Nite Songs

  It's safe to say that since their last full album, 2006's Revolution Per Minute , things have gone into a bit of a tailspin for Skid Row. Put it this way, while some bands’ previous efforts on here can be linked to via a previous review, this one was covered in the Garbage Days Revisited column. Since then, the group embarked on a run of EP's designed to form some kind of half-realised concept album when played back to back (the ill-advised United World Rebellion which they promptly abandoned halfway through) and have gone through no less than four lead singers (Johnny Solinger making way for Tony Harnell who was then replaced by ZP Theart who was succeeded by current incumbent Erik Gronwall a couple of years ago). So the omens going in here weren't exactly good but a few have been hailing The Gang's All Here  as a return to form for ver Row so let's take a look inside shall we... Well, the sound is most definitely identifiable as Skid Row with the big shouty ...

  (Andy's Note - So this one's going to be a bit different from your standard Garbage Days Revisited. I'd planned to write something on early Sunset Strip scuzzmongers the Joneses for a while now and had already got this one scheduled in the diary when, out of the blue, I got an e-mail from the PR guy for the group's frontman Jeff Drake asking if I would be interested in an interview as he's got an autobiography coming out in the next few weeks and there are plans to do some reissues of the group's back catalogue coming up. Although I've occasionally borrowed stuff from interviews I've done in the past for GDR columns on here, most notably the one I did with Haggis for the Zodiac Mindwarp , Cult and Four Horsemen articles, it's now several years since I'd actually done one as part of a feature. However, this looked like an excellent opportunity to get back in the saddle and so I agreed to take Jeff up on the offer. Happy to say that he was an a...

  "I’m so sick of being tired/I’m so tired of being sick"  - Zen Motel  - Devil Song I think the first time I ran into Zen Motel was supporting Tyla's Dogs D'Amour on Christmas Eve at Bradford Rio's.  Needless to say, that Christmas was one of the more hungover ones in recent memory. I think that might have been the infamous gig where me and a mate ended up sat at the same table as Danny McCormack ( the Yo-Yo's were basically acting as Tyla's backing band on this tour) and I went into complete and total starstruck mode and basically ended up telling him that if it wasn't for him then I'd never have wanted to be a bass player and join a band. Bless him, he was really good about it and gave me a hug. Top bloke, Danny. Anyway, before Zen Motel, there was a group called Johnny Zhivago from Colchester who I was sort of aware of around the turn of the millennium as they put a couple of singles out on ChangesOne records (I seem to remember them doing a ...

  I've opined many a time in these pages about how I'm still annoyed that Tyla and the classic Dogs line-up still can't seem to get on with each other but when it comes down to it, I'll always give the Wolverhampton Wanderer's releases the time of day around here. I think to be honest, by this point I've kind of accepted that Tyla at least seems happy enough with his current Dogs line-up. Following on from the reasonable enough Dice Clown Man  EP from a couple of months ago, Tree Bridge Cross  is the first Dogs album since 2018's In Vino Veritas (although a number of EP's have surfaced since then) and, y'know what, it's not bad. The likes of the title track and Journey To The Centre Of The Soul  are solid rockers while the lurching balladry of Stole My Love  sees Tyla teaming up with his old mate Spike and the slide guitar blues of Angel Lane  conjures up memories of the Dogs' late '80s glory days. Elsewhere, Raining Fire almost has a hi...

  After first coming to our attention with last year's excellent Punk AF  album, it's sad to report that Chat Shit Get Banged  will be the last Rum Lad album. And at 19 tracks and over an hour in length, it's pretty clear that the Nottingham noisemonger is intent on clearing out the decks on his way out. The surprise given the dark nature of a lot of the Punk AF  album is that opener Football  actually has a bit of a sense of humour to it and could easily have sat on the underrated All You Need Is Ndlovu  album by Armchair Loyal from last year. And it rhymes "Carlton Palmer" with "Valderama"  which is always a plus with me. However, All Rise  quickly heads into more serious territory, a rabble-rousing call to arms for the downtrodden in society to rise up against their corrupt overlords. As with Punk AF , there's a lot of anger here as the likes of Boy Racer and Forgotten Ones ' cautionary tale of the consequences of going too far down the wrong ...

