It took me just 37 seconds to realise how great Gang Of Youths when they released their second studio album,album “Go Farther In Lightness” was. that it would be the album of the year. This album was a game-changer for me and this band. With a nod towards the optimism and kindness the band have found by surviving their various ordeals, this record continues the work that has already so indelibly imprinted on fans across the world. Go Farther In Lightness bears the scars of the bands painful history, flashing their wounds with the same candor as The Positions but seeking to draw new lessons from their struggle to endure. Attempting to compartmentalise the past five years into 16 tracks is no mean feat, but the band come away with songs which encourage listeners to persevere as theyve tried to, empathising with those whove brushed up against death, suffering and loss every step of the way.
Before Go Farther In Lightness, I hadn’t really paid Gang Of Youths a whole lot of attention but as soon as I heard the opening lines of Fear & Trembling and Dave Le’aupepe’s vocals I knew they were a band for me. At the album’s heart though, it’s Le’aupepe’s candour that draws listeners in and holds them tight. This is the type of music that makes you want to keep living. Even when you feel like all hope is lost.
“Go Farther In Lightness” will also prove that frontman Dave Le’aupepe as one of Australia’s foremost songwriters” and it’s a sentiment I stand by. It’s also become very apparent given the attention the group have received since the album’s August 2017 release. Foo Fighters and Mumford & Sons don’t pick you as stadium tour supports without good reason, you know? Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz also called them the “best fucking band in the world right now”.
This an album of earnest, honest and vivid lyricism from Le’aupepe, paired with striking and varied arrangements from guitarist Joji Malani, keyboardist Jung Kim, bass player Max Dunn and drummer Donnie Borzestowski that draw on everything from Bruce Springsteen to classical music.
”The whole point of Go Farther In Lightness was to make, and is to make, the arc of my life, more or less, about the process of repairing, the process of being more human, more empathic, more authentic to myself, more aware of the people around me, more aware of the world. To open myself back up to love and back up to life and try to negate the things in me that are life negating.”
Last year they broke venue records in Australia with their epic Say Yes To Life tour, which saw 21 shows, the launch of their own festival and thousands of people in attendance.
Whitney’s debut album, “Light Upon the Lake”, came out on June 3rd, 2016. It was the kind of record perfectly suited to early June, its sunny guitar riffs personifying the promise of summer: the parties, the road trips, the romances. The now indie classic began with an ode to loneliness on “No Woman,” but it quickly transitioned into something more hopeful, the search for golden days on the open road in a “trash heap two-seat” with nowhere to go. The duo, made up of Max Kakacek and Julien Ehrlich, reveled in the unknown and found happiness in spontaneity.
This year Whitney has returned to delight us with its delicate indie folk ambient sound. Its soft and enveloping music seems to be designed for rainy afternoons of tea and blanket. In his album time seems to pass slowly between very bright everyday places. Although critics agree that this new work has been little risky and has lost some of the freshness of its first album, it is still an exquisite album.
In contrast their new album, “Forever Turned Around”, is the Chicago band’s follow up (which finally sees the light of day on August. 30th embodies the very end of summer.
That auspicious romance didn’t quite work out the way they had envisioned it when pulling out of the driveway—it’s now dissolving right in front of them. Lyrics like “You’re still a friend of mine while you’re drifting away” (“Friend of Mine”) or “Tears are falling one by one / I can feel you giving up” (“Giving Up”) have replaced the wide-eyed optimism of their debut. Forever Turned Around is the reality to Light Upon the Lake’s expectation—summer is over and with it, the fling that defined it.
Forever Turned Around is like the return of a good friend you’ve not seen for some time – but there’s something lost or broken.
There’s always been a wistful melancholy coursing through vocalist/drummer Julien Ehrlich and guitarist Max Kakacek odes but where Light Upon The Lake was a wide-eyed love letter to the future Forever Turned Around seems more of sigh to what’s gone, and will never be rekindled.
There’s genuine sadness and longing in Ehrlich‘s beautiful falsetto. See the way he coos desperation in Valleys (My Love), “There’s gotta be another way, I’ve been on my own all day, pretending everything’s alright, we’ve been drifting apart sometime.”
