Nite Songs

  Hailing from Finland, Velvet Insane are another band to add to the Scandinavian glam scene. Except while a lot of their compadres in this movement like the Backyard Babies and Hardcore Superstar are indebted to the '80s sleaze rock scene, these guys are setting their controls a little bit further back, namely to the junkshop glam of the '70s as evidenced by the Mott The Hoople style opener Driving Down The Mountain  (complete with All The Way From Memphis  style honky tonk piano). While we've had a few Italian bands coming along in this genre in recent years (Faz Waltz and Giuda to name but two), this is something a bit different from a nation best known for Hanoi Rocks and HIM. They've clearly picked up a few admirers along the way as the T-Rex style Backstreet Liberace  features the talents of both Dregen from the Backyards and Nicke from the Hellacopters while Sulo from the Diamond Dogs is on production here and helps out with some of the songwriting too. Unfort...

  Another band from the oasis of power pop that is Rum Bar records, the Peppermint Kicks hail from New York and feature at least one off duty member of the excellent Watts so the initial prospects for this debut long player from them looked pretty promising. Unfortunately, it gets off to a bit of a duff start with opening song When Rock 'n' Roll Met Your Dad  seriously lacking bite to the extent that it reminds me more than anything of Smokie's Livin' Next Door To Alice  which I'm pretty sure wasn't the aim! Happily, the Romantics indebted power pop of Hey Fanzine!  drags things back on track before the acoustic led I Don't Hear A Single  sounds like a sort of mesh of the first two tracks with a very '50s style feel to it and doesn't quite hit the mark. Thereafter, this album turns out to be a mixed bag albeit with more good than bad - the "Stray Cats go Merseybeat" style strut of Strawberry Girls  and the melodic garage rock of Shag '7...

  Although it certainly got its share of plaudits in the press, I'll hold my hands up and say that I was a bit underwhelmed by Amyl & The Sniffers' 2019 debut album. To these ears, it sounded like the work of a band who'd been rushed into a studio to make a record before they were really ready and despite its undeniable energy, it didn't have a lot in the way of variety and quickly started to repeat itself by the time you reached its second half. Everyone deserves a second chance though and, to be fair, Comfort To Me  represents a definite step forward for Amyl & the Sniffers. The group have clearly used their experience gained over the last couple of years to start to hone their sound and slowly move away from the shouty two chord repetitiveness of their debut without shifting too much to alienate the people who came on board for that and the results, while not perfect, are certainly a bit more promising. I think the key is that the rage on here sounds a lot mo...

  Captain Future is the alter ego of Alex McGowan, frontman of the Future Shape Of Sound whose 2018 album Shakedown Gospel  was one of the surprise triumphs of that year, mixing swampy voodoo blues, soul and classic rock 'n' roll to devastating effect. With FSOS having their plans disrupted by the lockdown last year, McGowan has opted to put out a solo effort and as the opening duo of the smoky sinister Holy Waters  and the lurking Zombie Lover  (which sounds oddly like Tom Waits trying his hand at reggae) prove, it's just as much of a varied and intoxicating brew as Shakedown Gospel  was. And so it continues as the record swings from the Screamin' Jay Hawkins indebted Oh People through the haunting minimalist seven minute Rowing To The Pub  to the almost rockabilly style Wrong And You Like It  with minimal fuss. I Liked You When You Were Gone even sounds like Paul-Ronney Angel fronting the Cure which is a weird image but works better than it real...

  "'Cos we all need to raise a little hell before we get to heaven..."  - Life, Sex & Death  - Raise A Little Hell We looked at Antiproduct on Sounds From The Junkshop a couple of days ago but if you thought Alex Kane's reign of lunacy started there - oh no no no. About 5-10 years prior to dousing himself in Gene Simmons meets Krusty the Clown facepaint and regularly setting himself on fire onstage, Kane was the guitarist with one of the most utterly out there bands to emerge from the tail end of the LA hair metal scene, namely Life, Sex & Death. Formed in the dying days of Sunset Strip's reign as the Aquanet Babylon, they were one of those bands who were so uniquely insane that you could almost see their "plenty of press plaudits and a rabid die-hard following but album sales? Forget it" status coming from miles away. The legend has it that after leaving Enuff Z'Nuff in the late '80s, Alex Kane would relocate from Chicago to LA and link...

  "I wouldn't mind if I could find my place in life/I'm a fool on a string, I'm a bird with no wings and I'm always crashin' down..."  - Antiproduct  - Bungee Jumping People Die! Oh lord, Antiproduct. The memories. I must've followed this band all around the north in the early noughties. Even to Hebden Bridge once. To say that they really were a unique proposition is a bit like saying that Keith Moon could be a bit of an excitable chap on the odd occasion. Basically imagine a big bald lad on drums, three Amazons on guitar, bass and keys and a guy up front who looks like a cross between Gene Simmons and Krusty The Clown bombing into the audience and offering the mic around every five seconds. It was insane, it was brilliant and I don't think anyone who ever experienced it is likely to forget it in a hurry. We've already encountered Antiproduct frontman Alex Kane in these pages via his short-lived Clam Abuse project with Ginger Wildheart. When t...

