Cults
Host
(Sinderlyn)
★★★★

New York’s Cults are back with their fourth album and a newish direction, albeit still beholden to the otherworldly dream pop that is their musical shtick.

While much is the same as before, Trials has singer Madeline Follin’s child-like vocals front and centre, the 1960s-like sound has expanded.

This is in part due to Follins’s greater involvement with the songwriting, but also the band’s shift to live instruments rather than relying on synths. It’s a shift that works.

Spit You Out is deep, luxurious and delightful with an offset beat that builds up with Follin evoking Shirley Manson of Garbage. 8th Avenue brings brass to the mix while Working It Over ends with Lush-like layers of sound.  

Cults are mining a rich seam. Join them for a host of musical surprises, lyrical nuances and general oddities that demand repeated listens that lead on to new discoveries.

Mik Sabiers

Plants and Animals
The Jungle
Secret City Records
★★★★

Channelling Talking Heads, !!!, The Killers and even some Arcade Fire, the fifth album from Canadian indie rockers Plants and Animals is an interesting tour through the themes of loss and climate change.

The opening bars of The Jungle drop you into the depths of tangled vegetation and sitting on top of the synth is an engaging, simple guitar groove echoing the world’s fragile status.

Get My Mind has a 1970s rock feel with Bowie-like vocals and imagery, Le Queens is a quirky jam about a night dancing and letting music take over in that New York borough.

What feels like a reimagined version of Talking Heads’ Burning Down the House for the modern age - House on Fire - is a stand out track that perhaps serves as a warning of the climate change emergency.

More about the music than the lyrics, this is an ragtag collection of enchanting odd pop tracks.

MS

The Slow Readers Club
91 Days in Isolation
(SRC Recordings)
★★★

Manchester’s The Slow Readers Club fifth studio album, and second of 2020, is a product of lockdown and isolation that brings together well crafted slices of indie rock.

All eight tracks were written remotely, composed collaboratively over the internet, and then laid down once lockdown was lifted.   

It’s standard, but good, indie rock. Opener Barricades brings to mind Editors or Interpol, but there are a few twists that deserve closer attention.

Yet Again has gothic rock guitar and mordant lyrics, while Lost Summer almost lets you drift away, it may have been better titled Lost Year with what’s gone on in 2020, but it’s a welcome escape.

Like I Wanted To is just class to listen to and although in places there could be more creative punch, and maybe a few more tracks, all in all it’s an engaging album made all the more interesting by how it was put together.

MS

The Teacups
In Which
Haystack Records
★★★★★

The singing quartet of Alex Cumming, Kate Locksley, Rosie Calvert and Will Finn have just released their third album and regrettably this will be their last as they go on to pursue other ventures.

It is however a joyous way of ending their 10-year collaboration with traditional songs and some new ones exploring familiar folk themes of seafaring, love and loss.

The Weary Cutters is a girl’s lament for her sweetheart taken by the press gangs while Her Bright Smile Still Haunts Me tells of a sailor yearning for the girl he left behind. On a more cheerful note The Harvest Jug is a celebratory drinking song.

There are also political themes in the old enclosure protest The Goose and the poignant A Man of the Earth about a man’s retirement after 50 years working in the ironworks.
Shame they won’t be any more but a great swan song.

Steve Johnson

Rakoczy
Frontrunner
Talking Cat Recordings
★★★★★

This is the debut album of a young traditional singer, concertina, recorder and bagpipe player who was born in Budapest but who has lived most of her life in Manchester.

It is an impressive and promising debut exploring the image of the horse in British folklore but also reflecting on how we treat each other.

This is best reflected in her own composition Miss Portly about the true case of a racehorse in the 18th century with bet fixing and cruel practices which have still not gone away.

There are also good versions of traditional folk songs like the British Traveller song Poor Old Horse and another traditional song The Wanton Brown explores themes of class struggle through a case of equine fraud.

Ending with the vibrant Dead Horse Shanty this album is an enjoyable listening experience from a new artist we hope to hear more of.
SJ

Gareth Scott
The Basin Stone
Self-release ([email protected])
★★★★

Based in Calder Valley, West Yorkshire, Gareth Scott is a long-time member of the shanty group Kimber’s Men and this debut solo album has been six years in the making.

It has been well worth the wait however and is an interesting mix of traditional and new compositions.  

Two Magicians and Death and the Lady have been recorded by many veteran artists but Scott gives them his own distinct smoky style. The Pharaoh is a “spiritual” from an Alan Lomax field recording.

However, his own title track composition gives the best flavour of the album paying tribute to a venue in Todmorden where meetings of the Chartists used to take place. The song takes us through class struggles old and new both in Britain and internationally. Another self-penned track Violetta pays tribute to the NHS.

Plenty of themes here for Star readers to enjoy in this innovative album.

Steve Johnson

STEVE MILLER BLUES BAND
Live At The Fillmore West 1968
Retroworld FLOATM 6405
★★★★

In 1967 Steve Miller formed his Blues Band, backed Chuck Berry on Chuck’s live album at the Fillmore West, played the Monterey Pop Festival and their version of KC Douglas’s Mercury Blues and the Isley Brothers’ Your Old Lady appeared on the soundtrack of the underground film Revolution.

By 1968 he was west coast rock royalty, headlining three nights at Bill Graham’s legendary venue in December.

Kicking off with ex-band member Boz Scaggs’s Stepping Stone, they stretch out on Roosevelt Sykes’ blues classic Drivin’ Wheel while harmonica great Paul Butterfield guests on Blues With A Feeling, Butterfield Blues and Song For Our Ancestor’s (from their Sailor album).

Mercury Blues is the showcase track while the Wheels’ garage rock classic Bad Little Woman closes out an historic live set originally broadcast on KPFA.  

Tony Burke

 
RHINOCEROS
The Elektra Albums 1968 - 1970
Esoteric
★★★★

Paul Rothchild built a stellar roster fat Elektra including The Doors, Love and the Butterfield Blues Band. Given the chance to create a “supergroup” he signed up ex-members of Iron Butterfly, Electric Flag, Buffalo Springfield and the Mothers Of Invention to form Rhinoceros.

They were a powerhouse rock band and opened their account with a well-received self-titled debut in 1968 — which included the driving instrumental Apricot Brandy.

After touring the USA, in 1969 they recorded Satin Chickens a period psychedelic rock album.

But a bad decision by their managers in rejecting a chance to play Woodstock demoralised the band.

Their third Elektra outing Better Times Are Coming released in 1970 saw line-up changes — attracting mixed reviews.

This 3CD set features a well-illustrated booklet, with interviews bringing back to life a much overlooked 1960s rock band.
TB

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS
The New OK
ATO Records
★★★★★

The DBT’s 13th studio set following their acclaimed release of The Unravelling issued in January, this set was written and recorded over what their co-founder Patterson Hood calls “this endless summer of protests, riots, political shenanigans and pandemic horrors.”

Key tracks include the opener The New OK, Watching The Orange Clouds inspired by the protests over the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis cops plus a great cover of the The Ramones’ classic The KKK Took My Baby Away.

Tough To Tet Go has their trademark twanging guitar and there’s great horns too — replicating the Stax sound — especially on Sea Island Lonely which uses the riff from Otis Redding’s Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song).

Hood says this is “a full album that hopefully balances out the darkness of our current situation with a hope for better days and nights ahead.”

TB