Slipknot founding drummerJoey Jordison has died at the age of 46. According to a statement issued by his family, Jordison “passed away peacefully in his sleep on July 26th, 2021.” A cause of death has not been revealed.
“Joey’s death has left us with empty hearts and feelings of indescribable sorrow,” his family’s statement reads. “To those that knew Joey, understood his quick wit, his gentle personality, giant heart, and his love for all things family and music. The family of Joey have asked that friends, fans, and media understandably respect our need for privacy and peace at this incredibly difficult time. The family will hold a private funeral service and asks the media and public to respect their wishes.”
Born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, Jordison came up in the local heavy metal scene and in 1995 joined Slipknot, then called the Pale Ones, with percussionist Shawn Crahan and bassist Paul Gray. Known for his high-speed drumming and dynamic performance style, Jordison was the band’s primary percussionist and played on the band’s first release, 1996’s Mate. Kill. Feed.Repeat., through their fourth LP, 2008’s All Hope Is Gone. He was also a key songwriter in the group, having co-written some of Slipknot’s best-known songs.
In 2013, Slipknot announced they were parting ways with Jordison, who said he was “shocked and blindsided” by the decision. A few years later, he revealed he had been fighting a neurological disorder called transverse myelitis since 2010, which affected his ability to play drums. “It was a form of multiple sclerosis, which I don’t wish on my worst enemy,” he said. “I got myself back up, and I got myself in the gym, and I got myself back in therapy to beat this… If I can do it, you can do it. To people with multiple sclerosis, transverse myelitis or anything like that, I’m living proof that you can beat that shit.”
Following his dismissal from Slipknot, Jordison went on to form the bands Scar The Martyr, Vimic, and Sinsaenum, and continued playing in Murderdolls, a revival of his pre-Slipknot band the Rejects.
Smile Machine is the project led by Jordyn Blakely, who’s long been an integral part of Brooklyn’s DIY scene, having played drums for bands like Stove, Night Manager, Butter the Children, Jackal Onasis, Maneka, and more recently, Bartees Strange. The band’s debut EP, Bye for Now – released earlier this month on Exploding in Sound – finds Blakely reintroducing her voice and carving out her own vision, influenced as much by Elliott Smith and the Microphones as Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine. The EP’s five songs are raw and lo-fi, simultaneously juxtaposing and oscillating between fuzzy, scorched guitars and dreamy, warm melodies. Yet opener ‘Bone to Pick’ is early proof that Blakely isn’t afraid to play outside of that familiar structure, her screaming vocals breaking through to the surface before gently floating back down. Her open-ended approach reflects the way she views the project as a whole: a space for collaboration as well as a product of circumstance. Though Blakely started recording the EP with Dan Francia before the pandemic, it inadvertently ended up becoming more of a solo endeavour – and though she cannot be certain of what the future holds for Smile Machine, at least for now, the emotional thrust of these songs is more than enough to cut through the noise.
We caught up with Smile Machine’s Jordyn Blakely for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about her musical journey, the origins of the project, her new EP, and more.
Do you mind sharing some of your earliest memories of enjoying music?
I’d always been into music, but I didn’t play a lot as a kid. My parents liked a lot of good music, a lot of ‘70s and ‘80s music. It’s funny when you’re a kid, you always want to reject what your parents listened to. Like, even though my parents really liked Prince and Madonna and Michael Jackson and Fleetwood Mac and stuff that’s really good, as a kid I always wanted to find something more aggressive-sounding. I think it was in middle school, I got into blink-182, Green Day, and a lot of emo and screamo.
I played guitar a little bit, but I feel like drums just came easier to me. My little brother had a little kid drumset, and he’s like six years younger than me – his father, who is my stepdad, collected guitars and had the little kid drumset for him in the garage. So I would mess around on the drum kit a little bit, and I asked for a drum set for a few years and then got one for Christmas a year after that. I always felt like I didn’t start playing music until much later – I think I was around 14 or 15 when I started playing drums on a regular basis.
When did you realize that music was a passion of yours, rather than an interest or a hobby?
