Halfway through Vagabon’s 2017 debut Infinite Worlds, Lætitia Tamko stepped away from her guitar. The song, “Mal a Laise,” was an exercise in atmosphere, with droning synth loops layered over reverb-heavy vocals murmured in both French and English. It stood at odds with the guitar-centric indie rock production that defined the rest of the record: It was a detour, but it almost felt like a homecoming. Maybe it was. Tamko’s sophomore effort, the self-titled, self-produced Vagabon, is a more formless affair, a cosmic journey through synthetic sounds, lush orchestral suites and lyrical self-realization.
The result is an ambitious album overflowing with generosity and empathy, warm in production and rich in theme, even if it largely lacks the punch that made Infinite Worlds so immediately memorable. But homes are made to shelter aspirations, dreams, fears, anxieties, hopes, doubts. Homes are sanctuaries, and that’s what Tamko has created with Vagabon
Vagabon’s “Every Woman,” from her self-titled album, out now on Nonesuch Records; vinyl out soon:
The New Pornographers new album, “In the Morse Code of Brake Lights”, sharing its first single, “Falling Down the Stairs of Your Smile.”In the Morse Code of Brake Lights released September 27th via the band’s own Collected Work imprint, in partnership with Concord.
The band’s last album was 2017’s Whiteout Conditions, also released on Collected Works/Concord. In a press release the band’s frontperson and songwriter Carl Newman (who also produced the album) says In the Morse Code of Brake Lights is an accidental concept record.
“I was about two-thirds of the way through the record when I began to notice that lyrically so much of it was pointing toward car songs,” he says. “The opening track is ‘You’ll Need a Backseat Driver,’ and that was a metaphor that seemed to be running through other songs, too. Next to the love song, I feel like the car song is one of the most iconic kinds of songs in pop music, from Chuck Berry to the present. There was so much of that throughout it that I started thinking: ‘Oh, no, there’s too many references to cars on this record!’ And then I thought, ‘No, that’s good-people might think it’s a concept album.'”
Of “Falling Down the Stairs of Your Smile” Newman had this to say in the press release: “There are so many songs like ‘the something of love’-you know, there’s ‘The Book of Love,’ ‘The Freeway of Love’…Then I thought of ‘falling down the stairs of your love,’ and I thought, that kind of works. I think it has that element of how do you deal with the ideas of love and happiness in this world right now? When current events are stressful, that makes a stress on people’s relationships, and you’re trying to figure out how to be happy in this loving relationship in this world that seems ugly at every turn, which is not as easy as it seems. So I like the metaphor of love as something that you fall down.”
Almost 10 years ago, The New Pornographers, the band behind one of the best recorded catalogs of the 2000s, released its least enjoyable album, Together. After three near-perfect records out of the gate (2000’s Mass Romantic, 2003’s Electric Version and 2005’s Twin Cinema) and another that’s still really good (2007’s Challengers), the forgettable back half of Together (and a couple clunky arrangements) felt like a potential first step into a downhill slide. So a decade later, The New Pornographers are back on an upward trajectory as the 2010s come to a close. Carl Newman and his motley assemblage of power-pop heroes have not only just released their third straight outstanding album, In the Morse Code of Brake Lights, they’ve continued a killer second act and cemented themselves as one of the great bands of the era. In the Morse Code of Brake Lights is the second consecutive New Pornos album without a handful of songs written and performed by Destroyer’s Dan Bejar, who contributed tunes to each of the band’s first six records. Some will argue his presence is missed—that the band now lacks the variety it once had. That may be true, but the trade-off is worth it: After years of feeling like an experiment, then a hobby (albeit a very productive one) and then a band pulling in a couple different directions, The New Pornographers now have coalesced around Carl Newman and his singular vision. Twenty years into their existence, they seem stronger than ever.
New album ‘In The Morse Code Of Brake Lights’ out September 27th, 2019.
Although Common Holly’s sophomore album, “When I say to you Black Lightning”, is engaging from its very opening notes, its thesis statement doesn’t arrive until four songs in: “I think we’ve been measured out for pain since birth,” Brigitte Naggar sings on the woodwind-flanked folk rumination “Measured”.
The album, a thrilling experiment in shattering the boundaries between folk, rock and occasionally punk, examines the human capacity to receive, cope with and deliver trauma. A huge leap from Naggar’s 2017 debut, Playing House, Black Lightning is rife with minimally detailed yet fully rendered character sketches, and Naggar’s deftness at seamlessly weaving dissonant guitar lines into her riveting stories elevates her music well above much of the crowded folk-adjacent field.
“When I say to you Black Lightning” out October 18th. This project is funded in part by FACTOR, the Government of Canada and Canada’s private radio broadcasters.
Chicago rockers Post Animal have returned with their brand new song “Safe Or Not,” just ahead of their upcoming US tour with Cage The Elephant. This is their first new song since 2018 and brings their guitar-heavy prog-rock sound it’s a slightly more dance-friendly and electronic direction that expands their sonic-palette into new uncharted territories that feel like a natural evolution for them.
Here’s a little bit about the song from the band themselves:
“We wanted to leave the content more open ended for the listener to navigate, but it’s about self reflection. We played around with more somber, serious lyrical content over a particularly dance-oriented song to juxtapose how one may feel internally versus how they’re outwardly portraying themselves in the moment.”
Enjoy a listen to “Safe Or Not” below
“Safe or Not (Extended Mix)” is the new single from Post Animal, out everywhere October 30th, 2019.
DIIV have just released a new album, “Deceiver”, on October 4th via Captured Tracks. This week they shared another song from the album, “Blankenship,” via a video. The tight track is akin to a shoegaze version of Sonic Youth’s “Titanium Exposé,” especially in the guitar sounds. Stout directed the video, which intercuts between the band performing the song indoors and a woman (Savannah Macias) seemingly lost in the desert.
