Jesse Malin considers his video for the new track “Room 13” premiering exclusively below from his upcoming Lucinda Williams-produced album Sunset Kids, an impressionistic “little tribute” to some favorite films, including Midnight Cowboy and Paris, Texas.
Directed by Dito Montiel, a friend from the punk rock scene (Gutterboy, Major Conflict) turned filmmaker (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Empire State, The Clapper), the clip also nods to Malin’s habit of booking himself into hotels to do some songwriting in isolation. The various character plots pay homage to those older films and feature cameos from friends such as Malin’sD Generation bandmate Howie Pyro, the Dickies’ Leonard Graves Phillips and more.
“It was just a great time to make a video in there with (Montiel) and his eye,” Malin says, “Hotels are a place I sometimes go to write in to get that blank canvas feeling. It’s just this empty space. We’re in such a world with distractions, your phone and computer and all the social media. Sometimes if you get far away, in another time zone, you’re in a place where you’re forced to deal with yourself, thinking about that matters in life, who you care about, what really sticks when there isn’t as much noise to deal with. That’s what I’m getting at there.”
“Room 13” is also special to Malin because it’s the first song he and Williams worked on for Sunset Kids, which is due out August. 30th. The two have been friends for years, since Malin’s days in D Generation, and while having dinner in Los Angeles during the summer of 2017 (after Williams opened for the late Tom Petty’s final concert at the Hollywood Bowl), they began talking about having her produce Malin’s next project.
“Then Tom Petty’s (death) happened, and then what happened in Las Vegas (the Route 91 Harvest Festival shootings), and there was a very heavy emotional kind of pause for everybody,” Malin recalls. He and Williams finally got together, with engineer David Bianco, the next February and began working on songs, knocking out “a handful” and continuing to write throughout 2018, negotiating their two schedules as they crafted the 15-track album. “She has a real fearlessness and attention to detail — just a combination of hard work and gut instinct,” Malin says of Williams. “She’s very free, and I think there’s something to that, but yet really worked hard on the writing and crafting of the songs. Every time I’d see her I would have a couple new songs, and if they hit her she’d go with her instinct. ‘Listen to your heart’ was something I got from her, don’t be so over-analytical. We’d do three takes of a song and then go into the control room and see if we nailed it, and it was like, if she was moving her hips to it, that was the one we went with.”
Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, another old friend, co-wrote and sings on the Sunset Kids‘ track “Strangers and Thieves,” while Joseph Arthur appears on three tracks. Malin will be doing some dates this summer with Justin Townes Earle and with Arthur, while an album release show is slated for Sept. 14 at Webster Hall in New York City. And while Sunset Kids‘ title is a salutary reference to Petty and other artists and friends who have passed away while the album was being made, Malin says there’s also an implied salute to those who are still around.
“We all have people we look to, like Keith Richards — of all the people, this guy keeps going,” Malin says with a chuckle. “I sang at Shane MacGowan’s 60th birthday party thinking ‘Oh, this guy’s not going to make it,’ and he’s still here singing — and drinking. And from the hardcore scene…New York was a pretty tough place. A lot of us came from dysfunctional families that didn’t give you the tools to deal with pain and stuff. So when you see anybody who’s still here and made it through, that makes me happy.
Jesse Malin’s official music video for “Room 13 (featuring Lucinda Williams)” from his new record Sunset Kids, available August 30th on Wicked Cool Records.
For anyone who ever was an XTC fan, I have some great news for you. Colin Moulding and Terry Chambers will be presenting a live album under their TC&I moniker, following up their ‘Great Aspirations’ debut EP released a year and a half ago. ‘Naked Flames: Live at Swindon Arts Centre’ will be released via Burning Shed on August 9th.
Naked Flames collects the best from TC&I’s six momentous and stupendous shows at the Swindon Arts Centre in October and November 2018. These were the first live shows together for Moulding and Chambers in 36 years.This follows up their debut ‘Great Aspirations’ EP, released in late 2017.
