Dr Feelgood
Greatest Hits
(Grand)
★★★★★

FORMED in 1971 with charismatic frontman Lee Brilleaux, national treasure Wilko Johnson and John “Sparko” Sparks, the Feelgoods were in the vanguard of the pub-rock revolution — the antidote to stadium rock.

Playing no nonsense British R’n’B, they sent sweating audiences into orbit.

Their early hits and crowd pleasers included She Does It Right, Roxette, She’s a Wind Up, the stomping Back in the  Night, Night Time and Milk and Alcohol.

Their debut album Down by the Jetty is a stone classic along with the breakthrough 1976 live album Stupidity, which reached number one.

Constant touring gained them a massive following and while in 1994 Brilleaux died of cancer, they carried on touring and recording, with many line-up changes.

With tracks from every Feelgood era, play this loud and there will be no sleep to Canvey Island.

Tony Burke

Foodman
Yasuragi Land
(Hyperdub Records)
★★★★

HYPERDUB continue to release groundbreaking albums and the latest is by Japanese artist Foodman, real name Takahide Higuchi.

As a musician, he is heavily influenced by the Footwork electronic dance movement from 2010s and jamming as a teenage busker.

A food lover, he’s inspired by eating at Michinoeki, Japanese motorway service stations, and he likes visiting public baths too.

Dance-inspired, Yasuragi Land is a breezy and refined instrumental work full of hyper-rhythmic music made with a few simple tools. Unusually for a Hyperdub album, there’s no bass.

The album opens with Omiyage, with a slow and off-centre bird-like flute setting the scene for drums and synths.

Yasuragi and Parking Area feel like leftfield jazz while Ari Ari, deep-house Japan-style, comes across as cartoonishly naive and closer Minsyuku has a Nile Rodgers-inspired guitar woven into dense rhythms.

Simon Duff

The Mono LPs
Shuffle/Play
(Fretsore Records)
★★★

Shuffle/Play is the second album from Liverpool’s The Mono LPs.

It’s an eclectic mix of tracks and randomly shifting genres but with a rocky undercurrent backed by strings and cello.

Think About It opens with a good riff, a strong hint of 1980s pop, before rocking out and it's followed by the jazzy, Make Your Mind Up. Odd and eerie pop, it’s strangely enthralling, especially with the cello taking the track to the next level.

Elsewhere Chancy Gardener, with an acoustic simplicity that belies its quirky pop approach, has hints of the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields, while Love Me could be an electronic dance-floor filler but deserves a banging remix.

There’s a strong hint of the Arctic Monkeys and Alex Turner and while not all the tracks work — the switch in styles makes it hard to get into the groove — it’s an enigmatic collection worth listening out for.

Mik Sabiers

Gary Moore
How Blue Can You Get
(Provogue)
★★★★

COMING to prominence in 1970 with rock band Skid Row, Gary Moore was a guitar wonderkid and probably Belfast’s numero uno guitar-slinger since the age of 15.

Skid Row also featured Phil Lynott, later of Thin Lizzy, and Moore later played and recorded with Lizzy on and off until 1979 when he got tired of drug use hampering live shows.

He had also played in the jazz rock band Colosseum 2 and with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce in BBM in the early 1990s.

This set features unissued recordings, including covers of Freddie King’s I’m Tore Down and Memphis Slim’s Steppin’ Out.

Other highlights include In My Dreams, a scorching cover of How Blue Can You Get — originally cut by Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers and made famous in 1964 by BB King — and the blistering Living With The Blues.

A fine album of unearthed gems.

TB

Various
H25PITAL
(Hospital Records)
★★★★

TO MARK their 25th year as one of the most esteemed labels in drum & bass, Hospital Records celebrate with a groundbreaking selection of 25 brand new remixes and reworks.

While the formula of a high tempo 174bpm has stayed in place, the style of the genre has moved on. It’s the same architecture but radical reinterpretations, combined with bright new foundations and furniture, abound in what seems an endless flow of new ideas.

