Record company scouts spotted Alexandra Savior at just 16 but she balked at plans to turn her into the next Katy Perry. The arty Portland teenager decamped to LA where she met her songwriting soulmate, Arctic Monkey’s Alex Turner. With producer James Ford, they have created a debut that captures Savior’s preternatural self-possession. Blessed with a crystalline, intimate voice – think a less cabaret Lana del Rey – she channels the outsider cool of the cult 70s Japanese anime the album is named after. However, Turner’s retro snap, crackle and pop and Ford’s studio shimmer polish Savior too much out of the picture, leaving her sounding like an imitation, rather than the real thing.
Pop-noir tinged by desert rock. Imagine Lana Del Rey and Josh Homme charging feverishly into the sunset. An all-star line-up of Alex Turner and James Ford lent a hand, but it’s Savior’s idiosyncratic, dark charisma that ranks this as one of the best debuts of 2017.
“Alexandra Savior has a penchant for clever wordplay and a voice that can hypnotize, terrorize, or both in four measures or less.” – PITCHFORK.
“Her ability to create something evocative, sedating and sultry, all at the same time is uncanny”- PASTE.
“It’s a sound that should catch on in a hurry with fans of Lana Del Rey, Dead Man’s Bones, Zella Day and similar artists with a retro flair.” – FORBES
On this day in history First released February 4th, 1983) Echo and the Bunnymen released their 3rd album “Porcupine” featuringthe tracks The Back Of Love and favorite, The Cutter, it became the band’s highest charting release.
This album was produced by Ian Broudie, who later went on to form The Lightning Seeds.
IanMcCulloch’s comments, I think Porcupine was a classic autobiographical album, the most honest thing that I’d ever written or sung. I found the material from it really heavy to play – like, really oppressive. That’s the only reason why I didn’t like the album. The songs were great but it didn’t make me happy. A lot of songs are about coming to terms with the opposites in me.
When presented with the finished album, WEA Records rejected it as “too uncommercial”. The band agreed to re-record the album, despite Sergeant’s complaints. Using the original version of the album as a blueprint, the follow-up recording sessions went more smoothly. Drummond brought Shankar back to add strings to the other tracks on the album. It was these sessions that produced the band’s next single, “The Cutter”, which was released in January 1983 and went on to become the band’s first Top 10 hit.
A better listen than its predecessor, Heaven Up Here. Songs are intriguing and elaborate, often featuring swooping, howling melodic lines. Arrangements here owe a lot to 1960s psychedelia and feature lots of reverb, washed textures, intricate production touches, and altered guitar sounds. Ian McCulloch’s vocals are yearning, soaring, and hyper-expressive here, almost to the point of being histrionic, most notably on “Clay,” “Ripeness,” and the title track. Listen to the epic neo-psychedelia of ‘My White Devil’ or ‘Heads Will Roll’ as examples ,
Driving bass and drums lend the songs urgency and keep the music from collapsing into self-indulgence. Parallels between the group’s U.S. contemporaries
The recording session for “The Back of Love” went well, but the relationship between the band members was strained, with them either not speaking to each other or, when they did, arguing.Their manager Bill Drummond was aware of the tensions within the band and so arranged a tour in Scotland for April 1982. This was done in an effort to make the band work harder, write some songs, and to communicate with each other. Drummond’s plan failed to work as following the tour there was still tension between the band members.Two other album tracks – “Clay” and “My White Devil” – were first played during the tour of Scotland.
Echo & the Bunnymen
Ian McCulloch – vocals, guitar, piano
Will Sergeant – lead guitar
Les Pattinson – bass
Pete de Freitas – drums
Porcupine deserves a place in the canon of classic rock albums that are regarded as ‘great art’.
On Monday, February 17th, to mark the occasion of David McComb’s birthday and the release of “Truckload Of Sky: The Lost Songs of David McComb Vol 1”, Rob Snarski, Romy Vager, Alex Gow, Robert McComb, Phil Kakulas, Graham Lee and Bruce Haymes will be performing an intimate acoustic, performance.
This event will be taking place on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to elders past and present, and we acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded.
The Swedish dreampop artist I Break Horses (aka Maria Lindén) will release new album “Warnings”, It’s her first in six years, on May 8th via Bella Union/PIAS. “It’s not a political album,” says Lindén, “though it relates to the alarmist times we live in. Each song is a subtle warning of something not being quite right.” With this news comes the album’s first single, the ethereal and rather epic “Death Engine,’ as well as its video which Linden made herself.
