their career wish they could muster. It was enough that the band even got picked up by Prosthetic Records, looking at Dreamwell to capture lightning in a bottle twice with their sophomore effort, In My Saddest Dreams, I Am Beside You.Â
With their third outing Texas-based Narrow Head have created a body of music that if you were there, will well and truly spin you back in time to the mid-nineties. And if you weren’t there but nonetheless love the alternative rock sound of the time, then you’ll also find yourself intriguingly transported back to the era when baggy clothes and dirty scuzzy guitar riffs were the sign of the times. And on top of that Moments Of Clarity (Church Road Records) may well be considered a classic today, was it released some 25-30 years ago amongst the influences that it clearly wears on its sleeve.
And the record stands out today, as it lulls you into a sense of security before changing style and introducing heavier elements where the band sounds on their peak for me, before then throwing in a highly experimental closer. So the album opens with ‘The Real’ and a fuzzy grunge riff, with the vocal of Jacob Duarte sounding somewhere between an early Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl, and an early Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan. There is a lighter nineties indie alternative rock style to the sound, which continues into ‘Moments Of Clarity’ invoking memories from the likes of Weezer, Placebo, and The Lemonheads. It’s clear from the first couple of tracks that Narrow Head can write one hell of a catchy riff with highly engaging vocal hooks, and then on ‘Sunday’ they introduce a Deftones-esq riff which more than hints at what’s to come.Â
‘Trepnation’ kicks like a mule with dirtier down-tuned guitars and a heavy chugging bass, and my attention has well and truly been captured by the change in tone. ‘Breakup Song’ is melancholic with a lovely entwine between the main riff and a rolling bass, while ‘Fine Day’ is another sweet heavy cut with crunching guitars.
On ‘Carline’ Narrow Head reverts back to the more melodic feel of the album’s first quarter, but from here it changes tact once again with the darker muddy sounding ‘The World Sunday’ and the explosive ‘Gearhead’, which slams into a late-nineties era Deftones style, with Duarte channeling a shoe-gaze Chino Moreno vocal. And with the first screams on the album laid down before a furious outro of impressive drumming and heavy distortion … More of this, please! Â
And the band delivers on ‘Flesh & Solitude’ with the further subtle use of screams in amongst the heavy intoxicating music with a beautiful outro of avant-garde percussive cacophony. The aptly titled ‘The Comedown’ follows with lush strumming and kind of a Pearl Jam flavour, which gradually builds to the climax of ‘Soft To Touch’ where a mischievous guitar line perfectly plays over electronic beats. I love the way this album twists and turns from the indie rock style into a heavier alternative beast, before turning full circle and then going completely leftfield with the use of electronica. And these changes in tone create a real album experience which should definitely be absorbed as one. This is where rock music needs to be, for me, in 2023.Â
Buy the album here:
https://www.runforcoverrecords.com/artists/narrow-head/products
8 / 10
ABSTRAKT_SOUL_
Alice In Chains is being honored by Seattle’s MoPop Museum of Pop Culture on December 1st, and the band will be celebrated by a cadre of their peers, as well as hold their first performance of 2020. Korn, Metallica, Mastodon, Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, Dave Navarro of Jane’s Addiction, and Krist Novoselic of Nirvana are among the artists who will take part in virtual tribute performances when AIC is presented with this year’s Museum Of Pop Culture (MoPOP) Founders Award. The full list of presenters (virtually) is listed below. Continue reading
Smashing Pumpkins will open for Guns N Roses at select shows for their highly anticipated 2020 North American tour. All dates are listed below and tickets go on sale to the general public for North American dates starting Friday, February 7 at 12 p.m. local time at the link below. The Pumpkins are at present recording their new album in Nashville for a late 2020 release. The new disc will be the follow-up to 2018’s Shiny And Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun., which was their first in over eighteen years to feature founding members Billy Corgan, Jimmy Chamberlin, and James Iha, along with longtime guitarist Jeff Schroeder. Corgan released his latest solo album, Cotillions, in November via his own Martha’s Music label. Like 2017’s Ogilala, the disc was issued under his full name, William Patrick Corgan.Continue reading
Rush has released a new live performance video of them performing their hit ‘Distant Early Warning’ from their upcoming concert film, Cinema Strangiato: An Annual Exercise In Fan Indulgence, which will get a one-night-only cinematic screening on August 21. Watch it now!Continue reading
