Slash Drops 'The River Is Rising' From Upcoming Album
Slash has dropped a new single with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, titled “The River Is Rising,” from his upcoming album, 4.
“The River Is Rising” marks the first collaboration between Slash and Kennedy and the Conspirators since their 2018 album Living the Dream.
4 is set to release on February 11, via Gibson Records in partnership with BMG. 4 is Slash’s fifth solo album and fourth overall with his band featuring Kennedy, Brent Fitz, Todd Kerns and Frank Sidoris.
Slash had teased the song on social media with a 30-second trailer in which he discussed the song’s recording process.
“This was the first time that we actually did all the guitars, bass and drums live at the same time and kept all those tracks, and we also did the vocals live as well,” Slash said in the video. “So, the record just sounds like the band playing the songs that we came in with, but it’s us playing in the moment, and that’s what we were going for.”
Kennedy added, “This one’s pretty much a live record, from my standpoint. You’re just trying to kind of document where you are at that point in life and do it in an authentic way.”
Elvis Costello Announces New Album, ‘The Boy Named If’
Shares Single, ‘Magnificent Hurt’
The new album is set for release on January 14 through EMI in the UK and Capitol in the US. On January 14, 2022, Elvis Costello, and The Imposters release, The Boy Named If, a new album of urgent, immediate songs with bright melodies, guitar solos that sting and a quick step to the rhythm. “The Boy Named If” is preceded today with the release of a new rock & roll song called, “Magnificent Hurt”, which you can check out below.
Costello tells us,” The full title of this record is The Boy Named If (And Other Children’s Stories). ‘IF,’ is a nickname for your imaginary friend; your secret self, the one who knows everything you deny, the one you blame for the shattered crockery and the hearts you break, even your own. You can hear more about this ‘Boy’ in a song of the same name,” Speaking of the lyrical content of the record, Costello added, “Once upon a time, when I didn’t know what a kiss could do and didn’t even dare to caress, the way ahead was a mystery; a departing from that magic state called innocence for the pain that leads to pleasure and all that jazz.” “Don’t get me started about the guilt and shame and all those other useless possessions that you must throw overboard before you set sail with your dreamboat (and a runcible spoon),” remarked Elvis.
The Boy Named If, – Produced by Sebastian Krys & Elvis Costello – is a collection of thirteen snapshots, “That take us from the last days of a bewildered boyhood to that mortifying moment when you are told to stop acting like a child – which for most men (and perhaps a few gals too) can be any time in the next fifty years,” as Costello put it.
The record comes from EMI, with Capitol Records as the release partner in the US. It will be available on vinyl, compact disc, and cassette formats or as a download and in the stream with all the other pilchards. The 8-Track and Flexi-disc releases will come later.
For those who like to hold something more substantial in their hands, the record can also be found tucked into an 88-page hardback storybook edition – each one numbered and signed by the artist. This edition features thirteen illustrated short stories, which have the same titles as the songs on the record. Some of these fables set the scene for the songs, others are sequels, or a clue or hint to what might have been going on before the music began. The lyrics can also be found in bold print alongside the colorful, dashing, sometimes macabre, daubs from the electric pencil of Eamon Singer. Costello added, “Whatever you take out of these tales, I wrote them for you and to make the life of these songs a little less lonely, if you should care to dive in a little deeper.”
“I started The Boy Named If with just an electric guitar, some sharps and flats, high heels and lowdowns, with five songs in bright major keys and carried on writing a whole new record for The Imposters to play,” Costello said. Speaking of recording sessions, Costello said, “The initial rhythm section for this record was my guitar and Pete Thomas’ Gretsch drums, recorded down in Bonaparte Rooms West. Our Imposter pal of 20 years standing, Davey Faragher soon dialed in his Fender bass and vocals while we awaited dispatches from France.” “If the record sounded swell as a trio, Steve Nieve’s organ was the icing on the cake, the cherry and the little silver balls,” Elvis added.
Since being forced to cut short a U.K. tour after a triumphant Hammersmith Apollo appearance in March 2020, Elvis Costello has released the album, Hey Clockface and the subsequent French language E.P., ‘La Face de Pendule à Coucou’ – featuring the voices of Iggy Pop and Isabelle Adjani.
