Forty Six Minutes Of Hope Sandoval

Hope Sandoval has one of those voices. It almost goes without saying. She sounds as if she's halfway between sleep and being awake, an effortless, soothing, narcotic tone, a heavy lidded half sigh. Born to Mexican- American parents, who split up when she was young, Hope struggled at school and dropped out, largely spending her teens at home listening to records. 

Hope and Dave Roback (who died of cancer in 2020) formed Mazzy Star in 1988 when the band they were in, Opal, lost its singer. Mazzy Star went on hiatus in 1997 and Hope formed The Warm Inventions with My Bloody Valentine's drum Colm O'Ciosoig, releasing three album. Mazzy Star reunited in 2016. Hope's voice has featured on loads of records with other people- The Chemical Brothers, Mercury Rev, Bert Jansch, The Jesus And Mary Chain, Massive Attack, Death In Vegas, Vetiver, Air and Le Volume Courbe have all benefited from her vocals. I could have done this mix twice given the sheer number of songs by her two bands and all those guest appearances. 

Forty Six Minutes Of Hope Sandoval

• Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions: Into The Trees
• Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions: Suzanne
• The Chemical Brothers with Hope Sandoval: Asleep From Day
• Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions: Wild Roses
• Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions: On The Low
• Mazzy Star: Blue Flower
• Mercury Rev with Hope Sandoval: Big Boss Man
• Mazzy Star: Fade Into You
• Mazzy Star: Five String Serenade
• Mazzy Star: Happy

Into The Trees is a long piece of music from her third album as Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions from 2016, Until The Hunter. Hope and My Bloody Valentine's drummer Colm O'Ciosoig recorded the album in various locations including a Martello Tower in Dublin, which had a natural reverb caused by the circular Napoleonic period room of the tower. Hope plays organ, a two chord drone and Colm plays gentle tumbling drums. Hope sings gently over the top and it all goes on softly and slowly for nine minutes.

Suzanne is from the first Warm Inventions album, Bavarian Fruit Bread, released in 2001. Hope and Colm recruited several guests for the album, including Bert Jansch. It came out a month after the 9/ 11 attacks and like all albums released in the wake of that event, it seemed to have something to say on the matter even though it was clearly recorded months prior to it. The fragile, narcotic tone of the album, a numbed out response to the world, minimal and spooked. It's difficult not to associate Hope's Suzanne with Leonard Cohen's Suzanne. On The Low is also from Bavarian Fruit Bread, an album that opens with a cover of The Jesus And Mary Chain's Drop. I vividly remember buying it on release in November 2001 and playing it on a Sunday evening while getting mentally prepared for the week ahead at work and the two sides/ twelve songs being quite the Sunday night experience. 

In 1999 The Chemical Brothers put out Surrender, probably their third album and for me their most complete and satisfying record. It came packed with guest vocalists- Bernard Sumner, Noel Gallagher, Jonathan Donahue and Hope Sandoval. Hope's vocal on Asleep From Day is the perfect accompaniment to the album's most blissed out track, a song that sounds like the space between sleep and dreams.

Wild Roses is from the second Warm Inventions album, from 2009- Through The Devil Softly. It had a slightly fuller sound than the first album, a fleshed out band feel, partly possibly due to its recording being interrupted by Colm going on tour with My Bloody Valentine. The arrangements are more complex and intricate, there's a lot more going on. Still as beguiling and bewitching as ever and Hope's voice still sounds like the one you want to hear as you're drifting off to sleep. 

Blue Flower is from Mazzy Star's debut, She Hangs Brightly, from 1990. Hope and Dave Roback formed Mazzy Star as the previous band they were in, Opal, broke up and Blue Flower carried over. It's a cover of a Slapp Happy song from 1972. Mazzy Star released it as their first single in August 1990. It's far more guitar/ third Velvets album sounding than the dreamy sound they developed into- in fact it could easily be on The Mary Chain's Darklands. 

Big Boss Man is from a 2019 album Mercury Rev recorded, a cover/ re- imagining of Bobby Gentry's The Delta Sweete album from 1968. Mercury Rev enlisted a cast of female vocalists including Hope and Rachel Goswell, Latitia Sadier, Vashti Bunyan, Lucinda Williams and Beth Orton.

