Heavy in Pocket’s Itchy Boo is a raw, cassette-born piece of alternative songwriting with a distinctly handmade character. Built around the uneasy realization that our sense of control may be an illusion, the track explores the idea of unseen forces and larger plans operating behind our everyday choices. That darker lyrical concept sits naturally within the project’s rough-edged musical approach, where dissonant textures and an earthy rhythmic pulse give the song an imperfect, intimate quality. There is something deliberately unpolished about Itchy Boo, as if the cassette recording itself becomes part of the artistic statement. The result is strange, personal and slightly unsettling—a fitting introduction to the forthcoming album and another intriguing entry in Heavy in Pocket’s exploration of desire, despair and human experience.
Four years after their Bloodstock debut, Acid Thrine return to the festival.
We chat with them about their return, stepping up from the Jager stage to the S.O.P.H.I.E. stage, losing a member and line up changes, playing with with Cancer Bats/Bat Sabbath, writing a second album, their future plans and so much more.
You can listen to the interview below, or jump over to any of the usual streaming services!
Safety Blanket’s Footprints is a high-energy indie rock track that hits with a sharp punk edge and a solid alternative rock backbone. Loud, fast and relentlessly driven, the song wastes little time building momentum, with punchy guitars, forceful drums and an urgent vocal delivery keeping everything moving forward. The arrangement has a raw, energetic quality that suits the track’s straightforward rock attitude, while the hooks provide strong melodic payoffs without slowing the pace. Footprints feels made for movement—equally at home on a road trip, during a workout or blasting through a gaming session. It’s a direct and energetic slice of modern indie rock, balancing punk aggression with catchy songwriting and plenty of forward momentum.
Franco-Venezuelan producer and composer Amílcar presents Dança Das Estrelas, an instrumental piece that brings together nu-jazz, jazztronica and world-music influences with a warm, atmospheric character. There are no vocals here; instead, the track relies on its rhythmic flow, melodic details and layered electronic textures to create an immersive experience. Amílcar has long explored instrumental music across styles including New Age, lounge, downtempo and electronic music, and Dança Das Estrelas continues that open-ended approach.
The result is light, melodic and gently uplifting, with a relaxed groove that gives the track an almost cinematic sense of movement. Dança Das Estrelas feels like an invitation to drift, dance and simply let the music speak.
Album Review: Uncle Acid & the deadbeats – Shapes Of Midnight
Reviewed by Mathhew Williams
If you look on the Bandcamp page of Uncle Acid and the deadbeats, is states that they are “The UK’s third worst psycho rock group”. I’d like to know who numbers 1 and 2 are, but as a fan of the group, it’s great to have the Cambridge quintet back with their seventh album, “Shapes of Midnight”. It’s a concept album partly inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death, and mixed with their “Evil Beatles” sound, it gives us plenty to enthuse about.
As soon as you hear the opening bars of “House of the Grave” it is distinctively Uncle Acid, with the unmistakeable voice of Kevin Starrs, who says that “our albums exist in an alternate universe to our own”. It’s another thrilling concoction of spooky harmonies, pop laden hooks and Thin Lizzy esque guitar rhythms, which is what attracted me and many others to them in the first place. The sound is further enhanced as they recorded at Abbey Road Studios, live to analogue tape, and used equipment from a bygone era, including Neumann mics.
The sound they’ve created is simply sublime, with the organ notes flooding through, and their chords really shine on the album title track. It bounces along and then the guitar has a lovely psychedelic/space age feel to it, as the consistent rhythm bursts in the background. Throughout the eight songs, you get blasts of Krautrock, weaved around jazzy notes and elements of NWOBHM. They have evolved with dark melodies alongside crafted melancholy, and it has worked a treat.
“When Evil Wakes” has sinister overtones and the organ playing enhances this perfectly, with solos popping off all over the place, the track flows effortlessly. They raise the energy levels on “Don’t Let it Control You” with a quicker paced number, and a delicious bass line can be heard driving them forward. It’s a very danceable tune but still maintains that essence of macabre which is ingrained throughout. With an intriguing 80’s inspired keyboard intro, “Psycho on the Loose” is a very interesting song, as the bass is prominent but the whole arrangement feels mischievous yet innovative, with a catchy chorus line making it my favourite song on the album.
