Table of contents for November 2025 in MOJO

Barrie Wentzell Described by Yes/King Crimson drummer Bill Bruford as the Francis Wolff of Britain’s rock scene, Barrie shot for Melody Maker, Disc & Music Echo, among other publications. Amazing photographs from his book Should’ve Been There… are featured from p34. Born in County Durham, he lives in Toronto. Chris Catchpole Chris (left!) is MOJO’s Digital Editor and has been a contributor since he first wandered into the offices as an over-enthusiastic teaboy in the early 2000s. This month, he spoke to Tim Burgess for the MOJO Interview (see p28), an inquisition so thorough The Charlatans’ frontman admitted to needing a lie down afterwards. The Red Dress The Red Dress is a London-based Illustration duo, Olivia Chancellor and Ollie Bland. This husband and wife team met studying Graphic Design and…

MOJO welcomes correspondence for publication. Write to us at: MOJO, H Bauer Publishing, The Lantern, 75 Hampstead Road, London, NW1 2PL. E-mail to: mojoreaders@bauermedia.co.uk DID BOB DYLAN REALLY MEET PETE SEEGER at Woody Guthrie’s bedside, and sleep on his couch? Was Albert Grossman his first manager, not Terri Thal? Are we entirely sure that an audience member shouted “Judas!” at Dylan during his Newport Folk Festival set in 1965? For some of us, it was hard to watch A Complete Unknown without a residual weight of Dylanology complicating the experience. A good film, for sure, but one where the narrative arc sometimes took precedence over the details of what actually happened. Does it matter? Maybe not, and of course Blind Boy Grunt has hardly been averse to the odd fabrication himself…

…in early August BOB DYLAN (right) and band spent two days at White Lake Studios in Colonie, New York. “We want every artist and guest to feel relaxed and at home,” said studio boss David Bourgeois. “This visit was truly special.” Details of what went down were not disclosed …YOUTH is recording “beautiful ambient textures and music” with his Chant Ambient project, with help from Brian Eno, Matt Black from Coldcut, Mixmaster Morris and more. Expect it next year …speaking to the Vinyl Guide podcast, DESCENDENTS’ Bill Stevenson said, “we have to put a record out next year or I’m gonna blow my brains out… we already have like, 25 songs recorded” …“the final new studio album from MINISTRY” is promised for next year. It will see Al Jourgensen reunite…

IT IS A SUMMER OF REUNIONS FOR THE GOLDEN generation of Britpop and Tim Burgess, still uncannily youthful at 58, has just been to see Oasis play in Manchester’s Heaton Park. Burgess’s band The Charlatans have ties with Oasis that go way back: they supported the Gallagher brothers at Knebworth Park in 1996, and guitarist Mark Collins even sat next to his Oasis counterpart Bonehead at school. The Charlatans, though, have negotiated the last few decades differently to the likes of Oasis and Pulp. Formed in the West Midlands in 1988, not only have Burgess’s band stuck together, they’ve done so in the face of setbacks and tragedies that would’ve torpedoed other bands multiple times over. Perhaps, MOJO wonders half-jokingly, The Charlatans missed a trick by not splitting up and…

TO HIS evident dismay, Dylan was still being quizzed about protest songs during his European tour in 1966, three years after he had finished writing them and one year after the last of them had fallen out of his live shows. “All my songs are protest songs,” he shot back during a press conference in London. “Every single one of them. All I do is protest.” Perhaps this was not merely exasperated sarcasm. It was possible to read a great deal into his impressionistic denunciations of anything that stood in the way of personal freedom. Pete Seeger reportedly considered Maggie’s Farm to have a solid anti-capitalist message, the far-left militants of Students For A Democratic Society – AKA Weatherman – took their name from Subterranean Homesick Blues, and It’s Alright,…

