Iconic and iconoclastic Texan singer songwriter and visual artist Terry Allen’s heartbreaking, hilarious new album, his first set of new songs since 2013’s Bottom of the World, features the full Panhandle Mystery Band, including co-producer Charlie Sexton (Dylan, Bowie, Blaze), Shannon McNally, and Jo Harvey Allen; mainstays Bukka Allen, Richard Bowden, and Lloyd Maines; and co-writes with Joe Ely and Dave Alvin.
The connections to Melville’s masterpiece are metaphorical and allusive, as elusive as the White Whale. The masterly spiritual successor to Lubbock (on everything), “Just Like Moby Dick” casts its net wide for wild stories, depicting, among other monstrous things, Houdini in existential crisis, the death of the last stripper in town, bloodthirsty pirates (in a pseudo-sequel to Brecht and Weill’s “Pirate Jenny”), the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (in the “American Childhood” suite), a vampire-infested circus, mudslides and burning mobile homes, and all manner of tragicomic disasters, abandonments, betrayals, bad memories, failures, and fare-thee-wells.
Appropriately, then, his heartbreaking, new album “Just Like Moby Dick”, is first set of new songs since 2013’s Bottom of the World, takes its title from the archetypal monster of American literature and the American imaginary. (Coincidentally—or not—his label Paradise of Bachelors also takes its name from a Herman Melville story.) “Memory shot her crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights,” Melville writes, and for most of the novel, Moby Dick himself remains hidden, haunting Ahab as a crystalline monster of fathomless memory, a terrible fever dream from the depths. The whale remains a specter on Allen’s record too, appearing explicitly only in the briny final line of the last song “Sailin’ On Through,” and on the artist’s Side D vinyl etching and CD insert drawings, where he lurks menacingly beneath the roiling seas of Thomas Chambers, the 19th-century maritime painter whose floridly freaky nautical scenes adorn the album jacket.
Fortunately, Just Like Moby Dick features friends in spades, including the full Panhandle Mystery Band in its current, formidable iteration. It is the most collaborative album in Allen’s catalog and arguably his most sonically rich and varied as well. Terry shares keyboard duties with his son Bukka Allen, who also plays accordion and piano. Pedal steel master and de facto Panhandle bandleader Lloyd Maines contributes slide guitar and dobro, while Richard Bowden brings his characteristically kinetic and lyrical fiddle; both musicians have appeared on every Allen album since Lubbock (on everything).
The brilliant Charlie Sexton, a veteran of Bob Dylan’s bands since 1999—he’s also played with David Bowie and Lucinda Williams and stars as Townes Van Zandt in Ethan Hawke’s 2018 Blaze Foley biopic—co-produced the record with Terry at Austin’s Arlyn Studios, plays guitar, and sings. Drummer Davis McLarty, a Mystery Band mainstay since Human Remains (1996) is joined by more recent rhythm section additions Glenn Fukunaga (bass) and Brian Standefer (cello). Terry’s other son BaleAllen sits in on djembe on “Abandonitis.”
The most clearly transformative new presence here, however, is Shannon McNally, who sings sublimely throughout, taking lead on “All These Blues Go Walkin’ By” and Jo Harvey’s jazzy “Harmony Two” and duetting with Sexton on “All That’s Left Is Fare-Thee-Well,” making this the only Allen album to cede lead vocals to other performers. Just Like Moby Dick is also unusual in featuring five songs co-written, in various permutations, with fellow travelers Joe Ely and Dave Alvin, as well as Sexton,
Itasca’s Kayla Cohen wrote the anticipated follow-up to her acclaimed 2016 album Open to Chance in a century-old adobe house in rural New Mexico. Inspired by the landscape and history of the Four Corners region, the sublime Spring—its title summoning both season and scarce local water sources—dowses a devotional path to high desert headwaters. Featuring contributions from Chris Cohen, Cooper Crain (Bitchin’ Bajas), James Elkington, and members of Gun Outfit and Sun Araw, Spring contains Cohen’s most quietly dazzling and self-assured set of songs to date.
