Expanding beyond the homespun rootsiness of her critically acclaimed debut to incorporate a grittier, more experimental palette, Becca Mancari’s captivating new collection, ‘The Greatest Part,’ lives in a liminal space between grief and joy, pain and forgiveness, sorrow and liberation. The record, produced by Paramore drummer Zac Farro, marks a significant sonic and emotional evolution, balancing unflinching self-examination with intoxicating grooves and infectious instrumental hooks fueled by explosive percussion and fuzzed out guitars. The lyrics are raw and gutsy to match, peeling back old scars to explore the emotional and psychological turmoil Mancari weathered growing up gay in a fundamentalist Christian home, while at the same time examining the ties that continue to bind her to the family she loves. Though personal reflection is nothing new for the Nashville-based songwriter, ‘The Greatest Part’ finds Mancari digging deeper than ever before, excavating new layers of her psyche in an effort to make sense of where she’s been, where she’s headed, and most importantly, who she’s become.
“This record was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write,” she explains. “At the same time, it was also the most freeing.”
Born on Staten Island to an Italian/Puerto Rican family with strict religious beliefs, Mancari spent much of her childhood wrestling with issues of identity and belonging. After college, she set out on her own, following the wind from Appalachia to Arizona, from south Florida to India, drifting in search of purpose and community. Mancari eventually found both in East Nashville, where she garnered widespread acclaim for her strikingly honest song writing and emotionally riveting performances. ‘Good Woman,’ her 2017 debut, was a critical smash, praised by NPR for its “exquisite self-awareness” and hailed as one of the year’s best by Rolling Stone, who lauded its “confident vocals [and] spacious, hazy production.”
Songs from the record racked up millions of streams on Spotify and helped land Mancari dates with the likes of Margo Price, Hurray For The Riff Raff, Shovels & Rope, Natalie Prass, and Julien Baker among others. On top of her solo work, Mancari also teamed up with Alabama Shakes frontwoman Brittany Howard and fellow songwriter Jesse Lafser to form the supergroup Bermuda Triangle, which earned similarly glowing reviews as they performed sold-out headline shows across the country and landed festival slots from Newport Folk to XPoNential.
From Eric D. Johnson:
This recording is cut down from a much larger show, a rare “evening with Fruit Bats”—no opener, two sets—that ran a little over two hours. Which was really long for me. How does Phish pull it off every night?
Revolution Hall is one of my favourite venues. It’s a nice theater with comfy seats, which is plush but also leads to people sitting down. I mean, a seated audience is kinda classy in a lot of ways, but I’m always looking for that extra rush of energy as the songs ramp up. At one point, you can hear me (gently) implore folks to stand up (!!). But as it was a long evening—and it being Portland, the beer selection was dank and flowing—naturally the audience got rowdier (and on their feet) as the night progressed, which you can clearly hear in the later points of this recording.
This was the last night of a short tour of the Pacific Northwest in January 2019, so in it you hear some of the earliest live versions of songs off of Gold Past Life which didn’t come out until a few months later. It also includes the only live version of “The Banishment Song” ever, plus a couple of rarely played cuts off of Spelled in Bones.
The band lineup was really special here, an expanded 7-piece lineup that included my stellar frequent co-conspirators Josh Mease (guitar), David Dawda (bass), Josh Adams (drums), and Frank LoCrasto (keys), plus extra special sauce provided by the members of the great Pure Bathing Culture: Sarah Versprille, taking the harmony vocals to a heavenly level (and playing Mellotron), and Daniel Hindman, giving the whole show a delicious gauzy Fender Strat flavor. I’m really happy that our excellent front-of-house engineer Aly Carlisle-Steinberg thought to hit record that evening.
