Katie Ellen’s debut album, 2017’s Cowgirl Blues, saw frontwoman Anika Pyle kicking against the traditions and norms that come with adulthood—namely, love, major life changes, cohabitation, and domesticity. She penned the anti-marriage anthem with “Sad Girls Club,” a standout track that featured the defiant heartbreaker of a chorus: “Sad girls don’t make good wives.” On the Philly band’s new, five-song EP, Still Life, Pyle is still trying to wrap her head around these things. On opener “Lighthouse,” Pyle reckons with warring thoughts—wanting to be brave enough to swim into life’s uncharted deep end, but feeling tied down by the anchor of fear and anxiety. Later, on the EP’s title track, she surrenders to the idea that love is more powerful and wild than our capacity to tame it: “You can’t make love stay / Do your best to hold it in place.”
Musically, Pyle flexes a few new tricks she’s trying out, like on “Still Life,” where her voice spirals into borderline operatic delivery, a far jump from the quick and dirty style she cut her teeth on in her former pop punk project Chumped. Was so excited at the news of this EP, considering that Cowgirl Blues was one of my favourite albums of 2017. I’ve had this on repeat since it came out. “Still Life” is particularly resonant for me. It feels so different as Anika showcases her vocal skills even more, with a fuller band sound and even backup vocals, but the emotional quality and content of the song still feels 100% like Katie Ellen.
Matt Sweeney, produced this Country Westerns album. Singer-guitarist Joey Plunkett left NYC for Nashville after making a name for himself in legends The Weight & hustling bass in Gentleman Jesse. In 2019, Sabrina Rush joined on bass. Nashville drummer Brian Kotzur was a member of Silver Jews and David Berman encouraged them to record with me and Fat Possum Records gave them a record deal.
Country Westerns is a three-piece rock band from Nashville that sounds nothing like its name. Drummer Brian Kotzur (Trash Humpers, Silver Jews) and singer-songwriter-guitarist Joseph Plunket (The Weight, Gentleman Jesse) began working on songs together in 2016, after bonding over the shared desire to be in a band in a town full of solo artists and guns-for-hire. Following a couple of years writing and playing shows with varying lineups, Sabrina Rush (State Champion) joined the band as bassist. The now complete Country Westerns recorded their debut album in New York and Nashville, encouraged by friend and producer Matt Sweeney. Plunket’s raspy bravado and subtle twang, his insistent 12-string guitar riffs, Kotzur’s dynamic and metronomic drumming, and Rush’s harmonic bass playing create hyper catchy rock songs, with lyrics that bend towards poetry and punk rock sneer in equal measure. Their self-titled debut is slated for release in 2020 on Fat Possum Record. This is guitar-driven garagey americana that doesn’t sound like anything else out there right now.
Released June 26th, 2020
Country Westerns played a private set at Grimey’s Music in Nashville to celebrate the release of their self titled debut album on Fat Possum Records. Love everything about this. It’s got the primo vocal gravel with an infectious rhythm and upbeat tone. Great mix of punky twang polished and mixed like a modern Manhattan in the calloused hands of an urban cowboy gone rogue.
Slow Nights 00:14 It’s Not Easy 3:32 TV Light 6:47 Gentle Soul 10:17 I’m Not Ready 13:19 Close To Me 17:35 Guest Checks 20:16 Times To Tunnels 23:48 At Anytime 26:51 Margaritas At The Mall (Purple Mountains) 30:15
In addition to the album announcement for their new album, they’ve shared the haunting single “Trials”, along with a mesmerizing video directed by Jeff Striker. Cults on “Trials”: “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.
Host is a radical reimagining of both the band’s sound and its dynamic. Written more collaboratively than ever before and recorded primarily with live instruments for the first time, the album explores the sinister dynamics at play in a parasitic relationship. Rather than dwelling in the discomfort, it charts a cathartic journey towards freedom and self-reliance, revelling in the power that comes from standing your ground and declaring independence in the face of exploitation and manipulation.
