Oum Shatt, Power to The Women of the Morning Shift

Oum Shatt is: Jonas Poppe (Kissogram; guitar/vocals/keys), Philipp Bellinger (guitar), John Donald (bass) and Chris Imler (Driver and Driver, Die Türen; drummer), and they are from Berlin.

As for the name: “Oum” means “mother” in Arabic and in this case is also a homage to Egyptian singer Oum Kalthoum, aka the Queen of Classical Arab music.

The music Oum Shatt makes combines delicate dark electronica with both surf guitar and traditional Arabic sounds, and the result is both unusual and lovely.

As an example, here is the titular song of the EP:
 

 
And also Hot Hot Cold Cold, which showcases some of the fancy guitar work:
 

The Replacements at Riot Fest Toronto

 

Everything you wanted, they were.

So says our friend and Toronto musician Christian D. Christian saw the recently-reunited Replacements play at the Toronto Riot Fest date, and with all the debate flying around on whether the Replacements should reunite (spoiler alert: Too late! They already did), Christian wanted to get his take on things down into words, and he kindly let us post his thoughts.

 


 

 

I’m betting that, like me, a lot of the audience at Toronto’s Riot Fest, never got to see the Mats the first time around. For me, it wasn’t so much about “was it worth the wait”, but rather a chance to see what might have/should have been. Based on those songs, the critical accolades, and the snotty punk attitude, it always seemed like the Replacements should have been goddamned huge. “Best band of the ‘80s”, remember that? Maybe they were ahead of their time or too fucked up to play the game – whatever it was, it never really happened for them.

BUT – the legacy looms large. I grew up on those albums, and the bootlegs, and all the stories of the brilliant band who’d show up too drunk to even bother. I didn’t know what Riot Fest was, and didn’t give a damn who was on the bill – to me this thing was all about the Replacements.

A big question for some was whether it should even be called the Replacements – maybe it should have been the Paul and Tommy show or something. That didn’t bother me. The Replacements name was fine by me, Paul singing those songs he wrote for all of us, Tommy hammering the bass and screaming his backing vocals – that’s close enough for rock and roll, ya know? Like, they’re the Replacements: don’t ask why.

I had to be there – this show was bound to be legendary, whether it would be a transcendent blast of rock and roll or a sloppy drunken money grab of half assed covers and a half hour of the roadies jamming Hootenanny.

Here are two things you should know before I get rolling: 1) I worship Iggy Pop and the Stooges, 2) I never buy merchandise at shows.

This is important because after a typically brilliant, always-manic Stooges set, I pretty much forgot I had just seen Iggy fucking Pop the second the Mats took the stage. Unfor-fucking-givable. And I, cheap bastard that I am, bought a T-shirt and wanted more shit, but they were selling out quick. The magic of seeing the Mats turned me into a 15-year-old fanboy.

So what did we get really? A wise-cracking Paul intros the set and slams into “Takin’ A Ride”, the first song from the first record. Perfect. Then “I’m in Trouble”, “Favourite Thing.” The Westerberg ravaged voice is as expressive as you remember it; his deadpan self-deprecating humour is still intact. Tommy still wears the bass low, rips some of the coolest bass lines ever to come out of punk rock, and plays with the energy of the hyper 17-year-old he was all those years ago.

“Hanging Downtown”, thousands are screaming along: “Bus stop, pimps and whores, liquor stores, Sixth Street, Seventh Street, bus stop, bus stop, bus stop, bus stop, bus stop…” We all know it until an ad-libbed “Jim Osterberg, he’s my new best friend”, then loud fucking cheers.

Some more classic Paul half-assed, jokey stage banter – including “Does everybody feel… uptight and worthless? ” – resets the show for a great romp through “Color Me Impressed”. The band (including Josh Freese and David Minehan) are having a blast, and we’re all having our minds blown in the audience. It’s like a triumphant headline gig that really should have happened when we were all a lot younger. Maybe we’re all appreciating it more now? I don’t know. It feels great, though. The band is semi-sloppy, pulling out some half-assed covers. Paul’s whispering in Tommy’s ear, it’s all playful rock-and-roll fun, and the crowd is lapping it up, transported. Like, damn, they could have/should have done this years ago. I’m already hoping they do it again, and we’re not even halfway done yet.

