New Shoulders to Cry On

I felt every one of my 58 years earlier this week, when telling a couple of work colleagues the name of the artist I was going to see in concert that night. 'Nils Lofgren' I said. Blank faces. 'Singer-songwriter' I added helpfully. Blank faces. 'Well he's been a member of the E-Street Band for 35 years'. Blank faces. 'Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band?' I continued, becoming a tad desperate. '...Bruce Sprig...who?' Neither of them had ever heard of Bruce Springsteen. It wasn't that they were unfamiliar with his music, or knew him but didn't like his stuff - they had literally never heard of Bruce Springsteen. How do you get into your early 20s without ever having at least heard of Bruce Springsteen? I threw a few more big names at my baffled colleagues to see if anything stuck. 'Bob Dylan?' Nope. 'Tom Petty?' Nope. 'The Clash?' Nope. I was clearly being too obscure. 'The Beatles' I boomed confidently. 'You must have heard of The Beatles?' 'Oh yes, I've heard of them,' came a reply '..but I don't think I've heard any music by them. Are they an instrumental group?' I kid you not.

It's been 40 years since I first saw Nils Lofgren in concert and around 25 years since the last time. This latest tour is a stripped back celebration of his 50th year on the road and showcases material from all stages of that long and successful career. The highlight of the night for me was 'Black Books', a song originally released on his 1995 studio LP 'Damaged Goods', though this interpretation from 1997's 'Acoustic Live' is much closer to the atmospheric version we got on Tuesday evening.

Nils Lofgren - Black Books

Neck Another Pill to Make Me Feel Better

Sometimes at work, a random song (or part of a song) will get lodged in my head and become an eight hour long earworm. One day last week, for no apparent reason, it was 'This Feeling', the first single from 'Only Forever', the second LP by Puressence. I dug out my generic promo CD of the album when I got home and gave it a spin. It took me back. I saw Puressence just once, in 1998 a couple of months before the release of 'Only Forever', at The Barfly in Camden. That evening, I stood on one side of the room and my then recent ex-girlfriend and her new beau stood on the other. The tension in the air was palpable!

When I played through 'Only Forever' last week, I regretted never having picked up a proper finished copy of the CD in the ensuing 20 years. Yesterday morning, bright and early, Mrs S & I drove 20 miles to spend a couple of hours pottering around a large car-boot sale in a field just outside of Norwich. Half way along the very last row of stalls, as we were about to make our way back to the car, I crouched down to flick through a box of CDs on the ground - and there it was. A pristine copy of 'Only Forever'. Would you believe it? 'How much?' I asked, waving the CD above my head to grab the stallholder's attention. '50p' came the reply. Sold.

Puressence - This Feeling

Fake Lake

Hang around Bandcamp for long enough, follow a few labels, download some tracks, buy the odd LP or CD and soon enough a steady trickle of suggested new releases by artists you've never heard of will start to appear in your inbox. This is how I stumbled upon 'Fake Lake', the third full-length album by The Coke Dares. At some point I must've liked something on Third Uncle Records enough to follow the label, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. I'm bloody glad I did though.

The first thing you notice about 'Fake Lake' is that nothing on the LP overstays its welcome. Eleven of the 35 tracks last less than sixty seconds and only four pass the two minute mark, the longest, 'Water Purse', clocking in at a lengthy 2.22. This might suggest that the record consists of a succession of brief, primitive thrashes, though nothing could be further from the truth. The music on 'Fake Lake' is very diverse - melodic, funny, angry, tender - and above all it's brilliantly arranged throughout. The songs might be short, but they are superbly crafted and bursting with more ideas than many bands come up with during the course of an entire career.

Think Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Grant Hart, a dash of The Descendents plus a smattering of Wire and a dab of powerpop and you're getting somewhere near, though 'Fake Lake' is so much more than that. Here are three samples, but I would highly recommend that you head over to their Bandcamp page, give The Coke Dares a full 44 minutes of your time and check out the whole album. It's the most richly rewarding new release I've heard so far this year.

