New on Shfl, February 2025
Nate Patrin on Tribute Compilations, Jon Dale on the Canterbury Scene, plus new recommendations from Ned Raggett, Joe Muggs, Chris Catchpole, Jeff Treppel and Hank Shteamer
Nate Patrin on Tribute Compilations
It was good for business, good for canon-building, good for rediscovering semi-forgotten yet low-key influential artists, and good for the occasional bizarre novelty. (Ever wanted to hear your favorite alt-rockers play your favorite James Bond or Saturday Morning Cartoon themes?)
Jon Dale on the Canterbury Scene
One thing that does seem to unite the various artists assembled, by others, under the Canterbury Scene aegis, is musical fluidity, both in listening habits (and thus influence), and in playerly capacity (and thus the music produced). Jazz was obviously big for many of the Canterbury Scene groups – it’s writ all over albums by The Soft Machine, Centipede, Hugh Hopper, Coxhill/Miller – but psychedelia is key, both in as psych-pop filigree and psych-rock grunt.
Reviews
Ned Raggett
The Legendary Pink Dots — So Lonely in Heaven
With Orbit Service member Randall Frazier now on electronics in the current quartet lineup, there’s a certain stateliness evident throughout So Lonely In Heaven, evident from the start with its title track – Erik Drost’s guitar parts are some of the loveliest they’ve had over the years, and he does a fine job throughout the album – but Ka-Spel’s particular lyrical and musical visions remain in full effect.
Supercollider — Supercollider
Supercollider’s debut album remains one of the most remarkable, unusual efforts of whatever could be termed alternative rock in the broadest sense from the early 1990s – it wasn’t simply at odds with what the term would become, it was almost at odds with nearly everything else around it in general.
Supercollider — Dual
The slight aural pun of Supercollider’s second album title also underscores the nature of the amazing partnership between Michael Horton and Philip Haut, who built on the striking promise of their debut to create an even more entrancing vision of truly modernist rock-as-such, as conversant with Steve Reichian minimalism, cyclical, relentless but never overbearing or crushing, as with vividly stirring guitar parts and an embrace of technological possibilities.
Joe Muggs
Causeway — Anywhere
And nobody more so than the US duo Causeway, who on their second album hit every reference point – Yazoo, early Human League, early Eurythmics, Chris & Cosey, Propaganda, affectless singing about devastating emotions, fizzing chords, clean sounds, all the rest – and yet manage to make it sound fresh, sonically immense, even current.
Ken Boothe — Let's Get It On
It’s truly extraordinary that this album remained more or less an obscurity for 50 years after its 1974 release. It’s as good an example as you could hope to find of how the first imperial phase of reggae could adopt any and all kinds of songwriting and make it completely its own – but perhaps because the Anglo-American critical establishment were hyperfocused on the rockstar-like rebel music of Bob Marley, the values of less glaringly politicised Jamaican music weren’t so widely appreciated.
Kuniko Kato — Bach: Solo Works for Marimba
Kuniko’s playing is careful and exacting, but also full of expressive micro-gestures and unbelievable understanding of the variation her instrument is capable of, so if you zoom in on the playing it will grip you as fiercely as any more obviously grand performance.
Jeff Treppel
Heavy Load — Death or Glory
Serious silliness from Sweden, but we could all use some quality Nordic cheese sometimes. In fact, Heavy Load may be the first Swedish metal band – their debut, Full Speed at High Level, came out the same year as metal forger Stained Class.
Dream Theater — Parasomnia
The heart of any prog rock band is almost always the drummer, so when Mike Portnoy left Dream Theater 15 years ago it was like that notorious scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Replacement Mike Mangini had the chops but not the hard-hitting soul of his predecessor, leading to increasingly byzantine and song-free concept records that put the truth to all the criticism leveled at them over the years. Portnoy’s return heralds the arrival of their finest album of perhaps the 21st century.
Rorschach — Protestant
Converge, Botch, Cave In, et al learned how to calculate infinity somewhere. That somewhere was here, Rorschach’s second album. After barking up a storm with Pavlov’s dogs on debut Remain Sedate, these five New Jersey dissonance dissidents looked at the inkblot and saw the future of hardcore.
Hank Shteamer
Pat Metheny Group — The Way Up
The Way Up turned out to be the final Pat Metheny Group album, and it’s fitting, as the record felt like both a creative peak and a culmination of everything the band had been working toward for the prior quarter-century-plus.
Pat Metheny Group — The Road to You
After making the jump from ECM to Geffen in the late ‘80s, the Pat Metheny Group transcended the jazz niche and became an international touring phenomenon, a triumph that’s captured beautifully on the band’s second live release, which opens with the sound of a massive crowd chanting the theme to Group staple “Minuano (Six Eight).”
Pat Metheny — Bright Size Life
There are auspicious debuts, and then there’s a first effort like Bright Size Life, on which Pat Metheny opened the door to a vast musical universe that he’s still exploring today. Then just 22, the guitarist led a plugged-in trio — featuring drummer Bob Moses and a bassist on the cusp of superstardom named Jaco Pastorius — but the flashiness of fusion was nowhere to be found here.
Chris Catchpole
Horsegirl — Phonetics on and On
Produced by Cate Le Bon, second album Phonetics On and On turns down the alt-rock static of their 2022’s debut, revealing more sparse and precise lines. Nora Cheng and Penelope Lowenstein’s vocals intertwine on songs of loneliness that come from a place of poignancy rather than aloofness.
Richard & Mimi Fariña — Celebrations for a Grey Day
In the mid 60s, the US folk scene faced a schism as Dylan broke ranks and folk rock, then later psychedelia, diluted what many saw as the integrity of the music. In 1965, however, Richard and Mimi Fariña found an entirely different route from within folk’s roots.
Richard Dawson — End of the Middle
Like an avant-folk Alan Bennett, Dawson’s eye for the mundane minutiae of everyday life is wonderful, with songs detailing the drudgery of post-Christmas sales (“Boxing Day”), the restorative power of gardening (“Polytunnel”) and the messy knots of family life and parenting (“Bullies”).