Juno Recommends Rock / Indie / Folk / Metal / Punk / 50s / 60s: July 2022

Review: Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner (Sons Of Kemet) finally deliver on their much-hyped The Smile project, blending the anxious and synaptic tones of Radiohead's anthemic indie-electro with the bluer party tones of UK jazz. The new album features a slew of tracks with swelling strings recorded by the full brass section of the London Contemporary Orchestra, as well as a band of jazz players like Theon and Nathaniel Cross and Robert Stillman.

Review: David Sylvian is best known for his naughties albums 'Blemish' and 'Manafon'- as well as his time at the time of Japan - but at the same time as writing those he recorded a load of alternative material. They took the form of collaborations and side projects with plenty of big names form the worlds of pop, electronic and contemporary classical and are now all gathered together on this Sleepwalkers album. The moods range from romantic to blissed out, sensual to experimental with the likes of the track with Ryuichi Sakamoto, with whom Sylvian has worked for many years, being particular highlights.

Review: Seven Psalms finds Australia's most imperious musical misfit Nick Cave leaving his Bad Seeds at home and teaming up with frequent collaborator Warren Ellis for a limited 10". The spoken word pieces on this record are the result of a daily song writing practice over a week during lockdown - Cave himself describes them as "small, sacred songs," set to appropriately subtle musical accompaniment. Recorded during the sessions for Cave and Ellis' 2021 album Carnage, it's a rich work in its own right that offers a different perspective on Cave's considerable gifts as a soothsayer.

Review: English band XTC served up White Music, their debut album, in 1978 having already impressed three months earlier with their debut EP. The album had modest chart success, making number 38 i the charts, and spaced the infamous single 'Statue of Liberty' which the BBC promptly banned on account of the line 'In my fantasy I sail beneath your skirt. It sure seems tame by modern standards but it helped gain the band more notoriety for their hyperactive post-punk sounds. While one reviewer at the time said the album was "aimed at bored Yes fans" it was a fine and hard to define debut that set the band in good stead.

Review: Liverpudlian post-punk band The Wild Swans formed in 1980 and has had a rotating ensemble of members ever since. But in that time they have pioneered a shoegaze and indie sound that has made them cult favourites on and off for years. Despite mainstream chart success eluding then, they are popular as far afield as Japan, the Philippines and the US. 'The Revolutionary Spirit' was their first single in 1982 with the original line up and it received a measure of critical acclaim which is easy to understand even now listening back, all these years later.

Review: 'Dive Deep' is the sixth studio album from the band Morcheeba, and it was their second album without former lead singer Skye Edwards. Instead, band members (and brothers) Ross and Paul Godfrey collaborated with several guest performers for the recordings, including rapper Cool Calm Pete, Norwegian alternative singer-songwriter Thomas Dybdahl, French singer Manda Zamolo and pop/rock acclaimed vocalist Judie Tzuke. The result is a pleasing and tactile foray through pop-trip-hop and downtempo, nautically themed to match its mood; now clock this blue vinyl reissue, the album's synaesthetic colour!

Review: Shinedown make just the kind of heavy electronic rock that could put Bring Me The Horizon to shame. Boundless and headbanging in scope, their new album 'Planet Zero' explores an American pre-apocalypse - "there might be no tomorrow" - inspired by the band's exasperation with the American political climate emergent over the course of the past few years and into the present. With the US referred to by the band as "planet zero", here's an emotive rock album that makes bittersweet do with the face of things.

Review: Brand spanking new album from Foals, which hits our shelves in the form of a first standard black vinyl edition following their new single '2AM'. Bright and plucky festival indie of the highest order; while that first single works in a heightened feel of summeriness, the rest of the album works in a completely different array of emotions.

Review: Following up their turn of the millennium self-titled debut, 2002's 'Sing Sing Death House' served as the introduction for many into The Distillers' scuzzy, empowering, sickly anthemic cavern, bolstered by punk frontwoman extraordinaire, Brody Dalle. While 'Coral Fang', released the very next year, would catapult the group to major exposure, airplay, festival sets and legions of rabid fans, one would be remiss to ignore the bloody groundwork laid by its far more aggro predecessor. Clocking in at under 30 minutes, this was The Distillers with little cash and nothing to prove, just aiming for the throat at all costs. And after a two-decade distillation period, what better time to find a new home on wax.

