Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Hamish Stuart shot to fame in the 1970’s as the falsetto voice of The Average White Band, his distinctive songwriting and guitar style paving the way for the band’s worldwide success. When the AWB split in 1982, Hamish went on to tour and record with an array of soul stars including Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, George Benson and Chaka Khan, for whom he wrote the No.1 chart hit Whatcha Gonna Do For Me? In 1986 David Sanborn invited Stuart to record with him and they released the live album Straight From The Heart on which Hamish sang Al Green’s Love and Happiness–now a Hamish Stuart Band standard. The following year he was back in the studio teaming up with former band member and drummer Steve Ferrone and together they recorded the Easy Pieces album. In 1988 Paul McCartney asked Hamish to join his band and he went on to tour and record with the legendary Beatle for six years, recording 2 studio and 3 live albums in the process before embarking on his solo project.
Since leaving McCartney’s band, Stuart has been working on new material of his own with his newly formed group The Hamish Stuart Band. He still finds time to work on projects such as Quincy Jones’ 64th birthday celebration event in Switzerland last year and most recently accepting Bonnie Raitt’s invitation to duet with her on-stage at her end of tour show in London.
Sooner or Later, Stuart’s first Compass release, showcases his inimitable vocal style and reflects both his own personality and immensely diverse interests and influences. There are haunting, romantic ballads like Care For You and Same Old Moon included among taut, sophisticated slices of urban funk like It Is What It Is and Midnight Rush.
In recent months, the Hamish Stuart Band has blown the roof off of U.K. venues including Ronnie Scotts in London. With the talents of Ian Thomas on drums, Steve Pearce on bass and Jody Linscott on percussion, the band generates a truly ferocious groove. Although it is becoming impossible to book a seat at their monthly gig at the 606 Club in Chelsea, England, fans old and new are always guaranteed a good time and often a bonus from guest friends such as Bonnie Raitt, Brian Auger, former AWB saxophonist Jim Mullen and Molly Duncan. Nostalgia is not the main goal of the shows. It’s hearing a new and soulful band firing on all six cylinders.
Glasgow native Eddi Reader embraces her Scottish roots on this stunning folk/pop song-cycle drawn from the tunes of the great bard Robert Burns. This ambitious project is Reader’s crowning achievement, a savvy translation of Burns’ classic songs into a modern setting, joined by a host of the finest British and Scottish musicians around (John McCusker, Kate Rusby, Ian Carr, Phil Cunningham, and more). Some of the songs are rendered faithfully, others are re-envisioned, all of them are marked by Reader’s trademark mix of swagger, tenderness, and sincerity.
USA Today: “Reader’s elegant renderings of such songs as My Love is Like a Red Red Rose and Jamie Come Try Me seem fresh and magical.”
Time Out NY: “Haunted hearts, unguarded affections, and drunken benders have long littered Reader’s musical landscape, so it’s not surprising that she would discover a kindred spirit in Burns…Devotees will welcome this warming balm against the bitterest of winter winds.”
Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “Reader brings new vitality to the songs of Robert Burns in this lovely collection. Reader’s voice is flawless…a magnificent gift from the heart of Scotland.” Grade: A
Irish-American News: “The most creative, wonderful, and difficult-to-describe album we have heard in years…a masterpiece. Flat out.”
Boston Herald: “Her enlightening tribute is a glorious set of towering romantic odes, sprightly jigs and reels, and poignant anti-war ballads.”
Is it a put-on? A con? Maybe – if the music weren’t so good. Kaleidoscopic psychedelica of the highest order. As Diana Ross didn’t quite put it, refractions of what used to be. The Uncle Devil Show begin with core kernels of classically composed pop songs, melodically incisive with a driving beat of the Mersey stripe. Then, through the distorted lens of their own wit and humor, things mutate. Sinister lines emerge from verses which first seem innocuous. Cunning allusions to arcane Britannia punctuate the proceedings – a dip in Barrymore’s pool anyone? And the music…exhilarating guitar driven Anglo-pop, rinsed in the waters of the Beatles, the Small Faces, the Kinks, and the like, yet entirely the property of the big brain known as The Uncle Devil Show.
