Electronic duo and festival favourites Sylvan Esso will release their highly anticipated third LP later this month, and it feels like the perfect time to receive their buoyant, joyful, dance-inducing music. “It’s a record about being increasingly terrified of the world around you and looking inward to remember all the times when loving other people seemed so easy, so that you can find your way back to that place,” the pair said in a statement. Sylvan Esso is made up of Amelia Meath (who you also may know from her folk project Mountain Man) and producer Nick Sanborn. Their music has become increasingly polished over the years, first catching fire with more ambient songs like “Hey Mami” and “Coffee” on their 2014 self-titled debut and following it with 2017’s more pop-forward What Now. Free Love seems to position them somewhere in between those two sounds. Single “Ferris Wheel” is tremendously fun, but it’s also weirdly cleansing. Meath describes this phenomenon best: “Nick wants things to sound unsettling, but I want you to take your shirt off and dance.” There you have it.
We are thrilled to announce our third album, Free Love, will be out 9.25.20
It’s a record about being increasingly terrified of the world around you and looking inward to remember all the times when loving other people seemed so easy, so that you can find your way back to that place.
This first single, Ferris Wheel, is about discovering your power and awkwardly figuring out how to wield it. It’s for the summer, it’s for you, we hope you like it.
Kate Stables announced earlier this summer that her next album under the This Is The Kit alias is called “Off Off On”, and it’s set to arrive October 23rd on Rough Trade Records. The news arrived with the lead single “This Is What You Did,” which features Stables’ signature upbeat banjo, top-knotch vocals and restless, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. Stables describes it as “A bit of a panic attack song,” adding, “The negative voices of other people that are your own voice. Or are they? Hard to say when you’re in this kind of a place. How to get out of this place? Needing to get outside more.”
Greetings friends.
hoping this update finds you as well as can be in these ever changing times.
i have come here to bring you the news that we have made a new album called ‘Off Off On’ and that it will be released on October the 23rd by Rough Trade records
our friend Josh Kaufman produced it, Rozi Plain, Jamie Whitby-Coles, Neil Smith, Jesse Vernon and many more played on it, and we are very much looking forward to being able to play it to you. the artwork for the record is by our hero Joff Winterhart.
there is a thisisthekit webshop exclusive green vinyl LP edition and the first hundred of these come signed – just make sure you pick the signed edtion from the menu. but that’s not all: you can pick up bundles with limited edition t-shirts and this is the kit playing cards, plus cd and download.
Ohio-born country singer Arlo McKinley released his debut album (as Arlo McKinley & the Lonesome Sound) back in 2014, and that album caught a few ears in the country scene, but it didn’t make the mark that Arlo had hoped and he almost gave up on music entirely. One of the album’s fans was Tyler Childers, who invited Arlo to open for him and sing on stage with him a few years later, and eventually that led to Arlo making a fan out of another famous person: the late, legendary John Prine, who signed Arlo to his Oh Boy Records label before passing away earlier this year. Arlo, now 40 years old, makes his Oh Boy debut with Die Midwestern, his first new music in six years and an album that’s already shaping up to be a potential breakthrough.
Die Western is more polished than Arlo’s lo-fi debut — he made it at Memphis’ legendary Sun Studio with producer Matt Ross-Spang (Prine, Jason Isbell, Margo Price, etc) and a backing band of Ken Coomer (Uncle Tupelo, Wilco), Rick Steff (Cat Power, Hank Williams Jr.), and Reba Russell (Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison) — so it sounds great, but it’s not overly polished. Arlo comes from a punk/DIY background, and that mindset informs these songs as much as classic folk and country does. He especially reminds me of fellow Matt Ross-Spang collaborator Jason Isbell, and if you like Isbell’s great new album, you may find that Die Midwestern pairs very well with it.
Like a lot of great country singers, Arlo fills his songs with real-life hardships — from heartbreak to addiction — and when he opens his mouth to sing about everything he’s been through in his 40 years on this planet, you feel it.
Arlo McKinley’s official video for “Die Midwestern” from his new album Die Midwestern.