Cults have returned with the announcement of their fourth studio album “Host”, out September 18th via Sinderlyn ‼️
Blitzen Trapper shares “Dead Billie Jean,” this is the third track from their Yep Roc Records debut, Holy Smokes Future Jokes, out September 11th.
BrooklynVegan premiered the song and video, noting that the song “works in the title star of Michael Jackson’s 1983 hit — not to mention a few dead rock stars — into the heady psychedelic universe of this album… a groovy, jammy Blitzen Trapper-style folk number.” Led by existential questions about life and death, Holy Smokes Future Jokes finds frontman and lyricist Eric Earley ruminating on the intermediate period between a person’s separate lives on earth, “and what it means to escape the cycle of birth and rebirth.”
Of the track he notes, “Pulling together Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo and MJ’s Billie Jean wherein the real Billie Jean has indeed killed herself as she promised Michael she would and now living in a state of rock and roll immortality kicks it in the Intermediate States with Jim Morrison, Brian Jones and Abraham Lincoln(?!) smoking mad dope, though she remains unaware of her death somehow as though her death ultimately was an awakening and reinvention.”
On August 28th, in support of independent record stores, Blitzen Trapper will release Holy Smokes Future Jokes on limited edition red, yellow & blue splatter vinyl EXCLUSIVELY two weeks before the September 11th official street date.
Across the months of August, September, October and November 2020, four classic Peter Gabriel concerts will be released on vinyl by Real World. Three of them for the first time. A twenty-year period of live performance is captured by the four releases, and over forty different songs. The series commences with Plays Live, Peter Gabriel’s first live album from 1983, which will be re-released on 2LP on 28th August. A month later, we jump forward musically to the tour that supported the release of Peter’s fifth solo album, ‘So’, with the release of Live in Athens 1987 on 25th September, also a 2LP set. Both albums come in wide-spine sleeves with printed inner bags.
By the third release, on 23rd October, we find ourselves immersed in the spectacle of the Secret World Live tour. Conceived by Peter and Robert Lepage, this is the show that accompanied the release of the ‘US’ album. Again, this is a 2LP with wide-spine sleeve and printed inner bags. The last release of this series is Growing Up Live, released on 27th November capturing Peter’s first tour in a decade in support of the album ‘UP’.This is a 3LP set with a gatefold sleeve and printed inner bags.
Plays Live, Peter Gabriel’s first live album from 1983, re-released on 2LP on 28th August 2020.
The album was compiled from live recordings made at four venues across the American Midwest in late 1982. It is effectively a sign-off to the first phase of Peter Gabriel the solo artist. As such, it’s a celebration of all that was achieved on his opening quartet of self-titled long-players, while also standing as confirmation that Peter was an engaged and engaging frontman.
The touring band captured by the recordings consists of Peter, alongside Jerry Marrotta (drums and percussion), Tony Levin (bass and stick), David Rhodes (guitar) and Larry Fast (synthesizer and piano), whilst the iconic cover image of Peter in ‘monkey mask’ make-up was taken by long-time collaborator Armando Gallo.
The 2LP artwork replicates the original vinyl release with a wide-spine single sleeve and full colour printed inner bags. All images are newly re-scanned.
The album has been Half-Speed Remastered and cut to lacquers at 33RPM by Matt Colton at Alchemy Mastering, mastered by Tony Cousins at Metropolis and overseen by Peter Gabriel’s sound engineer Richard Chappell. The LP also comes with a hi-res audio download code (24bit or 16bit).
