When Ratboys’ Julia Steiner wrote “Figure,” she did so from a place of pain.
“I wrote ‘Figure’ in the middle of the night in my bedroom a few years ago,” she tells NPR Music, “and for me the song was a way to air all of my disparate frustrations and fears in one place.”
But “Figure,” from the Chicago-based band’s GL EP, doesn’t really sound like a melancholy tune. True to much of the band’s self-proclaimed “post-country” sound, it’s punchy and playful — which, Steiner says, came from the suggestion of her bandmate Dave Sagan and friend-of-the-band Sean Eldon, and helped transform the feel of the song.
And while Steiner says she meant for the lyrics to be “vague and strange,” they’re evocatively poignant, too. “Is it the point of a story / To draw a picture in flame?” she sings over buoyant percussion and dynamic guitars, “I grew a heart in molting / Pleasure got beat down by shame.”
The reinvention took another turn when Steiner’s friend, artist Bayley White, crafted song’s video. “Bayley had been doing some research on claymation videos and was hoping to try her hand at one,” Steiner explains — so she sent her “Figure” and asked White to use the song to tell whatever type of visual story she wanted.
The resulting video follows the lyrics on a literal level, pairing spirited whimsy with bittersweet absurdity. Steiner says White peppered the video with “little touches” that felt deeply personal: “[Wilco’s] A Ghost is Born album art on the wall (my favourite record), the Coraline-esque portal that appears on the wall (my favorite movie), my Steelers hat, etc. all of these things made me smile so wide.”
Now, Steiner says, the song has landed in a place that feels pretty far from where it started. “It still has that original angst and grit, but it has become something so much more than that,” she says. “It’s heavy, but it’s also fun. And fun is hope.”
Occasionally when a hip new band starts to get considerable buzz there’s usually one single in particular tied to the hype. For Austin-based indie rock group Why Bonnie, that song just might be the blistering “Athlete,” a recently released single from their “Voice Box” EP. It’s truly an attention-grabber, full of fortified feedback fuzz, screeching guitars and the unmistakable power of frontwoman Blair Howerton’s soft yet deep voice. It begins with scratchy violin strings straight out of a horror flick before the band pokes at the idea of athletic prowess “‘Athlete’ is the most ‘rock and roll’ track on the EP so we wanted to make a video that embodied that, but also felt like casual, day-in-the-life footage,” the band said in a statement.
“Kind of like watching a home movie that you found in a box in your parents’ attic, but instead of you as a three-year old on the soccer field, you’re a grown adult with about the same skill level.” “Athlete” isn’t the only star single, though: The Voice Box title track is just as attractive, but a bit closer to the dream-pop side of things. Any band who can squeeze this much beautiful noise into such a small amount of output is one to keep your eyes on.
The Austin group add: “The video was directed by Alex inker and is essentially just a true field day filmed on VHS. ‘Athlete’ is the most ‘rock and roll’ track on the EP so we wanted to make a video that embodied that, but also felt like casual, day-in-the-life footage.”
“Kind of like watching a home movie that you found in a box in your parents’ attic, but instead of you as a three-year old on the soccer field, you’re a grown adult with about the same skill level.”
Loosely focused on Austin, Texas, the project match skittering indie pop to some early 90s alt-rock influences. Pitting the dream-like sheen of Mazzy Star or The Cranberries against grainy, DIY production, their song writing matches a sense of classicism to a supremely personal approach.
“Voice Box” by Why Bonnie off of ‘Voice Box’, It came out April 10th, 2020 on Fat Possum Records.
A shoegazey, indie rock band residing in Portland, OR. new album “Lotus Eaters” is out now! Formed back in 2008, Phosphene are a Portland based band, built around the duo of vocalist and guitarist Rachel Frankel and drummer Matt Hemmerich. The band released their self-titled debut album back in 2014, followed by an EP, Breaker in 2016. Four years on the band have just released their brand-new album, Lotus Eaters.
The songs that comprise Lotus Eaters were written during a period of mass transition and upheaval. The writing and recording process of this album took place preceding and following the 2016 election, when extremism and bigotry prevailed across the United States and world at large.
The title Lotus Eaters is loosely derived from Greek mythology, which describes a person in a peaceful but apathetic haze from continually eating lotus fruit. A similar, escapist notion was pervasive across the U.S., and it certainly impacted each of us personally. It took a great deal of focus and fortitude to resist that inertia and move forward as a band. Song writing has always been joyful and cathartic for each of us in different aspects: a distraction from anxiety, an outlet for depression, or a unique way to express our introverted selves in a way that feels most genuine and heartfelt—and that catharsis is what carried us through.
