Last week the band released Demos Vol. 1 – Topanga Canyon, CA – Feb 2018, a collection of unreleased songs from the sessions that spurred “U.F.O.F.” and “Two Hands” Albums. The demos are available to purchase with all proceeds benefiting Big Thief’s touring crew. Available to stream now, ‘Live Young Demo’ offers a taste of the collection. It opens with hypnotically repeating percussion and guitar, quietly blooming with Adrianne Lenker’s magnetic voice. Towards the track’s close, an interplay begins between the song and ambient drones and noises of unplaceable origin.
“We spent the month of February 2018 in a cabin in Topanga Canyon, California, recording 34 demos that were boiled down to become UFOF and Two Hands, and we’re bringing a handful into light now to share with everyone. We chose 5 of our favourites – none of which appear on any Big Thief records and a couple of which appear in different forms on Adrianne’s “abysskiss”. 100% of the funds we make from this release will go to our faithful road crew, whose income has been impacted by the disruption in our touring schedule. They are the lifeblood of the Big Thief shows and we care so deeply for each and every one of them.”
The Murder Capital release their new EP, “Live From Maida Vale”, which features their full live session for Annie Mac at Radio 1. The EP opens with a heart-wrenching cover of FKA Twigs’Cellophane, and also features gorgeous takes of fan favourites Green & Blue and Don’t Cling To Life.
Speaking about the EP, the band state:
When Annie Mac asked us to do a live session at Maida Vale, covering FKA Twigs was an easy decision. “Cellophane” especially encapsulates such a poignant landmark of heartbreak, and its innately exposed nature further allowed us to really connect with it.’
The band have always been open about their love of FKA Twigs, featuring her tracks on their lockdown playlist, ‘Staying Home For Now’.
The release follows the completion of the bands sold out UK and Europe tour, which included a date at London’s iconic Electric Ballroom. Their critically acclaimed debut album, “When I Have Fears,” released last August, reached number 2 in the Irish charts and received a top 20 spot in the UK.
The band’s live show at The Dome, Live From London: The Dome, Tufnell Park, will be released on limited edition vinyl on Record Store Day (Saturday 29th August, Saturday 26th September and Saturday 24th October). Limited copies will be available in record stores across the UK. The band are currently writing material for the highly anticipated second album.
Tokyo Police Club are back and keeping it simple with their fifth studio album TPC through Dine Alone Records. They’ve captured the sound that saved them within the walls of a church and by the hands of producer Rob Schnapf. These are hymns for the young at heart. The single, Simple Dude, vocalist David Monks sings about sensations and simple pleasures as if they are new discoveries, “my skin to your skin, I can feel it coming.” In Can’t Stay Here he asserts “ I don’t know how to grow up/I don’t know how to stay young/ I just know that I can’t stay here” over Josh Hook’s rousing guitar and Greg Alsop’s free-spirited drums. It’s the perfect song for leaving home, a relationship, or your twenties while Ready to Win is a genius ode to failure, which is a lifelong experience, and just as important as success.
TPC is proof that an album can be casual but not careless. There is value in simplicity, and some of the best art isn’t complicated. TPC has a fast tempo swagger, anxious but proud. This an album you can bounce to while you find your way through too many beers and one night stands. These fast times may be fleeting, but they’re worth it.
Can someone learn from their past without being beleaguered by it? Is change something measured in footsteps, days sober, or something less tangible? These are all questions that Jason Isbell poses, and some of which he answers, on his latest album with The 400 Unit, “Reunions”.
The Nashville-based, Alabama-native singer-songwriter has traced a long and storied path to get to this, his seventh studio record and fourth alongside The Unit. From cutting his teeth with Drive-By Truckers in the late 2000s, to his departure from that group, hitting rock bottom, and finding salvation on 2013’s Southeastern, Isbell has seen quite a bit. One of the things that made him such an attractive songwriter was his ability to bring listeners in on that arc of rise, fall, and redemption. Now, with the release of Reunions, he begins to tell a new story.
Reunions, featuring 10 new songs, is a grab bag of material from Isbell. Some of it is the tried-and-true storytelling of his turbulent past, while some looks to his bright present of family life and critical acclaim, and still more look to realities completely bereft of Isbell himself. Reunions marks the evolution of an artist uncomplacent with doing what’s easy and restless enough to risk making some mistakes.
The album’s opening track, “What’ve I Done to Help”, finds Isbell still wrestling with his past and the resulting life it has created. While this isn’t the down-and-out Isbell to which audiences are privy, this is a much more cogent singer who acknowledges that all of these long-standing problems won’t go away just because “I kept my head down and showed up to work on time.”