Think of it as a movie, with no pictures: three actor/musicians leaving behind the roles they previously made famous to invest themselves in a b(r)and new scenario. Justin Currie, the frontman, songwriter, and vocalist for Scottish pop favorites Del Amitri (best known stateside for their massive Triple-A radio hit “Roll To Me”), stars as bassist and ex-postal worker Jason Barr. At his side is guitarist/vocalist/fellow postman Langton Herring, played by cult Scottish songwriter Kevin McDermott. Rounding out the combo is the former cruise ship drummer only known as Terrance, as portrayed by Jim McDermott – best known for his work with another formidable Scottish band, Simple Minds.
Taking their name from a 1985 episode of The New Twilight Zone TV series, The Uncle Devil Show work from within their fictitious personas and leave any trace of pop-star ego in the dust. Consequently, their resulting debut album, A Terrible Beauty, arrives as if transported from some other, strangely better dimension. The precise popsmarts that fueled Del Amitri are well intact, matched with a keen sense of the gloriously, profoundly absurd. All three sing, both lead and lusciously captivating harmonies, and the compositions (co-written by Currie and Kevin McDermott) are ingeniously humorous while avoiding the pitfall of being merely funny.
The opening “Leonardo’s Bicycle” introduces itself as a relaxed meditation on cycling away from the urban hustle, until it is revealed that the instrument of transit wasn’t just designed by Leonardo – it was stolen from him. After all, nothing releases the adrenalin like a good heist. Currie delivers the cross-dresser’s lament “Plus Ca Change” with tender frustration, befitting what is perhaps the only pop missive to transvestite angst. Meanwhile, Kevin McDermott shines on “Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker,” a portrait of a man driven mad by the unending streams of chirping, flapping, and feces from the local feathered rat population. Sneeze at the right time, and you’ll miss a tasty sonic nod to a certain Liverpudlian foursome. One of many, truth be told.
From “Tambourine’s” elliptical swells to “I Had a Drink About You Last Night’s” plaintive hybrid of hyperbole and self-pity, A Terrible Beauty delights in testing the lyrical limits of the timeless Brit-beat-pop song. The first single, the Currie-sung “She Cuts Her Own Fringe,” is the absolute pinnacle of the Uncle Devil vibration. Bittersweet, touching, yet distinctly skewed, “Fringe” is a peculiar love song about a peculiar lass. She’s taught her parrot to sing Motorhead songs. She mangles her own clothing. “She keeps her phone in a tin,” Currie swoons, “so that the ringer sounds like an alien.” And Currie – aka Jason Barr – can’t get enough of her.
Strapped to a tunefully driven backbeat and complete with harpsichord solo, “She Cuts Her Own Fringe” is destined to introduce the world to all the wonders that The Uncle Devil Show has to offer. Who better to summarize the situation than the band themselves, who modestly surmised the following in their first, self-composed press release: “Not everyone digs the way they wear their hair – but then not everyone unused to a life of dignified manual labour knows how to dig properly. The Uncle Devil Show does. These handsome rakes are the aces of spades. They’re hoes who are seriously bitchin’. They’re earthy sods, and this is sweet soil music. Mulch ado about something!”
Bill Mallonee, the lyrical and inspirational source behind the Vigilantes of Love, grew up on Brit pop. Around the house he listened to The Beatles, Kinks, and The Who. In the States, a bit later, TV-type acts such as Paul Revere and The Raiders and the Monkees figured heavily into his youthful ’coming to musical consciousness.’ At the time, he played drums and an old set of Slingerland drums with real calfskin heads (that a man gave him for mowing his lawn each summer) were his truest friends. That drum kit and those records cranked to maximum in a dusty basement on some old Sears hi-fi kept Mallonee happy while his parents struggled to keep their own sanity amid the stresses and “soul-sucking strains of hawkish, corporate America.”
