Greta Van Fleet, Queen, Ace Frehley shine on new collections

The jaw-dropping full-length debut from Greta Van Fleet, the Bohemian Rhapsody soundtrack featuring Queen, and solid return from former KISS guitarist Ace Frehley were all released on October 19.

Artist: Greta Van Fleet
Title: Anthem Of The Peaceful Army (Republic Records)
You might like if you enjoy: Led Zeppelin, Bad Company
Tell me more: While many classic rock fans cling to the hope of a Led Zeppelin reunion they are sadly missing out on the emergence of that band's mind-blowing musical descendant Greta Van Fleet. Since emerging with its breakout single "Highway Tune" in March 2017, Greta Van Fleet has been conjuring up an explosive sound blending the best of Led Zep with their own 21st century creative instincts — all leading up to the terrific new album Anthem Of The Peaceful Army released on Oct. 20. "The Cold Wind" is a stylish rocker wrapped up with an undeniable groove. The ambitious "Watching Over" feels like a rock ballad, but only briefly, before it builds to a majestic mid-tempo gait highlighted by Jake Kiszka's stellar guitar work and singer Josh Kiszka's inviting wails. The troupe can also scale back as evidenced by the acoustic-flavored "You're The One" with its warm choruses and sweet embrace. This writer's favorite track is "Brave New World," which sounds nothing like any of the band's '70s influences. A song that is both heavy and melodic "Brave New World" is bolstered by a nuanced musical soundscape featuring an intoxicating rhythm, artful guitar playing and singer Josh Kiszka's otherworldly vocals. Armed with skills as top-tier songwriters and musicians, Greta Van Fleet's mesmerizing Anthem Of The Peaceful Army is an incredible work whose power is both obvious and rare. The Michigan-spawned quartet's authentic rock 'n' roll attitude doesn't hurt either. Information: GretaVanFleet.com.

Artist: Queen
Title: Bohemian Rhapsody (Hollywood Records)
You might like if you enjoy: Queen
Tell me more: One of rock's greatest and most creative artists, Queen's well-deserved legacy is celebrated across the newly-released Bohemian Rhapsody soundtrack. In addition to 11 number 1 hits, the 22-track collection features a mix of deep album cuts and live recordings. The lush prog rock-flavored "Doing All Right" (recorded when the group was known as Smile and featured vocalist Tim Staffell prior to the founding of Queen with Freddie Mercury), a fiery live recording of "Keep Yourself Alive" (featuring Brian May's guitar playing and a cool Roger Taylor drum mini-solo), a blistering "Fat Bottomed Girls" performed in Paris in 1979, and a moving "Love of My Life" recorded at the Rock in Rio festival in Brazil in January 1985 (with an audience of 300,000 singing along) are among the rarities on display. The release is highlighted by the inclusion of the audio from the band's complete Live Aid performance at Wembley in July 1985. That 21-minute set — "Bohemian Rhapsody," "Radio Ga Ga," "Hammer To Fall" and "We Are The Champions" — is widely viewed as one of the most memorable live performances ever. I can't wait to catch the film "Bohemian Rhapsody" when it opens in theaters on Nov. 2. Information: QueenOnline.com.

Artist: Ace Frehley
Title: Spaceman (Entertainment One)
You might like if you enjoy: KISS, Ace Frehley, Ozzy Osbourne
Tell me more: Fans of early KISS know that lead guitarist Ace Frehley was essential to the power of the band's best-known rockers. Now Frehley is back with Spaceman, his third solo LP in four years. The good news for fans of the brash, bar chord crunch of
'70s KISS is that Frehley has found plenty of new sonic pay dirt in that classic rock style across the new nine-track disc. "Without You I'm Nothing" is a hypnotic rocker with Frehley's flashy lead guitar front and center. Frehley also displays his finesse on his electric guitar via the tuneful "Your Wish Is My Command," the autobiographical "Bronx Boy" and hard-charging anthem "Pursuit of Rock and Roll." "Rocking With The Boys" comes closest to conjuring up the musical ghost of vintage KISS while elsewhere Frehley showcases his growth as an artist, particularly on an inspired reworking of Eddie Money's confessional "I Wanna Go Back" and his own cosmic "Mission To Mars." Frehley closes out the fast-moving LP with the amazing instrumental "Quantum Flux," a wonderful mix of folk rock and electric guitar prowess. Information: AceFrehley.com. 



