The TUTS Jukebox > What Are You Playing This Week?

[Rockula]

I've been devoting a whole day (or two) to a single artist/band.

I started with The Adverts/TV Smith last week and today I'm listening to the entire recorded output of The Boys.

Tomorrow it'll be all of Buzzcocks.

[Uli]

https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/8504114/the-mekons-how-many-stars-premiere

https://louderthanwar.com/thefranklys-286874-2/

[Uli]

Been playing the new albums by The Strange and Hugo Race Fatalists. Both excellent, somehow they complement each other (seeing Hugo Race and Chris Eckman sometimes perform together in Dirtmusic)!

Listening to 'Phenomenon' I can't help getting all sorts of names in my head of artists who have come and some have already gone before. The low talk-sing style immediately brings Leonard Cohen to mind, like the way Hugo Race's voice resonates reminds me of The Walkabouts' Chris Eckman. When later on in the album there are a few duets with Lisa Crawley the light and the dark mix perfectly like the tandem Eckman - Torgerson used to do.

In general reading my reviews of Distance, Light & Sky or more recently The Strange and now Taken By The Dream I can only derive at one conclusion: This worlds needs The Walkabouts. Race and Eckman have worked together in Dirtmusic, so the connotation is not that strange.

The album takes care of some intense listening, quality time with music. With a headset on or when played loud enough all the richness hidden in the songs come forward and makes the songs on the album sparkle. A sparkle that certainly is not there at a first glance. The investment of your time in this album is a prerequisite to be able to enjoy it. Invest and you will be rewarded, if folk noir is your thing of course. It is mine in the right doses and at the right moment.

https://wonomagazine.blogspot.com/2019/05/taken-by-dream-hugo-race-fatalists.html

Again Chris Eckman manages to do something that I had not heard from him before. There's no use comparing here to his previous work, as it doesn't have much to do with it. Yes, the voice is unmistakable. The music is much different. The Calexico side of Americana, mixed with mariachi violins, 60s film music and a deep longing mysticism...

Where The Strange scores is in the diversity. (...)
All through the album The Strange manages to capture different moods in a captivating way. Clean, dirty, Americana, jazz, rock, it's all here and more. I got onto the album by accident, the stumbling into shuffle mode of my iPod. I stayed on the album ever since.

https://wonomagazine.blogspot.com/2019/03/echo-chamber-strange.html

[Uli]

Apart from the aforementioned (Hugo Race & Chris Eckman projects), I've been listening to new stuff by The Waterboys (the new album is a very mixed bag), Calexico/Iron&Wine (collaboration)...

Also I found a few old tapes, e.g. Deborah Harry "Def, Dumb & Blonde" (1989), hadn't listened to this in ages. ("End of the run" is my favourite song of it.) Ten years later, Blondie released "No Exit"... some good tracks on it. 

[Uli]