Category Archives: Acoustic

Mad Mackerel The last Five Years – Chris T Popper Picks His Favourites

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MM The Last Five Years - Chris T Popper

Believe it or not, Mad Mackerel has been around for more than five years now. During that time we’ve posted more than 4,000 times, and offered more than 5,000 songs for your listening pleasure. And more than three quarters of a million people have paid MM a visit during our lifetime on Google’s (godawful) blogspot and since April 2010 on WordPress.

We asked some of the regular MM contributors to give us their top twenty songs since MM first went live and we’re also going to give you one big mega-listing shortly, first up was Dr Roddy and now the ultra-punctual and fastidious Chris T Popper offers up his selections.

20) Strand of Oaks – Trap Door

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19) Avett Brothers – January Wedding

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18) Blitzen Trapper – Black River Killer

Download Blitzen Trapper – Black River Killer mp3

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17) Toby Burke – Cantina Crawl

Download Toby Burke – Cantina Crawl mp3

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16) Wye Oak – Civilian

Download Wye Oak – Civilian mp3

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15) The Airborne Toxic Event – Sometime Around Midnight

Download The Airborne Toxic Event – Sometime Around Midnight mp3

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14) Mathew Sawyer & The Ghosts – Revenge Of The Extra From Zulu

Download Mathew Sawyer & The Ghosts – Revenge of The Extra From Zulu mp3

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13) Wooden Wand – Uncle Bill

Download Wooden Wand – Uncle Bill mp3

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12) Timber Timbre – Bad Ritual

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11) Howling Owls – Snake Charmer (No Money In The Bank)

Dowload Howling Owls – Snake Charmer (No Money In The Bank) mp3

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10) Sonny + The Sandwitches – Through The Fog And Haze
Over the years I have never forgotten how much this song meant to me; if anything it gets stronger like an addiction (and considering this is a personality trait I’ve developed over the years I will happily succumb). I can be in the shower/waiting in a queue/at a meeting with senior management and I’ll randomly sing the first line. Sometimes that doesn’t work out so well when someone is talking flow charts and I’m singing ‘through the fog and the haze…’ at them. But it makes more sense than what their flapping mouths are coming out with. It’s just going to happen.

Download Sonny + The Sandwitches – Through The Fog And Haze mp3

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9) Darren Hayman – The Ship’s Piano
Not a single mackerel swam my way on this one. I was denounced as an absolute arse but I cared not. Hayman wrote this song after suffering a fractured skull; which opened up the idea to him of writing a song gentle enough to listen to with brain ache. There is nothing wrong with gentle in this age of incessant noisy shit. It is a beautiful soliloquy telling the story of a piano’s life (something I always wanted to hear) luckily I was able to understand – they didn’t. Their fault not mine.

Download Darren Hayman – The Ship’s Piano mp3

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8) Eddy Current Suppression Ring – Colour Television
Passed me by initially. Found it by simply playing my iTunes on shuffle one night a couple of years ago and was instantly hooked… and what a revelation. The insistent guitar is ravaged with a punk attitude I thought was long dead. By that I mean talent. Could have come from 1976 and share a gob full of spit with the best of that era, by that I mean the Clash and there is no greater praise I can bestow. Another story televised, another billion hypnotised. Quite.

Download Eddy Current Suppression Ring – Colour Television mp3

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7) Dennis Hopper Choppers – Good To Me
As soon as that horn blast announces its arrival I’m in. It builds with a rhythmic hypnotism that refuses to let go. Evoking the spaghetti western soundtracks of Ennio Morricone with an outstanding vocal from Ben Nicholl (I was lucky enough to catch this live and it didn’t disappoint) it’s never been off the ‘best of’ playlists since I heard it.

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6) The Cave Singers – I Don’t Mind
A timeless guitar riff that immediately sends my brain synapses in to electrical overdrive. Everything else becomes secondary to tapping my foot and grinning inanely. To be fair though, grinning inanely comes fairly naturally…

I went to see the Cave Singers live and they didn’t even perform this song (and it’s still in my top ten!). Now I know their back catalogue is good, but next time I’ll write the set list for fucks sake.