In the last twelve months, Costello has also completed “How To Play Guitar & Y,” a comedic, “Words & Music” production for audible.com, and released the lavish vinyl box-set edition of the 1979 album, Armed Forces containing facsimiles of his original lyrical notebooks bound as pulp novels and comic books.
Speaking of re-fashioning a record, Costello said, “Pete, Steve and myself started out playing rocking pop music in another century. This year, This Year’s Model came back to surprise us in another tongue. That edition is called, ‘Spanish Model.’” Costello said, “Both that album and The Boy Named If are records that are happening right now and if you want to draw a line between them, go right ahead.”
“Sometimes I sit and write things down, the rest of the time I play guitar in a rock and roll band. I love my family. I really love everybody, especially the people I can’t stand, even those who trespass against us and there are a lot of them.”
Pre-order The Boy Named If, out on January 14.
The Boy Named If includes the following tracks:
“Farewell, OK”, “The Boy Named If”, “Penelope Halfpenny”, “The Difference”, “What If I Can’t Give You Anything But Love?”, “Paint The Red Rose Blue”, “Mistook Me For A Friend”
“My Most Beautiful Mistake” (guest vocal by Nicole Atkins), “Magnificent Hurt”
“The Man You Love To Hate”, “The Death Of Magic Thinking”, “Trick Out The Truth” “Mr. Crescent”
Credits: Tim Peacock – https://www.udiscovermusic.com/
Bruce Springsteen - Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and author of the new book, "Renegades: Born in the USA," Bruce Springsteen, wraps his full-episode Late Show takeover with this solo performance of his song, "The River."
Back To Black’: How Amy Winehouse Crossed The Atlantic
With the success and acclaim befalling ‘Back To Black’ in the UK, America couldn’t overlook Amy any longer. By early 2007, the excitement coming from the UK about Amy Winehouse was too overwhelming for the US record industry to ignore any more.
The British vocal sensation had failed to make the American charts with her debut album Frank, which made its UK debut in 2003, rising to an initial peak of No.13. But even in her home country, that first record was more of a critical favorite than a commercial success until Winehouse released the follow-up, Back To Black, on October 27, 2006. Both albums would spend literally years on the British charts. In the week of the 15th anniversary of its release, in 2021, Back To Black was spending its 127th week in the UK Top 40, and 444th in the Top 100.
Produced by Mark Ronson and universally hailed in Britain as a modern-day masterpiece of contemporary soul music, the record entered the domestic bestsellers at No.3 in November 2006. Perhaps surprisingly in retrospect, it spent only four initial weeks in the Top 40, but then the effect of its first hit “Rehab” and the new year single “You Know I’m No Good” began to kick in. In the second half of January 2007, Back To Black topped the UK chart for the first time and would go on to spend all but two of the next 48 weeks in the Top 10. America couldn’t overlook Amy any longer, and the album entered the Billboard 200 on the March 31 chart.
Just in advance of the set’s US release on Universal Republic, Kim Garner, the label’s senior VP of marketing & artist development, told Billboard: “The feedback across the board here has been nothing short of amazing. Amy had two incredibly successful shows here in New York that generated a slew of excellent reviews.” Those mid-January gigs, at Joe’s Pub in mid-January, were her first-ever US shows. ‘It made people rethink music’
The album “made people rethink music,” Ronson told Billboard, “because it was so simple in its approach: the sound of five or six really good instrumentalists with an amazing singer.” Blender, greeting the record’s US appearance, said it “sounds fantastic – partly because the production nails sample-ready 60s soul right down to the drum sound and partly because Winehouse is one hell of an impressive singer.” The New York Times purred: “A 23-year-old English songwriter, Ms. Winehouse is decades too young for 60s nostalgia, but she has come up with a wonderfully time-twisted batch of songs.”
Back To Black went on to reach No.2 in the US, turning gold in May 2007, platinum in July and double platinum the following March. From it, that “Rehab” signature became a major pop item, hitting No.9 on the Hot 100, and by the end of the year Winehouse had six Grammy nominations, of which she would win five, missing out only in the Album of the Year department. But back at the time of the American release of Back To Black, Winehouse was typically and delightfully dismissive about the business aspects of the record. “I love doing music and playing gigs,” she told this writer in that Billboard story, “and I’m really grateful for the opportunity to do so. But to be honest I’m not the kind of person that will think about the demographic. I’m just the ‘turn.’”
Credits: Paul Sexton – Udiscovermusic.com/
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