‘Get Me to a Nunnery’ is Heather Lynne Horton’s third album, following 2012’s ‘Postcard Saturdays’ and 2017’s ‘Don’t Mess with Mrs Murphy’. You might think that’s a fairly relaxed pace, but she has had other priorities, including raising her daughter and collaborating with her husband, Michael McDermott, on his solo and Westies albums. She’s even done a bit of touring with Michael as well. As you might expect, Michael features heavily on the album along with other collaborators like Will Kimbrough, although the concept, production and direction of the album are purely down to Heather.
There’s a theme running through the album which is strongly hinted at by the title. It’s the oppression of outsiders and minorities; the ones who don’t have the power to challenge when they’re told “That’s just the way it is”. There are some production and musical themes that run through the album as well. There’s an overall dreamy, ethereal feel that’s partly created by Heather’s layered lead and backing vocals that hint at sixties-era Marianne Faithfull, particularly on the album’s opening song.
‘After All This Time’ is slightly uncharacteristic in that underneath Heather’s vulnerable vocal the song builds up to a Spector-like wall of sound arrangement as it tells the story of a relationship that’s survived everything life can throw at it.
The two most vehemently anti-oppression songs on the album both feature Heather’s violin playing. ‘Ten Times’, with its lead vocals panned left and right deals with difficulties women find when the have to work ten times as hard as men to succeed and ‘Call a Spade a Spade’ with a sparse, almost sinister arrangement enhanced by the occasional single sour piano note as it highlights the racism that is still with us almost seventy years after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus.
‘You Said So’ and ‘Take Off’ both have an autobiographical flavour, with the latter metaphorically linking air travel with a career in the music business highlighting the conflict between family and professional life; you can’t give one hundred per cent to both. The album’s final piece, ‘Lin’s Never-Ending Song’ is a condensed classical string quartet, hinting at Bach, with several movements and various tempi and techniques, including a pizzicato passage and lots of counterpoint that demonstrate Heather’s violin and arrangement virtuosity. It’s a lovely way to finish the album.
The dreamy soundscapes of ‘Get Me to a Nunnery’ create a seductive and subversive framework to soften you up before Heather delivers the subtle lyrical punches. The album was inspired by and is dedicated to Sinead O’Connor, who died just as the recording was completed; it’s a fitting tribute.
‘Get Me to a Nunnery’ is out now on Pauper Sky Records (PSR015).
Here’s the video for ‘After All This Time’:
As an added bonus, here’s a shot of Heather from her UK tour with Michael McDermott in 2017:
“Twang”; simple, it does what it says on the tin. OK, front cover, but you know what I mean and, actually, it does quite a lot more than it says on the tin. The twang is certainly present, but there’s a lot more to this album than Dick Dale influences. “Twang” is much more than surf or surf-punk. James Oliver pulls in many more guitar influences including Elmore James, Chuck Berry, Link Wray, Mick Green, Wilko Johnson and George Thorogood. And that’s before we even mention the legendary Dave Edmunds, whose collaborator Paul Riley mixed “Twang”. If you want another Welsh guitar connection, James is from Blackwood, home of the Manic Street Preachers – all part of the service.
The album’s opener, “American Cars”, is a humorous swipe at the role of the car in rock ‘n’ roll music and the conspicuous absence of the American models in the Welsh Valleys, in a similar vein to Billy Bragg’s “A13, Trunk Road to the Sea”, but with more guitar; loads more guitar and plenty of piano as well. It sets the scene for the album; the musicianship is cracking, it’s one hundred miles per hour and there’s a lot of humour running through it.
Did someone mention Link Wray? The instrumental, “The Missing Link” is the surf equivalent of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s version of “Little Wing” as James runs through the various techniques of surf guitar, demonstrating his complete mastery of the genre (and more besides); and just like SRV’s piece, it’s a masterclass.
There are a couple of Big Joe Turner covers, “TV Mama” and “Honey Hush”, where James pulls in a few other references as well; “TV Mama” hints at Dave Edmunds’ 1970 No. 1 cover of the Dave Bartholomew classic “I Hear You Knocking”, while “Honey Hush” hints at a Phil Spector production, which Dave Edmunds also emulated for a while in the early seventies.
The James Oliver Band is much more than a simplistic tribute to sixties surf music. The stylings are complex; there are multiple tempo and rhythm changes throughout, particularly on “The Missing Link” and “Clean House” and the album’s closer, the Dick Dale classic “Misirlou” winds down with a bottom E string being gradually de-tensioned as the tune winds to a close. These are all examples of a musician with technical expertise and a clinical understanding of how a song is put together.
With the death of Cavan Grogan earlier this, maybe it’s time for James Oliver to make his breakthrough; after all, sixty-five years down the line all Chuck’s children are still out there playing his licks.