He was too young for the hippie thing, Mallonee says, “the extremist idealism of the day seemed a bit overly dramatic, so the Brit movement started to make an impression on me.” The west coast rock scene (the Byrds being a notable exception) seemed to pale in comparison to the love sick glory of a 3 minute pop song (preferably British) that stole your heart with the clang and bang of untempered guitars. The ’essence’ of this was not to surface in Malloneee until he started playing music in Athens in the late 80’s. Mallonee learned guitar quickly and the post-punk-pop of the La’s, XTC, Elvis Costello,the Clash and Squeeze filled his family house. Great college scene bands that passed through Athens, Georgia during that time were Athen’s own R.E.M., the dbs (with the great Chris Stamey and Peter Hosapple), Mitch Easter’s ’Let’s Active,’ the Bongos and Tommy Keane: these were also big influences. Each of those bands proudly wove an indebtedness to the first “British Invasion” into their musical flags.
The strange thing was that somehow Mallonee’s love for Dylan and Neil Young won out (temporarily shall we say) over these early influences. The terrain viewed from the inside of a van for 10 years and over 10 albums by the Vigilantes of Love seemed to lend itself more to the themes of Americana and alternative country….and so they went with it. Until now.
VoL’s brand new release Summershine once again grabs onto those British pop influences, forcefully taking the music of this highly acclaimed Athen’s band forward into the 21st century. Mallonee says, “Three years ago I began making regular trips to the UK to do pub tours and a few festivals. We were greeted with a great deal of interest and outright enthusiasm. Soon two weeks of touring in the UK became 3 months a year with a few solo swings by myself. With the hard work of our manager JJ Johnson and the support of BBC radio sage Bob Harris, we found a new and engaging audience. We enjoyed playing our brand of ’Americana.’ While radio and touring markets here in the States were trying to figure out what to do with the genre, the UK and Europe seemed to be opening up and embracing us.” The funny thing is that while the band thought they were giving the UK something that was theirs, in reality, something quite subtle was being given to them. That something was the resurgence of the joy of guitar pop music. They heard it all around them. In JJ’s collections, in the cafe’s, in the pubs, in the underground, on the trains, in the bands that opened for them on the tours…the glory of current British pop and its predecessors.
Music full of more hooks than a meat packing plant with well ordered big harmonies, jangly guitars and replete with choruses that made you wanna hit replay as soon as the tune was over. It provided for an epiphany of sorts. It was precisely that type of music that made Mallonee want to play in the first place. “Inside myself, it was as if a well of something like affirmation opened….and I followed its course. Previously I had written about 40 tunes on three 90 minute cassette tapes. These were to be the blueprint for the next VOL record to be recorded this year. Me? I bagged those tunes (a sort of son of Audible Sigh) after a 3 week west coast tour in the US in January of 2001. I came home, celebrated 20 years of marriage to my wife and wrote 16 new tunes between Feb.1 and Mar. 1st. Once I stepped back and looked at the results I could see where the inspiration came from: the stream that fed that previously mentioned well were all the experiences I’d had with the band touring in the UK over the course of the last 3 years. The music felt vital, organic and well, happy…full of hope and faith in the power of love to make us something more than we are without it…”
Summershine, the follow up to the band’s highly acclaimed Audible Sigh, was produced by Mallonee and Tom Lewis and highlights the musical talents of band members Jacob Bradley on bass and Kevin Heuer on drums. MIX Magazine called Audible Sigh “exhilarating” and The Associated Press described it as “Excellent!…A brilliant piece of work, a great album that deserves a wide audience.” The album hit #5 on the Billboard Internet Charts and reached #35 on the Gavin Triple A Non-comm charts. Fans of heartfelt melodic pop will love Mallonee’s insightful tunes. Mallonee’s lyrical vision is both original and compelling and VoL’s rough-hewn arrangements perfectly match the sentiments of the songs. There’s melody galore and soaring harmonies, but also true grit. And then there’s love.
