Liam Gallagher and John Squire – Just Another Rainbow

Rock’n’roll collaborations don’t get bigger than this. Genuinely. Oasis were one of the mightiest rock’n’roll bands of the 1990s, if not the mightiest, and The Stone Roses could take a similar crown for the antecedent decade. There is also the great serendipitous charm that if members of Oasis had not been at the Roses show in Spike Island, 1990, then masterworks like ‘Live Forever’, ‘Wonderwall’ and ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ may have never existed. Due to these critical ponderances there’s helluva expectation riding on Liam Gallagher and John Squire’s first joint effort – so, does ‘Just Another Rainbow’ fulfil our euphonious yearning and live up to Gallagher’s lofty claim that their forthcoming output is “the best record since Revolver”?

The answer is a resounding yes – at least to the first part, the jury is still out on the Beatles thrashing bit. From the opening tones, not unlike the start of Squire’s former group’s game-changing single ‘Waterfall’, it’s clear some spectacular voodoo is at work and when Manchester’s most recognisable frontman begins belting out mind-bending lyrics about rainbows dripping on trees, his legendary pipes sounding as strong as any point in his 30 year career, it’s confirmed that we’re witnessing musical greatness. Certain folk may even call it biblical.

Taking a peep at the song’s credits, the indication is we’re hearing a John Squire crafted soundscape with Gallagher the younger on vocal duties – the best possible fuck you to his grudging older sibling (“if you won’t put our band back together then I’ll go sing for my Stone Roses hero instead” – not an actual quote), the lyrics sorrowfully musing over disappointment: “no pot of gold waiting here for me/ Just another rainbow hanging over me”, could well reflect the guitarist’s feelings about his former band’s aborted reunion and equally the vocalist’s frustration over his fruitless attempts to get his troop back on the world’s stages.

If the first part of the single harks back to ‘Waterfall’, then the second half sees the esteemed guitarist taking front of stage and exhibiting the same artistic skills that created ‘The Second Coming’, losing himself in a solo that Mr Hendrix himself would have been eager to hold aloft. And that bridge where Liam just goes ahead and lists the seven key colours of the spectrum? That’s one of the most psychedelic moments in the last fifty years of music.

This isn’t the first time members of the two Manchester superpowers have collaborated, as back in 2004 Ian Brown and Noel Gallagher got together to release ‘Keep What Ya Got’. And how do the two compare? Gallagher Senior’s creation with the controversy courting vocalist may be an understated affair that slots competently but modestly into Brown’s back catalogue, but ‘Just Another Rainbow’ has clearly been penned to move mountains and make sure the world will listen.

‘Just Another Rainbow’ was released on 5th January 2024, produced by Greg Kurstin, and is our first sampler from the duo’s forthcoming LP. You can buy the 7″ single now. You can catch it on the YouTube video below:

Wez King – Officer

On his new single, ‘Officer’, Kent solo songsman Wez King finds himself chased down by the law and desperate to plead his innocence, “Tell me please, I’ve been on my knees, I’m begging you / It must be the clothes I wear, so why d’you stop and stare?”, whilst acknowledging an exasperating tendency to be forever noticed and pulled into the limelight.

To be frank, exposure and attention shouldn’t come as much of a surprise when you’re guilty of writing enticingly blues-tinged indie guitar bangers like this, King’s latest dispatch sounding as dirty, gritty and fuzzy as The Black Keys at their dirty, gritty and fuzziest or Arctic Monkeys at their Josh Homme helmed peak.

‘Officer’ was released on Friday 5th January and is available to hear on all of the streaming services. We’ve put the Spotify link for your listening pleasure below:

Bear Park – Betty

We adore a jangly guitar at Edge of Arcady, and Newcastle boys Bear Park provide joyous jangles in abundance on debut single ‘Betty’, along with an astoundingly addictive reverb-drenched melody. The track sees the up-and-coming trio deliver some heartening motivation to its downtrodden namesake (inspired by a harassed-looking coffee-slurping waitress character off of a t-shirt sighted by vocalist/bassist Shay Bagnall) with a disarmingly rousing rhythm and charmingly warm sentiment.

Produced by The Libertines’ Gary Powell, the record is the newest release from the drumsman’s own label ‘25 Hour Convenience Store’ and our first inkling of what the North East group have been busy creating for their forthcoming debut LP. If we can expect an album full of catchy indie numbers and even more compelling sugar-coated chimes, we’ll be immensely happy.

