Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard has shared another single off her debut solo album “Jaime”. This one shows off a slightly softer side compared to the previous single, and it comes with a video starring Terry Crews.
“Stay High” is as gentle and stripped-back as what you imagined Howard’s solo work would sound like. Easy acoustic strumming, warm, unembellished percussion and what truly sounds like a toy piano put Howard’s stunning bluesy vocals at the forefront. There’s no big chorus or blaring, thundering instrumentals à la Sound & Color; “Stay High” is smooth and bright—another easy entry point into the rest of the musician’s forthcoming solo project.
From the debut solo album “Jaime” set for release on September 20th, 2019.
A mere three months after the release of their critically-acclaimed “U.F.O.F”., Big Thief have announced a second LP this year. “Two Hands” will be released on October 11th via 4AD Records and its first scorching single “Not.”
Recorded 30 miles outside El Paso at Sonic Ranch Studio — surrounded by 3,000 acres of pecan nut orchards — the Brooklyn band called Two Hands “the earth twin” to its sister record U.F.O.F., known as “the celestial twin” (that LP was recorded in a cabin in the woods of Washington State). The new album was recorded live with almost no overdubs, giving it a really raw desert feel.
“Two Hands has the songs that I’m the most proud of; I can imagine myself singing them when I’m old,” vocalist Adrianne Lenker has said in a statement. “Musically and lyrically, you can’t break it down much further than this. It’s already bare-bones.” It’s our 4th record, Two Hands. . We started making this the week after making U.F.O.F. it’s hard to put into words how much this one means to us. we are so proud of it and we are so steamed up to share it with you all. once again, Dom Monks on the board and Andrew Sarlo in the producers seat.
‘Not’ by Big Thief, from their upcoming album ‘Two Hands’, out October 11 on 4AD Records.
Until its removal in 2015, an enormous sign for the store King Of Jeans—depicting a towering, shirtless man bending over to kiss a kneeling woman—loomed large in South Philadelphia. It’s no coincidence that the band Queen of Jeans, who also hail from South Philly, took their name from the sign’s egalitarian-minded replacement. Since releasing their eponymous EP in 2016, the group has made a point of celebrating female identity, in both their music and their public persona. That message is amplified on their dazzling sophomore album, If you’re not afraid, I’m not afraid. While the group previously incorporated elements of doo-wop into their indie rock anthems, here they pull from a wide swath of rock history, embracing a sumptuous hi-fi sound, to deliver a resounding message of resilience in the face of dissolving relationships. It also addresses the death of frontwoman Miriam Devora’s mother (whose photograph graces the album’s cover), and the challenges of being a queer woman in fraught times.
Devora doesn’t merely process these traumas individually—she identifies situations in which they intertwine. “Tell Me,” for instance, turns an account of gaslighting (“You can’t sign away my rights on a dotted line”) into a testament to Devora’s resolve: “I’m a woman / And a woman knows her mind.” In “Rum Cheeks,” which channels the stately melancholy of Leonard Cohen, she searches for herself in the context of a tense relationship: “At your place / At our place?” she asks deftly.
Instead of shying away from these moments of conflict, Queen of Jeans confront them with bombast. The epic kiss-off “Get Lost” evolves into a euphoric pop anthem in the vein of the B-52’s “Roam” or Fleetwood Mac at their most grandiose. Fueled by Patrick Wall’s thunderous drums and Mattie Glass’s vivid guitar figures, tracks like “Tell Me” and “Centuries” evoke the smart arena-rock of The Bends-era Radiohead. The album ends with “Take It All Away,” a cleansing, cathartic tidal wave of sound. “Break down that sorrow,” Devora cries alongside the tempestuous arrangement, summing up the album’s mission statement, “Rebuild things tomorrow.”
