Ask Jack Tatum what ‘Wild Nothing’ means and he’ll answer: ‘a contradiction’. In 2010, 21 year old Tatum released one of thefinest cult pop records of the summer whilst ensconced in his senior year of college in Blacksburg, VA, a small mid-atlantic town better known for producing football fans and engineers than musicians. Tatum lives in contradictions.
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 Lô 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.
Porches–the music-making moniker of Aaron Maine—has announced his next album, “Ricky Music”. The follow-up to 2018’s The House arrives March 13th via Domino Recordings. Porches has shared a new song called “Do U Wanna,” along with an accompanying music video directed by frequent collaborator Nick Harwood. Find the visual, along with a statement from Aaron Maine,
In another statement, Maine said, “‘Do U Wanna’ is a song about looking at yourself and realizing the disparity between how you’d like to act and how you actually act.” He added, “The fun you vs. the isolated you. I feel like with the refrain I’m almost taunting myself to get up and do something.”
Porches – “Do U Wanna”, from ‘Ricky Music’, out 13th March 2020 on Domino Record Co.
Irwin Sparkes (The Hoosiers) has recently emerged as White Tail Falls, using the moniker to create a truly novel and unique ethereal take on folk. They now release their exquisite new single ‘Disintegrate’.
Produced by Erland Cooper, ‘Disintegrate’ joins luscious string work, sparse percussion, gentle guitar and piano layered into an ambient fusion whilst
“I was thinking about bloodlines and procreation and how we think we’ve got power over it when the decision is ultimately out of our hands. Over-thinking about the family I’m from and the family I hadn’t started and the implications of having kids or not and remembering the love I do have in my life, to go skipping into the apocalypse with. It became a bit of an existential love song.”
‘Disintegrate’ will appear on their inaugural LP ‘Age Of Entitlement’, which is out March 6th via Physical Education Records.
Atmospheric Newcastle based indie rock band Lanterns On The Lake already had everyone eagerly awaiting fourth album ‘Spook the Herd’ with beautifully stark song ‘Every Atom’. Now that first taste is followed by powerful second single ‘Baddies’ which unveils frontwoman Hazel Wilde’s frustration with the domination of the rich and powerful, maintaining their control stoking up prejudice.
“Baddies is a song about the rising tide of anger and hate in the world that seems to have been unleashed over the last few years, with those in positions of power and influence actively encouraging it for their own ends, and the polarisation of society as a result. It is about the need for the individual, the underdog, to stand up to it, but the fact that in doing so we become part of it. We become someone else’s baddie.”
Baddies is the new single taken from our upcoming album ‘Spook The Herd’ out on 21st February 2020
Seven years after her Top 5 debut album, Ren Harvieu has announced news of her long-awaited new album ‘Revel In The Drama’, due for release 3rd April via Bella Union Records Includes the singles ‘Teenage Mascara’ and ‘Yes Please.’
Having earlier signalled her return via the track “Teenage Mascara”, which was both Lauren Laverne’s Track of the Day and Jo Whiley’s Single Of The Week, Ren Harvieu has today announced news of her long-awaited new album “Revel In The Drama”, due for release 3rd April via Bella Union . The album is a brilliant and bolder take on her timeless pop classicism, a compelling diary of a struggle with self-belief and a celebration of liberation and survival, seven years after her Top 5 debut album and having overcome a life-threatening injury. Think of Revel In The Drama as Harvieu’s second debut album; a new beginning. To celebrate the news Harvieu has shared a new track titled “Yes Please” which she describes as “A slow sensual dance of desire. I wanted to write about the art of seduction and the teasing power of being an unapologetic sexual being.”
Song written by Ren Harvieu and Romeo Stodart Taken from the album ‘Revel In The Drama’ by Ren Harvieu.