And Summershine deals with all of those feelings and emotions. Everyone knows that love casts its broadest web in the spring and summer. That’s when you fall under the spell. Mallonee remembers, “That’s what they told me on the radio and in all those records I listened to as a kid…and so that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”
VoL has always been proud that they’re basically “just a college band from Athens,GA. That reference point and those elements will always surface in the work. It’s the clang and bang of 12-strings, joy without lock or key, unapologetic…and above all…unafraid.”
A native of Los Angeles, singer and songwriter Kate Markowitz has a voice you’ve likely heard – whether you know it or not. As one of the most in-demand session vocalists on the immensely competitive L.A. scene, she has toured and recorded with the likes of James Taylor, Shawn Colvin, k.d. lang, Warren Zevon, Randy Newman, George Benson, and others. A Map of the World is the first release to focus on her immense gifts as a lead vocalist, songwriter, and frontperson. Long-awaited and a lifetime in the making, A Map of the World tempers Markowitz’s years of experience with the palpable thrill of her discovering her own unique voice and vision.
Music was in the air as Kate was growing up. Her father lead his first big band when he was only 16, meeting her mother (a half-English/half-Japanese artist) in Paris while studying music and jamming in the vibrant club scene there. After living in Paris for five years, they settled in Los Angeles, where Kate and her brother were born. Her father became a much-admired composer for film and television, but the early death of her mother (when Kate was a mere 10 years old) cast a pall over her younger days.
Music was Kate’s form of escape from the tumultuous family life following her mother’s death, which she sees as a gift from her father. “I was exposed to so many different kinds of music being around him: jazz, classical, Brazilian, pop… much of my love for music came from him. I would go to his recording sessions when I was a kid and watch him conduct an entire orchestra. He never lost his childlike excitement about it. All the players laughed around him, he was a hep-cat from the jazz era that loved to hear them play…he appreciated them and their talent so much. I would watch him in awe”
Kate’s early immersion into a wide range of musical styles lead to a versatility that made her a valuable contributor to a number of projects when she entered music professionally. That same graceful adaptability is a hallmark of the wonderful A Map of the World, which stands as the debut of Kate Markowitz, freestanding artist. Subtle musical sophistication offset by an endearingly honest and forthright lyrical approach places Map of the World in a proud lineage of classic West Coast adult pop. With special appearances by some of L.A.’s finest musicians (and a few of Kate’s illustrious employers), Markowitz’s debut is a special event – the public unveiling of one of contemporary pop’s best-kept secrets.
“I think everything you listen to has an influence over what you write and the way you play,” says Robbie McIntosh. “It all goes into the machine, and then comes out all minced up. People whom I’ve admired as writers over the years include Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Jimmy Webb, and Chrissie Hynde, but to say I wrote songs anywhere near as good as those guys would be presumptuous to the max.” McIntosh needn’t worry though. His solo debut album Emotional Bends was widely praised; Performing Songwriter Magazine called it “as stunning a debut as you’re likely to hear!” The album was a Top 10 hit on Gavin’s non-comm AAA chart (where it spent a total of 14 weeks) and earned him an appearance on the Late, Late Show with Craig Kilborn and features in a variety of national publications including Billboard, Stereo Review’s Sound & Vision, Blues Review and Gannett News Wire.
