This week saw the release of so many thoroughly decent new songs we could have doubled the number of tracks featured on our list. But we ran out of ink, and had to call a halt when we reached eight. We hope you enjoy them.
The Bots - Blinded This LA-born brother duo cut their first album aged 15 and 12. They’ve retained a lot of the rawness that first got them off the ground, but channeled it into melodic, understatedly stylish pockets of garage-blues rock – like this new single, in fact.
Muse - _Psycho _ Muse have been promising a return to a heavier sound and, by crikey, they’ve certainly achieved it with Psycho, an unexpectedly potty-mouthed song with a riff so thumping it could be used to dig mine shafts. Download Festival, in all likelihood, will explode the very second this unholy beast hoves into view.
Rival Sons - Long As I Can See The Light Released on a seven-inch single for Record Store Day 2015, where it hopefully won’t get lost amongst the plethora of previously available Bruce Springsteen albums (because that’s what it’s all about, right?), this stripped-back version of the Creedence classic features the Reverend Jay Buchanan at his most soulful. Singing? This is how you do it.
The Mono LPs - Emilia The Mono LPs describe themselves as “Rock’n’roll with a cello!”, and this delights us, for the cello is a vastly under-utilised tool in rock. It’s an instrument most usually employed to embellish things when artists get a bit fancy (read: short of ideas), but here it’s central to the band’s very core, and makes a very big noise indeed. Big up the bass clef massive.
The Last Vegas - Miss You Rather confusingly, the Last Vegas sound quite Stonesy, but Miss You isn’t a cover of the Stones song, but is instead a tune with a faint whiff of Gimme Shelter about it. Even more confusingly, the Last Vegas aren’t from Las Vegas, but Chicago, yet the video was shot in Europe. Lost? We don’t even know where our heads are any more.
Anvil - Hope In Hell Ahh, Anvil, with your career-rescuing documentaries and your sex toy solos, how you’ve kept us entertained for decades. Hope In Hell is a brooding affair that sounds like the kind of thing that might greet visitors at the very gates of Hades, and there’s a bit in the video where a lady appears to explode, but don’t fret, once the smoke clears she’s clearly OK.
Tragedy - You’re The One That I Want “Just what I always wanted”, sang Mari Wilson on her 1983 hit Just What I Aways Wanted, and three decades later her wish has finally been granted with the appearance of Tragedy, an “all metal tribute to the Bee Gees & beyond”. We’re presuming, of course, that this is just what Wilson and her lovely Wilsations always wanted, but we can’t imagine what else it might have been.
Gong - You Can’t Kill Me Farewell then to Magick Brother Daevid Allen, the wizard of Oz who helped kickstart the Canterbury scene when he founded Soft Machine with Robert Wyatt, Mike Ratledge and Kevin Ayers in 1966. This track comes from the upcoming reissue of 1971 album Camembert Electrique, where Gong found the jazz-psych groove that would thrill a wave of tea-drinking pot-headed pixies. RIP, sir, your unique sounds will live long.
