Nite Songs

  "The tools I see on my TV, can't stand it when they fake. A prick's a prick at any age, why give one a break?"  - Iggy Pop , I Wanna Live I mentioned in the Jesus & Mary Chain GDR a couple of weeks ago how as a teenager I very much considered myself to be living in the here and now when it came to music. Very little from pre-1990 or so was on my stereo back then apart from maybe a couple of Hendrix, Doors or Queen albums that I'd copied off my parents and the odd Smiths, Mary Chain and New Order track that cropped up on the odd compilation etc. To be honest, it would've taken something pretty damn special for me to start following any music from outside my time frame that my youthful arrogance considered to be "old git music". Something, for example, like this. I watched the Iggy Pop TV performance above round at a mate's house one Friday night from a taping of the Channel 4 music show "The White Room" presented by Mark Radcliffe...

  "It's been a while since we were last wasted..."  - Linoleum -   On A Tuesday , 1997 There seems to be a common thread through the SFTJ's covering the Britpop era and afterwards of great bands who for some reason or other just never quite slotted in anywhere. Linoleum are another good example - they seemed to be a band who were forever lumped with the sub-Elastica student indie likes of Sleeper and Echobelly but they were way better than that. Unfortunately the fact that they didn't really fit into the stereotype of what a female-fronted Britpop band was supposed to be was I think maybe the reason why Top 40 success largely eluded them. The world's loss really I first heard the band after Steve Lamacq started playing their early '97 single On A Tuesday  (arguably their best moment) on the Evening Session. Although maybe there's a superficial similarity to the above Britpop bands, Linoleum always seemed a lot darker and gothier - if anything they were...

  Suzi Quatro's previous album, 2019's No Control  was honestly the first of her 21st century output that I'd heard when I reviewed it for Pure Rawk . Maybe it's because I was expecting Devil Gate Drive part 2 but I was a little bit disappointed with the more "mature" direction, veering off into almost cocktail jazz territory in places. With this new album being touted as a return to her roots, my general thought upon reading the blurb was "oh aye? We'll see about that..." So when the opening title track of The Devil In Me  kicks in with a downright filthy guitar riff before ripping into a chugging glam rock riff, it feels like the queen's returned to sit on her throne. And I'm happy to say that it sets the tone nicely for the album with the stomping riff of Hey Queenie  and the bluesy stomp of Betty Who?  keeping the tempo up. It's as if Suzi has taken the slightly mid-paced blues of her previous effort and casually dosed it in nitro...

  Safe to say that this one is much-anticipated. Having graced us with two excellent albums at the start of the last decade and been briefly touted as the next big thing by the music press, Black Spiders' sudden split in 2015 just as it seemed they were hitting their stride was a bit of a gutter to put it mildly. Happy to say though that 2021 sees Doncaster's finest rock export returning to the fray with a self-titled third album which is well worth the wait. While the opening duo of excellent lead-off single Fly In The Soup  and Stabbed In The Back have the necessary urgency about them to grab your attention straight away, the lurching Sabbath style riff of Wizard Shall Not Kill Wizard  takes the heaviosity up a level to good effect while Back In The Convent  sounds like Wolfsbane trading riffs with Van Halen and when the Priest style menace of Give 'Em What They Want  and a well-executed cover of the Easybeats' Good Times  (similar to the excellent INXS/J...

  "And these are the thoughts that you keep inside, you smile from your window and stand all alone. And pour all the love that you keep inside into a song..."  - Suede , He’s Gone It was probably inevitable that we'd come to cover Suede on this blog at some point. In a way, the story here has a lot of parallels with the Manic Street Preachers GDR entry from a month or two ago but let's pick it up some time around 1993 or so. I think the first time I heard Suede properly was when Animal Nitrate  blasted into the Top 10 and I really can't state enough as a 14-year-old just how much of a shock to the system that song was for me. With Brett Anderson's screeched vocals and Bernard Butler's truly ferocious guitar riff cutting like a razor, it sounded thrilling and terrifying at the same time. I remember seeing them play the Brit awards a few weeks later - it's easy to forget now but early Suede were genuinely disturbing. While Butler, bassist Mat Osman and ...

  "Lands are green and skies are blue but all in all, we're just like you"  - Spacehog , In The Meantime , 1996 I've mentioned in SFTJ's past how it was a bit of a rarity in the mid-'90s for bands from Leeds or Bradford to be chart-bothering material. I started listening to guitar music in the early '90s and as far as northern music went then the focus was very much across the Pennines in Manchester. Although the Sisters of Mercy, the Mission and the Cult were all technically Leeds/Bradford bands (or at least had members hailing from there), it was unlikely to say the least that you were going to run into Andrew Eldritch or Wayne Hussey on the Headrow or see Ian Astbury doing his shopping at the Kirkgate Centre. New Model Army were still doggedly hanging on at this point although they were very much at the tail end of their success by now while the Bridewell Taxis and Cud never really rose above cult status (though as mentioned in the first Footnotes secti...

  Safe to say that this is an album that’s been hotly anticipated in these parts. Chris Catalyst (both solo and when he's fronting the Eureka Machines) is one of those guys where you can't help but wonder why someone who's such a talented songwriter with an ear for a great tune and perpetually able to keep the listener interested isn't someone able to sell out academy sized venues across the UK and regularly score Top 10 albums. It's been a couple of years since we last heard from Chris via the Eurekas' Victories  album - admittedly the Covid crisis did kind of get in the way of things but this album definitely reminds you how much we've missed the guy while he's been away. From the squalling riff of opener Make Good Art  (which features none other than Neil Gaiman reading out a manifesto while Chris provides the instrumentation), it's clear the guy means business here. King of Everything ,  Divide And Rule  and A Modern Adventure  see not only Catal...