Author Archives: Joseph Neff

Primitive Ring is a new Los Angeles-based power trio that features Bert Hoover on bass and vocals, Charles Moothart on guitar and vocals, and Jon Modaff on drums. The three share solid backgrounds in prior bands (more info below) but are kicking it into high heavy rock gear with their self-titled full-length debut, which comes out May 15 on vinyl and digital through In the Red Records. The album’s 11 songs are a fuzzy, psych-tinged, hard-rocking good time.

Along with Primitive Ring, Bert Hoover’s credits include Cab 20, GROOP, Mind Meld, Jesus Sons, and Hooveriii. Charles Moothart has contributed to Fuzz, the Ty Segall Band, GØGGS, The Preverts, Charlie & the Moonhearts, and CFM. Jon Modaff has taken part in Sweet Country Meat Boys, Frankie and the Witch Fingers, GROOP, and Hooveriii.

This supergroup-ish joining of forces commenced in 2024 and the following year the band cut four 45s beginning with “In the Ground” b/w “Golden in Your Eyes” on Greenway Records, followed by “Poisonous Gift” b/w “TV City” on In the Red, then “Luck” b/w “I’ve Been Waiting For You” via The Reverberation Appreciation Society, and finally “Rolling Greed” b/w “Cocaine Man” on Fuzz Club.

These are all worthy efforts that establish the extended pummeling of this full-length set, which finds Primitive Ring ramping it up a few tangible notches, as opener “Fire and Brimstone” swaggers with an almost glam punk feel. “The Last Gold Mine” extends this heavy groove and then “Lies from the Other Side” picks up the pace and solidifies the power trio stature with an utter torcher.

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The New York City-based outfit Suss has been extant for roughly a decade, starting as a quintet before trimming down to a trio lineup that’s remained in place since. Specializing in ambient country (their chosen descriptor) across a series of highly regarded full-length releases, their latest album is Counting Sunsets, its ten pieces offering exquisite, sunbaked, drifting resonances on LP, CD, and digital available May 15 through their label Northern Spy. This richly textured recording captures a band with an unusually heightened aptitude for cohesiveness honing a sound that’s organic and contemporary while lacking in clichés.

Suss is currently Jonathan Gregg on pedal steel and dobro, Bob Holmes on mandolin, baritone guitar, acoustic guitar, harmonica, violin, and keyboards, and Pat Irwin on electric guitars, National guitar, eBow, harmonium, keyboards, melodica, and loops. William Garrett departed the band in 2020, and Gary Leib passed away in 2021.

The two main elements in the style that this group has been steadily refining since debuting with Ghost Box back in 2018 are easy to recognize and absorb. The band can move with an exquisite graduality, reverberating with a calmness that fits pretty comfortably into the atmospheric, indeed ambient scheme of things, but without an overreliance on standard formal maneuvers.

On the other side of the equation, Suss’ country bona fides are rooted in the instrumentation listed above, but the playing is strengthened by a steadfast avoidance of hackneyed Americana-isms. By steering clear of excessive twang as a shortcut to mood infusion, the band is able to conjure up environments that are legitimately transportive.

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Celebrating Greg Dulli, born on this day in 1965. —Ed.

From humble beginnings, Cincinnati’s Afghan Whigs grew into one of 1990s more appealing Alternative success stories. Featuring guitarist Rick McCollum, bassist John Curley, drummer Steve Earle, and vocalist-guitarist-songwriting powerhouse Greg Dulli, they came on strong with 1990’s Up in It and sharpened their sound with ‘92’s Congregation; covers EP “Uptown Avondale” signaled the departure of Sub Pop for the majors. 

Up in It emerged in 1990 and was an immediate breath of fresh air. A whole lot of loud and heavy stuff was steamrolling toward a point of detonation, but the Afghan Whigs essentially came out of nowhere and infused the template with better than average songwriting right out of the gate. The LP’s best song is its opener, “Retarded” an almost ridiculously catchy hard rocker reinforcing that Dulli and company weren’t just hitched to a trend on the upswing. It’s sort of cut that can get stuck in one’s head for days, as this writer can attest, and reinvestigation has proved this capability undiminished.

