The New Cue #192 July 29: The Messengers Of God, Sam Prekop & John McEntire, Plains, U.S Girls, TRAAMS, Andrew Tuttle, Manics, Molly Lewis, Mick Talbot
29 July, 2022
Good morning,
Are you ready for some Reccie Friday action? Have you got your listening equipment ready? Your reading glasses? That’s all you need, you’re good to go. Oh, wait, you need a subscription too. That is quite important otherwise your Recommender Friday will be over before the recommending has begun. Disaster can be averted by clicking Subscribe Now below. It costs £5 a month and you’ll receive all three weekly editions of The New Cue plus full access to our archive.
Here's a playlist whilst you mull it over:
We’ll see you on Monday when we’ve got an interview with Julia Jacklin to get your week rolling.
Enjoy the edition,
Ted, Niall and Chris
An Album To Blow Your Mind
As selected by Hammond organ king Mick Talbot: soul-pop-rock from London in the 1970s.
Howlin’ Wind
Graham Parker (1976)
“It came along at a transitional time. People lump it in with the pub rock thing because of the musicians involved, from Ducks Deluxe and Brinsley Schwarz, but it really touched a lot of bases for me and my friends in as much as it included soul music but in an English rock setting. It also had elements of Dylan and Van Morrison, all threads that we liked and it was put together so well. It was such a great journey to go on. I heard Graham first on Charlie Gillet’s Honky Tonk Radio London radio show, we all listened to it because he was such a supporter of new music, and he played a Graham Parker demo. So you felt you were there at the start too. I saw them live, bought the album as soon as it came out and they really captured that live energy on Howling Wind. I could hear all the influences, like a song like Silly Thing had a Solomon Burke feel but the swagger of early ‘70s Van Morrison. It didn’t seem affected. It had energy and warmth about it, which the second album didn’t have. Nick Lowe who produced it caught something special there. I know Jerry Dammers of the Specials was very influenced by it, too. It encouraged him to write songs. And I’ve been in a few incarnations of the Dexys line-ups and in the early line-ups Big Jimmy Paterson, the trombone player, was a huge Graham Parker fan. Everyone should check it out.”
Chris Bangs & Mick Talbot's 'Back To Business' out now on Acid Jazz.
Recommender
Ted Kessler
I’ve always had a weakness for a catchy number with a funny lyric. I think they may be called ‘novelty songs’. You like them a lot the first time you hear them, for a few weeks even, then you’re too embarrassed to admit that still, gradually coming to loathe them, before spending the rest of your life sneering at them along with everyone else. Personal examples may include Destination Zululand by King Kurt (14 year-old me still quite likes it), Banned From The Pubs by Peter And The Test Babies (in fact, a timeless classic), Where’s Me Jumper by Sultans of Ping FC (still got charm), Considering A Move To Memphis by Colourblind James Experience (not great, at all), Cunts Are Still Running the World by Jarvis Cocker (lots of mid-90s Pulp singles qualify)…
You know the kind of thing. Well, for the past however many weeks I’ve been entranced by a song called We Don’t Do Smack by a group called The Messengers of God. It’s a glorious, slow-paced cockney country dance number listing all the drugs that singer Dave McGowan will do rather than heroin. It’s very funny, very groovy, and it’s not alone, it has siblings. Other songs that are also good by The Messengers include High Pain Threshold which I have also been playing a fair bit. And though the band all look to be in the fifties at least I have very high hopes for these Londoners who are self-described as “a cross between Kilburn and The High Roads and Leonard Cohen.” They had an album out in 2013, but have nothing on the immediate release schedule. A band acolyte sent me a studio recording of We Don’t Do Smack which is even better than the live version I’ve inserted here, however, so we demand its release!
There’s an extremely long and serious review on Pitchfork of the Sons Of album by Sam Prekop and John McEntire. The sell above the review describes the record as being of the “improvisatory spirit that’s at the heart of modular synthesis” which suggests this first solo collaboration from the former Sea And Cake members is about as far away from a novelty record as you can get. It’s an epic, frequently beautiful voyage across electronic oceans that is absolutely glorious on these warm mid-summers days, the windows and doors cast open, the sun streaming in alongside the light breeze (and the waft of nearby bins)… a beautiful electronic album record for the mind and soul. Not sure what more there is to say.
Really like the first taster from Plains, the collaboration between Waxahatchee’s busy-as-a-bee Katie Crutchfield and Jess Williamson. It’s a soulful country-rock swinger that kind of reminds me of the Jayhawks around the time of Hollywood Town Hall from a million years ago (1992). Crutchfield has such a strong, distinctive and plaintive voice that dovetails perfectly with the softer Williamson here. Looking forward to hearing their album I Walked With You A Ways, due in October.
Should we just all watch this nine-minute blast of Sly and The Family Stone running through a medley of some of their greatest songs (and therefore some of humanity’s greatest songs) for a live 1969 TV performance? So, so brilliant. As good a performance of any live music in a TV studio that I can think of. Wish I’d been there. Look at them all!