Robbie McIntosh returns with a vengeance on Widescreen, his sophmore release. McIntosh and company are in rare form, delivering another stinging set of rootsy, hard hitting songs with McIntosh’s raw vocals and mind bending electric guitar style front and center. McIntosh penned all 12 tracks on Widescreen and his writing style slips easily from folk-oriented guitar pop to stark balladry, Texas swing and whisky-drenched blues. Standout tracks include Fire and Flame, a longing love ballad featuring McIntosh’s former Pretenders boss Chrissie Hynde on harmony vocals and Separate Tables, featuring the vocal support of fellow Englishman Paul Young. Throughout the album, McIntosh Band members harmonica master Mark Feltham, pedal steel player Melvin Duffy and drummer Paul Beavis all deliver scorching performances. Not only are these guys some incredible musicians, it’s also clear that they have fun making music together. That energy shines throughout the album and perhaps nowhere better than on No Feeling for the Blues, a high energy blues shuffle with a nod to Bob Wills that gives the players a chance to step out.
But the core attraction here is Robbie McIntosh. While his guitar playing is sure to please fans from his Pretenders and McCartney days, it is his writing and singing on Widescreen that are likely to attract the most attention. He has a penchant for coming up with hook ladened pop music; take the opening track Rat in a Hole for example with its catchy chorus that’s likely to lodge itself in the listener’s mind for days. But McIntosh also gives the listener some lyrically introspective offerings as well, such as the moody Edge of the Same Old World which is a musical cross between Dire Straits and Fairport Convention. Throughout, he shapes his vocal delivery to suit the song and impresses with the versatility and expressiveness of his voice. That’s a rare feat for a musician who, prior to his debut release, was known only as a guitarist and sideman.
McIntosh began his career as a guitarist for the group Night in 1978 whose song Hot Summer Nights went to #18 in America. The group toured the U.S. supporting The Doobie Brothers in 1978-1979 which led to a relationship with producer Richard Perry and work with Littlefeat and Jackson Browne. He came to national attention when he joined the Pretenders in 1982. Since that time, he toured as a member of the Paul McCartney Band for 6 years and has appeared on countless recordings by a literal who’s who in pop music including Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton, George Martin, Paul Young, Joe Cocker, Mark Knopfler, Annie Lennox and Carl Perkins. He has performed in major venues all over the globe and has played at the Greatest Show on Earth – Live Aid. McIntosh currently resides in Dorsett, England, and tours regularly with The Robbie McIntosh Band.
It’s not a typical starting point for a new album, the band members asking each other to nominate the worst song they’ve ever written. Then again, there’s a lot about The Waifs that defies convention.
This unlikely scenario unfolded when Vikki Thorn, her sister Donna Simpson and Josh Cunningham got together in a studio in Western Australia last year. The three mainstays of The Waifs hadn’t seen much of each other since touring on the back of their last album, 2011’s Temptation. The reunion called for a break with tradition. Instead of writing separately, the formula that has served them so well for almost 20 years, it was time for total collaboration. The three musicians would work together as a unit until a bunch of songs emerged.
Much to their surprise, the three amigos drew a blank.
“It was all very exciting,” says Vikki. “We probably hadn’t sat together in a room like that for 15 years. We got out pens and paper and guitars. It felt like it should be an easy thing … but it wasn’t. We tried in earnest to jam and shape songs. We tried going through ‘what’s the worst Waifs song you’ve ever written?’ Even that became awkward because we couldn’t all agree which were the worst ones. It was all very intimate and personal. Then Donna one day got the shits and went off and wrote a song.”
We can be glad she did. That moment of frustration opened the floodgates to what has become The Waifs’ seventh studio album Beautiful You, an exquisitely crafted collection of songs from the three songwriters that bears all the hallmarks of a Waifs classic.
“I thought, ‘I’m just going to walk outside and write something’,” Donna recalls of that false start. ‘It just kind of comes to me that way. It came and just kept rolling.”
In January 2015, aided by their regular rhythm section of drummer Dave Ross Macdonald and bassist Ben Franz, The Waifs entered 301 Studios in Byron Bay, NSW with producer Nick DiDia (Bruce Springsteen, Rage Against the Machine, Powderfinger) and emerged several weeks later with Beautiful You. The emotionally raw but musically buoyant Beautiful You demonstrates the easy chemistry that has bound The Waifs together for more than two decades, as well as celebrating the depth of songwriting talent they have at their disposal.
