Men Of North Country - '3'

'3' is the third album by Men Of North Country and the first on Well Suspect Records.

Moving away from the pure soul sounds of their previous two acclaimed albums on Acid Jazz Records, delving fearlessly into more eclectic territory, mapping their musical influences into a stirring collection of irresistibly melodic songs.

Featuring wistful jangle-pop 'Out on the Hills', rollicking and celebratory 'Happy Birthday, Child', sweeping anthemic bravado 'There is Light', a romantic indie love ballad 'They Don't Know' (the Kirsty MacColl's classic) plus sexy rock'n'roll 'Since I found my Love'.

Oh, and they haven't abandoned their Northern Soul roots – just sprinkle some talcum powder on the floor and soar away to the sound of 'Ravens', plus a brilliant down-and-dirty rendition of Sam Dees's dance-floor filler 'Lonely for You Baby' (video below).

Opening with the soulful soundscape of 'Titanic' and closing with their dark version of Californian 60s garage-rock gem 'Rari' by The Standells – this album is a ride through diverse musical territories, all the while retaining the melodic heart and soul of the band.

Men Of North Country - '3' is available digitally, Bandcamp and vinyl from Well Suspect Records.

Check these videos for tracks featured on the album.

Men Of North Country - Titanic.

Men Of North Country release another single from their new and long awaited album since jumping ship from Acid Jazz Records to Well Suspect Records - Titanic. 

The follow up to their jangle-tastic version of the Kirsty MacColl track They Don't Know, this horn led dancer perfectly captures MONC's trade mark soulful indie pop/rock sound.

The press release blurb is fun ..

I's Titanic a cruise ship or a shipwreck? Is there a difference? Or is it a metaphor for the western world? Is Titanic the highest grossing blockbuster made up to its time, or a beautiful stop-motion animated short? Is the band in the song Robbie Robertson's The Band or a band of walruses? Do selkies really exist?

Titanic was written at a time of confusion and insecurity, when questions arose, and it all seemed to go down the drain. This called for a big vessel. We need a bigger boat.

Rari is an all-time live favourite, an epic of almost ten minutes, it's has been a show stopper and set closer for quite some time. A desperate tale of lust and longing by the great Californian 60s garage-rock band the Standells, written by the brilliant Ed Cobb of Tainted Love fame.' 

Men Of North Country - Titanic is out now on all digital platforms with links on their artist page on Well Suspect Records or Bandcamp if you prefer

The video is something else, a mini masterpiece directed and animated by Nadine Ann Abraham; check it out below.

Hopefully the album with follow .... soon.

Men Of North Country - They Don't Know. Kirsty MacColl tribute

Having worked closely with Men Of North Country throughout their two brilliant albums on Acid Jazz Records; Well Suspect Records are proud to claim them as the label's latest signing.

MONC have always worn musical influences on their sleeve, both in their original songs and choice of covers. Always pointing at the giants on whose shoulders they stand as if trying to zoom out of the shot, to capture the bigger picture, not just a selfie.

Kirsty MacColl's 'They Don't Know ' - is no exception. Kirsty was and always will be the queen of songwriters, ruling many a genre. No one sang like her, no one was sassier and no one softer; and sadly no one had a more tragic ending. Twenty years after her untimely death, MONC had to cover one of her tunes; her crown jewel, one of those 'best songs ever'. A tune that refines that feeling of 'us against the world', and of course, somehow manages to transcend it.

The perfect pop song and a taster of things to come –
a new MONC album due for release in 2021 on Well Suspect Records.

Available on Bandcamp.

And all other digital platforms.

CORDUROY - Winky Wagon (Best Of The Psy-Fi Years)

Corduroy legend holds that having recorded the three 'classic' albums for Acid Jazz Records, our illustrious heroes parted with said company and released a further two albums on a 'major' record label, investigating themes, techniques and technologies previously unexplored; this period of the band’s brave journey became known as the 'psy-fi -years'.

