Less Than Jake - Losing Streak (SIO07) CD + DVD Set

Losing Streak is the third album by the ska punk band and the bands first album with Capitol Records. The album was recorded at Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida and Mirror Image Studios in Gainesville, Florida, both with producer Michael Rosen. Drums and bass were recorded at the former, while everything else was recorded at the latter. The album includes re-recordings of Jen Doesn't Like Me Anymore and Johnny Quest Thinks Were Sellouts, both of which appeared on Pezcore. Losing Streak was re-released with Hello Rockview as a double album in 2000.The album represents a slight departure from the raw sound characteristic of Pezcore and a turn toward the refined sound of a major record label release. This is likely more the result of being afforded a better production for this album than an artistic choice of lower fidelity for the previous album, however. Losing Streak maintains the bands punk element and social commentary on songs such as 9th at Pine,Dopeman and Lockdown.The brand new reissue on Sleep It Off Records contains the same track listing as the original release but also comes with a bonus DVD of the full record being played live from the Florida record show plus a few other extras...

CD
1. Automatic
2. Happyman
3. 9th At Pine
4. Sugar In Your Gas Tank
5. Shindo
6. 107
7. Johnny Quest Thinks Were Sellouts
8. Krazy Glue
9. Never Going Back To New Jersey
10. How's My Driving, Doug Hastings?
11. Just Like Frank
12. Ask The Magic 8 Ball
13. Dopeman
14. Jen Doesn't Like me Anymore
15. Rock-N-Roll Pizzeria
16. Lockdown

DVD
1. Live Florida Record Show

and turning them upside down and inside out with the unique sense of drama and theatre, instrumental virtuosity, verve, humour and blind cheek that has seen them spearhead the new folk boom.

Their third album Hedonism was the highest-selling independently released traditional folk album of all time, yet the new one Broadside (a title that rather cunningly melds an early form of printed song sharing with an appropriate nautical reference to firepower) is surely set to eclipse it with its thrilling arrangements and non-stop party spirit.

Like Hedonism, Broadside is produced by the great John Leckie, who has previously done wonderful things with the Stone Roses and Radiohead; and he's now effectively captured all the explosiveness that has established Bellowhead's undisputed reputation as one of the planet's most exciting live bands and replicated it in the studio. In this case that studio is Rockfield, where Freddie Mercury once held court. Indeed, at one point the massed vocals even evoke Bohemian Rhapsody and Freddie would surely have identified with the electrifying dynamism and sense of fun conjured up by this very special band.

A couple of the tracks are based on songs that initially found common currency in the form of those printed broadsides – the gruesome romp Black Beetle Pies for one and the spooky ballad The Wife Of Usher's Well - all death, ghosts and "earthly flesh and blood" – for another.

Weirdness also abounds with Betsy Baker, a vigorous tale of unrequited love, while some of the most venerated songs of the folk revival – Northumbrian mining song Byker Hill, the Copper Family classic Thousands Or More, the rocking sea shanty Go My Way and The Old Dun Cow - the knockabout tale of being trapped inside a burning pub – are revived in startling ways. They may be familiar, but they've never sounded like this before. There's even an irresistibly bonkers take on Lillibulero, a satirical song set to a tune attributed to Henry Purcell, on which the band flex their considerable muscles and gleefully explore their seemingly bottomless box of magic tricks, emerging with storming vocals, blitzing percussion, rampaging strings and mad, bad brass.

Broadside, their fourth album, writes another extraordinary chapter in the story of Bellowhead, which began in 2004 when a disparate group of characters who initially knew one another from informal pub sessions thought it might be a good wheeze to pool their widely varied backgrounds, influences and talents and form a big band… just to see what happened. Even they couldn't have imagined the results as their funny little enterprise -incorporating top-notch jazz, world, folk and classical musicians in a swathe of brass, strings, squeezebox, percussion and anything else that seemed like a good idea at the time - swiftly expanded into a gung-ho 11-piece line-up. Four albums, a glut of awards, sell-out tours and a long trail of thunderous festival appearances down the line, they've transported folk music into hitherto unknown territory, introducing a whole new audience to it with them.

"The greatest live act in Britain," says BBC Radio 2's Simon Mayo. "One of the best live bands in the UK…or anywhere," says Jeremy Vine. And the hordes of dancing fans grinning and singing along and treating every gig as a party clearly agree.

That party gains even more momentum with Broadside for, while some of the songs may appear graphic and brutal, this is above all, an album driven by a lust for 

1. Byker Hill
2. Old Dun Cow
3. Roll The Woodpile Down
4. 10,000 Miles Away
5. Betsy Baker
6. Black Beetle Pies
7. Thousands Or More
8. The Dockside Rant/Sailing With The Tide
9. The Wife Of Usher's Well
10. What's The Life Of A Man (Any More Than A Leaf?)
11. Lillibulero
12. Go My Way