This is the first post to bend the rules and follow a theme not the events of the week. All tracks are new music I’ve been listening to over the last week. Enjoy!

A reminder that Spotify plays from this box in the annoying ‘Preview’ mode with short excerpts of each track. Please click the icon in top right corner to open the full playlist in a separate Spotify window.

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SAMO – A Certain Ratio (2023)

So we’re kicking off with new music from an old band. A Certain Ratio got a namecheck in last week’s piece on producer Martin Hannett as one of the many Lancashire-based post-punk bands he worked with. They’ve been on the go since the late 70s with some periods of inactivity. In 1979, they had the first stand-alone 7″ single release on Tony Wilson’s Factory Records (FAC5, catalogue number fans). They differed from their peers in that scene by being heavily influenced by the likes of Parliament and Funkadelic, sometimes adding Latin percussion to their bass-heavy, white funk groove. I was aware of them in the 80s through their Factory released singles selling well enough to feature regularly in the indie charts but I didn’t really get into them much at the time. Having passed through the 90s with deals at A&M and Creation, they faded from view until playing live more widely between 2008 and 2011. Mute Records picked up their back catalogue in 2018 and they’ve had a bit of a renaissance in the last five years with some anniversary collections and then some new music emerging. I picked up on their amazing cover of Talking Heads’ Houses In Motion in 2019, which I subsequently discovered had been reworked from original tapes recorded in 1980 with Martin Hannett. It was intended as a collaboration with Grace Jones but she never completed her vocal and so an old guide vocal by bass player Jez Kerr is used. So I was keeping my ear out for new music from the band and as you will hear from this single taken from recent album 1982, their funk sensibilities remain intact but are given a wonderful 2023 polish and sheen. The song features a new young Manchester soul musician Ellen Beth Abdi. It is inspired by the 1980s New York art scene and I cant help feel it has a certain Rapture feel to it, even referencing Fab-5 Freddy.

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Death Wish – Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit (2023)

I’ve been waiting for new music from award-winning Americana artist Jason Isbell for a little while now. His last record was a covers project of songs by Georgia artists (including REM, Gladys Knight and Cat Power) which he promised he would do if Joe Biden won the state in the 2020 US election. So I was delighted to hear this track as one of three advance singles from his new record Weathervanes, which is due in June. It sees him back with his trademark tense vocal and driving guitar arpeggios on a song which builds to a string laden climax and bodes well for the LP. I was aware of Isbell in the early 2000s when he joined the Drive-By Truckers as a young writer and guitarist. He was a major influence on their next three albums, in particular contributing the much admired song Decoration Day to the LP of the same name. He left the band amicably in 2007 and began his solo career working on his own and with a new band he put together call the 400 Unit, named after a psychiatric ward in a hospital in his home town of Florence, Alabama. I heard his output over this period retrospectively having discovered his amazing 2017 album The Nashville Sound, which became one of my records of that year. Tracks like Tupelo and If We Were Vampires revealed a songwriter of exceptional talent and sent me into his back catalogue where many other delights were to be found. It also revealed a history of drugs and alcohol addiction which had its roots in his time with the Drive-By Truckers. Following a slot supporting Ryan Adams on tour in 2012, Adams and Isbell’s manager intervened to get him to enter a rehab program from which he has been sober ever since. His 2013 LP Southeastern reflects and references his sobriety and he married long time colleague [and artist in her own right] Amanda Shires as it was released. The achingly beautiful Cover Me Up from that album was written about Shires and you can see her backing him on this song with the 400 Unit live at Austin City Limits here.

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Not Strong Enough – boygenius (2023)

So lowercase font band boygenius are apparently a “supergroup”! This is quite an old fashioned concept for three female singer songwriters in their late 20s who got together in 2018 through a friendship born of being compared to each other as solo artists and a mutual love of poetry. Whilst the expression brings to mind 60s rock like Blind Faith and Humble Pie, this meeting of musical minds appears to be a different kettle of kippers. I have to confess that until I heard this wonderful record, I only vaguely knew Phoebe Bridgers from her getting the (probably quite short) support slot on the Taylor Swift megashows this summer and had not heard of either Julien Baker or Lucy Dacus. Hey – there’s a lot of music out there, you know! Now I am better read, I know that Bridgers has had four Grammy nominations, released two solo albums and one with Conor Oberst and has collaborated with The National among many others. Baker is no slouch either having three critically acclaimed LPs of intense personal songs to her name and seems to have had some issues with substance abuse, mental health and the Christian faith? Dacus also has three albums on the shelves and similar to the others has met with widespread praise for her work. All three are activists to some degree in what is generally known as American progressivism and seem to enjoy challenging the norm . So far so good – but what do they sound like together? Well to these old ears, the track on this week’s playlist sounds like classy pop music. But elsewhere on their debut record, helpfully titled The Record, they sound folky (Emily I’m Sorry) but always with a strong indie sensibility, which particularly stands out on the track called $20. If not completely convinced, can I recommend you have a look at them performing Not Strong Enough live here. On the Jimmy Kimmel show, they are in ‘Beatle suits’ playing two Telecasters and a Gretsch semi-acoustic and a backing band having so much fun. I was already a fan of the song but I like it even more having seen this. Always An Angel, Never A God.