Wolf Parade the Montreal band’s 2005 debut, Apologies to the Queen Mary, became a ubiquitous indie radio staple. The band Wolf Parade – Dan Boeckner, Spencer Krug and Arlen Thompson – release ‘Thin Mind’, the group’s fifth album for Sub Pop. their heart, panache, and synthesizers on display through their next few albums, 2008’s excellent At Mount Zoomer and 2010’s Expo 86, and after a lengthy hiatus, they showed more growth on 2017′s Cry Cry Cry.
Their new album “Thin Mind” still comes as an unexpected new peak for the band this album scratches a very specific and satisfying itch for indie guitar music in 2020. Now a trio, the group has only deepened its talents and personal musical aesthetic, while their lyrical themes have taken on both a newfound maturity and optimism.
Wolf Parade seem more comfortable commenting on the world around them on Thin Mind, but they sound just as interested in having a good time making music. The songs bounce and zip with the sort of kinetic energy that’s hard to find in blogosphere success stories still making music in 2020. As can be heard on standout tracks such as “Julia Take Your Man Home” and “Forest Green,” everything sounds sharper and more direct, without being aggressive or in-your-face, as any art-pop sprawl has been replaced with glammy arena rock tendencies. The panoply of synthesizers on display across the entire project, especially on “Wandering Son” and “Against the Day,” are also a fine addition. This full turn away from being Wire disciples to New Order and Duran Duran acolytes provides a resplendent edge. for Wolf Parade to kick off 2020 with a ten-song album bursting with mature perspectives and emotional heft, it makes even jaded assholes like me sit up and take notice.
Thin Mind is packed with straight-up fun music that overflows with a danceable sensibility, infectious melodies, and overall good vibes. The songs here find Wolf Parade openly encouraging their listeners to make a difference in the world, to work to make things better. As they put it, during the chorus of album highlight “The Static Age,” “I don’t want to live in the static age staying in a place where nothing changes. We can begin again.”
Fickle tastes and trends aside, the Peter Wolf-produced Peace in Our Time (“King of Emotion”) was a slick, topical tour de force to mark the end of the ‘80s, and No Place Like Home (“We’re Not in Kansas”) and Buffalo Skinners (“Alone”) were all a series of terrific, hard-rocking album releases to greet the ‘90s.
But Big Country had lost its foothold on the pop charts: No Place and Skinners weren’t even released stateside, which raised the stakes for “Long Face” and tested the group’s mettle with minders, marketers, and bean-counters at Transatlantic, Castle, and Pure Records.
Formed in Dunfermline, Scotland in 1981 by the band’s guitarists and founder members Stuart Adamson and Bruce Watson, Big Country quickly broke worldwide with their initial album “The Crossing”, selling over 2 million copies and receiving 3 Grammy nominations in the US. Success continued, and the band went on to put out another 5 highly regarded albums before the release of “Why The Long Face” in 1995.
With original singer Stuart Adamson at the helm, Big Country scored 17 top 30 singles in the UK, and achieved 5 gold and platinum albums during the period.
This release includes not only the full length album “Why The Long Face”, but also their live 1996 album “Eclectic”, plus a huge array of bonus tracks and band demos, including alternative and acoustic versions of classic tracks such as ‘In A Big Country’ and ‘You Dreamer’, plus a whole load of rarities including Big Country’s cover versions of Alice Cooper’s ‘Teenage Lament’, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Down On The Corner’ and Neil Young’s ‘Hey Hey My My’.
All material contained within has been freshly remastered especially for this release. It Comes packaged in a clam shell box set, with booklet containing full sleeve-notes documenting the band’s activities throughout the release of the album.
Suffice to say, ...Long Face didn’t broaden Big Country’s audience as intended. Following a similar fate as The Seer seven years prior, the disc—packed with muscular, melodic guitars and bold, book-smart verses—sated core fans but didn’t yield any radio hits or MTV mainstays like “In a Big Country” and “Fields of Fire.”
