The Orielles new record “Disco Volador” has landed! Out this Friday, and it’s been flying out on pre-order. Initial pressing is coloured and is very nice, Out on Heavenly Recordings. Hailing from Halifax, The Orielles are sisters Sidonie B and Esmé Dee Hand Halford and their best friend Henry Carlyle Wade whom they met at a house party just a few years ago. The then teenagers bonded over their shared love of alternative US bands from the 90s such as Sonic Youth & Pixies as well as pioneering filmmakers including Quentin Tarantino (The Orielles have cited his work in their songs and consider his work a major lyrical and aesthetical influence). Following the release of ‘Silver Dollar Moment’ the band recruited a new member Alex Stephen’s and released the smash hit single ‘Bobbi’s Second World.’
Released on: January 5th 2020 The Orielles announced their sophomore album Disco Volador back in October with the release of lead single “Come Down On Jupiter.” Now that we’ve entered the album’s year of release, the English psych-pop band is back today with a second advance single — the album’s theme song, in fact. The appealingly lively “Space Samba (Disco Volador Theme)” is five minutes of sleek, danceable music drawing from disco, tropicalia, loungey psychedelia, and of course, samba. Get swept up in it below.
Brooklyn baroque shoegazers Peel Dream Magazine have shared another track from their upcoming album Agitprop Alterna which is out April 3rd via Slumberland Records. “Emotional Devotion Creator” chugs along at a quick motorik pace with more than a little Stereolab in there. Frontman Joe Stevens says the song is about “personal liberties and manipulation,” explaining, “an ‘Emotional Devotion Creator’ is a marketer or brand that tries to get you to feel attached to a product in order to get you to buy it. The song is asking, ‘where do you draw the line?’ Does everything have to be something special? Am I supposed to buy my way through everything now?’”
Peel Dream Magazine is the musical vehicle for NYC’s Joe Stevens, who launched the band in 2018 with the critically acclaimed album “Modern Meta Physic,” a mysterious, liminal tribute to the hazy end of ‘90s dream-pop that found its place on numerous “Best of 2018” lists. Now Peel Dream are back with “Agitprop Alterna,” an album that pays homage to the fuzzy, mod-ish pop of acts like My Bloody Valentine and early Stereolab, but it’s also indebted to stateside bands like Yo La Tengo and Rocketship that were cut from a similar cloth. “Agitprop Alterna” finds Stevens channeling the collaborative spirit of the band’s live incarnation in the studio, deepening the connection between the existential and the interpretive first explored on “Modern Meta Physic.” It is a rejection of manipulation in all its forms and a buzzsaw against complacency; it’s a rare trick to agitate without being obvious, and perhaps that makes “Agitprop Alterna” the most Peel Dream Magazine-like statement yet.
Taken from Agitprop Alterna, out 4/3/20 via Slumberland Records.
Real Estate return with ‘The Main Thing’ on Domino Recording Company.
Indie exclusive edition with limited deluxe tip on gatefold sleeve. Frontman Martin Courtney says the track is “an inspiration In a press release, Real Estate’s Martin Courtney explained:
“The Main Thing” is my attempt at writing an inspirational anthem for anyone who’s ever been in an existential crisis… specifically, me.
I was asking myself a lot of uncomfortable questions throughout the process of making this album. Wondering if being an artist is irresponsible or selfish, particularly with the world in the state that it’s in, particularly as a parent of young kids. This was the last song I wrote for this album, and I think it kind of distills where I found myself at the end of what turned out to be a long and extremely rewarding process: psyched on the power of music, for real!
The lyrics in this song are sort of tongue in cheek, but the sentiment is very real. Basically… when life gets tough, when the stresses start piling up, when you start second guessing every decision you’ve made, what do you do? You double down on the thing that makes you happy, the thing that feeds your soul.
At Long Last ! We can finally share our new single “Paper Cup” with you. It’s the second song on our new album, ‘The Main Thing’ which comes out on February 28th, The Main Thing is Real Estate’s follow-up to 2017’s In Mind. The band heads out on tour in support of The Main Thing in April.