Emma Pollock Begging The Night To Take Hold CHEMIKAL UNDERGROUND. CD/DL/LP IT’S BEEN nine years since Emma Pollock released In Search Of Harperfield, her third solo album after Glaswegian indie heroes The Delgados disbanded in 2005. While fans of her quietly unpredictable songwriting might find that an undesirable gap, it makes sense that Begging The Night To Take Hold should have taken so long to hatch: these songs are very much about life, and what happens when it gets in the way. Her last record was shaped by the death of her mother and subsequent complicated stock-taking; this time, tectonic shifts included the loss of her father, the 2023 live re-formation of The Delgados, and a diagnosis of autism. Pollock’s gift is to turn that turbulence into these measured, nuanced…

Cut & Rewind DRINK SUM WTR. CD/DL/LP Third album of politically-charged disco from NYC trio. IF THIS record has a significant flaw, it’s that it’s being released in autumn, depriving this summer of a natural soundtrack. Like its predecessors -2022’s Prism, 2023’s Silver – Cut & Rewind is luxe modern disco, Nya Gazelle Brown, Sabrina Cunningham and Piya Malik’s satiny vocals lightly snagged by the sharpest hooks and harmonies. Shop Boy’s Sharevari-synths and ESG grooves should ensure a live Neil Tennant guest spot at some point in the future, while Under The Sun’s iridescent soap-bubble swirl conceals a defiant message in its easy listening reverie. There’s a polished political edge to Cut & Rewind, She Who Dares tackling the erosion of women’s rights, Disco Life recalling the 1979 “Disco Demolition”…

Patti Smith Horses: 50th Anniversary Edition SONY LEGACY. CD/LP ON FEBRUARY 3, 1975, ex-Animals singer Eric Burdon headlined two shows at the Main Point, a 250-seater coffeehouse in Bryn Mawr, a Philadelphia suburb. The opening act was singer-poet Patti Smith, making her first hometown appearance (she partly grew up in the city) after a year of New York nights with guitarist Lenny Kaye and pianist Richard Sohl and a 45 of primal blues and incantation, Hey Joe/Piss Factory, released at the end of ’74. Smith was also showing off a combo with more groove and boom; bassist Ivan Kral joined four days earlier. I was there as the Main Point’s PR guy and keen to see what I had wrought after urging my boss to book Smith for the gig…

The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway – 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition RHINO. CD/LP British art-rockers’ barmy, sometimes brilliant, double album revisited. THIS DELUXE box set has been gestating for so long that it missed the actual anniversary. Genesis’s 1974 album was vocalist Peter Gabriel’s swansong, and he and keyboard player/schoolfriend Tony Banks have overseen this new mix (hence the delay, perhaps). It’s a stunningly polished new take on their heavy concept album (Pilgrim’s Progress meets West Side Story with a soupçon of Jungian psychodrama, apparently, but even Gabriel isn’t sure). There’s some dead wood, but its finest moments – Broadway Melody Of 1974, The Carpet Crawlers and Silent Sorrow In Empty Boats – transcend prog rock excess for glimpses of the future Genesis’s slick pop-rock and Gabriel’s odder solo…

Z ATO. CD/DL/LP Lush 20th-anniversary reissue for MMJ’s grief-stricken but life-affirming fourth LP MY MORNING Jacket entered their fourth album – and major-label debut – in a fugue state. The exit of guitarist Johnny Quaid and keysman Danny Cash a year earlier had shaken their foundations, while frontman Jim James was struggling with critics pigeonholing them as ‘classic rock’ – and, more profoundly, the recent suicides of two close friends. It speaks to this group’s alchemical magic, then, that from such heartache they wrought this sublime, life-affirming masterpiece, steeped in loss but so joyful and uplifting. Its numerous peaks – the tenderly psychedelic It Beats 4 U, the Morricone skank of Off The Record, the luminous, Floydian mourn of Dondante – have lost none of their magic, masterfully navigating turbulent…

Action Records Head to Preston, where vinyl treasures and a warm welcome are assured. Writes Ian Spence, “I’ve been buying from there for over 35 years. Staff knowledge and service is second to none. Like a big family.” Action Records began on a market stall in Blackpool in 1979 before assuming its bricks-and-mortar form in Preston in 1981. At the wheel is founder Gordon Gibson, who found his spot when hitching to the Lincoln Folk Festival in 1971 from Scotland. Action stocks 75 per cent new releases, but, says Gordon, “I love doing second-hand too. We’re all over the place – metal, hip-hop, indie, Prince, Grateful Dead, Oasis… we just sell a real good cross-section of good music for all tastes, and we want to appeal to people without being…

