This album from Katatonia, their first studio effort since 2006, is as moody and beautiful as their other latter-day work. The group's career can be marked in two stages based on the condition of singer Jonas Renske's vocal cords - basically, after the band's first two albums, he developed health problems that prevented him from performing harsh death growls, and ever since the band has moved in an increasingly melodic direction, even covering songs by Will Oldham and Jeff Buckley. It's unsurprising to learn that Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt helped out by performing the harsh vocals on Katatonia's Brave Murder Day album and Sounds of Decay EP in 1996 and 1997, since Night Is the New Day songs "Forsaker" and "Idle Blood" could be outtakes from that band's Damnation or Blackwater Park. Other tracks like "The Longest Year," the hilariously titled "Onward into Battle"…
In 1990 Neil Hannon started recording and releasing under the name The Divine Comedy. Thirty years and twelve great albums later, Hannon is rightly adjudged one of the finest singer songwriters of his generation. To celebrate, Divine Comedy Records are remastering and reissuing nine of the band's classic albums.
It is a hefty box in every sense: 13 CDs, supplemented with two DVDs, accompanied by a gorgeous hardcover book and a variety of tchotchkes, including a poster that traces the twisted family trees and time lines of the band and, just as helpfully, replicas of legal documents that explain why the group didn't retain rights to its recordings for years…
This DVD features a tribute concert for the legendary Buddy Holly. Recorded in Austin in 1987, it features Brian Setzer, John Fogerty, Carl Perkins, The Crickets and others.
Buddy Holly is perhaps the most anomalous legend of '50s rock & roll he had his share of hits, and he achieved major rock & roll stardom, but his importance transcends any sales figures or even the particulars of any one song (or group of songs) that he wrote or recorded. Holly was unique, his legendary status and his impact on popular music all the more extraordinary for having been achieved in barely 18 months.
Notwithstanding one or two isolated exceptions, it wasn’t until the mid-Sixties that independent female voices really began to be heard within the music industry. The feminist movement naturally coincided with the first signs of genuine musical emancipation. In North America, Joan Baez and Buffy Sainte-Marie emerged through the folk clubs, coffee-houses and college campuses to inspire a generation of wannabe female singers and musicians with their strong, independent mentality and social compassion, while the British scene’s combination of folk song revival and the Beatles-led pop explosion saw record company deals for a new generation of pop-folkies including Marianne Faithfull, Dana Gillespie and Vashti Bunyan.