She says: it’s been a while since the last album. Some of you might say it’s taken ages, others might not have been giving it much thought at all. Time is a slippery bastard.
However, I needed time to focus on what I really wanted. And that was to create the most intimate and sincere songs I felt I had in me. And I wanted to give them to you.
So this one is for all of you out there who have ever shown your appreciation for my music. If you have ever expressed your love in any of the channels, have been part of the audience at one of our live shows, or ever downloaded one of my tracks to help you get through the day.
This is the first track from the forthcoming album “Warnings”, released on Bella Union/PIAS on the 8th May 2020
Danish musician and songwriter Agnes Obel’s fourth LP, “Myopia”, comes out later this month, and the latest single she’s shared from it is the lovely instrumental interlude “Parliament of Owls.”
‘Parliament Of Owls’ is also one of the highlights of the Danish singer-songwriter’s highly anticipated new album Myopia, which is set for release through Deutsche Grammophon, Universal Music Group’s prestigious Yellow Label, and Blue Note in North America, on 21st February.
Following the same principles as with her previous albums (Philharmonics, Aventine and Citizen Of Glass), which she completed as a one-woman project in her own Berlin home studio, Obel has been under self-imposed creative isolation with the removal of all outside influences and distraction in the writing, recording and mixing process for Myopia.
“The albums I’ve worked on have all required that I build a bubble of some kind in which everything becomes about the album. For me the production is intertwined with the lyrics and story behind the songs,” says Obel. This is precisely what makes her music so compelling and the same is true with Myopia.
“Paradoxically, for me I need to create my own myopia to make music,” she says, speaking of the album’s creation, which saw Obel experimenting with techniques of recording processing, warping and pitching down vocals, strings, piano, celesta and lutheal piano, finding ways to melt these elements together to become one.
In support of Myopia, Agnes Obel will be playing across Europe on a headline tour in Spring 2020, and will be joining Dead Can Dance as their special guest across North America in April and May. Her itinerary kicks off with a sold-out show at London’s Rough Trade East on Myopia’s release date European dates also include two nights at Copenhagen’s KB Hallen (27 and 28 February) and a further London show at the Eventim Apollo on 9 April. Visit the artist’s official website for tickets and further information .
Associated Performer, Piano: Agnes Obel Studio Personnel,, Violin: John Corban , Cello: Kristina Koropecki Composer: Agnes Obel
3D Routine’ has arrived. Following on from their ‘Induction Party E.P’, Mush are circulating their own sonic mythology, blurring the lines between abstract surrealism, existentialism and social commentary. Like its predecessor ‘3D Routine’ is a sensory overload of clattering, hooky, guitar work. However, this time space emerges between the onslaughts and in this respite, room is found for new emotional depth. More expansive than ever before, ‘3D Routine’ manages to maintain the rawness of a classic debut but it’s experimentation and variety portray a band unlikely to rest on their ‘guitar band’ chops.
Songwriter Dan Hyndman explains the genesis of the band as being “fairly boiler plate” a combination of friends old and new converging in Leeds post-uni to form a band predominantly united in their mutual affection for the Pavement back catalogue. Finally settling on a lineup of Nick Grant (bass), Tyson (guitar) and Phil Porter (drums) the band’s progression has taken them far beyond this original vision.
UK band Mush are gearing up to release their new LP 3D Routine next week, and this latest single “Existential Dread” is a fun example of the band’s angular, guitar-driven style, which blends nervous post-punk with garage rock distortion.
Having garnered local attention in the early days for their unhinged and often calamitous live shows in Leeds, it was the unlikely radio hit ‘Alternative Facts’, (clocking in at an uncompromising ten minutes) that brought the Mush to the attention of a wider audience. The song, one of the last releases for the legendary Too Pure Singles Club saw early support from Marc Riley and others on BBC 6music with them playing multiple sessions, and the follow up single, ‘Gig Economy’ hopping onto the 6music playlist. Roaming further afield from their hometown, Mush spent the first half of 2019 heading out around the UK, earning a reputation for their intense live performances, supporting the likes of Girl Band, The Lovely Eggs, Yak, Shame and Stereolab, as well as releasing the ‘Induction Party’ EP to great acclaim. At the tail end of summer of 2019 Mush headed to Leeds’ Green Mount Studio and with Andy Savours (Dream Wife, Our Girl, My Bloody Valentine) manning the mixing desk, their debut LP, ‘3D Routine’ was born.