“Twang” is out now via The Last Music Company (2REV101).
Here’s a little video clip for you as well:
There’s a couple of interesting tours coming up in late November/early December that we really thought we should share with you. First up is a tour by the absolute legend Ronnie Spector with her “Ronnie Spector Sings the Fabulous Ronettes” tour, featuring the greatest Ronettes hits, including “Me My Baby”, “Baby I Love You”, “Do I Love You” and “Wallking in the Rain”, plus Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich/Phil Spector originals that became hits as covers, such as “I Can Hear Music” (Beach Boys) and “Chapel of Love” (Dixie Cups). The tour follows the release earlier this month of “The Very Best of Ronnie Spector” on Sony Music.
As if that wasn’t enough, Ronnie’s also working on her new album “English Heart”, a set of covers of songs by the sixties British invasion bands including The Beatles, The Stones, Gerry and the Pacemakers and The Animals which is scheduled for release in April 2016 on 429 Records. If you want to see the greatest hits tour, Ronnie’s doing the following dates:
November 28 Philharmonic Hall Liverpool
November 29 Royal Concert Hall Glasgow
November 30 The Sage Gateshead
December 1 Town Hall Birmingham
December 3 The Barbican London
December 4 Colston Hall Bristol
In early December, the European leg of the Light of Day tour comes to the UK. The Light of Day Foundation is a charity raising funds for research into Parkinson’s and related degenerative diseases, which originated in New Jersey in November 2000 and has been supported by many performers including Bruce Springsteen (whose song gave the Foundation its name), Michael J Fox, Southside Johnny, Darlene Love, Willie Nile, Jakob Dylan, Lucinda Williams, Badly Drawn Boy and Gary ‘US’ Bonds.
The headline band for the UK tour this year is Joe D’Urso, Vini ‘Mad Dog’ Lopez, Eric Bazilian, Ed Manion and Jake Clemons. If you want to see some incredible musicians and donate some cash to a very good cause, then you can catch the Light of Day tour on the following four UK dates:
December 4 Oran Mor Glasgow
December 5 TAPE Arts Centre Colwyn Bay
December 6 The Musician Leicester
December 8 The Half Moon, Putney London
You should catch both of these tours if you can, and maybe we’ll see you at The Half Moon for the Light of Day gig.
Unless you’re the most jaded and cynical old hack ever to have had any connection with the music business, then surely an email with the header ‘Slovenia’s ShadowIcon to release Symphonic Metal EP’ has to grab your attention. I mean, we know that symphonic metal exists, so why shouldn’t it exist in Slovenia? It’s easy to dismiss the genre as clichéd, over-the-top and predictable, but if you threw Paramore, My Chemical Romance and 1970s Queen into a blender you’d probably end up with something very like ShadowIcon (or a few litres of very messy genetic material).
The EP opens with “(Now I See) Through a Mirror Darkly”, a duet between Ana Prijatelj Pelhan and Helloween’s Sascha Gerstner and blasts in with a high-speed guitar riff and strings which break down briefly for the entry of the vocal, but carry on at 100mph (sorry 160kph) for the rest of the song. “If I Was the One”, the lead track from the EP is up next; slightly slower with loads of keyboard arpeggios under the vocal and a synth solo at the two-thirds mark which doubles up with guitar before the final chorus comes in. Here’s what the video looks like:
“The Edge” (and it isn’t about the guitarist from U2),opens like a Phil Spector classic, breaking down briefly again for the entry of the vocal before building to wall of sound climax with strings and bells. Of course it’s over the top, but isn’t that the point? “The Beauty of a Rose” starts with slow solo piano and voice, but it doesn’t take long before it becomes a big production number, trading string and guitar riffs before the obligatory impassioned guitar solo and epic finish with massed choir vocals and a plaintive synth line. “My Plea” again opens with just mid-tempo voice and keyboard but doesn’t even make it to the end of the first verse before the rest of the band starts to pile in, building up to an epic final chorus with the usual massed backing vocals, guitars and keys all turned up to eleven. The final track is a non-duet version of the opening track which doesn’t really add anything, but it doesn’t take anything away, so I guess the decision was easy; just put it on there and the fans can decide which version they prefer.
In addition to Ana, the band comprises Tomaž Lovšin (guitars), Bojan Kostanjšek (guitars), Matej Ravšelj (bass), Peter Smrdel (keys) and Žiga Ravšelj (drums) and they’re all good musicians. It’s easy to criticise bands like ShadowIcon but the music’s dramatic and dynamic; the drums thunder, the guitars scream, and the lyrics stand up to scrutiny pretty well. If you like your metal melodic and melodramatic, then you’ve come to the right place.
