Category: NEWS

What’s post-punk? Like any other musical term that gains currency, it’s been so used and misused that it can mean whatever the people saying it want it to mean. But if you understand it to mean, “I hear you, punk rock, and you’ve got a point, but there’s a lot more to be brought to the table—let me show you,” then This Heat was the original post-punk band.

Charles Bullen, Charles Hayward and Gareth Williams formed This Heat in London in 1976. Hayward (drums) and Bullen (guitar, clarinet) were accomplished musicians who had separately and together logged time in prog and improv settings; Williams (keyboards, bass) worked at the HMV record store in Leicester Square, and while he had never played an instrument, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of music. While they shared punk’s immediacy and aggression, they had no time for its stylistic austerity. This Heat’s music encompassed tape manipulation, angular song construction, found sound, creative recycling of sonic material and constructive clashes between styles and recording fidelities. The band’s lyrics addressed cold-war terror and skepticism about commercial/media forces in terms that didn’t tell you what you had to think about them, but left you in no doubt about how they felt. They shared labels, spaces and associations with Flying Lizards, Laura Logic and the Raincoats, but no one else sounded like them.

In 1981 Williams left This Heat to study Katakali dance, and Bullen and Hayward split the next year. While Williams died of cancer in 2001, the other two men kept in sporadic touch over the years and did their best to keep the This Heat catalog in print. But no one got to hear the music live again until 2016, when Bullen and Hayward convened a larger band called This Is Not This Heat to play This Heat’s material at London’s Café Oto. People came to those shows from around the world, so Bullen and Hayward decided to take the show to them. But the tension inherent in creative musicians playing music they conceived 40 years ago meant that TINTH had an expiration date, and it is nigh. The group—which also includes Daniel O’Sullivan, Alex Ward, James Sedwards and Frank Byng—will finish out with a tour of the U.S. 

—Bill Meyer

Tour Dates
July 23 – Chicago @ Thalia Hall
July 25 – Los Angeles @ The Regent
July 27 – San Francisco @ The Chapel
July 29 – Atlanta @ The Earl
July 31 – Brooklyn @ Elsewhere

The wonderfully titled ∑(No,12k,Lg,17Mif) New Order + Liam Gillick: So It Goes.. is a live New Order album recorded at the 2017 Manchester International Festival and out July 12 via Mute … Car Seat Headrest‘s nine-track digital live album Commit Yourself Completely, recorded at various shows last years, is out on Matador … Also out now is Neil Young + Stray Gators‘ Tuscaloosa (Reprise/Warner), a previously unreleased, 11-track live LP recorded at the University of Alabama in 1973 … Four Paul McCartney live albums—Amoeba Gig, Paul Is Live, Choba B CCCP and Wings Over America—are out on CD and vinyl via MPL/Capitol/UMe on July 12 … The Rolling Stones‘ Bridges To Bremen (Eagle Vision) is 155-minute set recorded in Germany in 1997 available on DVD/two CDs, Blu-ray/two CDs and triple vinyl … Gov’t Mule has released Bring On The Music: Live At The Capitol Theatre (Provogue/Mascot), a two-CD/two-DVD set recorded last year; the DVD will be out July 19 … Live From The Beacon Theatre (Rhino) by the Doobie Brothers is out as two-CD, two-CD/DVD and Blu-ray sets … Sinatra In Palm Springs: The Place He Called Home is a new DVD and Blu-ray from Shout! Factory exploring Frank Sinatra‘s 50-year relationship with the California town … Foreigner‘s Live At The Rainbow ‘78 in out July 12 via Rhino on CD and double-LP … Yes: 50 Live culls 13 songs recorded during Yes‘ 50th-anniversary tour last year, out via Rhino on August 2 as two CDs and four LPs … On August 23, Capitol is releasing Lionel Richie’s Hello From Las Vegas in three editions: standard, deluxe and Target … The Jerry Garcia Band‘s GarciaLive Volume 11, November 11th, 1993, Providence Civic Center was recorded on the band’s last tour and is out July 12 on Round.

Ride Me Back Home is the 69th studio album from Willie Nelson. Out June 21 via Legacy, the 11-track LP completes the “mortality trilogy,” following 2017’s God’s Problem Child and last year’s Last Man Standing … Steven Van Zandt‘s music from Netflix’s Lilyhammer (which he starred in, co-wrote and co-produced) has been compiled on two Lilyhammer The Score releases—Volume 1: Jazz and Volume 2: Folk, Rock, Rio, Bits And Pieces—out July 12 via Wicked Cool/UMe … Chrissie Hynde‘s Valve Bone Woe—a collection of songs written by the likes of Brian Wilson, John Coltrane, Nick Drake, Frank Sinatra, Ray Davies and Charles Mingus—is out September 6 via BMG … Out now is Perry Farrell‘s Tony Visconti-produced Kind Heaven (BMG), featuring Dhani Harrison, Elliot Easton (Cars), Taylor Hawkins (Foo Fighters) and more … The Cranberries‘ eighth and final album, In The End, is out now via BMG … Violent Femmes return with album number 10, Hotel Last Resort, out July 26 on PIAS and featuring guitar god Tom Verlaine of Television … Realm Of Spells is the first new LP from Jah Wobble & Bill Laswell in 18 years, out July 19 via Wobble’s eponymous label … Out now is 40 (Surfdog/Mascot), the first album from the Stray Cats in 26 years and one that celebrates the band’s four-decade existence … Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind & Fire will release Love Will Find A Way—featuring a star-studded collection of players from all genres—on June 21 via Verve … Vince Gill‘s Okie is out August 21 on MCA Nashville.

Happy Father’s Day from MAGNET and Frank Turner.