The National frontman Matt Berninger has promised his first solo LP for 2020. ‘Serpentine Prison’ it was produced and arranged by Booker T. Jones, with plenty of guest appearances lined up too. “More about it soon,” Berninger told fans on social media in October 2019, “but basically I’m the luckiest man in the universe with lots of brilliant friends who can play instermints [sic].”
For his proper solo debut, the National frontman teamed up with legendary producer and keyboardist Booker T. Jones for a stately set of mid-tempo ballads. Featuring contributions from everyone from Andrew Bird to Mickey Raphael, the album promises to be closer to typically sparse singer-songwriter fare than Berninger’s past solo detours (see his dancey 2015 collaborative record Return to the Moon, recorded with Brent Knopf under the moniker El Vy). On the title track, Berninger has said he dug “back into my own garbage” after focusing on writing from more character-based perspectives on the National’s 2019 album I Am Easy to Find. Expect more middle-aged ennui on this batch of introspective musings, like early highlight “Distant Axis,” a co-write with Walter Martin of the Walkmen that Berninger has described as being about “falling out of touch with someone or something you once thought would be there forever.”
Berninger shared a new track “One More Second” from his upcoming debut solo record Serpentine Prison, out on October. 16 via Book’s Records. The single follows the release of the album’s title track and “Distant Axis.” “I wrote ‘One More Second’ with Matt Sheehy with the intention for it to be a kind of answer to Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You,’ or sort of the other side of that conversation,” Berninger says. “I just wanted to write one of those classic, simple, desperate love songs that sound great in your car.”
Release date: October 16th
It’s not yet known if Berninger’s collaboration with Phoebe Bridgers, ‘Walking on a String’, will appear on the record, but it’s the first full non-National venture from the singer, who previously collaborated with Melomena’s Brent Knopf on 2015’s EL VY album.
The Arthur Brothers are a London based group that prides themselves in going above and beyond in terms of their musical creativity. They have already won awards for their music videos and have been played on radio stations all around the world. A 9mins30 sweeping epic journey – ‘Sun Gun’ is a timeless neo-psych, shimmering, summer’s day intergalactic cruise, surfing on waves of vocal harmonies and cascading guitars. From ‘Sun Machine’ to ‘Sun King’, sun salutations to sun salvation. A fitting last song for the creative enterprise that is The Arthur Brothers Nine, ‘Sun Gun’ acts as a statement of intent.
“Sun Gun” is the latest single off their upcoming debut album Nine. “Sun Gun” starts out with a quick strum of the guitar then goes into an epic vocal display. The vocals are powerful and give us the impression of being in a giant stadium arena watching the band perform. The vocal style is similar to that of The Beatles but also sounds quite futuristic. “Sun Gun” is full of brilliant harmonies that fill the room. This song was inspired and written as a future perspective of the past. The instrumentals have an atmospheric quality that takes you on a journey.
We’ve been dreaming of a light to lift the darkness… New single ‘Sun Gun’ and debut album out soon on ClearLight Records via Declared Goods
The Arthur Brothers; is a London based artistic alliance centred around brothers Matt and Danny Arthur and the producer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist J. C. Wright.
With an eclectic batch of singles over the last two years, The Arthur Brothers have demonstrated that there are no boundaries in terms of what to expect from their musical creations. With accolades from radio and press globally, throw in two award winning animated videos, and it’s clear to see that The Arthur Brothers are showing a unique ingenuity and imaginative ambition that doesn’t come around often. “Sun Gun” is a song that was written to inspire hope and love.
Written by: J. C. Wright, Danny Arthur, Matt Arthur
Angel Olsen’s 2016 marvel, My Woman, had been a career breakthrough, but it catalyzed a period of personal tumult, too: a painful breakup, an uneasy recovery, an inadequate reckoning. at home in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge mountains, Olsen penned songs that finally grappled with these troubles, particularly love—how forever is too much to promise, how relationships can lock us into static versions of ourselves, how you can go through hell just to make someone else happy. these heartsore explorations shape “Whole New Mess”.
Getting a glimpse at an alternate take of a classic album is something we’ve seen more and more in the modern era. But with her new album Whole New Mess, a fraternal twin to 2019’s “All Mirror”, songwriter Angel Olsen didn’t have to wander too deeply into the vault. But it’s not merely a “demos collection.” Instead, Olsen reimagines the songs of “All Mirror” in compelling and strange ways, documenting the way songs change and morph over time in an adventurous creator’s hands.
