Log #179 - What Next? Heaven Or Las Vegas

Another clean sweep of the magazine this week: everybody out, new lot in please (often precipitated by a visit of friends over the weekend).

Next is many fans' favourite Alex Harvey (SAHB) album. I have it at no. 3 in my personal rundown.

Next from 1973 was Harvey's second album with the Sensational Band although he'd made solo albums before teaming up with the former Tear Gas band who became SAHB. Here he reveals more cabaret than on the rockier debut but there’s also rockabilly and plenty of glam.

The Jacques Brel title track is one of Harvey’s most loved covers perhaps made most famous following a literally disturbing appearance on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test — many people’s first introduction to SAHB:

Yet the band showed they could still rock out with the best of the heavy metal bands of the day with Faith Healer which, with it’s hypnotic pulsing build up, became the band’s live opener, the Led Zeppelin like shuffle of Vambo, and the latter half of album closer The Last of The Teenage Idols.

I don't know if there is a fans' favourite Bonnie Prince Billy album but mine is this one, Lay Down In The Light. Maybe he should be the subject of a forthcoming ranking. I see he has a new album out right now and I will procure it shortly - I'm fan enough to get pretty much anything he does and I very much liked the very low fi solo sample track I heard somewhere. 

I haven't yet caught him live but we're both young enough to have plenty of future opportunities!

SAHB - Next

The Whitest Boy Alive - Dreams

Cocteau Twins - Heaven Or Las Vegas

Bear's Den - Islands

Bonnie Prince Billy - Lay Down In The Light

Randy Newman - Sail Away

Randy Newman is a classy performer who I'd also love to see live. Not right up there as a favourite of mine but a reliably great song writer. Another Elton John sort really. I always think of the Toy Story films (for which he wrote many of the songs) when I hear his voice. This 1972 release is a pretty good primer for new Newman fans containing several of his best known songs: Sail Away, Lonely At The Top, Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear and You Can Leave Your Hat On.

Heaven Or Las Vegas is my equal favourite Cocteau Twins album along with Four Calendar Cafe. A brilliant album from a unique band doing something different in the relatively barren '80s musical landscape.

Regular readers will know all about the Erlend Oye project The Whitest Boy Alive, one of the tightest, funkiest pop bands out there. Only two albums, this and Rules, both great.

Last but not least we have the lovely folk harmonies of Bear's Den. I know what you are going to say - "Isn't this like Mumford & Sons?" (after all they co-founded the nu-folk Communion Records label with Marcus Mumford). Well no, it's much better. Islands is a consistently excellent album throughout.

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Log #178 - Black Budgie

Sometimes one needs a complete change and following some relatively light folk over the last couple of weeks I just wanted to blow some cobwebs away with some heavy rock for week #178. 

Radiohead - Kid A

Black Keys - Attack & Release

Black Sabbath - 13

Black Sabbath - Never Say Die

Budgie - The Best Of

AC/DC - High Voltage

The Black Sabbath listening has been part of my research for my latest ranking article which you can find here >>

Over the last couple of weeks I've played 24 Black Sabbath albums which has been an illuminating experience. I already knew the first 8 albums well (the vintage Ozzy years), plus the first couple of Ronnie James Dio albums. I also had a copy of the 2013 comeback album 13 which I last reviewed favourably here >>

13 is a powerful album that doesn't sound dissimilar to some of the band's '70s albums. Never Say Die! (Ozzy's last album before the comeback) ain't too shabby either and was also favourably reviewed here >>. Unaccountably it gets a bad rap from Sab fans.

What was most interesting though was hearing the "more recent" albums - post 1982, mostly for the first time. Most are relatively anonymous to be fair but there were a few that stood out from the bunch >> The Devil You Know (2009) and Dehumanizer (1992) fared fairly well in the ranking.

The period was fraught with a revolving door of band members, many only staying for one record, many quitting and returning (Dio himself came and went 3 times) - the one constant member, guitarist Tony Iommi, firing and hiring at will forever seeking a return to the glory days. However for the most part his band became followers of the heavy metal fashions of the '80s and '90s rather than the innovators they once were.

Reaction on Twitter was concerned...