Exhausted, Corduroy disbanded shortly after.

      Prophecy foretold that, two decades later, the group would reform and reunite with Acid Jazz; and furthermore that the fabled 'psy-fi' recordings would be compiled by the sister label, WellSuspect Records, into a twelve track, sky-blue-vinyl collection, featuring choice tracks from the major albums, singles and B-sides. This limited edition selection is entitled Winky Wagon.

Experimenting with exotic eastern flavours, easy-soul, yacht-pop, Brit-beats and amped-up funk, the compilation captures Corduroy expanding their signature thematic instrumental palette with melodic, irresistible and beautifully crafted songs.

Out now on at www.wellsuspect.com on limited edition sky blue vinyl and CD.

Skill!

Fay Hallam - Propeller

Propeller is Fay Hallam's masterwork; a perfection of dynamic pop-soul; melodic, driven and precise...clearing a path through a fug of retro pretenders; re-setting the stylist bar, re-starting the modernist machine.

Having spent 2018 co-writing and performing with Swedish artist Magnus Carlson, Fay Hallam and her band have re-claimed 2019 as their own with this powerful collection of Hammond grooves, soul-full vocals, funky rhythms and powerful horn arrangements.

It will blow you away! 

The follow-up to the critically acclaimed House Of Now, produced by erstwhile Paul Weller bassist Andy Lewis, and including the dance-floor monster Starting To Feel Good, Propeller is available now on CD and vinyl on Well Suspect Records.

 Here's a video for one my favorite tracks, Lie Detector.
 

   

 A must have album.

Fay Hallam - Starting To Feel Good

Euphoric, infectious and addictive, Fay Hallam's latest single, Starting To Feel Good, is a pop master-class of funk groove, soul-full vocal and a horn section that's so catchy it should be quarantined.
‘A feel-great song for hearts and feet, with lyrics, melodies and rhythms that warm the soul.’

From the forthcoming album, Propeller (the follow-up to House Of Now), Starting To Feel Good is available from Well Suspect Records on all digital platforms from 29th March.

Watch this space for a the album release.

Here's the video.

Skill!

The Fleur De Lys Singles Box Set

The Fleur De Lys were in the thick of the swinging sixties music scene. Held in high regard by their rock star contemporaries and adoring public alike, but frustratingly fame and fortune never called. Initially formed in 1964 as a beat band, surviving through the excesses of psychedelia, before evolving into a Stax tinged soul outfit, their output was constant and outstanding. Whilst finding time to record under pseudonyms (Rupert's People, Shyster and Chocolate Frog), become the backing band for the late soul sensation Sharon Tandy, and fulfil commitments as in-house session band for the UK Atlantic label, The Fleur De Lys released seven 45s over a five year period; these singles are considered holy grails amongst record devotees. As part of the seminal Rare Mod series from Acid Jazz Records, the seven 45s are presented as one deluxe collection for Record Store Day and elsewhere soon after, I Can See The Light: The Fleur De Lys Singles Box Set. Including for the first time Wait For Me the original b-side to their debut single Moonbeams, the song that was mysteriously replaced with a Jimmy Page instrumental. Also including The Fleur's version of The Who's maximum R&B hit Circles, freakbeat classics Mud In Your Eye, I Can See A Light, Liar and Gong With The Luminous Nose, plus the soul stomper Stop Crossing The Bridge. Presented in replicated Immediate / Polydor and Atlantic Records house bags with matching labels, the box contains a fully illustrated 32 page booklet with sleeve notes from critically acclaimed author Paul ‘Smiler’ Anderson and The Fleur De Lys drummer, Keith Guster. 

