Michael Stipe appeared on American TV last week singing The Rest Of Ever, a brand new song from a solo album that is apparently going to be out by the end of the year. In the clip below Michael performs it with the house band, as is the norm on US chat shows- Louis Cato and The Great Big Joy Machine- so the recorded version may be a little different but the song sounds pretty good, Stipe is in good voice, and it is good to hear him singing again.
In the interview section he talked about recording the sound of a tree and singing along to it in the style of a sea shanty. Difficult to tell how serious he was being but I'm always in favour of the spirit of experimentalism and playfulness.
Back in 2020 Michael sang with Big Red Machine, a duo consisting of Aaron Dessner of The National and Bon Iver's Jason Vernon. The recording was done during lockdown and that period inspired Stipe's lyrics. 'No time for dancing... no time for love like now'. Low key, pattering drums, pianos, strings, and Michael Stipe's very specific timbre and phrasing.
The year before Michael released his first solo single via his own website, a quite startling song, very much a break from the R.E.M. alt- guitar sound that people might have expected and been hoping for. Juddering synths and tambourine, drones and keys, Stipe's voice on top, a little like a warmer but fragile version of Suicide.
In coming up with a solo album, a definitive Stipe solo musical statement, he's been taking his time and genuinely doesn't seem to have been in any rush to make music since R.E.M. called it a day back in 2011 but gradually we seem to be getting closer to the day we get a Michael Stipe solo album.
My brother took me along to a gig at Big Hands in Manchester on Saturday night, a small venue near the university in what was a branch of Barclays bank when I was a kid. Big Hands mainly put on guitar bands in all the flavours and varieties- punk, indie, grunge, metal, garage, psyche. Playing on Saturday night were Spring, a trio of young men in their mid- twenties, friends from primary school in Leicester who formed a band when all three went to university in Sheffield, who we were keen to see. Spring make a hazy, blissed out shoegaze- inspired sound, the three instruments- drums, bass and guitar- all perfectly balanced with each other. On top of this swirling, melodic storm the drummer sings/ whispers.
Spring took the stage at 11 pm and the crowd, most of whom were three decades younger than me and my brother, were on board straight away, drawn in by the hypnotic groove of drums and bass, guitarist Theo switching between ringing guitar toplines lines and a fuzzy, gauze wall of noise- a busy and urgent sound, driving drums and peeling guitars with nonchalant vocals. They look and sound totally assured, locked in to the music and the thrill of it being well received.
This is Watcher, their first single, released last December. There's a second single, Bones, due out this Friday.
Spring were supported by Leeroy Salmon, heralded as jazz punk on the flyer. A punkish looking four piece, again all in their twenties, Leeroy Salmon blasted their way into Big Hands from the moment the drummer clicked them into their first song.
From the south coast but now based in Manchester, totally single minded and utterly focussed, Leeroy Salmon hit hard- twin guitars, bass and muscular drums and the vocalist's gutteral roar (the only words I can make out all set are 'thank you' after some of the songs and the occasional 'fucking'). The beanie hatted guitarist stage left picks out wirey leadlines while the singer/ guitarist slashes at his Gibson SG and leaps around the tiny stage space. At one point he clambers on top of the bass drum and motions for the crowd to separate leaving a space down the centre of the floor into which he's going to run. Everyone complies.
I was watching and thinking 'I didn't know the youth were into Black Flag and Bad Brains'. I mentioned this to the singer later and it turns out I was a generation early- he said At The Drive In were their biggest influence which definitely makes sense. This is Kim Chi from 2025.
A good night, two young bands inspired by music from the 80s, 90s and 00s, a time before they were born, making sounds of their own, playing to their peers and looking like they were having fun doing it. Go and see both or either if they're playing near you.
Hope Sandoval has one of those voices. It almost goes without saying. She sounds as if she's halfway between sleep and being awake, an effortless, soothing, narcotic tone, a heavy lidded half sigh. Born to Mexican- American parents, who split up when she was young, Hope struggled at school and dropped out, largely spending her teens at home listening to records.
