Back catalogue: Rock (All)

Review: Pianist Rachel Grimes is Rachel's and their sophomore album Music for Egon Schiele was originally released in 1996 on Quarterstick Records as a live score for a theatrical production about the titular Austrian painter. The performance of it was premiered in 1995 by Chicago's Itinerant Theater Guild with Grimes and two string players. The music is intimate and emotionally rich material that is stripped down to chamber pieces that rise and fall with real intensity. More focused than their debut Handwriting, this album blends melancholy, romance and beauty into a deeply affecting narrative that lingers long after the final note.

Review: After 20 years of soulful and authentic rock & roll blues, Eli Paperboy Reed definitely had a right to celebrate. Originally recorded in a basement in Allston, Massachusetts, completely live onto and direct to analogue tape in mono, this collection was first released on a limited run of 300 CDs, self-released, and mostly sold by hand on the streets of Cambridge, close to Harvard University. Now redone, pressed-up and polished for 'proper release', you get all 12 original tracks and another 14 that never saw the light of day before. Four of those were recorded at the time of the others, the remainder come from a radio session the following year. All of them are incredible, and prove that it's not only the Deep South that can make these raw and unflinchingly honest sounds.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Creasing to corner of outer sleeve but otherwise in excellent condition***


Light In The Attic teams up with Laurie Anderson and the Lou Reed Archive for a thrilling retrospective, Why Don't You Smile Now: Lou Reed At Pickwick Records 1964-65. An expansive selection of songs all written by Lou Reed, during his mid-60s stint as the staff songwriter for the long-defunct label Pickwick Records, this is a rare glimpse of a master rock musician stepping out of the limelight over the course of 25 songs, yet still letting the form and contour of his voice and sensibility be heard. All this was achieved before Reed had at all launched his career with the Velvets; it may indeed be said that this pubescent 60s period was the firelighter to Reed's flame, as the label specialised in soundalike records that emulated the major pop hits of the day - it's no wonder Reed would absorb such emulations and take them in as his own, albeit with a Century-defining twist. Channelling everything from teenybopper pop to soul-inflected garage rock, whether byJeannie Larimore, The Hi-Lifes or The Hollywoods, we get a thorough look-in here as to what made Reed and his contemporaries tick, and what Reed made tick in turn, before the fame.

Review: Marc Ribot's latest LP draws on decades of work and reflection, gluing fragments recorded over years back together to form a coherent whole, and finally foregrounding Ribot's own voice in the process. Sparked by a memory of one of his daughter's childhood drawings, Map Of A Blue City perambulates states of disorientation and openness, tracing the emotional topography of loss. Stark truths pivot against tender storytelling, at once producing an intimately distant space. "Recording production is really complicated," he says, "but it all boils down to what kind of room the listener feels they're standing in." Not quite autobiographical, it's a record built on the long, unresolved tension between what changes and what doesn't.

Review: Formed in the heart of Belfast in 1975, Rudi were the Northern Irish punk band that time forgot, eclipsed by the success of their peers in Stiff Little Fingers and The Undertones who would both go on to have major label success in the UK while sadly, apart from a few early singles released via Good Vibrations, the band would sign to The Jam's own personal record label not long before Paul Weller would call it quits, leaving Brian Young and his cohorts deflated and eventually disbanding in 1982. Captured live at the McMordie Hall, Belfast on Jan 26th 1978, this live collection showcases their New York Dolls/Johnny Thunders glam-punk inspired vision in its rawest form while coming complete with an A4 12-page booklet featuring unseen articles, photos and detailed liner notes.