Chicago songwriter and guitarist James Elkington—who has collaborated with everyone from Richard Thompson to Jeff Tweedy to Tortoise—has announced his new album, “Ever-Roving Eye”, out April 3rd, alongside the video for lead single “Nowhere Time” and UK tour dates with Joan Shelley. He recorded his sophomore album at Wilco’s Loft Studio, expanding upon his “beautiful, complex, and assured” (Pitchfork) 2017 debut Wintres Woma, as well as his recent production and arrangement work for the likes of Steve Gunn, Nap Eyes (he produced their upcoming Snapshot of a Beginner), and Joan Shelley.
Casting glances back to British folk traditions as well as toward avant-garde horizons, these brilliant new songs, as accessible as they are arcane, buttress Elkington’s brisk guitar figures and baritone poesy with strings, woodwinds, and backing vocals by Tamara Lindeman of the Weather Station.
Ever-Roving Eye is even more elaborate, shrewd, thoughtful, and confessional than its predecessor. Though it sounds like a line culled from a murderous Child ballad, the title has everything to do instead with the slipperiness of satisfaction, and the equal parts virtue and vice that is being your own mule and driver. The album’s lead single/video, “Nowhere Time,” is a call to take up arms against procrastination, and features some of Elkington’s most daring guitar-wrangling. “A more cosmic acquaintance of mine once told me that when your life is going in the direction you want it to, it’s the universe’s way of telling you that you are in the place you’re meant to be,” Elkington says. “Does that sound likely? Not at all, but the song asks the question anyway…” The track’s accompanying video, directed by Tim Harris, features James, Spencer Tweedy on drums, and Nick Macri on upright bass.
James Elkington’s “Ever-Roving Eye” is out April 3, 2020 on Paradise of Bachelors.
The Ramones always had one foot in the future and one in the past. Even as the Queens quartet was rewriting the rock rulebook with its blitzkrieg bop, the band regularly revisited such golden oldies as “Let’s Dance” and “Needles And Pins.” For the album “End Of The Century” – released twenty years ahead of the new millennium – the Ramones tapped into the legendary Phil Spector to produce, and the collection includes a cover of the ’60s hitmaker’s “Baby I Love You,” as well as the propulsive “Do You Remember Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio?” and a version of “Rock ‘N’ Roll High School.”
End of the Century is the fifth studio album by the American punk rock band the Ramones, released on February 4th, 1980, through Sire Records.
In contrast to punk’s typically nihilistic viewpoint (so punk rock!), this 1980 effort proceeded to boldly go where no Ramones LP had gone before it: into galaxies of pop-oriented song craft never visited by the group’s famously aggressive and austere signature sound. The Ramones had hinted at this looming evolution on their previous LP, Road to Ruin, in 1978 but it was pushed to new heights on End of the Century – something underscored by the presence of infamous producer Phil Spector.
The highest-charting album of the band’s career, End Of The Century celebrates its 40th anniversary this week and captures Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and Marky in top form.
Jeffery’s first two offerings, especially the majestic “Stripping Cane” I am happy to say that “Ghost Repeater” is also a fine album. Following on from Stripping Cane was always going to be a challenge, but by adding a country twinge to the album whilst still including the crisp poetry and imagery of the previous two he has created an excellent, well balanced collection of songs.
When you set out to carry on a tradition as deep rooted as folk music is, you’ve got to have your story together. You’ve got to study, and have a foundation. Jeffrey Foucault has that foundation and you can hear it in his voice, and feel it in his music. He’s got an understanding that you don’t hear that often.’
