Singles: Introducing "New London Boy"/"All The Young Dudes"

 

The Pet Shop Boys will release "New London Boy" their fifth and final single from their latest album "Nonetheless" this November. It is being promoted alongside their cover of David Bowie’s "All The Young Dudes" and, in an exciting development, there will actually be two CD singles for this release, something pretty odd nowadays.

The first CD – with Neil cover – features a radio edit of "New London Boy", a new song "Beauty Has Laid Siege To The City" and two remixes of  "All The Young Dudes".

The second remixes CD single – with Chris cover – includes two further remixes of  "All The Young Dudes", a remix of "New London Boy" and – finally – "Clean Air Hybrid Electric Bus" the bonus track from the Japanese CD of Nonetheless.

Both CD singles are packaged gatefold card wallets, printed on uncoated board, which is consistent with all the CD singles from Nonetheless. New London Boy/All The Young Dudes will be released on 15 November 2024.

Track List: 

CD1:  

 

1. New London Boy (radio edit)

2. All The Young Dudes

3. Beauty Has Laid Siege To The City

4. All The Young Dudes (Delinquent mix)

5. All The Young Dudes (Richard X longest mix)    

 

CD2  

 

1. All The Young Dudes (Richard X edit)

2. New London Boy (Boy Harsher remix)

3. Clean Air Hybrid Electric Bus

4. All The Young Dudes (I. JORDAN remix)

New Music: The Centre Cannot Hold

           

Primal Scream shares the new single "The Centre Cannont Hold" the new cut from his forthcoming album "Come Ahead", a liberated tune with an interesting blend of acoustic guitars, keyboards and percussions highlighting Bobby Gillespie's voice, the video shows Bobby Gillespie walking and wandering in some urban neighborhood under Douglas Hart direction.

New Music: Evil Woman

          

From their new album "Danse Macabre De Luxe" Duran Duran is back with a bran new cover of ELO's classic "Evil Woman", a vibing disco for a classic rock tune that seems to work perfectly with a solid arrangement, the animated video is courtesy of Director Juan Pinto.

New Music: A Good Time Pushed

           

Kim Deal shares a new single "A Good Time Pushed" from the debut solo album "Nobody Loves You More", the track features some Deal's bandmates from the Breeders, Jim Macpherson and Kelley Deal with Steve Albini engineering, the single is accompanied by a visualizer from Mark Satterthwaite; Kim Deal album will be out the next November 23.

New Music: La Champions Y El Mundial

          

The Spanish indie pop band Love Of Lesbian join force with Leiva in their brand new single "La Champions Y El Mundial" according to the band, the song is a hymn to chaos, with an interesteing video by Joseph Ros in a truly Tarantino movies hommage.

Rocktrospectiva: The Masterpiece "Hats" Turns 35

Released on 8 October 1989, "Hats" was the second studio album by Scottish band The Blue Nile, the album came after a prolonged delay in which an entire album's worth of work was scrapped, the Blue Nile released Hats to rave reviews. It also became the band's most successful album, reaching number 12 on the UK album charts and spawning three singles: "The Downtown Lights", "Headlights on the Parade", and "Saturday Night".

Having finished promotion work for their debut album A Walk Across the Rooftops, the group's record company Linn Records were keen to have a follow-up record, and in early 1985 sent the band to a house in the golfing resort town of Gullane near the Castlesound Studios where the previous album had been produced. However, sessions for the new record hit problems almost immediately. The band did not yet have enough material to make another album, and with the group forced to share a house and having to spend all their time in close proximity with each other, arguments developed among the homesick band members. Exhausted and stressed, their problems were compounded when Virgin Records, to whom Linn had licensed the Blue Nile's records, began legal proceedings against Linn Records, demanding new material. the band was living away from home, no money, miserable, getting sued. We were absolutely zonked, the record company weren't pleased and everyone around was starting to think, this record is never going to get made. It was exhausting.

After almost three years in the studio which produced virtually nothing, having begun and scrapped several songs, then the Blue Nile had no option but to return home to Glasgow; back in familiar surroundings and freed from time constraints, Buchanan overcame his writer's block, while Robert Bell and Paul Joseph Moore began putting musical ideas down on a portastudio. As a result, when the band was finally able to return to Castlesound in 1988, the ideas for the album were already in place and according to Buchanan, "we knew exactly what we were doing. We actually recorded the rest of Hats super quick honestly, half of Hats was, like, a week.

The album was released in October 1989 simultaneously in both the United Kingdom and the United States: since the Blue Nile was essentially unknown in the US in 1989, the cover artwork for the US release of the album was slightly modified for marketing reasons, with the band's name in larger letters. As a promotional tool, A&M Records—who distributed Hats in North America—took out a full-page advertisement in Billboard magazine offering a free copy of the CD to anyone who called a toll-free number which was provided.

