Juno Recommends Rock / Indie / Folk / Metal / Punk / 50s / 60s: June 2023

Review: The Lemonheads' Come On Feel The Lemonheads is a rejuvenatory album of power-pop goodness and this double LP/CD reissue of the album - their sixth, from 1993 - will certainly cleanse your bad vibes once more. Led by Evan Dando, The Lemonheads have been making catchy, easygoing, melodicentric hits since the late 80s. 'Into Your Arms', 'It's About Time' and 'Big Gay Heart' all feature, not to mention guest appearances by Belinda Carlisle and Rick James - it's a stew that contributed readily to its stonking commercial success. This reissue celebrates the album's 30th anniversary, and includes a bonus disc of alternative/acoustic tracks, covers and curiosities. It also comes in a deluxe bookback edition with liner notes by Dando himself.

Review: When The Clash rolled into Passaic, New Jersey in March 1980, they were fully hitting their stride. They'd released their instant classic London Calling in December the year before and cracked the US top 30, so they hit Stateside with some swing in their stride, and it shows on this fantastic document of one of the breakthrough US gigs. Of course the classics spill out of this collection, from 'London Calling' and 'Guns Of Brixton' to 'I Fought The Law' and their cover of Junior Murvin's 'Police & Thieves', all delivered by a band firing on all cylinders.

Review: Talk about being ahead of their time. Not only did XTC get the jump on everyone else (inadvertently) by predicting the letters XTC would change the course of Western European youth culture from the mid-1980s onwards, they also offered a very early stylistic premonition of the sounds that would, temporarily, usurp rave and associated genres as the pre-eminent adolescence, teen hood, and early adulthood music.
Formed in 1972, XTC are one of those examples of why we shouldn't really listen to what the hype men and women are saying. Struggling to break ground during their formative years - arguably their most fertile creatively - nevertheless the cult followers could see what was there. Most of the rest of us waited for another decade or so, at least, before realising this combination of elaborate pop, punk and art rock was actually prepping us for post punk, power pop and Britpop. Go 2 makes that very clear indeed.

Review: It's the era of nepo babies, sure - but few artists have owned up to the phenomenon with a sense of humour, nor properly investigated it in album format. Baxter Dury, the infamous artist whose merits ironically don't exist purely insofar as him being the son of Ian, now makes himself an exception to this rule. The new album I Thought I Was Better Than You is an honest yet well-humoured take on Dury's own fortunate upringing - with highlights like 'Sincere', 'So Much Money' and 'Pale White Nissan' hearing him sift through the memories, with various self-caricatures used to interrogate the double-edged sword of at least partially-inheriting an entertainment brand. It's not just this, though: it's also a rumination Dury's childhood as a whole, being the sonic extension of Dury's 2021 coming-of-age autobiography, Chaise Lounge.

Review: This new CD captures a live recording of legendary post-punk band The Cure's first ever gig on foreign soil. It was on Sunday 29 July 1979 at the famous and still-there venue Melkweg in the capital of Amsterdam. It was a legendary show by all accounts and took in plenty of their big tunes of the time such as 'Seventeen Seconds', '10.15 Saturday Night' and 'Jumping Someone Else's Train.' There is a rawness to the recording that really takes you back to the gig and makes you feel like you are really there.

Review: Heads will know Suicide as the pioneering duo of electronic music and proto-punk from New York City, consisting of vocalist Alan Vega and instrumentalist Martin Rev. Fewer will know anything more beyond the pale of their debut album, though. 'A Way of Life', their third studio album released in 1988 via Wax Trax!, heard them escape the noise - exploring a more hypnotic, minimalistic synthpop sound. That being said, stonkers like 'Surrender', 'Jukebox Baby 96', and 'Dominic Christ' all still captured the doomy New York zeitgeist. This remastered edition contains a full remaster from its original tapes, as well as a brand new, never-heard-before live Bruce Springseen cover no less.

Review: The Wedding Present are an archetypal indie band if ever there was one. They first formed in 1985 and quickly made their way to prominence as part of the C86 scene - named after the cassettes to which NME recorded new tunes from hot bands of the times. Founder and only constant band member David Gedge wrote intelligent lyrics and paired them with fast-paced jangle-pop rhythms. Their debut album George Best in 1992 was a big one and Watusi - while coming some time later - was still sharp and commercially successful, with big tunes being the likes of 'It's A Gas' and 'Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah'.