Brian Christinzio will release his new album as BC Camplight in April and has just shared a second single off the record. “People that are struggling in life, be it from a stress, loss, or mental illness, are more likely to behave in self-destructive ways,” says Brian of the intent behind this odd, moving orchestral track. “The idea of only drinking when you’re drunk is the notion that sometimes we hurt ourselves because we are hurting. The verses reflect the feelings some of us have when we are plodding through our everyday lives. The choruses are what happens when these feelings get the best of us.”
I went to some pretty scary places to conjure up this, my best album. It’d mean a whole lot to me if you welcomed it into your home today. Not only do the first 500 vinyl pre-orders get personally signed by me, but I will be picking 4 album pre-orders at random to award a prize of two passes to any BC Camplight non-festival show for all of 2020. It’s the least I can do for the best fans in the world. I mean, you saved my dog for crying out loud.
Anyway, this album is a hard look at mental illness, loss, and human spirit. It will love you back. So, order this bear and, with any luck, together we can make the Top 40 a less awful place.
Love, Brian
Taken from the album ‘Shortly After Takeoff’ by BC Camplight, released 24th April 2020 via Bella Union Records.
Jess Williamson released her third album, Cosmic Wink, in 2018, and she’s preparing to follow it with a new one tilted, “Sorceress”, due out on May 15th via Mexican Summer. The first single, a folky, psychy singer-songerwriter track, she says, “grief has a way of making the veil between worlds very thin. Prior to the memorial service, I was sitting on a porch passing around a guitar and drinking beers with a few very dear people in my life who I look up to greatly and who were very close to the person who had passed. We heard an unexplainable sound in the wind that made us all pause. Like a flute, but more angelic. It kept going. We tried, unsuccessfully, to record it. The sound was indescribably beautiful and heavenly. “Were the angels singing just for us, or is that what the wind out here does on tin?” Regardless of the answer, I know that for that brief moment we were lucky initiates into the mystery realm, and I’m deeply grateful.
Williamson says, I’m thrilled to announce that Sorceress, my new album, will be out May 15th on Mexican Summer. We are living in the midst of an occult revival. THE WITCH: in the not too distant past she was abhorred, executed, or at the very least – kept underground. It’s 2020, and she’s gone mainstream. We have witnessed the meteoric rise of astrology apps, Tarot, crystal lifestyle brands, and smudge kits for sale alongside fast fashion. Magic is something that can live in chaos and make use of chaos, and these are uniquely chaotic times. Many of us are seeking a higher power, something to hold on to, to keep us afloat. Some look for it in these mystical realms, others seek it in spirituality or in traditional religion, some pursue it in material success or in romantic relationships, others are caught (understandably) in such muddy, murky waters that even the brightest beacon of light won’t get through, and far too many of us give away all of our energy trying to be that light. Technology – quite the modern trickster – makes all of this somehow more and less accessible to us. This record is me sifting through some of these modalities, thinking about and questioning our spiritual impulses, and exploring the different ways we try to cope.
That said, I am but a mystically inclined fumbling observer. Yes, there’s a little magic in my hat – but I’m no Sorceress.
Today, I’m sharing the first single, Wind on Tin, – streaming everywhere now – along with a music video and a month of tour dates across this great nation. Sorceress was produced by me, with co-production contributions on various songs from Shane Renfro (who I also co-wrote a track with), Dan Duszynski, and Al Carlson. We all played on it, along with Josh Jaeger and Dan Iead. It was recorded by Al at Gary’s Electric in Brooklyn NY and Dan at Dandysounds in Dripping Springs TX.
Over the past decade, the visionary musician Arthur Russell has entered something close to the mainstream.
Sampled and referenced by contemporary musicians, his papers now open to visitors at the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center in New York, and his name synonymous with a certain strain of tenderness, Russell is as widely known as he’s ever been. Thanks to Russell’s partner Tom Lee and to Steve Knutson of Audika Records, who have forged several records from Russell’s vast archive of unfinished and unreleased work, the world now hears many versions of Arthur Russell. There’s the Iowa boy, the disco mystic, the singer-songwriter and composer, and the fierce perfectionist deep in a world of echo. While all of these elements of Russell are individually true, none alone define him.