Fade Into You is from 1993's So Tonight That I Might See, Mazzy Star's second album. You don't need to me tell you how great Fade Into You is- one oft he best indie/ dreampop songs of the 1990s/ all time. Inexplicably good- Hope's voice, the acoustic guitars, the electric guitar topline, the brushed drums, the sense that the song is really just one huge sigh, the feeling of dissolving into another person that comes with young love. 

Five String Serenade is also from So Tonight That I Might See- an album that blurs the lines between country, indie, psychedelia and dreampop, everything soaked in a narcotic, hallucinogenic gauze. It was written by Arthur Lee of Love. 

Happy is from 1996's Among My Swan, Mazzy Star flirting with the mainstream, MTV, Batman soundtracks and all the rest that fame and a hit single, Fade Into You, brings. 

Yes, I should have included Paradise Circus, the song she did with Massive Attack and also should  have finished this mix with Sometimes Always, the song she sang with The Jesus and Mary Chain in 1994. To make up for its absence, here's Hope and Reids live in TV in the mid- 90s. 

All God's Children Gotta Have Their Freedom

I went to sixteen gigs in 2025, a pretty good number, and several of them were very memorable- Sabres Of Paradise (twice!), Iggy Pop, and Mercury Rev all stand out in my mind and The Beta Band were really good too though spoilt slightly by the crowd. In early May I saw Shack at The Ritz which as far as good gigs go was right up there, the Head brothers in sparkling form. This song wasn't on the setlist that night but I've been playing it loads recently, a 1990 standalone single. 

I Know You Well (12"Extended Mix)

Mick Head's songwriting chops are very evident, the sound is pure 1990 guitar band (Mick has said he was massively inspired by The Stone Roses debut album) and it marries 1966 Beatles (the bass from Taxman, the Revolver style acid guitar lines) with spacious, indie dance beats. The section from two minutes fourteen seconds is psychedelic Scouse and then the breakdown at two minutes thirty is indie dance heaven. 

The video is pure low budget 1990 too...

Mick also nods his head to his biggest musical hero, Arthur Lee of Love, with the line, 'All God's children gotta have their freedom', a line from Love's The Red Telephone. When I saw Shack at The Ritz in May they encored with one song, a cover of Love's A House Is Not A Motel. I haven't posted nearly enough Love at Bagging Area. This pair of songs are from Forever Changes, an album that shows Arthur Lee's disillusion with the hippy dream, an album released at the height of flower power, but where Lee could see it was built on sand. Forever Changes is a lament in some ways, for a new age that wasn't going to arrive.

Alone Again Or

Alone Again Or is utter beauty, complete 1967 brilliance. It was written by Bryan MacLean. Arthur Lee wasn't in the studio when it was recorded and reportedly grew jealous of people's praise for it. Lee then added the word 'or' to the song's title and re- recorded it with his voice to the fore on co- lead vox. These things contribute to bands splitting up- it led to Bryan quitting the group after the reelase of Forever Changes- but listen to the acoustic guitars, those horns, the orchestral flourishes and the bittersweet lyrics, and bask in it. What a song. 

Andmoreagain

Andmoreagain is an Arthur Lee song, sumptuous psychedelic folk with sweeping Burt Bacharach style strings and LA's Wrecking Crew playing (Carole Kaye on bass, Hal Blaine on drums, Billy Strange on guitar and Don Randi on keys). Bewilderingly good. Lee's lyrics are a stream of consciousness about addiction, temptations and defence mechanisms. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions

I held back from doing this for ages, a mix just containing cover versions, because it felt a bit lazy, a bit uninspired but the recent covers of Nick Drake by Joao Leao and The Velvet Underground by Thurston Moore twisted my arm into it. There are potentially more cover versions mixes to come. All these are relatively recent, although now I think about it Rowland S. Howard's Pop Crimes album came out in 2009 which is sixteen years ago and Calexico's in 2003 which is twenty two years ago- but the rest are all fairly recent. This mix leans towards the garage/ psyche/ guitar side of things. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions

• Andy Bell: Smokebelch
• Joao Leao: One Of These Things First
• Calexico: Alone Again Or
• Rowland S. Howard: Life's What You Make It
• Moon Duo: Planet Caravan
• Moon Duo: No Fun
• The Liminanas: Angles And Devils
• Thurston Moore: Temptation Inside Your Heart

Andy Bell's cover of The Sabres Of Paradise's Smokebelch was begun on the day of Andrew Weatherall's death, 17th February 2020, and finished in late summer/ early autumn 2023 when I emailed Andy to ask him if he had a track for our then unreleased pipe dream album Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1. Andy's reply contained the completed cover and as soon as we listened to it, we knew it would close the album. Smokebelch itself began life as a cover version of L.B. Bad's New Age Of Faith.

