My new song, “Hey Moon,” is out everywhere now. I often find myself talking to the moon. Maybe it’s just my Cancerian nature or maybe it’s something everyone does. But it feels grounding to have that constant presence throughout life. In my years of traveling around and finding myself in strange or unknown places, it’s been a sort of anchor to look up at the familiar light. I wrote this song about looking inward through conversing with the moon, or the emotional self. Something that seems easy to forget to do in times like these.
Over the last couple of years Fenne Lily has made a real name for herself as a songwriter, surpassing over 30 million streams for her five self-released singles and supporting the likes of Marlon Williams, Charlie Cunningham and many more across Europe. Despite the first song she wrote at the age of 15 proving an almost instant hit upon release, she’s not rushed into releasing her debut collection, instead taking time to perfect her songs and develop her sound while living in Bristol and continuing to perform around the continent. Deciding she wanted to get out of the city to record the album, Fenne travelled to see some musical friends on The Isle of Wight where she formed a band and recorded a number of tracks in a basement studio with upcoming producer James Thorpe. Returning to Bristol to finish the tracks with long-time collaborator Dave Dixon (Tamu Massif) and Ali Chant (Youth Lagoon, Perfume Genius, PJ Harvey) her debut album has taken shape and is now available.
Throughout 2018’s On Hold, Fenne Lily’s quaveringly intimate voice recalls the early works of Sharon Van Etten, particularly in the way she layers her own voice during choruses that ache and swoon. That almost jarringly beautiful effect jumps out in a minimalist mix that’s so stripped down, you can often hear fingers sweeping across guitar strings.
A record full of quiet strength, brightness, and yearning: The self-released debut “On Hold” establishes Fenne Lily’s ability to lean into emotion. “I’ve villainized my body for too long,” sings Fenne on the opening “Car Park.” Her writing is sharp and charged; the production is sparse and intimate. Track by track, the album maintains a cohesive narrative arch, following a heartbreak and resolving with self-acceptance – even self-love.
Next week Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith will return with her new album “The Mosaic of Transformation” via Ghostly International. West coast composer, artist, and producer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has chartered a pioneering career with multiple critically-acclaimed albums since 2015. Following the release of The Kid in 2017, Smith focused her energy in several directions. She founded Touchtheplants, a multidisciplinary creative environment for projects including the first volumes in her instrumental Electronic Series and pocket-sized poetry books on the practice of listening within. She’s continued to explore the endless possibilities of electronic instruments as well as the shapes, movements, and expressions found in the physical body’s relationship to sound and color. It is this life-guiding interest that forms the foundational frequencies of her latest full-length, The Mosaic of Transformation, a bright, sensorial glide through unbound wave phenomena and the radiant power discovered within oneself.
Smith describes her first encounters with this mosaic; “the inspiration came to me in a sudden bubble of joy. It was accompanied by a multitude of shapes that were moving seamlessly from one into the other…My movement practice has been a constant transformation piece by piece. I made this album in the same way. Every day I would transform what I did yesterday…into something else. This album has gone through about 12 different versions of itself.” As it has arrived, in a completed state, The Mosaic of Transformation is a holistic manifestation of embodied motions. Smith’s signature textural curiosity that fans have grown to adore pivots naturally into a proprioceptive study of melody and timbre. Airy organ and voice interweave with burbling Buchla-spawned harmonic bubbles.
“The Steady Heart” quivers to life, peppering blasts of wooden organ between winding vocal affirmations. As with a body, moving one portion requires a balance and counterbalance; here, subtle tonal twitchy signals fire in conjunction with coiling arias to create a mesmeric core. When the beat arrives at the midway mark, a swooping and jittery waltz, a sense of stasis in motion, a flow state, is sonically achieved. As soon as it syncs, it disappears back into the swirling ebbs of electric force.
Other tracks stray into more ruminative physical realms. “Carrying Gravity” is built around string-like pads that expand and contract like a solar plexus, becoming taught and then loose. As the breath interacts and is focused upon, suddenly, the nervous system engages, delicate arpeggios cascade, akin to becoming aware of the transmission of energy happening between muscles and the mind.