Review: Le Jardin De Heavenly is one of the four Heavenly albums scheduled for reissue this year by Skep Wax Records. The band have marked that news by reuniting for two special sold-out dates at Bush Hall in London as appetite for their music feels as strong as it did first time round back in the 1990s as the new generation pick up on it via mediums like Tiktok and streaming platforms. This record is packed with melody-laden pop tunes, complex harmonies and plenty of intense drums, guitar flourishes and sharp and loud riffs. Elements of early shoegazae can also be heard next to some dreamier pieces. A real classic.

Review: Talk about taking your sweet time. Anyone want to hazard a guess at how long Blinking Lights & Other Revelations took to finish? Thought not. In truth, Eels started work on it in 1998, but it wouldn't see the light of day until 2005. Marking the start of a new era for the band, contractually at least - their deal with David Geffen and Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks Records having dissolved the previous year - the album was high concept, too.
As per frontman E, writing on the band's official website at the time of Blinking Lights' release, the record is about "God and all the questions relating to the subject of God." Suddenly the extended production period makes sense. Then you see it has 33 tracks listed on the sleeve and it all becomes clear. A classic piece of alternative rock with big, bold ideas, it should always be remembered as one of the first landmarks to come from America this millennium.

Review: It has been almost fifty years since Sparks released on the venerable Island Records, notching up landmark hits like 'This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us', but they've been as consistent a force since then as any act you care to mention. The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte is as bold and uncompromising as anything the band has ever done and displays great song craft, stories with intricate lyrical narratives and plenty of near perfect pop tunes distilled into just over three minutes of real musical potency. This all means Sparks remain as smart and essential as ever in their field - as if you didn't know.

Review: Jim Jones (not that Jim Jones, but if your finger's on the pulse, then yes, that Jim Jones) makes a a whopping return with his new 7" 'Gimme The Grease'. A Memphis-via-London hard rock n' roll stonker, this one's a self-proclaimed ode to "getting over/getting it easy/getting it". Whatever that means, we're not sure, but the song is a figurative statement to match, as Jones sings relentlessly of prevailing against the odds despite life's grind, while staying staunchly backed up by rollincking drums, shimmying shakers and honking horn sections. Forwarding the upcoming album Ain' No Peril, it's a fantastic prototype for an upcoming album with an inevitable Mississippean rock stench, sure to sate anyone with even so much of a hint of keenness for the sound.

Review: "A document created in the shadow of incredible darkness. One from which the creator hadn't planned on escaping and still doesn't. Hence the title of the album. It is the result of an illness that I've battled my whole life. It isn't something that the world has done to me. It's the world I live in, and it's no one's fault."
So says Brian Christinzio, AKA BC Camplight, of his sixth album. As ever, it's a musical masterpiece packing dense layers of instrumental experimentation and theses-worthy lyrical poignance. An artist who has never played by the musical rules, fans of strong juxtapositions will again be in there element, with a tracklist that spans grunge-y garage rock, twisted barroom journeyman stuff, theatrical guitar pop, and plenty more. But the sounds themselves are only one half the genius. When it comes to arrangements, things are as playful as they are innovative, keeping listeners guessing as to how structures will pan out.

Review: Tame Impala's breakthrough album 'Lonerism' celebrates its tenth anniversary with a special edition reissue. Through tracks like 'Elephant', 'Feels Like We Only Go Backwards' and 'Endors Toi', the album is known for introducing psychedelia to a new generation of hungry music fans in the early 2010s, and features Kevin Parker's distinctive falsetto vocals and intricate guitarwork throughout. The reissue here includes various bonuses, demos and "assorted sketches", casting renewed light on an important record for both the music-loving public, and an Aussie band/project destined for stardom.

Review: Evand Dando and co broke through to the mainstream with the sublime, sunny songwriting of 1992's It's A Shame About Ray, then managed to sustain their time at the top the following year with the Slade-referencing Come On Feel The Lemonheads. It's an altogether bigger and superfically impressive prospect, with guests like Rick James and Belinda Carlisle making the contributors' list and a production job from The Robb Brothers which elevates it beyond the slacker rock tag they'd had until the is point. It also spawned their biggest ever single - 'Into Your Arms' - and a host of other chart successes, including the excellent anthem 'Big Gay Heart', which saw them neatly distancing themselves from the jock rock category that other contemporaries like Nirvana quickly found themeslves slipping into.

