It was quite a surprise when, last year, Nick Cave took to the road with Warren Ellis, the only member of his usual ensemble and his closest Bad Seed spirit, leaving the rest of them behind; and it’s quite a surprise now when, only a couple of days before its release, the duo announced the issue, on August 25th, of “Australian Carnage – Live At the Sydney Opera House”: a glorious document of their homeland concerts, a part of the “Carnage” tour.
Ringo Starr may be one of the most charming folks in the realm of rock – but no amount of charisma can conceal the standard mediocrity of his records which, despite the presence of top-notch players who help the former Beatle write songs, don’t do much justice to his legend. With the exception of “Postcards From Paradise” from 2015, all of the veteran’s albums since 2010’s “Y Not” were rather short – “Ringo 2012” clocking out in less than 29 minutes – that a lot of fans balk at having to pay full price for not a full-length record. Thus, the concept of series of EPs was born.
Restlessness might seem like a characteristic of a great musician who’s not satisfied with a single project and got to jungle a lot of things in order not to stagnate. This much is true when it comes to Mike Hansen: recently the drummer has, in his own words, been “busy making records and all good things” – the most prominent of those being “Reconnected” by HURRICANE, the band he had joined back in 2010 but managed to go on record with only now. But while their first album in more than twenty years will see the light of day on August 25th, September 15th will mark the issue of Hansen’s joint effort with singing guitarist Gary Myrick and the venerable bassist Doug Pinnick.
As a frontman of THE RUMOUR, he was one of the shakers and movers in the field of the English pub rock in the ’70s but Graham Parker found commercial success when he shifted towards new wave in the next decade before slowing down in the late ’90s when the veteran worked with THE FIGGS and then quietly continuing to work until the here and now, accompanied by compatriots THE GOLDTOPS and drifting back to the style that made him popular in the first place. Their debut “Cloud Symbols” saw the light of day in 2018, with the sophomore effort will be out soon, on September 8th.
Forever revered for his contribution to pushing the frontiers of jazz and its shift towards mélange with rock on the way to proper fusion, the great late Chick Corea wasn’t a stranger not only to its classical form but also to classical music in general, and while the ivories master didn’t usually pursue the symphonic edge of his art, he performed with orchestras from time to time, and the recording of one such concert will be released on September 29th.
