GF music review club

[Red Dawn]

Is this rather cool venture a closed shop? Any room for one more?

[Carvalho Diablo]

2 minutes ago, Red Dawn said:

Is this rather cool venture a closed shop? Any room for one more?

Absolutely. Welcome aboard. I will post the updated club list (including our new selection order and links to all of the albums selected so far) tomorrow. 

 

In the meantime feel free to drop in reviews of any of our AOWs, including the current one by Blackberry Smoke. 

[Red Dawn]

Excellent. I will check that out tonight and get a review up. Cheers.

[Carvalho Diablo]

Okay fellas, this week's AOW, Blackberry Smoke's Leave A Scar live ! (as chosen by Clarence).

 

TLW GF Music Club Youtube Channel

 

FAO Red Dawn, click the link and give us a follow, you'll find all of the club's AOWs (albums of the week) here under the playlist tab so you can easily go back over and listen to records that you've missed so far. If you choose, you can also interact with Tony's Ma and call Stig an arse.

[Carvalho Diablo]

Spotify link : Blackberry Smoke - Leave A Scar live

 

 

[Carvalho Diablo]

Spotify link : The GF Music Club channel

 

 

[Carvalho Diablo]

@ Red Dawn, once again you can give our Spotify playlist a follow, all of the AOWs so far (with the exceptions of The Mummies and Cat Power's albums) are on there.

 

The Spotify streams are of far better quality than the YouTube ones I find. Also, for brevity's sake I've only included one song from each AOW selected (plus all of the current AOW), but if you know how to navigate Spotify then you'll know how easy it is to navigate to the album from that individual song.

 

Hope that makes sense ?

[Carvalho Diablo]

With our recent reshuffle of members, this is the club's current rotation :

 

Shooter

Skids

Boss (anyone seen him about the forum recently ?)

Howie

Me

Zonko

RedTalisker

Lee909 (fucker's changed his name again !)

BabbsBurstNad

Toxteth O'Grady

Red Dawn

and maybe Stig ?

 

The door is always open to Moof too, he was a great contributor to the club and really helped to get the club up and running, Moofy's reviews were always an interesting read too and his first AOW, Steven's Wilson's Hand Cannot Erase remains one of the highlights of this little experiment to date.

[Carvalho Diablo]

One last post, remember that reviews don't need to be in any particular format, they can be as short or as long as you like, but out of fairness to the other lads in the club, in order to pick your AOW you should really review theirs.

 

Okay, bollocks, I'm off to make my tea.

[Skidfingers McGonical]

I’ll get a Cat Power (the correct one) up later hopefully. 

[Guest]

I'm behind on this, I'll have my outstanding two reviews up before the end of the weekend!

 

Good work Skids, you're an inspiration to music reviewers around the world!

[Red Dawn]

My review for Blackberry Smoke's Leave a scar LIVE :

 

I am a big fan of alt-country, Americana and roots music so despite never listening to Blackberry Smoke before I was looking forward to checking this band out. 22 songs is a lot so I wont list individual tracks and instead will try give an overview of the album.

Normally I like to listen to album a good 3 or 4 times before I form a strong opinion on it but I wanted to pop my cherry here quickly and get up to speed.

 

I'm not normally a fan of live albums as I am a picky bastard about sound and production and love the little nuances you can pick up from a good set of bins over your ears listening to a well produced and engineered album of music.

 

However the sound produced by BS here was BIG and full and well produced. No issues there. The album kicked off with some in your face rock/southern rock call it what you like. I kept thinking Aerosmith for some reason after the first few tracks.

 

After a few tracks the Hammond Organ and keys start coming to the fore. I am sucker for those. The band then start to knock out a few more full on country rock songs which is not normally for me. I do like alt-country (Drive by Truckers for example) but some of these were a bit too country for me. 

 

However the set then moves into its best part for me around two thirds through and the musicianship comes to the fore with a number of prolonged jams and improvisations coupled with excellent dynamics which allow all the members to showcases their talents. The four or five songs in here were class and I will be following those up on their albums later.

 

The set then falls away a bit for me at the end. Probably due to the amount of songs and it being a long listen.

 

Overall I enjoyed it but there did seem to be definite parts of the album that were better than others. I probably wouldn't listen again to the southern rock/country rock bits as there was nothing new there for me. However their rootsy and folky stuff was for me and I will be seeking some of their stuff out on Spotify.

 

Finally would I listen to the whole album again? - Probably not but I will be checking out their studio stuff.

[Babb'sBurstNad]

Only just realised Lee is Clarence. I'm always slow on user name changes.

[ZonkoVille77]

Blackberry Smoke's: Leave a scar - LIVE 

 

I never heard of them before and I was definitely very interested when the first riff played out in the first track. First thing that struck me is the band are excellent and very tight. The production is very good too for a Live album, really captures the energy of the band. Then it went downhill when I heard the singer.

 

I'm not a huge fan of Southern rock to be honest and the Southern singing style. I  just picture inbreeds with confederacy flags, bottles of moonshine, snogging their cousins. My own prejudices admittedly. I don't like the singers voice and I don't like the lyrics/song themes on some of the tracks. Not my bag but the band are brilliant. I know for a fact that I would enjoy this band if I went to a gig but I wouldn't listen to them at home.

