The new Morrisey album Low in High School will be released on November 17 on Etienne/BMG. Lead single Spent the Day in Bed can be streamed on YouTube, with all the Moz bits intact: critical and funny aloof vocals on top of a slightly skewed piano part.
DeVotchKa multi-instrumentalist Tom Hagerman has launched a Kickstarter campaign to cover the costs of recording his new album The 7 Deadly Sins with A Far Cry, a chamber orchestra from Boston.:
Hi, my name is Tom Hagerman and I guess I'm best known as 1/4 of the rock band, Devotchka. 2 years ago I was commissioned to write a piece of music based on the concept of the 7 Deadly Sins for the Denver based dance company, Wonderbound.
The 7 Deadly Sins as it was performed in September 2015 is essentially the story of a wedding-- if the characters were plucked out out of an episode of Seinfeld and placed in a play by Jean Paul Sartre.
UK prog musician Steven Wilson has just announced the dates for this North American tour to promote the release of his latest album To The Bone:
I’m happy to announce a return to the USA & Canada in April and May of next year with my band, and with a new show based on the current album To The Bone. As well as featuring songs from that album there will be favourites from previous tours, as well as some of my older songs that haven’t been played by the solo band before. The visual aspects of the show are planned to be on an even higher level than previous tours, and as always the sound will be in quadrophonic.
Due to popular a third show in London at the Royal Albert Hall (March 29th< 2018). Tickets go on sale on September 22nd.
Gunther’s Grass are a trio playing gnarly drones a the crossroads of avant-garde and free jazz. Its members have at the forefront of the Bay Area experimental scene and on their new album Bastille Day & Other Lullabies they travel across the globe, from Turkey to the Ukraine, Cambodia, Indonesia, France and the southernmost tip of the South American mainland.
This is not the kind of music that comes to mind to pop in the player of a rented car en route to visit the sites. The trio builds structures that appear to be impregnable or even unscalable at first, but on closer inspection offer handholds and hidden routes. Surrender to the flow with an open mind and the soundscapes unfold. It's like making your way to the jungle to find the structures that have been overgrown with dense vegetation.
Most of the musical heroes of retro psychdelic Britpop quartet Itchy Teeth are dead (and when were rather young when they left the planet). The resident genius of the Beach Boys is still here and that inspired them to write Brian Wilson Is Still Alive. He didn't overdose or took off to the great unknown in a silver space ship. He is still creating and experimenting, like a wandering child who got stuck in another time zone and much changed world that he cannot fully understand.
The Londoners wonder what it must be like for an artist, when the general public only wants to hear his prime work that saw the light of day many decades ago. Brian Wilson Is Still Alive is a respectful tribute, but with a sense of humour that gives an edge (or teeth in this case).