  Veteran lead singer with the Dwarves, Blag Dahlia's decision to create a new country singer alter ego isn't exactly uncharted territory - from the Beastie Boys' Country Mike to Ginger Wildheart's infamous Howlin' Willie C**t, rock and punk history seems to be littered with people who've gone down the cornball (and usually gleefully offensive) country route for a laugh-a-minute side project. I think the main surprise with Introducing... , especially given the Dwarves' penchant for blood, gore and thrash, is that it's a surprisingly straightforward effort. Oh sure, there's still an enjoyable lack of sensibility in some of the songs - Your Girlfriend  and She's All Mine  are gleefully foul-mouthed efforts that wouldn't have sounded out of place on the aforementioned Howlin' Willie album while  Lolita Goodbye  is about turning down a jailbait girl to start dating her mum instead and Horribly Wrong   manages to rhyme "Cheech without Cho...

  Sometimes you just need an album like this really. We first encountered South Wales noisemongers Deathtraps via their Stole Your Rock 'n' Roll  album a couple of years ago and it's safe to say that the intervening two years and lockdown have not mellowed them at all. The opening track here Let's Kill Rock 'n' Roll  screams through at full tilt like the Erotics at their most savage and sets the tone for the coming thirty minutes. Red Eyes   Black Kisses  is no less furious and sneaks a Wildhearts reference ( Rooting For The Bad Guy ) in there as well. The vitriol comes thick and fast here with What If Jesus  taking pinpoint aim at bible bashers, Press Darlings (sadly not an Adam & The Ants cover) eviscerates reality TV culture and Imitator  savaging NWOCR bores. There's a real howl of frustration echoing through the likes of She Said  while Still Fucked Up , Let It Burn  and Too Much Is Never Enough  are pure Dead Boys/Hip Prie...

  "And I don't take no shit from anyone/And I could land on money or the moon/You know the sun'll come soon/And we can sail away..."  - The Charlatans  - Tell Everyone Quite honestly, I probably owe Tim Burgess one for helping to keep my sanity intact a couple of years ago. I think the Covid lockdown hit all of us pretty hard when it happened and I was no exception. A bit of background - at the time I'd moved back to my native Bradford a few months previously to be closer to my family, leaving my wife behind down south while she sorted out our house sale. The plan was that I'd live with one of my oldest mates up here in the few months it'd take to sort that out then we could concentrate on getting a place of our own and start moving on with our new life up here. Needless to say, Covid fucked that plan up royally. On the 17th March (the first anniversary of my mum's death which really didn't help matters), I was sent home from my job not knowing whe...

  "I've done it all before and I'd do it again/I keep on spinnin' around, this hell never ends..."  - American Dog  - Train Similar to American Heartbreak and Broken Teeth , American Dog were another band formed from the ashes of a Sunset Strip era group who promptly well and truly eclipsed their former incarnation in terms of quality. The precursor band this time was Salty Dog who put out a solitary album Every Dog Has Its Day  in 1990 and...oh look, I'm just gonna say it, it really wasn't very good. They were basically one of those dreaded Sunset Strip groups who'd clearly listened to a fair bit of Led Zep and thought "hey, what if we tried doing that?" which, as we've established in Sounds From The Junkshop and Garbage Days Revisited columns past just NEVER works because if you try and copy Led Zep without at least trying to add your own twist on the formula then you basically just end up sounding like a poor man's Led Zep. Just a...

  It's weird to think that it's now 28 years since CJ first split from the Wildhearts to form Honeycrack with Willie Dowling. Of course, he's reunited and split again with Ginger on a few occasions since but it's probably fair to say that the guy's definitely earned the right to release a greatest hits album, freshly re-recorded in the aftermath of the Wildhearts' recent decision to go on hiatus. Kicking in with the brutal riff-fest of State Of Us  from last year's Siege  album, Lives is a good summary of the last three decades of CJ's solo work taking in new versions of his Wildhearts songs ( Little Flower , Hit It On The Head , Allein ), Honeycrack ( Go Away  and the evergreen Sitting At Home ), the Jellys ( Lemonade Girl , your correspondent's old favourite  Milk 'n' Honey ), the Satellites ( Girl's On Fire ) and his four solo albums to date. The latter selection definitely remind you that CJ's come up with some pretty good stuff i...

