Review - The Ginger Quiff

GingerQuiff – Final lists of 2020

December 31, 2020 By neilho27@sky.com

Following on from my albums of the year list, the following are my final lists for 2021.

I don’t have a top gigs list for 2021 as I only went to a handful at the start of the year not realising what the year had in store. Though The Wildhearts, Backyard Babies, The Interrupters, Savage Cut and Outstandifold & the Wettygrippers were a pretty good start to what should have been a great year of gigs..

Re-Releases

Bob Mould – Distortion (1989 – 2019) – what can I say, Santa was good to me this year. What a fantastic box set this is.

… Read the rest

Last Night From Glasgow – A success story for 2020

December 31, 2020 By neilho27@sky.com

My love for certain record labels is well documented with NYC based, while retaining its Scottish roots, Tarbeach Records up there amongst my favourites. A fact that is ably demonstrated by the inclusion of The Cundeez Teckle and Hide and New York Junk‘s Dreaming (shortly to be available for ordering on red vinyl) amongst my favourite albums of the year.

It is probably the only record label that I can say, hand on heart, that I own every pone of their releases. Here’s to another successful year in 2021 from Tarbeach.

Last Night From Glasgow…

This year though, one record label stands out amongst the others.… Read the rest

The Ginger Quiff – 2020 review

December 23, 2020 By neilho27@sky.com

Albums of the year

2020 might have been a year to forget for uncountable reasons, a year many would rather forget. However, the amount, and quality, of new music that saw the light of day in 2020 was astounding. So much so, narrowing down my favourite albums of this year to a top ten was a nigh on impossible task.

Even now as I have committed to and published this list, I am still making changes in my head. To say that some of these albums were “better” than others would be to dismiss the quality of said albums. Just know that I appreciate and applaud the time and love that has gone into the recording of all of these albums.… Read the rest

Dead Sheeran Vs TV Smith (album reviews)

December 11, 2020 By neilho27@sky.com

Two COVID related albums caught my attention in recent weeks.

One of them brimming with bristling brio, the other packed with very personal reflections. Both of them, despite their different music styles, bursting with energy and anger and overflowing with punk attitude.

One of these albums is the debut from the remarkable Dead Sheeran. Draw a Venn diagram of John Cooper Clarke, Sleaford Mods and IDLES and you’ve pretty much got the picture. The other is from the grandaddy of punk, the punk rock warlord himself, TV Smith. When so called icons of the first wave of punk, like the washed up MAGA loving controversial-for-the-sake-of-it muppet Lydon are playing to the gallery, Smith has quietly unleashed a monster.… Read the rest

Vulpynes – US Against Them EP review

November 1, 2020 By neilho27@sky.com

Irelands answer to L7, Vulpynes, released their latest 4 track EP on Halloween. Molly and Kaz the visceral power grunge duo preceded this EP with one of its track Sister earlier in the year.

The EP leads off with the remarkable power and ferocity of One Horse Mind. And Vulpynes journey continues apace. Molly’s formidable vocal more than a match for the sheer wave of intense noise they produce – no matter how much it “fucks with her brain”.

This Motor is Me has a highly infectious riff running throughout. Judging by the non-stop crashing drums and cymbals Kaz must have expounded a tonne of energy in the playing – her motor certainly in overdrive for this one.… Read the rest

Songs and Snippets

October 31, 2020 By neilho27@sky.com

As a lover of albums, one off tracks and singles sometimes pass me by, it would be remiss of me though not to highlight the plethora of quality stand-alone tracks, singles, or album teasers that have been waved temptingly in front of me over the past weeks and months.

In no particular order…

Deer Leader

Deer Leader follow up the absorbing Four Deuces with new single Crocodile. The single is an epic taste of what the band can do and fairly whets the appetite for more from this remarkable trio. An enigmatically engaging elegiac start to the song, hypnotic rhythms, soothing and reassuring, becoming softer and lulling you into a safe quiet place ….… Read the rest

The Cundeez – Teckle & Hide – album review

October 16, 2020 By neilho27@sky.com

I’ve been immersing myself in some Dundonian culture lately thanks to Teckle & Hide the latest, and strongest, album from The Cundeez

An Intoxicating Heady Brew

100% proof claims the album cover, and its claims are not wrong. The sixteen tracks served up are an intoxicating heady brew. The Cundeez cementing themselves as a North East Scotland powerhouse. One minute offering an ultimate good time party anthem, guaranteed to have any party jumping as they provide the raw unfiltered craic, once again promised on the album cover. I’m not going to lie though, the party might get messy, there are no guarantees how things might end up.… Read the rest

More Pandemic singles…

September 27, 2020 By neilho27@sky.com

The Filthy Tongues – Pandemic Pete

The real-life apocalypse that 2020 has become has fucked with The Filthy Tongues schedule of recording the third album in the apocalyptic trilogy they started with the darkly magnificent duo Jacobs Ladder and Back to Hell. To keep Tongues fans satisfied the band have just released the second of their global epidemic related tunes, following up Gas Mask Blues with the mighty Pandemic Pete.

The song is a microcosm of everything you could want or would expect from The Filthy Tongues. Colourful storytelling and characterisation. Biting lyrics with a wry dark humorous edge. The opening couplet drolly listing the ways in which an disaster that writes off a whole year might have announced itself…”I wanted zombies and diamond dogs, I wanted triffids and a plague of frogs….”… Read the rest

Mt Doubt – Doubtlands – album review

September 10, 2020 By neilho27@sky.com

One of the advantages of membership of Last Night From Glasgow is getting your sticky mitts on the glorious recordings ahead of their release. As the date for the official launch of the latest album, Doubtlands, from the magnificent Mt Doubt approaches (18th September) this stirring collection of songs, which manages to be both darkly melancholic but at the same time upliftingly enriching, feels like it has been spinning on my turntable for years such is the welcoming radiance it exudes. A sound that feels like the missing link between the dark storytelling and deep velvety resonance of antipodean troubadour Nick Cave and the multifarious textures of Glasgow’s own Blue Nile and The Bathers.… Read the rest

Emperor of Ice Cream – No Sound Ever Dies – album review

August 31, 2020 By neilho27@sky.com

Hailing from Cork, a breeding ground for such acts as Sultans of Ping FC, Microdisney/Fatima Mansions and Cyclefly, Emperor of Ice Cream is a band out of time. Their debut album has just been released. Some 28 years since the band formed back in 1992 and 25 years after they split having been dropped by their record label. This release should have been rubbing shoulders with releases from contemporaries from The Frank & Walters to Whipping Boy, A House to Into Paradise. Fast forward to the release in 2020 and instead they are rubbing shoulders with the likes of Fontaines DC and The Murder Capital.… Read the rest