Lime Garden have shared a new video for their latest single, ‘Pop Star’. The band premiered the final advance taste from their debut album ‘One More Thing’ yesterday evening on Huw Stephens’ BBC Radio 6 Music show.
Speaking about ‘Pop Star’, Lime Garden’s Chloe Howard said: “‘Pop Star’ was influenced by a real pop star and me not wanting to go back to my part-time job after being in the studio. On the morning of the studio session,
I’d watched a TikTok of Damon Albarn talking about how Gorillaz used the standard preset on an omnichord for “Clint Eastwood” – and then guess what I found in the studio!? – so, we figured if Damon says so we should try it! Then I sang over the demo about not wanting to go to work the day after our studio session and the lyrics stuck. The song is almost so sarcastic that it’s gone full circle into honesty and my work / life imbalance. The song has got a swagger that might surprise a few people!”
Lime Garden will release ‘One More Thing’ (16th February) on So Young Records. The band will also be embarking on an in-store tour marking the record’s release, before their biggest UK headline tour to date commences on 27th February at YES (Pink Room) in Manchester and culminates with a hometown show at Chalk in Brighton on 8 March.
“We’ve already had so much success without releasing an album that there is this huge pressure around ‘The Mess We Seem To Make’,” starts Crawlers vocalist Holly Minto. “People keep telling us that as soon as we release it, things will really start for us, but what the fuck have we been doing this whole time then?” she continues with a smirk.
Taking the explosive theatrics that have made Crawlers such a must-see live force over the past few years, the band’s debut album now comes with a newfound sense of self as the once-self-described “silly eyeliner band” come into their own. It’s a record that doesn’t need to worry about chasing the latest trends in guitar music or fitting into a wider world ‘cos people are undoubtedly going to flock to the one Crawlers have built.
Crawlers formed in 2018, with guitarist Amy Woodall, bassist Liv Kettle and vocalist Holly playing their grunge-inspired rock’n’roll in whatever North East venue would have them. They developed a loyal following from the back of Amy’s Fiat Punto, but the inclusion of drummer Harry Breen and the release of ‘Come Over (Again)’ in 2021 quickly changed the band’s trajectory. The following year, they supported childhood heroes My Chemical Romance at Warrington’s Victoria Park, played before Maneskin at the Montreux Jazz Festival and put in dominant showings everywhere from Reading & Leeds to Community and The Great Escape.
A sold-out UK headline tour, a run of shows around North America and their ‘Loud Without Noises’ mixtape rounded out a year which Holly could only describe as “a bit silly”. 2023 was more of the brilliant same, but that hasn’t stopped Holly from feeling physically sick about the release of their debut album, occasionally checking in to see whether her old job at Nando’s was still hiring.
“It’s more anticipation for me,” adds Liv. “I’ve enjoyed every single moment that has led us here. I’m excited to see where the album takes us next.”
The first proper idea for ‘The Mess We Seem To Make’ was written in 2020 and became the shimmering ‘Call It Love’. By the time it came to actually sit down and pull the record together last year, Crawlers had a “disgusting” stack of 190 demos to try and make sense of. “Which are the ones we really care about?” explains Liv of their process, with the resulting twelve tracks perhaps not the most obvious choices.
When they first started writing, the group were inspired by Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Melon Collie And The Infinite Sadness’, Pixies’ ‘Doolittle’ and Nirvana’s ‘In Utero’. “Just these amazing 90s alternative bands that wrote these incredible songs and managed to dress them up while still maintaining a rawness,” says Holly. That fuzzy rage can be felt across Crawlers’ back catalogue and continued to shape what would become the album’s prologue, angsty standalone singles ‘Messiah’ and ‘That Time Of Year Always’.
But as the process continued and the band continued to chase that feeling of excitement, their influences broadened. Amy got more into production, with Yeah Yeah Yeahs an important touchstone, while the joyous fury of Boygenius’ ‘The Record’ also inspired ‘The Mess We Seem To Make’. There were times Crawlers had to tell their label to trust them, especially with the nu-metal meets Bjork-inspired ‘Better If I Just Pretend’, but the end result brings new colours and dynamics to the band’s world without destroying anything that’s come before. “We’ve really been allowed to spread our feelings on a page with this album,” says Holly.
“The first song that we wrote that wasn’t typical for us was ‘Come Over (Again)’, and that one did alright,” grins Liv, with their breakout track currently sitting at well over 50 million streams. “We were really nervous about releasing it all those years ago, but we quickly realised that the excitement it made us feel was far more important. That energy has carried on through the mixtape and into this album. It might not be what people expect Crawlers to sound like, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t us.”