The album’s under-performance on the charts never really warranted it being overlooked by listeners (who by now had latched on to Nirvana, Dave Matthews, and Pearl Jam) or its dismissal in the annals of rock history.
That injustice is precisely what makes Cherry Red’s reassessment so crucial.
Handsomely packed in a sturdy yellow case (instead of original powder blue) with another photogenic Doberman on front, the 4CD set “Why the Long Face” 2018 includes not only the remastered ’95 album, but three extra CD’s worth of bonus Big Country tracks, demos, covers, and in-concert cuts from that era (1994-1996).
Disc One contains the album proper—fourteen tracks of sparkling guitar (clean and crunchily distorted), robust rhythms, and intelligent lyrics (about love, regret, and hope), all anointed by another serving of the same hardy, anthem-like refrains that made Big Country famous.
Opener “You Dreamer” rides high on a bagpipe-esque guitar riff and rugged, dirty power chords (courtesy Adamson and Bruce Watson) before introducing Stuart’s vignette of forgotten souls in pizza shops (where “prescription junkies” “watch the window fill with flies”). It’s an electrifying ode to shattered dreams that ponders a plethora of what-ifs and what-might-have-been…yet—in true Big Country form—keeps positive rather than give up the ghost to adversity.
“Is this the way that you believed your life was gonna turn out?” muses Adamson (quite possibly about himself). “Is this the better world that you were making all those plans for?”
Then there’s the typical (but effective) valentines to both imagined paramours (“One in a Million,” “Send You”) and humanity at large (“Message of Love”), reflections on personal triumphs and private travails (“I’m Not Ashamed,”“Wildlandin My Heart”), and sundry entries (“Sail Into Nothing,” “”God’s Great Mistake,” “Post Nuclear Talking Blues”) that couple the Dunfermline four-piece’s penchant for outdoor themes (nature, freedom, adventure) and affinity for its signature Scottish sound into upbeat, zeitgeist-sensitive zingers.
Disc Two is jam-packed with bonus tracks including single edits of “Dreamer” and “Ashamed,” early / alternate takes of “One in a Million,” and acoustic versions of old standbys “In a Big Country” and “All Go Together.” There’s also a bunch of extra songs that didn’t make the album (but might’ve popped up on the band’s Rarities series later), like “Crazy Times,” “Ice Cream Smile,” and “Bianca.” This is also where fans will find working versions recorded by Adamson, Butler, and company at House in the Woods studio in Surrey (“Hardly a Mountain,” “Can You Feel the Winter”).
Disc Three is a digitally-retouched edition of the in-concert Eclectic album released by Castle Communications in the year following …Long Face. Recorded live at Dingwalls in London in late March of ’96 (and long since out-of-print), the album shines with a mix of old and then-new Big Country classics (“River of Hope,” “Where the Rose is Sown”), all rendered before an elated audience. Also on the menu here is an assortment of choice cover songs that speak to the band’s early influences (The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby,” Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire,” Neil Young’s “Hey Hey My My,” CCR’s “Down on the Corner.” The smoldering set (with bassist Tony Butler and drummer Mark Brzezicki underpinning the guitar hysteria with glorious grooves) also features guest spots by British vocalist/actor Bobby Valentino, rocker Steve Harley (of Cockney Rebel), and American soul singer Kym Mazelle.
The …Long Face prototype is represented by Disc Four: This is where collectors and curators will discover working versions of the tunes that would be polished up later for the final version of the album. Workshopped at various locations in Scotland and England (Audiocraft, Riverside, Chapel, HITW), this missing-link record presents some of Adamson’s best ideas in a stripped-down format. But most the program is dominated by near-finished “jam” versions of “Dreamer,” “Message,” “Ashamed” and other stand-outs that sound—unlike most demos or garage versions—almost as concise (in performance) and as crystalline (in production) as the finished …Long Face LP.