Once we picked ourselves back up and creatively honed in, our most potent and ruminative songs began to take form. As a band, we found ourselves writing music that oscillated between dark, magnetic propulsions to dreamy, blissed-out reveries. During this period of time, Rachel was also writing and illustrating She Can Really Lay It Down, a musical anthology celebrating fifty influential women musicians from the past century, which was recently released in the fall of 2019. Some key heroines in the book such as Kim Gordon, Neko Case, and Janet Weiss absolutely made their influence known within several songs on Lotus Eaters, particularly “Incinerate” and “Incandescent Plumes.”
Although we’ve tinkered with our sound before, we really started to revamp our style and framework in more experimental ways on Lotus Eaters. From incorporating spoken word poetry and dismantling song structures to constantly swapping instruments, a newfound growth and confidence was evident in this collection of music. Lotus Eaters emanates a fervour that we want to resonate with each listener. And as turbulent as these times can be, we hope this album can be a source of comfort and inspiration for those seeking.
‘Sun Racket’ is the brand new album from legendary Boston trio Throwing Muses, consisting of Kristin Hersh, David Narcizo and Bernard Georges. The follow up to 2013’s ‘Purgatory/Paradise’ is an outpouring of modal guitars, reverbed shapes, echoey drums and driving bass set behind Kristen Hersh’s well-thumbed notebook of storylines.
A ten-song opus of suitably wrought tales set against a wall of sound that’s at once calm and ethereal before building into glorious cacophonous crescendos. When Throwing Muses wrote their last album, they were shattered. Pieces were coming and going, elements repeating and charging the whole. “It sounded beautiful jumping around like that”. Two-minute songs reappearing as twisted instrumentals or another song’s bridge.
They mimicked the effect live which kept them on their toes. Whatever was happening was already over in other words. ‘Sun Racket’ is the opposite. It refused to do anything but sit still. It says, “sit here and deal”.
“All it asked of us was to comingle two completely disparate sonic vocabularies: one heavy noise, the other delicate music box. Turns out we didn’t have to do much. Sun Racket knew what it was doing and pushed us aside, which is always best. After thirty years of playing together, we trust each other implicitly but we trust the music more” – Kristin Hersh
New album from the legendary Boston trio consisting of Kristin Hersh, David Narcizo and Bernard Georges. Sun Racket is an outpouring of modal guitars, reverbed shapes, echoey drums and driving bass set behind Kristen Hersh’s well-thumbed notebook of storylines. A ten-song opus of suitably wrought tales set against a wall of sound that’s at once calm and ethereal before building into glorious cacophonous crescendos.
This week John Jeffrey, the drummer for Moon Duo, announced his debut solo album, “Passage”, and shared its first single, the eight-minute long instrumental “Leaving Franklin.”Passage is due out October 30th via Jean Sandwich (a Portland-based label).
“Passage” consists of four lengthy jazz-influenced instrumental songs and a press release says Jeffrey was inspired by Alice Coltrane and Canadian painter Takao Tanabe. Recorded in a series of sessions at The Hive, with engineer Colin Stewart, Jeffrey drew inspiration from the jazz principles of spontaneity, dynamism, progression, and improvisation, the singular spirituality of Alice Coltrane and the mist-veiled landscapes of Canadian painter Takao Tanabe. He approached each session as an experiment in not only improvisation but also a kind of anti-composition in which he sought to remove ego from the creative process and to reimagine the self as a channel for natural processes, rendered through music. Playing to the rhythms of something unseen – a hidden partner that made itself known only in the moment of contact – Jeffrey sought to capture rather than design.
The four shimmering instrumentals that compromise the album are like a landscape unto themselves. At once grounding and expansive, molecular and infinite, they defy easy categorization. There are no linear surfaces, only elemental processes that curve and weave, disappear and reappear; a detailed interplay of atmospheric synths and meditative rhythm evokes the motion of water, the momentary ray of light through tall trees. Like a sonic rendering of one of Tanabe’s distant shorelines, there is both beauty and mystery here – a quality just out of reach, that rewards close attention but does not pursue it.
“I didn’t want to have a structure in place, in order to be guided in a specific direction,” says Jeffrey in a press release. “Everything was developed around simple rhythmic patterns.”