Itasca announces her sublime new album “Spring”, written in acentury-old adobe house in New Mexico. Feat. Chris Cohen, James Elkington, & members of Bitchin’ Bajas & Sun Araw, it contains her most quietly dazzling songs to date. Hear “Bess’s Dance” below, Itasca, is the mesmeric project of California songwriter Kayla Cohen, she has announced her new album Spring, due out November 1st. “Bess’s Dance,” describing it as “a beguiling rumination. Kayla Cohen’s got a voice that glows like the sun at dusk, and plays acoustic guitar with a nimble yet intricate touch.”
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 region, the sublime Spring—its title summoning both season and scarce local water sources—dowses a devotional path to high desert headwaters. James Elkington adds cinematic string arrangement graces “Bess’s Dance”, and members of Gun Outfit and Sun Araw.
More than 35 years after co-founding Sonic Youth, Kim Gordon has announced that she will release her debut solo album. The new LP – dubbed “No Home Record” – will drop on October. 11th via Matador Records.
“‘Why a solo record? And why now?,’” Gordon was questioned via press release. “I don’t know, but it wouldn’t have happened without the persistence of [producer] Justin Raisen. Living in LA the last few years it feels like home, but the transience of the place makes it feel sometimes like no home.”
The announcement comes with the music video for a new single, “Sketch Artist.” In it, Gordon portrays a ride-share driver (for a company called “Unter”), while “Broad City” star Abbi Jacobson makes a cameo.
From Kim Gordon’s new album ‘”No Home Record” released on Matador Records on October 11th.
“What is your wish? What do you expect?” Cross Record’s self-titled third album begins with Emily Cross’s disembodied voice intoning from an otherworldly vacuum. In the three years since her last album, Cross has divorced, quit drinking, become a death doula, started the observational podcast “What I’m Looking At,” and toured with Sub Pop’s Loma, the trio she formed with Dan Duszynski on drums and Jonathan Meiburg (Shearwater) on guitar /vocals. On Cross Record, she guides the listener like a sonic Virgil, delivering a textured soundscape of meditative curiosity, akin to Low’s Double Negative, Broadcast’s The Noise Made By People and Radiohead’s Kid A.
Having recorded 2016’s Wabi Sabi at home between work and sleep hours, Cross did the opposite for Cross Record, writing the album while living on a secluded part of Mexico’s coast. The collaborative atmosphere of Loma challenged Cross to experiment with her sound, detuning her voice and obstructing its clarity in specific moments. As such, Cross Record is primarily a showcase for Cross’s vocal style, as she pushes her range and engages with a multitude of approaches at every turn.
Cross Record, aka Emily Cross, releases her new single The Fly today off her self-titled album (out August 2nd) and we hope you’re as excited as we are! The Fly serves as the successor for Cross’ previous single, PSYOL My Castle. Both songs foreshadow the “voyage through the psyche” that the album is bound to take its listeners on,
With the release of The Fly comes the announcement of Cross Record’s North American Tour, as well as a series of Living Funerals that Emily will perform herself.
Cross Record, out August 2nd on Ba Da Bing! Records.
Sheer Mag return with their sophomore album, “A Distant Call”. They’re still writing about surviving our current hellscape, but this time around, the politics get extra-personal. The album verges on being a concept piece, and the protagonist resembles frontwoman, Tina Halladay herself. The songs document a particularly alienating time in her life when she was laid off from a job. Broke and newly single, her father passed away, leaving her with more wounds than felt possible to heal. It’s heavy power-pop so sleek it gleams.
“We’ve been waiting to write these songs since we started the band and we were able to take these experiences and build a story out of them,” Halladay says. A Distant Call makes an argument for socialism on an anecdotal level. We’re talking about how late capitalism alienates and commodifies whatever is in its path without using the term ‘late capitalism.’” Palmer and Halladay’s new approach to lyricism extended to the recording process, too. Once the Seely brothers had laid down the tracks, Halladay recorded vocals with producer Arthur Rizk (Power Trip, Code Orange).