So if you know Stuart Adamson and Big Country only by their earliest “essential” hits, now’s as good a time as any to revisit the well and get acclimated with the group’s strong, inspirational, and sorely-overlooked middle catalog. And there’s never been a better opportunity to take those first steps than with this respectfully-rendered …Long Face deluxe box.
With 2017’s Out In The Storm, Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield topped herself yet again with a roaring collection of songs worthy of one of the best projects to come out of the last decade. She revisited some older songs for 2018’s lovely Great Thunder EP, and in March, Waxahatchee will release her fifth full-length album.
It’s called Saint Cloud, and Crutchfield wrote the songs after committing to getting sober. Naturally, Saint Cloud is a potent examination of the behavior that springs from addiction and what it can feel like to be truly in tune with yourself. Crutchfield recorded Saint Cloud at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, TX, and Long Pond in Stuyvesant, NY, and it was produced by Brad Cook .
Its lead single, “Fire,” is about straddling between borders — physically, the border between Tennessee and Arkansas (as Crutchfield explains below) but also emotionally. It’s groovy and intricately layered and warm, unlike anything Crutchfield has put out with this project before. “If I could love you unconditionally, I– / Could iron out the edges of the darkest sky,” she sings. “For some of us, it ain’t enough.”
Crutchfield returns to that physical border in the video for “Fire.” Here’s her statement about the song:
The idea and melody for ‘Fire’ was dreamt up while driving over the Mississippi River from Memphis into West Memphis, AR, sun reflecting off the water which literally made West Memphis glow. The song’s written by me, to myself. It’s about the internal dialogue of shame surrounding mistakes you’ve made in the past and how we spiral and beat ourselves up when we slip. It’s meant to be a bit of a personal pep talk. If I can love myself unconditionally, then I can move through the world a little easier. If I can accept that I only have a partial view of the universe, and that I can’t know everything or control much of anything, then I can breathe a little easier, take better care of myself, and be closer to my own truth.
Finally after two years of sweat and tears, we are happy to announce that our third album “Truth or Consequences” will be out on the 13th of march 2020, courtesy of our new friends at Inertia Music and Polyvinyl Record Co.
They’ve shared the latest single from the record, “Cool For A Second,” which follows the previously shared “Right Track / Wrong Man.” It has that now-signature nostalgic and above the clouds feeling that Yumi Zouma’s best offerings give you. With both of the songs that we’ve heard so far, the album is shaping up to be another winner from the New Zealand outfit.
We think it’s our most special record yet, and we hope you do too. To celebrate, today we have released a new video for one of our favourite songs on the record, “Cool For A Second”, shot by Nick McKinlay (Julia Jacklin, Stella Donnelly, Merpire).
Wye Oak (Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack) have shared a brand new song, “Fear of Heights.” It follows “Fortune,” a new song they shared back in November . “Fear of Heights” is a bit more subdued than “Fortune” but soars on the strength of Wasner’s always sublime vocals.
Wasner had this to say about “Fear of Heights” in a press release: “This song’s central metaphor likens the deepening of a relationship to the feeling of ascending to the top of a very tall place. There’s something to be seen (or learned, or experienced) once you arrive, but for some there is also a fear that increases with every step upwards. You say it’s worth it for the view, but it’s impossible to know if that’s true until you get there to see it with your own eyes.”
For the first time since 2012, Wasner and Stack are now both living in the same city together, Durham, NC (home to their label Merge Records), which has allowed for renewed creativity and led to the band recording last summer. There’s no word yet on a new album.
Wye Oak released their last album, The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs, back in April 2018 via Merge. Since their last album, Stack launched his solo project, Joyero, releasing his debut album as Joyero, Release the Dogs, in August 2019 via Merge. Wasner, meanwhile, has been touring as part of Bon Iver’s band. A previous press release promised that the JOIN tour dates will feature an expanded live band and will find them not just performing Wye Oak songs, but also ones by Joyero and Wasner’s Flock of Dimes solo project.
The single, “Fear of Heights,” is out now on Merge Records.