Download The Cave Singers – I Don’t Mind mp3 (from Welcome Joy)

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5) Lower Dens  – Brains
In the language of common parlance may I just say one thing? OMG. In fact I’ll go even further… OMFG! I swear down. Now I’ve totally alienated you I’ll continue… There is a subtlety to this work you have no idea about unless you have included it in your own top 5 (which you haven’t). Opens with a drumbeat that grips your lapels up like a rottweiler on heat.  And then… well, it just gets better of course. I suggest you go and listen to it and then come back to me and we’ll talk about it over a large gin & tonic and a ridiculously large bifta.

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4) Emil Friis – Sand In Your Eyes
Smashed in to my number one spot last year and who could stop it? I have no idea what it’s about and neither do I care. It’s just not important to me because I can put this song on at any time, in any mood (and by jingo I can be a moody bastard) and find myself singing the chorus loud and proud – without getting a single word right. But hey that’s what it’s all about isn’t it? The sheer momentum carries you along like a crazed right wing Chancellor at a witch’s funeral – enough to shed a tear for the right reasons.

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3) Phospherescent – Song For Zula
When Mr Mackerel asked us to put together our favourite songs of the last five years I was a little cautious of including any recent favourites. It’s difficult enough to pick 20 of the best at any time… but Song For Zula transcends the conundrum. The impact of the opening bars/violins/first line (referencing Johnny Cash no less) is timeless. I have a special place in my heart for Phossie and the Red Eyed Fly in Austin when I first saw them live (get me!) – opening with a Radiohead cover and then converting me to country music by channelling the great Willie Nelson. Met him (Phossie not Willie!) by the way. I want to be his best friend. He doesn’t.

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2) Howling Owls – A Wordsmith’s Reverie
You know when you read a book and think ‘shit I could never write that beautifully’ (I’m a frustrated author as well as human being) – Howling Owls does that musically. There is a self-aware yet peaceful desperation to this; and not a single word is wasted. The lament of ‘I will change everything about me for you – except for the fact I can never be what you want me to be’ is heartbreaking. It also makes you realise how shit this world is. Far more people know about Kim Kardashian than Howling Owls and Wooden Wand put together. Just think about that for a moment- done that? Good. Now try not to wail in utter sadness…

Download Howling Owls featuring Maximino – A Wordsmith’s Reverie mp3

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1) Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson – Buriedfed
This is my favourite song of the last five years of Mad Mackerel. It’s actually hard to write anything that can really do it the justice it deserves… I love music so much that a work of this sheer magnitude can leave me running on empty, even when it comes to my typical hyperbole. So, deep breath… here goes. From the moment I heard it I knew it was special. And it’s never lost its impact or the way it moves me like no other song. I know people like me say ‘genius’ a lot (and that people say that people say ‘genius’ a lot when they shouldn’t). This is genius.

Download Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson – Buriedfed mp3

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And my 3 favourite bands…

3) Jeff The Brotherhood
2) Wooden Wand
1) Phosphorescent

Needs a mention

Best Cover:
Download Port O’Brien – Halo mp3 (Beyonce Cover)

My favourite Live Act of 08-13
Phossie – Red Eyed Fly, Austin, Texas 2009
I suddenly and quite unexpectedly understood country music.

Videos of the Day: Joe Pug || The Young Knives || Soledad Velez || Hookworms

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Videos of the Day

An excellent set of videos/tunes today from the outstanding Joe Pug with a lyric video with a slight difference and the song itself, a cover of Harvey “Tex” Thomas Young’s Deep Dark Wells is a stunner. We have the Young Knives continuing their welcome return with their new musical film for Maureen, and Soledad Velez’s video for Black Light In The Forest. Lastly, we have MM faves, Hookworms and their new video for On Returning.

