Music festival season has returned to Nevada County in full force from last weekend’s sold-out Strawberry Festival to next months World Fest, with others scheduled in between, but there is just one focused on…
Reviews: Icarus Peel s Acid Reign, The Sweet, Kraut Rock, Fleur de Lys, 70s Classic Rock, Global Village Trucking Company, Duke Reid
by Dave Thompson
Shallow Oceans (CD/LP)
(Billywitch Records)
Mr Peel, of Honeypot and Crystal Jacqueline fame, has been absent from these pages for a while now - indeed, it’s more than two years since his Acid Reign alter-ego last strutted its raucous stuff. But
Shallow Oceans makes up for lost time with one of the finest guitar rock albums of recent memory… and that’s Guitar with a capital aaaaarrrrggghhhh, and Rock with the headful of concrete that Peel is clearly banging against the wall whenever he needs a drum break. (With apologies, of course, to percussionist Jay Robertson.)
Cherry Red/Strike Force Entertainment
Like David Bowie and maybe one or two others, it matters not how “huge” Marc Almond’s individual records are. In the eyes of his diehard fans, of whom there are many, he remains akin to an underground cult, beloved by a select few folk, and offered widespread approval only for the hits that he occasionally spills out.
The Stars We Are, from 1988, is a case in point. Buoyed by what would become a monster smash duet with Gene Pitney, “Something’s Gotten Hold of my Heart,” and the UK Top 30 “Tears Run Rings,”
The Stars We Are may not, ultimately, have become his biggest-selling album yet, but it was certainly his most visible. Particularly in the US where, more than thirty years on, it’s still the one that the dealer is most likely to produce when you ask if he has any Almond in stock.