It sounds kind of sad, but honestly, when my stepdad passed away, I think that was – it felt very sudden. It was like my mom and my brother and I, and I was like 16 and my brother was kind of young, and it was just intense. I felt kind of isolated and I felt like drums was my only way to not have to think about it. Listening to music can be helpful for that, like if you’re listening to music and you’re in a dark place it helps you move out of that place or it can help you indulge and understand those feelings, which is I think why I was attracted to bands like Thursday and Taking Back Sunday. But with playing, it felt like I can be focused on this for hours and not have to think about reality right now. With drums especially, it’s really aggressive, it’s really loud, you can be angry. I don’t think women are always encouraged to express themselves in that way, like you’re not allowed to be angry, you’re not allowed to be upset. You just have to be easygoing and nice all the time. The kind of music I was interested in, but also drums, was a way to be like, “Yeah, I’m angry about this, and this is one way I can process it.”
And also, that’s how I made a lot of friends. I moved a lot, so in high school I was, like, new and I didn’t know anyone there. Playing music was a great way to be like, we can connect over this thing, we can hang out together, we can have friends over and we can play music and get to know each other in that way.
When did you start immersing yourself in the DIY scene in Brooklyn and found a sense of community there?
I always wanted to live in New York my whole life. My older brother, who did the music video with me, has lived in Brooklyn for over 20 years. And whenever I would come to visit him, I always felt like, “I want to live here, I just love how people look and how everyone dresses so weird and there’s music here.” So I moved to New York in 2010, right after college, and it took a while for me to really meet people. I lived in South Brooklyn and I didn’t really know anybody here – I had like one or two friends and then my brother in New York. I found bands on Craigslist a lot, I would just look on Craigslist and try to play with everybody, any kind of music. I joined this band called Life Size Maps that I met on Craigslist, and we played with bands like Night Manager and Total Slacker. I would fill in a lot for people, just if someone needed a drummer – I can learn stuff quickly and I liked a lot of different kinds of music, so I just wanted to play this as many people as I could. I always think how lucky I am in a way, because there are so many different communities in New York, but not everyone has to accept you into it. And I feel like people are really accepting, and I just felt like I finally found what I was looking for. I always just wanted to move here and meet people who liked music as much as me and who wanted to play music all the time, and I’m just really happy that I found that.
Did you know at the time that you would want to pursue a solo project at some point? What prompted you to do that, and why did it feel like the right time?
Honestly, I always just considered myself as someone who played drums. Writing music intimidated me, I think, because I felt like it’s so vulnerable, like, “I don’t know what I want to say, I’m not good at it, I don’t want to be the front person in the band and have all that responsibility. I just like being able to show up and play drums.” But I also in college had a band called Michael Jordn and Greg, it was me and two other people, and we were really into bands like The Bad Plus, the Microphones, Quasi. And sometimes they would ask me to sing the melody of the song and write words for it, so that was kind of my first time doing that. And then eventually, when I was playing with Jackal Onassis, I didn’t really write. It was Alex [Molini] who wrote the songs, but sometimes she would ask me to write lyrics or a melody. And then in Stove, Steve [Hartlett] often had me record vocals, just doubling his part. But it was like, someone always had to ask me to do it. I felt like I needed someone to validate, which is kind of why I started trying to do it more on my own with this music.
There was a Stove tour that we did with Mannequin Pussy in 2016. It was one of the craziest tours most of us have been on – we’re just in this really big van for like nine people, and it was in the summertime and there’s no AC and we’re in like Florida and Georgia. It was really fun though. When we got home from that tour, I was just really broke and I couldn’t really go out. So I got home from that tour, most of my friends were out of town for some reason that weekend and I was just feeling really – I’m kind of stuck at home, but I don’t have any money, I can’t really buy any food, I don’t really know what to do with myself. And I was playing guitar just because I was bored, and like, just wrote a song. I don’t even know how it happened. So I recorded it with Stove and then we used it for Stove and that made me feel more empowered, because most of time if I ever had an idea I’d be too shy to really show it to anybody.
I kept trying to put out more ideas, and it wasn’t until Stove took a hiatus – any songs that I was writing I just would use for that band, so I just figured I’ll just keep trying to write, and it wasn’t until I started recording that I was like, “Maybe this could be a real band.” I didn’t have any big plans, and even when I was putting out the EP, Dan [Goldin] from Exploding in Sound was like, “What do you want to do with this, how far do you want to go with it?” I was like, “It doesn’t matter, I just want to prove to myself that I can finish it. I want them to be out in the world.”
One of my favorite songs on the record is ‘Pretty Today’, which you’ve said is about figuring out your sense of identity in relation to your environment. Could you talk more about what was on your mind while you were making it?