I was unaware that Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road was based on a sample of the Nine Inch Nails song 34 Ghosts IV. This made me think of other surprising sample records, like The Orb’s Little Fluffy Clouds using Steve Reich, Rickie Lee Jones and Ennio Morricone. Who else borrowed weird and incongruous bits of other people’s records? Andrew Marsh, via e-mail MOJO says: Unexpected samples that protrude, eh? In no rational order, and aware that context is all, AC/DC fans hearing LL Cool J’s Rock The Bells back in ’85 would have immediately recognised Angus Young’s guitar sound from Flick Of The Switch being scratched. Staying with hip-hop, Kanye West got in trouble for lifting King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man on 2010’s Power, while Jay-Z’s use of…

CASE’S HIGH Five Neko faves. 6.7.8’s Motorcycle Go-Go-Go! (TOKYO STIFF, 1989) THE PAST YEAR has been busy for Neko Case, with 2025 bookended by a pair of major projects from the acclaimed dark Americana singer and songwriter. In January, she published her first book, the New York Times bestseller, The Harder I Fight The More I Love You: A Memoir. And this fall, Case will release Neon Grey Midnight Green, her first album in seven years. Her ninth studio LP -since launching her solo career in 1997 with The Virginian – is a self-produced affair cut largely at Case’s own studio in Vermont. In addition, she’s wrapping up work on a forthcoming Thelma & Louise stage production, having been tapped by screenwriter and Academy Award-winner Callie Khouri to help adapt…

1 Born lippy: the five-year-old Tim Burgess at his uncle Norman’s house in Swinton, 1972. 2 Full colour: The Charlatans in 1989 put newly-joined singer Burgess in the spotlight. 3 Baggy front: Burgess gives double maracas on-stage in Warrington, 1990. 4 Team spirit: The Charlatans backstage at Reading Festival, 1992 (from left) Mark Collins, Rob Collins, Burgess, Jon Brookes, Martin Blunt. 5 What’s the story?: Tim Burgess with Mark Collins and Noel Gallagher backstage at Knebworth Park, August 11, 1996. 6 One to another: Burgess pays tribute to the late Rob Collins, 1996. 7 Bowled over: Burgess at the Q Awards, October 22, 2014, where The Charlatans were honoured in the Hero category. 8 It’s only rock’n’roll: Burgess enjoys a warm moment with Ronnie Wood at the Hero 2 Hero…

THE FIRST TIME JEFF PARKER SAW TORTOISE, AT CHICAGO’S NEWLY OPENED Empty Bottle in the early ’90s, he was stunned by the silence. Not, of course, on-stage: with their two drum kits and dual basses, Tortoise offered something the guitarist had never heard before. Their regimented rhythms harnessed dub reggae’s magic but crystallised it in warped rock terms. No, it was the rapt crowd that fascinated Parker, how everyone seemed to be absorbing every note. They were noticing, Parker reckons, the same thing he did: new ideas. “It sounded punky, but not in an aggressive way,” Parker tells MOJO today. “It sounded experimental. Actually, when I heard them, I heard possibilities. I thought, You guys are looking at things in a different way, aren’t you? It was powerful, in a…

“I PLAYED all the folk songs with a rock’n’roll attitude,” Dylan told Cameron Crowe in 1985. “This is what made me different and allowed me to cut through all the mess and be heard.” True enough, but at the time Dylan went out of his way to avoid talking about the flamboyant teenage greaser from Minnesota whose ambition in his high-school yearbook was “to join Little Richard”. Looking back, Dylan related his adolescent obsession to the looming spectre of nuclear war, framing it as a protest against death: “Rock’n’roll made you oblivious to the fear.” More prosaically, it was thrillingly new, all wrapped up with girls, motorbikes and getting out of Hibbing. On Christmas Eve 1956, 15-year-old Bobby Zimmerman walked into a booth in a music shop in St Paul,…