If the record could be summarized in a single movement, it is the 10-minute closing suite, a rapturous collage called “Expanding Electricity.” Symphonic phrases establish the piece before washes of glittering electric peals and synthesized vibraphone helix into focus. Soon, Smith’s voice grounds it all with an intuitive vocal hook, harmonized and augmented by concentric spirals of harp-and-horn-like sounds. Smith’s music doesn’t capture a specific emotion as much as it captures the joys of possessing a body, and the ability to, with devotion and a steady open heart, maneuver that vessel in space by way of electricity to euphoric degrees
We’ve previously shared the album’s first two singles “Expanding Electricity” and “The Steady Heart” and ahead of next’s weeks release she’s released the third single from the album, “Carrying Gravity.” It’s a thoughtful and contemplative instrumental that takes you on a cerebral but emotional journey that is constantly shifting throughout its loving seven-minute runtime.
Here’s a description of the track from Kaitlyn herself:
Carrying gravity, Love is never without a sound. Sound is never without a rhythm. Rhythm is never without a pulse. A pulse is never without 2 extremes oscillating. Gravity is a force that tries to pull two objects toward each other. Carrying both extremes towards center.
Methyl Ethyl showcased why they’re arguably Australia’s finest pop-rock band on last year’s Triage. “The Hurts to Laugh” EP proves they’re not slowing doing anytime soon.
These five tracks were apparently recorded in the same 2019 sessions as Triage. If they were excluded for perceived lack of quality then the decision is baffling, as they are equal to or above the choicest cuts on that album. Single Majestic AF is especially strong, living up to its title with its epic build. With washes of strings and its Eastern keyboard melodies, it feels like it draws from Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir but adds a pop sheen.
Honest follows and is another epic, swapping bombast for yearning as frontman Jake Webb tears at the heartstrings with a passionate vocal. The instrumentation again shows creativity, with a great accordion melody popping up out of nowhere during the bridge. Charm Offensive also does as its title suggests. It is a relatively simple track that nonetheless captures ears on the strength of its refrain.
What Memory Found is the only misstep, a low-key mood piece driven by swelling synths that would’ve benefited from more structure. Closer The Quicker is more successful, similarly repetitive but with much more drive courtesy of its chugging rhythm and ascending progression.
Maybe these songs are better served on a standalone EP after all, better appreciated here rather than having their strength diluted deep in an LP. It’s a testament to Jake Webb and the band’s gargantuan songwriting abilities that they have so much in the bank.
Wire were originally releasing 10:20 — a new album featuring rare, unreleased and reworked tracks — as a Record Store Day exclusive, but it’s now going to receive a wide release on June 19th via their own pinkflag label. (June 19th is one day before what was to have been the rescheduled Record Store Day which has now been moved again.) With this news comes a second track from the album, “The Art of Persistence.”
Although it was originally scheduled to be a vinyl-only release, 10:20 will now get a full release on all formats.
The band is teasing the new release with “The Art of Persistence,” a song they wrote in 2000 following their 1999 reunion. The track was previously available only as a rehearsal room recording, issued on the EP The Third Day, and as a live recording on the album Recycling Sherwood Forest.
Where the EP version (dubbed a “first draft” on the release) sounded like a loose, almost new-wavey exercise, the new, fully mixed version of the song for 10:20 feels more dramatic and, in some ways, sadder. The song’s video features footage filmed at a Manchester gig in January. With the video’s release, the band is asking for donations for the National Independent Venue Association’s “Save Our Stages” campaign, whose goal is to help venues reopen when the time comes.
Singer-guitarist Colin Newman sings about “persistence, survival, test of the wills” over waves of slowly descending riffs. It builds and builds until he starts singing about a total breakdown of communication, ending with: “The last breath is spent.”
The rest of the album contains reworked versions of songs that had fallen by the wayside from throughout the band’s career. In March, they released the 10:20 song “Small Black Reptile,” which previously appeared as an almost reggae-inspired noise-rock song on their 1990 album Manscape. Other tracks include a version of a song they previously demoed for Chairs Missing and songs off A Bell Is a Cup … Until It’s Struck and The Ideal Copy.
July Talk stormed in with the radio-ready rock on their debut, followed by the volatile siren songs of Touch, and an album of sawtoothed pop + convulsing tension. For album three, the band cracks their equilibrium open to find a thrilling new balance in asymmetry. With “Pray For It”, JulyTalk commits to the possibility of alternate endings, acknowledging the power of vulnerability as a way to begin again. Out July 10th, 2020 (via Sleepless Records in Canada and BMG worldwide) the long-awaited new studio album emerges into unprecedented circumstances, a strange and startling background for July Talk’s surrender to the sacred unknown.