Holed up in Iowa City for the coldest week of the year, Jeffrey Foucault teamed with blues guitar player and producer Bo Ramsey (Greg Brown, Lucinda Williams) to create “Ghost Repeater”, a country and blues album at the crossroads between love and lament, exploring the hopefulness of new love and the seasickness of contemporary American living. Ghost Repeaters are empty radio stations scattered around the USA to re-broadcast demographically tailored playlists, endless echoes of American market culture, from thousands of miles away. Epidemic sameness, big-box stores, and the retail news cycle of ghost prisoners and God On Our Side create the context in which the songs on Ghost Repeater unfold a story of love and uncertainty. Against the broadcast echoes of an America long gone,
Foucault lays out the particulars of love in a country contending with its own ghost. In addition to Bo Ramsey’s inimitable sound Foucault has the backing of Rick Cicalo and Steve Hayes (Greg Brown) on rhythm, along with special guest appearances by Iowa legend Dave Moore on harp and accordion, Eric Heywood (Son Volt, Richard Buckner) on pedal steel, and Kris Delmhorst on backing vocals.
In the story cycle of Andy Shauf’s new album “The Neon Skyline”, “Where Are You Judy?” is the inciting incident: Shauf’s lonely barfly discovers his ex-girlfriend is back in town, and gets it in his head that he needs to see her again. You hardly need the other songs on the record to get a complete experience of it – to be honest, given that I like this song more than the others and I prefer not following up on where the character goes from here, I prefer it on its own. Shauf conveys a lot of information with economical language, first sketching out the character’s romantic notion of why his relationship with Judy ended, i.e., that she was enticed away by the possibilities of flashy experiences somewhere else. He fantasizes about her giving him a call, telling him that she got bored of all that, that what she was chasing instead of staying with him was empty. And, by extension, that what they had together…that was fulfilling. The final chorus turns that flash of egocentric optimism inside-out without changing a word.
Instead of wondering where she literally is in the moment, he’s flashing back to her lying in bed with him, her mind a million miles away. “Where are you, Judy?”
The Sound were an English post-punk band, formed in South London in 1979 and dissolved in 1988. They were fronted by Adrian Borland, and evolved from his previous band, the Outsiders. While never commercially successful, The Sound have long been championed by critics. The original lineup of the Sound consisted of Adrian Borland (vocals, guitar) and Graham Bailey (bass guitar), both ex-Outsiders, along with Mike Dudley (drums) and Benita “Bi” Marshall (keyboard, saxophone, clarinet). While not a member, ex-Outsider Adrian Janes would contribute ideas and co-write lyrics to the Sound’s music
The Sound made their debut with the EP Physical World in 1979, released on manager Stephen Budd’s Tortch label. It was favourably received by NME and received airplay from DJ John Peel. More of their early recordings were later released as the album Propaganda in 1999.
“Left all alone, I’m with the one I most fear,” Adrian Borland sang on “I Can’t Escape Myself,” the first and best song on The Sound’s 1980 debut album “Jeopardy”, and as conveyed in the 2016 Adrian Borland documentary Walking in the Opposite Direction which just became available to stream on-demand this year that line was more than your typical goth posturing. Adrian was truly his own worst enemy, and he battled serious mental health issues and was in and out of psychiatric hospitals for decades before ultimately taking his own life in 1999. His health issues were at least part of the reason that Adrian never gained the popularity that he truly deserved, but as his father Bob Borland said in Walking in the Opposite Direction, even if The Sound or any of Adrian’s other projects had hit it big, “I’m not sure that Adrian could’ve handled it.”
The documentary traces Adrian’s career from his days fronting the punk band The Outsiders in the late ’70s to fronting the post-punk band The Sound in the ’80s to his solo career in the late ’80s and ’90s, with which he dabbled in jangle pop, folk, alternative rock, psychedelic rock, and more. If you’re a fan of any of Adrian’s bands, I highly recommend watching the documentary and if you’re new to his music, read on for a little primer on Adrian Borland, a natural-born songwriter who really deserves to be better-known.
