Sour Widows are a bedroom rock band from the Bay Area comprised of long time friends Maia Sinaiko, Susanna Thomson, and Max Edelman. Songs marked by driving harmonies address themes of relationship and reflection; layers of warmth, depth, and grit surface and fade in their two-guitar dynamic. Through progressions that shift from subtle to biting, Sour Widows expose tender moments with an edge.
The trio Sour Widows‘ first proper release was their self-titled 2020 EP, and as promising as that EP is, it couldn’t prepare you for how stunning “Crossing Over” would be. It casually blurs the lines between genre — incorporating elements of ’70s Laurel Canyon folk, ’90s slowcore and shoegaze, Sharon Van Etten-esque indie rock, and just a slight hint of psychedelia — and the results are genuinely alluring. It’s just a four-song EP, but it doesn’t feel like a low-stakes project. It feels complete, and it marks the arrival of a great new band. The EP as a whole is a better representation of this band than any individual song, but if there’s one major standout track, it’s the nearly-eight minute title track. It channels the spirit of jammy, psychedelic ’60s/’70s folk rock, and it’s as hypnotic as the genre’s pioneers were half a century ago.
The viewer is lured in by the serene scene of a glorious sunset…perhaps piqued by the mysterious renegades looking toward the orange and purple horizon. Then Boom – cue the surf/garage punk-rock-a-go-go. It’s got the dance and tumble psyched-out film stock vibe of your favourite ’60s exploitation film, the edge of civilization, only Russ Myer’s gotta sit this one out. Sorry, pal. No mercy from the unleashed beasts of the Bombay Beach brigade.
It’s a cool lo-fi badass video Sheverb released this month for “Rattle Can Thrash,” one of ten desert-fuelled surf-psych instrumental treasures from “Once Upon a Time in Bombay Beach”, a conceptual piece literally inspired by tuning in and dropping out.
Cut to pre-pandemic February 2020: The band leaves behind the bustle of Austin, heads out to the “semi-abandoned” Southern Californian resort town the LP is named for, and completely immerse themselves in the songwriting process, including building a makeshift recording studio in a barn and crashing out in bunk beds in communal living spaces. Totally a family affair.
“We wanted to write an album that had elements of Southern California 1950’s/1960’s surf culture, psychedelics, real rock ‘n’ roll, Texas honky-tonk Western vibes, and of course, our kind of signature desert rock sound,” says Sheverb co-founder and guitarist Betty Benedeadly. “The Bombay Beach really embodied all of those elements, and we thought, what better place to go live for a month together?”
The experiment proved to be an eye-opening, magical time for the womxn-led collective, capped off with a finale performance at local dive Ski Inn, followed by their “Rattle Can Thrash” video shoot extravaganza in – where else? – a graffiti-covered abandoned house. True, most folks might skip a visit to Bombay Beach, but the remote, dystopian setting was perfect for Sheverb’s latest adventure. The entire journey was, in their own words, a dream come true.
The Band:
Betty Benedeadly Guitar, railroad spikes Xina Ocasio Drums, wooden frog Lainey Smith Bass James Ruthless Mescall Trumpet, flute, percussion Braden Guess Guitar, synth, fish bones
This tune is off of Sheverb’s album “Once Upon a Time in Bombay Beach”. This psychedelic, desert-fueled neo-surf album was the result of a month-long music-making adventure in a semi-abandoned seaside resort town in the Southern California desert.
Heading into the spring of 2020, T. Hardy Morris had 12 demos that he thought would make-up his next album, then, everything changed. The world took a break and so his plans to record did as well. As we all watched and waited out the storms; viral and societal, we seemed to wake up scrolling through a whole new century, a time Morris began to refer to as The Digital Age of Rome.
He scrapped the demos and began a collection of songs in quarantine where the unprecedented times and topics were unavoidable. He wanted to document the era sonically and lyrically in some way.
“I wanted it to sound like how the world felt to me in the second half of 2020. Uncomfortable and chaotic, dystopian but still beautiful.”
The Digital Age of Rome was recorded in a deserted downtown Athens, Ga. With long-time collaborator / producer Adam Landry.
Releases June 25th, 2021
The Band:
Lead Vocals: T. Hardy Morris Additional Vocals: Faye Webster, Shelly Colvin, Adam Landry Drums: Brad Morgan (Drive-by Truckers), Adam Landry Bass: Vaughn Lamb, Adam Landry Electric Guitar: Charlton Eugene Woolfolk III, Adam Landry, T. Hardy Morris Acoustic Guitar: T. Hardy Morris, Adam Landry Steel Guitar: Matt “Pistol” Stoessel Keys: Adam Landry Percussion: Adam Landry, T. Hardy Morris Programming: Adam Landry, T. Hardy Morris, Nate Nelson
Rock ‘n’ roll is often hard to define, or even to find, in these fractured musical times. But to paraphrase an old saying, you know it when you hear it.