Review: Back in the mid-90s Go-Sailor was a short lived band that burned bright in certain circles. They only put out a few singles and contributed to a couple of compilations before Rose Melberg (Tiger Trap, The Softies, Gaze, Brave Irene, Knife Pleats), Linton (Henry's Dress, The Aislers Set) and Paul Curran (Take A Day fanzine, Crimpshrine, Monsula) all went their own way. Their song writing is crisp and to the point, their grooves hard hitting and tight and listening back now these tunes have an honesty and purity that still resonates.

Review: Matthew Doty cut his teeth as a member of early 00s post rockers Saxon Shore, but these days you'll find him flying solo as Deserta with a sound which carries through some of his roots while adding a dreamy, shoegaze-pop twist. In 2020 he released the first Deserta album, Black Aura My Sun, and now he's back with the follow-up. Leading with the tracks 'Lost In The Weight' and 'I'm So Tired', Doty wields a mammoth sound with towering guitars and vocals that swirl in an ocean of reverb. It's genuinely huge, marking a new progression for the artist and his project which should be a must for fans of My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and plenty more besides.

Review: Baxter Dury has been making superbly loose and laidback sounds for more than 20 years now. Here, Mr Maserati collects some of his famously idiosyncratic sounds from across that long career with plenty of comedown disco sounds and deep, rumbling basslines. There is plenty of wry humour and musical sweetness within the material which is taken from Baxter's six long players. Says the artist, "It's a kind of provincial nod to the music I got into during lockdown because my son was playing it - Frank Ocean, Tyler the Creator and Kendrick Lamar."

Review: For Fleet Foxes, there'll be no clock-burning or heartelt 'omming' round Stonehenge this winter, as Robin Pecknold and co. present their latest album 'A Very Lonely Solstice', for all the hurt hearts out there freezing away alone in this festive quarter. Pecknold resonates; all tracks on this LP were recorded at the pinnacle of the artists' own solitude, during a live-streamed event performed on the winter solstice of 2020 just days after COVID restrictions in New York tightened. Coming to CD, black and limited white vinyl, songs from every classic Fleet Foxes album, From Helplessness Blues to Crack-Up, are reimagined acoustically here, as Pecknold's voice resonates through a lonesome yet gripping chamber space.

Review: Is it really 10 years since Alt-J burst into the open with the barnstorming success of their debut album An Awesome Wave? The band set out their stall as something a little different from the get-go, but the vital essence of the band is in their ability to bridge the gap between widely appealing indie songwriting hooks and unusual touches which make everything sound new, even a decade later. It's fair to say they inspired a fair few artists in their wake, especially with the likes of 'Something Good', but none of these imitators match up to the sheer inventiveness spilling out of this incredible debut album. In the wake of their latest album The Dream, it's a treat to be able to go back to the beginning of their remarkable journey.

Review: Keane's 2013 compilation, The Best of Keane, comes hurtling our way, having been released for the first time on wax. Now seeing an expanded 2xLP edition, we're damn Keane to see the band's hit songs 'Somewhere Only We Know,' 'Everybody's Changing,' and 'Is It Any Wonder?' make the record, alongside two new songs unearthed from around the time the band recorded Strangeland, 'Higher Than The Sun,' and 'Won't Be Broken.'

Review: Jay Wobble is the former bassist with Public Image Ltd of course, but is also a visionary in his own right. This new album finds him revisiting some old ground: it takes him back to influential PiL 1979 album Metal Box, which he wholly reinvents with a load of new and sophisticated dub takes with all new and mind expanding production. Alongside the original tunes are two bonus cuts which are new versions of originals from the first ever PiL album. It adds up to a timelsss fusion of new and old indie and dub from this masterful guitarist.

