LTW Newsletter 66

Welcome Xmas warriors!

Hope you all ready for the invasion of elves, reindeer, evergreen trees, bearded jolly looking fellows in red tunics stuck in chimneys, the ever lessening surge of Xmas cards - some with robins on the front and some with donkeys on them, tinsel and German street markets that somehow combine in that mass confusion of the year ending solstice meltdown.

Utterly unrelated activities and symbols, of course! And ones that somehow scream ‘Xmas!” at you a little too loudly but not loud enough to drown out the ultimate Xmas icon Noddy Holder!

Of course, we will be doing our own pagan dance today, on the 21st, to celebrate the shortest day of the year and, in what is in our more optimistic moments, the first day of summer (sort of). Musically everything has kinda gone to bed now and the final rush of gigs and releases has abated as the world seems to slump into its armchair or slump into 1974, which is the year that xmas seems to have stopped and stayed in with endless repeats of Morecambe and Wise and ye ancient xmas songs and Xmas fare doing its best to remain way back in the pre-punk seventies…!

Fear not though! Somehow our own team of Santa’s little helpers have remarkably still managed to find exciting musical moments to share with you - the pinnacle of that iceberg is here on this list but there is plenty more on the site to investigate!

The Chameleons were always a big deal in Manchester and their Christmas shows are something really special. Even with this piece of knowledge, there is something remarkable happening around this band. In the eighties, they seemed to be on the fast track to being one of the clutch of big bands who would emerge from post-punk before it all went wrong for them as they grabbed defeat from the jaws of success. In real life, this should have meant the end of their story, and yet remarkably, the band are now on a surge and, despite being over 60, they are winning a whole new audience to their cause by the simple fact that they are at the top of their game brilliant.

Could 2024 be the year of the Chameleons? We really think so…

We resurrected our ‘metal album of the year’ post just to shine a light on Godflesh's brilliance, whose album released in May has the pounding intense inventiveness and swinging groove of the late and great Killing Joke. We think it’s time the band got more than acknowledged as being a primary influence and for their boundary-pushing brilliance but also embraced for their own innate genius. ‘Purge’ is heavy as fuck, but it also swings with a dark funk or a pounding compressed hip hip groove that matches those corrosive thrilling guitars.

Maneksin should not really be anywhere on our radar - they coalesced around a Simon Cowell-type contest in their home country of Italy and then found fame due to winning the Eurovision song contest, but for once, a great band seems to have slipped through the cracks of the modern talent show slog. Filling arenas all around the world, they have made great work of their flamboyant take on rock n roll and celebrate all the cliches of the form whilst somehow assembling them into a captivating new order. Their recent show in Manchester Arena may not have broken musical boundaries, but it was a thrilling spectacle, says our reviewer.

Freshly signed to leading American post-punk label Cleopatra Records, Descartes a Kant are a Mexican band making all the right noises like on their new single - a killer bass driven track that is like a grinding Pixies/Breeders with an inventiveness all of its own. Equal parts Punk, Metal, Pop, Shoegaze and Cabaret, the critically acclaimed underground sextet are on the brink of being Mexico’s first big player in this scene.

Spotlight! Jack Valero is still young enough to be a fresh-faced new talent with songs that whirl and thrill with perfect guitar chords and a very British sense of vocal melody…

There has been a spate of great photo books running up to Xmas. Grey Flowers grabs Los Angeles by the tail, as photographer Suitcase Joe shines a soulful light on the shadow life of the city.

Blasting out loud in the LTW virtual office is  Pregoblin – we are loving this tune that is a crystalline collision between the glorious just about hanging together melodies of the genius Peter Perrett and The Only Ones with a sniff of Peter Doherty who sings BV’s on the track and appears in the buddy buddy video filmed in France.