Then, take a song like “Dreamsicle”, which again looks to the past but goes back a little further. From a turbulent childhood filled with cross country moves and frequent goodbyes to friends, “Dreamsicle” lays the emotional groundwork for songs closer to Isbell’s present self. With lines like, “I’ll be 18 four years from now/ with different friends in a different town/ I’ll finally be free,” Isbell offers a tender glimpse into a troubled childhood paramount to his adult formation.
Obviously, the lyrics are the focal point of Isbell’s music, but Reunions sets itself apart musically as well as lyrically. Take a song like “Overseas”, for example, with an opening guitar solo that comes roaring in like it’s a Tom Petty track. Isbell even poked fun at his musical maturation on Twitter the day the album was released, revealing that he wrote and recorded all of Reunions without using a capo. “How’s that for a folksinger and songwriter?” he asked.
Then, on Reunions, there’s a mysterious song-writing element that ties itself to Isbell as well as non-literal characters. “River” focuses on a protagonist who finds his saviour in the form of a river. The river tends to Isbell, hears his secrets, “wash my head when I’ve been sinning/wash my knuckles when they bleed.” As our character is saved by the dutiful protection of the river, the final stanza ends with the line, “and last night I woke up screaming at my wife.” This is immediately proceeded by a fiddle run from none other than Amanda Shires, Isbell’s wife.
This is not the lone reference to Isbell’s better half, for the song “St. Peter’s Autograph” is about Shires grieving over the passing offriend Neal Casal. Isbell said of the song in a recent New York Times profile, “I was trying to say, ‘It’s all right to grieve the parts of your relationship you might think I’d be upset or jealous about.’”
The role that Isbell and Shires’ domestic life plays in Reunions is unavoidable and unmistakable. It also represents the side of Isbell that looks optimistically toward the future, with a wife and a child, rather than constantly back at his destructive past. While Jason Isbell is not ready to give up that past just yet, Reunions shows the progress of a man who has learned from his mistakes, but is not defined by them.
The Texas-born, L.A.-based singer and songwriter Jess Williamson makes deeply felt songs that orbit around her powerful voice, a voice that’s strong and vulnerable, big room flawless, quietly ecstatic, and next-to-you intimate. In her most recent work, “Sorceress”, that voice is surrounded by a deep-hued kaleidoscope of dusty ‘70s cinema, ‘90s country music, and breezy West Coast psychedelia.
While attending the University of Texas, Williamson began to find her footing as an artist in the DIY and student-run art and music spaces of Austin. A photojournalism major, she interviewed and photographed bands for the school newspaper and hosted a radio show on KVRX, the student-run radio station. But quietly, she had an insistent pull to pursue music herself. In her last year of school, following an impulse after seeing Austin’s Ralph White play the banjo at a house show in her friends’ basement, Williamson took up banjo lessons at South Austin Music, and soon after was writing songs and making home recordings. After graduating, she moved to NYC to attend an MFA Photography program at Parsons. But after a couple semesters, she realized the call to pursue a career in music was too big to ignore, and she dropped out. She started a band in NYC called Rattlesnake with another friend from Texas: Williamson played banjo, her friend played electric guitar, and they both sang. They played their first show at the now defunct venue, Death by Audio, in March of 2010. A few months later, drawn to her larger hometown community, she moved back to Austin to focus on her solo project.
Her fourth album, “Sorceress”, also with Mexican Summer, arrives 2020. It was written in Los Angeles, recorded at Gary’s Electric in Brooklyn, and finished at Dandy Sounds in Dripping Springs, where she recorded Cosmic Wink. While she’s stayed true to her deep country roots, the music has grown in its ambitions. It’s her biggest, most assured collection to date, and a true document of the hard work paying off. About two-thirds of the way through the title track on her new album, Jess Williamson sings, “Yes, there’s a little magic in my hat / But I’m no sorceress.” Agree to disagree. Williamson is, at the very least, bewitching on Sorceress, her fourth album. It’s a blend of folk and country, with a dash of psychedelic rock, that brings together the strongest elements of her previous work—all the hints and glimpses of something deeper musically, and vocally, that never felt completely explored—into a fully realized collection of 11 songs that are at once polished, precise and visceral.
Jess Williamson – from the album ‘Sorceress’ out May 15th on Mexican Summer.
In 2016 the indie rock band Big Thief, comprised of former students of Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music, released their first album. They’ve since released two more albums, including their latest, “Two Hands,” and they’re beginning a world tour. James Krivchenia, Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek and Max Oleartchik joined “CBS This Morning: Saturday” to perform the song “Not.”
