The first of this week’s super six is Eels Time!, which was recorded between Los Feliz, California and Dublin and consists of twelve brand-new tracks created with collaborators such as Koool G Murder, The Chet, Tyson Ritter, Sean Coleman and more. Eels Time! follows a busy year for the band, in which they finally hit the road for their long-awaited Lockdown Hurricane tour of Europe and North America, and was helmed by Eels’ principal singer-songwriter Mark Oliver Everett.
Forever, the 16th studio album from one of history’s most iconic bands, Bon Jovi, features 12 new songs, including the hit lead single, ‘Legendary’. Of the album, Jon Bon Jovi said: “This record is a return to joy. From the writing, through the recording process, this is turn-up-the-volume, feel-good Bon Jovi.”
It’s been almost 20 years since Seasick Steve’s celebrated appearance on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny launched the unknown American singer-songwriter to worldwide fame, and his beat-up three-string Japanese guitar and old wooden stompbox became part of musical history. Of his new record, A Trip a Stumble a Fall Down on Your Knees, he says: “This album was made by mistake, as the title suggests we just tripped and stumbled into it, and it became my favourite album ever and the piece of work I’m most proud of. There’s not a week goes by that I don’t thank my lucky stars for that night on the Hootenanny which has brought us here to this record.”
Chart-topping British blues-rocker Joanne Shaw Taylor returns with her eagerly anticipated 9th studio album, Heavy Soul. Following 2022’s universally praised Nobody’s Fool, Joanne yet again effortlessly demonstrates her blues-rock wizardry as well her ever-evolving skills as a singer-songwriter. Heavy Soul highlights Joanne’s guitar prowess and instantly recognisable, smoky yet sultry vocals across seven brand-new original tracks plus three captivating covers of songs by Van Morrison, Joan Armatrading and Joe Simon. Here, Shaw Taylor once again reaffirms her reputation as a powerhouse modern blues-rock musician and an iconic musician of her generation.
Goat Girl’s third album, Below the Waste, explores the relationship between tension and resolution in music, and honesty and authenticity in relationships. The album was pieced together like a collage over an extended period of time, with the instrumentation tracked mostly over a ten-day stint at Hellfire Studios in Ireland, in the shadow of the infamous Hellfire Club itself. They also used Damon Alban’s Studio 13. Additional strings, woodwind instruments and vocals – including a choir made up of family and friends – were added to this framework at a number of locations, from a barn in Essex to Goat Girl’s own studio in South London.
Our release of the week comes from Bonny Light Horseman, who have lived a big ol’ messy, tangled-up pile of life, and this permeates their music with wisdom, humour and depth. Theirs is the stuff of folk music: love and loss, hope and sorrow, community and family, change and time. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the force of their voices together, which work with complete trust in one another through the gentlest moments and the most ruthless wails. Their new album, Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free, is an ode to the blessed mess of our humanity. Confident and generous, Bonny Light Horseman’s most vulnerable, unvarnished and bounteous offering to date puts every feeling and supposed flaw out in the open.
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