Now Hear This! August 2011 Issue 102
CD, 2011, Heftbeilage, Digisleeve

What's on the CD with the August 2011 issue:

1. Danny & The Champions Of The World - Heart And Arrow
Formerly folk-countryish Danny Wilson is reborn on his third album as a full-on anglo-Springsteen. “I wanted to make a totally un-bearded record,” he says, citing Black Flag, Bad Brains, Tom Petty and Thin Lizzy as inspirations. “Forget 1971, this is 1976 – Dr Feelgood, Nick Lowe, just great rock and roll.” You can’t argue with that. Well, you could. But you’d lose.
From the album Hearts and Arrows

2. In Fear Of Olive - I'm Sure They'll Fall
Twanged-up skiffling rock and roll from the Deep South – deep South Yorkshire, that is. Energised by Johnny Cash, Bright Eyes and Bob Dylan, this quintet has the Richard Hawley seal of approval, and ours too.
From the EP All We Can Do Is Wonder

3. Fitz And The Tantrums - Breakin' The Chains Of Love
Uncut, no-messing, sharp-suited soul from a Los Angeles sextet with a James Brown work ethic. Frontman Michael Fitzpatrick has written with Beck and others. This tragic-ecstatic tune wouldn’t have disgraced Motown at its zenith.
From the EP Breakin' The Chains Of Love

4. Lamb - Another Language
Mancunian muso Andy Barlow and his Mercury-nominated partner Louise Rhodes reunited their bespoke trip-hop vehicle Lamb for a tour in 2009. There was, as they say, renewed chemistry and this fifth album – their first together in eight years – shows why they were always the choice for introspective electronica.
From the album Five

5. Rival Sons - Pressure And Time
Like a forced merger between Led Zeppelin and Massive Attack, Los Angeles quartet Rival Sons’ fundamentalist brand of gumbo-greased, caterwauling, wolf-eating rock and roll is utterly unselfconscious and rather fantastic. We literally headbanged. Righteous!
From the album Pressure And Time


6. The Turner - Kitchen Sink Drama
If we’re going to have a New Great Depression we might as well get some decent art out of it. This new album by Mancunian singer-songwriter Gary Tompkinson – AKA The Turner – is suffused with the hard-times vibes of Cathy Come Home and Friday Night, Saturday Morning but marries them to thoughtful country grooves.
From the album Girls, Wives & Factory Wives

7. The Wild Swans - The Bluebell Wood
Readers of a certain age will recall heroic Liverpudlians The Wild Swans and their Peel fixture Revolutionary Spirit. Some 22 years since their last album, leader (and former Teardrop Explodes keyboards player) Paul Simpson still has the insurrectionist impulse. Here, over a lovely wide-screen rock tune, he counsels war on the tyranny of the supermarkets. To arms!
From the album The Coldest Winter For A Hundred Years

8. Charlie Dore - Liontamer
Yes, it’s that Charlie Dore, who was on Rainbow back when little kids were calmed by proper folk music and not Calpol, and who had a massive hit with Pilot Of The Airwaves in 1979. Now a writer-producer, she goes back to her folk roots on this charming solo LP.
From the album Cheapskate Lullabies

9. Mark Nevin - Blood
The former Fairground Attraction/Morrissey songwriter returns with his first solo album since 2002. It’s a lovely confection of lilting pop tones, delicate guitars and meditations on the messy but uplifting business of growing up and getting on with life.
From the album Stand Beside Me In The Sun

10. Inch-Time - Videograms
Sophisticated electronica from London-based Australian Stefan Panczak. Videograms connects the pixels between The Doors, Global Communication, The Selecter by The Selecter, Four Tet and Vangelis – and sounds like a sexy robot’s daydream.
From the album The Floating World

11. Marc Carroll - Love Over Gold
Dublin’s Mark Carroll has spent ten years in the trenches crafting quality, grown-up rock songs with an inimitable lyrical edge. This album collates the best of his four albums as a jumping-on point before his brand-new record, out later this year.
From the compilation In Silence



12. Dennis Hopper Choppers - All Could Come True
A disreputable chunk of Brit-blues from one-man band Ben Nicholls, this tune has the windblasted fatalism of a quality “death disc” and the spidery spectrality of a Joe Meek production.
From the album Be Ready

13. Jack Beaureegard - You Drew A Line
Borrowing their stage name from Henry Fonda’s character in My Name Is Nobody, this Berlin duo deal in subtle, subliminal alternative pop when they’re not writing songs for the German pop elite in their day job. A proper find.
From the album The Magazines You Read

14. The Blood Arm - Introducing Randy Newman
This tune from the hyperactive LA quartet’s third album starts deceptively, like it’s going to be some alt.country madrigal or other, before rapidly Transformerising into a hectic Cheap-Trick-meets-Banana Splits singalong. All together now: “Raaaa-ndy New! Man!”
From the album Turn And Face Me

15. The Wutars - Sea Monkey
Finally, a special treat for Word readers in which Now Hear This! co-compiler “Magic” Alex Gold brings forth his own band The Wutars, stalwart supports at our A Word In Your Ear live nights. The High Wycombe five-piece have a bright future if this sprightly composition is anything to go by.
From the EP EP2