New Music 2018 - Part 15 - Beelzebub Jones - A Good Day To Be A Bad Guy

Not many artists choose midnight at the end of Easter Sunday to drop a new release. I guess if they do then there are not that many people just waiting to discover it and listen there and then. As it happens I was and not because I had any prior knowledge. I'd been out doing something completely different and got home in no mood to turn in. I needed some wind-down time first and needless to say this immediately caught my attention. Some things are just meant to happen and this collaboration between Andrew McClatchie (Half Deaf Clatch) and Richard Wall is, to paraphrase their own description, dirty cinematographic Americana.
It is the soundtrack to a spaghetti Western that you have never seen simply because it doesn't actually exist. You can therefore imagine the plot to suit yourself. The cover art might look rather daunting but do you judge everything by its cover? Music is as much about your imagination as it is about the people who make it.

Beelzebub Jones - A Good Day To Be A Bad Guy (Speak Up Recordings, 2 April 2018).

It is based on a short story by Richard Wall and that accompanies the limited edition of the physical release (CD, 100 copies) as part of the 26-page A5 booklet. Here's the play list to contemplate:

Nicotine, Liquor & Blasphemy

Whiskey For Breakfast

Dry, Dry Bones

Rattlesnake Interlude

The Heist

Death Of The Teller 

Never Take Me Alive

Sinners Last Request

Vultures

The Crossing Place 

Working For The Devil

Revenge Is My Only Friend 

Showdown

I can only presume that title 'Beelzebub Jones' is taken from a comic strip, with a Wild Western theme, that ran in the Daily Mail from December 1938 - December 1945. If that is true then it is quite something, if not it is an astonishing coincidence. The clapperboard is all yours.

New Music 2018 - Part 12 - The Orielles - Silver Dollar Moment

As I have started listening to bands on the increasing wave of acts that I do not know much about and announced for festivals that I am attending in 2018, of which more later, it has caused me to reflect on some that I became acquainted with last summer. One thing that comes to mind here is that, despite all claims to the contrary, indie guitar rock is not dead and neither does it consist only of bands that made their reputations "back in the day", whenever that was.
There seem to be plenty of young bands willing and able to seek out nooks and crannies of the genre that they feel deserving of some attention.  This is the début LP from one of them that I saw at Green Man Festival 2017.

The Orielles - Silver Dollar Moment (Heavenly Recordings, 16 February 2018).

A three-piece from Halifax, Yorkshire the band consists of sisters Esmé D Hand-Halford (lead vocals, bass), Sidonie B Hand-Halford (percussion) and Henry Carlyle Wade (guitar, vocals) and on one level the songs are mirrored by the album artwork: fascinating but difficult to define exactly what it is or what it means. The band cites cinema, and Tarantino in particular, as an influence and that might have a bearing on all this.
What I will say is that although I am no aficionado of cinema I find this album fascinating. Not only do I like it but it works for me either as something to concentrate on to the exclusion of almost everything else but it also works as background music too. Indeed I have been doing both while thinking about, composing and then writing this post. I wonder if the band had and eye on and ear to the possibility that their music might attract cinematic attention. It would certainly be a good commercial move if it were to come off.

Their set at Green Man Festival 2017 was unenviable in one way - the band opened the lovely Walled Garden stage at mid-day Saturday. Opening a stage is never easy after the night before, even if that only applies to the audience, and inevitable nerves. The band showed no sign of the latter and the audience was significant and appreciative; however I found the atmosphere harder to catch on camera!

The Orielles - Walled Garden stage, Green Man Festival, 19 August 2017.

I won't single-out any tracks from the LP but I will mention their first single, which is not on the album, because the eight-minutes-plus of 'Sugar Tastes Like Salt' had already done more than enough to pique my interest and ensure that I was going to be there to discover more. The fact that it was released on Heavenly Recordings helped too; I have rediscovered the concept of "trusted" labels and this is one of them.

Here it is:

The Orielles are confirmed to play End Of The Road Festival 2018.