The late Hal Wilner’s final work is an all-star tribute to Marc Bolan and T. Rex, including Nick Cave, U2, Elton John, Todd Rundgren, Joan Jett and two Lennon brothers. It’s a mixed bag, but fitting tribute to a genius. Tribute albums always flatter to deceive. Especially when you love the tributee. There’s the initial excitement at seeing all those big names tackling your favourite songs. Then there’s the fascination of seeing edgy artists bring their own sensibilities to the music you love. And, at worst, the risk of heartbreaking disappointment when you hear a song you love being murdered.
Marc Bolan was my idol from 1970-75. I was his perfect demographic: discovering pop music for the first time as it emerged from the Beatles era, all satin and tat, glitter and make-up, lipstick and platform boots. And that was just the boys. Bolan was the first, and don’t let anyone try and tell you any different. He rode along in 1970 on his white swan, hinting at what was to come, more of a cygnet than a fully fledged water bird. Then, at the beginning of 1971 he emerged, fully feathered and face painted in his bright new plumage, with Hot Love. And that was that. Glam was born.
Bolan was not just a phenomenon. No one sounded like T.Rex. No one sang like Marc. No one looked like Marc, without a care; no square with his corkscrew hair. So how do you celebrate such an idiosyncratic performer 50 years on from his heyday (and 43 years on from his tragically early death, in that car crash)?
If you’re Hal Wilner, the American producer who specialises in lavish tribute affairs you invite a who’s who of your famous friends to sing a song each, hire another who’s who of top-class musicians so famous that they don’t mind not getting a song of their own, and overlay the whole thing with massive orchestrations.
Here he has collected another impressive cast drawn from the worlds of music, theatre and the art world and put them together in the studio with a backing band of musicians as diverse as Donald Fagen, Van Dyke Parks, Marc Ribot, Budgie from the Banshees, Bill Frisell, Pete Thomas from the Attractions and more. Wilner is, first and foremost, a Bolan fan, and it shows. He remembers first hearing Tyrannosaurus Rex and thinking the records were “very beautiful, soothing and slightly creepy”. Decades later he decided to put this tribute together “to show Bolan as a composer with our typical cast of artists from different worlds that one rarely sees in the same place”
With some great, some not-so-great, a few you rather wish hadn’t been done at all. It’s always like that with tribute albums. But the best bits make it all worthwhile. As ever with these things, the more successful efforts are those where the artist brings their own personality to the song, while staying faithful to the essence of Bolan. The least successful are those that play it straight – no one needs a Bolan tribute act (there’s already T. Rextasy for that) and simply copy the original.
The plain truth is that no one can imitate Bolan. He was unique. A one-off. Never mind the fact that his voice is almost impossible to imitate.
And here’s the thing: the covers work best when the originals are less familiar. Which may explain why a couple of the big hits (Hot Love, Telegram Sam) are missing altogether from this double album. No one needs Joan Jett trundling through a perfunctory Jeepster, a song that cries out to be reinterpreted as the blues upon which it was based – Bolan borrowed freely from Chuck Berry and Howling Wolf on those hits and it would be fun to hear a modern-day bluesman take the songs back to their roots.
But let’s not dwell on the negatives. Kesha has the right idea on the opening Children Of The Revolution, transforming it into a soulful affair with saxophones squealing, a contrast to the oh-so-familiar chunky guitar riff of the original: different enough to hold the attention (all the more so when you know you’ve got MC5’s Wayne Kramer on guitar and Bolan’s son Rolan Bolan on backing vocals).
The interpretations are varied, as becomes clear quite rapidly. Before long a pattern emerges: the female artists are best at reimagining these tunes. Perhaps because Bolan himself was such an androgynous performer; in contrast to the laddishness of the Glam rockers who followed him – Sweet, Slade, Mud, Glitter – Bolan brought a sense of femininity to his music. Even when he was overtly sexual (“I want to SUCK you!”) he didn’t sound gender specific: he was so pretty that everyone fancied him, even if they couldn’t admit it.
Beth Orton’s interpretation of Hippy Gumbo also takes it to another place, with a bar room piano and an air of impending chaos, with horror-movie scrapes and rattles in the background and some nicely distorted guitar from Marc Ribot. It’s one of the more successful numbers; as is Guatemalan Gaby Moreno, the self-styled “Spanglish folk-soul” singer coming close to Bolan’s own tremulous vibrato on a sensitive bossa nova-influenced Beltane Walk featuring Bill Frisell, Van Dyke Parks and Attractions drummer Pete Thomas.
