In a world where people return to work and carry on with their day jobs, we find sweet succour in a selection of new songs from talented artists.
Dead Shed Jokers - Memoirs of Mr Bryant This track features on the CD accompanying the current issue of Classic Rock, and we’re even more enamoured with the video. If you’re the kind of person who delights in demented footage of stout gentlemen in their underwear being chased around the countryside pursued by tractor-riding beasts, you’ll surely appreciate this. We certainly do.
Autograph – You Are Us, We Are You 31 years on from the sleek and shiny enormo-hit Turn Up The Radio, Autograph are back with a new tune. They say it’s their first new song in over 25 years, which suggests that they’re keeping quiet about 2003’s Buzz album, but we don’t care. “We are us!” they sing. “We are you!” Quite.
Swervedriver — Setting Sun When the so-called shoegazing movement was at its peak, one of the genre’s mainstays stood out for two reasons. First, they were’t a shoegazing band at all, but purveyors of hazy, guitar-wrangling psychedelia, with tales of tequila and dust and fast cars and Satan and all sorts. Second, they were really, really good, but never really got the credit they deserved. Who were they? They were Swervedriver, of course. The band have a new album out in March, which makes us happier than that time we were delivered of box of kittens by mistake and got to play with them for a while before they were collected and sent to the right address.
Jesse Malin - Addicted It’s the thick of winter and we’re all a bit sluggish so we need a track like this to boot us up the bum. And that it surely does, with a ridiculously, er, addictive flourish. As instant as a Cup-A-Soup and familiar as the nose of Pete Townshend’s face, as a CR staff member said: ‘If I were Ryan Adams I’d sue’. And we mean that in an ace way. New album New York Before The War should be a corker.
Ryley Walker - Primrose Green 24-year-old acoustic-twiddling troubadour, from sweet home Chicago, with a refreshing experimental hint. Compulsory listening for fans of pretty Americana, Tim Buckley, lo-fi jams, and cheesecloth. Luscious stuff.
Killer Boogie - My Queen The appropriately named Killer Boogie claim to influenced by the likes of Blue Cheer, The Stooges, MC5, Cactus and Radio Moscow, which means you know exactly what they sound like before you start listening. From the forthcoming album Detroit, this features the kind of driving riff that’ll have listeners thrashing round like scarecrows in a wind tunnel.
Smash Fashion - Marionette This has actually been around for a little while, but we’re delighted to be properly making its acquaintance in 2015. Marionette is a piece of power pop pie with plenty of crunch from LA’s premier dandy rockers. It’s like Cheap Trick crossed with something else that’s a bit like Cheap Trick but isn’t Cheap Trick.
Slowgold - Det Osynliga At the point where Mazzy Star meets early Fleetwood Mac you’ll find young Swede Amanda Werne and her hazy psychedelic persona Slowgold. Playing a residency every Monday at local Gothenburg hang-out Hagabions, Det Osynliga (‘The Invisible’) is a well-honed, patchouli-spiced velveteen smoothie from new album Stjänfall, due this spring.
