Can't Contain My Joy

Going down to Liverpool today to search for the Merseybeast with Ian McNabb.

I got into The Icicle Works, but mainly through their singles, and the same pattern continued when the band ended and Ian went solo in the early 1990s.

I have subsequently caught up with The Icicle Works' back catalogue, and a few of what followed but Ian McNabb is such a prolific artist that I'm not sure I'd ever get there even if I made a concerted effort. 

His latest, If It Wasn't For The Music, is due in April and by my reckoning is his 18th studio album. The tally grows substantially when you add numerous collections of previously unreleased or re-recorded material, covers and live albums. The new album is available for pre-order on Ian's official website.

Merseybeast is the title track of Ian's 1996 album and a song I like a great deal, though I've never seen the video before now. This VH-1 broadcast clip comes with the added benefit of being introduced by Clare Grogan.

In 2021, Merseybeast was remastered and expanded to celebrate its 25th anniversary and you can find the digital version in Ian's stall in the camp of bands. Great stuff.

Guitar Hero

A very happy birthday to Graham Coxon, 56 today.

Four top tunes from Mr. Coxon: one solo, one group, one supergroup, one duo. All great.

1) Bittersweet Bundle Of Misery: Graham Coxon (2004)

2) Coffee + TV: Blur (1999)

3) I Put A Spell On You: The Jaded Hearts Club (2020)

4) Love Is All Pain: The WAEVE (2025)

The latter is from the 3-song Eternal EP, out on Friday and available here.

 

 

 

 

A Conversation With That Little Devil On Your Shoulder

Iraina Mancini returned with a single and video, Running For Your Life, at the beginning of February and it's another gorgeous slice of dramatic pop, with lush cinematic production and sumptuous vocals.

I was introduced to Iraina's music pretty much this time last year via a couple of remixes of songs from her debut album, Undo The Blue. The title track was reanimated by Beyond The Wizards Sleeve aka Erol Alkan and Richard Norris, whilst Sugar High had been remixed in 2023 by Saint Etienne. 

With artists like that involved, you expect top quality but even so, both remixes are superb.

  

Which inevitably lead back to Undo The Blue the album, issued on Pete Paphides' rather wonderful Needle Mythology label. Ten songs brimming with confidence, poise and hooks, to the extent that you'd be forgiven for thinking that this is Iraina's second or third album. No first release nerves here, this is an accomplished and satisfying debut.

Here are a couple of examples: 

 

And, after that satisfying feast, for dessert, Undo The Blue in French.

And, to finish, Iraina performing Undercover, Wild Runaways and Deep End at Buffalo Studios in London, in 2021. 

  

 

Hope, Visions, Centre, Living, Seeing, Hell

Just the one video today, but it's a good one: Blind Vision by Blancmange.

Released in the spring of 1983, it reached #10 in the UK singles chart the week of 21st May.

I'm pretty sure I won't have seen the video at the time, although Blancmange did make an appearance on Top Of The Pops. it's an odd clip, to say the least. Neil Arthur does a lot of running (or singing from a lectern), whilst Stephen Luscombe plays all manner of instruments, including old school microphones as percussion, little of which you will hear on the song.

And then there is the actor replicating the 1940s housewife illustrations on this and their previous singles. Lots of creepy rictus grinning and the inevitable 'hand splatting a plate of blancmange' shot.

It's completely bonkers and completely brilliant.

Blind hope, blind visions, blind centre

One centre

Blind living and seeing, blind hell

Blind hell

Blind visions and no reasons for actions

Blind words

Blind visions and no reasons for actions

Blind words

Blind visions and no reasons

No reasons for action

In a dream when I'm reading pages full of words

The harder you look, 

It's getting hard, it's getting hard, it's not

A dream's a dream

In a dream when I'm reading pages

Pages full of words

It's, it's getting hard

It's not, it's not, it, it

It's getting harder

It's getting harder

Ooh, it's getting hard

Hold me closer now

Hold me closer

That's blind vision (blind vision)

Push me harder now

Harder, push me harder

That's blind hell (blind hell)

Keep me spinning around and round

The blind centre (blind centre)

Now I'm turning miles above the ground

That's blind hell (blind hell, blind hell)

Blind hope, blind visions, blind centre

One centre

Blind living and seeing, blind hell

Blind hell

Blind visions and no reasons for actions

Blind words

Blind visions and no reasons for actions

Blind words

Strawberries On Sunday

Robert Forster has a new album out in May called Strawberries and he's obligingly released the title track as a video this weekend.

Strawberries features Robert duetting with wife Karin Bäumler in what I presume is their kitchen, whilst the family black cat attempts to steal the show in the background. The song and the video are a joy from start to finish.

I''m not only looking forward to the album, but also Robert's return to the UK later this year for a few dates, including a show in Cardiff. Never having seen him or The Go-Betweens live on stage before, I bought tickets without hesitation. Very excited.

All this singing about strawberries inevitably made me think about other such songs, so here are five more. I rigidly stuck to the plural, so no Strawberry Fields Forever by The Beatles (or Candy Flip, for that matter) or Strawberry Line from the current Beak> album, even though it's brilliant.

