Love is everyday magic. That’s the impression you get listening to “Water”, the new album by Chicago trio Dehd. Veterans of Chicago’s increasingly fruitful DIY scene Jason Balla ( Ne-Hi and Earring) Emily Kempf (Vail and formerly with Lala Lala) and drummer Eric McGrady share a strange and inexplicable chemistry. Love rises up into the atmosphere like steam off a summer sidewalk and makes you wild. Love breaks your heart and you consider yourself lucky for it. Like water itself, it surrounds us, it supports us; it’s what we’re made of. It takes the shape of its container.
The music is hazy and reverb-drenched, a scuzzy and hyped-up take on surf rock that could only come from the Third Coast. It’s all animated by the red-lining feel-good spirit of the Velvet Underground’s Loaded and the breezy melodicism of C86-era indie rock, with a dash of the Cramps’ spooky-hop bop courtesy of McGrady’s locomotive drumming. It’s a clear-eyed look at the wild nature of everyday life that’s been spun up in sugary sweet melodies and scratched-crystal sounds. More than anything, it’s the embodiment of Dehd’s m.o. from the start:
As Kempf puts it, “Work with what you have and make it magical.”
From Dehd’s sophomore LP ‘Water’ out May 10th on Fire Talk.
The Citradels are a band of Melbournites who defy time and space. Sitars, handheld shakers, rattlers and rollers, open-D fuzz jams and unstoppable feedback driven 3 guitar odysseys that force unwary listeners to stare deeply into the depths of an infinite nothingness, The Citradels make some of the darkest, most intense drone music I’ve heard in a long time and make The Black Angels look like a pop group. The latest release from the Geelong five piece, drawing on all the regular spaced out influences from The Velvet Underground to JMC.
Drone music uses the interplay of different musical tones and timbres to create interesting music. In doing so, it fervently avoids things like key changes, melodic riffing or even chord changes in some instances. This means that listening to a drone album is like stepping into a black hole.
Tracs is the 10th album the band has produced in 7 years. Recorded over the space of a year in their home studio in rural Victoria, this album we have stripped back a lot of the instrumentation of our previous releases, taking songwriting and arrangement inspiration from the likes of Neil Young, The Band, The Byrds, Big Star and Cut Worms. We hope you find enjoyment listening to it.
The dark themes and hymn-esque vocals of the beginning of the album, this time revisiting the musicality of the entire album in one short mix. By short, I mean 8 minutes. There’s sweet atonal organ licks, some bent, screaming lead guitar and splashy, cymbal heavy percussion –
The band have been launching their LP relentlessly all over the east coast and have already cracked out the 12 string acoustics, the teardrops and the sitars to start production on their fourth album. If you’re into prolific psych jams, check em out and pay some money for their album – lord knows they deserve it.
Slowdive the English rock band that formed in Reading, Berkshire in 1989. The band consists of Rachel Goswell on vocals and guitar, Simon Scott on drums, Neil Halstead on vocals and guitar, Nick Chaplin on bass and Christian Savill on guitar.
30th anniversary edition for Record Store Day 2020 of their self-titled EP. Slowdive was actually the band’s original demo; the band preferred these original recordings after feeling disillusioned with the results of their studio recordings of the same songs. NME staff member Simon Williams wrote “Slowdive have banished the barrier restricting creativity… When they really relax, Slowdive can make Cocteau Twins sound like Mudhoney”. Melody Maker awarded the EP its “Single of the Week” award.
Originally released in 1990, now available on coloured vinyl for the first time. 30th anniversary edition for RSD 2020 of their self-titled EP. Slowdive was actually the band’s original demo; the band preferred these original recordings after feeling disillusioned with the results of their studio recordings of the same songs. NME staff member Simon Williams wrote Slowdive have banished the barrier restricting creativity… When they really relax, Slowdive can make Cocteau Twins sound like Mudhoney”. Melody Maker awarded the EP its “Single of the Week” award. Featuring the songs Avalyn I and Avalyn II and the track Slowdive. This special RSD 12″ is presented on coloured (blue and green mixed) vinyl. The sleeve is finished with special deluxe alu-brush coating, it shimmers, just like the music it contains! 45rpm.
Spacemen 3 were an English alternative rock band, formed in Rugby, Warwickshire by Peter Kember and Jason Pierce, known respectively under their pseudonyms Sonic Boom and J Spaceman.Their music is known for its brand of “minimalistic psychedelia”.Spacemen 3 had their first independent chart hits in 1987, gaining a cult following, and going on to have greater success towards the end of the decade.However, they disbanded shortly afterwards, releasing their final studio album post-split in 1991 after an acrimonious parting of ways.