Big Thief’s fourth studio album Two Hands was released earlier this year, and following a stretch of recent tour dates throughout North America the band stopped by CBS This Morning to play as part of the show’s ongoing “Saturday Sessions” performance series.
As with other CBS This Morning performances, the group played a short three-song set, which here included the songs “Two Hands,” “Not,” and “Forgotten Eyes,” all of which appear on their latest album. While “Not” and “Forgotten Eyes” were both released as singles, the title track was later released as a standard track on the album. Two Hands is the second Big Thief album in less than a year following the excellent U.F.O.F. which was released this past May. “It has been two years [since their second album], and in that time Adrianne [Lenker] had just written so many songs,” guitarist and vocalist Buck Meek said in a recent interview with Stereogum “For a month we went through every song and built arrangements and hashed them out.”
The indie rock band Big Thief, James Krivchenia, Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek and Max Oleartchik joined “CBS This Morning: Saturday” to perform the song “Forgotten Eyes.”
The “Seattle” EP was created in (you guessed it) Seattle; the city without a doubt most synonymous with the 90s; the era undeniably pulsating through Bloods’ DNA. Pouring through rock mags and staying up late watching music videos on Rage, trying to catch a glimpse of her flannel-clad rock heroes, it would’ve seemed unthinkable to teenage MC that one day she’d be standing in a studio in Seattle about to record with her own band.
But here is where MC and her bandmates Dirk Jonker (drums) and Mike Morgan (guitar, bass and backing vocals) found themselves – recording at Jack Endino’s Sound House (y’know just the guy who recorded Nirvana’s Bleach, no biggie), with Steve Fisk on production and mixing duties (yep, the dude who’s worked with Soundgarden and Mudhoney) and using the very amp Kurt Cobain played through on his band’s debut record.
Bloodsh have dedicated their free-spirited new EP to that very place – Seattle is out May 15. Along with the infectious lead track “U & M E” (premiered recently by FLOOD Magazine), Seattle also boasts the middle finger waving kiss-off of “The New Guy”, the buzzsaw sugar rush of “Waste Of Time”, and the Ten Things I Hate About You (set in Seattle btw) homage “I Hate It”, to the EP’s biggest blow “Girls Are Just Fucking Cool Like That”, Seattle’s six tracks are dripping in a wry, couldn’t-care-less attitude that would have been right at home in the Seattle of the 90s.
The second album by the British alternative rock band The Charlatans “Between 10th and 11th” was originally released on 23rd March 1992. and features the UK Top 20 hit (and biggest US single) “Weirdo”, as well as singles “Tremolo Song” and “I Don’t Want To See The Sights”.
When Tim Burgess isn’t busy hosting his Twitter listening parties (if you haven’t already, make sure you check them out HERE) or playing as a solo artist, he’s once again riding high with indie icons The Charlatans and to celebrate thirty years since the release of their seminal second album ‘Between 10th and 11th’, the Manchester lads are bringing out a new Expanded Edition.
Between 10th and 11th was originally released in the Spring of 1992 and include such game changing singles as ‘Tremelo Song’ which would become their biggest selling song to the US to date. Criticism within and without settled on Flood’s production style as well, his crisp, technically sharp abilities seem to go against the band’s natural flow. In hindsight, though,it is much stronger than its reputation, with many fans proclaiming it their favorite. It’s partly due to Burgess more up-front vocals.
Similarly, Rob Collins keyboards stand out more, either shading or leading the songs perfectly. “Weirdo,” the album’s lead single and strongest point, has a brilliant lead organ break from Collins and series of great funk stabs that became his strongest performance ever. Equally fine is the electric piano start to “Tremolo Song,” leading to a deep Blunt bass and sassy flow of a song. Mark Collins also fill out their parts equally well, with Flood’s production strengthening and creating excellent arrangements for everyone as a whole. His numerous touches are really something, from the sudden shift to buried/flanged production on “Ignition” to “Subtitle”‘s atmospheric mixing and burbling bass. Other highlights include the string-laden charge of “Can’t Even Be Bothered” and the concluding “No One (Not Even the Rain)”. ‘Between 10th and 11th’ (Expanded Edition) will include a remaster of the original album, plus plenty of bonus material in the form of the entire live disc devoted to their heralded 1991 Chicago gig know as Isolation 21.2.91. – with even more on the bonus CD!