Had Up in It been the only record the Whigs released…but wait. They do in fact have a prior record under their belt, 1988’s Big Top Halloween, issued on their own Ultrasuede label in an edition of 1,000 copies, one of which landed in the hands of Sub Pop’s Jonathan Poneman. Except for three tracks tacked onto the end of the Up in It CD (“Big Top Halloween,” Sammy,” and “In My Town”), nothing from the record has been legitimately reissued. Unbreakable: A Retrospective 1990–2006 chronologically cuts it out of the band’s history.

This is understandable. Although not terrible, Big Top Halloween (notably engineered by Wayne Hartman, who did the same for another Ohioan debut, the “Forever Since Breakfast” EP from Guided by Voices) is somewhat schizophrenic. Initially tapping into a Replacements vibe, across the disc there’re numerous structural nods to hardcore, doses of college jangle, a rather bogue country-ish number (“Life in a Day”), and the earliest nod to R&B-soul in the group’s discography (“But Listen”).

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Many ears were hipped to Indigenous folksinger, poet, filmmaker and activist Willie Dunn by the 3LP/2CD set Native North America (Vol. 1): Aboriginal Folk, Rock, and Country 1966-1985. Issued by Light in the Attic in 2014, that one’s received a recent repress, and in even better news, the next volume in the series is Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies: The Willie Dunn Anthology, which gathers tracks from his four albums and more, with everything remastered by John Baldwin. The icing on the cake for vinyl buyers is the inclusion of Willie Dunn Notes, the 24-pg newsprint insert with exhaustively researched liners assembled by the set’s producer Kevin Howes. 

Willie Dunn’s best-known song is “I Pity the Country,” in large part because it was one of two recordings featured on Native North America (Vol. 1). That revelatory compilation, GRAMMY®-nominated and prominent in numerous year’s best lists including the top 10 reissues offered by this very website, smartly placed “I Pity the Country” as track one on side one.

When a musician attains a belated boost in profile, their best-known song often just happens to be their best song period, but that’s not the case with Willie Dunn, as Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies begins with the nearly 10-minute powerhouse “The Ballad of Crowfoot.” Now, that song is arguably the artist’s greatest composition (as it plays it sure feels that way); that the ensuing 21 songs here are unmarred by even a hint of anticlimax is testament to Dunn’s talent.

“The Ballad of Crowfoot” is included on both his debut and its follow-up (both eponymous, released in 1971 and ’72 with an overlap of six tracks), but neither of those shorter versions are the one that’s heard on Creation Never Sleeps. The recording collected here is sourced from the soundtrack of the short film of the same title that was made in 1968 by the National Film Board of Canada’s Indian Film Crew, of which Dunn was a member.

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The 6-song EP can be a splendiferous thing, especially when is loaded with songs by The Wedding Present. Back in 1995, this august UK band released “Mini,” a set with a loose driving theme, and now, 30 years later, we have “Maxi,” a fresh half dozen from the current lineup, led as always by David Gedge, with the contents covering the same subject from six distinct angles.

The red and black 12-inch vinyl released by Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records is sold out on Bandcamp, but copies are still available in brick-and-mortar stores. A 10-inch pressing is also out now through the band’s label Scopitones, but it is going fast. Compact discs and digital downloads are also there for the purchasing.

A concise synopsis of The Wedding Present would, of course, situate them as top-tier indie pop specialists with an aptitude for guitar jangle at its most sublime and, occasionally, hyperactive. The other main characteristic is the band’s founder and constant frontman, David Gedge’s handiwork with a love song, and in fact, a whole big book of love songs.

Part of what makes this inclination for the amorous so impressive is how the songwriting has developed within the band’s indie-pop sound, which is very British and robust enough to be described as melodic rock (never have they been twee). The Wedding Present is not a band of grand stylistic detours and/or trend-hopping, although this shouldn’t suggest that the discography is predictable. Recognizable, sure, but predictable? No.