Released June 5th, 2020 The Band:
Eric D. Johnson – vocals, guitar, banjo
Josh Mease – guitar
David Dawda – bass
Josh Adams – drums
Frank LoCrasto – pianos, organs, synths
Sarah Versprille – vocals, Mellotron
Daniel Hindman – guitar
Recorded January 19th, 2019, at Revolution Hall, Portland, OR
Aly Carlisle-Steinberg – live mixing / engineering / recording
Nathan Vanderpool – additional post-production engineering and mastering
Mikal Croninexperienced a creativity boom in late 2018/early 2019, inspired in part by the massive wildfires in Southern California that forced him to evacuate from the Idyllwild cabin where he’d been writing songs. Upon his return to Los Angeles, he recorded two full albums:Seeker, released in October 2019, and its electronic counterpart “Switched-On Seeker”, which is out digitally June 30th and on vinyl August 29th viaRecord Store Day Drops. Mikal Cronin experienced a creativity boom in late 2018/early 2019, inspired in part by the massive wildfires in Southern California that forced him to evacuate from the Idyllwild cabin where he’d been writing songs. Upon his return to Los Angeles, he recorded two full albums: Seeker, released in October 2019, and its electronic counterpart Switched-On Seeker, which is out digitally now and on vinyl August 29th via Record Store Day Drops.
While Cronin’s self-assured vocals and the overarching theme of destruction and rebirth unite Seeker and Switched-On Seeker, everything else about the two albums is different. Support your local record store on August 29 to experience the songs from Seeker in a whole new way!
Playing garage-accented pop, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Mikal Cronin was raised in Laguna Beach, CA, where as a teenager he developed a passion for both surfing and rock & roll. While attending Laguna Beach High School, he fell in with a handful of like-minded music fans, many of whom he still collaborates with to this day.
On July 1st, Cronin will perform a “Switched-On” set from Zebulon in Los Angeles, onZebulon’s YouTube channel.
The idea forSwitched-On Seeker, whose title was inspired by a series of early electronic music records by Wendy Carlos playing classical music on an early Moog system, arose from Cronin’s interest in synths and electronic music, and he set out to record the songs ofSeekertrack by track using only his collection of synthesizers and drum machines. Alone in his garage, Cronin made the album with a variety of synths including Arturia DrumBrute, Moog Sub 37, Moog Mother-32, Hohner String Performer, Mellotron, Omnichord, various little Casios, Roland SH-01A, Korg R3, and classic drum machine samples.
While Cronin’s self-assured vocals and the overarching theme of destruction and rebirth uniteSeekerandSwitched-On Seeker, everything else about these two albums is different. Support your local record store on August 29th to experience your favourite songs fromSeekerin a whole new way!
Limited edition companion piece to Mikal Cronin’s 2019 Seeker album, Switched-On Seeker is a completely synth-based, full-length reworking of 2019’s Seeker in the vein of Wendy Carlos’ “Switched-On” series.Mikal Cronin will continue his world tour across the calendar in 2020, including a confirmed BBC 6 Music session with Marc Riley at the end of February.
Following up 2016’s acclaimed Alone, “Hate For Sale” is the Pretender’s first album to be recorded with the now long-standing touring line-up of the group. Produced by the revered StephenStreet (The Smiths, Blur) Hate For Sale is the Pretenders’ eleventh studio album overall and the first to be written collaboratively by Chrissie Hynde and electrifyingly dynamic guitarist JamesWalbourne. “I wanted to write with him since day one,” says Chrissie. “James is especially sought after and has recorded with Jerry Lee Lewis, Dave Gahan, and The Rails, to name but a few.” And on the single “The Buzz”, she adds, “I think we all know that love affairs can take on the characteristics of drug addiction. It’s about that.”
Hate For Sale, produced by the revered Stephen Street (The Smiths, Blur), is the latest studio album by The Pretenders via BMG. The album features 10 new songs written collaboratively by Chrissie Hynde and the electrifyingly dynamic guitarist James Walbourne, in what is the first Hynde/Walbourne song writing collaboration to date.
The official video for Hate for Sale by The Pretenders, from the new album ‘Hate For Sale’, out July 17th 2020.
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”