They gained a reputation as a ‘drug band’ due to the members’ drug-taking habits and Kember’s candid interviews and outspoken opinions on recreational drug use. Kember and Pierce were the only members common to all line-ups of the band. Both founding members have enjoyed considerable success with their respective subsequent projects: Sonic Boom/Spectrum and Spiritualized.’
Threebie 3′ is a live Spacemen 3 recording featuring performances from a 1988 gig at Melkweg in Amsterdam which were excluded from the live ‘Performance’ album. It was originally released in a strictly limited edition of 1,000 numbered copies which were only available via a mail order offer that came with the seminal and critically acclaimed Spacemen 3 ‘Playing with Fire’ studio album released in 1989 which went to number 1 on the indie charts.
Out of print for more than 30 years and now re-mastered by John Rivers at Woodbine Street Studio especially for vinyl release for Record Store Day 2020.
Yellow coloured heavyweight 180 gram audiophile vinyl LPPreviously only released on limited edition black vinyl in 1989
In the winter of 2019, Bob Mould bucked the era’s despair with his most melodic, upbeat album in ages, Sunshine Rock. Cut to spring of 2020, and he has this to say: “We’re really in deep shit now.”
That sentiment informs the new full-length album, Blue Hearts, the raging-but-catchy yin to Sunshine Rock’s yang. Recorded at the famed Electrical Audio in Chicago with Sorenson engineering and Mould producing, Blue Hearts nods to Mould’s past while remaining firmly planted in the issues of the day. Acoustic opener Heart on My Sleeve catalogues the ravages of climate change. Next Generation worries for who comes next. American Crisis references “Evangelical ISIS” and features this dagger of a line: “Pro-life, pro-life until you make it in someone else’s wife.”
Leather Dreams, Password to My Soul, and The Ocean were composed during a writing binge before a January 2020 Solo Electric tour, when Mould stayed up for three straight days. That feels right for an explosive, hook-laden album like Blue Hearts. Only there’s nothing forgettable about it.
Produced by Bob Mould
Recorded at Electrical Audio, Chicago IL
Additional Recording at Granary Music, San Francisco CA The Band:
Bob Mould: Guitars, Vocals, Keyboards, Percussion
Jason Narducy: Bass, Backing Vocals
Jon Wurster: Drums, Percussion
Originally released in 2013, “Purgatory / Paradise” gets reissued on double vinyl with a gatefold sleeve. Emerging ten years from a hiatus, it’s a formidable 32 track opus of tangible bliss from the alt-rock heroes. Devised as a book with essays by Kristin Hersh with art by drummer Dave Narcizo, it’s a fractured album about loss, most tracks are short, broken, some are even reprises. Everything is tentative with memories listed in order of disappearance – includes Milan about a neighbourhood in New Orleans where Hersh’s house was destroyed by hurricane Katrina, Static that deals with a close loss of a close friend and Terra Nova an ode to the band’s first break up.
Available on double Black Vinyl. Throwing Muses released their long awaited Purgatory/Paradise in 2013, 10 years after their previous studio album this vinyl reissue features all 32 tracks from these alt-rock heroes.
Dons Savage is an unparalled talent, a savant of the perfect melody and lyrics which both touch and bite, a throwbook to the Carole King’s and Gerry Goffin’s of Brill Building pop, an instinctive penseuse besting the originators of the Riot Grrrl movement by responding to their conversations of rage and sexuality and finding a place in the world some years before the initial sparks of that particular revolution had even begun. Dead Famous People’s first real album, “Harry”, is now being unleashed to the world.
Dead Famous People first emerged in the 1980s, releasing on the likes of Flying Nun and earning praise from the likes of John Peel, who invited them in for a session. However, things didn’t work out and to the dismay of many fans, they never released a proper album. Three decades later Dons was tracked down by Fire Records and given the opportunity to finally enter the studio to record. Somewhat more philosophical than her earlier work, Harry is an album that feels like the right one for a world of apocalyptic pandemic, uncertainty and quarantine. It begins with a healthy scoop of Dons’ earlier humour in Looking At Girls (expertly mixed by Dave Trumfio) wherein a woman learns of her lover’s car crash only to be told the cause was, well, look at the title. Goddess Of Chill is a paean to the forces of artistic inspiration in the face of ‘a little worry here, a little chorus there’. Dead Bird’s Eye is a parable of environmentalism through the misdeeds of a small child.
