“Running a family farm is more rock than playing rock’n’roll,” claim this Gascony duo. And they ought to know, as they do both. Produced by Vance Powell, this ninth (specifically a searing The Outsider) sounds an awful lot like the activist rockers’ defining magnum opus.
Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit - Weathervanes
Isbell and his trusted four-piece band fashion a bunch of expert narratives that operate where country and southern rock intersect. Thoughtful, compassionate, heartbreaking and more (try the Townes Van Zandt-referencing When We Were Close), it’s a record that is, above all, deeply human.
What’s surprising is that Ian Anderson can kick up more menace with his flute than any number of hoarse roaring voices and thrashing guitars. RökFlöte opens – and closes – with some metal-sounding flute feedback that makes for a chilling atmosphere. On the opening Voluspo, that’s followed by a ponderous theme to underscore the portentous implications of the prophecy that lies at the heart of Norse mythology
Ayron Jones - Chronicles Of The Kid
Part Living Colour, part SRV Couldn’t Stand The Weather vibes, his latest album is a vibrant wall of guitar wrangling, musical loops and more colours than a sky full of rainbows. My America echoes Living Colour’s Which Way To America? in tone and attack, but he switches things in an instant with the heartbreaking Living For The Fall and its ridiculous guitar part, at once rueful then in the next instant capable of making you think that Jones is going to come crashing in through the window. Like the rest of this record, it’s truly remarkable.
Rush! is dazzling proof that Måneskin are capable of writing rings around most modern riff monkeys. Exploring arena-friendly turf somewhere between Arctic Monkeys and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, it’s an album that bristles with swagger and sass. It’s also an album of great economy: none of the 17 songs waste any time getting where they’re ultimately going, with opener Own My Mind taking approximately three seconds to establish the frisky chug that underpins the Måneskin blueprint.
John Mellencamp - Orpheus Descending
Truth be told, Mellencamp appears to be on something of a songwriting hot streak, especially when he’s in a more contemplative mood; Understated Reverence, with its mournful violin and quiet reflections, might have appeared on Rain Dogs, while Lightning And Luck, a plaintive guitar part and a handful of memories and recollections, has its strength in simplicity, which is a welcome motif all record long.
72 Seasons isn’t an easy listen; it demands work. Ballads are absent and even big melodies are scarce, though that ensures they’re all the more striking when they do arrive. Jamming the slow-burning, 11-minute Inamorata on the end of an album that’s already passed the 60-minute is the work of a band seeing how far they can push things. Quite far, it turns out – Inamorata is one of the best songs on the album (it also ends with a much-needed chink of light lyrically).
Luke Morley - Songs From The Blue Room
Morley takes to the piano for the happy tramp of Damage, one of the poppier interludes on the album, woven around an incisive guitar solo. The swaying Nobody Cares casts its withering gaze at social media, while album closer Don’t Be Long is a song that you imagine Robbie Williams would have happily taken off Morley’s hands and turned it into a stadium barnstormer. You can almost feel the fireworks overhead as the last, sad piano chord is played.
Neverland Ranch Davidians - Neverland Ranch Davidians
Stoner psych gets its groove on in an irresistible fuzz-funk firefight that calls to mind a tight-but-loose, chitlin circuit-era Hendrix (Fat Back), elsewhere there’s the overdrive-pedal-tothe-metal freeway head-rush of Rat Patrol, swampabilly grunge (the powerfully wrought, George Floyd-inspired Knee On My Neck), and Cramps lurch (Aqua Velveteen).
Jared James Nichols - Jared James Nichols
An early highlight is recent single Down The Drain, a spindly, nihilistic, throatflaying alt.rocker with a riff the 90s grunge mob would have gladly claimed and a wah-wah solo they couldn’t have pulled off. Likewise Hard Wired, which opens with a sonic freak-out like Hendrix riding a giant hornet, before settling into acaveman clud that suggests an unhurried Bill Ward behind the drum kit.
Iggy’s on blistering, razor-sharp form throughout and, perhaps more than ever, totally himself. Previous solo career highs have seen him clearly indebted to Bowie or Josh Homme, but Andrew Watt’s production is only complementary. Flawless, and never casting shade across Iggy’s central performance. Every Iggy attribute features, yet subtle production discipline deftly sidesteps caricature.
Queens Of The Stone Age - In Times New Roman…
The titles may be punny, but the songs are deadly serious. Glam harmonies and Beatles-inspired strings cut through the motorcycle grease and bourbon, cigarette smoke and body fluids of the sleazy, spaced opener Obscenery, guitar tracks stacked high to the ceiling and swirling like a room at 4am after an evening of bad decisions. Malice seethes through Negative Space, Homme’s singular falsetto ghostly and full of bitterness.
Past Rival Sons albums have placed vibe and feel and energy over stick-in-the-head-and-don’t-shift melodies, but here, the shimmering Bright Light and Bird In The Hand with its glam-rock hand-claps offer an embarrassment of riches in that department. Even when they take things down a notch, as on the gospel-edged slow-burner Rapture, there’s still a sense that the furnace that powers it could become an inferno at any point.