The Band:
Tim Burgess – lead vocals
Mark Collins – guitars
Rob Collins – Mellotron, Hammond organ, piano, backing vocals
Martin Blunt –Bass guitar
Jon Brookes – drums
You can grab a copy of The Charlatans ‘Between 10th and 11th’ (Expanded Edition) right now
Muzz is a new band that features Paul Banks of Interpol, Matt Barrick of The Walkmen, and Josh Kaufman of Bonny Light Horseman. They are releasing their self-titled debut album on June 5th via Matador Records. Now they have shared a new live acoustic video of the three members performing the album’s previous single “Bad Feeling” separately and remotely from their homes in these socially distant times. Banks was in Edinburgh, Kaufman in Brooklyn, and Barrick in Philadelphia. It’s the band’s first ever live recording.
Previously Muzz had shared their first song, “Bad Feeling.” It was a little more lush and chill than the post-punk assault of Interpol. Then they shared another new song, “Broken Tambourine,” via a video for the track. Then the album’s third single was “Red Western Sky,” .
Banks and Kaufman have known each other since they were teenagers and both have also worked with Barrick before. Muzz’s earliest recordings date back to 2015. All three members wrote, arranged, and performed the album. And while Banks is usually the sole lyricist in Interpol, here all three members contributed to the lyrics.
“Josh has more training as a theory musician while Paul comes from a different perspective,” Barrick said about the process in a previous press release. “You never know how Paul’s gonna approach a song, lyrically and melodically, so it’s always unusual and exciting. Everyone is open to everyone else’s ideas. I think three is a great number of people for a band. We all had a big hand in everything.”
Kaufman had this to say about the band’s sound: “The music has this weird, super removed vibe but is also personal and emotional at the same time. If something felt natural in a simple way, we left it. I’d never heard Paul’s voice framed like that—a string section, horns, guitars—we know none of that is visionary but it felt classic and kind of classy.”
The band’s name stems from the word Kaufman used to describe the band’s sound, or as the press release put it, “the music’s subtle, analog quality and texture.”
Summing up the album Banks said: “Ultimately, the music speaks for itself. We have a genuine, organic artistic chemistry together. It’s partly a shared musical taste from youth, as with me and Josh, but then it’s also the souls of my friends that resonate with me when expressed through music. I think it’s cosmic.”
Interpol (which also features Daniel Kessler and Sam Fogarino) released a new EP, A Fine Mess, last year via Matador. It followed their 2018 album Marauder. Outside of Interpol, Banks has released two solo albums (2009’s Julian Plenti is… Skyscraper and 2012’s Banks) and one album with RZA as Banks & Steelz (2016’s Anything But Words).
British art-rockers Everything Everything have announced a new album, “Re-Animator”, and shared a new song from it, “Arch Enemy.” Re-Animator is due out August 21st via Infinity Industries/AWAL. It includes the track “In Birdsong,” a new song the band shared via a video in April.
The album was recorded last December at RAK studios in London with producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Sharon Van Etten, David Byrne). Prior to that there was a year of writing and demoing. A press release points out that for this album the band wanted to focus “on harmonies and melodies over synths and programming.”
In terms of lyrical themes, the album tackles “wonderment at the wider world despite the horror of its politics; existentialism and the prolonged, if fading, youthfulness of being in a touring band; and the ominous threat of climate change. All things which contribute to a sense of one door closing while another awaits.”
Frontman Jonathan Higgs also became interested in the theory of the bicameral mind, as put together by psychologist Julian Jaynes. The press release explains the theory: “It argues that early in human evolution, the two sides of the brain were next to each other but functioned independently. In essence, one side would hear the other sending instructions via a disembodied voice—a zombie-like state of pre-consciousness.”
Higgs further expounds: “This idea of the divided self captivated me. Jaynes attributes this to the origin of gods, people ascribing deity status to this voice they could hear in their head. All this blew my mind, and I started thinking of ways I could make this a central concept. It really touched me. So across the whole record there are millions or references to this theory—to having a split brain, two selves, hearing voices.”
Of the new single, Higgs had this to say: “‘Arch Enemy’ sees a modern-day protagonist searching for a meaningful God. Finding only a congregation of greed, toxicity and waste, in the form of a sentient fatberg in the sewer, he duly prays to it, willing it to purge the decadent world above that has created it. These growing grease mountains are a curious juxtaposition of the modern and the ancient; a brand new example of archaic squalor.”
The band also features Jeremy Pritchard (bass), Michael Spearman (drums), and Alex Robertshaw (guitar).
Their last full-length was 2017’s Mercury Prize-nominated A Fever Dream, although they released the Deeper Sea EP in 2018.
