Into the Distance Music 31

The Mockingbirds - The Silver Bullet, Finsbury Park, 1st April, 2016

The Hanging Stars - Over the Silvery Lake, album review

Cosmic River

Hailing from the West Coast of London, this ‘cosmicious’ band remind us that age cannot wither, nor custom stale 60s’ harmony psychedelia, especially evident in the opening and closing quintessential and liquidly lysergic tracks Floodbound and Running Waters. On both, The Byrds float down the long smooth river of time on a raft of pedal steel and lush vocals. If you fall off and in, the rest is a blissful drowning in soft sounds, ripples rising over the occasional rock.

Angel Forrest - Angel's 11, album review

Wood Facade, but the Music is Real

Quebec bluesrock vocalist Angel Forrest has 27 years’ performing experience, nine albums and at least three Canadian Maple Blues Award for Female Vocalist of the Year accolades to her impressive credit – and it shows.

This most recent album showcases her grit-seasoned rock vocal which can and is wrapped in that maple syrup blues to smooth, as well as eleven guitarists across its eleven self-penned tracks, their names carved into the wood façade of the album cover.

It is a steamy combination. Try fourth Hold on Tight….Mr. I’m Alright to get all fired up, and then fifth Tumbleweed for a soft towel-down. Guitar-wise, you’ll hear great lead, pedal steel and then slide just on these two: next Goodbye has superb acoustic work on display.

Sign Music 11

The Fab Beatles - The Institute, Ottery St Mary, 12 March, 2016

Beatles Knees

These guys are the bees knees - forget the looks [they aren't the real Beatles, obviously, and they wear wigs to look the part, and 'George' is really far too short....] - but they play the most precise, authentic repertoire of the Beatles' catalogue, especially focusing on the earlier rock'n'roll, and encoring their third and final set on Twist and Shout, Roll Over Beethoven and so on. It had the full house dancing. Among the never-ending nostalgic reverie, you also keep asking yourself if the band hadn't already played that 'hit', realising there really were so many. A great night out.

The Nice - Ars longa vita brevis (live 1968)

Big Hogg - Big Hogg, album review

Fucking Prayer

I’ll start with fourth track Rabbit Plateau, a gentle, flute-led acoustic track that begins instrumentally and then eventually arrives at its folk leaning melody, a beautiful Randy California-like guitar at work within. This is followed by the harmonious with horns song Duke of Shakespeare Street, flute again as on the whole album a prominent instrument, and Sophie Sexon leading the beautiful singing, just before the birds join in at the end.

Next, Bad Salad Boogie, delivers the band’s and this album’s flipside, a wild sax opening that smooths into those horns and flute again – this instrumental core having echoes of jazzrock from before, but retaining a Britishness [though a Glaswegian band whose members may not have voted to stay…] which is more brass-band and even light orchestral.

The gifted outfit is Justin Lumsden (electric and acoustic guitars, vocals), Sophie Sexon (flute, vocals), Richard Merchant (trumpet, tenor horn and cornet), Ross McCrae (trombone), Alasdair C. Mitchell (bass guitar) and Nigh Gaughan (drums, percussion), and whilst owing much to folkrock and other of the 60s and 70s [main songwriter Lamsden has been quoted in an interview that his record collection contains nothing beyond 1976] there is a contemporary take on its clever manipulations of old, and some new, on this album. Indeed, eighth Remember Handsome Tony mixes Beefheart, Dr Feelgood and Blood, Sweat and Tears in its pumping, spoken-narrative performance, horns and organ driving it all onwards.

The album opens with When We Were Young which has another Beefheart echo, more in the rhythmic jolts than singing as Sexon is a Captain of Sweet, and female. Perhaps the sound here is also Principal Edwards, but whatever, it is a great start. Dog People follows with that BS&Ts sound very much in evidence in its horn-orchestrated start, the flute joining with the runs. Then the saxophone creeps in literally, another spoken narrative [Beefheart-esque again or Jim ‘Dandy’ Mangrum in the growl] adding to the gothic/horror theme, bass pulsing, organ whirling, horns and guitar riffing: it is playful in its crossovers. Third Turn to Prayer mixes it up yet again with horn triumphs and then spoken narrative, this time Sexon providing the comic line about fucking prayer, and the song explodes. Wonderful.