They played a selection of the songs from the XTC catalogue written by Colin, many of which had never been played live as the band stopped touring in 1982, not long before Chambers‘ departure. They also played material from TC&I’s debut EP, where Moulding and Chambers offer some truly original music. ‘Scatter Me’ and the other three resulting recordings showcase Colin’s English pop vision – the first new material from Moulding in many years, featuring XTC’s trademark qualities of melody, rhythm, variety, and idiosyncratic subject matter, mixed in with nostalgia fuelled by an understated political anger.
“I’d never heard a lot of these tunes in any concert hall and I felt I deserved a chance to put that right….yes a bit of TC&I too, but my songs have been stuck in the closet too long, and I wanted to dry clean them and give them an evening out, or six,” says Colin Moulding.
“I was as excited about these gigs as I was in 1973 playing our first gig at the Arts Centre Swindon as a 17 year Helium Kid, and the first time to be playing with Colin together on stage since San Diego,” says Terry Chambers.
For this mini-residency in Swindon, XTC’s long-standing rhythm section was joined by music veterans Steve Tilling on guitar and Gary Bamford on keyboards and guitar.
Who knows whether there’s more to come… these artists do not even know… Here TC&I intend to release a momento of last autumn’s live shows in Swindon. For the fans who went… and for those who wished they had went, this is a time capsule for all concerned…..enjoy this total eclipse.
2018 marked the 40-year anniversary of XTC’s first studio album ‘White Music’. Founded in 1972, XTC only had their first UK charting single in 1979. Moulding wrote the first three charting singles (‘Life Begins at the Hop’, ‘Making Plans for Nigel’, and ‘Generals and Majors’). Chambers left XTC in the 1980s, while Moulding continued with frontman Andy Partridge through the group’s dissolution in 2006.
There is new fervour over XTC, in part due to the eye-opening documentary ‘This Is Pop’ about the band’s legacy, exploring their journey from mercurial pop outsiders to full blown national treasures and one of Britain’s most influential yet unsung bands.
‘Naked Flames: Live at Swindon Arts Centre’ will be released on Friday, August 9th A bundle order is also available, including two CDs from TC&I – the ‘Naked Flames’ album and their debut ‘Great Aspirations’ EP. Both options Include signed postcards (while stocks last).
The Band:
Colin Moulding – Bass guitar and lead vocals
Terry Chambers – Drums
Gary Bamford – Keyboards, guitar and vocals
Steve Tilling – Lead Guitar and vocals
Lee Moulding – Percussion and vocals
Susannah Bevington – Soprano voice on Scatter Me
All songs written by Colin Moulding except ‘Statue of Liberty’ (written by Andy Partridge)
While listeners have previously described Field Mouse’s sound as something akin to a shoegazey dream pop, “Meaning” marks a decided turn to less obscured realms, boasting 11 songs about finding meaning at the end of the world.
“A lot has happened in the three years since our last record came out. While there is far too much to say about it all in one place, we wrote this album anyway. What are the broad strokes, you ask? It’s more or less about the end of the world and all of the ways that it seems to be happening, but also about making peace with former selves and growing as a person despite the feeling of global entropy. Also: strange internet versions of our friends and selves, bouts of insomnia and picking through the dreams that followed, the importance of forgiveness, and creating meaning in a world that increasingly feels like total chaos. What is the function of art in a place like this? Is anything we make going to last? I am not sure, but here are 11 songs looking for the answer. What I do know is that art connects us to each other and to our feelings and our selves. It is a liferaft, and I hope that we can all continue to put it into the world, appreciate it, and share it indefinitely.”
– Rachel Browne
“Meaning”, the third full length album by the Brooklyn– and Philly-based indie rock group Field Mouse, out August 16th, 2019 on Topshelf Records.