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MM Shorts 378: Keston Cobblers’ Club

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MM Shorts 378: Keston Cobblers' Club

Based on the folklore of the old, penniless Cobbler of Keston who threw barn dances for the villagers, wearing their soles thin and thus creating business…The modern Keston Cobblers’ Club have brought this ethos back with contemporary, catchy music fused with the grittiness of traditional British folk.

Already much beloved of Mrs M and the High Priestess, have yourself a listen to Beam – the new single from their summer EP A Scene of Plenty, which saw a release last week.

The Changing Colors Announce New Album

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New Album From Changing Colors

Sometimes it takes just one play, one single spin, to know you’ve found something to treasure.

So it is with Changing Colors and the track Good Times from their new album Joan & The King, which sees a release via Blank Tape Records. From the opening lazy strum of guitar and gently hypnotic percussion to the perfect, world-weary vocals of frontman Conor Bourgal, the song meanders slowly and surely to its destination over a simple refrain, “I am a mess of a man“. This is haunted, melancholy Americana at its very best.

The album also features some fantastic guests in Jolie Holland, Macon Terry and Mark Anderson from Paper Bird, and Inaiah Lujan and Desirae Garcia of The Haunted Windchimes.

Listen below and you can grab yourself a free download of Good Times from Pigeons & Planes here.

Wednesday Means Eight Of The Best

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Tuesday Means Eight of the Best!

Its been a good while since we’ve put up one of these type of posts, but a plethora of top notch releases meant it demanded to be temporarily resurrected!

So without further ado we have another taste of Laura Marling’s much anticipated new album in the shape of Once, and another taste from the rather weirder folk songstress Amanda Jo Williams and Holster, The Gun It Hangs In There, which is taken from her new album You’re The Father Of My Songs.

Cass McCombs will release a split single with Michael Hurley in the summer and his offering is the cheery shuffle of Three Men Sitting On A Hollow Log. Elsewhere, New Zealand band Surf City’s forthcoming album We Knew It Was Not Going To Be Like This continues their love affair with psychedelic, reverb-swathed guitar pop, drawing from their Flying Nun forefathers The Clean and The Chills, as well as the fuzzed-up dream pop of The Jesus and Mary Chain and the loopy noise of Animal Collective. Have a listen to It’s A Common Life.

Brendan Benson has a new single out titled Swallow You Whole, which is an infectiously jaunty piano led slice of indie rock and by contrast a slow burning, semi-intimidating cover of TLC’s  No Scrubs by Scout Niblett is a gem right out of left field – it comes from her critically acclaimed new album It’s Up To Emma.

Next, turn up the volume for another taste of White Mystery’s high octane garage-punk blues with their new single Telepathic from recent album of the same name, and finally we have the insouciant indie of Smith Westerns new single 3AM Spiritual which comes with a free, lightly sprinkled tinge of 60s psychedelia.


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Introducing >>> The August List

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Introducing >>> The August List

1) Taking their name from a Willard Grant Conspiracy song is always going to meet with our approval.

2) To see The August List then self-proclaim themselves as “backwards country porch-folk”, was also going to pique our interest that little bit more –  we love those country porch sing-a-longs.

3) And to have our friend Ronan at Nightshift compares them to The Handsome Family and the Carter-Cash partnership meant that we were definitely going to put this husband and wife duo’s debut EP Handsome Skin right to the top of our ‘must listen’ pile.

We’re glad we did.

Originally hailing from Dorset and now residing in our neck of the woods in a small barn perched on a hill in Oxfordshire, this self-released EP via their own Ubiquity Project Records is an absolute gem. Consisting of four tracks of perfectly judged Americana tinged with a dash of southern-gothic flavour, they are perfectly told campfire stories wrought from dying embers, and borne away on woodsmoke to drift and linger overhead.