‘Betty’ was released on 8th December 2023 and comes complete with a video shot around the band’s stomping ground – from South Shields beach to Burnmoor Tennis Club. You can see the Maggie Barksby directed video below:

Helen Love – Yeah Yeah We’re Helen Love

Punk rock is all abrasive, rudimentary tunes and sweaty grunting from the (usually male) great unwashed, right? Nah, if you’re going around thinking that then you’ve yet to have the pleasure of getting bonafide Welsh indie mega-legends Helen Love in your deprived earholes. So, to put that right, their original record label, the equally legendary Damaged Goods, have heaped together the toppest, most gleeful, tracks from the first decade-ish of the Swansea band’s career into one glorious ‘best of’ style compilation. Honestly, you’re in for a treat here.

To introduce Helen Love as a punk group is perhaps doing the full scope of their output a disservice, although with a gold-plated endorsement from the late King Joey Ramone himself, countless Ramones references scattered about their discography and a vocal adoration for the scuzziness of a fuzzbox we doubt the group would have any issues with that assertion, but away from the three-chord sphere there’s plenty of twee and glam bubblegum-pop to boot. Maybe glitter-punk is a better descriptor?

A hot blast of distorted guitar greets us from the off with the title track’s bold introduction of ‘Yeah Yeah We’re Helen Love’, providing the listener with a distinct and unerring outline of what to expect over the span of the record or even their thirty-year career: “Super Kay guitars and Casiotone, ‘Sheena Is A Punk’ on the stereo, plug in your fuzzbox, ready to play, from Swansea Bay to the USA”.

The earliest of the songs included, ‘Joey Ramoney’, ‘Love, Kiss, Run, Sing, Shout, Jump!’, ‘So Hot’, ‘Golden Summer’ and the original version of ‘Punk Boy’ (the rework complete with Joey Ramone feature comes later on), all circa 1993-1994, are as lo-fi as records get – the sound of some unsuspecting teenage pop-kids with a knack for an addictive melody mucking about with a piece of home-recording kit, splurging all of their fandom and sunny disposition out on some brightly coloured vinyl, who ended up getting a surprise, but entirely deserved, lauding from John Peel and the Melody Maker.

Even though they never really graduate from 8-track second-hand tape machine production, their songwriting goes on to become more robust with carefully crafted and concise glittering nuggets like the mendaciously gritty ‘Beat Him Up’, seeing Love come to the protectively vicious aid of a friend suffering domestic abuse, and ‘Girl About Town’s tale of a returning ex-rocker who “got signed to a record label, spent the advance on a pinball table, sold a hundred records to all our friends, now she’s back again”.

The greatest picks off the compilation come from the band’s late 90s and very early 2000s releases, a string of total punk-pop bliss a-sides and b-sides. The unmistakable tuneful synth-assault, repeating “Atari Teenage Riot” vocal and newly adopted happy-hardcore sample launches ‘Does Your Heart Go Booooooomm’s recounting of a chap who has a reckless Kula Shaker induced-breakdown but finds salvation in Alec Empire’s digital hardcore dirge. On ‘Sunburst Super Kay’ the group mercilessly mock a neighbour who took patronising umbrage at their “Woolworths cheap guitars”, chiding “Now they’re fixing window seals/ and we’ve got a record deal/ Saw them just the other day and laughed straight in their faces”. They then take that same merciless mocking and aim it at the entire Britpop movement with ‘Long Live The UK Music Scene’, ensuring everyone from Oasis to Shed Seven and Alan McGee to Chris Evans gets a bit of their taunting ire.

‘Leader Of The Pack’ pays brilliant homage to The Shangri-Las sixties girl-group classic with Helen Love’s own song featuring dirty guitars and Elton John-style rock’n’roll piano, ‘King of Kung-Fu’ potentially paying indie-lads Ash back a favour with a similarly titled offering to their own ‘Kung Fu’, after the Irish trio put out a cover of ‘Punk Boy’. Album track from the group’s debut LP proper, ‘Love and Glitter, Hot Days and Musik’, ‘Jump Up And Down’ sounds like an intentional glammed up, punked out, lipstick daubed antithesis to Technohead’s 1995 atrocity ‘I Wanna Be A Hippy’ with an unearthly refrain of ‘Wanna be a punk, wanna be a punk rocker’.

And this all takes the collection neatly up to its latter era with the band’s 2004 piece-de-resistance, ‘Debbie Loves Joey’, a transposition of punk’s most iconic coupling (Blondie’s legendary Harry and the oft-mentioned Ramone) onto an innocuous 1980s pair of loved-up kids who fall for each other on the bus after a school disco, set to short, sharp jabs of guitar fuzz and jubilant Casio keyboards.