Live in Athens 1987 captures the concert tour that supported the release of Peter Gabriel’s fifth solo album, ‘So’, released on 2LP on 25th September 2020. An open-air theatre cut into a hill, the lights of a capital city twinkling beneath. five musicians take to the stage, five musicians at the peak of their game. a few thousand acolytes approvingly roar at their arrival. ear-to-ear smiles are visible in every direction, both in the crowd and onstage. this is the last night of a tour. a long tour. a very long tour. we are in Athens and it’s October 1987. more significantly, it’s the climax of Peter Gabriel’s “This Way Up Tour”, an endeavour that kicked off nearly 12 long months previously, tens and tens of thousands of miles ago. over many, many months, this jolly caravan has travelled throughout north America and Europe, from Buffalo to Bologna, Milwaukee to Munich, Toronto to Toulouse. it’s nearly all over. and here in the Greek capital the occasion will be preserved for eternity. though previously release as a concert film the recording has never be available on vinyl.
Recorded at the open-air Lycabettus theatre above the Greek capital, Live in Athens 1987 documents the final shows of the This Way Up world tour and five musicians at the peak of their game, playing the songs from the album that had catapulted Gabriel into the pop stratosphere. The show features a special guest appearance by the young Youssou N’Dour on a rousing rendition of ‘In Your Eyes’.
The touring band captured by the recordings consists of Peter, alongside Manu Katché (drums), Tony Levin (bass, backing vocals), David Rhodes (guitar, backing vocals) and David Sancious (keyboards), and in a nod to the Plays Live album the cover image was taken by photographer Armando Gallo.
Though previously a concert film, this is the first time on vinyl for ‘Live in Athens 1987’, presented as a 2LP set with a wide-spine single sleeve and full colour printed inner bags. Brand new artwork by Marc Bessant, Gabriel’s long-time designer.
The album has been Half-Speed Remastered and cut to lacquers at 33RPM by Matt Colton at Alchemy Mastering, mastered by Tony Cousins at Metropolis and overseen by Peter Gabriel’s sound engineer Richard Chappell. The LP also comes with a hi-res audio download code (24bit or 16bit).
Secret World Live, released on 2LP on 23rd October 2020.
Conceived by Gabriel and Robert Lepage, this is the show that accompanied the release of the ‘US’ album and features a collection of songs that spans Gabriel’s solo career until that point; from debut single ‘Solsbury Hill’ to ‘Digging In The Dirt’, ‘Steam’ and ‘Blood Of Eden’. All delivered in a thoroughly committed and total performance by Gabriel and band and recorded over two nights at the Palasport in Modena, Italy in November 1993. the album looks amazing with a wide-spine single sleeve and full colour printed inner bags. this is the first time that “Secret World Live” has been available in vinyl, with the LP designed by Marc Bessant at Real World. Secret World Live contains 16 tracks from the Secret World Tour of 1993 the extraordinary live tour, conceived by Peter Gabriel and Robert Lepage, that accompanied the release of peter’s sixth solo album, us. recorded over two nights in Modena in Northern Italy, the collection spans Peter’s solo career until that point; from debut single Solsbury Hill right up to Digging in the Dirt, Steam and Blood of Eden from us. with a thoroughly committed and total performance Peter further consolidated his reputation as a ringmaster of dynamism and daring. the touring band captured by the recordings consists of Peter,
The touring band captured by the recordings consists of Peter, alongside Manu Katché (drums), Tony Levin (bass, vocals), David Rhodes (guitar, vocals), Jean Claude Naimro (keyboards, vocals), Shankar (violin) and Paula Cole (vocals). Special guest appearance by Papa Wemba.
This is the first time on vinyl for ‘Secret World Live’, which is presented as a 2LP set with a wide-spine single sleeve and full colour printed inner bags.
The album has been Half-Speed Remastered and cut to lacquers at 33RPM by Matt Colton at Alchemy Mastering, mastered by Tony Cousins at Metropolis and overseen by Peter Gabriel’s sound engineer Richard Chappell. The LP also comes with a hi-res audio download code (24bit or 16bit).
Growing Up Live, released on 3LP on 27th November 2020.