Jeff Tweedy Twilight Override DBPM. CD/DL/LP BEING A DRIVEN and prolific writer, making records since the early 1990s, Jeff Tweedy has on occasion enjoyed a song splurge. The Wilco frontman and bandleader is already responsible for no less than three double albums – ’96’s sweeping twin-disc statement Being There, 2022’s genre-corrupting Cruel Country, and 2014’s Sukierae, his literal dadrock LP with son Spencer on drums. Even so, a triple album is quite the stretch, Twilight Override boldly joining the exalted/dubious company of All Things Must Pass, Sandinista!, Prince’s Emancipation and, more recently, Joanna Newsom’s Have One On Me (2010) and Kamasi Washington’s The Epic (2015). Especially in this age of ever-lowering boredom thresholds, it’s a decidedly chin-first artistic statement. But, weirdly, given Wilco’s standing as the American art rock equivalent…

Nobody’s Girl ATO. CD/DL/LP Grammy winner’s eighth solo album, her first post-divorce. JOINING THE Texas Playboys at 15, Amanda Shires has been at the musical coalface for almost 30 years. Yet the last couple of years saw her father and grandmother die, and a divorce from fellow singer-songwriter Jason Isbell. Pain oozes out of every pore of Nobody’s Girl, not least on the tellingly titled The Details, where she snarls with restrained bitterness, “no matter how clear I keep the memories, you rewrite them so you can sleep”; on Lately, where she listens to Billy Joel’s The Stranger album for emotional salvation; or on Not Feeling Anything where she declares, “I don’t care if nobody wants me ever again.” It’s a strange, intense collection with barely a whiff of the…

Benedicte Maurseth Mirra HUBRO. CD/DL/LP Deer diary: Hardanger ace runs with the caribou. Stalking that sexy hinterland between trad folk, musique concrète and ECM aromatherapy jazz, Norwegian fiddler Benedicte Maurseth won a Nordic Music Prize for 2022’s Hárr -a magical nature walk through her native Hardangervidda plateau. A sequel of sorts, Mirra is a wordless musical exploration of that landscape from the viewpoint of the native reindeer. Those who know The Residents’ hokey concept album Eskimo may raise a weary eyebrow, but Mirra (a local dialect word describing how reindeer circle for warmth and to ward off predators) feels chillingly soulful, clacking antlers and reindeer grunts giving way to head shop mood music (Sommarbeite), elegiac sawing noises (Nysnø over reinlav) and snowy reverie (Simleflokk under månen). Fans of Robert Wyatt’s…

Dallas Burrow The Way The West Was Won 40 BELOW. CD/DL/LP Eight new songs from Texas cowboy-poet. Burrows keeps impressive company. The producer of his new album is Lloyd Maines, Texas country music royalty, an inductee into no end of country music halls of fame whose CV includes Guy Clark, Terry Allen, Wilco, and the Dixie Chicks. The guest artists are impressive too – Jim Lauderdale, Kelly Willis, and Ray Wylie Hubbard. The last of these, a favourite of this column, joins Burrow on the album’s opening track Read ’Em And Weep, a gambling song that’s so good you’ll want to stick around and listen to the rest of the record. In style it ranges from storytelling cowboy songs (The Way The West Was Won; Tornado) to gentle folk (Colorado…

Buckingham Nicks Buckingham Nicks RHINO. CD/DL/LP “IT WAS just a one-off moment,” Stevie Nicks recalled of her and Lindsey Buckingham’s duet on The Mamas & The Papas’ California Dreamin’ at a San Francisco Christian youth party in 1966. Two years later she’d joined the Fritz Rabyne Memorial Band, Buckingham’s psychedelic rock act. The pair weren’t yet an item, but support slots with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin seeded their romance with rock’s mythos. “I would stroll through San José State University with my guitar, thinking, Does everybody know who I am? Because I’m a rock star,” Nicks told this writer in 2013. “I felt it and really believed it.” Despite the best efforts of Fritz’s manager David Forrester, no record deal was forthcoming. It was Keith Olsen, already a producer…