 

Highlights:

"Up the road" - great guitar solo in this track at the end.

"Up in smoke" - bass line is excellent.

"Crimson Moon" - great riff.

 

9/10 for the band.

6/10 for the songs/singer.

[Lee909]

5 hours ago, Red Dawn said:

My review for Blackberry Smoke's Leave a scar LIVE :

 

I am a big fan of alt-country, Americana and roots music so despite never listening to Blackberry Smoke before I was looking forward to checking this band out. 22 songs is a lot so I wont list individual tracks and instead will try give an overview of the album.

Normally I like to listen to album a good 3 or 4 times before I form a strong opinion on it but I wanted to pop my cherry here quickly and get up to speed.

 

I'm not normally a fan of live albums as I am a picky bastard about sound and production and love the little nuances you can pick up from a good set of bins over your ears listening to a well produced and engineered album of music.

 

However the sound produced by BS here was BIG and full and well produced. No issues there. The album kicked off with some in your face rock/southern rock call it what you like. I kept thinking Aerosmith for some reason after the first few tracks.

 

After a few tracks the Hammond Organ and keys start coming to the fore. I am sucker for those. The band then start to knock out a few more full on country rock songs which is not normally for me. I do like alt-country (Drive by Truckers for example) but some of these were a bit too country for me. 

 

However the set then moves into its best part for me around two thirds through and the musicianship comes to the fore with a number of prolonged jams and improvisations coupled with excellent dynamics which allow all the members to showcases their talents. The four or five songs in here were class and I will be following those up on their albums later.

 

The set then falls away a bit for me at the end. Probably due to the amount of songs and it being a long listen.

 

Overall I enjoyed it but there did seem to be definite parts of the album that were better than others. I probably wouldn't listen again to the southern rock/country rock bits as there was nothing new there for me. However their rootsy and folky stuff was for me and I will be seeking some of their stuff out on Spotify.

 

Finally would I listen to the whole album again? - Probably not but I will be checking out their studio stuff.

 

Which songs was it you liked and ill tell you the best albums. Not got the tracks in front of me. It's the likes of Ain't move left of me now(the led zeppelin jam) in it and one horse town around that far in isn't it? 

 

If so it's The Whipperwill you'll want. Probably my fav album of theirs 

[TheHowieLama]

You have to take Charlie as the sum of his parts - while not an overwhelming singer he has an incredible stage presence and his vocal delivery is very much a part of that. Also if you see them live his guitar playing is really quite handy. 

 

I do hear the Aerosmith comparison a little -- the riff in Shakin Hands  has a little Draw the Line in it. The lyrics reference it so it is probably purposeful.

 

 

For those that like to watch while they listen:

 

 

 

[Carvalho Diablo]

6 hours ago, Babb'sBurstNad said:

Only just realised Lee is Clarence. I'm always slow on user name changes.

Tell me about it! Apparently Joe McDonnell is now Toxteth O'Grady. 

 

I think. 

[Lee909]

58 minutes ago, Carvalho Diablo said:

Tell me about it! Apparently Joe McDonnell is now Toxteth O'Grady. 

 

I think. 

Still trying to figure out who them cunts Kal El and Lord Flashheart where

[Lee909]

Went to see them last week. 

Done a couple of great covers of The Beatles Come together and Peter Green oh well. 2 hour set too. 

[Jose Jones]

Had to neg you for taking photos and videos on your phone while at a gig.

[Lee909]

1 minute ago, Jose Jones said:

Had to neg you for taking photos and videos on your phone while at a gig.

 

 

Get that

Not really for me, for other non techy family I was with. Got them all(about 10) out the way in the first two songs. I wouldn't bother on my own

[Guest]

Cat Power by Sun.

 

I'm not able to give a track by track review of this album as I listened to it as a continuous track.

 

As an album it has quite a melancholy feel to it but it's well produced with some very good musical talents on show here. I kept thinking of other artists as I was listening to it and there's one band that I remember listening to and enjoying that I would compare them to, but I had real problems remembering their name. 

 

This ultimately is going to be the long lasting memory of this, very enjoyable in the moment and certainly very well made but in a year or two's time I will most likely not remember their name.

 

It may well be a 'grower' that gets better each time you listen to it - certainly sometimes these are the albums that stand out the most - but after one listen I feel that I may get more out of it with a second listen (and I will) but overall at this stage I would give this a 6.5 out of 10.

[Guest]

I'm still trying to think of the name of the band that this reminds me of as I had/have a couple of their albums and I cannot seem to identify them.

 

Edit: just as I wrote the above the name of one of their songs popped into my head...'Daniel' by Bat For Lashes...

 

 

[The-Sir]

https://youtu.be/cKiti1mM01s

Can't remember how to embed a video on here, but for anyone interested my band released this on Friday, our debut single. See what yas reckon!

[Skidfingers McGonical]

Mr Ted. Long time no hear. Is right.