LTW newsletter 72

Welcome Warriors!

It was great to meet some of you - the readers! in the past week as I trotted around the country doing my spoken word tour.

I was in Selby and Chorley at great local theatres and we talked music into the deep night! This week I will be in Halifax, Sale and Kendal so more opportunity to meet you all - come and say hello if you are in town!

Whilst spring shivers over the horizon, the music season is in full swing. There is so much on at the moment that it takes superhero qualities to keep up. In my home city of Manchester, the combination of the largest amount of venues in living memory and the sheer amount of bands playing them means that there has been a lot of running around in the days off between the tour dates.

One of those venues Night and Day got a reprieve after months of wrangling - we are naturally glad that the place survived but not sure if the local council were actually the villains of the story as some liked to claim - no matter - the whole thing is sorted for now.

In the meantime, the ever busy beaver Louder Than Words team has been out and about!

It’s been heartwarming to see the triumphant return of the noisenik kings, The Jesus and Mary Chain, the band who caused a seismic shift in pop culture when they first burst of the scene in 1984, have managed to find a longevity few expected at the time. Who would have thought that in 2024 they would have released one of their best albums ina long and explosive career and still sound as urgent and vital as ever,. Their gig at Manchester’s Albert Hall was described by many as they took their earplugs out as biblical, and our reviewer was briefly lost for words but then found them all in this beautifully written review.

The former Fall band, House Of All, have been ridiculously prolific since they put the band together a couple of years ago. The band, made up of former Fall members, somehow picks up the mantle of the Fall groove and creates their own version of the mystic grind.  Built around original Fall member Martin Bramah the band and their singer are at the top of their game on the new album.

Another fantastically idiosyncratic band Shellac have announced a new album and tour. Steve Albini and his two high decibel chums have been following their own path for years and their albums are a post punk taken to its logical extremes - a death to trad rock in perfect execution. The band are great players and creaste a music that benefits having the best sound recoding team on the planet in the group! Every album has the most stunning drum sounds, and the rest of the instruments sound perfect - it’s like you are sonically inside the song, and the music is massive, sounding but also somehow clear. Intermittent releases are beautiful albums of angular noise - we can’t wait to hear the new album and also the UK tour.

St Vincent has dropped a few more hints about her new album. It’s already sounding like a more vamped up louder work and underlines her eclectic muse. Already one of the best guitar players in the world who creates unique and hard-to-fathom sounds out of her guitar, the new songs have an added Nine Inch Nails industrial clank and crank to the sound. Sparse yet engrossing - intense yet playful - we look forward to the album.

We caught Killing Joke frontman Jaz Coleman dealing with his grief of the death of key band member Geordie and also the world’s slide into deeper insanity in a two hour spoken word event in Manchester last week. It was engrossing if somewhat dark but always challenging and thought provoking.

Teutonic titan of percussive and artful shapeshifting sound, Einsturzende Neubauten announced a new album. In a tongue in cheek manner they announced themselves as a pop from a parallel universe -  perhaps the first evidence of the multiverse theory! The lead off track may not be the apocolyptic metallic KO of their earlier work but it is a captivating morsel of tension and release and is like, their description, a wonk pop from a parallel universe for the lizards to dance to.

Nico’s classic albums, The Marble Index and Desert Shore got the rerelease treatment and it is a glorious reminder of its unsettling proto gothic darkness. A stunning work it proved that Nico was far more than a bit part player in the Warhol psychodrama of the Velvets and was an artist in her own right with her own powerful vision. It’s one of those albums that never dates and is a perfect soundtrack to these dark energy times.

David Potts has taken a break from being a leading light in Peter Hook’s The Light to release two albums all at once of his own songs that are perfect post New Order slices of indie technocratic pop. Every song is a killer and he's pulled off that trick of making a greatest hits album before the songs have become hits.

Sniffin’ Glue was Mark P’s classic punk fanzine that changed the shape of UK music media. First released in 1976 its cut and past graphics and writing was a game changer and gave many people the inspiration to write…like myself!

Fanzine culture was another key wing to the punk wars. Suddenly, music writing was there for anyone, and like the host of wild youth going out and making homemade, punk rock bands, there were others with chainsaw typewriters and gonzoid Xerox ambitions. Collecting all the issues together is a timely reminder of how wonderful they looked and how sharp the writing was and how the inherent style and energy matched the punk rock movement.

Last week at Laugharne Festival I spent a wonderful evening in the local church watching father and daughter Martin and Eliza Carthy play together and perfectly compliment each other with their set of classic and self-penned folk songs that gave you an aural glimpse into the heart of England - it was captivating and hypnotic.