On This Day…
1956 Elvis Presley made his second appearance on US TV’s The Ed Sullivan Show, where the host presents him with a gold record for ‘Love Me Tender’.
1972 The United States Council for World Affairs announced it was adopting The Who song ‘Join Together’ as it’s official theme tune.
1972 Stevie Wonder released his 15th studio album Talking Book. The album’s first track, ‘You Are the Sunshine of My Life’, hit No.1 on the Billboard charts, then earned Wonder his first Grammy Award. The album featured a guest appearance of Jeff Beck on the track ‘Superstition’.
1978 The live-action movie “KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park”, was shown on NBC-TV in the U.S. The four rock stars had to deal with a mad scientist who went crazy in an amusement park. All four members of Kiss had just released their individual solo albums.
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CRX | New Skin
After watching each of his band-mates from the Strokes stretch their musical chops outside of that band, it’s now time for guitarist Nick Valensi to give it a go. His new band, CRX, is a five-piece, and for New Skin, their debut, they’ve doubled-down on any anticipation by having Queens of the Stone Age main man Joshua Homme produce it. While the album is consistently up-tempo and showcases Valensi great knack for writing interchanging guitar hooks, the 10 tracks here do sound all over the map. Fortunately, and to their benefit, none of them reach the 4 minute mark, making this album go by very quickly (the album runs barely over 30 minutes). Fans of the Strokes shouldn’t expect anything groundbreaking here – or that they’ll necessarily be listening to it in a year – but for right now it’ll do.
Soft Hair | Soft Hair
The debut eight track LP from Connan Mockasin and Sam Dust is self-described on their Bandcamp page as ““a view into an exotic world with a blend of familiar, unfamiliar and unconventionally attractive sounds”. And that’s pretty close to dead-on. Intensely fun, familiar and sometimes wobbly affair is reminiscent of late-90’s Ween albums. Colourful and lively the LP goes from top to bottom with weirdness and grace that has been honed into this form over the five-plus years that this duo has been working on this.
Toy | Clear Shot
Never a group that enters the studio with any intentions of creating something unambitious, Toy has simplified their game a little bit. After freaking a lot of people out when their cite their influences (Disney and the Manson family, among others) they are, in fact, much less creepy than that. Using classic songwriting techniques to make the audience uncomfortable like, unexpected chord changes, complete stylistic left turns or overpowering keyboards keeps the album unpredictable – and not necessarily their inherit “weirdness”.