  A man with an impressive musical CV, Sami Yaffa is probably best known for his stints with Hanoi Rocks, the New York Dolls and, most recently, in his old Hanoi bandmate Michael Monroe's solo band. Surprisingly though, unlike the other three surviving members of Hanoi's imperial phase line-up (Monroe, Andy McCoy and Nasty Suicide), he's never put out a solo album. Until now. To be honest, I really wasn't sure what to expect here as Yaffa has been a guy who's lent his talents to a very varied selection of bands down the years from the straight ahead glam rock of Jetboy to the more experimental Mad Juana but the truth is that The Innermost Journey To Your Outermost Mind  sees him drawing on all of his experience across the board to come up with something genuinely different - it's there from the way that the languid Queens of the Stone Age style opener Armageddon Together  gives way to the furious punk rush of Selling Me Shit although even this promptly then goes...

  Certain albums you can tell that you're in for a good time as soon as that first riff you hits your ears and Action! , the opening track on Rum Bar signed New Yorkers the Idolizers' second album, is one of those times, a deliciously nasty sounding Radio Birdman style descending spiral building up before the tune kicks in properly. As far as opening thirty seconds go, it's definitely up there with some of the best I've heard of late. It's pretty clear from the off that the Idolizers are into the nastier end of garage punk - as well as Radio Birdman, think the Stooges, the Dead Boys, Back In The USA  era MC5 and obviously the Ramones (I have a theory that a love of da Bruddas is a precursor to getting signed by Rum Bar on the evidence of this year so far!) None of which would mean squat of course if they weren't any good at it but I'm pleased to report that Concretins  packs a suitably hefty punch and the requisite amount of sneering aggression to make it a ...

  We've had a few power pop bands from Italy landing on these pages in recent years (Giuda and Faz Waltz being the two most obvious) and Radio Days are another to add to this canon. Rave On , despite its titular nod to Buddy Holly, is certainly an album with its head in the late ‘70s with the opening duo of I Got A Love  and Lose Control  being sugar-sweet soundalikes of the Romantics and the Buzzcocks respectively. However, despite their obvious leanings towards the halcyon days of power pop as evidenced on When I'm With You  and the Costello-esque harmonies of No One To Blame ,  Rave On isn't just a one-trick pony - the jangling guitars of Walk Alone  bring to mind the prospect of a cross between the Ramones and Big Star which isn't bad at all,  What Is Life?  tips a nod to the stomping glam sound of the Sweet and Meltdown  even dips a toe into ska waters. It's not all plain sailing - Running Around  clearly wants to be the Kinks but ...

So we finally did it, the first ever Nite Songs live review - a mere 19 months after my last live gig (Terrorvision at Leeds Warehouse in February 2020), your correspondent finally makes it out to his first post-lockdown concert. And, let's be honest, there's no better way to do that than by seeing your favourite band in your home city for the first time in many many years after a decade away down south. More on that shortly. First on tonight, The Middlenight Men   put in a good account of themselves with a line-up including four guitarists, a horn section and two backing singers - I think the last time I saw that many people on a stage together outside of an Urban Voodoo Machine concert might have been on Ginger's Valor del Corazon  tour way back when. However, their tunes hit home nicely tonight with Heroine Heights  and BA Baby  being particular standouts. They've got an album launch coming up soon at Camden Underworld - capital dwellers among our readership, you ...

  Started up as a side project a decade or so ago by frontman Jyrki from Finnish goth/glam legends the 69 Eyes and guitarist Danny B Harvey (Lemmy's six stringer in his Headcat side project), the 69 Cats have been joined by Damned drummer Rat Scabies for this, their second album. A hell of a pedigree then, but can this album live up to it? Pleased to report that the answer is yes - opener She's Hot  kicks in with a winsome mix of Jyrki's Glenn Danzig-meets-Pete-Steele croon, Harvey's frenetic shredding guitar and Scabies' pounding drums and when it's followed by a superbly sinister cover of Post Malone's Hollywood's Bleeding , you know we're in safe hands here. You're The Kind Of Girl  starts off as a mid-paced rocker before unexpectedly breaking into a full on psychobilly breakdown for the middle eight. Decent enough but it feels like a bit of a step down after that opening one-two. However, the spaghetti westernisms of Good Time To Die  take th...

  “We were young, we were fast, it was never gonna last...”  - Wolfsbane  - Smoke And Red Light Unlike a few of the other early '90s Britrock bands I've covered in these pages like the Dogs D'Amour , the Quireboys and the Almighty , I wasn't particularly aware of Wolfsbane at the time of their (admittedly much more modest than the other three) commercial success. Widely hailed as "one to watch" in most of the metal mags as the '80s turned into the '90s, for some reason they never got anywhere near the Top 40 (their biggest hit, the anthemic Ezy  peaked at a lowly number 67) and despite seeing clips of their videos on the ITV Chart Show 's rock chart and hearing a really bad quality live bootleg courtesy of a mate's older brother in the early '90s (the songs were decent but it sounded like someone had chucked a dictaphone in a waste bin and left it at the back of the venue which didn't exactly inspire me to investigate further) I was ge...

