P44 CLUSTER
P45 LIGHTSHIPS
P46 GIRLSCHOOL
P46 PEGGY LEE
P48 THE METERS
P50 YOKO ONE
P50 MARTIN REV
P51 BOZ SCAGGS
ALABAMA SHAKES
Boys & Girls: 10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
ROUGH TRADE
10/10
Expanded reissue of the group’s dynamite debut
Who can forget the thrill on first hearing Brittany Howard’s voice on “Hold On”, the explosive opening track on Alabama Shakes’ 2012 debut? Sounding like an implausible, intense amalgam of all the best bits of Janis Joplin and Amy Winehouse, it’s one of those visceral moments that lives forever – and a decade on, Boys & Girls still sounds like a contender for the best soul-blues-rock-boogie record of the millennium so far.
Extras: 9/10. A second disc featuring a ferocious 2012 live performance on the LA radio show Morning Becomes Eclectic. Recorded prior to the album’s release, incendiary versions of eight of its tracks are augmented by three non-album songs. The impassioned, hook-laden “Always Alright” from the soundtrack of the movie Silver Linings Playbook is the best of them, but the frantic, barrelling ’50s-style rockers “Heavy Chevy” and “Mama” (both originally heard on a 7” bonus EP), are completely irresistible too.
NIGEL WILLIAMSON
BOG SHED
The Official Bog-Set
MELODIC
8/10
Flush life: complete works of the kings of ’80s wonk
Nettled at being lumped in with the “shambling” C86 bands, Bog Shed showed their Thatcher-era Magic Band chops with a note-perfect rendition of Benny Hill’s “Gather In The Mushrooms” for a 1986 John Peel Session. It’s about the only recording of the awkward foursome that doesn’t feature on this five-disc set, which incorporates their two-and-a-half LPs, almost complete BBC output and plenty more besides. Merseyside ‘social surrealists’ who lived in bucolic squalor near Hebden Bridge, Bog Shed specialised in Fall-ultra clatter, “Oily Stack”, “Excellent Girl” and the immortal “Fat Lad Exam Failure” exemplifying frontman Phil Hartley’s grotesque gifts. They split in 1988, bandmates only realising Hartley had died (of cancer, in 2006) when they asked the PRS why their tiny royalty cheques had stopped coming. The Official Bog-Set offers little help in fathoming Bog Shed’s perverse lyrics, but plentiful live bonuses soundtrack the one-time Roy North Penis Band’s successful mission to evade mainstream approval. Nimble, ugly: anything but bog standard.
Extras: 7/10. Bonus tracks, live cuts.
JIM WIRTH