Meanwhile, Peaches deconstructs a short, sharp Solid Gold Easy Action in the style of Prince – with his androgynous glamour, perhaps the closest parallel to Bolan in the pop firmament. Less successful, sadly, is Lucinda Williams drawling sleepily through a funereal Life’s A Gas, punctuated by a pleasingly grungy guitar solo from Ribot, or possibly Bill Frisell: both are credited, and both are part of the house band assembled by Wilner, who recorded several songs on the same day in the same studio, lending the affair rather more continuity than is often the case on these pick’n’mix affairs.
As for the rest, the clear highlight is Nick Cave’s impassioned Cosmic Dancer, plangent strings enhancing the deep melancholia he has brought to his own work since family tragedy changed him for ever. A shout-out, too, to Marc Almond, never knowingly underblown, for his extravagantly orchestrated, verging-on-overwrought, kitscher-than-your-kitchen take on the already overwrought Teenage Dream.
The decadent nightclub mood is continued by Helga Davis, a New York performance artist, whose Organ Blues features an ominous drum beat and swirls of bass clarinet, and Todd Rundgren who, with the help of Donald Fagen on piano, converts Planet Queen into a slice of sci-fi cabaret. Speaking of which, Metric front woman Emily Haines sprinkles fairy dust on Ballrooms Of Mars to close Side 1 of this double album; her ghostly vocals seeping through the weirdness of a lavishly orchestrated arrangement. It’s really quite special.
Festival favourite King Khan offers a boisterous romp through I Love To Boogie which lives up to its title, if nothing else, and invests Bolan’s final hit (from 1976, a year before his death) with rather more life than Bolan’s own pallid effort. The big-name collaboration between U2 and Elton John on Get It On (irritatingly listed under its American title of Bang A Gong) is predictably terrible: despite selling more records than everyone else on the record between them – and then some – they sound like some bunch of middle-aged men at their local pub’s karaoke night. Not only is it uninspired, it’s the one thing Bolan never was.
Other misfires – and thankfully they are fewer than the successes – include actor-director-playwright John Cameron Mitchell interpreting Diamond Meadows in a style somewhere between MOR and musical theatre, despite the novelty of Showgirls actress Gina Gershon on Jew’s harp. Father John Misty falls into the copycat trap by doing an entirely forgettable Main Man, despite the legendary Van Dyke Parks on piano, while the German singer Nena, last heard of 36 years ago singing 99 Red Balloons, sadly adds nothing of note to Metal Guru though, to be fair, it is practically perfect in its original form and would probably have been best left alone.
It all ends with a hauntingly effective medley of Ride A White Swan and She Was Born To Be My Unicorn, sung virtually a capella by an angelic Maria McKee and gravelly Gavin Friday, duetting from what sounds like beyond the grave. Which is as fitting a finale as one could hope for to a record that reflects Wilner’s overarching ambition (and celebrity connections – it’s hard to imagine many people said no to taking part), and will be remembered, despite the odd misstep, as a fitting memorial to hthe life and work of the producer – and the man to whom he’s paying tribute.
Side A:
1. Children Of The Revolution – Kesha
2. Cosmic Dancer – Nick Cave
3. Jeepster – Joan Jett
4. Scenescof – Deveandra Banhart
5. Life’s A Gas – Lucinda Williams
6. Solid Gold, Easy Action – Peaches
7. Dawn Storm – Børns
Side B:
8. Hippy Gumbo – Beth Orton
9. I Love To Boogie King Khan
10. Beltane Walk – Gaby Moreno
11. Bang A Gong (Get It On) – U2 feat. Elton John
12. Diamond Meadows – John Cameron Mitchell
13. Ballrooms Of Mars – Emily Haines
Side C:
14. Main Man – Father John Misty
15. Rock On – Perry Farrell
16. The Street and Babe Shadow – Elysian Fields
17. The Leopards – Gavin Friday
18. Metal Guru – Nena
19. Teenage Dream – Marc Almond
Side D:
20. Organ Blues – Helga Davis
21. Planet Queen – Todd Rundgren
22. Great Horse – Jessie Harris
23. Mambo Sun – Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl
24. Pilgrim’s Tale – Victoria Williams with Julian Lennon
25. Bang A Gong (Get It On) Reprise – David Johansen
26. She Was Born To Be My Unicorn / Ride A White Swan – Maria McKee
Double vinyl. Angel Headed Hipster – Various artists sing ‘The Songs of Marc Bolan & T. Rex.’