THE OUTSIDERS Adrian’s first “real” band was The Outsiders (though around that same time, he apparently had a band with the late Tim Smith of Cardiacs that lasted for like two shows), and The Outsiders rivalled just about any of the great early punk bands. Their first album, 1977’s “Calling on Youth” recorded mostly by Adrian’s father in their home and released on their own Raw Edge label — wasn’t quite there yet, but the potential is overwhelming. Rippers like the title track and “Hit and Run” had all the speed and raw energy you’d expect from ’77 punk, and even that early on, you can hear the power and distinctiveness in Adrian’s voice. That’s really one of the major things that would set The Sound apart in the increasingly crowded post-punk genre, and that makes any Adrian Borland song hit you in the gut, even when it’s not his finest work. He just had one of those voices that stops you in your tracks every time he opened his mouth to sing.
The rippers were fine examples of early punk, but Calling On Youth also had stuff like the haunting acoustic jangle of “Start Over” and the ballad “Walking Through A Storm” that hinted at the music Adrian would make much later on in his career. It’s not exactly the most cohesive album, but it’s a solid teaser of the many sides of Adrian Borland’s music that would get perfected later on. The Outsiders‘ second and final album, 1978’s Close Up, was much more cohesive, and also a pretty major leap from the debut. It was done in a real studio, and it’s one of the true classic albums of ’70s punk. Like a lot of punk albums from that era, it opens with its best song — the catchy, anthemic “Vital Hours” — but the rest of the 11-song album wasn’t too shabby either, and it still sounds urgent and timeless today.
The Outsiders broke up in 1979, and Adrian went to form a few other projects. He and Outsiders bassist Graham Bailey formed the gothy minimal synth duo Second Layer, who released one great album (1981’s World of Rubber) and a couple cool EPs/singles during their short run. He also formed the even shorter-lived The Witch Trials, who were fronted by the Dead Kennedys’ JelloBiafra (and also included Morgan Fisher of Mott the Hoople), and who released one four-song EP that finds the middle ground between theatre, horror films, industrial, and political commentary (it’s wild to hear 1981’s “The Tazer” in the context of 2020’s protests against police brutality). And most significantly, he formed The Sound, also including Graham Bailey on bass as well as drummer Michael Dudley and keyboardist Belinda Marshall (who was also dating Adrian at the time). Their debut album, 1980’s “Jeopardy”, is among the finest post-punk records ever recorded, and it’s both confusing and criminal that it’s so overlooked today.
THE SOUND
“Jeopardy”, their debut album, was recorded inexpensively and released in November 1980 to critical acclaim; it received 5-star reviews from three major music publications, NME, Sounds and Melody Maker. Jeopardy is a caustic jolt of a debut that startles and fascinates. With the plaintive intro of the rhythm section, a spidery guitar, and incidental synth wobbles. “I Can’t Escape Myself” begins the album unassumingly enough until reaching the terse, one-line chorus that echoes the title of the song; suddenly, from out of the blue, all the instruments make a quick, violent, collective stab and retreat back into the following verse as singer Adrian Borland catches his breath.
The reverb placed on his voice is heightened at just the right moments to exacerbate the song’s claustrophobic slant. The ecstatic onward rush of “Heartland” forms the back end of a dynamic one-two opening punch, with a charging rhythm and blaring keyboards leading the way. Much later on, near the end, “Unwritten Law” comes along as one of theSound’s best mid-tempo mood pieces – If you’re thinking this sounds like someone’s telling you that you need Jeopardy just as much as you need Kilimanjaro or Unknown Pleasures or Crocodiles, you’re right again.
Following the album, Marshall left the band and was replaced by Colvin “Max” Mayers, previously in The Cardiacs. For their second album, the band worked with producer Hugh Jones.
“From the Lions Mouth” was released in 1981, to further critical acclaim, though their fanbase hadn’t extended beyond a cult following. The Sound went into the studio with talented producer Hugh Jones on board to accentuate the band’s winning atmospherics. As a result, the sound is fuller, less pungent. And speaking of winning, the snake-charming opener “Winning” is like a dash of cold water in the faces of all the bands that were wallowing and withering away at the weeping well: “I was going to drown/Then I started swimming/I was going down/then I started winning.”