The imagery in the song is inspired by this cat that my old roommate and I got. When she was a kitten, we were so excited and we just wanted to pet her all the time. You know how it is, you just feel like you want to smother your pet because they’re so cute, and that’s not really her personality. She likes to have her space, so I had to learn how to really just let her do her thing. And there’s another thing she does where like, when you go to pet her, she’ll take her paws and put them around your hand, but she holds them so tightly. So it just made me think of how sometimes when you’re holding your pet and kissing them, you think like, “I’m just giving you love,” but to them it’s like, “Get the fuck away from me.” [laughs] So it just made me think about how in many relationships with other people I might have, you know, not been empathetic to their point of view. Or like, family can be really overbearing sometimes, where there’s not a lot of boundaries. I don’t know if anyone else can relate, but sometimes your family expects you to be a certain kind of person, and if you have your own way of doing things or your own emotions that are different, they take it personally or it’s seen as wrong. It’s kind of a long story, but it just made me start thinking about that – you put expectations on people to be what you want them to be, but that’s not really who they are, and that’s not real love.
When I was making the video, I was able to dive deeper into that. I feel like this has only been discussed in recent years, but like, stuff with gender – I always felt like I never wanted to, like, wear a purse or wear makeup when I was a teenager because I was really into skateboarding and drums and guitar and punk rock. There wasn’t a lot of people around me who were women who were into that kind of stuff, and even getting like guitar magazines, it’s all men. Like, I would tell people I want to play drums and they would just look at me like, “You want to play drums? Really?” I think now it’s been more normalised, but growing up I always felt the struggle to be like, “You need to wear more makeup, you need to wear more dresses, you need to be more girly and more feminine.” And I always felt boxed into that. And in the video, it’s kind of represented in that way, like the makeup and the tea party – just having this etiquette where everyone’s looking over your shoulder, making sure you’re behaving in a certain way.
Do you ever think about what you would say to your younger self from your current perspective?
Yeah, I think about that a lot, because I think, you know, you still have that inner child in you and everything. I would probably tell my younger self to just not worry about what people think as much – and I think as women, especially, you’re trained to please other people and worry about what people think about you. I felt really self-conscious about my looks and like, developing, so I would always wear baggy clothes to try to hide my body because I felt sexualized. And I wish I could tell myself like, “People are gonna do and think whatever they will, and you should just do whatever makes you happy and comfortable. Just don’t worry so much, and try to figure out what you want instead of what everyone else around you wants.”
Thank you for sharing that. Could you tell me about the idea behind the cover artwork?
There’s this artist who I really like, her name is Shana Von Maurik, she does watercolours like this, where it’s like animals and flowers and butterflies. So I asked my friend Steve [Hartlett] to draw something because we’re close friends and he definitely empathises with a lot of the themes on the record and has always been really supportive of me trying to write songs. I asked him to draw something that was either a butterfly or a moth to kind of represent – I think that’s also where Bye for Now comes from too, even though I wasn’t as intentional about it, where it’s like, sometimes I just need to go away and figure out what I’m feeling, spend some time alone, process everything. Coming out of that relationship and having so much death in my family, like, sometimes it feels very… just trying to process who you want to be. I was also in my late 20s, and I feel like so much shit happens in your late 20s – you’re 25, 26 and you’re hanging out and then suddenly shit just gets really intense and real. Especially living in New York, there’s a lot of spaces to just be self-destructive. You can go out and drink all the time – you never really have to sit with your feelings. And so, a lot of me trying to write songs was just me sitting down and being like, “What would it be if I just tried to understand how I feel and work on it instead of smoke weed about it or go hang out with friends and drink and just forget, you know, escape?”
So, the cover, I asked him to draw something with a butterfly or a moth to try to be an emblem of like, coming out of your cocoon, working on yourself, bettering yourself. But then I wanted it to be in a setting that was really beautiful, like trees or mountains or some kind of body of water. I think he did a perfect job, too, because with the butterfly flying towards the mountains and the water, there’s such a long way to go, so it’s sort of symbolic of like, it’s a never-ending journey to work on yourself and to get to know yourself, especially with so many social constructs and pressures to be a certain person. And then I watercoloured it, just because as a kid I always played with pastels or watercolour.
Do you feel like this process has brought you any clarity in terms of how you see yourself as a person and an artist?
