Ten East – The Robot's Guide to Freedom
This instrumental album with a super line-up, including the man who made Black Flag great, Greg Ginn, and stoner punk legend Scott Reeder (Kyuss), features the aggressive riffing that has scared suburbanites for decades. Best played on long drives when your companion has fallen asleep, it provides space for quiet contemplation. For that reason alone it’s a rare treat. Even when Hogbreath cranks it up early and you hear Ginn’s genius, the absence of vocals gives you a chance to overlay your own thoughts onto excellent guitar music rattling pleasantly in your ears. Lexicon Devil/fuse
Sally Ford: Births, Deaths and Marriages
After a number of years on the Latin scene, singer/songwriter Sally Ford has put her trademark sax and flute in the rack for this exciting change of style. Supported by an all-star band that includes Bruce Haymes (keyboards), Tony Floyd (drums), James Black (bass, piano, guitar), cellist Helen Mountfort and a horn section led by tenor saxophonist Paul Williamson, Ford delivers a batch of highly personal songs that chronicle various facets of relationships. An outstanding singer and an intelligent insightful lyricist, Ford clothes her stories in blues, funk, reggae, acoustic and pop.
Newmarket
Motley Crue – Saints of Los Angeles
The world’s most notorious band has reunited with its original line-up to record a new album. Considering their well-documented history, it’s a small miracle that they’re alive at all. This history hangs heavily over Saints Of Los Angeles, and in a roundabout way, documents Motley Crue’s high and lows as a band, making this a concept album, even though it hasn’t been framed as such. Taking the better elements of Girls, Girls, Girls and Dr Feelgood, Saints Of Los Angeles is a solid effort, but not a classic one.
Eleven Seven music/Shock
Tyler Ramsey – A Long Dream About Swimming Across the Sea
Tyler Ramsey serves valiantly with righteous southern rockers Band of Horses, but his debut solo album veers left of the road the Horses tread so lightly. He comes on at times like an Appalachian hinterland Neil Young jamming with John Fahey under a bridge at midnight on a Xanax bender. It’s dreamy, sweet, bearded folk with a core of steel. The instrumental Chinese New Year grooves along with pattering drums in the manner of early ’70s Ry Cooder. Ramsey has
a fine way of revealing his songs to you like great anecdotes whispered in a noisy pub. SHOCK
