Feature: Vic Chesnutt (The Quietus)

I was lucky enough to meet Vic Chesnutt more than once, and the world is a far poorer place for his passing. A couple of months before he took his life, I phoned him at home and found "a man who, throughout an hour-long conversation, veers dramatically between self-loathing and justifiable confidence, despair and wonder". The feature can be read on The Quietus:
http://thequietus.com/articles/02982-vic-chesnutt-interview-at-the-cut-skitter-on-take-off

Listen to one of the album's highlights here:

Feature: Vic Chesnutt (The Quietus)

Live Review: Them Crooked Vultures (The Quietus)

Take three alleged 'legends' and stick 'em on a stage. A packed crowd of Berliners loses their legendary cool, but there's something missing. "These guys can rock, but they're perhaps not so big on writing."

My full review is available here: http://thequietus.com/articles/03418-them-crooked-vultures-live-in-berlin-what-a-carrion

Live Review: Them Crooked Vultures (The Quietus)

Artwork for Cortney Tidwell

Cortney Tidwell's latest album is called 'Boys', and for the artwork we wanted to use some of the photographs that I have taken of her and her kids over the last couple of years. Canada's The Cardboard Box Project were drafted in as designers, and what they were able to do made me very proud indeed. Here's the front cover for the album:

The first single was 'Watusii':

 

This was followed by the release of 'So We Sing':

 

The 'Boys' done good...

Artwork for Cortney Tidwell

Feature: Yello (The Quietus)

What happens if you take one aristocratic, entrepreneurial, golf-playing, restaurant-owning, prankster artist and put him in a room with an obsessive compulsive, sound obsessed, blind-in-one-eye studio boffin? You get Yello. I met up with Dieter Meier at the premiere of Yello's 'The Virtual Concert', "a combination of James Bond, Blade Runner and Laurel & Hardy". Read the interview here: http://thequietus.com/articles/03367-yello-dieter-meier-interview-touch

See further evidence of Swiss cheese here:

Feature: Yello (The Quietus)

Album review: The Antlers - Hospice (Uncut)

4/5

Life after death in New York

If the subject of terminal illness and lines like “Sylvia, get your head out of the oven” seem unappealing then Hospice might appear an unlikely candidate for praise. But Brooklyn-based Peter Silberman’s first work with a band is a remarkable, lyrically dense album full of delicately executed crescendos, unexpected anthems and passages of ambient beauty. ‘Bear’ recalls Loney, Dear’s breathless sensitivity, while ‘Two’ tells a multicoloured shaggy dog story of a disintegrating relationship and death. Best is ‘Sylvia’, where Bon Iver’s intimacy, Arcade Fire’s ambition, Sigur Ros’ otherworldly reach and Flaming Lips’ psychedelic experimentalism collide.

Album review: The Antlers - Hospice (Uncut)

Album Review: Betty Davis - Nasty Gal / Is It Love Or Desire (Uncut)

4/5
Third and fourth mid-70s albums from the filthy queen of funk

Until recently best known for romantic liaisons with Miles Davis (who she married), Eric Clapton and Robert Palmer, Betty Davis is arguably history’s most influential unrecognised funk / soul artist. Such was her defiantly sexual and powerful persona that it overwhelmed the music – Is It Love Or Desire was shelved by Island for over thirty years, no doubt for songs like ‘Whorey Angel’ and ‘It’s So Good’, where she moans “Any questions you got, my body will answer”. As funky as Funkadelic, these lovingly assembled reissues offer a rich, occasionally over-spiced stew that demands long overdue attention.

Album Review: Betty Davis - Nasty Gal / Is It Love Or Desire (Uncut)

Album Review: Various Artists - D-Funk: Funk, Disco & Boogie Grooves from Germany 1972-2002 (Uncut)

 
3/5
Everybody Tanz now: Germans always knew how to party

If all Boney M means to you is ‘Mary’s Boy Child’ then this latest in Marina Records’ ongoing attempt to reclaim Germany’s musical past is a must. ‘Dancing In The Streets’, previously buried on its flipside, is a slick blast of anthemic funk, and it’s matched here by a mass of similarly styled teutonic discoveries. The fabulously named Cheeseslider’s ‘Sweatmajor’ sports forgivable slap bass, The Poets Of Rhythm get down and dirty, and Fehlfarben’s playfully epic ’14 Tage’ steals shamelessly from Chic. Even James Last gets in on the action with a funked up ‘Bolero ‘75’. Geil!

Album Review: Various Artists - D-Funk: Funk, Disco & Boogie Grooves from Germany 1972-2002 (Uncut)