BUCK GOOTER – KING KONG LIVES: THEREMINSANITY The combination of enigmatic, vintage synths and loBY TOM MURPHY fi percussion with the late Terry Turtle’s wiry and urgent guitar, alongside Billy Brett’s impassioned vocals and other strangeness, is the perfect vehicle for an album of cultural and personal time travel. Starting by invoking the poignant moments of the schlocky 1986 sequel to the 1976 King Kong, Buck Gooter weaves in stories of childhood memories as a way of navigating the anxieties of the present, as those early experiences manifest well into adulthood as part of our subconscious narrative. The result is a little like Laurie Anderson, with her typically absurdist humor, making a prescient, tribal industrial punk record without mincing words. DETH RALI – RUBY’S CASTLE ISLAND Did songwriter and lyricist Jay Maike get a time travel machine and go hang out with Billy Thorpe in 1979 while he was recording Children of the Sun, after a stop at Wye Valley in February 1977 to jam with Hawkwind during the making of Quark, Strangeness and Charm? Or more in line with reality, he had some hang time with Kevin Barnes when he was working on Lady on the Cusp in 2024? Chances are no, but this ambitious, psychedelic, goth pop album has plenty of narrative arc, colorful characters, and epic fantasy concepts of its own that it’s easy to get lost in its gorgeous, transporting melodies and tales of peril and transcendence. EDDIE DURKIN – SOME MORE DEMOS FOR NOTHING Durkin probably could have recorded without the wind sound and other white noise in the background, but that would have subtracted from the raw appeal of this album. It’s like he is writing songs on a porch and recording straight to analog tape, though it’s obvious there is some production. When writing tracks that get real about everyday life struggles from the perspective of someone with a poetic soul, a completely pristine recording would seem to work at cross-purposes. The yearning and hopefulness in these songs against present and sometimes overwhelming challenges is refreshingly free of bravado and gives the songwriting a heightened accessibility, like the kind of energy you can reach even if you’re way down low in life. Fans of Microphones and Owen Ashworth will find great resonance here both sonically and emotionally. No. 136
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