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First there was The Churchills, followed by a switch to Jericho Jones and then simply Jericho, essentially the same band in different stages of development. Formed in Tel Aviv, Israel, with a transition to the UK, an album was cut under all three names, and all three albums have been reissued on vinyl by the ever-dependable Guerssen Records of Spain. We give proper consideration to this trio of platters below.

The story here begins with the legendary UK producer Joe Meek. A new version of the Meek-affiliated band The Tornadoes (of “Telstar” fame), notably with no original members but formed through the auspices of Meek, were doing that “struggling in the 1960s” thing when they secured a six-week run of gigs in Israel.

After arriving, the arrangement fell through (naturally), but they still managed to play some shows and crossed paths with an Israeli band, The Churchills (or Churchill’s). At this stage in this region, all successful rock-oriented bands were essentially cover bands, and Tornado Robb Huxley began dishing a 30-minute set of soul belters live with The Churchills.

During this period, Huxley also met Canadian Stan Solomon, who became a musical collaborator who convinced Huxley to remain in Israel. Guitarist-vocalist Huxley and lead vocalist Solomon eventually joined a version of The Churchills with guitarist-mandolinist-vocalist Haim Romano, bassist-vocalist Miki Gavrielov, and drummer Ami Triebich.

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Born in Seoul, South Korea, and currently living in Brooklyn, NYC, DoYeon Kim sings and plays the Korean instrument the gayageum, an ancient Korean zither. She’s also a composer and improviser of considerable skill, with all of her talents driving the brilliance of her debut album as leader Wellspring, which is available on vinyl, compact disc, and digital May 1 through the TAO Forms label. Featuring creative cyclones Tyshawn Sorey on drums, Mat Maneri on viola, and Henry Fraser on bass, the record’s contemporary resonance is abundant. It will assuredly be among the best of the year.

As a fan of free jazz, avant-improv, and associated exploratory musics, it can be a treat to hear instruments from outside of the standard sphere of reeds, valves, keys, drums, and bass. Mallet axes, guitars, and bowed-string contraptions (such as the viola as heard on this album) are less prevalent but still common enough that they don’t deliver a level of anticipatory excitement that’s comparable to sitting down at a quality restaurant and unexpectedly dining on a rare delicacy.

Accordions, hurdy-gurdies, mbiras, harps, synthesizers, Theremins, harpsichords, didgeridoos, bagpipes, sitars, harmoniums, gayageums: what ultimately elevates these unusual timbres and textures far above mere novelty is heightened ability combined with the sincere desire to express.

DoYeon Kim’s journey to the strikingly powerful Wellspring is an interesting one. She began playing the gayageum as a hobby before moving on to serious study that eventually led her to the New England Conservatory. It was there that Kim’s initial encounters with free improvisation left her perplexed and unimpressed.

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Maisy Owen is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist based in that musical hub of Nashville, TN. After debuting with a 7-inch last October, she is releasing her debut long-playing record on classic black vinyl on May 1 through Tompkins Square. Dark on a Sunny Day is an assured set that excels through nimble fingerpicking, sturdy string bowing, and boldness of voice. The connection of folk music’s rich, long tradition is readily apparent.

As Dark on a Sunny Day unfolds, the songs are engaging and fresh while avoiding the tentative. Opener “My Youth Is All for You” connects like a tune that’s been passed down from older generations while eschewing the dustiness of a relic. Unsurprisingly released as Owen’s first single on a vinyl 45 in stereo and mono versions (copies still available), the track establishes a timelessness the artist alternately embraces and keeps at arm’s length.

“Letters” sounds like it could’ve been dished out solo for a few coffeehouse diehards on a slow, chilly New England weeknight, but this guitar and vocal core (this idyllic folk vision) gets fortified with bass played by the album’s producer Robin Eaton and viola that’s credited to Owen. The title track is a sturdier strummer, with some gentle electric fuzz tones in the weave. The drumming of John Radford gives the song a folk-rock feel that’s appealingly casual.

