An in bulk round-up of reviewables – both fresh and refreshed – from Lloyd/Bean, Andy Bell & Masal, Ozbolt, The Lemonheads and more

From new and fruitful partnerships to rewarding nostalgia, with plenty else in-between, here’s another forage through the incoming mounds of musical material…

At first glance, the pairing of Robert Lloyd and Jane Beveridge Bean, looks like an odd coupling. With the former being the post-punk-birthed shape-shifting leader of The Nightingales from the West Midlands (as recently immortalised by the eccentric King Rocker documentary), and the latter a gutsy yet thoughtful co-founder of the amorphous Eleventh Dream Day and alt. country pioneers Freakwater, with roots in Louisville and a long career in Chicago. However, on closer aural inspection, Black Cat, Dark Horse (on Tiny Global Productions) from Lloyd/Bean makes for an inspired interlocking of talents.

Recorded on neutral sun-kissed territory, in Valencia, Spain, with help from Lloyd’s long-time multi-instrumentalist accomplice Pete Byrchmore, Madness bassist Mark Bedford and previously unknown Spanish drummer Pablo Roda, this inaugural augmented-duo affair, is a loose but carefully crafted confection, that mixes offbeat covers as well as songs transferred from each other’s regular enterprises and personal stockpiles.

Whilst the opening title track – the only Lloyd and Bean (with Byrchmore) co-write – cleaves closely to Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash kitschiness as a charming meta scene-setter, the ensuing cuts go into deeper grooves of pensiveness and playfulness, that make for a rounded and eclectic conjoining.

Thus, the ensuing “Heavy Reckonings” (penned by James Elkington, Bean’s previous duo partner in The Horse’s Ha as well as a latter-day Eleventh Dream Day bandmate) unfurls as a broodingly majestic Bad Seeds-go-country prowler with Lloyd’s lugubrious baritone converging cohesively with Bean’s airier voicings, to give the album some welcome gravitas.

Thereafter, things swing between settings. So, across the rest of the record, we find twangy takes on Dion’s “Wake Up Baby” and The Nightingales’ “Sweet Georgia Brown” providing plenty of space for Bean to vocally ascend to the fore; “Eggs and Bacon” bringing in more Johnny-June duetting hokeyness with some added dry wit; Bean generously giving Lloyd room to roam around her own songs with the sublime “Arc of a Smile” and the smoky “One Shot”; and the two coming together on a wistful closing re-rendering of The Nightingales’ already Americana-baked “Black Country”.

Taken in isolation, Black Cat, Dark Horse is a fun and empathetic pleasure. Also considered as part of the ongoing parallel purple patches of its co-creators, it more than sustains the twosome’s life-affirming self-regeneration powers.

Speaking still of ever-expanding purple patches and somewhat unexpected collaborative offerings, we find Ride’s Andy Bell returning to these pages once more, this time in a productive hook-up with Masal (the Essex-based duo of Al Johnson and Oz Simsek), in the form of Tidal Love Numbers on Sonic Cathedral.

Consisting of four sprawling semi-improvised instrumentals edited-down from even lengthier pieces – forged from the intertwining of Bell’s guitars, Johnson’s electronics and Simsek’s classical Turkish harp – this is hypnotic head music. With subtly blended shades of Dean McPhee, Spacemen 3, Mary Lattimore, Fripp & Eno’s Evening Star, the most recent new-agey avenues of Polypores and more, all in the meditative mix, Tidal Love Numbers is best absorbed whole, reclining in its captivating astral waters.

Staying in similarly cosmic – albeit more conceptual – tributaries is Send and Return (Blackford Hill), from the also veteran Ultramarine. A collection constructed in homage to the Blackwater Estuary no less, featuring the long-running duo of multi-instrumentalists Paul Hammond and Ian Cooper joined by Greg Heath (soprano sax, alto flute) and Ric Elsworth (vibraphone, percussion), proceedings flow across six tracks of expansive wordless journeying.