Yeah. Going in – I have so many friends who are so amazing at writing songs, I just really felt like these really aren’t that great, like it’s not for anyone, it’s just sort of for me to do it and get better at it. And I feel like I got a lot better at guitar, which was really fun, just thinking about the leads and what I wanted them to sound. That was definitely challenging, especially with COVID, trying to finish everything on my own. But I’m really proud of myself for just doing it, because there’s a lot of times I just felt like, “I’m so sick of these songs, this doesn’t matter.” And I’m really happy that this is like a new way I have to express myself that I didn’t know that I had before. It wasn’t ever this thing, it was just like, “Oh, sometimes I’ll write songs and maybe Stove can play them.” And now it’s like, “I can have my own voice, and it’s cool.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Grouper has announced a new album. The follow-up to 2018’s Grid of Points is titled Shade and it arrives October 22 via Kranky. The Pacific Northwest artist recorded the LP’s 9 songs over a period of 15 years; some were recorded on Mount Tamalpais during a self-made residency, others longer ago in Portland, and the rest were tracked more recently in Astoria. Listen to the new single ‘Unclean Mind’ below and scroll down for the album’s cover artwork and tracklist.
Shade Cover Artwork:
Shade Tracklist:
1. Followed the Ocean
2. Unclean Mind
3. Ode to the Blue
4. Pale Interior
5. Disordered Minds
6. The Way Her Hair Falls
7. Promise
8. Basement Mix
9. Kelso (Blue Sky)
Boy Scouts, the moniker of singer-songwriter Taylor Vick, has announced a new album. It’s called Wayfinder, and it arrives October 1 via ANTI-. Today’s announcement comes with the release of the new single ‘That’s Life Honey’, alongside an accompanying video directed by Jake Nokovic. Check it out below and scroll down for the LP’s cover art and tracklist.
“This song is about trying to make light of a shitty situation,” Vick said of ‘That’s Life Honey’ in a press release. “Having a circumstance that sucks, like wanting to go to therapy but you can’t afford it, and fantasizing about a world where you could get a chip implanted or have some surgery that rewires your brain and resolves you from whatever problems you have. This song is mostly my attempt at writing a tragicomedy, combined with true experiences of figuring out how to open up to people.”
Recorded in Anacortes, Washington at The Unknown, Wayfinder sees Vick reuniting with longtime collaborator Stephen Steinbrink. The album, which includes collaborations with Taylor’s brother Travis and Jay Som’s Melina Duterte, takes its name from Sallie Tisdale’s book Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them): A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying. “For my whole life, music has been a crucial part of my identity and how I relate to the world,” Vick explained. “The act of making music has been my wayfinder during the past year.”
Ada Lea has announced her next album: the follow-up to 2019’s what we say in private is called one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden, and it’s out September 24 via Saddle Creek. To accompany the announcement, Ada Lea has today shared a new song, ‘damn’, alongside a music video directed by Monse Muro. Check it out and find the album’s cover artwork and tracklist below.
The new album is set in Alexandra Levy’s hometown of Montreal, with each song existing as “a dot on a personal history map of the city where Levy grew up,” according to a press release. It was recorded with producer and Phoebe Bridgers collaborator Marshall Vore, who had previously worked on Lea’s 2020 EP woman, here. “Marshall’s expertise and experience with drumming and songwriting was the perfect blend for what the songs needed,” Levy said in a statement. “He was able to support me in a harmonic, lyrical, and rhythmic sense.”
Last month, Ada Lea released the album single ‘hurt’, which made our Best New Songs list.
one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden Cover Artwork:
one hand on the steering wheel the other sewing a garden Tracklist:
1. damn
2. can’t stop me from dying
3. oranges
4. partner
5. saltspring
6. and my newness spoke to your newness and it was a thing of endless
7. my love 4 u is real
8. backyard
9. writer in ny
10. violence
11. hurt
How has it been over 10 years since Willow Smith’s springy banger ‘Whip My Hair’ came out? The only thing scarier than finding that out is discovering that its creator is still only 20 years old and has just released her fourth studio album. The album in question is called lately I feel EVERYTHING and the purposeful stylistic choice in the title is crucial, for these 11 songs live in ALL CAPS ferocity. After making several albums of thoughtful and exploratory R&B and soul, Willow has pivoted to the extreme, capitalizing on the au courant genre of the mainstream moment, youthful pop-punk.
