Vinyl Release

Steve Sutherland | May 31, 2019

This debut LP laid down a beat that courses through the veins of rock 'n' roll to this very day. Steve Sutherland pays tribute as he hears the 180g reissue on Sundazed

What's the baddest record ever made? I don't mean baddest as in worst. I mean baddest as in bad-ass, brimming with threat and braggadocio. A few candidates immediately spring to mind. Honey Boy Martin's 'Dreader Than Dread' threatens to shank you and send you to the graveyard. Johnny Cash's 'The Man In Black' is a pretty broody dude. Dr John The Night Tripper's 'I Walk On Gilded Splinters' boasts destructive powers of magic malignancy.

Vinyl Release

The Zombies: Odessey & Oracle

Steve Sutherland | Apr 17, 2019

The greatest English pop lyric writers of the 1960s? Steve Sutherland argues his case as he reassesses this mono LP from 1968, recently reissued on 180g vinyl

Afew decades ago I read an interview with Tom Waits where he was asked about the art of songwriting. Tom thought about it for a second, then declared that in fact he found it very easy, thanks to a nine-word magic formula. Those words were: 'Things will be better when we get to Chicago…'.

Vinyl Release

Jefferson Airplane: Crown Of Creation

Steve Sutherland | Mar 05, 2019

Thinking back to just after the time of his dad's Anderson shelter, Steve Sutherland dips into the 180g vinyl reissue of a 1968 concept album with sci-fi overtones

Devo have actually got nothing to do with this article, but in the past week or so it's occurred to me that those crazy coots from Akron, Ohio may have had a point all along.

Vinyl Release

Wilson Pickett: The Exciting...

Steve Sutherland | Dec 01, 2018

One-take, on-the-money thrills... Steve Sutherland listens to the recent 180g vinyl reissue of a 12-track LP that saw a 'steely figure' of a singer become a superstar

In three weeks short of two years' time, just along the hall from here, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, who is in town to support the Black Sanitary Public Works employees, who are striking over higher wages and greater equality with their white co-workers, will step out onto the balcony of Room 306 and be gunned down dead by an assassin later identified as James Earl Ray.

Vinyl Release

The Everly Brothers: The Everly Brothers

Steve Sutherland | Nov 01, 2018

Steve Sutherland tells how the duo tweaked their covers, wrote some originals but finally fell out by the 1970s as he hears the 180g reissue of their debut LP

So many stories, where-oh-where to begin? Maybe we could start on the 14th of July 1973 at that fateful gig at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, when Don's so hammered that he's butchering the songs and Phil smashes his guitar in frustration, tells the crowd he's tired of being an Everly Brother and says that they, in fact, died as a meaningful entity ten years before – thus revealing the fraught fabrication behind all those celestial harmonies. It was an acrimony so strong that it kept them full-on apart for the entire next decade.

Vinyl Release

Dick Dale: Surfers' Choice

Steve Sutherland | Oct 01, 2018

It was the 1962 live album that launched the Surfin' genre. Listening to the 180g reissue, Steve Sutherland still wishes the guy on the sleeve was him

Every now and then, it's OK to be wrong. Not often, I grant you, but on occasion a long-held misbelief can be way better than the actual fact. That lyric you misheard years ago maybe, a phrase which has informed your enjoyment of a particular song – until you discover that the words and meaning were something different all along. Sometimes the reality can ruin the thereafter. And it's better to continue with your fantasy.

Vinyl Release

Nico: Chelsea Girl

Steve Sutherland | Sep 01, 2018

It was an album the singer hated, while the reaction of the music press was at best lukewarm. All wrong, says Steve Sutherland, who hears the 180g reissue of the LP

'The first time I heard the album, I cried.' It's rare but not entirely unknown for a musician to disown their own work. Lee Mavers wanted nothing to do with his one and only La's LP [HFN Nov '17], claiming the finished article did not represent the melodic visions gambolling in his brain. And Paul McCartney famously baulked at all the lush orchestration Phil Spector lavished on The Beatles' Let It Be.

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