And you always hear it with The Wallflowers. For the past 30 years, the Jakob Dylan-led act has stood as one of rock’s most dynamic and purposeful bands – a unit dedicated to and continually honing a sound that meshes timeless song writing and storytelling with a hard-hitting and decidedly modern musical attack. That signature style has been present through the decades, baked into the grooves of smash hits like 1996’s Bringing Down the Horse as well as more recent and exploratory fare like 2012’s Glad All Over.
But while it’s been nine long years since we’ve heard from the group with whom he first made his mark, the Wallflowers are silent no more. And Dylan always knew they’d return. “The Wallflowers is much of my life’s work,” he says simply. That life’s work continues with “Exit Wounds”, the brand-new Wallflowers studio offering. The collection marks the first new Wallflowers material since Glad All Over.
Exit Wounds, which, true to its title, is an ode to people – individual and collective – that have, to put it mildly, been through some stuff.
“I think everybody – no matter what side of the aisle you’re on – wherever we’re going to next, we’re all taking a lot of exit wounds with us,” Dylan says. “Nobody is the same as they were four years ago. That, to me, is what Exit Wounds signifies. And it’s not meant to be negative at all. It just means that wherever you’re headed, even if it’s to a better place, you leave people and things behind, and you think about those people and those things and you carry them with you. Those are your exit wounds. And right now, we’re all swimming in them.”
Jakob Dylan: vocals, guitar Butch Walker: guitar, keyboards, percussion, backing vocals Mark Stepro: drums Whynot Jensveld: bass Aaron Embry: keyboards Val McCallum: guitar Shelby Lynne: vocals (Maybe Your Heart’s Not In It No More, Move The River, Darlin’ Hold On, I’ll Let You Down (But Will Not Give You Up)) Brian Griffin: drums (Move The River)
Dinosaur Jr. offered another preview of the band’s upcoming album “Sweep It Into Space” with the new single, “Take It Back”. “Sweep It Into Space” is out on Friday via Jagjaguwar Records.
Following the release of the Lou Barlow-penned “Garden“, this latest single finds singer/guitarist J Mascis back at the helm. While the song opens with bright sonic tones compared to “Keith Richards’ Jamaican explorations” in a press release, these quickly give way to a more conventional Dinosaur Jr. tone. What could be construed as a catchy, radio-friendly hook gets ruffed up just the right amount by J’s raspy delivery to give “I Ran Away” a comfortable edge of grit. Meanwhile, the stop-motion animated video by director Callum Scott-Dyson makes some of the lyrics’ straightforward messaging a bit more ambiguous and abstract.
“[I] really wanted to use the creature on the front of the album sleeve for Sweep It Into Space as an inspiration and springboard for its own little adventure, exploring some simple notions of creation, dependence, coming of age and searching for another like yourself,” Scott-Dyson said in a press release. “I wanted to mix those themes with my style of stop motion animation, everything being very DIY and handmade, using any materials I could get my hands on to bring the idea to life and give it a surreal and otherworldly feel. I’ve always been a really big fan of Dinosaur Jr, so I was working extra hard to do something that could add to such an awesome track and sit alongside it.”
New Album “Sweep It Into Space” will be out April 23rd! Check out the first song, “I Ran Away,”
“Take It Back” the new song by Dinosaur Jr. from the album ‘Sweep It Into Space’, out April 23rd on Jagjaguwar Records.
Australian heartland rock/alt-country-leaning punks Amends have shared a new single off “Tales of Love, Loss and Outlaws”, and this one finds the band harmonizing and duetting with Against Me vocalist Laura Jane Grace, whose voice is perfect for a song like this,
Starting in the mid 2010s as an emo-rock revival outfit, Amends have expanded to incorporate a sound more focused on alt-country, heartland rock and folk-punk. Building their style across EP’s and their debut album ‘So Far From Home’, led them to support acts such as Lucero, The Menzingers and Luca Brasi. The strong development of the band’s style and sound is evident in their new record, ‘Tales Of Love, Loss and Outlaws’.
Joining in on the record are Murder By Death Cellist Sarah Baillet and Against Me! leader Laura Jane Grace. The former contributes strings on the ballad “I Gave My Heart Away A Long Time Ago,” while the latter duets on “Walking Backwards.”
‘Tales of Love, Loss, and Outlaws’ demonstrates and solidifies Amends status as one of Australian music’s most unique and endearing prospects.
Taken from our album “Tales of Love, Loss and Outlaws” Out on the 23rd of April via Resist Records.
Cold Moon the jangly indie rock band with members of pop punk bands The Story So Far and Set Your Goals — have shared another song off their upcoming Jack Shirley-recorded debut LP “What’s The Rush?” (due 5/7 via Pure Noise). It’s closer to Real Estate or Turnover than to the members’ more famous bands, and they do this kind of thing very well.
By mid-2018, the Northern California-based quartet—vocalist/guitarist Jack Sullivan, bassist Will Levy, guitarist Kevin Ambrose and drummer Mike Ambrose—were deep into the writing of their debut EP, “Rising”: a collection of instrumental indie-rock songs that culled influences from legendary emo acts including American Football and icons like Wilco, as well as more analytical post-rock impulses.
