Patricia Kennealy Strange Days

The sole album of this great, but underrated British progressive band was released in 1975 on small Retreat Records. This powerful but still unknown album LP was mostly inspired by early Genesis records, but some Yes and Camel influences were also palpable. The quartet offered varied, imaginative and beautifully-arranged songs with excellent and quite heavy guitar parts, inventive and truly amazing keyboards phrases, very complex and busy drumming and fine vocals. This memorable will definitely appeal to all fans of creative, progressive music.

Supergrass – Gaz Coombes, Mick Quinn, Danny Goffey, and Rob Coombes – are one of the most important bands to emerge during the 1990s, with several million record sales, including 6 top 10 albums and 10 top 20 singles. Formed in Oxford UK in 1993, the Brit, Q, NME and Ivor Novello-winning outfit released their Mercury-nominated No.1 debut album I Should Coco in 1995. Fourth single, Alright, was a pop masterpiece and became a massive hit, catapulting the band to global success.

London glam rockers The Struts return with their third album. Lead cut is Strange Days which features the incomparable pop legend Robbie Williams. A magnificent, sprawling and string-laced duet, it’s a tender-hearted epic that offers incredible solace in the most chaotic of times. The song came about – along with the rest of the ten-track album – as a result of the band’s enforced lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic but started out as an idea lead singer Luke Spiller originally had on a tour bus last summer. It then took on a life of its own as a result of a chance encounter online.

Whirlwind is elated to announce the signing of internationally-acclaimed artist Natacha Atlas and her October 4th release Strange Days. Heralded as one of the world’s most distinctive voices, she’s carved a path synthesising western and middle eastern vocal traditions with mind-blowing dexterity. Natacha’s latest work sees her push vocal and musical boundaries even further by effortlessly weaving jazz traditions into her already unique blend.

The Doors had one of the most extraordinary debut years in music history in 1967, releasing a string of hit singles and two platinum albums, beginning in January with the band’s self-titled debut, followed by Strange Days in September. The latter peaked at #3 on the Billboard album chart and featured classics like “Love Me Two Times,” “When The Music’s Over,” and the title track “Strange Days.”

Many of the songs on Strange Days had been written around the same time as the ones that appeared on The Doors, and with hindsight one has the sense that the best of the batch had already been cherry picked for the debut album. For that reason, the band's second effort isn't as consistently stunning as their debut, though overall it's a very successful continuation of the themes of their classic album. Besides the hit "Strange Days," highlights included the funky "Moonlight Drive," the eerie "You're Lost Little Girl," and the jerkily rhythmic "Love Me Two Times," which gave the band a small chart single. "My Eyes Have Seen You" and "I Can't See Your Face in My Mind" are minor but pleasing entries in the group's repertoire that share a subdued Eastern psychedelic air. The 11-minute "When the Music's Over" would often be featured as a live showstopper, yet it also illustrated their tendency to occasionally slip into drawn-out bombast.