Previously DIIV shared Deceiver’s first single, “Skin Game” . Then they shared another song from it, “Taker,” a somewhat languid shoegaze cut that grows with intensity as the track ends.
Deceiveris the band’s third album and the follow-up to 2016’s Is The Is Are. The band’s current lineup features Zachary Cole Smith (lead vocals, guitar), Andrew Bailey (guitar), Colin Caulfield (bass), and Ben Newman (drums). The album was recorded in Los Angeles in March 2019 with producer Sonny Diperri (My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails, Protomartyr), which is the first time the band has used an outside producer.
New Jersey band Pinegrove has announced that their new album “Marigold” will be released on January 17th, 2020, via Rough Trade Records. This announcement comes paired with the release of new song “Phase,” the second song released from the album following the album’s first single “Moment,” .
“Phase” has that now-signature urgent and emotional Pinegrove sound, packing a lot in it’s 2 1/2-minute runtime. Evan Stephens Hall wrote the song about those times you’re desperately trying to sleep but you can’t because your mind is racing with different ideas and anxieties.
The official music video captures this idea in a humorous fashion, which was directed by Colin Read. Find it posted below, along with the Marigold tracklist and some newly announced tour dates.
we’re also real psyched to report that we are working with Rough Trade Records! they’ve been terrific to work with so far & it’s an honor to be on their roster. may we also say! our tour is coming up—beginning, in fact, next week! we’ll be playing this song “moment” & perhaps some other new ones out there on the dusty trail.
28-Mar-20 Dublin, Ireland @ The Grand Social
30-Mar-20 Glasgow, UK @ SWG3 TV Studio
31-Mar-20 Manchester, UK @ Academy 2
01-Apr-20 Bristol, UK @ SWX
02-Apr-20 London, UK @ Electric Ballroom
The UK-based band composed of Billy Easter on bass, Sarah Datblygu on drums and Rivka Gillieron on vocals and guitar excel in creating atmospheric, erratic sounds with a jaunty disregard for anything mundane. Wetdog count a variety of top notch influences on Frauhaus!, citing Micachu, Syd Barrett and Euros Childs, with legendary graphic novel illustrator Robert Crumb and 1979 cult British horror flick “The Wicker Man” also flagged, the latter’s flashing play between gentle pastoral and darker reveals most evident on the twittering bird song and thick, stop-start chords of “Trees Fall.” Though each of the album’s 14 songs has a disjointed style and rhythm of its own, they bob and weave into each other with a connecting sense of joyful weirdness, darkly irreverent rather than pretentious; menacing at times, but in a deliriously fun way.
Fabulously uncompromising, it’s futile to attempt any generic labelling here; Wetdog delight in merging styles, setting keyboard and guitar melodies clashing gloriously against stubborn basslines, beginning songs in one manner only to change all the rules come the chorus. These helter-skelter tactics mean Frauhaus! has a kind of anarchic spontaneity to it, where the ground could shift at any moment. It’s an exciting atmosphere that evokes the tumultuous ethos of The Slits, made even more potent by the darker, Halloween-style motifs of The Need, that cover the corners of their songs with spiderwebs and vampire fangs.
Hiss Golden Messenger has released a new track from their upcoming album “Terms of Surrender”, which comes out September 20th. The hypnotic and moody “Cat’s Eye Blue” finds lead singer/songwriter M.C. Taylor taking emotional inventory and gaining a new perspective focusing on what is fundamentally most important.
Taylor says of the track, “‘Cat’s Eye Blue’ is a song about anxiety. And about fathers. How to express ourselves in real terms. How to cut the poison out to avoid further harm. ‘Is this wicked word too bad to be spoken? You let the heart attack in. One taste and it’s broken.’ I sing about fathers—my own, specifically—because I almost lost mine during the writing of this record. He’s still here—I hear him outside playing with my kids right now—but I’ve been thinking about him a lot this past year.”
“Cat’s Eye Blue” follows the June release of “I Need a Teacher”, the first single off of Terms of Surrender. The inspiring video for the song was filmed during the statewide North Carolina Association of Educators’ Day of Action demonstration. The reaction and support since the release of the song and clip has been exceptional.
“Cat’s Eye Blue” from the new record Terms of Surrender, out September 20th on Merge Records.
Brisbane-based duo Amaringo release their debut album, “I Woke Up This Morning After a Dream”, out via Melbourne label Healthy Tapes (Stella Donnelly, Rainbow Chan, Dianas).
The project of drummer/vocalist Allie Wu Lin and guitarist/bassist Christian Driscoll,Amaringo create expansive and woozy atmospheres with tinges of psych that never stray too far away from their ambitious and beautiful songwriting.
Fragmented between writing and recording half of the album in a recording studio, then a year later completing the rest in a more improvised fashion, the resulting record is a startlingly consistent and accomplished piece of work. From the acoustic strums of the 70’s-inspired I Woke Up, to the major-minor drones of Saguaro, and the 7-and-a-half minute monumental Her Way, the album has no shortage of timeless moments sure to appeal to fans of La Luz and Sharon Van Etten.
Amaringo’s debut LP I Woke Up This Morning After a Dream is out October 30th digitally and on limited cassette via Healthy Tapes and features the singles Sacred and Her Way.
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.
A year following the release of Wild Nothing’s fourth studio album, Indigo, Wild Nothing share a look into their sweeping live set ahead of the band’s November 2019 tour dates. Recorded in November 2018, Live from Brooklyn Steel is in-depth survey of the band’s celebrated catalog, showcasing songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jack Tatum’s versatility and strength in composition.
