The band comprises of Primus vocalist and bassist Les Claypool and Sean Lennon, with the follow-up to 2016’s Monolith Of Phobos titled South Of Reality.
Released on February 22nd of this year via ATO Records. Speaking about his partnership with Claypool, Lennon tells Rolling Stone: “We are great friends indeed, and I guess I’m not nervous in quite the same way as I was in the beginning, but I still make sure to do as much preparation as possible.
“Ideas always come quick for us, and I think that’s why we like working together. But playing with Les is like knowing you’re gonna be playing tennis with Rafael Nadal – it makes you wanna brush up on a few things before you get on the court.”
The video for “Blood & Rockets,” from The Claypool Lennon Delirium, taken from their second album release “South Of Reality” suddenly I am no longer offended by Claypool’s sophomoric sense of humor and no longer bored with Mr. Lennon. Quite the contrary! “South Of Reality” is a smart, exciting, well-played, and admittedly, somewhat out of control mix of Pepper-era Beatles, Barrett-era Floyd, and all the listenable bits from your favorite psych and prog records. It has more than a few kitchen sinks, but always keeps you engaged by never forgetting to toss in a great hook or melody with everything else. This one is consistently entertaining, something that becomes increasingly more difficult to say.
From The Claypool Lennon Delirium’s new album “South of Reality” out Feb 22nd, 2019.
Alison Moorer has been making records for years, She has a wonderful voice and she can certainly write a song. But it wasn’t until her collaboration of covers with her sister Shelby Lynne, 2017’s “Not Dark Yet,” that I got on board. I wish I could tell you the precise reason why 20 years of prior recording failed to pique my interest. But I can’t. Wrong place, wrong time, I guess. Now seems to be the right time, as her new release, “Blood,” the companion to her memoir of the same name, has really shaken me up.
Moorer’s not so secret life includes among other things, a divorce from husband Steve Earle, and of course, the 1986 murder-suicide of her parents, both of which I imagine take up more than a few pages in the book. While I plan on reading the memoir, until then, “Blood,” the album, gets heavy rotation, thanks to some truly amazing songs, like the beautifully heartbreaking “I’m The One To Blame,” a song with lyrics written by her father and found in a box, or “All I Wanted (Thanks Anyway),” a song Jagger & Richards have been trying to write since 1975.
From the album “Blood” – the musical companion piece to Allison Moorer’s memoir by the same name.
There’s something different about The Rails on their brilliant third album. It’s not just the sound of the record, which is harder, tougher and rockier than ever before. Cancel The Sun is melodic and immediate, a record that brings together the musical pasts of Kami Thompson and James Walbourne – her family heritage, as the daughter of Linda and Richard Thompson, and sister of Teddy; his as guitarist for Son Volt, The Pogues and The Pretenders – in a record that sounds like a pure version of themselves. You could spend hours casting around for a term to describe it, but maybe the best one would be pinched from an Eliza Carthy album title: Anglicana – music that might originate in America, but is clearly and resolutely English.
Their debut, “Fair Warning” was among my favorite record of the year for two years in a row. That’s how much I loved that record. “Cancel The Sun” is their third, and Kami Thompson and husband, Pretenders guitarist James Walbourne have expanded their musical horizons a bit further from the British folk of their debut. The sublime harmonies are still there. While some of the harder rocking tunes don’t quite work for me, “Cancel The Sun” has one of the most perfect Side Twos in recent memory, including my favorite song of the year, by anyone, “Something Is Slipping My Mind.”
In 2015, when Avi Zahner-Isenberg announced the end of Avi Buffalo, he said that although the band life was not for him, he would continue making music and maybe even release some, joking that “I will probably honestly be 40 or 50 when that happens and extremely fat.”
Well, the songwriter-composer-producer-guitar whiz is still only 29, and he’s looking mighty trim in recent photos on social media. And this week brought a new Avi Buffalo song, “Skeleton Painting,” a epic 6 1/2-minute journey through the hallowed halls of orchestral and prog rock. The scope is Floydian.