GUITARIST BRENT HINDS (below, b.1974) helped found Atlanta metallers Mastodon in 2000. With their second LP Leviathan (2004), a concept set based on Moby Dick, the band became heavy rock trailblazers in the new century, folding prog and avant-garde influences into their imposing sound. They released eight LPs, up to Hushed And Grim (2021), before Hinds departed acrimoniously in March this year. PUNK CAMPAIGNER JOCK McDONALD (b.1956) formed 4” Be 2” in 1979 with John Lydon’s brother Jimmy, and recorded two singles with Youth of Killing Joke and Lydon senior. The band then mutated into The Bollock Brothers, becoming known for their religion-preoccupied LPs, eccentric covers and getting Michael Fagan, who invaded Queen Elizabeth II’s bed chamber in 1982, to appear on their 1983 synth-rock cover of the Pistols’ Never…

Fred Armisen COMIC, ACTOR, PUNK DRUMMER What music are you currently grooving to? Atlas, Real Estate. I’ve been playing this album all the way through a lot recently. Particularly on my iPod on flights. It feels like being in a dream or something. I love the guitars. What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? Ram, Paul & Linda McCartney. There are other albums that are strong contenders: Sandinista!, The Hot Rock, Strawberries. Whenever a song from Ram comes up, I sometimes say to myself out loud (quietly): “Oh, this is the best album ever.” What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it? Eat To The Beat, Blondie, from Korvette’s at Green Acres Mall. Korvette’s was a department store and they…

FACT SHEET Title: Danceteria Date: 2026 Production: Soft Cell, Philip Larsen Songs: TBC The Buzz: “The idea is roughly around when we were going to that club in New York, who we were seeing, what we were up to, and what was going on, but obviously, Marc’s lyric writing has matured and he’s writing from his real point of view now. And I’m definitely finding new tricks – you get better at what you’re doing.” Dave Ball SOFT CELL’s 2022 reunion album, Happiness Not Included, was a UK Top 10 hit but, like many groups of their vintage, they’re also curating the legacy. An expanded version of pioneering remix mini-LP Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing came out in June: recorded at New York’s Mediasound studio in cold February 1982, it was notoriously made under the influence of…

I WAS SENT from Venezuela to boarding school in Dulwich. My best friend was a guy called Bill MacCormick. He wasn’t a boarder like me, and every day on the way home he would pop into Robert Wyatt’s house where he lived with his mum and Soft Machine would be rehearsing in the front room [MacCormick and Wyatt’s mothers worked together]. This was when everything was kicking off in London. You’d be reading the International Times about the Roundhouse gigs with Pink Floyd and The Soft Machine -they were the hippest bands in London. It was a vicarious line for me via Bill to someone who was famous and in a band. We were obsessed with everything they did. There’s something particularly British about this LP. Robert is listed as…

Spain The Blue Moods Of Spain (RESTLESS, 1995) A defining statement of slowcore, Spain’s signature LP is an aching, lovelorn masterpiece. Desolate yet warm, it’s an hour-long voyage into torch song, jazz and blues. Rick Rubin bought 30 copies to give away. Josh Haden Devoted (DIAMOND SOUL, 2007) Guided by hip-hop savant Dan The Automator, Haden’s solo album hit the reset button. The mood remained blue and arrangements spare while trying on soul, trip-hop, even reggae, while his melodic songwriting held steady. Spain Mandala Brush (GLITTERHOUSE, 2018) 2012’s The Soul Of Spain featured his sisters The Haden Triplets and expanded Haden’s gritty rootsiness. This most recent album took things higher and deeper. Think miasmic jazz, burnished blue soul, North African and Latin fusion, and, inspired by an ocean liner-shaped hotel,…

