Neil Young and The Chrome Hearts

Flytjendur

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  Neil Young

  Neil Young was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on November 12, 1945. He is a singer-songwriter with a long and extensive musical career. He has become one of the most respected and influential musicians of his generation. Neil started his professional music career in the mid-1960's with a number of bands in Canada, notably the Mynah Birds, which also included fellow future Buffalo Springfield bassist Bruce Palmer and future funk star Rick James. When the Mynah Birds broke up, Young and Palmer headed to California to meet Stephen Stills, whom he had met in Winnipeg, and the result was Buffalo Springfield. That band split up after three albums, and Neil soon started his solo career with the release of Neil Young November 12, 1968. The album did not do very well commercially, but included several strong tracks, including The Loner, said to be a portrait of Stephen Stills. On May 14, 1969 he recruited Crazy Horse and made the critically acclaimed Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. This was a much more consistent album, the first to introduce longstanding collaborators Crazy Horse, and built around the balanced interplay between the guitars of Young, and the talented Danny Whitten. The album also featured two lengthy classics, Down by the River and Cowgirl in the Sand, but it was Harvest in 1972 that would make Neil Young into a well-known star with his first solo hit "Heart of Gold". During this time he also enjoyed considerable success as a quarter of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Neil's subsequent work has zig-zagged across genres - dabbling in country rock on Old Ways; electronics on Trans; hooking up with the Shocking Pinks in a homage to old-time Rock 'n' Roll on Everybody's Rockin'; creating a wall of feedback on the live Arc-Weld; and cementing his status as Godfather of grunge when collaborating with Pearl Jam on Mirrorball. His idiosyncratic approach to genre even led to him being sued by his record company (Geffen) in the 80's for making "uncharacteristic" music. Young has also dabbled in film, most recently on the album/concert series/dvd Greendale. 60 years and still going strong the very special and often strange Neil Young keeps on making music. His latest release is Living With War, a rock protest against George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. The film Canadian Bacon includes the line "Canadians are always trying to figure out a lot of ways to ruin our lives. The metric system, for the love of God! Celsius! Neil Young!"

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  Elvis Costello & the Imposters

  Elvis Costello and The Imposters – Steve Nieve (keyboards), Davey Faragher (bass), Pete Thomas (drums) – have made a sensational new album that ranks alongside the best work this singularly great artist has ever produced.

  Recorded in Hollywood, New York City and Vancouver, British Columbia, ‘Look Now’ is beautiful in its simplicity, reflective in its lyrical vision, surrounded by melodies and orchestrations that are nothing short of heavenly. It’s the first album Costello has made with The Imposters since the 2008 release of ‘Momofuku’ and his first new album since the acclaimed 2013 Roots collaboration, ‘Wise Up Ghost’.

  Anyone anywhere in the world who has seen Elvis Costello and The Imposters live can testify to their unmitigated swagger. Costello’s suspicion that it was time to return to the studio was confirmed while on the ‘Imperial Bedroom & Other Chambers’ tour of the USA, last summer and he realized the power and sheer musicality of The Imposters had never really been fully captured on one record.

  “I knew if we could make an album with the scope of ‘Imperial Bedroom’ and some of the beauty and emotion of ‘Painted From Memory’, we would really have something”, said Costello.

  ‘Look Now’ is an outstanding 12-strong addition to his song catalogue. Most of the titles were written solely by Elvis Costello although, ‘Don’t Look Now’ and ‘Photographs Can Lie’ were co-written with Burt Bacharach, who makes a guest appearance, leading The Imposters from the piano for those two ballads.

  Another song to which Bacharach contributed, ‘He’s Given Me Things’ features some of the best singing Elvis has ever recorded, while ‘Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter’ was written with Carole King and closes with a serpentine horn line winding around Steve Nieve’s atmospheric keyboard parts.

  The album was co-produced by Elvis and Sebastian Krys - the Latin Grammy Producer of the Year for 2007 and 2015, whose love and understanding of music spans both hemispheres.

  Sebastian had worked extensively with Pete and Davey in the Los Angeles studios, so it’s no surprise that this dynamic rhythm section was incredibly well-prepared for the recording sessions. “When Pete and Davey are in this kind of rare form, it’s wise to get on the back-beat with your Telecaster and stay out of their way”, said Costello.

  Speaking of his own role as co-producer, Costello said, “I had all of the orchestrations and vocal parts in my head or on the page before we played a note, so it was essential that I worked closely with Steve Nieve to maintain the light and space in the arrangements and allow him to shine.”

  Costello completed the picture by adding both guitar and his own vibraphone or celesta parts to his orchestrations but remarked, “Sebastian was there to make sure only the essential notes got onto the record, whether it was a fuzz-tone guitar or jazz bassoon.”

  “In the final mixing, Sebastian did a beautiful job of keeping everything present but always lead by emotion or narrative, although when balancing the band, my voice and the quartet of woodwinds and horns that I’d written for ‘Stripping Paper’, I told him to “Just trust the blur.”

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  Charlie Sexton

  Terry Allen is a songwriter, visual and recording artist, and playwright. He’s released more than a dozen studio albums since his 1975 debut, Juarez, and his wide-ranging artwork resides in collections around the world, including the Met, MoMA, and LACMA. Raised in Lubbock, Texas, since 1989 he has resided in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife and collaborator, the performer and poet Jo Harvey Allen.