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Grand Junction – The Hold Steady (2023)

So what attracts you to a band? It can be many things but more often than not for me it is the singer’s voice. This is how it happened with The Hold Steady. I was listening to my Spotify Discover Weekly algorithm-generated playlist back in the summer of 2017 and liked this singer’s distinctive voice and the way he sung on a track. It turned out to be Preludes by a someone called Craig Finn. A couple of months later the same source threw up a track called Easy with the same vocal but when I checked it was by The Hold Steady. A quick internet search told me Craig Finn was the singer with The Hold Steady but he had a solo career as well. He was born in Boston, grew up and formed the band in Minneapolis but now work out of Brooklyn, NY. Another Finn solo track appeared a few months later – the wondrous God In Chicago which will get a full post of it’s own in the future. And from that point on I was looking up both him and the band and dipping into their music. Finn is the principal writer and has been described as a “lyrically dense story-teller” – a favourite idiom of mine! He loves developing involved song narratives which feature (sometimes recurring) characters who live complex and difficult lives “in the dark parts of big Midwestern cities”. In these strange but fascinating songs, people work in humdrum jobs, scraping to get by and crash in and out of difficult relationships in a very American way. Finn’s solo stuff is often less musically intense than with the band and often the lyric hits harder in this environment. The track on this week’s playlist comes from the band’s new LP The Price of Progress and is a kind of travelogue featuring a frayed couple drifting and searching for a life destination. I saw him solo in King Tut’s a few years back and he was fantastic live – a hugely enthusiastic stage performer not conforming to the thin, cooly coiffed frontman expectations of rock music. They are not for everyone but, as the video for this track shot on location in London’s Electric Ballroom last month shows, those that do get them, really get them.

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B What U R – Stone Foundation & Shirley Jones (2023)

My mod mate Dave put me on to the Stone Foundation a wee while back but I’m amazed to see they are long enough in the tooth to be putting out a 25th anniversary collection of their sweet soul music in June. Beginning in the clubs in 1998 with an ever changing line up led by Neil Jones and Neil Sheasby, they have done the classic hard graft gigging to “pay their dues”, eventually getting their first big break supporting the reformed Specials on their UK arena tour in 2011. With a settled line up and a couple more albums under their belt, Paul Weller made contact with them in 2016 to work together and ended up producing and appearing on their next album. Their list of other collaborators is as long as it is impressive with names like soul legend Nolan Porter, Bettye Lavette, Hamish Stuart, Durand Jones and the great Melba Moore. Lavette’s voice is a thing of wonder and it really suits the track Season of Change which has a great video here. Weller continues to work with them and I am a big fan of the amazing groove they get on the track Deeper Love from their 2021 album Is Love Enough? Check it out! The track on this week’s playlist is featured on the forthcoming 25th anniversary compilation Standing In The Light and appears (to this novice at least) be a new track with a new collaborator in the shape of Shirley Jones. In the 70s and 80s, Jones sang with her sisters Brenda and Valorie in the Jones Girls and had several hits on the US R&B charts. Here she contributes to a decidedly funky track by the Foundation which cannot fail to get your feet moving on a Friday evening. Push the sofa back!

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Bed Of Roses – Ian Hunter (2023)

So we’re ending with another old dog not doing any new tricks but doing what he’s always done and I’ve always loved him doing. I can’t tell you how much it fills my heart with joy to hear Ian Hunter sing in that voice over those simple, unfussy guitar chords to that steadfast beat. He will be 84 years old this week and in a feat of octogenarian ….erm… defiance, he has named his brand new album Defiance Part 1. Apparently he is well advanced with recording Part 2! One of his defiant tongue-in-cheek lyrics on the record goes: “When I was thirty I was over the hill/Fifty years later I still kill”. Among many media appearances, he was on the Today Programme on R4 on Tuesday talking about the record and about getting up in the middle of the night. Not for a pee like most 84 year olds but to write down a song that comes to him in the dark fully formed and in key! Normally an album with a stellar list of rock contributors like this one (eg Billy Gibbons, Slash, Todd Rundgren and the late Taylor Hawkins) can turn out wrong but Hunter’s personality and focus shines through, although maybe the title track is a bit too Slash-like for me. I was delighted to see self-confessed Mott fan Jeff Tweedy appearing and Jeff Beck makes his last ever recording alongside Johnny Depp. Hunter was careful to state Depp was only a friend through music when asked in his interview. I’ve chosen the standout lead single for the playlist which appropriately features Ringo Starr on drums for a song about Hunter’s time as a jobbing bass player in the Star Club in Hamburg where the Beatles cut their teeth playing long sets. It’s yet another of Hunter’s songs eulogising life in a band (he does these better anyone) and it features some lovely slide guitar parts by Mike Campbell who played with Tom Petty in the Heartbreakers. The lyrics are fantastic referencing Star Club stalwarts Roy Young and Tony Sheridan playing with the “Silver Bugs”. They include this knowing piece of nostalgia which rings true for old geezers like me: “You can never go back so they say/And it’s a bank now anyway/But I can still feel it like yesterday”. The song comes with a really good animated video featuring a band with younger lookalikes of Hunter, Starr and Campbell which just makes me smile every time I watch it. Fabulous stuff.

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Last Word

Working on the theme of newly released music this week has led to the shorter posts predicted last week. But not by much – I just can’t help myself! It’s been a busy week with the building work on the house, so even slightly writing less has helped here at the temporarily re-located WeekInSound HQ. We’ll see what next week brings…

The Master Playlist continues to grow and has been given an injection of 2023 music this week.

WeekInSoundMaster

AR