On July 12th, Sub Pop Records released “Automat”, a collection of METZ non-album singles, B-sides, and rarities dating back to 2009, available on LP for the first time, and including the band’s long out-of-print early (pre-Sub Pop) recordings. It’s a chronological trip through the lesser-known material of Metz, the widely-adored and delightfully noisy 3-piece punk band from Toronto, ON.
The vinyl LP format of Automat included an exclusive bonus 7” single of Metz interpretations of three diverse cover songs, a glimpse of their wide-ranging and excellent taste. And, on August. 20th these three bonus tracks will be available in digital services everywhere. Rejoice! And then also go listen to: a cover of Sparklehorse’s “Pig,” from a very limited 2012 Record Store Day split single originally released by Toronto’s Sonic Boom record shop; “I’m a Bug,” a cover of the Urinals’ art-punk classic, originally released on YouTube (not an actual record label) in 2014; and Metz’s previously unreleased rendition of Gary Numan’s “M.E.”
When Francis Lung describes his new album as sounding “like a short Mancunian boy single-handedly trying to incite Beatlemania” he’s really not too far wide of the mark. Lung’s much-anticipated debut album “A Dream Is U” is both bold and enthusiastic, a kaleidoscopic journey informed by the greats but also one that is wonderfully enigmatic, the sound of a multi-instrumentalist tying together all manner of influences into one beautifully cohesive album.
Following on from the home-recorded Volumes 1 and 2 EPs, which contained titbits written during his time in Wu Lyf, A Dream Is U is the first fully-realised Francis Lung record, a studio undertaking brought to life with producer Brendan Williams (Dutch Uncles, GoGo Penguin), a colourful patchwork of vision and ingenuity. “Before we started recording I knew exactly what the arrangements were in my head” Francis says, reflecting on the time spent devising his new work. “It was kind of my mission to capture everything as it was in my imagination”.
Touching upon the universal themes of addiction, faith, and love in all of its confusion, A Dream Is U is a collection of characters and stories that plays out something like a Harvey Pekar comic strip; an obsessive chronicle of daily lives twisted into new shapes by the unique mind and manners of their narrator. With flashes of striking colour and an ever-present wry smile, Francis Lung has created a debut album that drifts between simple acceptance and exuberant yearning for more. “My favourite part is when it talks about escaping to another universe,” Francis says of one song in particular, Unnecessary Love. “Although it’s a doomed and impossible dream, it’s amusing to me that if we survive long enough it could be a real possibility.”
At times boisterous and radiant, elsewhere contemplative and brooding, A Dream Is U feels like being awake in dreams, like stepping outside of the daily rotation; like shadows leaving their dancing bodies to waltz away to their own tune. For fans of The Beach Boys, Belle and Sebastian and Elephant 6 Records.
Devin Tuel may consider herself to be an artist meant for a different time, but she now finds herself inhabiting her own true place. The singer-songwriter is at home in Newburgh, NY reflecting on her third album, “Happier Now”, released under her nom de plume, Native Harrow, as well as the difficult sojourn the former ballerina and classically trained singer has had to traverse to become the writer and performer she was meant to be.
Happier Now, is a set of nine songs recorded and mixed by Alex Hall (JD McPherson, The Cactus Blossoms, Pokey LaFarge) at Chicago’s Reliable Recorders. The album was co-produced by Hall, Tuel, and her bandmate, multi-instrumentalist Stephen Harms.
Native Harrow cuts out clear and vibrant narratives on fear, love, the open road, ill-fated relationships, and coping with the state of the world. Happier Now oscillates between feeling the sting of uncertainty (Can’t Go on Like This), the beauty of California (Blue Canyon) and the ache for lavish stability (Way to Light). You could say Tuel wears her heart proudly on her sleeve, but that’d be underplaying the exact gravity of her stories. Each starlit image is framed within her warm, enveloping vocals and the careful, profound considerations of Harms’ musicianship. Start to finish, the new record pours forth from her very bones, and you get the overwhelming sense she has never been more daring and honest than right now.