Nick Cave’s profoundly effective and affecting solo performance from earlier this year will be coming out to have and to hold this November.
These unique reinterpretations received effusive praise from any and all who bore witness. this is so much more than a live album or a live performance – these reinterpretations change the colour, tone and feel of every song in a way that proves that Cave is the finest songwriter of his (or, perhaps, any other) generation. This summer, Nick Cave hosted a ticketed livestream of a solo piano concert in London. That special will now be released as a live album and concert film. Packaged with four unreleased performances, Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace is coming to cinemas around the world on November 5th, and the live album will follow on November 20th. Watch the recording of “Galleon Ship” below.
Idiot Prayer features music from across Cave’s career, including early Bad Seeds, Grinderman, and material from his latest album Ghosteen. The film was shot by cinematographer Robbie Ryan and edited by Nick Emerson; Dom Monks recorded the music. Read Nick Cave’s statement about Idiot Prayer below.
The film Idiot Prayer evolved from my Conversations With… events. I loved playing deconstructed versions of my songs at these shows, distilling them to their essential forms. I felt I was rediscovering the songs all over again, and started to think about going into a studio and recording these reimagined versions at some stage – whenever I could find the time.
Then, the pandemic came—the world went into lockdown, and fell into an eerie, self-reflective silence. It was within this silence that I began to think about the idea of not only recording the songs, but also filming them. We worked with the team at Alexandra Palace—a venue I have played and love—on securing a date to film just as soon as they were allowed to re-open the building to us.
On 19th June 2020, surrounded by Covid officers with tape measures and thermometers, masked-up gaffers and camera operators, nervous looking technicians and buckets of hand gel, we created something very strange and very beautiful that spoke into this uncertain time, but was in no way bowed by it. This is the album taken from that film. It is a prayer into the void—alone at Alexandra Palace—a souvenir from a strange and precarious moment in history. I hope you enjoy it.
An essential album for every Nick Cave fan. we’re already counting down the days…the telegraph ****
“Cave’s solo live stream could be the most the beautiful and sombre performance he’s ever given” the guardian ****
“Cave’s performance in an empty hall, with just piano and voice, seems to try and ward off the terrifying silence of the covid-19 age” evening standard ****
“gravitas echoes beautifully in the void of an empty Alexandra Palace”
“This is the album taken from that film. It is a prayer into the void – alone at Alexandra Palace – a souvenir from a strange and precarious moment in history. I hope you enjoy it.”
After its cinematic release, Idiot Prayer will be released on vinyl, CD and streaming services on November 20th.
Powderfinger have revealed they’ll be releasing a new album this year. Band members Darren Middleton and Jon Coghill have announced that the band will be sharing an album of previously unreleased tracks later this year.”We were in putting together “Odyssey Number Five” 20th anniversary release and we went back and found like 50 songs that we had never released,” said Coghill during the interview. “And we’ve got the 10 best songs, we think. “There’s gonna be a new album this year at some stage. New songs. No one’s heard any of them. And it sounds pretty good to us. It’s been put together really well.”
The pair went on to reveal that the unnamed album will include tracks recorded as far back as 1998 from the Internationalist album era and that they have worked with long-running Powderfinger producer Nick DiDia to finalise the release. The album’s first single, “Day By Day”, is due to be released on Friday 18th September.
It’s already been a big year for Powderfinger fans, with the group reforming (for the first time since their disbandment in 2010) for a one-off fundraiser for Support Act and Beyond Blue. It seems that fans shouldn’t hold their breath for another performance anytime soon though, with Middleton saying “There’s no plans to do any more live lockdown videos or record any new songs or write any new songs together”.
Powderfinger are celebrating the 20th anniversary of their album Odyssey Number Five this week, with a vinyl reissue and deluxe edition CD out this Friday.
Easily one of our most requested vinyl titles over the years and previously only available in a very expensive and out-of-print box set. Finally re-issued as a stand-alone vinyl pressing, 20 years to the day of the original release!, Available as a standard LP reissue or in a deluxe 2xLP 180-gram colour edition, remastered for vinyl by Don Bartley and expanded with 10 bonus tracks including acoustic versions, covers & B-sides.