Black + white and vividly complex, Pray For It is about breaking patterns of action and reaction. Conflict, a major theme throughout, drives the story behind the steel-toed shoegaze swoon of “Pay For It,” . “I wrote this song after a group of men violently attacked my friends and bandmates in a fast-food restaurant one late summer night. Their rage erupted quickly and violently, like an old habit,” shares July Talk’s Leah Fay. “This song gave me a chance to re-imagine the experience with a sense of agency, to tell it like it is, like it always has been. If we question our ingrained habits which recycle states of violence, greed, destruction and hate, we can disrupt these toxic patterns and heal.”
“Pay For It” arrives via award-winning creator Norah Sadava’s video, a swooping emotional survey of consequences and responsibility. Originally inspired by a Roy Scranton quote about living ethically, the video is unavoidably reframed by current events: “Five weeks ago we wrapped a music video shoot. The lyrics, the images, the concept…it contextually lived in that moment and meant something personal and specific.
Four weeks ago we were editing the video. The lyrics, the images put in sequence… the context had slightly shifted. The meaning of a face mask had changed. The connotation of two hands touching had changed. Two weeks ago crowds of people, a hospital….all carried new meaning. The news around the world is changing so rapidly that it’s hard to know what these images will mean today, tomorrow, next week,” Sadava reflects.
July Talk’s path has never been through fitting in. Their music, viscerally, blisteringly hot, sliced right through the alternative and rock charts for multiple number one singles. Their churning and fiercely physical performances make spaces hiss and hum, spit and seethe in glorious, artful abandon.
With Pray For It, July Talk continues to rise with purpose and poise. From the start, the band has fostered a community of creators and collaborators on stage, on film and among those also challenging systemic inequities. July Talk has also grown in their roles as advocates of an urgent and fundamental music industry recalibration, through curatorial partnerships with festivals and by defining their own parameters for safer spaces at rock shows.
Pray For It was produced by Burke Reid and Ben Fox (Film Composer).
Courtney Gavin, of the Canadian indie rock outfit The Courtneys, has joined forces with multi-instrumentalist Connor Mayer to launch a new band called Gum Country.
Los Angeles-based duo Gum Country are releasing their debut album, Somewhere, on June 14th via Burger and Kingfisher Bluez. This week they shared another song from it, “Tennis (I Feel OK).” The band features vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Courtney Garvin (The Courtneys) and multi-instrumentalist Connor Mayer. They describe their sound as “harsh twee.”
In a press release Garvin says the song is inspired by her love of tennis: “Kinda goofy, but in all honesty my relationship with tennis is so meaningful to me on a spiritual level. It’s my meditation practice. The game makes you present, you’re repeating movements, and finding a rhythm. And it’s so creative. I think all athletes are artists. Plus you get to be outside, getting exercise, hanging with friends and all of those things are so good for you. So the song is pretty much about how tennis just makes my life better. I love tennis. If anyone reading this wants to play (after the pandemic) please hit me up.”
Previously Gum Country had shared the album’s title track, “Somewhere,” via a video for the song.
Speaking of the title track, Gavin commented, “I wrote ‘Somewhere’ a couple years after moving to LA. It’s about leaving a place that you are comfortable in and landing in a strange new one, and discovering what parts of your identity remain and which were left behind. The first line I wrote was ‘haven’t felt this way in a while, I can’t think straight can’t hide my smile, I guess this is gonna be my life for a while’, and then it was just a process of unravelling that thought. I think the song could be about the range of emotions that come with any big change, and ultimately settling on a mellow excitement for vulnerability.”
The duo began in Vancouver, where they quietly made lo-fi four-track recordings in an apartment. Then they relocated to their current home of Los Angeles. There they recorded the album with Joo-Joo Ashworth at Studio 22. A press release cites the following as influences and reference points: Stereolab, The Replacements, The Breeders, Beat Happening, Yo La Tengo, Meat Puppets, and The Magnetic Fields.
Pop punk isn’t dead—it’s just evolving, and nothing showcases that better than the progression of Pup. Their self-titled album from 2013 started off like any other catchy, poppy band obsessed with group chants, which is precisely what we needed at the time. 2013 was a pretty desolate year for pop punk, with a Wonder Years album The Greatest Generationand The Story So Far’s What You Don’t See, but not much else resembling anything you’d want to listen to outside of a Warped Tour playlist. Pup were the answer to our post–Bomb the Music Industry!, pre-worry. years, changing the mold of what we thought the genre had disintegrated into.