Singles:

1. MOONDREAMS / WAIT FOR ME. 

2. CIRCLES / SO COME ON.

3. MUD IN YOUR EYE / I'VE BEEN TRYING.

4. I CAN SEE A LIGHT / PRODIGAL SON.

5. GONG WITH THE LUMINOUS NOSE / HAMMERHEAD.

6. STOP CROSSING THE BRIDGE / BRICK BY BRICK.

7. YOUR JUST A LIAR / ONE GIRL CITY.

Fay Hallam - House Of Now

Queen of the Vidal bob hair-do, Fay Hallam paid her rock dues fronting bands like The Prime Movers, Phaze, The Fay Hallam Trinity and Makin' Time (with a pre- Charlatans Martin Blunt). She has worked with Billy Childish, Graham Day, Alan Crockford and The Bongolian, and has toured the UK and Europe extensively.

2016 finds Fay having recorded possibly her strongest album to date; produced by Paul Weller collaborator Andy Lewis, House Of Now is a collection of progressive torch songs and filmic funk, ambitious and groovy; her rhythm & blues inspiration still very apparent but fused with a theatre-land soul reminiscent of musical freak-fests like Godspell, Superstar or Hair. 

All songs are written by Fay except for His Name Is King, a big band gospel arrangement by Luis Bacalov, rediscovered by Quentin Tarantino for his spaghetti film soundtrack, Django Unchained.

Curious and conceptual, House Of Now is a timely fusion of Fay Hallam's music and Musical influences.

Available from Well Suspect Records.

The Third Degree - TOXIC

The Third Degree was the band that fooled the nation that Duffy's hit record, Mercy, was a cover version of an older, much better, Northern Soul original; were you fooled?

Another modern classic gets The Third Degree treatment; this time it's Madonna-snogger Britney Spears' turn to be outclassed with this sexed-up version of Toxic, re-imagined as a heavy soul rocker. 

Sounding like the mutant lovechild of seventies stadium fillers, Chicago and Meatloaf, with a guitar riff reminiscent of The Knacks My Sherona, a driving bass line similar to The Spencer Davis Groups Keep On Running, plus moody horn section and soulful vocal, this red hot seven inch vinyl funk master-class will be an instant DJ deck essential, getting dancing shoes spinning on polished boards in late night dance joints everywhere.

The flip side is I Kissed A Girl, the song that made Katy Perry famous ... But whose version came first?

Taken from the forthcoming Well Suspect Records compilation album Dirty Mod.

Available from wellsuspect.com. 

Generation Mod

Mod created the world in six days ... and it was good. On the first day, the be-suited sharp set distinguished themselves from duffel coated 50s traditional jazz fans (Trads) by identifying with the caffeine fuelled heartbeat of modern jazz; the Moderns established a precedent in music and style that spilled into the next decade. On the second day, a crowd of working class kids discovered 60s soul, invested their disposable income on multi-coloured amphetamines and gathered at all-night rave-ups; an offshoot clique of suede headed peacocks broadened the musical palette with Jamaican ska. On the third day a parallel of punk rock, with a fresh faced mod-father as its feather headed spokesman, inspired kids to stitch targets to musty parkas and glory to the new wave; this mod revival swelled in ranks and battled through to the early eighties. On the fourth day, a new decade witnessed an independent record label christen a music genre of the same name, as a family of beat bands reclaimed mod in all its acid jazzy moods and fancies. On the fifth day, a gathering of mid-nineties musicians re-invented lad-rock, reclaiming it as British. On the sixth day, inspired by the moderns, the suedes, the revivalists, beatniks and the brit-popper - yet another batch of bands site mod as their musical motivation. These bands and their fans are… Generation Mod! (Searle. Generation Mod. Well Suspect Records (2016)).

No matter how you choose to define your modernist self; be it Italian shoe obsessed, or mohair suit specific; three-finger button-down slim-fit fanatical, a bouffant comb-overed middle-aged polo-shirt wearing scooter enthusiastic... or simply a kid in a target T,  the mod scene has, and always will be, about the music; Generation Mod is a celebration of that fact.

       Released on the fresh faced Well Suspect record label, this compilation features an eclectic and contemporary musical reach that will appeal to most mod tastes, soul, ska, beat and psych.

