In 2015, singer songwriter and power pop champion Kurt Baker capitalised on his escalating popularity in Europe by teaming up with a bunch of Spanish garage rock and bar band heroes…and Bullet Proof Lovers was born. Not so much out of necessity, but from fun, and the resulting mini-album (which had a belated US release in 2016) saw Baker tackling some of his punkiest tendencies since his days with The Leftovers.
Category Archives: Album & EP Reviews
MILES READ & THE TRIP – Ofertas EP
Miles Read is a blues oriented singer songwriter from sunny San Francisco. With his band The Trip, he exhibits a broad spectrum of talents on his 2017 release and the six tracks on ‘Ofertas’ are steeped in tradition. In just over half an hour, Read explores various types of blues, a little Americana and sometimes even a deep and spooky sound that echoes the both the heartbreak of UK performer Charlotte Carpenter and the moodier aspects of Old House Playground warming up. Right from first listen, this release asserts itself as a fantastic one.
BLACK INITIALS – EP
Ramsgate is a seaside town in east Kent, once famous for the docks, its hovercraft trips and a town horse. It still boasts an impressive harbour, but often gets overlooked in favour of Margate – its arguably more famous brother – situated just along the coast. Ramsgate also home to alt-rock two-piece Black Initials, a band whom bring a mixture of garage based sounds on their debut EP. Continue reading
ALWAYS SICK – Telephone EP
Russia’s Always Sick are another band joining the onslaught of punkers either channelling classic Ramones or ‘39/Smooth’ era Green Day for their primary influences. Ranging from the almost piss-takingly good (Riverdales, Tough) to the flat out awful, there’s a world’s worth of acts channelling the same four chords to make their punky mark. So many, in fact, there are now too many to even count, so it’s unsurprising when many slip by unnoticed.
STYX – The Serpent Is Rising
The first Styx album (self-titled, 1972) is an overlooked slab of pomp rock. It’s not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but any band wishing to open their debut long player with a thirteen minute epic fusing hard rock with flourishes of Aaron Copland and what sounds like a conversation with a New York cabbie must have something, right? With that track, ‘Movement For The Common Man’, Styx announced their arrival in a typically grand style. The rest of the album, while nowhere near as complete sounding as 1977’s ‘Grand Illusion’ or as obviously song oriented as any of the albums from then onward, still makes for interesting listening decades after its original release. 1973’s ‘Styx II’, by contrast, is a more sedate affair – sedate in the world of early Styx means still very much still pompous and overblown – but, naturally, a bigger input from vocalist/pianist Dennis DeYoung, brought with it a much stronger element of musical theatre.
With these two records as a solid grounding, the band went all out for their next long player ‘The Serpent Is Rising’. Released in October 1973 – the third Styx LP to hit the shelves in just eighteen months – it has to be said, it has less of a focus than its predecessors. It doesn’t sound as if Styx had been tempted to use up leftover material though, rather more that this time out, the gloves were truly off. Coming from the days when bands were allowed to spend record company money (no matter how meagre a budget) while still very much on a learning curve, it sounds as if Styx intended to throw everything at this recording bar the kitchen sink to find out, once and for all, what styles worked for them…and which ones really didn’t.