Now, after ten years of work inside the Russell library, Lee and Knutson bring us Iowa Dream, yet another bright star in Russell’s dazzling constellation. Blazing with trademark feeling, these nineteen songs are a staggering collection of Russell’s utterly distinct songwriting. And although Russell could be inscrutably single-minded, he was never totally solitary. Collaborating here is a stacked roster of downtown New York musicians, including Ernie Brooks, Rhys Chatham, Henry Flynt, Jon Gibson, Peter Gordon, Steven Hall, Jackson Mac Low, Larry Saltzman, and David Van Tieghem. Musician Peter Broderick makes a contemporary addition to this list: more than forty years after Russell recorded several nearly finished songs, Broderick worked diligently with Audika to complete them, and performed audio restoration and additional mixing.
Having read Hold On to Your Dreams, Arthur Russell loved the Modern Lovers–but you can actually hear said love within several of these songs (the others sound like companion songs to Love Is Overtaking Me). But it’s Arthur, so the Modern Lovers influence is mutated.
Several tracks on Iowa Dream Russell originally recorded as demos, in two early examples of his repeated brushes with potential popular success—first in 1974, with Paul Nelson of Mercury Records, and then in 1975, with the legendary John Hammond of Columbia Records. For different reasons, neither session amounted to a record deal. Russell kept working nearly up until his death in 1992 from complications of HIV-AIDS.
At once kaleidoscopic and intimate, Iowa Dream bears some of Russell’s most personal work, including several recently discovered folk songs he wrote during his time in Northern California in the early 1970s. For Russell, Iowa was never very far away. “I see, I see it all,” sings Russell on the title track: red houses, fields, the town mayor (his father) streaming by as he dream-bicycles through his hometown. Russell’s childhood home and family echo, too, through “Just Regular People,” “I Wish I Had a Brother,” “Wonder Boy,” “The Dogs Outside are Barking,” “Sharper Eyes,” and “I Felt.” Meanwhile, songs like “I Kissed the Girl From Outer Space,” “I Still Love You,” “List of Boys,” and “Barefoot in New York” fizz with pop and dance grooves, gesturing at Russell’s devotion to New York’s avant-garde and disco scenes. Finally, the long-awaited “You Did it Yourself,” until now heard only in a brief heart-stopping black-and-white clip in Matt Wolf’s documentary Wild Combination, awards us a new take with a driving funk rhythm and Russell’s extraordinary voice soaring at the height of its powers. On Iowa Dream, you can hear a country kid meeting the rest of the world—and with this record, the world continues to meet a totally singular artist.
True like Dylan, Sweet like Daniel Johnston, funny like Jonathan Richman, introspective and poignant, this album is phenomenal— pure creative melodic bliss.
From the compilation album “Iowa Dream”, out now through Audika Records:
David Roback, producer and Mazzy Star co-founder, has died, a rep for the band confirmed. He was 61 years old. David’s mother Rosemary Roback, “said the cause was metastatic cancer.” Our condolences to David’s mother, wife Hedi (Raikamo) Roback, and sister, and to his Mazzy Star bandmate Hope Sandoval.
Roback was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and attended Palisades High School, graduating in 1975. He and his brother Stephen Roback, a bass guitarist, formed a band called the Unconscious, which also included Susanna Hoffs, who would go on to become the lead singer and guitarist of The Bangles.
The Rain Parade was a band active in the Paisley Underground scene in Los Angeles in the 1980s.
The band was founded by college roommates Matt Piucci (guitar, vocals) and David Roback (guitar, vocals) in 1981, originally as The Moving Sidewalks.
He formed Rain Parade with Matt Piucci then after the release of the band’s first album, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip, in 1983, Roback left Rain Parade citing a sense of limitations in the band. He spent time in Berkeley and New York before founding Opal with Dream Syndicate bassist Kendra Smith in the mid-1980s. After Smith departed the band in the middle of a tour where Opal were supporting The Jesus & Mary Chain, Hope Sandoval was tapped as her replacement. Robackto record Rainy Day, a collaborative effort with a number of Los Angeles musicians all involved in the Paisley Underground scene.
The California-born Roback played in bands throughout the mid-’80s, including Rain Parade and Opal, before co-founding the seminal West Coast band Mazzy Star alongside Hope Sandoval in 1989. The alt-rock group unveiled their debut album, “She Hangs Brightly”, in 1990, before going on to release three more records and two EPs.