The 12 new tracks – four from Donna, three from Josh and five from Vikki – play to the strengths of one of Australia’s most enduring and lauded folk, pop and roots outfits. There’s a familiar mix here of celebration and reflection, combined with that easy musical energy and intuition spawned from so many years of touring, whether in the pubs of rural Australia in the early days or on the road internationally ever since then. Beautiful You boasts abundant choruses, intoxicating instrumental exchanges and joyful harmonies, the characteristics that make so memorable the band’s noughties hits London Still, Bridal Train and Sun Dirt Water.
The title track, Donna’s aching vocal drifting over a simple guitar motif, has a deeply personal undertow, a plea to a friend struggling with addiction: “You gotta change the road you’ve been taking,” sings Donna, “lay down your weapons and surrender.”
Simpson’s shuffling, alt country ballad “When a Man Gets Down,” another personal account, this time of a relationship breakdown, is equally emotive. “I sat bawling my eyes out when I wrote that song,” she says. “It was something real that was happening in my life.”
Josh’s country stroll “Dark Highway” is a gentle prod at humanity inspired by the night his van broke down and no one stopped to help him. He wrote the song in the back of the van to kill time until assistance arrived (“obviously I eventually got out of there” he says).
Then there’s the overtly poppy “Blindly Believing,” complete with a killer hook that explores the fleeting nature of love. Vikki wrote the song with WA singer Bex Chilcott, better known as Ruby Boots, in a session in Utah that marked Vikki’s first attempt at co-writing and that produced several co-writes for Ruby Boots’ debut album, Solitude.
Donna’s “Rowena and Wallace” is a bluesy coming-of-age romp punctuated by Vikki’s harmonica stabs and Josh’s piercing electric guitar, while Josh’s “Born to Love” echoes the folk/blues swagger of his hit song Lighthouse from the band’s breakthrough, ARIA Award winning album Up All Night (2003).
Home has been in a variety of places for The Waifs during their career. Donna lives in Fremantle after spending eight years in Minneapolis, where the band recorded Temptation four years ago. Josh splits his time between California and the NSW south coast, where he’s building a house for his family. Vikki is based in Utah. It’s no accident that what inhabits Beautiful You most of all is that attachment to home, wherever that might be.
Twenty-three years after Donna and Vikki set off from Albany to play music across Australia to anyone who would listen, teaming up with Josh en route, the three have come to appreciate the places they left behind. It’s hardly surprising then that Vikki, who with her sister grew up at Cosy Corner Beach near Albany, WA, steeped in the simple, rural traditions of their salmon-fishing family, should reflect on and celebrate those things on the new album. This she does beautifully and longingly on the pulsing, heartfelt album opener, “Black Dirt Track.” “The longer I am away from Australia the more connected I feel to Australia and I keep writing songs about that,” Vikki says. “I grew up near the salmon camp where my grandfather fished, my father played there as a kid and when I go back there now I do the same things with my children. I physically feel connected to that place when I’m there. It’s almost a spiritual thing. It’s where I grew up. It’s where I learned to play guitar, where my husband proposed to me. I’ve had all these deeply personal moments and significant things happen in this one place.”
There’s a similar bent to “6000 Miles”, on which Vikki contemplates the distance between her old home and her new one.
The closing “February”, a sparse acoustic ballad that develops quickly into a full-tilt rocker, has Vikki anticipating warmer, brighter days: “February hitches up her skirt and rolls her stockings down,” she sings.
There are plenty of brighter days ahead for The Waifs. As Josh notes, “the relationship deepens”. Beautiful You is a powerful statement of the individual songwriters’ skills, their beliefs, their passions and their dreams. Bound together by expert musicianship and the love and respect that have developed between them since the early 1990s, it’s also a moving, entertaining and ultimately joyful statement from a group of musicians dedicated to each other and to their craft.