Hope and Dave Roback (who died of cancer in 2020) formed Mazzy Star in 1988 when the band they were in, Opal, lost its singer. Mazzy Star went on hiatus in 1997 and Hope formed The Warm Inventions with My Bloody Valentine's drum Colm O'Ciosoig, releasing three album. Mazzy Star reunited in 2016. Hope's voice has featured on loads of records with other people- The Chemical Brothers, Mercury Rev, Bert Jansch, The Jesus And Mary Chain, Massive Attack, Death In Vegas, Vetiver, Air and Le Volume Courbe have all benefited from her vocals. I could have done this mix twice given the sheer number of songs by her two bands and all those guest appearances.
Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions: Into The Trees
Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions: Suzanne
The Chemical Brothers with Hope Sandoval: Asleep From Day
Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions: Wild Roses
Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions: On The Low
Mazzy Star: Blue Flower
Mercury Rev with Hope Sandoval: Big Boss Man
Mazzy Star: Fade Into You
Mazzy Star: Five String Serenade
Mazzy Star: Happy
Into The Trees is a long piece of music from her third album as Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions from 2016, Until The Hunter. Hope and My Bloody Valentine's drummer Colm O'Ciosoig recorded the album in various locations including a Martello Tower in Dublin, which had a natural reverb caused by the circular Napoleonic period room of the tower. Hope plays organ, a two chord drone and Colm plays gentle tumbling drums. Hope sings gently over the top and it all goes on softly and slowly for nine minutes.
Suzanne is from the first Warm Inventions album, Bavarian Fruit Bread, released in 2001. Hope and Colm recruited several guests for the album, including Bert Jansch. It came out a month after the 9/ 11 attacks and like all albums released in the wake of that event, it seemed to have something to say on the matter even though it was clearly recorded months prior to it. The fragile, narcotic tone of the album, a numbed out response to the world, minimal and spooked. It's difficult not to associate Hope's Suzanne with Leonard Cohen's Suzanne. On The Low is also from Bavarian Fruit Bread, an album that opens with a cover of The Jesus And Mary Chain's Drop. I vividly remember buying it on release in November 2001 and playing it on a Sunday evening while getting mentally prepared for the week ahead at work and the two sides/ twelve songs being quite the Sunday night experience.
In 1999 The Chemical Brothers put out Surrender, probably their third album and for me their most complete and satisfying record. It came packed with guest vocalists- Bernard Sumner, Noel Gallagher, Jonathan Donahue and Hope Sandoval. Hope's vocal on Asleep From Day is the perfect accompaniment to the album's most blissed out track, a song that sounds like the space between sleep and dreams.
Wild Roses is from the second Warm Inventions album, from 2009- Through The Devil Softly. It had a slightly fuller sound than the first album, a fleshed out band feel, partly possibly due to its recording being interrupted by Colm going on tour with My Bloody Valentine. The arrangements are more complex and intricate, there's a lot more going on. Still as beguiling and bewitching as ever and Hope's voice still sounds like the one you want to hear as you're drifting off to sleep.
Blue Flower is from Mazzy Star's debut, She Hangs Brightly, from 1990. Hope and Dave Roback formed Mazzy Star as the previous band they were in, Opal, broke up and Blue Flower carried over. It's a cover of a Slapp Happy song from 1972. Mazzy Star released it as their first single in August 1990. It's far more guitar/ third Velvets album sounding than the dreamy sound they developed into- in fact it could easily be on The Mary Chain's Darklands.
Big Boss Man is from a 2019 album Mercury Rev recorded, a cover/ re- imagining of Bobby Gentry's The Delta Sweete album from 1968. Mercury Rev enlisted a cast of female vocalists including Hope and Rachel Goswell, Latitia Sadier, Vashti Bunyan, Lucinda Williams and Beth Orton.