Robert Kinsler

Sights and Sounds: LOGAN soundtrack, Aimee Mann, The Jesus And Mary Chain

I have plenty of great music-related news to share! I had to lead off with the 'LOGAN' update; I am super excited to see Hugh Jackman's last movie starring as Wolverine.

'LOGAN - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack features original music by Marco Beltrami

Lakeshore Records will release the LOGAN- Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally on March 3 and on audio CD March 31, 2017. The album contains original music by Marco Beltrami (BEN-HUR, THE HURT LOCKER) who previously scored two films for director James Mangold, 3:10 TO YUMA, for which Beltrami earned an Academy Award® nomination, and THE WOLVERINE.

“When I first watched LOGAN I was really impressed with its originality,” Beltrami stated.  “Although it’s a Marvel superhero movie, it is also many other movies as well, all tied up into a delicate balance of brazenness and subtlety. Jim is a master at moving fluently between genres and subverting them to present a new emotional landscape, and it was in trying to define this landscape in musical terms that I found my puzzle.”

In the near future, a weary Logan (Hugh Jackman) cares for an ailing Professor X in a hide out on the Mexican border. But Logan's attempts to hide from the world and his legacy are up-ended when a young mutant arrives, being pursued by dark forces. 

“LOGAN was an extremely demanding but very inspiring film score to work on. Jim distilled the innovation of an indie within the framework of a tentpole,” Beltrami explained.  “He played me scores he liked and which inspired the tone of the film for him—Taxi Driver, Paper Moon (the film itself), The Gauntlet. He liked the directness and rough edges, the unpolished tone, the energy. Somehow I had to capture this while simultaneously creating a modern score. It did not need grandiose thematic music and verbose melodic statements. It was all about vibe.”

Marco Beltrami is an award-winning composer who built his reputation as a genre innovator with non-traditional horror scores for the SCREAM franchise and DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK. Beltrami’s musical palette has since expanded to virtually all film genres. He has received two Oscar nominations for Best Original Score, for THE HURT LOCKER and 3:10 TO YUMA. He has received two Critic’s Choice Award nominations, and he was Emmy nominated for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series for THE PRACTICE. In 2011, he won the Golden Satellite Award for Best Score from The International Press Academy for SOUL SURFER and in 2014 was nominated for a World Soundtrack Award for Film Composer of the Year, for his incredible range of projects including CARRIE (2013), A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD (2013), The Homesman (2014), Snowpiercer (2013), Warm Bodies (2013), The Wolverine (2013) and WORLD WAR Z (2013).  Current projects for Beltrami include scoring the hit Fox television show, LUCIFER, which recently got picked up for its third season.

20^th Century Fox presents LOGAN in theaters on March 3, 2017.  Lakeshore Records will release the LOGAN – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally on March 3 and on audio CD on Friday, March 31, 2017.

Aimee Mann shares 'The Making of Mental Illness' video

Singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Aimee Mann has revealed a behind the scenes look at the making of her new album Mental Illness (due out March 31, 2017 on her own SuperEgo Records). Watch here: https://youtu.be/XSUF_umjo0E. 

Mental Illness shows off Mann’s rich, incisive and wry melancholia in an almost all-acoustic format, with a “finger-picky” style inspired by some of her favorite ‘60s and ‘70s folk-rock records, augmented by haunting strings arranged by her longtime producer, Paul Bryan. Aimee remains a student of human behavior, drawing not just on her own experiences to form the characters in the songs but tales told by friends. 