Sometimes frantic, occasionally creepy and expertly switching between the uptempo, toe-tappin’ hoedown of Death Penalty and Bird House Song to the contemplative, languid melancholy of Homeland, this is an EP that enthrals and enchants in equal measure. We’re pretty confident this will appeal to anyone with a soft spot for Shovels & Rope, Roadside Graves, or even Wilco.

Head over to their Bandcamp page here to hear the whole EP.

Highly recommended.

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Mad Mackerel The Last Five Years – Dr Roddy Looks Back

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MM The Last Five Years - Dr Roddy

Believe it or not, Mad Mackerel has been around for more than five years now. During that time we’ve posted more than 4,000 times, and offered more than 5,000 songs for your listening pleasure. And more than three quarters of a million people have paid MM a visit during our lifetime on Google’s godawful blogspot and since April 2010 on WordPress.

We asked some of the regular MM contributors to give us their top twenty songs since MM first went live and we’re also going to give you one big mega-listing shortly, but first up with their personal top twenty is the right honourable Dr Roddy.

Through good fortune and fine sailing I have been lucky enough to be involved with this blog and it has provided me with some of the finest music in genres I maybe wouldn’t have looked in. So when asked to compile a top twenty of tunes from the last five years, I kicked aside the memories of musical turmoil that is involved with the yearly top tens, poured a stiff drink and set about it with relish.

20 Dan Auerbach – Heartbroken, In Disrepair

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19 Dirty Bourbon River Band – Train Is Gone

Download Dirty Bourbon River Show – Train Is Gone mp3 (from Volume 2)

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18 Tame Impala – Half Full Glass Of Wine

Download Tame Impala – Half Full Glass Of Wine mp3 (from Tame Impala EP)

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17 Janice Graham Band – Front Door

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16 Ox – Midnight On The Island

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15 Dennis Hoppers Choppers – Good To Me

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14 Timber Timbre – Bad Ritual

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13 Nathaniel Rateliffe – Brakeman

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12 William Elliot Whitmore – Old Devils

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11 What Would Jesus Drive – The Girls Are In Charge

Download What Would Jesus Drive – The Girls Are In Charge (live) mp3 (from What Would Jesus Drive EP)

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10 The Cave Singers – I Don’t Mind
Wonderfully carefree and happy song that could so easily be heard drifting out of a doorway in Haight Ashbury with some interesting smelling smoke circa 1967. Yet this song never bows or becomes a pastiche of that, it rises above it all with its own verve and character.

Download The Cave Singers – I Don’t Mind mp3 (from Welcome Joy)

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9 Brown Bird – Wrong Black Mare
Sullen, desperate story songs are a bit of a fave of mine and to be honest I think I can trace it back to this song. A tale of woe, desperation and unpaid debts are told here with such clarity, it’s as if you’ve got drunk with Brown Bird and they have decided to spill their guts to you. You understand though, ‘coz at some point we have all backed the “Wrong Black Mare”

Download Brown Bird – Wrong Brown Mare mp3 (from

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8 Mummy Short Arms – Cigarette Smuggling
When I wrote my first review of this song I thought I had described quite well. Upon re-reading it, I can safely say that my view has changed and will probably change on my next listen to it. The insanity, confusion, and babbling of this song are what holds my love for it. It’s an enigma wrapped in a riddle, all encased in a funky B-line, foot tapping beat, gravel throated, roister of a song.

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7 Strayfolk – What Wouldn’t I Do
This is such a beautifully crafted song. Simple, but packed with a rich warm sound that feels like it lends weight to the honesty of this tale of lost and forlorn love. Perfect Americana direct from Sweden.

Download Strayfolk – What Wouldn’t I Do mp3

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6 Withered Hand – Religious Songs
A piece of lyrical mastery is on display here. A fantastic sing-a-long arrangement supports the witty word play that Dan Wilson sings with a vulnerability to his voice. This doesn’t stop him from punching the words that need emphasis. This song also ask the obvious question “How does he really expect to be happy, when he listens to death metal bands?”