Out on March 16th.
Please tell me it hasn’t come round again already; drunks on public transport, pubs packed with once-a-year drinkers and a demand from MusicRiot to cobble something together for their inane end of year feature. Damn, Christmas again and I hate Christmas unless I can sack a widow on Christmas Eve. But wait, I can see a chink of gloom poking through the bright lights; it looks like John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revisited are opening legal hostilities again, so I think a festive five music lawsuits is about as much fun as I can hope for.
John Fogerty
The man in the lumberjack shirt and his CCR ex-buddies are kicking legal lumps out of each other again and nobody really knows what it’s all about, but there are plenty of lawyers involved and onstage pronouncements and press conferences and a whole flamin’ media circus. Just bear this in mind guys; whoever wins, all the lawyers get paid.
But that’s not the most interesting lawsuit John Fogerty has been involved in, oh no. He sold the rights to his songs to his former label Fantasy (headed by the infamous Saul Zaentz) to escape from label (don’t try that one at home boys and girls) and go solo. So, Mr Fogerty gets a bunch of songs together and releases the album “Centerfield”. Happy ending; not quite. The litigious Mr Zaentz sues on the grounds that the album’s opening song, “The Old Man down the Road” plagiarises a Creedence song, “Run Through the Jungle”, which Zaentz holds the copyright for. He wasn’t too chuffed about the song “Zanz Kant Danz” (later changed to “Vanz Kant Danz”) either. So what could be more stupid than suing someone (unsuccessfully) for copying their own song?
Neil Young
Well, David Geffen had a pretty good shot at it in 1983 with Neil Young when he sued him for not sounding like his previous records. After signing one of the most contrary artists in rock (or maybe just a guy who follows his own artistic vision), he decided, after three albums he didn’t like, to sue Shakey for submitting ‘uncharacteristic’ music for release. Maybe it was a bit of a coincidence that the albums weren’t selling. You have to wonder where David Geffen had been living during the seventies if he hadn’t realised that Neil Young didn’t give a stuff about following commercial trends. They eventually kissed and made up and Shakey went back to his spiritual home at Reprise records.
So that’s one case of a label suing an artist for sounding too much like themselves and another case of a label suing an artist for not sounding like themselves. Where else can the stupidity go? Well, back in time a decade or so.
George Harrison
After the Beatles, the quiet one was quickly out of the blocks with the triple album “All Things Must Pass” and the single “My Sweet Lord”. Three weeks after the release of the single, George was hit with a lawsuit alleging that the single plagiarised the Chiffons single, “He’s So Fine” (big in the US, not so big in the UK). It took five years for the case to come to court and George was found guilty of “subconscious plagiarism”, which cost him over half a million dollars. What you have to ask is how come no-on spotted this similarity? “All Things Must Pass” was co-produced by Phil Spector, who was very much part of the American teen scene in 1963 when “He’s So Fine” was a hit. It’s hard to believe he couldn’t spot such an obvious similarity. So, how many more ways could lawyers invent to make money out of the music business. How about “Where there’s blame there’s a claim”?
The Metal Suicides
Jumping back to the eighties again, in 1988 the parents of a teenage fan tried to accuse Ozzy Osbourne of causing the death of their son, claiming that hidden lyrics in “Suicide Solution” had caused their son to take his own life; the suit was dismissed but it didn’t mean that the suicide blame game was over. In 1990, Judas Priest were taken to court by the parents of two teenagers who, after a drugs and alcohol binge, attempted a suicide pact. It’s interesting that no-one was trying to sue any brewers, distillers or dealers for their part in the events. Just ask yourself again who benefitted from these legal cases; I’ll give you a clue, it wasn’t the parents or the bands. Ok, it’s Christmas, let’s try to end on a slightly happy note.
Spandau Ballet
It all started off so well; a bunch of school friends got together and formed a band in the seventies. The band caught the New Romantic zeitgeist with their first single in 1980 and everything was looking good; who needed lawyers and contracts? Well, in this case it might have been a good idea (I never said I had to be consistent) because any memories of verbal agreements vanished after the band became famous. In 1990, Tony Hadley, Steve Norman and John Keeble sued for a share of the booty, claiming that their contributions and a verbal agreement entitled them to a twelfth of the royalties. The case was dismissed and the non-Kemp Spandaus faced huge legal bills, but that wasn’t the end of the affair.
In 2009, the guys resolved their legal issues and got back together to tour again as Spandau Ballet; well, it is Christmas and we should have a happy ending really. There’s a lesson there as well; at this time of year, everyone goes to the pub and maybe that’s what the Spandaus and all of the other people mentioned here should have done. Forget all of the lawyers, go and have a few beers and sort all of your problems out.
Merry Xmas.