This, in a sense, exemplifies the point that the Sound were not mopes. Most of the record has an effortless thrust to it, and only occasionally — for maximum effect — does the Sound whip out the heavy artillery. If “The Fire” sounds too bombastic and pummeling, listen closer. The bass is the lead instrument, the keyboards are just as prominent as the guitars,
Borland also released a collaborative EP that year with Jello Biafra under the name the Witch Trials.
During the early 1980s, The Sound toured throughout Europe, covering the UK and much of the continent. Like their contemporaries the Comsat Angels (whom they toured with in 1981), The Sound recorded several Peel sessions and performed the single “Sense of Purpose” on the TV show Old Grey Whistle Test.
In the same year, The Sound released a live EP titled Live Instinct.
Korova Records pressured Borland and his bandmates to come up with a more commercially successful third album, in addition to shifting the Sound from Korova to WEA proper. In an act of rebellion, they responded with “All Fall Down” in 1982, an album that took them even further away from the mainstream. Drummer Mike Dudley explained:
We thought [the label wasn’t] giving us the support that we were due and that if they really wanted a commercial album, they had got to put plenty of money behind it, which with both “Jeopardy” and “From the Lions Mouth” they hadn’t really done .So when they turned around and said, ‘The solution is for you to write more commercial songs’, we thought, ‘Fuck you’, and went ahead and produced All Fall Down.
“All Fall Down” was panned by critics upon its release. Upon receiving the album, WEA decided not to promote it, and the band and the label parted company. The Sound responded to label demands and simmering internal pressures with a record that challenged devout fans as well. All Fall Down is one of those maligned records where some fans bailed but a select few.
In 1983, The Sound released a joint EP in collaboration with singer Kevin Hewick “This Cover Keeps Reality Unreal”, on Cherry Red Records.
The band were approached by several labels, ultimately signing with independent label Statik in 1984. They released an EP, Shock of Daylight, which received favourable coverage from the music press. This was followed a year later by the full-length Heads and Hearts which finds them riding the wave of optimism — or maybe it would be better to say enthusiasm, that shot through them as they found themselves revitalized after parting ways with a major label. While nothing here is as sparklingly “up” as the Shock of Daylight EP’s “Golden Soldiers,” and while the lyrics don’t exactly deal with the happier elements of romantic relationships, there’s a sweepingly hopeful sensibility apparent through the arrangements and Wally Brill’s bold, crystalline production.
By 1985, Borland had begun to exhibit symptoms of mental illness, perhaps worsened by the frustrations of his career.
Not long after the 1985 release of a live album, “In the Hothouse”, Statik went into bankruptcy. The band produced one more album, “Thunder Up”, on the Belgian label Play It Again Sam.While touring Spain in 1987, they had to cancel several appearances after Borland suffered a complete breakdown. Dudley recalled bringing an incoherent Borland home on a plane.
It’s the beginning of November, and the thirty-three-year-old Hop Along Frances Quinlan is sitting in her living room, having just come from voting in a local election. She’s originally from North Jersey, and while careful to emphasize that she’s not a native Philadelphian, the affection for her adopted hometown is evident. “Philly is an incredible city full of people doing their best, who’ve lived here all their lives, and who want it to be a happy, healthy place. It’s cool to be around that.”
Quinlan’s new album, Likewise, is set for release January 31st, and while fans might regard it as her debut solo effort, that distinction actually belongs to 2005’s Freshman Year. Credited to Hop Along, Queen Ansleis, the self-released album—recorded in her parents’ basement—now serves as an overture to the spectacular trio of Hop Along albums that followed. Though a few friends played drums and banjo on some tracks, the record was effectively a solo endeavor, and if it doesn’t sound like one, that’s by design. “I just wanted so badly for it to sound like a band,” she laughs, “so I literally played bells and whistles, and tried to make it sound like more than just me.”
