LTW Newsletter 117

Dearest Warriors!

We are now in what feels like that month of Sundays between Xmas and New Year, that befuddled time of year when those endless seventies comedy shows and fifties films begin to drag and time starts to slows down to a drip drip drip and bins start to fill with unwanted Xmas food, unwanted Xmas presents and unwanted relatives…

Fear not we have New Years Eve to look forward and the annual hoot at Jools Holland’s hoots mon Hootenanny with its cast of jolly mates from London that makes pop culture feel so middle aged! Of course the programme can never please anyone but by being virtually the only pop music TV these days it is under laser beam focus. 

New Year’s Eve is a weird night anyway - ever since the millennium it has been dying a slow death by a thousand cuts pricing itself out of the market and a victim of the changing nature of culture. In its own way a bit like Guy Fawkes night has been sidelined by the American version of Halloween. New Years has become an appendage for Xmas - an extra stumble into the new calender page and another inevitable disappointment. What was once a jolly with mates in the pub has gradually become the amateur night out but at least there are signs of life on the horizon…

Fear not!

The wheels are turning and the New Year is coming!

First we have the Louder Than War Live festival in March - headlined by Sea Power, Pale Blue Eyes, Benefits, Evil Blizzard and Immersion and with a bill of many others - tickets are selling fast but we have a small amount of special cheap tickets for our subscribers - hurry and grab some now before we run out…

Madness are one of the great British pop bands. Their music hall take on ska was a staple of Two Tone and the nutty boys have remained one of out most loved bands for decades to the point where we sort of take them for granted. Their catalogue is full of songs that celebrate the magic in the mundane and often a very British melancholia that you can dance to. The band’s recent arena tour was perfect xmas fare for our reviewer…

Before the year finally conks out here is another chance to look at our top 100 albums from a year that has had no over arching musical narrative but plenty of very diverse musical journeys and unexpected twists and turns. Where once you could sum up a year as being ‘punk’ or Blur v Oasis’ the true strength of the now is that pop culture is fractured with more tasty snacks than a xmas spread…

The same can be said for our top twenty tracks of the year as well…

The recent passing of the much loved Mani put the spotlight back on the Stone Roses. The band were so key to the culture and changed the shape and sound of indie forever also had many unexplored angles as this though provoking piece and interview points out.

What was was once the future will always end up becoming entombed in the past and it’s fascinating to pick over these culture bones but at the same time you still need to be aware of the new twists and turn in pop culture like new bands and the Manchester based three piece The Sly who have somehow have twisted guitar, bass and drums into a new shape that is like a prog take on Arctic Monkeys or a post punk sharp and and angular - they are really good - check them out here…

A rejuvenated Doves are somehow making sense of a difficult situation. Even without talisman singer Jimi Goodwin they managed to pull off a spectacular festive homecoming.   At the end of a strange year, home is an anchor for Doves. This festive show at the O2 Apollo, five days before Christmas, should be a triumphant homecoming, especially after the trio delivered one of their finest albums of the year back in February. 

1985 is often regarded by some music critics as ‘the year that music died’ – in that a lot of the pop aristocracy dominated the charts and record sales with their bland offerings that sold by the truckload thanks to the twin effects of MTV and, of course, the overwrought extravaganza that was Live Aid. There was much more going on beyond the fringe…

Band of Holy Joy’s irrepressible frontman Johny Brown returns with his second solo album, – a vivid, orchestral drift through the streets, friendships and formative moments of his North Shields youth. Dream A Memory Of Home is a reflective, tender excavation of growing up in the 60s and 70s – a time of identity-shaping upheaval, wild imagination and constant change. Following the widescreen sweep of 2024’s Gut Feels, Brown lifts the baton once more but lets it spiral somewhere more intimate. From kickabouts in the sand dunes (When Football Was Our Game) to life-altering schoolyard alliances (Michael The Eagle), going to his first gig via a local pub (My First Pint) to the ignition spark of forming a punk band (A Hymn To Speed), Brown roams the lost map of his youth with warmth, wit and a fragile kind of wonder