1 NEIL YOUNG BIG CRIME Young’s summer tour has been full of rabble-rousing deep cuts, but in Chicago he unveiled a molten new country-rocker with unambiguous clout: “Got to get the fascists out!” Find it: neilyoungarchives.com 2 BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN LONELY NIGHT IN THE PARK Punchy Jersey Shore elegy, mystifyingly left off Born To Run but released, finally, to mark the album’s 50th anniversary. Find it: streaming services 3 EDEN GRAY & CORNERSHOP AMSTERDAM VIA ROTTERDAM Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayres break cover, in the company of singer and ethical AI expert Eden Gray, for a catchy, sneakily moving reflection on ageing. Find it: streaming services 4 MAVIS STAPLES BEAUTIFUL STRANGERS Staples’ knack for making classic soul out of contemporary rock on show again, as she adds gentle gospel heft to a Kevin Morby nugget.…

THE BRITPOP STONES! The Charlatans The Charlatans (BEGGARS BANQUET, 1995) 1994’s Up To Our Hips had realigned The Charlatans into Britpop’s mainstream, and with Burgess and guitarist Mark Collins taking the tiller, the band’s self-titled fourth album gave them their second Number 1. The pair’s homages to Mick, Keef and Gram on the likes of Just When You’re Thinkin’ Things Over and Tell Everyone brought a country soul looseness that’s weathered far better than many other LPs from the era. THE LA MADNESS ALBUM! The Charlatans Wonderland (UNIVERSAL, 2001) At a point where many of their contemporaries were slipping into Dadrock drudgery, The Charlatans pulled the most unexpected move of their career. Gorging on Curtis Mayfield – amongst other things – producer Danny Saber helped them pull together a mélange…

TORTOISE Millions Now Living Will Never Die (Thrill Jockey/City Slang, 1996) An epiphanic record: intricate, imaginative, influential. Opener Djed is a 20-minute fantasia of mutated drums and sculpted static, while Dear Grandma And Grandpa uses samples and synths to conjure an eerie sunset and The Taut And Tame is a masterclass in tension and release. TORTOISE TNT (Thrill Jockey/City Slang, 1998) Temporarily a two-guitarist band with Jeff Parker joining Slint’s David Pajo, Tortoise seemed capable of anything. The electronic Tropicália of The Equator, the minimal techno of Jetty, the Steve Reich-indebted repetition of Ten-Day Interval: none of it feels dogmatic or forced but, instead, like an ensemble enthused by every muse. TORTOISE It’s All Around You (Thrill Jockey, 2004) Wrongly maligned upon release, Tortoise’s fifth LP was a testament to growth, its arrangements…

DAVID BYRNE WAS STILL IN THE middle of his greatest success since his old band, Talking Heads, broke up in 1991 – a five-year touring run with American Utopia, a sensory feast of new songs and freshly arranged Talking Heads hits performed with a wireless, perpetually dancing band – when he decided the end was near. “I didn’t think it was getting stale,” says Byrne, ensconced in a stark workroom at the back of his office in midtown Manhattan. “But I didn’t want to be the guy who just does that show, recognised for one thing, like Hal Holbrook,” referring to the American actor who portrayed author Mark Twain on-stage for 60 years. “I thought, It feels good, but it’s time to pull the plug and start thinking about what…

I WAS FOUR years old when I saw Rocky Horror at the Essoldo, and they let me sit up in the balcony and control the lights at the end. The cast came out in clear plastic masks, so you couldn’t quite see their faces, and led everyone to their seats. There was a real sense of dread and scariness because it wasn’t normal. As Jim Sharman says in the movie, this was immersive theatre before there was such a thing. I started the documentary in May 2022, and once my dad knew there was a professional crew behind it he was on board. I knew that there was a story here about the fans, the midnight screenings, the effect on the LGBTQ community, alongside my dad’s personal journey. Here was…

AFTER ROBERT Shelton’s seismic New York Times review, Dylan’s next press appearance was in a syndicated newspaper gift guide for Christmas 1961, quoted as “noted harmonica virtuoso Bob Dylan”. Virtuoso is not the word most people would have used. Like his singing and guitar playing, his harmonica playing was loud, abrasive and not to everybody’s taste. “Most of the time, I would blow on the harmonica because everybody sucks in,” he once explained, citing blues star Jimmy Reed and Woody Guthrie sideman Sonny Terry as inspirations for his hectic, agitated style. At college, Dylan’s playing was actively repellent. His ex-girlfriend Bonnie Beecher recalled that when he played at her sorority house, her friends would say, “Uurgh! Who is this geek?” Even in Greenwich Village, some contemporaries thought that it was…