Hats peaked at number 12 on the UK Albums Chart. Three singles were released from the album: the first, "The Downtown Lights", was released in September 1989 and peaked at number 67 on the UK Singles Chart, followed by "Headlights on the Parade" in September 1990 which reached number 72, and "Saturday Night" in January 1991, which reached number 50. In the US, Hats peaked at number 108 on the Billboard 200. "The Downtown Lights" reached number 10 on the Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart in early 1990, becoming the group's only single chart entry in that country.

The album received highly positive reviews from music critics. Describing the album as "absolutely superb", others noted the more stripped-down nature of the album's songs and praised the band's new direction, stating that "if Hats has a flaw, it's only that it's too perfect, too considered. Others said that only the laziest ear would confuse this crystalline perfection with the hygiene and polish of plastic pop" and described the album as "big music, that leaves you feeling very small, very still and very close to tears. The Album is a triumph of personal vision over the cold, remote calculations of technology" and stated that in spite of general lack of live instrumentation, "it is nevertheless an immensely warm and human album, a superior, elegant examples of masterful craftmanship", noting elements of soul and classical minimalism in the albums.

 

Hats Track List:

 

1. Over The Hillside

2. The Dowtown Lights

3. Let's Go Out Tonight

4. Headlights On The Parade

5. From A Late Night Train

6. Seven A.M.

7. Saturday Night

Rocktrospectiva: The Conceptual "Nightlife" Turns 25

 

Released on 8 October 1999, "Nightlife" was the 7th., studio album by iconic British duo Pet Shop Boys, the album came after the production of "Closer To Heaven", considered a conceptual album that was inspired by the musical that the duo composed. Musically, the album is one of the most influential and varied, from hard trance sounds thanks to Rollo's production in some tracks like "For Your Own Good" and "Radiophonic", going through the dance pop of "Closer To Heaven" and "I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Anymore", euro disco in "New Yoir City Boy" a certain country sampling in the great "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk", as well as classical pieces in "Happiness Is An Option" that were inspired by the songs of Sergei Rachmaninoff. 

 

The album spawned three singles "Don't Know What You Want It But I Can't Give It Anymore", the famous "New York City Boy" and finally the sad and calculating "You Only Tell You Love When Your Drunk" that allowed the album to have a moderate success thanks to the 1.2 million copies sold, although in the United States, the album was their lowest in terms of reception and success, since it only reached No. 84 on the Billboard.  

 

Even thought, the album stands out mostly for their appearance that the band adopted for the album, a purely sinister and unhinged look for Neil Tennant courtesy of theater designer Ian Mcneil, who made the duo look dark eyebrows inspired by the Kabuki theater, various hair colors inspired by the punk subculture, and dark glasses, as well as dark suits and with certain colors adopting culottes, like a samurai-type outfit. The outfits were used to promote the singles and the videos, especially for the video of the first single where Tennat took on various appearances and began in an experimental laboratory courtesy of Pedro Romhanyi, whose visuals were inspired by films such as THX1138, Ridicule and even 2001: A Space Odyssey, there was an ode to New York in the second single, where certain clichés and visits to iconic places in the Big Apple were taken up again and in the third single, everything takes place on a dance floor, where the party-goers appear lying on the floor and as the song progresses they get up and start the action.

 

The first part of the album is nice, "For Your Own Good", "Closer to Heaven" and the single track "I Don’t Know What You Want but I Can’t Give it Any More" assorted and considered classic in ther career, the danceable "Radiophonic" is fast, and then you have the ballads in midtempo sound as the heartbreaking "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You’re Drunk" is not only a very long song title, it’s also one of the highlights of "Nightlife", where the voice of Neil Tennant is the most dominant feature. Neil’s voice is without question one of the most charismatic and personal in the business today. There’s also a duet with Kylie Minogue called "In Denial", and it’s actually quite good, and then the little boring "Boy Strange" with a guitar dominated thing with silly lyrics and strange rhythms, but in the end, the album is one of the most astonisihing recordings delivered by the Pet Shop Boys.

 

Nightlife Track List:

 

1. For Your Own Good

2. Closer To Heaven

3. I Don't Know What You Want It But I Can't Give It Anymore

4. Hapiness Is An Option

5. You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk

6. Vampires

7. Radiophonic

8. The Only One

9. Boy Strange

10. In Denial

12. New York City Boy

13. Footsteps

 

Rocktrospectiva: The Goth Classic "It'll End In Tears" Turns 40

 

Released on 8 October 1984, "It'll End In Tears" was the first album released by 4AD collective This Mortal Coil, consisted in a loose grouping of artists on the label brought together by label boss Ivo Watts-Russell, and reached #38 on the UK Albums Chart. The album spawned two singles "Song To The Siren" & "Kangaroo". 

Summing up 4AD at that point, created by label head Ivo Watts-Russell and engineer John Fryer this soundtracked many a sun dappled bedsit deftly mixing soundscapes, original music and classic covers (Tim Buckley, Alex Chilton, Roy Harper, Rema Rema) but it's the guest musicians who make the album such a seminal slice of wonder - the hugely undervalued Gordon Sharp (Cindytalk), Dead Can Dance, Howard Devoto, Colourbox, Modern English and of course the Cocteau Twins with Elizabeth Fraser taking top honours with readings of Harper's Another Day and Buckley's Song to the Siren. 

