We’re not at Glastonbury this weekend, but we’re replicating the experience here at Classic Rock HQ by erecting a tee-pee, filling the office with mud, drinking rancid scrumpy and starting a drum circle. It’s not very good, to be honest… but the music’s much better.
Fred Abbott - Adrenaline Shot You may remember Fred Abbott as a member of indie-folksters Noah And The Whale, who split up earlier this year. Instead of gnashing his teeth and wailing like an abandoned tot, Fred has instead thrown himself into his debut album Serious Poke, and this — a joyous blast of rollicking rock’n’roll — is a taster. It’s Americana via London (he’s a big Tom Pretty fan, we hear) and we’ve filed it under “very pleasantly surprised, thank you very much.”
Refused - Dawkins Christ God is dead. Must be true, cos Black Sabbath said it. Backing that up are revived Swede screamo legends Refused (who were, at one point, ‘fucking dead’ too), with a peed-off atheist exposition that brings Nightwish’s new best pal Richard Dawkins into things. New album Freedom is streaming right now on YouTube. Happy Friday, everyone!
Screaming Eagles - Save Me This song starts with an air-raid siren and a man licking a gimp, and if that doesn’t get you ready to Rock, nothing will. When the riff arrives, it crunches and struts and bruises like a distressed rhino in a shopping mall, and that’s even before the nice fire-eating lady shows up.
Galactic - Into The Deep Galactic have been personally delivering unparalleled levels of funk to the inhabitants on New Orleans for the best part of two decades now, but they’ve slowed things up for Into The Deep, a sultry, soulful, slow burner of a song. With Macy Grey at the helm, it’s the kind of thing Alabama Shakes were aiming for on Sound & Color, but more epic.
Kobra and The Lotus - Black Velvet Here’s something we never though we’d see: Kobra Paige romping around in a bathrobe while performing a rather fetching version of Alannah Myles’ 1990 hit Black Velvet. Excitingly, this comes from Paige’s forthcoming album of cover versions of songs by fellow Canadians, which will include her take on Rush’s Spirit Of Radio. This, we eagerly await.
\\GT// - Something’s Wrong With My Mind We’re a calm, friendly bunch, and there’s literally nothing in the world that annoys us. No, wait, there’s one thing that annoys us: typographic affectations in band names, like Sunn O))) and menswe@r and B*Witched. So it’s only natural that \\GT// irk us greatly with their flagrant disregard for the proper use of forward and back slashes. Thankfully, they pull things round with Something’s… which is ace, and sounds a bit like Hawkwind, if Hawkwind were from Seattle in 1990 instead of Ladbroke Grove in 1969. We’re calling it space-grunge, and you read it here first.
Five Grand Stereo - _Iceberg _ For this video, Five Grand Stereo put a GoPro on a Turntable, and we’ve spent hours trying to identify the record being played. We think it’s either Creedence Clearwater Revival or Alvin and The Chipmunks, but that’s not really important: what’s important is that this is is a fine piece of power-pop, like Marc Bolan impersonating Jeff Lynne on the way over to David Bowie’s house, full of clever hooks and surprising key changes. It also pretends that the 1980s never happened, which, for many, will be a very good thing.
The Jesus And Mary Chain - Reverence Taken from last year’s triumphant homecoming at Glasgow’s Barrowlands, this is a wonderfully chaotic classic, taken from the Chain’s debut Psychocandy. Cool, fuzzy and inspirational to rafts of rock artistes since.
