Hello,
Happy Friday folks!
Due out on May 26th we have a brand new LP by Cowbell! It's not available for pre-order yet but you can check out the great cover art below!
Also a quick reminder of our recent and forthcoming releases along with a blast of hardcore from the DG vaults by Deep Wound (feat J Mascis and Lou Barlow). Read on!
Cowbell - Haunted Heart (CD/LP/DIGI)
London Garage Soul duo return with 3rd album HAUNTED HEART released on Damaged Goods!
More Memphis, more Fuzz, more greasy foot-beating, party-greeting, soul-treating maximum RnB. And yes, more Cowbell.
Jack Sandham (Guitar/Keys/Vox) and Wednesday Lyle (Drums/Vox) have straddled the Atlantic with the beat stampede of their songbook so far, but Haunted Heart sees them walk down the dark end of the street, drawing on Atlantic-era Ray Charles and Dusty, while still keeping on creeping on with the sweaty-hand shaky-knee Garage rock ear-worms.
From the Sun Studio, Cramps-like swagger of the title track, to the paranoid Coasters swing and Doors-keys of None Of Your Business, Jack’s urgent vocals yelp out from the first needle drop, stepping aside for Wednesday’s wink of the eye on the Holly Golighty/Black Lips femme-fatale fury of Downlow, which sounds like it’s been ripped straight from the beating heart of the Fillmore during the Summer Of Love.
Produced by the band themselves at Soup studios in Limehouse, London, their early raw bare-bones sound has now been fully expanded with Jack’s sandpaper grit guitars and Wednesday’s freight train rhythms chased down with some glitchy synths and vintage organs (Doom train/Neon blue) as well as a drop of Delta gospel Blues on Nothing But Trouble (also incidentally the first Cowbell song ever to actually feature a Cowbell).
Otis and Pickett-era horns breathe seductively into the swampy-stomp of What Am I Supposed To Do, while New Kind Of Love tiptoes onstage with its alluring smokey jazz piano as Wednesday brings a beautifully casual Peggy Lee type Fever to the microphone.
But it’s with the curtain-closers on both sides of wax that Cowbell have really rung in the new, Something’s Gotta Give swaps in gently plucked Laurel Canyon vibes, teardrop-stained and tie-dyed into a soul-stirring torch song. And just as we’re ready to step off this train, the last stop of No Wrong drops us off in the sherbet-sweet swell of a Cowbell classic. A toast to Percy Sledge and Van Morrison, with a giddy gospel reprise that has Jack and Wednesday promise that they “won’t do you no wrong”. And they’re damn right. Haunted by name, haunting by nature. Flip it up and start again. More Cowbell.
Cowbell are Jack Sandham and Wednesday Lyle.
Haunted Heart is their 3rd album on Damaged Goods, following their debut Beat Stampede and the follow-up Skeleton Soul.
They have been playlisted on BBC 6Music and toured extensively in the USA and Europe.
Cyanide Pills - Sliced and Diced (CD/LP/DIGI)
Limited edition LP! - 700 PINK copies!
CD – Digipack with 20 page lyric booklet!
Fact #1 - Cyanide Pills are a brilliant live band. Anyone who has seen them at Rebellion Festival or on one of their jaunts around Europe will agree.
Fact #2 – They write great songs.
Fact #3 – Their third LP Sliced and Diced is due out in March. It has 18 songs on it. (See Fact #2)
Keeping the spirit of '78 alive, the band's mix of punk blasts and melodic power-pop has never sounded better. With razor-sharp twin guitars, a pounding rhythm section and un-matched lyrical barbs, Sliced and Diced is one of the best albums you'll hear all year. It's everything you love about the band.
Since the last LP (2013's Still Bored), the band have gigged alongside some of the biggest names in punk including Buzzcocks, UK Subs, Johnny Moped, The Lurkers and many more.
Cyanide Pills will be touring Europe in March (see flyer below) and also play Rebellion Festival in Blackpool this August.
Like the previous album, Sliced and Diced was recorded at The Billiard Room in Leeds by Wedding Present producer Carl Rosamond.
There'll also be a 7" single ' Big Mistake' taken from the album featuring an exclusive B-side, due out in late April. It's not available for pre-order yet but here's a preview of the sleeve art.
And here's those tour dates in full -
Slime - 'Controversial' b/w 'Loony' (Ltd. Col 7")
Long-lost punk classic reissued on limited edition slime-green 7”!
Another in a long line of punk single re-issues from Damaged Goods, this time it's the 7" released on Toadstool Records by the band SLIME.
