Welcome to episode 123 of Sweetman Podcast with support from our sponsors – T Leaf T, Yeastie Boys and Le Petite Chocolat. Ali Harper is someone I met for the first time earlier this year. I told her I wanted to podcast her – because I knew her work. I had heard some of her albums, seen her on the TV […]
Ray Davies Our Country: Americana Act II Sony Legacy Last year Sir Ray of the Davies ironed out some of the kinks in his various stories around America – a love/hate relationship that’s included living there, getting shot there, being banned from playing there, being fascinated by the music and culture, influencing it, staying distant […]
Anna Burch Quit The Curse Polyvinyl Records Although a debut album, Quit The Curse is the maturation of Anna Burch as writer and singer, for the past decade or so she’s been fronting bands (Failed Flowers, Frontier Ruckus) and any tentative steps as a solo performer are most definitely in the past. Quit The Curse […]
Gimmer Nicholson, Christopher Idylls (1968/2016) A good story, this – one of those ones where you have to thank the reissue labels – and LightInTheAttic usually gets it right. I bought this on a whim really – having heard about it. The recording took place in the late 1960s, it was eventually issued years later, […]
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami Director: Sophie Fiennes Umbrella Entertainment As with her recent/ish memoir (a mostly great read) here Grace Jones is self-mythologising. And rightly. Wisely. More than fair enough. She’s singular – her impact felt across fashion and music and (to a lesser degree) both the big and small screen. She’s a visual […]
I met Ed Kuepper a couple of years ago. I was the DJ before and after his set – he played a great gig and I felt lucky to be “on the bill”, sharing the bill with a legend. He was very polite, he approached me a few times during my opening set to ask […]
Yeahyeahabsolutelynoway! Ah.. Wizard Tone Records Adelaide power-jazz trio Yeahyeahabsolutelnoway! features drums (Stephen Neville) and two guitars (Sam Cagney, James Brown) and on their most recent full-lengther, Ah.., they ran the gamut from slinky, cocktail-hour groove pieces (Doubt) to post-rock-meets-prog/fusion workouts (Do – The Liquefactionist Jig).
Steve Winwood, Chronicles(1987) I have vinyl copies of Arc of a Diver and Talking Back To The Night but both are quite scratched – and rather than replace them (though I guess I might one day) I got hold of this compilation, which cheery picks from them and represents, up to that point, Steve Winwood’s […]
Bill Direen Mean Time – EP 666494 Records DK A four-track EP from Direen, released early in 2018 – it finds Bill in a gentle, folk-ish-pop-song mood at least as far as opener Fewer Than Few is concerned. In fact, this has such a Go Betweens-type charm you could be convinced you’re listening to something […]
As good as it is to hear albums I’ve heard of, know of, know about and by bands or artists I know and perhaps have collected up – but just not the one album mentioned as ‘The Classic’…it’s better, more interesting, more exciting, when I hear the albums I didn’t even know about. Like this. […]
He must have been around 48 because I was about 13… He’s nearly 80 now. (And I’m far closer to the age he was then than I ever thought was going to be possible). He was standing by the buffet table, his band had just played and they had this dirty great-big fuck-off feed waiting […]
Skinny Hobos Skinny Hobos Skinny Hobos Here’s the self-titled debut full-lengther by Auckland-based rock/metal/riffers Skinny Hobos. It’s good too. Charging out of the gates with Sevenatenine, which opens in a Sabbath-meets-Alice In Chains way, with a bit of the windswept stoner rock of the Queens/Kyuss nature before losing the meandering coolness and lurching on over […]