“If I’d wanted to release demos, it wouldn’t sound this way,” Olsen says of her first proper solo album since 2012. “The sonics would be very different if I’d just recorded it myself. I was still in the process of going through a lot of the material emotionally. I just wanted to have an account of how I would’ve done it without someone really stirring the pot.”
Olsen’s first solo album since her 2012 debut and an emotional portrait so intimate and vulnerable you can hear her find meaning in these crises in real-time. at least nine of the eleven songs on Whole New Mess should sound familiar to anyone who has heard All Mirrors, Olsen’s grand 2019 masterpiece that earned high honours on prestigious year-end lists and glossy spreads in stylish magazines. “lark,” “summer,” “chance”—they are all here, at least in some skeletal form and with slightly different titles. but these are not the demos for all mirrors. instead, Whole New Mess is its own record with its own immovable mood, with Olsen working through her open wounds and raw nerves with just a few guitars and some microphones, isolated in a century-old church in the pacific northwest.
“Waving, Smiling” from ’Whole New Mess’ by Angel Olsen, out on Jagjaguwar August 28th, 2020
Though its track list overlaps with her last record, this new project illustrates how songs can change over time. Much in the same way that a song’s meaning can soften and reshape itself over time for its author, here the material Olsen is working with is akin to metal freshly pulled from a forge, pliable into the forms that still hot emotions could bring about.
If the lavish orchestral arrangements and cinematic scope of All Mirrors are the sound of Olsen preparing her scars for the wider world to see, Whole New Mess is the sound of her first figuring out their shape, making sense for herself of these injuries. considered alongside All Mirrors, Whole New Mess is a poignant and pointed reminder that songs are more than mere collections of words, chords, and even melodies. They are webs of moods and moments and ideas, qualities that can change from one month to the next and can say just as much as the perfect progression or an exquisite chord. in that sense, these 11 songs—solitary, frank, and unflinching examinations of what it’s like to love, lose, and survive—are entirely new. this is the sound of Angel Olsen, sorting through the kind of trouble we’ve all known, as if just for herself and whoever else needs it
New York-based singer/songwriter Samia Finnerty’s debut album, “The Baby”, is about learning how to be yourself, by yourself. Embarking on her first tours––far away from friends and alone in green rooms across the country––she began to untangle just how much of her own identity had been created by those she held close. Each of the twelve songs that make up The Baby find Samia holding up her relationships as a mirror, reflecting her own truths and learning how to show up for herself when there’s no one else around. The result of this introspection is an album that is bold and authentic, philosophizing while surgically examining the mundane.
On whiskey-tinged standout “Big Wheel”, she provides a status report on those closest to her, checking in on a liar in Montana and an old friend in Japan who just bought new shoes. The breathtaking Stellate finds her grappling with power imbalance and a fear of confrontation: “you buy me a big bucket/and I scream into that/and when it overflows you want your money back.” She laments the closing of downtown East Village haven St. Dymphna’s, facetiously boasts getting Fit and Full off apple cider vinegar and kale and threatens to get fully naked in a hot restaurant. She vacillates between humorous and harrowing often within a single line, a skill born from growing up with the internet and all of its simultaneous horrors and pleasures. Each song is centred by Samia’s incredible voice, which effortlessly glides between campfire intimacy and 90’s rock panache.
After a string of hushed ballads and spirited pop/rock tunes, Samia Finnerty (aka Samia) began drawing ears and eyes. The New York-based singer/songwriter’s debut album “The Baby” centers on her low, rather soulful voice, and it finds her at her most self-assured. Operating in a ’90s and 2000s pop/rock lane, Samia thrives on soaring hooks, which carry even more power thanks to her impressive vocal range. Upbeat rock songs like “Fit N Full” and “Big Wheel” possess yearning and the type of humour that everyone’s craving these days, and they bring instantaneous choruses, too. Her downtempo side is just as moving, if not more so—“Pool” and “Stellate” are packed with desire, with the former embracing a more ethereal pop airiness and the latter leaning into stripped-down, contemplative rock.