“The Rest of Me” exudes the gorgeous fragility of the best of Brit-folk, wispy gal picking and intoning on a haybale division, but sorta miraculously without affectation. “On My Way Down” is a more forceful affair, Owen strumming alone in singer-songwriter mode save for Eaton’s bass.

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Dave Harrington, Max Jaffe, and Patrick Shiroishi are a Los Angeles-based trio specializing in the improvisational. Making Colors is their new record, abstract and robust, available April 24 on Natural Purple Swirl vinyl in an edition of 300 copies through AKP Recordings.

Now three releases strong, the collaboration of Dave Harrington, Max Jaffe, and Patrick Shiroishi is a creative union of equality, even as the three have individual levels of productivity outside the trio. Shiroishi has the largest output, as he’s credited on over 60 full-length releases as a leader or as part of a duo or group. He’s amassed a long and varied list of collaborators.

Harrington has also been busy, having played in the groups Darkside, Hyloxolos, and Taper’s Choice and leading Lights Fluorescent and the Dave Harrington Group. His list of collaborators is also sizeable and broad, with a few of them having also played with Shiroishi and Jaffe.

Jaffe has a pair of albums out under his own name, and he’s played in the groups Afuche, Chives, Elder Ones, In One Wind, JOBS, Killer Bob, and Three Reps. Amongst numerous credits as a contributor, Jaffe played on Kid Millions’ 100 Disciplines and Steph Richards’ Power Vibe. He was also in the James Brandon Lewis Trio for an album, Eye of I.

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Alan Bishop has long been championed as a founding third of one of the underground’s greatest founts of experimental genre flexibility and unpredictability, Sun City Girls, which he formed with his brother Richard and the late Charles Goucher. The newest transmission from Bishop under the moniker Alvarius B. is Malarial Dream, which is available on LP April 24 through the Abduction label. Recorded in Cairo, where Bishop has resided for 15 years, the set’s scope is expansive, offering rich Middle Eastern excursions and vivid psychedelic vistas. Numerous worthy contributors take part in a satisfying dive into the unexpected.

Alan Bishop released his first album as Alvarius B. over 30 years ago, and at that point, he’d already been on the scene for more than a decade. Sun City Girls was the main course in his discographical banquet, but Bishop also recorded with Eddy Detroit, Velvet Underground drummer Maureen Tucker (in the band Paris 1942), and guitarist Eugene Chadbourne.

In the 1990s, when it would’ve been easy or at least possible for Bishop, either solo or as part of Sun City Girls, to navigate upward and negotiate a record deal with a major label, he wisely kept it subterranean as the output continued to flow forth. Along with running Abduction and co-founding the incalculably valuable Sublime Frequencies label, he’s participated in a range of projects, including The Dwarfs of East Agouza and The Invisible Hands.

Dwarfs of East Agouza members Maurice Louca and Sam Shalabi, and Invisible Hands participants Adham Zidan, Aya Hemeda, Cherif El Masri, and Morgan Mikkelsen guest on Malarial Dream alongside Amelie Legrand, Asher Gamedze, Eyvind Kang, Hana Al Bayaty, Huda Asfour, and Sammy Sayed.

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Dylan Hundley is a fixture on the scene in New York City and a crucial contributor to The Vinyl District, who’s also half of Lulu Lewis alongside Pablo Martin, her partner in life and also in new wave-post punk-darkwave groove science. With her “one woman brutalist synthpop” project Darling Black, Hundley is indeed going it alone, except when a top-flight remix specialist comes a-knockin’.

In the case of “8th and Alvarado,” a plum track from Darling Black’s eponymous full-length from last year, the remixer is Killing Joke bassist Martin “Youth” Glover. The Youth “Champagne” Remix is an exquisite expansion and extension of Hundley’s inspired conception, as evidenced below.