If being punk demands realness and authenticity, though, Willow seems to have it: her mother Jada Pinkett was famously in a nu-metal band called Wicked Wisdom (who Willow sweetly reunited a couple of months ago) and Willow has spoken confidently of her love for bands such as My Chemical Romance in the past. This turn to pop-punk from R&B feels clever but never contrived. She’s the latest young star to be guided in the genre by the ubiquitous Travis Barker from Blink-182, who appears on several tracks (his incessant drumming only threatens to overwhelm on ‘Gaslight’). Lead single ‘T r a n s p a r e n t s o u l’ runs with the intent and speed of early Paramore, sizzling with attitude from the very beginning.
Despite her famous upbringing, Willow has always possessed a fiercely independent spirit, and it powers everything in the album. ‘F**k You’ is an angsty spoken-word diatribe whose lyrics deal with race and relationships, the bare drums recalling the ersatz spirit of no wave. In many of the songs, Willow contends with remaining true to herself and finding her own path forward: “I blew out the gaslight, now I feel a different way,” she sings in ‘Gaslight’, a song about leaving a controlling lover.
The instrumentation is always forceful and never underdeveloped. Memorable and gritty guitar lines power ‘Don’t SAVE ME’ and ‘XTRA’; there’s a razor-sharp industrial rhythm in ‘Lipstick’ and a fiery rock prowess on show in ‘!Breakout!’ (aided by LA’s excellent rockers Cherry Glazerr). The tempo is slowed on the melancholic ‘naive’ and ‘4ever’, with its ponderous indie guitar sound and solemn and sweet ‘oohs’. It’s then fitting that pop-punk queen Avril Lavigne features on the album, lending her undying angsty spirit in the supremely fun ‘G R O W’, her voice immediately recognizable.
Lately I feel EVERYTHING is spiky and provocative, joyful and passionate. It might not boast a breakout blockbuster track like Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘drivers license’, but Willow’s whole record more than matches her contemporary pop-punk peer’s exemplary effort. If being punk is to show rage and power, then the raw and liberating outpouring here ensures Willow satisfies the conditions. After a decade of sonic exploration, she might have found her natural home.
Of all the recent all-consuming single chart sensations, none defy belief as much as Tones and I’s ‘Dance Monkey’: a plodding and grating hit that came from Australia seemingly out of nowhere, a track filled with some of the most insufferable vocal tics and inanely catchy production this side of Crazy Frog. After dropping in 2019, it’s now one of the biggest musical commercial successes of all time, including Tones and I – real name Toni Watson – becoming the first female artist to reach over 2 billion streams on Spotify.
A funny thing happens when you top the charts in over 30 countries: you get a large amount of leeway to make whatever you want next. So it is with Welcome to the Madhouse, Tones and I’s much-anticipated, long-delayed debut album, a record that, though it fails in terms of execution, is at least fiercely independent. Most of it was written by Watson and self-produced by her, the artist relenting on hiring a backing squad of production talent when she likely could have secured the services of any of the mainstream’s big hitters. Perhaps she should have: Watson’s production is so crudely awful that there must have been some oversight, most noticeably on the wannabe party track ‘Won’t Sleep’, the ghastly tropical touch of ‘Westside Lobby’, and the gloopy experimental electronica of ‘Child’s Play’.
The title track and album cover go hand-in-hand, hinting at a self-reverential quirkiness. “I’m kooky, I’m different, welcome to my crazy world,” Watson seems to be saying invitingly. The vocals, though. While there is ever reason to be in favour of vocal integrity and innovation in pop music, to save us from the unceasing blandness of crooning and cooing interchangeable dullards, Tones and I presents a problem: it’s so whining that it becomes unlistenable at certain points; she often sounds like a particularly theatrical am-dram member. Her vocal chops are incessant and rarely come off seamlessly. It essentially sounds like Watson is trying too hard to sound distinctive.
The lyrics far outweigh the production in terms of quality, although not by much. ‘Fly Away’ and ‘Cloudy Day’ are predictably radio-friendly, faux-inspirational pieces for mainstream play, the latter featuring a cloyingly sincere chorus (“Look up into the sky/ Find the sun on a cloudy day”). Such a sentiment is too vague, and it’s when Watson is unafraid to be pointedly personal that leads to the album’s best track. “My song went number one in over thirty fucking countries and I’m sorry if that offends you,” she scolds in ‘Westside Lobby’, an ode to her whirlwind career path that has drawn sexist detractors from the gutter; listening to the song, you don’t begrudge her the surprising success (intriguingly, Watson also tones down her idiosyncratic vocal delivery the most on this track, speaking the lyrics as if deadpan to the camera).
