Agent Mirai And The Submission Machines 0

After the fluke success of "Hey Saint Peter" made Flash and The Pan's first album into an international hit, this side project from Harry Vanda and George Young had to contend with a follow-up. Vanda and Young, best known as the core of 60's hit makers The Easybeats and producers to AC/DC (George Young is family to Malcom and Angus), were already no strangers to hit song-writing. The result was "Media Man" charting in several countries, and the album expanding on the band's cult audience. The formula remained pretty much the same. Heavy new wave synths paired to either dance-beats or down tempo gloominess, along with monotone, processed vocals. This doesn't click quite as often as it does on the debut album, and there's nothing here as memorable as "Hey St Peter" or "The Band Played On/Down Among The Dead Men." But more than half the album clicks, with "Media Man" being the dance-hit and the title track being the best of the bummers. It's also worth pointing out that, despite the minimalist trappings, these guys were pretty incredible musicians. Give a listen to the piano solo on "Welcome To The Universe" for proof on that one.

Rick Wakeman spent much of the '80s and '90s recording instrumental albums that veered toward either classical or ambient, so 2003's Out There comes as a bit of a shock: it's an honest to goodness revival of the full-throttle prog rock Wakeman pursued on his solo albums in the '70s. A large part of this is due to his decision to form a full-fledged supporting rock band. Called the New English Rock Ensemble, they're a quintet led by Wakeman and featuring Damian Wilson on vocals, Ant Glynne on guitar, Lee Pomeroy on bass, and Tony Fernandez on drums and percussion. They're a powerful and skilled outfit, able to follow Wakeman's shifting tempos and moods with dexterity without ever losing sight of their forceful rhythmic core, which keeps this rock, not new age.

Have you heard The News? The sweet pop/rock/soul sound of San Francisco's Huey Lewis & The News has sadly gone silent in recent years, thanks to its one-of-a-kind frontman's battle with Ménière's disease, which causes intermittent hearing loss. But a surprise new reissue campaign courtesy of Universal Music Group's Japanese division promises the most comprehensive look at the band's blockbuster catalogue of the '80s and early '90s.

Once Upon a Time: The Singles collects all ten of Siouxsie and the Banshees' A-sides spanning the years 1978-1981, with four songs otherwise unavailable on LP. It's a neat and accessible encapsulation of the group's early guitar-driven sound – a frosty, dissonant art punk that had a tremendous impact on the emerging goth rock scene. Unlike similarly forbidding work by such proto-goth contemporaries as Joy Division or the Cure, the early Banshees were tense and visceral; the darkness of the Once Upon a Time singles doesn't come from a sense of downcast gloom so much as it does from a jittery angst. Yet as challenging as the music is, it's also accessible enough for eight of these singles to have charted in the British Top 50. The melodies are angular and almost alien, yes, but oddly memorable once the listener has assimilated them. Starting shortly after the period covered by this collection, Siouxsie Sioux's icy detachment would be fused with an elegant romanticism and lusher, smoother arrangements. Which means that Once Upon a Time isn't the one, definitive Banshees compilation, but it is a cohesive and essential overview of the band's edgy, influential peak.

My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, Anohni’s sixth studio album, expresses a world view by shape-shifting through a broad range of subject matter. Through a personal lens, Anohni addresses loss of loved ones, inequality, alienation, acceptance, cruelty, ecocide, devastation wrought by Abrahamic theologies, Future Feminism, and the possibility that we might yet transform our ways of thinking, our spiritual ideas, our societal structures, and our relationships with the rest of nature.