Stef Chura sings “If only you can hear me scream” 10 full times on “Scream” before she, well, screams. Bizarrely, it’s one of the few instances on Midnight, Chura’s sophomore release and first full-length release on Saddle Creek, where she shows restraint, a fleeting respite for her vocal chords that take hit after hit throughout the entirety of the record’s 43 minutes. Howling throughout with a confident vibrato, it’s perhaps the most impressive raw vocal performance since Hop Along last put out an album, reminiscent at times of a young Karen O. A major step up from her 2017 debut Messes (which was reissued in 2018 by Saddle Creek), Midnight is the complete realization of the Detroit-based artist’s solo project, chock full of perfectly fuzzed-out guitars on one of the best-recorded DIY-leaning records in quite some time. That’s thanks in large part to Car Seat Headrest frontman Will Toledo, who helps mold Chura’s songs into ones that sound like his own. “Scream” resembles the song structure of Teens of Denial’s“Unforgiving Girl (She’s Not An),” though potentially even exceeding it as Chura’s guitar solo provides a fist-in-the-air moment before she brings the house down for one final chorus. Chura has been one of the more buzzed-about rising artists in the indie rock community for quite some time; Midnight more than delivers on that initial hype, surpassing virtually all expectations en route to becoming one of her genre’s biggest breakouts.
This an indie record for the ages, a wonderful listen where each song is completely essential to the project as a whole. Midnight is an incredible record, owing, but in no way indebted to her pitch perfect partnership with Toledo, one that’s further catapulted by Chura’s distinctive voice and extraordinary songwriting chops.
The very first Palehound songs were acerbic and wired. They could be dark and ugly, even masochistic at times. “Vandalize my body if it helps you sleep soundly,” Ellen Kempner begs on one of her best early tracks. The music she was making back then matched that energy: knotted guitars dripping with sourness and slime. But as Kempner has grown up and settled down, her songs have become less nervy and more quietly assured. Black Friday,Palehound’s third full-length album, is her most accomplished yet. It trades in the slicing guitars that made Kempner so beloved for more pillowy arrangements that sound like something you could fall back on to keep warm. “I think I hate my body/ ‘Til it’s next to yours,” she sings instead here — something once accepting of harm now deserving of love.
Love abounds on Black Friday. At its center is a healthy partnership that feels like a safe bubble, one that isn’t liable to fade away any time soon. “Aaron,” one of Kempner’s most gorgeous songs, is about supporting her partner through his transition, and it’s filled with tender-hearted declarations of devotion that slide out into open air. “You live your life with your back turned to me/ Your body swaying, voice steady in stance,” she sings. “If shutting my mouth will help you/ Turn around, Aaron/ I can, I can, Aaron, I can.” Even more than the specific experience, “Aaron” is about learning how to be comfortable with what we’ve been given, about wanting to feel weightless in the face of life’s burden. “Rid of our bodies, come and float with me,” she beckons. It’s the happiest Kempner has ever sounded in her music, when she’s opening herself up to new forms of love.
Palehound’s last album, A Place I’ll Always Go, had happy songs like this, too, but they were tempered by songs about death. That album was written shortly after Kempner’s grandmother and a close friend passed away in quick succession, and a lot of those songs were dealing with the disconnect that comes with happiness arriving at the most inopportune time. But Black Friday accepts happiness as something that we’re entitled to, that everyone should feel regardless of their situation. “If there’s anything I learned while I was back in town/ It’s that nothing worth loving ever sticks around/ But you,” Kempner sings on the last lines of this album.
Her newfound stability allows her the opportunity for some perspective to explore devotion in all its forms. Some of the most impressive songs are about friendships and partnerships that didn’t work out. On the album’s title track, Kempner reflects on one such friendship where she constantly felt like an afterthought, but a mislaid sense of dedication kept her coming back for more. “I’ll take being the last one on your mind,” she sings. “Still squeeze me in, never cared about waiting on your line.” The album’s title comes from this clever barb: “You’re Black Friday and I’m going to the mall,” a reminder of our tendency to keep doing things that we know are bad for us, like keeping up the ties of an imbalanced friendship or stoking the memories of an old flame, like Kempner does on the anthemic “Stick N Poke.” There she adopts some of her clanging old-school dramatic flair for a shout-along chorus: “I think I’m due for a shitty tattoo! I only have these thoughts when I’m missing you!”