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5 Tweak Bird – Weight
I love the in-your-face nature of this song. Right from the start, it sets its stall out – flat out, foot on the amp rock, and proud of it to boot. The guitar plays a gritty riff that sounds angry and frustrated, while the drummer is hell bent on punishing every bit of his kit.

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4 Grass House – A Cradle A Short Breath
The deep sombre tones that lay across this song act as a perfect partner to the bass as it pounds along at a merry old pace. It never fails to make me give a wry smile as I bob along to it’s woeful chorus of “A cradle, a short breath”.

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3 Roadside Graves – Far And Wide
I still think Roadside Graves is the best band name of this century and Far And Wide is a song that has stayed with me since my first listen – I was hooked. A great country riff lures you in and you hardly notice that the song fills with more and more sound and pleasure until it finishes and you’re left with a hole where the music once was, so you reach for the replay button, you know like musical heroin.

Download The Roadside Graves – Far And Wide mp3 (from My Son’s Home)

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2 Wooden Wand – Servant To Blues
As this track rolls effortlessly on, Wooden Wand spills his bleak melancholy tale of a servant to blues. In other words, the relationship equivalent of the Church’s pious man. I love the rhythm of this track, it almost seems to tick along like a clock. The peacefulness of this song is speared through the heart with a great screeching guitar solo, this then just seems to ebb back into the shadows it leapt from, only to be covered by the warm sound of the organ. Truly blissful…

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1 Henry’s Funeral Shoe – Stranger Dig (Everything’s For Sale)
For just two guys damn! They make some noise. Great heavy blues tinged riffs and rolling drum beats – I’m loving that all day long. There is talent and passion in abundance here. I’m sat here trying to write something for this whilst listening to it, that has had to stop, as when it plays it just grips me up and I can’t do anything other than get right into it. If you’re looking for something new rock wise I beg you to check them out, live if possible. Disappointment won’t be on the menu.

Duquette Johnston Offers Up Cherry Blossom

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Duquette Johnston Offers Up Cherry Blossom

Next week sees the release of Rabbit Runs A Destiny, the fourth studio album from Birmingham, Alabama native Duquette Johnston.

In advance of the big occasion, he has now released a third track from the record to tickle the earbuds and this time it is the excellent Cherry Blossom. It has a slightly more anxious feel than the previous songs we’ve heard, a fretful, plaintive vocal and some wonderfully ominous fuzzy guitar lines are counterbalanced by lovely harmonies and robust percussion.

With every new track we hear, we anticipate the whole album a little bit more. This is the best we’ve heard from Duquette Johnston yet and we’d highly recommend you head over to Pledge Music here to pre-order.


[Click through for a free download]

New Track From Mathew Sawyer

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Matthew Sawyer & The Ghosts

Ah, how we love Matthew Sawyer and his unique/oddball/visitor from Mars perspective on the world. His 2010 album How Snakes Eat, with backing band The Ghosts remains one of our all time favourites.

Good news then to discover that he is returning with a new album later this year on our favourite label Fire Records. We have a track from it below, the typically original Feeeeling. Given the plethora of wonderful releases Fire have already put out in 2013, they should be having their best year ever.

See previous posts here. You can catch him live with Ned Collette & Wirewalker and Pete Astor on the 23rd May at the 12 Bar Club in London. To book tickets call 020 7240 2622.

Introducing >>> EM George

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Introducing >>> EM George

Emily Anne George is a singer-songwriter from Sydney. Influenced by the early sounds of Carole King, Etta James and Leonard Cohen and literature from Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote and Emily Bronte, she writes about personal experience or about the absurdities and observances of life.

If her feature single Murderers On The Inside is a typical example of what she is capable of, then we are in for a treat. A haunting melody underpins lyrics that are as insightful as they are honest – and the subject matter is not for the fainthearted, as it explores the effects of abuse and the ignorance of those that observe it.

Have a listen/download it here.