H25PITAL embarks on a journey through the past, present and future of the label, featuring the likes of Netsky, London Elektricity, Keeno, Voltage, Fred V, Danny Byrd, Nu Logic and many more.

Highlights include DRS & Dynamite, who team up with Logistics for a shapeshifting remix of the 2009 track Jungle Music, Halogenix’s remix of Kings Of The Rollers’ Shella and Metrik’s Cadence, complete with dreamlike synths and ravishing vocals.

SD

Dear John: Concert for War Child UK
(Blurred Vision Music)
★★★

WITH proceeds going to War Child UK, this celebration of John Lennon, marking what would have been his 80th birthday, brings together a collection of international artists for a worthy, but perhaps slightly underwhelming, walk through the legend’s back catalogue.

Curated by war refugee Sepp Osley and his band Blurred Vision, a top idea of calling on artists from all continents to come together to celebrate doesn’t quite click.

There’s a riff-heavy Strawberry Fields Forever and an adept but uninspiring version of Tomorrow Never Knows by Gowan of Styx.

Neither add much to Lennon’s canon and more tracks inspired by the man rather than just covers of his work may have worked better.

Then again, KT Tunstall’s take on Gimme Some Truth pares it back to the message which soars with her sweet voice and Maxi Jazz’s Power to the People is simple and potent.

Kudos for the concept, less so for the application.

MS

Howlin’ Wolf
Rare Wolf
(Floating World)
★★★★

ONE of my favourite TV clips is of the US show Shindig when the Rolling Stones faced presenter Jack Good making small talk.

Brian Jones tells him to shut up and let Howlin’ Wolf perform and we were then treated to the giant blues singer performing How Many More Years, jabbing his finger, blowing the back off his harmonica and doing hip rolls which left nothing to the imagination as Mick Jagger smiled on.

Born in Mississippi in 1910 Chester Burnett (Wolf) was a sharecropper who befriended the great delta bluesman Charley Patton and in 1951 he commenced recording some of the toughest post-war blues records at Sun studios in Memphis and at Chess in Chicago.

This 55-tracker contains out-takes, demos and alternate takes from 1951 to 1963 and there are no barrel scrapings, they are music history.

TB

black midi
Cavalcade
(Rough Trade)
★★★★

SOUTH LONDON’S black midi’s 2019 debut album Schlagenheim was nominated for the Mercury Prize and was one of the New York Times’ albums of the year.

Their sonics, a hybrid mix of PiL, Talking Heads, Gang of Four and progressive punk jazz, is central to their signature sound as are the high falsetto and broodingly dark vocals of Geordie Greep.

Their new album is a dynamic and inventive mix which scales new heights but with a more focused song structure and theatrical approach.

It opens with John L, with a full-on machine-gun snare leading into staccato guitar riffs and violins and the tempo slows up for the ballad Marlene Dietrich, followed by contrasting jungle dance rhythms on Dethroned.

The highlight is the single Chondromalacia Patella, a multilayered jagged jazz-guitar punk fusion, full of swooping piano lines and a punching yet subtle bass, all framing shifting melodic vocals.

SD

Frank Turner
England Keep My Bones: 10th Anniversary Edition
(Xtra Mile Recordings)
★★★★

NEATLY summed up by his debut solo EP Campfire Punkrock, Frank Turner’s music puts an angry spring in your step while wrapping warm arms around you.

This breakthrough album — released as a special edition a decade on — touches on death, Englishness and identity.

Whether singing about his late grandmother in the simple and uplifting Peggy Sang The Blues, to how rock ’n’ roll is the new religion in I Still Believe, this expanded collection of tracks questions the status quo and what it means to be English.

There are the original dozen tracks, ending with Glory Hallelujah — which asks if there is no God, is there still meaning to life — along with a myriad of unheard demos and obscure B-sides.

It’s an impressive collection from what could possibly be best described as an Eton-educated Billy Bragg.

Yet, as Turner sings: “It doesn’t matter where you come from, it matters where you go.” Indeed.

MS