A good relationship will only get you so far away from your demons, though, and Kempner still falls into old patterns of negativity on Black Friday. Love isn’t a cure for self-consciousness and self-loathing. The feeling that you’re never going to be enough is pervasive, that expectation that the worst will happen never really goes away. On “Worthy,” she pokes at that old wound of unworthiness: “I text you late at night/ I’m in the motel bathroom/ Staring at my thighs.” But Kempner leans into that fear, using it to remind herself of how far she’s come already. “At the thought of losing you/ My muscles hum familiar tunes/ And curl me to a naked ball/ Wet on our shower floor/ How do I unfurl from here?” she sings on the album’s closing track. But the difference between then and now is that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, in the form of another half that understands where you’re coming from and accepts you for who you are.
Black Friday’s central visual motif is a plush puppet mask (created by Gaudmother) that’s featured on the album’s cover art and recurs in its music videos. In the one for “Aaron,” we see this puppet before it assumes its final form. It’s rough-looking, covered in lint and muck, a gigantic outer protective layer that ends up being shed as it runs wildly through the streets, emerging into a cozy and lovable Muppet-like creature, delightful in its awkwardness. Kempner achieves a similar transformation with this album. Her gnarled guitar lines have given way to soft-focus serenity, warm keys stemming the anxiety that once threatened to envelop her. Her bitter edge has opened up to vulnerability and light.
Hatchie is the world of Harriette Pilbeam. Step inside her mind; a dreamy landscape where cascading synths, jangling guitars, propulsive rhythms and white noise undulate beneath irresistible pop melodies. Rather than focusing on the external world of her life in Brisbane, Pilbeam turns her gaze inwards, making a soundtrack out of her daydreams, setting her emotional life to song.
Brisbane’s Hatchie, aka Harriette Pilbeam, has released her debut full-length, “Keepsake”. Available through Double Double Whammy.
Following up on 2018’s Sugar & Spice EP, Keepsake spans 10 dreamy tracks that bring in elements of shoegaze and danceable pop. Singles “Stay With Me”, “Without a Blush”, and “Obsessed” have hinted at the influence of the likes of Cocteau Twins and Mazzy Star.
Speaking about the album title , Hatchie said of Keepsake,
“It was a word that popped up in one of the songs, ‘Kiss the Stars’. I talk about keeping a heart as a keepsake, and I thought it was really nice. I have a bunch of little keepsakes and mementos in a drawer at home. I thought that this album would be a keepsake, kind of like a time capsule of this time in my life. So, it just kind of makes sense. I didn’t put too much thought into it at the time, which is good because I was worried I would be agonizing over it. I really liked that it was an easy decision to name the album Keepsake.”
For more insight into Keepsake, Hatchie has broken the record down Track by Track.
“Not That Kind”:
I wrote this song in mid 2017, when I wasn’t intentionally working towards anything specific like, say, an album. I just wanted to write a fun, rollicking pop song so I started with the lead synth line and guitars. It came together really quickly and I don’t even remember writing the lyrics. It’s got one of my favourite bass lines on the whole album. I used an old multi-effects pedal to create a random rhythm for the guitar in the bridge. I always thought it would be the perfect opener for an album, so I’m glad it’s ended up that way.
“Without A Blush”:
I wrote this one in early 2018 when I was focusing on the more industrial, heavy sounds that I wanted on the album. I started with the bass line and worked on the verses for ages. I actually lost the original demo because my programs kept crashing, but it ended up being a bit of a blessing because the second time around I had a much more concise vision for the song. I agonized over the bridge for months, originally trying a bunch of different vocal lines before deciding it really just needed some breathing space, both for me as the singer and the listener. After all the touring I did over the past year, I realized most of my songs have no breaks at all, so I really wanted this one to have space to grow before coming back with a bang at the end.
“Her Own Heart”:
This track is sonically more similar to the early Hatchie demos and the vision I had for the project back when I started it. As with the EP demos, the original version was also super washy, with 10 layers of guitars stacked up to make it as wet and verbed out as possible. At the time it was really irking me that so many of my songs are about someone else and how they make me feel, so with this one I set out to write about how I hoped I would react if I was suddenly completely on my own and forced to be emotionally independent — hence the cheesy lyrics about shooting your heart with your own arrow, and being your own muse. These are concepts I wish I’d been more aware of when I was younger. The original lyrics were far too long, telling a much bigger story that I wish I could have fit in. I wrote it in third person because I found it easier to open up and see it from a different perspective.