Then what? Do you want a song list? How about you go download the bootlegs instead? I sure as hell did. How about some highlights: “Tommy Gets his Tonsils Out” into Hendrix’s “Third Stone From the Sun”. A tremendous sing-along to “Kiss me on the Bus”. Paul’s misremembering/not remembering lyrics, Tommy and Dave are filling them in. Part of the magic of the Mats was that they never seemed to take themselves too seriously, and they still don’t. There’s a sloppy “Maybelline” in the best sense of sloppy. A slamming cover of “Borstal Breakout”. Was there stuff I wanted to hear and didn’t? Yeah, of course, but over all it was a mad romp through one of the best catalogs in rock and roll. We even got “Wake Up”, a sharp little rocker from the All Shook Down sessions.

“Little Mascara” into “Left of the Dial”, hell yeah! Perfect.

Paulie (as he keeps referring to himself) says, “I think we’re running out of time, we got maybe one more or something” at the end of “Can’t Hardly Wait”. And then THAT opening: the guitar break and scream that kicks off “Bastards of Young”, one of the best intros in all of rock and roll.

Do you know the feeling of a crowd of thousands shouting along to one of the best songs by a band no one ever thought would play again? It’s pretty goddamned amazing – and if you can get your ass to one of the two promised Riot Fest shows you can find out for yourself.

For the encore, Paul returns in a Montreal Canadians jersey – a classic Replacements playful fuck-you. “We’re gonna play a really stupid song that we don’t know”. It’s “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” from the benefit e.p. Songs for Slim. Which is how and why we all got here, the sad backstory to a triumphant return.

Westerberg once wrote, “Rock and roll could make you quiver a long long time ago”. Well, tonight, it sure did again.

If you can, I’m telling ya: get to the remaining shows, go grab the bootlegs that are roaming around the net. Who knows how long this can last?

Video: Dead Professional, Downtown at Sundown

It’s a three-day weekend in America, which for me means trying really hard not to become accidentally nocturnal.

If you, too, often find yourself on the wrong side of 3AM, here is Dead Professional, aka John Harouff (The Cinnamon Band, The Union of Man and a Woman, Man Forever) with a song you can groove to while you’re up: Downtown at Sundown.

Enjoy your weekend, everyone.

 

Dead Professional - Downtown at Sundown

A Good Read, A Good Listen, A Good Drink: Simon Sinclair, The Big Nowhere

It’s a simple yet sublime pleasure, and just thinking about it can make you feel a little calmer, a little more content. Imagine: You bring out one of the good rocks glasses (or your favorite mug or a special occasion tea cup) and pour a couple fingers of amber liquid (or something dark and strong or just some whole milk). You drop the needle on the jazz platter (or pull up a blues album on your mp3 player or dig out that mixtape from college). Ensconcing yourself in the coziest seat in the house, you crack the spine on a classic (or find your place in that sci-fi paperback or pull up a biography on your e-book reader). And then, you go away for a while. Ah, bliss.

In this series, some of NTSIB’s friends share beloved albums, books and drinks to recommend or inspire.


The Big Nowhere is Simon Sinclair and Billy Crowe, and they are from Glasgow, Scotland.

One time I was casting around for a way to describe them and I landed on “the house band at Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon.” I realize some of don’t know what that means, but what I am trying to say is they have great stories. Sad stories, weird stories, disquieting stories, happy stories, stories that could both inspire a two-stepping dance party and end in everyone throwing their shot glasses into the fireplace.

On The Waterfront, their second release this year, is a collection of out-takes and leftover songs from the sessions for The Big Nowhere’s second album Don’t Burn The Fortune, which was released in April. It is currently available for pay-what-you-can-if-you-can on bandcamp.

