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Just like every Nite has its dawn, just like every cowboy sings a sad sad song...

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  “It’s always darkest before the dawn, it just never dawned on me” - Hanoi Rocks Hi all - just a quick update on the current situation with Nite Songs… Due to being a bit stressed out and having a lot of stuff on in my life at the moment, I’ve made the difficult decision to put the ‘zine on hold for a bit. Lately, I’ll be honest, keeping on top of things and making sure it’s updated regularly has started to feel like a real chore which something you essentially do as a hobby should NEVER feel like. I think the tipping point came last night when I was desperately trying to put the Sounds From The Junkshop column that was due to go up today together (it says a lot that normally I try and cue things up at least a week before they’re due to go live but as with a lot of ‘zine related stuff that’s well and truly hit the skids of late which has only added to the pressure to keep this thing up to date) and I just couldn’t think of anything to write leading to me basically being sat gawping a
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Album Review: Hi-Fi Sean & David McAlmont - "Happy Ending"

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  I was pleased to discover last year that Hi-Fi Sean (aka former High Fidelity and Soup Dragons frontman Sean Dickson) and David McAlmont have been collaborating on an album - given the pedigree of the guys involved (McAlmont's peerless voice and Dickson's record for supremely tuneful experimentation with the very underrated High Fidelity), it seemed as if this really had the potential to be something special. The seven minute opening title track eases you gently into the album - a dreamy slice of string-drenched soul with McAlmont's voice soaring over the top. Fever  is similarly chilled with its rolling rhythm while recent single Beautiful  sees McAlmost really cutting loose over some almost trip-hop drums and Bollywood strings (those with long memories may remember Dickson collaborating with the Bollywood orchestra on the High Fidelity's classic Demonstration  album a couple of decades ago) before Hurricanes  takes the tempo up a notch with some funky rhythms which
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Album Review: Sister Morphine - "Ghosts Of Heartbreak City"

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  Hailing from South Wales, Sister Morphine are another group, similar to the Last Great Dreamers or Paradise Alley, were regulars on the live circuit in the early '90s just after the glam-punk ship sailed with the arrival of grunge. However, the pandemic saw the band re-establish contact with each other and decide to give things another go and Ghosts Of Heartbreak City , their much delayed debut album, is the result. My initial thoughts when I reviewed the album's lead-off single Nothin' Dirty In The Truth  a few days before writing this 'ere album review was that Sister Morphine sounded a lot like the Backyard Babies but that's actually a bit of a red herring - over the 15 tracks here, they show an impressive amount of variety and twists and turns to keep you interested. Second track Do You Wanna Get Wasted?  is a case in point with its chugging Dr Feelgood style riff (that's the pub rock legends not the Crue song for the record) being underpinned by an acoust
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Garbage Days Revisited #103: The Sea Hags - "The Sea Hags" (1989)

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  "I can't recall 'cos I've had quite a few/So lend me your ears and I'll tell ya a tale..."  - The Sea Hags  - Doghouse The Sea Hags hailed from San Francisco and were friends of fellow GDR alumni the Nymphs and if you remember that column, you've probably already got an uneasy feeling about how this story's likely to end. And I suspect that you're probably right but suffice to say the answer is "not well". Anyway, the group were formed in San Francisco in the mid-'80s by frontman Ron Yocom and bassist Chris Schlosshardt. They seemed to quickly gain a reputation as a band who were scuzzy enough to attempt to appeal to the sleaze rock crowd but also heavy enough to capture a few floating thrash fans as well - indeed, their first demos were produced by none other than Kirk Hammett and they shared bills with the likes of the Ramones , Motorhead and fellow San Fran natives the Dead Kennedys in their early days. It was enough to bring th
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The Nite Songs Singles Bar - February 2023

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  Heard ya missed us, well we're back. We didn't run a Singles Bar in January due to a lack of stuff to review (kind of standard for that time of year tbh) but I'm pleased to report that we've now got enough stuff to open the bar up again so let's open the fridge and get stuck in... *** Always good to have something exciting to start off the Singles Bar for a new year and the prospect of a new offering from  the Damned  definitely falls into that category. The Invisible Man  (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑) is culled from Vanian, Sensible and co's new offering Darkadelic  and is a promising effort which just when you've got it pegged as a mid-tempo garage rocker suddenly goes into a full-on psychedelic freakout just to really throw you off. Looking forward to that new album chaps. *** I'm thoroughly ashamed to admit that I completely missed the memo about  Black Star Riders  having a new album out but rest assured we'll get a review up of it in the near future. In the m
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Sounds From The Junkshop #123 - The Hangmen

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  "There ain't nothin' on TV but a preacher tryin' to save me/I'll just close my eyes and make it go away..."  - The Hangmen - Rotten Sunday The Hangmen are one of those rare groups who could have featured in either the Sounds From The Junkshop or Garbage Days Revisited columns as their career kind of straddles both. The group would first rise up in the Sunset Strip era when they were briefly being hyped as the Next Big Thing only for things to fall apart and the group to be knocked on their backs for over a decade before pulling themselves out of the gutter to start things again in the early noughties. (Quick NB - this is the American Hangmen we're talking about, not the UK psychobilly band. Just so we're all on the same page right from the off, like) The group formed in L.A. in 1986 under the guidance of Montana native Bryan Small and, similar to the Joneses a couple of years earlier, gained notoriety as a killer live band in the L.A. circuit who we
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Album Review: Ginger Wildheart - "Teeth"

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Ginger Wildheart has always been a man to hit you with new material when you're least expecting it and to be honest, following on from the worthy but rather sedate Sinners album from last year, the prospect of something showing off the harder edge to his output was definitely something that piqued our interest. Teeth is very much a back to basics punk effort, crashing through 16 tracks in just 26 minutes and seeing the G-man at arguably his heaviest since the brutal Mutation albums of a few years ago. Right from the opening political tirade of Not My Country (very much an anthem for these times where the choice between Sunak and Starmer increasingly has the feel of two eunuchs fighting over a punctured condom), the guy definitely means business here and this album is pretty much one concrete-heavy right hook after another as he skewers religious bigots ( Digital Elimination , Thoughts And Prayers ), online mob mentality ( Witch Hunt ), braindead tabloid readers ( Happy John ) and
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