Grian Chatten
Chaos For The Fly
(Partisan)
★★★★

HAVING made three albums with Irish post-punk outfit Fontaines D.C., frontman Grian Chatten now releases his solo debut.

Dreamt up during a night-time walk around Stoney Beach just north of Dublin, Chatten says “I wanted to explore the stories and the people of a small seaside town, the underbelly of that life ... the bitterness of lives not lived.”

No surprise then that it’s instilled with a sense of claustrophobia and darkness. 

“People are scum,” he intones on All Of The People. 

Elsewhere his famous monotone wail kicks in during the catchy chorus of the wonderfully intense Fairlies, while Bob’s Casino, a torch song presumably named after the arcade in his hometown of Skerries, comes with Divine Comedy-style horns and strings.

More accessible than Fontaines D.C., Chaos For The Fly suggests Chatten is overflowing with arresting music right now.

Lucinda Williams
Stores From A Rock’N’Roll Heart
(Highway 20 Records/Thirty Tigers)
★★★★

2020 was a challenging year for Lucinda Williams — just before the Covid lockdown, a tornado damaged her home and then in November she suffered a stroke.

Currently unable to play guitar, the 70-year old US singer-songwriter has enlisted the help of some friends for her excellent new album, including Bruce Springsteen, Patti Scialfa, Angel Olsen, Margo Price and Jesse Malin.

She rocks out on tracks like Let’s Get The Band Back Together and Rock’N’Roll Heart but it’s the slower, soulful numbers that hit the hardest. Nobody does bottom of the bottle melancholy like Williams. Last Call For The Truth drips with wistful nostalgia (“Give me one more taste of my lost youth”), while Jukebox is imbued with a desolate loneliness. 

Full of defiance, Stories From A Rock N Roll Heart is another career high from the country legend.

TEKE::TEKE
Hagata
(Kill Rock Stars)
★★★

HOLD on to your hats, folks: after touring relentlessly following their 2021 debut record Shirushi, Montreal-based band TEKE::TEKE return with their second album.

Taking in psychedelic rock, Japanese pop, surf music and God knows what else, the seven-piece, complete with trombonist and flutist, have manufactured another wild ride, the set barrelling along at a frenetic pace. 

Single Garakuta has the feel of a crazed, surreal military stomp, before Hoppe’s riffing guitars and intense drumming creates the musical equivalent of a heart attack. The lovely Me No Haya provides a brief peaceful interlude, while Doppelganger rides along on some wonderful ’60s-style strings.

With each track full of twists and turns, and theatrical frontwoman Maya Kuroki singing in Japanese, if you are looking for something completely different, exciting and experimental, then check out TEKE::TEKE’s madcap wall of sound.