Now It’s Time To Let Her Go is my favorite:
 

 

And, as an additional treat, Simon Sinclair is joining us today to share his favorite book, record, and drink. Take it away, Mr. Sinclair:


My selections tie together – to me, they share a thread that may not be exactly visible, or even actually there. There’s something inexplicable about the three – there’s something intangibly… not exactly wrong, but definitely not right about them, and that’s what makes them, in my eyes at least, perfect.

Good Read: The Dark Stuff:Selected Writings on Rock Music 1972-1993 by Nick Kent

There have been countless collections of rock writing published, but none have served as much as a confessional than former NME hack Nick Kent’s collection of articles culled from various magazines first published in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Like his American contemporary Lester Bangs, you can almost feel the anger, despair and crushing disappointment dripping from the ink on the page when the artists Kent idolizes fail to stay perched on the pedestal he has constructed for them. Likewise, you get caught up in the adrenaline rush of the fervor (and often panic) he experiences when someone actually lives up to the ideal he has in his head.

Whether it’s a sit-down with a confrontational Jerry Lee Lewis, or on-the-road fly-on-the-wall tour stories with the Sex Pistols, not everything here is complimentary – take the pieces on Phil Spector or Kurt Cobain for example. There’s no myth-making in his writing, except perhaps to the pieces in which he himself is injected (in more than one sense) into the proceedings –as an aside, the piece on Brian Wilson is admittedly by Kent almost a work of fiction on his part, but it’s fantastically realized nonetheless. There’s not really any middle ground here though.

Again, like Lester Bangs (who’s writings were a touchstone for Kent himself), he swings from cynicism to an almost child-like naivety – although at his cruelest, he never comes close to the externalised insight of say, Greil Marcus, and neither is he ever as lost and giddy as a Cameron Crowe. The stories contained within the book have been expanded, and sometimes re-written from the original magazine articles, which can offer a perspective tempered by later realizations or experiences. A good thing, I think.

I bought this book on it’s initial release in 1994, and have taken it around the world on my travels. The writing within it’s pages reveals as much about the writer himself as it does his subjects, even more than his own memoir, published in 2011. It’s a book I’ve read hundreds of times, and still often pick it up, look through the contents page and pick out an artist to try and put myself in that room at that time and imagine how it feel to be sat in the gaze of his Kohl-rimmed eyes, trying as hard as I can not to reveal anything, but telling everything.

Good Listen: Don’t Give Up On Me by Solomon Burke (2002)

In 2002, when this album was released, it was almost unthinkable that people still knew how to make records as joyful, as alive as this one: Don’t Give Up On Me by Solomon Burke.

To those of us who witnessed the decline of some of the greatest performers and songwriters into the mire of General MIDI set and vacuum-sealed assembly-line plastic production in the late 70s to the 90s (and it happened to everyone – from Dolly Parton to Aretha Franklin, from Willie Nelson to Ray Charles), the removal of the most important ingredient in any record – the soul, the feeling, whatever you want to call it – was like a knife to our hearts and polyfilla to our ears.

Then, in 1994, an album called ‘American Recordings’ by Johnny Cash did a little more than open some eyes. It had a spare, stripped back sound – recorded live in the studio – which let the songs, and the performance of Cash himself be allowed to breathe, to settle, it resigned to leave behind the showy studio shenanigans that had become commonplace.

A few other albums around the time had sought to communicate in such a direct way between the artist and listener – The Black Crowes’ ‘A Southern Harmony and Musical Companion’ – recorded live in the studio with all the feeling and grace that was missing from their multi-tracked debut. Bob Dylan’s ‘Time Out Of Mind’ in 1997 was seemingly the album that fans had been waiting for him to record for 30 years – it had a beautiful, warm sound uncommon in the already by-then quest for loudness that the record industry had seemingly decided on its own that the public wanted, and which was ruining the listening experience for those of us who clung desperately to our vinyl collections and turntables like frightened children.

Former Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan took the idea of the laid-back, stripped back raw sound to heart for his collection of cover versions with 1999’s ‘I’ll Take Care Of You’ – a great record, and a great sounding record in its own right. You can hear every breath taken between words, every nail-scrape on brass guitar strings. The songs hit that little harder because you can imagine yourself being in the room. A performance is captured and every time you play it back you let a little of the ghosts that were in the room on that day out.