This feeling is echoed right across Forever Turned Around‘s instrumentation as their folksy-pop doesn’t effuse the bright spark of their debut, instead it is replaced by a pensive, mournful or downright sorrowful tone – see intro and lead single’s Giving Up‘s tearful waltz before their characteristic introduction of brass brightens up the narrative in the final third.
Equally downbeat are the final three tracks which neatly segue into a triptych of soulful blues; Day & Night with it’s swoonsome guitars aligned to lyrics about drifting and feeling strange, Friend of Mine which takes The Band‘s template of Americana wrapping delicious harmonies around a longing ragtime tune before the title track’s closing statement: “Has your heart grown heavy by now, because mine’s already on the ground,” sums up the album’s over all feel.
There are, however, brighter notes – the brass-to-the-fore instrumental of Rhododendron plays on their superlative nature as a tight-ass live outfit before fading out way too soon. While Before I Know It is a simply gorgeous track uplifted by a final flourish of lush sweeping orchestration.
By taking the same approach as their quite magnificent debut, Whitney have repeated that blueprint, yet with thinly layered woe Forever Turned Aroundis a without a doubt a more difficult listen which will inevitably underwhelm some of their fan base.
That said, there’s few bands out there who can create such beautiful timeless music as this and make it seem so easy. Expect tears.
Forever Turned Around, the new album from Whitney, out August 30th, 2019 on Secretly Canadian Records.
Perfectly imperfect – that’s one way to describe Los Angeles based punk act, The Regrettes. Writing songs that proudly bear a brazen and unabashed attitude in the vein of acts Courtney Barnett or Karen O – with a pop aesthetic reminiscent of 50’s and 60’s acts a la the Temptations or Buddy Holly – the LA based four piece create infectious, punk driven tracks.
Lead by outspoken frontwoman, Lydia Night, and comprised of Genessa Gariano on guitar, Sage Nicole on bass and drummer Maxx Morando, the group have left the LA rock scene floored, managing to capture the hearts of jaded rock critics while opening for acts like Kate Nash, Jack Off Jill, Bleached, Pins, Deep Vally and more. With nothing but demos available online, the group are already beginning to generate hype, from outlets like NPR, and with NYLON already heralding them them as a “punk act you should be listening to”
Angie McMahon is an Australian musician who loves honest songwriting and romantic melodies, with songs that ruminate on life, love and takeaway food. Angie loves to write and perform across the full dynamic spectrum, shifting between gravelly intimacy and pounding rock.
One of the standout discoveries at this past South By Southwest, was Australian artist Angie McMahon has now released her debut LP on Dual Tone Records, a partnership she announced during the festival where she was awarded the Grulke Prize for Best Developing International Act. Considering she has only released five or six tracks for us to spin incessantly since then (and they are, by all means, each incredible) we’ve been ready for this album since first hearing McMahon’s guitar fill the vaulted ceilings of a church in Austin.
McMahon’s gorgeous vocals range over somber folk melodies, evoking passionate emotions in anyone within earshot. Look no further than the stunning energy of “Keeping Time” for the essence of one of the finest vocalists and songwriters we’ve had the pleasure of discovering this year.
I don’t have to do anything more than read the name of the album to have the chorus of the title-track stuck in my head, and it’s a reminder that although the Nottingham troupe put so much into their progressive style and vocal harmonies and arrangements, and a more conceptual theme in the case of Everybody’s Going to Die — their answer to 2018’s excellent Science Fiction — their roots are in songcraft, and it’s the foundation of songcraft that lets them soar. Would be higher on the list if it weren’t so new.
Church of the Cosmic Skull are not only one of the most exciting rock bands in the world today, but also an ever-growing spiritual organization, spreading the light of the Cosmic Rainbow across this planet and beyond.
The combination of Hammond organ, electric cello, guitar, bass, drums and six-part vocal harmony completes the 7 piece psych-prog-pop-rock powerhouse. Fans of ELO, Black Sabbath, Fleetwood Mac, Queen, Deep Purple et al have been waiting for a new torch-bearer since the late 70s: the wait is over.
Brought together by songwriter Bill Fisher, the group features some of the best musicians in the universe:
Band Members
Bill Fisher – Guitar & Vocals;
Michael Wetherburn – Hammond Organ & Vocals;
Amy Nicholson – Electric Cello & Vocals;
Loz Stone – Drums;
Sam Lloyd – Bass & Vocals;
Jo Joyce – Vocals;
Caroline Cawley – Vocals
If life were fair, then things would be easier the second time around. But music history is littered with bands who have clattered headfirst into the hurdle marked ‘sophomore slump’. Not The Big Moon, though. You’ll find them soaring clear in the outside lane.
