Album coming soon. Find the Alabama Shakes EP here.

Any road up, it’s been a good year for a bunch of old lags who probably should have packed it in in 1978, how ever much I love ‘em. The Rolling Stones’ Some Girls reissue double CD, its attendant Live In Texas DVD plus the Brussels Affair 1973 digital package rank very highly in the long list of ‘new’ old music I’ve been playing lately.

My Best of the Year will be up here very early January. I’ve got some cool stuff to write about before that, though. Stay tuned.

Wham bam thankyou maam!

#2 in this series.

Golden Glow is the solo project of Manchester singer/songwriter Pierre Hall, which began following serious injury sustained in a car accident. Incapable of getting around, Pierre started from scratch and honed his home demos, attracting the attention and support of Brooklyn indie-poppers The Drums. Download Adore Me, from the album Tender Is The Night – Franz Ferdinand meets Lightspeed Champion with a tip of the cap to Manchester bands past. None of the rough edges knocked off, bash it down, pump it out. Nice.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra is the new project from Ruban Neilson, of Flying Nun indie darlings The Mint Chicks. Grab a couple of slices of distorted indiefied R&B – Ffunny Ffrends (courtesy of Pitchfork) and How Can U Love Me – ahead of an eponymous debut album on Fat Possum. If Prince used Toe Rag Studios, he’d sound like this.

It’s been awhile, folks, but here I am again. Why has it been a while? Maybe because a fair amount of the much trumpeted record releases of the past few weeks drifted by without troubling me for more than a few brief moments. For example: a lacklustre effort by the Strokes – hell, if Nick Valensi can’t be arsed to care about it, why should we? The Vaccines, who really should have called their debut album Placebo**. Heard it all before, which is a feeling I get more and more these days.. every new release can be compared to bands from way back, and usually unfavourably. That’s worrying.

So then what happened? I got the new R.E.M. record. What’s all that about? I haven’t done that for 16 years or so.

Collapse Into Now sounds just like R.E.M. It could have been released right after Monster. Good songs, well played. Bursts of  mandolin in all the right places, chunky rock guitars,  verse, chorus, verse, chorus, hook. Lenny Kaye and Peaches guesting, and a cornucopia of video entertainment alongside the record:

Uberlin and Alligator_Aviator_Autopilot_Antimatter and Oh My Heart and It Happened Today and more.

Critical faculties on hold, I rolled right over and let Stipe, Buck and Mills tickle my tummy (OK, that’s not something you’d ever want to see). The CD is in the car, the rip is on my computer, we play it a lot, I like it a lot.

And I feel fine.

** – the perception and expectation of the patient is high, the content of the medical intervention, however, is an inert substance.

I’m a fan, right? So, obviously, I’m going to enjoy it, but I don’t think I was quite ready for such an energetic, committed and engaging show. No sign of end of tour ennui, this was a proper performance, and one of the best I’ve seen in a good long while.

A killer opening of Moonshine, 22 Dreams and From The Floorboards Up got us bouncing, and the more forceful stuff from Wake Up The Nation kept us going. I became the person in the crowd you don’t want me to be, singing along to Strange Town. Yes, I know.. one song, that’s all I ask.

Other highlights from yesteryear were Shout To The Top and Butterfly Collector, Pretty Green and Start! from the 30 year old Sound Affects and encores featuring Art School and the final payoff of A Town Called Malice. OK, I had another little sing. Try stopping me.

The more succinct stuff from 22 Dreams and Wake Up.. works well live and there’s plenty of light and shade – the pace did slightly drop around the time of Invisible but the old boy probably needed a breather. Just kidding, I needed it more than he did.

The music Weller plays these days is invigorating and the approach he takes when making it is more adventurous than of old. If he carries on in this rich vein of form, it’s fine by me.

Here’s Moonshine (not, as it says, Wake Up The Nation).

** Dear whiners: you’re always there, aren’t you, lurking in the shadows? Listen, if you want a greatest hits set, go see a Jam covers band. Weller plays what he wants to play.

Great playing all round from the Pumpkins though. The young fella Byrne did stuff up the intro to Cherub Rock, for which Mr Corgan pulled him up abruptly in a sort of “I’m joking now but you’re banished to the back of the airplane tomorrow” kind of way. I thought we were in for quite an early night, since at one point I could see from the set list that there was only Gossamer to be played. 22 minutes of sonic mayhem later..

Big ups to Bronson and Jeff Schroeder.

But you can be sure that Endless Boogie explore the .. how shall we say.. temporal possibilities of a rock song to the maximum. It’s not about jazz inflections and musicianly improvisation, it’s all about the groove, about laying down a foundation, plastering sonic squalls on top, getting out there, but coming back. Eventually.

There’s no meandering here: Endless Boogie set out on a mission at the start of each jam. Think Velvet Underground plus The Groundhogs, Canned Heat, Space Ritual and Fun House. 60s psych and 70s scuzz. You nod along to the growling rhythms, unhinged solos whanging out left and right, for what seems like an age.. but you’ll only realise that later. No matter. Get your head down and lock in to the groove. Time goes by, time slips away unnoticed.

Given that, it might not surprise you at all to learn that the new album Full House Head has been a long time in the making.. worth waiting for though. Join them in their time capsule.

Download Pack Your Bags and The Manly Vibe (from Focus Level), courtesy of No Quarter Records.

There are several top Hitch albums I could have commented on (Element Of Light and Globe Of Frogs to name two) , but I chose one from 2006, Ole! Tarantula, for a couple of reasons. It has a consistently good track selection, and a prodigious backing band in the Venus 3 – Peter Buck deploying his signature Rickenbackers to great effect, Scott McCaughey on bass and keys (both from REM of course), plus Bill Rieflin (ex-Ministry) on the traps.

So it might be a cult classic, but it’s not erratic or wonky – this is a tremendously sure-footed album stuffed to the brim with great songs and classic observations.

Belltown Ramble is a lovely slice of folky goodness, Underground Sun is Byrds-meets-Floyd pop. (A Man’s Got To Know His Limitations) Briggs is the only song I know that refers to the 70s classic Clint Eastwood movie Magnum Force. Cause It’s Love is a jaunty melody co-written with XTC’s Andy Partridge. Authority Box explodes into rudeness, the title track spawns spiders – man, there’s a lot of sex on this record. A museum of it, no less – “On this deck, I stand erect, like an egg for you to swallow, kiss me till your light goes out, kiss me till there’s no tomorrow.” And the record closes with a most touching tribute to the New York Dolls bass player Arthur Kane, N.Y. Doll.

Here’s the stomping psych-tinged opening track from the album, and the video illustrates one of Hitch’s most endearing (and infuriating) qualities – the ability to ramble at length with surreal between-song flights of fancy. Sometimes you want to hug him, other times you want to throttle him. A national treasure.

P.S. I could have just as easily written about: Radiohead and the album Kid A

Wonder what S will be?