Joao Leao's bossa nova flecked cover of Nick Drake's One Of These Things First, a song from Nick's 1971 album Bryter Later, came out as a 7" single on Toronto's Local Dish label and was posted here two weeks ago. 

Calexico's cover of Love's 1967 classic Alone Again Or doesn't stray too far from the original- Calexico were surely destined to cover it through with their combination of desert indie and mariachi horns. I thought I had a dub version of Alone Again Or- it sounded superb, dub groove, those horns and a snatch of vocal but I must have dreamt it. 

Rowland S. Howard's Pop Crimes was the former Birthday Party guitarist's second solo album. He was undergoing treatment for liver cancer at the time and died two months after it was released. Under those circumstances Talk Talk's Life's What You Make (second line, 'can't escape it') takes on a different meaning. Rowland's guitar playing- in fact just the way he held and approached the guitar- is pretty unique. His roiling guitar lines and feedback, the metallic clang and grim vocal delivery take the song into new places- which is what a cover version should do really. 

Moon Duo are represented twice here. First their cover of Black Sabbath's Planet Caravan was a summer 2020 release, their version of the 1970 original a chilled and weightless cosmic take. Their version of The Stooges' No Fun is from a 2018 12" single with Alan Vega's Jukebox Babe on the other side. Sonic Boom produced it. Again, a blank eyed, calmed down take on Iggy's 1969 proto- punk classic. 

The Liminanas released a compilation of singles and other rarities in 2015, I've Got Trouble In Mind Vol. 2 which included this cover version of Angels And Devils, an Echo And The Bunnymen B-side. The Liminanas, French psyche/ garage band par excellence, take The Bunnymen's Mo Tucker stomp and turn it Gallic. 

Thurston Moore's cover of The Velvet Underground's Temptation Inside Your Heart came out in September, a song he's been playing live for some time, MBV bassist Debbie Goodge plays the bass (as she does when Thurston plays live). Lou Reed's song first saw the light of dark on the 1985 outtakes album VU and has been a favorite of mine since the late 80s. Thurston more than does it justice.

Fifty Million Reasons

Shack have got back together after an absence of fifteen years since they last played together (and nineteen since their last album). They played at The Ritz on Friday night. The Head brothers, Mick and John, formed Shack in the late 80s after their first band The Pale Fountains split and recorded some very fine albums- Waterpistol, HMS Fable, The Magical World Of The Strands in the 90s and Here's Tom With The Weather and On The Corner Of Miles And Gil in the 00s. Playing live again the brothers have been joined by bassist Pete Wilkinson and drummer Ian Skelly on loan from The Coral (following the sad death of original drummer Ian Templeton in 2022) plus a duo filling out the sound with horns and flute. 

Shack exist in their own world and space, a band out of time. They seem entirely untouched by 2025, by Tik Tok, Snapchat and Spotify. Their sound- analogue warmth, California in 1967 by way of Liverpool in 1991- is a joy, beautifully crafted songs that ease their way in, songs touched by melancholy and fragility, tales of drug addiction and woe, but also filled with love and joy, the sound of an eternal summer. Mick Head's acoustic guitar and John's semi- acoustic electric mesh together perfectly, wrapping their sounds around each other, with the bass and drums locked in tight, Skelly's drums occupying a space somewhere in between rock and jazz. And then they sing, two voices wracked with over thirty years of living, most of the songs sung by Mick with John taking the lead on three or four. 

They kick off with Sgt. Major from Waterpistol (an album that was nearly lost forever in 1991 following a series of misadventures- a studio fire, tapes left in a taxi). Mick Head between songs seems almost overcome by the occasion, the love and warmth in the room from the crowd to the band and back again. The Ritz was very much a Manchester/ Liverpool event on Friday night, lots of Scousers heading across on the M62 for the gig, the crowd peppered with La's t- shirts. The set ebbs and flows, John and Mick's songs sounding exactly as they should- lived in and loved. Cornish Town (written and sung by John) is a beauty. So is Undecided, one of Mick's best songs, a song for lost summer days, with guitars that cross The Byrds with Fairport Convention, and the line about sticking a needle in your arm jumping out.