“It’s still great to look across at each other and know where we are going to go with the music,” says Donna. “That has never changed. And we get along better now than we ever have.”
“One of the most promising and provocative singer/songwriters to emerge from England in years, Gilmore detangles sex, religion, and politics with a literate eloquence and defiance that recall the early poetic eruptions of Bob Dylan.” -USA TODAY
It is not unusual for a songwriter to stray from the beaten path as they mature, to experiment more intrepidly and find a thoroughly distinctive voice. But when this happens at age 25, people take notice.
It is fitting that Thea Gilmore conceived her Compass Records release, Songs From The Gutter, as part of a Bob Dylan tribute album. Like the obstinate American songwriter to whom she is frequently compared, Gilmore seemed unshackled by convention even in her early work, able to escape the confines of both genre and industry and give her creativity space to grow.
Gilmore believes that audiences don’t want to be pandered to and that people will respond to honest expression more than accessibility. The young Brit’s respect for music listeners paid off and accolades poured in from such respected sources as USA Today, Mojo, and Guardian. Gilmore was invited to appear on Radio 4 and at Glastonbury Festival, one of the UK’s largest musical events. In the fall of 2004, she toured the US with Joan Baez.
A steadfastly original lyricist generating recordings at a breakneck pace, Gilmore has kept her growing fan base almost satisfied with a new project nearly every year. While most of her peers spend years in the planning stages, Gilmore takes her ideas to the studio quickly, capturing the muse of the moment and allowing it to be whatever it is, whether that fits in with any larger trajectory or career plan — or not. Following the highly successful 2003 release of Rules for Jokers, Gilmore changed direction with 2004’s lush, Avalanche.
Songs From the Gutter is a textbook example of Gilmore’s method of creation. Invited to contribute to a Bob Dylan tribute CD sponsored by Uncut magazine, the ever-generating artist found herself in a studio in Cheadle Hulme in May of 2002. Five days later she emerged with ten tracks, which she promptly added to several older, unavailable cuts for an internet-only, double album release. Nigel Stonier’s production and a mastering job at Abbey Road polished the collection without taking away any of its nerve, and fans clamored for the disc at Gilmore’s live shows. Making its American debut on Compass Records this August, Songs from the Gutter glimmers with the immediacy and unpredictability of Gilmore’s performances, delving into her darker, grittier side. True to her varied and prolific form, Gilmore will follow Songs from the Gutter with Loft Music, an album of covers that will be released on Compass Records this fall.
Gilmore is best described as a gritty but lyrical poet, one who is frequently asked about politics and social issues because of her hard hitting lyrics. Her response to such a question in a recent See Magazine interview is classic take-no-prisoners Thea – “I just take a more social standpoint — personal politics rather than politician politics. My politics basically comes from trying to put a rocket up people’s asses and saying open your eyes a bit.”
Best known for the hit singles “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles),” “Sunshine on Leith,” “I’m On My Way,” and “Letter From America,” the identical Scottish twins known as The Proclaimers have announced the release of their 10th studio album, LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE DOGS, out May 5th on Compass Records.
Craig and Charlie Reid have enjoyed huge success across the English speaking world throughout their years as a band. The quirky pair has carved a niche for their brand of sing-along raucousness and witty, vulnerable songwriting at the junction of pop, folk, new wave and punk. With both Gold and Platinum singles and albums in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, The Proclaimers have found their way into the hearts and headphones of fans spanning nearly three generations.
LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE DOGS proves The Proclaimers to be craftsmen of gloriously catchy songs who are simultaneously unabashed romantics. The album was recorded at the legendary Rockfield Studios in Wales and was produced by Dave Eringa, (The Who) and features their live band: Stevie Christie (keyboards), Garry John Kane (bass), Zac Ware (electric guitar) and Clive Jenner (drums) with additional guitars by Sean Genockey and an appearance by the Vulcan String Quartet.
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