What song are you listening to right now? (Page 385 of 385)

Laurence Jones - Bad Luck & The Blues  (2023)

Album #2 on the Marshall label from Mr Jones which finds him back in "power trio" mode since Bennett Holland has moved onto his own Jube project. And it also sees Laurence in the producer's chair, living the dream.

What we get then is 10 tracks over 38 minutes of Laurence really letting rip on guitar, as promised, direct from the guidebook of Jimi Hendrix and other 1970's luminaries. There's no doubt, Laurence has skill, shops and licks aplenty, beefed up by Jack A Timmis on bass and Ash Sheehan on drums, but... To be frank, there are others doing the same, but better. For me, this is loud because it can be, but there's nothing to make it stand out. Again, it'll probably play brilliantly in a live context, but while Laurence still falls back on his debut Thunder In the Sky as a showcase, it shows that he hasn't grown proportionally as a writer as much as a player. I don't mind so much Laurence going down this "heavier" direction, he flirted with it in his earlier days; it's just that there's not enough light & dark on the album, one track seems to bleed into the next.

Bad Luck & The Blues - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPV_Fc2EAcE
You're Not Alone - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1JfdPQFUWA
Lonely Road - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BssNa-yeqy0

I really enjoyed those vids Mike.  Great shout out indeed.

Tonight I came across a song that could've made that bill on the BBC.  Strangely it will be played on weekend SEC football games on ESPN.  The band is from Birmingham, Alabama, not the workingman town of Birmingham UK.
This band was a fave of my late forum buddy, AHSmith, and I dedicate it to him for all the great music he brought here.

Miss you Tres....

https://youtu.be/KkTACr33Nng?si=_7a4Q5-zrCo6InZX

Jethro Tull - The Broadsword & The Beast: 40th Anniversary Monster Edition (1982/2023)

I've been eagerly awaiting this re-issue as Broadsword was the album that really cemented my love for 'Tull. And what a reissue set it has turned out to be - 8 discs!

Once again, ol' "magic ears" Steven Wilson provides the remix, and it is far, far superior than the previous attempt back in 2005, which was rather muddy in trying to sort the 1980's "bells & whistles" approach. After the more experimental and disappointing previous album, A, Broadsword was not only a return to more established music themes, but a better marriage between the more established instrumentation and the ever encroaching electronica. Also there was the now ever changing line-up, with Gerry Conway behind the drums for the recording, but not the subsequent tour, and Peter John Vettesse on piano and synthesisers, later to record Ian Anderson's delayed solo album in 1983 (Walk Into Light - wonder if that will get a reissue?)

Broadsword was Tull's first album not to have been released in consecutive years, but in the year's hiatus, the band certainly weren't idle, there's almost 2 other album's worth of material in the box set which has been polished up with equal care as the main feature; certainly a lot I've not heard before. Rounding off the CDs, there's 2 discs of a full German show from 1982, over 110 minutes worth. Sadly, there's no video of this in the 3 DVDs in the set, which is a shame as it means we don't get to see jethro Tull's "Spinal Tap" moment with the Viking Longship stage. (The 2 other DVDs have all the recorded materials in either 5'1 or DTS audio sound.

Once again, sumptuous packaging with a comprehensive and richly illustrated 160+ page booklet, though I have to say, the mechanism holding 6 of the discs seems a bit flimsy and might be cause for concern if you're going to by playing the discs often.

The Record Company - 4th Album (2023)

At the end of 2022, The Record Company was facing numerous trials and tribulations including a cancelled tour and being dropped from their record label. On 'The 4th Album,' The Record company see that rejection as a rite of renewal, a way to cleanse themselves, to start over. They head back to their roots: creating the raw, self-produced, blues-based music that in past years earned them multiple Billboard #1 AAA songs, a Grammy nomination and mainstream exposure supporting the likes of Bob Seger and John Mayer.

And what they have done on The 4th Album, (I'd love to have been in the room at the naming discussions...) is gone right back to "dirt-floor" basics as much as they could; working out of an intimate home studio in Beachwood Canyon, they wrote, recorded and self-produced the music.the drum tracks were cut at Sunset Sound Studios (L.A.)

The single Talk To Me features a dancing bass atop a simmering groove, punctuated by tambourine before the guitar kicks back in.  Second single Dance On Mondays features guitar cries through a hypnotically hummable bassline and head-nodding beat.  Other songs on the album include I Found Heaven (In My Darkest Days), Highway Lady, Patterns, Roll With It, Bad Light, Control My Heart Blues, I’m Working and You Made A Mistake. “I’d love for people to hear this record and feel like they’re in the house with us making it,” Alex leaves off. “I want them to feel like they’re part of this unpolished and homemade thing, because that’s what we were trying to get back to.”

And that sums up the album perfectly; it's raw, it's basic and it does sound like it was cut in your front room. There's not one "filler" track on the album and each has it's own catch. I bet there's someone at their previous label either eating crow, or waiting his cards....

Dance On Mondays - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmLByOF_wjg...
Talk To Me - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XY05F3hDOM&t=2s

The Coral - Sea of Mirrors (2023)
                  Holy Joe's Coral Island Medicine Show (2023)

Hmm, a two-for-one here... One of my favourite "secret" bands, and they've only gone and come up trumps on each album.
Sea of Mirrors come across a Psych-folk-pop-rock soundtrack to an imagined Italian spaghetti western adventure, and even has narration from Cillian Murphy, as if it needed any more kudos. “Sea of Mirrors” is a perfectly crafted collection of songs, from a band who have are still at their peak.

Holy Joe's is a sort of bridge, making a triptych between Sea of Mirrors and the earlier Coral Island; dealing with loneliness, joyriding, bank robbers & murder, lyrically this is the darkest album the Coral has released to date. The album brings James and Ian Skelly's grandad a.k.a The Great Muriarty back into the fold for the narrated post-script to Coral island, one of the band's most successful albums to date. Framed inside a midnight radio show beaming out from a Michelin blimp that hovers somewhere past the piers of Coral Island, '"Holy Joe...' is a love letter to the tradition of the death disc and murder ballad, from Stack-o-Lee to Skeleton Key, and everything in between. Stay up late. Tune in. If you do, who knows? You might end up loving it more than the original."