  It's safe to say that The Rest Is Distraction  has a bit of a hint of the last chance saloon about it. When Girls In Synthesis first raised their heads above water with 2020's Now Here's An Echo From Your Future , they seemed like one of the most vital new bands in Britain at the time. Mixing brutal post-punk jarring rhythms with a furiously nihilistic lyrical outlook, the world looked to be their oyster. Two years on though, a lot has changed. Several of the group's politico-noise contemporaries have either stumbled and put out underwhelming follow-ups to their defining albums (Idles, Fontaines DC) or just never fulfilled the early potential they seemed to have (TV Priest). And with Girls In Synthesis themselves having put out a couple of EP's which were slightly disappointing, foregoing the pin missile anger of Now Here's An Echo...  for lumbering experimentalism that tended to blunder off down blind alleys when it should've been going for the throat, th...

Over the last couple of years, Willie Dowling and Jon Poole have certainly been pretty prolific with their Dowling Poole project. Always a varied band with plenty of tricks up their speed and a righteous anger firing their lyrics, Refuse  is a collection of some of these tracks which have crept out on the internet prior to the lockdown (a separate collection of the group's lockdown releases is incoming soon apparently). There's a real fury behind these songs despite the gentle nature of the lyrics - opener The Strawman  is an angry diatribe against Johnson and Trump while Fuck You Goodbye  is a sheer howl of rage set to gentle countrified backing and is a real highlight here likewise the furious Deep Breath  ( "The game is done/The wrong side won/There is no change of heart to come" ). It's not all political invective though as The Same Mistake Again  looks at dysfunctional family relationships while Miles Checks Out  is a Falling Down  style tale of o...

  I think it's safe to say that a cursory listen to Tony Wright's solo output for those only familiar with him through his day job as singer with Terrorvision might come as a bit of a surprise. His two solo efforts so far, 2014's Thoughts 'n' All  and 2016's Walnut Dash  were pretty bleak overall, detailing the trials and tribulations of his life in the years leading up to them. And it's safe to say that The Anti-Album , written during the lockdown, is similarly downbeat. Yet there's comfort in the darkness here - opening track  Sleep  definitely recalls the strangeness of those lockdown days with its tale of feeling like you're trapped in an endless cycle of wake up, try and pass the day somehow, sleep again and the paranoia it induces. Similarly, Nothing To Write Home About and Get It Wrong  are both brutally honest tales of a life less than well lived and definitely show Tony bringing the darker side of his personality to the fore. Former single B...

  "I feel a fool in conversation/I'm so surprised by what you say/I can't control this situation/I've fallen all the way..."  - Rene Berg  - Secrets Had this album come out five years earlier than it did then I'm pretty sure it'd still be being talked about by connoisseurs of good old fashioned knockabout Soho glam rock in the same breath as the Dogs D'Amour 's In The Dynamite Jet Saloon  and the Quireboys ' A Bit Of What You Fancy . As it is, The Leather, The Loneliness And Your Dark Eyes  is yet another of those great albums in this genre that came out a year or so after grunge came in and glam was essentially exiled back to the margins. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here. Rene Berg then. I have to be honest, my knowledge here is a little bit sketchy so I apologise in advance if there's a few details missing from this here article. But the guy's probably best known for his spell as bass player in Hanoi Rocks ' final li...

  Well, a cursory glance outside your window will tell you that the nights are drawing in so what better place to seek solace than here in the Singles Bar. As with last month, the offerings this time out are an eclectic mix of singles, EP's and a token mini-album so let's mix something up and see what happens... *** Well the big news this month is we're finally getting the multiple times postponed UK tour from the one and only Mr Billy Idol and to celebrate, he's issued a new EP, The Cage (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑). Honestly, it might just be the best thing I've heard from him since Devil's Playground  a good decade and a half ago with a good mix of stuff that shows off all facets of his musical style from the stomping title track through the pounding goth ballad Running From The Ghost  and the affectionate nod back to his '80s stadium rock heyday Rebel Like You  to the twisted groove of Miss Nobody . After the solid but unspectacular Kings and Queens of the Underground  ...