A decade later, Quinlan supervised a new vinyl pressing of Freshman Year, which proved tricky—though it wasn’t nearly as nerve-wracking as the initial release. “I was stamping burned CDs,” she recalls, “and the stamp I’d made was so bad, I decided to paint back onto the CDs with the same ink and a brush, because I wanted so badly for them to be special, to have meaning for people.” She has no idea how many of those hand-made treasures exist, but in the fifteen years since she assembled that first recording, she’s still enamored with experimentation.
On Likewise, Quinlan enlisted the help of longtime bandmate and producer Joe Reinhart, who helped her flesh out the arrangements, and she’s animated as she describes the sessions. “Collaboration is so different when it’s you, the songwriter, and a producer, and you’re kind of producing together,” she explains. “For this project, we could do whatever we wanted—I even play drums on a couple of tracks,” she laughs before admitting, “I can’t play bass.” The pair’s crackling chemistry is apparent in every note, and across nine songs, a bevy of strings, chorals, and electronic elements telepathically track Quinlan’s magical, mercurial cadence.
As a lyricist, Quinlan is a poet, and reading through the verses which comprise Likewise, it’s tempting to see the tracks as a loosely connected narrative. Squint, and you can make out the telemetry of a rocky relationship. But Quinlan says the stories here are all abstract bits—which isn’t to say there’s no overarching theme. “A common thread would be attempts at discourse between loved ones,” she explains. “The people you’re closest to, you want them to understand you the most, right? And that can be so harrowing. It’s a hard thing to let go of who you were before, and not feel a sense of regression, not feel held back by the perception that others have of you. I don’t think it’s a hopeless record, by any means. But I do think it’s a challenge to speak your mind to the people you’re closest to.”
On the lead single “Rare Thing,” she recalls a surreal dream where barbs like, “I know there is love that doesn’t have to do with taking something from somebody” sting against a stippled synth. For “Detroit Lake,” she conjures images of a hawk striking prey, blooming algae, and words left unspoken, while the plaintive notes of “A Secret” mirror her lyrics’ portrait of geographical and emotional distance. At times, the syncopation between her vocals and the instrumentation is so effortless that it feels like she’s dynamically bending the instruments to her will. During the sessions, “I was thinking, in a different way, what the song needed,” Quinlan says. “I had no concrete, instrumental goal, and that kind of left the songs room to really wander and get strange.” She may call them “strange,” but overall the tracks are compulsively captivating, and with the spotlight on her fantastic voice, it seems like she’s present in any room where they’re played.
Likewise closes with a cover of Built to Spill’s“Carry the Zero,” a song Quinlan has adored for years. As she relays that Doug Martsch is “cool” with her interpretation, our conversation shifts to the singers who’ve influenced her, and after quickly citing Kate Bush, Fiona Apple, and Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum, she turns pensive. “It’s tough, because you have people you love, but you’ll never in a million years sound like,” she considers. “There are so many vocalists I revere, that I wish I could emulate.
Andy Gill, a founding member and guitarist for the British post-punk band Gang of Four, has died. He was 64.
Formed in Leeds in 1976, Gang Of Four’s career spanned five decades, from their first single Damaged Goods to last year’s studio album Happy Now. In 1979, they made their Top 60 chart debut with At Home He’s A Tourist – despite the song being banned by the BBC for a lyrical reference to condoms.
Their debut album Entertainment!, released in September of the same year, has frequently been cited as an influence or inspiration by aspiring musicians, Combining Marxist politics with punk, dub, funk and disco, the “stiff, jerky aggression of songs such as Damaged Goods and I Found That Essence Rare invented a new style,
Gang Of Four never had a hit single (1982’s I Love A Man In Uniform came close, before it was banned from the airwaves during the Falklands War) but their first three albums are considered indispensable. They split in 1984, but reformed several times over the years, with a variety of line-ups. They released 10 albums in all, with a couple of periods of hiatus during their 40-year history Gill was the only constant throughout their career.