For those familiar with Lulu Lewis who have yet to get acquainted with Dylan Hundley’s latest endeavor, rest easy that Darling Black flaunts a complementary approach. The main differentiating factor is that Hundley is honing a sharp and edgy dancefloor attack throughout. That hasn’t registered as a major difference, at least until Youth got his hands on “8th and Alvarado.”

The core track is already a mover, but its no-wave-electro-post-punk blend conjures visions of a sweaty mass of unison writhing in a packed room during a live performance. After Youth got his mitts on the tune, the sound is thicker and is even more likely to whip a crowd into a frenzy, but now the mental picture that forms is of a heaving humid dance club with a DJ bent over a pair of spinning turntables.

As it is in Lulu Lewis, Hundley’s strong suit in Darling Black is a desire to enliven her inspirations with fresh possibilities rather than settling for mere imitation. Everything connects as correct, including this version by Youth.

When it comes to pop-punk, nobody excelled at the form quite like California’s Descendents. Over-stimulated through caffeine and sporting raging late-adolescent libidos, the band eschewed the political and the nihilistic for subject matter that was more down to earth and still relevant. Many of their songs were about girls, sex, and the lack thereof, and occasionally fishing. In 1986, they released their third album, Enjoy! On April 24, the record gets a well-deserved vinyl reissue through ORG Music, along with a limited Punk Note sleeve edition. There are also compact disc and cassettes available.

By the release of Enjoy!, the Los Angeles suburbanites Descendents had defied the odds twice over, surviving far beyond the modest but very likeable pop-rock beginnings of their pre-Milo Aukerman “Ride the Wild” b/w “It’s a Hectic World” 45, which was released in 1980, and the quick-blast EP of melodic hardcore that comprises the “Fat EP” as it came out the following year.

Descendents’ percentage quashing began with the two full-length albums to follow, Milo Goes to College, released in 1982, and then I Don’t Want to Grow Up, which hit stores in 1985 and featured a lineup change after a hiatus. That both LPs are beloved by fans and critics is unusual enough; the records are not just pop-punk done right, they are considered by many to be qualitative pinnacles of an oft-derided sub-genre. Pulling this off after essentially ceasing operations is where the twice-over unlikelihood figures in.

Vocalist Milo had indeed fulfilled the debut’s titular prophecy and left for college. Bill Stevenson’s keister was warming the drum stool in Black Flag. Guitarist Frank Navetta quit the band in rather dramatic fashion, burning his equipment and moving to Oregon to become a full-time fisherman. When Aukerman was once again available and interested, Stevenson quit Black Flag, and they reconvened with bassist Tony Lombardo for I Don’t Want to Grow Up. Ray Cooper replaced Navetta.

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Blood Sucking Maniacs is the newest record by the estimable Texas singer-songwriter and multidisciplinary artist Terry Allen, and it’s also a family band experience encompassing members rooted by birth (a mother from beyond the grave Pauline, sons Bukka and Bale, grandsons Sled, Calder, and Kru, the fetal heartbeat of great grandchild Lucky Marlo), by the ritual of marriage (Terry’s wife Jo Harvey Allen, granddaughter-in-law Sophie) and also by surrogate bonds (Richard Bowden and Lloyd Maines, both longtime Panhandle Mystery Band members, plus Will and Charlie Sexton).

Offering 22 tracks across four sides of vinyl, the music that shapes Blood Sucking Maniacs is warm and casual but never unfocused. It’s a sheer pleasure to soak up, with the set releasing on April 24 in a 140-gram black vinyl edition tucked into a gatefold sleeve with an essay by Allen biographer Brendan Greaves. Compact disc and digital options are also available.

Terry Allen has recorded a slew of albums since hitting the radar from the fringes of the Texas music scene in the mid-1970s. If his first and second records, Juarez from ’75 and Lubbock (On Everything) from ’79, are the ones most often recommended as introductions to his work, Allen’s output has never suffered a stumble in quality. A listener could jump into his discography through basically any release and work forward and backward to a fulfilling result.