Although the electro pulsations of the opening seven-minute “Mirosa” suggest a more ambient techno mindset at first, akin to say Four Tet and The Home Current, it’s somewhat of a red herring in comparison to the rest of the record.

Hence, “Xylonite” pulls together haunted sax sounds and early Brokeback twangs; “Decima” combines the prettier corners of Tortoise’s Millions Now Living Will Never Die with the aerophone flourishes of Littlebow; “Hydrogen” envisages Can’s “I Want More” subtly resewn with digital-age stitching; “Reminder” ripples with Robin Guthrie-like ethereality; and “Dawn” skilfully segues from florid flutes to a paradoxically temperate Tubular Bells-at-the-Haçienda beatscape to conclude proceedings.

Although it might take quite a few spins to unpick its mesmeric mysteries, Send and Return gives plenty back in reciprocity.

Over in the one-person synth sculpting side of the world, arrives strong sets from two trusty scene leaders.

Extracted from recording sessions in the unnaturally melting-hot summer of 2022, away from his usual modular set-up, Stephen Buckley explores a different analogue synthesizer and digital sampling combination as Polypores, with the 57-minute sonic salmagundi that is ECCO (Frequency Domain).

Moving through the aptly-anointed drifting ambient fog of “Floatation”, the cylindrical tones of “Humid Zones”, the psychical churning of “ECSTY”, the tropical drones of “Suburban Mystics”, the brain frequency disturbances of “Moonhole” and beyond, this sits closest in scale and spirit to 2021’s immense Gargantuan in the Buckley back catalogue. Yet, preventing it from becoming a straightforward re-run, are further subliminal shifts in the man-meets-machine manipulations that Polypores fans have come to rely upon to maintain ongoing interest.

For a project with such an unwieldy moniker, it’s perhaps somewhat of a surprise to see Graham Chapman-Fox’s Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan has become the near-crossover venture for Castles in Space – if occupying space in both the pages of Uncut and Electronic Sound as well as garnering recommendations on the Oh God, What Now? podcast are a measure of such things, that is.

Following on from last year’s impressive kosmische-driven Districts, Roads, Open Space, the arrival of The Nation’s Most Central Location comes with a greater sense of anticipation and weight of attention. Whilst the hauntological recipes of its predecessor remain largely similar, this feels like a darker, tenser and more aggressive concern, musing politically on four decades of the pressures and resentments baked into the UK’s North/South divide.

Gliding through the desolation of “Just Off the M56 (J12)”, the twinkling yet juddering pulsations of “Rocksavage”, the murkily mesmeric “Europa Boulevard”, the almost-pretty “Busway” and the foreboding gloom of “A Brighter and More Prosperous Future”, Chapman-Fox ticks many of the dependable WRNTDP boxes with commanding assurance, even if the bleaker vibes might be somewhat less inviting to latecomers.

It’s yet another busy month for the Woodford Halse, Preston Capes and Fenny Compton label family, with distinctive releases on the go from the hard-to-pin down Maud the Moth & Trajedesaliva, the electronically-fried Beam Weapons and entrancing This Mortal Coil-tinged pastoralists Widow’s Weeds, respectively. But it’s the elysian Felt Interscape from Ozbolt on Woodford Halse that commands unqualified interest and affection, with its plaintive comfort food for the head and the heart.

As an exquisite ensemble recording led by the Berlin-based Andy Ozbolt on upright piano – who is underpinned by barely-there but crucial accomplices on bass, guitars and synths – the simple but remarkably effective half hour suite casts a spell that’s part-Harold Budd, part-Nils Frahm, part-Roger Eno and all parts lovely.

In a completely different thirty-minute headspace is Mad Half Hour, the debut album from the London-based Panic Pocket. Fitting the indie-pop philosophies of Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey’s Skep Wax label like a glove, whilst still bringing in their own rambunctiously distinctive line of attack, the core twosome of Sophie Peacock (vocals/keyboards) and Natalie Healey (vocals/guitars) deliver a characterful collection stuffed with earworms, which might require surgical removal for some listeners.