Gill’s death was announced Saturday (February. 1st) on Twitter by his current bandmates Thomas McNeice, John Sterry and Tobias Humble. A cause of death was not given. Gill had developed a “respiratory illness,” after finishing an Asian tour with Gang Of Four last year, they said. “This pain is the price of extraordinary joy, almost three decades with the best man in the world,” wrote his wife, Catherine Mayer, on Twitter.
Gill was a founding member of Gang of Four since the band’s inception in the late 1970s, and served as guitarist and producer of the group’s nine albums, including Happy Now in 2019. The musician’s scratchy, staccato riffs provided the band with their signature sound, and influenced the likes of Nirvana, Fugazi and Franz Ferdinand.
“This is so hard for us to write, but our great friend and Supreme Leader has died today,” Gang of Four wrote in the statement. “Andy’s final tour in November was the only way he was ever really going to bow out; with a Stratocaster around his neck, screaming with feedback and deafening the front row.”
The group called Gill “one of the best to ever do it,” adding that his “influence on guitar music and the creative process was inspiring for us, as well as everyone who worked alongside him and listened to his music.” His bandmates ended their post asking fans to “go give ’em a spin for him.” He had just finished a new studio album with Gang Of Four, they added.
As a producer, Gill worked on many high-profile music projects, including Red Hot Chili Peppers‘ 1984 self-titled debut album. He also worked on music by the Stranglers, Michael Hutchence, Killing Joke, Therapy?, the Jesus Lizard and the Futureheads.
In 2018, Gill spoke about his never-ending interest in creating music. “These days I get up early at 6:30, I get a cup of tea and I go straight down the studio and start working … I get a buzz out of it. I’m not in any hurry to stop,” he said.
Gill is survived by his wife, Catherine Mayer; his brother Martin; and “many family and elective family members who will miss him terribly” . His uncompromising artistic vision and commitment to the cause meant that he was still listening to mixes for the upcoming record, whilst planning the next tour from his hospital bed.
But to us, he was our friend – and we’ll remember him for his kindness and generosity, his fearsome intelligence, bad jokes, mad stories and endless cups of Darjeeling tea. He just so happened to be a bit of a genius too.
One of the best to ever do it, his influence on guitar music and the creative process was inspiring for us, as well as everyone who worked alongside him and listened to his music. And his albums and production work speak for themselves. Go give ‘em a spin for him…Love you mate.
On Laughing Gas, the third EP from Wild Nothing, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jack Tatum delves deeper into the territory where he thrives: namely, the synth and sophisti-pop of the 1980s. Working within a more mechanical and synthetic framework than his previous releases, Wild Nothing continues to delicately toe the line between the organic and the unnatural. These are still pop songs, but there’s an underlying sense of uneasiness that threads the music together.
Recorded in Los Angeles, CA and Richmond, VA with the help of Jorge Elbrecht, these five songs were originally imagined alongside last year’s Indigo and were written and tracked simultaneously with the album. When work on the full-length was nearing completion, Tatum set these ideas aside; they seemed to fit better on their own. In spare moments between tours, Tatum began to look back and piece the songs together at his home studio in Richmond, reconnecting with Elbrecht to mix the EP. With Elbrecht in Denver and Tatum in Richmond, the two went back and forth on the final touches, molding a common thread from the Lo Borges inspired new wave of Sleight Of Hand to the propulsive, icy synth funk of Foyer.
Often considered a secondary or transitional format, Wild Nothing has always used the EP to further explore new ideas and influences. Laughing Gas is no exception.
This May we’ll also be celebrating the 10 year anniversary of our first record “Gemini” with a string of shows with our friends Beach Fossils. Both of us will be playing our first records in full!