Review: A lot can change in two years or so. Not least if 2021 saw you release one of the most celebrated records of the current decade, tackling the mental health crisis head on in the midst of a global pandemic. An album that despaired and threw its hands up, declaring that we, collectively, are not alright and something needs to change, all via staggeringly poetic prose, at times bordering on spoken word. Returning from that triumphant episode, Arlo Parks follows up with The Soft Machine, an LP that lands after most of the dust from that global emergency has settled, and she's relocated to sunny Los Angeles to live with partner and alternative rapper, Ashnikko. To say the result is something that sounds warmer, more appreciative of what you've got rather than focussed on what isn't would be an understatement, but the exquisite songwriting and willingness to speak honestly about major issues remains.

Review: "People have described their music as ambient, although that's a description they don't care much for. It's certainly atmospheric and there's something about their sunny-sounding guitar that seemed appropriate to a book that, although published in 1927, didn't become popular in America until the 1960s."
So says writer and director Gerard McInulty about The Durutti Column, the group he drafted for the soundtrack to his 12 Stars group production of Treatise On The Steppenwolf, first staged in Glasgow in 2003. This is what that sounds like - call it what you like, essentially it's just beautiful music to captivate and enthral, without insisting on itself - and you also get an additional trio of extended movements that were used to score the Human Avatars art installation at MOSI, Manchester, in 2005. Ace all round.

Review: Recorded in Nashville over the course of just one week during March 2017, Lucy Dacus described her second studio album as comprising songs about "living through loss and the inevitable darkness of life, and doing so hopefully and joyfully", explaining that the title refers to "me having this impulse to document and capture and create a history of my life and the people that I know ... Because as I'm making this history and capturing these things that I hold dear, those things won't stay." Universally acclaimed at the time, with critics pointing to the razor sharp songwriting, innovative arrangements and strong sense of heightened emotion running thought the work, while so much has happened in the half decade since its release, this epic collection of alternative country-hued indie rock & roll hasn't waned one iota.

Review: Now in their second decade as a band, it seems almost unthinkable that anyone should not have long-since fallen head over heels for Detroit's Protomartyr. The post-punk set stormed out of the starting blocks amid a niche but very notable resurgence in the sound, but years later have managed to continue staying relatively true to their remit, swerving any and every opportunity to reinvent in the hope of finding a spot on the next bandwagon, while still managing to avoid falling into repetitive pitfalls. Ever imaginative, in many ways Formal Growth In the Desert is their most uncompromising ode to the style we associate them with, and certainly reflects how close they can come to starting a full blow riot in your front room. Nevertheless, it's also packed full of tender moments, not least on closer 'The Author', an ode to iconic singer Joe Casey's late mother. A powerhouse band returning with a powerhouse record, even in its softest seconds.

Review: Beach Fossils are regarded as bedroom-pop trailblazers from Brooklyn. They were one of the most influential and well-loved New York bands of the 2010s and manage to find some of that form here on new album Bunny. As inventors of jangle pop, they revisit that with some extra warm and stylish songwriting, lush dream-pop moods and hints of post-punk energy. Lyrical themes include the joys of being a father and other equally brilliant but less noble subjects such as how good it is to smoke a cigarette out of a car window with friends.

Review: 2022's stunning album Once Twice Melody was a fine example of Beach House doing what they do best - living bang up to that name, with intimate-but epic instrumentation falling somewhere between surf-y jangle and grand shoegaze. 'Become' is definitely on a similar tip, and as such feels much like an extension of the long form.
Dig a little deeper, though, and scratches begin to show. While the full-length record represented Beach House reaching for the stars, or at least the moon, and stepping into the role of festival headliners, here the sense of pure confidence and occasion is less pronounced. That may not be a bad thing, mind, because while Once came across like a finished article, refined and prepared, things here seem somehow rawer, as though we're sitting in on a session as oppose to getting the signed off product.

Review: The blissed-out folk-pop stylings of Kacey Musgraves haven't taken long at all to influence the international scene. This anniversary edition marks five years since Golden Hours' original release - already, we can hear its big-beaty dream pop sound having infected the tastes of an entire generation of producers. Musgraves' incipient take on the style is honest, as she sings of cryptic personal life experiences, with her marriage to fellow singer-songwriter Ruston Kelly a central inspiration. We begin with the plodding maximizers 'Slow Burn' and 'Butterflies', but the album throws curvier and curvier balls as it progresses, with 'High Horse' eking into full dancepop territory. This edition sees a brand new blue vinyl version for the obsessives out there.