“Obsessed”:
I wrote this song more recently than the other tracks, a few weeks before we went into the studio in July last year. I wanted a super contained, compressed pop song with imperfections to balance out the sprawling, dramatic songs already written for the album. I started with the drum machine and layered up the synths before adding the vocals and guitars, trying to make them sound like samples. It makes me feel really nostalgic for when I was a teenager. It sounds like it’s a love song but it’s actually about my tendency to get obsessed with new friends to the point of pushing them away because I over analyze the relationship and ruin it. I wrote it in a few hours when I was feeling really down about not writing any new songs that I liked for a few months.
“Unwanted Guest”:
I probably shouldn’t say it, but this is my favourite track on the album. It’s exactly what I wanted the whole album to sound like before deciding it needed the balance of other more poppy, light, happy songs for it to work as a whole. I played around with the verse for months, really struggling to figure out where it should go after the spoken line. I just had two parts that I loved – the vocals and a bass line – and couldn’t decide on proper chords to fit under it. I had actually decided to shelve this song after a few different sessions working with Joe where we tried everything from changing the key to changing the entire chord structure. It was driving me crazy and I felt like we just kept getting further and further away from how I wanted it to sound. I gave up and started working on a brand new song, which I realized worked perfectly as a chorus after this original verse, so we put them together in a new session and it was a revelation. Recording all the synths in the outro was one of my favourite days in the studio. It’s an angry song about being dragged to a party you don’t want to be at!!
“Secret”:
This song was a surprise addition to the album in the final days of recording. We had some spare time after almost finishing all of the other tracks so decided to give something new a go. I had all the vocal and synth parts written, but like Unwanted Guest, I had no idea how to fit them all together and make something that sounded really different from the rest of the album. John Castle, who produced the album, sat down with the parts for an hour and came out with something way beyond where I imagined the song going originally. We were wary about the Robbie Williams piano line he suggested we add in behind everything in the second half of the song, but it’s my favourite part now. I wrote the lyrics last. It’s about confiding in a friend about your mental health.
“Kiss The Stars”:
This song is about seeing a childhood friend after years apart. I wanted to write something super nostalgic that looked back on a much simpler time in my life. I had the ‘kiss the stars’ line in my head for a while, having an idea of how I wanted that part of the song to go but not the rest. I tried adding it to various other tracks I was working on before realizing it worked best with this one. I love that the rhythm guitar and bass alternate between the same two chords for the entire song. In the demo I even just cut the progression in half and pasted the guitar and bassline in the opposite order for the change halfway through. The outro vocal part is such a special part to me, I love stacking up three or four harmonies to mimic a chord like that. It’s also when I reference the album title!
“Stay With Me”:
I heard Joe playing and singing this verse over and over from the other room and fell in love with it. We finished it together for fun, not as a song for any project in particular, aiming for a Kylie meets Trainspotting dance track. It was really exciting hearing it all come together though, and we agreed it was the perfect addition to the album. I love that it’s got a real a crying-on-the-dancefloor vibe.
“When I Get Out”:
This is another track that started off sounding completely different from the final product after merging multiple songs into one. I wanted something that reminded me of the The OC soundtrack that was so prevalent in my teen years.
“Keep”:
This is by far the oldest song on the album — it actually almost ended up on the previous EP. When deciding on the demos I was going to re-record for the album I skipped over it, feeling like I had outgrown the straight up pop sound and had better options. Once I had selected all of the other tracks though I felt like “Keep” would be the perfect connection between the album and the EP. I really like the simple, pop bookends of the album – opening with “Not That Kind” and closing with “Keep”.
Released this week was Trash Kit’s monumental third album “Horizon!” Available now on LP (yellow and black vinyl pressings), CD and digitally, Horizon is essential listening for these sun-soaked times, both exhilaratingly bold and rapturous in equal measure! Trash Kit are Rachel Aggs (guitar, vocals), Rachel Horwood (drums, vocals) and Gill Partington (bass). Three deeply creative individuals who play in a multitude of other groups including Bas Jan, Sacred Paws, Shopping and Bamboo, united by a shared decade of spry musicality with Trash Kit.