The way in which the album brazenly moves from polished 3- minute punk tracks, to avant-garde spoken word, to sardonic-political funk, whilst sounding like the same band is testament to an uncompromisingly unrefined ethic and compounds the jarring nature of Mush. Together, the songs form a unified, abrasive, emotive, frenetic and entirely beguiling concoction of sound and opinion, a fast-moving snapshot of current times, relatable, politically minded and incredibly personal. Music for those who want their guitars loud and weird, and their political commentary a little less ‘on the nose’.
Woods / Purple Mountains / Crystal Stilts keyboardists Kyle Forester makes lovely, bucolic pop as a solo artists and will release new solo album “Hearts in Gardens” later this month. Here’s the second track off the record, the sun-dappled, lazy soft and slow track “Marigold.”
A lot has happened since Crystal Stilts’Kyle Forester dropped his first solo album in 2016—much of which has to do with his busy touring schedules as a member of Woods’ live jam band, as well as the Purple Mountains live collective that never got a chance to spread its wings. With this newfound passion for collaboration, though, Forester has recorded a follow-up to his self-titled debut, which seems him working with his own dream team of a hired band, including production from Woods’ Jarvis Taveniere and harp contributions from Mary Lattimore.
Forester is sharing the second single from his forthcoming Hearts in Gardens, which is a hushed experimental number that sounds less like the dense heartland rock of The War on Drugs than the first. “Marigold” instead smears a number of surprising instrumentals together to form a hazy, psychedelic pastiche of sounds to accompany his acoustic guitar.
Kyle Forester: Vocals, Keyboards, Guitar, Hampus Öhman-Frölund: Drums, Paul Jenkins: Bass, Sam Kulik: Trombone
Michael O’Neill: Guitar, Mary Lattimore: Harp on “On the Way Down”
I spent a couple of days in December recording at The Loft in Chicago with Jeff Tweedy, Tom Schlick, Nick Macri,Spencer Tweedy and Mark Greenberg, bringing into existence a song called Prairie Winter Wasteland. The song is an ode to place and the spirits that occupy them and you can listen to it in all of the places. Thanks The Loft for the invitation, the energy and the kindness
“Prairie Winter Wasteland” by Daughter of Swords out now on Nonesuch Recordings / Bella Union. Produced by Jeff Tweedy and recorded at The Loft
For their fifth full-length album, prominent indie-folksters The Lone Bellow teamed up with The National’s Aaron Dessner at his studio in upstate New York. “I want it to bring comfort,” the band’s Brian Elmquist said of the new album in a statement. “But it’s not all hard conversations. There’s a lot of light and some dancing that needs to happen.”
For this video, I had this vision of a figure skating routine, but we wanted to bring it a little closer to home. Instead of a poised athlete on ice, we hopped into a dirty old muscle car and while doing donuts in a field, we got to be Burt Renolds for a day! I’m so thankful I was finally able to reap some of the skills from my redneck upbringing.
With “The Prettiest Curse” Hinds shrug off any remaining lo-fi accusations and unveil a widescreen beast of an album, not so much a shift as a quantum leap in their evolution as a band. This is a record positively bursting with life, with the band finally harnessing the full extent of their pop prowess and unleashing songs which sound bigger, bolder, and more complex than anything they have done before. Which isn’t to say they have turned their backs on being Hinds – quite the opposite in fact! Here, they double down on what, precisely, makes them so special – the bright melodies betraying heartbreaking themes of isolation and betrayal, the empowering, don’t mess with us all-girl gang glow – while going even further.
You know how people say that a drop of balsamic vinegar makes strawberries taste more strawberry-ish? Well, on “The Prettiest Curse”, Hinds sound even more Hinds-ish, and marvelously so.
as the sleeve would suggest, the spanish quartet are fully embracing their most colourful, most joyous outlook on life with ‘the prettiest curse’…and we in turn are fully embracing our sunny sides (not something that’s known to happen too often to be fair!).
Carlotta Cosials (vocals, guitar) – Ana Perrote (vocals, guitar) – Ade Martin (bass) Amber Grimbergen (drums).