So, in 2002, it was the turn of the Fat Possum label to shine a little light on one of the gems of their collection – Solomon Burke: ‘The King of Rock ‘n’ Soul’ – the man who once told us ‘everybody needs somebody to love’ . Almost a forgotten figure to the mainstream music world, while undoubtedly deserving of the recognition of a James Brown, a Ray Charles or an Aretha Franklin, Burke’s stock seemed to be at an all-time low – not dissimilar to the position the pre-American Recordings Johnny Cash found himself in. Again similarly, it would be the man’s interpretation of others material (something he was known for in the first place) that would launch him back into the spotlight and give him a profile somewhere approaching his reputation.

Label president Andy Kaulkin approached the soul survivor after Burke’s induction on the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, with a view to make a record featuring songs written by some of the true song writing greats. Not for nothing, but Burke was a little skeptical going into the project –

“I said, ‘How many of these stars do you know?’ And Andy said, ‘Well, none.’ I thought, ‘Oh, this is gonna be great.’ ” – Solomon Burke

With Fat Possum label-mate and producer Joe Henry at the helm, and veteran engineer/mixer S. Husky Huskolds taking charge of the overall sound of the project, Burke should have had no reason to worry. Huskolds had previously made records with artists such as Tom Waits and Sheryl Crowe, and was known for a particularly warm and honest sound. Without doubt, he was in good hands.

 
http://youtu.be/joXHmEOGy38
 

Artists and songwriters practically fell over themselves to contribute to the record. Van Morrison gave two songs he had been working on – ‘Fast Train’ and ‘Only A Dream’, both of which ended up on Morrison’s subsequent album upon hearing the treatments given here. Dan Penn, writer of such heartbreaking soul standards as ‘Dark End of The Street’ and ‘Do Right Woman’ contributed the song ‘Don’t Give Up On Me’, co-written with the late R&B legend Carson Whitsett. This song would ultimately provide the title of the album, itself almost a statement from Burke to the audience that had all but forgotten him. Tom Waits gave the song ‘Diamond In Your Mind’, an out-take from the sessions for his album ‘Blood Money’, originally written for avant-garde theatre director Robert Wilson’s production of ‘Woyzeck’. Waits would release his own version on the rarities collection ‘Orphans’ in 2006.

Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson and Tin Pan Alley veterans Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil also contributed songs to the project. Costello’s providing one of the album’s highlights in the sweeping, dramatic ‘The Judgement’, co-written with wife Cait O’Riordan.

“It’s like an opera. It takes you back to that time, it takes you back to Europe” said Burke.

[Much has been made of the similarity with Isaac Hayes’ ‘I Stand Accused’, which Costello had covered years before. I see it, but I don’t see it.]

There’s really not much to say about the Dylan and Brian Wilson songs except that it’s a little disappointing that even such a legendary interpreter of other people’s material can’t do anything with these two songs to make them sound any less like cast-offs or even ‘written-in-the-style-of’ knock-offs. That Burke and the band manage to make them not only entertaining, but even endearing (in the case of ‘Soul Searchin’’, Wilson’s song) is a testament to the talented individuals making the record. For shame, Bob and Brian, FOR SHAME.

Producer Joe Henry’s ‘Flesh and Blood’ is another of the album’s stand-out tracks, (and, cheekily, maybe a way for Henry to present his material to a wider audience – hell, he deserves it.). A heartbreaker for sure, a song of temptation and disgust and not a little regret. Everything’s going to hell. ‘How many ways can I fuck up?’, the song seems to be saying. All muted sax, swirling gospel organ and wrath-of-God-is-upon-us bass mixed up with Jay Bellerose and his collection of battered and broken drums like a death rattle coming through your cellar door. One cellar door you do not want to open.