Their songs once succinct, patchwork post-punk numbers of an honest diary-like nature now tussle more with long-form songwriting, expeditious polyphony and cascades of sung-spoke vocals. Aggs’ guitar playing for this album was informed by her love of guitar music from Zimbabwe, her cyclical motifs billow with lean Mbira rhythms. Horwood has similarly approached her drumkit with an untamable freedom, allowing it to breathe as a vivid lead instrument. Trash Kit’s music is woven with silence and punctuation, and this is where the resonant, driving bass of Partington fits in. The bass has become now central to shaping the melody of this new collection of songs.
Horizon finds itself abrim with themes, especially the notion of looking to the future, “personally as well as to the future of the band, the future of marginalised people making music, political futures, trying to imagine and re-imagine our world, thinking about what possibility and change sound like” attests Aggs .
Pivotal to this new album, ‘Horizon’ is sleeping giant of a title track, forever reaching out and intensifying throughout its lively five-minute lesson in reinforcement. Trash Kit’s approach to life as with music is one of openness, inclusion and potential and Horizon is an album with that in dutiful abundance. It’s an album that forever listens for the next moment and will meet you once more beyond the vanishing point.
‘Horizon’ by Trash Kit, taken from their forthcoming album ‘Horizon’.
Released through Upset The Rhythm on LP. CD and digitally on July 5th.
Expanded version of seminal debut from cult band, includes unheard extras and a bonus 7” by 15 Minutes.
• a reissue of “Days of Wine & Roses” endorsed by the entire band!
• a vinyl reissue of their original 4 song 12-inch EP (long out of print)
• exact facsimile replica of Steve Wynn’s rare “15 Minutes” 7-inch single
Plus: new interviews with Kendra Smith, producer Chris D., & Paul B. Cutler (who recorded the “Down There” EP), ephemera from the Dennis Duck archives – Lovingly curated by Dream Syndicate archivist Pat Thomas.
An exceptional early ‘80s guitar-powered gem, remastered in full and includes the band’s debut indie EP and both tracks from main protagonist Steve Wynn’s earlier combo 15 Minutes.
With few exceptions, the bands that rose from L.A.’s Paisley Underground scene in the ’80s had only one real thing in common — all of them were obsessed with the rock & roll touchstones of the mid- to late ’60s, whether it was psychedelia (the Rain Parade), country rock (the Long Ryders), or AM pop (the Bangles). But while most of these bands looked to the sunny side of ’60s rock, the Dream Syndicate were the Paisley Underground’s juvenile delinquents, smart but cynical and happy to spread bad vibes for the hell of it.
Nearly all of the Paisley bands were audibly Californian, but while they hailed from Davis, California, the Dream Syndicate’s key influences were significantly from the East Coast: the Velvet Underground (particularly White Light/White Heat), and mid-’60s Bob Dylan (think Highway 61 Revisited). At the core of their sound was the bracing thrust and parry between Karl Precoda’s lead guitar, noisy and elemental but inspired in its wanderlust, and the sharp report of Steve Wynn’s rhythm guitar, yielding a tougher and more abrasive sound than their peers. Consequently, the Dream Syndicate’s debut album, 1982’s The Days of Wine and Roses, is arguably the finest LP to come out of the Paisley Underground’s salad days, and ultimately atypical of the movement, a blast of beautiful but ominous rock & roll chaos whose speedy guitar-based attack was held in place by the intelligent minimalism of bassist Kendra Smith and drummer Dennis Duck. While the Dream Syndicate’s influences were obvious (the initial vinyl pressing of The Days of Wine and Roses included the helpful run-off groove message “Pre-Motorcyle Accident”), the way they manifested themselves were not; the skronky impact of the guitars recalled the Velvets, but Precoda’s billows of noise had a personality all their own, and though Wynn’s vocal delivery had the bite of both vintage Dylan and Lou Reed, his lyrical voice was his own, offhand but deeply personal at the same time. And Chris D.’s no-frills production captured the Dream Syndicate gloriously, and the greatest pleasure of The Days of Wine and Roses is how well this band plays together, like a miraculously contained explosion that seemed to be going a dozen places at once but confidently and fearlessly rolls forward, and the expressive jams on “Then She Remembers,” “Until Lately,” and the title cut are outstanding. The Dream Syndicate would be a very different band when they cut Medicine Show two years later, but while they would remain an interesting band to the end, The Days of Wine and Roses captures them at their peak, and it’s essential listening for noise guitar fiends and anyone interested in ’80s alternative rock.