There was more information and a nice tribute today by Pat Thomas, “a longtime fan and current manager of Roback’s former [Opal] bandmate Kendra Smith.” It’s worth reading, but we especially wanted to point out this nugget at the end:
At the time of his passing, Roback was working with Kendra Smith on finalizing the re-release of their two albums together, “Happy Nightmare Baby” and a compilation of their first EPs titled “Early Recordings (first released in 1989). Both albums have been unavailable for decades and are not currently available on streaming services, but are due for imminent release digitally and physically via Ingrooves Music Group.
The group’s 1987 opus, “Happy Nightmare Baby,” will not include any bonus tracks, but a 1989 compilation of earlier material called, naturally enough, “Early Recordings,” will include five extra songs: “Hear the Wind Blow,” “I Called Erin,” “Don’t Stop the Train,” “Sailing Boats” and an alternate version of “Empty Bottles.” (Some of these songs appeared on a bootleg compilation called “Early Recordings Volume 2.”) Thomas did not give a more specific release date than “imminent.”.
Mazzy Star is best known for the song “Fade into You” The track reached No. 3 on the Alternative Songs airplay chart in 1994 and has sold 1.1 million downloads in the U.S. It also reached the top 20 of Alternative Songs which brought the band some success in the mid-1990s and was the group’s biggest mainstream hit, earning extensive exposure on MTV, VH1, and radio airplay. Roback and Hope Sandoval are the creative center of the band, with Sandoval as lyricist and Roback as composer of the majority of the band’s material.
Opal were a direct precursor to Mazzy Star musically—often featuring the same psychedelic guitar drones and similar hints of blues and folk that would later appear on Mazzy Star recordings. Sandoval who was in high school at the time formed the folk music duo Going Home in the early 1980s with fellow student Sylvia Gomez, and went on to tour with Sonic Youth and Minutemen. Both were devoted followers of the Rain Parade, and after a 1983 concert by the band in the Los Angeles area, Gomez entered the backstage area of the venue and gave Roback a copy of Going Home’s demo tape, featuring Sandoval on vocals and Gomez on guitar. Upon hearing the tape, Roback offered to produce a still-unreleased album by the pair.
Sandoval and Roback quickly composed and recorded seven new tracks in Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco, under the band name Mazzy Star. Written over a year before Mazzy Star’s inception, the track “Ghost Highway” is the duo’s only original song to not feature a writing credit from Sandoval, while another song, “Give You My Lovin'”, was written by Going Home guitarist Sylvia Gomez.
She Hangs Brightly was released in April 1990 on Rough Trade and, although it was not an immediate commercial success, the album established the duo as a recurrent fixture on alternative rock radio, with lead single “Blue Flower” – a cover of the Slapp Happy track, The album would go on to sell over 70,000 copies in the UK.
Following the success of “Fade into You”, She Hangs Brightly album opener “Halah” began to receive heavy airplay in the US and peaked in the Modern Rock Tracks chart, a chart based solely on airplay. In 1995, She Hangs Brightly was awarded a gold certification from the RIAA for shipments in excess of 500,000 units.
The band’s most recent studio album, Seasons of Your Day, was released in 2013, followed by a EPStill in 2018.
The group’s album So Tonight That I Might See, which features “Fade Into You,” sold 1.3 million in the U.S. Mazzy Star charted two more albums “Among My Swan” in 1996 and “Seasons of Your Day”, the group’s final project, in 2013.
Mazzy Star discography
She Hangs Brightly (1990)
So Tonight That I Might See (1993)
Among My Swan (1996)
Seasons of Your Day (2013)
Simon Raymonde Of Bella Union had this to say: So sad to hear of the passing of David Roback formerly of Opal and Mazzy Star. A brilliant Musician and producer he gave us some amazing music. A quiet, private and brooding man during the time we worked together : We were label-mates at Capitol & Mazzy Star supported us in the USA during a long tour in the 90s. Dave then produced some tracks of Beth Orton’s Central Reservation LP at our September Sound studios in Richmond during 1999, he leaves us way too early at the age of just 61 years old.