The Metre by Powderfinger taken from the album Odyssey Number 5
Anjimile Chithambo, who records as Anjimile, is on a road to self-improvement on their debut album “Giver Taker”, and their folk-pop vibrancy certainly adds to that revitalizing spirit. There’s an earthy spirituality and youthful determination, boosted by radiant vocals and lyrics of patience and compassion. One highlight “Maker” blooms with nimble, bubbly guitars and rapturous percussion—it’s a symphony of wonder as Chithambo asks, “Have you ever seen anything quite like this?” Another key track, the reflective, downtempo “In Your Eyes,” grapples with identity and acceptance: “Was my body denied? / I can’t see what’s in your eyes / No, I can’t be what’s in your eyes.” Its warm rootsiness, indie-pop vivacity and African-influenced rhythms make for an incredibly inspired first LP.
“Maker” by Anjimile From the album, “Giver Taker”, out September 18th, 2020.
On Giver Taker, the gorgeous debut album by Anjimile, death and life are always entwined, wrapping around each other in a dance of reverence, reciprocity, and, ultimately, rebirth. Giver Taker is confident, intentional and introspective. Anjimile Chithambo (they/them, he/him) wrote much of the album while in treatment for drug and alcohol abuse, as well as while in the process of living more fully as a nonbinary trans person. Loss hovers over the album, whose songs grieve for lost friends (“Giver Taker”) and family members (“1978”) along with lost selves (“Maker,” “Baby No More,” “In Your Eyes.”) But here, grief yields an opening: a chance for new growth. “A lot of the album was written when I was literally in the process of improving my mental health, so there’s a lot of hopefulness and wonder at the fact that I was able to survive,” says Chithambo. “Not only survive but restart my life and work towards becoming the person I was meant to be.”
“Baby No More” by Anjimile From the album, Giver Taker, out September 18, 2020.
Each song on the album is its own micro-journey, adding up to a transformative epic cycle created in collaboration with bandmate Justine Bowe of Photocomfort and New-York based artist/producer Gabe Goodman. “1978” and “Maker” both begin as Sufjan Stevens-esque pastoral ballads with Chithambo’s mesmerizing voice foregrounded against minimal instrumentation and swell into the realm of the majestic through the addition of warm, steady instrumentation (informed by the mix of 80’s pop and African music Chithambo’s Malawi-born parents played around the house) and harmonies by Bowe. “In Your Eyes” starts out hushed and builds to a crescendo via a mighty chorus inspired by none other than The Lion King. The allusion is fitting: each song encapsulates a heroic voyage, walked alone until accompanied by kindred souls. The choirs present throughout are equally deliberate. Chithambo grew up as a choir boy himself, and several songs (notably “Maker”) grasp not only towards reconciliation between his trans identity and his parents’ strong religious beliefs, but towards reclaiming his trans identity as an essential part of his own spirituality. (“[Less] Judeo-Christian, more ‘Colors of the Wind.’”) There is a boldness to this borrowing and shaping, a resoluteness that results from passing through hardship and emerging brighter, steadier. As a closing refrain on “To Meet You There” might sum it up: “Catalyst light of mine / now is your time.”
Lomelda—the indie project of Hannah Read—has shared her new full-length LP “Hannah”, out now via Double Double Whammy. Hannah follows her 2019 album “M for Empathy” as well as her covers EP with Hovvdy. In usual Lomelda fashion, lead single “Wonder” is cathartic and vulnerable. It’s soft, but it builds into something powerful and poignant, clocking in at just over two minutes. The album was recorded in a studio in Silsbee, Texas, over a period of a year.
Last year, Lomelda (aka Texas-born, L.A.-based singer/songwriter Hannah Read) released an out-of-the-blue album called “M for Empathy”. As its title suggests, the 11-song project explored empathy in all its forms through various sung stories and mini vignettes. But the album was lacking something—perhaps time: At only 16-minutes-long, it felt like we didn’t really receive the full scope of Read’s studies on the topic. Thankfully, there’s Hannah, Read’s charming M for Empathy follow-up that arrived last month. Where M for Empathy was shadowy and finicky at times, Hannah is more assured and robust (though it wouldn’t be “robust” compared to most other rock music today—Read’s voice is as hushed and restrained as ever). Hannah again finds Read thinking about empathy, compassion and human understanding. But this time, there’s more for the listener to unpack.
Performed by Hannah Read, Tommy Read, Andrew Hulett, Charlie Martin, Andrew Stevens, Zachary Daniel, Adan Carlo and Cody Green