Few bands embody the DIY spirit, with their pritt stick anime and Nintendo magazine collage artwork, and the, now tragically largely lost, pastime of weaving about Camden High Street and Soho’s Berwick Street record stores searching for out-of-print day-glo 7” singles moreso than Helen Love and this revisiting of the initial part of their career masterfully captures everything that made them so special from the off, with delicious buzzsaw riffs, original girl power, cutting humour, lazer guns and glitter balls still firmly in place.

‘Yeah Yeah We’re Helen Love’ was released this summer, on 23rd June 2023, via Damaged Goods records and you can nab yourself a copy right now.

You can watch the promo video for ‘Does Your Heart Go Boom’ below.

The Libertines – Night of the Hunter

Photo: Ed Cooke

The countdown to the release of album number four, ‘All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade’ is hotting up for The Libertines and to close off the start of their 2023 comeback year the garage rock four piece’s latest record shows off their tender proclivities. Largely regarded as an erudite punk group, it’s the band’s more overtly melodic moments that help raise them above their peers and ‘Night of the Hunter’ serves only to elevate them further.

With the title inspired by Charles Laughton’s 1955 film of the same name, the song acoustically narrates a revenge-murder scene, the law-loathing protagonist making one last phone call to his lover as the blue flashing lights arrive, whilst a lone theremin performs a haunting excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, the listener unsure whether the chorus’s plea of “Don’t blame me, it’s the world that made me” is coming from the character still or the fast-and-risky-living band themselves.

Photo: Ed Cooke

‘Night of the Hunter’ was released on Wednesday 6th December 2023 and coincides with the Libertines takeover of Margate this weekend (9th and 10 December), performing shows and sets at the town’s Lido, bandstand as well as in their own venues The Albion Rooms and Justine’s.

The group’s fourth album, ‘All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade’, is due for release on 8th March 2024 and is available for preorder now.

There’s an excellent promo out to go along with the single, produced by Alex Brown, and you can view it below:

The Slackhead Incident – Turtleneck

We weren’t prepared for a snazzy cabaret jazz piano and saxophone foray to meet our off-guard ears when we got stuck into The Slackhead Incident’s latest track, but that’s exactly what we were greeted with, amongst some britpop Pixies-type tuneage and fantastically nimble bass guitar gymnastics.

Three singles in and the Glasgow post-punkers have evidenced already in their fledgling career that they don’t go by the conventional tune-makers handbook, with ‘Turtleneck’ taking things further into the realm of the unorthodox. Barked lead vocal non-sequiturs get placated by coo-ing backing vox, jangly guitars bounce artfully all over the shop and just enough of a tune takes off before the entire thing collapses into a merry series of drum breakdowns and astral keyboard noises. Glorious utter madness!

Photo: Byron Turner

‘Turtleneck’ was released on 25th November 2023 and you can give it a listen on the Spotify link below:

Jackson Lucitt – Save Our Steel

There are few better ways to make a worthy cause heard than to put a powerful message to music. Port Talbot indie-folk singer/songwriter/all-round person who makes things happen (see Shiny Vinyl) Jackson Lucitt has joined a long tradition that runs from the most poignant of protest songs to political punk rock in order to bring attention to the proposed closure of large parts of his home town’s crucial steelworks and the devastating impact dealt to his local community.

Photo: Jess Regan

‘Save Our Steel’ opens and ends with humble but earnest spoken pleas direct from the mouths of proud steel workers, Lucitt crafting a poetic love letter to his own community, deftly communicating the symbiotic reliance of surrounding industry on the town’s historic metallurgy and his overwhelming fondness for individuals he calls friends and family who pour their hearts into their work, over simple but wildly affecting acoustic strums.

Photo: Michael Burgess

‘Save Our Steel’ was released on 28th November 2023 via Shiny Vinyl Presents and supports an effort by workers and trade unions to reverse the proposal to shut down large parts of the Port Talbot steel works, costing the loss of jobs for thousands of people in the town and other cities across the UK threatened with the same. There’s a petition you can sign right now to help the cause.

You can take a listen to ‘Save Our Steel’ on the Spotify link below:

Gaffa Tape Sandy – Split

Photo: Mark Holley (he of Black Foxxes fame)

Down in Brighton, Gaffa Tape Sandy are keeping the garage-punk-rock flame burning brightly and on latest single ‘Split’ they’ve distilled the whole primal, sweaty, exhilarating experience of their live gigs into a succinct two minute ferocious cracker of a track that’s all incendiary, scratchy guitars and fierce melody.

Guitarist Kim Jarvis and bassist Catherine Lindley-Neilson duel it out in barked vocals on the record’s chorus with the insistent command to “Find out what they want then split”, letting the remainder of the song descend into an effervescent mass of perky rhythm and delinquent-spirited energy. Simply a gleefully punkish pogo-er’s dream.