Although Blood Sucking Maniacs is not a Terry Allen album per se, as he is but one contributor among many in the set’s weave, it’s still as fine a place as any to get acquainted with his brilliance. It’s fair to say the Blood Sucking Maniacs band owes its existence to Terry’s artistic ambitions and to his union with Jo Harvey, who is also a multidisciplinary artist of considerable achievement. They were married in 1961.

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This year’s springtime Record Store Day reissue resurgence continues with two solid ones from the Liberation Hall label, a performance collection from San Francisco-based new wavers Romeo Void, Live ’81-’85, and an odds-and-ends set from the Los Angelino kings of Americana, The Blasters, Rare Blasts: Studio Outtakes and Movie Music 1979-1985. Both albums are worthy additions to any shelf documenting rock music’s transitions in the early 1980s. Both records are hitting the bins on vinyl in limited editions, but are also available on compact disc and digital.

It seems fair to say that when considering the edgier, sturdier side of the new wave spectrum, Romeo Void, if not wholly overlooked, haven’t received enough retrospective acclaim for the tough smarts of their sound. Extant from 1979–’85, the band cut three full-length albums, an EP, and a handful of singles during that stretch. Starting on indie 415 Records, Romeo Void made the move to Columbia and stands as one of the few instances where the switch to a major label wasn’t a botch job.

Back in 2023, Liberation Hall unveiled Romeo Void’s Live from Mabuhay Gardens, a very cool set that caught the band at an early stage, specifically on November 14, 1980. Eight of Mabuhay Gardens’ eleven tracks were recut in the studio for the debut album, It’s a Condition, but neither of Romeo Void’s best-known songs was part of the setlist on that evening.

That makes Live ’81–’85 very necessary. It holds not only “Never Say Never” and “A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing),” their most celebrated tunes (the latter even climbed into the Billboard Top 40), but also a cross-section of material from their discography. What’s sweet is that the band is in sharp form throughout, from vocalist Deborah Iyall to guitarist Peter Woods to the rhythm section of bassist Frank Zincavage and drummers Frank Carter (on the ’81–’82 material) and Aaron Smith (on the stuff cut in Europe in ’85).

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Remembering Eddie Hazel, born on this day in 1950. —Ed.

The late guitarist Eddie Hazel remains highly esteemed for his role in shaping the funk rock juggernaut that is Parliament-Funkadelic. With beaucoup assistance from the P-Funk All-Stars including George Clinton himself, Hazel released Game, Dames and Guitar Thangs, his solo debut, in 1977, an absolute fiesta of string bending that quickly fell out of print, grew to be highly sought after, and therefore became rather expensive. 

I suppose it’s possible to review Game, Dames and Guitar Thangs without mentioning Hazel’s role in Parliament-Funkadelic, but I’m not sure what purpose that would serve, particularly as so many of his bandmates contribute to it, specifically bassists Bootsy Collins and William “Billy Bass” Nelson, drummer Tiki Fulwood, keyboardist Bernie Worrell, guitarists Michael Hampton, Gary Shider, Glenn Goins, and those Brides of Funkenstein, Dawn Silva and Lynn Mabry. Additionally, George Clinton had a hand in writing all four of the record’s originals, with Hazel a co-writer on two of them.

It’s the original stuff, which is very much in the sonic ballpark of P-Funk, that made Hazel’s only non-posthumous solo album such a pricey item for such a long time. And even after being reissued on CD and vinyl on a handful of occasions in the 21st century, copies of the first pressing (in good condition, natch) still changed hands for roughly 200 smackers.

Lending Game, Dames and Guitar Thangs fresh ears on the occasion of Real Gone’s new vinyl edition (the label issued it on CD back in 2012 featuring notes by P-Funk Minister of Information Tom Vickers, with copies still available) reestablishes the most important factor in the record’s enduring stature, which is a baseline standard of quality. It is an eminently listenable record, providing that one is amenable to the P-Funk sensibility of course, and to Hazel’s playing in particular.

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