Rat Heart: Northern Luv Songs / Pamela Peanut 2xCS

Tom Boogizm gifted us with two new Rat Heart albums in 2023: ‘Northern Luv Songs 4 Wen Ur Life’s A Mess’, and ‘The Pamela Peanut Kitchen Sessions’. In typical fashion, both sold out in days, but have now been packaged together for this special edition tape doublepack for anyone who missed out. Inside you’ll find two hours of exquisite emotional untangling tipped if you’re into The Durutti Column, Vincent Gallo, Andrew Chalk, Dean Blunt, Arthur Russell, Labradford! ‘Northern Luv Songs 4 Wen Ur Life’s A Mess’ scrubbed out the bowels of Tom Boogizm's emotional plumbing, chopping and screwing dream pop, narcotic improv and freeform DIY into a fuzzy and bewitching opus. Shrouded in an atmospheric clag, Boogizm spun out the blues on a noumenal loom that weaved in aspects of DIY bedroom styles akin to Dean Blunt or Roy Montgomery’s spectral jangles and end-of-world romance. On ‘The Pamela Peanut Kitchen Sessions’ he reconvened, Peanuts in tow, for an album of opposing energies, from electric blues to transcendent drift, all uppercase, wry-lipped track titles, with an emotionally melted core. Using pretty much just electric guitar, pedals and voice, the songs wound around the aesthetic progressions of Arthur Russell, manc style, running deep into the red with bare emotion. And then things took a turn, halfway thru, with a trio of songs that clocked in at almost 40 minutes between them, arcing from a sort of urban desert blues to properly smudged slowcore and into iridescent ambient, shot through with visions of manc backstreets filmed in the glow of night. There’s nowt mannered or urbane to see here, just pure expression, from one of the low key greats of our time.