One of the great musicians, songwriters and participants in three of music’s most wonderful bands
Steve Wynn says “The Regulator” is a microcosm of The Dream Syndicate’s new album “The Universe Inside”. “It was just a formless, trippy mass as we all started playing together,’ says Wynn. “There was an early 70’s drum machine—a Maestro Rhythm King, the same model used on Sly Stone’s“There’s A Riot Goin’ On”—with Dennis locking in and setting the pace. Stephen grabbed an electric sitar because it was the first thing he saw. Jason and I were kicking pedals on like lab monkeys in a laboratory and Mark was a lightning rod, uniting all of those elements into one tough groove. I collected a list of random, unconnected lyric ideas that I kept on my phone. I tried them all out in random order in my home studio just to see how they would feel and that one-take test run is the vocal you hear! There’s just so much lightning-in-a-jar, first take excitement on this record.”
The Dream Syndicate is:
Steve Wynn – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica
Jason Victor – guitar
Chris Cacavas – keyboards
Mark Walton – bass guitar
Dennis Duck – drums
Special guests: Stephen McCarthy (electric sitar, guitar, six-string bass, pedal steel, backing vocals)
“The Regulator” by The Dream Syndicate from the album ‘The Universe Inside,’ available April 10th
The first single off Phoebe Bridgers’ TBA sophomore album has finally arrived. We’ve been anticipating Phoebe Bridgers‘ followup to her classic 2017 debut album “Stranger in the Alps” for a while, though she still hasn’t announced the album, she did just release her first proper solo single since 2017 and confirmed that the album is on the way. The song is called “Garden Song,” it was made with Stranger In The Alps producers/collaborators Tony Berg and Ethan Gruska, and it finds Phoebe adding a synthy touch to her melancholic songwriting, which remains as compelling as ever. The song also comes with a DIY-looking video directed by Phoebe’s brother Jackson, in which Phoebe rips a bong and then really weird shit starts to happen, including an appearance by Tig Notaro in a monk’s costume. Here’s what Phoebe tells Zane Lowe about the song:
I was just thinking about my home town and I was thinking about reoccurring nightmares I have on tour. So on Garden Song my tour manager sings with me – he’s 6 ft 7. He’s a Dutch man named Jeroen. I realized he had the voice of an angel when he was singing Mitski with me in the van and he was two octaves below me and I was like ‘You sound like a Dutch Matt Berninger from The National.
In the time between Stranger in the Alps and “Garden Song,” Phoebe Bridgers released a ton of collaborations (with Matt Berninger, Lord Huron, Manchester Orchestra, Mercury Rev, and more) and formed the groups boygenius (with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus) and the Better Oblivion Community Center (with Conor Oberst). Phoebe will be hitting road with The 1975 (whose new album she contributed to), with beabadoobee on the bill as well.
“Garden Song” by Phoebe Bridgers, out now on Dead Oceans Records.
“Overlord” is Dirty Projectors’ first new song in two years and it features new-ish member Maia Friedman on lead vocals. The band Dirty Projectors have released their first new song since 2018’s Lamp Lit Prose.
Tongue-in-cheek ode to surveillance capitalism? Critique of our primal confusion of charisma for actual leadership? Cautionary tale about blind faith in technology? Anti-fascist manifesto? Who knows, but “Overlord” feels like a “Both Sides Now” for our brave new Amazon Prime world. The lyrics are belied by a rootsy, organic arrangement — capo’ed acoustics, upright bass, congas, drum kit & three-part harmony that must be Dirty Projectors’ loosest and warmest production since Swing Lo Magellan.
“Overlord” is the first Dirty Projectors song to feature the new lineup that lead Projector Dave Longstreth put together around the Lamp Lit Prose touring in 2018/19. Guitarist Maia Friedman handles lead vocals and co-wrote the lyrics with Dave, who wrote and produced the music. Felicia Douglass and Kristin Slipp contribute additional vocals. Nat Baldwin plays upright bass; Mike Johnson is behind the kit. Mauro Refosco plays congas.
The video, directed by Dave and starring Maia, features some recent, notable public architecture in New York City, and traces an elliptical story about the stories we tell ourselves about progress.
Dirty Projectors – Overlord (Official Music Video) Out now on Domino Record Co.