Review: Solo rockist Warren Zevon gets a vinyl 'archival-rarities' reissue, compiled and finalized nearly 20 years after his son Jordan discovered over 120 unreleased outtakes and demos from the artist in an attic-buried touring case. Filtered out even further and put on display, the best of these recordings were compiled and put out on a double comp, Preludes, which only existed in CD format. This vinyl version features all of the original ditties, plus bonus tracks and a one-time-only 20 page bound book.

Review: When Silverchair burst into the limelight in Australia they were high school kids riding on the back of a competition win to record their debut single, 'Tomorrow'. In a blur of youthful energy and precocious talent, Frogstomp followed just a year later thrusting them to worldwide notoriety as a new force in grunge to rival the Seattle demigods. Even if the lyrics speak to Daniel Johns' angsty age at the time, the album stands the test of time as an all-time classic, filled with scuzzy hooks and pop nous that set them apart from some of their US peers. From the opening bass licks of 'Israel's Son' to the final, hopeful blasts of 'Findaway', this is an album loaded with gold from one of Australia's proudest musical exports.

Review: Perfume Genius aka Mike Hadreas wrote this music choreographer Kate Wallich's immersive dance piece The Sun Still Burns Here at the request of the Seattle Theatre Group. The show was performed across America and captures the euphoria of the dance floor in elegant fashion. Now the full suite of sounds from the show make it on to this record with GRAMMY-winning producer and long-time collaborator Blake Mills co-producing with Hadreas. It's a world of dramatic synths, delicate percussion and swirling rhythms.

Review: RECOMMENDED
It's the sixth studio album by English rock greats the Alan Parsons Project, with both the eponymous man and his partner in crime Eric Woolfson are on particularly fine form. Originally released in 1982, the fact it was nominated for Best Engineered Album at the GRAMMY Awards a year on, and then won the GRAMMY for Best Immersive Audio Album in 2019 tells you everything there is to know about how well produced this is.

Nevertheless, critics at the time weren't so quick to laud praise on the record, with one Philadelphia Inquirer write-up labelling the release "hopelessly banal", and likening the instrumentation to Paul Mccartney as a manic depressive. Skip forward a few years, though, and it was heralded as a soft pop triumph, combining artistic lyricism with immediate chart accessibility.

Review: The last time we heard from Sophie Regina Allison was two years ago, when Color Theory arrived as a follow up to the well-received debut, Clean. Born into a very different world to the one we're living in today, pre-pandemic (the WHO had yet to describe Covid-19 in those terms), before the outbreak of all-out war on the border of NATO's defensive territory, when things were affordable, and while the idea of a national strike in Britain was unthinkable.

Of course, that halcyon moment was short-lived. Within weeks of the record landing we were tapped in the personal prisons of our own homes. The rest is history. So, emerging out the other end it's only fitting that the artist in question - AKA Soccer Mommy - returns to bookend things. Sometimes Forever is certainly a fitting reward for all that's happened. A distorted hybrid of garage rock and pop sensibilities, it's the ideal soundtrack to an era when subcultures have all-but-vanished, and the mainstream can be underground.

Review: In many ways Spiderland is lucky to exist., Slint weren't exactly the most avid studio band in the world, only recording two full length albums during the five years in which they were properly active. They also disbanded around the time this record was released - 1991 - perhaps even shortly before, which could have scuppered any plans for their difficult second even after they managed to emerge from a recording facility with enough tracks.

But what tracks they are. Spiderland is rightly considered an absolute landmark, an LP that captures the spirit of rock 'n' roll in transition. Leaving one decade behind, and the hardcore punk that had dominated the underground guitar scene, while still retaining those ethics, it has one foot in grunge, another in experimental, another in garage and a fourth somewhere else. Enough limbs to mark it out as a real mutant.

Review: Post-punk outfit Yard Act quickly picked up plenty of fans after their powerful debut album The Overload made a big impression in 2022. It came hot on the heels of their equally impressive first EP, Dark Days, from 2021, which saw them head off on world tours and smash sales records. It now gets an overdue repress on new silver vinyl which is in honour of 'The Overload' finishing second in the Album Charts. Four potent tunes of punchy drum work, razor sharp riffs and bounding grooves with singable choruses.