MENTAL ILLNESS TRACKLIST
1. Goose Snow Cone
2. Stuck In The Past
3. You Never Loved Me
4. Rollercoasters
5. Lies Of Summer
6. Patient Zero
7. Good For Me
8. Knock It Off
9. Philly Sinks
10. Simple Fix
11. Poor Judge

AIMEE MANN LIVE
April 20 /// Washington, DC /// Lincoln Theatre
April 21 /// Philadelphia, PA /// Keswick Theatre
April 22 /// New York, NY /// The Town Hall
April 23 /// Boston, MA /// The Wilbur Theatre
April 25 /// Albany, NY /// The Egg Center For The Performing Arts
April 26 /// Toronto, ON /// Danforth Music Hall 
April 28 /// Ann Arbor, MI /// The Ark
April 29 /// Chicago, IL /// Park West
April 30 /// Milwaukee, WI /// Pabst Theater
May 2 /// Madison, WI /// Barrymore Theatre
May 3 /// Saint Paul, MN /// Fitzgerald Theater
May 5 /// Boulder, CO /// Boulder Theater
May 6 /// Salt Lake City, UT /// The State Room
May 8 /// Missoula, MT /// The Wilma
May 9 /// Seattle, WA /// Neptune
May 10 /// Portland, OR /// Revolution Hall
May 12 /// San Francisco, CA /// The Fillmore 
May 13 /// Los Angeles, CA /// The Theatre at Ace Hotel

The Jesus And Mary Chain announce Spring North American Tour dates

Tickets on-sale this week

LONG-AWAITED NEW ALBUM ‘DAMAGE AND JOY’

TO BE RELEASED MARCH 24^TH ON ADA / WARNER MUSIC

The Jesus And Mary Chain set to return in 2017.
Photo by Steve Gullick

The Jesus and Mary Chain have announced Spring North American tour dates. The upcoming shows are set to follow the band’s highly anticipated new studio album ‘Damage and Joy’ – out March 24^th on ADA / Warner Music – and will see the duo performing new tracks from the LP live for the first time in the US & Canada. The trek begins on May 9^th in St. Paul, MN and is expected to hit Brooklyn, NY and Los Angeles, CA, among others. Tickets are on-sale this week via the band’s website.

Fronted by the Reid brothers Jim and William, The Jesus And Mary Chain first reformed to play the Coachella festival back in 2007. Despite regular touring – most notably a 2015 world tour which revisited their landmark album ‘Psychocandy’ – it took some time before they could agree on a plan to record a much-mooted seventh album.

Work on ‘Damage and Joy’, the band’s first album since ‘Munki’ in 1998, began in September 2015. The album commences with ‘Amputation’, in which waves of distorted guitar and Jim’s insouciant vocal delivery collide to create a hypnotic track which addresses his feelings of “being edited out of the whole music business… I felt like a rock ‘n’ roll amputation.”

Other highlights include a refined and re-energised new version of ‘All Things Must Pass’ which previously featured in the TV show ‘Heroes’ and then on ‘Upside Down: The Best of The Jesus and Mary Chain’; and the raw garage-rock of ‘Facing Up To The Facts’ which offers the revealing lyric: “I hate my brother and he hates me / That’s the way it’s supposed to be”.

The album also features performances from the band’s touring drummer Brian Young as well as former Lush bassist Phil King.

“The interesting thing about this record is what comes out of the speakers,” declares Jim. “To make a good record is an achievement if you’re twenty-two, but to do it in your fifties, the way we are, I think is a minor miracle.”

‘Damage and Joy’ will be released on digital, CD, vinyl and Cassette formats, and pre-orders are currently open. All pre-orders receive an immediate download of ‘Amputation’.

The full album tracklisting -

1.     Amputation

2.     War On Peace

3.     All Things Pass

4.     Always Sad

5.     Songs For A Secret

6.     The Two Of Us

7.     Los Feliz (Blues and Greens)

8.     Mood Rider

9.     Presedici (Et Chapaquiditch)

10.  Get On Home

11.  Facing Up To The Facts

12.  Simian Split

13.  Black And Blues

14.  Can’t Stop The Rock

The Jesus and Mary Chain North American Tour Dates: 

5/9 - St. Paul, MN @ The Palace

5/10 - Chicago, IL @ Riviera

5/12 - Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall

5/14 - Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel

5/19 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern

5/20 - Oakland, CA @ The Fox Theater

5/22 - Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom

5/23 - Seattle, WA @ Showbox SoDo

5/24 - Vancouver, BC @ Vogue Theatre

http://thejesusandmarychain.uk.com/

https://twitter.com/TheMaryChain

https://www.facebook.com/JesusAndMaryChain/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4rjlerN21ygkIhmUv55irs