Featuring:

Dogtooth - Get In Get Out; they are only 13,14 and 16 years of age and they rock!  A band to watch. 
Dave's Doors of Perception; south London's nastiest noisiest garage psych band, make their Farfisa drenched debut with Falling.
Motown legend, Martha Reeves, called Samuel S. Parkes "the genuine spirit of Northern Soul," Samuel opens side one with Let Me Go. 
Dirty rock slags, The Get Go, turn their attentions to the Ike and Tina Turner classic, Nutbush City Limits. 
Italy's finest, The Mads,offer the melodic stomper What I Need.

French Boutik, reinvent the torch song with Mieux Comme Ca.

Men Of North Country get extra Northern with They Don't Know.

      
There are a total of fourteen tracks including fine offerings from Andy Lewis, The Moons and New Street Adventure, but possibly the highlight is the track, also released as a limited edition seven inch single for Record Store Day, Private Jones - I Got By In Time; if you don't manage to get yourself the seven, then order Generation Mod now; it's gonna be hot!  

   

Men Of North Country: This City.

It’s been 3 years since Tel Aviv’s indie-soul outfit, Men Of North Country, released their critically acclaimed debut LP, The North, on Acid Jazz Records. In the meantime they have been keeping themselves busy, touring Europe no less than five times, including Germany, France, Italy and the Czech Republic and were greeted with excitement all over Europe’s Mod and Soul scene; that hard work has apparently paid off.

MONC's much anticipated second album, This City, won't disappoint; it still contains the sixties inspired dance floor killers of its predecessor, but the musical palette has broadened, sonically its a much harder edged record, yet the lyrics and vocals convey a spectacular soulfulness; it turns out that the bands 'tricky second album' is a masterpiece.

The band describe their sound as 'space mod lounge music that emerged from the Bauhaus inspired architecture of Tel Aviv and a thousand other influences:most of them unexpected'. Twelve tracks infuse Northern Soul, Post-Punk and Nu-Wave influences into heady visions of the city’s buildings, streets, bedrooms, clubs and bars, while remaining dedicated to their brass section extravaganza and the three-minute pop-nugget charm.

Side one of the vinyl kicks off with Running, a track that Craig Charles has championed, (resulting in a digital single release of the song with two extra tracks not featured on the album).

Track two, (this reviewers favourite track on the album) is a tribute to obscure Stax singer and Wu Tang Clan favourite, Wendy Rene, an epic heart thumping monster of a soul song with a horn arrangement of omnipotent proportion.

Track 3, All In, sounds like a hit record waiting to happen, and track 4, Boy, is the kind of song that raises the small hairs on the back of your neck, puts a lump in your throat, and haunts your every moment with a melody that is near impossible to shake from your head.

If you didn't manage to get a seven inch copy of the bands storming cover version of Lou Pride’s Northern Soul classic, I’m Com’un Home (In the Morn’un), then stop stressing; it kicks off side two.

This City is an exceptional recording by a remarkable, if little known band; believe me when I say... you need this records.

Corduroy / Private Jones. Records Store Day single.

The first release on the re-launched Well Suspect Records label is a double A side Record Store Day, limited edition (500 copies), white vinyl seven inch single, featuring Private Jones' audacious cover version of The Jam's I Got By In Time; and a previously unreleased version of Chowdown recorded live by the funky beatnik outfit, Corduroy in 1992.

Taken from the forthcoming Well Suspect compilation, Generation Mod (SUSS04), Private Jones have re-imagined Paul Weller's punky rocker, featured on The Jam's debut album 'In The City', as a Tamla Motown stomper; expect to hear this on on talcum powder sprinkled dance-floors; a DJ box essential.

The flip side is a recently discovered live recording of Corduroy, from one of the Acid Jazz groups' earliest gigs, playing one of their live favourites, Chowdown. This funky instrumental captures the band at the beginning of their career, playing in a small and sweaty basement club in London's Soho. One for the beardy hipsters..video below.