‘Split’ was produced by George Perks (Wargasm, Enter Shikari, Skindred) and released via the legendary Alcopop! records on 28th November 2023. You can take a listen on Spotify at the link below:

The Malakites Interview

“We want people to feel like you can do anything you want if you really go for it. It don’t matter what background you’re from, or what football team you support… we’re all the same! “ – The Malakites

One band we think are about to springboard into the cosmos after making seismic waves throughout South Wales’ live music venues are rapturously transcendent guitar aficionados The Malakites. Taking the anxiety of wasted chances and turning it into a joyously boisterous anthem, their latest release, Morning After, is one of the finest tracks to come out of Cardiff’s vibrant music scene in 2023. Back in January we declared it a solid indie rock stormer with a killer false ending.

And their frankly remarkable output doesn’t halt there, with 2022’s Only Sometimes providing forthright jabs of high quality rock’n’roll ardor and debut single, Roses on the Doorstep, displaying a somewhat embryonic version of a group adroitly navigating their way around an excellent tune that’s only slightly more stripped down than the lads usual riotous fare.

The end of 2023 and the start of 2024 sees The Malakites headlining their largest hometown show yet at The Globe in Roath before taking on a slew of shows nationwide in January and February to kick off the new year. The band’s frontman Webber agreed to have a little chat with us to fill us in on where the group are at right now before their next chapter begins.

The Malakites, Hi. How do we find you today and who exactly are we speaking to?

My name is Webber, and today you find me keeping myself nice and warm inside the house with a cup of tea.

First and foremost, you’ve got a massive gig coming up at The Globe in Cardiff on 16th December. What can we expect from the night?

You can expect love, joy, carnage, soaring guitar riffs, melodic melodies and just everybody having a good time!

Then, come the new year, you’ve got a tour in the works. Fill us in on those dates too – what are you particularly looking forward to, being out on the road?

Yes! We’re going on tour in January and February and really looking forward to be playing some cool headlines shows across England and Wales. The road trips are always fun. We’ll be playing cities such as Manchester – 20/1/24, Sheffield – 26/1/24, Liverpool – 1/2/24, Birmingham – 3/2/24, Brighton – 8/2/24, Bristol – 9/2/24, London – 17/2/24, Swansea – 23/2/24… Oh and also supporting Circa Waves at Tramshed – 2/2/24, so extremely looking forward to that!

Photo: @bhxnt

Your shows have built up a strong reputation already. Can you tell us about your favourite live show moments so far?

I’d say our favourite live show would probably be our sold out headline show at upstairs Clwb Ifor Bach at the start of the year. Also playing Y Not Festival back in July was mint as well.

You performed at the Shiiine On weekender in Butlins a couple of weeks back. How was it? Got any stories?

It was absolutely amazing, it was an absolute pleasure to be back! I was sat opposite John Powers (The La’s/Cast) and his son Finn Power (STONE) eating pizza in the artist canteen area, so that was pretty cool. Hats off to the organisers as well… Great people and great music!

Tell us a bit about The Malakites. What impact do you want your music to make on people’s lives?

We want people to feel like you can do anything you want if you really go for it. It don’t matter what background you’re from, or what football team you support… we’re all the same! We’re doing this purely because we all absolutely adore music, and we want people to feel like they can relate to how we feel about music! A lot of the lyrics in our songs have true, deep meanings that we’re sure others can relate to.

The Cardiff music scene is excellent right now. Great artists are springing up all over the place. Where do The Malakites fit into it all?

Yes, there is many great artists in the capital right now and lots that we are very proud to call our mates. However we believe that our sound is our own… all four of us have our very own different musical influences that we believe has been blended into one sound which is us – The Malakites!

Photo Credit: @talevans_ from Shunk Fest 2023

Who are your biggest inspirations, musically or otherwise?

I can’t answer for the others as I’d probably get it wrong… but my earliest memories of music comes from listening to the band Doves and watching my dad’s old band rehearse as a child. But my favourites are The Stone Roses, U2, Nirvana and Catfish and the Bottlemen. Also been listening to a lot of the Sea Girls as of recently.

Are you able to tell us what’s coming from the band, after the UK tour is complete? Any new releases on the horizon?

Expect lots and lots of new music, bigger, bigger shows, bigger, bigger sounds and some nice, nice festival slots for the spring/summer!

Cheers Webber! Looking forward to coming along to The Globe on the 16th!

Cheers, see you there!

If you want to join us there, the last few tickets for The Globe gig are available right now, as well as tickets for all of their upcoming dates. You’re probably best off snapping them up as soon as possible before the shows start selling out.

If you’ve yet to hear it, you can check out Morning After on the youtube link below: