Irish five-piece Silverbacks have been grabbing headlines recently for their art-punk-meets-indie-rock tunes. Their debut album, Fad, which was produced by Girl Band’s Daniel Fox, doesn’t merely fill space with Joy Division or Pavement homages—they’re far too invested in their own detailed world. Their music revels in contradiction—light and dense, soft and rough, playful and cynical—resulting in a multi-faceted sound of crashing art rock riffs, poetic lyrics and vocals that range from easy-going pop to grim punk.
“A holiday resort in Dunkirk, a John Hughes Film set in 1970s Berlin, politicians in denim, or just your local pub, Silverbacks’ FAD takes you on the time-travel experience of a lifetime.” – Anon Luzhny, Central Tones.
Hoo-ha! Muted Gold is the lead-in single off our debut album ‘Fad’ released on Central Tones – 14th July 2020.
“Bile and Bone” is the new album from songwriter Al Riggs and guitar annihilator Lauren Francis.
Two years in the making, and in between countless side-projects, singles, side-albums, and a premiere at Hopscotch Music Festival 2019, Al and Lauren recorded this nine-song album in two different New York apartments, an apartment in Durham, a house on the other side of Durham, and additional recording in yet another house on yet another side of Durham.
Durham-based songwriter Al Riggs and guitarist Lauren Francis have teamed up for a new album called “Bile And Bone”, mixed by i,i engineer Alli Rogers and set for release this fall. It’s billed as a culmination of familiar Riggs themes such as horror movie monsters, queer politics, and puns. The lead single, though, is more of a reflection on personal rhythms and the casual familiarity of romance. It’s called “Boyfriend Jacket, Boyfriend Sweater,” and it finds Riggs drawling conversationally over a drum machine and a melancholy roots-rock mirage. “Marginalized young men out on the job,” they sing. “Never late for work, always late for work.”
Riggs explains:
“Boyfriend Jacket” is about that moment in a relationship where things start to run like a well oiled machine, and you’re wearing each other’s clothing, and meeting up after work. And how great all of that feels. This was the first song Alli Rogers mixed for us and she knocked it so far out of the park it went into another park. It was all the proof we needed to have her do the whole album.
The title track is a shuffling climax of held-back fury, summarizing the overall air of the album with volatile lyricism (“I should not be in a place/where I am on my knees each night/praying for my leaders/to be shot down on sight”) with classic pop harmonies
Boyfriend Jacket, Boyfriend Sweater · Al Riggs · Lauren Francis Boyfriend Jacket, Boyfriend Sweater ℗ Horse Complex Records Released on: 2020-07-14
The album “Bile And Bone” is out 18th September on Horse Complex Records.
Widowspeak shared the title track from their upcoming album, Plum, due August 28th via Captured Tracks. “Plum,” the third single featured on the album, was shared with an accompanying video. It follows singles “Money,” and “Breadwinner,”
The duo features singer/songwriter Molly Hamilton and guitarist Robert Earl Thomas. Plum was recorded last winter by Sam Evian at his Flying Cloud studio in the Catskills, New York, and mixed by Ali Chant.
Hamilton had this to say about “Plum” in a press release: “I wrote ‘Plum’ about wanting to be more comfortable and casual with thoughts I tend to avoid. Especially when I’m feeling very out-of-step with the world, there’s no use in being nostalgic for “the end of an era” or being afraid of what could happen. But, avoiding the present is kind of my default. I’m trying to be more aware that everyone is on its own trajectory, in its own time, slowly becoming something or becoming nothing.”
Official video for Widowspeak’s new single “Plum”.
Cults duo of Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion have announced a new album, “Host”, and shared a new song from it, album opener “Trials,” via a video for it. Host is due out September 18th via Sinderlyn Records and features “Spit You Out,” a new song Cults shared in June.
In a press release Cults collectively had this to say about the new song: “‘Trials’ focuses on the power that addictions and harmful ideologies have to transform. The chorus walks a tightrope between a metaphor for gaslighting and a despairing worry about the person you still hold out hope for.”
Jeff Strikers, who directed the “Trials” video, had this to say: “Cults asked me back in April if I had any ideas for a music video we could make while quarantined across the country. Via Zoom, we shot Madeline’s performance against a green tablecloth from a party store. I started experimenting with an old optical illusion called ‘Pepper’s Ghost,’ projecting Madeline’s image onto a sheet of glass to create a ghostly, hologram effect. They use this technique on the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. It was pretty magical and the whole process was constant discovery and surprise. An ideal creative experience.”
Cults co-produced the Host with Shane Stoneback and it was mixed by John Congleton and mastered by Heba Kadry. Loren Shane Humphrey (The Last Shadow Puppets, Florence and the Machine, Guards) plays drums on the album. The album finds Follin exerting a bit more creative control than before and taking a larger role in the songwriting. “In the past, I’d never brought my own music to the table because I was just too shy,” Follin says in a press release.
“When Shane and I heard what Madeline had written, we couldn’t believe it,” says Oblivion. “The music just floored us.” The band’s last regular studio album was 2017’s Offering. Although in 2018 Cults also released another album where they covered The Motels’ classic 1979 debut album Motels in its entirety as part of Turntable Kitchen’s Sounds Delicious Series.
Brighton’s indie psych collective Moon Attendant emerge to release their debut LP ‘One Last Summer’. A new band featuring old friends. Brothers from critically acclaimed psych-space rock group Black Hearted Brother. Blewett swaps bass duties for vocals and electric guitar and other brother Holton once again provides synths & production. The line up is completed by Big Potato mainstay McCutcheon (Slowdive/ Mojave 3) on percussion & guitarist and songwriter Molyneux.
Moon Attendant’s psychedelic grunge pop debut LP wields deranged analogue synths within a cozy jacket of fuzzy guitars and over saturated sonics. Imagine if Colin Blunstone & Klaus Schulze had released Pebbles-esque garage. Words & production walk a starry eyed tightrope between childish endeavour and mature lamentation. Songs about Death, Power, Drugs and Despair have never felt so pop!.
“There’s so much going on and it all works, they make it sound simple but it’s very hard to do” Janice Long, BBC
“Like Felt exploring the recesses of krautrock, Moon Attendant marry analogue electronics to a lovely burbling pop sound” Shindig Magazine
Rreleases August 28th, 2020 Moon Attendant: Paul Blewett – Vocals, bass, acoustic & electric guitar, moog, eavestaff piano, stylophone & tansanite organ Danny Molyneux – Electric guitar & backing vocals Nick Holton – Lead guitar, synths, tansanite organ & Casio pt80 Ian McCutcheon – Drums
additional stuff Kevin Wells – Bass & electric guitar Neil Halstead – Electric guitar
The Bobby Lees are a young bone-shaking Garage Rock band out of Woodstock NY. Their new record ‘Skin Suit’ is produced by underground punk legend Jon Spencer of the Blues Explosion, and mixes classic garage-punk hits with raw and emotive storytelling. Their sound mixes classic garage-punk hits with raw and emotive storytelling, the new LP from the Bobby Lees, a garage-rock quartet with sex, sweat, and lightning bolts of electricity surging through their collective veins..
Their raw and unapologetic energy promises to make you feel alive.” Listen and see for yourself. In the past year they’ve played with The Chats, Future Islands, Boss Hog, Daddy Long Legs, Shannon & The Clams and Murphy’s Law. They will be on tour in the US and Europe throughout 2020.
The excellent Skin Suit is not the group’s first foray into the studio, though it speaks with the same hungry, passionate desire to leave behind its mark. This thing claws from the gutter to the heavens. That debut distinction belongs to 2018’s Beauty Pageant, which, in homage perhaps to its dirgy, grungy grind, featured a cover with the band mimicking the muddy poses of Mudhoney’s “You Got It (Keep It Out of My Face)” , The Sub Pop single. Well, Skin Suit makes the proto-punk of Beauty Pageant seem half-thought-out, like the work of a lesser band. The new record, which was produced by the Blues Explosion’s titular/legendary Jon Spencer , is a raw and rollicking blast of joyful noise. It is a mighty, mighty thing.
The band waste little time experimenting with and launching off on their sonic flights. The opening track, “Move”, is a punch square to the jaw, from its intentionally error-prone kick-off to its deliciously playful double entendre, which uses listening to records and lending bodies to toy with the notion of temporary physical harbours. Skin suit, indeed. From there, it’s a ramshackle kind of roar from one song to the next, each one building upon the energy of the last. Frontwoman Sam Quartin, who’s clearly schooled in the stage-conscious strutting and character role-play of Spencer, lends a powerful and particularly sex-ridden explicitness to the proceedings. “I gotta let him in,” she moans, with a breathlessness teetering, quite intentionally, on the orgasmic on “Riddle Daddy”. “He just want to mow / But he doesn’t have a body / He needs a body / So I gotta let ‘im in.” The spoken-word interlude “Ranch Baby” might or might not be about ejaculate.
But this is a record that’s about more than just sloppy fucking. This is clearly a constructed message and an electrifying, tightly performed one at that. The superb “Drive”, which the band feature as a video on their website, has a poppy jangliness to its verses that is beautifully betrayed by the head-long plunge of driving drums and bass that crash down in the chorus. A playful “la-la-la” bridge is also worth noting for its sense of joy and abandon. “Coin”, is another standout and one of the record’s brightest points, has a rollicking, even funky, undertow (kudos to bassist Kendall Wind). The band distance themselves from its geographic point of origin with little hints of urban flair, like the way Quartin phrases “with your” as “witcha”.
The Bobby Lees clearly benefit from Spencer’s production, which, like the best Blues Explosion work, is decadent but a student of the decadence that came before it. Alive Naturalsound is also wise to package downloads of the 11-track CD (last song: “Last Song”) with two cover gems, a gnarled, highly subversive take on Bo Diddley’s “I’m a Man” (which Quartin performs with cocky bravado) and an enthralling cover of Richard Hell’s “Blank Generation”.
Skin Suit is a raucous ride from beginning to end. Cover to cover, this thing’s got you by the short hairs. Quartin is the star and a light that you can’t seem to blink out, but the whole band is a well-oiled and furious blues-punk machine. Just remember to bring protection. If the swagger of most of this thing is any clue, you’re going to need it.
The Bobby Lees’ Skin Suit is oozing with sex, sweat, and joyful abandon. It’s a raucous ride from beginning to end. Cover to cover, this thing’s got you by the short hairs. – POPMATTERS
Quartin is the star and a light that you can’t seem to blink out, but the whole band is a well-oiled and furious blues-punk machine. – HIT MUSIC The Bobby Lees are a rambunctious, sometimes ramshackle, reminder of what rock and roll is all about. – PENNYBLACK MUSIC The Bobby Lees are a very young band from Woodstock NY and they play the garage punk blues with real fire and wild animal energy like they can hardly stop themselves. – ECHOES AND DUST
How many bands have you heard lately that can get away with desecrating “I’m a Man” and sound credible? It’s all in Quartin’s leering vocal and Casa’s muscular guitar. – I-94 BAR
Fronted by Sam Quartin, whose vocal charisma channels some of the preposterous intensity of the Alan Vega/Cave/Cramps lineage, the band’s second album is an explosion of intensity of high-concept, low-budget rock’n’roll. – UNCUT The band show they’ve got the chops and the weirdness to refresh vintage rock, punk, and blues without the commercialism that has plagued other prominent garage bands of their generation. – CHICAGO READER
Available now on Alive Naturalsound the Bobby Lees “Skin Suit”
This is an exquisite set of cover songs by Nashville-based Sunshine Pop band, The Explorers Club. Features guest vocals by former Barenaked Ladies front man Steven Page, and Drive-By Truckers member, Jay Gonzalez. Songs include huge pop hits originally recorded by The Turtles (“She’d Rather Be With Me,”) Manfred Mann, (the Bob Dylan penned “Mighty Quinn,” Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart (“I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonight”) Herb Alpert (“This Guy’s In Love With You”) and Paul Revere and the Raiders (“Kicks.).
Exquisite set of cover songs by Nashville-based Sunshine Pop band, “The Explorers Club”. A Ten-song-set is chock full of hits, misses and other delights from the 1960s. Brainchild of Charleston, SC native Jason Brewer, the only constant “member” of The Explorers Club over the band’s lifespan
Album features guest vocals by former Barenaked Ladies front man Steven Page, and Drive-By Truckers member, Jay Gonzalez.Three previous albums: “Freedom Wind” (2008), “Grand Hotel” (2012) and “Together” (2016) and of course their “self-titled” album (2020) which is being released around the same time as “To Sing And Be Born Again”Brainchild of Charleston, SC native Jason Brewer, the only constant “member” of The Explorers Club over the band’s lifespan, Brewer re-unites with Freedom Wind and Grand Hotel producer, Matt Goldman (Copeland, Underoath, Smalltown Poets, etc). New contributors to this set include Shane Tutmarc (Dolour, Sean Nelson,) Page and Gonzalez, as well as vocals from former Explorers Club member Wally Reddington and past contributor Brian Langan.
Brewer, Tutmarc, and Goldman recorded most of the album in Nashville, at Columbia’s legendary Studio A. Additional work was done at Gem City Studios on the…more
The lovely Mr Ruston Kelly has announced the release of his third album ‘Shape & Destroy’ which is due out on 28th August via Rounder Records, and to accompany the news he’s today released a new song from it called ‘Rubber’ which you can watch below.
Co-produced by Kelly and longtime collaborator Jarrad K and recorded at Dreamland Recording Studios in upstate New York, ‘Shape & Destroy’ documents Kelly’s journey through maintaining his sobriety and facing his past. He addresses these experiences and setbacks across thirteen new songs including ‘Brave’ which premiered earlier this year.