To rewind: Avi Buffalo burst out of Long Beach (reluctantly, as it turned out) as a teenager, hailed as a prodigy. In 2010, he released a self-titled album for Sub Pop, followed by “At Best Cuckold” in 2014. Both earned deserved acclaim. Since he checked out of the band life, he has dabbled in ambient and improvisational music, collaborated with artists such as Litronix and Ari Prado, toured Europe and pursued painting. He’s also playing in the new band Sink Drinkers.
“Skeleton Painting” was some two years in the works. It was recorded in living rooms and various studios, including the Lab Studio in Highland Park (with Frankie Siragusa engineering) and Woodshed Music in Long Beach. Production comes courtesy of DeRock Tucker (who also played bass) and Dave Andersen, and the lavish arrangements feature strings by Meg Webb and woodwinds by Dave Dillon.
Dense lyrically and complex yet warm sonically, “Skeleton Painting” feels like some sort of thesis, a song that begs to be read as well as heard.
A Beautiful Thing: IDLES Live at Le Bataclan is the brand new live album from IDLES, recorded at the famous venue Le Bataclan in Paris on 3rd December 2018, at the close of a 90 date world tour. The album celebrates the band’s success over the last two years, featuring songs from Brutalism and Joy as an Act of Resistance, and highlights their overall message of unity, and of healing through community.
“Our show at Bataclan was the end of a very long journey for us. On that tour we learnt so much about ourselves, each other and the audiences we have grown with over the past 10 years. That show was nothing short of catharsis and nothing more than love. We love what we do and the people who have carried us here, there was no hiding that at Bataclan and we are so very grateful that the moment was captured in all its glory, love and fatigue. Long live the open minded and long live the moment.”
out this Friday. IDLES ‘A Beautiful Thing: Live At Le Bataclan’. Available with 3 different sleeves and coloured vinyl combinations.
Television (Live at Le Bataclan) from the album ‘A Beautiful Thing: IDLES Live at Le Bataclan’ released on Partisan Records on 6th December 2019.
Freshly signed to Bon Iver and Aaron Dessner’s 37d03d label, Eve Owen introduces herself with a beautiful piano ballad offering a hopeful outlook from a position of abject loneliness. Directed by Hannah Owen for 37d03dEve Owen is a singer-songwriter based in London. Eve’s debut single, the piano ballad “She Says” is an intimate portrait of loneliness and longing, nearly devastating in effect but infinitely softened by the warmth of Owen’s vocals, the unbreakable hope in her delivery. Eve is also known for having lent vocals to The National song “Where Is Her Head” from the band’s most recent album, I Am Easy To Find.
Alice Boman is back with new single “Don’t Forget About Me”, lifted from her forthcoming debut album “Dream On”. Expanding on her new offering, Bomansays, “This song is about holding on to a fantasy about something or someone. It has happened to me a few times when I’ve been into someone, or the idea of someone, but known that it’s not gonna last or happen for various reasons. You know how it’s gonna go, but you still want hold on to some kind of illusion, just a little bit longer. You’re in some kind of dreamlike state, just to prolong the feeling. Dancing is a way for me to do that. To be in your body, in the feeling, in the moment.”
“Don’t Forget About Me” is the fourth single to be shared from Dream On, after last month’s “The More I Cry”, “Wish We Had More Time” and “This Is Where It Ends”.
The new track features drums from John Eriksson of Peter Bjorn & John. Boman’s soft-focus indie pop is delicate to the touch, but delivers a hefty emotional punch capable of delivering an unlikely K.O.
Squirrel Flower – the moniker of Ella O’Connor Williams – recently announced her debut album, “I Was Born Swimming” out January 31st on Full Time Hobby. Along with the announcement she shared the video for lead single ‘Red Shoulder’; today she has followed up with new single ‘Headlights’. Showcasing a gentler side to her songwriting, ‘Headlights’ comes with a stunning video by Bao Ngo.
