They’ve been away for a while, but Chilean shoegaze sensations MAFF are back with a new EP ‘Melañiña’, which releases in April.
Before the full release, you can check out two of the new songs on Soundcloud, including the new digital single ‘Hawaii’, which absolutely destroys by a way of a heavy and pulsing bass, before the whole track explodes into a world of 90s distortion culling the very best from Catherine Wheel and My Bloody Valentine.
There were rumours flying last year that the original and classic line up of The Smashing Pumpkins were getting back together. The rumours were fuelled by Billy Corgan himself who hinted at doing something with old and familiar faces.
It has finally been announced that Corgan, along with guitarist James Iha and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin will tour the US this summer. It’s promised to be a show “unlike any [the band] have ever done”, according to Corgan, with material culled from the band’s first five albums.
Male/female dreampop duo The Desert started to make waves in 2017 and seem set to continue their rise in popularity during 2018.
They’ve just released a no-frills new video shot in their hometown of Bristol, which acts as a great downbeat visual aid for their single ‘Half-Hearted’. The full video can be streamed below.
This Minneapolis based garage rock band is entirely unpretentious. At no point do these musicians stretch too far beyond their garage-ish musical limits – limits that are occasionally just a little too obvious – nor do they display any kind of ego. By their own admission, J. Eastman & The Drunk Uncles are rather shambolic. Still, a fairly loose and carefree attitude has got them so far and this third release works very much on a maxim of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Or in the case of the Uncles, it might even be “if it sounds a bit broke, let’s swill some booze and knock things about until they sound better.”
True to their word, bits of ‘No Capo Required’ do indeed sound sloppy. That said, you’ll have heard sloppier…and sometimes from bands who actually genuinely believe they’re the very acme of musical perfection.
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!
***