There’s a warm psychedelic embrace at the beginning of “I Won’t Sleep (`til You’re Gone)” as the rhythm takes you on another one of their adventures. The underlying riff is an instant ear worm, as the solo soars in and out of the melody, with the vocals further enhancing the weirdness and then it’s all about the stunning saxophone. About the collection of songs, the frontman says that “they’re all stories that could happen here, but everything’s just a bit off” so expect the unexpected.
“The Other Side of the Sky” has a weightier touch about it, moodier and darker than what has gone before it, yet weaved beautifully into the band’s tapestry, with a solo that is somehow gloomy and uplifting in equal measure. They end with “Sleep No More” and a riff that Thin Lizzy themselves would have been proud to write. The pace to it is sumptuous, and as end tracks go, this is right up there with some of the best.
Ahead of five rare UK shows, ever-present frontman, guitarist and last remaining original Flamin’ Groovies member Cyril Jordan invites us to a 50th-anniversary birthday party in honour of the Californian group’s signature single, Shake Some Action, which is often rated as among the greatest rock’n’roll singles of the 70s
Rolling Stone magazine once hailed the Flamin’ Groovies as “maybe the greatest rock’n’roll band to ever come out of San Francisco”.
We’re probably the only rock’n’roll band from there. The Grateful Dead were psychedelic improv-meets-folk rock. None of those bands were influenced by Little Richard, but we recorded two of his songs.
These upcoming dates celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the power-pop anthem Shake Some Action, and the album of the same name. What do you recall of the song’s birth?
We cut that song at Rockfield in Wales at Christmas of 1975, eleven years after the British Invasion. I like to write in sections, and over a three-month period I tried in vain to finish them. In the end I put all of my ideas together to make one whole song.
Did you recognise it immediately as a hit?
No [laughs]. Not at all.
Shake Some Action was produced by Dave Edmunds. How did you get on with him?
I had been turned on to Dave with I Hear You Knocking [1970]. Hearing it on the radio, I stopped the car and turned up the volume. When I heard it had been cut at Rockfield, which seemed to me to be the new Sun Studios [in Memphis], I swore to myself that one day I would go to Rockfield and record with Dave Edmunds. It happened, and it was fantastic.
Cited as a watershed moment in the birth of punk, Flamin’ Groovies’ 1976 headline gig at the Roundhouse in London had two notable support acts: Ramones and The Stranglers. How did that happen?
Back then we had some clout, so I would call up friends in England and ask them about the up-and-coming local groups. One year it would be the Boomtown Rats, the next The Stranglers and then Dr Feelgood. On our last tour of England it was The Damned.
Groovies lead singer of the era, Chris Wilson, once called the Ramones “Nice kids but limited players”. Do you agree?
Well, we were quite a lot older than those guys. We were advanced guitar players. We were fingerpickers. As a barre chord guy, Johnny was always amazed by that. One of the reasons the punk scene was so radical is that the players were not advanced. They made a noise. That’s what it was all about.
But it could be a special noise.
In 1972 I became friends with Malcolm McLaren [Sex Pistols manager]. Three years later we played the annual NME party at Dingwalls [in London’s Camden Lock], and Malcolm came by along with this new band he was managing. One of them proceeds to steal our briefcase which contains the band’s passports, five thousand pounds in cash and my fuzz-tone pedal.
At the hotel, one of their roadies returns the briefcase, saying it had been taken “by mistake”. We open the thing up and everything is there – except the fuzz-tone. It all made complete sense to me the first time I heard [Pistols’ debut album] Never Mind The Bollocks. Years later I found out Steve Jones had stolen it.
On this tour, apart from Shake Some Action – obviously – what else can we expect to hear?
We’ll do maybe eighty per cent of the songs from that album, plus an assortment of others that are stuck to my shoe like gum. It will be a mish-mash of earlier songs, the stuff from Shake Some Action and brand-new material that I’ve written. It’s still an energetic rock’n’roll show.
The Flamon’ Groovies UK tour begins this evening (September 15) in Bristol, followed by dates in Leeds, Edinburgh, Nottingham and London. Find tickets.