Undecided 

It's a dream setlist- Butterfly, Mr. Appointment, the wondrous sea shanty/ folk song Captain's Table, Mick's songbook high point Comedy, a song that cries and laughs- and concludes with the electrifying Streets Of Kenny, Mick's tale of trawling the streets of his home, Kensington (the Liverpool one not the London one), looking for heroin, a sidestep away from Love and into Velvet Underground territory, John shaking his guitar.  

Captain's Table

After a brief disappearance they return for a one song encore, a cover of a song by the band whose DNA runs through Shack more than any other, Love's A House Is Not A Motel. 

Comedy (Radio Edit)

Shack are possibly the cult band's cult band, a band dogged by bad luck and human frailties but loaded with songs. They go largely under the radar and are unknown to most. They lit up The Ritz on Friday night, the set sounding like a celebration. 'When you cry it pulls me through', Mick songs on Comedy, a line echoing down the line from the late 90s, as the Head brothers pluck victory out of the fire. 

Half An Hour Of Calexico

Calexico's dusty, Tex- Mex, border town songs have been lighting up my world since the late 90s and although I've dipped in and out over the years I went back in again for 2018's The Thread That Binds. There's a new one this year I still haven't heard. Joey Burns and John Convertino are based in Tucson, Arizona. They started out in Giant Sand with Howe Gelb and then struck out on their own as Calexico in 1996. Since then they've made thirteen albums and dozens of singles and EPs. Their early records really mined the traditional Latino sounds, mariachi crossed with American indie. Listening to this last night I was struck by how they manage to do despair and joy equally, a feat not all bands can do- from the Mariachi party horns of Crystal Frontier to the hopelessness and loss of Not Even Stevie Nicks, they span the full range of human emotion. 

Half An Hour Of Calexico

• Untitled 3 (Virus Style Mix)
• Minas De Cobre (For Better Metal)
• Not Even Stevie Nicks
• The Black Light
• Track 32 (Corona)
• A History Of Lovers 
• End Of The World With You
• Dub Latino
• Crystal Frontier (Widescreen)
• Alone Again Or

Untitled 3 (Virus Style Mix) is a Two Lone Swordsmen remix from 2001. Calexico returned the favour remixing Tiny Reminders No. 3.

Minas De Cobre (For Better Metal) and The Black Light are both from their 1998 album, The Black Light, a seventeen song introduction to the Calexico border noir world. 

Not Even Stevie Nicks is one of the saddest songs I've ever heard. It and Dub Latina are from their 2003 album Feast Of Wire, their best album in many ways. Track 32 is a cover of Corona by Minutemen, San Pedro's ever inspirational 80s punk rock heroes and was a hidden extra on the CD version. 

A History Of Lovers is from the 2005 mini album they recorded with Iron And Wine, a beautiful country lament. 

End Of The World With You is from 2018's The Thread That Binds, an album that was in part a response to Trump and the right wing, anti- immigrant populism that he peddled while president. 

Crystal Frontier was a single in 2000, a trumpet led celebration of the people that live in the border areas between the US and Mexico and their shifting lives. In 2008 NASA beamed it into space to wake up the crew of the space shuttle. 

Alone Again Or is a cover of Love's 1967 classic, released as a single in 2003. 

Alone Again Or

I sometimes think all I'm doing here is finding one thousand three hundred different ways of saying 'Hey, this is a good song'. I think blogging works best when there's a story attached to it, something to give it context, and not just some biographical details cobbled together from Wikipedia. In this song's case it's just me going 'Hey, this is a good song'.

I love this song and the album it comes with- Forever Changes. In the late 80s it was one of those legendary 60s lps that people talked about in awed tones. Hearing it for the first time was a revelation- they were right,  it was as good as they said though not necessarily what I expected, a million miles away from Byrds, Doors, Stones. This song, written by Brian MacLean, is awash with possibility, taking the 60s beat boom somewhere else entirely. But there's sadness in those horns and flamenco rhythms too.

Alone Again Or