“The Days Of Wine And Roses’ is as timelessly potent as the records that inspired it.” Uncut
Central to the hugely influential Paisley Underground scene of the early 1980s that spawned Green On Red, The Bangles, Long Ryders and Rain Parade.
“Arguably the finest LP to come out of the Paisley Underground’s salad days.” AllMusic
With a nod to the Velvet Underground, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Dylan, packed into an incendiary slow-burn punk fuse, ‘The Days Of Wine And Roses’ is a glorious, upbeat sprawl, everything that rock ‘n’ roll should be.
The Eyelids have been kicking up a rockin’ storm down in Cornwall for a few years now, honing their garage/psychobilly/rockabilly/roots rock chops to within a plectrum of Lux Interior backed by Link Wray. The four piece all-female band – Kelley Green on vox, Sharon Kellaway on guitar, Louise Fowler on double bass and Michelle Fowler on drums – are set to release their latest offering and it’s some of the best stuff they’ve recorded.
Curated Oblivion opens the EP with a driving beat that sounds like a manic Johnny Too Bad on speed. It’s a drag race car rocking to the end of the road and oblivion or victory. You Make Me A Zombie has a drum beat and bass rhythm like an off kilter heart beat that builds tension under the surfabilly guitar. It has great moments of syncopation, building up then dropping you off the top of a tall building. There is subtlety and power here. It’s cool as fuck. Love it like the undead. The Last Time has a sense of brooding like a hot, sultry night. There is a slightly melancholic feel to it. The rim shot drums are like chattering bones or the noise of sticks on grinning skulls. The guitar is pure rockabilly perfection. The title track Suffer opens with a great garage rockabilly guitar. Then the drums and double bass kick in and we’re on a road to garage-a-billy heaven. It’s a breathless tune.
The Eyelids bring back the great joy of 50s and 60s garage music; a bunch of not-so-juvenile delinquents with brains sent crazy by the devil’s music and drowning in garage frenzy. The garage/psychobilly sound is the music of youthful exuberance and love of schlock horror, cheap thrills, fast cars, cool dudes and hip girls – it’s a celebration of a musical form that is rock n roll at its most primitive and visceral. As the age of youth witnesses the first stirrings of rebellion against old farts, so rockabilly/garage is rock n roll’s even more rebellious twin, the one the family hides away in the basement.
The Eyelids are a great band with drums like rumbling thunder, bass slapping like a downpour of rain on freshly turned graveyard earth, guitar like slicing lightning and a voice like a demon twinned with an angel.
As Long Beard, New Jersey singer-songwriter Leslie Bear crafts wistful soft rock that sticks to your bones. It’s been four years since she premiered her debut album, Sleepwalker, and now, she’s officially announcing the followup. The album, which was co-produced by Craig Hendrix (of Japanese Breakfast) is called Means To Me. It’s out in full September 13th via Double Double Whammy, but ahead of that, she’s sharing the first single, “Sweetheart,” a pensive dream of falling back in touch with someone who made an impact some time ago.
Long Beard, Aka Leslie Bear says So happy to finally announce the new Long Beard record, ‘Means To Me’, out on Double Double Whammy! I’m really proud of this one and can’t wait to share it with you :’) The first single ‘Sweetheart’ is a nostalgic song that shifts between the distant past and the present. It’s a letter to someone you’ve lost touch with from a long time ago, finding some small connection to their life with regards to yours—how the thought of them resurfaces every once in a while and how they may have shaped the person you’ve become while wondering if you’ve had a similar impact on them,” .“It’s a jangly/indie-pop song reminiscent of the 90s with a chimey lead guitar that weaves in and out. It’s written almost as a stream of consciousness with a heavy daydream mood.”