  "'Cos I'm hedonistic and I stay up all night/And I dunno what's wrong and I dunno what's right"  - The Donnas - Hyperactive! The Donnas were an odd one looking back. Basically imagine if Kenickie had come from California rather than Sunderland and had the indie instincts mixed in with their love of glam rock replaced by a fondness for the flashier end of '70s US stadium rock. They were also a bit of a rarity in that they were a US band who crashed into my conscience when about 90% of the stuff I was listening to was British indie. I first heard them on a free CD with Melody Maker  and the track Hyperactive  which was being played by Steve Lamacq on the Evening Session a lot around this time as well. Similar to the Hellacopters and the Backyard Babies , there was something about its sheer stripped-down Ramones style no-nonsense punk that was just irresistible (I'd just discovered da Bruddas at this time which may have had a bearing on things). Comp...

  First release from the Manics since 2018's Resistance Is Futile , The Ultra Vivid Lament  had its genesis during lockdown, a tough time for the band with Nicky Wire losing both of his parents to cancer. With several of the songs on here written by James Dean Bradfield on the piano instead of his usual guitar, it makes for an incredibly stark and stripped down album. The key thing as a child of the '90s whenever I get a new Manics album in is to remember that it's the 21st century fiftysomething version of the band that I'm listening to now rather than the group of flame-spewing Welsh firebrands of the early '90s and I think remembering that is the key to appreciating this album. The political invective on here is much more thinly spread on those imperial phase albums with only Orwellian  and lines like "Don't let the boys from Eton suggest that we are beaten"  on Don't Let The Night Divide Us  really going anywhere near that whole ballpark.  Yet ...

I have to admit, the announcement of a new Stranglers album this year was a bit of a surprise. The group had already been touting their upcoming tour (now rescheduled to next spring) as their final one before the tragic passing of keyboardist Dave Greenfield last year put a pretty comprehensive full stop on things. So I think it's safe to say there's a very good chance that  Dark Matters  may well be this legendary band's swansong. Although eight of the eleven tracks here were completed prior to Greenfield's passing, there's a definite air of death and mortality hanging over Dark Matters with song titles like If Something's Gonna Kill Me (It Might As Well Be Love) as well as the hypnotic tribute to their fallen comrade And If You Should See Dave , the mournful Down  and the gentle acoustic-led ode to aging The Lines . Musically, Dark Matters  is as varied and engrossing as you'd expect from the swirling psychedelia of opener Water  through the spiky punk of...

  "I played my hand in a rock 'n' roll band, it was my ace, my jack and my king/I rolled the dice to see what Lady Luck would bring, salvation or sin..."  - The Quireboys  - One For The Road In a way, I'm quite surprised I haven't covered the Quireboys either on Sounds From The Junkshop or here on Garbage Days Revisited yet. Unlike a lot of bands who were slung in with the "hair metal" tag in the late '80s and early '90s, I actually was  aware of the band when they had their brief flirtation with chart success around the turn of that decade and had a couple of their singles in my collection - Hey You  on a Now compilation (which sounds incredibly incongruous all these years later!) and There She Goes Again/Misled  on cassette single. For whatever reason though, they never quite became the firm favourites of mine that their fellow Soho dwelling glam rockers the Dogs D'Amour did. I'm not quite sure why - I think I just thought the Dogs...

  So here we are again. The autumn is rolling in although given that as I write this it's 25 degrees up here in Yorkshire, clearly no-one told the supreme being. Guess we'd better grab some cold ones, head out on to the terrace and see what aural delights the month has waiting for us then... A couple of covers to kick us off this month, both courtesy of Screaming Crow Records' Action Jukebox series. First up,  The Dirty Denims  take on the Kiss classic Rock 'n' Roll All Night  (🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑) and turn in a respectable version although it was always gonna have its work cut out matching the peerless original. The fact that they're a Donnas style female fronted band at least gives this version a slightly different twist (hey hang on, didn't the Donnas cover Rock 'n' Roll All Night  themselves back in the day? :checks notes: No, turns out that was Strutter . Carry on) The original track Better Believe It  on the flipside is actually the better tune here, so...

  "And I'm older but I sure ain't as wise..."  - The Hellacopters  - Hopeless Case Of A Kid In Denial It seems apt that we're covering the Hellacopters on Sounds From The Junkshop a week after we dealt with the Backyard Babies as the two are pretty heavily linked. Like the Backyards, I'm pretty sure it was through the Wildhearts that I got into the Hellacopters way back in the day, specifically through Ginger and 'copters frontman Nicke Andersson (aka Nick Royale) collaborating on the Super$hit666 side project in the late '90s. Andersson had formed the band in his native Sweden in the early '90s after starting out as drummer with doom metallers Entombed (talk about a career 180!) and the initial line-up also featured future Backyard Babies guitarist Dregen but by the time I discovered 'em they were well into their career and had just been signed to a major label for the High Visibility album. A few of their songs from prior to this era did su...