Alan Dearling uncovers more music – recent and recently excavated!
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Twisted Teens
This album is definitely quirky. Kicks off with punky, rock ‘n’ roll with a thumping, driving beat and a Ramones-like set of vocals. It sounds very much of the alto-Indie scene of New Wave 1970s, even though it’s a quite recent release. Sneering, often shouty vocals, twisted, indeed. But catchy, and it also involves old-time steel pedal guitar, vocals in a range of country-rock style songs too, and some warped and weird lyrics that wouldn’t sound misplaced on a They Might be Giants’ album. “If you were a wasp and I was a bee…” from ‘Marionette’. It is often a curious musical melange – very wordy and in yerr face. Worth seeking out for its ‘out there’ quality of strangeness. But it is creative and no way is it a simple punk album. There’s even a hint of a country-version of The Shadows meets The Saints about them! The music contains an underlying tension and menace both in vocals and guitar playing. There’s a lot of punk poetry hidden in the little vignette songs and the fragmented productions; shades of Velvet Underground. Twisted rock ‘n’ roll with an edge. Think, ‘rock’ from the Crypt. And add a ‘roll’ or three from the Night of the Living Dead! You have been warned, but worth a check-out, if you fancy something unexpectedly warped… it’s unrefined, very rough around the edges, but that’s part of the charm. Twisted Teens are apparently from New Orleans, and online they are described as a garage/country rock band. Eleven songs executed in 32 minutes of crazed madness! “I’ve got to tell you about a really cool, former friend…”
A recent live bit of video from Groningen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVXuDWafw1g
Neil Young with the Chrome Hearts – Talkin’ to Trees
This album sounds very familiar. It’s pleasantly full of personal stories, family members (‘Family Life’), pastoral scenarios and nature (‘Silver Eagle’, with its echoes of Woody Guthrie). Much of it is stripped back in the early tracks and then it gets a bit more energetic, electric, noisy and angry/political and anthemic (‘Let’s Roll Again’ – the tune seems like it is based on Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land is your Land’, and ‘Big Change’). “If you’re a fascist, get a Tesla”. The lyrics are a bit sloppy and many of the tunes sound rather too familiar. Is ‘First fire of Winter’ a re-tread of the melody from ‘Helpless’? It’s not a top notch Neil Young album. It’s really rather too straight-forward compared with the substantial body of poetry and imagery that Neil has created in past days of glory. ‘Talkin’ to Trees’ is one of high points, alternately, rueful, mournful, sad, “Rooster crowin’ like I never heard it…” It’s a rumination on life. The final couple of tracks, ‘Bottle of Love’ and ‘Thankful’ purvey a somewhat different sound – more spacey, more trippy, floating on pedal-steel guitar sounds (reminiscent of ‘Harvest Moon’), but the words are still rather hippy-drippy to my ears! I happened to listen to Neil’s ‘Sail Away’ straight after this album and couldn’t help thinking how much stronger and more original that track is! It’s on ‘Oceanside/Countryside’, which was billed as a great lost album when it was released earlier in 2025. It was recorded back in 1977 apparently just after ‘Comes A Time’. That really is a much better album and worth checking out, methinks.
‘Talkin’ to Trees’ video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEeTii9iNyY
‘Sail Away’ video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g–qqVI_H8
Next up, I invited my friend, Neil Thompson, to review a couple of recent folk albums. These days he is much more involved in the folk scene in the UK than me. For me, ‘Hinterland’ is far more experimental, much darker in content, whilst ‘Queen of the Lowlands’ is almost like a forgotten classic, traditional folk album, from and for a past age.
Odette Mitchell – The Queen of the Lowlands
Lisa Knapp & Gerry Diver – Hinterland
Two recent offerings to the folk world, both firmly rooted in tradition, but vastly different in delivery and content. Knapp and Diver with their intention to prevent folk music becoming static, come up with an album of the self-penned and traditional stalwarts whilst Odette writes all her own material, although the subject matter is tried and tested.