“The point of ‘Loud Without Noise’ was that it felt like an actual mixtape. It wasn’t coherent; it was just all our different influences on the same record. Sonically, a lot of the songs on the album are still really different,” explains Holly, pointing at the Adele-esque ballad ‘Golden Bridge’ that sits neatly alongside the heavy ‘Better If I Just Pretend’. “It all works together, though. We made sure it felt like the same world, and all our different influences help paint this collective vision,” she adds. “Everything’s elevated.”
“We are just in a place now where we are a lot more comfortable with who we are as individuals and as a band. The album definitely screams that,” says Liv. “There’s this unspoken mantra now that we are okay with ourselves.
Hudson-based duo Babehoven make a triumphant return with their latest album, “Water’s Here In You”, set to release everywhere on April 26th, 2024. The album journeys through the indie folk landscape they had previously etched out, now adorned with touches of eerie, atmospheric, and occasionally dissociative tones.
“Seemingly aware of the blandness that runs through most modern indie rock, ‘Birdseye’ opts for something more ambitious and strikes a balance between melancholic and soaring, jangley and ornate.” —The FADER
“It’s not just one of Babehoven’s best, it’s one of the best moments of 2024 yet, period.” —Paste Magazine
From Babehoven’s sophomore album ‘Water’s Here in You’ available everywhere on LP/CD/digital April 26th, 2024 on Double Double Whammy
Screaming Females an American rock band from New Brunswick,New Jersey comprising Marissa Paternoster on vocals and guitar, Jarrett Dougherty on drums, and Mike Abbate on bass.
That guitar! That guitar TONE! That bass! That bass tone! Those drums! Curious that Screaming Females have chosen to make their new EP semi-secret (you can only buy it at their shows), because it features the band sounding exceptional. The group’s earliest stuff found them shredding it up at 200mph, and the more recent stuff has found them making precise, dedicated strikes, but here, the band is revelling in what’s underneath the surface. Again, simplicity is the rule here, but underneath that simplicity is a big sound.
It’s almost as if finger technique is too easy for the band, so they are seeing if they can pull multiple sounds from one pluck or crack. If this EP was a wine, some douche in a turtleneck and blazer would say something like, “A assured but delicate ballet of oak and north field cherry, with an understated licorice highlights that are daringly cloaked by a earthy and playful ambiance.” Today, I am that douche.
“Swallow the world” opens with a drum power-strike by Jarrett D before bassist Mike A and Marissa Paternoster lock into a short solo that is like Sticky Fingers era Stones decided to be in Hawkwind. It’s spacey and blusey and I love it. The band takes this spartan, but bold approach throughout the whole album. Sort of the deliberate, slow-mo punch of “Glass House” from their last LP, “All At Once”, the band has a clear vision of attack. They know that, perhaps paradoxically, keeping it slower and rumbling here let’s us really get what is going on. Instead of rushing through theatrics, we get to focus on each individual scene- almost to the point where the band feels gothy at points.
As usually, Paternoster slides surrealist, gothic imagery into her storytelling. “Where I Live,” mentions “blood” and “love,” some of her most favourite trademark topics, along with being abandoned. My guess is that Paternoster often cloaks her lyrics in such Poe/Mary Shelley varnish because these tunes are exceptionally personally, so the added mystery creates the feeling intended without any details.
It’s a good trick that also lets you bend the imagery to your own personal vision. From “You Got It:”I thought it would stop / I watched You leave / I Swallowed Your Coil in Ecstasy / Now you got it!” WTF? I feel totally gothed out. Someone tell David J to buy these lyrics. Don’t ask me what “My Dead Wife” is about. It’s a creepy title for an alarmingly upbeat tune that has the lyric “I wish that I was dead” that feels like bad mojo to even discuss. Let that one do its own talking.
I felt that in its massive vision and pure execution, “All at Once” was the band’s epitome. But, before that, I thought the all out rockage of “Rose Mountain” was the band’s epitome, so I was wrong there. If the band cuts an album as spacey and as bold and as artfully direct and nuanced as this EP, I’ll be wrong again. I’m willing ti bet that I’m right that I’m going to be wrong,
Five years after the release of “Deceiver“, DIIV have announced their fourth album, “Frog in Boiling Water”. Produced by Chris Coady and set for release on May 24th via Fantasy Records, the LP was reportedly a four-year process that nearly broke the band before the album was completed. The project’s first single “Brown Paper Bag” is a snarling alt-rock cut that takes cues from ’90s shoegaze and the sludgy beauty of bands like Audioslave and Smashing Pumpkins.