The London quartet’s debut LP, Love In The 4th Dimension, rode a quirky wave of guitar-pop to a Mercury Prize nomination back in 2017, and its follow up Walking Like We Do is a worthy successor that melds controlled experimentation with a road-tested understanding of what makes the band tick. Its fresh palette – soaring synths, ringing piano intros, stacked vocal harmonies – is a perfect fit that took a little getting used to.
“It was a new experience writing for an audience that already exists and expects something,” vocalist and guitarist Jules Jackson admits. “For a few months, I put too much pressure on myself. After a while, we realised we could make any kind of music, and we didn’t have to copy the first album. We could do anything. I felt a lot more freedom after that.”
After wrapping up touring on Love In The 4th Dimension, The Big Moon pressed pause. Guitarist Soph Nathan released an excellent record with Our Girl – an experience she equates to swapping brains – while Jackson eventually settled back into writing mode. The initial roadblocks she describes came from a place of over-familiarity. Specifically, they came from her guitar.
“It was quite a long process of trying to find new ways to write songs,” she says. “Every time I sat down and tried to write in the way that I always have done, I would write the same kind of song. Your hands go to the same shapes on the guitar, and you have the little things that you instinctively do. I started playing the piano a lot more.”
At the same time, Jackson was adjusting to writing from a fresh perspective. Like the rest of us, her world isn’t the same as it was three or four years ago, and Walking Like We Do acknowledges the weird, frightening landscape outside its window. “I don’t think I wanted to write an album that was all about distraction and forgetting,” she says. “There is definitely a time and a place for the right song to come into your life and give you a bit of a break from thinking or trying to articulate things, but you always crash down to earth in the end.
“When I was writing the first album I was falling head over heels in love, and that was all I cared about. Those songs were the sound of me trying to process that. The last couple of years, it feels like I’ve grown up and the world has changed. Things got a lot stranger, and I think this album is us trying to process that and translate it into something that makes sense. It doesn’t.”
Aided and abetted by Nathan and the rhythm section of Celia Archer and Fern Ford, who have parlayed their roles as bassist and drummer into multifaceted synth and sample work, Jackson eventually assembled an ambitious, melodically florid set of songs. With so much going on, room had to be made for the guitars that provided such a giddy rush on album one.
In a canny move, they sought to isolate them in empty pockets of space, dropping droning distortion over the outro of the opener It’s Easy Then, or twisting corkscrew riffs into the pop confection Why. On the loping, addictive single Your Light, the guitars are a clean, rhythmic counterpoint to the song’s driving pace. “Each guitar line has a reason behind it,” Nathan says. “With the first album, the instinct was to keep layering them.”
Jackson adds: “We really wanted to try new things, which does lead to picking and choosing where you put the guitar. On It’s Easy Then, there are none for the whole thing until the very last chorus. When Soph starts start playing – it’s like two notes – there’s so much emotion and joy because you haven’t had it yet. When you get a taste of it, it’s the best. It’s better than if you had played it for the whole song.”
Walking Like We Do was recorded in Atlanta with producer Ben H Allen III, who has worked alongside everyone from Deerhunter to Belle & Sebastian in the past. “We got on the phone and he was so excited about all of our demos,” Jackson says. “He had listened to them really deeply and sincerely loved them. He became like a fifth member of the band.” Nathan adds: “He was asking Jules about the lyrics, what they meant, what the intentions were for each song. He got into it before we even fully decided to go.”
Jackson and Nathan took their beloved guitars – a Gibson Les Paul Special Double Cut and a G&L ASAT Classic respectively – along for the ride and, when in the studio, also mingled with a handful of Telecasters, including one kitted out with a Bigsby tailpiece.
“They had the head of a Twin and a Vox AC30 in the control room,” Nathan says. “They’d link it up with different cabs. It was nice to be in the room and have the control with the head but also be able to just switch it out with lots of cabs and make different sounds. We normally use our own amps, but it just felt like there were so many options. You’d just keep going until you got the sound that felt right.”