Samia is a gift that keeps on giving. Just one week on from “Triptych,” the New York songwriter returns to our column today with the track “Minnesota.” Lifted from her recent album The Baby, it’s a melancholic strut about the irrationalities of love, with “Bennie and the Jetts”-esque chords backing Samia as she sings about losing control of her feelings.
My first album is called The Baby and it’s coming out via Grand Jury on 28th August 2020. Made it with my friends Caleb Hinz, Jake Luppen, Nathan Stocker and Lars Stalfors
The 2nd single off the record is called Fit n Full and I wrote it Tom D’agustino Donating my pre-sale proceeds to NAACP Legal Defense Fund, -a legal defense organization fighting for racial justice !!.
Jenny Owen Youngs grew up in the forests of northern New Jersey and now lives in Los Angeles, where she spends much of her time writing with and for other artists, making podcasts, and working on her next record. Her songs have appeared in Bojack Horseman, Weeds, Suburgatory, Switched at Birth, and elsewhere. If you need her, she’s probably in Skyrim right now.
Okay so I recorded a cover of “Teenage Dream” by Katy Perry because it’s one of my very favourite modern love songs, and it has been making me feel feelings for the full duration of its decade upon this earth.
It was my great pleasure to record this (remotely, in quarantine, via Zoom hangs and shared Pro Tools sessions) with John Mark Nelson, who produced and mixed the song with great instincts and great sensitivity. Mastered by the wonderful Jett Galindo at The Bakery.Canada’s sweetheart Devan Power designed the artwork, and incorporated a photograph made by America’s sweetheart, Tucker Leary.
Renowned Chapel Hill string band Mipso has signed with Rounder Records, it was announced “Mipso” is a wildly creative, boundary-pushing band that is somehow also completely consistent with Rounder’s deep string band tradition. Their ensemble playing, singing, and song writing set them apart from the pack of rising acts in today’s roots music scene.”
“It’s hard to imagine Mipso would exist if not for the influence a key handful of Rounder releases have had on our music, so it’s exciting to join a label whose legacy we already love,” said guitarist and singer Joseph Terrell. “Plus, the new Rounder team really understands our band. We think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“We’ve long been inspired by Rounder Records’ commitment to artistry,” adds Mipso manager their deep industry experience, passion for music, and creative vision for ushering the label into its 50th year and beyond — makes it a very exciting match for Mipso.”
The band — Terrell, bassist and singer Wood Robinson, fiddler and singer Libby Rodenbough, and mandolinist and singer Jacob Sharp — first came together when they were students at the University of North Carolina. Their distinctive and wholly original blend of indie-folk, traditional Appalachian roots music, and atmospheric pop has earned them a devoted following among music fans and admiration from critics.
Joseph: “I think there’s a double strangeness in looking back on our childhoods from our late twenties. For one thing the memories themselves are fuzzy, deceitful. And then all the strongest emotions I can access–the moments of joy and triumph or heartbreak–feel unfamiliar, like I can’t see the world that way anymore. It’s harder to see such bright and beautiful primary colours. I guess I’m old enough now to feel totally disillusioned about the politics and culture of the 90s–which is to say I’m seeing the era clearly!–but still it’s hard not to miss the wide-eyed wonder of being a kid. There’s probably a German word for this kind of negative nostalgia.”
Libby: “It was really tempting to take this song in a kind of familiar bluesy direction, but we fought the temptation and tried to take into a weirder, quirkier zone. Joseph’s lyrics are like that; they describe nostalgia for childhood in a way it often feels to me: sort of uncomfortable and sad in an inscrutable way, but charged with the emotional memory of something beautiful.”
”Hey, Coyote” has a really particular tone, kind of half wistful prayer, half self-deprecating joke. We were brainstorming for the video and realized…it’s totally a Twin Peaks vibe! Had some fun with that. Basically a mixture of earnest formality and a little absurdity, plus the backdrop of strange outdoorsy gear and wildlife. We were also thinking of early 90s arty pop videos like “Downtown Lights” by The Blue Nile…Some of that very saturated sentimentality we grew up on, for better or worse. Somehow those two visual worlds fit together well.” – Joseph
David Lynch was unavailable for the Hey, Coyote shoot, so we did our best. this one was really fun to make.