The last track on the album has something of a mysterious history. ‘Sit This One Out’ is a good-whiskey-and-honey-sitting-on-the-porch-at magic-hour-looking-out-over-the-fields reminiscence. It’s sitting at a rain-streaked window in a city anywhere in the world, loved one by your side, head against the glass, content. It’s having lived a life, and being okay with it. It’s sweet without being saccharine – it’s The Straight Story. It’s the kind of song that can stop an argument inside of eight bars.

The song is credited to one Pick Purnell – a shadowy figure no doubt. According to Solomon Burke himself, the songwriter walked in, sat at the piano, played the song, got up and left. Hmm..

[as an aside, I have heard various claims ranging from Pick Purnell actually being jazz pianist Nick Purnell to being a pseudonym for Epitaph/Fat Possum head honcho Andy Kaulkin (is he the same Andy Kaulkin that released the album ‘Six Foot Seven and Rising’ in the late 90s? Can’t find any info either way, but it’s …interesting…]

This is a record that lives, breathes, procreates. I love that I can hear every breath between the words, every squeaky shoe, every foot slipping off a pedal, pocket change jingling. It’s a bunch of people, in a room making music. It’s a record made by a man in his 60s who has fathered twenty-one children and is a licensed mortician. It’s a record filled with joy, hurt, anger, disappointment, regret, spirituality, faith (and the loss of faith), but most of all love. In all honesty, Solomon Burke’s legendary pipes have never sounded better than here – the king come back to reclaim his throne. And that he did.

Good Drink: Fuzzy Tickle Button – invented by Simon Sinclair & Jennifer Snodgrass

Ingredients:
• 3/4 of a half-pint glass Alcoholic Cider (as cheap as you can find)
• 1/4 of a half-pint glass Energy Drink (again, as cheap as you can find – Emerge, Best-In, Mixxed Up)
• 1 shot Peach Schnapps (use a particularly peachy one, like Iceland’s [ed note: grocery store, not country!] own brand Peach Schnapps – very, very cheap)

Instructions:
Make sure the cider and energy drink are suitably chilled. Pour the cider into the glass first, letting the bubbles settle. Pour in the energy drink. Take a gulp, then add the shot of Peach Schnapps. Add ice until the liquid is back to the top of the glass.

The cheaper the ingredients the better, as once the drink is mixed, it will not make the slightest bit of difference if you use more expensive cider or energy drink, it tastes exactly the same. Cheap, really peachy-tasting Peach Schapps (the one from Iceland is perfect for this and is about £4 a bottle). Crisp, sweet, fruity and refreshing.

Video: Lindi Ortega, Murder of Crows

Here is Lindi Ortega with a scorcher of a . . . well it isn’t a murder ballad, I guess, but that’s the vein in springs from. Plot twist, though: this time it isn’t a girl who’s dead.

Murder of Crows is from her last record, Cigarettes & Truckstops, but she has a new one coming soon: Tin Star, on October 8th.
 

Lindi Ortega - Murder Of Crows (Official Video)

 

Field Assembly: Narco

FieldAssembly_640x640

Narco is the second record from Field Assembly, aka L. Adam Fox (Ten Year Drought), with assistance from Dean Drouillard (Sarah Harmer, Royal Wood, Matt Barber) Colin Huebert (Siskiyou), Joshua Van Tassel (David Myles, Selena Martin), and Bryden Baird (Feist).

It is a fever dream of a record, written by and for the sleep deprived. It is delicate, lush and sweeping and also embodies the quasi-hallucinatory quasi-permanent state of what day is today and what am I doing? common to the overstimulated and overtired.

And it is glorious.

This is Receiver, the first song. Here are the lyrics – which arrive first over minimalist strumming and then repeat as the song swells and expands – that caused me to say, “okay, I’m in”: Throw your arms around the obscenity / slip your tongue into the lions mouth / pray he don’t taste your blood / pray he taste wine.

I thought it was pray he taste mine for quite some time, which might have made it twice as weird, I guess, but anyway, maybe I also need a nap, because all I had was yes, exactly, exactly.
 

