LTW Newsletter 125

Welcome warriors!

After a deluge of online complaints inspired, no doubt, by the fake media we have decided to explain a recent illustration on our socials of us apparently dressing up in costumes to make us look like Jesus H Christ and the disciples - not the long lost underground band of the same name but our saviour.

It is not unusual for us to dress in robes and have aurua glowing around our heads and to be pictured saving lost souls with the power of rock n roll.

No sir!

Redemption is our business and if this has been misreported and misinterpreted by the likes of religious light weights like the pope then we have to explain, I suppose.

We promise that nothing in this week’s column has been doctored or that any of us are in fact doctors and that we have made sure that there see no circumstances were we posting AI generated images of anyone who works for the site as any kind of messiah.

We often wear robes to the office and the shining aura around our heads in the images is merely a misprint placed there by the demons of the fake news - we may have been mistaken for the ‘Jesus of cool’ but this is purely accidental and purely coincidental and this has been a fake story posted by fake news.

Thanks for your attention

‘The messiah’

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In yet another week when the lunatics continue to run amok in the asylum we have been busy trying to find any level of showbiz that that is as crass and overblown as the people that run the planet and it’s been truly fucking difficult.

In some cases politics has become showbiz for the insane people and they don’t even have to sing and dance - for the all singing and all dancing escape from the Wardance stuff we have been busy bees seeking out the new and in some cases old noise…

Punk rock classic! The Damned kinda kicked off punk’s 50th anniversary reverberations with their own 50th anniversary show in London at Wembley arena. It’s been a joy to watch the band gradually rise back up through the ranks from being a bit of a punk rock shipwreck twenty years ago to a much loved institution with an endless lap of honour. On top form, the band used the gig to underline all their different musical adventures and unique visions that is as much about film as it it is about their many different takes in their rock n roll chassis.

Even if this dark energy strain of rock n roll has been with us for decades it shows no sign of dying off. As the Damned continue to forge decades into their career, new band Mouth Ulcers are already making a lot of noise in the undergound and four gigs and three singles in have become one of the hottest young bands in the country with even 6music picking up on them which is rare for this kind of ‘gothic’ music. Their new single is their best yet and looking like a further big step in their cimmerian adventure.   

Another new band that we are excited by are Manchester youth crew, Ishango Bone who are making something that is very much their own with dislocated rhythms and great harmonies with unusual song structures that all somehow make sense and have created something that has the potential to remain quirky but also indie mainstream. Rarely do we come across something as original and thrilling as this.

Of course making sense in pop culture is often an overrated idea - a bit of confusion is always good for the soul…and just after the Talking Heads main man David Byrne just breezed into town to play an astonishing show last month one of his former albums is celebrated in this show. There is much love for the art rock of his former band and the theatrical cover of their Stop Making Sense album thrilled Manchester Albert Hall this week. More than forty years later, that blueprint returns to life as part of a UK tour. Recreating it live is a bold move, but ten-piece band Slippery People clearly love the challenge.

One of the great things about music is the idea of sonic archeology - dig deep into the strata of sound and you will find endless lost classics that often make you wonder how you could miss them in the first places. Last week Echo and the Bunnymen’s brilliant guitar player Will Sergeant sent over the decade old Eva Peterson album that he worked on and played some great guitar lines on as well and we were blown away. Thank fuck the album is getting released again! And we can celebrate its luscious and addictive pop noir here.

Eva Petersen with Will Sergeant 'Emerald Green Eyes' album review https://louderthanwar.com/eva-petersen-lost-pop-noir-psyche-classic/ (Abre numa nova janela) via @louderthanwar

There has always been something intriguing about the brooding dark energy of Godspeed you! Black Emperor. The Canadian collective seem to appear from nowhere every few years with their classical infused monochromatic slices of sound which are  a fitting sound track to these times. Back over in the UK for a short series of dates we caught up with them in Leeds as they ‘deliver a fitting soundtrack to a world on the brink’ according to our reviewer.

Those veterans of sardonic and poetic pop academia Pet Shop Boys turned up in the most unlikely of places - a grubby sweaty gig venue with sticky floors and sticky elephant tape all the stage at the Electric Ballroom in London for a proper shindig of a gig.Legendary synth pop duo Pet Shop Boys begin their residency inside Camden Town’s Electric Ballroom where they plan to perform some of their more obscure tracks from the past.

/ https://louderthanwar.com/pet-shop-boys-electric-ballroom-london-live-review/ (Abre numa nova janela)

Those polka dot capers crusaders

Angine de Poitrine have bizarrely and brilliantly taken the world by storm with an unlikely combination of prog virtuosity and propulsive grooves as well as specially doctored double necked guitar with embedded extra grooves to add a whole host of additional micro tones and half notes giving their sound a neat extra twist - they are truly mesmerising so ignore the inevitable backlash and get to their up coming tour dates…