Sweet Drawinng

A rare and collectable 2-on-1 LP, originally released in the 1970s and featuring two top fun groups from that wonderfully colourful decade, is now revived and remastered on one fun-packed CD. The Sweet, regular chart toppers and the ultimate Glam Rock heroes, are represented here by 12 rare tracks, including The Lollipop Man and All You Ever Get From Me . The Pipkins unleashed the highly popular and humorous Gimme Dat Ding , a Top 5 novelty song in 1970. It's featured here with 7 other songs, including Yakety Yak and 2 rare Single B-sides. Booklet features liner notes by respected author and journalist Chris Welch. Expertly remastered, superb sound, top quality reproduction - The best in the business!

This UK studio group comprised several of the country’s leading blues musicians. Saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith was a veteran of Blues Incorporated, the Graham Bond Organisation and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers before becoming a founder member of Colosseum, while John O’Leary (harmonica) and Keith Tillman (bass) were concurrently members of the John Dummer Blues Band. Stuart Cowell (guitar), Sam Crozier (piano), Junior Dunn (drums) and vocalists Annette Brox and Alan Greed completed the Sweet Pain line-up featured on the unit’s lone album…

Oh, My Girl, the second album by singer/songwriter Jesse Sykes and her band the Sweet Hereafter – led by Phil Wandscher – picks up where her debut, Reckless Burning, left off. Songs are played at cough-syrup tempo, production is sparse, instrumentation equally so, offering just enough of a frame for the melody and lyrics to hang themselves on, and everything, absolutely everything, is underplayed. There is plenty of dynamic tension, but little to no dynamic range. Yes, this is a good thing. Sykes' ghostly voice, which hovers about her words more than inhabits them, has enough old-world folkiness, raw – if intentionally muted – willingness, and lonesome country pain in it to carry off these tunes with authority. Produced, mixed and engineered by multi-instrumentalist Tucker Martine, Oh, My Girl is full of slow, dipping passion, moody expressionism and poetic smarts to make it stand out in a sensual, narcotic way from the rest of the gothic alterna-twang pack. And one more thing: Sykes has more emotion in the grain of her halting, cracking voice than a whole army of Margo Timmins'es – so let the comparisons stop now, please.

The shear breadth and diversity of artists gathered for this benefit project, Sweet Relief: A Benefit for Victoria Williams, is a tribute to the affection Victoria Williams' peers had for her. It conveniently also makes for heady listening for any fan of contemporary music. The hard, brittle edges of Soul Asylum ("Summer of Drugs") and Buffalo Tom ("Merry Go Round") stand shoulder to shoulder with the country-folk of Lucinda Williams ("Main Road") and Maria McKee (an inspired and riveting "Opelousas (Sweet Relief)"). Sweet Relief offers a unique opportunity to introduce yourself to an enduring songwriter while savoring some of the day's most intriguing musicians. How sweet it is!