Musically, the songs Cold Moon wrote were miles removed from where the band came from (Levy plays guitar in pop-punk stalwarts The Story So Far, while Mike Ambrose was a long time member of the hardcore-tinged Set Your Goals), but they still carried the same intrinsic urgency and emotional resonance that coloured their other projects.
After demoing Rising and preparing to hit the studio to track the final versions, the childhood friends soon stumbled upon the power of Sullivan’s voice, as well as the influence singing could have on their song writing. It immediately changed everything for the band, who began using vocal parts not to define their music, but rather drive it—adding yet more melodic textures to their songs
“I don’t know if it was the right approach to song writing,” Sullivan says with a laugh, “but it felt good. It was like a nice coat of finish on a completed piece of art.”
As such, Rising (released May 10th via Pure Noise Records) is the sound of band painstakingly placing every instrument and note, both played and sung, alongside one another to build intricate, at-times dense and mathy soundscapes. This attention to detail gives Rising’s six songs—from the hypnotic, ominous riffs of “Stevie” to the acoustic-based pitter-patter of “Green Eyes” and cascading guitar movements on the set-closing “Lessons” a cinematic quality, while the tracked-to-tape nature of the EP imbues the songs with breaths of authenticity and humanity a digital process would have sorely lacked.
Throughout its songs, Rising tackles themes of change and vulnerability, looking out into the vast expanse of the unknown and mustering up the courage to face it head-on. In many ways, it mirrors the approach the band took while writing it: Life’s big moments—and, perhaps more often, the small ones, too—disrupt our comfortable state of equilibrium and force us to examine who we are and what we really want
Ultimately, it’s only by fearlessly following them that we’re able to arrive at our final form. Chasing that inspiration is what brought Cold Moon together, and it’s what changed the band’s direction forever during the making of Rising. It’s steeled them both personally and professionally, and they’ll carry this forward-thinking mindset with them throughout the course of their career.
“We didn’t know what was going to happen when we got in a room together, but it was a real safe, comfortable space,” Sullivan says. “It was a positive atmosphere for all of us, where we weren’t worried about making mistakes. We just let the music happen.”
Lord Huron have shared the title track (and third single) off their upcoming album “Long Lost”, and this one finds them combining their trademark indie folk with sweeping, string-laden, vintage balladry. Lord Huron announced the new album, Long Lost, and so far, the group has shared a pair of songs from it: the driving single “Not Dead Yet” and the breezy “Mine Forever.” Now they’re back with another preview of the album (which is set for release on May 21st), the title track.
“Lonesome Dreams is the album from rising pop experimentalists Lord Huron, led by Michigan-born songwriting prodigy Ben Schneider. A joyous collision of Appalachian percussion, rustic guitars and sumptuous harmonies lit up by lens-flare flashes of electronics, it’s a record inspired by the rust coloured canyons and characters of the Wild West, with the emphasis on wild. Tales of the great American outback have always been an inspiration, according to Schneider. “Sometimes I feel like I’m living in one of those stories,” he confides. “I wanted to look at my life and lives close to me as though they were tales from some frontier novel.”
Los Angeles’s La Luz have released a new Numero Group 7″ single where they cover “Tale of My Lost Love” which was originally written and performed in 1966 by Female Species. The flip side features the original song and it’s out to promote the new Female Species compilation the label just released.
Our Los Angeles friends La Luz just cut this cover of “Tale Of My Lost Love,” originally written and performed in 1966 by Female Species. The surf and undertow-inspired La Luz are one of the best in the business right now—check their three albums on Hardly Art if you don’t know. Their compelling version of “Tale” is the first fresh take on a Female Species original in many a moon. We suspect it will not be the last.
Behold the Female Species! A once-in-a-decade discovery of two sisters, married to music for life, always charging forward, indefatigable, indomitable, at last seen and heard. From their origins as the archetypal mid-’60s southern California girl group to their destiny as top-flight songwriters in the ’80s and ’90s Nashville country-industrial complex, Vicki and Ronni Gossett have never been much further than 20 feet from stardom. Fifty-five years into their remarkable story,Tale Of My Lost Love was the Gossetts‘ debut album – an ode to what could have been, and still might be.
Tale Of My Lost Love (Cover) · La Luz released through Numero Group on: 2021-04-16
Tegan and Sara join Beach Bunny for a new version of the track “Cloud 9” from their 2020 debut “Honeymoon”. “We’re massive fans of Beach Bunny, and when we heard ‘Cloud 9’ for the first time fell in love with the brilliant lyrics and addictive melody,” the say. “We love that Lili was up to let us experiment with changing the pronoun in the chorus to she. The efforts made to make the song relatable to everyone, isn’t just about inclusivity, we think it’s a great indication of the flexibility and creative spirit of the band at its core!”. The new version of ‘Cloud 9’ not only features Tegan And Sara but has also been updated to include gender-neutral and feminine pronouns in its lyrics.
The original version of the track was released on Beach Bunny’s debut album ‘Honeymoon’ last year.
Cloud 9 (feat. Tegan and Sara) ℗ 2021 Mom+Pop Records Released on: 2021-04-16
The Fat Angel Sings 