Illusions in a Twisted Mind

Porter Wagoner was a fascinating character that's for sure. A star of the Grand Olé Opry, famous for wearing a range of garish rhinestone Nudie and Manuel suits, but unafraid to explore the darker side of life. 'The Rubber Room', a fabulous compilation from 2006, pulls together the bleaker and stranger strands of his long recording career. For bleak try 'The Party', a 1968 duet with Dolly Parton. And strange? They don't come much stranger than the 1972 title track.

Porter Wagoner - The Rubber Room 

Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton - The Party

Hello Dawn

Feeding time in the garden over the weekend. The kids are growing up fast. No wonder he feels the need to let off steam every morning!

Because of staff holidays I was offered a stretch of early shifts last week, which meant getting out of bed at 4.30 and into work by 6am. It was a long haul, but I successfully negotiated the week despite feeling more knackered than usual by the end of it. One morning (I don't remember which, they all blur into one) I fuzzyheadedly checked my clock and saw that it was exactly 4am, leaving another half an hour to doze. The pre-dawn light was weak. All was still and absolutely silent, apart from Mrs S breathing gently beside me. I closed my eyes. It felt like little more than a blink, but when I opened them again, the volume of the world had increased to a cacophonous level. The dawn chorus was in deafeningly full swing. I looked at the clock. It read 4.12. Just 12 minutes had elapsed, but in that time the local robins, sparrows, wrens, cockerels and finches had all kicked off big style. Even the visiting cuckoo somewhere out on the marsh behind the house was joining in with gusto. Leading the charge, as always, was the neighbourhood blackbird population, one of which uses the ledge above the dormer window in our bedroom as a vantage point each morning for maximum volume and sound projection. 'Shut up' mumbled a half asleep Mrs S as I slipped out of bed.

Just lately, during my breaks at work, when not digging into the recent batch of decent new releases, I've been reacquainting myself with the music of the 1960s/70s Canterbury Scene and related spin-offs. This past week it was the turn of Steve Hillage, whose early solo albums were big favourites of mine as a teenager, until the advent of punk and post-punk set me off in a different direction. The opening track from his third LP, 'Motivation Radio', felt a particularly apt one to revisit.

Steve Hillage - Hello Dawn

Over Rainbows and Rainier

Along the lines of Charity Chic's annual New Years Day Homage to Hank & Townes and Brian's yearly Happy (Mitch) Easter postings, I've long considered establishing a once every 12 months tradition of Richard Swift Day, to celebrate the season's first sighting of my favourite bird in our local skies. Needless to say, I've never quite been on the ball enough to pull it all together (it was May 8th this year in case you're interested), but I hope this goes to show the very high esteem in which I hold not only the bird in question, but also the American singer-songwriter who shares its name. Frustratingly, Richard hasn't released an LP of original material since 'The Atlantic Ocean' in 2009, instead choosing to focus his attention on production work for the likes of The Shins, Kevin Morby, Foxygen, Laetitia Sadier and, notably, Damien Jurado, for whom he produced the excellent 'Maraqopa' trilogy of albums between 2012 and 2016. The combination of Jurado and Swift was a match made in heaven to these ears, so imagine my concern when I read a while back that Damien's new LP, 'The Horizon Just Laughed', was to be a much more low-key and self-produced affair. I needn't have worried though. Depending on who's counting, 'The Horizon Just Laughed' is either Jurado's 11th, 13th or 16th long player and surely his most personal in many years. There's an intimacy to these 11 songs that draws the listener closer and is in places similar in tone to the work of Phosphorescent and Iron & Wine. It's a quiet triumph of a record.

Session News

I very rarely get to hear his programmes as they are broadcast these days, but in odd spare moments over the past week or so I've been desperately trying to catch up with a batch of recent Marc Riley radio shows on the BBC iPlayer before they disappear into the ether 30 days after transmission. His session guests have been of a exceptionally high calibre of late. They include marvellous sets from Joan As Policewoman, Peter Perrett, Yo La Tengo, Wreckless Eric and Robyn Hitchcock & the LA Squires. I've attached a handful of individual highlights, but you'll have to dig through Marc's episode guide to check out the rest. Don't delay though.

Hitchcock's full session and between song banter with Marc was a particular joy for this old Soft Boys fan and if anyone out there is able to magically preserve these moments in an MP3 format for me, I'd be eternally grateful. Robyn is in the middle of a UK tour at this very moment, but I'm unable to make it to any of the shows. Bugger.