Go Girl – August 2019

Pretty much every record released during the psychedelic era by EMI’s various satellite labels was honed and buffed to opaque perfection by the studio technocrats who were working for the company.

Most alternative music lived underground. It made a lot of noise, but no-one in the mainstream could hear it…. The nineties would see it go so much further than many of us expected. It wasn’t just the popularity of alternative music which would change; the music was constantly reinventing itself too, sucking in influences from different genres and different eras.

Retrospective singles collection of the one and only Primal Scream. Titled Maximum Rock’n’Roll, the record features releases from across their lifetime as a band. “Right from our 1985 debut All Fall Down onward we’ve approached singles as an aesthetic choice, a statement of where we are as a band,” says Bobby Gillespie. “We grew up with Suffragette City and Metal Guru flying out of the radio. The four Sex Pistols singles were great. Public Image by PiL sounded like nothing else. Prince and Madonna made amazing hits. That has been our approach. I’ve always loved Top 40 pop radio, I love greatest hits albums like The Who’s Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy. I remember Alan McGee saying of Higher Than The Sun: it won’t be a hit, but it will be a statement. Great singles can get out into the world and show people an alternative way of thinking. They make you feel less alone.”

This is the second of four volumes of the complete recorded output of Def Leppard available as a 7-CD box set. The box features the albums Adrenalize, RetroActive, Slang, Euphoria (never before on vinyl) and Rarities Vol. 2 and 3, both specially compiled by Joe Elliott…

Part of the fun of listening to Lana Del Rey’s ethereal lullabies is the sly sense of humour that brings them back down to earth. Tucked inside her dreamscapes about Hollywood and the Hamptons are reminders—and celebrations—of just how empty these places can be. Here, on her sixth album, she fixes her gaze on another place primed for exploration: the art world. Winking and vivid, Norman F*****g Rockwell! is a conceptual riff on the rules that govern integrity and authenticity from an artist who has made a career out of breaking them.

The very title of Goin' 50 suggests ZZ Top are considering their 50th anniversary as an event to be celebrated with a sense of humor. That's appropriate. Good spirits and lascivious jokes always have been integral to the trio's appeal, and they can be heard in abundance on this triple-CD/five-LP set that tells their story from beginning to end (there is also a single-disc edition that rounds up the highlights). The set breaks down into three easy acts: the band's greasy early years, spanning from "La Grange" to "Pearl Necklace," are on the first disc; the second installment covers their MTV glory days; the third CD traces the aftermath of Afterburner, beginning with "Viva Las Vegas" and ending with the 21st century barnburner "I Gotsta Get Paid" (plus recent live versions of "Waitin' for the Bus" and "Jesus Just Left Chicago," which brings this full circle to the beginning).