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Chris Catchpole
Having spent most of the past two years working from my kitchen table, the nuances of life in an office are largely a distant memory – queuing to use the microwave, forgetting your printer code, trying to ascertain who it was that kept making such an ungodly mess in the third toilet cubicle… Thankfully, the latest track by Office Culture doesn’t touch on any of those subjects. Instead, Elegance is pillow-soft dollop of creamy, 70s AOR - all twinkling electric piano, stacked harmonies and frontman Winston Cook-Wilson’s gentle plea that he “only wants you to be happy”. If it was an actual office, you’d imagine it would be one with really comfy chairs, posh coffee and someone pouring cocktails at 4pm every afternoon…
Few have done the banjo more of a disservice in recent years than Cook-Wilson’s namesake, Mumford & Sons fop turned right wing pundit Winston Marshall. Out today on Basin Rock, the new album by Andrew Tuttle helps reclaim some of the instrument’s cred. Fleeting Adventure sees the Australian producer and banjoist finger pick his way through a gorgeous soundscape of ambient Americana. On tracks such as Steve Gunn-assisted opener Overnight’s A Weekend and the pedal steel washed Correlation you can practically see the pine trees, silvery lakes and rocky mountaintops drift past the mind’s eye. It’s a musical road trip well worth embarking on…
T.Rex’s glam rock stomp has been kicking around in the music of Ty Segall since he first broke through over a decade ago. On the psych rock workaholic’s fourteenth album (that’s not including multiple side projects and live LPs), Hello, Hi, he harks back to Marc Bolan’s hippie origins strumming cross legged as one half of Tyrannosaurus Rex. The bad-trip quiver of Cement and Blue have Segall playing a gnarled goblin to Bolan’s elfin pixie, while the fuzz rock thrash of the title track show he’s still capable of wigging out with the best of them.
Speaking of wigging out, a couple of weeks ago we had Neu!’s Michael Rother on here telling us that it takes more to reach krautrock nirvana than simply copying the distinctive ‘motorik’ drumbeat pioneered by his former bandmate, Klaus Dinger. On their third album, Chichester trio TRAAMS certainly do a good job of taking that propulsive beat and using it as a bedrock to build up their own heady sturm und drang. At times, Personal Best sounds like Martin Hannett producing The Stooges, at others drone rock supremos Spacemen 3 and yes, on tracks such as Siren’s floaty ambience or the heads down groove of Hallie, there’s a fair bit of Rother’s old outfit in there. Crucially though, despite the hypnotic Breathe clocking in at just under ten minutes, the eight tracks here never one veer off course into meandering indulgence. Everything is a tightly compacted, lean, mean krautrocky machine. A band PB from start to finish….
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Niall Doherty
I hadn’t intended to put the new single by Nils Frahm in my Recommender, but then I started writing it early in the morning and needed something to ease my brain into the day and Nils and A Winged Victory For The Sullen and Max Richter are my go-to crew for that sort of thing. Lemon Day is the latest cut from his forthcoming record Music For Animals. It’s a bit of a push to call it a single – it’s 18 minutes long, an ambient meander through soothing soundscapes with a faint rhythmic pulsing gently prodding it forward. I really like it, so I thought I should probably recommend it, which is what I’ve just done.
I’m awake now, and that can only mean one thing: I’m ready for some professional whistling. The new single by Los Angeles-dwelling Aussie native (and “preeminent whistler”, it says here) Molly Lewis possesses similar meditative morning vibes to my mate Nils but doesn’t take as long to get there. Miracle Fruit is a hazy four-minutes of shimmying bossa nova acoustic guitars, lounge-y grooves and, of course, some top class whistling. What else would you expect from the 2015 winner of Masters Of Musical Whistling? I can only whistle inwards, badly. Just can’t get the requisite mouth-shape to whistle outwards. I feel better for getting that out there, thanks for listening.
Last week, the Manics announced a mammoth reissue overhaul of their 2001 album Know Your Enemy. I’ve never really thought about Know Your Enemy in a ‘stand back, music journalist approaching to assess the situation’ way, it came out at a time when I was still in that phase of unquestioning loyalty to my favourite bands. A great phase, that, a solid and dependable state of mind to be in. Twenty-two years later, I do know that it is probably the Manics record I have revisited the least but I’m looking forward to getting to grips with the remixed and recalibrated version that is coming out in September, pitched as the double album the band originally envisioned. This previously-unreleased track Rosebud sounds like peak turn-of-the-century Manics, when the choruses were still big and anthemic and melodically sharp but defiance had given way to melancholy. What were they doing leaving this off the record? Bloody lost it lads.
I love the new single by U.S. Girls, aka Toronto-based singer and producer Meg Remy. Titled So Typically Now, it’s a strutting synth-pop banger that continues Remy’s brilliant reinvention from experimental indie artist into modern pop adventurer and it’s made all the more better that sometimes her vocal sounds a bit like Kylie.
And Finally…
Ghostpoet on the oddest job he’s ever had:
“I was a painter and decorator in a brothel. They went for the standard magnolia. It was me and this older guy employed to spruce up the place, so we were painting hallways and bathrooms. It was very odd, seeing clients come in and we just had to get on with our job. I was an efficient and disciplined painter and decorator.”
Hi Ted. Just wanted to quickly say that I really enjoyed your book. Lots of very funny stories and enjoyed the parts about your family (it’s been a busy month for the Kesslers!).
However, it also makes me sad. I was also a student of the NME, started picking it up in my mid teens in the early 2000’s and read it religiously until it went free. Also, picked up the usual monthlies now and then and when the NME disappeared, I found solace every month in Q. It was always something I looked forward to every month, right up the end. I’m still really pissed off that both are no longer here and we’re left without a music press. I still get Mojo every month but it’s doesn’t satisfy the same itch. I still hope that one day soon a new magazine will appear and things will get back to the way they were. It feels like a big gap is missing.
Very grateful for The New Cue and what you three produce every week, thank you!