With sharp lyrical takes on modern relationship mores and a feisty gang mentality – fleshed out by bassist Healey Becks and drummer Laura Ankles – the long-player nods to everything from early-Elastica (“Get Me”) and mid-period Heavenly (the title track) to a bedsit Blondie (“Out of the Woodwork”) and imagined Buzzocks-meets-X Ray Spex mash-ups (“Mr. Big”).

As its visceral but shrewdly-scripted name and character suggests, Mad Half Hour doesn’t outstay its welcome, but it warrants repeated airings to keep embracing its intelligent and spiky songcraft.

Connecting things back to the indie-pop world of yore, comes another double-helping of BBC session EPs from the ever-reliable Precious Recordings of London.

The Janice Long Session 02.04.87 four-tracker, from onetime Medway scene exports The Dentists, is certainly the pick of the latest pair. Featuring a quartet of joyously jangling and chugging cuts, that comprises of an utterly soaring cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”, the rousing beat-pop of “(We Thought We’d Got To) Heaven”, the twangling Josef K-meets-Johnny Marr propulsions of “Just Like Oliver Reed” and the pensively yearning “A Strange Way to Go About Things”, this is a fine late (re)introduction for a band otherwise ill-served by in-print releases.

From a BBC studio just over a decade later, Helen Love’s Steve Lamacq Session 16.09.98 may not possess quite the same charm of (re)discovery, but it’s still an endearingly quirky snapshot in time. Racing through hyperactive bubble-gum Ramones pogoing with a fleeting phoned-in cameo from Joey Ramone himself (“Tommy Gun”); snot-and-synth-flecked pop-punk (“Does Your Heart Go Boom” and “Shifty Disco Girl”); and straight-ahead two-chord garage racket making (“MC5”), this particular session EP doesn’t leave much capacity to catch any breath, but it comes crammed with hooks and fuzzy warm memories of following DIY-spirited 7” single-centric bands in the 1990s.

Still considering 1990s flashbacks, Fire’s expanded thirtieth anniversary reissue of The Lemonheads’ Come on Feel the Lemonheads is an even bigger injection of coming-of-music-loving-age nostalgia for some of us. Whilst 1992’s It’s a Shame About Ray (given a equally definitive expanded edition on Fire last year), is rightly considered a go-to standalone gem, its somewhat more sprawling sequel is no slouch either.

Whilst retaining a few frazzled edges – notably in the druggy mantras of “Style” and “Rick James Style” as well as through the whimsical outro of “The Jello Fund” – Come On Feel… stands up remarkably well three decades down the line.

With the seminal line-up of Evan Dando (vocals/guitar), Nic Dalton (bass) and David Ryan (drums), bolstered by guest spots from Juliana Hatfield, Belinda Carlisle, Rick James, Sneaky Pete Kleinow and co-songwriting contributions from Smudge’s Tom Morgan, the album has a familial feel that radiates into its overriding communal infectiousness.

This manifests as a satisfying bundle of towering power-pop nuggets (“The Great Big No”, “Down About It”, “Dawn Can’t Decide”), honeycombed folk-rock bliss (“It’s About Time”, “I’ll Do It Anyway” and cover of Love Positions’ “Into Your Arms”), winsome nods to Gram Parsons (“Paid to Smile”, “Big Gay Heart”, “Being Around”) and gorgeously mopey unplugged balladry (“Favourite T”).

Bolstering the core album is an almost-comprehensive bounty of contemporary B-sides and rarities, to remind us of the adaptable strength of the Come On Feel.. material itself (especially with a divine demo of “Big Gay Heart”, and over a variety of alternative and acoustic versions), the excavated dreaminess of “Deep Bottom Cove” and Dando’s gift for covers (“Learning the Game”, “Little Black Egg” and more), with perhaps the radio-airplay-friendly-re-tailored single version of “Big Gay Heart” being the only obvious but forgivable omission.

An absolutely hearty feast of a reissue in short… come on feel the archival curation.

Adrian
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