Following the release of his album ‘UP’, Peter Gabriel went on the road for the first time in a decade. Once again collaborating with production designer Robert Lepage to create a spectacular and theatrical live experience, with the band performing in the round. the tour took in thirty-two cities across the USA, Canada and Europe and this concert performance was recorded over two nights at the Filaforum in Milan in may 2003, with Peter Gabriel and the band performing in the round at the centre of the arena. a concert film capturing the live show was released in late 2003, but growing up live has never previously been on vinyl.
The concert was recorded over two nights at the Filaforum in Milan in May 2003 and features notable contributions from the likes of The Blind Boys of Alabama, Hukwe and Charles Zawose, Sevara Nazarkhan and the voice of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
The touring band captured by the recordings consists of Peter, alongside Ged Lynch (drums), Tony Levin (bass, vocals), David Rhodes (guitar, vocals), Richard Evans (guitar, mandolin, whistle), Rachel Z (keyboards, vocals) and Melanie Gabriel (vocals).
Previously a concert film, this is the first time on vinyl for ‘Growing Up Live’, presented as a 3LP set in gatefold sleeve, designed by Marc Bessant.
The album has been Half-Speed Remastered and cut to lacquers at 33RPM by Matt Colton at Alchemy Mastering, mastered by Tony Cousins at Metropolis and overseen by Peter Gabriel’s sound engineer Richard Chappell. The LP also comes with a hi-res audio download code (24bit or 16bit).
Land of Talk today shared the video for their plaintive new song “Now You Want to Live in the Light,” which singer/guitarist Elizabeth Powell calls “a poem set to music. A tender negotiation between the light and dark parts of ourselves.” The gentle track is the fifth single released from the Montreal-based band’s forthcoming album “Indistinct Conversations”, out July 31st, and showcases the album’s versatility. “In developing the visual image for ‘Now You Want To Live In The Light,’ I anchored myself in the pulse of the song,” explains director Lara Kramer of the video “I wanted to mobilize in ways we think, feel, and do in our self-confronting states.”
Indistinct Conversations is now available for pre-order and shipments will begin going out shortly to ensure your copy arrives by street date.
“Now You Want to Live in the Light” follows previous singles “Footnotes,” “Diaphanous,” “Compelled,” and “Weight of that Weekend,” which have earned press from outlets including Pitchfork (Selects playlist), Stereogum, Consequence of Sound, Paste, NPR Music (‘NMF’ and ‘Press Pause and Hit Play’ playlists), and Brooklyn Vegan, among others.
Alabama ShakesguitaristHeath Foggreturns with “Sun on Shade”, the debut album from his new project of the same name.Set for June 26 release via ATO Records, the album examines the power and fragility of the human spirit, particularly in the face of addiction. “Tiger Lilies,” the first single, was unveiled today. Lloyd Buchanan (Alabama Shakes, Brittany Howard) takes the mic on the deep-grooving track, which is a soulful reminder to make each day count and to cherish the moments spent with loved ones. Also joining Heath on the album are Alabama Shakes bandmates Ben Tanner, Zac Cockrell and Steve Johnson, plus a few other friends. In addition to Buchanan, vocalists include Sam Doores (Deslondes, Hurray for the Riff Raff) and Shonna Tucker (Drive-By Truckers).
“Lyrically, it’s just a conversation with a couple of friends,” explains Fogg. “I never set out to do anything close to a solo record and I still don’t see it that way.” Sun on Shadeis a collection of cautionary tales for those who’ve yet to wander down the wrong path.For those who have wandered off, it’s a beacon and suggests that while time moves quickly, it hasn’t run out.It’s not too late to change. Fogg recalls, “Around the time my second child was born, one of my best friends died and another told everybody he was going to rehab for heroin.”