Royal Thunder - Rebuilding The Mountain
Offering emotional candour and empowering melodies in place of stadium-sized riffs and instrumental grandstanding, it nonetheless still feels triumphant. On The Knife, Fade and Live To Live, subtly simmering instrumentals, suddenly swell into all-swallowing tidal waves, Mlny Parsonz’s powerhouse vocal still somehow towering over all. Not since Fleetwood Mac has a band so deftly turned turmoil and strife into such empowering, addictive ear worms, a subtle doom sensibility the only reminder that they came close to imploding entirely
Inspirations was a rather predictable exercise in paying homage to Saxon’s influences (Beatles/Stones/ Zeppelin), its successor is more rewarding. The artists and songs are mostly less obvious and even when they’re not, Saxon breathe new life into old dogs such as The Who’s Substitute, where Biff Byford is sneering bitterness incarnate, while they take a similar approach on We Gotta Get Out Of This Place to Joan Jett’s tumultuous assault on Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.
JD Simo - Songs From The House Of Grease
JD Simo is shaping up as one of the great interpreters of old soul and rock‘n’roll. The Nashville-based slide man was drafted to play guitar for the soundtrack of last year’s Elvis biopic. Now, Simo’s power trio are evidently still running on mojo, rush-recording a cracking covers set whose free-form mastery means these five songs stretch to 40 minutes without anyone checking their watch.
Sparks - The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte
With appealing symmetry, the Maels have returned to Island Records almost 50 years since the label launched their mainstream pop career. As determinedly quirky as its title, The Girl is Crying In Her Latte is a very strong collection of vintage Sparks moods, plus a few new left-field twists. Arch, ironic, culturally rich lyrics underpin heavily mannered staccato vocals and punchy mini-opera melodies, from sarcastic new-wave blammers like Nothing Is As Good As They Say It Is to the waspish Morrissey-on-Broadway power ballad When You Leave.
Right down to daft New Generation and obligatory power ballad Flowers Of Fire there’s some Led Zep heft here, but mainly Kiss’s dumb fun (Johnny "Gash" Sombretto’s impressive roar has some Paul Stanley to it) and a dash of Roth’s party vibe too. Steve Vai keeps the guitars thrillingly, skilfully simple – big riffs and bigger choruses, with the occasional face-melting solo in there.
Mahal’s song choices are impeccable and his players beyond top-notch; the sweet and sour of the brushed drums and Evan Price’s violin is potent, while producer/pianist John Simon has a stunning wee-small-hours touch. But it’s the veteran’s session, and with that stentorian voice Sweet Georgia Brown and I’m Just A Lucky So And So are highlights that warm any room you play them in.
With Troublegum producer Chris Sheldon at the controls once more, Hard Cold Fire finds Therapy? crafting a solid collection of tracks that are both brutal and melodic. Opener They Shoot The Terrible Master comes out of the blocks hard and fast, firing off thunderous drum licks and raging guitar riffs, while Andy Cairns wrestles with an exhausting, post-pandemic world dominated by corrupt rulers.
Those Damn Crows - Inhale/Exhale
You can’t help feeling that the title of Those Damn Crows’ third album may have been informed by the seismic global events that have taken place since they broke into the Top 20 of the album chart with Point Of No Return in February 2020. Musically there’s an impatient feel to their best songs, which seem filled with a compulsion to seize life by the lapels – possibly a sentiment many others will be feeling after a stop-start couple of years during which traditional rock’n’roll thrills were severely restricted.
Whether it’s the poetic pomp of Hail The Sunrise, the rampaging, protometal cautionary tale of Hurricane, or the symphonic melodrama of the eightminute You’ll Never Be Alone, every one of these tracks has charm and substance to spare. More importantly, it all sounds exactly as one would hope some of hard rock’s greatest architects to sound, 50 years in: committed, passionate, bursting with ideas and absolutely not interested in stopping any time soon.
Lucinda Williams - Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart
She is joined on two tracks by Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa, putting in the keen support. Songs like New York Comeback are joyous and undaunted. Her voice retains all the character and grit, and on Jukebox she yearns for the postpandemic, post-recovery charm of the local Wurlitzer machine stacked with Patsy Cline and Muddy Waters records.
Wytch Hazel are uniquely positioned to be the least annoying Christian metal band since Trouble. Since their debut in 2016, the band has delivered a fresh, bracing sound redolent of NWOBHM and ancient twin-guitar majesties like Wishbone Ash and Thin Lizzy. Lushly atmospheric and stridently catchy, IV is their best effort yet, with galloping epics like Future Is Gold and A Thousand Years that sound both folk-horror rustic and impressively sleek.
Mirror To The Sky was begun before The Quest was released, with the band on a roll and no immediate touring in prospect. Steve Howe has clearly been energised and has grown in confidence, allowing the stately title track to spread over 14 minutes after some fine introductory guitar and skedaddling bass runs by Billy Sherwood. Two other tracks nudge the nine-minute mark without any sign of padding.
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