Hinterland is almost an album of two halves – the first three tracks dedicated to not letting folk music stagnate. Tradition is bludgeoned into oblivion against complex soundscapes of percussion and strings, overlaid vocals – slightly menacing and dark, challenging, discordant, mesmerising. Given that ‘Train Song’ is simply a list of observations during a rail journey, this is some achievement – innovative, clever – bordering on genius. Is it folk music? Well yes, as it’s all dragged back into the fold by the following set of jigs, played with an almost lazy precision against a background of plucked strings. It’s familiar, but still gives the impression there is something different going on. Lisa’s voice doesn’t really come to the fore until halfway through the album, on ‘I Must Away Love’. Pitch perfect. Flawless. Stunning, just stunning. The rest of the collection is closer to home, with renditions of the classics ‘Long Lankin’ and ‘Loving Hannah’, both faithfully delivered vocally although yet again, the restrained musical backings are far from the norm. The percussion on ‘Long Lankin’ is almost jazzy, but it works really well. This is not just another folk album – it wasn’t meant to be and the artists have certainly succeeded. It’s not a particularly easy listen – you are unlikely to stick it on whilst you’re doing the ironing, but if you put it on late at night with the lights out… Wow. Bandcamp: https://lisaknappgerrydiver.bandcamp.com/album/hinterland
Queen of the Lowlands is a proper folk record. It’s all here – songs of the wonders of nature, songs of the sea, of immigrant factory girls dreaming of love and home, right down to the three sisters who deal with the strange man in the woods with lust in his heart and a knife in his hand. All written by the very talented Odette Mitchell who is clearly as much a storyteller as she is a songwriter. There is not a weak song on the album, all well-played and helped out by various luminaries from the folk pantheon. The mix is really good, with Odette’s vocals well to the fore so you can hear every word of her finely crafted tales. It’s not going to rattle cages or make people man the barricades, but if this was the only folk record I had, I’d be a happy bunny. This is really, really good.
Odette and band live in Hampstead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6eWVqdg7TY
Ayreon – Into the Electric Castle
Record shop, Muse Music, used to be run by Sid Jones in Market Street, Hebden Bridge, up until a second flood devastated much of his stock. I was a great supporter and miss Sid. I think he lives up in Northumberland now. Sid was featured in the book, ‘Last Shop Standing’, Graham Jones (2010): It related to Sid’s regular best-selling album, one which wouldn’t often be stocked in most record shops. “Since its release in 1998, Muse have sold over 500 copies (of ’Into the Electric Castle’). I was staggered by this figure (says Graham), but as Sid was telling me this, the customer in the shop joined in the conversation telling me that Sid had persuaded him to buy a copy and it was now his all-time favourite CD.”
From the ‘Space Opera’ featuring the likes of Thijs van Leer (Focus), Fish (Marillion) and dozens more… “Welcome! You have entered the cranial vistas of psychogenesis…to release yourselves from this Web of Wisdom, this knotted Maze of Delerium…you must enter the nuclear portals of the Electric Castle.”
This is almost the last musical word in the overblown pomp of Prog Rock! Wacky. “You have chosen to enter the great hall of Isis and Osiris.” If you survive the moog madness, the mellotronics, synths, guitars, Fish and Peter Daltrey on vocals (with many, many others) you have been to ‘excess’ and back. As the Hippie (Arjen) intones towards the end:
“What kind of trip have I been on?
Where did I go?
I’d like to know just why
It felt so damn real.”
In 2018, the original creative artist, Arjen Anthony Lucassen, re-mixed the entire album. Hear him describe the aim and process. His aim, to produce a new ‘classic album’! ‘Tis certainly bonkers!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08BsmmgNlfc
Steve Avo Lindsey – Ping
I really liked the opening track, ‘All this and more’. Very tribal. Eastern beats. Tony ‘Wims’ Wimshurst on electric sitar. It could easily be a track from a Robert Plant/Damon Albarn collaboration. Even some shades of Peter Gabriel. However, across the album, there is a bit of everything. It can be viewed as a strength , but also bit of problem for the listener. As Lindsey says: “I was really pleased at how varied they are.” There’s a lot of Paul McCartney’s influence in there. Friendly, catchy, bouncy little numbers with the likes of ‘Cheers my dears’ and ‘SDJ’. Indeed, the drummer is Josh McCartney, Paul’s nephew, son of Mike McCartney of Scaffold fame. It’s old-fashioned. Pleasant. Mostly easy on the ear. Very wordy. Steve obviously enjoys word-play. “Chin-chin, salutations…cheers, felicitations”… “symbolic interaction”… “walk on stage in Sandie Shaw’s shoes.”