Both the title and the themes of the new record reference “The Boiling Frog” in Daniel Quinn’s The Story of B. The band explained, “If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place it gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, the frog will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on its face, it will unresistingly allow itself to be boiled to death.” Cheery stuff here.
The band added: “We understand the metaphor to be one about a slow, sick, and overwhelmingly banal collapse of society under end-stage capitalism, the brutal realities we’ve maybe come to accept as normal. That’s the boiling water and we are the frogs. The album is more or less a collection of snapshots from various angles of our modern condition which we think highlights what this collapse looks like and, more particularly, what it feels like.”
Speaking of end-stage capitalism, get a jump on consuming their product by pre-ordering “Frog in Boiling Water “
DIIV—Zachary Cole Smith [lead vocals, guitar], Andrew Bailey [guitar], Colin Caulfield [vocals, bass], and Ben Newman [drums]—craft the soundtrack to personal resurrection under the heavy weight of metallic catharsis upheld by robust guitars and vocal tension that almost snaps, but never quite
The band’s new album will arrive on May 24th via Fantasy Records
Enter Austin’s Punk Band: The Bodysnatchers, composed of a coterie of musicians from Abilene,Del Rio, and Idyllwild, who’d all migrated to Austin in the early 70’s. Singer Larry James, guitarist Tom McMahon,”tenor” bassist Kyle Brock, (also in Eric Johnson’s Electromagnets), second bassist Jimmy Pettit, and brothers Chris Bailey on guitar and Ian Bailey on drums. The Bodysnatchers was a band that was ultimately unsustainable due to its force and volume.
Their live show experience left band and audiences alike, energized, yet completely drained. Only about seven shows were performed over a period of months. Although at the dawn of punk rock, their sound had an early metal ethic, and a wall of sound production. Too much was never enough, and true to their distorted indulgence of stupidity and carelessness – It’s live!
Goat Girl are very excited to share our new tune ‘Ride Around’ with yaz, we had so much fun making this song and the video too with our pals at Foreign Body Productions
it’s the first single from our new album “Below The Waste”, which we co-produced with the amazing John ‘Spud’ Murphy and it’s coming out on 7TH June . it actually bangs can’t wait to share with yuz.
also check out the amazing artwork from our fave artistic sibling duo Toby and Aidan Evans-Jesra
THAT’S NOT ALL!!! we’re doing a test drive tour (beep beep) at the end of march where you can hear songs old and new, good and bad (jk they’re all bangers) so go hit that link in our bio to get that exclusive access to presale of album and gig tickets!!!
wait…. THERE’S MORE!! we’ll be hitting up some record stores around the release of the album and playing even more shows. we’re so gassed it’s good to be back, love and power, GG xxxxx4
Welsh band Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard have shared a live performance of our new single ‘National Rust’!
We’ve done a couple of these now so I think everyone knows the score but we recorded it in this big barn in mid-Wales by a bunch of sand dunes, we went running around in those damn dunes before we shot it so I was all sweaty and covered in sand and then the temperature dropped so I was freezing cold and itchy and trying to set up microphones and shouting at Ethan to stop slamming drums 24/7 it was class.
Our brand new record “Skinwalker” is coming out on April 12th. If you wanna be the proud owner of one of these freaky new tees or a spooky-ass glow in the dark vinyl then go get ’em from our official store.
The new MOJO stars Liam Gallagher & John Squire, Beth Gibbons, St. Vincent, Steely Dan, The Rolling Stones, Michael Head, Waxahatchee, Lenny Kravitz, Marvin Gaye, Can, Mdou Moctar, Dion, Sam Lee, The Ramones, Mary Weiss, Studio One, Butthole Surfers and a 15-track Manchester CD.
“Underdressed at the Symphony” is out March 1st on Secretly Canadian and available now for pre-order.
“Feeling Good Today” is straightforward: Simple guitar, piano, and autotune. Lighthearted and self-aware with a surprisingly sticky melody. Webster’s favorite song on the record, and the one appearance of autotune on “Underdressed at the Symphony”, as Webster sings an airy, acrobatic melody over a sweet, ambling guitar riff. It’s a snapshot of a day in the life of Faye Webster: a to do list of what she’s planning for the day from visiting her brother, to walking her dog, to buying something dumb. Anything to stay focused on the positive while processing a breakup.
Unlike most songs on the album, Webster and her band took many swings at “Feeling Good Today”, recording and scrapping numerous takes before returning to the demo and original recordings. “The demo can’t be beat,” says Webster, as the she sings through what almost sounds like a morning inner monologue, the tiny highs and lows that carry us through.
‘Underdressed at the Symphony’, out March 1st on Secretly Canadian.
The Fat Angel Sings 