From Pup “UP” to 2016’s The Dream Is Over, the band explored their anger, sadness, and general discontent with the direction their lives had gone. While those albums were heavy-hitters in their own right, they were made for a specific time in Pup’s life. Like their predecessors, Pup have done what all pop punk bands must eventually do: they grew up. On “Morbid Stuff”, you can see their age. The group chants are louder, harsher, more unapologetic, while their words are uncensored, confident, and sincere. They’ve embraced the uniqueness of their perspectives, and in turn created a piece of confessional art. Morbid Stuff came at a time when we’re all craving transparency and honesty, and told us it’s OK to feel like shit. It’s OK to say no. It’s OK to tell people when you care about them. It’s OK to be loud. Instead of simply dealing with the curveballs that life throws your way, this record presents the option of fighting back.
Toronto band, Pup have released a further video for the album’s title track that gives us a glimpse at their live show, but from the fan’s perspective. The new video for “Morbid Stuff” was recorded live and shot on cheap, hand-held cameras that were given out to 19 gig-goers that the band personally connected with in advance of their recent London dates. This video continues PUP’s longstanding tradition of putting their fans first, like when they asked fans to record their own version of “Free At Last” without ever even hearing the song and only knowing the lyrics and chords, or when Pup leaked the news of their latest album and new song “Kids,” via a zine sent to fans through their Little Dipper label imprint. The “Morbid Stuff” video, which premiered yesterday across the nineteen fans’ social media accounts, showcases the sweat-stained euphoria of the band’s show and once again captures the unique bond between Pup and the people that come to see them live, screaming every word.
Toronto rockers PUP released their great third album Morbid Stuff which found the band crafting their most cathartic collection of songs yet. With blazing guitars, blasting drums and the perfect amount of gang vocals, Morbid Stuff, as described by a friend, is nostalgic, sassy and it fucking rips!
Chicago’s Melkbelly will release new album “Pith” in April and they’ve just released this grungy new single and it’s accompanying video. For ‘Humid Heart,’ we wanted to let the mood and tone of the song guide our direction, rather than forcing anything too specific into the video,” say video directors Weird Life. “Loosely based upon the notion of going through everyday life with any sort of heightened emotions can weigh someone down, we followed our hearts and that of the song and fell down a rabbit hole. That being said, we have no regrets.
Right before they unleashed “Pith” upon the world, Melkbelly shared a video for their single “Sickeningly Teeth” which featured a dude waving at the camera with a handful of dog shit in his other hand, and another dude dislodging an entire salad from being stuck between his friend’s teeth. It honestly kinda set the mood for the off-kilter grunge record, with “Teeth” perfectly exemplifying the band’s strength as a group proficient in gentle pop choruses jilted off course by their fixation with off-putting time signatures and screeching guitars—essentially the audio equivalent of sticking spinach between their teeth and smiling.
“Humid Heart” is taken from Melkbelly’s forthcoming record, ‘Pith,’ out April 3rd, 2020 on Wax Nine/Carpark Records.
Introducing Stay Home, a Polyvinyl Record Co. compilation featuring 16 tracks including previously unreleased music, demos, and covers.
We’ve been especially inundated with covers this past month, though most have been recorded live from the artists’ living rooms. Hazel English’s contribution to the covers-heavy Polyvinyl StayHome compilation, though, is considerably less of a novelty item, taking the impossibly dreamy Mamas/Papas joint and cranking up the dreamy factor. It’s stripped to the essentials—vocals, guitar, tambourine, and a Mellotron cameo, making for less emphasis on the plot and more on its unique stylizations .
There are some tracks from recent Polyvinyl releases and some previously unreleased material. That includes Owen covering the 1975’s “Me,” Xiu Xiu covering Kim Jung Mi’s “Haenim,”Palehound covering Karen Dalton’s “Something On Your Mind,” Squirrel Flower covering Emmylou Harris’ “Icy Blue Heart,” and Hazel English covering the Mamas & the Papas’ “CaliforniaDreamin’.” There’s also new songs from Chris Farren and Radiation City, and demos from of Montreal, the Get Up Kids, Yumi Zouma, and STRFKR.
Stay safe, and stay healthy Polyvinyl family. Some gems in this one
