Nite Songs

  On into the Top 30 we go then. Brace yourselves... *** 30.     RICKY WARWICK - "When Life Was Hard And Fast" When Life Was Hard And Fast   sees Ricky Warwick back to the no-nonsense rock music he's made his name with first in the Almighty and more recently with Black Star Riders. Veering from fired up punk to more moody reflective moments, this is straight ahead fist-in-the-air singalong rock anthems done by a master of the craft. Great stuff. *** 29.     BEANS ON TOAST - "Survival Of The Friendliest" Jay McAllister aka Beans On Toast is one of those songwriters who can make you see the light in even the most dark of times and Survival of the Friendliest  was a much needed ray of sunshine as the bleakness of December and the prospect of yet another lockdown set in. Working with a full band for this one, it's an album full of songs of hope to put an arm around your shoulder and see you through your long dark night of the soul. *** 28.     PE...

  And here we go with part 2 of our KGLW review double bill. Arriving a mere three months after K.G.  (see our earlier review today) landed, L.W.  kicks in in proper style with an absolute maelstrom of guitars and drums abruptly giving way to If Not Now Then When? , a funky soulful number which sounds oddly like a garage rock version of something off the Charlatans' Wonderland  album. Certainly if K.G. 's main point of reference was '60s psychedelia then L.W.  is aiming for the same era but more for the funky excursions of Sly Stone or Funkadelic as O.N.E.  demonstrates as it goes from a dreamy acoustic opening to a strutting rhythm which you can't help but be drawn in by. However, Pleura kicks things up a gear with a BOC/Sabbath style riff underpinned by some sitars which really shouldn't work as well as it does. Supreme Ascendancy  keeps up the Eastern feel with the drums skittering all over the shop to create something genuinely unique and fascinati...

  King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are one of those bands who I've heard of many times (well, with a name like that they're kind of difficult to miss) without actually checking their music out. However, with two albums new (or new-ish) out and having heard the band recently namechecked by no less an authority than the great and good Danko Jones, I decided that maybe it was time to catch up. As stated earlier, K.G.  is the first of a brace of albums from these Aussie psych-rock merchants and emerged in the dying days of 2020 (we'll have a review of its successor, the newly-released L.G.  up on the site later today). Sounding like a more chilled out Queens of the Stone Age (pre-shark jump obviously), the trippy fuzzed up rhythms of songs like Automation , Some Of Us  and Minimum Brain Size  (which is hiding some barbed lyrics at the band's doubters behind the warm laconic guitar lines get this off to a good start while Straws In The Wind  adds some skeletal...