This album feels very close to the real Evan Dando: up and down, dark and light, funny and melancholy… “Automatic poetry. [My wife] Antonia’s dad [Brazilian singer-songwriter Renato Teixeira] does that on his albums and I guess I picked up on a little of that. I can’t believe how well the album came out. It’s got quiet bits, loud bits, some riffs… I’m constantly trying to write more riffs into my songs. Once you become friendly with Keith Richards, you gotta put in some riffs.” What did recording in Brazil add to the process? “I just love being in Brazil. People just let you get on with what you’re doing. It’s a really good place to focus. The studio sounds great. They have some really great old gear from the…

Vol 3: Ancestros Futuros DAPTONE. CD/DL/LP Past and future merge in percussion-heavy meditation from veteran saxophonist. A LONG-SERVING member of Sharon Jones’ Dap-Kings who’s played with everyone from Run The Jewels to Amy Winehouse, composer-arranger Cochemea Gastelum has been imaginatively immersed in the roots of his Yaqui heritage since he kicked off this earthy yet dreamlike trilogy with 2019’s All My Relations. Recorded live to analog-8 track by Daptone boss Gabriel Roth (Bosco Mann), this latest instalment vividly conjures into life half-forgotten or imagined communal rites, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes melancholic, perfectly pitched between the mystic and blaxploitation tropes. Over a dense bed of loping, percussive grooves powered by a trio of percussionists in constant dialogue, Cochemea presides like a master of ceremonies, blowing haunting horn riffs and topline melodies that…

Katie Spencer What Love Is LIGHTSHIP. CD/DL/LP Speaking of mid-’70s Bert Jansch, the third album from Katie Spencer is a rueful, pedal-steel-and-woodwind-speckled set. The moody Humbersider plays guitar like Michael Chapman and writes classy, John Martyn-esque songs which nod to the tradition but go their own way. Ideas old as the hills, but fresh as a sweet Sunday morning, regardless. Cerys Hafana Angel TAK:TIL. CD/DL/LP An old man goes out for a walk and is so transfixed by the sound of an angel singing that he doesn’t realise until he gets home that 350 years have passed. So goes the traditional song threaded through Welsh harpster Cerys Hafana’s fourth LP, a melange of twinkling strings, austere improv and Henry Cow side-project vibes. Enchanting. DUG Have At It! CLADDAGH. CD/DL/LP “All…

Fruit Bats Baby Man MERGE. CD/DL/LP A tough one to rate and so very different from his luxurious last record, A River Running To Your Heart (2023), Baby Man finds Eric D Johnson alone at the piano or on solo guitar, playing music stripped to the bone. There’s some really good songs here – Creature From The Wild is classic Fruit Bats, Moon’s Too Bright is a beauty, and so is his moving cover of the Incredible String Band song First Girl I Loved – but the overall feeling is of an abandoned demo album. Dean Johnson I Hope We Can Still Be Friends SADDLE CREEK. DL/LP A Seattle singer-songwriter and bartender, Johnson was a late starter, aged 50 when he made his first album. His songs sound similarly unhurried and…

For a band who pre-dated smartphones, it is astonishing how much footage of The Cramps exists, all the way back to their CBGB days when they were caught during a soundcheck at the club in 1977. For a comprehensive timeline and links to an extensive selection of video and audio clips, visit the Hang Ten website (hang10.de). Or if you’re short of time, their legendary 1978 gig at Napa State Mental Hospital, captured using a half-inch Sony Port-a-Pak black & white video camera and single microphone, remains one of the most primal examples of live rock’n’roll ever filmed. For an excellent 2-CD tour through the band’s early demos and history, there’s How To Make A Monster (2004), compiled by The Cramps themselves. There are also many books, starting in 1990…