This is bound to be a highly sought after item, so get down your local record shop very early on Record Store Day (April 16th); or if you don't fancy losing out to the in-crowd, here's a link.

E.P Choice 2 - the Rare Mod e.p collection: series 2.

The first series of Acid Jazz's Rare Mod E.P series became a box-set and CD comp,

E.P Choice 1; this compilation, as the name suggests, is the second series. No less ambitious than it's predecessor, this beautifully packaged CD features eight artists,The Aphex, Geno Washington, Jimmy James and The Vagabonds, The Ossie Layne Show, Dave Anthony's Moods, John's Children, and David Bowie's first group, The Riot Squad.

Most of the individual artist E.Ps are reviewed elsewhere on this blog (follow the links) so I won't go into great detail, but standout tracks include, The Aphex's storming garage rocker She's Got The Time, John's Children's original version of Smashed! Blocked!,The Ossie Layne Show (feat, Norman Watt-Roy of The Blockheads) Sing A Simple Song, Dave Anthony's Moods' storming classic New Directions, Geno Washington and The Ram Jam Band's floor-filler Holding On (with Both Hands), Jimmy Jame's Northern Dancer She's Looking Good and a fascinating version of The Velvet Underground's I'm Waiting For My Man by The Riot Squad featuring David Bowie on lead microphone.

If you haven't managed to track down each of the very limited edition 7” vinyl E.Ps in this series, or just fancy having the lot on a disc to play in the Jag, this compilation is another fantastic, and often thrilling, journey through the swinging sixties music scene.

Skill!

Modern Northern Soul

Acid Jazz Records have been at the forefront of contemporary soul artists, releasing their modern take on the traditional Northern Style genre. Now, twenty-one of the best modern takes on Northern Soul have been compiled on this CD; starring Men Of North Country's brilliant reworking of the Lou Pride classic I'm Com'un Home In The Morn'un, spectacularly remixed by Smoove especially for this release. (M.O.N.C appear on this CD a stonking four times).

The compilation contains the best tailor-made soul of the decade, including Andy Lewis & Paul Weller's top 20 hit, Are You Trying To Be Lonely; Andy Lewis (bassist in the Weller band) features three times in all. The Third Degree’s Mercy (the track made famous by Duffy) is another stand out tune, as is Night Trains’ version of the Stranglers hit No More Heroes. Soul legend Dean Parrish collaborates with Lord Large on Left Right and Centre (a song written by Paul Weller when he was 16, which features Steve Cradock (Weller band) on Gtr and Richard Searle (Corduroy) on bass.

Look out for the new kids on the scene and their tracks, Lucky Lady and The Big AC from those fresh faced New Street Adventure boys, delivering old school new cool soulful vocals and horn section with vigor and verve.

Admittedly, at least half of these tracks feature on the compilation,Soul Potential, also released by Acid Jazz recently (minus the funkier numbers) but this is a solid effort none the less; highly recommended.

Full track listing:

Men Of North Country – I'm Com'un Home In The Morn'un.

Andy Lewis & Paul Weller – Are You Trying To Be Lonely?

Lord Large & Dean Parrish – Left Right And Centre.

Magnus Carlson – From Now On.

New Street Adventure – Lucky Lady.

The Third Degree – Mercy.

Night Trains – No More Heroes.

Lord Large feat Clem Curtis – Stuck In A Wind Up

Jasmine Kara – Ordinary Joe

Andy Lewis feat Lynda Lawrence - See You There

Smoove feat Jess Roberts – Coming Back

The Filthy Six – Girlfriend

New Street Adventure – TheBig A.C.

Tony Christie – Nobody In The World.

Andy Lewis feat Keni Burke – (Love Is) Alive In My Heart.

Men Of North Country – Pandora.

The Third Degree – Can't Get You Outta My Head.

The Dilemmas – Fahrenheit.

Men Of North Country – MirrorMan.

New Street Adventure – She's An Attraction.

Men Of North Country – I'm Com'un' Home In The Morn'un' - Smoove Remix

Released June 22^nd