Fatalism and faith bookend Sun on Shade.Fogg is unblinking in detailing the danger lurking in album opener “Light Behind the Eyes” as Doores declares, “You’re gonna die if you keep on living this way.”But the final line of the closer, “Up from the Water,” holds out an unmistakable hand of hope, as Buchanan warmly croons, “One of these days I will rise up from the water.” “Electronic artists will make records where every song has a featured vocalist on it. I wanted the album to be like that – like a mixtape or a collaborative collage of ideas and artists. I just see it like a team, and for this game I got picked as the team captain.” – Heath Fogg
Fogg producedSun on Shade and wrote the album’s nine tracks.He was joined by Alabama Shakes bandmates Ben Tanner (keyboards), Zac Cockrell (bass) and Steve Johnson (drums), plus a few local friends.They recorded the album at the Muscle Shoals studio of Tanner,
A recording project from Heath Fogg of Alabama Shakes.
We have already told you about the wonder that was “Been Around”, but the album by A Girl Called Eddy is turning into a phenomenon on many levels. We know about the support it is receiving from critics, but its fan base is growing at an incredible rate, the way the best of news spreads: word of mouth. Or, keyboard to screen; as you wish. It is a combination of impeccable songs and a handful of marvelous videos. This new single of “Jody” is joining this handful now. With echoes of Steely Dan ,Laura Nyro, it is one of the brightest songs, musically speaking, and the saddest, lyrically. Erin Moran’s farewell to her friend Jody is represented here full of colour and full of class, in a new show of prodigious animation by Pooley (Woom Studio). Vintage and current interact with the song’s lyrics in an absolutely marvelous visual work, which also pays homage to the graphic designer Saul Bass. We are enjoying this album so much. It is such a pleasure to discover it down piece by piece.
Erin Moran, who records as A Girl Called Eddy, released her entrancing self-titled debut in 2004. Finally, she’s returned with Been Around, a follow-up that’s just as beautiful and haunting as its predecessor.
Although it echoes the likes of everyone from Dusty Springfield and Chrissie Hynde to Carole King and Dionne Warwick, Been Around is no simple act of reverent nostalgia. Moran’s pop classicism feels fresh and urgent, turning romantic tales of regret, desire and occasional hope into timely dispatches from a heart roiled by the sheer intensity of everyday life. The buoyant “Jody” is an ode to a long-lost friend (“He liked to call me kid, I liked it when he did”) while the shimmering “Someone’s Gonna Break Your Heart” mixes New Wave and girl-group vibes to thrilling effect. The elegant melancholy of “Not That Sentimental Anymore” provides the perfect setting for her dark, stately voice, which conjures a world of emotional travail; when she sighs, “What brought me to tears just yesterday now only gets in my way,” her weary disappointment makes total sense.
Been Around features some A-list collaborators, among them co-producer Daniel Tashian (whose credits include Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour) and composer Paul Williams (known for the Carpenters hits “Rainy Days and Mondays” and “We’ve Only Just Begun”), who co-wrote one song with her, but this is Moran’s show, and a compelling one it is.
One of the most exciting rock bands of the last decade, the Detroit-based post punk band will release its fifth album, “Ultimate Success Today” July 17th. The word prophetic isn’t a stretch. With its references to disease, institutional brutality, and gross inequality—symptoms of “a cosmic grief, beyond all comprehension”—the new record matches the apocalyptic mood of the US, and much of the world, in 2020. But it also speaks to the continued growth of the Protomartyr aesthetic, pairing guest vocals and contributions by players associated with free jazz and experimental music with reverb-drenched guitars and brittle rhythms.
Writing about the album, Ana da Silva of the Raincoats says: “Our world has reached a point that makes us afraid: fires, floods, earthquakes, hunger, war, intolerance…there are cries of despair. Is there any hope?” . Protomartyr’s artistic growth, the uncanny influence of Robocop, and other doomed and damned topics.