The track is tender and beautiful, exemplifying the way her lyrics stick firmly in the mind of the listener, lingering long after the track is over.
Speaking of the track Squirrel Flower says: “Headlights takes place in a moment of solitary reflection; a glance back and a glance forward. I wrote it on tour driving through the pioneer valley in Massachusetts in some heavy fog. Suddenly I was aware of the space the car was plummeting through, both physical and temporal.”
Bao Ngo says of the video: The video for ‘Headlights’ was inspired by cheesy, classic imagery of actors riding in cars through LA— evoking glamour and sunshine. Here, we ran with the concept and placed it in a Massachusetts suburb on a cold winter day, driving around in circles in a convertible, shooting from morning til night, playing with a slightly warped sense of time so that the video would feel a little cold and a little lonely, and perhaps at times a little jarring, while still aiming to subtly reference the beauty of older Hollywood films.”
Throughout the 12 songs that make up I Was Born Swimming, landscapes change and relationships shift. The lyrics feel like effortless expressions of exactly the way it feels to change — abstract, determined and hopeful.
Squirrel Flower’s music is ethereal and warm, brimming over with emotional depth but with a steely eyed bite and confidence in it’s destination. The band on I Was Born Swimming plays with delicate intention, keeping the arrangements natural and light while Williams‘ lead guitar is often fiercely untethered. The album was tracked live, with few overdubs, at The Rare Book Room Studio in New York City with producer Gabe Wax (Adrienne Lenker, Palehound, Cass McCombs). The musicians were selected by Wax and folded themselves into the songs effortlessly. At the heart of the album lives Williams’ haunting voice and melancholic, soulful guitar.
“Headlights” is taken from Squirrel Flower’s debut full length album, I Was Born Swimming, out January 31st, 2020.
The more I listen to SRSQ, the less I hear Kennedy Ashlyn’s grief. Though the project was born of tragedy, last year’s debut Unreality was comprised of dream-pop ballads of varying levels of elation with a general recipe recreated for a two-track follow-up this past month. “Temporal Love” is a bold opener mirroring the rapturous choruses of “Cherish,” though “Unkept” stands out as a more unique sample of Ashlyn’s operatic vocals soaring over a blaring synth-driven beat, culminating in an industrial ecstasy rarely heard this side of Downward Spiral. The manipulated, moaning samples that open the track quickly give way to something considerably more optimistic, as she opts for an unexplored promised land she hopes is more palatable than the home she’s always known.
From SRSQ’s “Temporal Love / Unkept” 7″ single released on Dais Records, Autumn of 2019. SRSQ is the solo project of singer and songwriter Kennedy Ashlyn, the founding member of the bay-area dream pop duo Them Are Us Too. SRSQ’s pulse began after the loss of Kennedy’s closest friend and Them Are Us Too collaborator, Cash Askew, in the tragic Ghost Ship fire of 2016. Driven by this sudden, heartbreaking loss, SRSQ became the vehicle for Kennedy’s transformative process for her to explore nostalgia, reflection, and reconciliation, manifesting in the aural landscape of her 2018 debut album, Unreality. It’s been a year since the release of Unreality and 2019 has taken SRSQ around the world, touring extensively with Black Queen and Uniform, sold out performances in support of Cold Cave and Godflesh, tours with Torche and Drab Majesty, and a current run with TR/ST this fall.
Amid performances and writing in preparation for her upcoming 2020 album, Ashlyn went into the studio with producer Jorge Elbrecht, who mixed down two new tracks featured on the 7” single Temporal Love b/w Unkept. Wrapped in ethereal gauze and dreamlike textures, what SRSQ presents on this single are undeniably love songs. The B-side, “Unkept” presents an almost ceremonial incantation channeling the likes of Lisa Gerrard’s finest moments. Stirring in echoes and reverb, Ashlyn emerges alongside a slow and steady beat – rising and building: “Speak softly, my love” to create the perfect counter-balance to the dreamy pop sensibilities of “Temporal Love.”