Fade Into You is from 1993's So Tonight That I Might See, Mazzy Star's second album. You don't need to me tell you how great Fade Into You is- one oft he best indie/ dreampop songs of the 1990s/ all time. Inexplicably good- Hope's voice, the acoustic guitars, the electric guitar topline, the brushed drums, the sense that the song is really just one huge sigh, the feeling of dissolving into another person that comes with young love.
Five String Serenade is also from So Tonight That I Might See- an album that blurs the lines between country, indie, psychedelia and dreampop, everything soaked in a narcotic, hallucinogenic gauze. It was written by Arthur Lee of Love.
Happy is from 1996's Among My Swan, Mazzy Star flirting with the mainstream, MTV, Batman soundtracks and all the rest that fame and a hit single, Fade Into You, brings.
Yes, I should have included Paradise Circus, the song she did with Massive Attack and also should have finished this mix with Sometimes Always, the song she sang with The Jesus and Mary Chain in 1994. To make up for its absence, here's Hope and Reids live in TV in the mid- 90s.
A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion.
Last week's Oblique Strategy was- Tape your mouth.
I plumbed for the recently released Tom Waits and Massive Attack single, Boots On The Ground, a song I've returned to many times since, Tom Waits' mouth taped, both the disgust in his delivery and his words and the sound of him breathing.
There were as usual some excellent suggestions from the Bagging Area massive- Cryptoliz opted for the Bulgarian State Television Female Choir, as beloved by 4AD's Ivo Watts- Russell and as heard here singing Erghen Diado.
Rol went with Radiohead's Gagging Order, Ernie with Julie Fowlis and Joe Dolce and Al G with Deerhunter.
This week's Oblique Strategy card is this- Short circuit (if eating peas improves virility, shovel them into your pants)
Sound advice from Eno and Schmidt.
Pass the peas. More peas. Fred Wesley and The J.B.s.
I dunno if Fred Wesley and The J.B.s' peas improved their virility or indeed if they shoveled them into their pants but this is very much music that struts, 1973 funk that could potentially cause accidental pregnancies.
This is an ALFOS favorite, one I've heard go off in The Golden Lion, courtesy of Secret Circuit. Maybe not virile but definitely sexy.
A new release from Irish artist Def Nettle and a song that pushes a lot of post- punk/ 80s alternative and indie buttons, The Party. Built on top of punchy drums and a prodding bassline, there's accordion and flecks of guitar and singer/ frontman/ songwriter Glen Brady singing of being late to the party, acrid smoke and moving on. Lots of echoes of The The, Fatima Mansions, The Cure and other literate 80s indie- pop.
There's a remix by Andy Bell in his GLOK guise which strips the song down, adds throbbing electro bass and percussive clacks. Andy drops the accordion melody back in among blips and bleeps and the vocal comes back sounding even more alienated than before. It's a murky and dark but energising piece of music, the sort of thing you hear in the street late at night, suddenly coming out of a briefly open door that leads down some stairs to a basement club, where there are lights flashing and the unmistakable smell of dry ice.
I've continued writing some guest posts at Ban Ban Ton Ton, the Japan based Balearic blog run by Dr. Rob. I say Balearic, Ban Ban Ton Ton's remit runs far wider than that. Since the start of February this year I've written about these four albums.
Jason Boardman's second compilation of obscure post punk and dub cuts, music from the outer fringes of the early 1980s. ...And The Native Hipsters open the album with the surreally brilliant There Goes Concorde Again, low fi, DIY post- punk recored onto 4 track in a band member's bedroom.
No One's Listening Anyone 2 is a trip back to a time of invention and inspiration, the swirling creativity that was thrown into the air by punk, giving everyone and anyone who had an idea the confidence to go out and have a go. It was also a period with an ever present threat of nuclear war, economic recession and warmongering, clinically insane leaders... hmmm... You can read my review of No- One's Listening Anyway 2 here.
In March I reviewed the latest album by Craven Faults, an ambient outfit who make music inspired by the post- industrial landscape of northern England, a world of engine sheds, derelict mills, paths and cobbled streets walked by people from two hundred years ago. Craven Faults are dark and immersive, an experience. My review of Sidings is here. This is the fifteen minute long track Far Closes that ends the album.