Slime was SLIMY TOAD from Johnny Moped's solo adventure into a recording studio during a bit of downtime in Johnny Mopeds career in 1978.
He was joined by mates Dave Tate on drums and Phil Sayers on vox and bass. They never got around to playing live as Moped duties took over once again. The single came out on Toadstool Records, Slimy's idea for a record label which was run by Chris Goodness who run a couple of record shops in Caterham, South London.
It was recorded in Richmond studios where the legendary Cycledelic was also recorded.
CTMF - SQ1 LP now on clear vinyl!
We've just had a repressing of the end of year journalist top 30 listings favourite CTMF's SQ 1
We've updated the cover a little, a green logo instead of black on the original pressings and it's on clear vinyl.
It's available in the shop now, click on the cover or just go direct to the DG shop. Cat No is DAMGOOD452/2
Deep Wound - Deep Wound LP
DEEP WOUND WERE NOT A SKI BAND (notes by Bryan Foley)
Although it has a legendary reek is some circles, the actuality of the Western Mass Hardcore scene is really kinda gloopy. I mean, for all extents and purposes, the Pajama Slave Dancers were the kings of the Valley. And there's just no way that a milieu dominated by a goddamn funny punk band can really be maxist. But it's worth bearing in mind that Hardcore was a predominantly suburban artform. Even the bands that became associated with certain cities were usually from the environs, rather than any downtown you'd recognize.
Because of this, Hardcore was one of the first underground musical movements that was instigated by teens themselves (rather than culturally-aware chickenhawks), and it was also a pit of anguished non-erotic-male-bonding. Drinking, drugs, wanton sex, none of these timeless topics was celebrated inside the Hardcore vortex. If these guys shared any Dionysian impulses they were directed towards record collecting, skateboarding and dancing around in weird tribal circles.
Which is not to say these bands didn't rip; they did. They created a crashing, post-glottal tongue-universe inside the heart of the Reagan Era, and destroyed (once and for all) the idea that it was necessary to maintain any real barrier between the audience and the band.
That said, Deep Wound, was a strange and powerful unit inside the doctrinaire confines of Hardcore. Although they were all kinda nerdy (excepting secret weapon Charlie Nakajima), they shredded in a very explicit way. There were some obvious structural debts to the Oi! Bands in their compositions, but they approached the exterior textures with stylistic nuances that were distinctly North American. As the Neos did on their Hassiban Gets the Martian Brain Squeeze EP, Deep Wound compressed time in ways that were extreme, and way outside the standard Square Dance beat that had been defined by Robo's drumming for Black Flag.
But Deep Wound's actual story is nothing out of the ordinary. It is but a minor variation on a thousand others.
J Mascis lived in Amherst. There was one punk at his high school and it wasn't Uma Thurman, it was Charlie. They were fortunate to have Ken Reed's great store, Main Street Records, in nearby Northampton. And they could get almost any American or UK punk stuff they needed from the racks or by special order.
One day in early '82, J met a Dee Dee Ramone lookalike at the Oi! singles bin. This was bassist Scott Helland. Scott posted a flier soon after looking for musicians into Anti-Pasti, Discharge and the like. J called to audition and had his dad drive him and his drums over to guitarist Lou Barlow's place in Westfield. They had a singer already, but J got them to replace him with Charlie, and Deep Wound was there.
They made a cassette, got a few gigs in Boston with the X-Claim bands (SSD, FU's, Jerry's Kids, etc.) and became the Western Mass band most likely to open for Hardcore visitors. They cut an EP, had tracks on Gerard Colsoy's Bands That Would Be God comp and even did a late-period session with Gerard singing that has disappeared into nada.
And every day they vowed to play faster. And they did, eventually developing a blur that could verge on experimental noise. Finally they burned as fast as they could, and realizing that was the case, they stopped. It was 1984.
The rest of the story is well known: Dinosaur, the Outpatients, Sebadoh, Gobblehoof, etc. Most of what Deep Wound recorded is on this disk, and it still sounds pretty choice the hundredth time through (believe me, I know). Like many of their suburban kith, there are huge swathes of Xeroxed style and content, but these patches are obliterated by an underlying fascination with the reckless potential of absolute speed, and an intellectual overlay (albeit in a nascent state) that would blossom more fully in the bands that would follow.
But y'know, Hardcore was a really fucking good scene. And Deep Wound were a really fucking good Hardcore band. Living in this society has left a DEEP WOUND. Get used to it.
Byron Coley
Florence MA 2005
Happy weekend folks!
Ian & Duncan