In January 2018 it was announced that both The Beautiful South’s debut LP and Housemartins ‘London 0 Hull 4’ were to be reissued on vinyl. Classic albums both, but here at Real Gone we think that any Beautiful South deluxe edition CDs are long overdue. We’d like to take this opportunity to look at what might make up a box set of their 1996 best seller ‘Blue Is The Colour’.
***
John Peel – The Fall’s biggest and outspoken fan – famously claimed they were “always different, always the same”. In many ways, Peel was right. With each new Fall album, you could never guarantee you’d like all of the material; you couldn’t even guarantee you’d remember any of the material after the album finished, but through it all, there would be Mark E. Smith, founder and only constant member, gleefully bamboozling the listener with rambling, obtuse lyrics. A lyricist and performer like no other, Smith’s work balanced precariously between the utterly mundane and bizarre, humorous and spiteful. Such a one-off proposition that even imitators could never quite match his unique style.
Smith steered his artistic vision through forty years and over sixty members. Sometimes the addition of a new band member or even Smith’s current mood could change the sound and fortunes of a new Fall record. The Fall back catalogue is one of the most daunting of any band’s, comprising of thirty two studio albums, as many live albums and over forty compilations to date. Given that Smith himself cared nothing for quality control and released material at a frighteningly prolific rate and then expected fans to work at reaping their own musical reward, finding the genuinely brilliant material within The Fall’s oeuvre can be like panning for gold, especially for newer listeners.
Here is Real Gone’s guide to The Fall essentials!
***
As we head into a new year at Real Gone, we’re committed to our ongoing voyage of musical discovery…and we really hope you’ll join us for the ride. Our inbox is bulging with new promos and we’re ready to share our opinions with you all.
Before we set off, though, here’s a quick look forward. There will be a lot of musicians either coming up through the ranks or making their first important musical statements throughout ’18 and – as always – we’ll do our very best to champion some of the more interesting but, in the meantime, here are our five picks most hotly tipped to either make the leap to bigger things or release favourite tracks. Continue reading
As always, it’s been an interesting year for music, but unlike a few previous years, there have been no clear winners or stand-outs. There has been a lot of great music, of course…and this year, we’ve found it very hard to pick favourites.
Our top ten albums, as always, has been restricted to things that actually got reviewed at Real Gone and very much represent our broad musical scope. Hopefully, a couple of our choices will align with yours, but more importantly, we hope our top picks will open your ears to something new.
A yearly tradition, the Real Gone Sampler is one of the most popular things in our calendar. In previous years, we’ve given away great music by Kurt Baker, The 1957 Tail Fin Fiasco and Black Moth. Every year, the project rounds up the very best in DIY acts and aims to get great music out to a new audience.
On occasion, we’ve even been lucky enough to give you two end of year samplers. This year, the download is only one disc long, but we bring you over seventy minutes of underground sounds. We’ve got dream pop, shoegaze, roots rock, garage rock, singer songwriters and a whole bunch more. It could just be the best Real Gone freebie to date.
As always, reviews for each album can be found behind the band name links.
Sleeve art designed by Elena Barrio.