Welsh rockers Budgie imo were a very underrated band. I don't think the band name helped:

I loved the idea of playing noisy, heavy rock, but calling ourselves after something diametrically opposed to that.

Burke Shelley

I must admit I haven't heard many of their actual albums and this Best Of is ostensibly their best stuff, and it is cracking good rock full of exciting guitar riffs. They remind me a bit of Rush actually, and actually even look like Rush physically. Much of the iconic Budgie artwork was designed by Roger Dean.

Budgie

You know what you are getting with AC/DC, ie. basic good riffing rock. Most their songs start off with an Angus Young riff, before a one note Cliff Williams pumping bass comes in, followed by crashing Phil Rudd drums, and then a squawking Bon Scott or Brian Johnson singing about birds and booze. Great stuff! This album, High Voltage, was their first international release in 1976 combining tracks from two albums that had had limited release in their home country Australia only.

So I was expecting basic rock, but not this basic. This album is a lot more bluesy than subsequent albums I have heard.

It's also got the classic It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock N Roll) made famous by the Jack Black School Of Rock film.

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Never Say Die! Eddy Reassesses Black Sabbath's Much Maligned Breakup Album From 1978

Come on Sabbath lovers. Never Say Die!, Ozzy Osbourne's final album with Black Sabbath (before the 2013 reunion) is actually a cracking good album! Like Technical Ecstasy before it, it only suffers relatively from comparison with the earlier albums, that were even better, but as a standalone rock album from 1978 it knocks the spots off most competitors.

Granted the sound is different from what we were used to, with a more conventional rock sound — the tracks are more upbeat, the guitar is tuned higher and the overall production is super polished. There are even elements of jazz which is not entirely alien to the Sabs going back as far as their debut album (although admittedly instrumental honker Breakout is taking it too far).

There is a reason the best bands have a good singer.

Another track that doesn’t work too well is the messy closer Swinging The Chain where Bill Ward takes up vocals again as he did more successfully on It’s Alright from Technical Ecstasy (there is a reason the best bands have a good singer).

However where the new polished production really comes together well is on tracks like Junior’s Eyes which has a funky drum and bass backing a chugging guitar, and a catchy chorus, and Air Dance which has fluid guitar and piano arpeggios and goes full on jazz fusion in its second half.

The overall continuity of sound and style is pleasing and in the title song Never Say Die! the band nail down one of their most exciting rockers ever — enough to keep even the most cynical fan happy.

I also love the cover with the hooded pilots, stormy sky, and iconic Sabbath font (another from Hipgnosis).

Despite it's difficult provenance and the messy aftermath leading to Osbourne's replacement by Ronnie James Dio Never Say Die! remains a fitting, albeit underrated, (first) swansong for vintage period Sabbath.

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Log #177 - Mount, Attack, Release, Unrest and Free

The Unthanks Mount The Air

Black Keys Attack & Release

Free The Free Story
Erlend Oye Unrest

Iron And Wine The Creek Drank the Cradle
Lal and Mike Waterson Bright Phoebus

Erlend Oye is one half of Kings Of Convenience, and also the main leader in The Whitest Boy Alive. He has released two solo albums, Unrest being the debut from 2003.

Unrest sounds relatively modern with its electro-disco house beats and nods to Daft Punk and Kraftwerk. Ultimately it's a little easy listening and didn't really grab me by the scruff of the neck, albeit served as pleasant background. It did encourage me to play some Kings Of Convenience (a bit better) and some Whitest Boy Alive (much better) albums again though. Oye has a very gentle voice that seems to suit the acoustic whimsy of Kings and sharp pop of Whitest Boy best.

I'm sort of surprised I still like The Black Keys. I thought their brand of, by definition quite limited, guitar blues rock would be quickly commercialised and wear thin quite quickly but each new record I hear maintains a significant amount of grit, surprise and originality, which lifts them well clear of simply being White Stripe copyists.

I must admit I am non too familiar with the entire The Black Keys catalogue so it is difficult as yet to form much of an opinion on where the band have been and where they are going - I still fear they will, or maybe they have done already, venture off down the Kings Of Leon road towards mediocrity, but so far, 5 albums in, this hasn't happened.

Attack and Release features guest appearances from Tom Waits guitarist Marc Ribot and Danger Mouse (who also produced).

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