 
Storm and Stress is one of the more uptempo numbers, and is mainly about the very strange things that sometimes live in the silence of the night:
 

 
And finally, Lions Versus Christians, which I have picked to share because, among many other things, of the deft deployment of a harmonica at the beginning and end of the song:
 

Late Night Listening: High Lonesome Ark, Sloppy Gospel

When I created the Late Night Listening category, it was intended to be – for lack of a better metaphor – my own personal 120 Minutes file: a home for things that might be fleeting, might be soothing, might be weird, might be soothing and weird. The blogging equivalent of sitting in the garage twiddling radio knobs just to see what might be out there.

The latest entry into this file is Sloppy Gospel, from High Lonesome Ark, a band which popped into existence last week and is the latest project of Martin Bemberg (Memphis Pencils), along with Dick Darden (drums), Sean Johnson (rockin’ rhythm) and Cody Troglin (dreamy lead, pizza)

Or as they further expanded on it: Nasty Marty Bemberg is bass and baritone, Cody Pizzaboy Trogdog the reverie on strings, while SeanJohn Hard Like A Johnson just rocks all six real hard, and Slick Dick Darden straight up brings it on the pounders.

At present they have turned six songs loose upon the world. I am going to share two:

First, the title track, Sloppy Gospel, because it was not at all what I was expecting, but I wasn’t mad about that, and, also, it persuaded me to jump the rest of the way down the rabbit hole and see what was at the bottom.
 

 

And second, Take You Home, which is more of a mellow groove.
 

A Good Read, A Good Listen, and A Good Drink: Astro Zu

Astro_zu
 
It’s a simple yet sublime pleasure, and just thinking about it can make you feel a little calmer, a little more content. Imagine: You bring out one of the good rocks glasses (or your favorite mug or a special occasion tea cup) and pour a couple fingers of amber liquid (or something dark and strong or just some whole milk). You drop the needle on the jazz platter (or pull up a blues album on your mp3 player or dig out that mixtape from college). Ensconcing yourself in the coziest seat in the house, you crack the spine on a classic (or find your place in that sci-fi paperback or pull up a biography on your e-book reader). And then, you go away for a while. Ah, bliss.

In this series, some of NTSIB’s friends share beloved albums, books and drinks to recommend or inspire.


Astro Zu, also called Ronnie, spent his formative years with his parents, an astrologist and a yoga teacher, in a hippy/New Age commune in Staffordshire, England, but has since moved to East London. Ma Body Sayin’ is on of two songs he recently released as a follow-up to his first EP.

It is both trippy and chill; calming, but possessed of a subtle, otherworldly spark.

 

 

His selections for us this evening are a similar mixture of the practical and the fantastical:

Good Read:
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy [by Douglas Adams] is one of the first books I read. It’s got a mad, eccentric energy, weird, very English and drags you into such a fantastical world. I also got the Stephen Fry narrated audio book about a year ago too and is so good. His voice suits so perfectly. I’m not usually a sci-fi book fan, but this is just genius.

Good Listen:
Flying LotusLos Angeles – The first Fly Lo album I heard and was instantly obsessed by him. The subtleties are what make it special. The disjointed beats and lush string samples and the beautiful and often simple melodies. Then you get spikes of cosmic darkness from ‘Riot’. Such a perfect album for me. To be honest I could be describing any of his albums, as they’re all amazing and he keeps pushing forward his artistry.
 

 

Good Drink:
A Cuba Libre is a classic and it is almost impossible to make a bad one. So the further you go into the night and your measuring skills are failing you badly, you can rest assured. Its all gonna be OK :)

Video: Skunk Anansie, Hedonism (acoustic)

And now, because bands remixing their own work in dramatic ways is always fascinating to me, here is Skunk Anansie, with a stripped down and revamped version of Hedonism, from their new (and first ever) live album/DVD, An Acoustic Skunk Anansie – Live in London, set to be released in September 2013.

The arrangement is not that dramatically different from the original, but the switch to acoustic does give Skin room to fill the empty spaces with her magnificent voice.

 

Skunk Anansie Hedonism - An Acoustic Skunk Anansie Live In London