A month ago I wrote about the latest album by Thought Leadership, a mysterious Stockport based guitarist who has released three album now, each one named after a suit from a deck of Tarot cards. The latest one is called IV Of Cups and indicates that Thought Leadership is showing no signs of running out of inspiration or ideas. IV Of Cups has ten new guitar led ambient/ instrumental pieces, all named Roman numerically from XXI to XXX. It's a joy of an album, inventive and hypnotic, some obvious influences worn on its sleeve but very much its own thing too. My review of IV Of Cups is here and the album can be found at Bandcamp with some vinyl still available here.
Most recently, two days ago in fact, Rob posted my review of the new Pan* American album, Fly The Ocean In A Silver Plane, an ambient/ electric./ acoustic tribute to travel- physical travel by airplane and the kind of metaphorical travels we can make at home, transported by music to another place. It's also a response to the decline and death of Pan* American's parents so there's a third kind of travel involved and referred to, the passage from life to death. Fly The Ocean In A Silver Plane is by no means a depressing or downbeat album though, it's an album of possibilities and of taking flight. You can read my full review here and listen to the album at Bandcamp.
At the end of March I went to see Ladytron play at Gorilla. The tickets were a gift, courtesy of friends who couldn't make it. I tend to think of Ladytron as a relatively recent band but they formed in Liverpool in 1999 and have released eight albums since 2001, the most recent a few weeks ago. Gorilla was rammed to the rafters, a little unpleasantly so. Once inside the venue (and it's a small venue anyway) the only way to move was if someone else moved. Making our way to the bar was a feat in itself and once there there was little chance of moving any further forward.
The band played twenty songs, set up with the two female members, Helen Marnie and Mira Aroyo, at the front of the stage- Helen sings most of the songs, the archetypal cool front woman, and Mira playing synth/ guitar and singing on a handful of songs. When Mira sings they become more angular, sounding like a Bulgarian Stereolab. When Helen sings, they snap into sharp, futurist synthpop mode.
Behind them founder member/ songwriter Daniel Hunt plays bass/ synths, there's a human drummer and another synth/ keys player. The songs from the new album Paradises follow in the electronic- synth pop vein they're known for and early on this single, Caught In The Blink Of An Eye, stands out- dramatic and urgent, slow burning synth with the drummer adding masses of extra oomph.
Old favourites Seventeen (their breakthrough from 2002) and Destroy Everything You Touch (from 2005) are saved for the end of the set and the encore. There's some audience- band interaction, Daniel joking about the heat onstage making everything 'moist' and all the songs, new and old, are well received. Just wish it hadn't be so packed in there.
More recent, closer to home and slightly less packed out, Justin Robertson appeared at Head last Thursday promoting his latest novel The MineralTail. Head is just up the road from me, a twenty minute walk to Stretford and is a bar/ space in a former branch of Barclays with the bar being the surviving bank counter and some of the late 60s modernist design features still intact. It's a low key and welcoming place with 70s geometric wallpaper and assorted pieces of furniture.
Justin promoted his second novel The Trial Of Jonah at Head a year ago and returned with his third- The MineralTail, a cosmic tale of the greatest three piece rock 'n' roll band ever formed (in this case, a trio of a megalithic stone and two dogs), the greatest album ever made and the longest song ever recorded. Following on the heels of the semi- autobiographical time travelling story The Trial Of Jonah, it's an irreverent, freewheeling tribute to the redemptive powers of music and of sound.
Justin reads a couple of passages and does an in- conversation with our host Stephen, who delves into the book's creation myth, the Buddha nature of dogs, 'Satan's flaccid jingles' and we take a headlong dive into the magical psychedelic world of pan pipes and bagpipe jazz.
The MineralTail has an album to accompany it, the soundtrack to the novel. There's a fifteen minute sampler at Soundcloud- motorik space rock, ambient dub ritual and rocking cosmische. Listen here.