Steve is bass-player with Deaf School. He’s a likeable chappie. As he sings, “I’d like to know you better.” At times, the nostalgia factor does create some fine songs, such as in ‘Fabulous 208’. Again it sounds like an old McCartney ballad. Slushy, comfortable like an old pair of slippers! By total contrast, ‘Place in time’ is a quiet, meditative piece of piano-playing, and rather lovely it is, too.
https://steveavolindsey.bandcamp.com/album/ping
Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe – Lateral and Luminal
Two albums from this pair of experimental musical artists. I really rather like the ambient, instrumental dream-journey of ‘Lateral’. It’s very much a soundscape creation. Immersive. It is a sonic-cycle entitled, ‘Big Empty Country’. Perfect to work along with, an old and much-loved sound-blanket. By comparison, I found Beatie’s vocals on ‘Luminal’ at first interesting – floaty, disembodied, even hallucinatory. She displays a spoken word style of poetry. A little like Laurie Anderson. The title of the opener, ‘Milky Sleep’, pretty much sums up the approach. ‘Life is a Dream’ is followed by ‘Breath March’. There is enchantment in this music, but the vocals can become a bit repetitive, as it morphs into something akin to a continuous tone-poem.
Links to the music: ‘Play On’ from Luminal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdsxPOC-SXI
And, from ‘Big Empty Country’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQQljLrU9sA
Graham Bond – Holy Magick/We put our Magick on you
Here’s what author and music journalist, Ben Myers’s wrote online back in 2020 during the Covid lockdown:
“Bond left behind a rich legacy, and this year I became obsessed with his overlooked 1970 album Holy Magick, a free-wheeling collection of wailing spiritual jazz incantations complete with Crowley-esque nonsense spells delivered by an untrained but sometimes brilliant voice. Some jams are twenty-plus minutes in length while others, such as ‘The Magician’, fit the pop format. It was largely panned or ignored by critics and one more commercial failure for Bond, but to these 2020 ears it stands up beside anything Dr John or Fela Kuti produced at the time.”
I had not heard these albums before buying this double album reissue. The first side of ‘Holy Magick’ is the strange centrepiece. It’s dedicated to the hermetic order of the Golden Dawn and the Lord of Light and Darkness. It is heavily percussive, driven along with an insistent beat. It is definitely in the same musical bag as the later ‘Xitintoday’ from Nik Turner’s Sphynx (with Steve Hillage and friends), which was partly recorded in the Great Pyramid in Giza in 1976. Graham Bond has obviously lots of self-belief in the words of so-called magick that are chanted. But it ends up as a genuine oddity featuring some eminent musical talent including Victor Brox and Ric Grech who played bass with Family and Humble Pie. It’s also a little reminiscent of Quintessence, some strong jazz sax playing and at times it creates a blistering, pounding set of rhythms. Because it is so eccentric, I was also minded of Gong. The other three sides of the original two albums are somewhat ‘all over the shop’, with honky-tonk jazz-blues, with more traditional rocky songs, an excursion into the soul territory of Joe Cocker, gospel/soul, and even, on ‘Ajama’, an African-style call and response song. Weird stuff.
First side of ‘Holy Magick’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaiKyo5FN-U
Terry Edwards – The Koln Concerts 2002 (live from the per->SON Symposium)
I am quite a fan of Terry’s work with the Near Jazz Experience (NJE) and know of his highly rated session work. This is a much more challenging work. I guess you would call it experimental, almost free-jazz. It includes sound effects – rifle shots, buzzing insects. It’s largely a collection of solo works with guest contributions from Mark Ribot, David Coulter and Alexander Balanescu. It’s a curious collection. It grew on me, but it’s an erratic musical journey that Terry Edwards takes the listener on. A very personal collection. In fact, it’s the sort of collection which jazz maverick Lol Coxhill would have created/curated. It’s full of homage pieces – nursery rhymes, covers of Thelonious Monk’s ‘Well you needn’t’, and ‘Never Understand’ originally by the Jesus & Mary Chain – punky good fun! The track titles hint at the avant-garde territory: ‘Stacking Beans’, ‘Homicide/Suicide’, ‘Didjeridu & Trumpet’, and it all ends with something of a triumphant version of ‘Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner’. As a live set of recordings it is sonically a well-presented album. But at times, it is quite challenging!
https://terryedwards.bandcamp.com/album/the-k-ln-concerts-2002
Roots Architects – From Dub ‘til now
This is a Roberto Sanchez collaboration with the keyboard wizard, Mathias Liengme. Mathias had co-ordinated a massive collection of over 50 Jamaican musicians in the recording project for nine instrumentals. Now, we have this deep, deep, dub re-mix of the 2024 album, ‘From then ‘til Now’. The reggae instrumentals were already blended with added piano and other instruments performed by many of the absolute top reggae musicians such as Ernest Ranglin, Vin Gordon, Sly & Robbie, Roots Radicals and more. I have compared the original album and actually prefer the sonics and dub effects in the new 2025 version. At times, almost psychedelic reggae. It’s simply uplifting music and great fun in the background of life and work!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-lTkVkQHS8
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