In stark contrast to its title, Ultimate Success Today—the fifth full-length from Detroit’s lugubrious post-punks Protomartyr—is a deeply dark album riddled with chaos, neurosis, illness, angst and anger about the state of the world. And rightly so. Yet while these songs are a fitting reflection of an America that feels like an empire on the verge of collapse—with an explosion of documented police brutality and murder, and the subsequent riots against the systemic racism that drives it, and the utter mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, which continues to spread at alarming rates across the country—they were all written before that stuff really started spiralling out of control.
In fact, the initial inspiration was frontman Joe Casey’s own physical ailments, coupled with the usual existential dread that tends to reside within him. The result is a harrowing record both sonically and lyrically, one that sounds as much like the product of a terrifying David Lynch nightmarescape as much as it reflects the actual horrors of the real world—a far cry, as Casey explains, from the “happy” record he hoped it might have been.
It’s a weird time, because you learn not to dwell on the past, but you’re also frightened of the future, so all you have is the present. Which is why it’s “ultimate success today.” And at the end of it you hope that you can seize the day, as corny as that is. With “Worm In Heaven,” the music sounded so beautiful, I felt if I’m going to write a swan song or a farewell address, I might as well do it now and get it off the books, so I don’t have to worry about that later on. They can play this song at my funeral now, so maybe I can think about other things. It’s a way to confront these weird feelings, get them down and then hopefully I won’t dwell on it—and the next album will be the happy one!.
Protomartyr’s sound is forged from the bones of punk and the blood of indie rock. The Detroit four-piece delivers heady lyrics with an ironic detachment in the vein of Destroyer and the Mountain Goats, while the blistering noise and distorted intensity of their music brings to mind Sonic Youth and early Sleater-Kinney. Their fifth album, Ultimate Success Today, continues this stylistic balancing act, with existentially oriented lyrics accompanied by ferocious guitars and frantic percussion that sustain a sense of anxiety. References to philosophical concepts and pre-Enlightenment literature could be considered over-thought if Protomartyr’s sound didn’t possess such raw immediacy. The band’s catalogue is strewn with such musings about life as a fulfillment of a disappointing fate, and they’ve perfected that obsession here. The restless punk spirit and flippant, downtrodden ethos that prevail over the album render Protomartyr’s painstaking intellectualizations as fuel for a visceral winding up and release of discontent.
Bridging the gap between one post punk era and next, these Michigan anti heroes influence is as clear and loud as is their bombast and rage. Album number 5 proving that the possibilities are unbound by any constraints or expectations.
“Angry and exhilarating. In short—dissonant angst delivered with precision.” Socialist Worker
“The soundtrack of an uncertain future, capable of unleashing pulverising guitar noise, but not reliant on it.” The Guardian ★★★★
“Harrowed, humane and stout-hearted, Protomartyr hold out for hope to the end and beyond.” Record Collector ★★★★
Though their music has often been tied to American roots music, Holy Motors were formed in Tallinn, Estonia in 2013, when founding member Lauri Raus (songwriter/guitar) recruited Eliann Tulve to join the band as songwriter and lead vocalist. With Tulve’s gorgeously foreboding vocals serving as a ballast for the guitar section’s “infinity-pool-style shimmer” the band quickly became as un-ignorable as they were inscrutable. 2018 saw the band release their critically acclaimed debut LP, Slow Sundown, which won them praise from Stereogum (Album of the Week), Bandcamp (Album of the Day) and DIY (Neu Pick) to name a few.
They even landed on one of their very own idols’s radar – Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre – who went on to work closely with the band in 2019. Since then Holy Motors’ incongruence has only grown all the more prevalent and endearing. They remain musicians from an ex-Soviet country who write songs that have been described as “shoegaze that sounds like the old West” .The resulting mystique, paired with their ability to write lyrics and music that resonate with a deeply relatable feeling of isolation, has allowed their music to connect with people from devoted shoegaze and western psychedelia fanatics to dreamer cowboys, driving through wide open country roads under the stars. Their second album Horse will land 16th October 2020 via Wharf Cat Records.