Watson is famously private, so much so that her real age isn’t even on Wikipedia. It’s to be admired, certainly, but Welcome to the Madhouse was perhaps the opportunity to let her fans inside her world a little more: instead of bringing them into a haunted house of distorted mirrors, a little more realism might have been worthwhile. Though a meagre piano ballad, ‘Lonely’ offers a meaningful exploration of the mental health struggles Watson has experienced since becoming a star; ‘Fall Apart’ and ‘Just A Mess’ are the only other significant moments where she strips the chaotic funhouse atmosphere back. Not that it matters: the album went to number one in the Australian album charts anyway. There’s no stopping the Tones and I behemoth.
“‘Hide With You’ is about the search for freedom; hoping that one day, in the vastness of space & time, we find it together,” Ring explained in a press release. “This is a song I hold very dear to my heart and has provided great healing for me. I hope that it may do the same for others also.”
Before purchasing any used vehicle, make sure its past does not hold dark secrets. Unfortunately, some sellers are unscrupulous, so they conceal facts that would deter buyers. Luckily, you can check auto background easily — just run a quick check of the identifier.
Every vehicle sold in the United States since 1981 has a unique 17-digit code. Known as VIN, it allows you to obtain full reports about the history and specifications of any car or motorbike. No two numbers are the same, which is why you can check stolen car by VIN easily. Any accidents, repossessions, damage, and other critical events are also highlighted instantly.
Prevent Big Mistakes
Even when the deal seems irresistible, do not pay until you are sure the vehicle is legit. An online check will prevent you from buying illegally traded property. If you see that the title has been hijacked, cancel the deal and contact law enforcement. This check is recommended by state authorities.
How to Find the Code
The sequence is always stamped on non-removable elements. It includes numerals and letters except for those that are easily confused — I, O, and Q. The location varies depending on the manufacturer and model. Some typical locations include:
The windshield on the driver’s side (bottom left);
The front side of the frame near the container holding the washer fluid for the windshield;
The number on the vehicle must match the sequence in any paperwork that comes with it, including the owner’s manual. In case of a mismatch, you have grounds for concern. If there is no number at all, this could mean the vehicle was not produced for sale in the US, so it may not be registered in the country.
Finally, you can see different numbers on the vehicle itself. This often happens when cars are hijacked. Most consumers only pay attention to the number on the windshield, so thieves do not bother changing the other ones.
Additional Benefits
Finding out if the vehicle was stolen is just one of the benefits. The full report will tell you about any suspicious events in history before the car was returned to the owner. For example, it may have been damaged. Generally, buyers should never presume that a car that was hijacked is safe for driving.
You can use the check on your smartphone. During the visual examination of the vehicle, find the number and enter it into the search field. If you see that the car is stolen, inform the police, but do not tell the owner to avoid problems.
Spiritualized have announced a vinyl reissue of their landmark 1997 LP Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space as part of the Spacemen Reissue Program. It’s the third edition of the series following re-releases of 1992’s Lazer Guided Melodies and 1995’s Pure Phase, and it’s due out September 10 via Fat Possum. Check out a newly unveiled uncensored video for ‘Come Together’ below.
Talking about the album, the band’s Jason Pierce (aka J. Spaceman) said in a statement: “We went out to America ahead of recording this record. John [Coxon] had joined on guitar and I’d recorded the title track and a number of other demos that ended up on the finished record. But we got to play Cop Shoot Cop and Electricity live and to work them out before we recorded them for the record and then John became integral to the band. He came from a world of Syl Johnson and Al Green, Teenie Hodges and Reggie Young; a different world within the guitar lines. And then there was Kate [Radley]’s hugely influential keyboard that was relentless and loud.”
Pierce added: “I like Pure Phase the best of these four records, but people still say Ladies and Gentlemen is where everything kind of came together. I’m still astounded by both records, where they don’t let up. There’s no kind of curfew. Or no ‘you can’t stay on that section for that length of time.’ They sit on where they arrive and stay there, and I found that kind of amazing.”