Instead, and perhaps inevitably, things continue with Strawberries by Asobi Seksu, a beautiful song from the 2007 album called - what else? - Citrus. The single was accompanied by fine remixes by The Whip, CSS and out-shoegazing the original, Ulrich Schnauss.

Next up is Strawberries Are Growing In My Garden (And It's Wintertime), a 1985 single by The Dentists. I'd like to say that I was hip to the Medway Scene bands as a 14 year old but I'd didn't even know there was a Medway Scene at the time. Frankly, I barely knew that there was a Bristol scene, let alone anywhere further from home.  

I first heard this on the 2005 compilation Children Of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The Second Psychedelic Era 1976-1996 and, had I got there 20 years earlier, it would have been right up my street.

Fast forward to 2014 and Franz Ferdninand, with a low-key release of Fresh Strawberries, on 7' and promo CD single only, although there is a striking monochrome video. Fresh Strawberries closes Side 1 of Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action, Franz Ferdinand's 4th album released the previous year. 

The penultimate choice is Taste The Strawberries by War Against Sleep, the non de plume of Duncan Fleming, described as an "ongoing battle against the absurd waking dream that passes for life, in which he plunders the hidden treasures of a thousand charity shop records, writing songs that tingle the spine, move the soul and lift the spirit".

I'm a recent convert and I have to say that I'm all in. There are five albums available on Bandcamp, Taste The Strawberries taken from the 2008 debut Pleasure Complex. I will also have the pleasure of seeing Duncan perform live next month, in a special show with Emily Breeze at the Cube Microplex in Bristol.

There is only way to wrap up this half dozen though, and the one singular exception to the strawberries (plural) theme. That, of course, is Strawberry Switchblade. 

I selected their cover of Jolene, as a tribute to Dolly Parton, whose husband of 60 years, passed away last week. Whilst Dolly's career went into the stratosphere, Carl Dean intentionally kept a low profile, continuing to focus on his Nashville-based asphalt-paving business. 

However, as Dolly revealed decades later, Jolene was inspired by her husband's experience of a cashier at his local bank, who developed a crush on him.

As an impressionable adolescent, I thought Strawberry Switchblade were fantastic. My crush on Jill Bryson, though in the video and TV appearances for Jolene, Rose McDowall was an arresting sight in a leather zip-up one-piece, coming on like a Gothic Emma Peel from The Avengers.

Jolene was released in 1985, and sounds very much of its time, including a musical nod to Bronski Beat's cover of I Feel Love by Donna Summer. I still own and cherish the 12" single, but can it really be forty years old?!

 

 

 

 

 

If I Were A Richman

 
ScottishTeeVee is a treasure trove of archive music performances and well worth a regular visit. Today's discovery is half an hour of Jonathan Richman, recorded live at the Otto Zutz Club in Barcelona, Spain on 10th April 1986.

It was originally broadcast on TV3 Televisió de Catalunya, so it's heavily edited and intercut with other footage and interview snippets with Jonathan, meaning that several of the songs are little more than snippets.

As a whole though, it's a lot of fun. Jonathan dances badly, claps his hands and - on Wipe Out and La Bamba - blows some sax. 

1) The Tag Game

2) Ice Cream Man

3) It's You

4) This Kind Of Music

5) Wipe Out

6) Rockin' Shopping Center

7) I'm A Little Dinosaur

8) La Bamba

9) Come Back To Rock And Roll

10) The Beach

11) UFO Man

12) Let's Take A Trip

13) Vincent Van Gogh

14) Give Paris A Chance

15) Chewing Gum Wrapper

16) That Summer Feeling

Ayers And Graces

Celebrating Roy Ayers aka Roy Edward Ayers Jr., 10th September 1940 to 4th March 2025.

News broke on Thursday that Roy had been added to the already significant toll of musicians this year. Barely into the third month of 2025 and already we've lost Angie Stone, Albert 'Junior' Lowe, Bill Fay, Chris Jasper, David Johansen, Gerry Arling, Gwen Macrae, Jamie Muir, Jane McGarrigle, Jerry Butler, Ken Parker, Marianne Faithfull, Mike Ratledge, Peter Yarrow, Roberta Flack, Sam Moore...too many, yet so many I've not even listed here.

I was at a gig on Thursday night and, unexpectedly, Roy's passing was acknowledged with a cover of this song.

  

Liquid Love was written and recorded with Sylvia Cox on vocals sometime between 1976 and 1981. Incredibly, it remained unreleased until the 20th Century, when it appeared on the Virgin Ubiquity II compilation in 2005.

As it will (hopefully still) be Bandcamp Friday when you read this, I'm happy to report that you can obtain a copy of the 2023 single release, backed with What’s the T?, on digital and 7" vinyl.

If that's not enough Ayers for you, then BBE has also reissued Virgin Ubiquity II (Unreleased Recordings 1976-1981). Shiny discs are long gone, but you can still get the digital and rather lovely triple vinyl formats, featuring Liquid Love and a dozen other gems.

