Welcome back to the Real Gone Singles Bar, the place where we explore some of the individual mp3s that have landed in our inbox over the previous few weeks. As always, the amount of submissions has been staggering, and we’ve cherry picked some of our favourite tracks for your enjoyment. This time around, we’ve got a soundtrack worthy tune, some top notch power pop, a fine tribute to a Boston heroine, and more besides. We hope you find something to enjoy!
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Carla Olson has had a long and varied career. In the late 70s she was a member of new wave band The Textones with future Go-Go’s bassist Kathy Valentine; in the 80s, she recorded an album with Byrds legend Gene Parsons, and also co-wrote ‘Trail of Tears’, a track from guitarist Eric Johnson’s breakthrough album ‘Tones’. At the turn of the 90s, she recorded solo albums and played live with Rolling Stone Mick Taylor. Into the twenty first century, her on/off career went into overdrive as she continued recording as a solo artist, but also became a renowned producer. Those are just a few potted highlights from across several decades, but it’s fair to say there’s far more to Olson than an easy tag of “country singer”.
In 2016, Robert Rex Waller released his solo debut ‘Fancy Free’. On that record, the sometime collaborator with I See Hawks In L.A. put his own stamp on a well curated selection of cover tunes, often with mixed results. Great versions of Neil Young’s often overlooked ‘Albuquerque’ and Dylan’s ‘She Belongs To Me’ gave the album an easily approachable core, whilst a drastically reworked version of The Doors’ ‘Crystal Ship’ showed how Waller was unafraid of rebuilding material from the ground up. Even when the material that wasn’t quite as interesting, showed off a man with a rich voice. The album certainly could have done without the misjudged version of ‘Waterloo Sunset’, but the good often outweighed the bad.
Since Pink Floyd’s uneasy reunion at Live 8, Roger Waters has spent far too much time rubbing people up the wrong way. He isn’t shy in spouting angry political opinions via a webcam for the whole internet’s benefit, or offering other pointed opinions, even if they weren’t asked for. Following the release of the rather dull ‘Is This The Life We Really Want?’ – an album where the best arrangements seemed indistinguishable from lazy rehashes from a Waters past – his live shows became increasingly like political rallies with some songs thrown in. He’s spoken publicly many times about the war in Ukraine, siding with the Russians. He’s attacked British politicians, even stooping as low as to use disability hate speech against one MP. He was always a curmudgeon but, in 2023, the 80 year old ex-Pink Floyd bassist finally reached the point of being intolerable.
A year on from her unsympathetic reworking of Bowie’s ‘Loving The Alien’, Stella Wembley’s ‘Wasting My Time’ brings the listener more detached post-goth/electronica that listeners will either love or hate. Stella has rarely approached her music in the most user-friendly way – which can be a good thing – and here, her love of rigid rhythms and reverbed vocals goes into overdrive. The track’s blend of robotic beats and strange synth tones sets up something that could loosely be described as goth-disco, like an old Mute Records track remixed by Georgio Moroder, but once you make it past the confronting coldness, there’s something weirdly appealing. The way Wembley shifts between strange croons and stylised yelps just accentuates any surface oddness, whilst the cold music and wantonly mechanical rhythm harks back to an alternative (early) 80s in the best possible way. Yes, this number is likely to be divisive, but at least it makes a definite impression.