Joseph: “We were playing a show in Missoula, Montana, and I had the afternoon to explore town, feeling like a very fluent traveller, very at home in the world. A barista looked at me flatly and asked, “where are you from?” and it snapped me out of my little delusion. I’m not at home here, and in fact, we travel so much that I don’t really feel at home anywhere. Why lie to ourselves? Why pretend? Because it’s so sad not to. We spend our days moving between impersonal commercial spaces: hotel lobby, gas station, restaurant, venue, bar. I remember realizing once that every room I’d been in all day had been selling Doritos. Coyote is like Hermes, the trickster figure, God of travellers and transitions and commerce and language. I guess this song comes from wanting to have the option of leaving these in-between spaces and really being home somewhere.”
Chapel Hill’s indie Americana quartet Mipso – Jacob Sharp (mandolin, vocals), Wood Robinson (bass, vocals), Joseph Terrell (guitar, vocals), and Libby Rodenbough (fiddle, vocals).
Mipso Announces Self-Titled album for Rounder Records Debut, Set For October 16th
When Paul Weller announced the Style Council’s arrival in march 1983, he’d come a very long way. in fact, at the age of just 24, he was already a musical veteran with six albums and nine top 10 singles under his belt with the Jam. as their leader he had become a deity-like figure and for his fans, the Jam’s split was unimaginable. but creatively restless and of inquisitive mind, Paul jettisoned them at their height to form a collective with an eventual core line-up of Paul with Mick Talbot, Dee C Lee and Steve White. in a quest for new sounds, the group travelled to realms previously unchartered for a pop group incorporating musical influences as wide ranging as Blue Note jazz and Chicago soul, Claude Debussy and Erik Satie, Chicago House and Jacques Brel.
At the same time, as battle lines were drawn in a decade under Margaret Thatcher culminating in the miner’s strike of 1984-85, Paul’s lyrics spoke with the language of the activist and his state of the nation addresses were both fierce and eloquent. over four albums and 17 singles, The Style Council made a stand and became the standard bearers of progressive soulful pop and social comment. The Style Council was emblematic of its creator. Paul Weller, smart, fearless, audacious, with a social conscience and totally unafraid to push the possibilities of pop. this is their story… “we set out to have fun, document the times and at the same time we wanted to elevate pop to an art form – I think we did that.” Paul Weller
Ahead of a forthcoming documentary on the second famed band of Paul Weller’s career, the revered British rocker has co-compiled a new collection devoted to The Style Council.
Long Hot Summers: The Story of The Style Council provides an extensive overview of Weller’s work through the ’80s after the dissolution of The Jam. The 37-track collection, available across 2 CDs or 3 LPs, includes a healthy mix of the group’s biggest singles, album cuts, B-sides and two unreleased tracks: an extended version of 1984’s “Dropping Bombs On The Whitehouse” and a string-laden demo of the band’s biggest worldwide hit, “My Ever Changing Moods.”
Working with Dexys Midnight Runners keyboardist Mick Talbot, drummer Steve White and vocalist Dee C. Lee,Weller’s work in The Style Council largely eschewed the punk leanings of TheJam for more overt New Wave, slick soul and sophisti-pop influences. But Weller’s signature song writing was still at the helm – as well as a growing political bent. (Along with Billy Bragg and Jimmy Somerville, Weller was active in Red Wedge, a collective of Labour-sympathetic musicians working to drum up support against England’s prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
The group earned three straight gold records in England with 1984’s Café Bleu (released in America as My Ever Changing Moods – the title track of which became a U.S. Top 40 hit), 1985’s chart-topping Our Favourite Shop and 1987’s The Cost Of Loving. The latter’s mixed critical reception was followed by the experimental Confessions Of a Pop Group (1988); the following year’s Modernism: A New Decade was rejected by Polydor Records, after which Weller called the group off for a solo career.
Long Hot Summers will be available from UMC October 30th – the same day a new documentary about The Style Council, featuring interviews with Weller, Talbot, White and Lee, will premiere on Sky Arts in England. The compilation, remastered at Abbey Road Studios, features new notes by Weller, essayist Lois Wilson, and actor Martin Freeman (star of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy and the U.K. version of The Office), a professed “superfan” of the group.
The Fat Angel Sings 