Reflecting on the album, Kelly says: “Making this record definitely taught me that I don’t want to be selfish: I want to channel something larger than myself and give myself to the process as fully as possible, because these songs also become the story of whoever hears them. Whatever someone might get out of listening to this record and hearing me express myself in this way, it’s completely theirs.”
“Radio Cloud” is the Nashville singer/songwriter’s third single from his forthcoming album Shape & Destroy (out August. 28th). It’s a cathartic country-folk ballad, following the release of the very Elliott Smith-influenced “Rubber” and “Brave.” The album is sure to be an enchanting, emotional masterpiece.
In addition to Kelly (vocals, acoustic guitar, high-strung acoustic, electric guitar, piano, percussion, sandpaper, mandolin) and Jarrad K (electric guitar, 12-string acoustic guitar, piano, Rhodes, Hammond M3, percussion, student bells, background vocals), the album also features Kelly’s father Tim “TK” Kelly (steel guitar, background vocals), Eli Beaird (bass, background vocals) and Eric Slick (drums, percussion, background vocals) as well as special guests Gena Johnson, Abby Kelly and Kacey Musgraves on background vocals.
Ruston Kelly released his full-length debut album ‘Dying Star’ in 2018. Also co-produced by Kelly and Jarrad K, the album landed on several “Best of 2018” lists including Rolling Stone, Paste, American Songwriter, NPR Music described it as “a solid foundation for what should become a promising and long-lasting career.” Kelly also released ‘Dirt Emo Vol. 1’ this past autumn —a project consisting of eight new covers of his favourite emo songs including Dashboard Confessional’s ‘Screaming Infidelities’ featuring the band’s lead singer Chris Carrabba, Wheatus’ ‘TeenageDirtbag,’ The Carter Family’s ‘Weeping Willow’ and Taylor Swift’s ‘All Too Well,’ which earned praise from Swift herself.
“I want nothing more than to be a loner,” Emily Kempf sings early on “Flower of Devotion”, the new album by Chicago trio Dehd. It’s a startling admission coming from a songwriter who, just a year ago on Dehd’s critically acclaimed “Water”, wrote eloquently about the joys and pains — more than anything, the necessity — of love, compassion, and companionship. But then, “admission” isn’t really the right word here, given the stridency of Kempf’s tone. “Loner” is a declaration.
The record ups the ante on Dehd’s sound & filters in just enough polish to bring out the shining and melancholy undertones in Jason Balla and Emily Kempf’s songwriting, even as it captures them at their most strident. Balla’s guitar lines at times flirt with ticklish cosmic country, while at others they reflect the dark marble sounds of Broadcast. Kempf, meanwhile, establishes herself as a singer of incredible expressive range, pinching into a high lonesome wail, letting loose a chirping “ooh!,” pushing her voice below its breaking point and letting it swing down there. When she and Balla bounce descending counter-melodies off one another over McGrady’s one-two thumps, or skitter off over a programmed drum pad, they sound like The B-52s shaking off heartache.
What makes Flower of Devotion so impressive is how its creation seems to have strengthened its creators, both as individuals and as a unit, even as they’ve stared down their own limitations. It’s also striking just how much fun they seem to be having in the process. “It’s okay to be lighthearted in the face of despair,” Kempf says. It’s a theme that runs through the album, from the opening back-and-forth build of “Desire” to the click-clacking chorus of “Haha,” which finds them deflating their own history. Flower of Devotion was recorded in April and August of 2019 in Chicago.
It will be released on Fire Talk Records on July 17th 2020.
Newly remastered double LP beautifully repackaged gatefold sleeve with new artwork and expanded liner notes. Second disc includes the Mad Dog Studio sessions from 1991
A firm fan favourite, Giant Sand’s essential 1991 album ‘Ramp’ was the second of three revered albums the band released in the early 90s. Now set for a remastered special indie store exclusive, the new edition released on 17th July comes beautifully repackaged in a gatefold sleeve with new artwork and expanded liner notes from MOJO’s Dave Henderson.
‘Ramp’ is a magical trip with a host of guests including Victoria Williams, Rainer and Pappy Allen. Featuring piano lounge music for an off-world colony interrupted by an onslaught of guitar when needed. Reverb on, fuzz friendly. Up to 11, it’s light and dark and the better for it, a musical journey on a road less travelled. All sounds are welcome; banjo, dobro, pedal steel, plaintive harmonica, whistling all wrap themselves around the flow of consciousness; those truly memorable words. With Gelb’s lyrical invention to the fore: “His thoughts unfold in long, rolling sentences that don’t always follow conventional rules of grammar or syntax.” (The Quietus).
The Fat Angel Sings 