Throughout these songs, Dons’ power over melody and knack for profundity in a single simple line is unchanged since Dead Famous People’s original incarnation. “Harry” is a rare record in a time of musical factionalism and a world divided into camps of wilfull obscurity and grotesque mockeries of stardom and art, a document of unadorned perfection which will make as much sense to you at sixteen as it will when you’re sixty.
“Bob bought a DFP single which we both really liked, we were drawn to the mystery of the band’s name and the melancholy tone of Dons’ voice.” Pete Wiggs – Saint Etienne
“There was a sense of excitement that something special was happening.” Martin Phillipps – The Chills
On October 22nd 2019 Courtney Barnett performed a unique and special show at the invitation of MTV in her hometown of Melbourne. The “Unplugged” performance features Barnett as you’ve never heard her before, warm, vulnerable and emotional, performing a stirring set of eight songs to an intimate audience including “Depreston”, “Avant Gardner” and “Sunday Roast”.
Joined by her usual band Dave Mudie and Bones Sloane, she also enlisted cellist Lucy Waldron. Barnett made the night even more iconic by inviting some of her favourite musicians to collaborate including legendary songwriter Paul Kelly, angelically-voiced New Zealander Marlon Williams and Milk! Records label-mate Evelyn Ida Morris.
The performances include covers of Leonard Cohen, Archie Roach and Seeker Lover Keeper as well as a never-before-heard original track from Courtney herself titled Play It On Repeat</strong
Released December 6th, 2019 The Band:
Courtney Barnett – guitar & vocals
Dave Mudie – drums & backing vocals
Bones Sloane – bass & backing vocals
Lucy Waldron – cello & backing vocals
w/ special guests
Paul Kelly – guitar, harmonica, vocals (Charcoal Lane)
Marlon Williams – guitar & vocals (Not Only I)
Evelyn Ida Morris – piano & vocals (Nameless, Faceless)
and piano (Avant Gardener)
All songs written by Courtney Barnett except
Charcoal Lane written by Archie Roach
Not Only I written by Sally Seltmann, Sarah Blasko & Holly Throsby (Seeker Lover Keeper)
So Long, Marianne written by Leonard Cohen
Jellyfish co-founder Roger Joseph Manning Jr. is returns with a new band The Lickerish Quartet which also features Tim Smith and Eric Dover, two other musicians who played a part in the Jellyfish story around the time of the second album.
Jellyfish flirted with UK chart success in the early nineties, but never quite crossed over into the mainstream, despite the creative core of the band – singer/drummer Andy Sturmer and keyboard player Roger Joseph Manning Jr. – delivering some timeless, melodic power-pop, with influences coming courtesy from the likes of The Beatles, Queen, and ELO. They were, in many ways, a band out of time, with the release of 1990’s Bellybutton coinciding with the ‘Madchester’ scene in the UK and follow-up Spilt Milk (1993) being issued at the height of the Grunge movement emerging from Seattle.
If Eric and Tim are unfamiliar, then let’s establish their credentials; Tim Smith was brought in to play guitar on “Split Milk”, while Eric Dover joined the band on the road for the tour of the same album. Jellyfish broke up after that tour, but since then, the three musicians have forged their own paths with occasional overlapping projects. Roger is probably best known as being the keyboard player in Beck‘s band for over 20 years, Tim has worked with the Finn brothers Neil and Tim, Sheryl Crow and Noel Gallagher, while Dover was in Imperial Drag with Roger (they released just the one album before disbanding in 1997). Andy Sturmer has no involvement in The Lickerish Quartet , Roger Joseph Manning Jr. explained that their goal “wasn’t to resurrect Jellyfish, it was simply to get together and write original music we love”.
The first release is Threesome Vol. 1 a four-track EP which will be issued on vinyl and CD that is brimming with the kind of joy and invention that made those two Jellyfish albums so good. It includes ‘Lighthouse Spaceship‘, six minutes of harmony-driven classic rock with all those aforementioned influences clearly in place, alongside the exquisite production values that made Jellyfish so highly regarded.
Manning’s ‘Bluebird’s Blues‘ as is a slice of folk-guitar power-pop with cheeky 10cc-referencing intro, while the Dover-driven Fadoodle is a ludicrously catchy, and rather humourous number, which according to Roger, “has the distinction of being a pop song that has the world’s oldest slang yet is released in the 21st century” (Fadoodle apparently means fornicate).
”Our intention is always to keep the point of the song fairly straightforward and very catchy right from the onset. We enjoy having fun with production and arranging intricacies here and there, but we never want those to overshadow the raw, innocent beauty of a song. This whole song, both musically and lyrically, is pretty much from myself. Obviously, Eric and Tim are in there, they help with the arrangement and some sections, like the intro, outro and some stuff in the bridge. But the lyric and the core of the verses and choruses came from me.