Note (1): Gig review to follow, and hopefully there won't be a month-long wait this time, as for poor John Grant.

Note (2): As I doing final edits on this post, I also discovered another grim addition to the 2025 toll: Brian James of The Damned passed on 6th March. I will come back to this in another post.

Have I Told You Ledley That I Love You

If you had told me even 24 hours ago that I would be raving about a love letter to Tottenham Hotspur legend Ledley King from a Bristol-based, London-rooted jazz duo named after their football hero, I would have given you a quizzical look.

Yet, here I am. One of the hundreds of music-related mailshots that I receive every week led me to Ledley aka saxophonist Chris Williams and trombonist Raph Clarkson, whose shared experience of Spurs season tickets and, according to the Times in 2009, "Tottenham's 25th best player of all time" inspired their self-titled album.

Chris and Raph are joined by bassist, arranger and composer Riaan Vosloo, who is credited with co-writes, recording, post-production and 'electronics'. 

The album's been a while coming: recorded in the basement of Cafe Kino in Bristol on 7th October 2022; mixed at J&J Studio, also in Bristol, on 8th August 2023; released on vinyl and digital on 4th April 2025. 

Based on the four 'songs' and three 'videos' made available on Bandcamp and YouTube respectively, Ledley the album promises to be an intriguing, immersive experience.

Ledley the band are playing live at the Cube Microplex in Bristol on 8th April. The evening will kick off with "a solo electronic and percussive set of cut and spliced animated video with a playful and abstract, Dadaist and humorous approach" from percussionist and drummer

Tony Orrell.

Chris and Raph will then perform together, before an ensemble finale with Riaan and Tony. All for a tenner.

Until I left Bristol in the late 2000s, I used to go to the Cube loads. Back then, it was a humble cinema offering some cult classics, past and present, with occasional nights offering some live musical accompaniment and was always a gem of the city (off) centre. These days the Cube is described as an "arts venue, independent museum, and progressive social wellbeing enterprise".

The 'microplex' appellation was a nod and a thumbed nose to the multiplexes that were cropping up on the outskirts and subsequently in the heart of the Cabot Circus shopping centre. It says something about Bristol's maverick and creative spirit that whilst the latter multiplex is now long gone, the Cube Microplex endures.

Sadly, I'm going to have to give Ledley a miss this time, as I'm going to another gig the following night in Bath and these days I just can't squeeze in two consecutive outings in a working week. Hopefully there will be a 'next time'.

In the meantime, one more for the Bandcamp Friday shopping list.

 

 

 

 

A Pair Of Portmanteaus

Parvale = Neil Parnell & Ian Vale

Jezebell = Jesse Fahnestock & Darren Bell

I do love a portmanteau name and when Nein Records label head Neil Parnell teamed up with Ian Vale, Parvale was created and new EP Breaker City the first fruits.

The lead track is an unashamedly heartfelt love letter to Acid and Breakbeat, blending the best of both into 345 seconds of compelling body music. 

I've greatly enjoyed Neil's releases and remixes as Tronik Youth and relatively recently caught up with Ian's work, so I was pretty much bought into this concept before hearing the track. That first listen sealed the deal.

Who else do you turn to for a remix than Jezebell? In their own words, Breaker City is "gone cut'n'paste and pop 'n' lock", dropping the tempo but not the attitude. A recurring sample of "nice 'n' slow" provides the remix with its name and, as you might expect, it's a slick, groovy six minutes that thrills from start to finish.

Closing track Drip Dry brings the BPMs right back up, another consumate and confident example of Neil and Ian's ability to pull from the past whilst reaching forward. At once evocative of the late 80s/early 90s and fresh as a springtime flower, it's another winner for me.  

Breaker City was released on 21st February but if you hang on to Bandcamp Friday to buy, even more of your hard earned pennies will reach the artists. And whilst you're at it, check out more of the Nein Records and Jezebell back catalogue too.

Blamed It On The Moon

When I got to see Emily Breeze live in concert for the first time last February, I was mightily impressed by support act Mumble Tide, in spite of a cluster of 'scenester' assholes near the front who talked (well, shouted) through most of their set.

I vowed to get Mumble Tide's back catalogue at the next Bandcamp Friday and hoped that I would get to see them perform live again.

Well, it's another Bandcamp Friday this week and, even better, Mumble Tide's debut album os out on 1st April and available for pre-order. They're also playing at SWX in Bristol as part of the Ritual Union event on 29th March, with a further date in London in May followed by a UK tour in October and November.

Mumble Tide released Pea Soup a couple of weeks ago, the third single/preview from the album Might As Well Play Another One. I've included the videos for the other two, The Rails and album title track (more or less) MAWPAO. 

(The #BlogCon25 massive may be particularly impressed by the taster of The Galleries shopping centre and Cabot Circus car park ahead of their gathering in Bristol in June)

It's fair to say that Gina Leonard and Ryan Rogers have transcended their self-described "Bristol bedroom pop" and created something quite wonderful. I'm looking forward to hearing the album.