Walking Like We Do is the sort of record that vindicates the choices made along the way. It doubles down on certain elements of The Big Moon’s style while boldly changing things up elsewhere. It feels right. “We’ve learnt we can be anything,” Jackson says. “As long as it’s us singing and us writing the lyrics and us writing the songs, we can play anything and do anything. It’ll sound like The Big Moon.”
Walking Like We Do by The Big Moon is out on 10th January on Fiction Records.
Holiday Ghosts are back with their second LP “West Bay Playroom”, the follow-up to their acclaimed self-titled debut album from 2017. Originally starting out as a solo project from Sam Stacpoole the band evolved into a partnership with Katja Rackin, before turning into a full band with the debut album – showcasing a primitive rock ’n’ roll sound that’s been compared to The Modern Lovers and The Velvet Underground alongside current garage rock acts, and praised by the likes of The FADER, Stereogum, BrooklynVegan and KEXP. For West Bay Playroom the band’s refined their sound, with Stacpoole and Rackin being joined by Ryan Cleave on bass and Charlie Fairbairnon on guitar, offering a cleaner and more focused set of songs while breaking new ground and experimenting with influences from country, blues, spaghetti western soundtracks and more.
The California band returns with a fifth album also with a sound that navigates between the garage and the psychedelia, which will transport you to a B movie on a disc full of speed and distortion.
Frankie and the Witch Fingers’ latest LP, “ZAM”, bleeds beyond borders and boundaries. Its opening preternatural sounds bubble up out of the primordial soup, spilling into our world, invading the inner recesses of the listener’s mind. Like a two-headed snake wrapped around the skull, the album pendulates between winding instrumentals and dancey riffs that pop like supernovas out of the black void. Just when a song goes one way, it propels another through long stretches of a cosmic inferno.
Bringing glimmers of krautrock and funk, its eleven tracks unleash a versatile and tenacious weight, slithering between the sexy, the aggressive, the vivacious, and the disorienting—until the living invasion is felt—ZAM—a supernatural entity summoned by four madmen obsessed with tearing open a gateway to dark space. After being pulled apart atom-by-atom, the listener is reconfigured on the other side, born unto starry wasteland. Where head is separated from body. Where music is seen and apocalyptic soundscapes flow to revelation. A funhouse undercurrent pulses through the album’s epoch, reflecting a carnival mosaic shrewdly lulling and doggedly brutal. As one track bleeds into the next, that hour of running time becomes wormhole travel, until the listener returns earthbound, transmuted, craving more odyssey.
The late 80’s and early 90’s were a huge influence for many new artists. But when they cite sounds from great artists like Johnny Marr, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, and the Beach Boys, you know they are on track to something great. Combining up-beat drum beats, melodic bass riffs, jingly guitar leads, and fluttery lighter-than-air vocals, Tallies gives out a soft, yet bouncy ray of sunshine not unlike The Sundays’ debut album Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. Tallies bridges that long lost sound with yet a new and youthful take on something all their own.
Coming out of Toronto, this indie pop band recently formed this year by lead singer and guitarist Sarah Cogan and guitarist Dylan Franklin. With Cian O’Neill on drums and Stephen Pitman on bass they release their debut album via Kanine Records and Fear of Missing Out.
Jingly, jangly, and memorable, Tallies hit the mark and leave a lasting impression with their debut album.
Sometimes you need an amazingly crafted Swedegaze pop album, and sometimes that album will kick in your door, shower you with kisses, then proceed to back its time capsule steamroller over your face. The band’s debut album “Last Forever” from 2015 was a surprise to many, not just because of its shoegaze influences but because of the depth and maturity of the songwriting. Unlike many Swedish bands Westkust didn’t fit the framework of the indie rock or the indie pop that have engulfed the guitar based music scene in Sweden . Instead they walked down their own road and followed the same path like shoegaze guitar heroes such as The Jesus and Mary Chain and that kind of patented quiet-loud dynamic that have inspired many bands.
Four years after they released their debut album Westkust are back with their sophomore self-titled record, but it’s a band that experience transitional times. First, original members Gustav and Hugo left the band to focus on other projects, but with the new line-up entailing Brian Cukrowski and Pär Carlsson added to Julia Bjernelind and Philip Söderlind, there’s greater focus on Westkust; second on Luxury Records,