My gosh, I wrote most of that song in 1988! The lyric was written very recently, in the last couple of years, but most of the music came right when I graduated from college and I was living on my own in San Francisco. Jellyfish hadn’t even formed yet, but I was working with Andy [Sturmer] who was going to be my partner in that band. I was writing lots and lots of songs and that was just an idea that popped out. There were so many songs to do over the years in Jellyfish and other projects that it never got completed and I thought it would be a perfect song to try for the Lickerish Quartet.
The lyric basically is the old familiar tale of Cyrano de Bergerac. That’s me taking that theme and running with it. It’s really about any young man who wants to get the attention of a woman he’s attracted to but has no self-confidence, he has no social skills. He’s inept to speak his heart. Very often that’s a lot of musicians or poets and they’ll do that through their art because they often don’t have what it takes to simply walk up to a woman and tell them directly that they’re attracted to them.
When I work on songs and create ideas I never really have a lyric in mind, that always comes later. I would sing made up words and gibberish just so I can create a melody, so when I first wrote that song I was singing this ’bluebird’ word over and over again. I decided to run with it to see if I could create an entire lyric that way. So yeah, the bluebird is the one who serenades the girl because the man is ill-equipped to do so for himself, ha ha!
Everything you hear in the song is very, very intentional. It takes us a very long time to create this music. We always try to hold the listener’s attention, we never want the listener to start nodding off or for things to become too repetitive or too boring, so we love all the games, earcandy, playfulness and seduction we try to do as audio. The intro is mysterious, ’what’s about to happen?’. It’s sucking you in ideally to this mysterious world that happens in the first verse which is very stripped down.
We love having fun with background vocals. So many of our heroes inspired us over the years, certainly in the sixties and seventies. Rock and pop artists could really harmonize and sing very well, certainly a lot of the psych pop in the sixties. They experimented with the power of vocals. We enjoy doing that too on our own terms.”
– Roger Joseph Manning Jr.
Finally, ‘There Is a Magic Number‘ a gorgeous yearning Smith-penned rumination on lost love, blame and attribution. Mid-paced soft-rock perfection.
Manning said with some regret, that it was clear to him back in 1993/4 that “both Eric and Tim were fantastic singer-songwriters in their own right” but that because Jellyfish broke up “we never got to conduct that experiment and continue on in that Jellyfish writing tradition.” He also makes no apologies for his musical influences: “You’ve got to be honest with yourself and what excites me and motivates me for the most part, is the record collection I grew up with as a young boy and a young man.”
The Threesome Vol. 1 EP will be released on CD on 26th June and on vinyl on 31st July 2020.
Now and then a debut comes along that feels more like a greatest hits collection. Introduction, Presence is a portrait of Nation Of Language’s first few years — singles trying out different iterations of a sound and attacking various ideas, but fully-formed even within that process of early discovery. Climactic moments abound: the twin “where is my life going” catharses of album bookends “Tournament” and “The Wall & I,” the digital wormhole of political screed “Indignities,” reclaimed awe in the city lights of “On Division St.” Eventually the vignettes form a whole story, tracing the listlessness and yearning of being not-quite-young-anymore in precarious times.
Brooklyn-based synth auteurs Nation of Language entered 2020 as one of the most heralded new acts of recent memory, having already earned high-praise from the likes of NME, FADER, Stereogum and countless others for their energetic anthems’ ability to blend the upbeat with a healthy dose of sardonic melancholy. Inspired by the early new-wave and punk movements, the band quick earned a reputation for delivering frenzied nights of unconventional bliss to rapt audiences, establishing themselves in the process as bright young stars emerging from a crowded NYC landscape.
The small handful of offerings from the band that began circulating in recent years prompted unusually big reactions from the press for an unsigned and fully independent new artist, turning many a head in their direction. Stereogum labeled the band “Immediately Addicting” while the NME went on to describe Nation of Language as ‘An Absolute Blast’ and some of the ‘most exciting music coming out of New York’.
What a debut Introduction, Presence is! An album of the year contender for sure.
While many of their contemporaries are hellbent on 1980s homages, Nation of Language’s song writing influences recalls 2000s bands like Arcade Fire and The National just as much as ’80s golden era groups. You can hear Matt Berninger like tone and pacing on “Tournament,” James Murphy’s warmth and exhilaration on “Rush & Fever,” the zest and pomp of Cut Copy’s Dan Whitford on “Indignities” and Arcade Fire-sized elation on “The Wall & I.”