 

It'll End in Tears was a surprisingly influential album in many circles, key in the reawakening of interest in artists like Alex Chilton and the late Tim Buckley by a younger generation of listeners. Two songs from Big Star's Third are included, a version of "Kangaroo" featuring Cindytalk vocalist Gordon Sharp that sounds even druggier and more disorienting than the original, and a chilling piano and strings version of "Holocaust" with haunted vocals by Howard Devoto; the simple but ravishing version of Buckley's "Song to the Siren" by Cocteau Twins Liz Fraser and Robin Guthrie was cited by David Lynch as the direct inspiration for Julee Cruise's first two albums and has since been used several times in commercials and films. 

 

The covers are the most memorable part of the album, a Robbie Grey-sung version of Colin Newman's "Not Me," cleverly incorporating a hypnotic riff from another Newman song, "B," is the most conventionally hooky song on the album, to the point that folks who haven't listened to the album for a while tend to forget that half of the songs are "band" originals. 

 

These six songs mark 4AD's definitive break from its origins as an artsy post-punk imprint (Bauhaus, Modern English's first few records, etc.) to the development of "the 4AD sound," a heavily reverbed wash of treated guitars and atmospheric keyboards with vocals treated as another instrument in an amorphous wash of sound. The problem is that these largely instrumental tracks sound more like half-baked studio doodles than fully formed songs; a three-song stretch on side two featuring Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard is particularly tiresome. As a whole, It'll End in Tears is a lovely, often exquisite record; taken individually, the power of some of the songs is lost.

 

It'll End In Tears Track List:

 

1. Kangaroo

2. Song To The Siren

3. Holocaust

4. Fyt

5. Fond Affections

6. The Last Ray

7. Another Day

8. Waves Become Wings

9. Barramundi

10. Dreams Made Flesh

11. Not Me

12. A Single Wish

The Compilation: Tomorrow's Here Today "35 Years Of Lightning Seeds"

Celebrating 35 years of career, The Lightning Seeds release this compilation "Tomorrow's Here Today: 35 Years Of Lightning Seeds", this is an absolute masterclass in modern pop songwriting from Ian Broudie. 

Kicking off with their classic debut single "Pure", this really is a greatest hits compilation worthy of the title from a band who have sold over 8 million albums. Across 19 tracks the compilation features Lightning Seeds favourites including 'The Life of Riley', 'Change', 'Lucky You', 'Sense', 'All I Want', 'Sugar Coated Iceberg', 'You Showed Me', '3 Lions' and more. 

Tomorrow's Here Today: 35 Years Of Lightning Seeds Track List:

Disc 1

 
1. Pure
2. Emily Smiles
3. My Best Day
4. Lucky You
5. Waiting for Today to Happen
6. Sense
7. Perfect
8. Change (Single Version)
9. Life's Too Short
10.  Sugar Coated Iceberg

Disc 2

 
1. The Life of Riley
2. All I Want
3. You Showed Me
4. What If
5. Marvellous
6. Ready Or Not
7. The Nearly Man
8. Like You Do
9. 3 Lions

In Memoriam: The Iconic Dutch Player "Johan Neeskens" Has Died Aged 73

Johan Neeskens, the iconic Dutch player who scored the first-minute penalty to put the Netherlands ahead in the 1974 World Cup final against West Germany, has died at the age of 73. Neeskens was taken ill while working for the Dutch football association’s World Coaches programme in Algeria. 

According to the KNVB said in a statement that he died on October 6th., after medical intervention was unable to save him. A truly magnificent midfielder with Ajax and Barcelona, Neeskens was renowned for his ferocious shooting and equally ferocious tackling, as well as his stamina and versatility. Ajax team-mate Sjaak Swart once said he was "worth two men in midfield".

He moved to Barcelona in 1974 after winning three European Cups with Ajax, shadowing Johan Cruyff and earning himself the nickname Johan Segundo (Johan the second). But he was far from a second fiddle, playing in two World Cup finals for the Netherlands and scoring 17 international goals in 49 appearances.

His penalty in the first minute of the 1974 final in Munich was famously scored before a single German player had touched the ball, but Oranje eventually lost the match 2-1. Neeskens was also in the team that lost the 1978 final 3-1 to another host nation, Argentina. The player spent five years at Barcelona and then followed in Cruyff’s footsteps again, this time to the United States where he spent five seasons with the New York Cosmos. He finished his career in Switzerland, which became his home for the rest of his life.

He spent the second part of his career as a coach, working as Guus Hiddink’s assistant in the Dutch team that reached the semi-finals of the 1998 World Cup.Two years later he took charge of NEC Nijmegen, leading them to their first European appearances in 20 years in 2003, but the following year he was sacked for poor results.

Even if you finish second, you can still win over the world with the way you play," he said. "That was our legacy, the fact that people still talk about it today. We should be proud of that."